A Divided Spy (Thomas Kell Spy Thriller, Book 3)

by Charles Cumming

  ‘It is and it is not,’ he replied. ‘She prevents him from living the life he wants to live. From being the man he wants to be. She is also highly critical of him, closed off in her thinking. Spoiled and judgmental.’

  Kell wondered how much of this was true. He suspected that Minasian had constructed flaws in Svetlana’s character that would both console Riedle and justify his emotional distance from the marriage.

  ‘And children? Do they have any?’

  Riedle shook his head. ‘No.’ There was a strange kind of satisfaction in his reply; it suggested the complete absence of a sexual relationship between Minasian and his wife. ‘I think Dmitri was very sophisticated, very clever when it came to presenting himself to me in a certain way,’ Riedle said, with a perceptiveness that took Kell by surprise. ‘He knew what I wanted and he knew how to give it. He also knew how to take it away.’

  ‘Take what away? You mean his love for you?’

  Like a breeze coming through an open window, Kell remembered the enveloping intimacy he had known with Rachel, the deepest and most fulfilling love he had ever felt for a woman; a love ripped away in a few short days by the realization that she had been lying to him. He thought of Amelia’s cunning and of his own role in deceiving Riedle. Minasian was the common denominator. ‘Dmitri’ controlled them all.

  ‘I mean that there is something sadistic about him. Something deeply manipulative and cruel. That is the conclusion I have come to, not just because of the way he has disregarded me since our relationship ended, but also because I can now look back on his behaviour when we were together in a different way.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He was often selfish and bullying. He knew that I was not as strong as he was. He knew that I was profoundly in love with him. But rather than take responsibility for this, to be careful with my feelings, he used it as a tool, a weapon against me.’ For some time, Riedle chewed his food, saying nothing. Kell also remained silent, waiting. ‘A person should have a duty of care for someone they profess to love, no?’ Riedle’s expression suggested that his question could brook no argument. ‘I think Dmitri was obsessed by ideas of power. This is the only way I can understand things, looking back. Have you read Nineteen Eighty-Four?’

  ‘Not for a long time.’

  ‘It is one of Dmitri’s favourite novels.’ Kell silently absorbed the irony of this revelation, but said nothing. ‘There is an exchange, towards the end of the book, when Winston Smith is being tortured. A discussion about power. Winston is asked how a man exerts power over another man. Do you remember his answer?’

  ‘By making him suffer?’ Kell suggested.

  ‘Precisely!’

  Riedle beamed at Kell with astonished admiration, as if he had at last met a person who could not only understand his plight, but explain Dmitri’s behaviour into the bargain. Kell smiled. He was trying to link together what Riedle was saying. Much of it was startling, yet a jilted lover, an angry and heartbroken boyfriend, will think and say anything that might make sense of tangled emotions. Kell needed to be able to separate Riedle’s prejudices from the hard, observable facts about Minasian’s behaviour. Kell reminded himself that he had only two objectives: to build a detailed psychological profile of Minasian, and to use Riedle to lure him out of the shadows. Everything else was tangential.

  ‘It sounds to me as though it’s a good thing that you’re no longer with this man. If what you’re saying is true, he didn’t make you very happy. It sounds like a form of torture.’

  ‘It is true. Believe me. But isn’t it also the case that the things in life which give us the most pleasure also cause us the most pain?’

  ‘I’ll drink to that.’

  Kell lifted his glass but had misjudged the moment. Riedle was uncomfortable and quickly returned to his recollections.

  ‘Dmitri was everything to me. I thought of us as a perfect match, despite the gap in age between us.’

  ‘How old was he?’ Kell asked.

  ‘Thirty-four when we met. He is almost thirty-eight now. I have just become fifty-nine.’ Riedle appeared briefly to slip into a private memory. Kell knew that Minasian had lied to Riedle about his age; according to his file at SIS, he was almost forty-one. ‘We laughed together,’ Riedle said. ‘I could tell him everything and he could solve my problems. He was capable of immense kindness, of great insights. We shared a love of the same literature, the same interests. The truth is that he fascinated me in every element of his personality.’

  ‘But he knew this and he took advantage of it.’

