19

 

Amelia’s choice of seat was telling. Rather than pick a vacant table in the window, with a view out onto Istiklal, she jammed herself into a noisy corner of the restaurant alongside a geriatric Turk sporting an antediluvian hearing aid. Even if he spoke or understood English, it was unlikely that the man would be able to hear what Kell and Amelia were saying; less likely still that he would then go running to MIT with a verbatim account of their conversation.

Kell ordered lamb shanks and mashed potatoes; Amelia a lamb stew with a side order of pureed eggplant that had the look and texture of baby food. Within a couple of mouthfuls they had both pronounced the food to be “disgusting,” but ate as they talked, sipping from glasses of sparkling water.

“You haven’t talked about your meeting with Jim Chater,” she said.

“I thought I’d wait for a full moon. Why didn’t you tell me he was out here?” Amelia produced another trademark look of inscrutability, adjusting the sleeves of her blouse. Kell felt a rising irritation once again. “I’m assuming there’s method in all this madness,” he said.

“Come again?” Her tone of voice suggested that Kell was being unnecessarily provocative.

“Why didn’t you mention it? Why haven’t you asked me about him until now?”

“You sent a report last night, didn’t you?”

“Which you’ve seen?”

Kell was surprised to discover that Amelia had not read his account of the meeting with Moses and Chater, which he had telegrammed to London shortly after he had finished talking to Adam Haydock in Athens.

“I wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth,” she said, as though she were paying Kell a compliment.

“Well here’s the horse,” he replied, biting off a mouthful of bread.

To avoid creating an impression of bias, Kell reproduced the characteristics of the meeting as blandly and as factually as he could: the Moses monologue; Chater’s obvious time-wasting; the American’s brusque reaction to Kell’s questions about HITCHCOCK. When it came to Iannis Christidis, Kell told Amelia only that he felt Chater was already familiar with the name.

“Iannis Christidis,” she repeated. “The one you’ve asked Adam to track down?” Her interest was piqued. “You really think Jim recognized the name?”

Kell had to proceed carefully. To suggest as much to Amelia, with the clear inference that the CIA had been involved in Wallinger’s crash, would be a grave accusation.

“Who knows?” he said, fudging it. “I thought I saw something. I might have been projecting.”

“Projecting what?”

Kell shot her a look. It had been many months since they had last spoken about what had happened in Kabul.

“Look. You know there are decisions I made which I regret…”

“Okay, okay,” Amelia said quickly, as though Kell had embarrassed her. Angered as much by this as by his own persistent need to explain his actions, he lapsed into silence. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Tom. Don’t be like that. I just don’t want us to get sidetracked. I want to know about Chater’s state of mind.”

“Why?” Kell replied quickly.

“Because I have doubts about him too.”

It was an extraordinarily loaded remark, and one that Kell seized on.

“What do you mean?”

Amelia pushed her plate to one side; it was immediately scooped up by a passing waiter. She dabbed her mouth with a paper napkin and glanced toward the window.

“You haven’t asked me the obvious question,” she said, following the progress of a child who was walking past the restaurant.

“Obvious question? About what? Your doubts? Where are we on this?”

Her head snapped back toward him. “What am I doing here?” There was a rare surge of melodrama in her tone of voice, perhaps even a measure of panic. Kell recalled that he had asked that exact question in the resident’s lounge of the Hotel de Londres. Amelia, as was typical of her present mood, had declined to answer.

“Okay, then. Why are you in Istanbul? Something breaking in Syria?”

She turned back toward the window. They had both been keeping an intermittent watch on any new customers who came into the restaurant: looking for repeating faces; checking the obvious observation points across the street. But this wasn’t tradecraft. Something was plainly bothering Amelia. She seemed to be weighing up the good sense of what she was about to say.

“We lost another Joe.”

“What?”

“In Tehran. On Monday. Assassinated.”

Kell had seen the news reports. He had assumed, like everybody else, that the Mossad had carried out the assassination.

“The guy in the car. The scientist? He was an asset?”

“One of Paul’s, yes. Cryptonym EINSTEIN.”

“Jesus.” To recruit a scientist on the inside of the Iranian centrifuge program was a major coup both for Wallinger and for SIS; to lose him to a black op was a body blow. “Who took him out?”

Amelia shrugged with her eyes. Either she knew, and couldn’t say, or, more likely, had no idea who had carried out the attack and wasn’t prepared to trade in theories.

“The point is that we lost HITCHCOCK three weeks ago, Paul in a plane crash, EINSTEIN on Monday. That’s more assets than we’ve dropped in AF/PAK in seven years.” Kell, still eating, bit down on a brittle chip of lamb shank and had to pick a tiny piece of bone out of his mouth. Amelia, with the tact of a croupier, looked away. “When you went through Paul’s telegrams, through the files,” she said, “did anything jump out?”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning did anything strike you as odd? Anything at all about the things he was saying and doing?”

“Everything I looked at seemed above board,” he replied. “Commonplace, even. Doug Tremayne was looking at the agent handling, farming out Paul’s assets to new officers. There was no point in giving that to me because I’m not going to be around long enough to play an operational role.”

