A Divided Spy (Thomas Kell Spy Thriller, Book 3) (33 page)

They drove to an SIS safe house on the western side of the city. Minasian was taken inside by Krzysztof, leaving Stenbeck and Kell on the street.

‘What happens now?’ Stenbeck asked. ‘He’s your source, Tom.’

Kell shook his head and looked down at the cobbled road.

‘Minasian is nothing to do with me,’ he said. ‘Amelia will want to get him back to London. They’ll do a trade. In return for telling her everything he knows, she’ll set him up for a new life in the UK. Quid pro quo.’

‘Don’t you want a piece of that?’ Stenbeck was astonished at Kell’s nonchalance.

‘I’m done,’ Kell told him. ‘Getting out.’

‘
What?
’

Kell did not have the patience to explain himself. He had reached the point of no return. He was grateful that nobody had been harmed on the bridge, but sick of vengeance and death. He thanked Stenbeck and wished him well. He assured him that he would write up a report of the incident and tell Amelia that Stenbeck had acted at all times with professionalism and integrity.

‘I appreciate that. Thank you.’

Stenbeck ordered a car to take Kell back to his hotel. He packed his bags, checked out and hailed a taxi that took him to the railway station. There was an overnight train leaving for Berlin at half past eleven. Germany seemed a good place to aim for. He could disappear for a while.

Kell bought a ticket and ate a kebab at a counter inside the station. He had switched his phone to mute, but when he saw Amelia’s name light up on the screen he decided to answer.

‘Max says you’ve left. What’s going on?’

‘It’s simple,’ Kell replied. ‘My dealings with Minasian are finished. I’ve brought him to you. Call it a parting gift.’

‘What do you mean “a parting gift”? I don’t understand.’

He wondered where she was calling from. The grace-and-favour flat? The fringes of an official meeting?

‘I’ve decided to stop,’ he said.

‘Stop?’

‘Move on.’

There was a pause as Amelia absorbed what he had said.

‘But I want you to come back. I
need
you to come back.’

‘It’s no good, Amelia. I’m done.’

Kell felt no pleasure in telling her this. He did not enjoy the feeling of walking away from a challenge, nor did he like letting Amelia down.

‘Too much has happened,’ he said. ‘I don’t enjoy the work any more. I think of it as unhealthy.’

‘Unhealthy? But you just had the greatest triumphs of your career!’

Kell could hear the consternation in her voice. He knew that he would never effectively be able to explain to her why his life was more important to him than his career. For Amelia, the two things were inextricable.

‘Those weren’t my triumphs,’ Kell replied. He was being disingenuous because he wanted the conversation to end. ‘Carnelian saved Minasian. Minasian stopped Brighton. If it weren’t for Rachel, I would never have gone after him. And what was the end result? Riedle dead, Minasian’s marriage and career finished—’

‘Tom, for goodness’ sake. You must be tired.’

‘Very,’ Kell replied. They were showing the platform number for the Berlin train. ‘It’s simple,’ he said. ‘I don’t want this life any more, this divided life. I can’t remember a time when what I did for a living made me happy. Fulfilled. I don’t feel as though I was making a difference to anyone or anything. It was all just moves on a board.’

‘Tom, please. Just come home. Come back to London. We’ll talk. You’ve been through hell in the last few years. I owe you. The Service owes you. Let’s find a way.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I am deeply grateful to you, Amelia. I thank you for everything you have done for me. Even for what you have
not
done, because I learned from that. It has been an honour to know you and to serve alongside you. I think you are a remarkable woman. I think you are devious and cunning, too. You are
complicated
. We are all complicated. But I want no further part in your secret life.’

‘This is senseless. You’re tired. Come back.’

‘I won’t be coming back for a long time.’ Kell put a handful of coins on the counter and picked up his bags. ‘I just want to live, Amelia. I want to start again.’

