A Colder War

7

Kell had packed his bags, cleared out of his room and cancelled his reservation at L’Enclume within the hour. By seven o’clock he was back in Preston station, changing platforms for an evening train to Euston. Amelia had driven to London with Simon Haynes, having called Athens and Ankara with instructions for Kell’s trip. He bought a tuna sandwich and a packet of crisps on the station concourse, washed them down with two cans of Stella Artois purchased from a catering trolley on the train, and finished The Sense of an Ending. No colleague, no friend from SIS had elected to join him on the journey home. There were spies from five continents scattered throughout the train, buried in books or wives or laptops, but none of them would run the risk of publicly consorting with Witness X.

Kell was home by eleven. He knew why Amelia had chosen him for such an important assignment. After all, there were dozens of capable officers pacing the corridors of Vauxhall Cross, all of whom would have jumped at the chance to get to the bottom of the Wallinger mystery. Yet Kell was one of only two or three trusted lieutenants who knew of Amelia’s long affair with Paul. It was rumoured throughout the Service that ‘C’ had never been faithful to Giles; that she had perhaps been involved in a relationship with an American businessman. But, for most, her links to Wallinger would have been solely professional. Any thorough investigation into his private life would inevitably turn up hard evidence of their relationship. Amelia could not afford to have talk of an affair on the record; she was relying on Kell to be discreet with whatever he found.

Before going to bed he repacked his bags, dug out his Kell passport and emailed the photograph of the Hungarian inscription to an old contact in the National Security Authority, Tamas Metka, who had retired to run a bar in Szolnok. By seven the next morning Kell was in a cab to Gatwick and back in the dreary routine of twenty-first-century flying: the long, agitated queues; the liquids farcically bagged; the shoes and belts pointlessly removed.

Five hours later he was touching down in Athens, cradle of civilization, epicentre of global debt. Kell’s contact was waiting for him in a café inside the departures hall, a first-posting SIS officer instructed by Amelia to provide a cover identity for Chios. The young man — who introduced himself as ‘Adam’ — had evidently been working on the legend throughout the night: his eyes were stiff with sleeplessness and he had a rash, red as an allergy, beneath the stubble on his lower jaw. There was a mug of black coffee on the table in front of him, an open sandwich of indeterminate contents, and a padded envelope with the single letter ‘H’ scribbled on the front. He was wearing a Greenpeace sweatshirt and a black Nike baseball cap so that Kell could more easily identify him.

‘Good flight?’

‘Fine, thanks,’ Kell replied, shaking his hand and sitting down. They exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes before Kell took possession of the envelope. He had already passed through Greek Customs, so there was now less danger of being caught with dual identities.

‘It’s a commercial cover. You’re an insurance investigator with Scottish Widows writing up a preliminary report on the Wallinger crash. Chris Hardwick.’ Adam’s voice was quiet, methodical, well-rehearsed. ‘I’ve got you a room at the Golden Sands hotel in Karfas, about ten minutes south of Chios Town. The Chandris was full.’

‘The Chandris?’

‘It’s where everybody stays if they come to the island on business. Best hotel in town.’

‘You think Wallinger may have stayed there under a pseudonym?’

‘It’s possible, sir.’

Kell hadn’t been called ‘sir’ by a colleague in over a year. He had lost sight of his own status, allowed himself to forget the considerable achievements of his long career. Adam was probably no older than twenty-six or twenty-seven. Meeting an officer of Kell’s pedigree was most likely a significant moment to him. He would have wanted to make a good impression, particularly given Kell’s links to ‘C’.

‘I’ve arranged for you to pick up a car at the airport. It’s booked for three days. The Europcar desk is just outside the terminal. There’s a couple of credit cards in Hardwick’s name, the usual pin number, a passport of course, driving licence, some business cards. I’m afraid the only photograph we had of you on file looks a bit out of date, sir.’

Kell didn’t take offence. He knew the picture. Taken in a windowless room at Vauxhall Cross on 9 September 2001. His hair cut shorter, his temples less greyed, his life about to change. Every spy on the planet had aged at least twenty years since then.

‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ he said.

Adam looked up at the ceiling and blinked hard, as though trying to remember the last in a sequence of points from a mental checklist.

‘The air traffic control officer who was on duty the afternoon of Mr Wallinger’s flight can meet you tonight at your hotel.’

‘Time?’

‘I said seven.’

‘That’s good. I want to move quickly on this. Thank you.’

Kell watched as Adam absorbed his gratitude with a wordless nod. I remember being you, Kell thought. I remember what it was like at the beginning. With a pang of nostalgia, he pictured Adam’s life in Athens: the vast Foreign Office apartment; the nightclub memberships; the beautiful local girls in thrall to the glamour and expense accounts of the diplomatic life. A young man with a whole career ahead of him, in one of the great cities of the world. Kell put the envelope in his carry-on bag and stood up from the table. Adam accompanied him as far as a nearby duty-free shop, where they parted company. Kell bought a bottle of Macallan and a carton of Winston Lights for Chios and was soon airborne again above the shimmering Mediterranean, checking through the emails and texts that had collected on his iPhone before take-off.

