Free The Heist by Daniel Silva Page A

ventures that were not exactly legal, but for the most part we averted our eyes and hoped for the best.”
    “And when you learned he’d been murdered in Italy?”
    “We clung to the fiction he was a diplomat. The Foreign Office made it clear, however, that they would disown him at the first hint of trouble.” Seymour paused, then asked, “Have I left anything out?”
    “What happened to Nicole Devereaux?”
    “Apparently, someone told her husband about the affair. She disappeared one night after leaving the AFP bureau. They found her body a few days later out in the Bekaa Valley.”
    “Did Rashid kill her himself?”
    “No,” replied Seymour. “He had the Syrians do it for him. They had a little fun with her before hanging her from a lamppost and slitting her throat. It was all rather gruesome. But I suppose that was to be expected. After all,” he added gloomily, “they were Syrians.”
    “I wonder if it was a coincidence,” said Gabriel.
    “What’s that?”
    “That someone killed Jack Bradshaw in the exact same way.”
    Seymour made no response other than to ponder his wristwatch with the air of a man who was running late for an appointment he would rather not keep. “Helen is expecting me for dinner,” he said with a profound lack of enthusiasm. “I’m afraid she’s on an African kick at the moment. I’m not sure, but it’s possible I may have eaten goat last week.”
    “You’re a lucky man, Graham.”
    “Helen says the same thing. My doctor isn’t so sure.”
    Seymour put down his drink and got to his feet. Gabriel remained motionless.
    “I take it you have another question,” Seymour said.
    “Two, actually.”
    “I’m listening.”
    “Is there any chance I can have a look at Bradshaw’s file?”
    “Next question.”
    “Who’s Samir?”
    “Last name?”
    “I’m working on that.”
    Seymour lifted his gaze to the ceiling. “There’s a Samir who runs a little grocery around the corner from my flat. He’s a devout member of the Muslim Brotherhood who believes Britain should be governed by shari’a law.” He looked at Gabriel and smiled. “Otherwise, he’s a rather nice chap.”

    The Israeli embassy was located on the other side of the Thames, in a quiet corner of Kensington just off the High Street. Gabriel slipped into the building through an unmarked door in the rear and made his way downstairs to the lead-lined suite of rooms reserved for the Office. The station chief was not present, only a young field hand called Noah who leapt to his feet when his future director came striding through the door unannounced. Gabriel entered the secure communications pod—in the lexicon of the Office it was referred to as the Holy of Holies—and sent a message to King Saul Boulevard requesting access to any files related to a Lebanese businessman named Ali Rashid. He didn’t bother to state the reason for his request. Impending rank had its privileges.
    Twenty minutes elapsed before the file appeared over the secure link—long enough, Gabriel reckoned, for the current chief of the Office to approve its transmission. It was brief, about a thousand words in length, and composed in the terse style demanded of Office analysts. It stated that Ali Rashid was a known asset of Syrian intelligence, that he served as a paymaster for a large Syrian network in Lebanon, and that he died in a car bombing in the Lebanese capital in 2011, the authorship of which was unknown. At the bottom of the file was the six-digit numerical cipher of the originating officer. Gabriel recognized it; the analyst had once been the Office’s top expert on Syria and the Baath Party. These days she was noteworthy for another reason. She was the wife of the soon-to-be-former chief.
    Like most Office outposts around the world, London Station contained a small bedroom for times of crisis. Gabriel knew the room well, for he had stayed in it many times. He stretched out on the uncomfortable single bed and tried to sleep, but