Kell was looking around for his trousers when his mobile phone began to ring. The number had been withheld.
Tom?
At first, through the fog of his hangover, Kell failed to recognize the voice. Then the familiar cadence came back to him.
Jimmy? Christ.
Jimmy Marquand was a former colleague of Kells, now one of the high priests of SIS. His was the last hand Kell had shaken before taking his leave of Vauxhall Cross on a crisp December morning eight months earlier.
We have a problem.
No small talk? Kell said. Dont want to know how life is treating me in the private sector?
This is serious, Tom. Ive walked half a mile to a phone box in Lambeth so the call wont be scooped. I need your help.
Personal or professional? Kell located his trousers beneath a blanket on the back of a chair.
Weve lost the Chief.
That stopped him. Kell reached out and put a hand against a wall in the bedroom. Suddenly he was as sober and clear-headed as a child.
Youve what?
Vanished. Five days ago. Nobody has any workable idea where the hell shes gone or whats happened to her.
She? The anti-Rimington brigade within MI6 had long been allergic to the notion of a female Chief. It was almost beyond belief that the all-male inmates at Vauxhall Cross had finally allowed a woman to be appointed to the most prestigious position in British Intelligence. When did that happen?
Theres a lot you dont know, Marquand replied. A lot thats changed. I cant say any more if were talking like this.
Then why are we talking at all? Kell thought. Do they want me to come back after everything that happened? Have Kabul and Yassin just been brushed under the carpet? Im not working for George Truscott, he said, saving Marquand the effort of asking the question. Im not coming back if Haynes still has his hands on the tiller.
Just for this, Marquand replied.
For nothing.
It was almost the truth. Then Kell found himself saying: Im beginning to enjoy having nothing to do, which was an outright lie. There was a noise on the other end of the line that might have been the extinguishing of Marquands hopes.
Tom, its important. We need a re-tread, somebody who knows the ropes. Youre the only one we can trust.
Who was we? The high priests? The same men who had turfed him out over Kabul? The same men who would happily have sacrificed him to the public inquiry currently assembling its tanks on the SIS lawn?
Trust? he replied, putting on a shoe.
Trust, said Marquand. It almost sounded as though he meant it.
Kell went to the window and looked outside, at the pink bicycle, at Jackies learner driver, moving through the gears. What did the rest of his day hold? Aspirin and daytime TV. Hair-of-the-dog bloody Marys at the Greyhound Inn. He had spent eight months twiddling his thumbs; that was the truth of his new life in the private sector. Eight months watching black-and-white matinees on TCM and drinking his pay-off in the pub. Eight months struggling to salvage a marriage that would not be saved.
There must be somebody else who can do it, he said. He hoped that there was nobody else. He hoped that he was getting back in the game.
The new Chief isnt just anybody, Marquand replied. Amelia Levene made C. She was due to take over in six weeks. He had played his ace. Kell sat down on the bed, pitching slowly forwards. Throwing Amelia into the mix changed everything. Thats why it has to be you, Tom. Thats why we need you to find her. You were the only person at the Office who really knew what made her tick. He sugared the pill, in case Kell was still wavering. Its what youve wanted, isnt it? A second chance? Get this done and the file on Yassin will be closed. Thats coming from the highest levels. Find her and we can bring you in from the cold.
5
Kell had returned to his bachelors bedsit in a near-derelict Fiat Punto driven by a moonlighting Sudanese cab driver who kept a packet of Lockets and a well-thumbed copy of the Koran on the dashboard. Pulling away from the house which had indeed belonged to a genial, gym-addicted Pole named Zoltan with whom Kell had shared a drunken cab-ride from Hackney he had recognized the shabby streets of Finsbury Park from a long-ago joint operation with MI5. He tried to remember the exact details of the job: an Irish Republican; a plot to blow up a department store; the convicted man later released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. Amelia Levene had been his boss at the time.
Her disappearance was unquestionably the gravest crisis MI6 had faced since the fiasco of WMD. Officers didnt vanish, simple as that. They didnt get kidnapped, they didnt get murdered, they didnt defect. In particular, they didnt make a point of going AWOL six weeks before they were due to take over as Chief. If the news of Amelias disappearance leaked to the media Christ, even if it leaked within the walls of Vauxhall Cross the blowback would be incendiary.
