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

by Charles Cumming

  Marquand shook his head and held the letter up in front of Kell, letting it flap in the wind.

  ‘Come on now. You can’t expect us to act on something like this without deeper investigation.’

  Kell took the letter, afraid that Marquand would allow it to blow away down the street. Then he looked at Minasian’s neat, level handwriting, the careful spacings and schoolboy ink, and suddenly realized what Marquand had seen. A piece of adolescent fantasy, an SVR practical joke, hatched in Moscow and played on a man so desperate to prove his worth that he had fallen for it, hook, line and sinker. In the same moment, Kell saw himself as others must see him: as a pedigree spy who had tripped on the career ladder and failed to stay the course. As an increasingly dishevelled divorcé, drinking and smoking too much, worn out and frayed around the edges. Yesterday’s man.

  ‘I believe it’s actionable,’ he said.

  ‘Can you leave it with me?’ The tone of Marquand’s question betrayed his absolute commitment to do nothing of any consequence with the information that Kell had given him.

  ‘You can take a copy,’ he replied.

  ‘And how do you suggest I do that?’ Marquand looked down the street, as if to indicate that photocopiers were not commonly found on pavements in that area of London.

  ‘How about using your phone?’ Kell suggested, his patience about to snap. He was tired of trying to persuade SIS that Minasian’s product was valid, tired of trying to spur Amelia and her useful idiots into action. Dealing with them was like rattling the handle on a locked door and somehow expecting it to open. He was wasting his time.

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Marquand, pinching the letter between his thumb and forefinger as Kell held it in his hand. ‘Why don’t you make us a copy and file it through the usual channels?’

  ‘The usual channels,’ Kell repeated.

  ‘That is correct.’

  Marquand indicated that he was going to leave. There had been no trace of the years they had spent together as colleagues, no acknowledgement of the awkwardness of the situation, nor of Marquand’s role in exacerbating it. Kell might just as well have been a stranger who had accosted him on the street.

  ‘Always good to see you, Tom.’

  Marquand shook Kell’s hand, smiled a patronizing smile, then turned and walked away. Doubtless he would return to Vauxhall Cross with reports of their erstwhile colleague’s sorry and hilarious demise. Kell looked at Marquand’s bouffant hair, at his neat tailored suit and polished City brogues, and could not prevent himself from a petty and yet liberating retort.

  ‘Hey, Jimmy.’

  Marquand was halfway down the passage, about to join the flow of pedestrians heading north along Regent Street.

  ‘Yes?’ he said, turning around.

  ‘Go fuck yourself.’

  50

  Kell knew what he had to do. The plan came to him with absolute clarity.

  He found a public phone box. He took out his phone, found the number for Falcon Security and asked to be put through to Anthony White.

  ‘May I ask who’s calling, please?’

  ‘Thomas Kell.’

  White was ex-SAS, the CEO of a private security firm that had made a fortune from more than a decade of conflict in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Amelia had employed him on the operation to rescue her kidnapped son. Kell had subsequently done a small amount of private sector work for Falcon, after which White had offered him a permanent position. Kell had turned the job down.

  The interior of the phone box was plastered with cards advertising the services of prostitutes. Kell looked down and waited for the receptionist to connect the call, the floor wet with water that had spilled from a crushed bottle of Evian. He heard the long, sustained sound of a phone ringing in an international location, then the crackle of White picking up.

  ‘White.’

  ‘Anthony? It’s Tom Kell.’

  ‘Tom! How are you? Good to hear your voice.’

  ‘I need a favour.’

  ‘Of course. What can I do for you?’

  White was in his early forties, a six-foot Old Etonian whose charm, good looks and faultless manners had proved as indispensable in the business world as his innate ruthlessness and capacity for violence. Kell had known him to kill a man at point-blank range. He was glad to count him as a friend.

  ‘Where are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Dubai.’

  It wasn’t the answer Kell had hoped for. Nevertheless, he pitched White on the open line, concealing his purpose as best he could.

  ‘I’m going shooting at the weekend,’ he said. ‘Private party.’

