A Colder War Read online

  As soon as the waitress had brought the water, Kell stood up and headed toward the bar. He turned right, ostensibly looking for the toilets, but made a point of staring at Marianna’s table. Sensing movement in her peripheral vision, she looked up and instantly recognized Kell. She smiled warmly and set aside the book she was reading.

  “Oh, hello.” Kell managed to convey a look of complete surprise as he came to a halt beside her. He was pleased to note that Marianna was blushing.

  “Mr. Harding!”

  “Hardwick. Call me Chris. Marianna, yes?”

  She looked embarrassed not to have remembered his name. “What are you doing here?”

  Kell turned and nodded back in the general direction of his table. “Same as you, I suppose. Just having some lunch.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  Marianna looked at the chair opposite her own, as though mustering the courage to invite Kell to join her.

  “I’ve just ordered,” he replied, adding a warm smile. “What have you got there? Some soup? Looks delicious.”

  Marianna looked down at what appeared to be a bowl of clear chicken soup. She lifted up the spoon. For a moment, Kell wondered if she was going to offer him a taste.

  “Yes, soup. I am very sorry about Nico.”

  Kell played dumb with the name. “Nico?”

  “My boss…”

  “Oh. Him. Yes, that was frustrating.”

  She appeared to have run out of things to say. Kell looked ahead toward the door of the bathroom.

  “Sorry,” she said, taking the cue. “I didn’t mean to stop you.”

  “No, no,” Kell replied. “It’s really nice to see you. I enjoyed meeting you this morning.” Marianna appeared not to know how to react to the compliment. Her hand moved toward her face and the tips of her fingers brushed her eyebrows. Kell hooked the ensuing silence with an appropriate amount of bait. “I was just frustrated. It would have been useful to find out why Mr. Wallinger had your number.”

  Marianna looked as though she was in possession of the answer to Mr. Hardwick’s simple question.

  “Yes,” she replied, her hand reaching for the spine of the book, as though to reassure herself about something. The flush had gone from her cheeks and she looked eager to continue the conversation. “Nico can be difficult in the mornings.”

  Kell nodded, allowing another brief silence to envelop them. Marianna shot a nervous glance toward the bar.

  “Where are my manners?” she said. “You are a guest in Chios. Would you like to eat at my table? I can’t leave you on your own.”

  “Are you sure?” Kell felt the small but unmistakable buzz of a successfully executed plan.

  “Of course!” Marianna’s natural bustle and bonhomie was suddenly in full flood. She looked buoyant. “I can tell the waitress to bring your food to my table. That is, if you’d like me to?”

  “I would like that very much.”

  After that, it was easy. Kell hadn’t recruited an unconscious asset for over a year, but the tricks of the trade, the grammar of a successful pitch, were second nature to him. “If you’re doing it properly,” the same instructor at the Fort had told the same 1994 class, “a recruitment shouldn’t feel cynical or manipulative. It should feel as though both parties want the same outcome. It should feel as though the prospective agent requires something from you, and that you can meet that requirement.”

  And so it was that Kell discovered the limits of Marianna Dimitriadis’s loyalty to Nicolas Delfas.

  From the outset, he avoided talking about Wallinger. Instead, Kell concentrated on finding out as much about Marianna as possible. By the time they were eating dessert—a rice pudding flavored with lemon—he knew where she had been born, how many brothers and sisters she had, where those siblings lived, the names of her best friends, how she had come to work at Villas Angelis, why she had remained on Chios (rather than pursue a career in Thessaloniki in public relations), as well as the identity of her last boyfriend, a German tourist who had lived with her for six months before returning to his wife in Munich. In her natural warmth and good cheer, Kell detected the loneliness of the maiden aunt, the romantic and social frustration of the lifelong spinster. He rarely shifted his gaze from Marianna’s lively and melancholy eyes. He smiled when she did; he listened as carefully and as intelligently as she required. He was certain that, by the time it came to settle the bill, she would agree to the simple task that he was about to set her.

  “I’ve got a problem,” he said.

  “You do?”

  “If I can’t find out why Paul Wallinger used the number of your office on his flight plan, my boss is going to go crazy. He’ll have to send somebody else out to Chios, I’ll get the blame, the whole thing will take weeks and cost a fortune.”

  “I see.”

  “Forgive me for saying this, Marianna, but I felt like Nico was hiding something from me. Was that the case?” His companion’s eyes dropped to the table. Marianna began to shake her head, but Kell could see that she was smiling to herself. “I don’t mean to pry,” he added.

  “You’re not prying,” she replied instantly. She looked up and gazed into his eyes, a look of yearning with which he had become familiar throughout the meal.

  “What was it then?”

  “Nico is not very…”—she searched for the correct adjective—“kind.” It was not the word that Kell had been expecting, but he was glad of it. “He does not like to help people unless they can help him. He does not like to involve himself in anything … complex.”

  Kell nodded in appreciation of Marianna’s stark analysis of character. The waitress passed their table and Kell took the opportunity to order an espresso.

  “How would it be complex?” he asked. “Was he involved in business with Mr. Wallinger?”

