Seymour followed Gabriel’s gaze into the blackened landscape. At first there was nothing. Then three figures rose slowly from the darkness. Two appeared to be laboring with fatigue, but the third was pounding along the footpath as though he had many miles to go. He paused briefly and, looking up, gave a single stiff-armed wave. Then suddenly he was standing before them. Smiling, he extended a hand toward Seymour.

“Graham,” he said amiably. “Long time no see. Are you staying for supper? I hear Miss Coventry is making her famous cottage pie.”

Then he turned and set off into the darkness. And a moment later he was gone.

32

WORMWOOD COTTAGE, DARTMOOR

GRAHAM SEYMOUR DID INDEED STAY AT Wormwood Cottage for supper that night, and for a long time afterward, too. Miss Coventry served them the cottage pie and a decent claret at the kitchen table and then left them to a warm fire in the sitting room and to the past. Gabriel remained largely a spectator to the proceedings, a witness, a taker of notes. Keller did most of the talking. He spoke of his undercover work in Belfast, of the death of Elizabeth Conlin, and of Quinn. And he spoke, too, of the night in January 1991 when his Sabre squadron came under Coalition air attack in western Iraq, and of his long walk into the waiting arms of Don Anton Orsati. Seymour listened largely without interruption and without judgment, even when Keller described some of the many assassinations he’d carried out at the don’s behest. Seymour wasn’t interested in passing judgment. He was interested only in Keller.

And so he cracked a bottle of Wormwood Cottage’s finest single malt, added a log to the pile of embers in the grate, and proposed an arrangement that would result in Keller’s repatriation. He would be given a job at MI6. With it would come a new name and identity. Christopher Keller would remain dead to everyone but his immediate family and his service. He would handle cases that suited his particular skill set. Under no circumstances would he be drafting white papers at a desk in Vauxhall Cross. MI6 had plenty of analysts to do that.

“And if I bump into an old chum on the street?”

“Tell the old chum he’s mistaken and keep walking.”

“Where will I live?”

“Anywhere you want, so long as it’s in London.”

“What about my villa in Corsica?”

“We’ll see.”

From his outpost next to the fire, Gabriel treated himself to a brief smile. Keller’s questions resumed.

“Who will I work for?”

“Me.”

“Doing what?”

“Whatever I need.”

“And when you’re gone?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“That’s not what I read in the newspapers.”

“One of the things you’ll soon learn working at MI6 is that the newspapers are almost always wrong.” Seymour raised his glass and examined the color of the whisky by the light of the fire.