A Colder War

by Charles Cumming

  He opened the curtains and the shutters, went to the bathroom and took a shower, then ordered breakfast to his room. Just after six thirty, too soon for the coffee and eggs to have been prepared, there was a knock at the door. Rachel? Had she forgotten something?

  Wearing just a towel around his waist, Kell opened the door.

  “Thomas! I am a married woman now. Cover yourself!”

  It was Elsa, grinning.

  “Thanks for the warning,” he said. “What are you doing up so early?”

  “This,” she said, thrusting a file in his direction. “I have been working on it since I saw you. It is a long night. Amelia ask me to make some background on Cecilia Sandor. This is what I find out. It is all so very sad, Tom. How I hate wasted love.”

  29

  The file was a bible of grief. E-mails from Cecilia to her closest friend in Budapest, mourning the loss of Paul. Telephone calls to a doctor in Dubrovnik, whom Elsa had identified as a psychiatrist specializing in “addiction and bereavement.” Cecilia had visited Internet sites about death and heartbreak and signed into an English-language chat forum in which she had discussed her feelings of loss with total strangers around the world. She had joined a yoga class on Lopud, was having massages every forty-eight hours, therapy three times a week. She had bought self-help books from Amazon, spent £2,700 on a two-week trip to the Maldives. She had read widely on plane crashes—specifically the many newspaper reports and web articles relating to Wallinger’s accident—and closed her restaurant for ten days as soon as she had heard about his death. To Kell’s astonishment, he saw that Sandor had also made an anonymous donation of a thousand pounds to the SIS Widows’ Fund.

  Further checks of her e-mail had shown that Wallinger’s mistress had flown by easyJet from Dubrovnik to Gatwick the day before the funeral and had reserved a seat on the same train that Kell and Amelia had taken from Euston. Kell realized that they had been seated no more than a carriage apart. Cecilia had been booked onto a return London train in midafternoon, a flight back to Dubrovnik the following day. She had most probably bought the flowers in Preston, driven direct to the farmhouse, left the bouquet and card in the barn, then returned to the station. One of the e-mails sent to her friend in Budapest—badly translated by Internet software—showed that Cecilia had not attended the funeral service itself.

  Kell read the file over breakfast. At nine o’clock he rang Elsa in her room, congratulated her on a job well done, and asked if there had been any specific references, in any of the research, to Jim Chater or Ryan Kleckner.

  “No,” she said, her voice falling away. Perhaps she felt as though she had let Kell down. “I do not think so, Tom. I can check this.”

  “Don’t worry,” Kell told her. She had been up all night and sounded weary. “Get some rest. You deserve it.”

  * * *

  The British consulate was a glorious, humbling remnant of Empire, a three-story nineteenth-century neoclassical palace in the heart of Beyoglu, no more than a hundred meters from Kell’s hotel. An attack by suicide bombers a decade earlier had resulted in the death of the British consul-general and more than twenty others. Kell could remember exactly where he was—eating lunch with Claire on a glorious November afternoon in London—when he had heard about the attack on the BBC.

  “All because of bloody Bush,” Claire had said, pointing at images of the president, who had been in town for talks at 10 Downing Street. Kell had ducked the argument, as he always did with Claire when it came to cause and effect on terror. “If Blair had just kept us out of Iraq,” she said, “none of this stuff would be happening.”

  Amelia beat him to the meeting by an hour. Kell walked into the Station just before ten to be informed by “C” that she had been “up since six” and was “keen to get down to business.”

  “You look knackered,” she said as she spun the locks, clockwise, counterclockwise, on the secure speech room. An alarm sounded as Kell lifted the lever and pulled on the deadweight of the door. The combination of the physical effort involved in this and the screech of the alarm served only to intensify his hangover. He felt as though he had left the better part of his brain comatose on a pillow in the Hotel Londres.

  “Nice and warm in here,” Amelia quipped, reacting to the intense cold of the air-conditioning. It was a feature of secure speech rooms around the world: it was not unknown for officers to attend meetings wearing scarves and overcoats.

  Amelia sat at one end of a conference table set with chairs for eight; Kell took a seat halfway down, having sealed the doors behind him. He was carrying a double espresso from an automated coffee machine on the ground floor, his third of the morning.

