The Russian closed her door and walked around the back of the car to the driver’s side, where the valet was awaiting his gratuity. The Russian handed him a ten-pound note before dropping behind the wheel and starting the engine. The gun was now in his left hand, and it was pointed at Sarah’s right hip. As they pulled away from the curb, she glanced over her shoulder and saw the valet running after them.

The Russian had forgotten his suitcase.

He turned onto Connaught Avenue and pressed the throttle to the floorboard. A parade of shops flashed past Sarah’s window: Café 19, Allsorts Cookware, Caxton Books & Gallery. The Russian was pressing the barrel of his gun into her hip. With his right hand he was gripping the wheel tightly. His eyes were locked on the rearview mirror.

“You might want to look where you’re going,” said Sarah.

“Who are they?”

“They’re innocent British subjects who are trying to enjoy a pleasant evening in a seaside community.”

The Russian ground the gun into Sarah’s hip. “The two people in the van behind us.” His British accent was gone. “Essex Police? MI5? MI6?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He placed the barrel of the gun against the side of her head.

“I’m telling you, I don’t know who they are.”

“What about your husband?”

“He works in the City.”

“Where is he now?”

“Back at the hotel, wondering where I am.”

“I saw him on television a few minutes ago.”

“That’s not possible.”

“He escorted Khalid into his uncle’s house in Eaton Square.”

“Khalid who?”

Sarah never saw the blow coming—the butt of the gun, an inch above her right ear. The pain was otherworldly. “You just made the second biggest mistake of your life.”

“What was the first?”

“Strapping a bomb to Khalid’s daughter.”

“I’m glad we cleared that up.” He swerved to avoid a pedestrian crossing the road. “Who does your husband work for?”

“MI6.”

“And you?”

“CIA.” It was an untruth, but only a small one. And it would make the Russian think twice about killing her.

“And the two people who are following me?” he asked.

“SCO19.”

“You’re lying, Mrs. Edgerton.”

“If you say so.”

“If they were SCO19, they would have killed me at the hotel.” He turned off Connaught Avenue and drove dangerously fast through a quiet residential area. After a moment he checked his rearview mirror. “Too bad.”

“Did you lose them?”

He smiled coldly. “No.”

He sped along Upper Fourth Avenue to the car park of the Frinton rail station. It was an old redbrick building, with a steeply pitched white portico over the entrance. Sarah would always remember the flowers—the two pots of red-and-white geraniums hanging from hooks along the facade.

A train must have just arrived because a few passengers were filing into the pleasant evening. One or two glanced at the tall man who stepped from a flashy Jaguar F-Type, but most ignored him.

Swiftly, he walked over to the white Ford van that had followed him into the confined space of the car park. Sarah screamed a warning, but it was no use. The Russian fired four shots through the driver’s-side window and three more through the windscreen.

“In case you were wondering,” he said when he was behind the wheel again, “I saved one bullet for you.”

From the rail station, he sped north on Elm Tree Avenue. It seemed to Sarah he knew exactly where he was going. He made a right at Walton Road and another at Coles Lane. A hedgerowed track, it bore them into a marshland. The first sign of human habitation was a blue, cube-like security office at the entrance of a marina. Inside was a single guard. Despite Sarah’s pleas, the Russian shot him with the last round in his gun. Then he reloaded and shot him three more times.

Calmly, he returned to the Jaguar and drove along the access road to the marina. A part of Sarah was relieved to find it deserted. The Russian had just killed three people in less than five minutes. Once they were at sea, there would be no one left to kill but her.

71

Essex–London City Airport

Units of the Essex Police responded to reports of gunfire at the Frinton-on-Sea rail station at 7:26 p.m. There they discovered two victims. One had been shot four times; the other, three. A pair of distraught-looking men were desperately trying to resuscitate them. Traumatized witnesses described the gunman as a tall, well-dressed man driving a bright red Jaguar sports car. There had been a woman in the passenger seat. She had screamed throughout the entire incident.

In the United States, where firearms are plentiful and gun violence epidemic, police might have initially attributed the killings to road rage. The authorities in Essex, however, made no such assumption. With the help of the Metropolitan Police—and the two distraught-looking men—they established that the gunman was an operative of Russian intelligence. The woman was not his accomplice but his hostage. The Essex Police were told nothing about her professional provenance, only that she was an American.

Despite a frantic search for the Russian and the woman, more than ninety minutes would elapse before two constables called on the marina located at the end of Coles Lane. The guard at the gate was dead, shot four times at close range, and the bright red Jaguar was parked haphazardly outside the marina’s office, which had been broken into and ransacked. With the help of the marina’s video system, police determined that the Russian had stolen a Bavaria 27 Sport motor yacht owned by a local businessman. The vessel was fitted with twin Volvo-Penta engines and a 147-gallon fuel tank, which the Russian had filled before leaving the marina. Just twenty-nine feet in length, the Bavaria was designed for harbor and coastal cruising. But with a skilled seaman at the helm, the vessel was more than capable of reaching the European mainland in a matter of hours.

Though the two constables did not know it, the dead guard and missing motor yacht were but a small part of a rapidly unfolding diplomatic and national security crisis. The elements of this crisis included a dead Russian operative on the M25 motorway and a Russian oligarch who was being held in a hazmat tent at London City Airport because he was too radioactive to be moved.

At eight p.m., Prime Minister Lancaster convened COBRA, Britain’s senior crisis management group. They gathered, as usual, in Cabinet Office Briefing Room A, from which the group derived its name. It was a contentious meeting from the start. Amanda Wallace, the director-general of MI5, was outraged she had not been told of the presence of a Russian hit team on British soil. Graham Seymour, who had just lost two officers, was in no mood for an internecine squabble. MI6 had learned about the Russian operatives, he said, as part of a counterintelligence operation directed against the SVR. Seymour had informed the prime minister and the Metropolitan Police about the Russians after confirming they had indeed arrived in Britain. In short, he had played it by the book.

Curiously, the official record of the meeting contained not a single reference to Crown Prince Abdullah—or the possibility there might be a connection between his sudden illness and the Russian hit team. Graham Seymour, for his part, did not lead the horse to water. And neither, for that matter, did the prime minister.