Daniel Silva - The New Girl

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2019

First published in the United States of America by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 2019

Copyright © Daniel Silva 2019

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

Cover photograph © Serge Ramelli/Getty Images

Daniel Silva asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008280864

Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008280871

Version: 2019-07-24

For the fifty-four journalists who were killed worldwide in 2018. And, as always, for my wife, Jamie, and my children, Nicholas and Lily.

What’s done cannot be undone.

— MACBETH (1606), ACT 5, SCENE I

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Foreword

Part One: Abduction

1. Geneva

2. New York

3. New York

4. New York

5. Ashtara, Azerbaijan

6. Tel Aviv

7. Tel Aviv–Netanya

8. Netanya

9. Nejd, Saudi Arabia

10. Nejd, Saudi Arabia

11. Nejd, Saudi Arabia

12. Jerusalem

13

14. Jerusalem–Paris

15. Paris

16. Paris

17. Paris–Annecy

18. Geneva

19. Geneva

Part Two: Abdication

20. Geneva–Lyon

21

22. Paris–London

23. Kensington, London

24. Mayfair, London

25. Kensington, London

26. Haute-Savoie, France

27. Haute-Savoie, France

28. Auvergne–Rhône–Alpes

29. Areatza, Spain

30. Paris–Jerusalem

31. Tel Aviv–Paris

32. Paris

33. Mazamet, France

34. Carcassonne, France

35. Département du Tarn, France

Part Three: Absolution

36. Southwest France–Jerusalem

37. Tel Aviv

38. Eilat, Israel

39. Jerusalem

40. Jerusalem

41. New York–Berlin

42. Berlin

43. Berlin

44. Berlin

45. Berlin

46. Gulf of Aqaba

47. Gulf of Aqaba

48. Notting Hill, London

49. Vauxhall Cross, London

50. Harrow, London

51. Epping Forest, Essex

52. Moscow

53. The Kremlin

54. Moscow–Washington–London

Part Four: Assassination

55. Frinton-on-Sea, Essex

56. 10 Downing Street

57. Ouddorp, The Netherlands

58. Heathrow Airport, London

59. 10 Downing Street

60. Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex

61. Notting Hill, London

62. Eaton Square, Belgravia

63. Eaton Square, Belgravia

64. Eaton Square, Belgravia

65. Eaton Square, Belgravia

66. Eaton Square, Belgravia

67. 10 Downing Street

68. London City Airport

69. Frinton-on-Sea, Essex

70. Frinton-on-Sea, Essex

71. Essex–London City Airport

72. London City Airport

73. The North Sea

74. Rotterdam

75. Rotterdam

76. 10 Downing Street

77. Ouddorp, The Netherlands

78. Ouddorp, The Netherlands

79. Renesse, The Netherlands

Part Five: Vengeance

80. London–Jerusalem

81. Langley–New York

82. Tiberias

83. Berlin

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Daniel Silva

About the Publisher

IN AUGUST 2018, I COMMENCED work on a novel about a crusading young Arab prince who wanted to modernize his religiously intolerant country and bring sweeping change to the Middle East and the broader Islamic world. I set aside that manuscript two months later, however, when the model for that character, Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, was implicated in the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and columnist for the Washington Post . Elements of The New Girl are quite obviously inspired by events surrounding Khashoggi’s death. The rest occur only in the imaginary world inhabited by Gabriel Allon, his associates, and his enemies.

IT WAS BEATRICE KENTON WHO first questioned the identity of the new girl. She did so in the staff room, at a quarter past three, on a Friday in late November. The mood was festive and faintly rebellious, as was the case most Friday afternoons. It is a truism that no profession welcomes the end of the workweek with more anticipation than teachers—even teachers at elite institutions such as the International School of Geneva. The chatter was of plans for the weekend. Beatrice abstained, for she had none, a fact she did not wish to share with her colleagues. She was fifty-two, unmarried, and with no family to speak of other than a rich old aunt who granted her refuge each summer at her estate in Norfolk. Her weekend routine consisted of a trip to the Migros and a walk along the lakeshore for the sake of her waistline, which, like the universe, was ever expanding. First period Monday was an oasis in an otherwise Empty Quarter of solitude.

Founded by a long-dead organization of multilateralism, Geneva International catered to the children of the city’s diplomatic community. The middle school, where Beatrice taught reading and composition, educated students from more than a hundred different countries. The faculty was a similarly diverse lot. The head of personnel went to great effort to promote employee bonding—cocktail parties, potluck dinners, nature outings—but in the staff room the old tribalism tended to reassert itself. Germans kept with other Germans, French with French, Spanish with Spanish. On that Friday afternoon, Miss Kenton was the only British subject present other than Cecelia Halifax from the history department. Cecelia had wild black hair and predictable politics, which she insisted on sharing with Miss Kenton at every opportunity. Cecelia also divulged to Miss Kenton details of the torrid sexual affair she was having with Kurt Schröder, the Birkenstocked math genius from Hamburg who had given up a lucrative engineering career to teach multiplication and division to eleven-year-olds.

The staff room was on the ground floor of the eighteenth-century château that served as the administration building. Its leaded windows gazed across the forecourt, where presently Geneva International’s privileged young students were clambering into the backs of German-made luxury sedans with diplomatic license plates. Loquacious Cecelia Halifax had planted herself next to Beatrice. She was prattling on about a scandal in London, something involving MI6 and a Russian spy. Beatrice was scarcely listening. She was watching the new girl.