Page 86 of The New Girl

It was not truethat Charles Bennett had never ridden an evening train to Stoke Newington with the man in the beret. In fact, they had shared the same carriage on the 7:30 on two previous occasions. The little man had also taken several inbound trains with Bennett, including that very morning. He had been wearing the clerical suit and collar of a Roman Catholic priest. In Bishopsgate a beggar had asked for his blessing, which he had conferred with two sweeping movements of his right hand, the first vertical, the second horizontal.

Charles Bennett was to be forgiven for not noticing him. The man was Eli Lavon, the finest surveillance artist the Office had ever produced, a natural predator who could follow a highly trained intelligence officer or hardened terrorist down any street in the world without attracting a flicker of interest. Ari Shamron had once said of Lavon that he could disappear while shaking your hand. It was an exaggeration, but only slight.

Though he was a division chief, Lavon, like his director-general, preferred to lead his troops into battle. Besides, Charles Bennett was a special case. He was an officer of a sometimes-friendly service, a service that had been penetrated at the highest level by Russian intelligence. Bennett had survived a top-up with the vetters, but a shadow of suspicion hung over him, mainly because two important assets in Syria had recently been lost. There was broad agreement among the vetters that Rebecca Manning was likely to blame. But there was a camp that included none other than “C” himself that was not ready to close Bennett’s file. Indeed, there were some in this camp who thought Bennett should be hung upside-down in the Tower until he confessed to being a poisonous Russian spy. If nothing else, they wanted to strip Bennett of his controllerate and put him out to pasture where he could do no more harm. They were overruled, however, by none other than “C” himself. “C” had declared that Bennett would remain in place until such time as the situation was no longer tenable. Or, preferably, until “C” was presented with an opportunity to undo some of the damage done to his service. In a safe house in Notting Hill, an old friend had given him that opportunity. Thus the meeting that morning during which Bennett was brought into the inner ring regarding the operational status of a certain Saudi royal who was about to ascend to the throne. Bennett was now the sole keeper of a most important, if false, secret.

Bennett also knew the tactics, and perhaps some of the identities, of his service’s surveillance artists. For that reason, “C” had entrusted physical observation of him to the Office. On that evening there were twelve Israeli watchers in all, including Eli Lavon. After his brief appearance at the Kingdom Hall, where he had been welcomed with open arms, Lavon had followed Bennett along Stamford Hill to Church Street. There he had witnessed the purchase of a bunch of hyacinths from the Evergreen & Outrageous flower shop. He took note of the fact that Bennett, upon leaving the shop, had switched the flowers from his left hand to his right, so that when he rounded the corner into Albion Road they would be clearly visible to anyone sitting outside the Rose & Crown. The two men present that evening paid no attention to Lavon, but one appeared to watch Bennett carefully as he passed. Lavon, with a whisper into the miniature mic concealed at his wrist, ordered six members of his team to follow the man when he left the pub.

Lavon had continued straight along Church Street to the old town hall before reversing course and making his way back to Stamford Hill. Mikhail and Sarah Bancroft had left Kookies café and were waiting in a Ford Fiesta in the car park of a Morrisons supermarket. Lavon dropped into the backseat and soundlessly closed the door.

“Well?” asked Mikhail.

Lavon didn’t answer; he was listening to the chatter of his watchers in his ear. They were in the game, he thought. They were definitely in the game.

The house overlooked the Grims Dyke Golf Club in the Hatch End section of Harrow. A sprawling Tudor pile of many wings and gables, it was surrounded by thick trees and reached by a long private drive. With a single text message to Khalid, Gabriel made a gift of the house to Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service, which was sorely in need of safe properties. There were eight bedrooms and a large double great room that served as the operation’s nerve center. Israeli and British officers worked side by side at two long trestle tables. Large flat-screen panels displayed live CCTV images. Secure radios crackled with updates from the field in Hebrew and British-accented English.

At Gabriel’s insistence there was no smoking in the op center or any other room of the house, only in the gardens. He also ruled that there would be no catering or food deliveries. They shopped for themselves at the Tesco Superstore down the road in Pinner Green and ate communally whenever possible. In the process, they became well known to each other, which was the peril of any joint operation—the exposure of personnel and tradecraft. Gabriel paid an especially high price in watchers and other field assets, most of whom would never be able to work covertly in Britain again.

But some of Gabriel’s personnel were known to the British from previous joint endeavors, including Sarah, Mikhail, and Eli Lavon. It was half past eight when they returned to the house at Hatch End. Entering, they joined Gabriel, Graham Seymour, and Christopher Keller before one of the video screens. On it was the output of a CCTV camera located outside the Arsenal Tube station in Gillespie Road. The man from the Rose & Crown was now standing at the kiosk next to the station’s entrance. Had he walked there directly from the pub, he might have made the journey in fifteen minutes at most. Instead, he had taken a circuitous route full of switchbacks and wrong turns that had forced five of Eli Lavon’s most experienced watchers to abandon the chase.

