The English Girl: A Novel

this moment in time, that fact is beyond dispute.”
    “Point taken,” said Keller. “But what’s the link?”
    “I’m still working on that. But if I had to guess, I’d say it was their operation from the beginning.”
    “Operation?” asked Keller incredulously. “You’re saying the Russians kidnapped the mistress of the British prime minister?”
    Gabriel made no reply. He didn’t quite believe it yet, either.
    “Would you allow me to remind you of a few salient facts?” Keller asked.
    “Please do.”
    “Marcel Lacroix and René Brossard weren’t Russian, and they didn’t work for the SVR. They were both French organized crime figures with a long track record in Marseilles and the south of France.”
    “Maybe they didn’t realize who they were working for.”
    “What about Paul?”
    “We don’t know anything about him except that he speaks French like he learned it from a tape—or so said the great Don Anton Orsati of Corsica.”
    “Peace be upon him.”
    Gabriel rapped his knuckle on the windshield and said, “She’s too far ahead of you.”
    “I’ve got her.”
    “Close the gap some.”
    Keller accelerated for a few seconds, then eased off the throttle.
    “You think Paul is Russian?” he asked.
    “That would help explain why the French police were never able to attach a name to his face.”
    “But why would he hire French criminals to kidnap Madeline instead of doing the job himself?”
    “Have you ever heard of a false flag operation?” asked Gabriel. “Intelligence services routinely conduct operations that would cause diplomatic or political damage if they were ever exposed. So they cloak those activities under a false flag. Sometimes they pose as operatives from another service. Or sometimes they pose as something else entirely.”
    “Like French criminals?”
    “You’d be surprised.”
    “There’s just one problem with your theory.”
    “Just one?”
    “The SVR doesn’t need money.”
    “I doubt very much that this was about money.”
    “You gave them two suitcases filled with ten million euros.”
    “Yes, I know.”
    “If this wasn’t about money, what was the payment all about?”
    “They flew the false flag until the end,” said Gabriel.
    Keller was silent for a moment. Finally, he asked, “But why did they kill Madeline?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Where’s her family?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “How did the Russians find out about Madeline and Lancaster?”
    “I don’t know that, either.”
    “There’s someone who might.”
    “Who’s that?”
    “The woman driving that car,” said Keller, pointing over the steering wheel toward the taillights of the Volvo.
    “It’s better to be a pickpocket than a mugger.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “Close the gap,” said Gabriel, rapping his knuckle against the glass. “She’s too far ahead of you.”
    S he passed beneath the M25 ring road, sped over a landscape of farms and fields, and then entered the suburbs of metropolitan London. After thirty minutes the suburbs gave way to the boroughs of the East End and, eventually, to the office towers of the City. From there, she headed across Holborn and Soho to Mayfair, where she pulled to the curb of a busy section of Duke Street, just south of Oxford Street. After engaging the emergency flashers, she climbed out of the Volvo and carried the Marks & Spencer bag toward a Mercedes sedan that was parked a few feet away. As she approached the car, the trunk lid rose automatically, though Gabriel could see no evidence the woman had been the one to open it. She placed the bag inside, closed the lid with a thump, and returned to the Volvo. Ten seconds later she eased carefully away from the curb and headed toward Oxford Street.
    “What should I do?” asked Keller.
    “Let her go.”
    “Why?”
    “Because the person who opened the trunk of that Mercedes is watching to see if she’s being tailed.”
    Keller scanned the street. So did Gabriel. There were restaurants on both sides, all of them catering to the tourist trade, and the pavements were crowded with pedestrians. Any one of them might have been carrying the key to the Mercedes.
    “What now?” asked Keller.
    “We wait.”
    “For what?”
    “I’ll know it when I see it.”
    “Pickpockets and muggers?”
    “Something like that.”
    Keller was staring at the Mercedes, but Gabriel was looking around at the culinary nightmare that was upper Duke Street: Pizza Hut, Garfunkel’s, something