A Colder War

21

Kell was sure that it wasn’t Tremayne. He knew next to nothing about Landau or Begg. He wanted to suggest to Amelia that Chater would most probably have had equivalent or superior access to the same CIA intel as Ryan Kleckner and was therefore just as much of a suspect in the molehunt. Almost in the same thought, he wondered if Amelia had instructed a third party to look into Chater’s affairs. That was surely possible. Since Wallinger’s death, Amelia’s behaviour had been more than secretive: she had been deliberately opaque, even obstructive. She knew that Kell could not be relied upon to give Chater a fair hearing; she would have asked a trusted comrade to put the watch on the American. But who?

He stopped himself. Kell was in the centre of the Galata Bridge, directly above the restaurant where, a few hours earlier, he had eaten breakfast. The same fishermen were probably dropping the same lines over the same southern section of the bridge. And Kell realized that, less than half an hour after listening to Amelia’s theory, he was already lost in Angleton’s wilderness of mirrors, the place where your friend is your enemy, the place where your enemy is your friend.

‘Tom?’

Amelia had stopped and turned around a few metres ahead of him. A taxi passed within inches of her extended elbow as she rested her hands on her hips.

‘Sorry’, Kell muttered. He moved to catch up. There was an overwhelming smell of landed fish on the bridge.

‘I said that Josephine Wallinger is in Istanbul. At the house in Yeniköy. I was going to go and see her.’

‘Is that a good idea?’

‘You think it’s a bad idea?’

You tell me, Kell thought, and remembered that Amelia possessed that same cold centre which he had glimpsed in so many of his colleagues, the chill in the jaded soul. He knew the emotional territory: the quiet, always conscious desire to go face-to-face with an adversary, to prove one’s superiority, often while wearing a mask of kinship and warmth. Amelia had betrayed Josephine time and again. Was that not enough for her? Yet despite all of their shared passion, all of Amelia’s learning and brilliance, her great beauty, her success, Paul had always returned to his wife. Did Amelia feel, finally, humiliated by that? She was as ceaselessly competitive in matters of the heart as she was in matters of the state. This was more than a question of survival. Amelia Levene embodied the nailed-down principle that a pedigree SIS officer should never come off second-best.

‘I said I’d drop round for a cup of tea at about four.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘It’s already quarter to. Join me?’

‘Sure.’

Within seconds she had flagged down a taxi. The driver made a jerking, unnecessary chicane through cluttered traffic, lurching north towards the Unkapani Bridge. Kell thought to strap himself in before remembering that no cab in the history of Turkish transportation had ever boasted a functioning rear seat belt. Amelia remained impassive throughout. She had told Kell that she wanted to ask Josephine if Paul had ever mentioned the mole; yet he wondered if he would be party to that conversation when it took place. More likely Amelia wanted him by her side to dilute the intensity of her encounter with Josephine. It was not a question of whether or not Josephine knew about the affair — a wife always knows — but simply the extent to which she would be prepared to forgive Amelia for her transgressions.

His mobile phone sounded, a text pinging in. Kell took it out and looked at the screen. Claire had replied to his earlier message:

Seems like yesterday. We were so happy, Tom. What happened? It all seems such a waste. x

‘You all right?’ Amelia asked, seeing the change in his expression. He was familiar with the sudden, parabolic shifts in Claire’s mood. When she was lonely or frightened about the future, she would try to draw close to him; when she was content and happy in her new life with Richard, she would treat Kell as a failed state. Nevertheless, in that moment he felt an extraordinary yearning for his wife, and for what he had lost. Though Kell knew that he wanted a different future, there were still times when he wished that he had been able to resolve his differences with Claire so that they could have lived peaceably together. She was right. It all seemed such a waste.

‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Just Claire.’

It was another half hour before they located the house, a modest yali on the shore of the Bosporus, built by a rich Ottoman trader in the late nineteenth century and then renovated by a faceless landlord who rented it to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office at extravagant cost. They rang the bell, waited for almost two minutes, then heard the fast, light step of someone clipping down a flight of stairs. Kell was certain it was not Josephine. The movements were young, quick, almost weightless.

