Dirty Little Secret

by Jon Stock

  Again, all faces swung round to Denton, as if they were watching a tennis match.

  ‘I know my presence in the cockpit of the Russian SU-25 was unorthodox.’

  Unorthodox? Spiro had heard enough. He stood up, gesturing at the screen.

  ‘This man was party to an act of war against the United States. What are you guys doing just sitting here, letting him run circles around you? He’s gone rogue. His half-brother is Salim Dhar, for Chrissake. He’s as good as a terrorist himself. After shooting down a US Air Force plane, he bombed GCHQ. What more frickin’ evidence do you need?’

  ‘Jim, we just need to hear what Marchant’s got to say,’ the PM said. ‘Unlike your country, ours is being subjected to a sustained terrorist assault, and so far we don’t have too much to go on.’

  ‘And you think this guy will help you? I’ll give you a lead. He just sprung Salim Dhar from Bagram jail.’

  There was silence for a moment. Marchant appeared to have heard Spiro’s outburst, and had paused, looking down and to the side like a confused interviewee on a live TV programme. Spiro sat down. He hoped Denton might say something to back him up, but he had withdrawn into himself, lowered his lizard eyes, the way he used to do.

  ‘As I was saying,’ Marchant continued. ‘I’m aware my recent actions have thrown up more questions than answers – about me and Marcus Fielding. One day I hope both of us can explain everything. In the meantime, there’s something you should all know about Ian Denton. His rise to become Chief of MI6 – acting Chief – was not driven by personal ambition, it was the result of blackmail.’

  A low murmur travelled around the room like a Mexican wave. Spiro gripped his upper arms, as if he was cold. The noise in his ears grew louder. He didn’t want to dwell on what Marchant was about to say next, but he knew it would be bad. The whole day was shaping up to be a disaster. His wife was in London, and wanted to meet for a chat. He was relieved she was no longer in the West Bank, but he hadn’t liked her tone of voice – he didn’t know the exact word for it, but it was the opposite of conciliatory.

  ‘For the last fifty years,’ Marchant continued, ‘Moscow Centre has dreamed of having an asset at the top of MI6. Kim Philby almost made it, and they nearly got there with Ian Denton, thanks to the support he received from Washington.’

  Where was Marchant going with this? Spiro glanced at Denton, who was staring into the middle distance, teeth gritted, his jaw pulsing. His own stomach had tightened. The Ambassador had been trying to warn him. Don’t get too close. Denton had been his appointment.

  ‘Fortunately, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary had the good sense not to fully endorse Denton’s appointment, sparing MI6’s blushes,’ Marchant continued. ‘“Acting Chief” won’t look so embarrassing when they come to write the history books. If someone could access the following website – www.dirtylittlesecret.org.uk – there are some photos I’d like to share.’

  Without warning, Denton stood up, gathering his papers as if to leave. ‘I haven’t got time to listen to these baseless lies,’ he said.

  ‘Actually, would you mind holding on, Ian?’ Armstrong said, glancing across at the PM. ‘Allegations of this sort, however unfounded, are my department. And I’d like to clear this up now.’

  Denton turned to the PM, who was looking at Armstrong.

  ‘Harriet’s right,’ the PM said. ‘We need to sort this.’

  Denton sat down again, his limbs almost seeming to give way beneath him. Spiro noticed Armstrong nod at a female member of COBRA staff. A moment later, the screen next to Marchant displayed a government website. Everyone waited, listening to the sound of a tapping keyboard as the URL address Marchant had given was typed in.

  Another murmur, this time louder, mixed with a single female gasp. Spiro traced it to the typist, who had a hand clasped to her mouth. He preferred to look at her than at the image on the screen. It showed a naked Ian Denton bound in chains, clearly in physical pain but sexually aroused nevertheless. Not a pretty site at the best of times, but even more troubling in the cavernous surrounds of COBRA.

  Spiro couldn’t bring himself to look at Denton sitting next to him. No one could. People glanced at the shocking image several times, as if to check, and then anywhere except at the man himself. Awkward wasn’t the word for the car-crash atmosphere, Spiro thought: a head-on collision between the English reserve that usually prevailed in this room and the obscenity now depicted on the screen. For the first time he could remember, the sound of Daniel Marchant’s voice came as a relief.

