by Jon Stock
‘If it’s any consolation, your British half-brother is distraught,’ Primakov said, turning back to face him. ‘He gave your mother his personal word that she would be taken to London. If Spiro hadn’t been armed, Marchant would have killed him.’
‘He is ready to help us, then?’ Dhar asked, happy to move the conversation away from his mother.
‘Marchant could forgive the West once. But now, following your mother’s rendition, he is struggling to call Britain his home.’
Dhar flinched again at the mention of his mother. He closed his eyes, trying to calm the twitch, control the body with the mind.
‘We need to be sure,’ he said, raising a reluctant hand to steady his eyelid. It was too much. ‘Rendition’ and ‘mother’ were words he never wanted to hear together again. ‘After all that happened to Marchant before, he still went back to work for the infidel.’
‘He wants to meet you. I have told him everything about your father, how I recruited him in Delhi, his twenty years of service to Moscow.’
‘How did he react?’
‘Like you, I think he suspected already. There was relief in his eyes. Let us see. He must pass one final test before he joins us.’
70
‘I thought I should drive to Heathrow, pick Daniel up,’ Ian Denton said, standing in front of Marcus Fielding’s desk. Fielding was lying on the floor behind it, partly out of sight, trying to relax after another back spasm. ‘He must be pretty cut up after what happened in Madurai.’
‘It’s OK,’ Fielding said. ‘I’ve just sent Prentice. With orders to get Marchant drunk. Look out for him when he’s back in the office, though. He’ll have no desire to talk to me.’
Fielding was touched by Denton’s concern. Despite his cold-blooded demeanour, he had a warm heart. And he had always taken an interest in Marchant’s welfare.
‘Of course.’ Denton paused. ‘Is everything all right with Daniel?’
‘As much as it ever is with him,’ Fielding said. He wanted to confide more in his deputy, but he couldn’t. Denton’s own deep suspicion of the Americans had brought him close to Marchant in recent months, but Fielding knew that the plan to help Marchant defect must remain known only to himself.
‘I’ll leave it to Prentice, then,’ Denton said. ‘And look forward to signing off his exorbitant expenses.’
Fielding sometimes wished his deputy would unbutton a little, let things go, but he could never remember an occasion when Denton had got drunk. After he had left, Fielding unzipped the second encrypted audio file from GCHQ and listened, reading the covering note from his opposite number at Cheltenham. Grushko again, this time talking to an unnamed colleague in Moscow Centre. It had been recorded a few hours earlier.
‘I still have my doubts.’
‘About Marchant?’
‘About everyone. Marchant, Comrade Primakov.’
‘The Muslim is keen to see his brother.’
‘I just think we should use him.’
‘Argo?’
‘That’s what he’s there for, isn’t it? Moments like these.’
‘It’s a risk. Warsaw is on to him.’
‘They get on well. Marchant will confide in Argo if he’s genuinely upset. He should try to meet him at the airport when he arrives back in Britain.’
The recording ended suddenly. ‘Argo’ was an unusual choice, nostalgic. It was the codename the KGB had assigned to Ernest Hemingway in the 1940s. Fielding tried to linger on the historical detail, delay the realisation, the rising nausea, but it was impossible. In one awful moment, he had traced the line of succession, identified the inheritor. He reached for the phone, too heavy in his hand, and dialled General Borowski, head of Agencja Wywiadu, Poland’s foreign intelligence agency, at his home on the outskirts of Warsaw.
71
‘Come on, Daniel. That’s what we do. We use people.’
Marchant hadn’t been pleased to see Prentice waiting for him at arrivals. It was a sight that was starting to annoy him, particularly as this time Prentice explained that he had been sent as a peace envoy by Fielding. But he was an old family friend, someone he had always found it easy to confide in. His offer of alcohol was welcome, too. Marchant had been drinking on the plane, and was happy to keep going. A bender loomed. Prentice had driven him into central London, and they were now sitting at an outside table at Bentley’s Oyster Bar in Swallow Street, off Piccadilly. It was one of Prentice’s favourite restaurants.