  A burst of laughter and a beaming smile told Kell that this was not the case. Marianna shook her head.

  “Oh, no. There was nothing wrong in their relationship.” She glanced out of the window. A ferry was easing into the harbor, passengers on the bow waving at the mainland. “He just decided not to help you.” Marianna could see that Mr. Hardwick was affronted by Delfas’s belligerence. “Do not take it personally,” she said, and for a moment Kell thought that she was going to reach for his hand. “He is like this with everyone. I am not like that. Most Greek people are not like that.”

  “Of course.”

  The moment had arrived. Kell felt the bulge of five hundred euros in his wallet, money that he had been prepared to offer Marianna in exchange for her cooperation. He had laid a private bet with himself that he would not need it.

  “Would you be prepared to help me?” he asked.

  “In what way?” Marianna was blushing again.

  “Can you tell me what Nico wasn’t prepared to say? It would save me a lot of trouble.”

  If Marianna experienced a moment of ethical conflict over the matter, it passed in no more than a second. With a matter-of-fact sigh, her loyalty to her boss was shaken off like a passing fad.

  “From my memory,” she said, taking Kell into her immediate confidence, “Mr. Wallinger was staying in one of our villas. For a week.”

  “Then why didn’t Nico tell me that?”

  She shrugged. It seemed that they were both at the mercy of a stubborn and irascible man. “He came into the office to collect the keys.”

  Kell buried his surprise. The news of the sighting was like a vision of Wallinger coming back from the dead.

  “You met him?”

  “Yes. He was very nice, a quiet man, quite serious.” Marianna hesitated, taking a risk with Mr. Hardwick’s ego. “I thought he was very tall—and extremely handsome!”

  Kell smiled. That sounded like Paul.

  “So he was on his own?”

  “Yes. Although I saw him later that day. With somebody else.”

  “Oh. Who was that?” Kell was about to say: “A woman?” when he checked himself. “Another tourist?”

  “A m
an,” Marianna replied matter-of-factly. Kell wondered if her memory was playing tricks on her. It was not the answer he had been expecting. “I walked past their table,” she said. “One of the cafés near my office.”

  Kell found that he was turning Amelia’s words over in his mind. Tread carefully around the Yanks. Tricky out there at the moment.

  “This man. Was he American by any chance?”

  Kell was concerned that he was asking too many questions. He was relying on the atmosphere of broad agreement which had grown up between the two of them, a relaxed complicity.

  “I don’t know,” Marianna replied. “I never saw him again.”

  “Was he as handsome as Mr. Wallinger?”

  Kell put a grin on the question, trawling for a description in a way that he hoped would not raise Marianna’s suspicions.

  “Oh, no!” she said, obliging him. “He was younger, but he had a beard, and I don’t like beards. I think the villa was rented by a woman. In fact, I am sure of that, because I spoke with her on the telephone.”

  This was the name Kell needed. Find the woman and he could find the man. He was sure of it.

  “I don’t want to get you into trouble,” he said, suggesting quite the opposite with his eyes.

  “What do you mean?”

  “All I would need is a copy of the rental agreement. If there’s nothing sinister or illegal going on, it would really save me a lot of…”

  Marianna did not even bother to hear him out. They were friends now—perhaps more than that. Mr. Hardwick had successfully earned her trust. She leaned forward and at last touched the top of his wrist. Kell heard the buzz of a moped as it tore along the port, the crack of seagulls circling above the restaurant.

  “No problem,” she said. “Where are you staying? How would be the best way of sending it? I could fax?”

  * * *

  Three hours later, lying on his bed, almost halfway through My Name Is Red, Kell heard a knock at the door of his hotel room. He opened it to find the same receptionist who had assisted him with the recorded message the previous evening. She was holding up a piece of paper.

  “Fax.”

  Kell tipped her five euros and went back into the room. Marianna had sent through the rental agreement, as well as a short handwritten note scribbled at the top of the page: “Great to meet you! Hope to see you again!” The document was dual-language, so Kell was able to see that the villa in question had been rented, at a cost of €2,500, for the seven days prior to the crash. There was no sign of Wallinger’s name on the document, only the signature and date of birth of a woman who had given a Hungarian passport and cell phone number for ID. Seeing her handwriting, Kell felt the mystery of Rachel’s note opening in front of him like a blooming flower. Checking the camera roll on his iPhone, he saw that there was a clear match with the signature on the rental agreement.

  He was on the phone to Tamas Metka within minutes.

  “Tom!” he exclaimed. “Tell me. Why am I so popular all of a sudden?”

  “I need a profile on somebody. Hungarian passport holder.”

  “Is he the poet?”

  Kell laughed. “Not he. She. Our usual arrangement?”

  “Sure. The name?”

  “Sandor,” Kell replied, reaching for a packet of cigarettes. “Cecilia Sandor.”

  11

  The force of her grief had astonished Rachel Wallinger. She had spent the greater part of her adult life thinking that her father was a liar, a cheat, a man of no substance, an absence from the heart of his own family. Yet now that he was gone, she missed him as she had never missed anyone or anything before.

