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

by Charles Cumming

  Kell did not know how long it would be before Minasian replied. He was certain that the Russian did not carry the BlackBerry around with him; he could not even be sure that he had access to it at Claridge’s. If Minasian was engaged on other SVR business, or having dinner with Svetlana in central London, it could be many hours before he replied – time in which STRIPE could be making the final preparations for an attack.

  It was not yet eight o’clock. Kell decided that if Minasian had not responded by nine, he would breach all protocol and cold-call the Eremenko suite at Claridge’s from a public telephone. He had no other choice.

  Ten minutes later he was preparing some food in the kitchen when the BlackBerry chimed.

  Very embarrassed to hear this. I apologize. It was not my intention. I can replace it with a new one tomorrow.

  Kell sent back a terse reply.

  Tomorrow is too late. You know that. I need it now.

  Minasian’s response was immediate.

  Not possible. I cannot get the battery from my office until the morning. Do not worry.

  Kell could understand Minasian’s position. The intelligence had most likely come from a file that was kept under lock and key by the SVR. Minasian could not risk a late-night visit to the Embassy without raising suspicion. Nevertheless, he pushed for answers.

  Anything is possible. Tomorrow could be too late.

  Still Minasian refused to act.

  Tomorrow will not be too late. Trust me.

  It was the last thing Kell was prepared to do. Yet he had no choice. He knew that Svetlana was scheduled to meet her doctor at the fertility clinic at nine o’clock the next day.

  You have an appointment, yes?

  There was a two-minute delay before Minasian replied.

  Yes. At nine.

  Kell was taking a risk, but he felt squeezed by time. The plan was lazy and he was certain that Minasian would not go for it. It was bad tradecraft. The Russian would be passing sensitive information to a third party over which neither side had operational control. Nevertheless, he tapped out his reply.

  Leave it for collection. Our friend who wrote the poem will pick it up.

  Kell waited. Pasta was boiling on the stove. He put a metal spoon into the water and stirred it, freeing a clump of spaghetti that had stuck to the base. He opened a bottle of wine and poured himself a glass, staring at the BlackBerry, willing Minasian to understand what he was being asked to do.

  The screen lit up.

  The envelope will be there for collection from 9 a.m. Have a good evening.

  46

  Kell was awake at first light. To kill time, he went to the gym as it was opening and swam his habitual forty lengths of the pool. Mowbray had come round the night before in an attempt to open the flash drive, but after working on it from eleven until after midnight, had declared it ‘a cheap piece of shit which doesn’t work’ and driven the hire car home.

  Kell took the Tube as far as Marble Arch, then walked the remaining mile to Upper Wimpole Street. He was close enough to the entrance of the clinic to see Minasian and Svetlana pull up in the Eremenko limousine at 8.55 a.m. The chauffeur stepped out and opened the back door on the street side. As he walked beside his wife, Kell could see very clearly that Minasian was carrying a brown manila envelope in his left hand. The chauffeur did not accompany the couple inside. Instead he returned to the limousine, pulled closer to the kerb, then switched off the engine and put on the hazard lights.

  Kell assumed that Svetlana would be the first appointment of the day and therefore that the doctor would see her almost immediately. He waited fifteen minutes before climbing the steps to the clinic and pressing the buzzer for the ground floor. Kell could see the Eremenko limousine reflected in a brass plaque on the side of the building.

  He was buzzed inside. Kell pushed the door and found himself in a residential lobby that had been converted for office use. There was a door to his right with a sign saying: ‘RECEPTION’, three others ahead of him stretching along a narrow corridor, each with the name of a doctor printed on a square plastic panel. Kell was clicked into the waiting room.

