by Jon Stock
‘The priests, they are very strict about this sort of thing, you know,’ the man from Bangalore had said. But Marchant had reassured them, explaining that he was just there for the atmosphere. In the darkness, he had calculated that he wouldn’t be turned away before he reached Shushma.
Suddenly he was at the front of the queue, standing before her. They exchanged eye contact, and he could already see surprise in Shushma’s eyes, which was just what he wanted. She glanced across at the priest, who was wearing a white lunghi bordered with green and gold, and a sacred thread slung diagonally across his bare chest. He was too busy with a big party of devotees to have noticed a foreigner apparently trying to talk his way into the shrine.
‘Sorry, Hindus only,’ Shushma said, in surprisingly good English. He remembered that she had worked at the British High Commission for a year. He studied her for a moment, tracing her features, thinking that his father had once looked into the same big eyes. She was undeniably beautiful. Marchant’s mother had never been a big influence in his life. If she had, he imagined he would feel some hostility towards the woman who had slept with his father and was standing before him now. Instead, he felt only warmth. And pity. Her small features had a filigree fragility about them.
‘You need to come with me, now,’ he said quietly. ‘Your life is in danger.’ Shushma dropped the candle she was holding. The yellow ghee spread out across the table. ‘Don’t be alarmed, please. I’m here to help you. Look at me.’
She fumbled with the spilt candle and slowly raised her eyes.
‘Who are you?’ she asked. Was there a flicker of recognition? Marchant detected a growing restlessness in the queue behind him.
‘I’m not with the police,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m Daniel, Stephen Marchant’s son.’
58
Meena moved quickly back through the hall, following the foreigner at a safe distance. He looked Russian to her. Something about his manner, the tan socks on his shoeless feet. When he passed the Golden Lotus Pond, he broke into the open and pulled out a mobile phone. Meena dropped back and did the same, calling her CIA colleague who was still stationed outside the east gate.
‘We’re bringing her out in five,’ she said.
‘Your taxi’s waiting,’ he replied.
‘And we’ve got company,’ she added.
She hung up and rang her colleague at the Lakshmi idol. The signal was faint, but he heard enough to make his way quickly towards the Golden Lotus Pond, picking up another colleague, who was posing as a market-stall seller, along the way. They knew what to do. Delay the Russian for as long as possible, accuse him of taking photos without a camera ticket. Anything. Just play up the paperwork, Meena had told them.
‘How can I trust you?’ Shushma asked, glancing around her again, but Marchant sensed that she already believed he was who he said he was.
‘My father used to keep a Nataraja on his bedside table in Delhi,’ he said. She looked at the icon across the hall, and then back at Marchant. It was a gamble. He didn’t know where his father and Shushma had made love, where they had conceived Dhar, but there was a chance it had been in his parents’ bedroom in Delhi.
Shushma stared at him, this time tracing his features, recognising in them the man she had once loved.
‘I have been in danger most of my life.’
‘The Americans want to ask you some questions. We’d rather you talk to us, in London.’
‘I don’t know where my son is,’ she said. ‘If that’s what you want.’
‘I’m sure you have no idea. But the Americans won’t believe you. Trust me, I know. Please, we have to go. The east entrance.’
Shushma paused for a moment and then went over to talk to another female temple worker, who was lifting candles out of boxes in the shadows. After a brief exchange, the woman came up to the table and began to hand out candles to the devotees who had grown increasingly agitated in the queue. Shushma said something to her in Hindi, touched her forearm and then made her way out of the hall, followed a few yards behind by Marchant.
59
Marchant saw Meena up ahead and drew alongside Shushma, who was walking swiftly, her small feet barely lifting off the ground.
‘This is Lakshmi, she’s with us,’ he told her as Meena approached. ‘You can trust her.’
Meena stopped, expecting them to slow up. But Shushma kept moving, head down, as if she was trying to shut out the world, an approach to life that Marchant reckoned didn’t look too out of place in a temple.