Metka had already sent through a translation of the message seen by Rachel.

Kell powered down the phone and looked out of the window at the wisps of motionless cloud. What Rachel had reacted to so strongly was obvious enough: a message from one of Wallinger’s grieving lovers. But had Rachel understood the Hungarian or recognized the woman’s handwriting? He could not know.

The plane landed at a small, functional, single-runway airport on the eastern shore of Chios. Kell identified the air traffic control tower, saw a bearded engineer on the tarmac tending to a punctured Land Cruiser, and took photographs of a helicopter and a corporate jet parked either side of an Olympic Air Q400. Wallinger would have taken off only a few hundred metres away, then banked east towards Izmir. The Cessna had entered Turkish airspace in less than five minutes, crashing into the mountains south-west of Kütahya perhaps an hour later.

The island’s taxi drivers were on strike so Kell was glad of the hire car, which he drove a few miles south to Karfas along a quiet road lined with citrus groves and crumbling, walled estates. The Golden Sands was a tourist hotel located in the centre of a kilometre-long beach with views across the Chios Strait to Turkey. Kell unpacked, took a shower, then dressed in a fresh set of clothes. As he waited in the bar for his meeting, nursing a bottle of Efes lager and an overwhelming desire to smoke indoors, he reflected on how quickly his personal circumstances had changed. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, he had been eating a tuna sandwich on a crowded train from Preston. Now he was alone on a Greek island, masquerading as an insurance investigator, in the bar of an off-peak tourist hotel. You’re back in the game, he told himself. This is what you wanted. But the buzz had gone. He remembered the feeling of landing in Nice almost two years earlier, instructed by the high priests at Vauxhall Cross to find Amelia at any cost. On that occasion, the rhythms and tricks of his trade had come back to him like muscle memory. This time, however, all that Kell felt was a sense of dread that he would uncover the truth about his friend’s death. No pilot error. No engine failure. Just conspiracy and cover-up. Just murder.

Mr Andonis Makris of the Hellenic Civil Aviation Authority was a thick-set islander of about fifty who spoke impeccable, if over-elaborate English and smelled strongly of eau de cologne. Kell presented him with Chris Hardwick’s business card, agreed that Chios was indeed very beautiful, particularly at this time of year, and thanked Makris for agreeing to meet him at such short notice.

‘Your assistant in the Edinburgh office told me that time was a factor,’ Makris reassured him. He was wearing a dark blue, pin-striped suit and a white shirt without a tie. Self-assured to the point of arrogance, he gave the impression of a man who had, some years earlier, achieved personal satisfaction in almost every area of his life. ‘I am keen to assist you after such a tragedy. Many people on the island were shocked by the news of Mr Wallinger’s death. I am sure his family and colleagues are as keen as we are to find out what happened as soon as is possible in human terms.’

It was obvious from his demeanour that Makris bore no sense of personal responsibility for the crash. Kell assumed that he would want to take the opportunity to shift the blame for the British diplomat’s demise on to the shoulders of Turkish air traffic control as quickly as possible.

‘Did you meet Mr Wallinger personally?’

Makris was taking a sip of white wine and was halted by the question. He swallowed in his own good time and dabbed his mouth carefully with a paper napkin before responding.

‘No.’ The voice was even in tone, a trace of American in the accent. ‘The flight plan had been filed before I arrived on my shift. I spoke to the pilot — to Mr Paul Wallinger — on the radio as he checked his instruments, taxied to the runway and prepared for take-off.’

‘He sounded normal?’

‘What does “normal” mean, please?’

‘Was he agitated? Drunk? Did he sound tense?’

Makris reacted as though Kell had impugned his integrity.

‘Drunk? Of course not. If I sense that a pilot is any of these things, I will prevent him from flying. Of course.’

‘Of course.’ Kell had never had much time for thin-skinned bureaucrats and couldn’t be bothered to summon an apology for whatever offence his remark might have caused. ‘You can understand why I have to ask. In order to complete a full report on the accident, Scottish Widows needs to know everything …’

As though he had already grown tired of listening, Makris leaned down, picked up a slim briefcase and set it on the table. Kell was still speaking as two thick thumbs operated the sliding locks. The catches popped, the lid sprang open, and Makris’s face was momentarily obscured from view.

‘I have the flight plan here, Mr Hardwick. I made a copy for you.’

‘That was very thoughtful.’

Makris lowered the lid, passing Kell a one-page document covered in hieroglyphs of impenetrable Greek. There were boxes where Wallinger had scrawled his personal details, though no address on the island appeared to have been provided.

‘The flight plan was to take the Cessna over Aignoussa, then east into Turkey. It is customary for Çeşme or Izmir to take immediate responsibility for aircraft entering Turkish airspace.’

‘This is what happened?’

Makris nodded gravely. ‘This is what happened. The pilot told us he was leaving our circuit and then changed radio frequency. At this point, Mr Wallinger was no longer our responsibility.’

‘Do you know where he was staying on Chios?’

Makris directed his eyes towards the flight plan. ‘Does it not say?’

Kell turned the sheet of paper around and held it up for inspection. ‘Hard to tell,’ he said.

