A Divided Spy (Thomas Kell Spy Thriller, Book 3) Page 8

  Shahid felt inside his jacket for the passport. He touched it. Also the mobile phone, provided to him by Jalal, and the wallet. Shahid had been given over one thousand pounds in cash. Jalal had promised that his contact at Heathrow – a man named Farouq who had fought jihad – would give him a thousand more. Shahid took out the wallet. It had a London Oyster card inside it, also till receipts, a book of stamps, even the membership card from a gym. How had Jalal organized all of this? He was so thorough and clever in his thinking. His planning and his foresight were gifts from God.

  Shahid looked at the men and the women walking all around him. There were many men like him in casual clothes wearing denim jeans and grey or black jackets. Jalal had been right. It was important to look like the others, to blend in.

  They came to the passport queue. Shahid waited at the end of a long, snaking line. People were complaining about the delay. Shahid wished that the queue had been shorter. It was agony to wait. He stared at his phone and shuffled forward as the queue moved, but he could not think about anything else except facing the guards. He was able to look at the Facebook page that Jalal had created and to see that a number of the friend requests he had made to strangers on the site had been accepted. This was surely good. It would make the page more believable if he was questioned in the airport. Jalal had filled the phone with numbers and contacts, but they were not people Shahid knew. He had been told never to try to communicate with any of his brothers and sisters in the Caliphate. Likewise, he was forbidden to contact any member of his family in England. Shahid had to understand this. He had to understand that his family had been told by the British government that Azhar Ahmed Iqbal had been killed while fighting for ISIS near Mosul. His father believed that his son was dead.

  The queue took thirty minutes. At last, Shahid was facing the row of officials. A space came up at one of the desks in front of him and he walked up to it. He looked up and saw that the guard was Muslim. Her head was covered by a black hijab. He smiled at her. The woman did not smile back. Shahid felt that she could see right through his heart to the secret that lay inside him.

  He placed the passport on the counter. The woman took it and opened it while studying his face. There were two men on the far side of the desk, watching the room. Shahid knew that they were plain-clothes officials and was sure that they were suspicious of him.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ she said. ‘Where have you come from today?’

  ‘From Cairo,’ Shahid replied. He had not spoken for more than four hours and his voice was dry and cracked.

  The woman placed the passport inside a machine that emitted a cold blue light. There was a red rash on her wrists and the back of her hands. She looked at a computer screen that was partly obscured behind the counter. Shahid felt sure that she was going to question him. He felt sure that the computer would tell her that the passport was a fake. ISIS had been duped by their contact in Tirana. He would be arrested by the two men in plain clothes and sent for trial. They would imprison him.

  The guard looked up. She placed the passport on the counter and smiled. Shahid took it back.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Khan,’ she said. ‘Welcome home.’

  16

  Kell could not sleep.

  Mowbray had left just before one, heading back to the Metropole with a quip about sharing an adjoining room with Rafal and Stephanie.

  ‘That headboard starts to bump, I’m calling the concierge,’ he said, shaking Kell’s hand and heading off into the night.

  Kell had lain awake for an hour in the semi-darkness of his rented, featureless bedroom, wondering what Minasian would be doing in Paris. Business or pleasure? A relationship-mending break with Svetlana? A stolen weekend with a new lover? Without Amelia’s help, there would be no way of finding him in Paris. Even with the assistance of SIS, the chances of Minasian leaving a trail for Kell and his ilk to follow were minimal. The emails were his only solid lead. Riedle remained the key.

