A Colder War

63

Kleckner sprinted outside through a door on the opposite side of the terminal building. Nina and Javed were still on the western quay, looking at the ship, looking at the Mercedes. Danny was trying to find a way back to Kell. They were all out of action. Kell and Carol the only members of the team with line of sight to Kleckner.

‘He’s heading for the main square in the port. Towards the railway. Moving. Running.’

Kell’s voice alerted Elsa and Alicia, who confirmed that they were in separate taxis, engines running, at the gates. Harold was back in Kell’s hire car, Danny sprinting for the Audi. Their voices a cacophony in Kell’s earpiece as he sprinted along the eastern walkway towards the square at the northern end of the terminal. Carol was somewhere behind him. Kell could hear sirens in the distance. He had no idea what had become of Nina and Javed and only hoped that they had slashed the tyres and were sprinting along the eastern side of the building. A forty-four-year-old man who smoked thirty a day, chasing a panicking, gym-fit, twenty-nine-year-old American. Kleckner would be out of sight within seconds.

‘I can see him.’ It was Harold, parked at the edge of the slip road linking the port to the highway. ‘Could have fucking run him over. Came right in front of me. Fuck.’

Kell could visualize where Kleckner was. Past the rank of taxis, nowhere for him to go but out of the port, towards the highway, towards the Potemkin Steps.

‘I have him.’

Elsa’s voice this time. In the taxi. That meant Kleckner was already at the gates.

‘What’s he doing?’ Kell came to a halt. He was so out of breath that Elsa had to ask him to repeat what he had said.

‘Looking for a taxi,’ she said. ‘He saw me, saw I was in the car. Otherwise I think he takes it. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Kell began to run again, moving towards her position. He was perhaps a hundred metres behind her. He thought that he had glimpsed Kleckner walking left-to-right across the entrance. Elsa confirmed this.

‘He is crossing the road,’ she said. ‘He is so close to me. Minchia.’ Somebody else tried to speak on the link but Kell barked them off. ‘Wait please,’ said Elsa. ‘He is going for the railway.’

‘What do you mean “going for the railway”?’ There were train tracks under the slip road, but that was inside the port. There was no access to them from the road. Unless Kleckner was doubling back.

‘Sorry. I mean the little thing. That takes you up the Steps. I cannot remember the name in English you told me. In Italian we call it funicolare.’

‘Funicular, same,’ Kell replied and arrived at the highway, looking across the road. He was exhausted, and just in time to see Kleckner entering the small booth at the base of the funicular railway that would take him to the top of the Steps. The American appeared to be the last passenger on board. The doors were closing.

‘You want us to follow him?’ Elsa asked.

‘No. Stay there. I’ll need you if he comes back down.’

Kell had no choice. He stepped over a barrier and ran across the highway, a Lada bearing down on him from twenty feet. The driver blasted the horn as Kell spun in front of him, reaching the other side. Looking up, he made eye contact with Kleckner in the booth as the funicular began its slow journey up the hill.

‘Danny!’ Kell shouted into the commslink. ‘Harold! Get to the top of the Steps. Get to the fucking square, get to Jez on Primorskiy Boulevard.’

If a reply came, Kell did not hear it. His sweat-soaked earpiece slipped free from the lobe and tapped loose against his back as he began, in the full glare of the midday sun, to run up the ten flights of the Potemkin Steps. His legs were numb with effort, his stinging lungs giving him only shallow, seizing breaths as he desperately tried to stay level with Kleckner. The progress of the funicular was obscured by a line of trees. Kell knew that he was behind the game. Kleckner would be out in the square within a minute, and then only one chance left to catch him.

Kell urged himself on, three more flights, two steps at a time, drawing stares as he sprinted forward. At the top stood the same shirtless boy with the same vast eagle bulked on his shoulder. Behind the boy, the imperial outline of the Duc de Richelieu, the pigeon long gone from his outstretched hand. Kell was soaked in sweat, a searing pain in his lungs. One more flight. ABACUS was surely out of the carriage by now and loose in the square.

Kell saw Kleckner ten seconds later. Jogging away from the Steps, away from the Duc de Richelieu, towards the rank of taxis parked at the northern end of Ekaterininskaya. As he turned, Kleckner made eye contact with Kell, the hunter and the hunted. The man who had tried to take Rachel from him, the man who had almost ruined Amelia’s career. Kell sprinted towards him, closing up the distance so that there was no more than twenty feet between them. Kleckner had no choice but to turn and run.

Three men, all smoking, were leaning on the same car in the taxi rank. None of them looked like they had washed in days. Kell hoped to God that the other two had been paid off.

‘Taksi?’ Jez asked in his best lazy Russian, taking a step towards the American.

Kleckner did not hesitate.

‘Da,’ he said, getting into the back seat of the car. ‘Let’s go.’