  White immediately understood what was being asked of him.

  ‘I see,’ he said.

  There was an unmistakable note of pleasure in his voice, a love of adventure and mischief. White had the lowest boredom threshold of any man Kell had ever met and would plainly relish whatever scrape he was about to get into.

  ‘I need some kit,’ Kell told him. ‘Wondered if I could pop into your London office and chat to someone? Sooner rather than later. I’ve got the Barbour. I’ve got the Wellington boots. It’s the other stuff I need.’

  ‘Sure. What number are you calling from?’

  Kell told him that he was speaking from a public phone box near Piccadilly Circus. White checked that he was still using the same mobile number and asked if Kell was on WhatsApp.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And the kit is just for you?’

  ‘Just for me.’

  It sounded as though White was in a moving vehicle. Kell pictured him in the back seat of an armoured car, tanned and resplendent, pitching his services to a member of the Saudi royal family while running his hand up the thigh of a Russian ballerina.

  ‘I can get this done for you, Tom,’ he said, the brisk, decisive confidence of the alpha male. ‘Can you give me an hour?’

  ‘That would be ideal.’

  ‘And lunch when I get back to London. On me. I want to hear all about it.’

  Ninety minutes later, after a brief exchange of messages, Kell was in a branch of Caffé Nero at Victoria station, waiting for a man called ‘Jeff’. White had said that he would be ‘easily recognizable as ex-Regiment’, having evidently forgotten – in the relative confusion of making the arrangements so quickly – that Jeff had also been involved in the operation to release Amelia’s son from captivity.

  Kell saw that he had not changed. Jeffrey Quest was built like a prop forward but had the face of a saint. With his sandy-coloured curly hair and ruddy-cheeked bonhomie, he might have passed for a farmer or the landlord of a much-loved rural pub. He was carrying a small red rucksack and a copy of the Evening Standard and nodded warmly at Kell as he caught his eye. He put the rucksack on the ground between them but did not shake Kell’s hand.

  ‘Nice to see you again, Mr Kell. How have you been?’

  ‘Well, thanks,’ Kell replied, sipping his coffee. ‘Want one?’

  ‘Not for me, cheers. Bad for the ticker.’

  Jeff, who was in his early fifties, illustrated his point by tapping his chest three times. Kell remembered the three bullets he had fired with a high-velocity rifle into the fleeing Luc Javeau, seconds before Kell himself would have been obliged to take the shot.

  ‘Weapon’s in the rucksack,’ he said. ‘Sig Sauer nine-millimetre with a spare magazine. Sixteen rounds. That be enough?’

  ‘That’s all I’ll need.’

  ‘You know what you’re doing? You’ve used one before?’

  Kell was accustomed to the military’s view of SIS officers as brain men and desk jockeys. He absorbed the inherent condescension and drained his coffee.

  ‘I’m sure I can work it out,’ he replied. ‘Put a bullet in the chamber, point the barrel away from me, fire. That’s how it works, right?’

  Jeff smiled. ‘Something like that.’

  He explained that the gun was unregistered and untraceable and that ‘Mr W’ did not want it back. He was not going to ask why
Kell needed it, nor did he want to know.

  ‘I hope you won’t find out,’ Kell replied, an ambiguous reply that Jeff struggled to understand. ‘Will you tell the boss I’m grateful to him?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Anything goes. He likes you.’

  Jeff stood up to leave. This time he shook Kell’s hand.

  ‘Thank you for this,’ Kell told him. ‘I appreciate it.’

  ‘No problem.’ Jeff nodded in a slow, reflective fashion, an affable man of apparent integrity who had lived alongside violence and conflict throughout his adult life. ‘Take care,’ he said, leaving the rucksack on the ground as he walked away. ‘Look after yourself, Mr Kell.’

  51

  The man Shahid knew as ‘Kris’ had given him a strip of sleeping pills to use on the nights leading up to the operation. Shahid had taken only one, on the final evening, when prayer had failed him and he could not shake off the images of Rosie in his bed, her nakedness and her touch somehow more real to him, the memories richer and more shameful, than anything he might do the following day.