  Just after two thirty he went into the kitchen and swallowed two aspirin with an inch of Talisker. He longed for a cigarette. It was perhaps a sign of the softening of Kell’s operational temperament that he was concerned about Riedle’s wellbeing. He imagined the moment when he would have to tell the German the truth about ‘Dmitri’. To break his heart still further by revealing that the man with whom he had fallen in love and shared three of the most exciting and turbulent years of his life was, in fact, a Russian intelligence officer. Riedle would have to come to terms not only with the loss of Dmitri, but also with the realization that he had been lied to and manipulated, again and again – not least by Kell himself. And to what end? To satisfy Kell’s desire for vengeance? To recruit Minasian so that he could take him in triumph to Amelia, dropping an SVR officer at her feet like a dog with a captured bird? There was no guarantee that Riedle would even agree to assist SIS in any operation against Minasian. Certainly he harboured great anger and resentment towards his former lover, but Kell was in no doubt that if ‘Dmitri’ returned, asking to be understood and forgiven, Riedle would take him back in an instant. Far from Kell’s options opening up in the wake of the discovery of the email exchange, they were shutting down.

  He went into the sitting room and retrieved the laptop.

  Mowbray had not signed out of Riedle’s email account. Kell felt the aspirin and the whisky working through him as he looked more closely at the screen. There were no longer three messages in the inbox. There were four. At some point in the previous two hours, Alexander Minasian had responded.

  Kell clicked on the message.

  I have been thinking about your letters to me. There is a great deal that I violently disagree with, but I cannot ignore the fact that you feel very angry and upset with me. For this, I want to say sorry.

  This is not a justification, but an explanation: I honestly believed it would be better for you if I was not in contact with you, reappearing in your mind. I limited myself to brief emails. I thought it was better to remove all emotion.

  I will be in England from 29 or 30 June until 2 July, staying at our place. You obviously have very strong feelings about the way I behaved. I would be happy to meet and talk. I believe that many of the things you have written are dishonest and unfair. If I had not written this message to you, you would have even stronger feelings in that respect. If you leave a note for me in the usual way, I will try to come and see you. I hope that my schedule will permit this.

  Kell read the email three times. Minasian was coming to London. He was reaching out to Riedle, seemingly trying to make amends. Perhaps much of what Riedle had said was true. The two men really had been in love. They had shared something that was proving impossible to break. Certainly Minasian’s message did not fit with the personality type Kell had constructed in his mind. Sociopaths did not say sorry. Narcissists did not take into consideration the feelings or the circumstances of their victims. Or, rather, they did so only if they required something from them in terms of their own continued wellbeing. Was it possible that Minasian was having second thoughts about his reconciliation with Svetlana?

  Kell read the email a fourth time, immediately drawing an opposite conclusion. There was no suggestion of reconciliation in the message, only a desire on Minasian’s part not to be regarded as unfeeling or cruel. A determination, in other words, to influence Riedle’s emotions. Minasian’s principal driver was power. He needed to exercise control even over the denouement of their relationship.

  Thirsty for another whisky, Kell poured himself a second Talisker and resolved to think practically; to stop trying to understand every nuance of Minasian’s personality and to put a particular spin or interpretation on his behaviour based on insufficient evidence. Yet he was feeling the long night of drinking. A dangerous combination of adrenaline and stubbornness was threatening to cloud Kell’s judgment. He convinced himself that his best course of action was to reply to the email immediately, masquerading as Riedle. He felt that he could easily recreate the German’s style and syntax. He
would extract the name of Minasian’s favourite hotel from Riedle in the morning, instruct Elsa or Mowbray to block his access to the account, then arrange to meet ‘Dmitri’ in London. It would be a classic false flag operation.

  To that end, Kell created a blank document and began to compose his reply. Before he did so, he took the sealed packet of Winston Lights from the drawer beside his bed, opened the sitting-room window and lit his first cigarette in over six months. The nicotine worked on him with the snap of an amphetamine; he gasped at the pleasure of the first drag, inhaling deeply as the smoke filled his chest. He tapped the ash into his now empty whisky glass, balanced the cigarette on the end of the table, and began to type.

  I am so happy to hear from you, Dmitri.

  Kell saw that he had already made a mistake. At no point, in any of the drafts, had either man used the other’s name. Anonymity was paramount. He deleted ‘Dmitri’, took another drag from the cigarette, and continued.