‘Are you using Monika?’ Marchant asked, a smile softening the question’s harsh undercurrent. Something about their relationship was still bugging him, and he was sure it wasn’t jealousy.
‘You’ve got a thing for her, haven’t you?’ Prentice washed an oyster down with a deep draft of Guinness. ‘I can see why. She’s a great lay.’
‘I’m sorry, Marcus, we should have informed you of our suspicions.’
Usually, Fielding’s conversations with General Borowski were upbeat. He was an old-school spy who liked to be taken to the Traveller’s Club for a sharpener whenever he came to London. Now, as they talked, Fielding felt only numbness. There was always the chance in his line of work that the man sitting at the next desk was praying to a different god, but it had still come as an almighty shock. Was this how the happily married felt when they discovered their partner had been cheating all along?
‘How long have you known?’ Fielding asked, trying not to think back, recalibrate the past, reassess the future.
‘We never knew exactly, but the worry has been there for several months. At first, we thought it was someone else.’
‘Who?’
‘Come on, Marcus. You know there’s little point in our game of causing offence unnecessarily. We have the right man now. That’s all that matters.’
‘And you’re confident the codename matches?’
‘We picked up “Argo” in an intercept last month.’
Fielding closed his eyes. For the first time in years, he felt he wanted to weep. ‘You really should have pooled it. The damage could be irreducible. Ongoing operations jeopardised, entire networks blown.’
‘I’m sorry, truly.’ Borowski paused. ‘There’s something else. We put someone onto him as soon as he became our main suspect. Monika is one of our best agents — you may remember she helped Daniel Marchant earlier last year — but I’m worried. Argo has not only betrayed our country, he has caused the death of several colleagues, most recently her brother. She’s taken it very personally.’
Marchant ordered another Guinness, his smile now slack with alcohol. Prentice liked to provoke him, and the only response was to join battle.
‘I’m surprised you can still eat seafood, after what happened with the sushi at the gallery,’ Marchant said.
‘It wasn’t the food, it was the wine,’ Prentice replied.
‘And there was I thinking you had a strong head. One glass of red and you were arse over tit.’ Marchant paused, thinking back to the evening at the Cork Street gallery. He hadn’t seen Prentice since he had collapsed in the corner. It had been unlike him. ‘Monika was good to me in Poland, that’s all. I wouldn’t want her to get hurt.’
‘She’s a big girl, Dan.’
‘Maybe she’s using you.’
Prentice looked at Marchant for a moment, his gaze cutting through their drunken banter. Marchant was in no doubt that one of them was using the other. He just wasn’t sure why.
‘I’m a father figure. She lost hers when she was young. We’re in the same business, we lie and cheat for the same noble causes.’ Prentice shucked another oyster open with a knife. ‘Where’s the harm?’
CCTV cameras never pointed exactly where you wanted them, but Fielding could see enough from the intercepted live relay in his office to know that both men were drunk, relaxed, laughing. It couldn’t be worse. The reason he had sent Prentice was to reassure Marchant, give him an opportunity to whinge about MI6 and its methods. And that was exactly what the two of them appeared to be doing. He could only bl
ame himself. They were good friends, even closer after Prentice had rescued Marchant from the CIA’s waterboarders in Poland.
Fielding had to move fast. Moscow would be listening to their man, live-streaming every word. It was essential that Marchant played the right music, said nothing that undermined the genuine anger he had displayed in Madurai. If he revealed that it had been fabricated in order to convince the Russians, they would never go near him again. As far as Moscow was concerned, Marchant was ready to defect, not comparing drunken notes with a colleague about an unscrupulous boss. Fielding reached for his mobile phone.
‘Talking of lying,’ Marchant continued, ‘you’ve known Fielding a lot longer than me. Has he ever double-crossed you?’
‘First, he’s using you, now it’s double-crossing,’ Prentice said. ‘What mortal sin did our Vicar actually commit?’
