“An irresistible thriller, built on the realpolitik of today’s Middle East but deepened by the universality of human tragedy.”
— Booklist (starred review)

“Sophisticated…As always, Silva delivers sharply drawn characters, a complex plot, and vivid backgrounds that add to the book’s realism…an excellent introduction for new readers.”
— Publishers Weekly

“It’s hard to fathom that Silva could ever top himself after last year’s The Other Woman, but he’s done just that.”
— The Real Book Spy

“Silva’s pages are splattered with intrigue and betrayal; his violent visuals are like a head-on collision… have your next reading selection queued up because this one will not be easily put down.”
— The Times of Israel 

“At times a brilliant novel tells us as much about the times we live in—and the struggles of the world, the global deceptions and tragedies—as well or better than journalism….Eye-opening and a joy to read.”
— Bob Woodward

“Features Silva’s trademark dark humor and unrivaled talent for unexpected plot twists and unforgettable characters. He once again weaves a presciently relevant story of politics and rivalries in our dangerous world.”
—  Brooklyn Fans

“The New Girl weaves a masterful story…The book delivers and is authentic…Silva provides enough narrative to stimulate thought but at the same time, enough action to allow the reader to escape into a great summer adventure…It is a book meant to savor.”
— The Cipher Brief

Chapter 1: GENEVA

It was Beatrice Kenton who first questioned the identity of the new girl. She did so in the staff room, at a quarter past three, on a Friday in late November. The mood was festive and faintly rebellious, as was the case most Friday afternoons. It is a truism that no profession welcomes the end of the workweek with more anticipation than teachers—even teachers at elite institutions such as the International School of Geneva. The chatter was of plans for the weekend. Beatrice abstained, for she had none, a fact she did not wish to share with her colleagues. She was fifty-two, unmarried, and with no family to speak of other than a rich old aunt who granted her refuge each summer at her estate in Norfolk. Her weekend routine consisted of a trip to the Migros and a walk along the lakeshore for the sake of her waistline, which, like the universe, was ever expanding. First period Monday was an oasis in an otherwise Empty Quarter of solitude.

Founded by a long-dead organization of multilateralism, Geneva International catered to the children of the city’s diplomatic community. The middle school, where Beatrice taught reading and composition, educated students from more than a hundred different countries. The faculty was a similarly diverse lot. The head of personnel went to great effort to promote employee bonding—cocktail parties, potluck dinners, nature outings—but in the staff room the old tribalism tended to reassert itself. Germans kept with other Germans, French with French, Spanish with Spanish. On that Friday afternoon, Miss Kenton was the only British subject present other than Cecelia Halifax from the history department. Cecelia had wild black hair and predictable politics, which she insisted on sharing with Miss Kenton at every opportunity. Cecelia also divulged to Miss Kenton details of the torrid sexual affair she was having with Kurt Schröder, the Birkenstocked math genius from Hamburg who had given up a lucrative engineering career to teach multiplication and division to eleven-year-olds.

The staff room was on the ground floor of the eighteenth-century château that served as the administration building. Its leaded windows gazed across the forecourt, where presently Geneva International’s privileged young students were clambering into the backs of German-made luxury sedans with diplomatic license plates. Loquacious Cecelia Halifax had planted herself next to Beatrice. She was prattling on about a scandal in London, something involving MI6 and a Russian spy. Beatrice was scarcely listening. She was watching the new girl.

As usual, she was at the hindmost end of the daily exodus, a wispy child of twelve, already beautiful, with liquid brown eyes and hair the color of a raven’s wing. Much to Beatrice’s dismay, the school had no uniform, only a dress code, which several of the more freethinking students flouted with no official sanction. But not the new girl. She was covered from head to toe in expensive wool and plaid, the sort of stuff one saw at the Burberry boutique in Harrods. She carried a leather book bag rather than a nylon backpack. Her patent leather ballet slippers were glossy and bright. She was proper, the new girl, modest. But there was something else about her, thought Beatrice. She was cut from different cloth. She was regal. Yes, that was the word. Regal…

She had arrived two weeks into the autumn term—not ideal but not unheard of at an institution like Geneva International, where the parent body came and went like the waters of the Rhône. David Millar, the headmaster, had crammed her into Beatrice’s third period, which was already two pupils on the heavy side. The copy of the admissions file he gave her was gossamer, even by the school’s standards. It stated that the new girl’s name was Jihan Tantawi, that she was of Egyptian nationality, and that her father was a businessman rather than a diplomat. Her academic record was unexceptional. She was deemed bright but in no way gifted. “A bird ready to take flight,” wrote David in a sanguine margin note. Indeed, the only noteworthy aspect of the file was the paragraph reserved for the student’s “special needs.” It seemed privacy was of grave concern to the Tantawi family. Security, wrote David, was a high priority.

Hence the presence in the courtyard that afternoon— and every afternoon, for that matter—of Lucien Villard, the school’s capable head of security. Lucien was a French import, a veteran of the Service de la Protection, the National Police unit responsible for safeguarding visiting foreign dignitaries and senior French officials. His final posting had been at the Élysée Palace, where he had served on the personal detail of the president of the Republic. David Millar used Lucien’s impressive résumé as proof of the school’s commitment to safety. Jihan Tantawi was not the only student with security concerns.

But no one arrived and departed Geneva International quite like the new girl. The black Mercedes limousine into which  she slipped was fit for a head of state or potentate. Beatrice was no expert when it came to automobiles, but it looked to her as though the chassis was armor plated and the windows were bulletproof. Behind it was a second vehicle, a Range Rover, containing four unsmiling brutes in dark jackets.

“Who do you suppose she is?” wondered Beatrice as she watched the two vehicles turn into the street.

Cecelia Halifax was bewildered. “The Russian spy?”

“The new girl,” drawled Beatrice. Then she added dubiously, “Jihan.”

“They say her father owns half of Cairo.”

“Who says that?”

“Veronica.” Veronica Alvarez was a hot-tempered Spaniard from the art department and one of the least reliable sources of gossip on the faculty, second only to Cecelia herself. “She says the mother is related to the Egyptian president. His niece. Or maybe his cousin.”

Beatrice watched Lucien Villard crossing the forecourt. “Do you know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think someone is lying.”

* * * * *

And so it came to pass that Beatrice Kenton, a battle-scarred veteran of several lesser British public schools who had come to Geneva looking for romance and adventure and found neither, undertook a wholly private inquiry to determine the true identity of the new girl. She began by entering the name jihan tantawi in the little white box of her Internet browser’s default search engine. Several thousand results appeared on her screen, none corresponding to the beautiful twelve-year-old girl who came through her classroom door at the beginning of each third period, never so much as a minute late.

