A Colder War Read Free Page B

something must have happened to François, or that Amelia’s husband, Giles, had been killed in an accident.
    “It’s Paul.”
    That winded him. Kell knew that she could only be talking about Paul Wallinger.
    “What’s happened? Is he all right?”
    “He’s been killed.”

 
    4
     
    Kell hailed a cab on Holland Park Avenue and was outside Amelia’s house in Chelsea within twenty minutes. He was about to ring the bell when he felt the loss of Wallinger like something pulling apart inside him and had to take a moment to compose himself. They had joined SIS in the same intake. They had risen through the ranks together, fast-track brothers winning the pick of overseas postings across the post–Cold War constellation. Wallinger, an Arabist, nine years older, had served in Cairo, Riyadh, Tehran, and Damascus before Amelia had handed him the top job in Turkey. In what he had often thought of as a parallel, shadow career, Kell, the younger brother, had worked in Nairobi, Baghdad, Jerusalem, and Kabul, tracking Wallinger’s rise as the years rolled by. Staring down the length of Markham Street, he remembered the thirty-four-year-old wunderkind he had first encountered on the IONEC training course in the autumn of 1990, Wallinger’s scores, his intellect, his ambition just that much sharper than his own.
    But Kell wasn’t here because of work. He hadn’t rushed to Amelia’s side in order to offer dry advice on the political and strategic fallout from Wallinger’s untimely death. He was here as her friend. Thomas Kell was one of very few people within SIS who knew the truth about the relationship between Amelia Levene and Paul Wallinger. The pair had been lovers for many years, a stop-start, on-off affair which had begun in London in the late 1990s and continued, with both parties married, right up until Amelia’s selection as chief.
    He rang the bell, swiped a wave at the security camera, heard the lock buzzing open. There was no guard in the atrium, no protection officer on duty. Amelia had probably persuaded him to take the night off. As “C,” she was entitled to a grace and favor Service apartment, but the house belonged to her husband. Kell did not expect to find Giles Levene at home. For some time the couple had been estranged, Giles spending most of his time at Amelia’s house in the Chalke Valley, or tracing the ever-lengthening branches of his family tree as far afield as Cape Town, New England, the Ukraine.
    “You stink of cigarettes,” she said as she opened the door into the hall, offering up a taut, pale cheek for Kell to kiss. She was wearing jeans and a loose cashmere sweater, socks but no shoes. Her eyes looked clear and bright, though he suspected that she had been crying; her skin had the sheen of recent tears.
    “Giles home?”
    Amelia caught Kell’s eyes quickly, skipping on the question, as though wondering whether or not to answer it truthfully.
    “We’ve decided to try for separation.”
    “Oh, Christ, I’m so sorry.”
    The news acted on him in conflicting ways. He was sorry that Amelia was about to experience the singular agony of divorce, but glad that she would finally be free of Giles, a man so boring he was dubbed “The Coma” in the corridors of Vauxhall Cross. They had married each other largely for convenience—Amelia had wanted a steadfast, backseat man with plenty of money who would not block her path to the top; Giles had wanted Amelia as his prize, for her access to the great and the good of London society. Like Claire and Kell, they had never been able to have children. Kell suspected that the sudden appearance of Amelia’s son, François, eighteen months earlier, had been the relationship’s last straw.
    “It’s a great shame, yes,” she said. “But the best thing for both of us. Drink?”
    This was how she moved things on. We’re not going to dwell on this, Tom. My marriage is my private business. Kell stole a glance at her left hand as she led him into the