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

by Charles Cumming

  ‘I won’t have any surveillance,’ Minasian replied firmly. It appeared to be a matter of personal and professional pride that Kell understood this. ‘We will not be disturbed.’

  ‘If you abort,’ Kell continued, ignoring this, ‘go back to Claridge’s. Somebody will make themselves known to you and we will make an alternative arrangement. It’s imperative that we meet next week, even if you have to get out of bed at three o’clock in the morning and talk to me through a wall in your hotel.’

  There was a useful ambiguity built into this last statement. Minasian could interpret it in one of two ways: as a plea for more information about the imminent terrorist attack; and as a warning that Kell would not hesitate to turn him in to the SVR if he failed to make contact.

  ‘I will be there,’ Minasian replied, meeting Kell’s gaze.

  ‘If anybody stops you or asks awkward questions, tell them you’re buying classic British food to take back to Kiev. Marks and Spencer marmalade, branded chutney. Earl Grey tea. Tikka Masala.’ Minasian nodded. ‘Once we’ve made eye contact, that’s where you’ll go. Downstairs to the Food Hall in the basement of Marks and Spencer. Put a stopwatch on it.’

  There was a momentary pause as Minasian committed the plan to memory. ‘A stopwatch?’ he said. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Kell took a long draw on the cigarette then stubbed it out.

  ‘You can reach the basement car parks from the Food Hall,’ he said. ‘There are moving walkways in the wine section which will take you to different levels in the car parks. Go to the Middle Car Park, Level Two. Exactly ten minutes after we have first made eye contact, walk to Aisle 45. It’s the one right in front of you. I’ll go down to the car park by a separate route, drive past and pick you up in a vehicle.’

  ‘Will you be alone?’

  Kell could tell him nothing about Amelia’s refusal to countenance the operation; he could not even be certain that he would be permitted to meet Minasian in nine days’ time. After all, ‘C’ was sending a car for his agent. If she intended to interview Minasian, however briefly, Kell’s link with the Russian would be snapped. Amelia would want control of GAGARIN and saturation on the threat from STRIPE.

  ‘I will be alone in the car,’ he replied. ‘But we will have people in other vehicles for back-up. Making sure you’re safe.’

  ‘As well as making sure you are safe,’ Minasian replied, with what Kell considered to be unnecessary emphasis. He greeted the remark with a patient smile, then outlined plans for a fallback if either man was unable to reach the first meeting.

  ‘If one of us can’t be in the men’s section between half past two and three, we try again two hours later. Between half past four and five. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’ Minasian scratched the side of his neck. ‘What about making contact in the meantime?’ he asked. ‘While I am away?’

  Kell stood up, took a BlackBerry from a stash of three he kept in a nearby drawer and handed it to Minasian.

  ‘This is PGP encrypted,’ he said. ‘If you learn anything about STRIPE that’s time-sensitive – if you have a target, a date, in other words only if the attack is imminent – you can send that information to me in such a way that you will not be compromised. Otherwise I suggest we have no interaction and meet on Friday. I don’t trust computers, I don’t trust phones. Never have, never will.’ Right on cue, there was a prolonged buzz on the intercom. Kell ignored it. ‘Do everything you can in the next nine days to find out what’s known to the SVR about this individual,’ he said. ‘His name. The number of the passport he was given, how it got to him, who he’s working with. It’s possible that my people already have him in their sights or know individuals associated with him. Anything that was gleaned by the SVR could be matched up with our intel. I need to know what he’s planning to do, when he’s planning to do it.’

  ‘Of course,’ Minasian replied.

  Kell stood up and lifted the receiver just as the intercom began to buzz a second time.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Vehicle for Mr Thomas?’

  ‘We’ll be down in five minutes.’

  Kell replaced the receiver and picked up Mowbray’s iPhone. He stopped the second recording and put the phone in his back pocket.

  ‘We’ve got a car for you,’ he said. Minasian looked up in surprise. ‘Time for you to be going.’