‘A car’s waiting for us outside,’ Meena said, catching up with them. She turned to Marchant with raised eyebrows. Hadn’t she expected him to close the deal, to appear with Shushma?
‘She’s American,’ Shushma said quietly, still walking fast.
‘Don’t worry,’ Marchant said. ‘We’re going to London. I promise.’
‘Please, relax,’ Meena said, speaking in fluent Hindi and slipping an arm through Shushma’s. For a moment, she resisted, but after glancing at Marchant, who managed a smile, she let Meena’s arm stay interlocked with hers. ‘We’re here to help you,’ Meena added.
Satisfied that Shushma was in safe hands, Marchant looked back down the crowded colonnade. Again he thought he saw someone slipping away, disappearing behind the pillars. He was certain it was Valentin.
‘I thought your people were taking care of the Russian,’ he said.
‘They were. Why?’
‘He’s behind us. I’ll catch you up.’
‘Daniel, we need to get her out,’ Meena said, a sudden urgency in her voice.
‘You don’t know this man. Get her into the car. I’ll find you.’
Before Meena could protest further, Marchant had peeled away and was heading back down the colonnade. He knew it wasn’t part of the plan — Meena was meant to neutralise any threats — but Valentin wasn’t going away. He should have pushed him under the train.
60
The tall Russian was moving fast through the devotees now, walking towards the Hall of a Thousand Pillars in the west corner of the complex. It was one of the temple’s main tourist attractions, a sixteenth-century architectural marvel, according to Meena. She had talked about it on the flight, explaining with a smile that there were in fact only 985 pillars. It reminded Marchant of a round of golf his father had told him he once played at the Bolgatty Palace in Kochi harbour, southern India: nine holes, but only six tees.
Marchant hung back behind a pillar to watch Valentin, trying to establish what he was doing. The Russian showed a ticket and entered the hall, glancing in his direction before he disappeared out of sight. Marchant was confident that he hadn’t been seen. Was he meeting someone? Hoping to draw him away from the others? Marchant knew he should have stayed with Meena and Shushma, but it wasn’t tradecraft that was driving him now. The Russians — Valentin, Primakov — were too closely associated in his mind with something he never wanted to accept. They represented all that he despised about himself, about his father: the potential in everyone to betray.
He paid for a ticket and entered. Ahead of him was a low-ceilinged hall supported by row upon row of carved pillars. It was about to close for the day and was almost deserted, but there was no sign of Valentin. He walked forward, keeping close to the pillars and looking down the lines as they stretched away from him. He thought he saw a movement to his right, in the far corner, and headed towards it. But by the time he reached it there was no one there.
Then he spotted him, at the end of another row of pillars. The hall was also a gallery, and Valentin seemed to be studying a glass display cabinet of some kind. Marchant moved quickly, his bare feet silent on the cold floor. He stopped behind a pillar, four feet from Valentin, who still had his back to him. Marchant watched for a moment, wondering whether to strike from behind or get him to turn first. It seemed less cowardly. But then Valentin glanced at his watch and looked around, making up Marchant’s mind for him.
He hit out hard and instantly, knocking the Russian to the
ground. His father was no traitor. Without hesitating, Marchant fell on him and struck again and again, ignoring the voices, Valentin’s, his own, others’.
‘Stop, please,’ someone was repeating behind him.
Marchant stood up, wiping his mouth, and backed away from Valentin, who lay bloodied and unconscious on the floor. It had felt good, too good.
61
The sun was setting, but it was still bright outside compared to the gloom they had left behind in the temple complex. Meena was surprised by Marchant’s behaviour. He had been disciplined in Marrakech, which had impressed her. She was also concerned about her two colleagues inside the temple. They were meant to have delayed the Russian, kept him away from the exits. She knew mobile reception was patchy inside the complex, but neither was answering his phone.