  I am so happy to hear from you. Thank you for your kind message. Of course I will come to London!

  Kell looked at what he had written. He wondered if it sounded like Riedle. The German had used exclamation marks in his own messages, but perhaps this one was misplaced. Kell removed it. A curl of smoke drifted up into his eyes, stinging them.

  I am so happy to hear from you. Thank you for your kind message. Of course I will come to London. I will travel over on the 28th and stay until the end of the month. Let’s sit down and talk about everything. It will make me so joyful to see you.

  Kell double-clicked on the paragraph and copied it from the document. He would paste his reply into an encrypted email for Minasian to read in the morning.

  He took a last drag of the Winston and dropped the butt into the glass. He had not enjoyed the second half of the cigarette. His mouth was dry and there was now a taste on his tongue like the surface of a road. Kell knew, without quite being able to admit it to himself, that he was drunk. He looked at his watch. It was twenty to four in the morning.

  Take a break, he told himself. Think.

  He went into the kitchen and ran the cold tap. Kell had intended to pour himself a glass of water, but instead cupped the water in his hands and threw it against his face so that his neck and the front of his shirt became soaked and cold.

  He needed to stop. He had no control. He was not leaving himself open to chance or to basic human error. What if Riedle woke up at five and checked the account, desperate for a sign of life from Minasian? What if he saw what Kell was intending to send?

  Kell went back into the sitting room and deleted the document. He marked Minasian’s email as ‘Unread’, turned off the MacBook, returned to his bedroom and swallowed two more aspirin. He was exhausted. He was so determined to find Minasian that he had been prepared to jeopardize everything just to gain a minuscule advantage of time. There was only one sensible way to proceed; to allow Riedle to respond to Minasian’s invitation and then to track him to London.

  Kell returned to the bedroom, relieved that he had not been foolish enough to send the email. He fell asleep almost immediately to the sound of a child sobbing in a neighbouring apartment.

  17

  Bernhard Riedle rang with the good news shortly before eleven.

  ‘Peter? I just wanted to tell you. Something very good has happened.’

  Kell had been awake for only five minutes, brain-fogged by the long night of drinking and five hours’ sleep. He was stumbling around the kitchen in a pair of boxer shorts, searching for a clean mug.

  ‘Bernie. Hi. What’s up?’

  ‘It’s Dmitri. He’s been in touch. He wants us to meet.’

  ‘That’s great.’ Kell opened the fridge and saw that he had forgotten to buy milk. ‘Did he call? Did you talk things over?’

  ‘No. He never telephones. We always email. It is safer that way. Because of Vera.’

  ‘Vera?’

  ‘His wife. You don’t remember?’

  Kell looked out of the window at the rooftops of Brussels. Svetlana, Vera. Alexander, Dmitri. Thomas, Peter.

  ‘Oh yes. Sorry. Haven’t had my cup of coffee yet.’

  Riedle proceeded to tell Kell what he already knew. That Minasian had apologized for seeming distant and cold and had suggested meeting up in London to clear the air.

  ‘When?’ Kell asked.

  ‘The last week of June.’

  He laid some early foundations.

  ‘That’s terrific. I’ll be in London from the twenty-sixth. We could meet up while you’re in town.’

  ‘You want to meet Dmitri?’ The tone of Riedle’s question suggested that he did not think this suggestion was entirely impractical.

  ‘No, no. I didn’t mean that. I just meant that I’ll be in London. If you find yourself free for lunch or dinner one night …’

  ‘Oh.’

  There was a delay on the line, a drop in the signal.

  ‘Bernie?’

  ‘Yes, sorry.’ The connection was restored. ‘So let’s do that.’

  The two men continued to discuss Riedle’s nascent travel plans, a conversation which allowed Kell to form a basic idea of how his own schedule would pan out in the coming days and weeks.

  ‘Where will you be staying in London?’ he asked.

  ‘I usually take a room north of Soho,’ Riedle replied. ‘The Charlotte Street Hotel. Do you know it?’

