Название: A Divided Spy
Автор: Чарльз Камминг
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Морские приключения
Серия: Thomas Kell Spy Thriller
isbn: 9780007467532
isbn:
‘It sounds to me as though it’s a good thing that you’re no longer with this man. If what you’re saying is true, he didn’t make you very happy. It sounds like a form of torture.’
‘It is true. Believe me. But isn’t it also the case that the things in life which give us the most pleasure also cause us the most pain?’
‘I’ll drink to that.’
Kell lifted his glass but had misjudged the moment. Riedle was uncomfortable and quickly returned to his recollections.
‘Dmitri was everything to me. I thought of us as a perfect match, despite the gap in age between us.’
‘How old was he?’ Kell asked.
‘Thirty-four when we met. He is almost thirty-eight now. I have just become fifty-nine.’ Riedle appeared briefly to slip into a private memory. Kell knew that Minasian had lied to Riedle about his age; according to his file at SIS, he was almost forty-one. ‘We laughed together,’ Riedle said. ‘I could tell him everything and he could solve my problems. He was capable of immense kindness, of great insights. We shared a love of the same literature, the same interests. The truth is that he fascinated me in every element of his personality.’
‘But he knew this and he took advantage of it.’
‘Yes!’ Riedle’s response was quick, almost convulsive. Kell noticed the table behind him coming to a sudden halt in conversation. ‘Yes, he took advantage of that.’ Riedle cut off another chunk of lamb. He spoke as he chewed. It was the first time the German’s impeccable table manners had faltered. ‘What is most painful is the loss of this side of his personality. The side that could make me happy. It is not easy at my age to meet a man, particularly one who possessed this ability to bring such contentment to me.’ Kell thought of Rachel, her ghost eavesdropping on their conversation, and concluded – not for the first time – that human beings were fools to expect other people to shore them up. He was about to repeat his earlier assertion that Riedle was well shot of the relationship when something happened that stripped him of his composure. Looking down towards the entrance, he saw a beautiful woman in her early twenties walking into the restaurant in the company of a man who was at least twice her age. The man was wearing a black suit and his hair was slicked back with gel. A large birthmark was visible to the left of his nose.
It was Rafal Suda.
Kell fixed his eyes back on Riedle and smiled a crocodile smile. If the German looked down, he would see Suda. It was that simple. The man who had mugged him only two nights earlier was standing less than eight feet away, making audible small talk with the maître d’. If Riedle recognized him, there would be a confrontation. There would be police involvement and Kell would be obliged to act as a witness. The operation would be over before it had begun. Any hope of locating Minasian by using Riedle as a lure would evaporate.
In an effort to keep the conversation flowing, Kell repeated his assertion that Riedle was lucky to be free of Dmitri, a man who had exerted such a baleful influence over his private life. He spoke for as long as it took for Suda and his date to be led towards the interior of the restaurant. When they were beyond Riedle’s line of sight, Kell encouraged the German to respond. As he listened to his reply, Kell could see Suda, out of the corner of his eye, being led to the first table on the parallel balcony. He was no further away than the length of a London bus. It was a slice of wretched luck. Forgeron had seating for up to a hundred customers in the main section towards the back of the restaurant, but Suda had been seated in one of the few places from which he could still be seen by Riedle.
The German was talking. Kell was trying to absorb what he was saying about Minasian while simultaneously formulating a plan for getting Suda out of the restaurant. A warning text message would do it, but Suda would almost certainly have abandoned the mobile he had used on the Riedle operation. Kell had no other number, only an email address. What were the chances of a middle-aged Polish spook checking his inbox while a statuesque blonde was gazing adoringly into his eyes over a platter of oysters? Slim, at best. No, he had to think of an alternative approach – and all the while keep Riedle talking.
‘What were Dmitri’s politics?’ he asked. Kell looked down at Riedle’s plate. The German had almost finished his lamb cutlets. That was the next problem. With a kir and several glasses of wine inside him, a man of Riedle’s age might need to go to the bathroom in the break between courses. Should he do so, he would need to turn around and to inch along the balcony, all the while looking out over the restaurant, directly towards Suda’s table.
‘He rarely spoke about politics,’ he said. ‘I asked him, of course, and we had arguments about what was going on in Ukraine.’
‘What kind of arguments?’
‘Oh, the usual ones.’ Riedle speared a stem of purple-sprouting broccoli, no more than two or three mouthfuls left before he would finish. ‘That Crimea should be restored to Russia, that it was given to Kiev without permission by Khrushchev …’
‘I would agree with that,’ Kell replied.
‘But I saw the separatist aggression in the east as a senseless waste of lives, innocent people dying for the cause of meaningless nationalism.’
‘I would also agree with that,’ Kell concurred, desperately scrabbling for ideas. He felt like a public speaker with ten more minutes to fill and not an idea in his head. ‘And what we’ve been seeing in Russia is the extraordinary success of the Kremlin propaganda machine. There are educated, liberal intellectuals in Moscow who believe that Ukrainian soldiers have crucified Russian children, that any opposition to Russian influence in the region has been orchestrated by the CIA …’
The use of ‘we’ was a hangover from Office days, the party line at SIS. Kell had made a mistake. Riedle, thankfully, appeared not to have noticed. Instead he nodded approvingly at what Kell had said and then – Kell felt the dread again – turned in his seat and looked down towards the entrance, distracted by a movement or sound that Kell had not detected.
‘But otherwise he wasn’t a political animal?’ Kell asked, trying to bring Riedle’s eyes back to the table. It had been a mistake to ask about politics. Riedle was a sensualist, an emotional man in the grip of heartbreak. He didn’t want to be talking about civil wars. He wanted to be talking about his feelings.
‘No, he was not. He had studied political philosophy at Moscow University.’
A waiter brought a bottle of champagne to Suda’s table. When the cork popped, Riedle might turn around. All of Kell’s energy was directed at preventing that from taking place. He needed to hold Riedle in a sort of trance of conversation, to make it impossible for him to look away.
‘What was his job?’ Kell asked. He removed his jacket in the gathering heat.
‘Like you,’ Riedle replied. ‘Private investment. Raising financing for different projects around Europe.’
A classic SVR cover.
‘Which allowed him to travel extensively? To spend time with you?’
The woman was giggling, Suda raising a loud toast.
‘Precisely.’ Something had caused Riedle to smile. ‘It’s funny. I always felt like the sophisticated one. The older Western European intellectual teaching the boy from Russia. This was false, of course. Dmitri was much cleverer, much better educated than I am. But СКАЧАТЬ