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 lamb cubes with taftoon …’
‘I get it,’ said Kell, smiling as he closed the menu. ‘You order. I’m going to the bathroom.’
There was a strong smell of hashish leading up to the gents. Kell stopped to look at a wall of turquoise tiles inlaid on the staircase, breathing in the smoke. He wanted to trace the source of the smell, to find whoever had rolled the joint in a backroom office and to share it with them. In the bathroom he washed his hands and glanced in the mirror, wondering why Mowbray was coming to him with tall tales from Egypt. What was the scoop? ISIS? Muslim Brotherhood? Maybe he was the bagman for a job offer in the private sector, an ex-SIS suit using Kell’s friendship with Mowbray as a lure. There had been five or six such offers in the previous twelve months, all of which Kell had turned down. He wasn’t interested in private security, nor did he want to be a nodding donkey on the board of Barclays or BP. On the other hand, if the pitch was something Russian, something that would get Kell close to the men who had ordered Rachel’s assassination, he would give it serious consideration.
‘I forgot,’ Mowbray announced, as Kell settled back into his seat. ‘They don’t serve booze.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I gave up.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Seven months dry.’
‘Now why would you want to go and do a thing like that?’
‘Tell me about Egypt.’
Mowbray leaned forward and put a hand in his pocket. Kell thought he was going to produce a photograph or a flash drive, but he kept it there as he spoke. If Kell hadn’t known that Mowbray was capable of far greater subtleties, he might have assumed that he was triggering a recording device.
‘Hurghada.’
‘What about it?’
‘One-horse town on the east coast. Mainland Egypt. Red Sea, facing Sinai.’
‘I know where it is, Harold.’
‘Last three years, Karen and me have been flying there for a bit of winter sun; easyJet goes three times a week. Car picks us up and drives us an hour south to a place called Soma Bay. Four hotels and a golf course, back-to-back, arse end of nowhere. Fresh water piped in from the Nile, turns the fairways green, fills the swimming pools. Coral reefs and scuba diving for the grown-ups, camel rides on the beach for the kids. In the tourist industry they call it a “hot flop”.’
The food arrived. Mashed aubergines with garlic and herbs. Feta cheese mixed with tarragon and fresh mint. A bowl of hummus was placed in front of Kell, nestled beside a basket of flatbread.
‘There’s your taftoon,’ he said, encouraging Mowbray to continue.
‘Anyway, we always stay at the same place. German-owned, German efficient, German-occupied sunbeds. Never seen a Yank there, never met a Frog. The occasional Brit, from time to time, but mostly German pensioners and Russian oligarch types with dyed hair and third wives who probably weren’t alive under Gorbachev. Am I painting the picture?’
‘Vividly,’ said Kell, and took a bite of taftoon.
‘So, guv, here’s the thing. Here’s the reason I wanted to see you. Something very strange happened, something I can still hardly believe.’
Mowbray looked like he meant it. There was an expression of amused consternation on his face.
‘They do breakfasts,’ he said, nodding slowly and looking across the table, as though half-expecting Kell to finish his sentence. ‘They do breakfasts every morning …’
‘What a breakthrough in hospitality,’ Kell replied. ‘I must go and stay there.’
Mowbray didn’t laugh. His eyes were fixed somewhere around Kell’s left ear.
‘On the second last day we were there, this couple walks in. Two men. You get that kind of thing at the hotel. They’re comfortable with gays, lots of it about, even for a Muslim country.’ Mowbray sipped his tap water, trying to slow himself down. ‘Karen looks up and makes a noise of disapproval.’ He checked himself. ‘No, not disapproval, she’s not homophobic or anything. More conspiratorial than that. Like a joke between us. “Look at the fruits”, you know?’
‘Sure,’ said Kell.
‘They were both dressed in white shirts and white trousers. That’s very German, too. Ninety per cent of the guests look like they’re playing at Wimbledon or members of some cult. Pristine white, like an advert for one of those soap powders that really deliver at low temperatures.’ Kell resisted telling Mowbray to ‘get on with it’ because he knew how he liked to operate. ‘And there’s an age gap between them,’ he said, ‘maybe fifteen or twenty years. The older bloke is the one facing me. German money, you can tell. He sits down with what looks like a fruit salad, black-rimmed glasses, suntan. I can’t see the boyfriend, but he’s younger, fitter. Late thirties, at a guess. The old boy is camp, a bit effeminate, but this one looks straight, macho. There’s something about him that triggers me, but I can’t yet tell what it is.’
Kell had stopped eating. He knew what Mowbray was going to tell him, a giddy premonition of something so improbable that he dismissed it out of hand.
‘Anyway, Karen had finished her orange juice. Wanted to get another one. She’d hurt her foot on the coral so I offered to go instead. There’s an egg station at the buffet and I waited there while the chef made me an omelette. Got the wife’s orange juice, got some yogurt, then started to walk back towards our table. That was when I saw his face. That was when I recognized him.’
‘Who?’ said Kell. ‘Who was it?’
‘The boyfriend was Alexander Minasian.’
Kell stared at Mowbray in disbelief.
‘Don’t fuck around,’ he said, because the chance sighting was so sensational that Kell had to reckon that Mowbray was making a joke.
‘As clear as I’m sitting here facing you,’ he said. ‘No way it was anybody else.’
Alexander Minasian was the SVR officer responsible for the recruitment of Ryan Kleckner, a high-level CIA mole in the Middle East who had funnelled Western secrets to Moscow for more than two years. In an operation instigated by Amelia Levene, Kell had identified Kleckner, run him to ground in Odessa and handed him over to Langley. In response to the loss of Kleckner, Moscow had given the order to kill Rachel. Kell held Minasian personally responsible. He wanted his head on a plate.
‘Minasian has a wife,’ Kell said quietly. The heat of the kiln was burning into his back. ‘At least that’s what