  ‘I know it.’

  Elsa could have ascertained as much from Riedle’s email account, but Kell had a deeper purpose.

  ‘And Dmitri?’ he asked.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Where will he be staying? In the same hotel?’

  ‘Oh no.’ Riedle produced a quiet chuckle. ‘We like to keep things separate from Vera. Dmitri said he will be at his favourite place. A hotel where we have such happy memories.’

  A hotel that I’m going to soak in surveillance, thought Kell. A hotel where Alexander Minasian isn’t going to be able to move without a camera capturing every pixel of his wretched existence. All Kell needed was photographic proof of a sexual relationship with Riedle. Presented with evidence of that kind, Minasian would have no choice but to comply with whatever Kell asked of him.

  ‘And where’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘Dmitri always stays at Claridge’s.’

  18

  Shahid Khan had received the text message from ‘Farouq’ while he was waiting for his suitcase in the baggage hall. It was an instruction to meet him in the short-stay car park. Farouq had described himself as a tall man of fifty-five with ‘close-cropped grey hair’ wearing a dark brown suit. Shahid spotted him within moments of walking outside.

  ‘Peace be upon you,’ he said, greeting him in Arabic.

  Farouq shook his head.

  ‘I don’t talk like that,’ he replied. ‘Neither should you. You are not this person any more. You are not a religious man.’

  Shahid felt chastened. He had been in London for less than an hour and had already made a mistake. He had apologized to Farouq and they walked to the car in silence. Shahid watched him. There was something cold and determined about the man Jalal had sent to meet him.

  Once they were inside the car Farouq gave him the money and said:

  ‘I am going to drive you to Victoria station. You get the train to Brighton and you start everything now. You remember what you have been told?’ Shahid nodded. ‘You use the money to rent a room in a guesthouse. Find a job in the area. Join a gym. Open a bank account. Make friends.’

  ‘Yes,’ Shahid replied. ‘Jalal told me everything.’

  ‘No names,’ the man snapped back. ‘No details. I don’t know who you are. You don’t know who I am. At the moment I am just a person giving you a lift to Victoria.’

  Shahid wanted to tell Farouq about his past. He wanted him to know that he had fought bravely in the Caliphate, that he had been selected for martyrdom because of his high intelligence and courage. He wanted to feel that he had earned the respect of men like Farouq.
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br />   ‘You are Syrian?’ he asked. The man’s accent, his features and his colouring were near-identical to men of a similar age that he had seen in the Caliphate.

  ‘I am your contact. That is all,’ Farouq replied.

  They were driving out of the car park. Farouq told Shahid that there was a number in his mobile phone for a man called ‘Kris’. Shahid was to write it down and keep it somewhere safe. If he was ever concerned about anything, if he had questions, if he needed to talk, he should call Kris from a public telephone, or with the use of a third-party mobile. They would arrange to meet. He was to be Shahid’s sole point of contact in the UK. Kris would also be the person who would provide him with the weapons necessary to carry out the operation.

  ‘You are Kris?’

  Farouq shook his head. Shahid could not decide if he was relieved by this, or dismayed. He did not like to think that he would not see Farouq again.

  ‘You must never say anything about the operation on an open line or in any written communication.’

  ‘I know that,’ Shahid replied. ‘I’ve been taught that.’

  ‘Good.’ The Syrian had brought the car on to the M4 and they were heading east into London. ‘Do you have doubts?’ he asked.

  Shahid wondered if the question was a trick planted by Jalal. Did they have concerns about him? Or did they expect Shahid to be uncertain at this stage, to have moments of fear and hesitation?

  ‘I have no doubts,’ he replied.

  ‘You will carry out your duty to avenge the Prophet?’ There was an unmistakable note of bewilderment in Farouq’s voice, as though such a sacrifice would have been beyond his own personal capabilities. Shahid felt strengthened by this. He now knew that he was braver than the man Jalal had sent to escort him. He understood that there were very few men with a faith and courage equal to his own.