Subsequently, there appeared in the press unflattering accounts of Amanda’s management style. Underlings were said to fear her; numerous senior staff were said to be searching for greener pastures elsewhere at a time when Britain could least afford it. It was written of Amanda that she had a difficult relationship with Graham Seymour, her counterpart at MI6. It was said the two were scarcely speaking, that during one crisis meeting at Number Ten they had refused even to acknowledge each other’s presence. One notable former spook said that relations between Britain’s two intelligence services were at their lowest point in a generation. A respected journalist who covered security issues for the Guardian wrote that “British intelligence was in the midst of a force-ten crisis,” and for once the journalist was correct.

At which point a deathwatch commenced outside Thames House, with Amanda Wallace as its target. It did not last long—two days, three at most. Then Amanda put an end to it. Her weapon of choice was the same esteemed correspondent from the Guardian, a man whom she had cultivated for years. His story began not with the bombing on Brompton Road but with the death of the princess, and it got worse from there. Quinn’s name was featured prominently. So, too, was Graham Seymour’s. It was, said one political commentator, the finest example of murder by press leak he had ever seen.

By midmorning a new deathwatch had commenced. This time, the target was the chief of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service. He issued no statement and adhered to his schedule as normal until half past eleven, when his official Jaguar, with its blacked-out windows, was spotted sliding through the gates of Downing Street. He remained inside Number Ten for less than an hour. Later, Simon Hewitt, the prime minister’s director of communications, refused to confirm that the spymaster had set foot there. Shortly after two o’clock his Jaguar was seen turning into the underground parking garage of Vauxhall Cross, but as it turned out, Graham Seymour was not in it. He was sitting in the back of an unmarked panel van, and by then the van was already far from London.

29

DARTMOOR, DEVON

THE ROAD HAD NO NAME and appeared on no map. Viewed from space, it looked like a scratch in the moorland, perhaps the remnant of a brook that had run over the land in the days when men erected circles of stone. At its entrance was a sign, weathered and rusted, warning that the road was private. And at its end was a gate that whispered quiet authority.