A Colder War

65

Kell saw the Audi pull over to the side of the road. He instructed the driver of the cab to drop him at the corner. As he was handing over a ten grivna note, Kell looked ahead and saw Kleckner’s body flex and slump in the back seat of the Audi, then Jez opening the driver’s door and stepping outside. It was done.

Kell took out his phone and called Danny.

‘We’re on Sadikovskaya,’ he said, reading off the cyrillic on a street sign. ‘You?’

‘Traffic. Harold too. What’s happening? I’m sorry, we’re trying to get to you. Fast as possible.’

‘It’s all fine,’ Kell told him, taking over in the driver’s seat of the Audi. Jez had opened the back door, got hold of Kleckner’s leg and pushed a needle of Ketamine into his thigh. ‘We’ve got him,’ Kell said. His lungs felt as though they had been washed in acid. ‘Meet you at the strip.’

The strip was an abandoned military airfield, seventy-five kilometres north-west of Odessa, where Amelia had arranged for a chartered Gulfstream to be idling on the tarmac, waiting to spirit ABACUS out of Ukraine. Kell couldn’t risk the long drive north to Kiev, not with Minasian waking up in less than an hour and scrambling every SVR officer from Odessa to Archangel in pursuit of his lost prize. Jez had patted Kleckner down, found a SIM in the ticket pocket of his jeans, removed his wristwatch. Kell was concerned that the watch might show Kleckner’s position and had thrown it out of the window.

‘That thing was worth three grand,’ Jez exclaimed, looking back at the wheat field into which Kell had flung the watch.

‘Maybe a farmer will find it,’ Kell replied. ‘He can buy himself a new tractor.’

They drove on quiet country roads, avoiding the main highways, limiting the possibility of a bent Ukrainian cop pulling the Audi over as a favour to Moscow. Kleckner was out cold, slumped on the back seat after thirty seconds of hallucinogenic agitation in central Odessa when the ketamine had begun to work through him. Kell estimated that the American would be awake by the time the plane took off. Awake and ready to start answering questions.

A forest at the edge of a vast plain of fields, a metalled track leading to the airfield. Muggy in the late afternoon.

Nobody at the airstrip save for two British pilots smoking idly in the shadow of a derelict control tower, one called Bob, the other called Phil. Both of them long enough in the tooth not to ask about the cargo they were carrying. The flight plan had been filed, the right palms crossed with the right amount of silver. ABACUS would be taken out of Ukrainian airspace, the Gulfstream brushing the southern tip of Moldova, heading west into Romania, then refuelling in Hungary before continuing north over Austria and Germany. Bob expected to touch down at RAF Northolt sometime around nine o’clock BST. Kell would take Kleckner to a safe house in Ruislip, an SIS team would try to ascertain the extent to which ABACUS had corrupted assets and operations in the region, then he would be handed over to the Americans.

Danny and Harold arrived five minutes after Kell. No smiles, no congratulatory handshakes as they approached the Audi and saw Kleckner’s drugged body slumped in the back seat. Everybody knew that there was still work to do. Danny confirmed that the rest of the team were leaving Odessa — some by road, some by rail, some by air via Kiev — then grabbed Kleckner by the feet and dragged him out of the car. Kell stood at the back door and took the American’s shoulders. He could feel the bulk of Kleckner’s muscles as he carried him towards the Gulfstream, the body that Rachel had kissed. He experienced no sense of elation, no joy at Kleckner’s capture. Indeed, as the American was hauled into the cabin, Jez helping to lie him across two seats at the front of the aircraft, Kell thought only of Istanbul and offered a silent prayer to the God in whom he still sometimes believed that Rachel Wallinger was safe.