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

by Charles Cumming

Kell was swallowing a mouthful of peanuts and felt his throat go dry. After Brighton, Amelia had asked for a detailed account of his relationship with Minasian. Kell had obliged her. He had not anticipated that she would circulate the report to the Head of Station in Warsaw.

  ‘Not bad,’ he said.

  Stenbeck frowned, as if Kell was trying to draw him into a confrontation which he had no interest in joining.

  ‘I’m just intrigued,’ he said.

  ‘Sure.’

  There was an awkward silence. Kell filled it by walking outside. Clouds had gathered over the old town. It was threatening rain.

  ‘So where did he go?’ Stenbeck asked, joining Kell on the balcony.

  ‘I have no idea.’

  Kell felt the lie as no more than a necessary protection against Amelia’s snooping.

  ‘None? You don’t know where he went? Nothing about meeting his father-in-law? Nothing about seeing Andrei Eremenko?’

  It had been a long time since Kell had been outmanoeuvred in a conversation. What did Stenbeck know? Had he heard the exchanges with Minasian and lied about the microphones?

  ‘Why do you ask?’ he asked.

  ‘Because we’ve had some information.’

  ‘What kind of information?’ Kell inhaled on the cigarette and looked up at the darkening sky.

  ‘Minasian thinks he’s meeting his father-in-law tonight. Here in Warsaw. Did he mention that?’

  Kell found himself saying: ‘No. All he told me is that Eremenko has offered him a job.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not true.’

  ‘In what way is it not true?’

  ‘Eremenko is in London. We had a confirmed sighting at Claridge’s within the last forty-five minutes. The man he has sent to meet Minasian in Warsaw intends to kill him.’

  64

  Kell knew that he was holding a man’s life in his hands. If he revealed that Minasian was going to the bridge to meet Eremenko, Stenbeck could save him. If he did not, Minasian would be killed.

  ‘Why does Eremenko want to get rid of him?’

  Stenbeck shrugged. ‘More boyfriends. More fucking around. He was being watched twenty-four seven, they realized he was still cheating on Svetlana. Alex can’t keep it in his trousers. The father-in-law has had enough.’

  ‘And he was happy to leave the Service.’

  It was a piece of information Kell had not yet divulged. Stenbeck reacted with surprise. ‘He told you that?’

  Kell nodded.

  ‘So Minasian is no more use to him.’ Stenbeck understood how Russian elites functioned. ‘Eremenko’s power base is undermined. He wants Minasian out of the picture before he gets a chance to embarrass him in the private sector. Easier to screw around when you’re not answerable to the SVR.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Kell dropped the cigarette and kicked the butt towards the edge of the balcony. He was asking himself the same question, again and again. Do I protect the man who took Rachel from me? Or do I lie and let him meet his fate?

  ‘Where did this intel come from?’

  Stenbeck explained that Carnelian had been listening to Eremenko’s conversations on behalf of a Russian client. Jimmy Marquand had been digging around, looking to tie Eremenko to the Riedle shooting. Carnelian had handed him what they knew.

  ‘So what are you planning to do?’ Kell asked.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you. The Service. Amelia. What does she want to do about Minasian?’

  ‘She thinks that you should decide,’ Stenbeck replied.

  ‘She said that?’

  Stenbeck nodded. Kell picked up the first edition of Brighton Rock and opened it to the first page:

  Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.

  ‘She doesn’t care, one way or the other?’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Stenbeck replied.

  Kell felt that he was being tested; that Amelia had eyes and ears in the hotel suite and was somehow watching his every move.

  ‘I have no way of contacting Minasian,’ he said. ‘And we can’t exactly ring up Svetlana.’

  ‘No.’

  In that moment, he made the decision to save Minasian’s life. Amelia believed that Kell was a decent man. He did not want to let her down.

  ‘All I know is that he’s meeting Eremenko on a bridge somewhere this evening.’

  In some ways it felt like an act of surrender. Kell wished that he possessed the ruthlessness to abandon Minasian to his fate. An eye for an eye. But he knew that he would not be able to live with such an act on his conscience.

