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A Divided Spy
By Charles Cumming St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2017 Charles Cumming
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-14534-5
CHAPTER 1
Put it all on red. Put it all on black.
Jim Martinelli stacked five thousand pounds of chips into two six-inch piles. He held each of the piles in the tips of his fingers. One of them was fractionally higher than the other, the other slightly crooked at the base. He stared at them. His whole future, the mountain of his debt, just twenty disks of plastic in a casino. Double the money and he could keep Chapman at bay. Lose it and he was finished.
Arms across the baize, a blur of hands as the players around him reached out to place their bets. The suit from Dubai putting single chips on eighteen through thirty-six, the other Arab putting a grand on red. The Chinese tourist to Martinelli's left put a carpet of blue chips in the upper third, smothering the table with piles of five and six. Big wins for him tonight. Big losses. Then he put twenty grand on ten and walked away from the table. Twenty thousand pounds on a one–in–thirty-five chance. Even in the worst times, in the craziest urges of the last two years, Martinelli had never been stupid enough to do something like that. Perhaps he wasn't as messed up as he thought. Maybe he still had things under control.
The wheel was spinning. Martinelli stayed out of the play. It didn't feel right; he wasn't getting a clear reading on the numbers. The Chinese tourist was hovering near the bar, now almost twenty feet away from the table. Martinelli tried to imagine what it must be like to have so much money that you could afford to blow twenty grand on a single moment of chance. Twenty grand was four months' salary at the Passport Office, more than half of his debt to Chapman. Two wins in the next two rounds and he would be holding that kind of dough. Then he could cash out, go home, call Chapman. He could start to pay back what he owed.
The croupier was tidying up. Centering chips, straightening piles. In a low, firm voice he said: "No further bets, please, gentlemen," and turned toward the wheel.
The house always wins, Martinelli told himself. The house always wins ...
The ball was beginning to slow. The Chinese tourist was still hovering near the bar, back turned to the play, his little chimney of twenty grand on ten. The ball dropped and began to jump in the channels, the quiet innocent clatter as it popped from box to box. Martinelli laid a private bet with himself. Red. It's going to be red. He looked down at his pile of chips and wished that he had staked it all.
"Twenty-seven, red," said the croupier, placing the wooden dolly on a low pile of chips in the center of the baize. Martinelli felt a sting of irritation. He had missed his chance. Across the room, the tourist was returning from the bar, watching the croupier clear away the losing bets, the cheap plastic rustle of thousands of pounds being dragged across the baize and scooped into the tube. There was no expression on his face as the stack on ten was pulled; nothing to indicate loss or sorrow. Washed out and inscrutable. The face of a gambler.
Martinelli stood up, nodded at the inspector. He left his chips on the table and walked downstairs to the bathroom. They were playing Abba on the sound system, a song that reminded Martinelli of driving long distances with his father as a child. The door of the gents was ajar, paper towels littering the floor. Martinelli scraped them to one side with his foot and checked his reflection in the mirror.
His skin was pallid and gleaming with sweat. In the bright fluorescent light of the bathroom the tiredness under his eyes looked like bruises from a fight. He had worn the same shirt two nights in a row and could see that a thin brown line of dirt had formed inside the collar. He bared his teeth, wondering if a chunk of olive or peanut had been lodged in his gums all night. But there was nothing. Just the pale yellow stains on his front teeth and a sense that his breath was stale. He took out a piece of gum and popped it into his mouth. He was exhausted.
"All right, Jim? How's it going for you tonight?"
Martinelli swung around.
"Kyle."
It was Chapman. He was standing in the door, looking at a stack of leaflets in a plastic box beside the sink. Advice for gamblers, advice for addicts. Chapman picked one up.
"What does it say here?" he began, reading from the leaflet in his abrasive London accent. "How to play responsibly."
Chapman smiled at Martinelli. The eyes were dead, menacing. He turned the page.
"Remember. Gambling is a way for responsible adults to have some fun."
Martinelli had never had the balls to read the leaflet. They said that the addict had to want to quit. He felt his stomach dissolve and had to steady himself against the wall.
"Most of our customers do not see gambling as a problem. But for a very small minority, Jim, we know that this is not the case."
Chapman looked up. He moved the side of his mouth in a way that made Martinelli feel like he was going to spit at him.
"If you think you are having trouble controlling your gambling, this leaflet contains important information on where to seek help." Chapman lowered the leaflet and looked into Martinelli's eyes. "Do you need help, Jim?" He tilted his head to one side and grinned. "Do you want to talk to someone?"
"I've got five grand on the table. Upstairs."