Next Beatrice searched the various social media sites but again found no trace of her student. It seemed the new girl was the only twelve-year-old on God’s green earth who did not lead a parallel life in cyberspace. Beatrice found this commendable, for she had witnessed firsthand the destructive emotional and developmental consequences of incessant texting, tweeting, and sharing of photographs. Regrettably, such behavior was not limited to children. Cecelia Halifax could scarcely go to the loo without posting an airbrushed photo of herself on Instagram.

The father, one Adnan Tantawi, was similarly anonymous in the cyber realm. Beatrice found a few references to a Tantawi Construction and a Tantawi Holdings and a Tantawi Development but nothing at all about the man himself. Jihan’s admissions file listed a chic address on the route de Lausanne. Beatrice walked by it on a Saturday afternoon. It was a few doors down from the home of the famous Swiss industrialist Martin Landesmann. Like all properties on that part of Lake Geneva, it was surrounded by high walls and watched over by security cameras. Beatrice peered through the bars of the gate and glimpsed a manicured green lawn stretching toward the portico of a magnificent Italianate villa. At once, a man came pounding toward her down the drive, one of the brutes from the Range Rover, no doubt. He made no effort to conceal the fact he had a gun beneath his jacket.

“Propriété privée!” he shouted in heavily accented French.

“Excusez-moi,” murmured Beatrice, and walked quickly away. The next phase of her inquiry commenced the following Monday morning, when she embarked on three days of close observation of her mysterious new student. She noted that Jihan, when called upon in class, was sometimes slow in responding. She noted, too, that Jihan had formed no friendships since her arrival at the school, and had made no attempt to do so. Beatrice also established, while purporting to lavish praise on a lackluster essay, that Jihan had only a passing familiarity with Egypt. She knew that Cairo was a large city and that a river ran through it, but little else. Her father, she said, was very rich. He built high-rise apartment houses and office towers. Because he was a friend of the Egyptian president, the Muslim Brotherhood didn’t like him, which was why they were living in Geneva.

“Sounds perfectly reasonable to me,” said Cecelia.

“It sounds,” answered Beatrice, “like something someone made up. I doubt she’s ever set foot in Cairo. In fact, I’m not sure she’s even Egyptian.”

Beatrice next focused her attention on the mother. She viewed her mainly through the tinted, bulletproof windows of the limousine, or on those rare occasions when she alighted from the car’s backseat to greet Jihan in the courtyard. She was fairer complected than Jihan and lighter haired—attractive, thought Beatrice, but not quite in Jihan’s league. Indeed, Beatrice was hard-pressed to find any familial resemblance whatsoever. There was a conspicuous coldness in their physical relationship. Not once did she witness a kiss or warm embrace. She also detected a distinct imbalance of power. It was Jihan, not the mother, who held the upper hand.

As November turned to December, and the winter break loomed, Beatrice conspired to arrange a meeting with the aloof mother of her mysterious pupil. The pretext was Jihan’s performance on an English spelling and vocabulary test—the bottom third of the class but much better than young Callahan, the son of an American foreign service officer and, purportedly, a native speaker of the language. Beatrice drafted an e-mail requesting a consultation at Mrs. Tantawi’s convenience and dispatched it to the address she found in the admissions file. When several days passed with no reply, she sent it again. At which point she received a mild rebuke from David Millar, the headmaster. It seemed Mrs. Tantawi wished to have no direct contact with Jihan’s teachers. Beatrice was to state her concerns in an e-mail to David, and David would address the matter with Mrs. Tantawi. Beatrice suspected he was aware of Jihan’s real identity, but she knew better than to raise the subject, even obliquely.  It was easier to pry secrets from a Swiss banker than Geneva International’s discreet headmaster.

Which left only Lucien Villard, the school’s French-born head of security. Beatrice called on him on a Friday afternoon during her free period. His office was in the basement of the château, next door to the broom closet occupied by the shifty little Russian who made the computers work. Lucien was lean and sturdy and more youthful-looking than his forty-eight years. Half the female members of the staff lusted after him, including Cecelia Halifax, who had made an unsuccessful run at Lucien before bedding her sandaled Teutonic math genius.

“I was wondering,” said Beatrice, leaning with feigned nonchalance against the frame of Lucien’s open door, “whether I might have a word with you about the new girl.”

Lucien regarded her coolly over his desk. “Jihan? Why?”

“Because I’m worried about her.”

Lucien placed a stack of papers atop the mobile phone that lay on his blotter. Beatrice couldn’t be sure, but she thought it was a different model than the one he usually carried. “It’s my job to worry about Jihan, Miss Kenton. Not yours.”

“It’s not her real name, is it?”

“Wherever did you get an idea like that?”

“I’m her teacher. Teachers see things.”

“Perhaps you didn’t read the note in Jihan’s file regarding loose talk and gossip. I would advise you to follow those instructions. Otherwise, I will be obliged to bring this matter to the attention of Monsieur Millar.”

“Forgive me, I meant no—”

Lucien held up a hand. “Don’t worry, Miss Kenton. It is entre nous.”

Two hours later, as the hatchlings of the global diplomatic elite waddled across the courtyard of the château, Beatrice was watching from the leaded window of the staff room. As usual, Jihan was among the last to leave. No, thought Beatrice, not Jihan. The new girl … She was skipping lightly across the cobbles and swinging her book bag, seemingly oblivious to the presence of Lucien Villard at her side. The woman was waiting next to the open door of the limousine. The new girl passed her with scarcely a glance and tumbled into the backseat. It was the last time Beatrice would ever see her.

Your previous two novels, The Black Widow and House of Spies, dealt with the rise and fall of ISIS. In fact, your wildly popular hero, Gabriel Allon, personally eliminated ISIS’s top terrorist. But in The Other Woman, Gabriel is matched against the Kremlin and Russian intelligence. Why Russia? And why now?

Given the events of the last few months—in Syria and the United Kingdom, and in our own domestic politics as well—I think it was almost preordained that this year’s Gabriel Allon novel deal with the subject of Russia. I am a student of Russian and Soviet history, and I love writing about this new cold war in which we find ourselves. Simply put, the Russians are wonderful fictional villains. And that’s because they’re villains in real life, too.

The first time you wrote about the new Russia was in Moscow Rules, a novel you released in 2008. I think it’s fair to say you were ahead of the curve in your dark depiction of Russia under Vladimir Putin. What did you see in the new Russia that the media and most of our politicians and diplomats missed?

I saw a man who, perhaps paradoxically, was building a fascist state and economy atop the rubble of the old communist Soviet Union. I also saw a man who was revanchist and paranoid at the same time, which is a profoundly dangerous combination. Mainly, I saw kleptomaniac who was more than willing to use murder as a tool of statecraft. The brave Russian journalists who dared to oppose Vladimir Putin were the first to die. They were the canaries in the coal mine.

