Charles Cumming - A Divided Spy - A gripping espionage thriller from the master of the modern spy novel

To that end, Kell created a blank document and began to compose his reply. Before he did so, he took the sealed packet of Winston Lights from the drawer beside his bed, opened the sitting-room window and lit his first cigarette in over six months. The nicotine worked on him with the snap of an amphetamine; he gasped at the pleasure of the first drag, inhaling deeply as the smoke filled his chest. He tapped the ash into his now empty whisky glass, balanced the cigarette on the end of the table, and began to type.

I am so happy to hear from you, Dmitri.

Kell saw that he had already made a mistake. At no point, in any of the drafts, had either man used the other’s name. Anonymity was paramount. He deleted ‘Dmitri’, took another drag from the cigarette, and continued.

I am so happy to hear from you. Thank you for your kind message. Of course I will come to London!

Kell looked at what he had written. He wondered if it sounded like Riedle. The German had used exclamation marks in his own messages, but perhaps this one was misplaced. Kell removed it. A curl of smoke drifted up into his eyes, stinging them.

I am so happy to hear from you. Thank you for your kind message. Of course I will come to London. I will travel over on the 28th and stay until the end of the month. Let’s sit down and talk about everything. It will make me so joyful to see you.

Kell double-clicked on the paragraph and copied it from the document. He would paste his reply into an encrypted email for Minasian to read in the morning.

He took a last drag of the Winston and dropped the butt into the glass. He had not enjoyed the second half of the cigarette. His mouth was dry and there was now a taste on his tongue like the surface of a road. Kell knew, without quite being able to admit it to himself, that he was drunk. He looked at his watch. It was twenty to four in the morning.

Take a break , he told himself. Think .

He went into the kitchen and ran the cold tap. Kell had intended to pour himself a glass of water, but instead cupped the water in his hands and threw it against his face so that his neck and the front of his shirt became soaked and cold.

He needed to stop. He had no control. He was not leaving himself open to chance or to basic human error. What if Riedle woke up at five and checked the account, desperate for a sign of life from Minasian? What if he saw what Kell was intending to send?

Kell went back into the sitting room and deleted the document. He marked Minasian’s email as ‘Unread’, turned off the MacBook, returned to his bedroom and swallowed two more aspirin. He was exhausted. He was so determined to find Minasian that he had been prepared to jeopardize everything just to gain a minuscule advantage of time. There was only one sensible way to proceed; to allow Riedle to respond to Minasian’s invitation and then to track him to London.

Kell returned to the bedroom, relieved that he had not been foolish enough to send the email. He fell asleep almost immediately to the sound of a child sobbing in a neighbouring apartment.

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