  He woke up later than he had expected, feeling no sense of nervousness or agitation, only the melancholy yearning for Rosie that had plagued him for the past several days. He felt a determination to carry out his duty with professionalism and courage so that he would be remembered for all time as a brave warrior of Islam who had chosen God over the woman he loved. Shahid ran a bath, then took the razor and carefully shaved his head, propping up the mirror behind the taps and repeatedly wiping it with a towel when the steam from the water fogged the glass.

  He dressed in jeans, desert boots, a T-shirt and denim jacket, sealed the poem he had written for Rosie in an envelope and left it on the low stool beside the bookshelf. The police would find it and give it to her. He did not want to risk the poem getting lost in the post. It was important that Rosie read it so that she could finally understand why he had acted as he had acted, why he had not spoken to her since the night when she had stayed in his bed, why he was fixed on the path of martyrdom. He was sure that she would love him after this day because she would see that he was a great warrior. She would love him because he had realized that the cause, and the strength of his beliefs, were larger than the sanctity of his own life, larger than the lives of others. He was sure that she would respect him and come to see that there had been no choice for Shahid Khan other than to help to restore Europe to the age of the Prophet, to a time when life was pure, when the family was paramount, before the politics of greed, the wars prosecuted by the West, poisoned the earth. It was a beautiful idea. It was sublime. He had tried to express this idea in the poem. Rosie would read it and then she would understand.

  Kris came in the van at two o’clock. Shahid was waiting for him outside the takeaway at the entrance to Meadow Close. He realized that it would be the last time he would ever see this place. Kris said that he had rented the van for two days after answering an advertisement in the local paper, paid cash in hand so there was no trace back to him, no danger of numberplate recognition on a stolen vehicle. It was already a very hot day and he joked that this was good for Shahid.

  ‘More people on the beach, more people on the pier. Sitting ducks, man.’

  Kris said that Jalal had been right to wait until the early evening. That was when the pier would be most crowded, when Shahid could do the most damage. That was how he could send out the loudest message to all corners of the earth. He would be a hero. Shahid told Kris that he did not think of the operation in terms of ‘damage’. He thought of it in terms of ‘cleansing’. Kris said that he understood this and slapped him on the back. Then they both climbed into the back of the van so that Shahid could take a look at the weapons.

  There was a Glock 40 pistol with a spare magazine. Kris demonstrated to Shahid what he already knew: that the Glock held eighteen rounds in each clip and that the empty clip could be dropped by pushing the release at the side of the grip. Shahid had fired an identical weapon in Syria.

  Next Kris showed him the AK-47. It was fully automatic and there were four separate magazines, each with thirty rounds. Kris had brought a small backpack with him containing the spare magazines, as well as two hand grenades with a simple pin release.

  ‘In case things go wrong,’ he said.

  ‘They’re not going to go wrong,’ Shahid replied.

  52

  There was a train leaving for Brighton at two thirty. Kell jogged to the platform, boarding moments before the train pulled away from the station.

  The train was not busy. He found a deserted section between two carriages and locked himself inside a toilet. He opened the rucksack and took out the Sig Sauer. Quest had provided two magazines, but no belt holster with which Kell could have concealed the weapon under his jacket. Kell was oddly grateful for the oversight. It was a hot day. He removed the jacket, wrapped it around the weapon and placed it back inside the rucksack.

  There was unreliable wi-fi but a decent 3G signal on the train. Kell returned to the carriage, took a seat and typed Khan’s address into Google Earth. Rottingdean appeared to be a small village to the east of Brighton. A pin dropped on Meadow Close, a closed circle of suburban houses no more than a mile from the sea. The Close was surrounded on three sides by fields, to the north by more housing. There was a playground and two tennis courts to the south of the property.

