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

by Charles Cumming

‘I believe this is yours.’

  ‘Keep it,’ Kell told him.

  ‘I would rather not.’ Minasian looked at the phone as if it was something he wanted to throw into a bin. ‘I do not trust them.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  Kell removed the battery from the BlackBerry and placed it in a drawer beside the bed. It seemed a good opportunity to move the conversation into more fruitful territory. He longed for a cigarette and had no compunction about pulling back the curtains and sliding open the door on to the balcony. Let Stenbeck’s headphoned wonks live with the street noise and the birdsong. He needed nicotine and fresh air. Besides, what Kell now wanted to discuss with Minasian was his own private business. It had nothing to do with Stenbeck or Amelia.

  ‘You will smoke?’ Minasian asked.

  ‘Yeah. Want one?’

  Minasian shook his head. He took another long swig of water. Kell watched his Adam’s apple moving up and down, like a barometer of his concealed anxiety. The Russian stood up and settled in a chair closer to the open door. Kell stood outside in the shade provided by a high wall. It was still fiercely hot. He lit a cigarette and took the smoke deep into his lungs.

  ‘So about that,’ he said.

  ‘About what, please?’ Minasian asked.

  ‘Patience. Answers. Rachel. You were going to tell me.’

  ‘Yes.’ Minasian appeared to be overcome by regret. He shook his head slowly and looked at the ground. ‘I was going to tell you about that.’

  61

  The personal and business affairs of Andrei Eremenko had been under investigation by Carnelian Solutions for nineteen months. Carnelian styled itself as a ‘global consultancy’ offering ‘political and business risk assessments’, ‘investigative due diligence’, ‘on-the-ground client security and protection’, as well as ‘in-depth analysis of trends in global finance and economics’. More than half of its 125-strong workforce had backgrounds with national intelligence services. One such employee was a former SIS officer named Jane Shilling who had retired from the Service nine years earlier to join the board at Carnelian on a salary three times greater than that which she had enjoyed at Vauxhall Cross. A friend of Amelia Levene, and a former girlfriend of Jimmy Marquand, Shilling had run the clandestine investigation into Eremenko’s operations on behalf of a wealthy Russian client with a grudge as limitless as his bank balance.

  In the aftermath of the Riedle shooting, Amelia had instructed Marquand to make ‘delicate inquiries’ into the relationship between Eremenko and his son-in-law. Marquand decided to make Shilling his first port of call. His former lover was now married and wary that ‘Melvyn’ was trying to reignite a romantic fire that, for her, had been extinguished more than a decade earlier. But she agreed to meet Marquand for lunch at Sheekey’s on condition that he treated whatever she might tell him in the strictest confidence and ‘pass no judgment on our methods’.

  ‘What methods are those?’ Marquand had asked, trying to separate a razor clam from its shell.

  It transpired that, with the help of a former officer in the Shin Bet, Carnelian had control of three of Eremenko’s five mobile phones and had successfully planted listening devices in his homes in London, Verbier and New York.

  ‘We couldn’t manage Moscow,’ she confessed. ‘Tried. Too risky.’

  Shilling had subsequently handed Marquand a file that demonstrated Eremenko’s culpability in the Riedle shooting to a 90 per cent degree of proof. Carnelian had hacked text messages and voicemail recordings in which Eremenko expressed his anger with Minasian for his relationship with Riedle, as well as his concern that the affair, if discovered, would end his son-in-law’s career with the SVR. Carnelian had also traced two payments of £50,000 to the bank account of a known associate of the Turkish hitman suspected of carrying out the Riedle assassination. Shilling had believed that this would mark the end of her interaction with Marquand, but a subsequent conversation, picked up by microphones placed in Eremenko’s London office, caused her to summon him to a second meeting three weeks later.

  They met in a branch of Itsu on Notting Hill Gate.

  ‘What’s up?’ Marquand asked as he sat down. Plates of sushi and edamame beans passed their table on a help-yourself conveyor belt. ‘You sounded worried on the phone.’

  ‘It’s Minasian,’ she replied. ‘Eremenko has given the order. Warsaw. Tonight. They’re going to kill him.’

