Dirty Little Secret

by Jon Stock

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Fielding had his attention now.

  ‘He was asking about your wife. Whether I’d heard the rumours she’d been in the West Bank.’

  Spiro didn’t say anything.

  ‘No actual evidence, of course, just canteen talk.’

  ‘Thirty-year marriages provoke a lot of jealousy around here,’ Spiro said.

  ‘I’m sure. I told him I knew nothing about it. Which isn’t strictly true. The West Bank’s long been a personal interest of mine, a former beat. One of my old contacts in Ramallah emailed some images this morning.’ Fielding looked more closely at a photo of Linda Spiro, camera around her neck, a rock in one hand. ‘“Photography for Peace”, I think they’re called.’

  There was a pause. ‘What do you intend doing with these images?’ Spiro asked, his voice quieter now.

  ‘Nothing. If Daniel Marchant reaches Bandar-Abbas.’

  116

  Fielding’s timing was suspiciously immaculate, Spiro thought as he stepped back into the operations room.

  ‘Sir, we have an unidentified vessel approaching Iranian waters,’ a junior officer said. ‘One mile off the Pakistani port of Gwadar, travelling at 35 knots.’

  Spiro looked up at a video image of a powerboat. The footage was being relayed from the electro-optical camera of an RQ-170 Sentinel drone fifty thousand feet above the Gulf of Oman. Operated by the USAF in Nevada, the drone’s main role in the region was flying over Iran in search of radioactive isotopes found in nuclear weapons facilities, but it had been repositioned to monitor Iran’s recent naval exercises.

  ‘What the hell’s that?’ Spiro asked.

  ‘We’re just working on it,’ the junior officer said. An adjacent screen flickered as maritime recognition software scrolled with dizzying speed through a series of photographs – Iranian fast-attack gun boats, private launches, small military hovercraft. It stopped when it had found a match.

  ‘It’s called a Bladerunner 51, sir. There’s a dealership in Dubai, and –’

  ‘– and there’s one impounded in Karachi,’ Spiro said. ‘At least, that’s where it’s meant to be. Jesus, whose frickin’ side are the Pakistanis on?’

  ‘Sir, this came through earlier,’ another officer said, handing Spiro a report and a stack of photos. Spiro sifted through them. One was of Daniel Marchant entering a dock building in Karachi, taken with a long lens. Marchant looked more suave than Spiro remembered.

  ‘Is this boat armed?’ Spiro asked. ‘Can we zoom in? Get a better still from the Sentinel’s synthetic-aperture radar?’

  Spiro watched as the video feed was replaced by a high-quality still image of the Bladerunner.

  ‘According to the file, it wasn’t armed when it originally left Durban.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past the Pakistanis to have added a bit of firepower,’ Spiro said, walking over to take a better look at the image. ‘Although it doesn’t appear to have any obvious weapon systems.’

  ‘It may have been fitted with torpedoes,’ the junior officer said. ‘That’s what we told the Bureau of Industry and Security before they issued their stop order.’

  The BIS could go to hell, Spiro thought, as he studied the silhouette of someone in the cockpit of the boat. Was it Marchant? If it was, he cut a solitary figure, but a part of Spiro envied him, out there in the field. What was his game? Was he going to meet Dhar? He thought again about Fielding, his threat about the photos.

  ‘Sir, five minutes before the Bladerunner enters Iranian waters,’ another officer said. ‘If we’re going to disable it, we need to act now.’

  ‘Let it go,’ Spiro said.

  117

  ‘Why do you want to see him?’ Ali Mousavi asked.

  ‘He brought us the boat, didn’t he?’ Dhar said. ‘I wish to thank him – and to say goodbye.’

  Dhar watched as Mousavi walked around the medical room. The Iranian had arrived on the oil platform a few minutes earlier. He had come from the military shipyard in Bandar-Abbas, where the Bladerunner was being checked over and fitted with its supercavitation torpedoes.

  ‘He killed one of my men. A loyal colleague. Why would a friend of ours do that?’

  Dhar didn’t know, but he presumed that Marchant had tried to make contact with London and had been caught. According to Mousavi, the minder had been sent with Marchant expressly to prevent any contact with the outside world. But when the boat had been met by Revolutionary Guards as it entered Iranian waters, the minder was missing.

  ‘What does Marchant say?’ Dhar asked.

  ‘He claims they were attacked by pirates. There are many Somalis in these waters, but they do not have boats to match the Bladerunner’s speed. No one does. Marchant is lying.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Here, on the platform, where he will stay. It is best for everyone.’

  Dhar walked up to Mousavi, closed his eyes as if in prayer and then opened them. ‘Bring him to me.’

  His tone was cold and threatening. It was meant to be. He was running out of time. Mousavi stared back at him. For the first time, Dhar saw fear in his eyes. It was as if he was weighing up the whole operation that lay ahead of them, the swarm attack, the Bladerunner, wondering if he had chosen the right person to lead it or was being drawn into something beyond his control. Dhar waited for him to look away.