At first he did not recognize the young woman who opened the door. Her hair was shorter and dyed blonde. Her large brown eyes, the lashes dark with mascara, were luminous and kind. Her skin was lightly tanned, so that freckles had begun to appear around her nose and at the tops of her arms. She was wearing a dark blue summer dress; the straps of a cream bra were slightly loose across her shoulders. There was a bracelet around one of her ankles and the toenails of her neat bare feet were painted scarlet red. It was Rachel.

‘Hello. I remember you. Amelia.’

‘Hello. That’s right. We met in Cartmel.’

The two women shook hands and Rachel turned to look at Kell. He had responded instantly to something in her expression and manner, and felt the chest-shifting surge of attraction. Looking at Rachel’s photographs in the Ankara Station, watching her at the funeral, he had felt nothing of this. Rachel was not his type. But there was a force and an honesty in the penetration of her gaze that winded him. Kell had not felt such a thing for months, years even, and it was extraordinary to experience it again. He looked towards Amelia, then back at Rachel, who was studying his face with the calm, almost amused self-assurance of a plastic surgeon wondering which bit to cut first.

‘Tom,’ said Kell, extending his hand. Against his better judgment, he found that he held her gaze, stirring up the chemistry between them. Perhaps the whole thing was just a mirage. Perhaps Rachel was just fitting his face to the mourners at her father’s funeral, wondering if she had spoken to him, trying to remember if he had offered his condolences. That might explain why she was looking at him so intently.

‘Hello, Tom,’ she said. She had a radiant, guileless smile that lit up her face; it was as though she had already made up her mind to like him. ‘I’m Rachel. You’ve come to see Mum.’

‘Yes,’ said Amelia, before Kell did.

She led them into a hall cluttered with rugs and lamps and pictures. Full-bodied and graceful, a bombshell figure. Kell could smell her perfume as she walked ahead of them and felt as though Amelia was reading his every thought. In another room, he could hear Josephine talking on the telephone. He wanted to keep watching this beautiful woman, to decide if he had imagined what had just occurred or whether his sense of her was correct. Had there been a genuine connection between them or had he simply fallen victim to the trap of beauty? ‘Mum’s talking to a friend,’ she said, turning to look at him. That gaze again. ‘She won’t be long. Would you like some tea?’

The question took them into a kitchen awash in natural light. High windows, criss-crossed by narrow wooden frames, offered a panoramic view across the Bosporus to the Asian side. The waters were so close it was as though the room was floating on pontoons. Amelia said, ‘What a beautiful view,’ and Kell enjoyed the fact that Rachel made no effort to respond to the observation. Yes, it was a beautiful view. Everybody mentioned that. What else was there to say about it?

He stopped beside a sturdy wooden table on which various books and files had been piled up. Amelia took off her jacket and placed it over the back of a wicker rocking chair that looked as though it had been attacked, over a period of many years, by generations of giant moths.

‘Sorry, I should have taken that,’ said Rachel, indicating the jacket, though she made no effort to hang it up. Instead, she opened a door out on to a white-painted verandah so that a rush of warm sea air funnelled into the house. Then she crossed the room and set a kettle on a lit ring of gas. All of this captivating to Kell, who was enjoying the sight of a beautiful woman weaving her spell.

‘Pappa loved tea,’ she said, stretching towards a corner of the kitchen where boxes of Twinings and Williamson teas wrestled for space with glass jars of pulses and pasta. That movement — which showed off the curve of her breasts and very slightly raised the hem of her dress so that Kell could see the smooth tanned edge of her thigh — struck him as premeditated, though it could just as easily have been a sign of Rachel’s complete lack of self-consciousness. Nevertheless, he decided that she was being deliberately provocative and told himself to park whatever nascent feelings of lust he was experiencing.

‘Have you been out here long?’ Amelia asked.