  “How was the party?” Amelia asked as she lifted several files and printouts from a black leather briefcase, piling them on the table in front of her.

  “Fun,” Kell replied. “Eurotrash bar below Galata. Expats and rich Turks. Fun.”

  “And Rachel?”

  “What about her?”

  “Was she fun too?”

  Up since six. Kell felt the forensic, all-seeing penetration of the Levene gaze. Had Amelia spotted Rachel leaving the hotel? It was pointless lying to her; she knew that he was attracted to Rachel. Kell felt like a passenger at an airport passing through a state-of-the-art X-ray machine; every bone and muscle of his guilt glowing like a bomb.

  “She’s great,” he said. “An old soul. Clever. Funny. The chaperone had a good time.”

  Amelia nodded, seeming to accept this. “Is she interested in ABACUS?”

  Kell frowned. “ABACUS?”

  “I didn’t tell you?” Amelia shuffled around in the files, a sudden visual reminder of the plate-spinning chaos into which the new job had thrust her. “Cryptonym for Kleckner.”

  “Right,” Kell said, watching her as his head throbbed.

  “So?”

  Kell would enjoy answering the question. Rachel certainly hadn’t been interested enough in Ryan Kleckner to stay at his party for more than an hour. She had then come back to Kell’s hotel room and released herself to him with a passion and a finesse that had astonished him. All of this suggested that, at least for the time being, Rachel Wallinger was more interested in Thomas Kell.

  “Hard to say,” he replied, distracted by a specific visual memory of Rachel’s spine as she moved beneath him, the way the pale bedroom light had cast shadows in the dips and hollows of her back. He downed the last dregs of the espresso. “She flirted with him a little bit. Kleckner certainly looked fond of her.”

  “Fond?” Amelia was frowning. “Do the Cousins do fond? ABACUS doesn’t strike me as the type.”

  “What do we know about him?” Kell hoped to draw Amelia away from Rachel with the question. Retrieving a narrow file from the pile of papers, she duly obliged, giving him full spectrum background on Kleckner’s career (seven years in the CIA, three of them in Madrid, two of them in Turkey); his education (high school in Missouri—valedictorian—followed by SFS at Georgetown); his family history (parents divorced when Kleckner was seven, the father never to be seen again). There was—as Kell had suspected—a decent helping of religious fervor in the Kleckner lineage (the adored mother was an energetic Catholic schoolteacher who ran her own prayer group), allied to good, old-fashioned American patriotism (Kleckner had an older brother who had served two tours in Iraq, a younger sister who had returned to her day job as an ER doctor in Belleville having volunteered for a six-month secondment to Bagram in 2008). At twenty-two, Kleckner had been a star on the Georgetown rowing squad, paying his way through college by working nights as a hospital porter. After a short stint as an unpaid intern for a Republican congressman in St. Louis, he had applied for a position with the Central Intelligence Agency.

  “Self-starter. Overachiever,” said Kell. “Possible loner?”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Amelia replied, rapping her fingers on Kleckner’s résumé. “I would have thought Langley was pleased to have him.”

  “Would you give him a j
ob?” Kell was suddenly nauseous with hunger, the eggs and white bread of the Londres breakfast now just acid in his gut. Amelia produced an official State Department photograph of Kleckner and flashed Kell one of the smiles she reserved for boys.

  “He is awfully handsome,” she said, spinning the picture along the table toward Kell. He stared at the photograph. Kleckner looked as effortlessly seductive as a matinee idol. “IQ in the high hundreds,” she said. “Eyes like Gregory Peck. Pecs like Gregory Peck, most probably. Of course I’d give him a job.”

  “Sexist,” Kell replied. Through the small window in the door of the secure speech room he spotted a bowl of bananas and felt like a dying man who has glimpsed a source of fresh water in the Nefud desert. “So we soak him?” he asked, knowing that it would be a long time before he could get outside to eat something. Too many alarms. Too many locks. Too much conversation.

  “Oh, we soak him,” Amelia replied. “By this time next week we’ll know more about young Mr. Kleckner than he knows about himself.”