  ‘Of course,’ Mousavi said. ‘You are brothers. I cannot stand between you. But I must be present, I insist. We can no longer trust this man.’

  A small flame of doubt began to flicker in Dhar’s own mind. He hoped Mousavi hadn’t noticed. ‘Would he have delivered the boat to us if he was still working for the West?’ he asked, hoping to extinguish the thought.

  ‘Perhaps that is why he was able to deliver it,’ Mousavi said. ‘We were never expecting him to complete the journey. The Bladerunner is classified as “military use technology” by the Americans. It’s on a US Treasury watchlist, the subject of international sanctions. How is it possible for such a boat to travel across the Gulf of Oman without being intercepted by the CIA or the US Navy?’

  Another flicker. Dhar didn’t have an answer. It was the British who wanted the address of the second cell in London, and the British who knew that Marchant had to deliver the boat in order to get it; but they wouldn’t have the authority to allow the Bladerunner free passage. Only the Americans could do that. Was his half-brother playing them all?

  Five minutes later, Marchant was shown into the room by two armed guards. He was handcuffed, his face bloodied and his clothes dishevelled, stumbling as he walked. Dhar guessed he had been blindfolded as well as beaten up. He kept his head bowed as his eyes adjusted to the neon lighting. Mousavi nodded at the guards, who returned to their position outside the door. Dhar looked at his half-brother and then at Mousavi.

  ‘Are you working for the Americans?’ Dhar asked. He knew as soon as he had spoken the words that it was an unfounded charge. Of course Marchant wasn’t. He had suffered more than most at America’s hands, spent much of his adult life on the run from the CIA, culminating in him being renditioned and waterboarded. America didn’t treat its own agents like that. Not yet. He wanted to be angry with Mousavi for suggesting the idea, but instead he turned his frustration towards Marchant.

  ‘Answer me!’ he shouted, kicking him hard in his downturned face.

  Marchant looked up, his face full of disdain.

  ‘Our hosts here think you are,’ Dhar continued, already putting distance between himself and the accusation. He hoped Marchant would notice.

  ‘What do you think?’ Marchant said. His lips were swollen, his voice slurred.

  ‘I think you were lucky to travel from Karachi to Bandar-Abbas without being intercepted by the Americans. Perhaps too lucky.’

  Marchant paused before answering, wiping something – blood, spit – from his mouth with the backs of his shackled hands.

  ‘A US warship tried to make contact on Channel 16 after we’d been jumped by the Somalis, but we ignored
it. For the whole journey we stayed in Pakistani waters and then Iranian waters, never more than twelve miles offshore.’

  Was this enough to satisfy the Iranians? Dhar glanced across at Mousavi, who seemed to have relaxed. He was happier too. And feeling guilty for doubting his half-brother. It was time to give him the address in London.

  ‘Like our father, your loyalty is to Britain and our common enemy is America,’ Dhar said, walking around Marchant as if he was inspecting an animal at market. ‘Thank you for bringing the boat. Inshallah, it will help us to strike a mighty blow against the infidel oppressor.’ He paused, judging the moment. It was now or never. ‘I wish I had been able to stay longer in your country. Perhaps gone to London. I’ve never been there.’

  Marchant lifted his head, as if he understood the importance of what was about to be said. Dhar doubted whether Marchant would manage to find a way to communicate with London, but if they were both to die today, as seemed likely, he wanted to honour their deal. As it said in the Holy Qur’an: Those who take a small price for the covenant of Allah and their own oaths – surely they shall have no portion in the hereafter, and Allah will not speak to them.

  ‘I read in a foreign magazine once about a place called Hoxton Square,’ Dhar said, looking at Mousavi, who was checking messages on his phone, unaware of the direction the conversation was taking. ‘There is a gallery there called White Cube. Many artists live in the area, in the surrounding houses, around the square. Their art is not to everyone’s liking. Sometimes they push the boundaries too far, lose sight of their target audience. They need to be stopped.’

  ‘I’ll tell them,’ Marchant said. He didn’t thank him, but Dhar saw gratitude in his eyes. Regret, too, for they both knew it was probably too late.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Mousavi asked, putting away his phone. He seemed preoccupied.

  ‘Misguided artists who attack society,’ Dhar said, smiling at Marchant.

  ‘Come, now is not the time for banter, even between brothers. My colleagues in Bandar-Abbas have messaged to say the flagship is ready.’

  ‘We are done. I have thanked my brother for bringing us the Bladerunner,’ Dhar said, taking Marchant by the shoulders and kissing him on each cheek. ‘And, for the record, I do not believe he is an American spy.’

  ‘We shall see,’ Mousavi replied.

  ‘Good luck,’ Marchant said as the two half-brothers stood facing each other. Somewhere deep inside him, the flame began to flicker again. Dhar wondered if he had misjudged his brother, missed something in his bruised cerulean eyes, which suddenly looked different, more distant? But before he could challenge him, Marchant was being ushered out of the room by Mousavi and down the stairs, where a boat was waiting to take him to the mainland.

  118

  ‘Marchant’s reached Bandar-Abbas,’ Fielding said, replacing his phone. Armstrong was standing in the window, unable to sit.