‘Two days,’ Rachel replied. She appeared to be relishing the process of being hospitable in her father’s house; protective of Josephine; a first line of defence against visiting mourners. Rachel turned again, rose on to tiptoes, opened a cupboard and pulled down two china cups. Then she turned and caught Kell staring at her. He held her gaze, letting her know with a glance that he was aware of her beauty, of the game she was playing, and that he was enjoying it.

‘Sugar?’

‘Two please,’ he said. Amelia, he knew, took it black. She made a comment about how nice it was to be served tea from a mug ‘in the English fashion’, rather than from a ‘tiny little glass’, as was the custom in Turkey. Again, Rachel did not respond to the observation. If she had something to say about something, she would say it; if she didn’t, she would not. Kell guessed that she was the sort of person who could very easily sit through an awkward silence. He liked that about her.

‘Did you know my father?’ she asked, passing him his cup of tea. The mug had a reproduction of the Botticelli Venus on one side. A siren singing him on to the rocks.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I’m very sorry.’

‘What did you think of him?’

Kell felt Amelia’s sliding glance as the question caught them both off guard. Rachel’s tone of voice, allied to the directness of her gaze, demanded an honest answer. She would not want to deal in platitudes; he knew that much about her already.

‘He was a good friend. It was the nature of our business that I saw too little of him. He was cultured. He was clever. Always such good company.’

What might he have added? That he thought Paul Wallinger, for all his learning and brilliance, possessed that dangerous streak of selfishness — it was the fashion nowadays to call it narcissism, even sociopathy — that ultimately damaged anyone who came too close to him. Kell might have said that Rachel’s father had taken women for his pleasure, for years and years, discarding them when he was done. That he had allowed Amelia to fall in love with him, thereby jeopardizing her career, but had lacked the will — or perhaps the courage — to break with Josephine and to marry her, despite the fact that they were so well suited. Had he admired Paul for sticking with Josephine, to guarantee the Foreign Office perks, the school fees, while roaming the world as a free man, to all intents and purposes a bachelor at liberty to behave as he pleased? Not particularly. None of it, in final analysis, was Kell’s business. You never knew what private accommodations married couples made with one another.

‘Your father was also very good at his job,’ he added, because Rachel looked like she wanted to hear more.

‘I’ll second that,’ Amelia replied, trying to make a smiling eye contact with Rachel, who seemed to be avoiding her gaze. Kell sensed that Amelia wanted to get out of the room and to find Josephine; Rachel was making her feel uneasy.

‘So you’re another spook?’

The question was directed at him with a look of nonchalance. Kell met it with a grin.

‘I don’t know.’ He looked across at Amelia, who was staring into her cup. ‘What am I these days?’

The Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service was saved from conjuring a suitably witty response by the arrival of Josephine Wallinger, who had paused in the doorway of the kitchen, as though taking in the view for the first time. Kell was shocked by her appearance. She looked tired and browbeaten, as though everything Paul had ever done — his spying, his womanizing, even his death — had conspired to ruin her.

‘Did you know that the Turkish word for “Bosporus” is the same as the word for “throat”?’

‘I did not know that,’ Amelia replied, moving towards her with arms outstretched. The two women embraced. As Josephine said, ‘Thank you for coming. How lovely to see you,’ Kell looked at Rachel in an effort to discern whether or not she knew about her father’s affair with Amelia. There was no observable change in her expression.

‘You know Tom, of course?’

Amelia ushered Josephine towards Kell. She smelled of tears and face cream. He kissed her on both cheeks and said how good it was to see her. When she thanked him for coming to the funeral, Rachel interjected, saying: ‘Oh, were you there? I didn’t notice you,’ and Kell tried to unpick the implication of the remark. Was it an insult, a way of flirting with him, or simply a throwaway line?

For some time they idled in chit-chat: Kell, Josephine and Amelia sitting on various armchairs and sofas dotted around the open-plan kitchen. Rachel moved from room to room, from floor to floor, but honoured Kell with a glance whenever she returned to the kitchen. Having waited for the correct moment, Amelia invited Josephine to accompany her on a walk around Yeniköy. That gave Kell the chance to smoke a long-awaited cigarette on the verandah. It was no surprise when he heard the click of the door behind him and turned to see that Rachel was coming outside to join him.

