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“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“Do you remember what time the meeting ended?”
“If memory serves, it dragged on until nearly five.”
Gabriel asked Simon Eastwood to advance the recording to 4:55 p.m. and increase the playback speed. Charlotte Blake sat with the stillness of a figure in a painting while patrons and employees buzzed like insects around her.
“Pause it,” said Gabriel when the time stamp reached 5:04:12. Then he pointed to one of the figures in the tableau. “Do you recognize her?”
“Yes, of course,” replied Geoffrey Holland.
It was Lucinda Graves.
Gabriel asked Simon Eastwood to resume the playback at normal speed. Eastwood looked to Geoffrey Holland for approval, and Holland, after a moment’s hesitation, nodded his head solemnly. Then they watched in silence as the wife of the soon-to-be prime minister sat down opposite a woman who in a month’s time would be dead. By all appearances their conversation was cordial. It concluded at 5:47 p.m. They were the last customers to leave the café.
“May I have a copy of this video?” asked Gabriel.
Eastwood looked at Geoffrey Holland, who delivered his ruling without delay.
“No, Mr. Allon. You may not.”
***
“Perhaps it slipped her mind,” said Ingrid without conviction.
“It didn’t. She invited me to her office to pump me for information and then lied to my face. Quite well, I might add. Lucinda Graves is the link between Charlotte Blake and Trevor Robinson. Lucinda is the reason that Charlotte was murdered.”
They were walking westward along the Strand toward Trafalgar Square. “When you think about it,” said Ingrid, “it would explain a great deal.”
“Beginning with the Federov scandal,” added Gabriel. “It was manufactured by Lucinda and her friends at Harris Weber in order to force Hillary Edwards to resign. It was a coup directed against a sitting British prime minister.”
“None of which we can prove.”
“With one important exception.”
“The ten-million-pound payment from Valentin Federov to Lord Radcliff?”
“Exactly.”
They rounded a corner into Bedford Street and headed toward Covent Garden. Ingrid asked, “How much does Radcliff know about the plot?”
“If I had to guess, he knows everything.”
“Which means his lordship is a most dangerous man.”
“So am I,” replied Gabriel.
“What are you planning to do?”
He pulled his phone from his pocket, composed a text message, and tapped send.
The reply was instant.
I’ll call you back in five minutes...
***
Christopher’s beloved Bentley was wedged into a slender space on the bottom level of a car park in Garrick Street. Gabriel, certain the vehicle had not survived the ordeal intact, hurried down the internal stairwell with Ingrid at his heels. The light on the lower landing, functional an hour earlier, was no longer working. Consequently, he never saw the object—a human fist or perhaps a large-caliber bullet—that slammed into the left side of his skull. He was aware of his legs buckling beneath him and of his face colliding with concrete. Then there was only darkness, warm and wet, and the maddening electronic ringtone of his unanswered telephone.
