A Foreign Country

A Foreign Country
Charles Cumming

Winner of the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2012 for Best Thriller of the Year. Selected by the Sunday Times and the Guardian as Best Thriller. Perfect for fans of John le Carré, a gripping and suspenseful spy thriller from ‘the master of the modern spy thriller’ (Mail on Sunday) WITH AN EXCLUSIVE AFTERWORD BY THE AUTHOR.Six weeks before she is due to become the first female head of MI6, Amelia Levene disappears without a trace.Disgraced ex-agent Thomas Kell is brought in from the cold with orders to find her – quickly and quietly. The mission offers Kell a way back into the secret world, the only life he’s ever known.Tracking her through France and North Africa, Kell embarks on a dangerous voyage, shadowed by foreign intelligence services. This far from home soil, the rules of the game are entirely different – and the consequences worse than anyone imagines…

CHARLES CUMMING

A Foreign Country

Copyright

Harper

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www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012

Copyright © Charles Cumming 2012

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Cover photographs © Josephine Pugh/Arcangel Images (cityscape); Henry Steadman (foreground and figure, right); SuperStock (bench, seated man); Shutterstock.com (http://Shutterstock.com) (all other images)

A Colder War extract © Charles Cumming 2013

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

Extract from The Spirit Level copyright © Seamus Heaney

Published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber 2001

Reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber

Extract from The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley © 1953 Hamish Hamilton reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd

Extract from Ashenden by W. Somerset Maugham © 1928 William Heinemann reproduced by kind permission of A P Watt on behalf of the Royal Literary Fund

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

This novel 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.

Ebook Edition © March 2012 ISBN: 9780007346448

Version: 2016-05-03

Dedication

For Carolyn Hanbury

Epigraph

‘There’s just one thing I think you ought to know before you take on this job … If you do well you’ll get no thanks and if you get into trouble you’ll get no help. Does that suit you?’

‘Perfectly.’

‘Then I’ll wish you good afternoon.’

W. Somerset Maugham, Ashenden

‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’

L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between

Contents

Cover (#u3f26131b-fae9-57b1-9a47-42e1cc5132b6)

Title Page (#uccbd309c-1e08-5090-b820-2efc4fe981e3)

Copyright (#u7ed6d7a3-3980-52ad-8997-a4f6250fffac)

Dedication (#u882decf8-138c-56d6-a25d-c252bdd450de)

Epigraph (#u9e0cc136-9a8a-522b-9c03-bf3326ac7675)

Tunisia, 1978 (#u2f792197-9b7c-5375-a039-cceab2d71d72)

Chapter 1 (#uf1404e1d-a9e8-557a-bd78-04702f3554ec)

The Present Day (#u95869d79-814b-5f14-8241-a0786f9381e8)

Chapter 2 (#u09442355-8d76-5988-8ee3-0cdcd8d7a3cc)

Chapter 3 (#ub098089a-a295-5c65-a02a-846f42616d37)

Chapter 4 (#u715965b8-a2be-5f55-8592-5a4195f3fe06)

Chapter 5 (#u2835797a-4cb9-5949-9d5d-025240c55e71)

Chapter 6 (#u98232d4b-54c1-5ad7-9131-c0c9bd1ed471)

Chapter 7 (#u64765afe-e6f9-533a-8b48-b994448ccf87)