Russia struck again, in the English cathedral town of Salisbury, while you were finishing The Other Woman. Something tells me you weren’t terribly surprised by the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal.

Actually, I wasn’t. The Russian intelligence services have long memories, and they never forget those who work with Russia’s adversaries against the motherland. I wrote about Putin’s determination to kill his political opponents outside Russia’s border in a novel called The Defector. But even I was stunned by the use of a military-grade nerve agent like Novichok. As a thriller writer, I’m permitted enormous license, but I would have never dreamed of using a weapon like that in a residential area. It boggles the mind. But this is the reality of the new Russia. Vladimir Putin doesn’t think the old rules and norms of international conduct apply to him, and he’s not going to abide by them. Look at the civil war in Syria. Putin’s ally, Bashar al-Assad, has repeatedly used chemical weapons against his own people, presumably with Moscow’s blessing, perhaps even with Moscow’s help.

What is Putin’s goal?

Simply put, it is the restoration of the old Russian-Soviet empire and destruction of the postwar global order. And the sooner we recognize that, the better. Putin is testing us to see whether we have the backbone to oppose him. He’s putting into practice Lenin’s infamous maxim: “Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw.” Thus far, Putin has encountered only mush.

What about the sanctions that the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union imposed on the Kremlin after the Skripal affair?

They were long overdue and a very good start, but I doubt they will be enough to deter Putin from his present course. Putin and Putinism are on the march. The strongman and the corporate state—by another name, fascism—are all the rage. Western-style democracy and the global institutions that created an unprecedented period of peace in Europe are suddenly out of vogue.

The opening sequence of The Other Woman reads like a scene from the darkest days of the Cold War. A defecting Russian spy is brutally assassinated in Vienna. But there’s a twist.

The defecting Russian spy is Gabriel Allon’s most important asset inside the SVR, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, and his killing is staged to make it appear as though Gabriel is responsible. It creates an international firestorm that threatens his hold on the Office and leaves him no choice but to embark on an investigation into what went wrong. The inquiry leads him to the door of his old friend Graham Seymour, the chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6. Gabriel has some bad news for his old friend, that MI6 is harboring a Russian spy.

And Graham Seymour makes a fateful decision. He allows Gabriel to watch an MI6 officer to see if he’s in contact with the Russians.

Gabriel and Graham Seymour have an unusual relationship, to say the least. Graham allowed Gabriel to live for many years in the United Kingdom under an assumed identity, and they’ve worked together on several operations. They are as close as two spies from different services can possibly be.

Gabriel’s quest for the Russian spy takes him backward in time, to the twentieth century’s greatest act of treason. In 2016 you told the New York Times you had recently reread your entire collection of books on the Kim Philby affair in preparation for a forthcoming novel. Is it safe to assume The Other Woman was the novel you were referring to?

It is, actually. Kim Philby has been an obsession of mine for a very long time.

When did this Philby obsession start?

I suppose it began when I was twenty-two and I read My Silent War, Philby’s mendacious but utterly fascinating autobiography. It was written in Moscow under the watchful eye of the KGB, a few years after he defected. It’s quite a well-written book, which is hardly surprising given the fact Philby worked as a professional journalist for much of the time he was spying for the Soviet Union. I still can’t imagine how Philby betrayed his country the way he did, but he led one of the most extraordinary lives of the twentieth century. He was an active participant in the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Cold War, and his circle of friends and colleagues included a rather noteworthy writer named Graham Greene. Unfortunately, he betrayed them all, and a good many brave people died as a result.

Much of The Other Woman is set in Washington, where Philby lived and worked—and spied—from 1949 to 1951.

He also drank a great deal while he was in Washington, as did many of the early pioneers of the CIA. They were all spectacular boozers. Philby and his family lived in a large brick house on Nebraska Avenue that still stands today. When I lived in Washington, I passed the house several times a day, usually when I was picking up or dropping off my children at school. I used to imagine what it must have been like in those days. The drunken parties, the treachery, Guy Burgess living in the basement . . . If only those walls could talk.

You write in The Other Woman that Philby buried his miniature KGB camera and film in the Maryland countryside in 1951, after Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean defected to the Soviet Union. In fact, the buried loot plays an important role in the resolution of the story. First, is it true? And if so, is it still there?

It is indeed true that Philby buried his KGB paraphernalia that spring night in 1951, for the very simple reason he was afraid he was about to be exposed as a Soviet agent. Ben Macintyre, in his wonderful narrative history, A Spy Among Friends, wrote that Philby buried it in the woods along MacArthur Boulevard, near Old Angler’s Inn. In his own memoir, though, Philby was rather vague about the exact location. If I had to guess, the camera and film were probably unearthed during the construction of a new home without anyone noticing. But a part of me hopes it’s still out there somewhere.

Do you think there are any Russian moles inside MI6 or the CIA today?

If by the word “mole” you mean someone who penetrated MI6 or the CIA on orders from Moscow Center and burrowed his way into a position of power, I’d say the chances are remote. But that doesn’t mean the SVR hasn’t recruited assets inside the two most powerful intelligence services in the West. In fact, I’m quite confident they have.

Kim Philby spied out of his devotion to Marxism. What would motivate someone to spy for Vladimir Putin’s Russia?

Most spies betray their countries and their services for money. But some are forced into becoming spies through coerced recruiting methods. The Russians excel at burning and turning targets through so-called kompromat operations. The Russian intelligence operation in London and in Western Europe is truly massive. Security analysts estimate that two-thirds of the so-called diplomats stationed at a typical Russian embassy in Western Europe are actually intelligence officers. They’re not sitting around playing chess, they’re recruiting spies and running operations. For all of Putin’s bluster, Russia is economically and demographically weak. His intelligence services and cyberwarriors are important force multipliers.

This is the eighteenth novel in which Gabriel has appeared, and he’s a perennial #1 New York Times bestseller. But I read recently that you never intended for him to be a continuing character.

That’s true. Gabriel Allon was supposed to appear in one book and one book only, and then sail off into the sunset, never to be seen or heard from again. And now, seventeen additional books later, his story has come full circle. The morose, grieving man we first encountered in The Kill Artist has a new family and is the chief of the Israeli intelligence service. Obviously, I never imagined it would turn out this way.

How do you explain Gabriel’s popularity and longevity?

I think his essential appeal lies in the two very different sides of his character. He’s not just a brilliant intelligence operative, he’s one of the world’s finest art restorers as well. That combination of character attributes has allowed me to craft my stories in a way that makes them very different from most spy novels. As a result, I have many readers who might not typically pick up a novel of espionage. And I have Gabriel Allon to thank for that.

