Читать книгу A Divided Spy: A gripping espionage thriller from the master of the modern spy novel - Charles Cumming - Страница 15

As soon as he had shaken Mowbray’s hand outside the restaurant, Kell set to work.

He needed to discover more about Minasian, to find a way of running him to ground. He knew that the Russian would have left no trace of himself in Hurghada, save for a false passport and a few brisk, pixelated appearances on hotel CCTV. With that in mind, Kell instructed his old friend and ally, Elsa Cassani, a freelance computer specialist based in Rome, to try to find out the surname on which ‘Dmitri’ had been travelling in Egypt. To his surprise, her efforts failed. There was no record on the hotel computer of Bernhard Riedle’s companion; the room had been registered and billed solely in Riedle’s name. Kell assumed that if ‘Dmitri’ had presented a passport, the details had either been lost or transcribed by hand.

That meant going after Riedle. If Kell could befriend him and earn his trust, he could stripmine Riedle for information about Minasian’s habits, his character traits, his strengths and weaknesses. Such a psychological portrait would prove invaluable when the time came to try to recruit him. Above all, Riedle could provide Kell with a means of communicating with Minasian. Used correctly, the heartbroken lover could be the lure that would draw Kell’s quarry out into the open.

With Elsa having drawn a blank, Kell put his doubts about Mowbray to one side and hired him on £750 a day for ‘as long as it takes to get me face-to-face with Dmitri’. Such was Kell’s determination to pursue Minasian without involving Amelia Levene that he was prepared to spend much of the £200,000 fee SIS had deposited in his bank account following the Kleckner operation. It had always felt like blood money to Kell; to use it in pursuit of Rachel’s killer felt not only just, but liberating.

Mowbray was immediately successful. By Saturday he had located Riedle’s address in Brussels and ascertained that he was living in a block of luxury, serviced apartments in the Quartier Dansaert. Kell found the agents online and took out a three-week rental of his own on an apartment in the same building. He then travelled with Mowbray to Brussels on the Eurostar, taking two rooms at the Hotel Metropole. The next afternoon, less than five days after meeting Mowbray in Westbourne Grove, Kell had moved into the apartment.