Charles Cumming - A Colder War

‘Oh, hello.’ Kell managed to convey a look of complete surprise as he came to a halt beside her. He was pleased to note that Marianna was blushing.

‘Mr Harding!’

‘Hardwick. Call me Chris. Marianna, yes?’

She looked embarrassed not to have remembered his name. ‘What are you doing here?’

Kell turned and nodded back in the general direction of his table. ‘Same as you, I suppose. Just having some lunch.’

‘Have you eaten?’

Marianna glanced at the chair opposite her own, as though mustering the courage to invite Kell to join her.

‘I’ve just ordered,’ he replied, adding a warm smile. ‘What have you got there? Some soup? Looks delicious.’

Marianna looked down at what appeared to be a bowl of clear chicken soup. She lifted up the spoon. For a worrying moment, Kell wondered if she was going to offer him a taste.

‘Yes, soup. I am very sorry about Nico.’

Kell played dumb with the name. ‘Nico?’

‘My boss …’

‘Oh. Him. Yes, that was frustrating.’

She appeared to have run out of things to say. Kell looked ahead towards the door of the bathroom.

‘Sorry,’ she said, taking the cue. ‘I didn’t mean to stop you.’

‘No, no,’ Kell replied. ‘It’s really nice to see you. I enjoyed meeting you this morning.’ Marianna appeared not to know how to react to the compliment. Her hand moved towards her face and the tips of her fingers brushed her eyebrows. Kell hooked the ensuing silence with an appropriate amount of bait. ‘I was just frustrated. It would have been useful to find out why Mr Wallinger had your number.’

Marianna looked as though she was in possession of the answer to Mr Hardwick’s simple question.

‘Yes,’ she replied, her hand reaching for the spine of the book, as though to reassure herself about something. The flush had gone from her cheeks, and she looked eager to continue the conversation. ‘Nico can be difficult in the mornings.’

Kell nodded, allowing another brief silence to envelop them. Marianna shot a nervous glance towards the bar.

‘Where are my manners?’ she said. ‘You are a guest in Chios. Would you like to eat at my table? I can’t leave you on your own.’

‘Are you sure?’ Kell felt the small but unmistakable buzz of a successfully executed plan.

‘Of course!’ Marianna’s natural bustle and bonhomie was suddenly in full flood. She looked buoyant. ‘I can tell the waitress to bring your food to my table. That is, if you’d like me to?’

‘I would like that very much.’

After that, it was easy. Kell hadn’t recruited an unconscious asset for over a year, but the tricks of the trade, the grammar of a successful pitch, were second nature to him. ‘If you’re doing it properly,’ the same instructor at the Fort had told the same 1994 class, ‘a recruitment shouldn’t feel cynical or manipulative. It should feel as though both parties want the same outcome. It should feel as though the prospective agent requires something from you, and that you can meet that requirement.’

And so it was that Kell discovered the limits of Marianna Dimitriadis’s loyalty to Nicolas Delfas.

From the outset, he avoided talking about Wallinger. Instead, Kell concentrated on finding out as much about Marianna as possible. By the time they were eating dessert – a rice pudding flavoured with lemon – he knew where she had been born, how many brothers and sisters she had, where those siblings lived, the names of her best friends, how she had come to work at Villas Angelis, why she had remained on Chios (rather than pursue a career in Thessaloniki in public relations), as well as the identity of her last boyfriend, a German tourist who had lived with her for six months before returning to his wife in Munich. In her natural warmth and good cheer, Kell detected the loneliness of the maiden aunt, the romantic and social frustration of the lifelong spinster. He rarely shifted his gaze from Marianna’s lively and melancholy eyes. He smiled when she did; he listened as carefully and as intelligently as she required. He was certain that, by the time it came to settle the bill, she would agree to the simple task that he was about to set her.

‘I’ve got a problem,’ he said.

‘You do?’

‘If I can’t find out why Paul Wallinger used the number of your office on his flight plan, my boss is going to go crazy. He’ll have to send somebody else out to Chios, I’ll get the blame, the whole thing will take weeks and cost a fortune.’

‘I see.’

‘Forgive me for saying this, Marianna, but I felt like Nico was hiding something from me. Was that the case?’ His companion’s eyes dropped to the table. Marianna began to shake her head but Kell could see that she was smiling to herself. ‘I don’t mean to pry,’ he added.

‘You’re not prying,’ she replied instantly. She looked up and gazed into his eyes, a look of yearning with which he had become familiar throughout the meal.

‘What was it then?’

‘Nico is not very …’ She searched for the correct adjective ‘… kind.’ It was not the word that Kell had been expecting, but he was glad of it. ‘He does not like to help people unless they can help him. He does not like to involve himself in anything … complex.’

Kell nodded in appreciation of Marianna’s stark analysis of character. The waitress passed their table and Kell took the opportunity to order an espresso.

‘How would it be complex?’ he asked. ‘Was he involved in business with Mr Wallinger?’

A burst of laughter and a beaming smile told Kell that this was not the case. Marianna shook her head.

‘Oh no. There was nothing wrong in their relationship.’ She glanced out of the window. A ferry was easing into the harbour, passengers on the bow waving at the mainland. ‘He just decided not to help you.’ Marianna could see that Mr Hardwick was affronted by Delfas’s belligerence. ‘Do not take it personally,’ she said, and for a moment Kell thought that she was going to reach for his hand. ‘He is like this with everyone. I am not like that. Most Greek people are not like that.’

‘Of course.’

The moment had arrived. Kell felt the bulge of €500 in his wallet, money that he had been ready to offer Marianna in exchange for her cooperation. He had laid a private bet with himself that he would not need it.

‘Would you be willing to help me?’ he asked.

‘In what way?’ Marianna was blushing again.

‘Can you tell me what Nico wasn’t prepared to say? It would save me a lot of trouble.’

If Marianna experienced a moment of ethical conflict over the matter, it passed in no more than a second. With a matter-of-fact sigh, her loyalty to her boss was shaken off like a passing fad.

‘From my memory,’ she said, taking Kell into her immediate confidence, ‘Mr Wallinger was staying in one of our villas. For a week.’

‘Then why didn’t Nico tell me that?’

She shrugged. It seemed that they were both at the mercy of a stubborn and irascible man. ‘He came into the office to collect the keys.’

Kell buried his surprise. The news of the sighting was like a vision of Wallinger coming back from the dead.

‘You met him?’

‘Yes. He was very nice, a quiet man, quite serious.’ Marianna hesitated, taking a risk with Mr Hardwick’s ego. ‘I thought he was very tall – and extremely handsome!’

Kell smiled. That sounded like Paul.

‘So he was on his own?’

‘Yes. Although I saw him later that day. With somebody else.’

‘Oh. Who was that?’ Kell was about to say: ‘A woman?’ when he checked himself. ‘Another tourist?’

‘A man,’ Marianna replied, matter-of-factly. Kell wondered if her memory was playing tricks on her. It was not the answer he had been expecting. ‘I walked past their table,’ she said. ‘One of the cafés near my office.’