Acknowledgements

My thanks to:

Julia Wisdom, Kate Stephenson, Lucy Dauman, Jaime Frost, Anne O’Brien, Kate Elton, Roger Cazalet, Oliver Malcolm, Katie Sadler, Liz Dawson, Claire Ward, Richard Augustus and everyone at HarperCollins.

Will Francis, Kirsty Gordon, Jessie Botterill and Rebecca Folland at Janklow & Nesbit in London. To Luke Janklow, Claire Dippel, Stefanie Lieberman and Dmitri Chitov at the New York office.

Sally Richardson, Charles Spicer, April Osborn, Dori Weintraub and the team at St Martin’s Press.

To Jeff Silver at Grandview, Jay Baker, Jon Cassir and Matt Martin at CAA, and Ged, Colin, Claudia and Oliver at Raindog.

I am also indebted to: Sarah Gabriel (www.sarahgabriel.eu), Elizabeth Best, Caroline Pilkington, Ian Cumming, Salomé Baudino, Paolo Risser, Laila Danesh, Helena Tedal, Nick Lockley, Melissa Hanbury, Stanley and Iris Cumming, Barney Bristow, Damian Lewis, Rory Carleton Paget, Ludmilla Linkevich, Masha Hayward, Vera Obolonkina, Leyla Sabauri, Chris and Sarah Wright, Peter Frankopan, Ben Higgins, Mark Pilkington, Rowland White, Amos Courage, Bard Wilkinson, Boris Starling, Peter Caddick-Adams, James Maby, Kam Heskin, Alice Kahrmann, Dr Fatema Jan, Clementine Gaisman, JAF, Charlotte Cassis, Owen Matthews, Ron Amram, Chris Morgan-Jones, Marta Januszewska, Aurore de Broqueville, Nick Green, Raymond Lief and Natasha Fairweather.

Thank you to Roddy Campbell, Elit Kutsal, Constance Watson, Ian Johnson, Chelsea Carter and everyone at www.vrumi.com for the office. I discovered the Montaigne epigraph in John Yorke’s book,
Into the Woods
. Deeyah Khan’s extraordinary film,
Jihad: A Story of the Others
, helped me better to understand the choices made by Azhar Ahmed Iqbal. Mark Lilla’s essay ‘Slouching Toward Mecca’ (
New York Review of Books
), Ben Taub’s ‘Journey to Jihad’ (
New Yorker
) and ‘We and You’ by Owen Bennett-Jones (
London Review of Books
) were all extremely useful.

C.C. London 2016

Want more Thomas Kell? Try another book in the series:

Six weeks before she is due to become the first female head of MI6, Amelia Levene disappears without a trace.

Disgraced ex-agent Thomas Kell is brought in from the cold with orders to find her – quickly and quietly. The mission offers Kell a way back into the secret world, the only life he’s ever known.

Tracking her through France and North Africa, Kell embarks on a dangerous voyage, shadowed by foreign intelligence services. This far from home soil, the rules of the game are entirely different – and the consequences worse than anyone imagines…

Click
here
to order
A Foreign Country

When MI6’s top spy in Turkey is killed in a mysterious plane crash, Service Chief Amelia Levene turns to the only man she can trust: disgraced agent, Thomas Kell.

In Istanbul, Kell soon discovers that there is a traitor inside Western Intelligence. Then he meets Rachel – the dead spy’s daughter – and the stakes grow higher still.

From London to Greece and into Eastern Europe, Kell tracks the mole. But a betrayal close to home transforms the operation into something more personal. Soon Kell will stop at nothing to see it through.

Click
here
to order
A Colder War

About the Author

Charles Cumming was born in Scotland in 1971. In the summer of 1995, he was approached for recruitment by the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). A year later he moved to Montreal where he began working on a novel based on his experiences with MI6, and
A Spy By Nature
was published in the UK in 2001. In 2012, Charles won the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller and the Bloody Scotland Crime Book of the Year for
A Foreign Country. A Divided Spy
is his eighth novel.

www.charlescumming.co.uk

@CharlesCumming