  ‘This photo – I will spare you the others – was taken three years ago by the SVR, who used it to blackmail Denton. At the time, he was disillusioned with his career at Six – always being overlooked for the top jobs, never quite being given the nod, a bit of an outsider. So why not accept Moscow’s offer? The extra money was handy, and of course the consequences would have been fatal to his career if the photos ever surfaced. And if anyone believes these images are fabricated, Denton communicated with his Russian contact in the Clapham Junction branch of Waitrose last Friday night. I’ve posted photos of that on the website too.’

  ‘Could we see them, please?’ It was the PM, clearing his throat as he leant forward to talk into his table mike.

  ‘There’s a link at the bottom of the screen.’

  A moment later, Denton was clearly identifiable in a grainy photo, but there was no one else in the frame.

  ‘He’s leaving a message disguised as a simple retail barcode,’ Marchant said. ‘If you click on the next link …’ He paused. ‘… You’ll see his Russian contact at exactly the same place – the blini counter – reading the message with his barcode scanner.’

  ‘His real name is Dimitri Khrenkov,’ Armstrong said. ‘A Russian illegal living in the UK under the name of Duncan Spence.’

  Since when did she get in on the act, Spiro wondered. The PM was surprised by Armstrong’s comment too.

  ‘Did you know about this?’ the PM asked, as Armstrong dialled a number on her mobile.

  ‘Marchant contacted me before this meeting,’ she replied. ‘D4 managed to trace Khrenkov.’

  ‘What are you planning to do with these images?’ the PM asked, looking up at Marchant.

  ‘If Denton isn’t removed from his job with immediate effect and Marcus Fielding reinstated as Chief, the website will go live. Search engines won’t have any trouble finding it – I’ve keyworded the images with “Torture” and “MI6”.’

  ‘Counter-intelligence,’ the PM said, turning to Armstrong. ‘It’s your call.’

  Everyone looked up as the door to COBRA opened. Two uniformed Special Branch officers stood there, waiting for instructions.

  ‘Arrest him,’ Armstrong said, snapping her phone shut.

  95

  Salim Dhar made his way out of the medical room and along the corridor, following behind Ali Mousavi and two armed guards. The legs of the oil platform were resting on the seabed, but the superstructure was still prone to swaying. Mousavi refused to confirm their exact location, but it was somewhere in the Strait of Hormuz. The main shipping lanes were clearly visible in the distance, three oil tankers crossing the horizon.

  Two minutes later, after making their way down a metal staircase and through a warren of deserted corridors, Mousavi stood at the entrance to a steel, wheel-locked door. Dhar calculated that they were on the lowest level of the platform’s living quarters, the sea not far below them. Ushered in by Mousavi, he stepped through the door and found himself in a small indoor boatyard. Tools were scattered everywhere, as if they had just been put down, but there was nobody about. Dhar had already noted that, apart from Mousavi, only two medical staff and the two guards had seen his face. He guessed that Mousavi had ordered the boatyard and the living quarters to be evacuated before his arrival.

  In front of him, taking centre stage, was an unpainted vessel. It shared the contours of the Bradstone Challenger, the powerboat Mousavi had shown him in the TV news footage, but it had
none of its glamour or finish. The boat was hanging from a small derrick, and below it big bay doors were set in the floor.

  ‘I thought the Bradstone was still in Karachi,’ Dhar said.

  ‘The real one is. We have mocked this one up, based on technical specifications we managed to acquire from a Bladerunner dealership in Dubai. The boats they sell are not as high-spec as the Bradstone. Our people are reverse-engineering what they can, but we won’t be able to make proper progress until we have the real thing. Still, it gives you an idea of the size and shape. And inside, the controls are identical, so you can get a feel for them. Take a look, why not?’

  Dhar walked over to the hull, climbed up a short ladder propped against it, and slid into the cockpit. There were two big bucket seats at the front, one for the helmsman and one for the navigator. Behind them a long wooden bench ran down one side of the boat to the shell of a galley area. A wooden seat curved around the stern. None of the interior had been finished or upholstered apart from the two seats in the cockpit.