  ‘Yes!’ Riedle’s response was quick, almost convulsive. Kell noticed the table behind him coming to a sudden halt in conversation. ‘Yes, he took advantage of that.’ Riedle cut off another chunk of lamb. He spoke as he chewed. It was the first time the German’s impeccable table manners had faltered. ‘What is most painful is the loss of this side of his personality. The side that could make me happy. It is not easy at my age to meet a man, particularly one who possessed this ability to bring such contentment to me.’ Kell thought of Rachel, her ghost eavesdropping on their conversation, and concluded – not for the first time – that human beings were fools to expect other people to shore them up. He was about to repeat his earlier assertion that Riedle was well shot of the relationship when something happened that stripped him of his composure. Looking down towards the entrance, he saw a beautiful woman in her early twenties walking into the restaurant in the company of a man who was at least twice her age. The man was wearing a black suit and his hair was slicked back with gel. A large birthmark was visible to the left of his nose.

  It was Rafal Suda.

  Kell fixed his eyes back on Riedle and smiled a crocodile smile. If the German looked down, he would see Suda. It was that simple. The man who had mugged him only two nights earlier was standing less than eight feet away, making audible small talk with the maître d’. If Riedle recognized him, there would be a confrontation. There would be police involvement and Kell would be obliged to act as a witness. The operation would be over before it had begun. Any hope of locating Minasian by using Riedle as a lure would evaporate.

  In an effort to keep the conversation flowing, Kell repeated his assertion that Riedle was lucky to be free of Dmitri, a man who had exerted such a baleful influence over his private life. He spoke for as long as it took for Suda and his date to be led towards the interior of the restaurant. When they were beyond Riedle’s line of sight, Kell encouraged the German to respond. As he listened to his reply, Kell could see Suda, out of the corner of his eye, being led to the first table on the parallel balcony. He was no further away than the length of a London bus. It was a slice of wretched luck. Forgeron had seating for up to a hundred customers in the main section towards the back of the restaurant, but Suda had been seated in one of the few places from which he could still be seen by Riedle.

  The German was talking. Kell was trying to absorb what he was saying about Minasian while simultaneously formulating a plan for getting Suda out of the restaurant. A warning text message would do it, but Suda would almost certainly have abandoned the mobile he had used on the Riedle operation. Kell had no other number, only an email address. What were the chances of a middle-aged Polish spook checking his inbox while a statuesque blonde was gazing adoringly into his eyes over a platter of oysters? Slim, at best. No, he had to think of an alternative approach – and all the while keep Riedle talking.

  ‘What were Dmitri’s politics?’ he asked. Kell looked down at Riedle’s plate. The German had almost finished his lamb cutlets. That was the next problem. With a kir and several glasses of wine inside him, a man of Riedle’s age might need to go to the bathroom in the break between courses. Should he do so, he would need to turn around and to inch along the balcony, all the while looking out over the restaurant, directly towards Suda’s table.

  ‘He rarely spoke about politics,’ he said. ‘I asked him, of course, and we had arguments about what was going on in Ukraine.’

  ‘
What kind of arguments?’

  ‘Oh, the usual ones.’ Riedle speared a stem of purple-sprouting broccoli, no more than two or three mouthfuls left before he would finish. ‘That Crimea should be restored to Russia, that it was given to Kiev without permission by Khrushchev …’

  ‘I would agree with that,’ Kell replied.

  ‘But I saw the separatist aggression in the east as a senseless waste of lives, innocent people dying for the cause of meaningless nationalism.’

  ‘I would also agree with that,’ Kell concurred, desperately scrabbling for ideas. He felt like a public speaker with ten more minutes to fill and not an idea in his head. ‘And what we’ve been seeing in Russia is the extraordinary success of the Kremlin propaganda machine. There are educated, liberal intellectuals in Moscow who believe that Ukrainian soldiers have crucified Russian children, that any opposition to Russian influence in the region has been orchestrated by the CIA …’

  The use of ‘we’ was a hangover from Office days, the party line at SIS. Kell had made a mistake. Riedle, thankfully, appeared not to have noticed. Instead he nodded approvingly at what Kell had said and then – Kell felt the dread again – turned in his seat and looked down towards the entrance, distracted by a movement or sound that Kell had not detected.

