A Colder War

71

A small boy swimming in the shallows of the Bosporus had seen blood sprayed on the ground-floor windows of the yali. The body of Rachel Wallinger was found in the kitchen, a single bullet wound to the head. Minasian, stranded in Odessa knowing that Kleckner would be out of the country in less than six hours, had played a final, desperate card, not knowing that his superiors in Moscow had ordered Rachel to be killed.

Kell and Danny immediately flew to Istanbul. Amelia returned to London on the Gulfstream, breaking the news to Josephine at the flat in Gloucester Road. In his anger and despair at what had happened, Kell became numb to the sinister ease with which SIS conspired with the Turkish authorities to make the murder look like a random act of violence. Press reports described Rachel as ‘the daughter of a former British diplomat killed in a plane crash earlier this year’. Though Kell blamed himself as much for Rachel’s death as he blamed Amelia, he avoided speaking to her and refused to meet when she asked if they could discuss the case over lunch.

‘What’s left to discuss?’ he wrote back. ‘Rachel is dead.’

Kell also made it clear that he no longer had any interest in taking over as H/Ankara.

The day of Rachel’s funeral, Kell was woken at five in the morning by a call from Elsa Cassani. She told him that the wires were reporting the death of a twenty-nine-year-old American diplomat in Kiev. The story, subsequently carried in the international sections of all four British broadsheets, described Ryan Kleckner as a ‘health attaché’ at the US Consulate in Istanbul.

Eyewitnesses reported that Kleckner, who was on holiday in Kiev, became involved in a heated argument outside a nightclub in the small hours of Tuesday morning. His body was discovered in a suburb east of the city.

‘SVR?’ Elsa asked.

‘No,’ Kell replied. ‘The Russians have always prided themselves on getting their people home.’

‘The Americans, then?’

‘Yes.’

Chater would have given the order. Made it look like a violent crime. Ukrainian tough guys taking exception to an uppity Yank and putting a bullet through his brain. Further ‘eyewitnesses’ would emerge in the coming days claiming to have seen Kleckner in a brothel or lap-dancing club, behaving in a drunken or sleazy fashion. Something to put a slight stain on his reputation so that he did not return to Missouri as a hero. Something for his family and friends to be ashamed of as they stared at the coffin.

‘He was too much trouble to Langley,’ said Kell. ‘They couldn’t have survived the scandal.’

‘What about you?’ Elsa asked.

‘What about me?’

‘How are you, Tom?’

Kell looked across the room at the black suit hanging near the window. The light was coming up outside. He had to drive to Cartmel in a few hours’ time, to sit in a church surrounded by Rachel’s friends and family, nobody knowing what had happened between them, what Rachel Wallinger had meant to him. He could be no comfort to Josephine, to Andrew. Kell felt that he had betrayed them all.

‘I’ll be fine,’ he said. ‘Will you be there today?’

‘Yes.’

He was wide awake now. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he reached for a packet of Winston and lit a cigarette. He was determined to avenge Rachel, to make Minasian pay.

‘So I will see you later?’ Elsa asked.

She had rung on the landline. Kell knew that the SVR would be listening to the call, picking up every word of the conversation. He spoke very clearly and steadily into the receiver.

‘You will see me later.’