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Majesty.”
    “She has good taste in art.”
    “She can afford to.”
    Whitcombe offered this assessment not as a criticism but merely an observation of fact. He was like that: careful, shrewd, opaque as a concrete wall. He had started his career at MI5, where he had cut his operational teeth working with Gabriel against a Russian oligarch and arms dealer named Ivan Kharkov. Soon after, he became the primary aide-de-camp and runner of off-the-record errands for Graham Seymour, MI5’s deputy director-general. Seymour had recently been named the new chief of MI6, a move that surprised everyone in the intelligence trade except Gabriel. Whitcombe was now serving his master in the same capacity, which explained his presence in the Stockwell safe house. He spooned the Nescafé into the mug and watched the steam rising from the spout of the kettle.
    “How’s life at Six?” asked Gabriel.
    “When we first arrived, there was a great deal of suspicion among the troops. I suppose they had a right to be uneasy. After all, we were coming across the river from a rival service.”
    “It’s not as if Graham was a total outsider. His father was an MI6 legend. He was practically raised within the service.”
    “Which is one of the reasons any concerns were short-lived.” Whitcombe drew a mobile device from the breast pocket of his suit and peered at the screen. “He’s pulling up now. Can you manage the coffee on your own?”
    “Pour in the water, then stir, right?”
    Whitcombe departed. Gabriel prepared the coffee and went into the sitting room. Entering, he saw a tall figure clad in a perfectly fitted charcoal-gray suit and a striped blue necktie. His face was fine boned and even featured; his hair had a rich silvery cast that made him look like a male model one might see in ads for costly but needless trinkets. He was holding a mobile phone to his ear with his left hand. The right he stretched absently toward Gabriel. His handshake was firm, confident, and appropriate in duration. It was an unfair weapon to be deployed against inferior opponents. It said he had attended the better schools, belonged to the better clubs, and was good at gentlemanly games like tennis and golf, all of which happened to be true. Graham Seymour was a relic of Britain’s glorious past, a child of the administrative classes who had been bred, educated, and programmed to lead. A few months earlier, weary after years of trying to protect the British homeland from the forces of Islamic extremism, he had privately told Gabriel of his plans to leave the intelligence trade and retire to his villa in Portugal. Now, unexpectedly, he had been handed the keys to his father’s old service. Gabriel suddenly felt guilty about coming to London. He was about to hand Seymour his first potential crisis at MI6.
    Seymour murmured a few words into the mobile phone, severed the connection, and handed it to Nigel Whitcombe. Then he turned toward Gabriel and regarded him curiously for a moment. “Given our long history together,” Seymour said finally, “I’m a bit reluctant to ask what brings you to town. But I suppose I have no choice.”
    Gabriel responded by telling Seymour a small portion of the truth—that he had come to London because he was looking into the murder of an expatriate Englishman living in Italy.
    “Does the expatriate Englishman have a name?” asked Seymour.
    “James Bradshaw,” replied Gabriel. He paused, then added, “But his friends called him Jack.”
    Seymour’s face remained a blank mask. “I think I read something about that in the papers,” he said. “He was former Foreign Office, wasn’t he? Did some consulting work in the Middle East. He was murdered at his villa in Como. Apparently, it was quite messy.”
    “Quite,” agreed Gabriel.
    “What does any of this have to do with me?”
    “Jack Bradshaw wasn’t a diplomat, was he, Graham? He was MI6. He was a spy.”
    Seymour managed to maintain his composure for a moment