"Five? Have you?" Chapman sniffed loudly, as if he were struggling to clear his sinuses. "You and I both know that's not what we're talking about, don't we? You're not being straight, Jim."
Chapman took a step forward. He raised the leaflet and held it in front of him, like a man singing a hymn in church.
"Only gamble what you can afford to lose," he said. "Set yourself personal limits. Only spend a certain amount of time at the tables." He stared at Martinelli. "Time, Jim. That's what you've run out of, isn't it?"
"I've told you," he said. "Five grand. Upstairs. Let me play."
Chapman walked toward the basins. He looked at himself in the mirror, admiring what he saw. Then he kicked out his leg behind him and slammed the bathroom door.
"I can tell you that you've got a problem," he said. "I can tell you that if you don't give me what's owed by tomorrow morning, I won't be — how do they say — responsible for my actions."
"I understand that." Martinelli could feel himself freezing up, his mind going numb.
"Oh, you understand that, do you?"
"Can you just let me past?" Martinelli pressed away from the wall and moved toward the basins. "Can you open the door, please? I want to go upstairs."
Chapman appeared to admire his display of courage. He nodded and opened the door. An ominous smile was playing on his face as he indicated that Martinelli could leave.
"Don't let me stop you," he said, stepping to one side with the flourish of a matador. "You go and see what you can do, Jim. Be lucky."
Martinelli climbed the stairs two at a time. He needed to be back at the tables in the way that a man who has been held underwater craves to reach the surface and to suck in a deep breath of air. He headed back to his seat and saw that a play was coming to an end. The pop and clatter of the ball, the rapt attention of the gamblers waiting for it to settle.
"Six. Black," said the croupier.
Martinelli saw that the Chinese tourist had a split of five grand on five and six. A small fortune. The croupier placed the dolly on the winning square and began to sweep the losing chips from across the table. Then he paid out what he owed — more than eighty grand to the Chinese in a stack of twenty, with no discernible reaction from either man.
Martinelli took it as a sign. He waited until the table was clear, then moved his stack of chips onto black. All or nothing. Take it or leave it. The house always wins. Fuck Kyle Chapman.
Then it was just a question of waiting. The bloke from Dubai put his usual spread on eighteen through thirty-six, the other Arab going big on six-way splits along the baize. It worried Martinelli that the Chinese stayed out of the play and wandered over to the bar. It was like a bad omen. Maybe he should take back his chips.
"No more bets, please, gentlemen," said the croupier.
Too late. Martinelli could do nothing but stare at the wheel, praying for the fifty-fifty chance on black, mesmerized — as he had always been — by the counterpoint of spokes and ball, the one hypnotically slow, the other a blur as it raced beneath the rim.
Slowing now, the ball about to drop. Nauseated with anxiety, Martinelli took his eyes away from the wheel and saw Kyle Chapman standing in his eyeline. He had come back upstairs. He wasn't looking at the wheel. He wasn't looking at the baize. He was looking directly at the man who owed him thirty thousand pounds.
Martinelli's eyes went back to the table. All or nothing. Feast or famine. He heard the rattle and click of the ball, watched it drop and vanish beneath the rim like a magic trick.
The inspector looked down. He would see it first. The croupier leaned over the wheel, preparing to call the number.
Martinelli closed his eyes. It was like an axe falling. He always felt sick at this moment.
I should have put it all on red, he thought. The house always wins.
CHAPTER 2
Thomas Kell stood on the westbound platform at Bayswater station, one eye on a copy of the Evening Standard, the other on the man standing three meters to his left wearing faded denim jeans and a brown tweed jacket. Kell had seen him first on Praed Street, reflected in the window of a Chinese restaurant, then again twenty minutes later coming out of a branch of Starbucks on Queensway. Average height, average build, average features. Tapping his Oyster card on the reader at Bayswater, Kell had turned to find the man walking into the station a few paces behind him. He had ducked the eye contact, staring at his well-worn shoes. That was when Kell sensed he had a problem.
It was just after three o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon in June. Kell counted eleven other people waiting on the platform, two of them standing directly behind him. Drawing on a long-forgotten piece of self-defense, he placed his right leg further forward than his left, shifted his weight back on to his rear heel as the train clattered into the station — and waited for the shove in the back.
It never came. No crowding up, no crazed Chechen errand boy trying to push him onto the tracks as a favor to the SVR. Instead the District Line train deposited half a dozen passengers onto the platform and eased away. When Kell looked left, he saw that the man in the faded jeans had gone. The two men who had been standing behind him had also boarded the train. Kell allowed himself a half smile. His occasional outbreaks of paranoia were a kind of madness, a yearning for the old days; the corrupted sixth sense of a forty-six-year-old spy who knew that the game was over.
