by Jon Stock
50
Dhar watched the rickshaw driver’s legs seesaw through the Chandni Chowk traffic. ‘You will only have one chance,’ the woman next to him said. ‘At 5.35 p.m. the President will pause at the foot of the five flights of steps leading up to the Lotus Temple entrance. He will be greeted by a delegation of senior Bahá’ís. One will present him with a garland of flowers. At this point, and this point only, his security detail will withdraw a few steps. Your line of sight should be clear.’
‘I won’t miss,’ Dhar said. ‘Inshallah.’
They sat in silence, watching the sea of faces flow past them on either side. She had already been through all the practical arrangements for the evening and there was a sense that their meeting should now come to an end.
‘It must have been difficult, so much time-passing with the kafir,’ Dhar said. Across the street, two Western tourists, money belts slung below their thick waists, were taking photos of a man with no legs, perched on a board with wheels, pushing himself along with raw knuckles.
‘Those who work with animals get used to the smell.’
They were still wary of each other, both retreating to the muscled vernacular of the jihadi. There was no reason for either of them to trust each other beyond this short encounter. But there was something about the woman that intrigued Dhar. Her head was wrapped in a black scarf, concealing most of her face except for her big Meenakshi eyes. She spoke perfect Urdu, but with a slight accent that Dhar couldn’t quite place.
‘Some people are saying that the Americans were behind the jihad in Britain, the petty squabbles of the enemy doing our work for us.’
‘Is that what they say?’ she asked.
‘The talk is of nothing else. The American infidel recruited someone to destroy its allies from the inside.’
Dhar had a question for his passenger before he dropped her off at the town hall: the name of the insider in London. His father, whom he had met only once, was dead, but he still needed to know, for himself, for his brother.
‘The enemy within has succeeded,’ she said. ‘The Britishers are facing turmoil.’
‘Inshallah.’ The rickshaw speeded up, free of traffic now. ‘Your work is at the infidel’s embassy. You must know who this person is in Britain.’
‘Why do you ask?’
Because his jihadi world, so recently turned upside down, would begin to make sense again if he could be certain that it was an American who had betrayed his father. But he said nothing.
‘The infidels believe it was one of their own,’ she continued, ‘but the credit lies elsewhere. Not with Britain or America, but with someone, a woman, who tricked them both.’
‘Another woman?’ Dhar shifted in his seat. ‘It would be an honour to meet her,’ he said quietly, without conviction.
‘An honour?’ she asked. ‘What’s honour got to do with it?’
‘It can’t have been easy. Like you, she was living amongst the infidel, but acting in the name of Allah.’
‘Was she?’
But even Dhar wasn’t sure any more.
51
Straker took the call in one of the small private booths in the White House’s refurbished Situation Room complex. Moments before, he had stepped out of the Telecommunications Room next door, where the Vice President, the Director of National Intelligence, the White House Chief of Staff and a raft of other security advisers who wanted his job had been waiting for him to assess the threat matrix in India. It was a meeting he had been postponing ever since word had reached him that Salim Dhar had not been captured in Karnataka.
‘Harriet, I hope you have some decent CX for me. Otherwise I’m going to have to dunk our friend Marchant’s head in the Arabian Sea. Tell me he knows where Dhar is.’
‘Marchant was meant to be my prisoner.’
‘He was alive, wasn’t he? That’s all your PM wanted.’
‘Barely. Dhar left two hours before you reached the hideout, heading north.’
‘Great. Marchant told you nothing else?’
‘Dhar was shooting at Texans before Daniel reached him.’
‘Texans?’
‘A target in the shape of your previous President.’
‘Jesus, we need to take this guy down.’
‘Leila too. She might be working with Dhar.’
It was at moments like this, when he needed to punch someone, that Straker wished he brought a basketball into the office, as other DCIAs had been known to do, but it wasn’t his style to bounce balls down the corridors of power.