  The smell hit him first. The disinfected potpourri of a dozen identical clinics visited with Claire in years gone by. The same stark, vacuumed chill in the waiting room, the same pale yellow paintwork. On the wall behind the reception desk, photographs of mothers and babies, of fathers cradling infants in their arms. Vases of fake fresh flowers, plastic cups beside a plastic water cooler, and always a lone woman in the corner of the room, distractedly flicking through the pages of a magazine. Kell avoided her nervous, shuffling eye contact and walked towards the receptionist. He could not stop thinking of Claire, of the agony and the frustration and the boundless expense of her infertility, and wanted more than anything to be out of the clinic as quickly as possible.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’

  The receptionist had dyed blonde hair and a forced, insincere smile inadequate to the emotional responsibilities of her job.

  ‘My name is Mr Larkin. I’m here to pick up a package.’

  Kell could see the manila envelope beside a black keyboard behind the counter.

  ‘We were expecting you. Mr Eremenko left it for you just a moment ago.’ She passed the envelope to Kell and gave an exhausted sigh. ‘He’s still here. Would you like to wait for him?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Kell replied. He was already turning to leave. ‘Just tell him that I’ve picked it up.’

  47

  Kell went out into the lobby, closed the door behind him and walked up the staircase to a landing on the first floor. He looked at the envelope. Minasian had written the name MR P. LARKIN in block capitals on the front, with the words FOR PERSONAL COLLECTION ONLY in the top left-hand corner.

  Kell opened the envelope. There was no flash drive inside, just a single piece of paper covered in neat, almost childish handwriting.

  The man you are looking for is operating under the name Shahid Khan. He was born in Leeds in 1992 under a different identity – Azhar Ahmed Iqbal. He was presumed to have died in 2014 while fighting against the Assad regime in Syria. His parents moved to the United Kingdom in 1983. His mother died when he was sixteen years old. To the best knowledge that we have, his father continues to reside in Leeds.

  Shahid Khan’s passport was supplied to him due to a compromised official at the British Passport Office named James (Jim) Martinelli. The passport (number 653781818) was obtained by an associate of a former senior Iraqi intelligence officer, Jalal al-Hamd, now prominent within ISIL, via contacts with the Albanian mafia. Khan has been tasked by Jalal with carrying out a mass execution in the United Kingdom with the purpose of spreading fear and panic in the population and further escalating the confrontation between ISIS and the Western powers.

  Khan returned to the United Kingdom on 16 May. He met with a Syrian associate of Jalal al-Hamd during this period. We know that Khan took work as a night shelf-stacker at a twenty-four-hour Asda supermarket in Brighton Marina. He lodges in a room in the town of Rottingdean at 45 Meadow Close. The house is registered to a Mrs Katherine Arden.

  More information was obtainable in the flash drive. I do not know why it did not work. I did not intend to trick you or to make a mistake of this kind. We will meet again in thirteen days. As you know I am telling you this because there is strong indication that Khan will soon obtain a weapon and has closed his relationship with Jalal. In our own context, we would assume that this indicates his intention to act in the very near future. I wish you luck.

  48

  Kell dialled Amelia’s private number.

  ‘Tom. What is it?’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  If he had not been so determined that Vauxhall Cross should take immediate action on Khan, Kell might have paid closer attention to the curt, dismissive tone in Amelia’s voice.

  ‘I’ve heard back from our Russian friend.’

  There was a significant pause. ‘I see,�
�� she said.

  ‘We have a serious problem.’

  ‘We do, do we?’

  Kell felt a scratch of irritation, that old frustrated feeling of being held at arm’s length.

  ‘The boy from Leeds,’ he said, trusting that what he was telling Amelia would shake her out of her complacency. ‘I have a name. I have an address.’

  ‘I thought we agreed that you weren’t going to continue with that relationship?’

  ‘We never agreed that.’ Kell was amazed that he was being pulled into a conversation about trust when the threat from Khan was clear and present. He walked out of the clinic, passed the Eremenko Mercedes and headed south along Upper Wimpole Street. ‘Anyway, does it matter?’

  Amelia ignored the question.

  ‘What do we know about this young man?’ she asked.