The Other Woman has wonderful settings, including Vienna, Strasbourg, Seville, and a quaint cottage in the English countryside that British intelligence uses as a safe house. Do you visit all the places you write about?

I typically try to spend as much time as possible in the places where my characters live and work. I’ve been inside the headquarters of the CIA and the KGB, I’ve ridden in the president’s limousine, and I’ve held a Leonardo in my hands at the Vatican. That said, some of my favorite scenes have been set in places where I’ve never set foot. The climax of Portrait of a Spy, for example, was set in the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia, where I’ve never been. A significant portion of The Black Widow took place in ISIS-controlled Syria and Iraq. Needless to say, I did not spend much time in the caliphate of the Islamic State.

What about Lock 10 on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, the setting for the climax of The Other Woman?

I took my wife there one afternoon by the exact route Gabriel uses in the novel. On the banks of the Potomac, next to an overturned rowboat and a large tree, I physically choreographed the final sequence of moves to produce the ending I wanted. The people watching me from the towpath of the canal probably thought I was either out of my mind or a practitioner of a new form of tai chi.

Can we talk a little about your writing process?

The word process implies something orderly and methodical. About the only thing procedural about my work is that once I start a book, I write every day, seven days a week, until it is done. When I’m approaching my deadline, I become a virtual hermit. I sometimes write twelve or fourteen hours a day.

Do you outline a book before you start writing?

I’ve tried outlining but it really doesn’t work for me. I find it much easier to simply carry the story and characters around in my head. I have three or four other books mentally blocked out as well, but much to my wife’s dismay I haven’t bothered to write them down.

The Other Woman is an enormously complex web of treachery and betrayal that reaches deep into history for its source material. Are you telling us you wrote it without an outline?

Yes. But that’s not to say that I didn’t have a pretty good idea of where I was going and how I intended to get there. I typically make adjustments as I press forward, rather like a painter applying a layer of obliterating paint and reworking a portion of the canvas. For better or worse, the revisions continue to the very end. I’ve been known to make changes to a book on the day it’s supposed to go to the printer.

You have other strange habits as well.

So I’m told.

You write in pencil on yellow legal pads.

I used to think it was odd, but I’ve discovered that many writers still do, including Nelson DeMille. I like the quiet and the pace of writing in longhand, and I rarely have to make revisions. Oftentimes, I can pick up one of my old legal pads—yes, I keep them all—and find pages and pages of finished copy with no edits.

I hear you’re picky about your pencils.

The Mirado Black Warrior by Paper Mate. I use the number 2. It’s an excellent pencil. Lately, I’ve rediscovered the joys of a good Dixon Ticonderoga.

And your legal pad?

The Signa by Staples. The paper is very smooth. It doesn’t wear down my pencils as quickly.

I assume you don’t turn in your books that way.

No, I’m not completely crazy. They’re typed into Microsoft Word, one chapter per file. My wife is my primary editor, and I employ two of my oldest friends as proofreaders. We are all quite maniacal about typographical errors. When one slips into the book, I’m always mortified.

“Another jewel in the bedazzling crown of a spy-fiction master.”
—Booklist (starred review)

“Excellent…Readers will be enthralled by both the history and the up-to-the-minute plot that Silva spins with such finesse.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Silva’s work is always riveting..Gripping…will satisfy the author’s fans while it will also appeal to those who appreciate past masters of the genre like John le Carré and Graham Greene.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“It’s spy versus spy in Daniel Silva’s latest heart-pounding thriller, which is perhaps his most enthralling novel to date. Twists, turns, and nonstop action fill every page…Daniel Silva at his best…puts him firmly alongside le Carré and Forsyth as one of the greatest spy novelists of all time.”
—The Real Book Spy

PROLOGUE     |     MOSCOW: 1974

The car was a Zil limousine, long and black, with pleated curtains in the rear windows. It sped from Sheremetyevo Airport into the center of Moscow, along a lane reserved for members of the Politburo and the Central Committee. Night had fallen by the time they reached their destination, a square named for a Russian writer, in an old section of the city known as Patriarch’s Ponds. They walked along narrow unlit streets, the child and the two men in gray suits, until they came to an oratory surrounded by Muscovy plane trees. The apartment house was on the opposite side of an alley. They passed through a wooden doorway and squeezed into a lift, which deposited them onto a darkened foyer. A flight of stairs awaited. The child, out of habit, counted the steps. There were fifteen. On the landing was another door. This one was padded leather. A well-dressed man stood there, drink in hand. Something about the ruined face seemed familiar. Smiling, he spoke a single word in Russian. It would be many years before the child understood what the word meant.

* * * * * * * *

Part One: Night Train to Vienna

Chapter 1: BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

None of it would have come to pass—not the desperate quest for the traitor, not the strained alliances nor the needless deaths—were it not for poor Heathcliff. He was their tragic figure, their broken promise. In the end, he would prove to be yet another feather in Gabriel’s cap. That said, Gabriel would have preferred that Heathcliff were still on his side of the ledger. Assets like Heathcliff did not come along every day, sometimes only once in a career, rarely twice. Such was the nature of espionage, Gabriel would lament. Such was life itself.

It was not his true name, Heathcliff; it had been generated at random, or so his handlers claimed, by computer. The program deliberately chose a code name that bore no resemblance to the asset’s real name, nationality, or line of work. In this regard, it had succeeded. The man to whom Heathcliff’s name had been attached was neither a foundling nor a hopeless romantic. Nor was he bitter or vengeful or violent in nature. In truth, he had nothing in common with Brontë’s Heathcliff other than his dark complexion, for his mother was from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. The same republic, she was proud to point out, as Comrade Stalin, whose portrait still hung in the sitting room of her Moscow apartment.

Heathcliff spoke and read English fluently, however, and was fond of the Victorian novel. In fact, he had flirted with the idea of studying English literature before coming to his senses and enrolling at the Moscow Institute for Foreign Languages, regarded as the second-most prestigious university in the Soviet Union. His faculty adviser was a talent-spotter for the SVR, the Foreign Intelligence Service, and upon graduation Heathcliff was invited to enter the SVR’s academy. His mother, drunk with joy, placed flowers and fresh fruit at the foot of Comrade Stalin’s portrait. “He is watching you,” she said. “One day you will be a man to be reckoned with. A man to be feared.” In his mother’s eyes, there was no finer thing for a man to be.

