A Colder War (38 page)

57

Ryan Kleckner could not come to terms with the suddenness with which his work had come to an end. Returning to his apartment in the early hours of Saturday morning, he had tried to convince himself that the woman on the aircraft was not the same woman he had seen in Harrods. It was a coincidence, a case of mistaken identity. Surely he was not being tailed? What clues had he given? What mistakes had he made? None. He was certain that if there was fault in the operation, it had to have come from the Russian side.

Then the text message from Minasian. BESIKTAS. A single word, bringing everything to an end. KODAK blown. Get out of Istanbul. Follow agreed procedure.

Kleckner had sat and stared at the screen of his BlackBerry, even as he realized that his apartment was most likely compromised and that his every move was being watched by a room full of analysts in Langley and Istinye. He felt humiliated, ashamed. It was the first time that he could remember experiencing such sudden and profound despair. He had no choice but to pack, leaving behind countless belongings—pictures, books, records, items of clothing—that he knew he would never see again. He doubted that he would make it as far as the door of his apartment. They were probably waiting for him outside.

But to Kleckner’s surprise, he found that he was able to leave the building unmolested. To go to the phone booth and to call the number that Minasian had given him. When he heard the woman answering in Russian, he gave the agreed response: “BESIKTAS THREE.” There was a pause, after which the woman repeated the code and hung up.

Kleckner had not known whether or not the message had been conveyed to Minasian until he had stolen the cell phone on the ship. One of the passengers had left the phone on a table in the entertainment lounge and Kleckner had scooped it. There had been no signal for several hours. He had waited in his cabin, then out on deck at night, watching the bars on the screen, like a paramedic waiting for a pulse. At last, perhaps because the ship had drawn closer to the Romanian coast, he had been able to send a message to Minasian.

SERENISSIMA. LUNEDI.

It was simple enough. The name of the ship, which the SVR could track online, and the day when Kleckner hoped to be picked up. Within minutes, the Russian had replied, confirming receipt of the message with the agreed word. Kleckner had wanted to speak to him, to find out what had gone wrong, but knew that it would be unsafe to do so. He was convinced that Minasian had been compromised. In all the scenarios that his mind rehearsed, Kleckner would not allow himself to believe that Rachel had tricked him or had been working in concert with Thomas Kell. Ryan Kleckner didn’t make mistakes. The Brits didn’t do honey traps. The fault lay with Moscow.

58

Kell was the last to arrive at the eight o’clock meeting. The other members of the team had already gathered at a large outdoor table on the south side of Deribasovskaya, their seats partly screened from the street by a slatted white fence entwined with fairy lights and fake vines. Kell had chosen the restaurant because of several reviews on TripAdvisor describing it as “busy” and “extremely noisy.” Sure enough, there were several sources of music in the immediate area, including Russian pop tunes blaring from two speakers at the entrance to the restaurant and a folk band playing live across the street through a small, crackling amplifier.

“Nice and peaceful,” Kell muttered as he took his seat at the center of the table. He shook hands with Harold and Danny, kissed Elsa and Carol on the cheek. To the rest—Nina, Jez, Javed, and Alicia, a Russian-speaking SIS analyst brought along as a translator—he nodded and smiled. “How’s everybody enjoying their holiday so far?”

“I am enjoying myself very much,” Elsa replied, a sentiment echoed by Jez, who said he had spent the afternoon at Arkadia Beach with Carol.

“And you?” Kell asked Harold.

“I was just educating the masses on the history of this fine city,” he replied, brandishing a paperback book from which he began to read. Kell was glad for Harold’s icebreaking charm. It was good for morale. “Did you know that Catherine the Great had a one-eyed secret husband?”

“A one-eyed secret husband,” Kell repeated, ordering a beer from the waiter. “I did not know that.”

“Odessa was once the most vibrant port in the whole of the Russian empire,” Harold continued, flicking through the pages of the book. Elsa looked confused. His sense of humor had always baffled her. “Everything came through this place in the old days. Wines from France, olive oil from Italy, nuts from Turkey, dried fruits from the Levant…”

“The
what
?” Nina asked.

“The Levant,” Harold replied, without condescension. “Otherwise known as the Middle East.” Kell picked up a laminated menu on which every dish appeared with an illustrating photograph. “Then it all came to an end.”

