A Colder War

by Charles Cumming

  The conversation allowed Kell the chance to take Kleckner’s political temperature, though he never strayed far from established State Department lines. Erdogan, in Kleckner’s view, “wants his head on coins, his face on banknotes. Guy wants streets named after him, to out-Ataturk Ataturk.” This was not exactly news; indeed, it was a view shared by Kell and most of his former colleagues at SIS. Kell felt that Rachel made the most interesting contribution to the conversation.

  “Don’t you think the Ataturk cult is sort of fatal to Turkey?” she said, looking to Taylor first, her eyes level with his sweat-soaked shirt. “I think it stops them moving forward, thinking in fresh ways. He’s held in such reverence, and on the one hand that’s a wonderful thing, because he’s a sort of a Mandela figure here, the spiritual leader of the nation. But it’s maybe time to move on? They can’t seem to move out from behind the shadow of this immense father figure. They’re like children in that sense.”

  Taylor was closer in age to Kell and observably flattened by champagne and vodka. His washed-out eyes stared at Rachel’s, trying, without evident success, to engage his brain sufficiently to respond to what she had said. Kleckner, who had been drinking at twice Taylor’s rate, had no such problem.

  “I know what you mean,” he said, with a self-assurance that was almost patronizing. “Like a kind of North Korean brainwashing. They’re comforted by him. They worship him. They walk into a post office and his picture is on the wall. Nobody wants to betray that legacy. Nobody wants to question it or criticize him and maybe then move up to the next gear.”

  “Except fuckin’ Erdogan,” Taylor muttered, slugging another mouthful of Laurent-Perrier. He twisted his neck in the direction of the toilets, as though weighing up the tactical and strategic consequences of making a break for the bathroom. There were heavy crowds between the sofa and the doors. He appeared to decide against it and swiveled back to make a beady eye contact with Kell. “What about you, Tom?”

  “We’re all defined and held back by national myths,” Kell replied. Ordinarily he would have ducked the question, but the competitor in him wanted to outgun Kleckner. “The Russians have the Rodina. Everything flows from that concept. The Motherland, a near-masochistic willingness to subordinate to a strong leader.”

  “Yeah, talk about not being able to fucking move on,” Taylor muttered. “Talk about sabotaging your own future.”

  Rachel smiled as Kell pressed ahead. “And the Americans have it, too. Land of the free. Home of the brave. The right to bear arms. Question those principles too strongly and you’ll be run out of town as a socialist.”

  “You got a problem with those principles, Tom?” Rachel asked. Kell relished her archness, but noticed that Kleckner was looking at both of them very intently.

  “Not at all. Why would I have a problem with freedom? Or bravery?” Taylor screwed his face up and shook his head, seeking solace in another mouthful of champagne. “I’m just trying to make the point that if a politician, in the American context, strays too far from the rights of the individual, if he or she appears to promote an idea of collective, rather than personal, responsibility, then they’re going to get hammered in the newspapers and hammered at the polls.”

  For a moment, it felt as though Kleckner was going to respond, but the American kept his counsel. Perhaps it was all getting a bit serious for a twenty-ninth birthday party. Jay-Z had started singing “Empire State of Mind” and a tanned blonde in a micromini had appeared at Kleckner’s side. Taylor finally made a move to the bathroom, allowing the girl to slip into his seat while keeping her hand firmly on Kleckner’s thigh. She whispered something in his ear, shooting Rachel a quick look of search and threat. Kell couldn’t tell if they were more than friends. More likely the blonde was just another Istanbul party girl who liked to drape herself around handsome American diplomats.

  “Another drink?” he asked Rachel, who looked as though she was regretting coming to the party.

  “Sure,” she replied, with a soft glance.

  Kell stood up and moved through the crowds to the bar. What to make of Kleckner? Kell remembered the line in Macbeth. There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face. Kleckner looked like a believer. If not a patriot, exactly, then certainly a young man possessed of a certain idealistic zeal. At that age, everybody wanted to make a difference. Would it matter to Ryan Kleckner how he made that difference, or would it simply be a question of influence for its own sake? Could such a person be selling Western secrets to Moscow, to Iran, to Beijing? Of course.