  Kell opened the connecting door and walked through to the bedroom. Mowbray was looking out of the window, curtains pulled to one side. Kell stood beside him and saw a bottle green SIS Vauxhall parked on a double yellow line outside his flat, hazard lights flashing.

  ‘Got here quicker than I thought,’ he mumbled. ‘Cross kept saying time was a factor.’

  It didn’t sound like one of Amelia’s stock phrases; Kell wondered how many other officers were now involved in the effort to prevent him from forging a workable relationship with Minasian. It was a source of almost grotesque frustration to him that Amelia seemed so determined to keep the Russian at arm’s length. Surely, once he had confronted her with the evidence about STRIPE, she would reconsider her position?

  He walked back into the sitting room to find Minasian standing in front of the bookshelves. He was running his finger along the spines of some Dickens, almost on tiptoes as he peered up at the titles. Kell had an abrupt feeling that this might be their first and last encounter. Anything could happen in the next few days. Minasian’s relationship with Riedle could be unravelled by the SVR and his career ended at a stroke. His marriage to Svetlana could collapse under the pressure of what had happened, placing Minasian at the mercy of Andrei Eremenko. And then there was the interference from Amelia. She could prevent Minasian and Svetlana re-entering the UK, citing sanctions against the Russian elite.

  ‘When you come back next week, are you travelling under alias?’

  Minasian shook his head. He appeared to have been wrong-footed by the timing of Kell’s question.

  ‘Better to do so,’ Kell told him. ‘I assume you have British documents, a British passport?’

  With reluctance, but a faint trace of professional pride, Minasian conceded that this was the case.

  ‘Use it,’ Kell told him. ‘Just to get through the border.’ He looked around for his house keys. ‘Time for us to go,’ he said.

  Minasian looked at his watch. Kell walked past him and opened the curtains and the window. The air pouring into the room was cool and clean. The sound of children playing in a nearby garden was interrupted by a car alarm sounding on the opposite side of the building. Minasian rolled his neck and stretched his jaw, looking like a man who has emerged unscathed from a minor altercation on the street.

  Mowbray came out of the kitchen and nodded at the Russian. Minasian did not appear to recognize him from the hotel in Egypt. Kell passed the second iPhone to Mowbray, indicating with a look that he should again encrypt the video and send it on to Amelia.

  ‘We should go,’ he said, turning to Minasian, who was staring at the phone like a man in a trance. ‘Do you have everything?’

  ‘I came only with my jacket. If you could please now return my BlackBerry?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Kell passed the battery, SIM card and phone to Minasian, then led him towards the front door. They walked out of the building, leaving Mowbray inside the flat. When the driver saw Kell coming down the steps towards the street, he opened the door of the Vauxhall.

  ‘Mr Kell?’

  He was a short, neatly turned-out man in his late fifties, tanned and silver-haired. Kell was surprised that he had used his surname in front of Minasian.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I’m to take you to your meeting.’

  At first, Kell wondered if he had misunderstood. He looked across at Minasian, then back at the driver.

  ‘To my meeting …’

  The driver nodded towards the Russian.

  ‘Your friend is to walk away.’

  Minasian could not hide his pleasure and pivoted around, grinning a
t the pavement. Kell felt a sense of impotent fury. He tried his best to conceal his annoyance and apologized to Minasian for what had transpired.

  ‘My mistake,’ he said. ‘I thought they were sending a car for you.’

  ‘It is not a problem,’ Minasian replied. ‘I know London. I know where I am. I can walk from here.’ He looked up at the surrounding buildings, across the street at an unmarked Transit van. ‘No doubt your people will be following me all the way.’

  Kell did nothing to disabuse Minasian of the idea that he was under surveillance. They shook hands, Minasian’s grip surprisingly soft.

  ‘Look after yourself,’ he said.

  ‘You too, Tom.’

  Without acknowledging the driver, Minasian walked north along Sinclair Road. He did not look back. Kell watched him. Just another Russian in London, just another pedestrian on the street. When he was about to vanish out of sight, Kell called out.

  ‘Hey!’