  She wasn’t exaggerating. For the next half hour Amelia Levene was at her very best: thorough, imaginative, ruthless. She wasn’t just “C,” the Whitehall Dame-in-waiting. Her passion seemed to have returned, her love of the game. If she was worried that her legacy would be another Philby or Blake, a traitor to destroy the transatlantic relationship, she did not show it. Kell glimpsed some of the restless energy and enthusiasm that had marked Amelia out in her late thirties and forties. She was as focused and as forensic as he had seen her in many years. This was the woman Paul Wallinger had fallen in love with. The best SIS officer—male or female—of her generation.

  It transpired that many of her ideas for the blanket coverage of Ryan Kleckner were already in place. A ten-man team, seconded from the Security Service, had put foot surveillance on ABACUS on half a dozen occasions. They were currently on standby in Istanbul, ready to go full-time as soon as Kell gave the word. Amelia had instructed Elsa to cut out the Wi-Fi at Kleckner’s residence, thereby allowing a local asset Turk Telekom engineer to fit microphones in the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and living room of his apartment. The roof of Kleckner’s car—a Honda Accord—had been “painted” in the small hours of Friday morning by a team from the Station while it was parked on the street. The vehicle was now visible to satellites should Kleckner decide to go AWOL, although, as Kell pointed out, those satellites were mostly American-controlled, and therefore functionally useless (Amelia conceded the point with a grunt of disdain). Cameras were also being planted in any café, hotel, or restaurant where ABACUS had shown a “pattern.” It was known that he frequented a gym four blocks from his home and liked to visit a small teahouse off Istiklal whenever he found himself in Beyoglu. (“There’s a waitress there,” Amelia said. “He likes her.”) Both locations would have near-total visual coverage. At least once a month, Kleckner could be found attending Mass at the Church of St. Antony of Padua, the largest Catholic cathedral in Turkey. Catherine West, wife of a declared SIS officer whom Amelia had known for many years, had been given instructions to attend the same Mass and to report on Kleckner’s behavior and appearance, providing a description of anyone who came into contact with him. Information could very easily be passed between members of the congregation, most obviously by anyone sitting next to Kleckner in a pew. When Kell asked about them, Amelia confirmed that similar operations were already under way against Douglas Tremayne and Mary Begg. Tony Landau was also being watched in the United States.

  “And then there’s Iannis Christidis,” she said.

  “He’s not going to be much use to us.”

  “I’m aware of that.” Amelia looked down the table and frowned. “What are your thoughts?”

  It sounded like a test. Kell summoned as much intellectual energy as his jaded state would allow.

  “I think we should wait for Adam to report,” he replied, discovering some of his old talent for circumspection. “He’s only just arrived on Chios. Let’s give him a chance to talk to the police, to the airport people, to Christidis’s friends and family.”

  “You think that will change your mind about things?”

  Amelia was still staring down at the papers in front of her. He knew that she would brook no half truths or evasions.

  “Change my mind about what?”

  She knew him so well. Kell sensed what was coming.

  “I think you believe the Americans got to him.” Amelia stood up, ostensibly to stretch her legs in the cramped, chill confines of the room, but also perhaps to make a physical point to Kell by standing over him. “That Jim Chater was the bearded man on Chios, that Paul made the mistake of telling him your theory about the mole, and that Chater had him killed as a result.”

  Hearing the theory spoken aloud made it sound, for the first time, slightly absurd. But Amelia was entirely correct. She had articulated precisely what Kell believed had happened.

  “I think that’s the most likely scenario, yes,” he conceded. “Given the way Chater reacted in Ankara.”

  Amelia walked around the table and tapped the lever on the sealed door. Through the glass Kell saw Douglas Tremayne walking into the Station. In town from Ankara, looking like an army officer on a day off at the races: polished brogues, a tweed jacket, even burgundy trousers.

  “I would merely advise you to keep your mind open.”

  There was no tone of condescension in Amelia’s voice as she sat down, not even a warning. Just a friend’s wise counsel. Play the pieces on the board, not the opponent.

  “I hear what you’re saying,” Kell replied.

  “Good.” Amelia picked up a file. Kell recognized the cover. It was the Sandor report. She began to tap it on the table, as though beating out the rhythm to a song. “It’s just that I don’t entirely buy this.”

