CHAPTER 49

HIGHGATE, LONDON

It was an alarmingly short period of time, even for an intelligence service used to working under the pressure of a ticking clock. They would have just three days to turn a British investigative reporter into a professional spy. Three days to prepare her. Three days to train her in the basics of tradecraft. And three days to teach her how to perform a pair of critical procedures—one involving Martin Landesmann’s secure mobile phone, a Nokia N900, the other involving his Sony VAIO Z Series notebook computer.

Their task was made even more difficult by Gabriel’s decision to leave Zoe’s work schedule unchanged, a step he took to avoid any disruption in her daily routine. It meant the team would have her for only a few hours each evening, and only after she had already put in an exhausting day at the office. Graham Seymour quietly voiced doubts as to whether she would be ready, as did the Americans, who were now following the affair closely. But Gabriel held firm. Zoe had a date with Martin in Paris in three days. Break that date, and Martin might become suspicious. Send her into Martin’s bed too many times with her head filled with secrets, and she might end up like Rafael Bloch.

For his classroom, Gabriel chose the familiar surroundings of the Highgate safe house, though by the time Zoe arrived for her first session it no longer bore any resemblance to a private London club. Its walls were covered with maps, photographs, and diagrams, and its rooms were occupied by a large group of Israelis who seemed more like harried graduate students than accomplished intelligence operatives. They greeted the new arrival as though they had been expecting her for a long time, then crowded around the dining-room table for a quick takeaway curry. The warmth displayed by Gabriel’s team was genuine, even if the names they hid behind were not. Zoe gravitated naturally toward the tweedy, Oxbridge-educated Yossi, though she was clearly intrigued by an attractive woman with long dark hair who referred to herself as Rachel.

The enormous operational constraints forced Gabriel to dispense with normal methods of training and design a true crash course in the basics of espionage. It began immediately after dinner when Zoe was placed on a conveyor belt of sorts that whisked her from room to room, briefing to briefing. They trained her in the basics of countersurveillance and impersonal communication. They taught her how to move in public and how to conceal emotion and fear. And they even gave her a few lessons in self-defense. “She’s naturally aggressive,” Rimona told Gabriel, a bag of frozen peas pressed to her swollen eye. “And she has a wicked left elbow.”