  He was not quite sure why he was doing what he was about to do. Minasian reacted to Kell’s shout and turned around. Kell raised his hand, indicating that Minasian should stop. He began walking towards him.

  ‘What is it?’ Minasian asked as Kell caught up with him.

  Kell knew that he had been overcome by a moment of sentimentality, but there was also good operational sense in what he was about to say. Agent care. Agent cultivation.

  ‘What about Riedle?’ he asked. ‘What about Bernie?’

  Minasian stepped backwards and frowned. He seemed to think that Kell was taunting him.

  ‘The funeral,’ Kell explained. ‘Would you like somebody to go? To represent you?’

  Minasian reacted in a way that Kell could not have anticipated. With profound sadness, the Russian lowered his head, then reached out and placed a hand on Kell’s shoulder. He looked at him with gratitude.

  ‘You are kind,’ he said. ‘You do not need to do this. I will mourn him privately. All of my feelings for Bernhard were private. I am used to this.’

  Without another word, Minasian turned and walked away. There was a skip beside Kell, filled with bags of earth and smashed furniture. He leaned against it and watched Minasian until he was out of sight. He was heading in the direction of Westfield. Kell assumed that he would go directly to Marks and Spencer and walk the ground in readiness for their meeting. It was what he himself would have done.

  In due course Kell turned and headed back towards the car. The driver was watching him as he approached the vehicle. There was a look on his face of small-minded bureaucratic distrust that irritated Kell intensely.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he said to him.

  The driver did not reply.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I have a postcode, sir.’

  ‘What is it?’

  The driver indicated with a tilt of the head that he was not prepared to divulge even this simple piece of information. ‘I have my orders,’ he explained.

  Kell suppressed an urge to lean into the car and pick up the instruction sheet the driver had left out on the passenger seat. Instead he looked up at his flat and saw Mowbray’s face in the bedroom window, half hidden behind twitching curtains. It was like catching a neighbour spying. He wondered how long Mowbray would remain loyal. Was it his fault that Amelia had sent the car? Had they cooked up the plan together?

  ‘Do you need anything from your residence?’ the driver asked. He had a pedantic, adenoidal voice. ‘I was told it would be a long night.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning that you should perhaps pack a bag.’

  Kell shook his head, no longer bothering to disguise the fact that he had no idea what the hell was going on. He walked back to the front door and let himself in. Mowbray was at the table in the sitting room, working on a laptop.

  ‘You knew about this?’ Kell asked.

  ‘Knew about what?’

  ‘The car. The driver.’

  Mowbray looked up, an expression of blank innocence on his face. ‘No, guv.’

  Kell trusted him as he would once have trusted Amelia or Rachel. That is to say, he did not trust Mowbray at all.

  ‘What did she say to you on the phone? Did she threaten you?’

  ‘Threaten me? What about?’ Mowbray was not angry, but seemed bewildered by Kell’s questions. ‘She was just fucked off that you were doing stuff behind her back. Disobeying orders.’

  ‘Just me or you as well?’

  ‘You and me both.’

  Kell took a moment. There was no point in making an enemy of Mowbray, in continuing to interrogate him.

  ‘The second film,’ he said, trying to move on. ‘Did you encrypt it?’

  ‘Just doing it now.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Kell told him.

  Mowbray again seemed puzzled.

  ‘Something’s going on.’ Kell was looking around for his lighter. ‘I don’t want Amelia to see the second film until I know what’s happening. Can you hold her off until morning?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  Kell did not know what to make of Mowbray’s reply. It was neither a guarantee that he would do what he had been asked, nor an indication that his loyalty to Kell had been bought out by SIS. Kell took his phone, went into the bedroom and threw a change of clothes in an overnight bag. He grabbed some toiletries, picked up his jacket and wallet and went back into the sitting room.

  ‘Did you overhear any of the arrangements I made with GAGARIN? Lines of communication? Crash meetings?’

  ‘No, guv.’

  Kell was pleased. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘So if Amelia asks you about any of that stuff, you won’t have to lie to her.’