Cars weren’t allowed up to the east gate, so Meena had agreed to bring Shushma to the end of the closed-off street immediately opposite the entrance. It was a walk of about two hundred yards. She glanced up and down the road. A parked car had already caught her eye. Someone was sitting in the driver’s seat, but she couldn’t see their face. There was no time to collect her shoes.
She kept walking, her arm still linked through Shushma’s. The older woman had remained silent since Marchant had left them. Meena thought again about her conversation with Fielding at Heathrow. She trusted him, but it didn’t make what was about to happen any easier, particularly after her chat with Marchant at his London flat. King Shahryar would continue to distrust his wives.
At the end of the road, beyond a barrier, a white Ambassador had pulled up. Meena and Shushma climbed into the back. Meena glanced again at the car down the street.
‘Where’s your British friend?’ the driver asked, dropping his tourist manner.
‘We must leave without him. Let’s go, challo.’ Shushma looked up and felt Meena’s arm tighten around her own.
62
Marchant brushed off the member of the temple staff who was attempting to hold him. He glanced down at the Russian. His eyes were closed and swollen, but he was trying to open them. Marchant turned and fled the hall, pushing away another temple worker who had heard the disturbance.
He thought he was heading straight for the east exit, but found himself in an open courtyard. A group of elderly priests, naked to the waist, were sitting on the ground in a circle, talking quietly as they ate food from stainless-steel tiffin boxes. One of them — bushy grey chest hair, forehead streaked with vermilion — was speaking on a mobile phone. He glanced up at Marchant and then looked away. Marchant asked one of the other priests for directions to the east gate and then set off again, walking fast.
He knew the authorities would soon be looking for him, and his heart sank as he turned the corner and saw a group of four policemen running down the corridor. But something about their manner made him hold his nerve. They hadn’t reacted when he came into view, and were now turning off the main corridor. He glanced after them and saw a crowd gathered around the edge of the Golden Lotus Pond. Two bodies were lying still on the stone floor, surrounded by devotees. Marchant couldn’t be sure, but one of them looked like the CIA officer Meena had met at the Lakshmi idol. Clearly, Valentin had been busy.
It took him longer to get out of the labyrinthine temple than he had intended, so he wasn’t surprised when he didn’t see Meena or a car in the street outside. He looked up and down the road and then walked over to the barrier, where Meena had arranged for them to be picked up by her redneck tourist friend. No one was about. He went to retrieve his footwear, watching the man take his ticket and turn to a row of hundreds of shoes. A moment later, he was holding two pairs, his and Meena’s. He hesitated and then took both, slipping into his own and walking away with Meena’s in his hand.
Meena had had no time to collect her shoes. Someone other than Valentin must have been outside. He glanced up and down the street, looking for a taxi, and then his mobile phone rang.
‘It’s me. Sorry,’ Meena said. ‘Where are you?’
‘Waiting for you to pick me up outside the temple, as agreed.’
‘We had to go. Head for the airfield. Call me when you get near.’
She had briefed him earlier. The airfield was near Karaikudi, outside a small village called Kanadukathan, and had fallen into disrepair. In the Second World War, the Allies had used it as a base for Flying Fortresses targeting Malaya and Singapore. It was also the place where Meena’s legend was meant to be heading for her family wedding. She was thorough, Marchant couldn’t fault her on that.
Half an hour later, he was out of Madurai and heading east through remote countryside in a taxi with a dodgy horn. To begin with, he had assumed that his driver was simply more eager than usual in his use of it, knowing that in India the horn was like a friendly nod of the head, but it was definitely broken, staying jammed on for ten seconds every time he deployed it.
‘Sir, I will manage it, don’t worry.’ The driver grinned in the rear-view mirror.
Not using the horn would be a good start, Marchant thought, but he knew that would be impossible. He tried to cut out the noise and take in the scenery. The reddish earth was barren and unfarmed, flat and dotted with sparse bushes. In the distance, he could see an outcrop of rock that had had its top sliced off. Earlier, he had passed rainbow-painted trucks carrying quarried rocks back to Madurai.
