Gabriel helped Chiara down the stairs and across the front walk, all the while flogging himself for having neglected to factor the possibility of snow into his planning. In the back of the SUV, she leaned her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes to rest. Gabriel inhaled the intoxicating scent of vanilla and watched the snow dancing against the glass. It was beautiful, he thought. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

85

BUENOS AIRES

IT WASN’T AS IF THEY had nothing better do that spring. After all, even the most casual observer—the historically brain-dead, as Graham Seymour often described them in his darker moments—realized the world was wobbling dangerously out of control. Strapped for resources, Seymour assigned only one officer to the task. It didn’t matter; one officer was all he needed. He gave the man a briefcase full of cash and considerable operational leeway. The briefcase came from a shop in Jermyn Street. The money was American, for in the nether regions of the espionage world, dollars remained the reserve currency.

He traveled under many names that spring, none of them his own. In fact, at that particular point of his life and career, he really didn’t have a name. His parents, with whom he had recently been reunited, referred to him by the name they had given him at birth. At work, however, he was known only by a four-digit numeric cipher. His flat in Chelsea was officially owned by a company that did not exist. He had set foot there only once.

His search took him to many dangerous places, which was of no consequence, for he was a dangerous man himself. He spent several days in Dublin at the perilous intersection of drugs and rebellion, and then popped into Lisbon on the off chance his quarry’s connection to the city was more than merely cosmetic. A nasty rumor took him to a godforsaken village in Belarus; an intercepted e-mail, to Istanbul. There he met a source who claimed to have seen the target in an ISIS-controlled region of Syria. With London’s reluctant blessing, he crossed the border on foot and, disguised as an Arab, made his way to the house where the target was said to be living. The house was empty, save for a few snippets of wiring and a notebook that contained several diagrams for bombs. He pocketed the notebook and returned to Turkey. Along the way he saw images of brutality that he would not soon forget.