  Mowbray frowned. ‘No, I suppose not.’ He closed the laptop. ‘What’s going on, boss? How come they let GAGARIN walk? None of this feels right. Why is it you going in the car and not him?’

  Kell persuaded himself to be reassured by Mowbray’s questions. He found the lighter and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

  ‘I have no idea,’ he replied. ‘No idea at all.’

  37

  Kell was smoking as he opened the back door of the Vauxhall.

  ‘Please extinguish your cigarette before entering the vehicle,’ said the driver, with such banal, automated humourlessness that Kell was tempted to stub it out on the paintwork. Mowbray had gathered up his belongings and was already fifty metres away on Sinclair Road, heading south towards Kensington Olympia. Kell tossed the cigarette in the gutter, sat in the back seat and closed the door.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

  ‘I have my instructions, sir. I only have a postcode—’

  ‘So you keep saying.’ Kell didn’t bother buckling the seatbelt. ‘A postcode is all I’ll need. What is it?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to divulge that, sir.’ Though Kell had spent over two decades working alongside numberless job-for-life bureaucrats and middle-managers, he was always astonished by the manner in which they spoke. ‘All I can tell you is that you should prepare for a journey of perhaps two or two and a half hours. Traffic dependent.’

  Kell was at the edge of his patience. He felt as he had done on that wretched November day four years earlier when two SIS security gorillas had escorted him to the entrance of Vauxhall Cross, demanding – in tones of flat, emotionless condescension – that Kell surrender his pass at the gates ‘before leaving the premises’. Kell had served too loyally, and achieved too much for Amelia Levene, to be treated with such disdain.

  He sat back. Perhaps he was overreacting. He was tired and hungry and still angry with Amelia. Kell could not think why it was necessary to sit in a car for two hours in order to have a meeting with her. Who else would be there? In his state of bedraggled irritation, he would not have been surprised to find Amelia waiting for him in a coastal safe house alongside her opposite number in the SVR. Anything was possible. Why else had she been so reluctant to ensnare Minasian?

  ‘Can we stop for something to eat?’ he asked.

 
; The driver had been listening to a debate about the EU on LBC radio. He said: ‘Sorry, what was that?’ and turned down the volume.

  ‘I said can we stop and get something to eat? Just a sandwich will do.’

  ‘Yes, sir. That should be possible. I’ll stop at the next petrol station.’

  The next petrol station turned out to be Fleet Services on the M3, an hour outside London. Kell was followed around the rest area by the driver and watched at a discreet distance as he bought a Whopper at Burger King and a double espresso from Starbucks.

  ‘Where did you think I was going to go?’ he said, no longer bothering to disguise his contempt as they walked back towards the car. ‘Hide in the gents? Run out the back and hotwire a Ford Fiesta?’

  Nothing more was said. Kell sat in the back, wolfing his burger, running through old emails on his iPhone, and suppressing a truculent desire to rub gherkins into the upholstery.

  Fifteen minutes later, the driver took the exit for the A303. Kell now knew where he was being taken. Sure enough, just before half past nine, the Vauxhall entered the village of Chalke Bissett, where Amelia owned a small house. It was here, two years earlier, that Kell and Amelia had run the operation to flush out her kidnapped son. At the church in the centre of the village the sat-nav became confused and began to send the Vauxhall back in the direction of Salisbury. Kell explained that he had been to the address many times before and directed the driver through the village and along the isolated lane that led to Amelia’s property.

  To his surprise, the driver did not insist on accompanying Kell to the front door. Instead, he turned the Vauxhall around and waited in the lane while Kell approached the house. It was almost dark, but he could make out a satellite dish and what looked to be a mobile phone mast on the roof. Tech-Ops at Vauxhall Cross had given C’s country retreat an upgrade.

  Amelia took her time coming to the door. Kell had to knock twice before she appeared in the short corridor which led from the kitchen to the front of the house. She was wearing casual weekend clothes – there was a slight tear in the knee of her jeans – and looked as though she had been doing some gardening.