Marchant knew Prentice had been told the basics about his trip to India, that he was there to bring back Salim Dhar’s mother, but it was still an unusual question to ask another officer. Both of them were steeped in MI6’s strict culture of compartmentalisation, Prentice more than anyone. He was one of MI6’s longest serving field men, an old friend of his father’s and one of Fielding’s allies. He should have known better. Marchant decided to keep things general.
‘Fielding told me I was to bring the target home, but that was never the plan. She was always heading further west.’
‘And our cousins couldn’t have renditioned her without your help?’
‘That’s about it.’
‘A premier-league stitch-up. But it’s unlike Fielding. Lakshmi Meena?’
‘Way over her head.’ Marchant suddenly felt protective. He was sure it hadn’t been her plan. ‘Spiro.’
‘What an arsehole. You don’t seem too cut up about it all. Fielding said you’d be out the door.’
‘Did he?’
Marchant tried to gauge where the conversation was heading, what he could reveal. He wanted to confide in Prentice, confess to him that he had failed to play the traitor. But he knew he couldn’t. Prentice had been told nothing of Primakov’s past, or of Marchant’s efforts to be recruited by him. There was something else bothering him too, a distant nagging that he had learned not to ignore.
‘Let’s face it,’ Prentice continued. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time you were on the outside.’
But Marchant wasn’t listening any more. His phone had buzzed in his pocket, and he glanced at the text. It was from Fielding, and it consisted of only one word: ‘Resign.’
He put the phone away and looked at Prentice, smirking. ‘Lakshmi Meena. She wants to buy me a peace drink too.’
‘Will you accept?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Marchant sat back, trying to look relaxed as he glanced around the bar. Resign. He assumed Moscow must be listening. ‘You know, perhaps Fielding’s right. I’m finished with all this. I’ve had enough. I hear what you say, but I’m not prepared to be a part of what happened in India. I gave Dhar’s mother my word, for what it’s worth. Now Spiro will kill her.’
A moment later, an Italian motorbike was beside their table on the pavement. Marchant had heard its accelerating engine, but assumed it was heading up Piccadilly, not coming down Swallow Street behind him. The next few seconds seemed to slow down, but he knew afterwards that they had passed with the speed of a professional job. There were two people on the bike, both wearing black leathers and helmets with tinted glass. The one on the pillion raised a silenced, long-barrelled revolver and fired twice at Prentice before the bike roared away, narrowly missing a group of pedestrians walking up from Piccadilly.
Marchant had instinctively turned his back as the shots were fired, lifting his legs and arms to protect himself. When he looked up, he saw a woman standing ten feet away, a hand to her mouth. After what seemed an eternity, she began to scream, a terrible, almost inhuman cry. He turned to look at Prentice, slumped in the metal chair opposite him, his eyes more startled than pained. He had been shot twice in the forehead, two neat entrance wounds beginning to weep thick red tears.
72
‘It’s a bloody mess,’ Fielding said, walking through the graveyard of the small Norman church at Coombe Manor. ‘Officially, we’re mourning the passing of one of the Service’s finest officers. Unofficially, we’re burying a traitor.’
Marchant looked out on the idyllic English setting, down the valley across fields dusted with poppies. It was the sort of pastoral scene his father had loved: rolling hills dotted with small pubs where eighteenth-century cartoons hung on deep red walls and cool slate floors offered respite from the somnolent heat of summer. At the far end of the valley the land rose steeply to Coombe Gibbet, where a group of cyclists was silhouetted against the blue skyline.
The secluded setting was on the borders of west Berkshire, in a green pocket of Albion that was thick with retired ambassadors and politicians. Many of them had turned out today, their dark suits jarring in the July sunshine as they gathered around the grave. Prentice’s younger brother, who worked in the City and lived in the hamlet, had helped to carry the coffin, which was now being lowered into the ground.
‘The Polish evidence is strong?’ Marchant asked as the two of them dropped back from the main group.
‘Incontrovertible. It’s just a pity she took matters into her own hands. A debrief would have been helpful.’
