“You’re sure about that.”
“That’s where the Moscow flight comes in—”
“And you had eyes on him as he waltzed through Arrivals.”
“Ah . . . No, ma’am.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because there’s only one of me? And I was assigned to three attendees?”
The clock on the wall was silent: it swallowed seconds, minutes, hours without chewing. But everyone present could hear a crocodile tick tock while waiting for Diana’s response.
Which was slow in coming, but at least was fair. “All right,” she said. “So you assume a Heathrow arrival. And I assume I’ll have the CCTV footage of that waiting in my office before I get back there. And I further assume that the timings will indicate that he went from airport to embassy gate with no intervening outings. When did he arrive?”
“Ah, 11:45?”
“Mr. Dean, you seem to think you’re the one asking questions. I promise you, you’re not.”
“11:45.”
“Movements the rest of yesterday?”
A brief, panicky look at inadequate notes. “He remained in the embassy all afternoon, then was driven to his hotel, alone, just before seven.”
“I’ll make up the background detail, shall I?”
“Ah, the Grosvenor, ma’am. He ate in the dining room, again alone, then retired to his room. This morning he ate breakfast at the hotel, then made a shopping trip. West End. I, ah, have a list . . .”
“Highlights?”
“He spent two hours in Harrods.”
“No prizes for originality. There’s footage?”
“Yes.”
“Josie?”
“Cueing it now,” said Josie, and the viewing wall changed as she dabbed at her keyboard, now showing Gregory Ronovitch in the men’s department at Harrods, holding two ties, visibly deciding between the two. If he’d chosen to pose for Pete Dean’s study, he couldn’t have adopted a more useful stance; a neutral observer would have assumed Dean was being asked his opinion.
“Here’s another question,” said Diana to the luckless Op. “Do you think there’s a chance Gregory was aware of your presence in Harrods?”
“Ah . . .”
“In your own time.”
“I didn’t think so then.”
“And now?”
“Now, yes. It looks like he clocked me.”
“And following his shopping trip?”
“That first picture was him arriving at the embassy ninety minutes ago. Which was when I handed over to—”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Still on her feet, Diana approached the image on the wall so that it shimmered across her own head and shoulders. She looked out at the room as if she too had just been transported to Harrods, and was choosing a tie. Gregory Ronovitch’s head was next to her own, almost touching, and much larger. The two of them stared out at Pete Dean taking the picture then, and at everyone else looking at it now, as if no time had passed between the two moments. Nobody spoke. The silence held for a quarter of a minute.
She said, “Someone. Please. Put me out of my misery.”
It was Josie who got there first. “Oh my god.”
“Yes, indeed,” said Diana. “Anyone else?” She scanned the room. “Imagine it’s important. Imagine you work for the intelligence service.”
When realisation swept round the table it did so by morphic resonance, alighting on all present one after the other. Two heartbeats earlier, no one bar Josie had known what had triggered Lady Di. Now everyone did; the more foolish among them with mounting excitement, the rest with a sense of dread. Ops looked at hub and hub looked at Ops, and both wondered what might lie on the other side of the door Diana had just kicked down.
Someone, anyone, spoke. “He’s grown a beard.”
“He’s grown a beard,” Diana repeated flatly. “He’s grown. A. Beard. Well. If I’d known we’d be dealing with Dick Emery, I’d have thrown in the towel long ago.”
“But . . .”
“But yes, what?”
The speaker couldn’t follow through. “He looks different. That’s all.”
He did, but not enough that it should have taken them this long. Diana Taverner herself had never set eyes on the man, but she’d studied the same footage they all had, had grown familiar with the way he moved, with the hand gestures, with the rubbing of the—admittedly clean-shaven—chin. There’d even been, for a while, a photo pinned up in the hub’s breakout area; a rather self-conscious elevation of the man to celebrity status. The picture had shown him receiving a medal from the Gay Hussar himself, and wearing the expression most serving officers wore when posing alongside Putin, one adopted following instructions not to make eye contact, or sudden movements.