She woke with the knock, startled and damp with sweat, and stared at the blinding white lamp over her cot. She had been dreaming, the same dream she always had whenever she managed to sleep. Men in black hoods. A video camera. A knife. She raised her cuffed hands to her throat and found that the tissue of her neck was still intact. Then she looked at the cement floor and saw the note. An eye was glaring at her through the spy hole as if willing her to move. It was dark and brutal: the eye of Cain.

She sat up and swung her shackled feet to the floor, then stood and shuffled stiffly toward the door. The note lay faceup and was composed in a font large enough for her to read without bending down to pick it up. It was a question, as all their communications were, but different from any other they had put to her. She answered it in a low, evenly modulated voice, then returned to her cot and wept uncontrollably. Don’t hope, she told herself. Don’t you dare hope.

John O’Connell’s private number in the ops center rang at 3:09. This time he didn’t bother identifying himself.

“Do you have the information I need?”

“The animal was a stuffed whale.”

“What did she call it?”

“Fish,” the man said. “She called it Fish and nothing else.”

O’Donnell closed his eyes and pumped his fist once.

“Right answer,” he said. “Let’s put a deal together. Let’s bring my girl home in time for Christmas.”

The man with the modified voice listed his demands, then said: “I’m going to call back at five fifty-nine London time. I want a one-word answer: yes or no. That’s it: yes or no. Do you understand me?”

“I understand perfectly.”

The line went dead again. O’Donnell looked at Kevin Barnett.

“They’ve got her,” he said. “And we are completely fucked.”

A Jaguar limousine was waiting at the edge of the tarmac as Adrian Carter’s Gulfstream V touched down at London City Airport. As Gabriel, Carter, and Sarah came down the airstair, a long, boney hand poked from the Jaguar’s rear passenger-side window and beckoned them over.

“Graham Seymour,” said Gabriel theatrically. “Don’t tell me they sent you all the way out here to give me a lift to Heathrow.”

“They sent me out here to give you a lift,” Seymour said, “but we’re not going to Heathrow.”

“Where are we going?”

Seymour left the question momentarily unanswered and instead gazed quizzically at Gabriel’s face. “What in God’s name happened to you?”

“It’s a long story.”

“It usually is,” he said. “Get in. We don’t have much time.”

Chapter 47

47

10 DOWNING STREET: 4:15 P.M., FRIDAY