The old man at the next-door table was eating fruit salad and made a slurping sound, as though disappointed by Kell’s answer. Amelia appeared to be about to speak when she stopped herself.

“Jesus, spit it out,” he said.

“What if I was to offer you H/Ankara?”

The job was everything he had hoped for—his reputation cleared; a sense of purpose and direction restored to his life. Yet Kell did not experience the elation he might have expected. He was arrogant enough to believe that he deserved such a position, but Amelia’s offer seemed to contain a warning. Why would “C” take the considerable risk of appointing Kell H/Ankara if she did not expect to extract a quid pro quo?

“That’s enormously flattering,” he said, and put a cautious hand on Amelia’s arm. He was thanking her, but not yet saying yes, not yet saying no.

“Do you think you’d be interested?” Amelia’s head was tipped forward, as though she were looking at him over half-moon spectacles. “Could you see yourself based out here? Three years? Four?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“Good,” she replied. Then, as if there was no more to be said on the subject, she returned to what appeared to be troubling her.

“Did you come across a reference to Ebru Eldem?”

The old Turkish man rose from his seat, leaving behind the half-eaten bowl of fruit salad. Kell followed him with his eyes, but his mind was back in Wallinger’s office, sifting through files and telegrams, trying to summon the name from among a hundred others.

“Journalist?” he asked, more in hope than expectation, but Amelia nodded, encouraging him to expand. “Arrested a few months ago,” he said, dredging up the Eldem story. “Usual Turkish setup. Hack writes something critical of Erdogan, gets banged up as a terrorist for her troubles.”

“That’s the one.”

“What about her?”

“She was an American asset.”

“Okay.” It was a lunch of surprises. “Recruited by your old friend, Jim Chater. Chater complained to Paul when she was arrested.”

“Paul told you this?”

“Last time he was in London, yes. Said she was the third journalist on the Cousin’s books to have been jailed in the region.”

“Were they all Turks?”

“Yes.”

“Eldem is a political reporter?”

If Amelia was impressed that Kell had remembered such a seemingly insignificant biographical detail, she did not show it. “Yes. For Cumhuriyet.”

“But that’s par for the course round here,” he said. “There are eight hundred journalists in prison in Turkey. That’s more than there are in China.”

“Is that right?” Amelia absorbed the statistic. After a moment’s pause, she added: “Well, we’ve also lost academics. We’ve also lost students. We have a NOC in Ankara who reported direct to Paul; he’s lost a senior source in the EU. Fired about six months after we took him on.”

Like the vague physical discomfort that presages an illness, Kell had a sense that Amelia was about to tell him something profoundly troubling. Would it be the quid pro quo, or would it be something about Paul? Uncomfortable at the prospect of continuing their conversation in their current position—a mother and child were about to settle into the vacated seat beside them—Amelia suddenly stood up, put on her jacket, and led Kell out of the restaurant. They were some distance away, walking down a deserted cobbled street east of the Galata Tower, when she finally returned to the subject.

“What I’m about to tell you, I want to tell you as a friend.” She looked at Kell and, with no more than a glance, asked for his absolute discretion.

“Of course.” He put his hand on her back. This time Amelia did not flinch. “I think Simon Haynes dropped the ball in the last weeks of his tenure.”

“Go on.”

“I think certain things escaped his attention. During the transition, I was still so affected by what had happened in France”—she was referring to the kidnap and rescue of her son—“that I didn’t pay close enough attention to something that now seems very obvious.” Amelia turned down a narrow, deserted street that had been soaked by a burst pipe; water was gurgling out of a ruined building, pouring down one side of the road. “Over a four-year period, a number of joint operations with the Cousins have been undermined. HITCHCOCK and EINSTEIN the worst, no question, but others going back three years. In London, in the U.S., in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel.”

“What do you mean ‘undermined’?”

“I mean that the numbers are out. I mean that too many things have gone wrong. I’ve looked at the history, at the statistics, and we’re losing too many assets, too much strategic advantage, too much product.”

“You think there’s a leak?”

It was the question every spy hoped he would never have to ask. A mole was the secret state’s profoundest fear, the paranoid nightmare of its guarded and cautious inhabitants. Philby. Blake. Ames. Hanssen. The names kept coming, generation after generation, traitor breeding traitor, an entire bureaucratic class feeding on itself, on paranoia and doublethink. Amelia, acknowledging Kell’s question with a glance, asked for—of all things—a cigarette, which he lit for her as they walked.

“I don’t know its nature,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s technical.”

Was that better or worse? Human betrayal was morally more repugnant but, typically, less damaging than a compromised communications link. If, say, the Iranians or the Israelis, the Russians or the Chinese, had a line into SIS’s telegram system, the Service was finished, because it was the end of secrets. If, on the other hand, there was a mole, he or she was identifiable; by definition, their days were numbered.

“I’ve had to be bloody careful.” Amelia held the cigarette in the tips of her fingers and inhaled on it like a sixth-form prefect. “I’ve had everything checked and double-checked. Every mainframe, telegram, e-mail, you name it. Passwords changed, keypads, Augean stables job.”

