A Colder War by Charles Cumming Read Free Book Online Page B

life.”
    Makris tried to appear appropriately dignified as he considered the grave matter of Paul Wallinger’s possible suicide. It had doubtless occurred to him that such a verdict would absolve Chios Airport entirely of any responsibility in the crash, thus ending, at a stroke, the possibility of a lawsuit against the engineer who had checked the Cessna.
    “Let me ask around,” he replied. “To be perfectly honest with you, I have not yet even discussed the crash with my colleagues in Turkey.”
    “What about your engineers?”
    “What about them, please?”
    “Have you ascertained who was on duty the afternoon of the flight?”
    “Of course.” Makris had prepared for this, the most sensitive section of the interview, and dealt with it as Kell had expected he would. “Air traffic control is not accountable for maintenance and engineering. That is a separate department, a separate union. I assume that you will be holding other meetings with other employees in order to obtain a more full picture of the tragedy?”
    “I will.” Kell experienced another craving for a cigarette. “Do you happen to have the name of the engineer to hand?”
    Makris appeared to weigh up the good sense of denying the man from Scottish Widows this simple request. At some cost to his equilibrium—his neck did an agitated roll and there was another delicate cough of irritation—he wrote down the name on the back of the flight plan.
    “Iannis Christidis?” Kell studied Makris’s spidery handwriting. With this and the phone number he had more than enough leads to plot Wallinger’s movements in the days leading up to his death.
    “That is correct,” Makris replied. And to Kell’s surprise he immediately stood up and drained the last of his wine. “Now will there be anything else, Mr. Hardwick? My wife is expecting me for dinner.”
    *   *   *
    As soon as Makris had left the hotel, Kell went back to his room and dialed the number using the hotel landline. He was connected to a recorded answering service, but the message was in Greek. Heading back downstairs he dialed the number again, asked the receptionist to listen to the message and to give a rough translation of what was being said. To his frustration he was told that the voice was a default, computer-generated message with no person or corporation named. Kell, by now hungry and thinking about dinner, returned to his room to ring Adam.
    “The engineer who worked on Wallinger’s plane was called Iannis Christidis. Can you see if there’s anything recorded against?”
    “Sure.”
    It sounded as though Adam had woken up from a siesta. Kell heard the bump and scratch of a man looking around for a pen, the noise of a dog barking in the background.
    “With a name like Christidis you’ll probably get the Greek phone book, but see if he has a profile on the island.”
    “Will do.”
    “How are your reverse telephone directories for Chios?”
    “I’m sure we can work something out.”
    Kell read out the number from the flight plan, checked that Adam had taken it down correctly, then mentally switched off. Having watched the headlines on CNN, he went for a grilled sea bass and a Greek salad at a restaurant halfway along the beach. From his table on a moonlit terrace he could see the distant lights of the Turkish coast, blinking like a runway.
    At ten o’clock, smoking a cigarette at the edge of a high tide, he felt the pulse of a message coming through on his phone. Adam had sent a text.
    STILL WORKING ON IC. NUMBER IS FOR A LETTING AGENCY. VILLAS ANGELIS. 119 KATANIKA, ON THE PORT. PROPRIETOR LISTED AS NICOLAS DELFAS.

 
    8
     
    Alexander Minasian, the SVR rezident in Kiev, the Directorate C officer whose recruitment of KODAK would surely make him a legend in the halls of Yasenevo, was a ghost on visits to Turkey. Sometimes he would come by airplane. Sometimes he would cross by car or truck from Bulgaria. On one occasion, he had taken a train across the frontier at