Dirty Little Secret

by Jon Stock

  Her father would have been happier if she had continued with her studies at Georgetown University, but he hadn’t known her secret – which was ironic, given that it was an act of rebellion against him. She would ring him now, explain the real reason why she had dropped out, prepare him for the shame it would bring on the family. He would be at home, checking emails at the kitchen table, worrying about the call from the IRS.

  She brought his number up on the phone’s screen and looked at the image of him: never smiling, always formal, as if he was holding his breath. Then she held the phone to her ear, listening to the distant ring.

  ‘Dad? It’s me. I need to tell you something.’

  ‘Ennamma Kannu? I’m so glad you called.’ She could hear him place a muffled hand over the phone, letting her mother know it was their only daughter. ‘I’ve just had another call from the IRS. The whole thing was a hotchpotch, a terrible mix-up. They’re not investigating me any more.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Lakshmi said. Spiro must have moved quickly. ‘That’s so good.’

  ‘I’m just glad we didn’t waste time worrying unnecessarily. I always knew the charges were false.’

  Lakshmi had to smile. Who was he kidding? He had nearly worried himself to death. Just as he had constantly worried about her over the years. And she had always done his bidding, forgoing alcohol, unsuitable men, meat, even caffeine. Her rebellion, when it finally came, had been extreme.

  ‘I wanted to say,’ she began, ‘that I know you were mad at me for dropping out of Georgetown –’

  ‘Baba, you know that’s not the case. And we’re so proud of you now, the important government work you’re doing.’

  ‘I know, but –’ she paused, holding the syringe. ‘It was a difficult time. I wasn’t well. I needed a change of direction.’

  She thought back to the first and only meeting she had attended, when her habit was becoming hard to hide. Twenty strangers – hobos, storekeepers, journalists, a librarian – sat on plastic chairs in a circle, united by narcotics. Up until that anonymous gathering, her addiction had been private. Nobody knew about the stolen hospital supplies of diamorphine hydrochloride, better known as heroin. Shame had made her cunning, and she had concealed her secret life with the ingenuity of a spy. Certainly the vetters at Langley never found out when they later questioned her fellow students and tutors.

  As she had sat there, listening to other people’s stories, the futility of her own rebellion had become all too apparent. No one she cared about had noticed anything. To her friends and family she was still the same clean-living, hard-working Indian girl from Reston, Virginia. Only a group of strangers knew that one of the brightest medics on campus was mainlining. For two weeks she sweated and vomited, vowing never to take drugs again.

  ‘You studied hard,’ her father said.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ she replied, pursing her lips, fighting back the tears.

  She had studied hard all her life, that was the problem. At her father’s behest she had spent every waking hour at her books, shunning nights out in Georgetown, politely declining dates, turning her back on life, all so she could study. It wasn’t his fault, she realised that now. Hard work was the curse of the immigrant, a response to the constant need to justify oneself. What was the point of telling him that she hadn’t always been studying in Georgetown? That she had nearly thrown her life away, the opportunities he had given her, and was in danger of doing so again?

  ‘I just wanted to check you were OK, about the IRS and everything,’ she said.

  ‘It’s all good. Everything’s fine.’

  She said her goodbyes and put the phone down on the bed, looking again at the needle. The paramedic was to blame. After diagnosing that a single gunshot wound had shattered the lower radius and ulna of her left forearm, he had injected her with a 30mg ampoule of diamorphine hydrochloride. It had dulled the pain, like the good analgesic it was, but it had also mimicked the body’s endorphins, triggering a cascade of euphoria that had swept up her student past and laid it out in front of her in all its sparkling glory.

  She sat back, trying to relax. Her dressing gown was drenched in sweat. Rolling up one sleeve, she tied a pair of knickers around her upper arm, tightened the elastic as hard as she could and flexed her hand again. Then she broke open two glass ampoules, one full of sterilised water, the other containing powdered diamorphine hydrochloride BP.

  Although she knew the door was locked, she still looked up to check as she drew the sterilised water into the needle and squirted it into the powder. She shook the solution gently and then searched for the vein at the top of her forearm, sank back against a pillow and sobbed with joy.

