A Divided Spy. Чарльз Камминг
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There was an expression of amused consternation on his face.
‘They do breakfasts,’ he said, nodding slowly and looking across the table, as though half-expecting Kell to finish his sentence. ‘They do breakfasts every morning …’
‘What a breakthrough in hospitality,’ Kell replied. ‘I must go and stay there.’
Mowbray didn’t laugh. His eyes were fixed somewhere around Kell’s left ear.
‘On the second last day we were there, this couple walks in. Two men. You get that kind of thing at the hotel. They’re comfortable with gays, lots of it about, even for a Muslim country.’ Mowbray sipped his tap water, trying to slow himself down. ‘Karen looks up and makes a noise of disapproval.’ He checked himself. ‘No, not disapproval, she’s not homophobic or anything. More conspiratorial than that. Like a joke between us. “Look at the fruits”, you know?’
‘Sure,’ said Kell.
‘They were both dressed in white shirts and white trousers. That’s very German, too. Ninety per cent of the guests look like they’re playing at Wimbledon or members of some cult. Pristine white, like an advert for one of those soap powders that really deliver at low temperatures.’ Kell resisted telling Mowbray to ‘get on with it’ because he knew how he liked to operate. ‘And there’s an age gap between them,’ he said, ‘maybe fifteen or twenty years. The older bloke is the one facing me. German money, you can tell. He sits down with what looks like a fruit salad, black-rimmed glasses, suntan. I can’t see the boyfriend, but he’s younger, fitter. Late thirties, at a guess. The old boy is camp, a bit effeminate, but this one looks straight, macho. There’s something about him that triggers me, but I can’t yet tell what it is.’
Kell had stopped eating. He knew what Mowbray was going to tell him, a giddy premonition of something so improbable that he dismissed it out of hand.
‘Anyway, Karen had finished her orange juice. Wanted to get another one. She’d hurt her foot on the coral so I offered to go instead. There’s an egg station at the buffet and I waited there while the chef made me an omelette. Got the wife’s orange juice, got some yogurt, then started to walk back towards our table. That was when I saw his face. That was when I recognized him.’
‘Who?’ said Kell. ‘Who was it?’
‘The boyfriend was Alexander Minasian.’
Kell stared at Mowbray in disbelief.
‘Don’t fuck around,’ he said, because the chance sighting was so sensational that Kell had to reckon that Mowbray was making a joke.
‘As clear as I’m sitting here facing you,’ he said. ‘No way it was anybody else.’
Alexander Minasian was the SVR officer responsible for the recruitment of Ryan Kleckner, a high-level CIA mole in the Middle East who had funnelled Western secrets to Moscow for more than two years. In an operation instigated by Amelia Levene, Kell had identified Kleckner, run him to ground in Odessa and handed him over to Langley. In response to the loss of Kleckner, Moscow had given the order to kill Rachel. Kell held Minasian personally responsible. He wanted his head on a plate.
‘Minasian has a wife,’ Kell said quietly. The heat of the kiln was burning into his back. ‘At least that’s what we thought. It never entered the equation that he was gay. It’s not SVR house style. They wouldn’t countenance it. They’re not big on homosexuality in Putin’s Russia. You probably noticed.’
Mowbray’s reaction – a slow shake of the head, mouth pursed so that minute traces of food were visible on the inside of his lips – told Kell that he was convinced by what he had seen. He picked up his glass and turned it in his hand, a man waiting to be believed. Kell began to work from memory, his knowledge of Minasian still as insubstantial as the official SIS file. Nobody knew where Minasian had come from, where he was currently stationed, how he had recruited Kleckner.
‘Minasian’s wife is the daughter of a St Petersburg oligarch. Andrei Eremenko. Draws a lot of water in Moscow. Close to the Kremlin.’ Kell had spent long hours looking into Eremenko’s business affairs, searching for any overlap with Minasian, any clue as to his whereabouts or personality. ‘If he finds out his son-in-law is gay …’
‘He’s not going to be very happy about it.’ Mowbray finished Kell’s sentence and set his glass back on the table. ‘Nor is Mrs Minasian, for that matter. Wives can be sensitive about that sort of thing.’
‘Perhaps she already knows,’ Kell suggested. In his experience, wives often knew far more of their husband’s misdemeanours than they ever publicly acknowledged. Many of them preferred to exist in a state of denial. Let the man philander, let him play his vain and tawdry games. Just keep it in-house. At all costs, protect the nest.
‘That’s what I wondered.’
Kell was silent as he continued to analyse what he had been told. It was unthinkable that the SVR would have a gay officer on its books, married or otherwise. SIS had only begun recruiting openly homosexual employees in the previous ten or fifteen years; modern Russia was antediluvian by comparison. If Minasian’s secret were exposed, his career would end overnight.
‘Who else have you spoken to about this?’
Kell dreaded the simple reply: ‘C’ because it would instantly shrink his options. The wheels of his imagination had begun to turn, a dormant ruthlessness circling Minasian’s vulnerability like a bird of prey. If his nemesis was hiding a secret of this magnitude, he was vulnerable to an extent that was almost beyond belief. But if Amelia knew about it, she would sideline Kell on any subsequent operation, doubtless citing ‘personal issues’ and ‘clouded judgment’.
‘I haven’t told a soul,’ Mowbray replied, though his eyes slid to one side and he tapped his mouth with a napkin as he spoke. Kell studied the face and could not be certain that Mowbray was telling the truth. A tiny section of sunburned skin around his nose looked as if it was about to flake off.
‘Not even Karen?’ he asked. Spousal pillow talk was an occupational hazard among veteran spies; the habit of secrecy became harder and harder to sustain as the years went by.
‘Never discuss work with the wife,’ Mowbray replied quickly. ‘Never. Something we agreed on from day one. Last time she asked me was ninety-one or ninety-two, when they arrested a bunch of IRA in London. She was watching John Simpson on the Nine O’Clock News, said: “Did you have something to do with this?” I told her to mind her own business.’
‘But she saw Minasian?’
‘Oh yeah. All the time.’
‘What does that mean? She met him?’
‘No. Neither of us did. But we were staying at the same hotel. Caught the whole show.’
Kell saw the glint in Mowbray’s eye, the suggestion of an even greater prize.
‘Call it trouble in paradise,’ he explained with a predictable grin. ‘Our man from Moscow wasn’t getting on very well with his boyfriend. They kept fighting. Arguing.’
‘All of this played out in public?’ Kell was beginning to wonder if Harold had stumbled on a set-up, Minasian role-playing the moody boyfriend for the purpose of an undisclosed SVR operation at the hotel. Perhaps the relationship had even been staged for Mowbray’s benefit, or Harold himself had been turned by the Russians.
‘Not exactly.’ Mowbray was leaning forward again, still grinning. ‘You see, I made a point of watching them whenever I could. Surreptitious photos, eavesdropping in the bar.’
‘Jesus.’ Kell had an image of Mowbray prowling around a sun-blasted Egyptian tourist resort with a long-lens camera and a boom microphone. ‘Any chance I could see those photos?’
Mowbray