reaction – a slow shake of the head, mouth pursed so that minute traces of food were visible on the inside of his lips – told Kell that he was convinced by what he had seen. He picked up his glass and turned it in his hand, a man waiting to be believed. Kell began to work from memory, his knowledge of Minasian still as insubstantial as the official SIS file. Nobody knew where Minasian had come from, where he was currently stationed, how he had recruited Kleckner.
‘Minasian’s wife is the daughter of a St Petersburg oligarch. Andrei Eremenko. Draws a lot of water in Moscow. Close to the Kremlin.’ Kell had spent long hours looking into Eremenko’s business affairs, searching for any overlap with Minasian, any clue as to his whereabouts or personality. ‘If he finds out his son-in-law is gay …’
‘He’s not going to be very happy about it.’ Mowbray finished Kell’s sentence and set his glass back on the table. ‘Nor is Mrs Minasian, for that matter. Wives can be sensitive about that sort of thing.’
‘Perhaps she already knows,’ Kell suggested. In his experience, wives often knew far more of their husband’s misdemeanours than they ever publicly acknowledged. Many of them preferred to exist in a state of denial. Let the man philander, let him play his vain and tawdry games. Just keep it in-house. At all costs, protect the nest.
‘That’s what I wondered.’
Kell was silent as he continued to analyse what he had been told. It was unthinkable that the SVR would have a gay officer on its books, married or otherwise. SIS had only begun recruiting openly homosexual employees in the previous ten or fifteen years; modern Russia was antediluvian by comparison. If Minasian’s secret were exposed, his career would end overnight.
‘Who else have you spoken to about this?’
Kell dreaded the simple reply: ‘C’ because it would instantly shrink his options. The wheels of his imagination had begun to turn, a dormant ruthlessness circling Minasian’s vulnerability like a bird of prey. If his nemesis was hiding a secret of this magnitude, he was vulnerable to an extent that was almost beyond belief. But if Amelia knew about it, she would sideline Kell on any subsequent operation, doubtless citing ‘personal issues’ and ‘clouded judgment’.
‘I haven’t told a soul,’ Mowbray replied, though his eyes slid to one side and he tapped his mouth with a napkin as he spoke. Kell studied the face and could not be certain that Mowbray was telling the truth. A tiny section of sunburned skin around his nose looked as if it was about to flake off.
‘Not even Karen?’ he asked. Spousal pillow talk was an occupational hazard among veteran spies; the habit of secrecy became harder and harder to sustain as the years went by.
‘Never discuss work with the wife,’ Mowbray replied quickly. ‘Never. Something we agreed on from day one. Last time she asked me was ninety-one or ninety-two, when they arrested a bunch of IRA in London. She was watching John Simpson on the Nine O’Clock News, said: “Did you have something to do with this?” I told her to mind her own business.’
‘But she saw Minasian?’
‘Oh yeah. All the time.’
‘What does that mean? She met him?’
‘No. Neither of us did. But we were staying at the same hotel. Caught the whole show.’
Kell saw the glint in Mowbray’s eye, the suggestion of an even greater prize.
‘Call it trouble in paradise,’ he explained with a predictable grin. ‘Our man from Moscow wasn’t getting on very well with his boyfriend. They kept fighting. Arguing.’
‘All of this played out in public?’ Kell was beginning to wonder if Harold had stumbled on a set-up, Minasian role-playing the moody boyfriend for the purpose of an undisclosed SVR operation at the hotel. Perhaps the relationship had even been staged for Mowbray’s benefit, or Harold himself had been turned by the Russians.
‘Not exactly.’ Mowbray was leaning forward again, still grinning. ‘You see, I made a point of watching them whenever I could. Surreptitious photos, eavesdropping in the bar.’
‘Jesus.’ Kell had an image of Mowbray prowling around a sun-blasted Egyptian tourist resort with a long-lens camera and a boom microphone. ‘Any chance I could see those photos?’
Mowbray had been biding his time, waiting for the invitation. Setting his knife and fork to one side, he shot Kell a look of mischievous self-satisfaction and reached back into his jacket pocket. Inside were half a dozen colour photographs, the size of postcards, four of which spilled on to the ground as he retrieved them.
‘Fuck,’ he muttered. It was like watching a conjuror trying to learn a new trick. ‘Here you go.’
Kell took the photographs and experienced an extraordinary feeling of exhilaration. He turned to check his background. A chef in stained check trousers was standing three feet behind him, stretching a ball of dough on a small cushion. Kell’s body was cloaked in heat. He craved alcohol.
The first photograph showed Minasian standing alone at the edge of a swimming pool, in bright sunlight. He was wearing Rayban sunglasses and navy blue swimming shorts. Fit for his age, defined musculature, an expressionless mouth. The man who had given the order to kill Rachel. He felt a visceral hatred towards him. There was a woman’s blurred shoulder in the left foreground of the shot, presumably Karen. Mowbray had used her as a decoy.
The next three photographs were all taken by long lens from an elevated position, angled down towards a garden in which Minasian was standing with his lover. When Kell asked, Mowbray confirmed that he had been sitting on the balcony of his room at the back of the hotel and had overheard the two men arguing. In the first shot of the sequence, they were embracing, Minasian topless, the older man wearing a pale pink short-sleeved shirt, white shorts and plimsolls. He was tanned with chalk-white hair that was bald at the crown. In the second shot, the older man appeared to be extremely upset, his eyes stained with tears, Minasian leaning back as if to disengage from what was happening in front of him. In the third shot – Kell assumed that he had looked at the sequence out of chronological order – Minasian was gesticulating with his right arm in a manner deemed threatening enough for the older man to be shielding himself by raising his hand and turning to one side. Was he afraid of being hit? The next photograph, apparently taken with a different lens, from a new angle, showed the older man crouching down in a separate section of the garden, hands covering his face.
‘What was going on?’ Kell asked.
‘They were shouting at each other like a couple of teenagers.’ The waitress removed the bowls of hummus and mashed aubergine. There was a clatter as something fell over in the kitchen. ‘Big fight between two queens about “lying” and “broken promises” and Minasian being a “prick”. I couldn’t make much of it out.’
‘They were always speaking English?’
‘Mostly. Far as I could tell, the old boy didn’t speak Russian. He’s German. From Hamburg.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because I’m not an idiot, guv.’
‘Nobody said you were, Harold.’
Kell took a bite of lamb and invited Mowbray to continue. He was about to order a beer when he remembered that the restaurant was dry. A single glimpse of the secret world had