  21

  Marchant soon got used to the loose gears of the Morris Minor Traveller as he drove up the A34 towards Newbury. Downhill, the car sat comfortably at 75mph, but it began to shake violently at 80mph. The slightest incline reduced its speed to 50mph. The one time he lost his nerve was when he accidentally pulled out the tiny brass ignition key, only for the engine to continue working.

  The radio worked only intermittently, but the noisy heater produced warmth of a sort. His clothes were sodden and he was shivering, but at least his wallet and phone were dry, sealed in a food bag he had taken from the kitchen.

  The Traveller had been easy to find in the marina car park, as it was the only one of its kind. After Marchant had thanked his rescuers and jogged off down the jetty, telling them he was staying at a friend’s house in Gosport, he had quickly spotted the car’s distinctive ash frame in the distance. The boat had taken a mooring on one of the furthest jetties, at least five hundred yards from the car park, and he was confident that they hadn’t seen him drive away.

  His mobile phone lay on the passenger seat beside him. He had removed the battery as soon as Dhar had rung him. The call would have been picked up by GCHQ, and probably by the NSA too, who would have been monitoring his number. (Rumour had it that the NSA was now listening in on all MI6 comms traffic.) Dhar’s voiceprint would have been recognised and matched within seconds. He must have known that. What was he playing at? More importantly, what the hell was he doing at their father’s house in the Cotswolds?

  Marchant realised that his fears about the missing Russian from the trawler were well-founded. And Myers had been right to be suspicious about the Search and Rescue Helicopter. Dhar must have come ashore with one of the Russians and somehow got himself to Tarlton, using the sailor’s voice to avoid his own being detected.

  It would only be a matter of hours before Dhar was caught. Was he hoping for some kind of protection from Britain? If the Americans reached him first, would he talk, reveal their secret? Or perhaps he realised the game was up, and wanted to see his father’s home before he was killed.

  Marchant thought again about the call. The only thing that had bought Dhar time was that he had chosen to ring from the home of a former intelligence Chief. MI6 had yet to downgrade the security on the line. A few weeks after his father’s funeral, Marchant had been down to comms on the second floor of Legoland and singled out an attractive female technician he had spotted a few weeks earlier.

  ‘I’m going to be living there at weekends,’ he had said. ‘It would make sense if the line stayed.’

  ‘You know it’s against protocol,’ she had replied. ‘Chief and deputy, heads of controllerates – they get secure landlines because they’re important. Last I heard, you were just a cocky field agent.’

  ‘What will it cost me?’

  ‘A drink after work.’

  He had struck worse deals in his time. It turned out she had admired his father, thought he was a great Chief, and felt sympathy for a bereaved son. She would have to put in the order for a downgrade, but cuts in the department budget meant it would be a while before it was processed. She would oversee its delay personally.

  After too many drinks at the Morpeth Arms, he had walked her home to Vauxhall, but turned down coffee. Back then, there had been Leila to think about. Eighteen m
onths on, the line was a forgotten memo and still secure, routed through MI6. But his own mobile phone, despite the encryption, would have been tracked to Fort Monckton, which was why he had removed its battery. He thought of Lakshmi, hoping she was safe. They would come looking for him at the Fort, and she would tell them he had gone to see Fielding.

  It was 4 a.m. when he eventually reached Cirencester, two hours after he had left Gosport. He took the road to Tetbury, turning left to Kemble after a few miles. He didn’t want to drive up to Tarlton in the Traveller. There was a chance that the sailors had noticed it had been stolen and had already raised the alarm. He needed to leave it somewhere it wouldn’t draw attention.

  At Kemble, he turned right into the railway station and a big car park that he remembered. He used to cycle here from Tarlton in the university holidays when he went up to London, leaving his bike against the railings in a well-tended garden beside the platform. There had been no need to lock it, as it was a sit-up-and-beg Hero his father had brought back from India. Modern bikes were stolen regularly from Kemble, but nobody had wanted this one.