It was the ambition of most cadets to serve abroad in a rezidentura, an SVR station, where they would recruit and run enemy spies. It took a certain type of officer to perform such work. He had to be brash, confident, talkative, quick on his feet, a natural seducer. Heathcliff, unfortunately, was blessed with none of these qualities. Nor did he possess the physical attributes required for some of the SVR’s more unsavory tasks. What he had was a facility for languages—he spoke fluent German and Dutch as well as English—and a memory that even by the SVR’s high standards was deemed to be exceptional. He was given a choice, a rarity in the hierarchical world of the SVR. He could work at Moscow Center as a translator or serve in the field as a courier. He chose the latter, thus sealing his fate.

It was not glamorous work, but vital. With his four languages and a briefcase full of false passports, he roamed the world in service of the motherland, a clandestine delivery boy, a secret postman. He cleaned out dead drops, stuffed cash into safe-deposit boxes, and on occasion even rubbed shoulders with an actual paid agent of Moscow Center. There were vastly more sophisticated means of transmitting intelligence these days, it was true. But the SVR, for all its technical prowess—or, perhaps, because of it— was innately distrustful of computers and mobile phones, preferring the old ways to the new.

Consequently, Heathcliff was a man constantly on the move. It was not uncommon for him to spend three hundred nights a year outside Russia. The work left him unsuited for marriage or even a serious relationship. The SVR provided him with female comfort when he was in Moscow—beautiful young girls who under normal circumstances would never look at him twice—but when traveling he was prone to bouts of intense loneliness.

It was during one such episode, in a hotel bar in Hamburg, that he met his Catherine. She was drinking white wine at a table in the corner, an attractive woman in her mid-thirties, light-brown hair, suntanned arms and legs. Heathcliff was under orders to avoid such women while traveling. Invariably, they were hostile intelligence officers or prostitutes in their employ. But Catherine did not look the part. And when she glanced at Heathcliff over her mobile phone and smiled, he felt a jolt of electricity that surged from his heart straight to his groin.

“Care to join me?” she asked. “I do hate to drink alone.”

Her name was not Catherine, it was Astrid. At least that was the name she had whispered into his ear while running a fingernail lightly along the inside of his thigh. She was Dutch, which meant Heathcliff, who was posing as a Russian businessman, was able to address her in her native language. After several drinks together, she invited herself to Heathcliff’s room, where he felt safe. He woke the next morning with a profound hangover, which was unusual for him, and with no memory of engaging in the act of love. By then, Astrid was showered and wrapped in a toweling robe. In the light of day, her remarkable beauty was plain to see.

“Free tonight?” she asked. “I shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

He had no answer.

“You’ll take me on a proper date, though. A nice dinner. Maybe a disco afterward.”

“And then?”

She opened her robe, revealing a pair of beautifully formed breasts. Try as he might, Heathcliff could not recall caressing them.

They traded phone numbers, another forbidden act, and parted company. Heathcliff had two errands to run in Hamburg that day that required several hours of “dry cleaning” to make certain he was not under surveillance. As he was completing his second task—the routine emptying of a dead-letter box—he received a text message with the name of a trendy restaurant near the port. He arrived at the appointed hour to find a radiant Astrid already seated at their table, behind an open bottle of hideously expensive Montrachet. Heathcliff frowned; he would have to pay for the wine out of his own pocket. Moscow Center monitored his expenses carefully and berated him when he exceeded his allowance.

Astrid seemed to sense his unease. “Don’t worry, it’s my treat.”

“I thought I was supposed to take you out on a proper date.”

“Did I really say that?”

It was at that instant Heathcliff understood he had made a terrible mistake. His instincts told him to turn and run, but he knew it was no use; his bed was made. And so he stayed at the restaurant and dined with the woman who had betrayed him. Their conversation was stilted and strained—the stuff of a bad television drama—and when the check came, it was Astrid who paid. In cash, of course.

Outside, a car was waiting. Heathcliff raised no objections when Astrid quietly instructed him to climb into the backseat. Nor did he protest when the car headed in the opposite direction from his hotel. The driver was quite obviously a professional; he spoke not a word while undertaking several textbook maneuvers designed to shake surveillance. Astrid passed the time sending and receiving text messages. To Heathcliff she said nothing at all.

“Did we ever—”

“Make love?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She stared out the window.

“Good,” he said. “It’s better that way.”

When they finally stopped, it was at a small cottage by the sea. Inside, a man was waiting. He addressed Heathcliff in German-accented English. Said his name was Marcus. Said he worked for a Western intelligence service. Didn’t specify which one. Then he displayed for Heathcliff several highly sensitive documents Astrid had copied from his locked attaché case the previous evening while he was incapacitated by the drugs she had given him. Heathcliff was going to continue to supply such documents, said Marcus, and much more. Otherwise, Marcus and his colleagues were going to use the material they had in their possession to deceive Moscow Center into believing Heathcliff was a spy.

Unlike his namesake, Heathcliff was neither bitter nor vengeful. He returned to Moscow a half million dollars richer and awaited his next assignment. The SVR delivered a beautiful young girl to his apartment in the Sparrow Hills. He nearly fainted with fear when she introduced herself as Ekaterina. He made her an omelet and sent her away, untouched.

* * * * * * * * * *

The life expectancy for a man in Heathcliff’s position was not long. The penalty for betrayal was death. But not a quick death, an unspeakable death. Like all those who worked for the SVR, Heathcliff had heard the stories. The stories of grown men begging for a bullet to end their suffering. Eventually, it would come, the Russian way, in the nape of the neck. The SVR referred to it as vyshaya mera: the highest measure of punishment. Heathcliff resolved never to allow himself to fall into their hands. From Marcus he obtained a suicide ampule. One bite was all it would take. Ten seconds, then it would be over.

Marcus also gave Heathcliff a secure communications device that allowed him to transmit reports via satellite with encrypted microbursts. Heathcliff used it rarely, preferring instead to brief Marcus in person during his trips abroad. Whenever possible, he allowed Marcus to photograph the contents of his attaché case, but mainly they talked. Heathcliff was a man of no importance, but he worked for important men, and transported their secrets. Moreover, he knew the locations of Russian dead drops around the world, which he carried around in his prodigious memory. Heathcliff was careful not to divulge too much, too quickly—for his own sake, and for the sake of his rapidly growing bank account. He doled out his secrets piecemeal, so as to increase their value. A half million became a million within a year. Then two. And then three.

Heathcliff’s conscience remained untroubled—he was a man without ideology or politics—but fear stalked him day and night. The fear that Moscow Center knew of his treachery and was watching his every move. The fear he had passed along one secret too many, or that one of the Center’s spies in the West would eventually betray him. On numerous occasions he pleaded with Marcus to bring him in from the cold. But Marcus, sometimes with a bit of soothing balm, sometimes with a crack of the whip, refused. Heathcliff was to continue his spying until such time as his life was truly in danger. Only then would he be allowed to defect. He was justifiably dubious about Marcus’s ability to judge the precise moment the sword was about to fall, but he had no choice but to continue. Marcus had blackmailed him into doing his bidding. And Marcus was going to wring every last secret out of him before releasing him from his bond.