  How was it possible to grieve for a man who had betrayed her mother, time and again? Why was she suffering for a father who had shown her so little in the way of attention and love? Rachel had not respected Paul Wallinger, she had not even particularly liked him. When asked by friends to describe their relationship, she had always given a version of the same response—“He’s a diplomat. We grew up all around the world. I hardly ever saw him.” Yet the truth was more complex and one she kept to herself. That her father was a spy. That he had used his family as cover for his clandestine activities. That his secret life on behalf of the state had afforded him an opportunity to enjoy a secret life of the heart as well.

  At fifteen, while the Wallinger family was living in Egypt, Rachel had come home early from school to find her father kissing another woman in the kitchen of their house in Cairo. She had walked into the garden, looked up at the house, and seen them together. She had recognized the woman as a member of staff from the embassy. In that moment, her entire understanding of family life had been obliterated. Her father was transformed from a man of strength and dignity, a man she trusted and whom she adored with all her heart, into a stranger who would betray her mother and whose affection for his daughter was apparently meaningless and inchoate.

  What had made the discovery even worse was her father’s realization that he had been spotted. The woman had left the house immediately. Paul had then come out into the garden and had tried to convince the teenage Rachel that he had merely been comforting a distraught colleague. Please do not mention this to your mother. You do not know what you have seen. In her state of shock, Rachel had agreed to the cover-up, but her complicity in the lie changed the nature of their relationship for good. She was not rewarded for keeping the secret; in fact, she was punished. Her father became distant. He withdrew his love. It was as though, as the years went by, he perceived Rachel as a threat. There were times when she felt that she was the one who had betrayed him.

  What Rachel witnessed that day also affected the way she formed and conducted her own relationships in later life. As she grew older, she became aware of trusting no one, of playing games with prospective lovers, of testing men for evidence of duplicity and cunning. Intensely private and concealed, Rachel was habitually drawn to men whom she could not have or could not control. At the same time, particularly in her early twenties, she was often dismissive of those who showed her genuine kindness and affection.

  In the months after the incident in Cairo, Rachel had made it her business to pry into her father’s personal affairs, developing an obsessive fascination with his behavior. She had cross-checked dates in his diaries; investigated “friends” to whom he had introduced her at seemingly benign family gatherings; eavesdropped on telephone calls whenever she found herself passing her father’s office at home or standing outside her parents’ bedroom.

  Then, years later, a reminder of the day that had changed everything.

  Only weeks before her father’s death, Rachel had discovered a letter that he had written to yet another mistress. Sent to the family flat in Gloucester Road. Rachel had recognized the stationery, the handwriting, but not the name of the person to whom the letter had been originally addressed in Croatia: Cecilia Sandor. The envelope was marked “Address Unknown” and there was a demand for excess postage. Rachel had intercepted it before her mother had looked through the morning post.

  She could still recite parts of the letter from memory:

  I cannot stop thinking about you, Cecilia. I want your body, your mouth, the taste of you, the smell of your perfume, your conversation, your laughter—I want all of it, constantly.

  I cannot wait to see you, my darling.

  I love you

  P x

  More than fifteen years after Cairo, Rachel had felt the same wrenching shock that she had experienced as a teenager looking up at the kitchen window. At thirty-one, she was no moralist. Rachel was under no illusions about marital infidelity. But the letter only served to remind her that nothing had changed. That her father would always put his own life, his own passions, his other women, in front of his love for his wife and daughter.

  So why, then, was she grieving him so intensely? Driving back to London the day after the funeral, Rachel had been suddenly so overwhelmed by loss that she had pulled her car over onto the hard shoulder of the motorway and sobbed uncon
trollably. It was like being under a spell, a thing she could neither break nor control. As soon as the wave of grief had passed, however, she had felt restored and able to carry on driving, thinking up ways to cheer up her mother, even if it was just by spending time with her so that she was not left on her own.

  This ability to organize her behavior, to compartmentalize her feelings, was a characteristic that Rachel had observed in her father. He had been a tough and opinionated man, perceived by many as arrogant. From time to time, Rachel herself had been accused of being distant and cold, usually by boyfriends who had been drawn to her self-confidence and energy, but eventually repelled by her refusal to conform to their expectations of her.

  When she considered the many traits that she had inherited from her father, particularly now that he was gone, it felt to Rachel as though he was living inside her and that she would never shed his influence. Nor, now, did she want to. Her feelings about him in the aftermath of his death had become altogether more complex. She was angry with Paul for keeping her at such an emotional distance, but remembered the rare moments when he had held her, or taken her to dinner in London, or watched her graduation at Oxford, with great yearning. Rachel wished that he had not betrayed his family, but she also regretted never having confronted him about his behavior. Her father had probably gone to his grave knowing that his daughter resented him. The guilt Rachel felt about that was at times overwhelming.

  They were so similar. That was the conclusion she had drawn. At odds all her adult life, because they were alike in so many ways. Was that why they had come for her? Was that why she had been approached?

  Spying in the DNA. Spying as a talent passed down through the generations.

  12

  With the tide in his favor, Kell could have swum to Turkey in a couple of hours. It was less than ten kilometers from Karfas to Cesme; 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 overstaffed Turkish airport.