  Kell looked back in the direction of the sofa. He saw Kleckner’s gaze fastened onto Rachel’s, attentive and solicitous, the micromini blonde edged out by their body language, looking every bit the unwelcome guest as she perched on Taylor’s chair. Kell suddenly regretted sounding off about national myths. He regretted leaving to buy another round of drinks. He felt all of the separateness and the weight of his age in this place filled with youth and music and beauty. Too old for nightclubs, too young to stay at home.

  A space opened up at the bar. Kell angled into it, lodging a territorial elbow on the counter, but felt the pulse of his phone vibrating in his back pocket. He reached for it and answered a blocked call.

  “Tom? It’s Adam Haydock.”

  Kell could barely hear. He shouted at Haydock to wait and abandoned his place at the bar, pushing through the crowds to the exit. “Can you hear me now?”

  Kell wondered what was so important that it couldn’t wait until morning. “Sure,” he replied.

  “I thought I should tell you.” There was a conspiratorial edge to Adam’s voice.

  “Tell me what?”

  “Iannis Christidis is dead.”

  23

  Kell walked several meters away from the bar, down the quiet street.

  “Dead how?”

  “His body was spotted in the water by a local fisherman. They found his clothes, his wallet, on a beach near his home. Alcohol in his bloodstream off the charts.”

  “Drowned, then.”

  “Looks that way. Looks like suicide.”

  Kell’s instinct told him that Christidis had been killed on the orders of Jim Chater. Chater knew that Kell had got to him. He knew that Christidis had secrets to spill. The engineer who had worked on Wallinger’s plane—had most probably tampered with it—needed to be taken out of the equation.

  “He leave a note?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  Kell could hear the indistinct thump of the Bar Bleu music receding into the distance. A taxi drove past him, braked, then accelerated away when Kell turned his back to the road.

  “Where are you?”

  “At the embassy. I have a couple of good sources on Chios. One of them heard about Christidis on the island grapevine. Called me about half an hour ago.”

  “You need to fly…”

  Haydock was ahead of him. “Already booked. I’m leaving Athens in about six hours. I’ll get over there, ask around, find out the whole story. Can I call you at lunchtime?”

  “Do that, yes. Get as much information about his state of mind as possible. Ask around the other airport engineers. Get into his house, his phones, get a drink with his friends. You’ll need money.” Kell knew that he was preaching to the converted. Adam was SIS-trained to the eyeballs and would have done all of these things as a matter of course. But Kell was thorough and, in some sense that he could not precisely articulate or understand, keen to pass on tips and expertise to a junior officer, to a younger version of himself. “If there’s a suicide note, the police will have it. Other people will want to see it. You need to get there first. Get to the note before they do.”

  “Yes, sir.” Adam sounded slightly daunted. “Who else is going to want to see it? You mean journalists?”

  “I’m not worried about journalists. You can pay them. I’m worried about Cousins. Tread carefully around the Yanks.”

  Kell was distracted by something in his peripheral vision, someone coming do
wn the street. He looked up and saw Rachel walking toward him, smoking a cigarette. He gestured toward her—an apologetic smile with a raised hand—and wished Haydock luck with his trip.

  “There’s something else, Tom.”

  “What?”

  Rachel was now beside him, lovely in the pale cream light of the street. He gestured again, this time at the phone, as though the person calling him was wasting his time.

  “Fragments of CCTV came back from the restaurant.”

  “Fragments.”

  “The man sitting with Mr. Wallinger. He has a beard.”

  Kell looked at Rachel. He did not want to mention her father by name. He angled the phone closer to his mouth so that he would not be overheard.

  “We knew that, didn’t we?”

  “We did. The images are very poor. Indistinct.”

  “Has London seen them? Worked the pixels or whatever it is those guys do?”

  Again Kell wondered if the bearded man in the Chios footage, sitting at the outdoor table with Wallinger, would turn out to be Jim Chater. Rachel had taken out her own phone and was checking the screen for messages.