“Why?” Danny asked, from the end of the table. “Soviet Union?”

“Suez,” Kell replied. “Canal.”

Harold flattened the book spine-up on the table. “
Odessa
:
Genius and Death in a City of Dreams
.” Kell looked at the sepia-tinted photograph of the Potemkin Steps on the cover and said: “What’s everyone eating?”

It was a ritual he had endured many times in his career. As usual, there was very little operational conversation until the food had arrived. Kell knew from experience that it was best to allow teams to relax in one another’s company before turning to business. The time also allowed him to assess each member of the team. Did anyone seem nervous or tired? Were there tensions between individuals, or particularly strong bonds of friendship? Though Carol seemed quiet and somewhat out of place, he was satisfied that there were no obvious problems and began with an overview of what was planned for the morning.

“The ship is due to dock at eleven o’clock. I’ll be keeping an eye out; Elsa has been tracking her progress across the Black Sea. There’s every chance the boat could be an hour early, an hour late, so everybody needs to be ready and prepared by eight, phones live from midnight tonight. Goes without saying, keep them charged.” The restaurant was now so noisy, and the activity on Deribasovskaya so unceasing, that Kell knew there was no chance of his remarks being overheard. “You’ve all seen photographs of ABACUS,” he said. “We have a pretty good idea of the clothes he packed, what he might be wearing. I assume all of you have seen those notes on Gmail?” Kell registered a series of nods and muttered affirmatives. “Myself, Danny, Carol, Nina, and Javed will be down at the port terminal with two cars. It’s vital that we identify ABACUS as quickly as possible. At the same time, we all need to be looking out for a welcoming party. If it’s substantial, if for example an advance team gets onto
Serenissima
and brings the package out, that’s the end of it. We walk away.”

Danny looked down at his half-eaten plate of food. He had lobbied hard for a military solution that would have allowed Kleckner to leave Odessa in an SVR vehicle that would be subsequently immobilized by Special Forces. Conscious of the diplomatic fallout from such a plan, quite apart from the constraints imposed by time, Kell had snuffed it out without even running it past Amelia.

“If, on the other hand, our friends in Moscow are trying to be discreet, if there’s just a car of heavies and Minasian to cope with, we’ve got a playable chance. Keep talking to one another, give me positions, keep everybody informed. Trust one another, use your experience.”

There was a sudden break in the folk music across the street. Kell paused, draining his beer.

“Could you just tell us where everybody’s going to be?” Carol asked.

Kell took out his camera and began to pass it around the table, showing each member of the team their starting positions for the morning. Harold would be waiting with Kell and Danny on the quayside, ready to touch Kleckner in a brush contact, attaching a tracker to his clothing. Carol would be positioned inside the terminal building, waiting for Kleckner to pass through customs. Javed and Nina would be fluid in the port, an extra pair of eyes watching for Minasian, for Kleckner, for any sign of SVR personnel. Elsa and Alicia were to wait in two taxis parked close to the main exit of the terminal complex. There was only one way into the port and one way out. If Minasian came out with Kleckner, they were to follow the SVR until Kell, Aldrich, and Jez could join the pursuit. Jez himself was to park in the Italianate square at the top of the Potemkin Steps, role-playing a Ukrainian cab driver. Kell explained to the team that he was hoping to drive Kleckner away from the terminal on foot. If there were no taxis passing on the two-lane highway outside the port, the American would have no other option but to continue up the Potemkin Steps. If he failed to take the bait from Jez and made it into the center of Odessa, they would be in a game of cat and mouse with an expert in countersurveillance. Hence the need for workable comms, several vehicles, and for Harold, Elsa, and Alicia pulling information from the ether.

“And how do we get Ryan into one of the cars?” Nina asked. “What if it’s just me and him and an opportunity?”

“It won’t be,” Kell reassured her. “The only people who are going to physically interact with Minasian and Kleckner are myself, Danny, and Jez. Nobody else is to take that risk. Understood?”

“Understood,” Carol muttered.

“And how exactly are you going to do that?” Nina asked. Kell didn’t much like her tone. “How are you going to physically interact with him?”

“Leave that to us,” Danny told her.

