Portrait of a Spy. Daniel Silva

Service wanted a rerun of the Menezes fiasco. As a result of his death, a number of new guidelines and procedures were put in place to make sure nothing like it ever happens again. Suffice it to say a single warning does not meet the threshold for taking lethal action—even if the source happens to be named Gabriel Allon.”

      “So eighteen innocent people died as a result?”

      “What if he wasn’t a terrorist? What if he was another street performer, or someone with mental problems? We would have been burned at the stake.”

      “But he wasn’t a street performer or a mental patient, Graham. He was a suicide bomber. And I told you so.”

      “How did you know?”

      “He might as well have been wearing a sign declaring his intentions.”

      “Was it that obvious?”

      Gabriel listed the attributes that first raised his suspicions and then explained the calculations that led him to conclude the terrorist intended to detonate his device at 2:37. Seymour shook his head slowly.

      “I’ve lost count of how many hours we’ve spent training our police officers to spot potential terrorists, not to mention the millions of pounds we’ve poured into behavior-recognition software for CCTV. And yet a jihadi suicide bomber walked straight into Covent Garden, and no one seemed to notice. No one but you, of course.”

      Seymour lapsed into a brooding silence. They were headed north along the floodlit white canyon of Regent Street. Gabriel leaned his head wearily against the window and asked whether the bomber had been identified.

      “His name is Farid Khan. His parents immigrated to the United Kingdom from Lahore in the late seventies, but Farid was born in London. Stepney Green, to be precise,” Seymour said. “Like many British Muslims of his generation, he rejected the mild, apolitical religious beliefs of his parents and became an Islamist. By the late nineties, he was spending far too much time at the East London Mosque in Whitechapel Road. Before long, he was a member in good standing of the radical groups Hizb ut-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun.”

      “It sounds to me as if you had a file on him.”

      “We did,” Seymour said, “but not for the reasons you might think. You see, Farid Khan was a ray of sunlight, our hope for the future. Or so we thought.”

      “You thought you’d turned him around?”

      Seymour nodded. “Not long after 9/11, Farid joined a group called New Beginnings. Its goal was to deprogram militants and reintegrate them into the mainstream of Islam and British public opinion. Farid was considered one of their great successes. He shaved his beard. He severed ties to his old friends. He graduated near the top of his class at King’s College and landed a well-paying job with a small London ad agency. A few weeks ago, he became engaged to a woman from his old neighborhood.”

      “So you checked him off your list?”

      “In a manner of speaking,” Seymour said. “Now it appears it was all a clever deception. Farid was literally a ticking time bomb waiting to explode.”

      “Any idea who activated him?”

      “We’re poring over his telephone and computer records as we speak, along with the suicide video he left behind. It’s clear his attack was connected to the bombings in Paris and Copenhagen. Whether they were coordinated by the remnants of al-Qaeda Central or a new network is now a matter of intense debate. Whatever the case, it’s none of your concern. Your role in this affair is officially over.”

      The Jaguar crossed Cavendish Place and stopped outside the entrance of the Langham Hotel.

      “I’d like my gun back.”

      “I’ll see what I can do,” Seymour said.

      “How long do I have to stay here?”

      “Scotland Yard would like you to remain in London for the rest of the weekend. On Monday morning, you can go back to your cottage by the sea and think of nothing other than your Titian.”

      “How do you know about the Titian?”

      “I know everything. Everything except how to prevent a British-born Muslim from carrying out an act of mass murder in Covent Garden.”

      “I could have stopped him, Graham.”

      “Yes,” Seymour said distantly. “And we would have repaid the favor by tearing you to pieces.”

      Gabriel stepped from the car without another word. “Your role in this affair is officially over,” he murmured as he entered the lobby. He repeated it, again and again, like a mantra.

      Chapter 8

      New York City

      THAT SAME EVENING, THE OTHER universe inhabited by Gabriel Allon was also on edge but for decidedly different reasons. It was the fall auction season in New York, the anxious time when the art world, in all its folly and excess, convenes for two weeks of frenzied buying and selling. It was, as Nicholas Lovegrove liked to say, one of the few remaining occasions when it was still considered fashionable to be vastly rich. It was also, however, a deadly serious business. Great collections would be built, great fortunes made and lost. A single transaction could launch a brilliant career. It could also destroy one.

      Lovegrove’s professional reputation, like Gabriel Allon’s, was by that evening firmly established. British-born and educated, he was regarded as the most sought-after art consultant in the world—a man so powerful he could move markets with an offhand remark or a wrinkle of his elegant nose. His knowledge of art was legendary, as was the size of his bank account. Lovegrove no longer had to troll for clients; they came to him, usually on bended knee and with promises of vast commissions. The secret of Lovegrove’s success lay in his unfailing eye and in his discretion. Lovegrove never betrayed a confidence; Lovegrove never gossiped or engaged in double-dealing. He was the rarest of birds in the art trade—a man of his word.

      His reputation notwithstanding, Lovegrove was beset by his usual case of pre-auction jitters as he hurried along Sixth Avenue. After years of falling prices and anemic sales, the art market was at last beginning to show signs of renewal. The season’s first auctions had been respectable but had fallen short of expectations. Tonight’s sale, the Postwar and Contemporary at Christie’s, had the potential to set the art world ablaze. As usual, Lovegrove had clients at both ends of the action. Two were sellers—vendors, in the lexicon of the trade—while a third was looking to acquire Lot 12, Ocher and Red on Red, oil on canvas, by Mark Rothko. The client in question was unique in that Lovegrove did not know his name. He dealt only with a certain Mr. Hamdali in Paris, who in turn dealt with the client. The arrangement was unorthodox but, from Lovegrove’s perspective, highly lucrative. During the past twelve months alone, the collector had acquired more than two hundred million dollars’ worth of paintings. Lovegrove’s commissions on those sales were in excess of twenty million dollars. If things went according to plan tonight, his net worth would rise substantially.

      He rounded the corner onto West Forty-ninth Street and walked a half block to the entrance of Christie’s. The soaring glass-walled lobby was a sea of diamonds, silk, ego, and collagen. Lovegrove paused briefly to kiss the perfumed cheek of a German packaging heiress before making his way to the coat check line, where he was promptly set upon by a pair of secondary dealers from the Upper East Side. He put them off with a defensive movement of his hand, then collected his bidding paddle and headed upstairs to the salesroom.

      For all its intrigue and glamour, it was a surprisingly ordinary room, a cross between the United Nations General Assembly hall and the church of a television evangelist. The walls were a drab shade of gray-beige, as were the folding chairs, which were smashed tightly together to maximize the limited space. Behind the pulpitlike rostrum was a revolving display case and, next to the case, a bank of telephones staffed by a half-dozen Christie’s employees. Lovegrove glanced up at the sky suites, hoping to glimpse a face or two behind the tinted glass, then turned warily toward the reporters penned like cattle in the back corner. Concealing his paddle number, he hurried past them and headed to his usual