A Colder War (23 page)

Kell stood up, his calves aching. He took a half liter of water from the minibar and drank it down. Dinner was now an hour away and he was aware that he needed to formulate a strategy for meeting Sandor. First, though, he checked his e-mails. Rachel had been out of touch all afternoon.

He opened his private account and saw that she had replied to an earlier message, saying that she was booked onto a flight back to London in two days’ time.

Am I going to get to see you before I go? Mum’s gone back to London and I’ve got the house to myself … x

The prospect of seeing Rachel again, of spending the night with her at the
yali,
was intoxicating. He had half a mind to catch the last boat to the mainland, charter a plane out of Dubrovnik, and leave Lacoste and Sandor to their fates. Instead, he told her that he would be back within twenty-four hours, then changed into a pair of jeans and a shirt and wrapped his ankle in a pristine white bandage obtained from the concierge. He would need to show some evidence of his injury to Lacoste should they run into each other. Heading downstairs, Kell drank a glass of wine in the bar before walking along the path toward Centonove with the stubborn, possibly foolhardy idea turning in his mind that he would introduce himself to Sandor as a friend of Paul Wallinger’s, then sit back and watch the fireworks.

33

Kell became aware that there was a problem at Centonove when he saw a large group of people gathered on the pavement in front of the restaurant. The lights were out on the terrace and the tables overlooking the bay unoccupied. He stopped outside a beach shack bar and lit a cigarette, watching the crowd from a distance of about a hundred meters.

At first, it looked as though the kitchen had suffered a power shortage or gas leak, but then Kell saw two uniformed Croatian police officers emerging from the building, one of them speaking quietly into a walkie-talkie. There was no sign of Sandor. Kell assumed that she was indoors, dealing with the consequences of whatever burglary or petty crime had been committed at the restaurant.

Then he saw the paramedics. Two of them. Kell stubbed out the cigarette and walked farther along the path. He could see that perhaps as many as thirty people had gathered outside Centonove, mostly local residents in shorts and T-shirts as well as a smattering of tourists dressed more smartly for dinner. The younger of the two policemen was trying to move the crowd away from the entrance, trying to suppress an atmosphere of panic or scandal. His older colleague was still talking into the radio. Glancing toward the bay, Kell saw a police boat moored beneath the terrace and assumed that the officers had come over from Dubrovnik. Whatever was going on inside the building had required mainland assistance. Somebody was badly injured, or worse.

Kell felt a breeze against his legs as two small boys ran past him on either side, one of them clutching a football. They were talking excitedly in German, alerted by the crowds and by the scent of a story.

Movement in the first-floor window. A third paramedic in a crisp white uniform was walking around Sandor’s apartment. Kell kept his eye on the window and was staggered to see Lacoste standing to one side of the room, his face clouded by shock.

Kell knew then that Cecilia Sandor was dead. He felt the same dropped-stitch shock in his gut that he recalled from Istanbul when Haydock had called with the news that Iannis Christidis had drowned. This time, however, the natural opportunist in Kell recognized that Sandor’s death was the break he had been waiting for. If she had been murdered, who had killed her? The same people that had constructed the legend of a mistress mourning her dead lover? The intelligence service that had run Sandor against H/Ankara? It did not occur to Kell that she had taken her own life. One suicide on the same operation was a curiosity. Two was too much of a coincidence.

He approached a young couple standing in front of him. The man had the unmistakable late Empire self-confidence of an English ex–public schoolboy. With her careful hair and pastel skirt, his wife was straight out of Fulham.

“You’re English?” Kell asked.

“We are.” The woman had a single pearl earring clipped to each lobe.

“What’s happened here?”

The man, who was no older than thirty, a young husband with a young wife, nodded out toward the water.

“The manager,” he said. “We heard that she’s been found dead.”

“Found by who?”

“Cops,” he replied, as though he had found himself in his own television show.

Right on cue, the older of the two Croatian police officers emerged from the restaurant and began asking the crowds to move away. The tourists went first, then the locals, gradually leaving the scene to the paramedics and a handful of restaurant staff, including the bald waiter whom Kell had seen so many times in the preceding forty-eight hours. It turned out that the young couple were also staying at the Lafodia and had booked a table at Centonove. Under instructions from the police, they walked farther into town in search of an alternative restaurant, nodding a quiet farewell.