  He found a quiet corner, away from the station, and parked the Traveller between two other cars. One was an Aston Martin, the other a BMW. The Traveller might stand out more than he thought. Then he went over to the garden beside the platform, just in case there were any unlocked bikes there. But it was empty, the flowerbeds still well tended. Shivering in the dawn light, he set off back down the road and began the two-mile walk up to Tarlton.

  22

  James Spiro looked out onto a deserted Grosvenor Square and glanced impatiently at his watch. The Marines were running behind time. In his day, if you weren’t five minutes early, you were late. For a moment, he felt the same churn in his stomach that he used to get in Iraq before a contact. Back in the first Gulf War, the Brits had been allies, decent fighters in Operation Desert Storm. How times had changed.

  He didn’t believe Salim Dhar was really holed up in Legoland, but he couldn’t afford to take any chances. After all, who would have guessed that an MI6 officer would be sitting with Dhar in a Russian jet when it took down an F-22 Raptor? He had spent all evening in the crisis centre at the American Embassy, listening to Turner Munroe, the US Ambassador to London, fight a losing battle with Washington. As far as the President and the Pentagon were concerned, there was a good case for withdrawing Munroe in light of the air-show fiasco. The special relationship, if it ever existed, was over, and as Spiro pointed out, it could be argued that Britain had been complicit in an act of war against the US.

  But Munroe had displayed a dogged loyalty to Daniel Marchant.

  ‘Let’s not get too trigger-happy here,’ the Ambassador had said in a lengthy video conference with the White House. ‘We could have been discussing the death of the US Defense Secretary. Marchant has form when it comes to persuading jihadis not to blow people up. I should know.’

  Fifteen months earlier, Marchant had helped to talk a suicide bomber out of killing Munroe and countless other competitors in the London Marathon. At least, that was Marchant’s story. Spiro had begged to differ. In tonight’s discussions with Washington, Munroe had consistently fought Marchant’s corner, calling for restraint until all the facts were known. But the President’s anger had prevailed. The CIA’s London station was given carte blanche to do all they could to find Salim Dhar, last known location somewhere in UK waters.

  Spiro, as head of the Agency’s National Clandestine Service, Europe, was put in charge of the mission. His first call was to surround MI6’s headquarters with a deployment of US Marines who were based permanently at the embassy. He had also given orders for Daniel Marchant to be picked up from Fort Monckton. Fielding couldn’t protect him any longer. Denton had given assurances that Marchant was being held securely, but Spiro knew better than to underestimate Marchant.

  ‘Go in the back door,’ he had told the captain of USS Bulkeley, a destroyer moored in Portsmouth on a meet-and-greet hosted by the Royal Navy. The captain explained that he would need authority from the Pentagon before giving the order to deploy a unit of Seals against an ally he had just been on exercise with. Spiro had anticipated friction. The US Navy wasn’t in the habit of taking orders from the CIA, or storming British military bases. He gave the captain the name of someone to speak to, and told him to get on with it. ‘And leave the woman out of it,’ he added. ‘She’s one of ours.’

  He had expected to hear back from Lakshmi Meena by now, but she hadn’t rung, which made him wary. He had hoped to hear from his wife, too, but that was another story. It had been three days since they had spoken, and he had no idea where she was.

  He pushed her to the back of his mind and thought again about Marchant. As a former Marine, he wished he could be with the Seals when they beached at Fort Monckton. It would be the final humiliation of Marchant and MI6. Instead, Spiro had to settle for the lead jeep as it rolled out of Grosvenor Square five minutes later and headed down Regent Street towards Vauxhall. There were six US Army trucks behind him, carrying a hundred Marines in total. The sight of American forces on the streets of London would send a clear message to the Brits, causing acute political embarrassment. Better still, Spiro hoped, it would scare the crap out of Fielding.

  ‘Ain’t London a beautiful city when it’s empty?’ he said to his driver as they rumbled around a deserted Piccadilly Circus at 3 a.m. Above him, the advert for Coca-Cola flashed in the night.

  23

  ‘I think I know where Dhar might be,’ Denton said, turning to the Prime Minister.