  ‘This is where their loose women sat,’ Mousavi said, gesturing at the cabin. He was on the top rung of the ladder, looking into the cockpit. ‘When they weren’t lying about naked on the deck.’

  Mousavi smiled, but Dhar didn’t want to think of the craft as a place of pleasure for the decadent infidel. As he sat behind the wheel, studying the bank of six monitor screens in front of him, he preferred to concentrate on the boat’s military possibilities, the damage it was capable of causing. In recent days, Mousavi had talked more about the operation that lay ahead. It was not without risk, but the target was so iconic, the global ramifications so immense, that Dhar had struggled to sleep at night, his mind filled with the images that would soon be circulating around the world.

  ‘Does it actually work?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course. But it’s not as fast as the real thing. It doesn’t have the thousand-horsepower Caterpillar engines. Or the Arneson surface drives. Later we will lower it into the water for you to practise. It’s easy to operate. You’ll enjoy it.’

  ‘What about the torpedoes?’ Dhar asked, thinking back to the first time he had sat behind the controls of the SU-25 jet. He had felt daunted then as the Bird, his Russian instructor, had talked him through the flightdeck. This was much simpler.

  ‘That’s why our engineers have built this one. To work out how and where to install them inside the hull. The plan is to fit the real thing with “hoot” supercavitation torpedoes – our own version of the Russian “shkval” system – as soon as it arrives. During recent tests, they travelled at 200 knots, twice the speed of normal torpedoes and too fast for any American ship.’

  Dhar was impressed, but he wondered if he would ever be on the side that wasn’t reverse-engineering others’ technology. Mousavi had talked to him earlier about supercavitation. It was a way of creating a bubble of gas around an object as it moved through water, reducing friction and allowing it to travel at much faster speeds.

  ‘I need to send a message to my people in Morocco,’ Dhar said, still sitting behind the controls.

  ‘Every time you contact the outside world it is dangerous – for all of us.’

  ‘How do you expect me to ask Daniel Marchant about helping in Karachi?’

  ‘I was not thinking of asking him.’

  ‘He might not come quietly. It’s better he knows I’m involved.’

  Dhar couldn’t explain the real reason he wanted to send a message to Marchant. It wasn’t to reassure him about Karachi, but to honour their private arrangement. Thanks to Marchant he now had his freedom, but Britain was still burning. And that troubled him more perhaps than it should. There were over-zealous brothers in London who needed to be stopped.

  ‘Let me first send word to him,’ Dhar said. ‘Then your people can liaise with mine and bring him here.’

  ‘Send word? How will you do this? No one is allowed to leave until the next shift of oil workers arrive – that is why we brought you here. To the outside world, to the Americans, this must appear like a functioning oil platform.’

  ‘I don’t need anyone to leave. Just give me an internet connection.’

  96

  Marchant stepped out of the internet café and glanced up and down the street. Nobody was around. He thanked the owner, who turned the sign on the door back to ‘Open’, and set off towards his riad. The call to COBRA had gone well. Denton had been arrested, and the PM, after a private discussion with the Foreign Secretary, had agreed to Fielding’s return. The only surprise was Spiro’s presence. Luckily, no one had been in a mood to listen to his accusations about Marchant and his role in the Bagram jailbreak. Spiro’s influence in Whitehall was clearly waning.

  There was still a risk, though, that the Americans could make trouble for him. They hadn’t forgotten his role in the downing of an F-22, and they would try to blame him for Lakshmi’s death. At no point in his video conference with COBRA had Marchant discussed his own return or a possible amnesty. For the time being he wanted to remain abroad, unaccountable. There was work to do. Dhar was out there somewhere and had promised to protect Britain. Marchant just hoped his half-brother had detected his hand in the jailbreak. That had always been the deal: Dhar’s freedom in return for Britain’s safety.

  As he reached rue Sidi Mohamed ben Abdullah, Marchant heard a noise behind him. He turned to see a group of fifteen, maybe twenty, street children surge around a corner and run towards him as a pack. They were laughing and playing, one of them scuffing a deflated football along. Marchant tried to move to one side to let them pass, but they were already around him, streaming past on either side. The children were all smiles and there was no menace, but none of them acknowledged him, which struck Marchant as odd.