Kell, too, was ushered from the scene and returned to the beach shack, where he lit a second cigarette and ordered a lager while continuing to watch the restaurant. News of Cecilia’s death had spread to the bar. The manager was a young Croat with erratic hair who spoke good English and answered Kell’s seemingly innocuous questions with a lazy nonchalance, clearly assuming that he was just another bored tourist trawling for tidbits of gossip.

“Had you known her for a long time?”

“No. She keeps private. Bought the place three, maybe four years ago.”

“She wasn’t from the island?”

A shake of the head.

“And it was suicide?”

“Sure. Apparently pills. Then she cuts…” The barman’s vocabulary failed him. He was holding a glass and began to slash at his forearms, dragging the rim down to the wrist. “Opens up the skin. The artery, yes?”

“Yes.” Kell had known a boy at school who killed himself by the same method. “In water?” he asked, assuming that a black ops team had rendered Sandor unconscious and then maneuvered her body into a bath.

“Yeah.”

Whoever had wanted her dead had also wanted to create an impression of distress. A gunshot wound or poisoning would have left too many questions unanswered.

“What about her boyfriend?”

“Luka?” The barman’s response was instant and confirmed that Sandor had been seeing Luka and Paul at the same time. The barman put the glass down. “I think he’s from Dubrovnik.”

Four teenagers had entered the shack, three of them smoking rolled-up cigarettes. The barman turned to serve them. Kell walked out onto the path and took another look at Centonove. The shutters on the kitchen window had now been closed and the younger policeman appeared to be standing guard outside the restaurant. Kell waited until the barman had poured out four drinks for the teenagers, then went back to his stool.

“Seems much quieter now,” he said, ordering a second drink. He paid and left the change for the barman, keeping him in the conversation.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Just a policeman standing guard outside. Poor guy.”

“Who? The police?”

“No, the boyfriend. What did you say his name was? Luka?”

“Correct.” The barman opened up a dishwasher packed with glasses and ducked under a cloud of steam. “He’s always in here. Maybe not so much anymore, huh?”

“No,” Kell agreed, trying to sound sympathetic. “Did they run the restaurant together?”

“No. Luka works in the city. Owns a record company. Reggae and hip-hop. You like that shit?”

“Bob Marley, maybe Jimmy Cliff,” Kell replied, knowing now that he could easily run Lacoste to ground. How many independent Croatian record labels were run by men named “Luka”?

“Yeah, Marley, man.”

And so it went on. By nine fifteen, Kell had established that Cecilia Sandor was an outsider, viewed with suspicion by many on the island; that she was often away from Lopud for extended periods; that she was considered to be wealthy; that Luka had left his wife and eight-year-old daughter to be with her, but had confessed one drunken night in the bar that Cecilia had turned down a proposal of marriage. Satisfied that he had garnered more than enough information, Kell shook the barman’s hand just before half past nine and set out along the bay, passing Centonove in the hope of talking to the grieving Luka outside. But it was not to be. He exchanged a few words with the policeman, who spoke only rudimentary English (enough to confirm that the proprietor of the restaurant had “died sudden”) and was then moved on. Kell asked him if Luka was “okay,” to which he received a curt nod of the head. There was perhaps a small possibility that Sandor’s boyfriend would be arrested on suspicion of murder or, more likely, would soon accompany Cecilia’s body across the strait to Dubrovnik. Either way, Kell would advise Amelia to send Adam Haydock, or his equivalent from SIS Station in Zagreb, to obtain the full police and medical reports into the incident. His own work on the island was surely done.

It was only when he was in the passage outside his room, no more than ten minutes later, that he remembered the camera seen by Haydock on the CCTV in Chios. A silver digital camera, probably belonging to Cecilia, which might contain images of the bearded man at the outdoor restaurant. How could Kell have allowed himself to forget such a thing? True, given that Cecilia was a former intelligence officer, it was highly unlikely that she would have kept any compromising photographs in the camera’s memory. Nevertheless, Kell had a responsibility—to Amelia, if nobody else—to get into Sandor’s apartment and to try to obtain it.

