The next morning Christopher Keller flew to London. He was met at Heathrow Airport by an MI6 reception team and driven at an unusually high rate of speed to a safe house on Bishop’s Road in Fulham. Graham Seymour was seated at the linoleum table in the kitchen, his Chesterfield coat tossed over the back of a chair. With a movement of his eyes, he instructed Keller to sit. Then he pushed a single sheet of paper across the tabletop and laid a silver pen upon it.

“Sign it.”

“What is it?”

“It’s for your new phone. If you’re working for us, you can’t use your old one any longer.”

Keller picked up the document. “Minutes? Data plan? That sort of thing?”

“Just sign it.”

“What name should I use?”

“Your given name.”

“When do I get my new name?”

“We’re working on that.”

“Do I get a say?”

“No.”

“Hardly seems fair.”

“Our parents don’t allow us to choose our names, and neither does MI6.”

“If you try to name me Francis, I’m going back to Corsica.”

Keller scribbled something illegible on the signature line of the document. Seymour handed him a new BlackBerry and recited an eight-digit number for the MI6 encryption.

“Recite the number back to me,” he said.

Keller did.

“Whatever you do,” said Seymour, “don’t write it down.”

“Why would I do something as foolish as that?”

Seymour placed another document in front of Keller. “This one allows you to handle MI6 documents. You’re a member of the club now, Christopher. You’re one of us.”

Keller’s pen hovered over the page.

“Something wrong?” asked Seymour.

“I’m just wondering whether you really want me to sign this.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because if I get a shot at Eamon Quinn—”

“Then I expect you to take it.” Seymour paused, then added, “Just like when you were in Ulster.”

Keller signed the document. Seymour handed him a flash drive.

“What’s this?”

“Alexei Rozanov.”

“Funny,” said Keller, “but he looked taller in the photos.”

Keller returned to Heathrow in time to make the early-afternoon British Airways flight to Vienna. He arrived a few minutes after four and took a taxi to an address just beyond the Ringstrasse. It was a fine old Biedermeier apartment building, with a coffeehouse at street level. Keller thumbed the bell push, was admitted into the foyer, and found his way to the flat on the third floor. The door hung slightly ajar. A dead man waited anxiously inside.

46

VIENNA

THE PHOTOGRAPHS FROM COPENHAGEN proved that Reza Nazari had met with a Russian-looking man at the time and place specified during his interrogation. And the file from MI6 proved the Russian-looking man was indeed Alexei Rozanov. He had worked in London under diplomatic cover in the 1990s. Both MI5 and MI6 knew him well.