Page 132 of Ransom

There were some on the traditional anti-Russian right who found Lancaster’s response woefully inadequate, even cowardly, and others, especially in the press, who were sure they were getting only part of the story. Phoebe Chadwick, coordinator of the Africa program at Global Relief UK, fell into the second category. Like most relief workers and advocates for human rights, she maintained a healthy mistrust of the organs of state security. Still, she was relieved that Jonathan Lancaster had not gone off half-cocked. The last thing the world needed now, she thought, was yet another war.

The prime minister made his case to the Commons the followingday, but by late afternoon all of Britain was consumed by lurid new revelations about the king’s oversexed brother and his appalling friendship with an American pedophile and sex trafficker. Even Phoebe, a certifiably serious person who had largely averted her gaze from the unfolding scandal, found the story too shocking to ignore. Around half past five she checked her text messages and noticed that she had received an anonymous invitation for drinks at the Bloomsbury Tavern at six.The sender of the message would be seated in the corner table beneath the television. Phoebe was to come alone.

She was not in the habit of meeting strangers for drinks, but it was only the Bloomsbury Tavern, after all, and she had a sneaking suspicion the anonymous email had been sent by the famous art restorer and retired spy she had met there several weeks previously. She entered the pub at the stroke of six o’clock and made her way as instructed to the corner table. And there sat not the man she had been expecting but a woman in jeans and trainers and a stretched-out cotton pullover. Her face was hidden behind a pair of movie-starlet sunglasses. Her hair was short and dark.

Phoebe glanced around the interior of the pub.

“Looking for someone?” asked the woman in a sultry drawl.

“A friend of mine,” said Phoebe. “Not a friend, actually. More like an acquaintance.”

“Really? Who?”

“You wouldn’t know him.”

“Shortish chap? Eyes like jade?”

“Yes, that’s the one. Did you happen to see him?”

“He just left, I’m afraid.” There was something remotely familiar about the woman’s voice. She nodded toward the chair opposite and said, “But why don’t you have a drink with me instead?”

“I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“I insist.”

Phoebe sat down, extended her hand across the tabletop, and introduced herself. The woman frowned and said, “Yes, I know. We were at Cambridge together.”

“Were we?”

“We had a terrible row one evening. You threatened to throw me off the Magdalen Bridge.”

Phoebe stared at the woman for a long moment, then said, “Take off those glasses.”

She lowered them a fraction of an inch, revealing a pair of liquid blue eyes, then returned them to their original position. “You really mustn’t cry, my darling Pheebs,” she said in that posh drawl of hers. “After all, it’s only me.”

57

Wiltons

By then it was September, and the start of the Italian school year was fast approaching. Irene and Raphael, after spending three months in a remote corner of West Cornwall, were eager to resume their life in Venice, an enchanted place where one never encountered motorcars or lorries—or sheep or bovines, for that matter—and where one walked to dinner, then, after a stop at Venchi in the Rialto for gelato and butter cookies, one walked home again. Their mother was likewise anxious to return to the city of her birth, for she had two new restoration projects requiring her immediate attention. She was mildly displeased, therefore, that the esteemed director of her paintings department, having ruined his summer holiday searching for a missing British socialite who wasn’t really missing, had decided to remain in the United Kingdom for another week in order to tie up a few loose ends.

She was more annoyed, admittedly, that he had nearly been blown to bits by an exploding Russian drone along with his friends Sarah Bancroft and Ingrid Johansen. But this, she reminded herself yet again, was the man she had married. He was a restorer of all things—paintings, old sports cars, British socialites, even thieves and contract killers—who could never seem to leave well enough alone. Still, when all was said and done, he had come through hislatest adventure in remarkably good condition, nothing more than a few scrapes and bruises and a nasty dog bite on his left ankle. Oscar was the perpetrator’s name. Leave it to Gabriel Allon to be bitten by a deer-red German pinscher called Oscar.

On the last day of their summer holiday they rose before dawn and sailed the Beneteau to the Isles of Scilly. So rough was the return trip that Chiara, once safely ashore in Penzance, swore she would never again set foot on a boat—a vaporetto or water taxi, perhaps, but not a vessel powered by the wind. Next morning she helped the children pack their bags and loaded them into the Range Rover for the drive to Heathrow. Gabriel brought along a garment bag with a dark suit and a sober tie. He had an appointment with the committee of inquiry in the morning and wanted to look his best.

“And what exactly,” said Chiara, “are you going to say to them?”

“As little as possible.”

“And when the members of the committee of inquiryinquireas to how it was you got mixed up in this affair in the first place?”

“Alice Winter, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“My SIS-appointed lawyer will intercede on my behalf and change the subject.”

“So the truth will never come out?”