The Man Between: The gripping new spy thriller you need to read in 2018

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‘Recommended. I read it one breathless sitting’ Ian RankinHe risked it all to become a spy. Now he must pay the price.A gripping new standalone spy thriller from the winner of the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller of the Year and ‘the master of the modern spy thriller’ (Mail on Sunday).One simple task for British Intelligence takes him into a world of danger.Successful novelist Kit Carradine has grown restless. So when British Intelligence invites him to enter the secret world of espionage, he willingly takes a leap into the unknown.But the glamour of being a spy is soon tainted by fear and betrayal, as Carradine finds himself in Morocco on the trail of Lara Bartok – a mysterious fugitive with links to international terrorism.Bartok is a leading figure in Resurrection, a violent revolutionary movement whose brutal attacks on prominent right-wing politicians have spread hatred and violence throughout the West.As the coils of a ruthless plot tighten around him, Carradine finds himself drawn to Lara. Caught between competing intelligence services who want her dead, he soon faces an awful choice: to abandon Lara to her fate or to risk everything trying to save her.‘An instant classic of the genre’ Mick Herron‘The Man Between is up there with the best – full of thrills, wit and fine writing’ Peter Robinson

Автор

Charles Cumming

#Зарубежная литература #Современная зарубежная литература

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HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Cover jacket design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018

Cover photographs © Tim Robinson/Arcangel Images

Charles Cumming asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Source ISBN: 9780008200312

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2018 ISBN: 9780008200336

Version: 2018-09-21

Dedication

For Luke Janklow and Will Francis

Epigraph

‘There is a point of no return, unremarked at the time, in most lives.’

Graham Greene, The Comedians

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Moscow

London: Eighteen Months Later

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

By Charles Cumming

About the Publisher

‘Would you prefer to talk or to write everything down?’

‘Talk,’ she said.

Somerville crossed the room and activated the voice recorder. The American had brought it from the Embassy. There was a small microphone attached to a stand, a glass of tap water and a plate of biscuits on the table.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

‘Ready.’

Somerville leaned over the microphone. His voice was clear, his language concise.

‘Statement by LASZLO. Chapel Street, SW1. August nineteenth. Officer presiding: L4. Begins now.’ He checked his watch. ‘Seventeen hundred hours.’

Lara Bartok adjusted the collar of her shirt. She caught Somerville’s eye. He nodded at her, indicating that she should start. She brought the microphone slightly closer to her and took a sip of water. The American realised that he was standing in her eyeline. He moved to a chair on the far side of the room. Bartok did not continue until he was still and completely silent.

‘In the beginning, there were seven,’ she said.

SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE EYES ONLY / STRAP 1

STATEMENT BY LARA BARTOK (‘LASZLO’)

CASE OFFICERS: J.W.S./S.T.H. – CHAPEL STREET

REF: RESURRECTION/SIMAKOV/CARRADINE

FILE: RE2768X

PART 1 of 5

‘In the beginning there were seven. Ivan [Simakov], of course, who is still rightly regarded as the intellectual and moral architect of Resurrection; image missing and , both American citizens whom Simakov had met in Zuccotti Park at the height of Occupy Wall Street. , formerly of the Service; , the cyber expert who had been active in Anonymous for several years and was instrumental in planning and orchestrating many of Resurrection’s most effective operations in the United States. Ivan had a way of contacting such people on the dark web, of gaining their trust over time, of drawing them out into the open. I used to say that he was like a child on a beach, pouring salt onto the sand so that the creatures of the deep would rise to the surface. He enjoyed this image very much. It is no secret that Ivan Simakov liked to think of himself as a man with extraordinary capabilities.

Also present that day were Thomas Frattura, former assistant to Republican Senator Catherine McKendrick, who had been a prominent figure in Disrupt J20; and me, Lara Bartok, originally from Gyula, in eastern Hungary, about whom you know almost everything.

These seven individuals met only once, in a suite at the Redbury Hotel on East 29th Street in Manhattan. Of course, no cellphones, laptops or Wi-Fi enabled devices of any kind were permitted to be brought to the hotel. Each of the guests who entered the suite was searched by Ivan and myself and asked to remove watches and other items of jewellery, all of which we then took – along with personal belongings including bags and shoes – to a room on a separate floor of the hotel for the duration of the meeting. Ivan, who was meeting image missing and

for the first time, introduced himself as a Russian citizen, born in Moscow and educated in Paris, who was hoping to effect political change in his own country by inspiring ‘an international resistance movement directed against the advocates and enablers of autocratic and quasi-fascist regimes around the world’.

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