37 Wormwood Cottage
Wormwood Cottage
It was hardly the way Graham Seymour, director-general of the Secret Intelligence Service, had intended to spend his afternoon.
His busy schedule included a meeting of his section chiefs at Vauxhall Cross, a briefing for Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster
of Christoper Keller’s unusual request for a private aircraft, he abruptly cleared his calendar. He told only the prime minister
the reason why. He placed the call from the back seat of his official car while headed west on the M4. Lancaster was in his
private study at Number 10.
“Is it really her?” he asked.
“She looks different, and somehow she got herself a Swiss passport. But there’s no question it’s her.”
“I suppose it was our friend Gabriel Allon who found her.”
“It was, Prime Minister. But how on earth did you know that?”
“Because the Metropolitan Police prevailed upon him to look into her disappearance.”
“Is there some reason why no one bothered to tell SIS?”
“It was a matter for the Home Office, not Vauxhall Cross. Besides, Graham, you have quite enough on your plate at the moment.”
Which was indeed the case. The Secret Intelligence Service was desperately trying to prevent a Russian conquest of Ukraine
and the collapse of the NATO alliance, all at a time when Britain’s economy was reeling and its public finances were in disarray.
To make matters worse, the Americans were pressuring the Kyiv government to accept a peace agreement on Russia’s terms. Graham
steadfastly opposed allowing the Kremlin to redraw Europe’s map by force, as did the prime minister. Together with the French
president, Germany’s chancellor, and Denmark’s prime minister, Jonathan Lancaster was the leader of what was once fondly known
as the free world. It was a role he relished. No one loathed the Russians more than Jonathan Lancaster—and with good reason.
“The question is,” he asked, “why in the name of all that is holy would she do such a thing?”
“Evidently it had something do with her husband’s business. The details are somewhat murky, but it appears he got himself
entangled with one of the Russian oligarchs.”
“Which one?”
“Dmitri Savin.”
“A nasty piece of work,” remarked Lancaster.
“Quite.”
“A member of the Russian president’s inner circle, is he not?”
“As inner as it gets,” replied Graham. “Which was only one of the reasons why we seized his British-based assets and sent
him back to Moscow after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
“And the other?”
“He has long-standing ties to Russia’s intelligence services, the GRU in particular.”
“What sort of ties?”
“Financial, Prime Minister. We have reason to believe that Dmitri Savin has been clandestinely bankrolling the GRU’s activities here in Europe.”
“You don’t think he was using Edward Knight to—”
“It certainly sounds like that might be the case.”
“Not that it matters,” said Lancaster, “but Edward is a major donor to the Conservative Party. That said, I never cared for
the man.”
“Neither does his wife, it seems.”
“Met her once. Lovely woman.”
“I’m told she has the receipts.”
“About her husband’s involvement with Dmitri Savin?”
“Apparently so.”
“Tread carefully, Graham. The last thing we need is another scandal.”
He had one last cancellation to make, a small dinner party that his wife, Helen, was hosting that evening at their home in
Belgravia. He did so with a modicum of guilt and no small amount of relief, for Helen was a passionate but dreadful cook.
Having done the deed and endured the usual recriminations, he silenced his secure phone and dug a weighty document from his
attaché case. It was an assessment he planned to deliver to the Joint Intelligence Committee, the bureaucratic overseers of
SIS and the rest of Britain’s security and defense community. Stark in tone, it warned that Britain was obligated to commence
preparations for war with Russia. Ukraine, it argued, was only the beginning. Once the country had been turned into a Russian
vassal, the Kremlin would proceed to its next target, in all likelihood one of the Baltic states or perhaps even Poland. And
on it would go until Moscow had reconstituted the old Soviet Union and established its dominance over Europe. As far as SIS
was concerned, Britain and its European allies had no choice but to fight—for the simple reason that Russia was already at
war with them.
By the time Graham finally looked up from the document, his car was speeding across the northern reaches of Dartmoor.
About a mile past the old Warren House Inn was the turnoff for Wormwood Cottage.
He arrived there to find the forecourt deserted.
It seemed Parish the caretaker had other matters to attend to besides welcoming his director-general to SIS’s most secure safe house.
Graham locked his phone in his attaché case—a product of Q Division, it was impenetrable to any and all electronic signals—and
entered the cottage empty-handed. Miss Coventry, powdered and churchy and vaguely formidable, stood before the AGA stove,
wooden spoon in hand, an apron tied around her ample waist. Once upon a time she was one of the service’s best listeners.
She spoke several languages fluently, including Russian.
Graham opened the oven door and inhaled the savor of roasting lamb. “You’ve outdone yourself, Miss Coventry.”
“Mr. Marlowe is miffed we’re not having cottage pie.”
“He’ll get over it, I’m sure.” Graham closed the oven. “Where’s Parish? Under the weather?”
“In the drawing room with the company.”
“That’s not like him.”
“Could be the guest of honor,” said Miss Coventry knowingly.
“Has he figured out who she is?”
“In about two seconds flat.” She removed the lid from a pot and gave the contents a stir. “How long will she be staying with
us?”
