A Colder War

44

Zena slipped away before seven o’clock. Kleckner, who had been pretending to sleep, got out of bed as soon as she had left the room and checked the time on his watch. Having visited the bathroom, he dropped to the floor and completed fifty rapid press-ups, a series of stomach crunches and a leg-strengthening exercise in which he assumed a sitting position against the wall. Kell had seen it all before in Istanbul, but it was Harold’s first glimpse of the ABACUS beauty routine.

‘I knew there was something I forgot to do when I woke up this morning,’ he said. Kell, who had grabbed three hours’ sleep on a mattress in his office, said: ‘Me too’ and patted his stomach as he walked down to the kitchen.

By eight o’clock, Kleckner was eating a virtuous breakfast in the hotel restaurant — muesli, fruit, yoghurt — watched by Aldrich on the first floor. Eight surveillance officers were scattered around the neighbourhood — one with Aldrich, two more in the Addison Lee Renault with Jez, three on foot in Knightsbridge. Elsa had coverage of the wi-fi in Kleckner’s room, as well as his Turkish cell phone, but still nothing on the Heathrow SIM. There had been no hint, in any of the ABACUS traffic, of Kleckner’s plans for the day, nor had he contacted Chater in Istanbul. Kell knew in his bones that the American was going to try to make a break from surveillance.

Just after nine fifteen, Kleckner was reported to have left the Rembrandt and to be heading east on foot — directly towards Harrods. He was wearing a baseball cap and three layers of clothing, including a black jacket that could be removed at any stage, effecting a change in appearance. Kell, leading the operation from the hub in Redan Place, ordered Jez to Harrods and put his two officers inside, one in the western corner, one in the food hall. Two others were sent ahead to Harvey Nichols.

The first sign of Kleckner’s intention to shake off possible liaison came as he turned south on Beauchamp Place, less than a hundred metres from the entrance to Harrods. On Walton Street he turned right once again, effectively doubling back in the direction of the Rembrandt. Kell pulled the officers out of Harrods and put them back in the Renault with Jez. Aldrich, who had been idling in the black cab on Thurloe Place, picked ABACUS up on Draycott Avenue and managed to follow him into Pelham Street. Carol, dressed in running shorts, trainers and a T-shirt, was hooked up to headphones that allowed her to hear Kell’s feed from the hub. She jogged west along South Terrace, staying parallel to Kleckner’s position, then picked him up as he reached the underground station at South Kensington.

‘He’ll go for the Tube,’ Kell announced, and wasn’t surprised when Aldrich reported that Kleckner was making a phone call in the pedestrianized area immediately west of the station.

‘Can we hear that?’ he called across to Elsa.

Elsa had a constant line into Kleckner’s BlackBerry, but shook her head. Either the American was talking on the new SIM, or — more likely — was garbling nonsense into a dead mouthpiece while taking the time to make a complete observation of his surroundings. Any repeating faces? Anything out of place? Ryan knew all the tricks. Javed Mohsin had lived with them for six weeks.

‘Looks like a slow three sixty,’ Aldrich reported, confirming Kell’s suspicion that Kleckner was slowly turning a circle in order to make an assessment of the area. ‘Now he’s going for the trains.’

Carol could not follow. Not in running gear. Instead, Aldrich and two other officers followed ABACUS into the Tube. This was the worst time on a surveillance job. Dead time. No communication from underground, save for the odd lucky text with a bar of signal, or a miracle burst on free Virgin wi-fi. Otherwise Kell was forced to pace and to wait, trying to communicate a sense of calm and wellbeing to Elsa and Harold, but inside churning with tension. He used to love this feeling in his younger days, the adrenalin surge of high stakes and risk, but Kleckner was too important — his sins too grave — for Kell to have any sense other than an intense desire to bring him to justice. He thought of Rachel, and of her dead father, and the pleasure he would gain from presenting her with Kleckner’s head on a platter. If the London mission failed — and Kell was aware that there was every chance they would lose ABACUS in the next five days and fail to identify his handler — Kell would be forced back to Istanbul and to weeks, possibly months, of waiting for a second chance. His fallback plan, which he had discussed at length with Amelia, was to switch the intelligence dropped by ABACUS in the Büyükada football for chickenfeed. But such a plan would mean allowing Kleckner to continue to operate, and would almost certainly require the assistance of the CIA. That would mean Chater big-footing the SIS operation, thereby spelling the end of Kell’s involvement.

A signal from Elsa. A hand in the air, tapping her ear with the other.

‘Text from Nina. Piccadilly line. Hyde Park Corner.’

Nina was one of the two officers who had followed Kleckner into the Tube. She was short and slightly cross-eyed, with capped front teeth that produced an unsettling range of colours in her mouth; Kell had met her only once and taken an instant dislike to her.

‘Is he coming out?’

Elsa shrugged.

It was another twenty minutes before Kell heard anything more.

‘Boss?’

Aldrich this time.

‘Danny. What’s the situation?’

‘He’s doing circuits. I got him to Green Park. He gets off, he gets on. One more stop to Piccadilly. Then he goes north to Oxford Circus.’

‘Have you got him now?’

‘Yeah, I’ve got him. I’m looking at him. But I’m down to myself.’

‘What happened to Nina?’

‘Fuck knows.’

Kell swore under his breath but was glad to have Aldrich as a last pair of eyes. ‘Where are you?’

‘Hyde Park Hotel.’

A possible site for meeting a handler? Almost certainly not. It was too obvious, too quick out of the gates. An officer of Kleckner’s experience would run at least two hours of counter-surveillance before contemplating such a risk. The Hyde Park Hotel had to be just another stepping post on a pre-planned route.

‘Visual?’

‘Impossible. He’d make me.’

At that moment, a text came through from Jez who, by a miracle Kell would never entirely understand, had somehow contrived to get into the hotel ahead of Kleckner and to track him as far as the men’s bathroom. Acting on this information, Kell instructed the other members of the team to move back into the Knightsbridge area and to await further instructions.

‘You think Harrods is coming, don’t you?’

Elsa was standing beside Kell at one of the windows looking out over Whiteleys. To his surprise, she put her arm across his back, as if to try to reassure him.

‘I do,’ he replied, turning and smiling at her. ‘He’s less than five hundred metres away. It’s always been a favourite Russian watering hole. They would have told him to go there, if he didn’t know already. NKVD. KGB. FSB. Been using the place for decades.’

‘Watering hole?’ she said, screwing up her face. ‘What does this mean please?’

‘Never mind.’ Kell looked out across the skyline roofs and cranes of London.

ABACUS was about to go shopping.