Kell had showered at home, eaten some leftover take-away Lebanese, levelled off his hangover with two codeine and a lukewarm half-litre of Coke. An hour later he was standing underneath a sycamore tree two hundred metres from the Serpentine Gallery, Jimmy Marquand striding towards him with a look on his face like his pension was on the line. He had come direct from Vauxhall Cross, wearing a suit and tie, but without the briefcase that usually accompanied him on official business. He was a slight man, a rangy weekend cyclist, tanned year-round and with a thick mop of lustrous hair that had earned him the nickname Melvyn in the corridors of SIS. Kell had to remind himself that he had every right to refuse what Marquand was going to offer. But, of course, that was never going to happen. If Amelia was missing, he had to be the one to find her.
They exchanged a brief handshake and turned north-west in the direction of Kensington Palace.
So how is life in the private sector? Marquand asked. Humour didnt always come easily to him, particularly at times of stress. Keeping busy? Behaving?
Kell wondered why he was making the effort. Something like that, he said.
Reading all those nineteenth-century novels you promised yourself? Marquand sounded like a man speaking words that had been written for him. Tending your garden? Tapping out the memoirs?
The memoirs are finished, Kell said. You come out of them very badly.
No more than I deserve. Marquand appeared to run out of things to say. Kell knew that his apparent bonhomie was a mask concealing a grave, institutional panic over Amelias disappearance. He put him out of his misery.
How the fuck did this happen, Jimmy?
Marquand tried to circumvent the question.
Word came through from Number 10 shortly after you left, he said. They wanted an Arabist, they wanted a woman. Shed impressed the Prime Minister on the JIC. He finds out weve lost her, its curtains.
Thats not what I meant.
I know thats not what you meant. Marquands reply was terse and he looked away, as though ashamed that the crisis had happened on his watch. Two weeks ago she had a briefing with Haynes, the traditional one-on-one in which the baton gets passed from one Chief to the next. Secrets exchanged, tall tales told, all the things that you and me and the good people of Britain are not supposed to know.
Marquand tried to circumvent the question.
Word came through from Number 10 shortly after you left, he said. They wanted an Arabist, they wanted a woman. Shed impressed the Prime Minister on the JIC. He finds out weve lost her, its curtains.
Thats not what I meant.
I know thats not what you meant. Marquands reply was terse and he looked away, as though ashamed that the crisis had happened on his watch. Two weeks ago she had a briefing with Haynes, the traditional one-on-one in which the baton gets passed from one Chief to the next. Secrets exchanged, tall tales told, all the things that you and me and the good people of Britain are not supposed to know.
Such as?
You tell me.
What, then? Who shot JR? A fifth plane on 9/11? Give me the facts, Jimmy. What did he tell her? Lets stop fucking around.
All right, all right. Marquand swept back his hair. Sunday morning she announces that she has to go to Paris, for a funeral. Taking a couple of days off. Then, on Wednesday, we get another message. An email. Shes strung out after the funeral and has decided to take some holiday. South of France. No warning, just using up the rest of her allowance before the top job sucks all of her time. A painting course in Nice, something that shed always wanted to crack. Kell thought that he caught a vapour of alcohol on Marquands breath. It could equally well have been his own. Told us that shed be back in two weeks, reachable on such-and-such a number at such-and-such a hotel in the event of any emergency.
Then what?
Marquand was holding his hair in place against the buffeting London wind. He came to a halt. A blue plastic bag cartwheeled beside him across a patch of unmown grass, snagging in a nearby tree. He lowered his voice, as though ashamed by what he was about to say.
George sent somebody after her. Off the books.
Now why would he do a thing like that?
He was suspicious that shed arranged a holiday so soon after the download with Haynes. It seemed unusual.
Kell knew that George Truscott, as Assistant to the Chief, had been the man lined up to succeed Simon Haynes as C; as far as most observers were concerned, it was merely a question of the PM waving him through. Truscott would have had the suit made, the furniture fitted, the dye-stamped invitations waiting to go out in the post. But Amelia Levene had stolen his prize. A woman. A second-class citizen in the SIS firmament. His resentment towards her would have been toxic.
Whats unusual about taking a holiday at this time of year?
