A Colder War. Charles Cumming
mean recently? In London?’
‘Yes, recently.’
‘You want an honest answer to that?’
‘Of course.’
‘Fuck all.’
Amelia did not react to the bluntness of the response. Ordinarily she would have smiled or conjured a look of mock disapproval. But her mood was serious, as though she had finally arrived at a solution to a problem that had been troubling her for some time.
‘So you’re not busy for the next few weeks?’
Kell felt a jolt of optimism, his luck about to change. Just ask the question, he thought. Just get me back in the game. He looked out across a valley sketched with dry-stone walls and distant sheep, thinking of the long afternoons he had spent brushing up his Arabic at SOAS, the solo holidays in Lisbon and Beirut, the course he had taken at City Lit in twentieth-century Irish poetry. Filling up the time.
‘I’ve got a job for you,’ she said. ‘Should have mentioned it earlier, but it didn’t seem right before the funeral.’ Kell heard the gravel-crunch of someone approaching them across the drive. He hoped the offer would come before they were cut off, mid-conversation. He didn’t want Amelia changing her mind.
‘What kind of job?’
‘Would you go out to Chios for me? To Turkey? Find out what Paul was up to before he died?’
‘You don’t know what he was up to?’
Amelia shrugged. ‘Not all of it. On a personal level. One never does.’ Kell looked down at the damp ground and conceded the point with a shrug. He had dedicated most of his working life to the task of puncturing privacy, yet what did a person ultimately know about the thoughts and motives of the people who were closest to them? ‘Paul had no operational reason to be in Chios,’ Amelia continued. ‘Josephine thinks he was there on business, Station didn’t know he was going.’
Kell assumed that Amelia suspected what was obvious, given Wallinger’s reputation and track record: that he had been on the island with a woman and that he had been careful to cover his tracks.
‘I’ll tell Ankara you’re coming. Red carpet, access all areas. Istanbul ditto. They’ll open up all the relevant files.’
It was like getting a clean bill of health after a medical scare. Kell had been waiting for such a moment for months.
‘I could do that,’ he said.
‘You’re on full pay, yes? We put you on that after France?’ The question was plainly rhetorical. ‘You’ll have a driver, whatever else you need. I’ll make arrangements for you to have a cover identity while you’re there, should you need it.’
‘Will I need it?’
It was as if Amelia was holding back a vital piece of information. Kell wondered what he was signing up for.
‘Not necessarily,’ she said, though her next remark only confirmed his suspicion that there was something else in play. ‘Just tread carefully around the Yanks.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘You’ll see. Tricky out there at the moment.’
He was struck by the intensity with which Amelia was speaking.
‘What are you not telling me?’ he asked.
‘Just find out what happened,’ she replied quickly, and took his wrist in a gloved hand, squeezing hard at the bone as though to stem the flow of blood from a wound. Amelia’s steady eyes held Kell’s, then flicked back in the direction of the wake, at the mourners in black filing out of the barn. ‘Why was Paul on Chios?’ she said, and there was agony in the question, a powerful woman’s despair that she had been unable to protect a man whom perhaps she still loved. ‘Why did he die?’
For a moment Kell thought that her composure was going to crack. He took Amelia’s arm and squeezed back, the reassurance of a friend. But her strength returned, as quickly as the sudden gust of wind that blew across the farm, and whatever Kell was about to say was cut short.
‘It’s simple,’ she said, with the trace of a resigned smile. ‘Just find out why the hell we’re all here.’
Kell had packed his bags, cleared out of his room and cancelled his reservation at L’Enclume within the hour. By seven o’clock he was back in Preston station, changing platforms for an evening train to Euston. Amelia had driven to London with Simon Haynes, having called Athens and Ankara with instructions for Kell’s trip. He bought a tuna sandwich and a packet of crisps on the station concourse, washed them down with two cans of Stella Artois purchased from a catering trolley on the train, and finished The Sense of an Ending. No colleague, no friend from SIS had elected to join him on the journey home. There were spies from five continents scattered throughout the train, buried in books or wives or laptops, but none of them would run the risk of publicly consorting with Witness X.
Kell was home by eleven. He knew why Amelia had chosen him for such an important assignment. After all, there were dozens of capable officers pacing the corridors of Vauxhall Cross, all of whom would have jumped at the chance to get to the bottom of the Wallinger mystery. Yet Kell was one of only two or three trusted lieutenants who knew of Amelia’s long affair with Paul. It was rumoured throughout the Service that ‘C’ had never been faithful to Giles; that she had perhaps been involved in a relationship with an American businessman. But, for most, her links to Wallinger would have been solely professional. Any thorough investigation into his private life would inevitably turn up hard evidence of their relationship. Amelia could not afford to have talk of an affair on the record; she was relying on Kell to be discreet with whatever he found.
Before going to bed he repacked his bags, dug out his Kell passport and emailed the photograph of the Hungarian inscription to an old contact in the National Security Authority, Tamas Metka, who had retired to run a bar in Szolnok. By seven the next morning Kell was in a cab to Gatwick and back in the dreary routine of twenty-first-century flying: the long, agitated queues; the liquids farcically bagged; the shoes and belts pointlessly removed.
Five hours later he was touching down in Athens, cradle of civilization, epicentre of global debt. Kell’s contact was waiting for him in a café inside the departures hall, a first-posting SIS officer instructed by Amelia to provide a cover identity for Chios. The young man – who introduced himself as ‘Adam’ – had evidently been working on the legend throughout the night: his eyes were stiff with sleeplessness and he had a rash, red as an allergy, beneath the stubble on his lower jaw. There was a mug of black coffee on the table in front of him, an open sandwich of indeterminate contents, and a padded envelope with the single letter ‘H’ scribbled on the front. He was wearing a Greenpeace sweatshirt and a black Nike baseball cap so that Kell could more easily identify him.
‘Good flight?’
‘Fine, thanks,’ Kell replied, shaking his hand and sitting down. They exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes before Kell took possession of the envelope. He had already passed through Greek Customs, so there was now less danger of being caught with dual identities.
‘It’s a commercial cover. You’re an insurance investigator with Scottish Widows writing up a preliminary report on the Wallinger crash. Chris Hardwick.’ Adam’s voice was quiet, methodical, well-rehearsed. ‘I’ve got you a room at the Golden Sands hotel in Karfas, about ten minutes south of Chios Town. The Chandris was full.’
‘The Chandris?’
‘It’s where everybody stays if they come to the island on business. Best hotel in town.’
‘You think Wallinger may have stayed there under a pseudonym?’
‘It’s possible, sir.’