  62

  Kell rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt and took another drag on the cigarette. Minasian was sitting in the hardbacked chair on the other side of the sliding doors, propped forward like a man in a hospital expecting to hear bad news. His elbows were on his knees and he was staring at the ground. Kell felt that Minasian was too ashamed to look at him.

  ‘I did not tell you the truth about Istanbul,’ he said.

  ‘Go on.’ Kell knew, in the way that a person can sense themselves becoming sick, that nothing good was going to come of what Minasian was about to tell him.

  ‘The person who killed Rachel Wallinger was French. His name was Sebastien Gachon. He had many personalities, many pseudonyms. He operated on that occasion using the name Eric Cauques. Gachon was also responsible for the murder of our agent, Cecilia Sandor, and her boyfriend, Luka Zigic. The orders to remove all of them came from Moscow.’

  Kell choked on the word ‘remove’ but said nothing. Sandor had been Paul Wallinger’s lover, an SVR honeytrap orchestrated by Minasian. Kell could see a sheen of sweat on Minasian’s forehead and on the back of his neck. He had not yet looked up.

  ‘Where is Gachon now?’ Kell asked.

  At last Minasian made eye contact.

  ‘Dead,’ he said.

  ‘How?’ To Kell’s surprise he felt relief rather than anger that he would not have a chance to confront Gachon face to face. He was a hired killer; it was enough that he was dead. The person that mattered was in Moscow. That was the name he wanted.

  ‘Car crash,’ Minasian replied. ‘Outside Lyons.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Six months ago.’

  ‘Moscow arranged it?’

  ‘It was an accident.’

  Kell walked past Minasian, picked up a notepad and pen from the suite and returned to the balcony. He stubbed out his cigarette.

  ‘How are you spelling the surnames?’

  Minasian recited the letters – G A C H O N – and did the same for ‘Cauques’. Kell wrote them down and put the notepad in his back pocket. He would have Elsa run the names and produce a file. He wanted to see the face of the man who had shot Rachel. He wanted to know with absolute certainty that he was dead.

  ‘Anybody killed with him?’ he asked. ‘Anybody else in the car?’

  Minasian shook his head. Kell took out a second cigarette and lit it.

  ‘Who gave the order in Moscow?’

  Minasian walked out on to the balcony.

  ‘May I have one?’ he asked nervously, indicating the packet of Winston Lights in Kell’s hand. Kell closed the door, shutting out the last of the microphones. The suite was the only room on the top floor in this section of the hotel and their conversation could not be overheard.

  ‘Sure.’

  Kell passed Minasian a cigarette and lit it for him with Amelia’s gold lighter. There were two iron chairs on the balcony. Minasian sat in the closest of them, putting on a pair of sunglasses, as if trying to protect himself not from the light but from Kell.

  ‘The order was given by my immediate superior. He has since been replaced. He took the blame for the failure of the Kleckner operation.’

  ‘He took the blame rather than you?’

  Minasian nodded. ‘It was thought that he had acted rashly. That he was too concerned to keep the Kleckner product flowing, at any cost. He became paranoid. His methods became unnecessarily violent.’

  ‘That’s how you would describe the death of this young woman?’ Kell was appalled that Minasian would so casually refer to Rachel’s murder. ‘“Unnecessary violence”?�
�

  Minasian held up his hands. ‘Forgive me, Tom. My use of English was incorrect.’

  ‘Take off your sunglasses.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘I don’t like talking to people when I can’t see their eyes. Especially yours. I find it difficult to know whether they’re telling me the truth.’

  Reluctantly, and with a look of offended pride, Minasian removed the glasses and hooked them on to his shirt.

  ‘I am trying to tell you the truth,’ he said.

  ‘Trying.’ Kell turned the word over, exhaling a funnel of smoke as he studied Minasian.

  ‘What was the name of your superior?’

  There was a fractional hesitation before the Russian said: ‘It does not matter.’

  ‘It matters to me.’

  ‘He is still with the Service. It will be difficult to find him.’