“Is there a problem?”
“She’s not happy with her room. Nor is she pleased that she has to share a bathroom with the others.” Miss Coventry replaced
the lid. “Wormwood is a safe house, not a five-star resort or a mansion in Knightsbridge. I’m afraid she’s used to a level
of luxury that we simply cannot provide.”
“I’ll have a word with her.”
“And while you’re at it, you might make it clear that we cook with butter here at Wormwood, not avocado oil.”
“The more butter the better.”
“Say that five times quickly. Now, go away, sir. Otherwise you and your friends will be having a midnight supper.”
Graham headed off to the drawing room, wondering what he might find there. Tread carefully, he heard his prime minister say.
The last thing he needed was another scandal.
Graham had no desire to spoil Alice Winter’s first meal at Wormwood Cottage, so he waited until Miss Coventry had cleared
the plates and poured the coffee to get down to brass tacks. Several times Gabriel and Christopher tried to answer on her
behalf, but Graham was having none of it; he wanted to hear it from her mouth, not theirs. By the time he had posed his last
question, he was certain that Edward Knight’s ties to Russia went far beyond a single oligarch. It was possible they were
criminal in nature, but this was of no concern to Graham. He was not a policeman, he was a spy. And Edward Knight’s sins,
whatever they were, had presented him with a golden opportunity.
None of which he shared with the missing British socialite who had fallen quite unexpectedly into his lap. At the conclusion
of the meal he bade her a pleasant evening and asked Gabriel and Christopher whether they might accompany him on an after-dinner
walk around the grounds. Outside, the three-quarter moon hanging low in the cloudless sky was luminous enough to throw shadows.
Christopher took out his cigarettes and ignited one with his old Dunhill lighter. Then he offered the packet to Graham, who
did the same.
“A compelling story,” he said. “But is she telling the truth?”
“I’ve heard it three times now,” replied Gabriel, “and it hasn’t changed.”
“But that doesn’t make it true, does it? Perhaps our Alice is nothing more than a clever schemer who concocted this admittedly
compelling tale after you showed up at her door in Lauterbrunnen.”
“You give her too much credit, Graham.”
“And you seem to be forgetting that together with her Swiss banker she pulled off a half-billion-dollar heist and stashed
the money offshore. And what about that tearful phone conversation she had with you while she was supposedly in captivity?”
Graham shook his head slowly. “Bloody Cate Blanchett.”
“All valid points,” conceded Gabriel. “But she does have a substantial number of documents to back up her story. And we’ve
managed to obtain a few of our own.”
“The documents your Danish friend stole from the Knight Group’s database? For the record,” said Graham, “that was a crime
under British law.”
“Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”
“Never mind the apologies. Just bring me proof that the Knight Group is controlled by Dmitri Savin. I want to know where the
money is coming from and, more important, where it’s going.”
“It can’t be good.”
Graham dropped his cigarette to the footpath and ground it out with the toe of his oxford. “Did you happen to see the news
from Helsinki today? Yet another European airport shut down by drones. A few days before that, saboteurs attempted to blow
up a Polish train carrying relief supplies bound for Ukraine. And then there was the recent fire at a shopping center in Vilnius.”
“What about the incident involving the plane carrying the president of the European Commission?” asked Gabriel. “The navigation system failed midflight. The pilots were forced to use paper maps to get the plane on the ground again.”
“Vauxhall Cross concluded it was a blatant assassination attempt,” said Graham, “ordered by the Kremlin and carried out by
Unit 29155 of the GRU. Its sole mission is to sow division and discord in the West through disinformation and acts of sabotage
and violence. For years it operated in Europe with virtual impunity, largely because its personnel were able to travel on
false passports. They were rather sloppy as a result. But all that changed after the invasion of Ukraine, when we expelled
Russian diplomats en masse and imposed travel restrictions on ordinary Russian citizens. The GRU had no choice but to clean
up its act. It now has an entire unit dedicated solely to creating a network of illegals, and we have reason to believe that
those illegals are the ones orchestrating the attacks here in Europe.”
“Illegals cost money, Graham. Lots of money.”
“And so do their operations. What’s more, the money has to be laundered so that it can’t be traced back to Moscow. Otherwise
the entire network would be in jeopardy.”
“Find the money, find the illegals.”
“Precisely. Which is why I’ve created a special unit of my own. It has but one task as well, to identify and burn all the
illegals the GRU has managed to place in the West, preferably before they launch a major sabotage operation here in Britain.
We know they would love nothing more,” added Graham. “The PM is a thorn in the Kremlin’s side. And so am I, for that matter.”
“I’m not exactly beloved in Moscow myself,” said Gabriel. “And neither is Christopher.”
“But Christopher is obliged to obey my directives. You, on the other hand, have a wife and two children waiting for you in Cornwall.” Graham pointed absently toward the west. “It’s two hours by car in that direction.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Besides,” said Gabriel, “who better to confront Edward Knight than the fool he hired to track down
his wife?”
Christopher laughed. “He does have a point.”