A Colder War

60

Serenissima docked at seven minutes past twelve. Javed and Nina had binoculars trained on the decks, but reported no sign of Kleckner. It was a crystal-clear afternoon, the terminal far busier than the day before, with vendors doing brisk business on sales of snacks and newspapers, cab drivers queueing up to take curious cruise-ship passengers into the heart of old Odessa. Danny and Harold had been at the quayside for more than an hour, looking for Alexander Minasian, watching the vehicles parked on either side of the terminal for any sign of threat or surveillance. Danny had reported ‘at least three men’ in a Mercedes parked parallel to five empty vehicles immediately outside the Customs area. If they were SVR, they would only reveal as much when passengers began to disembark from the ship.

Kell, whose face was known to Minasian and Kleckner, had remained in his rented car until a member of the crew on Serenissima had thrown a mooring rope from the bow. That was his cue. Kell was then mobile in the port and at risk of being spotted. Too bad. It was now just a race to get to ABACUS; if Kleckner spotted him, he might even get spooked and play into their hands. A ramp had been lowered from the ship, connecting foot passengers to the quay. Kell and Danny needed to get as close to the ramp as possible, and to grab the prize.

‘Anything?’ Kell asked, walking through a scrum of local teenagers who had gathered on the dock. He was talking to Danny via the commslink.

‘Nothing,’ Danny replied.

Then, a call. Kell’s phone throbbing in his back pocket. It was Javed.

‘My comms are down,’ he said. ‘Possible Minasian. Alone. Fifty metres from you, eleven o’clock.’ Kell looked ahead. There was always bad news on an operation. To lose the commslink to Javed was a setback, but it had to be forgotten.

‘Describe,’ he said.

‘Dark hair, cropped short. I’m sure it’s him. Blonde woman to his right. Your left.’

‘I see her.’ Kell sighted the man with dark, cropped hair. It wasn’t Minasian. ‘Negative,’ he said. ‘Keep looking.’

Danny had approached from the seaward side and was already at the ramp. It was the only exit from the ship. No cars. Foot passengers only. A lot of elderly people starting to make their way down the ramp, two in wheelchairs. Crew members in navy-blue uniforms, helping them on their way, smiling and laughing against a background of squawking gulls.

‘Possible ABACUS.’ Nina this time. Kell felt a scratch of irritation every time he heard her voice. ‘To the left of the ramp. On the ship. No longer visible. I’m sure it was him.’

Kell looked up at the great white mass of the ship’s starboard side, twice the height of the Londonskaya. Shadows and sunlight and a mass of people bottlenecked at the exit making it almost impossible to get clear sight of faces. He had no binoculars. His phone was ringing again. Javed.

‘Boss. That car. The Mercedes. Driver just got out. Looks very serious. Black suit, muscle.’

‘Minasian?’

‘Negative.’

‘Danny will take the tyres if necessary,’ Kell told him and conveyed this message to Aldrich on the commslink. ‘Could be a politician. Could be business. Could be organized crime. Could be Simon fucking Cowell.’

‘Copy,’ Danny confirmed.

‘Boss?’

Carol now on the comms, from her position inside the terminal building.

‘Go ahead.’

‘Minasian confirmed. Seems alone. Blue denim jeans. White collared shirt. Black sweater. Standing left-hand side of the information desk. Black-rimmed glasses.’

‘Seems alone?’

‘Affirmative.’

It didn’t make sense. It was too easy. There had to be others. Why would Minasian risk the chance of Kleckner being grabbed off the ramp? Why allow him to reach the Customs area, to hand him over to the control of the Ukrainians?

‘Do not let him out of your sight.’

‘Obviously,’ Carol replied.

Kell spotted Danny at the bottom of the ramp, within touching distance of a geriatric couple who were walking, with painstaking slowness, towards the immigration zone. Kell was still at the edge of a thick crowd, ten metres from the base of the ramp. It was like being in a press scrum waiting for a glimpse of a celebrity.

‘Nina?’ he said on the comms, hoping that she had made a second possible sighting.

‘Nothing,’ she replied immediately.

Kell could now see all the way up the ramp and into the ship. Danny caught his eye. Still no sign of Kleckner. Had they missed him? Passengers had been disembarking for more than five minutes, but there were still large numbers of people queueing inside the ship.

‘Carol?’

‘Yup.’

‘Minasian?’

‘Still there. I’ll let you know if anything changes.’ It sounded as though she had moved position, possibly to get behind Minasian. The clarity on her link had dropped.

‘Earpiece? Is he talking to anybody? Using a phone?’

‘Negative. Nothing. Cool as a Russian cucumber.’

There was a sudden long blast on the ship’s horn, echoing out across the port. No reaction from the passengers, no reaction from the members of the public gathered on the quay. Kell lit a cigarette, turning through three hundred and sixty degrees, scanning the quay, the decks on the ship, the walkway above his head where Javed was clearly visible, standing beside a sculpture of a mother and child, a pair of binoculars trained on the ramp.

A second blast on the ship’s horn. Laughter in the group ahead of Kell, American voices exclaiming their delight at ‘being on dry land again’. Kell caught a smell of melted chocolate and roasted nuts from one of the carts upwind. Then, in his ear, Danny’s voice so sudden and excitable that he was spun around: ‘Ramp!’

Kell looked up towards the ship. Ryan Kleckner was clearly visible, no more than twenty metres away, slowly walking down the ramp. He was trailing the Karrimor suitcase and looking up at the terminal building, like a boy on his first day at boarding school.

Kell immediately turned around — he did not want to risk Kleckner seeing his face — and gave the command.

‘ABACUS in play,’ he said. ‘Take Minasian.’