A Colder War

by Charles Cumming

  He turned and looked back down the cabin. The stench of a three-hour flight. Too many people. Everybody crowding him up.

  Kleckner looked again. A face was familiar to him. A woman in her late twenties with dark hair, standing no more than three meters away. She was traveling alone, studiously avoiding his gaze, minding her own business.

  He had seen her before. He had seen those eyes. Not quite straight, not quite focused. And the teeth. They had been capped, perhaps following a childhood accident. Where had he seen her? At Bar Bleu? At a meeting in Istanbul? At a party?

  It was only as he was walking down the aisle toward the exit, nodding thanks to the pilot, smiling at the flight attendants, that Kleckner remembered exactly where he had seen the woman. The realization hit him with the force of a sickness.

  The perfume department. Then, an hour later, a repeating face at the exit in the southeast corner of the building. Kleckner had clocked her profile, written off the second sighting as coincidence, proceeded to a meeting with his agent.

  Harrods.

  54

  No fewer than eighteen SVR operational assistants, in London, Kiev, and Moscow, were assigned to the case. Ten of them looked at Rachel Wallinger’s digital vapor trail, eight of them at Kell’s. Working all through Friday night, the SVR was able to retrieve and translate 362 e-mails and 764 text messages between the two parties.

  Everything that KODAK had told Minasian was borne out by the evidence. The words “Amelia,” “Levene,” “crash,” “Chios,” “Cecilia,” “Sandor,” “death,” “murder,” “accident,” “mole,” “MI6,” “SVR,” “SIS,” “Ryan,” and “Kleckner” were flagged and run as cross-checks with the correspondence. Whenever these words appeared, the message was immediately forwarded to Minasian, who had caught a flight back to Kiev, via Frankfurt, on Friday evening. At no point did any of the analysts gain the impression that MI6 was investigating Kleckner. Kell’s relationship with Rachel appeared to be authentic, as did her job at a publishing house in London, the e-mails she had exchanged with friends about her conflicted feelings for Kell, her growing attraction to Kleckner.

  But Minasian was not satisfied. He was convinced that the analysts had missed something. At five o’clock on Saturday morning he asked that the entire file be couriered to his apartment in Kiev, where he began to read through every text, every e-mail, every message for himself, including items that were not specifically related to the sexual relationship between Kell and Wallinger. Minasian was adept at reading and absorbing large amounts of written material at speed. Though he had not slept in almost twenty-four hours, he was nevertheless alert enough to alight on the single word—“Buyukada”—which confirmed his worst suspicions about Kell’s true purpose in Turkey.

  According to the SVR report, the text message had been sent from Kell’s O2 account to Rachel Wallinger (without reply) on April 29 at 1734 hours. The same afternoon that Minasian himself had visited Buyukada to clear the DLB.

  HELLO YOU—AM I IMAGINING IT, OR DID YOU MENTION THAT YOUR FATHER HAD A JOURNALIST FRIEND ON BUYUKADA? IF I’M NOT GOING MAD, CAN YOU REMEMBER HIS NAME? RICHARDS? IF I AM GOING MAD, CAN YOU IGNORE THIS TEXT? SEPARATION FROM YOU HAS MADE ME DELIRIOUS—T X

  55

  At around eight o’clock on Saturday morning, a surveillance analyst watching the live feed from Ryan Kleckner’s apartment in Tarabya began to report that the American was acting strangely. ABACUS had returned home from the airport at two A.M. but had not been to bed. Instead, he had spent a significant amount of time at his laptop, drunk an entire bottle of red wine, and Skyped his mother in the United States for more than an hour. The tone of their conversation was later characterized as “melancholy and affectionate,” a description that made sense in light of what followed.

  Just after eight, Kleckner was observed reading what was assumed to be a text message on his BlackBerry. The American “appeared to freeze, as if shocked” (according to the analyst) and “remained still for a considerable period of time.” Kleckner did not reply to the message, but instead proceeded to the kitchen, where he retrieved “a passport (origin unknown), a significant amount of money (currency unknown), and a brand-new iPhone and charger” from a Tupperware box “hidden behind the pipes and materials beneath the sink.” Alert to the change in Kleckner’s behavior, the analyst had followed protocol and telephoned Tom Kell at his home in London. Kell had immediately doubled the four-man surveillance team on standby outside Kleckner’s apartment building.