  ‘He told you that?’ Stenbeck was suddenly jolted out of his mood of indifference. ‘A bridge? Where?’

  ‘The Gdansk Bridge,’ Kell replied.

  Stenbeck appeared to know the location. ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’

  ‘You didn’t ask.’

  Stenbeck allowed the moment to pass.

  ‘What time?’ he said.

  ‘Six o’clock.’

  Stenbeck shook his head. ‘He told you that as well?’

  He returned to the corner of the bed and sat down, deep in thought.

  ‘There is, of course, another theory,’ he said, after a long period of contemplation.

  ‘And what’s that?’ Kell asked.

  ‘That it’s a trap. That they have no intention of killing Alexander Minasian. That the real target of the operation is you.’

  65

  ‘You’d better explain that one to me.’ Kell felt a sense of frustration that was all too familiar. ‘Perhaps there are things you know that I don’t.’

  Stenbeck began to work from memory. Kell was impressed by how much of the detail of his written report he had absorbed.

  ‘When you met Minasian in London, the second time. After Westfield. You drove north, along the A40. Correct?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘But it was Minasian who suggested Warsaw? He was the one who sowed that idea in your mind, not the other way around?’

  ‘Also correct.’

  ‘He said that he was going to be here this afternoon. July twenty-fourth. He was very precise about this. A window of opportunity, away from prying eyes, for only two or three hours.’

  ‘Nothing unusual about that,’ Kell replied. ‘Minasian knows his own schedule, he knew when he would and wouldn’t have the opportunity to see me.’

  Stenbeck nodded. ‘Of course. And as an intelligence officer himself, he knew that your first order of business would be setting the next meet.’

  ‘What’s your point?’ Kell asked.

  ‘I’m saying that he came prepared. He wanted to meet you here. He wanted to see you, to act like you were the hero, to be told that he was free of his obligation to the Service. But he had another agenda. He wants to walk you into the arms of the men he and Eremenko have hired to kill you.’

  Kell sat in an armchair positioned between the bed and the window. He was not at all convinced by what Stenbeck was telling him.

  ‘You’re saying that Minasian and Eremenko are working in tandem? That both of them – for different reasons – want me out of the picture?’

  ‘I’m saying that it’s a possibility. Why else did he tell you about the Gdansk Bridge? Why be so specific? If information is power, why is he handing that power to somebody who has no need for it? Why did he feel it was necessary to tell you what he was doing and where he was going this evening? Unless he wanted you to be there?’

  Kell tried to interrupt but Stenbeck wasn’t done.

  ‘What happened with the BlackBerry?’ he said. ‘You gave Minasian a phone at the first meeting, right? Used it only once, to confirm today’s meeting?’

  Kell nodded. He knew the tail that Stenbeck was chasing.

  ‘Did he give it back to you or did you ask for it?’

  ‘I didn’t ask for it.’ Kell reached into the drawer and removed the BlackBerry. It was the first time that he had begun to doubt his own mind. ‘He gave it back to me. He want
ed to give it back.’

  Stenbeck leaned backwards with a look of quiet triumph on his face, as though his theory could now brook no argument. Kell worked through the logic. Eremenko knew that he was under surveillance by Carnelian. He had sworn revenge against his son-in-law in order to mislead SIS. What had been heard on the tapes had been misinterpreted by Marquand. A man had been sent to Warsaw not to kill Minasian, but to kill Kell.

  ‘But why?’ Kell asked. ‘Minasian knows where I live. Eremenko could have had me taken out at any moment in the last six weeks. I’m not exactly difficult to find.’

  ‘Not on British soil,’ Stenbeck replied instantly. ‘That way he starts a war. They do it here, it’s an accident. Plausible deniability. Minasian is playing on your decency. He knows that you won’t be cruel enough to let him die. You’ll have to be the hero. You’ll have to come and save him.’ Kell was astonished by Stenbeck’s frankness. ‘Why else did he give you back the phone? He knows that you have no way of contacting him now. You’ll have to go to the bridge to warn him in person. That’s when you get killed.’

  ‘Not if you come with me,’ Kell replied. ‘Not if we take a team down there, get in ahead of him, find out who we’re dealing with.’