‘I’m touched by your interest in an Agency employee, Harriet,’ he said, failing to conceal his anger. ‘Really, I am. But we’ve run the rule over Leila many times. Monk Johnson is the most paranoid man I know, and he’s happy to have her meet his President. She saved the Secret Service’s butt in London, remember? Spiro’s looked into her case. Every goddamn analyst in Langley has taken a look. It doesn’t stack up. She’s clean, she did us a favour, she saved one of our ambassador’s lives. She’s a fucking hero, for God’s sake.’
‘Daniel Marchant thinks she was working for the Iranians.’
‘Marchant? We’ve just airlifted the kid out of a terrorist’s hideout in the Indian jungle. Give me a break here, Harriet. He tried to kill Munroe. He’s an enemy combatant, like his father, another one of Dhar’s British buddies.’
Armstrong looked around the room she had been given in the American Embassy. It had started with Straker’s crass attempt to destroy Chadwick’s reputation, but now her disillusionment with America had grown into something more general, a weariness with its ways that she had once so revered.
‘Give me a little longer with him,’ she said.
‘Do what you have to, Harriet. We need to neutralise Dhar. I’ve told the embassy that Marchant’s yours, but we don’t have much time.’
Armstrong hung up and dialled through to the guardroom in the basement, where Marchant was being kept. Then she made an encrypted call on her mobile to the MI6 station chief in Delhi, one of Fielding’s old friends. If the Chief was in town, he would know.
52
Marchant couldn’t decide if it was a good or bad development that his guards were taking him out of his cell. The hood and cuffs should have made him fear the worst, but there was something about their manner that gave him hope. Their body language was routine rather than rough.
‘Where are we going?’ he asked, not expecting an answer. The brightness of a Delhi day was forcing its way through the hood as they walked slowly up some stairs.
‘For a little drive,’ one of the guards said. ‘With your new best buddy.’
The next moment, Marchant felt the full heat of an Indian summer hitting his face like a hair-drier. One of the guards ducked his head and helped him step inside an air-conditioned vehicle of some sort. It felt spacious rather than cramped as he sat down in a back seat. The sound of a sliding door told him it was a people carrier.
He sat in silence as it drove off, aware of a number of other people inside. Nobody talked except for the driver, an Indian, who muttered as he waited to pull out into the traffic. Daniel could smell jasmine incense.
‘So, how old were you when he died?’ a voice from the seat next to him asked. It was Armstrong’s.
‘Who?’ Marchant was troubled by her tone. He guessed that there were five of them in the car altogether: the driver, Armstrong, his two US Marine guards and himself. Armstrong seemed to be addressing the gallery, her maternal manner a distant memory.
‘Oh, come on, Daniel. Sebastian, your brother. The one you’ve blamed for so much in your life. The death you could have prevented, the reason for the survivor’s guilt that drove you to drink.’
Marchant tried to work out what was going on, why she was so obviously talking for the benefit of others. Her approach was unnatural, her tone forced.
‘He was eight. We both were.’
‘Twins. Of course. Tell us what happened.’
‘Where are you taking me?’ Marchant a
sked, but he already knew. He just wasn’t sure why.
‘To where it all went wrong for Daniel Marchant,’ she said. ‘I thought it might be useful if we returned to the beginning. It might help us work out how it all could end.’
She touched his hand, then spoke more quietly, as if just to him. ‘Here, put your seatbelt on. You’ll need it.’
‘I have a question for you,’ the woman said as she stepped down from the rickshaw. ‘Why did Stephen Marchant, the infidel spy chief, visit you in prison?’
Dhar instinctively looked around, then composed himself. ‘Is it common knowledge?’
‘It was one of the reasons he was removed from his office in London.’
‘The kafir was desperate, tried to recruit me. Why does it matter?’
‘Some of our brothers were concerned. They couldn’t understand what he wanted with you.’
‘He would have been slaughtered if it hadn’t been for my chains.’
‘And the son, they say he came for you too.’
Dhar was worried now, troubled by how much this woman knew. Did others also know?
‘Why should the son wish to find me?’
‘He was a spy for the infidels, like his father. He also lost his job.’
‘Our female comrade in London did well to bring down the house of Marchant,’ Dhar said, managing a thin smile. It wasn’t returned.