  “Elsa’s report?”

  “No. I think that’s first rate. As far as it goes.” She opened a random page of the report and ran her finger along the text. “I just don’t buy the trail of breadcrumbs. It’s too perfect.” Amelia began to detail Cecilia’s behavior as a list of bullet points. “The book from Amazon. The yoga. The massages. If you were going to create a legend for a girl who had lost the love of her life, would you do it any differently than this?”

  Kell felt the room invert. If what Amelia was suggesting was true, Wallinger had been played. “I guess not,” he replied, without conceding her point. It seemed too far-fetched. “What are you suggesting? That it’s a fiction?”

  “I’m just suggesting that you need to keep your mind open. That we need to look into it. Cecilia Sandor may very well have been a former Hungarian intelligence officer who opened a restaurant in Lopud and just happened to fall in love with Paul Wallinger. She may very well be so heartbroken that she’s taking herself off to therapy three times a week and pouring out her heart on chat forums. But she might equally have been an SVR honey trap tasked with recruiting H/Ankara.”

  For several seconds Kell was rendered speechless, his sleep-deprived mind trying to work through the myriad implications of what Amelia was suggesting.

  “You still think Paul might have been the mole?”

  Amelia merely shrugged, as though Kell had asked after nothing more significant than the state of the weather.

  “I would be very surprised, of course,” she replied quietly.

  “So Sandor found a line into his telegrams, his e-mails? Decrypted his laptop, duplicated his phone? Surely he wouldn’t have been that stupid?”

  “Pretty girls do funny things to middle-aged men, even the nonstupid ones,” Amelia replied curtly. Kell could not tell if this was a generalized statement of despair at male behavior, or a specific warning to steer clear of Rachel. “All I’m asking is that we consider all possibilities. We are still no closer to identifying the source of the leaks. Meanwhile, the Office is still running on half power, unable to do meaningful business with the Americans or to make significant progress on dozens of operations in the region. You know that.”

&
nbsp; “Of course I know that.”

  Kell took a moment to reflect as Amelia produced a bottle of mineral water from her briefcase and drank from it. Would it ease her suffering to know that Paul had fallen for a false god, for a love that did not exist? Would Amelia have preferred it that way? Or was she simply looking to avenge Sandor for stealing the heart of the man she had loved? The hunt for the mole and the hunt for the truth about Wallinger’s death seemed to be bound together in her heart.

  “You should go to Lopud,” she said, as if to confirm this. “Take a look at her.”

  “You’re happy for me to leave Kleckner to the team for a few days?”

  “More than happy. We’ve got him well covered.”

  “Then of course. I’ll go to Lopud.”

  “It’s a holiday island,” Amelia told him, as though Kell was unaware of this. “An hour from Dubrovnik by ferry. One big hotel at the end of town, a necklace of restaurants around the bay. You could fly in for seventy-two hours, play the businessman on a weekend break. Pop in for dinner at Sandor’s restaurant. Bump into her if she goes for a swim. Let’s see if Cecilia is who she says she is. Let’s run the rule over the poor, grieving girlfriend.”

  30

  Traveling on a French-Canadian passport under the name “Eric Cauques,” Sebastien Gachon took a scheduled flight to Zagreb in the early hours of April 11. In the Croatian capital, he hired an Audi A4, fixed his iPod into the music dock, and listened to an audiobook recording of the novel Dead Souls as he drove—within the speed limit at all times—southeast along the motorway to the coastal city of Zadar.

  As arranged, a second vehicle was waiting for Gachon in the car park of his hotel. In the recess beneath the spare wheel, he found the knife and a weapon with sufficient ammunition. That night, he ate well in an Italian restaurant, went to a bar to find a girl, paid her six hundred euros to spend the night in his room, but asked her to leave at three o’clock in the morning after she had satisfied him and he was ready to sleep. Gachon arranged for a taxi to come to the hotel to collect the girl. They exchanged telephone numbers, though he gave her a cell phone which would cease to function within forty-eight hours. Her working name was “Elena.” She told him that she was from a small town to the west of Chisinau in Moldova.