Fielding nodded at a small gathering of people under the trees, at the far end of the graveyard. Monika was flanked by two bulky men in suits, one of whom was handcuffed to her. Marchant hadn’t seen her inside the church, and assumed that she had just arrived. He would talk to her later, when his own feelings had settled. Prentice was dead, unable to justify himself, explain why he had crossed the divide. He couldn’t forgive Monika for that, for ending the treachery but not the confusion. She had denied them all an answer, a taste of the forbidden fruits of defection.
He caught up with Fielding, who was heading over towards Ian Denton, a lean presence in the shade. Marchant knew that the deputy’s attendance at the funeral was purely for appearances’ sake. Most people assumed he had only turned up to make sure Prentice was dead. Denton had been sympathetic to Marchant, though, acknowledging that he had lost a close friend.
It was more complicated for Fielding. The news of Prentice’s betrayal had aged him. Late nights at the Foreign Office defending his officers had left him gaunt and withdrawn. It wasn’t just the security implications, it was the personal humiliation. Everyone knew that in Prentice he had finally found someone he could trust. He had dropped his guard. The D-Notice committee had done what it could to limit the media fallout, while Fielding had called in personal favours with security correspondents, but there was little disguising that the Service was reeling. A High Court injunction was out of the question, as national security was not at risk. Just MI6’s reputation. I/OPS had set to work planting exaggerated press stories of Prentice’s gambling habits, but the damage had been done.
‘The one mercy is that Warsaw’s not going public,’ Fielding said. ‘They can’t afford to. Hiring gangland hitmen isn’t part of the AW’s charter. Hugo was in debt. He liked to gamble, owed bad people money. End of story.’
Marchant knew that Prentice had often rolled the dice. Even in death, his cover story was based on truth.
‘Were our own networks compromised?’
‘We’re still checking. Did you manage to tell Prentice that you were resigning?’
Marchant thought back again to the restaurant, a scene his mind was keen to erase. He had relived the details too many times already for the police and MI6’s own counter-intelligence officers: the unusual Benelli TNT motorbike, the silence before the screams, as if no one could quite believe what they had seen.
‘It was the last thing I said before he was shot.’
‘Then there’s hope that the Russians still believe in you.’
‘You’re sure they were listening?’
‘Moscow asked Argo to sound you out when
you arrived back at the airport. And I bloody sent him.’ Fielding shook his head and walked on. ‘I’m sorry about Madurai and Spiro, but for a time they had their doubts.’
‘And now they don’t?’
‘Let’s hope not.’
‘Where is she now? The mother.’
Fielding paused before answering. ‘You tell me.’
Marchant stared at him and then turned away. He knew what he was meant to say. ‘Bagram.’
The very name made him flinch. The airbase’s notorious theatre internment facility was not for the faint-hearted. Up to five hundred enemy combatants could be housed there at any one time. Marchant was sure Shushma was safe, in a secure location somewhere in Britain, not at Bagram, but Fielding wasn’t prepared to break the spell, not yet. It was a reminder of what lay ahead, the mindset he needed to adopt if he was to convince Salim Dhar of his treachery.
‘And still with Spiro,’ Fielding added. ‘Don’t resign just yet. You’ll be of more use to them in the Service. Dissemble, rebel, fall apart. Remember how you felt in India, how you feel now. They’ll be watching.’
Marchant deeply resented the way he was being handled, but no doubt that was the point. It wasn’t the time to challenge the Vicar about tactics, his lack of faith in him.
‘They’ve asked me to do something,’ Marchant said. ‘A final test before they exfiltrate me.’
‘Then make sure you pass it. I can’t help any more. You’re on your own now.’
Fielding was about to move to join the main group in the churchyard, but he hesitated, knowing there was something else that Marchant wanted to ask. They both knew what it was. The wider implications of Prentice’s treachery stretched like poison ivy back into the Service’s past as well as out across Europe’s network of agents.
‘Hugo was like family,’ Marchant said, watching a red kite wheel in the sky above the church. He felt his eyes begin to moisten, and turned away from the bright sun. ‘My father trusted him.’ Trusted a traitor. If Prentice could betray his country, then so could my father, his oldest friend.
