the same capacity, which explained his presence in the Stockwell safe house. He spooned the Nescafé into the mug and watched the steam rising from the spout of the kettle.
“How’s life at Six?” asked Gabriel.
“When we first arrived, there was a great deal of suspicion among the troops. I suppose they had a right to be uneasy. After all, we were coming across the river from a rival service.”
“It’s not as if Graham was a total outsider. His father was an MI6 legend. He was practically raised within the service.”
“Which is one of the reasons any concerns were short-lived.” Whitcombe drew a mobile device from the breast pocket of his suit and peered at the screen. “He’s pulling up now. Can you manage the coffee on your own?”
“Pour in the water, then stir, right?”
Whitcombe departed. Gabriel prepared the coffee and went into the sitting room. Entering, he saw a tall figure clad in a perfectly fitted charcoal-gray suit and a striped blue necktie. His face was fine boned and even featured; his hair had a rich silvery cast that made him look like a male model one might see in ads for costly but needless trinkets. He was holding a mobile phone to his ear with his left hand. The right he stretched absently toward Gabriel. His handshake was firm, confident, and appropriate in duration. It was an unfair weapon to be deployed against inferior opponents. It said he had attended the better schools, belonged to the better clubs, and was good at gentlemanly games like tennis and golf, all of which happened to be true. Graham Seymour was a relic of Britain’s glorious past, a child of the administrative classes who had been bred, educated, and programmed to lead. A few months earlier, weary after years of trying to protect the British homeland from the forces of Islamic extremism, he had privately told Gabriel of his plans to leave the intelligence trade and retire to his villa in Portugal. Now, unexpectedly, he had been handed the keys to his father’s old service. Gabriel suddenly felt guilty about coming to London. He was about to hand Seymour his first potential crisis at MI6.
Seymour murmured a few words into the mobile phone, severed the connection, and handed it to Nigel Whitcombe. Then he turned toward Gabriel and regarded him curiously for a moment. “Given our long history together,” Seymour said finally, “I’m a bit reluctant to ask what brings you to town. But I suppose I have no choice.”
Gabriel responded by telling Seymour a small portion of the truth—that he had come to London because he was looking into the murder of an expatriate Englishman living in Italy.
“Does the expatriate Englishman have a name?” asked Seymour.
“James Bradshaw,” replied Gabriel. He paused, then added, “But his friends called him Jack.”
Seymour’s face remained a blank mask. “I think I read something about that in the papers,” he said. “He was former Foreign Office, wasn’t he? Did some consulting work in the Middle East. He was murdered at his villa in Como. Apparently, it was quite messy.”
“Quite,” agreed Gabriel.
“What does any of this have to do with me?”
“Jack Bradshaw wasn’t a diplomat, was he, Graham? He was MI6. He was a spy.”
Seymour managed to maintain his composure for a moment longer. Then he narrowed his eyes and asked, “What else have you got?”
“Three stolen paintings, a vault in the Geneva Freeport, and someone named Samir.”
“Is that all?” Seymour shook his head slowly and turned to Whitcombe. “Cancel my appointments for the remainder of the afternoon, Nigel. And find us something to drink. We’re going to be a while.”
WHITCOMBE WENT OUT TO FETCH the makings of a gin and tonic while Gabriel and Graham Seymour settled into the charmless little sitting room. Gabriel wondered what sort of intelligence debris had floated through this place before him. A KGB defector willing to sell his soul for thirty pieces of Western silver? An Iraqi nuclear scientist with a briefcase full of lies? A jihadist double agent claiming to know the time and place of the next al-Qaeda spectacular? He looked at the wall above the electric fire and saw two horsemen in red jackets leading their mounts across a green English meadow. Then he glanced out the window and saw a portly lawn cherub keeping a lonely vigil in the darkening garden. Graham Seymour seemed oblivious to his surroundings. He was contemplating his hands, as if trying to decide where to begin his account. He didn’t bother to delineate the ground rules, for no such disclaimer was necessary. Gabriel and Seymour were as close as two spies from opposing services could be, which meant they distrusted each other only a little.
“Do the Italians know you’re here?” asked Seymour at last.
Gabriel shook his head.
“What about the Office?”
“I didn’t tell them I was coming, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t watching my every move.”
“I appreciate your honesty.”
“I’m always honest with you, Graham.”
“At least when it suits your purposes.”
Gabriel didn’t bother to offer a retort. Instead, he listened intently while Seymour, in the beleaguered voice of a man who would rather be discussing other matters, recounted the brief life and career of James “Jack” Bradshaw. It was familiar territory for a man like Seymour, for he had lived a version of Bradshaw’s life himself. Both were products of moderately happy middle-class homes, both had been shipped off to costly but coldhearted public schools, and both had earned admission to elite universities, though Seymour had been at Cambridge while Bradshaw had landed at Oxford. There, while still an undergraduate, he came to the attention of a professor who was serving on the Faculty of Oriental Studies. The professor was actually a talent spotter for MI6. Graham Seymour knew him, too.
“The talent spotter was your father?” asked Gabriel.
Seymour nodded. “He was in the twilight of his career. He was too worn out to be of much use in the field, and he wanted nothing to do with a job at headquarters. So they packed him off to Oxford and told him to keep an eye out for potential recruits. One of the first students he noticed was Jack Bradshaw. It was hard not to notice Jack,” Seymour added quickly. “He was a meteor. But more important, he was seductive, naturally deceptive, and without scruples or morals.”
“In other words, he had all the makings of a perfect spy.”
“In the finest English tradition,” Seymour added with a wry smile.
And so it was, he continued, that Jack Bradshaw set out along the same path that so many others had taken before him—the path that led from the tranquil quads of Cambridge and Oxford to the cipher-protected doorway of the Secret Intelligence Service. It was 1985 when he arrived. The Cold War was nearing its end, and MI6 was still searching for a reason to justify its existence after being destroyed from within by Kim Philby and the other members of the Cambridge spy ring. Bradshaw spent two years in the MI6 training program and then headed off to Cairo to serve his apprenticeship. He became an expert in Islamic extremism and accurately predicted the rise of
