53 Number 10
It was Graham Seymour’s practice to provide his customers in the British government with the intelligence they needed to make
critical decisions, but rarely did he divulge how that intelligence had been collected, especially when allied foreign services
were involved. To that end, he had neglected to tell his primary customer, Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster, that the Dutch
intelligence service had digitally burrowed into what appeared to be a drone control room at GRU headquarters in Moscow. He
did so now, as succinctly as possible. Then he informed the prime minister that cyberwarriors from the Dutch intelligence
service were at that moment staring at ten drone operators sitting at their control stations.
Lancaster, always cool under fire, was unruffled. “And the Dutch are absolutely certain that they’re drone operators?”
“Few things in the intelligence business are certain,” replied Graham. “But I strongly suggest that we take additional measures
to protect you and the other leaders.”
“What more can we do?”
Graham answered without hesitation. “You need to leave, Prime Minister. All of you.”
“Leave?”
“Evacuate,” said Graham carefully.
“To where?”
“The Citadel.” It was a secure underground command center located beneath the Cabinet Office. “You and your colleagues can
make your way there through the Downing Street tunnel and continue the meeting in the CObrA room. And when the threat has
passed, you can quietly return to Number Ten for the news conference.”
“What do we tell the press?”
“Nothing.”
“And when it leaks?”
“It won’t.”
“Don’t be naive, Graham. It always leaks.” Lancaster shook his head. “I will not go down in history as the prime minister
who fled this house out of fear for his life.”
“Now is not the time for heroics, Prime Minister.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” replied Lancaster, and walked out of the room.
“Well,” said Christopher, “that went about as well as could be expected.”
“If I were in his shoes,” admitted Graham, “I would have done the same thing.”
“Does that mean we’re not going back to Vauxhall Cross?”
“We’re not going anywhere, Christopher.”
He went to the window and searched the sky. “Do you remember the IRA mortar attack in ninety-one?”
“Like it was yesterday.”
Christopher lowered his gaze toward the spot in Number 10’s walled garden where the shell had landed. “They came damn close,
didn’t they? Thirty more yards and . . .”
He left the thought unfinished. Graham finished it for him. “Thirty more yards, and John Major and his entire Cabinet might well have been killed.”
“I always liked John Major.”
“I’m sure he feels the same about you, Christopher.”
He wandered over to the sideboard and removed the stopper from the crystal decanter.
“May I ask what you’re doing?” inquired Graham.
“Helping myself to the prime minister’s Macallan. What does it look like?”
“Perhaps you should do something a bit more productive.”
“What did you have in mind?”
“Call your friend Gabriel,” said Graham. “Tell him to find those bloody drones.”
The lines had been drawn with care. There were ten in all, radiating outward like the hands of a clock from the same fixed
point. Most of the lines—eight, to be precise—fell between the hours of two and four o’clock. One stretched toward five o’clock,
another toward approximately nine fifteen. At the midway point of each of the lines was a handwritten number. The shortest
line was labeled 849.78, the longest 2574.95. Gabriel enlarged the image and examined the numbers. They had been rendered, he reckoned, by the hand of a woman.
He printed a copy of the diagram and, downstairs, showed it to Sarah and Ingrid. They scrutinized it in silence for a moment,
then Ingrid asked, “Where did you find this?”
“It was saved in Yuri’s photo library.”
Ingrid pushed her computer across the countertop, and Gabriel found the original image. Reclaiming the laptop, Ingrid ran
a few diagnostics to determine its provenance.
“It wasn’t taken by his phone,” she said after a moment. “It was emailed to him about six months ago.”
“By whom?”
“A user of Proton Mail.”
Ingrid recited the anonymous numeric address and the date of transmission, and Sarah found a copy of the original email, complete
with the attached photograph. The subject of the email was hello. The text was one sentence in length.
Thought you might find this interesting . . .
“Why would a GRU officer find lines on a page interesting?” asked Ingrid.
“It could have been a diagram for one of the recent airport drone incursions,” replied Gabriel.
“Or?”
“It might be a future attack.”
“Another airport?” asked Sarah.
“I doubt it.”
“Why?”
Gabriel’s phone rang before he could reply. He accepted the call and heard the voice of Christopher. He managed to speak only
a few words before the connection was lost. Gabriel tried to ring him back, but the call wouldn’t go through. He checked the
signal meter on his phone. It read no service.
Ingrid checked her phone as well, then said, “No service.” Gabriel picked up the receiver of the kitchen’s landline phone,
but there was no dial tone. Sarah entered the address for the BBC into her web browser, but nothing happened.
“The Internet seems to be down,” she said.
Gabriel looked at Ingrid. “What are the odds?”
“That London’s phone and cellular system would crash in the middle of a summit? I would need a calculator.”
“Could an individual have pulled it off?”
“The more likely explanation,” said Ingrid, “is that it’s a state actor.”
“Any candidates?”
“Only one.”
“The question is,” said Gabriel, “why would they do it?”
“They might simply be attempting to show their displeasure over the fact that the Ukrainian president is in town.”
“Possibly,” replied Gabriel. “But I have feeling it’s a prelude to something bigger.”
“Like what?” asked Sarah.
“The director-general of the Dutch intelligence service rang Graham a few minutes ago with a rather dire warning. Christopher
managed to relay only a part of it before the phones went down.”
“And?”
“Evidently ten remote drone operators are sitting at ten drone stations at GRU headquarters in Moscow.”
“And you just found a diagram on Yuri Ivanov’s phone with ten lines,” Sarah pointed out.
Gabriel contemplated the diagram for a moment, a hand to his chin, his head tilted slightly to one side. “You don’t happen
to have an offline London map, do you?”
“This is your lucky day.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.”
Gabriel opened the app on Sarah’s laptop, adjusted the location and scale, and pressed the diagram to the screen. The light
rendered the printer paper semitransparent.
“Dear God,” she said.
Each of the ten lines ended at a London landmark: the Royal Albert Hall, Buckingham Palace, the US Embassy at Nine Elms, the headquarters of both MI5 and SIS, the Palace of Westminster, the Foreign Office, New Scotland Yard, the Ministry of Defense, and the official residence of the British prime minister at 10 Downing Street.
Which left only the center point where the ten lines converged. It was approximately one mile to the east of where they were
now standing, in the central London district of Belgravia. If the crude diagram was in fact a schematic for a drone incursion,
common sense suggested that this was the launching point.
Common sense also dictated that they should immediately alert someone in a position of authority. Sarah tried the landline,
but there was still no dial tone. Gabriel checked his mobile.
no service.
“Does your husband still have that peashooter of his?” he asked.
“The Walther PPK?”
“Yes, that one.”
“It’s upstairs in his dressing room,” said Sarah. “Second drawer from the right.”