Charles Cumming - A Colder War

HarperCollins Publishers

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollins Publishers 2014

Copyright © Charles Cumming 2014

Cover design layout © HarperCollins Publishers 2014

Cover photographs © Josephine Pugh/Arcangel Images (cityscape); Henry Steadman (foreground and figure, right); Superstock (bench, seated man); Shutterstock.com(all other images).

Charles Cumming asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Extract from The Double-Cross System by Sir John Masterman. Published by Vintage. Reprinted by permission from The Random House Group Limited.

Extract taken from ‘Postscript’ taken from The Spirit Level by Seamus Heaney © Estate of Seamus Heaney and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007467501

Ebook Edition © APRIL 2014 ISBN: 9780007467495

Version: 2020-06-15

‘The spy thriller has been on the ascendant in the past few years, breeding a bunch of talented writers, Cumming among the very best’ The Times

‘An espionage maestro … The levels of psychological insight are married to genuine narrative acumen – but anyone who has read his earlier books will expect no less’ Independent

‘A cleverly plotted spy tale’ Sun

‘Cumming’s prose is always lean and effective, but I was struck by the many times he injected phrases and descriptions so nice that I stopped to savour them’ Washington Post

‘ A Colder War is more than an excellent thriller: it is also a novel that forces us to look behind the headlines and question some of our own comfortable assumptions’ Spectator

For Christian Spurrier

‘Certain persons … have a natural predilection to live in that curious world of espionage and deceit, and attach themselves with equal facility to one side or the other, so long as their craving for adventure of a rather macabre type is satisfied.’

John Masterman, The Double-Cross System

‘… You are neither here nor there,

A hurry through which known and strange things pass

As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways

And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.’

Seamus Heaney, ‘Postscript’

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for A Colder War

Dedication

Epigraph

Turkey

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

London: Three Weeks Later

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Keep Reading …

Acknowledgements

About the Author

By Charles Cumming

About the Publisher

The American stepped away from the open window, passed Wallinger the binoculars and said: ‘I’m going for cigarettes.’

‘Take your time,’ Wallinger replied.

It was just before six o’clock on a quiet, dusty evening in March, no more than an hour until nightfall. Wallinger trained the binoculars on the mountains and brought the abandoned palace at İshak Paşa into focus. Squeezing the glasses together with a tiny adjustment of his hands, he found the mountain road and traced it west to the outskirts of Doğubayazit. The road was deserted. The last of the tourist taxis had returned to town. There were no tanks patrolling the plain, no dolmus bearing passengers back from the mountains.

Wallinger heard the door clunk shut behind him and looked back into the room. Landau had left his sunglasses on the furthest of the three beds. Wallinger crossed to the chest of drawers and checked the screen on his BlackBerry. Still no word from Istanbul; still no word from London. Where the hell was HITCHCOCK? The Mercedes was supposed to have crossed into Turkey no later than two o’clock; the three of them should have been in Van by now. Wallinger went back to the window and squinted over the telegraph poles, the pylons and the crumbling apartment blocks of Doğubayazit. High above the mountains, an aeroplane was moving west to east in a cloudless sky, a silent white star skimming towards Iran.

Wallinger checked his watch. Five minutes past six. Landau had pushed the wooden table and the chair in front of the window; the last of his cigarettes was snuffed out in a scarred Efes Pilsen ashtray now bulging with yellowed filters. Wallinger tipped the contents out of the window and hoped that Landau would bring back some food. He was hungry and tired of waiting.

The BlackBerry rumbled on top of the chest of drawers; Wallinger’s only means of contact with the outside world. He read the message.

Vertigo is on at 1750. Get three tickets

It was the news he had been waiting for. HITCHCOCK and the courier had made it through the border at Gürbulak, on the Turkish side, at ten to six. If everything went according to plan, within half an hour Wallinger would have sight of the vehicle on the mountain road. From the chest of drawers he pulled out the British passport, sent by diplomatic bag to Ankara a week earlier. It would get HITCHCOCK through the military checkpoints on the road to Van; it would get him on to a plane to Ankara.

Wallinger sat on the middle of the three beds. The mattress was so soft it felt as though the frame was giving way beneath him. He had to steady himself by sitting further back on the bed and was taken suddenly by a memory of Cecilia, his mind carried forward to the prospect of a few precious days in her company. He planned to fly the Cessna to Greece on Wednesday, to attend the Directorate meeting in Athens, then to cross over to Chios in time to meet Cecilia for supper on Thursday evening.