A Colder War

by Charles Cumming

  “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, toward the immigration zone. Kell was still at the edge of a thick crowd, ten meters 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 toward the ship. Ryan Kleckner was clearly visible, no more than twenty meters 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.”

  61

  Traveling on a French-Canadian passport under the name “Eric Cauques,” Sebastien Gachon took a scheduled flight from Paris to Istanbul in the early hours of Sunday, May 5. He had traveled overnight from Kampala, where he had been spending time with a girlfriend.

  Gachon had never visited Istanbul before, nor did he speak Turkish. He waited in line for a taxi and passed the driver a piece of paper on which he had written down the address of a clothes boutique in Yenikoy. An hour later, Gachon was outside the Wallinger yali, wheeling his suitcase along the road, making a preliminary observation of the property. A single front door. No side entrances. Access from the sea.

  The target was at home. Gachon could see her moving from floor to floor, a woman matching the description cabled from Kiev. No apparent security detail, no third parties in the building. He could have taken her there and then. Left his suitcase on the street, rung the doorbell, made the hit, walked away. But he was acting under orders.

  Gachon continued along the street to the main coastal thoroughfare, where he hailed a second taxi. He retrieved the name of the hotel in Galata from his phone and showed the display to the driver. The driver stared at the screen. Gachon could not tell if the man was illiterate or merely lazy. He waited. After a delay of several seconds, the driver nodded, engaged first gear, and proceeded south toward Beyoglu.

  Gachon was hot. He removed his jacket, took a bottle of water from his suitcase, and swallowed several mouthfuls. He then tapped out a message on his phone, in English, which he sent to the dedicated number.

  WE HAVE ARRIVED. YOUR SISTER IS HOME.

  Alexander Minasian had replied within thirty seconds.

  THANK YOU. PLEASE WAIT FOR US. WE ARE STILL LOOKING AT THE ALBUMS. WE ARE GLAD YOU HAVE ARRIVED SAFELY.

  62

  Harold was at Kell’s side within thirty seconds, at the edge of the ramp within ten. Kell turned to see Danny walking away from the crush toward an exterior staircase that would take him up into the arrivals area. Carol confirmed that Minasian was still loitering near the information desk. Kell was relying on her to have made the right call. If the man she suspected of being Alexander Minasian turned out to be just a run-of-the-mill Odessan hanging around the port, they were in trouble. If the real Alexander Minasian was currently getting out of a black Mercedes-Benz, flanked by SVR minders who would grab ABACUS from customs and take him to the airport, they were finished.

  “Missed him.”

  It was Harold. Kleckner had passed too far away to be painted. The American had his head down and was walking along the roped-off passage toward a door in the lower ground floor. No sign of a welcoming committee. No sign of anybody trying to grab Kleckner out of the line. It was all too easy.

  Kell called Javed.

  “Tell me what’s going on with the car.”

  “Driver got back in. Has Danny done the tires?”

  “Not yet. He’s going to Minasian. We’re waiting on that.”

  Danny confirmed by comms that he was inside the terminal, Kleckner now out of sight in the customs area two floors below. A place where nobody on the team could get to him. Nobody but the SVR.

  “Confirm on Minasian,” Danny said calmly, and Kell felt a swell of relief. Carol had made the right call.

  “Any company?”

  “Not that I can see.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen seconds.”

  Kell sprinted up the flight of stairs, came into the arrivals area. He was out of breath. The day before, the terminal had been all but deserted; now there were at least two hundred people crowded at the top of the escalators. Noise and bustle and heat. It was impossible to move quickly.

  The first American tourists had made it through immigration and were pushing their way toward the souvenir shops at the southern end of the terminal. Kell looked across the hall at the information desk and saw Danny closing in on Minasian. Carol between them, turning, watching, looking for plainclothes. And all the time Kleckner downstairs, seizable, with only Javed and Nina outside making sure that he didn’t double back.

  Kell’s phone rang. Javed.

  “Mercedes engine on,” he said. “Exhaust fumes. Back doors open. Another man has got out. No suit. Just jeans and a T-shirt. Tattoos. Tires?”

  “Take them,” Kell replied instantly. He was convinced that Minasian was a diversion. The Russian had known that Kell was coming, positioned himself in the terminal building to give the impression that he was Kleckner’s only contact, while down below a second SVR team was pulling Kleckner out of the customs line and preparing to take him to the Mercedes.