‘Some brothers tried to kill the son, at the Gymkhana Club. They were worried about you.’ She paused. ‘But he is on the run, still alive.’
For a moment Dhar thought he detected emotion in her voice, disguised like his own.
‘Not if he finds me.’
They looked at each other, eye to eye, and then she was gone.
‘We were driving back from Chanakyapuri,’ Marchant began. ‘My mother, Sebbie, me.’ His hood tasted of stale clothes. ‘Usually we drove around in our Ambassador, but it was being fixed by a garage so my father had arranged for us to borrow a vehicle from the High Commission. It was used by the traffic police, a desi version of the American Jeep.’
‘Nice wheels,’ one of the guards said from the front. ‘Got one in the garage back home.’
‘Not these.’ Marchant paused. ‘Death traps. No safety belts in those days. Our driver, Raman, was normally so careful, but he was angry that day. The petrol pump attendant had ripped him off, served us up short. Raman disliked that more than anything. My mother was anxious, too. We had an ayah coming for a job interview, and we were late. She hated being late. So we were rushing, heading down towards Saket on a main road.’
Marchant was aware of the car slowing down. When it stopped, his hood was removed by one of the guards. He blinked in the bright sunshine.
‘Was this the place?’ Armstrong asked.
Marchant looked at the traffic all around him. They had pulled over on the side of a busy road, on the edge of a big junction. Then he glanced at Armstrong in the seat next to him, and tried to work out what was going on. He had been right about the number of people in the car. The two Marines were sitting up front with the driver, who was tapping the steering wheel nervously. It was a dangerous place to have parked. Armstrong must have asked them to leave her and Marchant on their own in the back.
‘I can’t be sure,’ Marchant said. ‘It was more than twenty years ago.’
‘Try to remember,’ Armstrong said quietly. ‘Because we’re not going anywhere until you do.’
Fielding climbed into the back of the cotton-white Ambassador and turned to look at the airport behind him. The Gulfstream was still sitting on the Tarmac, shimmering in the hazy heat. At least it had fuel now, and Denton and Carter would soon be clear of Delhi’s intolerable summer. They had been reluctant to let him go on his own, for their different reasons, but they knew it would have been impossible to smuggle three men out on the fuel truck, even though security at the airport was lax. ‘Don’t let her even get near the President, if only for me,’ Carter had said.
As the car drove off, with Prasannan, the local agent, sitting in the front, Fielding wondered what he would do if he found Leila. He knew he must stop her. It wasn’t enough to know that he had been right and the Americans were wrong. But he was a marked man himself now, on the run like Daniel Marchant. He assumed it was Armstrong who had entered his office in London. She would have loved marching into Legoland with a warrant, tearing the place up, questioning everyone.
‘The traffic is very vigorous today,’ Prasannan said, turning to Fielding. ‘It’s the President’s visit.’ The driver nodded in agreement. He was sitting almost sideways-on to the steering wheel, his back pressed against the door, one leg jigging up and down. Fielding thought he looked unduly anxious, even for someone about to drive through Delhi.
‘Do we have an itinerary yet?’ he asked.
‘I have a copy here, sir, acquired from the city police.’ Prasannan waved a sheet of paper in the air. Fielding thought he looked nervous too.
‘Where’s the President going today?’
‘He started at the Gandhi memorial, then visited the Lokh Sabha, the lower house of parliament. Lunch at the American Embassy was followed by Lodhi Gardens and then the Red Fort.’ Prasannan looked at his watch, then back at the sheet of paper. ‘He should be on his way now to the Lotus Temple, before a state banquet tonight hosted by the Indian President at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.’ He paused. ‘Sir, there is…’
‘What’s the Lotus Temple?’ Fielding interrupted, remembering something he had once read.
‘The Bahá’í house of worship. Built like a giant lotus flower. You will have seen photos of it. Very nice place,’ Prasannan added, rocking his head proudly.
‘Bahá’í? Why’s he going there?’ But Fielding already knew the answer.