One, however, managed to follow the man into the station and board the same inbound Piccadilly Line train. The man rode it to Hyde Park Corner. Emerging, he entered Mayfair and once again engaged in a series of textbook countersurveillance measures that compelled Lavon’s final watcher to fall away. It was no matter; the cameras of London’s Orwellian CCTV system never blinked.

They followed him through the streets of Mayfair to Marble Arch and then westward along Bayswater Road, where he passed beneath the darkened windows of the Office safe flat known affectionately as Gabriel’s London pied-à-terre. A moment later he crossed the road illegally, ducked into Hyde Park, and vanished from view. Graham Seymour ordered the technicians to engage the cameras along Kensington Palace Gardens, and at 9:18:43 p.m. they observed the man entering the Russian Embassy. The technicians ran his photo through the database. Facial recognition flagged him as one Dmitri Mentov.

“A nobody in the consular section,” said Graham Seymour.

“There are nonobodiesat the Russian Embassy,” replied Gabriel. “He’s an SVR hood. And he just made contact with your controller for Middle East stations.”

At the two long trestle tables, the news that yet another senior MI6 officer might be working for the Russians was greeted only with the tapping of keyboards and the crackle of secure radios. They were in the game. They were most definitely in the game.

51

Epping Forest, Essex

When Charles Bennettstepped from his residence in Albion Road at half past nine on Saturday morning, he was wearing a dark blue waterproof anorak and quick-dry pants. Over one shoulder was a nylon rucksack, and in his right hand he held a carbon walking stick. A devoted hiker, Bennett had traipsed across much of the British Isles. Weekends he typically had to make do with one of the many excellent trails near Greater London. Hester, who considered gardening exercise, never accompanied him. Bennett didn’t mind; he preferred to be alone. In that respect, at least, he and Hester were entirely compatible.

Bennett’s destination that morning was the Oak Trail in Epping Forest, the ancient woodland that stretched from Wanstead in East London to Essex in the north. The footpath wandered for six and a half miles through the uppermost reaches of the forest near the village of Theydon Bois. Bennett drove there in Hester’s Swedish sedan. He parked at the Tube station and in violation of service rules left his MI6 BlackBerry in the glove box. Then, stick in hand, rucksack on his back, he struck out along Coppice Row.

He passed a couple of shops and restaurants, the village hall, and the parish church. A thin fog hung over Theydon Plain like the smoke of a distant battle, then the forest swallowed him. The trail was wide and smooth and covered with fallen leaves. Ahead, a woman of about forty emerged from the gloom and, smiling, bade him a pleasant morning. She reminded him of Magda.

Magda...

He had met her at the Rose & Crown one night when he stopped for a beer rather than rush home to Hester’s cold embrace. She was a recent immigrant from Poland, or so she said. She was a beautiful woman, newly divorced, with luminous white skin and a wide mouth that smiled easily. She claimed she was meeting a friend—“a girlfriend, not a man”—and that the friend was running late. Bennett was suspicious. Nevertheless, he had a second drink with her. And when the “friend” sent a text saying she had to cancel, he agreed to walk Magda home. She took him into Clissold Park and pushed him up against a tree near the old church. Before Bennett knew it, his fly was open and her mouth was upon him.

He knew what would come next. Indeed, he supposed he had known it from the moment he laid eyes on her. It happened a week later. A car drew alongside him in Stamford Hill, a hand beckoned from an open rear window. It was Yevgeny’s hand. He was holding a photograph. “Why don’t you let me give you a lift? It’s a filthy night to be out walking.”

Bennett came upon a rubbish bin. The chalk mark at the base was clearly visible. He left the trail and picked his way through the dense trees and undergrowth. Yevgeny was leaning against the trunk of a silver birch, an unlit cigarette dangling impossibly from his lips. He seemed genuinely pleased to see Bennett. Yevgeny was a cruel bastard, as most SVR officers were, but he could be pleasant when it suited his purposes. Bennett possessed the same set of skills. They were two sides of the same coin. Bennett, in a moment of weakness, had allowed Yevgeny to get the upper hand. But perhaps one day it would be Yevgeny who would be forced to reveal his country’s secrets because of a personal misdeed. That was the way the game was played. All it took was a single slip.

“You were careful?” the Russian asked.

Bennett nodded. “You?”

“The oafs from A4 tried to follow me, but I lost them in Highgate.” A4 were the surveillance artists of MI5, the British security and counterintelligence service. “You know, Charles, they really need to raise their game a bit. It’s got to the point where it’s not even sporting.”

“You have more intelligence officers in London now than you did during the height of the Cold War. A4 are overwhelmed.”

“There’s safety in numbers.” Yevgeny lit his cigarette. “That said, we shouldn’t stay long. What have you got?”

“An operation your superiors in Moscow Center might find interesting.”

---