The telephone call arrived in the Family Quarters on the second floor of the White House at 3:14 A.M. The president snatched the receiver from the cradle after the first ring and brought it quickly to his ear. He immediately recognized the voice at the other end of the line: Cyrus Mansfield, his national security advisor.
“I’m afraid there’s been another attack in London, Mr. President.”
“How bad?”
Mansfield answered the question to the best of his ability. The president closed his eyes and whispered, “My God.”
“The British are doing everything they can to seal off London and prevent them from escaping,” Mansfield said. “But as you might expect, the situation is extremely chaotic.”
“Activate the Situation Room. I’ll be downstairs in five minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
The president hung up the phone and sat up in bed. When he switched on the bedside lamp, his wife stirred and looked at his face. She had seen the expression before.
“How bad?” she asked.
“ London has been hit again.” He hesitated. “And Elizabeth Halton has been taken hostage.”
PART TWO. THE LAND OF STRANGERS
11
I wouldn’t complain too much about a nasty bump on the head.”
Graham Seymour’s limousine lurched out of the forecourt of New Scotland Yard, headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, and turned into Broadway. The MI5 man looked very tired. He had a right to. Bombs had exploded in the Underground at Marble Arch, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, and Charing Cross. Six American diplomats and security men had been slaughtered in Hyde Park and the daughter of the American ambassador, Elizabeth Halton, was missing and presumed kidnapped. And thus far the only person to be arrested was Gabriel Allon.
“They asked me to put my hands in the air and drop the gun,” said Gabriel. “I complied with their order.”
“Do try to see it from their point of view. You were about to shoot a man in the head and were surrounded by eight other bodies. You’re damned lucky they even gave you a
“Wouldn’t that have been perfect. The one person who tried to prevent the attacks, shot dead by London police.” Greeted by Graham Seymour’s angry silence, Gabriel pressed his case. “You should have listened to me, Graham. You should have raised the threat level and rousted a few of your known terrorists. Maybe Elizabeth Halton and the rest of the Americans would have stayed in their embassy instead of going for a morning jog in Hyde Park.”
“And I told you to stay out of it.”
“Is that why you left me sitting in that holding cell for sixteen hours, Graham? Is that why you let them file charges against me? Is that why you let them take my fingerprints and my photograph?”
“Forgive me for not coming to your rescue sooner, Gabriel. I’ve been a little busy.”
Gabriel looked out at the wet streets of Westminster. They were abandoned, except for the uniformed Met officers standing watch at every other corner. Graham Seymour did have a point. London had just experienced its bloodiest single day since the Second World War. Gabriel could hardly complain about spending most of it inside New Scotland Yard.
“How many dead, Graham?”
“The toll is much higher than the attacks of July 2005,” Seymour said. “So far we’re at three hundred dead, with more than two thousand injured. But these bombings obviously had a second purpose-to create an atmosphere of chaos in the capital that allowed the kidnappers to slip away undetected. Unfortunately, it worked to perfection. Whoever planned this attack was bloody diabolical-and damned good.”
“What have you picked up about the identity and affiliation of the bombers?”
“They’re all second-generation British boys from Finsbury Park and Walthamstow in East London. All four are of Egyptian heritage, and all four were members of a small storefront mosque in Walthamstow called the al- Salaam Mosque.”
“The Mosque of Peace,” Gabriel said. “How appropriate.”
“The imam has disappeared and so have several other members of the flock. Based on what we know now, it appears local boys handled the bombing operation, while your boy Samir and his associates saw to the kidnapping.”
“Have you been able to trace the vans?”
“They were all purchased by companies owned or controlled by a man called Farouk al-Shahaki. He’s a London-born entrepreneur of Egyptian heritage with business interests across Britain and in the Middle East.”
“Where is he?”
“He boarded a flight for Pakistan last night. We’ve asked the Pakistani ISI to find him.”
“Good luck,” said Gabriel. “Were you able to follow them on street surveillance cameras as they left Hyde Park?”
“For a time,” Seymour said. “Then they turned into an alley with no camera coverage and we lost them. We found the vans in a garage in Maida Vale that had been rented by one of the suicide bombers.”
“Any claim of responsibility?”
“Too many to keep track of at the moment. Clearly it has all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda attack. I suppose we’ll learn more when the kidnappers make their demands.”
“It would be better for everyone if you found Elizabeth Halton
“We’re operating under the assumption she’s still somewhere inside the British mainland. We’ve got men at every airport, train station, and ferry terminal in the country. The Coastguard is attempting to seal our shoreline, no easy undertaking since it measures nearly eight thousand miles in length. SO13 are questioning informants and those suspected of terrorist sympathies, along with known associates of the suicide bombers. They’re also conducting house-to-house searches in predominantly Muslim districts of the city. Our Muslim countrymen are already getting angry. If we’re not careful, things could get out of hand very quickly.” Seymour looked at Gabriel. “Too bad you didn’t manage to wound one or two of those terrorists you killed in Hyde Park. We need information badly.”
“I may have,” Gabriel said.
“What are you talking about?”
“I fired several shots into the back of one of those vans. Keep an eye out for Arabs coming into hospital trauma centers with unexplained bullet wounds.”
The limousine turned into Millbank and headed along the Thames toward Lambeth Bridge. Seymour ’s mobile phone chirped. He brought it to his ear, murmured a few words, then rang off. “The Americans,” he said by way of explanation. “As you might expect, they’re on war footing. They’ve put the embassy and all its personnel and dependents on lockdown status. They’ve also issued a terrorist travel alert for the United Kingdom, which hasn’t exactly gone over well with Downing Street or the Foreign Office, since it puts us on a par with Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. Two hundred investigators from CIA, FBI, and the departments of State and Justice touched down at Heathrow earlier this evening and set up shop at Grosvenor Square. They have an open line to the State Department Task Force in Washington and another one to COBRA, the special committee chaired by the
