A Colder War. Charles Cumming

of the stairs, Kell heard a reply in a sing-song accent he recognized instantly.

      ‘Hello? Somebody is there, please?’

      A woman came out of the office. She was wearing blue leggings and a black leather jacket and her hair was grown out and tied at the back. Kell hadn’t seen her since the operation to save François Malot, in which she had played such a crucial role. When she saw him, her face broke into a wide smile and she swore excitedly in Italian.

      ‘Minchia!’

      ‘Elsa,’ Kell said. ‘I wondered when I’d run into you.’

       15

      They hugged one another in the hall, Elsa wrapping her arms around Kell’s neck so tightly that he almost lost his balance. She smelled of a new perfume. The shape of her, the warmth in her greeting, reminded Kell that they had almost become lovers in the summer of the Malot operation, and that only his loyalty to Claire, allied to a sense of professional responsibility, had prevented that.

      ‘It is so amazing to see you!’ she said, raising herself up on tiptoes to kiss him. Kell felt like a favourite uncle. It was not a feeling he enjoyed, yet he remembered how easily Elsa had broken through the wall of his natural reticence, how close they had become in the short time they had spent together. ‘Amelia sent you?’ she asked.

      Kell was surprised that Elsa did not know that he was going to be in Ankara. ‘Yes. She didn’t tell you?’

      ‘No!’

      Of course she didn’t. How many other Service freelancers were working on the Wallinger case? How many other members of staff had Amelia dispatched to the four corners of the Earth to find out why Paul had died?

      ‘You’re picking up his computers?’

      Elsa was a Tech-Ops specialist, a freelance computer whizz who could decipher a software program, a circuit board or a screen of code as others could translate pages of Mandarin, or sight-read a Shostakovich piano concerto. In France, two summers earlier, she had unearthed nuggets of intelligence in laptops and BlackBerrys that had been critical to Kell’s investigation: without her, the operation would certainly have failed.

      ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Just picked up the keys.’

      She glanced towards the glass table. Kell saw the keys resting against the base of a vase containing fake plastic flowers.

      ‘I guess that’s what you call good timing,’ he told her. ‘I was about to start downloading the hard drive.’

      Elsa’s face screwed up in confusion, not merely at the obvious overlap in their responsibilities, but also because she knew that, to Kell, computer technology was a gobbledygook language of which he had only a rudimentary understanding.

      ‘It’s a good thing I am here, then,’ she said. And it was only then that she let go of his hands, pivoting back in the direction of the office. ‘I can tell you which plug goes in the wall and which one goes in the back of the computer.’

      ‘Ha, ha.’

      Kell studied her face. He remembered the natural ebullience, a young woman entirely at ease in her own skin. Running into Elsa so suddenly had lifted his spirits out of the despondency that had plagued him for days. ‘When did you get here?’ he asked.

      She glanced outside. She had three earrings in her right lobe, a single stud in the left. ‘Yesterday?’ It was as though she had forgotten.

      ‘You’re going into the Station at some point?’

      Elsa nodded. ‘Sure. Tomorrow, I have an appointment. Amelia wants me to go through Mr Wallinger’s emails.’ She pronounced ‘Wallinger’ in two separate parts – ‘Wall’ and then a Scandinavian ‘Inga’ – and Kell smiled. ‘Is that not correct, Tom Kell? Wallinger?’

      ‘It’s perfect. It’s your way of saying it.’

      It was good to hear the music of her voice again, the mischief in it. ‘OK. So I take a look at this man’s computers, take the phones and maybe the drives back to Rome for analysis.’

      ‘The phones?’ Kell followed her into the office and watched as Elsa powered up Wallinger’s desktop.

      ‘Sure. He had two cell phones in Ankara. One of the SIM cards from his personal phone was recovered from the aeroplane.’

      Kell did not disguise his astonishment. ‘What?’

      ‘You did not know this?’

      ‘I’m playing catch-up.’ Elsa squinted, either because she did not understand the expression, or because she was surprised that Kell appeared so far off his game. ‘Amelia only brought me in a few days ago.’

      During the operation in which they had first worked together, Kell had spoken to Elsa about his role in the interrogation of Yassin Gharani. She knew that he had been sidelined by SIS, but made it clear that she believed in Kell’s innocence. For this, she occupied a special place in his affections, not least because her trust had been more than Claire had ever been able to afford him.

      ‘You’re going to Istanbul?’ she asked.

      ‘As soon as I’m done with the Americans. You?’

      ‘I think so, yes. Maybe. There is Wallinger’s house there? And of course a Station.’

      Kell nodded. ‘And where there is a Station, there are computers for Elsa Cassani.’

      The booting desktop played an accompaniment to Kell’s remark, a rising scale of digitized notes issuing from two speakers on Wallinger’s desk. Elsa tapped something into the keyboard. It was only then that Kell saw the ring on her finger.

      ‘You got engaged?’ he said, and experienced a sense of dismay that surprised him.

      ‘Married!’ she replied, and held up the ring as though she expected Kell to be as pleased as she was. Why was he not glad for her? Had he become so cynical about marriage that the prospect of a woman as lively, as full of promise as Elsa Cassani walking up the aisle filled him with dread? If so, these were cynical, almost nihilistic thoughts of which he was not proud. There was every chance that she would find great happiness. Plenty did. ‘Who’s the lucky man?’

      ‘He is German,’ she said. ‘A musician.’

      ‘Rock band?’

      ‘No, classical.’ She was about to show Kell a photograph from her wallet when his phone began to ring.

      It was Tamas Metka.

      ‘Can you speak?’ The Hungarian explained that he was calling from a phone box across the street from the bar in Szolnok. Kell gave him the number of the secure telephone in Wallinger’s bedroom and walked upstairs. Two minutes later, Metka rang back.

      ‘So,’ he said, a strain of irony in his voice. ‘Turns out you may have met this Miss Sandor.’

      ‘Really?’

      ‘She used to be one of us.’

      Why wasn’t Kell surprised? Wallinger was most likely having yet another affair with yet another female colleague.

      ‘A spook?’

      ‘A spook,’ Metka confirmed. ‘I took a look at the files. She worked several times alongside SIS, Five. She was with us until three years ago.’

      ‘Us meaning she’s Hungarian?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Private sector now?’

      ‘No.’ There was a smothering roar on the line, the sound of a truck or bus driving past the phone booth. Metka waited until it had passed. ‘Nowadays she owns a restaurant on Lopud.’

      ‘Lopud?’