  Kell then typed ‘Asda’ into the Search bar and was directed to the twenty-four-hour superstore at Brighton Marina. The store was located beside a complex of upmarket apartments backing on to a marina. There was a large car park to the west, a low white cliff to the north. A dual carriageway ran east to west along the top of the cliff, connecting Rottingdean to Brighton along a coastal road. It would have taken Khan less than half an hour to walk to work cross-country; only five or ten minutes by car or bus.

  The train passed through Gatwick Airport. Hordes of pale-faced Brits with overweight suitcases were disembarking from a train on the opposite platform. Two young couples, tanned and chatting animatedly about a holiday in Ibiza, walked into Kell’s carriage and slumped down at a vacant table. One of the girls had dreadlocks and a birthmark across her shoulder. She soon fell asleep against the window. Kell watched her face as it rocked against the glass, fields flashing by, the darkness of tunnels. He bought a cheese sandwich and a Coke from a passing catering trolley and checked that he had enough cash to pay for the taxi in Brighton. He felt overwhelmingly underprepared for what he was about to face. Nothing had been planned in advance and he would have no support or back-up. Kell could spend the next twenty-four hours in Brighton and find nothing. He could go to the house in Rottingdean and find Shahid Khan fast asleep in his bed.

  The train pulled into Brighton station. Kell watched the girl being pushed awake by her friends, heard them joke with her about coming down from three successive nights of clubbing. He picked up the rucksack, waited until the other passengers had disembarked, then stepped off the train.

  Bright sunlight streaming through the station. Families feeling the energy and pull of the seaside as they made their way along the platform. Kell took out his wallet and looked for his ticket. It was not there. He lifted out his credit cards and the money he had taken earlier in the day from an ATM, but there was no sign of it. He searched his trouser pockets but found nothing except a crushed box of matches and some loose change. He wondered if he had dropped the ticket on the platform or left it on the train. He could not even remember physically taking the ticket from the machine at Victoria station.

  The jacket. Of course. Kell stepped to the side of the platform and reached into the rucksack. He pulled his jacket free of the pistol, rolling it out in his hands inside the bag until he felt the gun drop on to the ammunition. The ticket was in the inside pocket. He put the jacket back in the rucksack, passed through the ticket barrier and walked towards the taxi rank.

  There was a long queue. Kell was obliged to wait for ten minutes, smoking as he listened to the squawk of seagulls and the perpetu
al automated drone of public announcements inside the station. Standing amid clumps of excited children, day-trippers from London shielded under hats and sun cream, Kell could not remember a feeling of such profound isolation. Even in the most solitary days of his career, in Kabul and Baghdad and Nairobi, he had always felt part of some larger structure. This day, though, had confirmed in Kell an almost infinite sense of separation from the everyday flow of life, beginning with his solitary laps of the pool, his visit to the clinic, and now concluding in the queue of a taxi rank in Brighton, surrounded by all the blameless excitement of an English summer crowd. He felt that he was heading towards some kind of personal reckoning: a confrontation not only with Shahid Khan, but with Minasian and Amelia and Marquand. With all of them. It was as though Kell wanted not only to prevent Khan from carrying out an attack, but also to prove something about his own courage and judgment. If he could stop Khan, he could silence them all; even Claire. It was a case of rattling the handle on the locked door until somebody had the good sense to let him in.

  ‘You’re up, mate.’

  A shaven-headed man had tapped Kell on the shoulder, pointing out the next car on the rank. Kell thanked him and walked towards the taxi, holding the rucksack in his arms like a sleeping child.

  ‘Can you take me to Rottingdean?’ he said, climbing into the back seat.

  ‘I can take you anywhere.’ said the driver, immediately reaching for a sat-nav. ‘Got an address?’

  53

  Meadow Close was twenty minutes away. The driver took the same coastal road that Kell had looked at on Google Earth less than an hour earlier, pointing out the Asda Superstore at Brighton Marina as they passed along the top of the cliff. At the entrance to the Close, Kell instructed him to pull over and park on a quiet street beside a shuttered Chinese takeaway. There was a Renault Clio with a dent in the door parked outside the restaurant, a white van pulling away into traffic. Kell handed the driver a twenty-pound note and asked him to wait.