  Stenbeck reacted with astonishment.

  ‘Are you serious? You think London would sign that off? I’m not putting my people in the line of fire to protect an SVR officer who may or may not be trying to assassinate one of my colleagues. Alexander Minasian is not your responsibility.’

  ‘He saved lives, Max. Hundreds of lives. Eremenko is trying to kill him because he’s ashamed of his son-in-law’s sexuality. It’s that simple. Power and homophobia, with a dash of the psychopath for good measure. Believe me. This is not a secret plot. I am not the target. This is Eremenko taking Minasian out of the equation because it’s his will.’

  ‘I’m afraid I profoundly disagree.’

  Kell stood up. ‘Then I guess I’m on my own.’

  66

  They came to an arrangement.

  Stenbeck knew that it was pointless trying to prevent Kell from contacting Minasian. Warsaw Station would have to help him, with or without clearance from London.

  ‘Minasian doesn’t want to kill me,’ Kell insisted.

  They were still in the suite, Kell finishing off the last of the peanuts.

  ‘That may well be the case,’ Stenbeck told him. ‘But it’s my responsibility to think otherwise. I don’t want to be the man who lost Thomas Kell to an SVR trap.’

  He took out a map of Warsaw and showed Kell the location of the Gdansk Bridge. It was no more than a ten-minute walk from the Regina, north along the river. There were tram stops on the bridge at both ends and a walkway for pedestrians and cyclists running along the southern face, overlooking old Warsaw and the Vistula River. Stenbeck explained that there was a ramp at the far end of the bridge, leading down towards the Warsaw Zoo.

  Both men anticipated that Minasian would most likely be waiting at one of the two tram stops or at a point somewhere on the walkway overlooking the river. If Eremenko planned to have him killed, the attack could occur in several different ways: a gunman could emerge from a passing tram; conceal himself among the waiting passengers; or approach Minasian on the walkway and shoot him in plain sight. If, on the other hand, the meeting was a trap, Minasian might try to lure Kell off the bridge, to get him into a vehicle or to take him into the more secluded, forested areas on the eastern side of the river. A gunman could be waiting at a pre-arranged location. Kell’s murder would be made to look like an act of petty crime, rather than a professional hit. Kell continued to insist that he was in no danger, but Stenbeck refused to believe him. To avoid giving any further fuel to his theory, Kell did not tell him that Minasian had confessed to culpability in Rachel’s death.

  It was almost half past five. There were only thirty minutes until the Russian was due on the bridge. Stenbeck left the suite for a moment. He returned carrying a small canvas bag. He closed the door behind him and walked up to Kell. He reached into the bag and pulled out a gun.

  ‘Take this,’ he said. ‘Just in case.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I believe you’re familiar with the brand.’

  The gun was identical to the one Kell had used in Brighton.

  ‘All too familiar,’ Kell replied, forcing a smile.

  This time there was a belt holster for the weapon that Kell hooked on to his trousers. Stenbeck had arranged to put a driver on the road outside the zoo. Stenbeck himself would follow Kell at a discreet distance, watching for threats and variables as he approached the first tram stop on the western side of the river. With the gun concealed by his jacket, Kell walked out of the Regina ahead of Stenbeck at exactly 5.40 p.m., moving east towards the river.

  The streets were crowded with pedestrians walking around the restored medieval city. Watching them, Kell had no idea if he was alone or operating under a blanket of SVR surveillance. There was no way of knowing and no time to check. He passed a bronze sculpture of Marie Curie and lit a cigarette. Dogs were barking on leads and couples holding hands in the evening sunlight. There was a small park set back from the highway that ran along the shore of the Vistula River. Adults and children were cooling their bare feet in the waters of a small lake, columns of water shooting up in jets from a fountain. Kell thought of Brighton and the innocent summer day smashed by the hate of Shahid Khan. He could see the Gdansk Bridge in the distance, now just a few hundred metres away. He thought of Rosie and wondered what had become of her.

  His phone rang. It was Stenbeck.

  ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘Fine,’ Kell told him. ‘Anyone on me?’