  ‘But otherwise he wasn’t a political animal?’ Kell asked, trying to bring Riedle’s eyes back to the table. It had been a mistake to ask about politics. Riedle was a sensualist, an emotional man in the grip of heartbreak. He didn’t want to be talking about civil wars. He wanted to be talking about his feelings.

  ‘No, he was not. He had studied political philosophy at Moscow University.’

  A waiter brought a bottle of champagne to Suda’s table. When the cork popped, Riedle might turn around. All of Kell’s energy was directed at preventing that from taking place. He needed to hold Riedle in a sort of trance of conversation, to make it impossible for him to look away.

  ‘What was his job?’ Kell asked. He removed his jacket in the gathering heat.

  ‘Like you,’ Riedle replied. ‘Private investment. Raising financing for different projects around Europe.’

  A classic SVR cover.

  ‘Which allowed him to travel extensively? To spend time with you?’

  The woman was giggling, Suda raising a loud toast.

  ‘Precisely.’ Something had caused Riedle to smile. ‘It’s funny. I always felt like the sophisticated one. The older Western European intellectual teaching the boy from Russia. This was false, of course. Dmitri was much cleverer, much better educated than I am. But he was often very quiet. I used to think of it as shyness. Now I think of it as a lack of something.’

  ‘He sounds like somebody with very little generosity of spirit.’

  ‘Yes!’ Riedle almost thumped the table in enthusiastic endorsement of Kell’s insight. ‘That is exactly what he was like.’

  ‘Generosity of spirit is so rare,’ Kell said, continuing to improvise conversation. Could he send a note via a member of staff? Not a chance. Nor could he leave Riedle alone at the table; the German might use the time to start gazing around the restaurant. ‘If a person is essentially self-interested,’ Kell said, moving a floret of cauliflower in slow circles around his plate, ‘if their only goal is the satisfaction of their own vanity, their own appetites, even at the expense of friends or loved ones, that can be enormously distressing for the person left behind.’

  ‘You understand a great deal, Peter,’ Riedle replied, lifting a final mouthful of lamb towards his gaping mouth. Kell watched the rising fork as he might have watched a clock ticking down to zero hour. He was convinced that Riedle was going to leave the table as soon as he had finished eating. ‘Tell me about your own experience,’ Riedle asked. ‘Tell me how you coped with the end of your marriage.’

  If it would guarantee the German’s undivided attention for the next hour, Kell would happily now have told him the most intimate and scandalous details of his relationship with Claire. Besides, wasn’t it one of the golden rules of recruitment? Share your vulnerabilities. Confide in a prospective agent. Tell him whatever he needs to hear in order to establish complicity. But before he had a chance to answer, Riedle added a coda.

  ‘First, however, will you excuse me?’ He was dabbing his mouth with his napkin and preparing to stand up. ‘I must go to the bathroom.’

  At that same moment, Kell looked across the room and saw Rafal Suda in the midst of precisely the same ritual. The dabbed napkin. The soundless request to his companion. It was as though the two men had made a secret plan to meet. Rising to his feet, Suda laughed as his date cracked a toothy joke. If Riedle left now, he would bump into Suda within thirty seconds.

  ‘Would you mind if I went first?’ Kell asked and did something that he had never done in all his life as an intelligence officer. He clutched at his waist and pretended to be hit by a searing pain in his stomach.

  ‘But of course,’ Riedle replied, settling back into his seat. ‘Are you all right, Peter?’

  Kell struggled to his feet, wincing in apparent agony. ‘Fine,’ he gasped, ‘Fine’, and ducked to avoid a low-hanging lamp. ‘Happens from time to time. Just give me five minutes will you, Bernie? I’ll be right back.’

  12

  Kell was only a few feet behind Suda as he walked into the bathroom. A man in a dark grey suit came out at the same time and held the door for him as they passed.

  ‘Merci,’ Kell said, going inside.

  Suda was standing at a urinal, staring down into the bowl. He was alone in the room. There were two cubicles beyond him, both of which Kell checked for occupants before lighting the blue touchpaper.

  ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

  Suda looked back, urinating, and swore in Polish.

  ‘Tom.’

  ‘I’m eating dinner ten feet away from your fucking table with Bernhard fucking Riedle. Why are you still in Brussels?’

  The shock oozed into Suda’s face as he began to reply, his blue-black birthmark creased with fatigue. Still urinating, he was unable fully to turn around. Kell was riding the adrenaline of the previous fifteen minutes and did not hold back.

  ‘You realize if he sees you, I’m fucked? You realize if he so much as turns around and looks at your underage, I-still-haven’t-graduated-from-high-school girlfriend and recognizes the man sitting opposite her, that my operation – for which you were extraordinarily well paid and which has cost me outside of ten thousand pounds and almost two weeks of planning – will not only be over, but will involve you being arrested in front of a room full of people carrying iPhones – iPhones with cameras and zoom lenses and microphones – and me standing right beside Riedle as he asks me to positively identify the street criminal who tried to mug him two nights ago?’

  Suda was zipping up his trousers and trying to interrupt, but Kell wasn’t done.

  ‘I’m not interested what excuse you have, why you felt that you had to stay in Brussels with your newly adolescent, fake eyelash, breast-enhanced babysitter, rather than go home to your wife and children in Warsaw as you promised me you would do when I hired you, but here’s what’s going to happen, Rafal. There’s a kitchen outside. You go into it. You walk very quickly and very confidently to the back of that kitchen and you leave by any exit possible. You leave the way the staff leave. If anybody tries to stop you, pay them. Do you have money?’

  Suda nodded. It was like scolding a schoolboy who had been caught cheating in an exam.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘I will tell a waiter that I saw you leaving, that you had to go out the back because your wife had walked into the restaurant and that you gave me money. I will pay your bill. The waiter will then explain to Kim Kardashian that you’re waiting for her outside. Maybe she’ll finish her oysters. Maybe she won’t. You can call her. Do what you want. But if you don’t get out of here and get permanently out of Riedle’s sight, I will personally see to it that no intelligence agency, no corporate espionage outfit, no police department, no ba
nk or multinational will ever give you any business again. You won’t teach. You won’t drive cabs. You won’t change a fucking lightbulb in this shitty Belgian bathroom. All you will do is get out of this restaurant. Do not pass go. Do not collect five hundred pounds. Leave.’

  13

  Suda did as he was told.

  Kell watched him walk briskly through the swing doors of the kitchen and waited outside to make sure that he did not double back. He then took the maître d’ to one side, explained that he had met a man in the bathroom who was at risk of being compromised by his wife while dining with his mistress, paid Suda’s bill in cash, tipped the maître d’ a further twenty euros to break the news gently and discreetly to the girlfriend, then made his way back to Riedle.

  Several minutes had passed since Kell had left the table, but the German was relaxed and companionable, fussing and fretting over Kell’s condition. Have you had these incidents before? Do you require a doctor? Perhaps it was something in your food? Kell brushed aside his concerns, realizing – as their conversation continued – that Minasian would almost certainly have taken advantage of Riedle’s innate decency; there was a neediness about him, a desire to win affection through acts of kindness and generosity, which to a sadist like Minasian would have been like the scent of blood to a shark.

  ‘I was thinking, while you were away, that I feel rather ashamed.’

  ‘Ashamed, Bernie? Why?’

  Kell wondered why Riedle hadn’t yet taken the opportunity to go to the bathroom. His napkin was still balled on the table.

  ‘It is embarrassing for a man of my age, a man almost sixty, to be at the mercy of an infatuation, don’t you think? To be so broken-hearted. So weak. I feel like a fool.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Kell replied firmly, and tried to comfort Riedle with a gentle smile. ‘I think it shows that you are alive. That you haven’t given up on people, become stale or jaded.’ Riedle asked him to translate the word ‘jaded’ and Kell offered ‘tired’ as a lazy synonym. ‘We all have a need for company. Most of us, anyway. What you are going through speaks to our deep need to feel connected, to share our lives with somebody who understands us, who makes us feel cherished. We want to feel free to be who we are. We want somebody who will help to open up the best side of ourselves.’