  Kleckner then spent the next fifteen minutes packing a “large black wheeled suitcase.” When he removed the hard drive from his laptop and placed it inside the case, the analyst—who was later to be congratulated for her quick thinking and initiative—again contacted Kell. Realizing that Kleckner was showing all the signs of a blown agent, he immediately ordered Sirkeci railway station, Ataturk and Sabiha Gokcen airports, the bus terminals at Harem and Topkapi, as well as the Black Sea ferry terminal at Karakoy to be placed under observation by two-man teams, drawing for the first time on consular staff to make up the shortfall.

  Having packed the hard drive, Kleckner was seen to put two framed photographs, two bottles of contact lens solution, “a significant amount of clothing,” and a second pair of shoes in his suitcase. He removed the SIM card from the BlackBerry and threw the telephone itself into a bin outside the apartment building. It was assumed that ABACUS had left his diplomatic passport and driver’s license inside the safe in his bedroom, though the analyst was not able to confirm this.

  A block from the front door, the American was observed making a call from a public phone box close to the branch of Starbucks in which Javed Mohsin and Priya were waiting for him. Kell assumed that the conversation, which lasted “no more than ten seconds,” was an agreed signal to Minasian indicating that ABACUS was on the run.

  It was not yet six o’clock in the morning in London. Looking at a map of the region in his flat, Kell deduced that Kleckner’s most likely route to Moscow was across country by bus or rented car into eastern Anatolia, where he might attempt to cross the border into Georgia. An SVR exfil team might also attempt to pick him up at Samsun, or one of the other ports on the Black Sea, taking Kleckner across to Odessa or Sevastopol by ship. A route north into Bulgaria was also an option, though ABACUS would know that the border could more easily be controlled by the Americans. If he trusted his alias, he might risk a commercial airliner, but would assume that all direct flights to Moscow, Kiev, Tashkent, Baku, and Sofia—indeed any of the former Soviet satellite countries—were compromised.

  Kell was completely reliant on the surveillance team. Lose ABACUS and, chances are, the next time anyone in SIS saw Kleckner’s face would be on the front page of The Guardian. Track him to his arranged exfil point and there was a minute chance that ABACUS could be grabbed before an SVR team got to him. Kell telephoned Amelia at the house in Chelsea to update her on developments. Both were aware that Kell’s relationship with Rachel had most likely triggered Kleckner’s exit: Minasian had trawled through the data and concluded that ABACUS was blown. Amelia arranged to meet Kell at Vauxhall Cross, reassuring him that Rachel would immediately be pulled out of Istanbul. Kell doubted that he would have the opportunity to see her before he was obliged to leave London.

  That instinct proved correct. The surveillance team successfully tracked ABACUS to the ferry terminal at Karakoy, where Kleckner was observed making enquiries about joining one of two cruise ships docked on the northern side of the Golden Horn. Javed Mohsin housed the American onto an Italian boat—Serenissima—obtained a copy of the timetable, and remained in the terminal building until the vessel had departed, two hours later, making sure that Kleckner did not double back onto dry land. As luck would have it, he was then photographed walking on the deck of the ship as she sailed north toward the Black Sea. An enterprising surveillance officer had rented a water taxi and followed Serenissima as far as the Bosporus Bridge.

  “Kleckner is headed for Ukraine,” Kell to
ld Amelia as soon as he heard the news. “Unless the ship is intercepted and he manages to get off, he’ll be in Odessa in forty-eight hours.”

  “We’d better call the Americans,” she replied.

  Kell was bewildered. “Why? ABACUS is our catch. Our triumph.”

  “You know why, Tom.”

  They had taken themselves into a small conference room on the first floor. Door closed, blinds down.

  “You let Chater interfere with what I want to do, we will lose ABACUS. No question.”

  “You can’t assume that.”

  “The Cousins will swarm all over Odessa,” Kell told her. “Flood the port. Minasian will know they are coming twenty-four hours before the ship even docks. Jim doesn’t do this stuff as well as we do it.”

