A Colder War. Charles Cumming
allowed himself to forget the considerable achievements of his long career. Adam was probably no older than twenty-six or twenty-seven. Meeting an officer of Kell’s pedigree was most likely a significant moment to him. He would have wanted to make a good impression, particularly given Kell’s links to ‘C’.
‘I’ve arranged for you to pick up a car at the airport. It’s booked for three days. The Europcar desk is just outside the terminal. There’s a couple of credit cards in Hardwick’s name, the usual pin number, a passport of course, driving licence, some business cards. I’m afraid the only photograph we had of you on file looks a bit out of date, sir.’
Kell didn’t take offence. He knew the picture. Taken in a windowless room at Vauxhall Cross on 9 September 2001. His hair cut shorter, his temples less greyed, his life about to change. Every spy on the planet had aged at least twenty years since then.
‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ he said.
Adam looked up at the ceiling and blinked hard, as though trying to remember the last in a sequence of points from a mental checklist.
‘The air traffic control officer who was on duty the afternoon of Mr Wallinger’s flight can meet you tonight at your hotel.’
‘Time?’
‘I said seven.’
‘That’s good. I want to move quickly on this. Thank you.’
Kell watched as Adam absorbed his gratitude with a wordless nod. I remember being you, Kell thought. I remember what it was like at the beginning. With a pang of nostalgia, he pictured Adam’s life in Athens: the vast Foreign Office apartment; the nightclub memberships; the beautiful local girls in thrall to the glamour and expense accounts of the diplomatic life. A young man with a whole career ahead of him, in one of the great cities of the world. Kell put the envelope in his carry-on bag and stood up from the table. Adam accompanied him as far as a nearby duty-free shop, where they parted company. Kell bought a bottle of Macallan and a carton of Winston Lights for Chios and was soon airborne again above the shimmering Mediterranean, checking through the emails and texts that had collected on his iPhone before take-off.
Metka had already sent through a translation of the message seen by Rachel.
My dear Tom
It is always good to hear from you and I am of course happy to help.
So what happened to you? You took up poetry? Writing Magyar love sonnets? Maybe Claire finally had the sense to leave you and you fell in love with a girl from Budapest?
Here is what the poem says – please excuse me if my translation is not as ‘pretty’ as your original:
My darling. I cannot be with you today, of all days, and so my heart is broken. Silence has never been this desperate. You are asleep, but I can still hear you breathing.
It is really very moving. Very sad. I wonder who wrote it? I would like to meet them.
Of course if you are ever here, Tom, we must meet. I hope you are satisfied in your life. You are always welcome in Szolnok. These days I very rarely come to London.
With kind regards
Tamas
Kell powered down the phone and looked out of the window at the wisps of motionless cloud. What Rachel had reacted to so strongly was obvious enough: a message from one of Wallinger’s grieving lovers. But had Rachel understood the Hungarian or recognized the woman’s handwriting? He could not know.
The plane landed at a small, functional, single-runway airport on the eastern shore of Chios. Kell identified the air traffic control tower, saw a bearded engineer on the tarmac tending to a punctured Land Cruiser, and took photographs of a helicopter and a corporate jet parked either side of an Olympic Air Q400. Wallinger would have taken off only a few hundred metres away, then banked east towards Izmir. The Cessna had entered Turkish airspace in less than five minutes, crashing into the mountains south-west of Kütahya perhaps an hour later.
The island’s taxi drivers were on strike so Kell was glad of the hire car, which he drove a few miles south to Karfas along a quiet road lined with citrus groves and crumbling, walled estates. The Golden Sands was a tourist hotel located in the centre of a kilometre-long beach with views across the Chios Strait to Turkey. Kell unpacked, took a shower, then dressed in a fresh set of clothes. As he waited in the bar for his meeting, nursing a bottle of Efes lager and an overwhelming desire to smoke indoors, he reflected on how quickly his personal circumstances had changed. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, he had been eating a tuna sandwich on a crowded train from Preston. Now he was alone on a Greek island, masquerading as an insurance investigator, in the bar of an off-peak tourist hotel. You’re back in the game, he told himself. This is what you wanted. But the buzz had gone. He remembered the feeling of landing in Nice almost two years earlier, instructed by the high priests at Vauxhall Cross to find Amelia at any cost. On that occasion, the rhythms and tricks of his trade had come back to him like muscle memory. This time, however, all that Kell felt was a sense of dread that he would uncover the truth about his friend’s death. No pilot error. No engine failure. Just conspiracy and cover-up. Just murder.
Mr Andonis Makris of the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority was a thick-set islander of about fifty who spoke impeccable, if over-elaborate English and smelled strongly of eau de cologne. Kell presented him with Chris Hardwick’s business card, agreed that Chios was indeed very beautiful, particularly at this time of year, and thanked Makris for agreeing to meet him at such short notice.
‘Your assistant in the Edinburgh office told me that time was a factor,’ Makris reassured him. He was wearing a dark blue, pin-striped suit and a white shirt without a tie. Self-assured to the point of arrogance, he gave the impression of a man who had, some years earlier, achieved personal satisfaction in almost every area of his life. ‘I am keen to assist you after such a tragedy. Many people on the island were shocked by the news of Mr Wallinger’s death. I am sure his family and colleagues are as keen as we are to find out what happened as soon as is possible in human terms.’
It was obvious from his demeanour that Makris bore no sense of personal responsibility for the crash. Kell assumed that he would want to take the opportunity to shift the blame for the British diplomat’s demise on to the shoulders of Turkish air traffic control as quickly as possible.
‘Did you meet Mr Wallinger personally?’
Makris was taking a sip of white wine and was halted by the question. He swallowed in his own good time and dabbed his mouth carefully with a paper napkin before responding.
‘No.’ The voice was even in tone, a trace of American in the accent. ‘The flight plan had been filed before I arrived on my shift. I spoke to the pilot – to Mr Paul Wallinger – on the radio as he checked his instruments, taxied to the runway and prepared for take-off.’
‘He sounded normal?’
‘What does “normal” mean, please?’
‘Was he agitated? Drunk? Did he sound tense?’
Makris reacted as though Kell had impugned his integrity.
‘Drunk? Of course not. If I sense that a pilot is any of these things, I will prevent him from flying. Of course.’
‘Of course.’ Kell had never had much time for thin-skinned bureaucrats and couldn’t be bothered to summon an apology for whatever offence his remark might have caused. ‘You can understand why I have to ask. In order to complete a full report on the accident, Scottish Widows needs to know everything …’
As though he had already grown tired of listening, Makris leaned down, picked up a slim briefcase and set it on the table. Kell was still speaking as two thick thumbs operated the sliding locks. The catches popped, the lid sprang open, and Makris’s face was momentarily obscured from view.
‘I have the flight plan here, Mr Hardwick. I made