  “There’s not much. London can’t get anything out of it,” Adam said. “Only this.”

  “What?”

  “The table seems to be set for three.”

  “They’re sure about that?”

  Rachel looked up from her phone. Listening to everything.

  “Three sets of knives, forks, napkins. Three wineglasses. A jacket on the back of a chair, Wallinger and the beard in the other two.”

  “Could have been beard’s jacket.”

  “It’s pink,” Adam replied briskly.

  “Well, you never know. Nice weather. The Mediterranean. Certain men feel confident wearing pastels.”

  Kell bounced his eyebrows at Rachel. Two more minutes. She indicated that there was no rush. Smiling at him as she did so, her lips reddened by lipstick. Kell felt the hum of the wine at dinner, the caipirinha, the inch and a half of vodka he had shot before leaving the hotel. Rachel’s calves, raised on the wedge heels, were tanned and sinuous, the belt of her black dress corset-tight around her waist. She was not slim or willowy like so many of the girls in the bar. She had curves, an hourglass in jet black.

  “Anything else on the table?”

  Adam seemed to appreciate his attention to detail.

  “Yes. Glad you mentioned that. I might have forgotten.”

  A Porsche with diplomatic plates growled past, a bespoke-suited Mastroianni at the wheel, an impossibly beautiful girl beside him. Italian embassy, Kell thought, and saw Rachel tracking the car with her eyes.

  “Forgotten what?” he asked.

  “There’s a digital camera on the table in front of the jacket. Between the knife and fork. Silver, pocket-size. Might belong to whoever was sitting there.”

  “But we have no idea who that was? There are no other angles on the CCTV? Security cameras on the dock? Another bar or shop, farther along the promenade?”

  “I’m still looking.”

  Sandor. Was Cecilia the owner of the pink jacket? But why would Paul have dealt his mistress into a meeting with Chater? Kell knew that he had to go to Croatia to speak to her. To find out who else had been at the table with Wallinger. Let Amelia cope with the molehunt for now; she was the only one with the power to control what did and did not make its way to the Cousins.

  “Good luck,” he told Adam, then pocketed the phone and crossed the street to talk to Rachel.

  24

  “Sorry,” Kell told her. “Work.”

  “That’s all right. I wondered where you’d gone. Went outside for a cigarette and saw you talking.”

  “I was meant to be buying you a drink.”

  Rachel scrunched up her nose, shook her head like a shiver. “I’ve probably had too much already.” Kell took out a packet of cigarettes and offered her one. This time Rachel lit her own. No need to touch his cupped hands. “What do you make of Ryan?” she asked.

  “Seems nice enough. Good-looking fucker.”

  The response produced a cheeky smile. “Isn’t he? I think he might be quite clever, too. I hardly spoke to him at the funeral.”

  Kell found himself saying: “There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.”

  Rachel joke-choked on her cigarette and stared at him. “What does that mean, Shakespeare?”

  “I’m just saying. He might be clever. He might be good-looking. But he might also be a wanker.”

  “Isn’t that true of anybody?”

  “Of course.” They began walking back up the street toward the bar. “Not my kind of place,” he said, in an attempt to change the subject.

  “Mine neither.” Rachel inhaled on the cigarette, touching the back of her neck. “The first place to be blown up in the event of a revolution.”

  She was exactly right. Bar Bleu had been wall-to-wall with that new international class—overeducated, overprivileged—who are dedicated solely to the accumulation of wealth and status and to the satisfaction of vast, insatiable appetites. That had been one of the noticeable things about Kleckner. The people at the party—intellectually incurious, devoid of self-doubt, somehow making a virtue of distilled greed and social ambition—had happily wallowed in the Eurotrash nirvana of the bar. Girls, coke, champagne, designer labels. It was all there, all on show, all for the taking. Yet Kell had sensed in Kleckner a reluctance fully to embrace such a lifestyle. Had he found himself part of a fast diplomatic and entrepreneurial expat set, swinging from bar to bar, from nightclub to nightclub, and simply decided to enjoy it for what it was? Or was there an operational agenda, an advantage to be gained from doing so?