Round Two.

‘Got a spare one of those?’

‘Sure.’

He dug out the packet of Winston Lights, slid out a single cigarette and tilted it towards her. She took it and he offered her a light, cupping his hand around the flame to protect it from gusts of sea wind. The tips of her fingers touched the back of his hands as she inhaled on the flame and withdrew from him.

‘I always think it looks as though it’s coming to the boil.’

It took Kell a moment to realize that Rachel was talking about the Bosporus. The observation was entirely apt. The churning waters ahead of them seemed to be bubbling in a fury of surging tides and winds.

‘You go out on it much? Did your father take you?’

‘Once,’ she said, and exhaled a funnel of smoke that bent in front of his face and rushed off, evaporating on the breeze. ‘We took a ferry out to Büyükada. Have you been there?’

‘Never,’ Kell replied.

‘One of the islands in the Sea of Marmara. Summer tourists, mostly, but Pappa had a friend who lived out there. An American journalist.’

As soon as he heard the word ‘American’, Kell thought of Chater, of Kleckner, of the mole. He wondered who the journalist was to whom Rachel was referring. Just as quickly, like the smoke turning sharply from her lips, she changed the subject.

‘Why did you say that he was good at his job? How is a spy a good spy? What made Pappa better than anyone else?’

Kell would happily have spent the rest of the afternoon answering that question, because it was his area of particular expertise, a subject he had studied and thought about for the better part of his adult life. He began with a simple observation.

‘Believe it or not, it’s a question of honesty,’ he said. ‘If a person is clear about what they want to achieve, if they set about achieving that goal objectively and with precision, more often than not they will succeed.’

Rachel looked confused. Not because she did not understand what Kell was trying to say, but because she did not necessarily accept it.

‘Are you talking about life or are you talking about spying?’

‘Both,’ Kell replied.

‘It all sounds a bit self-help.’

Kell laughed off the insult. ‘Thanks,’ he said, but her next remark caught him off guard.

‘Are you saying my father wasn’t a liar?’

He would have to proceed carefully. It was all very well sharing a flirtatious cigarette with an attractive woman on the shores of the Hellespont, but that woman was also the daughter of a man who had recently been killed. Kell was the gatekeeper of Paul Wallinger’s reputation. Whatever he told Rachel about her father, she would remember for the rest of her life.

‘We lie,’ he said. ‘I have lied in my career. It wasn’t something your father was immune to, either. But let’s face it, deceit isn’t exactly unique to espionage.’ She frowned again, as if she thought that Kell was trying to wriggle off a hook. He looked up at the house, then out across the water. ‘Architects lie. Ship captains lie. I was trying to make a different point. That we achieve our best results by presenting ourselves honestly. That goes for all relationships, don’t you think? And what I do, what your father did, was ultimately about making relationships.’

Rachel drew deeply on the answer and smoked in silence. A ketch passed within a hundred metres of the yali. Kell followed its progress, enjoying the drum tautness of the full sails, the clean white churn of the wake.

‘I loathe spies,’ she said.

Kell laughed at this, but Rachel was looking out across the water and would not meet his gaze.

‘Explain,’ he said, trying to deny to himself that a woman he desired, whose good opinion he already coveted, had deliberately insulted him.

‘I think it killed something off in Pappa,’ she said. ‘A part of him dried up inside. I began to think that he had a piece missing from his heart. Call it decency. Call it tenderness. Honesty, perhaps.’

And Paul knew that, Kell thought, remembering the abundance of photographs of Andrew in Ankara, the comparative absence of pictures of Rachel. Wallinger knew that his bright, beautiful, perceptive daughter had seen through him. He knew that he had lost her respect.

