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
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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.
As usual, she was at the hindmost end of the daily exodus, a wispy child of twelve, already beautiful, with liquid brown eyes and hair the color of a raven’s wing. Much to Beatrice’s dismay, the school had no uniform, only a dress code, which several of the more freethinking students flouted with no official sanction. But not the new girl. She was covered from head to toe in expensive wool and plaid, the sort of stuff one saw at the Burberry boutique in Harrods. She carried a leather book bag rather than a nylon backpack. Her patent leather ballet slippers were glossy and bright. She was proper, the new girl, modest. But there was something else about her, thought Beatrice. She