Kell felt that he knew the answer to his own question. Amelias story made no sense. It wasnt like her to attend a painting course; a woman like that didnt need a hobby. In all the years that he had known Amelia, she had used her holidays as opportunities for relaxation. Health spas, detox clinics, five-star lodges with salad bars and wall-to-wall masseurs. She had never spoken of a desire to paint. As Marquand contemplated his answer, Kell walked across the stretch of unmown ground, pulled the plastic bag clear of the tree and stuffed it into the back pocket of his jeans.
Youre a model citizen, Tom, a model citizen. Marquand looked down at his shoes and gave a heavy sigh, as if he was tired of making excuses for the failings of other men. Of course theres nothing unusual about taking a holiday this time of year. But usually we have more warning. Usually it goes in the diary several months in advance. This looked like a sudden decision, a reaction to something that Haynes had told her.
What was Hayness view on that?
He agreed with Truscott. So they asked some friends in Nice to keep an eye on her.
Again, Kell kept his counsel. Towards the end of his career, he had himself become a victim of the paranoid, near-delusional manoeuvrings of George Truscott, yet he was still privately astonished that the two most senior figures in the Service had green-lit a surveillance operation against one of their own.
Who are the friends in Nice? Liaison?
Christ, no. Avoid the Frog at all costs. Re-treads. Ours. Bill Knight and his wife, Barbara. Retired to Menton in 98. We got them to sign up for the painting course, they saw Amelia arrive on Wednesday afternoon, enjoyed a bit of a chat. Then Bill reported her missing when she failed to turn up three mornings in a row.
Whats unusual about that?
Marquand frowned. Im not sure I follow you.
Well, couldnt Amelia have taken a couple of days off? Got sick?
Thats just it. She didnt call it in. Barbara rang the hotel, there was no sign of her. We telephoned Amelias husband
Giles, said Kell.
Giles, yes, but he hasnt heard from her since she left Wiltshire. Her mobile is switched off, shes not responding to emails, theres been no activity on her credit cards. Its a total blackout.
What about the police?
Marquand bounced his caterpillar eyebrows and said: Bof in a cod French accent. They havent scraped her off a motorway or found her body floating in the Med, if thats what you mean. He saw Kells reaction to this and felt compelled to apologize. Sorry, that was tasteless. I didnt mean to sound glib. This whole thing is a bloody mystery.
Kell ran through a list of possible explanations, as arbitrary as they were inexhaustible: Russian or Iranian interference in some aspect of Amelias personal affairs; a clandestine arrangement with the Yanks relating to Libya and the Arab Spring; a sudden crisis of faith engendered by something in the meeting with Haynes. In the run-up to Kells demise at SIS, Amelia had been knee-deep in Francophone West Africa, which might have aroused interest from the French or Chinese. Islamist involvement was a permanent concern.
What about known aliases? He felt the dryness of his hangover again, the bluntness of three hours sleep. Isnt it possible shes running an operation, one that Tweedledum and Tweedledee know nothing about?
Marquand conceded the possibility of this, but wondered what was so secret that it would require Amelia Levene to disappear without at the very least enlisting the technical support of GCHQ.
Look, he said. The only people who know about this are Haynes, Truscott and the Knights. Paris Station is still in the dark and it needs to stay that way. This leaks out, the Service will be a laughing stock. God knows where it would end. Shes due to meet the PM formally in two weeks time. Obviously that meeting cant be cancelled without creating a gold-tinted Whitehall shitstorm. Washington finds out weve lost our most senior spy, theyll go ballistic. Haynes wants to find her within the next few days and pretend that none of this happened. Shes due back Monday week. Marquand looked quickly to his right, as though reacting to a sudden noise. Look, maybe shell just show up. Itll probably be some smoothie from Paris, a Jean-Pierre or a Xavier with a big cock and a gîte in Aix-en-Provence. You know what Amelias like with the boys. Madonna could take notes.
Kell was surprised to hear Marquand talk of Amelias reputation so candidly. Philandering, like alcohol, was almost an Office prerequisite, but it was a male sport, jocular and off the books. In all the years that Kell had known her, Amelia had had no more than three lovers, yet she was spoken of as though she had slept her way through seventy-five per cent of the Civil Service.