  Amelia nodded in agreement, though Kell could see that she was still conceding to the political argument. Exclude Langley, and SIS would pay a heavy price. If Kell failed to grab Kleckner, there would be hell to pay.

  “Just let me arrange it,” Kell said. “A small team, low visibility. Minasian won’t want to make a big song and dance. His prize agent is blown. He asks Moscow for backup, he’s going to lose face. He’s going to get big-footed by a more senior officer, a more experienced team.” Kell risked a Russian accent. “You couldn’t cope, Alexander. We will take over now.” Amelia almost smiled. “Minasian will want to do it quietly. No leaks coming out of Kiev Station, no indication to London or Langley that ABACUS is heading for Odessa. He just wants to get his man off the boat, get him into a car, drive him to the airport, put him on the six o’clock news. That way he’s still the hero. That way he did everything by the book and it was Kleckner who fucked up. That’s what I would do. That’s what you would do, too, right?”

  Amelia nodded but did not immediately respond. Kell could see the calculation being made behind the eyes.

  Finally, she turned to him.

  “You cannot fuck this up, Tom. We cannot lose Ryan Kleckner.”

  “I will not fuck this up,” he replied, already walking out of the room. “Just give me what I need.”

  56

  Kell put a team together inside two hours. Javed Mohsin and Nina flew direct from Istanbul to Odessa, taking rooms at a four-star hotel on Arkadia Beach, a resort area to the south of the city. To avoid a cluster of last-minute bookings appearing on the passenger manifest of a single airline, the seven other officers leaving London for Odessa took separate flights from Gatwick, Stansted, and Heathrow. Harold flew with British Airways to Kiev, Danny and Carol with Ukrainian Airlines. Kell connected through Vienna, Elsa and Jez via Warsaw. For the same reason, the team was distributed across several Odessa hotels, on standard tourist aliases. In the unlikely event that they were questioned by immigration officials, the younger members of the team were to express an interest in the city’s nightlife. Harold and Danny were to declare a lifelong passion for Battleship Potemkin and the films of Sergei Eisenstein.

  “What about you, guv?” Harold had asked Kell.

  “There are some catacombs under the city,” he replied. “I’ll tell them I want to go caving.”

  Kell traveled under the Hardwick alias, rehearsing the legend as he flew east from Vienna, trying to think of every eventuality, every trick that would help his hastily assembled team snatch ABACUS from under the noses of the SVR. He pored over a street map of Odessa and learned whatever he could about procedures for passengers disembarking from ships at the port. Kell had left preliminary instructions in the drafts folder of a Gmail account to which all ten officers held the password, attaching mug shots of Kleckner and Minasian and arranging a meeting at a restaurant in the center of Odessa for eight o’clock on Sunday night. The team would otherwise have limited contact with one another, on clean U.K. cell phones, once they had passed through Ukrainian immigration.

  Amelia had suggested using officers from the embassy in Kiev, both for local expertise and to bulk up the numbers, but Kell insisted on keeping the Station at arm’s length. If Minasian’s people were watching SIS personnel, that could lead the SVR right into the heart of the Odessa operation and blow it open.

  * * *

  Kell’s planes were delayed out of both London and Vienna. He arrived three hours late in Odessa. SIS had reserved a hire car for Chris Hardwick, but there was a further delay of forty-five minutes in the airport while the rental firm agent tried to locate it. (“No cars,” he said, in bored, spluttering English. “All gone.”) It was already past midnight by the time Kell was on the road, driving with a sat-nav through a grid of time-travel nineteenth-century boulevards into the heart of the old city. He hadn’t slept in almost two days, but managed several hours of rest in his room after receiving confirmation by secure e-mail that Rachel was “safe and well” in Istanbul. Amelia had pointed out the importance of Rachel maintaining cover; to fly her back to London would look like panic, merely confirming to the SVR that she had been working against ABACUS. Better that she remain in Turkey and continue to try to contact Kleckner. To that end, Rachel had sent two text messages to the American, as well as an e-mail, wondering why he was not responding to her calls. Amelia had instructed her to break off the relationship on Sunday morning (“I can’t BELIEVE you would mess me around like this”), thereby leaving Rachel free to return to London on Monday without raising greater suspicion.

