The Rembrandt Affair

American homeland. Because the facility did not officially exist, it had no official name. Those in the know, however, referred to it as the annex and nothing else. Its centerpiece was an amphitheater-like control room dominated by several large video screens capable of projecting images securely from almost anywhere on the planet. Directly adjacent was a glass-enclosed soundproof meeting room known affectionately as the fishbowl, along with a dozen gray cubicles reserved for the alphabet soup of American agencies involved in counterterrorism and intelligence collection. Even Graham Seymour, whose primary task remained counterespionage, could scarcely remember them all. The American security establishment, he thought, was much like American automobiles—large and flashy but ultimately inefficient.
    It was a few minutes after six p.m. by the time Seymour finally gained admittance to the annex. Adrian Carter was seated in his usual chair on the back deck of the control room with Ari Shamron perched at his right, looking as though he were already in the throes of a full-blown nicotine fit. Seymour settled into his usual spot at Carter’s left and fixed his gaze on the video screens. In the center of the display was a static CCTV image of the exterior of the Financial Journal, workplace of their soon-to-be agent in place, Zoe Reed.
    Unlike her colleagues at the Journal, Zoe’s day had been the subject of close scrutiny by the intelligence services of three nations. They knew that it had begun badly with a twenty-minute delay on the dreaded Northern Line tube. They knew she arrived for work at 9:45 looking deeply annoyed, that she lunched with a source at a quaint bistro near St. Paul’s, and that she ducked into a Boots pharmacy on the way back to work to pick up a few personal items, which they were never able to identify. They also knew she had been forced to endure several unpleasant hours with a Journal lawyer because of a threatened libel suit stemming from her Empire Aerospace exposé. And that she was then dragooned into Jason Turnbury’s office for yet another lecture about her expenses, which were even higher than the previous month.
    Zoe finally emerged from Journal headquarters at 6:15, a few minutes later than Gabriel had hoped, and hailed a taxi. By no accident, one pulled to the curb immediately and ferried her at inordinate speed to St. Pancras. She navigated passport control in record time and headed to the boarding platform, where she was recognized by a lecherous City banker who proclaimed himself her biggest fan.
    Zoe feared the man would be seated near her on the train but was relieved when her traveling companion turned out to be the quiet, dark-haired girl from Highgate who called herself Sally. Four other members of the team were also aboard Zoe’s carriage, including an elfin figure with wispy hair she knew as Max and the tweedy Englishman who called himself David. Neither bothered to inform the ops center at Grosvenor Square that Zoe had made her train. CCTV did it for them.
    “So far, so good,” said Shamron, his gaze fastened on the video screens. “All we need now is our leading man.”

    B UT EVEN as Shamron uttered those words, the three spymasters already knew that Martin Landesmann was running alarmingly behind schedule. After starting his day with an hour-long scull across the flat waters of Lake Geneva, he boarded his private jet along with several top aides for the short hop to Vienna. There he visited the offices of a large Austrian chemical concern, emerging at three in the afternoon into a light snow. At which point, the intelligence gods decided to throw a spanner in the works. Because in the time it took Landesmann and his entourage to reach Schwechat Airport, the light snowfall had turned into a full-fledged Austrian blizzard.
    For the next two hours, Saint Martin sat with monastic serenity in the VIP lounge of Vienna Aircraft Services while his entourage worked feverishly to obtain a departure slot. All available weather data pointed to a long delay or perhaps even airport closure. But by some miracle, Martin’s jet received the only clearance that night and by half past five was Paris bound. In accordance with Gabriel’s standing order, no photographs were snapped as Martin and his entourage deplaned at Le Bourget and filed into a waiting convoy of black S-Class Mercedes sedans. Three of the cars headed to the Hôtel de Crillon, one to the graceful cream-colored