“Says who?”

“Hanifa Khoury.”

“Nawwaf’s wife?”

“Widow,” said Gabriel.

“How does she know they were Russian agents?”

“She doesn’t. In fact, she assumes they were Saudi.”

“Why wouldn’t they have been Saudi?”

“If Saudi agents had raided the hotel room and the apartment, Omar’s story would have ended up in Khalid’s hands. He never knew about it until I showed it to him.”

Seymour returned to the trolley and freshened his drink. “So what you’re telling me is that KBM’s defense in the murder of Omar Nawwaf is that Uncle Abdullah made him do it?”

Gabriel ignored Seymour’s sarcasm. “Do you know what the Middle East will look like if Russia, Iran, and the Chinese displace the Americans in the Persian Gulf?”

“It would be a disaster. Which is why no Saudi ruler in his right mind would ever break the bond between Riyadh and Washington.”

“Unless the Saudi ruler was beholden to the Kremlin.” Gabriel wandered over to the French doors overlooking the tiny garden. “Did you never notice Abdullah was keeping company with one of the Tsar’s closest friends?”

“We noticed, but frankly we didn’t much care. Abdullah was a nobody.”

“He’s not a nobody anymore, Graham. He’s next in line to the throne.”

“Yes,” said Seymour. “And when His Majesty dies, which is likely to happen soon, he will be king.”

Gabriel turned. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Seymour gave a half smile. “Do you really think you can choose the next ruler of Saudi Arabia?”

“Not necessarily. But I have no intention of allowing a Russian puppet to reach the throne.”

“How do you intend to prevent it?”

“I suppose I could just kill him.”

“You can’t kill the future king of Saudi Arabia.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would be immoral and against international law.”

“In that case,” said Gabriel, “I suppose we’ll have to find someone to kill him for us.”

49

Vauxhall Cross, London

One week later, as much of Westminster was engaged in a furious debate over how best to commit national suicide, Her Majesty’s Government somehow managed to extend an invitation to His Royal Highness Prince Abdullah to make an official visit to London. Five days passed without a response, long enough to send a chill wind of doubt blowing through the halls of the Foreign Office, and through the secret rooms of Vauxhall Cross and King Saul Boulevard as well. When the Saudi response finally arrived—it was delivered by court messenger to the British Embassy in Riyadh—official London was much relieved. A date was set for early April. BAE Systems and the other British defense contractors were thrilled, their counterparts in America less so. The rented television experts saw the Anglo-Saudi summit as a rebuke of the current American administration’s policy in the Middle East. Washington had placed all its chips on an untested young prince with a hair-trigger temper and a lust for shiny objects. Now the young prince was gone, and Britain, faded and divided though it was, had brilliantly seized the diplomatic initiative. “All is not lost,” declared the Independent. “Perhaps there is hope for us yet.”

Charles Bennett, however, did not share the media’s enthusiasm over Abdullah’s pending visit, mainly because he had not been told a summit was in the works or even that Downing Street and the FO were considering one. It was a breach of normal protocols. If anyone in official London needed advance warning of a royal visit, it was MI6’s controller for Middle East stations. It was Bennett’s job to supply much of the intelligence the prime minister would review before sitting down with Abdullah. What kind of man was he? What were his core beliefs? Was he a Wahhabi hard-liner or was he merely playing to the base? Was he going to be a reliable partner in the fight against terrorism? What were his plans in Yemen and vis-à-vis the Qataris? Could he be trusted? Could he be manipulated?

Bennett would now have to scramble to prepare the necessary assessments and estimates. His personal opinion was that it was far too early to invite Abdullah to Downing Street. The dust had yet to settle after Khalid’s messy abdication, and Abdullah was rolling back Khalid’s reforms. Better to wait, Bennett would have advised, until the situation had stabilized. He knew full well why Jonathan Lancaster was so keen to meet with Abdullah. The PM needed a foreign policy success. And then, of course, there was commerce to consider. BAE and its ilk wanted a crack at Abdullah before the Americans got their hooks into him.

Bennett looked up from his personal iPhone as the 7:12 from Stoke Newington rattled into Liverpool Street Station. As usual, he left the carriage last and followed a long and indirect route to the street. Outside in Bishopsgate it was not yet properly light. He walked to the river and crossed London Bridge to Southwark.

From Borough Market it was a brisk walk of about twenty minutes to the office. Bennett liked to vary his route. Today he went via St. George’s Circus and the Albert Embankment. He was below six feet and thin as a marathoner, a balding man of fifty-two with hollowed-out cheeks and deeply set eyes. His suit and overcoat were hardly Savile Row, but owing to his slender frame they fit him well. His school tie was carefully knotted, his oxfords shone with fresh polish. The trained eye might have noticed a telltale watchfulness in his gaze, but otherwise there was nothing about his dress or aspect to suggest he was bound for the hideous secret citadel that loomed over the foot of Vauxhall Bridge.

Bennett had never cared for it. He much preferred dreary old Century House, the anonymous twenty-story concrete office block where he had arrived as a new recruit in the dying days of the Cold War. Like all the other probationers in his intake, he had not applied to work for the Secret Intelligence Service. One did not ask to join Britain’s most exclusive club, one was invited. And only if one came from the right sort of family, had the right sort of connections, and had earned a decent degree from either Oxford or Cambridge. In Bennett’s case it was Cambridge, where he had studied the history and languages of the Middle East. By the time he arrived at MI6, he spoke Arabic and Persian fluently. After completing the rigorous IONEC training course at Fort Monckton, MI6’s school for fledgling spies, he was shipped off to Cairo to recruit and run agents.

He went to Amman next and then to Damascus and Beirut before landing the job as Head of Station in Baghdad. Faulty or misleading reports from several of Bennett’s Iraqi assets found their way into the infamous September Dossier, which was used by the Blair government to justify Britain’s involvement in the American-led war to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Bennett, however, suffered no damage to his career. He went to Riyadh, again as Head of Station, and in 2012 was promoted to controller for the Middle East, one of the most important jobs in the service.

Bennett entered Vauxhall Cross overtly from the Albert Embankment and endured a thorough search and identity check before being allowed beyond the lobby. It was all part of the post–Rebecca Manning security overhaul. Suspicion hung over the building like the Black Death. Officers scarcely spoke to one another or shook hands for fear of catching the dreaded disease. There was no meaningful product coming in and virtually nothing going out to the customers on the other side of the river that they couldn’t read in the Economist. Bennett’s career had intersected with Rebecca’s only briefly, but like many of his colleagues he had been dragged before the inquisitors for a thorough roasting. After many hours of questioning he had been given a clean bill of health, or so he had been informed. Bennett trusted no one inside MI6, least of all the bloodhounds in the vetting department.