landscape had changed, yet Kell still felt wedded to an idea of England, even as that idea shifted and slipped beneath his feet. There were days when he longed to return to active duty, to stand once again at Amelia’s side, but Rachel’s death had pushed him into exile. He had allowed the personal to overcome the political.
The train pulled into the platform. Carriages as empty as his days flickered in the afternoon light. Kell stepped aside to allow an elderly woman to board the train, then took his seat, and waited.
Kell was at his flat in Sinclair Road within twenty minutes. He had been inside for less than five when his phone rang, a rare landline call that Kell assumed would be from Claire. The number was otherwise known only to SIS Personnel.
‘Guv?’
It didn’t take long for Kell to pick the voice. Born and raised in Elephant and Castle, then two decades in Tech-Ops at MI5.
‘Harold?’
‘The one and only.’
‘How did you get this number?’
‘Nice to hear from you, too.’
‘How?’ Kell asked again.
‘Do we have to do this?’
It was a fair question. With half a dozen clicks of a mouse, Harold Mowbray could have found out Kell’s blood type and credit rating. Now private sector, he had worked closely with Amelia on two occasions in the previous three years: Kell’s home number might even have come directly from ‘C’.
‘OK. So how have you been?’
‘Good, guv. Good.’
‘Arsenal doing all right?’
‘Nah. Gave them up for Lent. Too many pretty boys in midfield.’
Kell found himself reaching for a cigarette that wasn’t there. He thought back to the previous summer, sitting with Mowbray in a Bayswater safe house killing time waiting for a mole. Harold had known that Kell was in love with Rachel. He had come to the funeral, paid his respects. Kell trusted him insomuch as he had always been efficient and reliable, but knew that theirs was a professional relationship that would never transcend Mowbray’s loyalty to whoever was paying his bills.
‘So what’s up?’ he asked. ‘You selling something? Want me to buy your season ticket to Highbury?’
‘Keep up. Arsenal moved out of Highbury years ago. Been playing at the Emirates since 2006.’ It occurred to Kell that, save for a perfunctory exchange in Pret A Manger, this was the first conversation he had held with another human being in over twenty-four hours. The night before he had cooked spaghetti bolognese at home and watched back-to-back episodes of House of Cards. In the morning he had gone to the gym, then wandered alone around an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Sometimes he would go for days without any meaningful interaction whatsoever.
‘Still,’ said Mowbray, ‘we need to have a chat.’
‘Isn’t that what we’re doing?’
‘Face to face. Mano a mano. Too long and complicated for the phone.’
That could mean only one thing. Work. Blowback from a previous operation, or a dangled carrot on something new. Either way, Mowbray didn’t trust Kell’s landline to keep it a secret. Anybody could be listening in. London. Paris. Moscow.
‘You remember that Middle Eastern place we used to go to on the American gig?’
‘Which one?’ ‘The American gig’ had been the molehunt. Ryan Kleckner. A CIA officer in the pay of the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service.
‘The one with the waitress.’
‘Oh, that one.’ Kell made a joke of it, but understood that Mowbray was being deliberately obscure. There was only one Middle Eastern restaurant that both of them had been to on the Kleckner operation. Westbourne Grove. Persian. Kell had no recollection of the waitress, pretty or otherwise. Mowbray was simply making sure that their table wouldn’t be covered in advance.
‘Can you make dinner tonight?’ he asked.
Kell thought about stalling but was too intrigued by the invitation. Besides, he was looking at another night of leftovers and House of Cards. Dinner with Harold would be a fillip.
‘Meet you there at eight?’ he suggested.
‘You will know me by the smell of my cologne.’
Kell arrived at the restaurant at quarter to eight, early enough to ask for a quiet spot at the back with line of sight to the entrance. To his surprise, Mowbray was already seated at a table in the centre of the small, brick-lined room, his back to a group of jabbering Spaniards.
It was fiercely hot, the open mouth of a tanoor blowing a furnace heat into Kell’s face as he walked inside. A waitress, whom he vaguely recognized, smiled at him as Mowbray stood up behind her. Iranian music was playing at a volume seemingly designed to guarantee a degree of conversational privacy.
‘Harold. How are you?’
‘Salam, guv.’
‘Salam, khoobi,’ Kell replied. The heat of the tanoor as he sat down was like a summer sun against his back.
‘You speak Farsi?’ They were shaking hands.
‘I was showing off,’ Kell said. ‘Enough to get by in restaurants.’
‘Menu Farsi,’ Mowbray replied, smiling at his own remark. ‘Iranians don’t like being confused for Arabs, do they?’
‘They do not.’
Mowbray looked to be recovering from a bad case of sunburn. His forehead was scalded red and there were flaking patches of dry skin around his mouth and nose.
‘Been away?’ Kell asked.
‘Funny you should mention that.’ Mowbray flapped a napkin into his lap and grinned. ‘Went to Egypt with the wife.’
‘Why funny?’
‘You’ll see. Shall we order?’
Kell wondered why he was playing hard to get. He opened his menu as the waitress passed their table. Mowbray looked up, caught Kell’s eye and winked.
‘So,’ he said, spring-loading another joke. ‘You can have a skewer of minced lamb with taftoon bread, two skewers of minced lamb with taftoon bread, a skewer of marinated lamb cubes with taftoon bread, two skewers of marinated lamb cubes with taftoon bread, a skewer of minced lamb and a skewer of marinated