He knew why he was reluctant to act. It was obvious.
Things are very quiet and dull here without you.
He wanted to be on a plane, in a cab, at the
yali
.

Kell stood in the passage outside his room. There was no realistic chance of getting into Sandor’s apartment that night, or even for the next few days. Let Haydock, let Elsa, let Zagreb deal with the camera.

Kell reached into his pocket for the keycard to his room, opened the door, switched on the lights, and took two miniatures of Famous Grouse from the minibar. Within fifteen minutes he had filed a CX on Sandor’s death and sent it via encrypted telegram to London. He then opened up his private e-mail account and wrote back to Rachel.

Leaving Berlin first thing tomorrow, back midafternoon. Cancel whatever plans you’ve made. Have dinner with me x

34

Istanbul was just as Kell had left it: hot and crowded and traffic-stalled, the horizon a smogged screen of tower blocks and minarets. But it was now a different city, a Petri dish in which every movement and idiosyncrasy of Ryan Kleckner’s behavior was being minutely examined and interpreted by a team of SIS analysts in London and Turkey. As he drove in from Sabiha Gokcen, Kell instructed his taxi driver to take him past Kleckner’s apartment building, where a four-man surveillance team was already on post: a man and a woman in a branch of Starbucks a block from the entrance; two young British Asians in a van parked across the street. Kell was receiving updates on Kleckner’s movements every half hour.

ABACUS had woken early, been to the gym, returned to his apartment for lunch, and was presently upstairs reading an unidentified paperback book in the kitchen. As Amelia had promised, Kleckner’s residence, his routes to work, his favorite restaurants, his gym, and his car had all been decked out with enough cameras and microphones to capture the subject in almost every moment of his waking life. He was followed onto trams, trains, and ferries. A Turkish source working inside the American consulate as a computer technician was even able to provide SIS Station with regular briefings on Kleckner’s work timetable, his moods and routines. If, at any point, a single element of the operation was discovered, SIS could be reassured that they were deniable: Kleckner would simply assume that MIT had put him under surveillance, and most probably report as much to his Station chief at the CIA.

En route to Dubrovnik airport Kell had spoken to Amelia, who had agreed with Kell’s assessment that Zagreb/3 should handle the fallout from Sandor’s death and spend a week on Lopud crossing Croatian palms with silver. “I need you in Turkey,” she had told him, and Kell had readily agreed.

But he was made to wait before seeing Rachel. Kell had invited himself round for what he euphemistically described as “tea at the house,” but she coolly informed him that she was “busy until dinner” and suggested that they meet instead at a fish restaurant in Bebek at nine o’clock. “You’ll just have to be patient, Mr. Kell…,” she had told him, decorating the text message with kisses. Kell had checked into the Georges Hotel on Serdar-i Ekrem and tried to kill time by reading a novel. He had been reading the same page of the same opening chapter for well over fifteen minutes when Rachel finally put him out of his misery.

Hmmm. Just found a bottle of vodka in the freezer. Two glasses as well. Drink here first before dinner…? xxx

He was at the
yali
within thirty minutes.

Rachel had left a key under the mat. Kell opened the front door and walked into the house to find the ground floor deserted. There was no sound, save for the lapping of the waves against the shoreline and the rumble of a dishwasher. Kell took off his shoes and socks and left them by the door, the air-conditioning cooling his skin as he walked upstairs and stopped at the first-floor landing.

One of the bedroom doors was open. In the reflection of a mirror, Kell could see Rachel lying naked in bed, her head propped up against a scattering of pillows, her beautiful body exposed to him. He took off his shirt and moved toward her. Rachel’s dark eyes tracked him across the room.

They stayed in bed for almost three hours. Only afterward did Kell realize that they had played out a parallel version of Paul’s letter to Cecilia. He remembered the words almost perfectly:
You left keys for me. I let myself in and you were waiting. I don’t think I have ever seen you looking so beautiful. I wanted to take my time. I was craving you.
Yet he could not know—and did not ask—if Rachel had been conscious of this.