A Colder War

50

It was exactly as Amelia had promised, exactly as she had planned it. ABACUS went to his Georgetown dinner, ABACUS went home to bed. ABACUS woke up on Friday morning and then ABACUS went to see Alexander Minasian.

Kell and the surveillance team stayed on him, for the simple reason that the battery might fail, that technology would render Rachel’s remarkable coup entirely useless. They saw him visit the Embassy on Thursday afternoon, they tracked him to a cinema in Westfield. In the evening ABACUS was housed to the eight-man dinner at Galvin, then taken home to the Rembrandt in an MI5 taxi that just happened to be passing as the Georgetown mob spilled out on to Baker Street at one o’clock in the morning. The next day, with Kleckner booked on to a British Airways flight to Istanbul at 18.40, the American had set his alarm for seven in the morning and embarked on a counter-surveillance routine so prolonged, so complex and so exhaustive that Kell, by the time Kleckner had vanished into the suburbs of Clerkenwell at six minutes past twelve, never to be seen again, could only sit back and admire his immaculate tradecraft.

But it didn’t matter that the team had lost ABACUS a second time. Kell was obliged to go through the motions of disappointment and regret, reassuring Jez and Theo and Carol and the useless Nina that they had been up against a pedigree CIA officer and that there was no shame in failing to cover him. It didn’t matter because the BlackBerry kept beeping, the microphone kept working, all the way to a modest bed and breakfast in a semi-detached house in Snaresbrook where Minasian was waiting in the lounge.

‘Where’s the owner?’ Kleckner asked, exhausted by more than four hours of counter-surveillance but pleased to see that Minasian had also cleaned his tail sufficiently for the meeting to go ahead.

‘We are the owner,’ the Russian reassured him, and they had embraced like long-lost brothers.

Kleckner had removed his sports jacket at the door of the bed and breakfast. He had left the battery in the inside pocket, hung the jacket up on a hook in the hall, then carried the phone unit into the meeting.

The conversation between the two men was immediately transcribed. It was estimated that Rachel’s device had picked up as much as 80 per cent of the dialogue.

There was always flattery, too, the theatre of reassurance. Kleckner knew the drill; Christ, he used it on his own agents. You’re the best. We couldn’t be doing this without you. Have no doubt that you’re helping us. One day all this will be over.

Then it was down to business. Are you happy with the drop sites? Do you want to move from Büyükada? Is there any heat in Istanbul or a sense that Langley suspects a mole? It was always the same with Minasian.

To all his questions, Kleckner gave reassuring answers. Yes, the drop sites were fine, the signals in and out were working well. No heat in Istanbul, no worries about a mole. Minasian wanted to talk about the new stream of reporting from the mayor’s office. Fair enough. Kleckner told him what little he knew. And the cache of CIA weapons heading for the border at Jarabulus? Sure, if you think you can stop them and do Assad a favour, that’s why I told you about them in the first place.

But all Kleckner really wanted to talk about was Paul Wallinger. That was the reason he had risked Harrods and the Rembrandt. All he needed to know was why Sandor had been killed. He required answers on that. No, he demanded answers on that. And if he got the wrong replies, the wrong explanation, well then fuck you and fuck the SVR. Our little arrangement is terminated.

The meeting between Minasian and Kleckner thus confirmed that Paul Wallinger had never been working for Moscow. The transcript also revealed that the SVR was lying to Kleckner. Intelligence obtained by SIS had confirmed that Cecilia Sandor had been murdered by a French assassin named Sebastien Gachon. As Kell had predicted, Sandor’s boyfriend, Luka, had also disappeared a few days after Sandor’s death. Moscow had been busily tidying up the loose ends around ABACUS. It was doubted that Luka’s body would ever be found.

What came next on the transcript, however, pitched Kell and Amelia into an entirely new area of concern.