A Colder War (28 page)

“Sure,” he said, delighted finally to have been asked to play a more dynamic role in the operation. No more stakeouts, no more foot surveillance, no more paperwork and waiting. He was playing with the big boys now. “I’ll start over here.”

“You do that.”

At the same time, Kell began looking for a route to the Richards house, because that would surely be Kleckner’s cover? A drink in the garden, a solitary stroll and a cigarette after dinner, perhaps even a wander at three
A.M
. while spending the night. If there was a quick, unobstructed route between the two properties, Kleckner could be there and back within a couple of minutes. Under cover of darkness, or shielded during the day by the ample foliage of the gardens, his absence would not even be noticed.

Kell was at the eastern end of the ruins when he heard a child laughing, perhaps twenty or thirty meters away. One of the Richards kids. Ahead of him there was a tangle of trees and bushes obscuring the view, trapping the heat, but as gloomy as an English forest in the depths of winter. Kell climbed over an intact wall and looked to his left. There was a clearing to the side of the house, adjacent to what had once been a doorway. Walking toward the sound of the laughing child, he was able to move through the clearing and to bend and twist with relative ease along a path that linked the two houses. This was surely ABACUS’s route. So why had he approached the ruined house from the seaward side?

Now an adult’s voice. A Frenchwoman, most likely Marguerite Richards. Kell froze. He could not risk being seen by one of the children, or flushed out by a barking dog. He waited, then moved slowly back toward the ruined house, where he rejoined Mohsin.

*   *   *

No more than half a mile away, Alexander Minasian had joined the long line of passengers exiting the ferry at Buyukada. Having stepped down onto the jetty he walked south toward the main street, past the ticket check, and into a covered arcade of shops where he had once bought his nephew an imitation sailor’s cap with
CAPTAIN
embroidered on the peak.

KODAK favored the second café on the main street as a first point to shake off surveillance. Minasian, on the other hand, preferred a larger restaurant to the west of the ferry terminal. It was his habit to take a table outside, to order a drink and perhaps a snack, then to read for twenty minutes, building up a portrait of his fellow customers, watching for repeating faces from his countersurveillance routine on the mainland. When Minasian was satisfied that there was no threat, he would pay his bill, leave the book on the table, go inside the restaurant—ostensibly to use the bathroom—then walk out via a rear exit adjacent to the women’s toilet. This took him into a small courtyard at the back of the building. From there it was possible to reach one of the quieter alleyways that ran behind the main harbor road and to set out toward the Richards house in the western corner of the island, employing whatever further countersurveillance Minasian deemed necessary.

On this beautiful summer afternoon, the Russian chose a table at the outer perimeter of the terrace, ordered a bottle of Efes lager, paid in advance, and continued to read the novel he had begun on the boat. He was enjoying the book very much—it had been a gift from his lover in Hamburg—and so it was with a measure of regret that he abandoned it on the table, in order to give the impression that he was going to the bathroom. Minasian then slipped away from the restaurant via the staff exit.

A bicycle had been left for him, as arranged with the consulate in Istanbul. Minasian unlocked it using the key he had collected earlier in the day from an SVR colleague at the Pera Palace Hotel. He then embarked on a pleasant bicycle ride around the town, passing the churches of Aya Dimitrios and San Pacifico before heading downhill in a westerly direction toward the house occupied by Matthew and Marguerite Richards and their two young children.

*   *   *

Kell spent more than half an hour lifting paving stones, standing up on crumbling walls, peering into the gaps between wildly overgrown trees, even pulling back a rotten hessian sack that had been wedged in one of the doorframes. He began to think that he was on a fool’s errand. Mohsin had become so irritable—and plagued by insect bites—that he had returned to the beach, complaining about the “fucking heat” and saying that he needed a swim to “cool the fuck down.” Again and again Kell reminded himself of the tradecraft lunacy of planting a DLB on an island. No escape route. The suicide of the choke point. And he was about to give up, about to join Mohsin in the water, when he glimpsed a rusted gas canister in the corner of what had once been a kitchen or pantry at the southeastern end of the house.

Kell crouched down. The canister was protected from the elements by a portion of wooden shelf. There were dried leaves and loose stones all around it, as well as a prehistoric cigarette packet, crumpled and faded by years of rain and heat. Cobwebs deterred Kell from picking it up; he did not want to disturb the site. Instead, he banged on the canister. A hollow retort. An insect landed on his wrist and he flicked it away, banging his head on the wooden counter as he did so.