Makris pursed his lips, as if to imply that Chris Hardwick had caused secondary offence by his failure to read and understand modern Greek. He took back the flight plan, studied it carefully, and was obliged to admit that no address had been given.

‘There seems to be only Mr Wallinger’s residence in Ankara,’ he conceded. Clearly, this was a minor breach in aeronautical protocol. Kell suspected that, first thing in the morning, Makris would hunt down a junior colleague at the airport and take significant pleasure in reprimanding him for the oversight. ‘But there is a telephone number,’ he said, as if to compensate for the clerical error.

‘A telephone number on Chios?’

Makris did not need to look back at the code. ‘Yes.’

According to a preliminary report sent to Amelia the day before the funeral, Wallinger had used his own logbook and JAR licence to hire the Cessna in Turkey, his own passport to enter Ankara, but had then left no trace of his movements once he arrived on Chios. His mobile phone had been switched off for long periods during his stay and there was no activity on any Wallinger credit card, nor on his four registered SIS legends. He had effectively spent a week on Chios as a ghost. Kell assumed that Wallinger had been with a woman, and was trying to conceal his whereabouts from both Josephine and Amelia. Yet the lengths he had gone to suggested that it was equally plausible he had been making contact with an agent.

‘Do you recognize the number?’

‘Do I recognize it?’ Makris’s reply was effortlessly condescending. ‘No.’

‘And have you heard anything about what Mr Wallinger was doing on Chios? Why he was visiting the island? Any rumours around town, newspaper reports?’

Kell accepted that his questions were what is known in the trade as a ‘trawl’, but it was nevertheless important to ask them. It did not surprise him in the least when Makris suggested with a light cough that Mr Hardwick was exceeding his brief.

‘Paul Wallinger was just a tourist, no?’ he said, raising his eyebrows. It was clear that he had no desire to improvise an answer. ‘I certainly have not spoken to anybody, or read anything, which suggests other interests. Why do you ask?’

Kell produced a bland smile. ‘Oh, just background for the report. We need to ascertain whether there was any chance that Mr Wallinger deliberately took his own life.’

Makris tried to appear appropriately dignified as he considered the grave matter of Paul Wallinger’s possible suicide. It had doubtless occurred to him that such a verdict would absolve Chios airport entirely of any responsibility in the crash, thus ending, at a stroke, the possibility of a lawsuit against the engineer who had checked the Cessna.

‘Let me ask around,’ he replied. ‘To be perfectly honest with you, I have not yet even discussed the crash with my colleagues in Turkey.’

‘What about your engineers?’

‘What about them, please?’

‘Have you ascertained who was on duty the afternoon of the flight?’

‘Of course.’ Makris had prepared for this, the most sensitive section of the interview, and dealt with it as Kell had expected he would. ‘Air traffic control is not accountable for maintenance and engineering. That is a separate department, a separate union. I assume that you will be holding other meetings with other employees in order to obtain a more full picture of the tragedy?’

‘I will.’ Kell experienced another craving for a cigarette. ‘Do you happen to have the name of the engineer to hand?’

Makris appeared to weigh up the good sense of denying the man from Scottish Widows this simple request. At some cost to his equilibrium — his neck did an agitated roll and there was another delicate cough of irritation — he wrote down the name on the back of the flight plan.

‘Iannis Christidis?’ Kell studied Makris’s spidery handwriting. With this and the phone number he had more than enough leads to plot Wallinger’s movements in the days leading up to his death.

‘That is correct,’ Makris replied. And to Kell’s surprise he immediately stood up and drained the last of his wine. ‘Now, will there be anything else, Mr Hardwick? My wife is expecting me for dinner.’

As soon as Makris had left the hotel, Kell went back to his room and dialled the number using the hotel landline. He was connected to a recorded answering service, but the message was in Greek. Heading back downstairs he dialled the number again, asked the receptionist to listen to the message and to give a rough translation of what was being said. To his frustration he was told that the voice was a default, computer-generated message with no person or corporation named. Kell, by now hungry and thinking about dinner, returned to his room to ring Adam.

‘The engineer who worked on Wallinger’s plane was called Iannis Christidis. Can you see if there’s anything recorded against?’

‘Sure.’

It sounded as though Adam had woken up from a siesta. Kell heard the bump and scratch of a man looking around for a pen, the noise of a dog barking in the background.

‘With a name like Christidis you’ll probably get the Greek phone book, but see if he has a profile on the island.’

‘Will do.’

‘How are your reverse telephone directories for Chios?’

‘I’m sure we can work something out.’

Kell read out the number from the flight plan, checked that Adam had taken it down correctly, then mentally switched off. Having watched the headlines on CNN, he went for a grilled sea bass and a Greek salad at a restaurant halfway along the beach. From his table on a moonlit terrace he could see the distant lights of the Turkish coast, blinking like a runway.

At ten o’clock, smoking a cigarette at the edge of a high tide, he felt the pulse of a message coming through on his phone. Adam had sent a text.

Still working on IC. Number is for a letting agency. Villas Angelis. 119 Katanika, on the port. Proprietor listed as Nicolas Delfas.