40 Hans Place
Hans Place
Where once Edward Knight was a fixture on the London social scene, he was now a prisoner of his redbrick mansion in Hans Place,
a recluse, a hermit king. He ran the Knight Group by phone and email and avoided calls from old friends. It had been weeks
since he set foot in Annabel’s, his exclusive Berkeley Square club, and his gray-blond locks were now borderline Branson,
for he hadn’t summoned the nerve to show his face at Taylor Taylor. The tabloids, he thought, would crucify him.
Showered and dressed, he headed downstairs to the kitchen, where Liam Higgins, his sole remaining companion, was preparing
his breakfast. The menu never varied. An egg-white omelet, a single slice of whole-grain toast, fresh fruit with nonfat yogurt.
The morning papers were arrayed on the table. Knight started, as always, with The Financial Times.
Higgins placed a cappuccino at his elbow. “Good morning, Mr. Knight.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“Any news, sir?”
“The pound is taking a beating.” Knight looked up from the paper. “And no, Higgins, there’s no news about Alice. Not real
news, at least.”
Higgins laid a plate in front of Knight. As he was tucking into his omelet, the doorbell tolled solemnly. “Who in the world could that be?”
“I’m sure it’s only a reporter, Mr. Knight. I think I saw one or two milling about when I arrived this morning.”
“In that case, don’t answer it.” The bell tolled a second time. “Oh, for heaven’s sake.”
“I’ll get rid of them,” said Higgins, and went out. He was gone only a few seconds. “It’s not a reporter, Mr. Knight.”
“Who is it?”
“An associate of Mr. Allon. Apparently it’s urgent.”
Knight shot to his feet and hastened down the corridor to the entrance hall. The man waiting there wore a dour gray suit and
the benevolent smile of a country parson.
“Who the bloody hell are you?”
“I’m Whitcombe,” replied the man. “Nigel Whitcombe.”
“Where’s Allon?”
“Here in London.”
“He has news?”
“Important news.”
“Why didn’t he contact me himself?”
“You’ll have to ask him that question.” He gestured toward the car parked curbside. It was a Mini Cooper, neon blue in color.
“Shall we, Mr. Knight? We really mustn’t keep him waiting.”
Knight followed the man out the door and squeezed into the car’s cramped passenger seat. They rounded Hans Place in a blur
and a moment later were racing westward along the Brompton Road. Knight maintained a tight grip on the armrest.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked.
“To see Mr. Allon, of course.”
“Has he found her?”
The man blew through a red light without lifting his foot from the throttle. “Found who, Mr. Knight?”
Their destination turned out to be a cottage in St. Luke’s Mews—Number 7, to be precise. Like the rest of the dwellings on
the cobbled street it had once been a garage. The door was opened by the pretty Danish cyber specialist, the one with the
nimble fingers of a card sharp. Her greeting was solicitous, compassionate, even. Her hand lingered soothingly on Knight’s
upper arm as she spoke—or was it the front of his sport jacket? He was so enchanted by the empathetic glow in her pale blue
eyes that he couldn’t say for certain.
She led him into a small, sparsely furnished sitting room and then disappeared from view. Gabriel was seated in a modular
armchair, legs crossed, hands bunched reflectively beneath his chin. In the chair next to him sat a man wearing the formal
charcoal-gray suit of a Whitehall mandarin. A third man—blond hair, deeply tanned skin, a notch in the center of his chin—was
pacing the room as though awaiting the arrival of a long-delayed train.
On the coffee table was a stack of documents, including one bearing the corporate logo of Edward Knight’s company. Craning
his neck, he read the first few lines. It was dated October 22, 2009, and concerned a ten-figure investment in his company.
“Where the hell did you get that?” he demanded to know.
Gabriel indicated an unoccupied chair. “Sit down, Edward.”
He did so, then looked at the man sitting to Gabriel’s right. “Friend of yours?”
“You don’t recognize him?”
“Should I?”
“Once upon a time you would have never known his name. But all that changed in 1992, when Sir Colin McColl decided to tell
the British people what he really did for a living.”
Knight’s eyes narrowed. “Graham Seymour? Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service?” Receiving no answer, Knight looked down
at the documents. “That would explain how you acquired the confidential records of my company.”
“In point of fact,” said Graham, “the Secret Intelligence Service had absolutely nothing to do with it.”