A second train, moments later. Kell stepped on board, took a fold-down seat, and reopened the Standard. Royal pregnancies. Property prices. Electoral conspiracies. He was just another traveler on the Tube, traceless and nondescript. Nobody knew who he was nor who he had ever been. On the fifth page, a photograph of an aid worker murdered by the maniacs of ISIS; on the seventh, more wretched news from Ukraine. It was of no consolation to Kell that in the twelve months he had spent as a private citizen following the murder of his girlfriend, Rachel Wallinger, the regions on which he had worked for the greater part of his adult life had further disintegrated into violence and criminality. Though Kell had deliberately avoided making contact with anyone in the Service, he had occasionally run into former colleagues in the supermarket or on the street, only to be treated to lengthy discourses on the "impossible task" facing MI6 in Russia, Syria, Yemen, and beyond.
"The best we can hope for is a kind of stasis, somehow to keep a lid on things," a former colleague had told him when they bumped into one another at a Christmas party. "God knows it was easier in the age of the despots. There are some mornings, Tom, when I'm as nostalgic for Mubarak and Gaddafi as a Dunkirk Tommy for the white cliffs of Dover. At least Saddam gave us something to aim for."
The train pulled into Notting Hill Gate. In the same conversation, the colleague had offered his "sincere condolences" over Rachel's death and intimated to Kell how "devastated" the "entire Service" had been over the circumstances of her assassination in Istanbul. Kell had changed the subject. Rachel's memory was his alone to curate; he wanted no part in others' recollections of the woman to whom he had lost his heart. Perhaps he had been naïve to fall so quickly for a woman he had barely known, and a fool to trust her, yet he guarded the memory of his love as jealously as a starving animal with a scrap of food. Every morning, for months, Kell had thought of Rachel at the moment of waking, then steadily throughout the day, a debilitating punctuation to his solitary, unchanging existence. He had raged at her, he had talked with her, he had drenched himself in memories of the short period in which they had been involved with one another. The loss of the potential that Rachel had possessed to knit together the broken strands of Kell's life constituted the most acute suffering he had ever known. Yet he had survived it.
"You must be having a midlife crisis," his ex-wife, Claire, had told him at one of their occasional reunion lunches, commenting on the fact that Kell had given up alcohol, was taking himself off to the gym three times a week, and had broken a twenty-year, twenty-a-day smoking habit. "No alcohol, no fags. No spying? Next thing you'll be buying an open-topped Porsche and taking twenty-two-year-olds to the polo at Windsor Great Park."
Kell had laughed at the joke even as he inwardly acknowledged how little Claire understood him. She knew nothing, of course, about his relationship with Rachel, nothing about the operation that had led to her death. This was just the latest in a lifetime of secrets between them. As far as Claire was concerned, Kell would always be the same man: an intelligence officer through and through, a spy who had spent more than two decades in thrall to the luster and the intrigue of espionage. Their marriage had failed because he had loved the game more than he had loved her.
"You're wedded to your agents, Tom," Claire had said during one of many similarly unequivocal conversations that had heralded the end of the marriage. "Amelia Levene is your family, not me. If you had to choose between us, I have no doubt that you would pick MI6."
Amelia. The woman whose career Kell had saved and whose reputation he had salvaged. The chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, appointed three years earlier, now approaching the end of her tenure, with the Middle East on fire, Russia in political and economic turmoil, and Africa ravaged by Islamist terror. Kell had neither seen nor heard from her since the afternoon of Rachel's funeral, an occasion at which they had deliberately ignored one another. By recruiting Rachel to work for SIS behind his back, Amelia had effectively signed her death warrant.
Earl's Court. Kell stepped off the train and registered the familiar acid taste of his implacable resentment. It was the one thing he had been unable to control. He had come to terms with the end of his marriage, he had mastered his grief, reasoned that his professional future lay beyond the walls of Vauxhall Cross. Yet Kell could not still a yearning for vengeance. He wanted to seek out those in Moscow who had given the order for Rachel's assassination. He wanted justice.
The Richmond service was due in a few minutes. A pigeon swooped in low from the Warwick Road, flapped toward the opposite platform and settled beside a bench. There was a District Line train standing empty behind it. The pigeon hopped on board. As if on cue, the doors slid shut and the train moved out of the station.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A Divided Spy by Charles Cumming. Copyright © 2017 Charles Cumming. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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