  “I ought to say good-bye to Ryan.”

  Rachel had decided on behalf of both of them that they would not be going back to the party. Five minutes later she had emerged from the bar with a smile on her face and a promise that their night was not yet over.

  “So,” she said, looping her hand through Kell’s arm and guiding him down the street. She was holding his body close to hers. “Where are you taking me?”

  Kell could smell her perfume, his arm enclosing her waist, the suppleness of her.

  “Where do you feel like going?” he asked.

  “How about your hotel?”

  25

  They were in a taxi, knees touching, knees not touching, Kell’s heart racing like a gambler waiting on the turn of a card. Rachel looked across at him and said: “So who was on the phone earlier?”

  This was more than a little icebreaking small talk in the backseat of a midnight cab. He realized that she had been biding her time before asking the question.

  “A colleague in Athens.”

  “Something about Pappa?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “What does that mean?” The same rush of anger that had scalded her cheeks, the same sudden hardening of the eyes as she read the card at the wake, suddenly passed across Rachel’s lovely face and changed its character completely. She was distant from him, brittle and cold.

  “Sorry, instinct,” Kell said, scrambling for an excuse. “We’re not supposed to talk about operational…”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she replied, staring out of the window as the taxi stopped at a set of lights. They were no more than fifty meters from the walls of the British consulate. “Fucking spies.”

  She was drunk. Perhaps stress and alcohol and grief played out inside her as rage. Kell took Rachel’s hand. She allowed him to press his fingers against hers, but she did not respond to his touch. He would have preferred it if she had flinched and retracted her hand.

  “It was someone at the embassy in Athens who’s looking into the crash that killed your father.”

  She turned toward him, her dark eyes beginning to forgive him, perhaps realizing that she had overreacted.

  “What’s the person’s name?”

  “Adam.”

  “Adam what?”

  “Haydock.”

&n
bsp; The taxi was coming to a halt beside the Hotel de Londres. It had started to rain. Kell hoped that Amelia or Elsa weren’t nursing brandies in the bar or he’d have a lot of explaining to do at his ten o’clock.

  “Did you make that up?”

  Kell passed a ten-lira note to the driver. “You’ll never know,” he said.

  Rachel did not laugh.

  “Jesus, Rachel. His name is Adam Haydock. Okay? I didn’t make it up.”

  She walked three paces ahead of him, clipping up the steps of the hotel. A man was selling roses in the rain. He offered one to Kell, as though it would help him to make amends with the pretty girl, but Kell ignored him and walked inside. Rachel was already in the lobby. Whatever chemistry had built up between them, whatever promises their bodies had made to each other on the street outside the bar, had evaporated. And yet Rachel was still in his hotel.

  Kell watched her walk into the lounge. To his relief, it was empty. No sign of Amelia, nor of Elsa. Just a parrot in a cage, a picture of Ataturk on the wall. The bar at the far end of the room was closed, the lights dimmed.

  “Just like Studio 54 in here.” Rachel’s voice was deadpan as she turned to face him. Her anger had subsided, she still looked bruised by Kell’s evasiveness, but she was letting him back in.

  “Your father had a meeting on Chios before he died.” Kell knew that he had to be frank with her. “We’re trying to find out who he was talking to. The identity of the man.”

  “Man?” she said.

  “Yes. Man. Why?”

  Rachel puffed out her cheeks and turned away from him, touching the tassels of a velvet-upholstered cushion.

  “You don’t need to finesse me, Tom,” she said. “I know who my father was. I know what he was like. You don’t have to protect me from him.”

  How to reply to such a remark? A person can invite you to be forthright and honest, but they will often resent you for that honesty as soon as it shows its face. What Rachel knew about her father’s behavior with other women, the manner in which he had conducted himself as a husband, would affect every relationship she would make in the future. Kell was in possession of extraordinarily sensitive information about Paul Wallinger’s private life: his relationship with Amelia Levene, his affair with Cecilia Sandor. He should not and could not divulge that information to his daughter.