“I didn’t know,” Kell said, and shrugged out a momentary cramp in his right shoulder. “And still the leaks keep coming?”

“And still the leaks keep coming.” Amelia tossed the cigarette into an oil-streaked puddle of water. She had taken no more than two puffs. “There are names,” she said. “The same people copied on the same intelligence, attending the same meetings, seeing the same CX.”

“Us or them?”

“Both,” she said.

“How many?”

“Too many. Dozens on our side of the Atlantic, dozens on theirs. I could be investigating this thing until my ninetieth birthday. I could make Angleton look level-headed.” They rounded another corner. Two men were playing backgammon at a small table in front of a shoe shop. One of them looked up and smiled at Amelia, apparently appreciating the presence of an elegant, well-dressed woman in his gray neighborhood. Ever the politician, she smiled back. “Too many suspects,” she said, in a flat voice. “I have little idea who sees what we see once it crosses the pond. The mole could be State Department, could be Langley. Christ, it could be the White House.” Kell listened to the fading rattle of the backgammon dice. “But,” Amelia said.

“But,” Kell repeated. A boat moaned on the Bosporus.

“There are specific people I want to look at. Four, to be precise. One is Douglas Tremayne.”

Kell felt an instinctive sense that Amelia had the wrong man: Tremayne didn’t fit the profile of a traitor, but he knew that such thoughts were the spycatcher’s Achilles’ heel. Everyone was a suspect. Everyone has his reasons. “Doug?” he said.

“I’m afraid so.” Amelia again removed her jacket and looped it over her arm. “The other, on our side, is Mary Begg.”

“Never heard of her.”

“Works on the Middle East Directorate at the Cross. Came to us from Five just after you left. She’s seen most things. Been involved. It could be her.”

“And the others are Yanks?” Kell asked, wondering with an accumulating envy if Begg had been his like-for-like replacement.

Amelia nodded. “I’ve got a team in Texas. In Houston. Taking a very close look at Tony Landau. His fingerprints were all over HITCHCOCK, all over EINSTEIN. He had access to most of the files relating to the corrupted assets.”

“Most of the files,” said Kell pointedly.

Amelia appeared to appreciate the fact that Kell had noticed the caveat. “He didn’t know about Eldem. The circulation on her was very low.”

Kell knew what Amelia was going to tell him. Chater had known about Eldem, had possibly betrayed her to the Turks. Kell was going to be asked to soak Chater’s laptops and phones, to follow him into bathrooms, to sleep under his bed. He was going to be presented with an opportunity to avenge Kabul.

“That’s why you’re here,” she said, right on cue. “The Cousins have a young officer here. Ryan Kleckner.”

“Kleckner,” Kell replied, caught off guard. He had never heard the name.

“He’s had the same access. Attended the same meetings. We’ll be looking at Begg; I have someone on Tremayne. I want you to take on Kleckner. I’ll give you everything you need to make an assessment of his behavior, to include or exclude him as a suspect.”

Kell nodded.

“A month before he flew to Chios, a week before Dogubayazit, Paul came to London. I confided in him as I am confiding in you.”

“Paul knew about the mole?” Kell asked.

“Yes.”

“And the Americans? Did you raise your concerns with them?”

“Christ, no.” Amelia shook off the idea like a sudden chill. “Go to the Cousins with an accusation like that? It would shut everything down. Every joint op. Every shared bite of intelligence. Every ounce of carefully nurtured trust since Blake and Philby.”

“So Paul was the only one who knew?”

“Wait.” Amelia held up a hand to interrupt him. They had come to the bottom of the hill, the crowded Galata Bridge now visible to the southwest, heavy traffic funneling in both directions along Kemeralti Caddesi. “I’ve got to be completely honest with you. I cannot say, hand on heart, that Paul is above suspicion.” Kell saw the conflict in her, knew the consequences if Wallinger proved to be the mole. “But we have to stop this thing. We have to find out where the leaks are coming from. I’ve had to shut almost everything down. All the joint ops, limit the circulation on too many reports. The Cousins don’t understand it and they’re getting restless. Everything we’re doing in Turkey, in Syria, with the Iranians, the Israelis, it’s all being affected. I can’t move until this thing is resolved.” Amelia was chopping the air with her hand. “You’ve got to try to get answers quickly, Tom,” she said, curling the hand into a fist. “If we can’t get anything on Kleckner, I’ll have to go to the Americans. Soon. And if the mole turns out to be one of ours…”

“Curtains,” said Kell.

They stood in silence for a moment.

“What did Paul say about the leaks?” Kell asked.

Amelia seemed surprised by the question. “He agreed to look into it,” she said. “He said he didn’t trust Kleckner, didn’t like Begg. Something not right about her. We agreed never to discuss my theory using any of the usual channels. No telegrams, no telephones, nothing.”

“Sure.” Kell waited for Amelia to continue. When she remained silent, gazing at the cluttered horizon beyond the minarets encircling the Golden Horn, he prompted her by saying: “And?”

She turned toward him. To Kell’s surprise, her eyes were stung with tears.

“And I never saw him again.”