  Then something touched his hand. Was he being naïve? Had they fleeced him like a swarm of locusts? He felt for his money, and a scrap of paper, screwed up in a tight ball, fell to the ground. It must have been pressed into his palm. He looked up to see the last of the children disappearing around the corner. The child turned back, catching his eye, and was gone.

  Marchant didn’t unfold the paper at once. After doubling back on himself, he walked past the internet café and turned into a small side street before cutting back to rue Sidi Mohamed ben Abdullah. Somebody had known he was at the café, which meant he had been careless. He was certain no one had followed him, but they might be watching now.

  He put the paper in his pocket, unfolded it with his fingers and then brought it out, glancing at it briefly. One word was written on it: ‘Abdul’. He balled the paper and threw it down an open drain.

  Dhar had told him at Tarlton that he would make contact through the camel herders of Essaouira. The most obvious place was on the main beach, at the far end of which he had seen herders standing around in the wind and surf with their camels, waiting for tourists. He hadn’t been over there yet, but he set off now, assuming that Abdul was in some way connected to Dhar.

  Essaouira felt different as he left through the south-eastern gate of the medina and headed towards the beach. He was no longer a visitor, he was a target, the focus of someone’s surveillance. No one was who they seemed any more. Women on the promenade wall were selling henna designs for hands and feet. One of them glanced up at him as he passed. A row of laminated cards showing different patterns was laid out on the pavement in front of the women. Some were complex, like matrix barcodes. Relax, he told himself. The women were just trying to earn a living.

  The beach was shrouded in a heavy sea mist but it was still busy, a riot of football matches. This was no casual Sunday knockabout, Marchant thought. Proper pitches had been marked out in the sand. Players, mostly young men in their teens and twenties, were wearing formal strips, the refs dressed in black and brandishing whistles.

  Marchant walked down to the water’s edge, kicking a ball back to a player as he went. Two runners jogged past, listening to iPods. A few people were swimming. Stray dogs roamed the foreshore, searching for food. Up ahead, a man
appeared out of the mist and headed across the sand towards him, hood up, his arms dripping with watches. Marchant was firmly in his sights.

  ‘Rolex?’ he asked. Marchant smiled but said nothing, walking on. ‘Breitling?’ His time in Marrakech had taught him not to be drawn into dialogue. ‘Sunglasses?’ he heard behind him.

  The kite-surfers were further down the beach, on the far side of the bay, away from the swimmers. Nobody was on the water yet. The mist was slowly lifting, the sun breaking through in patches like dim torchlight. In front of him, a group of French beginners was being given a lesson by an instructor. Their kites and strings were laid out like giant jellyfish.

  An ephemeral layer of sand rippled across the beach towards Marchant as he walked on towards the camels. Some stood in the mist, others were lying down, the occasional grunt carried in the wind. One pair necked like lovers – anything to attract the tourists. Competition for business was fierce, the modern world undermining the camels’ ancient draw. Beyond them, a column of quad bikes snaked through the sand dunes, ridden by a family of tourists. In the far distance, Marchant could make out a rider on a solitary Arab horse, galloping through the shallow surf.

  One of the herders broke away from a group and approached him, pulling on a reluctant camel.

  ‘Five hundred dhirams, half an hour,’ he said. His heart wasn’t in it, Marchant thought. Had he given up on tourists, or was he Dhar’s man?

  ‘Not now. Maybe later,’ Marchant said.

  ‘OK, my friend. If you want camel ride, my name is Saif. Here’s my card.’

  Marchant took it and walked on towards a row of beach cafés and water-sports shops, where rival flags billowed in the wind like tribal standards. At the first café, a man in a tattered blue overcoat moved between orange sun loungers, a bulging plastic bag in his hand.

  ‘Cacahuete! Cacahuete!’ he shrieked, bursting into a toothless, gummy song. ‘Bom-be-bom-be-bom-be-bom-be-bom. Cacahuete! Cacahuete!’ He was selling roasted peanuts and almonds.