A Colder War

35

The memory of that night, the stillness and the intensity of it, stayed with Kell for days afterwards. Shuttling between Ankara and Istanbul, combing through file after file, report after report on Wallinger and ABACUS, he was fuelled by visions and memories of Rachel, their separation as frustrating to him as the endless search for clues in the great mass of data about Kleckner.

She had left for London the next day. Kell, buried in meetings and paperwork, felt like a man who had become stuck on a bus in heavy traffic, the driver refusing to let him off between stops. He could just as easily have analysed the reports, the surveillance logs, the transcripts, in an office at Vauxhall Cross. Instead, Amelia had him living out of a suitcase in Turkey, surviving on a diet of emails and text messages to Rachel that became less frequent the longer they were apart.

Against this background, he worked effectively. Reading the transcripts of Ryan Kleckner’s private emails, listening to his telephone conversations, watching him on video surveillance feeds, Kell was able to build up an almost complete picture of ABACUS’s day-to-day life. Kell was quickly able to deduce that there were at least five women in Istanbul with whom the handsome young American was sexually involved. Kell read every word of Kleckner’s correspondence with Rachel, written in the run-up to his birthday at Bar Bleu, checking the language for clues, and judging the tone for any evidence of mutual attraction. To snoop on Rachel’s private correspondence, albeit as part of a legitimate and pressing operation, left Kell with a feeling that he was sliding into seedy and unethical behaviour that would eventually exact a heavy toll. The competitor in him was relieved that whatever attraction Kleckner had felt for her at the funeral appeared to have dissipated, but Kell was glad to set the information about Rachel to one side, and to restore her privacy.

It was while searching through Kleckner’s list of friends on Facebook that Kell stumbled on a coincidence. Ebru Eldem, the twenty-nine-year-old journalist with Cumhuriyet who had been jailed the previous month, ostensibly for ‘terrorist’ activities, had known Kleckner intimately. She had also been a source for Jim Chater — albeit as an unconscious asset — providing him with low-level cocktail party and conference gossip. Chater had been angry when the Turkish government had banged her up and had complained about it to Wallinger. Contacting Elsa, who was now in Milan, Kell instructed her to hack Eldem’s dormant Facebook account and to search for any evidence of a relationship with Kleckner. Two hours later Elsa had sent over several pages of screen-grabbed messages between the pair, which showed quite plainly that they had been lovers.

Kell immediately called Amelia in London from the Secure Speech room in Istanbul. She was in her office.

‘Did you know that ABACUS was involved with one of Jim Chater’s assets?’

‘Yes, I did.’

Any elation he had felt at making the link between Eldem and Kleckner evaporated when he heard the terse disinterest of ‘C’s reply.

‘It doesn’t flag up for you?’ he said. It was freezing cold in the sealed room and Kell had forgotten to bring a sweater.

‘Should it?’

He had obviously caught her in a cool, distracted mood. At their last meeting, a lunch in Istanbul, Amelia had been relaxed and open, Kell’s friend rather than his boss. She had told a story about bumping into a senior Whitehall civil servant while shopping in Waitrose (‘He looked at me in my spinster loneliness, stared at the gin and ice cream in my basket …’). Today, however, she had reverted to type, her manner brusque and businesslike, wanting results from Kell, not tenuous links between ABACUS and a jailed Turkish journalist. This, he realized, was his future. If he was handed H/Ankara, their friendship would suffer as a result. Amelia would pull rank repeatedly, reminding him time and again of his place in the firmament.

‘If he knew that Eldem was reporting to Chater, that she was briefing against Erdoğan. If her agenda didn’t fit with his values …’

Kell heard a noise on the line that he interpreted as Amelia’s continued frustration with the direction that the conversation was taking. Theories. Conjectures. What ifs. She had no interest in them. He felt that she had somehow discovered that he was involved with Rachel; that she knew the extent to which the relationship was affecting his work. Instead, Amelia said something quite extraordinary.

‘We’ve had a break on Chios.’

‘Adam?’

‘Yes. He’s been clever. Found a camera, got the footage. Eyes on the table. We’ve identified the man who was sitting with Paul and Cecilia. The man with the beard.’

‘And?’

‘Looks like an SVR officer. Minasian. Alexander Minasian.’