There was a gap to the left of the canister, running under the counter into darkness. Kell took out his iPhone, leaned closer in and shone it around the corner into the empty space. No cobwebs, no obstructions here. The area surprisingly clean. Just a deflated leather football, old and worn. By stretching out his arm, Kell could pull it out.

The leather was bone dry, but the surface of the ball was not as dusty or as caked in filth as Kell had expected. He felt something slip and move inside the ball, perhaps a stone. His fingers probed at the edge of a slit in the leather. Using both hands, Kell prized it open.

He was holding a balled-up sheet of paper wrapped in cellophane and held together by two rubber bands. He knew then, in his bones, that it was product and felt an adrenalized rush of euphoria that caused his hands to shake as he removed the rubber bands and unscrewed the bundle.

The piece of paper was still crisp, the typed letters clear and easy to read.

1. JC/LVa consistently losing argument on S intervention with WH. UK will do what US will do. Trying to get more on this but veracity of chem usage a) doubted by JC and b) not a WH threshold, as stated. Intel on FSA contradictory. WH happy for LVa to arm clandestinely.

2. Assad Pharma VX to AQ intercepted GID (April)

3. New BND source inside Huda-Par/Batman—deputy chairman HA

4. New stream of reporting coming out of mayoral office. JC source. Unidentified. More to follow on this.

5. Weapons cache FSA planned for frontier crossing and interaction 5.2.13 Jarabulus. RX, license plate by SMS 4.30. Very low circulation on this.

6. Why CS termination? Explanation? PW compromised? Suggest LHR Tues 30-Fri 3 (confirm SMS)

*   *   *

Alexander Minasian was thirsty. There was a man selling drinks from a stall at the side of the road, no more than three hundred meters south of the Trotsky house. The Russian leaned the bicycle against a garden fence before paying for a liter of chilled water. It was still very hot on the island, even in the relative cool of the shaded suburban neighborhood, and he removed his baseball cap before swallowing almost half a liter of the water in one long, breathless gulp.

The break in his journey allowed Minasian the opportunity to check his tail for following surveillance and to make an assessment of the good sense of servicing the DLB. There were three designated approaches, each of which he had used at different times. The most straightforward access to the Trotksy house was via the Richards garden, though Minasian could only enter the property when the family were away. The second route took him down to the sea, where he would pass in front of the Richards
yali
and then approach the site from the beach. The third route required Minasian to bicycle half a mile farther west, then to double back along a narrow path that clung to the coast.

Because of the heat, he decided on the second option. He would lock the bicycle, walk down to the beach, enjoy a brief, cooling swim, then service the DLB on his way out.

*   *   *

Kell took out his iPhone, photographed the piece of paper four times, immediately sent a copy of the photograph to one of his e-mail accounts, then whistled to Mohsin down on the beach.

He had soon deciphered Kleckner’s abbrevations. “JC” was Jim Chater, “LVa” was Langley, Virginia. “WH” was White House, “FSA” very obviously the Free Syrian Army. (The cache of weapons would be transported in a Red Cross vehicle to the border at Jarabulus.) “CS” was Sandor, “PW” was Paul. Kell assumed “HA” were the initials of a deputy chairman of Huda-Par, the Kurdish Islamist party with offices in Batman, a town about a hundred kilometers east of Diyarbakir. In item 2, Kleckner had suggested that a consignment of VX nerve agent, disguised as market pharmaceuticals by the Assad regime, and destined for al-Qaeda, had been intercepted by Jordanian intelligence.

Kell had a decision to make. Should he leave the letter in place and risk it passing into the hands of Kleckner’s case officer? The product itself was not incendiary: ABACUS had not revealed the identities of any CIA or SIS agents in Turkey. The name of the new source in the mayoral office in Istanbul was not known to him. That Langley and the White House were in disagreement about the good sense of intervention in Syria was an open secret, as was Downing Street’s position on arming rebels opposed to Assad. Nobody had ever believed that the use of chemical weapons would be a red line for the White House.