59

Kell slept on and off for only a few hours, dreaming of Rachel, waking with his body drenched in sweat at two, then again at half past four. He had switched off the rattling air-conditioner in his room and it was stultifyingly hot. He climbed out of bed and opened both windows onto the tree-lined colonnade. It was still dark outside, no birdsong. He took a shower and ordered a room service breakfast. By the time Kell was ready to leave, it was not yet six o’clock. A sensationally long-legged, slim-waisted girl in a nonexistent miniskirt was coming up the broad staircase on the arm of a short, shaven-headed middle-aged man who flashed Kell a triumphant smile of lust and conquest. It was all Kell could do to prevent himself muttering: “You get what you pay for,” but he continued down to the lobby in silence.

He emerged onto the broad pavement outside the Londonskaya. A couple of teenagers were sitting on a wooden bench under the plane trees, kissing. A woman wearing a dark blue pinafore was sweeping street dust with a broomstick. Kell turned east toward the Potemkin Steps. A horse and cart, newly painted in white, had parked at the edge of the square, the horse eating from a bag of grass, the driver asleep with a rug spread out across his body. A single taxi was waiting on the rank at the junction with Ekaterininskaya, a Humvee and a stretch limo parked alongside. Kell checked his phone. There were four messages. Danny, Javed, and Nina were awake. According to Elsa,
Serenissima
was delayed by an hour. Alicia had translated a message sent by the Odessa Port Authority giving the ship clearance to dock on the western quay. Neither Elsa nor Harold had picked up a syllable of local SVR chatter.

Kell continued past the Steps, encountering a pack of stray dogs asleep on the ground in front of a pale yellow building on the far side of the square. Somewhere in the distance a generator was running: perhaps the local grid was experiencing one of Odessa’s frequent power cuts. Kell lit a cigarette and walked to a metal footbridge overlooking the port. Cranes as far as the eye could see, no ships docked at the terminal. Hundreds of padlocks had been attached to the railings, love tokens rusted by rain and sea air. An old man with a corrugated nose stopped close by and tucked in a loose section of his shirt, nodding at Kell as he went on his way. Then, out of nowhere, a familiar voice behind him.

“Waiting for a ship?”

Kell turned to find Harold and Danny coming toward him.

“Gentlemen,” he said.

They stood on either side of him. Both were dressed in jeans and polo shirts. Harold had a gray nylon jacket looped over his arm.

“So,” Harold said. “Is she on time?”

“Slight delay,” Kell replied. “An hour, max.”

“Maybe they hit an iceberg.”

Kell stubbed out the cigarette. “Who is it in Greek mythology that waits for a ship?” he asked.

“Aegeus,” Danny replied instantly. Kell had a flash image of Aldrich at home in Guildford, poring over books and encyclopedias. A pub quiz brain. “Theseus, his son, went off to slay the Minotaur. Told him that if he was successful, he’d change the sails on his ship from black to white…”

“But he forgot,” said Kell.

“Exactly.” Danny looked out at the Black Sea. “Aegeus saw the ship, saw the black sails. Reckoned he’d lost his son. So he killed himself.”

“This is what people forget,” said Harold. “They didn’t have cell phones in those days, so Theseus couldn’t call ahead.”

Kell put his hand on Harold’s shoulder, laughing.

“We’ve got time to kill,” he said. “Coffee?”

60

Serenissima
docked at seven minutes past twelve. Javed and Nina had binoculars trained on the decks, but reported no sign of Kleckner. It was a crystal-clear summer afternoon, the terminal far busier than the day before, with vendors doing brisk business on sales of snacks and newspapers, cab drivers queueing up to take curious cruise ship passengers into the heart of old Odessa. Danny and Harold had been at the quayside for more than an hour, looking for Alexander Minasian, watching the vehicles parked on either side of the terminal for any sign of threat or surveillance. Danny had reported “at least three men” in a Mercedes parked parallel to five empty vehicles immediately outside the customs area. If they were SVR, they would only reveal as much when passengers began to disembark from the ship.

Kell, whose face was known to Minasian and Kleckner, had remained in his rented car until a member of the crew on
Serenissima
had thrown a mooring rope from the bow. That was his cue. Kell was then mobile in the port and at risk of being spotted. Too bad. It was now just a race to get to ABACUS; if Kleckner spotted him, he might even get spooked and play into their hands. A ramp had been lowered from the ship, connecting foot passengers to the quay. Kell and Danny needed to get as close to the ramp as possible, and to grab the prize.