“Who did?”
“Me,” said Gabriel.
“Why?”
He appeared to give considerable thought to his answer. “Do you remember when I came to your office in Berkeley Square the
morning after Alice’s kidnappers made contact with you?”
“It is not a day I will ever forget, Allon.”
“Nor will I,” he replied. “In fact, I have a very distinct memory of asking whether you had any enemies who might have wanted
to harm your wife. I also asked you for a list of your investors and a portfolio of your current holdings. You gave me both
and assured me they were accurate, which was not the case. The Knight Group’s property empire is far larger than you let on.
And it turns out that you’re beholden to a single private investor, a Kremlin-connected Russian oligarch named Dmitri Savin.”
Knight chose to respond with incredulity, hardly a novel tactic. “Have you taken leave of your senses, Allon?”
“Not at all. In fact, to hear Dmitri tell it, you’re simply the manager of a company that he controls.”
“Dmitri Savin never invested a pound in the Knight Group.”
With a heavy sigh, Gabriel picked up a stack of documents.
“These are only some of the business records that Dmitri’s wife gave to her team of divorce lawyers at Ambler & Rose.
” He pulled one of the documents from the stack and handed it to Knight.
“It’s rather unambiguous when it comes to who has ultimate control of the company that bears your name. ”
Knight examined the document, then tossed it onto the coffee table and rose to his feet. “This conversation is over.”
“This conversation,” said Graham evenly, “is only just beginning.”
“You have no legal right to question me like this.”
“You can deal with me, or you can deal with DCI Douglas Chapel of the Metropolitan Police. He’d like to have a word with you,
under caution, of course, about your role in Alice’s disappearance.”
“I had no role!” Knight roared.
“DCI Chapel isn’t so sure about that.”
Knight reached into the front of his jacket and frowned.
“Something wrong?” asked Gabriel.
“I seem to have rushed out of the house without my phone.”
“Who were you planning to call?”
“My lawyer.”
“You’ll only make your situation worse,” said Graham.
“How much worse could it possibly get?”
“Based on the documents I’ve seen, a great deal worse. But if you want a lawyer, be my guest.”
Knight looked at Gabriel. “May I borrow yours?”
“My phone?” He shook his head. “No, Edward.”
Knight’s gaze settled on Graham. “Surely you jest,” said the SIS chief with a wintry smile.
Knight turned finally to the third man in the room, saw that no phone was in the offing, and sat down again.
Gabriel was leafing through the documents, a look of consternation on his face.
“There’s something else you neglected to tell me,” he said after a moment.
Then, wordlessly, he tossed a file onto the coffee table.
It was a copy of a report, filed by DI Timothy Peel of the Devon and Cornwall Police.
“Those records were supposed to have been destroyed,” said Knight.
“A single copy somehow survived the purge. It makes clear that the investigating officer thought Alice was under the influence
when she crashed her car into that tree. But that’s not the reason you were so interested in making sure she was never interviewed
by that detective, was it, Edward? You were far more concerned she might tell the police about the phone call she overhead
that evening.”
Knight was pale with rage. “There’s only one other person in the world who knows about that, Allon.”
“And who would that be?”
“My wife.”
“Which means she must have told someone else about it. After all, no one has seen Alice since her abduction.” Gabriel was
silent for a moment. “Or perhaps she put it in writing and gave a copy to a lawyer friend in the event something untoward
were to happen to her.” He handed over one more document. It was a copy of a sworn affidavit—signed, dated, and notarized—made
by one Alice Winter in the presence of Sophie Maxwell, solicitor at the law firm of Ambler & Rose. “I don’t suppose you mentioned
any of this to the Metropolitan Police, did you, Edward?”
He made no reply.
“I’m not a lawyer,” said Gabriel. “But I’ve watched enough British detective dramas to know that DCI Chapel might conclude
that you were attempting to obstruct his investigation.”
“I didn’t think it was relevant.”
“We’ll let Scotland Yard be the judge of that. And I imagine Revenue and Customs, and the Financial Conduct Authority, will want to take a long, hard look at some of your offshore banking. It appears to us like a rather glaring example of tax evasion.”
“It wasn’t.”
“How would you describe it?”
“It was a matter of life and death,” said Edward Knight, and then he told them everything.