  ‘Go on.’

  The room fell silent as everyone looked down the table at Denton. He paused, calculating the implications one more time. On balance, it was better to share his hunch with COBRA rather than with the Americans, but there wasn’t much in it. He studied the tired, expectant faces and thought that the British establishment had never appeared so weak. If he was going to become a Chief with any power, he would need US support. To win that, he had to give them Dhar on a plate. But he didn’t trust them to capture him. The British were still better at some things.

  Just as he was about to speak, an aide to the Chief of Defence Staff came into the room and whispered something to his boss.

  ‘A contingent of US Marines is currently making its way down Regent Street,’ the Chief of Defence Staff announced, trumping Denton’s announcement. ‘It’s an unauthorised movement. Any US troop activity on UK soil must be cleared first with –’

  ‘Of course it’s bloody unauthorised,’ the PM said. Denton had often noted how, in times of crisis, the military defaulted to mindless protocol.

  Everyone in the room turned to look at the staccato images now streaming live from traffic cameras on Piccadilly Circus. For a moment, Dhar’s location was no longer important. Denton had known it was coming, but the sight of the US military on the streets of London was still chilling. Fielding must have anticipated it too. A few seconds earlier, Denton had received a staff alert informing him that Legoland was in lockdown.

  ‘They’re heading for Vauxhall Cross,’ the PM continued. ‘Unilateral action, just as the President warned.’ He turned to the Chairman of the Defence Advisory Committee, who had been summoned from his club to join COBRA. ‘It’s too late for the papers, but I don’t want to see these pictures tomorrow morning on The Andrew Marr Show.’

  ‘That might be difficult,’ the Chairman replied. ‘The best we can do is put out an MoD release explaining that it’s an exercise.’

  ‘If only it was,’ the PM said. ‘I hope to God Dhar’s not there.’

  ‘He’s not,’ Denton said. ‘And even if he was, the Americans wouldn’t find him. Fielding’s locked down the building.’

  ‘That could be interpreted as the actions of a Chief with something to hide.’

  ‘Just pride.’ Denton paused, looking around the room at his pale, flabby colleagues. Most of them had been up for twenty-four hours. ‘Dhar’s not in London. He’s gone to his father’s house. Stephen Marchant ha
d a big place in the country, in a hamlet called Tarlton, just outside Cirencester.’

  A murmur swept around the room, followed by shuffled papers and disbelieving asides.

  ‘I know it’s been a long night, but are you seriously telling me that Salim Dhar is hiding in the Cotswolds?’ the PM asked. ‘Wouldn’t he want to be as far away from here as possible?’

  ‘It would explain the MI6 number. As Chief, Stephen Marchant’s home was installed with a secure landline. My guess is that it was never downgraded after he died.’ Denton turned to the Chief of Defence staff. ‘How long would it take for the Increment to reach Tarlton?’

  24

  Dhar stood by the grave in the half-light, reading the words that had been carved into the stone. ‘Stephen Marchant 1949–2009. Semper occultus.’ He didn’t know what the words meant. If Marchant showed up, he would ask him. Time, though, was running out – for both of them. He had left the pilot in the house, tied up and gagged. He still wasn’t sure why he had chosen to keep the man alive. Perhaps it was for his own self-preservation. One kidnapped kafir wouldn’t be enough to barter with when they came for him, as he knew they would, but it might stop him being killed.

  He glanced around and knelt awkwardly, trying to ignore the pain in his leg. His father was buried at the back of a small and ancient church, separated from the main house by a gravel drive. It was the first time he had been to a Christian burial site, and he began to recite the last verses of the Surat al-Baqarah, the second chapter of the Holy Qur’an.

  ‘… Our Lord! Lay not on us what we have no strength to bear. Pardon us, forgive us and have mercy on us. You are our Protector; give us victory over the disbelievers …’

  Tears pricked his eyes as he prayed in the early-morning stillness. A gossamer mist hung over the surrounding fields, and his knees were wet with dew. He was here to honour his real father, whom he had only met once, at a black site in South India, but images of another man kept rearing out of the shadows.