A Colder War. Charles Cumming

       12

      With the tide in his favour, Kell could have swum to Turkey in a couple of hours. It was less than ten kilometres from Karfas to Çeşme; a ferry from Chios Town would have got him there in forty-five minutes. Instead, sticking to the itinerary arranged by London, he flew back to Athens and took a bumpy afternoon plane to Ankara, landing a little after five o’clock and losing his bag for an hour in the late afternoon chaos of an over-staffed Turkish airport.

      Douglas Tremayne, Wallinger’s number two in Ankara and the acting Head of Station, was waiting for him in the Arrivals area. Kell couldn’t work out whether his presence at the airport was an indication of the seriousness with which he was taking the Wallinger investigation, or evidence of the fact that Tremayne was bored and starved of company. He was wearing a pressed linen suit, an expensive-looking shirt and enough aftershave to water the eyes of anyone within a twenty-foot radius. His hair had been carefully combed and his brown brogues polished to a brilliant shine.

      ‘I thought we were meeting for dinner?’ Kell asked, shouldering his bag as they headed towards the car park. Tremayne was an unmarried former Army officer with a fill-in-the-blanks personality whom Kell had briefly worked alongside in the late 1990s when both men had been stationed in London. Along with several other colleagues, Kell had formed the opinion that Tremayne had not yet found the courage to admit to himself, far less to others, that he was gay. Personable to an almost suffocating degree, he was best enjoyed in small doses. The prospect of spending the next several hours in his company, not to mention two full days and nights at the British Embassy combing through the Wallinger files, filled Kell with a sense of despondency bordering on dread.

      ‘Well, I had some time on my hands, I know what the taxi drivers are like round here, thought I’d surprise you so we could make a start on things in the car.’

      Given that Tremayne was declared to the Turkish authorities, there was a chance that anything they discussed in the vehicle would be recorded and relayed back to MIT, the Turkish intelligence service.

      ‘When did you last have this thing swept?’ Kell asked, swinging his luggage into the boot. There was a dent in the left back panel of the car, an unhealed scar from a collision in Ankaran traffic.

      ‘Don’t worry, Tom. Don’t worry.’ Tremayne opened the passenger door for him, like a chauffeur anticipating a tip. ‘Picked it up yesterday afternoon.’ He patted the roof for good measure. ‘Clean as a whistle.’

      ‘But you’re followed?’

      Tremayne waited until he had sat in the driver’s seat and switched on the engine before replying.

      ‘By the Iranians. By the Russians. By the Turks. Isn’t that part of my job description? To suck up surveillance so that the likes of you can go about your business?’

      If such a status bothered him, Tremayne did not betray his distress. He was the quieter breed of spook, grown somewhat lazy, certainly happy to serve time in the shadow of more dynamic colleagues. Wallinger had been the star in Turkey, Amelia’s point-man for the restructuring of SIS operations in the Middle East, heading up a team of hungry young officers eager to recruit and run operations against the myriad targets presented to them in Ankara and beyond. Tremayne would not have considered himself in the running for Head of Station.

      Within minutes Tremayne’s Volvo was crawling along a standard-issue Turkish highway, Kell reviving a sense he dimly recalled of Ankara as a soulless city, deposited on the Steppe, buildings of no recognizable age or tradition strewn across an erratic landscape. He had visited the city on two previous occasions, solely for meetings with MIT, and could recall nothing of the trips save for a January blizzard that had given the British Embassy the look of an Alpine ski lodge.

      ‘So we’ve been battening down the hatches, trying to come to terms with the whole thing.’ Kell’s mind had wandered; he wasn’t sure how long Tremayne had been monologuing about Wallinger. ‘I wasn’t able to go to the funeral, as you know. Had to mind the fort. How was it?’

      Kell cracked a window and lit a cigarette, his fourth since landing.

      ‘Difficult. Very moving. A lot of old faces there. A lot of unanswered questions.’

      ‘Do you think he might have crashed the plane deliberately?’

      Tremayne had the decency to make a momentary, glancing eye contact as he pitched the question, but the timing of it still irked Kell.

      ‘You tell me. Did Paul strike you as the suicidal type?’

      ‘Not at all.’ Tremayne’s response was quick and forthright, though he added a caveat, like a quick adjustment to the steering wheel. ‘Truth be told, we didn’t see a great deal of one another. We didn’t fraternize. Paul spent the majority of his time in Istanbul.’

      ‘Any particular reason for that?’

      Tremayne hesitated before responding. ‘It’s an attack Station.’

      ‘I’m well aware of that, Doug. That’s why I said “particular reason”?’

      Kell was trawling again, for anything: Wallinger’s assets – conscious or unconscious – his contacts, his women. The files and telegrams he would pore over in the next forty-eight hours would give an official version of Wallinger’s interests and behaviour, but there was no downside to the raw intel of gossip and rumour.

      ‘Well, for one thing, he loved the city. Knew it like the back of his hand, enjoyed it as Istanbul deserves to be enjoyed. Things are always more formal here. Ankara is a government town, a policy town. As you will be aware, most of the important discussions on Iran, on Syria and the Brotherhood, are taking place in Istanbul. Paul kept a lovely house in Yeniköy. He was surrounded by his books, his paintings. That’s where Josephine would visit him. She loathed Ankara. The children did, too.’

      ‘Rachel came here?’

      Tremayne nodded. ‘Only once, I think.’

      Kell took out his iPhone and checked the screen for activity. There was a single text, which turned out to be a welcome message from his mobile phone provider, and three emails, two of which were spam. It was a bad, addictive habit he had developed after spending too many solitary days and nights in London without sufficient intellectual stimulation: a craving for news, for the tiny narcotic fix of contact from the outside world. Most days he hoped for a friendly message from Claire, if only to reassure himself that she had not entirely vanished from his life.

      ‘Is that the new one?’ Tremayne asked.

      ‘I’ve no idea.’ Kell put the iPhone back in his pocket. ‘Tell me what Paul was working on when he died. Amelia said you’d be able to bring me up to speed.’

      A change of gear and Tremayne crawled towards a red light.

      ‘I suppose you’ve heard about the Armenian fiasco?’

      It was a reminder to Kell that he had been out of the loop for too long. Whatever operation Tremayne was referring to had not even been mentioned by Amelia in Cartmel.

      ‘Assume that I’m starting at zero, Doug. The decision to send me here was only taken two days ago.’

      The traffic light began to flash. Tremayne moved off in bunched suburban traffic, passing beneath a giant billboard of José Mourinho advertising what appeared to be contents insurance.

      ‘I see,’ he said, plainly surprised by Kell’s ignorance. ‘Well, best described as a bloody farce.