A Colder War (21 page)

“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
non
stupid 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.”

“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.

The following morning, Gachon drove along the coast road toward Dubrovnik. Due to an accident near Split, there was heavy traffic and he was two hours behind schedule by the time he arrived at his hotel. Using a public phone box in the old town, he obtained final confirmation of the target’s position from his controller and received the go-ahead for the operation. To Gachon’s frustration, he was instructed to wait in Dubrovnik for an extra twenty-four hours and to take the ferry to Lopud no earlier than Saturday morning. The other elements of the plan were to be observed as arranged. The water taxi would still be waiting to take him off the island at the jetty of the Lafodia Hotel at 2330 hours.

No explanation was given for the delay.

31

Kell didn’t bother traveling to Lopud under alias. If Cecilia Sandor was a Russian asset, a freelancer in the pay of the Iranians, the Chinese, or the Mossad, any false identity he attempted to use on the island would be ripped apart in a matter of minutes. As soon as Sandor became suspicious of Kell, she would trace him to his hotel, have his legend run through a database, and conclude that he was hostile. Pretending to a Greek real estate agent that he was an insurance investigator from Edinburgh was one thing; posing as Chris Hardwick to a former Hungarian intelligence officer with possible links to the SVR quite another.

For the same reason, he didn’t suggest taking Elsa along for cover, even if Amelia could have spared her. Yes, a couple always drew less attention than a single man, in almost any environment, but Kell wanted to leave his options open. Having a “girlfriend” in tow might limit his access to Sandor. If she was as innocent as she appeared, Kell could introduce himself at the restaurant as a friend and colleague of Paul’s and try to ascertain what had happened on Chios in the days leading up to the crash. He was also—if he was honest with himself—keen to avoid being trapped in quasi-romantic cover with Elsa. Kell was troubled by his desire to get back to Istanbul, and to Rachel, as soon as the operation would allow.

London had booked him into the Lafodia, the large hotel that Amelia had described at the southwestern edge of Lopud Town. There were two separate groups attending conferences at the hotel, as well as a number of holidaying families; Kell was grateful for the natural cover of crowds as he wandered back and forth from the beach or strolled along the pedestrianized path that curled around the bay in a half-mile crescent.

Sandor’s restaurant—Centonove—was located some distance from the hotel, inside a small converted house a few meters from the shoreline. There were half a dozen tables positioned on a terrace overlooking the bay, several more inside the restaurant itself. No vehicles were permitted on the island, so the necklace of bars and restaurants along the bay were undisturbed by passing traffic.

On his first full day on Lopud, a Saturday, Kell passed Centonove perhaps seven or eight times without setting eyes on Sandor. GCHQ were tracking her phone and laptop but had failed to inform him that Cecilia was spending most of the day in Dubrovnik “visiting a friend for lunch and then meeting a decorator in the afternoon.” When it transpired that Sandor was scheduled to work the Sunday evening shift at the restaurant, Kell booked a table for eight o’clock and spent the rest of the day at the Lafodia, reading a novel
,
swimming in the sea, and e-mailing Rachel. He was not permitted to tell her that he was on Lopud, nor would he have wanted to, for obvious personal reasons. Nevertheless, it was a source of agitation to Kell that he was obliged to lie to her, to give the impression that he was “in Germany on business.” It was like a reminder of the many years he had spent with Claire, unable to tell her where he was going, who he was meeting, the nature of the covert business he was conducting on behalf of the secret state. Furthermore, he sensed that Rachel
knew
he was deceiving her and that any relationship that might develop between the two of them would be compromised as a result.

*   *   *

Kell woke late on Sunday morning with the idea of walking to a ruined fort above the bay and carrying out basic distance surveillance on Sandor’s apartment, which was located directly above Centonove. Rachel had sent an e-mail overnight, complaining that she had been to “an amazingly boring party filled with amazingly boring people” at a nightclub on the Bosporus.

Things are very quiet and dull here without you, Mr Kell. When are you coming back from Berlin? xxx

The route to the fort began in the back streets of Lopud town and quickly wove uphill along a rocky path that meandered through a forest of pine and cypress. From the bay, Kell had spotted what appeared to be an abandoned shepherd’s hut halfway up the hill. Leaving the path and picking his way through thick undergrowth, he located the hut and—having ensured that he was concealed from view—trained a set of binoculars across the water at Centonove. There was no sign of Sandor, only the bald middle-aged waiter whom Kell had passed on three occasions, as well as a smattering of tourists eating lunch on the terrace. Cheltenham had triangulated Sandor’s cell phone to the building, so Kell assumed that she was upstairs in her apartment. The shutters were closed and the veranda outside her kitchen, on the southern side of the building, deserted.

He swept the binoculars along the bay, left into town, right toward the Lafodia. It was almost midday and the heat was intensifying. Kell could see children splashing in the shallows, tourists in rented kayaks embarking on trips around the island, the ferry from Dubrovnik slowing on approach to the terminal. The normal buzz and drift of island life. He would like to bring Rachel here. Just a few nights together, a chance to sleep late, to catch some sun, eat good food. Instead Kell knew that it would be at least two months, perhaps three, before he was done with Kleckner and free to leave Istanbul, and only then for a short break before returning to Ankara. In that time, who knew what would happen to Rachel? Chances are she would soon head back to London and he would never see her again.

He waited another five minutes in the shade of the hut. Still no sign of Cecilia. Standing up and shouldering the binoculars, Kell returned to the path, removing his shirt and continuing uphill toward the fort. Within ten minutes he had emerged from the forest to find himself among the ruins at the summit of an arid, rocky outcrop. He rested against a wall and tried to recover his breath, sipping from a bottle of water and wiping the sweat from his face. Behind him, to the southeast, Dubrovnik glittered in the midday sun. To the north, Kell could make out the tiny hulls of motorboats and yachts crisscrossing the strait. He checked his phone for messages, but there was nothing from Elsa, nothing from Rachel, nothing from London. He took several pictures of the ruins, then began the descent, passing two elderly British tourists as he tracked back through the forest. Halfway down, he again dropped off the path, clambered through the undergrowth, and returned to the cover of the shepherd’s hut.

This time, Kell sat with his back to a shattered wooden door. The sun was at its zenith and he was aware of the danger of light reflecting off the surface of the binoculars as, once again, he trained them on Centonove. The door began to itch against the small of his back and he put his shirt on, smacking at his neck to kill an insect that had settled on his wet skin. He picked up the binoculars and traced along the bay, focusing on the cluster of tables outside the restaurant.