‘To show solidarity with the Bahá’ís of Iran. Sir…’
‘We need to be at the temple now.’
‘Sorry, sir, there is one thing else. I have an urgent message from Harriet Armstrong. First we must go to Saket.’
Prasannan fastened his safety belt.
‘The police said later that the traffic lights were faulty,’ Marchant said, speaking slowly. The air conditioning was on, but struggling. ‘I remember seeing a traffic policeman – the thick white gloves – so perhaps the lights were out and he was in charge. Raman thought it was clear to go. We were at the front of the queue, but ten yards back from the junction for the shade. It was hot in the jeep, no A/C, of course. We accelerated forward, in case anyone tried to move in front of us, and then I just remember this awful noise of twisting metal and the policeman’s whistle, a desperate shrill sound that went on and on, as if he was trying to undo what had happened. The bus, a government one, had been coming from the left, and didn’t stop at the junction. Maybe it was going too fast, or the driver just ignored the policeman. It pushed our jeep thirty yards down the road.’
‘And you were unhurt?’
‘I was thrown across the back seat, so was my mother. But Sebbie…’ he paused, thinking back. ‘It was Sebbie’s turn to ride in the front with Raman. He loved Sebbie, loved us both. Sebbie was sitting on the left, by the door. He took the main brunt of the impact.’
Marchant looked up just as the British High Commission Ambassador hit them, pushing its proud Morris bonnet deep into the front passenger side of the people carrier in a shower of glass. Armstrong must have seen it moments before the impact, because she had reached a protective arm across him. The two Marines and the driver had no warning. In the slow, panicked seconds that followed, after their car had been shunted sideways across the junction, Armstrong slid open the side door and nodded for Marchant to get out. One of the guards was conscious, hanging forward in his seatbelt, but the other one appeared to be dead. The driver was slumped over the wheel, his chest jammed against the horn.
‘Bloody hell, I can’t do much more,’ Armstrong said. ‘Find her, and stop whatever she’s started.’
Marchant realised that Armstrong couldn’t move. Her left leg was bent forwar
d at the knee.
‘I can’t leave you like this,’ Marchant said, unscathed for the second time in his life.
‘It’s better I’m found with them. Now go. Get on with it. The Chief’s waiting.’
‘Daniel, over here!’ a voice called from across the road. Marchant turned to see Marcus Fielding in the back of a rickshaw. The three-wheeler swung out into the road, where the traffic had come to a sudden halt, picked Marchant up and drove off in the direction of the Lotus Temple, a policeman’s shrill whistle fading behind them.
53
Salim Dhar brought the US President into focus with the telescopic sights of his semi-automatic Russian rifle. He seemed smaller than on election night, when Dhar had watched him on TV milking the adoring American public. A large group of suited Security Service personnel were bunched around him as he walked down the tree-lined avenue towards the Lotus Temple. They were scanning the crowd with the worried urgency of parents in search of a lost child. A clean shot was impossible, the President’s head partially obscured all the time. For a moment Dhar began to doubt the plan.
He and the woman had synchronised their watches in Old Delhi, close to Chandni Chowk’s clock market, the biggest in Asia. Most of them were fakes, unlike his own, a Rolex Milgauss, given to him by Stephen Marchant as he left the jail. Made in 1958, it had been designed to withstand strong magnetic fields, Marchant had explained. Dhar hadn’t worn it when he met Daniel, unsure how their meeting would go, but it was on his wrist now. He needed to keep perfect time with the West.
It was 5.33 p.m. The President was moving at a steady pace, waving at the crowds, but equally concerned that the TV cameras were getting a clear view of him. Dhar had similar worries. He was one thousand yards to the north, lying on the flat roof of a two-storey building that formed part of a small housing estate near a large school. The owner, a brother who worked for India’s Forest and Wildlife Department, was away on leave, but he had hidden the Dragunov sniper rifle before he went, just as the woman had said he would. The gun had been used against tiger poachers, and Dhar recognised it as an SVD59, a model favoured by the Indian army. Two brothers had recently been killed in Kashmir by a Dragunov’s steel and lead bullets.
