The Secret Servant

tossed the newspaper onto his desk. “What’s on your calendar for today?”
    “A conference on African health care issues and afternoon tea at the Houses of Parliament.”
    “Still glad we came to London?”
    “I wouldn’t have traded it for the world.” She stood up and headed toward the door. “Give my best to the foreign secretary.”
    “Don’t forget drinks at Downing Street.”
    “I won’t forget.”
    Elizabeth left her father’s office and rode the elevator down to the atrium. Four other people, attired as she was in cold-weather athletic suits, were already there: Jack Hammond, the embassy’s public affairs officer; Alex Baker, an FBI special agent who served as legal affairs liaison, Paul Foreman from Consular, and Chris Petty from the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Petty served as London’s Regional Security Officer, which meant he was responsible for the safety of the embassy and its staff. Two of Petty’s assistant RSOs arrived a moment later. Their matching blue tracksuits did little to conceal the fact that they were powerfully built and well armed.
    “Where’s Kevin?” Elizabeth asked.
    Kevin Barnett, the CIA’s deputy chief of station, rarely missed the morning run when he was in town.
    “Stuck in his office,” said Chris Petty.
    “Anything to do with that NCTC alert?”
    Petty smiled. “How did you know about that?”
    “I’m the ambassador’s daughter, Chris.”
    Alex Baker looked at his watch. “Let’s get rolling. I have a nine o’clock at New Scotland Yard.”
    They headed outside and slipped through a gate in the north fence reserved for embassy personnel. A moment later they were jogging west along Upper Brook Street, heading for Hyde Park.
     
     
     
    The Ford Transit panel van was painted forest green and bore a stencil on the side that read: ADDISON & HODGE LTD . ROYAL PARKS CON - TRACTORS . The van did not belong to Addison & Hodge but was a meticulously produced forgery, just like a second one already inside Hyde Park. As the group of Americans came trotting along Upper Brook Street, the man behind the wheel watched them calmly, then pressed a button on his mobile phone and brought it to his ear. The conversation he conducted was coded and brief. When it was over he slipped the phone into the pocket of his coverall—also a forgery—and started the engine. He entered the park through a restricted access point and made his way to a stand of trees north of the Serpentine lake. A sign read AUTHORIZED VEHICLES ONLY , and warned of heavy fines for violators. The man behind the wheel climbed out and started collecting rubbish, praying softly to himself while he worked. In the name of Allah, the beneficent, the merciful…master of the day of judgment…show us the straight path…

10
     
    CIA H EADQUARTERS : 2:32 A.M. , F RIDAY
     
    L ater, during the inevitable Congressional inquiry, much emphasis would be placed on determining precisely when and how the intelligence services of the United States first became aware of the calamity about to befall London. The answer was 2:32 A.M . local time, when a telephone call from an individual identified only as an FIS, or “foreign intelligence source,” arrived on an emergency line in the seventh-floor executive suite of CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The foreign intelligence source, though never identified, was Gabriel, and the emergency line he dialed belonged to none other than Adrian Carter, the CIA’s deputy director of operations. In normal times, the call would have been automatically transferred to Carter’s home in nearby McLean. But these were hardly normal times, and, in spite of the appalling hour, Carter was standing in the window of his office anxiously awaiting word on the outcome of a sensitive operation under way in the mountains of Pakistan.
    Aside from the grand view toward the Potomac, there was little about Carter’s lair to suggest it belonged to one of the most powerful members of Washington’s vast intelligence establishment. Nor would one have guessed as much from Carter’s rather churchy appearance. Only a handful of people in Washington knew that Adrian Carter spoke seven languages fluently and could understand at least seven more. Or that Carter, before his ascension to the rarified atmosphere of Langley’s seventh floor, had been one of his nation’s most faithful clandestine warriors. His fingerprints were on every major American covert operation of the