‘Sir, are you knowing about the tourism business?’ the driver asked, in between sustained blasts of the horn, which was beginning to grow hoarse. ‘I have a good friend — ’
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ Marchant interrupted.
‘Cement sector?’
‘No. Can we go a bit quicker? Faster?’ It was not something he had ever thought he would ask on Indian roads, but he was worried that Meena hadn’t rung again. He had tried to call but her phone was switched off.
‘No problem. Isuzu engine.’
The taxi might have had Japanese technology under the bonnet, but its Indian suspension had long since gone. Marchant found the discomfort oddly reassuring, taking him back to his childhood, driving out of Delhi on a Friday night, the bright lights of the lorries roaring past, waking up at a remote Rajasthani fort. Then he thought of Sebbie and felt a ball tighten in his stomach. It shocked him how much he still missed his twin brother. He stared out of the window at the scenes of rural-roadside life: a woman shaking the coals out of her iron, a threshing machine, schoolchildren cycling home on oversized bikes, their long legs languid in the heat.
‘Sir, am I boring you?’ the taxi driver asked, his face in the mirror now long with concern.
‘Not at all. I’m sorry,’ Marchant said, feeling guilty. ‘Please, tell me about the cement sector.’
63
Meena’s car turned off the dusty road into what at first looked like scrubland. The area was completely flat, covered in green bushes. Peacocks were strutting about, picking at the dry ground, the green sheen of their feathers glinting in the dying light of the day. She knew the airfield was disused, but she had expected a little more infrastructure. In the distance there were a few low buildings, derelict and overgrown. The control tower had long since been demolished. Towards the far perimeter, near a group of trees, a team of local women were loading long logs into stacks and covering them with tarpaulins. Beside the piles of wood someone had laid out cow dung to dry.
Meena left Shushma in the car and walked out into the open expanse. Beneath the vegetation the ground was concrete, but it had broken up over the years, and she wondered if a plane would still be able to land there. As she walked out across the wide expanse, she could see where the main runway had been. It was in better condition than the rest of the airfield’s surface. She had been told that a local flying club had been campaigning for years for it to be reopened, and it looked as if volunteers had cleared away some of the vegetation.
She glanced at her watch and stared up into the dusk sky. There was no sign of a plane. If it didn’t come before nightfall, the operation would be a
bandoned. A night-time landing was out of the question without any airport lights. She didn’t know whether Delhi was onside or not about the flight, but that wasn’t her problem. She looked again at her watch. A part of her hoped that Marchant would turn up after they had gone, but she owed him an explanation. She turned on her phone and dialled.
‘Where are you?’ she asked.
‘Ten minutes away,’ Marchant said. ‘I’ve been trying to call.’
‘There’s a change of plan.’
‘What sort of change?’
‘I’ll explain when you get here.’
She hung up and walked over towards the car, fighting back a tear.
Marchant saw the plane coming in low over the scrubland. He was still two minutes away, and urged his driver to hurry up. Events were spiralling out of his control. Meena’s tone worried him. Nobody was being straight with anyone. He cursed himself again for going after Valentin, but he had felt better for it.
Marchant asked the driver to drop him off at the edge of the airfield. He ran across the broken surface, watching the plane turn slowly on the old runway, scattering peacocks. It was a Gulfstream V, the CIA’s preferred choice for renditions after 9/11, the plane Spiro had used to fly him out of Britain the previous year. It had taken him to an old Russian airfield outside Syzmany in northern Poland, where they had waterboarded him. He shut out the thought as he approached Meena. Shushma was standing beside her, their arms too close.
‘Glad you made it,’ Meena said, glancing at the plane, which had now drawn up a few feet behind them. The noise of the jet engines made it necessary to speak loudly to be heard. Shushma was not happy, staring at the ground, trying to cut out the world again, or just in shock.
‘Are you?’ Marchant asked.
‘It was your call to go after the Russian,’ Meena said. ‘The operation was compromised. I had no choice.’