  ‘Why? Because you’re leaving the SVR?’

  Minasian’s composure cracked. ‘How did you know this?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Kell ground out the cigarette. ‘You’ve lost faith in what we do. You’re meeting your father-in-law on neutral ground this evening. He’s made you an offer, hasn’t he?’

  Minasian did not bother concealing this. ‘You see a lot, Tom,’ he replied. ‘Yes. I have decided to move on. A new career.’

  ‘So what did you mean when you said that you hadn’t told me the truth about Istanbul? Was there somebody else involved? Why aren’t you giving me more details? What is it that I still don’t know?’

  Minasian took his time. He looked like a man carrying a terrible secret. Kell did not believe that he was speaking to someone who had undergone a profound change in temperament; he still knew that the Russian was capable of layered subterfuge and chameleonic shifts in personality. Nevertheless, in these moments Minasian’s discomfort seemed precise and authentic. He did not want to have to tell Kell what he was about to tell him.

  ‘I lied to you at your apartment in London,’ he said. ‘I was shocked by what had happened to Bernhard. I was angry with you and I was grieving. I did love him, whatever you may think or whatever Bernhard may have told you. I did not always treat him well, but I did not set out to destroy him.’

  ‘What you felt for each other is private. It’s none of my business,’ Kell replied.

  ‘But you loved Rachel?’

  ‘Yes I did.’ Kell wondered at the good sense of revealing what he was about to say, but something in him wanted Minasian to know how he felt. ‘I got over it. I hardly had a chance to know her. It was the sense of what had been wasted – the potential in her. That was what was taken away. Not just from me, but from her family, her friends.’

  ‘I could have stopped it.’

  Kell took a sharp breath.

  ‘There was a communication with Moscow. My superior gave the order. He instructed me to engage Gachon. I did this. I am very sorry, Tom. I was angry with you because of the humiliation in Odessa. Your people had injured me and you had taken Kleckner. I wanted to strike back at you. I could have stopped him, I could have made out that I never received the communication. I could have told Moscow what others said later, after it was too late. That the murder of this woman – of Rachel Wallinger – was senseless and wrong. But I did not do that. There is blood on my hands. I lied to you.’

  A plane was flying high overhead, east to west in the cloudless sky. Kell looked up and understood why Minasian had confessed. It was an act of vengeance, a means of regaining control over him after a long period of humiliation. He could walk out of the room knowing that Kell was powerless against him. Minasian’s suffering, his apparent mood of anxiety, of mournful resignation, was a façade. He was drawing sadistic satisfaction from the impact of his words, even as he feigned remorse.

  Kell opened the sliding door and pulled back the curtain. He turned to face Minasian.

  ‘Go,’ he said, indicating the door of the suite.

  ‘Tom, please.’

  Kell had known for a long time that Minasian had been responsible for Rachel’s death. He had needed to think otherwise in order to recruit him, to run him, but his instincts had been right all along.

  ‘Our business is concluded,’ he said.

  Minasian stood up. He walked towards Kell, seizing him by the arms.

  ‘I need to know that you forgive me.’

  ‘No you don’t.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  Kell removed his hands, feeling the strength in Minasian’s arms. ‘You know what you’re doing. You know what you’ve done. We both understand that.’

  Minasian took a step back.

  ‘I can see that it is pointless trying to persuade you,’ he said, going into the suite. Kell followed him, saying nothing. He felt an impotent rage at his failure to protect Rachel, at the futility of his lust for vengeance, even at his failure physically to attack Minasian, to fight him. In this last moment between them, all of it felt meaningless. Kell’s humiliation, his anger at Gachon, at Amelia, at Moscow – none of it was of any importance when set against the fact that Rachel was lost.

  ‘We have said all that we will ever say to one another.’

  Kell reached for the door. Bowing his head, the Russian walked out into the corridor.

  ‘I am truly sorry,’ he said, turning back to face him. ‘Whatever you may think, whatever you may believe. What I did was wrong and I regret it deeply.’

  ‘Goodbye, Alexander,’ Kell said, and closed the door.