  ‘Hard to tell.’

  For the first time, Kell felt a sense of trepidation. He wondered if he was being wilfully naive; if his desire to save Minasian was an act of sentimental weakness that the Russian had played upon as easily as he had manipulated the hapless Bernhard Riedle. Taking out another cigarette, Kell began to smoke, looking out across the river to the eastern side, at the undeveloped banks of forest and makeshift urban beaches, the sand dotted with sunbathers. Was this where Minasian planned to take him? What was waiting for him on the other side of the bridge?

  ‘Fucking hot,’ said Stenbeck.

  ‘I noticed. Any sign of our man?’

  ‘None.’

  Kell hung up and continued towards the bridge. He entered the station at five minutes to six. Cars were passing on the carriageway overhead. Beneath the bridge, traffic was moving in both directions along the highway that skirted the river. There were only half a dozen passengers waiting for trams on either side of the platform. The tramlines disappeared to the east beneath a canopy of green steel girders that formed a tunnel across the Vistula. At the far end of the tracks, in a vanishing point of gleaming steel, Kell could see a cone of bright yellow sunlight.

  He called Stenbeck.

  ‘No sign of Minasian,’ he said. ‘I’m going to the other side.’

  ‘You’ll be alone as you cross,’ Stenbeck told him.

  Kell passed a corkscrew concrete staircase and joined the walkway running along the southern side of the bridge. He was aware of two women following him and a cyclist coming fast in the opposite direction. The walkway was separated from the tramlines by a screen of girders, the green steel plates marked with graffiti, the spaces between them grown thick with weeds and cobwebs. There was no way of leaving the walkway without climbing through on to the tracks or jumping into the river on the other side. Kell was caged in. He reached for the butt of the gun.

  The cyclist passed him, a flash of helmet and Lycra. Kell turned to see that the two women had stopped a third of the way across the bridge, seemingly to look at the river. The only other person he could see was Stenbeck, a few metres behind them. Kell was now halfway across the bridge. He tossed the cigarette down into the water and quickened his pace. A bell in the old city chimed six o’clock.

  He reached the tram stop on the east
ern side. It was deserted save for a man standing on the far side of the platform. He was wearing a white polo shirt and leaning against a concrete pillar. Minasian.

  ‘Alexander.’

  Minasian looked up. Kell knew straight away, from the look on his face, that Stenbeck had been wrong. Minasian was not expecting to see him.

  ‘Tom? What are you doing here?’ He was shouting across the tramlines. ‘Andrei will see you. He will see us.’

  Kell had not yet released the gun. Minasian glanced down and saw that Kell was armed.

  ‘Andrei isn’t coming,’ Kell called back. They were no more than twenty feet away from each other, their voices almost drowned out by the noise of the traffic passing overhead.

  ‘What do you mean he’s not coming? Why did you follow me here? You said it was over. Why did you come?’

  To Kell’s astonishment, he saw that Minasian looked frightened.

  ‘Andrei wants you dead,’ he said, walking across the tramlines so that he came within a few feet of the Russian. ‘He’s not even in Warsaw. He was seen two hours ago in the lobby of Claridge’s.’

  Minasian shook his head. ‘That is not true,’ he said, trying to force a smile that would disguise his disbelief. ‘I had a message from Andrei twenty minutes ago. He is coming here at any moment. He is on the next tram.’

  Kell was close enough now to reach out and to touch Minasian’s arm. ‘Our Station has intelligence that this meeting was set up in order to kill you. You need to come with me. You are not safe.’

  ‘This is a trap,’ Minasian replied, stepping back to break Kell’s hold on him. ‘A clumsy trap. You blame me for Rachel, you are reacting impulsively.’

  ‘This is not about Rachel. I promise. Whoever gets off that tram is most likely the same person who murdered Bernhard. But this time he will have come for you.’

  ‘You are insane to say this!’ Minasian glanced to his left. As if sent to confirm a prophecy, a tram was gliding in from the east. Minasian looked utterly alone.

  ‘It’s over,’ Kell said. ‘It’s over. If you want to be safe, Alexander, you must come with me. Your life is in danger.’