  “I can do that,” Javed replied. He had a knife, but no conviction in his voice.

  At that moment, Kell saw Alexander Minasian begin to struggle, Danny with his arms around him, hugging him tight. As though Minasian was an old friend, encased in a welcoming bear hug, not filled with the ketamine that had just been jammed into his bicep. Kell heard Minasian shouting out in Russian, a man at the edge of losing control, trying to get a warning to somebody, trying to ask for help. But Danny was much stronger, he had the element of surprise, and the sedative was working through him. Kell saw Danny laughing, lowering Minasian to the ground, Carol still watching the terminal for cops and plainclothes, signaling to Kell with her eyes that the coast was clear.

  Javed was still on the phone.

  “Talk to me,” Kell said, as a space formed around Minasian, crowds stepping back, as if from a drunk. Danny and Carol already long gone. “Is anybody moving near the car?”

  “Negative. Engine still running. Driver looks very relaxed. I don’t think it’s them. I think we’re watching the wrong people.”

  “Take the fucking tires,”
Kell ordered and turned toward the escalators.

  At that moment, the head of Ryan Kleckner, his neck, his shoulders, his chest, came sliding up into view. There was a blond woman of about Rachel’s age in front of him, two elderly cruise ship passengers behind. Before Kell had a chance to turn away, Kleckner had looked directly at him. The expression on the American’s face disintegrated. Kell saw his eyes widen in alarm, then shoot away. In the next moment Kleckner had abandoned his suitcase, letting it drop as he reached the top of the escalators, seeming to understand that the commotion ahead of him, the disturbance around Minasian, was part of the plan to trap him. Kell called for Danny on the comms, because he could no longer see him.

  “Outside. Doing the tires,” Danny replied.

  Kell shouted back: “Leave the tires. Javed has them. ABACUS is mobile.”

  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. Toward 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 rental car, Danny sprinting for the Audi. Their voices a cacophony in Kell’s earpiece as he sprinted along the eastern walkway toward 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 tires 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, toward the highway, toward 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 toward her position. He was perhaps a hundred meters 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 perched 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, toward 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 toward 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 toward the American.

  Kleckner did not hesitate.

  “Da,” he said, getting into the backseat of the car. “Let’s go.”

  64

  Kleckner slammed the rear door, urged Jez—in fluent Russian—to “go as quickly as possible to the airport,” then twisted around in the backseat to see a breathless Tom Kell gesticulating at one of the taxi drivers in the rank. As the Audi accelerated along Ekaterininskaya, Kleckner opened the window and tried to organize his thoughts. If Kell had come for him, he had come with a team. SIS and the Agency would have the airport, the train station, the main roads out of Odessa wrapped up. Within moments, Kell himself would be in a taxi, giving pursuit. How the hell had this been allowed to happen?

  “Can you go faster, please?” he urged the driver, who had a bored, contempt-for-tourists laziness about him. “I’m being followed. I’ll pay you. Just go as fast as possible, get off the main road. Take back streets.”

  “Da, da.”

  Kleckner muttered “Jesus Christ” in English. Normally his spoken Russian impressed people, broke the ice on a conversation. Not today. Not with this one. The driver missed an obvious side street at a set of lights, continuing west along a main drag in clear contravention of Kleckner’s instructions.

  “Hey! I thought I said get off the main roads.” He wondered if the driver was from a different country. Maybe he didn’t speak Russian. “You wanna let me drive?”

  “Da, da.”

  Kleckner swore again, this time with greater ferocity. Yet his words continued to have no effect. The driver was immune to any sense of urgency or threat. Kleckner turned in his seat to see one of the cabs from the rank less than three hundred meters behind him. Kell was on his tail. At last the driver made a slow turn into a quieter side street.

  “About fucking time, man,” Kleckner muttered, in English, only to be thrown forward in his seat as the driver slammed on the brakes.

  Jez turned around. He had pulled the Audi over to the side of the road. There were no pedestrians in sight. The taser was concealed in the hollow recess beside his left ha
nd. He reached for it.

  “You know what, mate?” he said, and saw Kleckner’s eyes widen in alarm, registering the British accent. “Why don’t you shut the fuck up for a little bit?”

  And with that, Jez reached forward, touched the taser to Kleckner’s chest, and fired.

  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 backseat 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 kilometers northwest 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.”