But not all secrets are created equal. Some are mundane, workaday, and can be passed with little or no threat to the messenger. Others, however, are far too dangerous to betray. Heathcliff eventually found such a secret in a dead-letter box, in faraway Montreal. The letter box was actually an empty fat, used by a Russian illegal operating under deep cover in the United States. The illegal had concealed a memory stick in the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink. Heathcliff had been ordered to collect it and carry it back to Moscow Center, thus evading the mighty American National Security Agency. Before leaving the apartment, he inserted the flash drive into his laptop and found it unlocked and its contents unencrypted. Heathcliff read the documents freely. They were from several different American intelligence services, all with the highest possible level of classification.

Heathcliff didn’t dare copy the documents. Instead, he committed every detail to his flawless memory and returned to Moscow Center, where he handed over the flash drive to his control officer, along with a sternly worded rebuke of the illegal’s failure to secure it properly. The control officer, who was called Volkov, promised to address the matter. Then he offered Heathcliff a low-stress junket to friendly Budapest as recompense. “Consider it   an all-expenses-paid holiday, courtesy of Moscow Center. Don’t take this the wrong way, Konstantin, but you look as though you could use some time off.”

That evening, Heathcliff used the secure communications device to inform Marcus that he had uncovered a secret of such import he had no choice but to defect. Much to his surprise, Marcus did not object. He instructed Heathcliff to dispose of the device in a way it could never be found. Heathcliff smashed it to pieces and dropped the remains down an open sewer. Even the bloodhounds of the SVR’s security directorate, he reasoned, wouldn’t look there.

A week later, after paying a final visit to his mother in her rabbit’s hutch of an apartment, with its brooding portrait of an ever-watchful Comrade Stalin, Heathcliff left Russia for the last time. He arrived in Budapest in late afternoon, as snow fell gently upon the city, and took a taxi to the InterContinental Hotel. His room overlooked the Danube. He double-locked the door and engaged the safety bar. Then he sat down at the desk and waited for his mobile phone to ring. Next to it was Marcus’s suicide ampule. One bite was all it would take. Ten seconds. Then it would be over.

“A tense, thrilling adventure…. With Silva’s novels you find yourself being educated as well as being entertained…. Silva is that rarity of rarities, a writer whose stories just keep getting better.”
—Huffington Post

“An irresistible thriller…. The phrase ‘#1 New York Times best-selling author’ gets bandied about a lot (Which list? For how long?), but in Silva’s case, it means exactly what it says.”
—Booklist, starred review

“Written by one of our greatest living spy novelists, House of Spies gives us protagonist Gabriel Allon in his 17th adventure. The novel features Silva’s taut and compelling dialogue and keen insight into the human psyche.”
—Dallas Morning News

“Riveting…. Silva’s writing has lost none of its elegance. He provides readers with just enough real-world geopolitics to make sense of his narrative, and his depictions of the different styles of the world’s diverse intelligence services is fascinating as always.… Another chilling glimpse inside global terror networks from a gifted storyteller.”
—Kirkus, starred review

“One of Silva’s most entertaining books…. It’s uncanny how Daniel Silva keeps doing this. The opening chapters… feel like they were ripped from the headlines…. But when Silva created the scenario in his book, the headlines hadn’t been written yet.”
—Fort Worth Star-Telegram

“Outstanding…. Readers will eagerly await the next installment in this deeply fulfilling series.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

1

KING SAUL BOULEVARD, TEL AVIV

For something so unprecedented, so fraught with institutional risk, it was all handled with a minimum of fuss. And quietly, too. That was the remarkable thing about it, the operational silence with which it was carried out. Yes, there had been the dramatic announcement broadcast live to the nation, and the splashy first Cabinet meeting, and the lavish party at Ari Shamron’s lakeside villa in Tiberias where all the friends and collaborators from his remarkable past—the spymasters, the politicians, the Vatican priests, the London art dealers, even an inveterate art thief from Paris—had come to wish him well. But otherwise it came to pass with scarcely a ripple. One day Uzi Navot was seated behind his large smoked-glass desk in the chief’s office, and the next, Gabriel was in his place. Absent Navot’s modern desk, mind you, for glass wasn’t Gabriel’s style.

Wood was more to his liking. Very old wood. And paintings, of course; he learned quickly he could not spend twelve hours a day in a room without paintings. He hung one or two of his own, unsigned, and several by his mother, who had been one of the most prominent Israeli artists of her day. He even hung a large abstract canvas by his first wife, Leah, which she had painted when they were students together at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem. Late in the day, a visitor to the executive floor might hear a bit of opera—La Bohème was a particular favorite—leaking from his door. The music could mean only one thing. Gabriel Allon, the prince of fire, the angel of vengeance, the chosen son of Ari Shamron, had finally assumed his rightful place as chief of Israel’s secret intelligence service.

But his predecessor did not go far. In fact, Uzi Navot moved just across the foyer, to an office that in the building’s original configuration had been Shamron’s fortified little lair. Never before had a departing chief remained under the same roof as his successor. It was a violation of one of the most sacred principles of the Office, which mandated a clearing away of the brush every few years, a tilling of the soil. True, there were some former chiefs who kept their hand in the game. They wandered into King Saul Boulevard from time to time, swapped war stories, dispensed unheeded advice, and generally made a nuisance of themselves. And then, of course, there was Shamron, the eternal one, the burning bush. Shamron had built the Office from the ground up, in his own image. He had given the service its identity, its very language, and considered it his divine right to meddle in its affairs as he saw fit. It was Shamron who had awarded Navot the job as chief—and Shamron who, when the time had finally come, had taken it away.

But it was Gabriel who insisted Navot remain, with all the perquisites he had enjoyed in his previous incarnation. They shared the same secretary—the formidable Orit, known inside King Saul Boulevard as the Iron Dome for her ability to shoot down unwanted visitors—and Navot retained the use of his official car and a full complement of bodyguards, which provoked a bit of grumbling in the Knesset but was generally accepted as necessary to keep the peace. His exact title was rather vague, but that was typical of the Office. They were liars by trade. They spoke the truth only among themselves. To everyone else—their wives, their children, the citizens they were sworn to protect—they hid behind a cloak of deception.

