The English Girl: A Novel

objections of the secretary of state for energy. Finally, he told Seymour about the Russian-speaking woman he had first seen in an ancient church in the Lubéron and then in an abandoned council house in Basildon.
    “Who’s the source for Jeremy Fallon and the five million?” asked Seymour.
    “I’d like to claim a zone of exclusivity on that one, if you don’t mind.”
    “I’m sure you would. But who’s the source?”
    Gabriel answered truthfully. Seymour shook his head slowly.
    “Viktor Orlov is genetically incapable of telling the truth,” he said. “He’s always offering MI6 bits of so-called intelligence about Russia, and none of it ever pans out.”
    “Chiara and I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for Viktor Orlov,” Gabriel responded.
    “That doesn’t mean that everything he says is true.”
    “He knows more about the underside of the Russian oil industry than anyone else in the world.”
    Seymour did not challenge this assertion. “And you’re sure about the man and the woman who drove off in the Mercedes?” he asked. “You’re sure they were the same ones who followed you in the gallery?”
    “Graham,” said Gabriel wearily.
    “We all make mistakes from time to time.”
    “Some of us more often than others.”
    Seymour tossed his cigarette into the darkness in anger. “Why am I hearing about this only now? Why didn’t you call me last night while you had them under watch?”
    “And what would you have done? Would you have alerted the chief of your Russian counterintelligence division? Would you have informed your director?” Gabriel was silent for a moment. “If I had come to you last night, it would have set in motion a chain of events that would have led to the destruction of Jonathan Lancaster and his government.”
    “So why are you coming to me now?”
    Gabriel made no reply. Seymour started to light another cigarette, then stopped himself.
    “Rather ironic, don’t you think?”
    “What’s that?”
    “I asked you to find Madeline Hart because I was trying to protect my prime minister from scandal. And now you’re bringing me information that could destroy him.”
    “That wasn’t my intention.”
    “You can’t prove a word of it, you know. Not one word.”
    “I realize that.”
    Seymour exhaled heavily. “I am the deputy director of Her Majesty’s Security Service,” he said, more to himself than to Gabriel. “Deputy directors of MI5 do not bring down British governments. They protect them from enemies foreign and domestic.”
    “But what if the government is dirty?”
    “What government isn’t?” Seymour replied glibly.
    Gabriel didn’t answer. He was in no mood for a relativistic debate over ethics in politics.
    “And if I prevailed upon you to walk away and forget about it?” asked Seymour. “What would you do?”
    “I would abide by your wishes and go home to Jerusalem.”
    “And do what?”
    “It seems Shamron has plans for me.”
    “Anything you want to tell me about?”
    “Not yet.”
    Seymour was clearly intrigued but let it drop for now. “And what would you think of me?” he asked after a moment.
    “What does it matter what I think?”
    “It matters to me,” said Seymour earnestly.
    Gabriel made a show of thought. “I think you would spend the rest of your life wondering what the SVR was doing with all the money they were siphoning from the North Sea. And I think you would feel guilty that you’d done nothing to stop it.”
    Seymour made no reply.
    “We have a saying in our service, Graham. We believe that a career without scandal is not a proper career at all.”
    “We’re British,” Seymour answered. “We don’t have sayings, and we don’t like scandals. In fact, we live in fear of making even the slightest misstep.”
    “That’s why you have me.”
    Seymour looked at Gabriel seriously for a moment. “What exactly are you suggesting?”
    “Let me go to war against Volgatek on your behalf. I’ll find the proof that they stole your oil.”
    “And then what?”
    “I’ll steal it back.”
    G abriel and Graham Seymour spent the next thirty minutes thrashing out the details of perhaps the most unorthodox operational accord ever reached between two sometimes-allied services. Later, it would come to be known as the Parliament Hill accord, though there were some inside British intelligence who referred to it as the Kite Hill accord, which was the other name for the knoll at the southern end of Hampstead Heath. Under