‘Still,’ said Mowbray, ‘we need to 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.’
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 previous twelve months, all of which Kell had turned down. He wasn’t interested in private security, nor did he want to be a nodding donkey on the board of Barclays or BP. On the other hand, if the pitch was something Russian, something that would get Kell close to the men who had ordered Rachel’s assassination, he would give it serious consideration.
‘I forgot,’ Mowbray announced, as Kell settled back into his seat. ‘They don’t serve booze.’
‘Don’t worry about it. I gave up.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Seven months dry.’
‘Now why would you want to go and do a thing like that?’
‘Tell me about Egypt.’
Mowbray leaned forward and put a hand in his pocket. Kell thought he was going to produce a photograph or a flash drive, but he kept it there as he spoke. If Kell hadn’t known that Mowbray was capable of far greater subtleties, he might have assumed that he was triggering a recording device.
‘Hurghada.’
‘What about it?’
‘One-horse town on the east coast. Mainland Egypt. Red Sea, facing Sinai.’
‘I know where it is, Harold.’
‘Last three years, Karen and me have been flying there for a bit of winter sun; easyJet goes three times a week. Car picks us up and drives us an hour south to a place called Soma Bay. Four hotels and a golf course, back-to-back, arse end of nowhere. Fresh water piped in from the Nile, turns the fairways green, fills the swimming pools. Coral reefs and scuba diving for the grown-ups, camel rides on the beach for the kids. In the tourist industry they call it a “hot flop”.’
The food arrived. Mashed aubergines with garlic and herbs. Feta cheese mixed with tarragon and fresh mint. A bowl of hummus was placed in front of Kell, nestled beside a basket of flatbread.
‘There’s your taftoon,’ he said, encouraging Mowbray to continue.
‘Anyway, we always stay at the same place. German-owned, German efficient, German-occupied sunbeds. Never seen a Yank there, never met a Frog. The occasional Brit, from time to time, but mostly German pensioners and Russian oligarch types with dyed hair and third wives who probably weren’t alive under Gorbachev. Am I painting the picture?’
‘Vividly,’ said Kell, and took a bite of taftoon.
‘So, guv, here’s the thing. Here’s the reason I wanted to see you. Something very strange happened, something I can still hardly believe.’
Mowbray looked like he meant it. There was an expression of amused consternation on his face.
‘They do breakfasts,’ he said, nodding slowly and looking across the table, as though half-expecting Kell to finish his sentence. ‘They do breakfasts every morning …’
‘What a breakthrough in hospitality,’ Kell replied. ‘I must go and stay there.’
Mowbray didn’t laugh. His eyes were fixed somewhere