  Kell explained that Minasian’s intelligence indicated an imminent attack, almost certainly in an area of high population density in or around Brighton.

  ‘Brighton?’

  ‘Brighton,’ he confirmed.

  ‘Tom, come on. At no point have we ever had a significant threat directed at a small coastal town in England. Oxford Street, yes. Waterloo, yes. Manchester Piccadilly, perhaps. These people are about cities, they’re about generating fear. Hitting at the heart of government. You know this. The greater the carnage, the greater the publicity. Brighton is simply not going to be on their radar.’

  ‘Are you prepared to take that risk?’ Kell had come to a halt on the corner of Wigmore Street, lighting a cigarette as he spoke. ‘You’re prepared to have this on your record? A maniac starts shooting people in the Brighton Pavilion, takes out two or three hundred summer tourists on the pier, gets into the Aquarium and kills scores of young children with their families, you’ll live with that?’

  There was a long silence. Kell could not make sense of Amelia’s refusal even to countenance the possibility that Minasian was telling him the truth. Nor could he understand her lack of faith in his judgment. He had surely earned the right to be heard, to be treated with greater respect. It could only be the case that she knew something about GAGARIN, something about Khan or Brighton, which trumped his own intelligence, rendering it obsolete.

  ‘All right,’ she said, as though she had been made aware of the foolishness of her position and had resolved to correct it. ‘I’ll send someone to meet you. Where are you?’

  Kell drew deeply on the cigarette.

  ‘Amelia, I don’t have time for a fucking meeting. I don’t want some underling from the Office to finish his cup of tea, wander down to the Tube, get stuck in a tunnel, turn up to see me fifteen minutes late, listen to what I have to tell him, then wander back to work after stopping for lunch. He’ll spend the afternoon filing a report that someone several rungs below you may, or may not, find time to read before the end of the summer. I am telling you that this intelligence is real. This threat is real. You need to act immediately.’

  It was always a mistake to try to pressure Amelia Levene, to adopt aggressive tactics or to lose control of one’s equilibrium. Very slowly and very calmly she picked at the loosest thread of Kell’s argument and began to pull.

  ‘So you’re telling me that anyone I send to listen to what you have to say would be so unmoved by the product that they would delay returning to the Office, stop for a sandwich and write such a dreary CX on their return that it would never cross my desk?’

  Kell flew at her. ‘For Christ’s sake, I’m trying to impress upon you that time is a factor.’

  ‘And I understand that. And I can arrange for you to sit down with Jimmy Marquand within the hour. All it takes is a phone call.’

  ‘Jimmy?’

  Marquand was an old colleague of Kell’s, one of the high priests at SIS, a smooth career spook with fading hopes of replacing Amelia as ‘C’. The last Kell had heard, he had been farmed out to Washington.

  ‘Yes. Jimmy. Will he do?’

  The question was deliberately snide, implying that Kell was demanding special treatment. Realizing that Marquand was his only hope of eliciting official help, Kell agreed.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Tell him to meet me at Oxford Circus Tube. Ticket gates.’

  ‘Time?’ Amelia asked.

  Kell glanced at his watch. ‘As soon as he can get there.’

  ‘Eleven,’ she said.

  49

  Marquand was twenty minutes late.

  Kell had been pacing up and down inside the station for almost half an hour. He eventually caught sight of Marquand at the top of the Victoria Line escalators. He was easily spotted. At fifty-two, Marquand boasted a lustrous blow-dried mop of hair which had earned him the nickname ‘Melvyn’ from colleagues at SIS. He was looking tanned and fit and wearing a well-cut suit. The briefcase that usually accompanied him on official business was nowhere to be seen. Two dreadlocked, black-clad teenagers with piercings in most available orifices obscured Marquand’s view of Kell until he had almost reached the ticket gates. When he looked up and spotted him, he nodded in a way that made Kell suspect that he had been briefed to be obstructive.

  ‘Tom.’