  Kell was woken at dawn by the rattling air-conditioning unit in his room. Mr. Hardwick had been booked into the Londonskaya, a pre-Soviet relic of Odessa’s romantic past with broad, high-ceilinged corridors and a sweeping staircase that led down into an ornate fin de siècle lobby. Kell planned to spend the morning walking around the port, then to meet up with Danny to discuss the best means by which they might grab Kleckner.

  It was a humid morning in Odessa, smells of engine oil and sea air as Kell left the Londonskaya and walked east along a colonnade of plane trees toward a pretty Italianate square at the top of the Potemkin Steps. He continued south on foot, familiarizing himself with the grid of streets around Deribasovskaya, the main pedestrianized thoroughfare in the center of the city. Soviet-era Ladas bumped along cobbled streets under crisp sunshine, Ukraine’s famously beautiful women dressed at ten o’clock in the morning as if going to a wedding, teetering on high heels in curve-hugging dresses. Kell stopped for a coffee at a restaurant advertising sushi and shisha, then returned to the square.

  A bare-chested teenage boy was standing at the top of the Potemkin Steps, a giant eagle perched on his shoulder. Tourists were taking photographs of the bird, a young German girl gasping at the size of its beak and talons. Kell handed the teenager a ten-grivna note and took pictures of his own, firing off several shots of the area—including the entrance to a funicular railway that ran parallel to the Steps. A group of perhaps twenty tourists were standing beneath a statue of a man Kell identified from a Cyrillic sign as the Duke of Richelieu, a nineteenth-century French aristocrat evidently integral to some aspect of Odessa’s fabled past. He was dressed in the style of a Roman senator, a pigeon resting on his outstretched arm. Kell sat at the base of the memorial and looked south toward the Black Sea. There was a tall modern building in the center of the port complex, about half a mile away. Block capital letters on the roof identified the building as the Hotel Odessa. Kell was frustrated. Had the researchers at Vauxhall Cross realized that it was situated so close to the area where Kleckner’s ship would dock, they would have booked Danny a room. With a decent pair of binoculars, Aldrich could have tracked Serenissima’s approach from several miles away while keeping a discreet eye on possible SVR movement in the port. The lobby of the hotel would also have made a convenient meeting point for the team in the event of emergency. Such were the missed opportunities and complications of a last-minute operation. Kell would try for a room as soon as he reached the port.

  He began to walk down the Potemkin Steps. Vendors sitting in the dappled light of shading trees were selling Russian dolls from plinths on either side of the Steps. As the heat of the day intensified, a
n elderly man paused to catch his breath halfway up, exhausted by the effort of climbing but still managing to smile at the passing Kell. Kell offered him a sip from a bottle of water, but the man declined, resting his hand on Kell’s arm and muttering: “Spasiba.”

  Traffic was passing in both directions along a busy two-lane highway at the base of the Steps. Kell used an underpass to reach the pedestrian entrance to the port on the opposite side of the road. Within a few minutes he had reached a large square in front of the main terminal building, his view of the port dominated on either side by rusted cranes and distant container ships. Kell walked along the eastern side of the terminal as far as the entrance to the Hotel Odessa. To his surprise, he saw that the hotel had been boarded up: weeds had even sprouted at the base of a set of locked automatic doors. Peering inside, Kell could see time-zone clocks bolted to the wall behind an abandoned reception desk, plastic sheets laid out across the carpets. He remembered the office of Nicolas Delfas and thought briefly of Marianna Dimitriadis, wondering what had become of her. A number of people were walking in the area in front of the hotel: parents with their children; couples on a romantic stroll.

  Kell carried on, walking around to the western pier until he had made a circuit of the terminal. He took photographs—of staircases, exits, walkways, and landmarks—that he would show to the team at the evening meeting. At one point, Kell passed within twenty feet of Javed Mohsin and enjoyed the fact that Mohsin was professional enough to avoid eye contact.

  Kell went next inside the terminal itself, following signs directing passengers to the customs area. He was surprised by how easily he could move through the various levels of the building without being stopped or questioned by officials. It would be different in the morning, with any number of police officers and immigration officials present. For now, though, the environment was as open and as fluid as Kell could have hoped.