  63

  Kell went back on to the balcony and sat in the hot sun. In a moment of extraordinary clarity, he knew that his career as a spy had come to an end. He wanted nothing more to do with it. Far from a desire to go after Minasian, Kell felt a profound empathy with the words he had spoken just a few minutes earlier. The Russian had articulated the doubt with which Kell had wrestled for too long. Spying was a sickness that had hollowed him out. It had cost Kell his marriage; it had cost Rachel her life. How had Minasian put it? ‘The constant process of lying, of subterfuge, of concealment and second-guess, is exhausting. It is bad for the soul.’ Whether or not he had been speaking from the heart was immaterial. It no longer mattered to Kell whether or not Minasian had been telling the truth. What he had said was indisputable. The profession they had chosen had left both of them broken and compromised and alone.

  There was a loud knock on the door. Kell walked back into the suite. Max Stenbeck was standing in the corridor. He was a rotund man, bespectacled and prematurely bald. Kell did not know him well enough to determine if the weary look on his face indicated confusion or annoyance.

  ‘What the hell happened?’ he said.

  ‘Minasian left.’

  ‘So I see.’

  Kell ushered him inside. ‘You didn’t hear our conversation?’

  ‘None of it.’ Stenbeck pulled the sliding door on the balcony until it clicked shut. ‘None of the mikes worked. Heard him come in. Heard you tell him that the British government couldn’t thank him enough for Brighton, blah blah blah – then nothing. Fucking kit.’

  Kell was not surprised; he had known technical failures of this kind several times before in his career. He took out his iPhone and saw that Stenbeck had sent him three text messages during the meeting with Minasian, each of them warning him that their conversation was not being picked up.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, indicating the phone. ‘Only just saw these.’

  Stenbeck perched on the same corner of the bed that Minasian had briefly made his own. He did not test the springs.

  ‘I was sitting with Tomasz thinking I’ve got another Philby–Elliott on my hands.’ Stenbeck was referring to the notorious SIS recording of Kim Philby’s confession to his SIS counterpart, Nicholas Elliott, which was drowned out by the sound of Beirut traffic. ‘We literally had no idea what was going on in here.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Kell told him. ‘He didn’t say anything incendiary.’

  ‘How long ago did he leave?’

  �
�About ten minutes. I thought you had a car outside?’

  ‘They didn’t see him go,’ Stenbeck confessed. ‘Minasian must have used a side entrance.’

  ‘Must have.’

  Kell was hungry and took a packet of peanuts from a tray above the minibar. He offered Stenbeck a drink.

  ‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘So what happened?’

  Kell knew that he could carry off an attitude of gnomic indifference and that Stenbeck wouldn’t confront him about it. He was Amelia’s newly anointed saint: the hero of Brighton, the man who had brought down Ryan Kleckner. He was untouchable.

  ‘We talked,’ he said, opening the peanuts. ‘We decided to end our relationship. I thanked him for Brighton. He thanked me for letting him go.’

  ‘That was it?’

  ‘That was it.’

  Kell found that he could hardly summon the energy to lie.

  ‘What about when you went on to the balcony?’

  ‘How do you know we went out there if the microphones weren’t working?’

  It was a first indication that Stenbeck was suspicious of him. Kell assumed that Amelia had planted the seed of doubt. Keep an eye on Tom. He has issues with Minasian. Personal issues. Stenbeck looked over his glasses at the sliding door and gave a cool reply.

  ‘Because that was open when I came in. Because you like to smoke. And because I gave up on the tech, opened the window to get some air, heard you talking outside your room, but couldn’t make out what you were saying.’

  Kell smiled. He liked Stenbeck. He was a fellow traveller, not a company man like Marquand. He had the look of someone who loved the game, who had entered it for the right reasons. Kell wondered if he should just tell him everything – about Gachon, about Minasian’s decision to green-light the hit on Rachel – but he couldn’t be bothered to deal with the blowback. It was over. The past was a foreign country.

  ‘He gave me a present,’ he said, picking up the copy of Brighton Rock. ‘American. First edition.’

  ‘In return for The Whitsun Weddings?’