‘I’m sorry to hear you say that,’ he said. ‘I really am. I hope you won’t always feel that way. I don’t think it’s true of Paul. He was capable of great kindness. He was a decent man.’ Kell tripped on the words as he said them, because he knew they were platitudes designed to comfort a woman who was long past any desire to be falsely reassured. He tried a different approach. ‘What we do — the people we are obliged to work with, the ends we are asked to justify — takes its toll. It becomes impossible to remain above the fray. Does that make sense? In other words, we are blackened by our association with politics, with the secret world.’ Even as he said this, Kell could feel a contrary argument rising inside him. There had been decency in Paul Wallinger only when it was in Paul Wallinger’s interests to be decent; when it served him to be ruthless, he was ruthless. ‘What’s the line from Nietzsche? He who fights with monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster—’

Rachel interrupted him, tossing her cigarette out to sea. ‘Right,’ she said impatiently, as though Kell was a freshman trying to impress her with cod philosophy. He felt embarrassed and opted for greater simplicity. ‘What I’m trying to tell you is that we are all the sum of our contradictions. We all make mistakes. They fuck you up your mum and dad, but your mum and dad also do a pretty good job of fucking themselves up, too.’

That made her grin. At last. It was lovely to see it again, the flattering radiance of Rachel Wallinger’s smile. Kell tossed his cigarette into the water, but they remained on the verandah.

‘So what mistakes have you made, Tom?’ she said, and touched his arm, as though she imagined that she did not have his full attention. Had Kell possessed an ounce more self-confidence in that moment, a watertight assurance that it would not offend her, he would have reached for Rachel, looped his hand around her waist, pulled her towards him, and kissed her. But he could no more make a pass at Wallinger’s daughter than he could imagine making a pass at Amelia Levene.

‘Lots,’ he replied. ‘And all of them bound by the Official Secrets Act. You’ll have to wait for my memoirs.’

She smiled again and looked south at the vast suspension bridge linking European Istanbul to the Asian side. At night it was lit by a thousand blue lights, a sight Kell always enjoyed. He would have liked to take Rachel to one of the restaurants in Moda or Ortaköy, to order oysters and Chablis, to talk for hours. He hadn’t felt that way about a woman in years.

‘How well do you know Amelia?’ she asked.

Kell heard a warning in the question, perhaps the implication that Rachel knew about the affair. He smothered his concern with a joke.

‘Well enough that if she had spinach in her teeth, I would tell her.’

Rachel did not laugh. She was still looking south, towards the bridge.

‘Mum doesn’t trust her.’

‘No?’

‘She thinks she knows more about Dad’s accident than she’s letting on.’

That was unexpected. Nothing to do with the affair. Everything to do with the crash. Kell did his best to reassure her.

‘Please don’t worry about that,’ he said. ‘All of us are trying to find out what happened. That’s why I’m here. That’s why they’ve gone off for a walk.’

‘You’re talking to me like I’m too young to hear the grown-up’s secrets.’

‘You know that’s not true. Nobody thinks that, Rachel. Least of all me.’

‘We’ve only just met. You don’t know me.’

He wanted to tell her that he had met her before; or, at least, that he had watched her and seen what she had done with the flowers at her father’s funeral. The flare of anger in her eyes, flinging the bouquet into the wall, a gesture at once violently dismissive of Cecilia Sandor, and instinctively defensive of her mother. Kell remembered how Rachel had gone to Andrew afterwards, almost as if she was protecting him from the consequences of their father’s deceit. She had removed the card before Andrew had had the chance to see it. Kell still did not know if Rachel had been able to understand the Hungarian text on the card or had simply recognized the handwriting.

A noise inside the house. Josephine and Amelia returning from their walk. Kell wished that he had been privy to their conversation; Amelia tiptoeing around Josephine’s resentment of the woman who had almost stolen her husband. Rachel opened the door and went back into the room. Kell caught a knowing look on Amelia’s face as she registered that the two of them had been outside together.

‘I wish you wouldn’t smoke, darling,’ Josephine said, smiling benignly at Kell as though he was a chauffeur who had been killing time waiting for his boss. ‘What time’s your thing tonight?’

‘What thing?’ Amelia asked.

‘I’ve been invited to a party,’ Rachel replied.

‘Some colleague of Paul’s,’ Josephine added blandly, still looking at Kell. ‘Perhaps you know him. American diplomat. Ryan Kleckner.’