  There was very little warmth in the greeting, only a sense of wariness, like meeting an old friend who has let you down too many times.

  ‘How are you, Jimmy? Long time no see.’

  ‘Long time. Long time.’

  They shook hands and turned towards the exit, emerging into thick crowds on the corner of Regent Street. Kell remembered meeting Marquand in the spring of Amelia’s disappearance and felt that something significant had changed in his manner in the intervening period. Three years earlier, Marquand had been nervous and agitated in Kell’s presence, very much the junior man. He had all but begged Kell to come out of enforced retirement and to search for Amelia. On this occasion, however, he seemed altogether more poised and self-possessed, giving the impression that their meeting was an interruption in his day that he could have done without.

  ‘I heard you were working in Washington.’

  Marquand pursed his mouth and said: ‘Yes, that’s correct,’ as though Kell – a private citizen – had no right to be enquiring about SIS postings overseas.

  ‘How did that work out for you?’

  ‘Perfectly well, thank you. Came back in April.’

  In the space of a few minutes, Kell had moved from a feeling of gentle optimism to one of intense irritation at Marquand’s manner; any respect or loyalty he might once have felt for Kell appeared to have leached out of him. His hauteur was all the more galling when Kell considered the sorry secret at the heart of Marquand’s career – that in fifteen years he had failed to make a single truly significant recruitment. Why, then, was he the one acting like he was doing Kell a favour?

  ‘Amelia said you had something you wanted to show us.’

  They were outside Hamley’s, children loitering on the pavement, shoppers laden with heavy bags weaving through the crowds. Kell didn’t need anybody to show an interest in his private life or to enquire after his state of mind, but he felt it was telling that Marquand had avoided the subject altogether. They had not seen one another in over two years. Marquand had been heavily involved in the operation to free Amelia’s kidnapped son. For him to move straight to business indicated either that he was aware of the time pressure surrounding Khan or, more likely, regarded Kell as yesterday’s man.

  ‘I do,’ he said. Kell turned off Regent Street and led Marquand down a narrow pedestrianized passage. He took Minasian’s letter from his jacket pocket, unfolded it and passed it to him. ‘Take a look at this.’

  Marquand produced a pair of half-moon spectacles and put them on. ‘Now what do we have here?’ he said. He began to read the letter, peering down at the contents like a man inspecting a bill for surcharges at the end of an expensive meal.

  ‘It came from a Russian—’

  ‘I heard.’ Marquand raised his hand to indicate that he did not wish to be interrupted. A man in torn jeans and a stained T-shirt walked pas
t, offering Kell a copy of the Big Issue. Kell shook his head. Marquand appeared to be coming to the end of the letter. To his horror, Kell saw the ghost of a smile at the edge of his lips, as if Marquand was struggling to contain a fit of giggles.

  ‘Brighton?’ he said, with almost exactly the same measure of contempt as Amelia.

  ‘That’s what it says.’

  ‘Who’s the source?’

  ‘As I was saying, he’s a Russian SVR—’

  ‘Yes, yes, we know about him.’ Marquand’s interruption was instant. ‘I mean, where is he getting his information?’

  Kell understood immediately that Marquand was prepared to downgrade the intelligence by doubting its veracity.

  ‘I believe it’s coming from a Syrian official in London, but I have no proof of that.’

  ‘So you don’t know the chain of command?’

  Marquand corrected his hair in a gust of wind.

  ‘Chain of command?’ Kell was bewildered that Marquand had used such a phrase.

  ‘I mean the source, the transfer of information. How is a Russian SVR officer getting this kind of product? Is it coming out of a cell, is there somebody on the Syrian side who’s reporting to Moscow?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ Kell replied.

  ‘Of course it matters. We need to know that it’s bona fide.’

  A young arm-in-arm couple walked past them, gazing into one another’s eyes. Kell waited until they were out of earshot before responding.

  ‘Jimmy, it’s real. Now here’s what I need you to do—’