When their respective doors were open, which was usually the case, Gabriel and Navot could see one another across the foyer. They spoke early each morning by secure phone, lunched together—sometimes in the staff dining room, sometimes alone in Gabriel’s office—and spent a few minutes of quiet time in the evening, accompanied by Gabriel’s opera, which Navot, despite his sophisticated Viennese lineage, detested. Navot had no appreciation for music, and the visual arts bored him. Otherwise, he and Gabriel were in complete agreement on all matters, at least those that involved the Office and the security of the State of Israel. Navot had fought for and won access to Gabriel’s ear anytime he wanted it, and he insisted on being present at all important gatherings of the senior staff. Usually, he maintained a sphinxlike silence, with his thick arms folded across his wrestler’s chest and an inscrutable expression on his face. But occasionally he would finish one of Gabriel’s sentences for him, as if to make it clear to everyone in the room that, as the Americans were fond of saying, there was no daylight between them. They were like Boaz and Jachin, the twin pillars that stood at the entrance of the First Temple of Jerusalem, and anyone who even thought about playing one against the other would pay a heavy price. Gabriel was the people’s chief, but he was still the chief and he would not tolerate intrigue in his court.

Not that any was likely, for the other officers who comprised his senior staff were thick as thieves. All were drawn from Barak, the elite team that had carried out some of the most storied operations in the history of a storied service. For years they had worked from a cramped subterranean set of rooms that had once been used as a dumping ground for old furniture and equipment. Now they occupied a chain of offices stretching from Gabriel’s door. Even Eli Lavon, one of Israel’s most prominent biblical archaeologists, had agreed to forsake his teaching position at Hebrew University and return to full-time Office employment. Nominally, Lavon oversaw the watchers, pickpockets, and those who specialized in planting listening devices and hidden cameras. In truth, Gabriel used him in any way he saw fit. The finest physical surveillance artist the Office ever produced, Lavon had been looking over Gabriel’s shoulder since the days of Operation Wrath of God. His little hutch, with its shards of pottery and ancient coins and tools, was the place where Gabriel often went for a few minutes of quiet. Lavon had never been much of a talker. Like Gabriel, he did his best work in the dark, and without a sound.

A few of the old hands questioned whether it was wise for Gabriel to load up the executive suite with so many loyalists and relics from his glorious past. For the most part, however, they kept their concerns to themselves. No director general— other than Shamron, of course—had ever assumed control of the Office with more experience or goodwill. Gabriel had been playing the game longer than anyone in the business, and along the way he had collected an extraordinary array of friends and accomplices. The British prime minister owed his career to him; the pope, his life. Even so, he was not the sort of fellow to shamelessly collect on an old debt. The truly powerful man, said Shamron, never had to ask for a favor.

But he had enemies, too. Enemies who had destroyed his first wife and who had tried to destroy his second as well. Enemies in Moscow and Tehran who viewed him as the only thing standing in the way of their ambitions. For now, they had been dealt with, but doubtless they would be back. So, too, would the man with whom he had last done battle. Indeed, it was this man who occupied the top spot on the new director general’s to-do list. The Office computers had assigned him a randomly generated code name. But behind the cipher-protected doors of King Saul Boulevard, Gabriel and the new leaders of the Office referred to him by the grandiose nom de guerre he had given himself. Saladin…They spoke of him with respect and even a trace of foreboding. He was coming for them. It was only a matter of time.

* * *

There was a photograph making the rounds of like-minded intelligence services. It had been snapped by an asset of the CIA in the Paraguayan town of Ciudad del Este, which was located in the notorious Tri-Border Area, or Triple Frontier, of South America. It showed a man, large, solidly built, Arab in appearance, drinking coffee at an outdoor café, accompanied by a certain Lebanese trader suspected of having ties to the global jihadist movement. The camera angle was such that it rendered facial-recognition software ineffective. But Gabriel, who was blessed with one of the finest pairs of eyes in the trade, was confident the man was Saladin. He had seen Saladin in person, in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C., two days before the worst terrorist attack on the American homeland since 9/11. Gabriel knew how Saladin looked, how he smelled, how the air reacted when he entered or left a room. And he knew how Saladin walked. Like his namesake, he moved with a pronounced limp, the result of a shrapnel wound that had been crudely tended to in a house of many rooms and courts near Mosul in northern Iraq. The limp was now his calling card. A man’s physical appearance could be changed in many ways. Hair could be cut or dyed, a face could be altered with plastic surgery. But a limp like Saladin’s was forever.

How he managed to escape from America was a matter of intense debate, and all subsequent efforts to locate him had failed. Reports had him variously in Asunción, Santiago, and Buenos Aires. There was even a rumor he’d found sanctuary in Bariloche, the Argentine ski resort so beloved by fugitive Nazi war criminals. Gabriel dismissed the idea out of hand. Still, he was willing to entertain the notion that Saladin was hiding somewhere in plain sight. Wherever he was, he was planning his next move. Of that, Gabriel was certain.

The recent attack on Washington, with its ruined buildings and monuments and catastrophic death toll, had established Saladin as the new face of Islamic terror. But what would be his encore? The American president, in one of his final interviews before leaving office, declared that Saladin was incapable of another large-scale operation, that the U.S. military response had left his once-formidable network in tatters. Saladin had responded by ordering a suicide bomber to detonate himself outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. Small beer, countered the White House. Limited casualties, no Americans among the dead. The desperate act of a man on his way out.

Perhaps, but there were other attacks as well. Saladin had struck Turkey virtually at will—weddings, buses, public squares, Istanbul’s busy airport—and his adherents in Western Europe, those who spoke his name with something like religious fervor, had carried out a series of lone-wolf attacks that had left a trail of death across France, Belgium, and Germany. But something big was coming, something coordinated, a terror spectacular to rival the calamity he had inflicted on Washington.

But where? Another attack on America seemed unlikely. Surely, said the experts, lightning would not strike the same place twice. In the end, the city Saladin chose for his curtain call came as a surprise to no one, especially those who battled terrorists for a living. Despite his penchant for secrecy, Saladin loved the stage. And where better to find a stage than the West End of London.

2

ST. JAMES’S, LONDON

Perhaps it was true, thought Julian Isherwood as he watched torrents of windblown rain tumbling from a black sky. Perhaps the planet was broken after all. A hurricane in London, and in the middle of February at that. Tall and somewhat precarious in comportment, Isherwood was not naturally built for such conditions. At present, he was sheltering in the doorway of Wilton’s Restaurant in Jermyn Street, a spot he knew well. He pushed up the sleeve of his mackintosh and frowned at his wristwatch. The time was 7:40; he was running late. He searched the street for a taxi. There was not one in sight.

