Daniel Silva - The Secret Servant

“I take it you’re interested in taking the deal,” O’Donnell said to the caller.

“I wouldn’t be calling otherwise.”

“You have our girl?”

“We have her.”

“I’m going to need proof.”

“There isn’t time.”

“So we’ll have to make some time. Just answer one question for me. It will just take a minute.”

Silence, then: “Give me the question.”

“When Elizabeth was a little girl, she had a favorite stuffed animal. I need you to tell me what kind of animal it was and what she called it. I’m going to give you a separate number. You call me back when you’ve got the answer. Then we’ll discuss how to make the exchange.”

“Make sure you pick up the phone. Otherwise, your girl dies.”

The line went dead. O’Donnell hung up the phone and looked at Barnett.

“I’m almost certain that was our boy.”

“Thank God,” said Barnett. “Let’s just hope he has our girl.”

She woke with the knock, startled and damp with sweat, and stared at the blinding white lamp over her cot. She had been dreaming, the same dream she always had whenever she managed to sleep. Men in black hoods. A video camera. A knife. She raised her cuffed hands to her throat and found that the tissue of her neck was still intact. Then she looked at the cement floor and saw the note. An eye was glaring at her through the spy hole as if willing her to move. It was dark and brutal: the eye of Cain.

She sat up and swung her shackled feet to the floor, then stood and shuffled stiffly toward the door. The note lay faceup and was composed in a font large enough for her to read without bending down to pick it up. It was a question, as all their communications were, but different from any other they had put to her. She answered it in a low, evenly modulated voice, then returned to her cot and wept uncontrollably. Don’t hope , she told herself. Don’t you dare hope .

John O’Connell’s private number in the ops center rang at 3:09. This time he didn’t bother identifying himself.

“Do you have the information I need?”

“The animal was a stuffed whale.”

“What did she call it?”

“Fish,” the man said. “She called it Fish and nothing else.”

O’Donnell closed his eyes and pumped his fist once.

“Right answer,” he said. “Let’s put a deal together. Let’s bring my girl home in time for Christmas.”

The man with the modified voice listed his demands, then said: “I’m going to call back at five fifty-nine London time. I want a one-word answer: yes or no. That’s it: yes or no. Do you understand me?”

“I understand perfectly.”

The line went dead again. O’Donnell looked at Kevin Barnett.

“They’ve got her,” he said. “And we are completely fucked.”

A Jaguar limousine was waiting at the edge of the tarmac as Adrian Carter’s Gulfstream V touched down at London City Airport. As Gabriel, Carter, and Sarah came down the airstair, a long, boney hand poked from the Jaguar’s rear passenger-side window and beckoned them over.

“Graham Seymour,” said Gabriel theatrically. “Don’t tell me they sent you all the way out here to give me a lift to Heathrow.”

“They sent me out here to give you a lift,” Seymour said, “but we’re not going to Heathrow.”

“Where are we going?”

Seymour left the question momentarily unanswered and instead gazed quizzically at Gabriel’s face. “What in God’s name happened to you?”

“It’s a long story.”

“It usually is,” he said. “Get in. We don’t have much time.”

Graham Seymour’s limousine turned into Whitehall and stopped a few seconds later at the security gates of Downing Street. He lowered his window and flashed his identification to the uniformed Metropolitan Police officer standing watch outside the fence. The officer examined it quickly, then signaled to his colleagues to open the gate. The Jaguar eased forward approximately fifty yards and stopped again, this time before the world’s most famous door.

Gabriel emerged from the limousine last and followed the others into the entrance hall. To their right was a small fireplace and next to the fireplace an odd-looking Chippendale hooded leather chair once used by porters and security men. To their left was a wooden traveling chest, believed to have been taken by the Duke of Wellington into battle at Waterloo in 1815, and a grandfather clock by Benson of Whitehaven that so annoyed Churchill he ordered its chimes silenced. And standing in the center of the hall, in an immaculately tailored suit, was a handsome man with pale skin and black hair shot with gray at the temples. He advanced on Gabriel and cautiously extended his hand. It was cold to the touch.

“Welcome to Downing Street,” said the British prime minister. “Thank you for coming on such short notice.”

“Please forgive my appearance, Prime Minister. It’s been a long few days.”

“We heard about your misadventure in Denmark. It appears you were deceived. We all were.”

“Yes, Prime Minister.”

“We treated you shabbily after the attack in Hyde Park, but the fact that your name and face appeared in the newspapers has provided us with an opportunity to save Elizabeth Halton’s life. I’m afraid we need your rather serious help, Mr. Allon. Are you prepared to listen to what we have to say?”

“Of course, Prime Minister.”

The prime minister smiled. It was a replica of a smile, thought Gabriel, and about as warm as the December afternoon.

They hiked up the long Grand Staircase, beneath portraits of British prime ministers past.

“Our logs contain no evidence of any previous visits by you to Downing Street, Mr. Allon. Is that the case, or have you slipped in here before?”

“This is my first time, Prime Minister.”

“I suppose it must seem rather different from your own prime minister’s office.”

“That’s putting it mildly, sir. Our staterooms are decorated in early kibbutz chic.”

“We’ll meet in the White Room,” the prime minister said. “Henry Campbell-Bannerman died there in 1908, but, as far as I know, no one has died there today.”

They passed through a set of tall double doors and went inside. The heavy rose-colored curtains were drawn, and the Waterford glass chandelier glowed softly overhead. Robert Halton was seated on a striped couch, next to Dame Eleanor McKenzie, the director general of MI5. Her counterpart from M16 was pacing, and the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was off in one corner, speaking quietly into a mobile phone. After a set of hasty introductions, Gabriel was directed to the end of the second couch, where he sat beneath the mournful gaze of a Florence Nightingale statuette. A log fire was burning brightly in the hearth. A steward brought tea that no one drank.

The prime minister lowered himself into the wing chair opposite the fireplace and brought the proceedings to order. He spoke calmly, as though he were explaining a bit of dull but important economic policy. At noon London time, he said, Ambassador Halton submitted his resignation to the White House and made an offer of twenty million dollars’ ransom to the terrorists in exchange for his daughter’s freedom. Shortly after two o’clock London time, the terrorists made contact with FBI negotiators in the American embassy and, after providing proof that they were indeed holding Elizabeth captive, made a counteroffer. They wanted thirty million dollars instead of twenty. If the money was delivered as instructed-and if there were no traps or arrests-Elizabeth would be released twenty-four hours later.