“That’s very good of you.” Her voice contained a knife’s edge of contempt. She was still watching the center screen. “Tell Allon to back off. We’ll take it from here.”

She listened as Seymour relayed the message. Then she picked up the receiver of a dedicated line to the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service. The commissioner came on instantly.

“There’s a dark blue BMW sedan headed east on Cromwell Road. UK registration AG62 VDR. The registration plates are known to be false, the car is almost certainly stolen, and the woman driving it is connected to a known terrorist.”

“What do you recommend?”

Amanda Wallace stared at the video screen. The BMW was on Brompton Road heading toward Hyde Park Corner. And three cars behind it, traveling at the same rate of speed, was the silver Passat.

At the edge of Brompton Square, a London policeman sat astride a motorbike. He paid the BMW no heed as it sped past him. Nor did his head turn at the approach of a silver Passat. Gabriel lifted the BlackBerry to his ear.

“What’s going on?” he asked Graham Seymour.

“Amanda has ordered the Met to intervene and take the woman into custody.”

“Where are they?”

“One team is coming down Park Lane. A second is approaching Hyde Park Corner from Piccadilly.”

A row of exclusive shops slid past Gabriel’s rain-spattered window. An art gallery, a home-design showroom, a real estate broker, an open-air café where tourists swilled drinks beneath the shelter of a green awning. In the distance a siren cried. To Gabriel, it sounded like a child calling for its mother.

Keller slammed suddenly on the brakes. Ahead, a red light had halted the traffic. Two cars—a taxi and a private vehicle—separated Gabriel and Keller from the BMW. Brompton Road stretched before them. On the right side of the street rose the gingerbread turrets of the Harrods department store. The sirens were growing louder, but the police were not yet in sight.

The signal switched to green, the traffic shot forward. They passed Montpelier Street and another row of shops and cafés. Then the BMW lurched into a lane reserved for buses and came to a stop outside a branch of the HSBC bank. The front door swung open; the woman climbed out and walked calmly away. In an instant she vanished beneath the canopy of umbrellas bobbing like mushrooms along the pavement.

Gabriel stared at the blue car parked along the curb, and at the throngs of tourists and pedestrians rushing through the rain, and at the dreamlike facade of the iconic department store rising on the opposite side of the street. Then, finally, he looked down at his BlackBerry, which was vibrating silently in his palm. It was a text message from an unidentified sender, six words in length.

THE BRICKS ARE IN THE WALL . . .

27

BROMPTON ROAD, LONDON