Page 43 of The Other Woman

“No. They wanted him totryto defect. There’s an enormous difference.”

“Why let him leave Russia at all? Why not hang him by his heels and let the secrets fall out of his pockets? Why not put a bullet in the nape of his neck and be done with it?”

“Because they wanted to get a little mileage out of him first. All they needed was the address of the safe flat where I would be waiting, but that was the easy part. The distribution list was a mile long, and the mole’s name was certainly on it. When Heathcliff arrived in Vienna, they had an assassin in place and a surveillance team with a long-lens camera in the building next door.”

“I’m still listening,” said Seymour grudgingly.

“Killing Heathcliff beneath my window and splashing my photo across the Internet had one obvious benefit. It made it seem as though I was the one who had ordered the murder of an SVR agent in the middle of Vienna, thus weakening the Office. But that’s not the main reason they did it. They wanted me to launch an investigation and identify Alistair Hughes as the likely source of the leak, and I stepped into their trap.”

“But why did they kill him?”

“Because keeping him around was too dangerous to the overall operation, the goal of which was to throw us off the scent of the real mole. After all, there’s no need to hunt for a mole if the mole is dead.”

An unmarked van waited at the end of the lane, two men in front. “Don’t worry,” said Seymour, “they’re mine.”

“You sure about that?”

Seymour turned without answering and started back toward the lifeboat station. “The night you came to my house in Belgravia, I asked for the name of the person who told you that Alistair was traveling frequently to Switzerland. You pointedly refused to tell me.”

“It was Werner Schwarz,” said Gabriel.

“The same Werner Schwarz who works for the Austrian BVT?”

Gabriel nodded.

“What’s the nature of your relationship?”

“We pay him money, and he gives us information. That’s how it works in our business.” A bicycle squeaked toward them along the lane, ridden by a man with a crimson face. “You’re not carrying a gun, are you?”

“He’s one of mine, too.” The bicycle rattled past. “Where do you suppose he is, this mole of yours? Is he in my service?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Langley?”

“Why not? Or maybe it’s someone in the White House. Someone close to the president.”

“Or maybe it’s the president himself.”

“Let’s not get carried away, Graham.”

“But that’s the danger, isn’t it? The danger that we chase our tails and tie ourselves in knots. You’re in the wilderness of mirrors. It’s a place where you can arrange the so-called facts to come to any conclusion you desire. You’ve put forward a compelling circumstantial case, I’ll grant you that, but if one element crumbles, all of it does.”

“Alistair Hughes wasn’t a Russian spy, he was a patient at the Privatklinik Schloss in the Swiss village of Münchenbuchsee. And someone told the Russians.”

“Who?”

“If I had to guess,” said Gabriel, “it was the mole. Therealmole.”

They had returned to the beach. In both directions it was deserted. Seymour walked down to the water’s edge. Wavelets lapped at his Wellington boots.

“I suppose this is the part where you tell me you’re suspending our relationship until the real mole is discovered.”

“I can’t work with you if there’s a direct pipeline running between Langley, Vauxhall Cross, and Moscow Center. We’re reassessing several operations now under way in Syria and Iran. Our assumption,” said Gabriel, “is that they’re blown to high heaven.”

“That’s your assumption to make,” Seymour replied pointedly. “But it is the official position of the Secret Intelligence Service that we are not now, nor have we ever been, harboring a Russian mole in our midst.” He paused, then asked, “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” said Gabriel, “I believe I do. You’d like me to find the mole in your service that doesn’t exist.”