The obvious operational risk was to an apparent consignment of weapons designated for representatives of the Free Syrian Army. The date given for the transfer at the border crossing in Jarabulus was May second. That was in three days’ time. If Kleckner was an SVR asset, it was almost certain that Moscow would pass details of the Red Cross license plate to its client state. That would lead to arrests, and certainly to the deaths of whomever the Americans hired to drive the truck. It was perhaps a price that would have to be paid. To alert Chater would be to alert him to Kleckner’s treachery. It was too early to play that card.

Kell heard the sound of Mohsin coming up the shattered stone staircase from the beach. He whistled again, directing him toward the kitchen. He took a final look at the sheet of paper, then balled it in the cellophane, tied it with the rubber bands, and replaced it inside the football. Taking care not to disturb the cobwebs strung beneath the wooden shelf, he reached into the space behind the gas canister and put the football back in exactly the same place and position in which he had found it.

“You find something?”

Mohsin was standing in the doorway. He had swum in his shorts, which were wet through, his hair matted with seawater. Kell motioned at him frantically.

“Stay where you are. Fuck’s sake don’t come in here.” He was concerned that Mohsin would drip water on the ground, contaminating the scene. “Where was ABACUS yesterday? Did he go to Arada?”

“What?”
Something of Mohsin’s default disdain had returned. He was plainly irritated by Kell’s tone.

“I said was ABACUS in Arada—”

“I heard you.”

Kell stood up. At last he allowed his anger full expression. “Javed, I don’t have time for your attitude. Answer me. This is important. Time is a fucking factor. Was ABACUS in Arada yesterday or wasn’t he?”

The surveillance man was stung by the rebuke. Looking at Kell with sullen eyes he said: “Yes” and wiped his still-wet arms clear of drying salt and water.

“Was he wearing a tie? Was he wearing a suit?”

Kell could see the cogs beginning to work in Mohsin’s brain.
The boss wants to know if ABACUS signaled the DLB. The boss wants to know if somebody is coming to clear the box.

“Yes. I think so,” he said.

“And where did he go yesterday? After work?”

“I don’t know,” Mohsin replied.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“We lost him, sir. Yesterday was one of the times he got away from us. I thought you knew that.”

Kell walked toward him and physically turned Mohsin through one hundred and eighty degrees. If Kleckner had gone to Arada the day before, wearing a tie to signal that the box was full, his SVR handler could come to the house at any moment. If he had seen Kell in the old kitchen, had heard them talking, had watched them going into the site, the operation to identify and then arrest the mole was ruined before it had begun. Even as Kell guided Mohsin out of the house, down the ruined steps, telling him to pick up his shirt and personal effects as quickly as possible, he knew that ABACUS’s handler could be sending an abort code that would put Kleckner on the next flight to Moscow, never to be seen again.

“What’s going on?” Mohsin asked, as Kell guided him toward the small concrete harbor, his hand in the small of his back. They had moved so quickly that Kell had not even been able to check for signs of water in the house, droplets from Mohsin’s arms and legs, drips from his shorts. He could only hope that they would dry quickly in the fading heat. There was a house about eighty meters along the coast, close to where the beach flattened out. Several bathers were swimming and splashing in the shallows.

“There’s a risk that somebody is coming to the site. I found the DLB. It was loaded.”

“Jesus.” Mohsin was putting on his shirt. “You want me to stay? Keep an eye out?”

Kell had considered that option, but it was too much of a risk. Keep an eye out from where? The tops of the trees? A rowing boat out at sea? No. The location of the box had been well chosen. Even setting up static camera positions overlooking the site would be fraught with risk.

“Forget it,” he replied, taking out a cigarette and lighting it as they reached the edge of the shingled beach. “We just need to get away from here as quickly as possible.”

*   *   *

Alexander Minasian surfaced seventy meters from the shore, clearing seawater from his nose with a crisp, efficient snort. Treading water, he was able to study both the façade of the Richards
yali
and the outline ruins of the Trotsky house, which was largely hidden from view by a curtain of pine trees. He could hear children playing in the distance, the low moan of a motorboat engine, the lisp of water as low waves unfurled on the beach. Turning around so that he was looking out across the vast plain of the Sea of Marmara, stretching all the way to the blur of Istanbul, Minasian remembered the long arguments with Kleckner about the good sense of locating the DLB on Buyukada. The Russian had argued his case vociferously, but the American was as stubborn as he was eventually persuasive.