A Divided Spy (Thomas Kell Spy Thriller, Book 3) Read Free Page A

have a chat.’
    ‘Isn’t that what we’re doing?’
    ‘Face to face.
Mano a mano.
Too long and complicated for the phone.’
    That could mean only one thing. Work. Blowback from a previous operation, or a dangled carrot on something new. Either way, Mowbray didn’t trust Kell’s landline to keep it a secret. Anybody could be listening in. London. Paris. Moscow.
    ‘You remember that Middle Eastern place we used to go to on the American gig?’
    ‘Which one?’ ‘The American gig’ had been the molehunt. Ryan Kleckner. A CIA officer in the pay of the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service.
    ‘The one with the waitress.’
    ‘Oh,
that
one.’ Kell made a joke of it, but understood that Mowbray was being deliberately obscure. There was only one Middle Eastern restaurant that both of them had been to on the Kleckner operation. Westbourne Grove. Persian. Kell had no recollection of the waitress, pretty or otherwise. Mowbray was simply making sure that their table wouldn’t be covered in advance.
    ‘Can you make dinner tonight?’ he asked.
    Kell thought about stalling but was too intrigued by the invitation. Besides, he was looking at another night of leftovers and
House of Cards
. Dinner with Harold would be a fillip.
    ‘Meet you there at eight?’ he suggested.
    ‘You will know me by the smell of my cologne.’

4
     
    Kell arrived at the restaurant at quarter to eight, early enough to ask for a quiet spot at the back with line of sight to the entrance. To his surprise, Mowbray was already seated at a table in the centre of the small, brick-lined room, his back to a group of jabbering Spaniards.
    It was fiercely hot, the open mouth of a
tanoor
blowing a furnace heat into Kell’s face as he walked inside. A waitress, whom he vaguely recognized, smiled at him as Mowbray stood up behind her. Iranian music was playing at a volume seemingly designed to guarantee a degree of conversational privacy.
    ‘Harold. How are you?’
    ‘
Salam
, guv.’
    ‘
Salam, khoobi
,’ Kell replied. The heat of the
tanoor
as he sat down was like a summer sun against his back.
    ‘You speak Farsi?’ They were shaking hands.
    ‘I was showing off,’ Kell said. ‘Enough to get by in restaurants.’
    ‘Menu Farsi,’ Mowbray replied, smiling at his own remark. ‘Iranians don’t like being confused for Arabs, do they?’
    ‘They do not.’
    Mowbray looked to be recovering from a bad case of sunburn. His forehead was scalded red and there were flaking patches of dry skin around his mouth and nose.
    ‘Been away?’ Kell asked.
    ‘Funny you should mention that.’ Mowbray flapped a napkin into his lap and grinned. ‘Went to Egypt with the wife.’
    ‘Why funny?’
    ‘You’ll see. Shall we order?’
    Kell wondered why he was playing hard to get. He opened his menu as the waitress passed their table. Mowbray looked up, caught Kell’s eye and winked.
    ‘So,’ he said, spring-loading another joke. ‘You can have a skewer of minced lamb with taftoon bread,
two
skewers of minced lamb with taftoon bread, a skewer of marinated lamb cubes with taftoon bread,
two
skewers of marinated lamb cubes with taftoon bread, a skewer of minced lamb
and
a skewer of marinated lamb cubes with taftoon …’
    ‘I get it,’ said Kell, smiling as he closed the menu. ‘You order. I’m going to the bathroom.’
    There was a strong smell of hashish leading up to the gents. Kell stopped to look at a wall of turquoise tiles inlaid on the staircase, breathing in the smoke. He wanted to trace the source of the smell, to find whoever had rolled the joint in a backroom office and to share it with them. In the bathroom he washed his hands and glanced in the mirror, wondering why Mowbray was coming to him with tall tales from Egypt. What was the scoop? ISIS? Muslim Brotherhood? Maybe he was the bagman for a job offer in the private sector, an ex-SIS suit using Kell’s friendship with Mowbray as a lure. There had been five or six such offers in the