From the bar at Wilton’s there came a trickle of halfhearted laughter, followed by the booming baritone voice of none other than tubby Oliver Dimbleby. Wilton’s was now the primary watering hole for a small band of Old Master art dealers who plied their trade in the narrow streets of St. James’s. Green’s Restaurant and Oyster Bar in Duke Street had once been their favorite haunt, but Green’s had been forced to close its doors owing to a dispute with the company that managed the Queen’s immense portfolio of London real estate. It was symptomatic of the changes that had swept through the neighborhood and the London art world as a whole. Old Masters were deeply out of fashion. The collectors of today, the instant global billionaires who made their fortunes with social media and iPhone apps, were only interested in Modern works. Even the Impressionists were becoming passé. Isherwood had sold just two paintings since the New Year. Both were middle-market works, school of so-and-so, manner of such-and-such. Oliver Dimbleby hadn’t sold anything in six months. Neither had Roddy Hutchinson, who was widely regarded as the most unscrupulous dealer in all of London. But each evening they huddled at the bar of Wilton’s and assured themselves that soon the storm would pass. Julian Isherwood feared otherwise, never more so than at that moment.

He had seen troubled times before. His English scale, devoutly English wardrobe, and backbone-of-England surname concealed the fact that he was not, at least not technically, English at all. British by nationality and passport, yes, but German by birth, French by upbringing, and Jewish by religion. Only a handful of trusted friends knew that Isherwood had staggered into London as a child refugee in 1942 after being carried across the snowbound Pyrenees by a pair of Basque shepherds. Or that his father, the renowned Paris art dealer Samuel Isakowitz, had been murdered at the Sobibor death camp along with Isherwood’s mother. Though Isherwood had carefully guarded the secrets of his past, the story of his dramatic escape from Nazi-occupied Europe had reached the ears of Israel’s secret intelligence service. And in the mid-1970s, during a wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israeli targets in Europe, he had been recruited as a sayan, a volunteer helper. Isherwood had but one assignment—to assist in building and maintaining the operational cover of an art restorer and assassin named Gabriel Allon. Lately, their careers had proceeded in decidedly different directions. Gabriel was now the chief of Israeli intelligence, one of the most powerful spies in the world. And Isherwood? He was standing in the doorway of Wilton’s Restaurant in Jermyn Street, battered by the west wind, slightly drunk, waiting for a taxi that would never come.

He checked his watch a second time. It was now 7:43. Having no umbrella in his possession, he raised his old leather satchel over his head and waded over to Piccadilly, where after a wait of five sodden minutes he tipped gratefully into the back of a taxi. He gave the driver an approximate address—he was too embarrassed to say the name of his true destination—and anxiously monitored the time as the taxi crawled toward Piccadilly Circus. There it turned into Shaftesbury Avenue, arriving at Charing Cross Road at the stroke of eight. Isherwood was now officially late for his reservation.

He supposed he ought to call and say he was delayed, but there was a good chance the establishment in question would give away his table. It had taken a month of begging and bribery to obtain it in the first place; Isherwood wasn’t about to risk it now with a panicked phone call. Besides, with a bit of luck, Fiona was already there. It was one of the things Isherwood liked best about Fiona, she was prompt. He also liked her blond hair, blue eyes, long legs, and her age, which was thirty-six. In fact, at that moment, he could think of nothing he disliked about Fiona Gardner, which was why he had expended much valuable time and effort securing a reservation in a restaurant where ordinarily he would never set foot.

Another five minutes slipped away before the taxi finally deposited Isherwood outside St. Martin’s Theatre, the permanent home of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. Quickly, he crossed West Street to the entrance of the famed Ivy, his true destination. The maître d’ informed him that Miss Gardner had not yet arrived and that by some miracle his table was still available. Isherwood surrendered his mackintosh to the coat check girl and was shown to a banquette overlooking Litchfield Street.

Alone, he stared disapprovingly at his reflection in the window. With his Savile Row suit, crimson necktie, and plentiful gray locks, he cut a rather elegant if dubious figure, a look he described as dignified depravity. Still, there was no denying he had reached the age that estate planners refer to as “the autumn of his years.” No, he thought gloomily, he was old. Far too old to be pursuing the likes of Fiona Gardner. How many others had there been? The art students, the junior curators, the receptionists, the pretty young girls who took telephone bids at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Isherwood was no sportsman; he had loved them all. He believed in love, as he believed in art. Love at first sight. Love everlasting. Love until death do us part. The problem was, he had never truly found it.

All at once he thought of a recent afternoon in Venice, a corner table in Harry’s Bar, a Bellini, Gabriel…He had told Isherwood it was not too late, that there was still time for him to marry and have a child or two. The ragged face in the glass begged to differ. He was well past his expiration date, he thought. He would die alone, childless, and with no wife other than his gallery.

He made another check of the time. Eight fifteen. Now it was Fiona who was late. It wasn’t like her. He dug his mobile from the breast pocket of his suit and saw that he had received a text message. Sorry Julian but I’m afraid I won’t be able to…He stopped reading. He supposed it was for the best. It would spare him a broken heart. More important, it would prevent him from making a damn fool of himself yet again.

He returned the mobile to his pocket and considered his options. He could stay and dine alone, or he could leave. He chose the second; one didn’t dine alone at the Ivy. Rising, he collected his raincoat and with a mumbled apology to the maître d’ went quickly into the street, just as a white Ford Transit van was braking to a halt outside St. Martin’s Theatre. The driver emerged instantly, dressed in a bulky woolen peacoat and holding something that looked like a gun. It was not any gun, thought Isherwood, it was a weapon of war. Four more men were now clambering out of the van’s rear cargo compartment, each wearing a heavy coat, each holding the same type of combat assault rifle. Isherwood could scarcely believe what he was seeing. It looked like a scene from a movie. A movie he had seen before, in Paris and in Washington.

The five men moved calmly toward the doors of the theater in a tight fighting unit. Isherwood heard the splintering of wood, followed by gunshots. Then, a few seconds later, came the first screams, muffled, distant. They were the screams of Isherwood’s nightmares. Again he thought of Gabriel and wondered what he would do in a situation like this. He would charge headlong into the theater and save as many lives as possible. But Isherwood hadn’t Gabriel’s skills or his courage. He was no hero. In fact, he was quite the other thing.

The nightmarish screams were growing louder. Isherwood dug his mobile phone from his pocket, dialed 999, and reported that St. Martin’s Theatre was under terrorist attack. Then he spun round and stared at the landmark restaurant he had just departed. Its well-heeled customers appeared oblivious to the carnage taking place a few paces away. Surely, he thought, the terrorists would not be content with a single massacre. The iconic Ivy would be their next stop.

Isherwood considered his options. Again he had two. He could make his escape or he could try to save as many lives as possible. The decision was the easiest of his life. As he staggered across the street, he heard an explosion from the direction of Charing Cross Road. Then another. Then a third. He was not a hero, he thought as he careened through the door of the Ivy, waving his arms like a madman, but he could act like one, if only for a moment or two. Perhaps Gabriel had been right. Perhaps it was not too late for him after all.