The Secret Servant

his skull in two. He felt a burst of excruciating pain and saw a flash of brilliant light. Then he saw a woman, a woman in a dark blue tracksuit, being led into a valley of ashes by murderers in black hoods.
     
     
     
    The telephone call arrived in the Family Quarters on the second floor of the White House at 3:14 A.M . The president snatched the receiver from the cradle after the first ring and brought it quickly to his ear. He immediately recognized the voice at the other end of the line: Cyrus Mansfield, his national security advisor.
    “I’m afraid there’s been another attack in London, Mr. President.”
    “How bad?”
    Mansfield answered the question to the best of his ability. The president closed his eyes and whispered, “My God.”
    “The British are doing everything they can to seal off London and prevent them from escaping,” Mansfield said. “But as you might expect, the situation is extremely chaotic.”
    “Activate the Situation Room. I’ll be downstairs in five minutes.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    The president hung up the phone and sat up in bed. When he switched on the bedside lamp, his wife stirred and looked at his face. She had seen the expression before.
    “How bad?” she asked.
    “London has been hit again.” He hesitated. “And Elizabeth Halton has been taken hostage.”

PART T WO
     

THE LAND OF STRANGERS

11
     
    N EW S COTLAND Y ARD : 12:26 A.M. , S ATURDAY
     
    I wouldn’t complain too much about a nasty bump on the head.”
    Graham Seymour’s limousine lurched out of the forecourt of New Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, and turned into Broadway. The MI5 man looked very tired. He had a right to. Bombs had exploded in the Underground at Marble Arch, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, and Charing Cross. Six American diplomats and security men had been slaughtered in Hyde Park and the daughter of the American ambassador, Elizabeth Halton, was missing and presumed kidnapped. And thus far the only person to be arrested was Gabriel Allon.
    “They asked me to put my hands in the air and drop the gun,” said Gabriel. “I complied with their order.”
    “Do try to see it from their point of view. You were about to shoot a man in the head and were surrounded by eight other bodies. You’re damned lucky they even gave you a chance to surrender. They would have been well within their rights to use lethal force. That’s what they’re trained to do when confronted by a man they believe might be a suicide bomber.”
    “Wouldn’t that have been perfect. The one person who tried to prevent the attacks, shot dead by London police.” Greeted by Graham Seymour’s angry silence, Gabriel pressed his case. “You should have listened to me, Graham. You should have raised the threat level and rousted a few of your known terrorists. Maybe Elizabeth Halton and the rest of the Americans would have stayed in their embassy instead of going for a morning jog in Hyde Park.”
    “And I told you to stay out of it.”
    “Is that why you left me sitting in that holding cell for sixteen hours, Graham? Is that why you let them file charges against me? Is that why you let them take my fingerprints and my photograph?”
    “Forgive me for not coming to your rescue sooner, Gabriel. I’ve been a little busy.”
    Gabriel looked out at the wet streets of Westminster. They were abandoned, except for the uniformed Met officers standing watch at every other corner. Graham Seymour did have a point. London had just experienced its bloodiest single day since the Second World War. Gabriel could hardly complain about spending most of it inside New Scotland Yard.
    “How many dead, Graham?”
    “The toll is much higher than the attacks of July 2005,” Seymour said. “So far we’re at three hundred dead, with more than two thousand injured. But these bombings obviously had a second purpose—to create an atmosphere of chaos in the capital that allowed the kidnappers to slip away undetected. Unfortunately, it worked to perfection. Whoever planned this attack was bloody diabolical—and damned good.”
    “What have you picked up about the identity and affiliation of the bombers?”
    “They’re all second-generation British boys from Finsbury Park and Walthamstow in East London. All four are of Egyptian heritage, and all four were members of a small storefront mosque in Walthamstow called the al-Salaam Mosque.”
    “The Mosque of Peace,” Gabriel said. “How appropriate.”
    “The