  ‘We’re out of time, Marcus, aren’t we?’ she said, her back still to him. She had invited herself over to Legoland, hoping, Fielding suspected, that it might somehow encourage Marchant to make contact quicker. Fielding hadn’t objected. It had been a difficult few hours for everyone as pressure mounted from the government and the media to find the second cell of terrorists.

  ‘He’ll call,’ he said, trying to sound confident. He wouldn’t tell Armstrong that Marchant had arrived in Iran as a prisoner rather than a hero, bound and blindfolded and under armed guard. She wasn’t listening anyway.

  ‘Every policeman in the country is on the streets, my own officers haven’t seen their families for weeks,’ she said. ‘We can’t do much more, can’t stop people living their lives, not in Britain. There are seventeen music festivals opening across the country this weekend. What should I have done? Shut them all down, told the organisers we’ve been unable to find the bombers but we think they might be about to blow up your main stage?’

  ‘You’ve done everything you can, Harriet.’

  Fielding rarely felt sorry for others, but he pitied Armstrong now. It was the loneliest hour for any intelligence chief, when all ideas were spent and the clock was ticking down. And it was worse for Armstrong. The buck stopped with the Director General of MI5 when the terror was home-grown.

  ‘Have I?’ she asked.

  Before he could answer, an incoming call flashed up on his comms panel. It was an Iranian number.

  119

  Marchant took out the first guard with a blow to the back of the head, catching him by surprise after he had called him into the medical room. The second guard put up more resistance. It wasn’t easy with his hands bound together, but Marchant used the metal cuffs to his advantage, wielding his wrists like a mace, just as he had done with the minder on the boat.

  When both guards were finally lying still on the floor, he felt around in their pockets and found a metal key, a pair of electronic key cards and two mobile phones. The key fitted the handcuffs, and he released his wrists. Then he removed the guards’ handguns and slipped them into the waistband of his trousers.

  He had waited twenty minutes before attacking them, long enough for Mousavi and Dhar to have left the oil platform for the mainland. His head was throbbing, still in pain from the beating he had taken earlier on the naval patrol boat. At least he had had time to think as he had been shut away below decks, a chance to stand back from the deal he had entered into with Dhar.

  His priority remained getting the London address to Fielding, but after that he would do everything in his power to stop Dhar. He couldn’t stand by while an American supercarrier was attacked by a boat he had provided. He owed it to Lakshmi. She was right: he had been blackmailed. The operation to run Dhar was over. Marchant didn’t understand Lakshmi’s loyalty to America, but he no longer shared Dhar’s deep hatred of it either, regardless of what had been done to him in America’s name. He hoped his father would understand.

  He pulled out one of the mobile phones and dialled Fielding’s direct line.

  ‘It’s dropped,’ Fielding said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Armstrong turned away, biting her lip.

  Marchant cursed the phone. The signal strength was poor, and the call had not connected. He tried the other phone, but the signal was no better. He needed to ring again from somewhere else on the oil platform. After listening at the door, he locked it behind him with one of the electronic keys, and moved down the corridor towards the staircase. The only sound was a low-level hum that reverberated through the floors and walls of the platform. He assumed it came from the drilling rig. As far as he could tell, the platform was fully operational, despite its covert military role. During the Iran–Iraq war in the 1980s, oil platforms had been fitted with anti-aircraft guns, and there had been no secret about their strategic use.

  He made his way down the staircase to the lower deck, where Dhar had spoken of a small indoor boatyard and a mock-up of the Bladerunner. There was still no phone signal. He pushed at an outside door and walked out onto a gantry where, incongruously, someone had planted flowers in a row of clay pots. The dash of colour – crimson red, blue – brightened up the industrial setting, gave him hope.

  He checked the superstructure above and around him. No one was about. The entire living quarters seemed to be deserted. Then he looked out to sea, towards Bandar-Abbas. In the distance, a line of small fast-attack gunboats was heading out towards the Strait. Behind it was another line of boats, then another. The swarm was gathering.

  He dialled Fielding’s number, and this time it began to ring.

  120

  ‘Hoxton Square,’ Fielding said aloud, for Armstrong’s benefit. ‘Can you be more specific?’

  ‘That’s all he told me,’ Marchant said. ‘It might be an artist’s house, maybe a studio, but the cell’s somewhere in the square.’

  Armstrong was already on the phone, dispatching CO19 and her own officers to Hackney. They would have to close the entire square. It would take time to search every house, and there was a danger the ter
rorists would try to escape.

  ‘You need to give the Americans a heads-up about something too,’ Marchant said. ‘A warning.’

  ‘I didn’t know you cared.’

  ‘The Revolutionary Guard’s navy is currently massing fast-attack boats in the Strait.’

  ‘They’ve been doing that for days. It’s part of an ongoing naval exercise.’

  ‘Not today. This time it’s for real.’

  121

  Marchant watched as wave after wave of boats surged out into the Strait, heading past Qeshm island in his direction. No wonder the oil platform was deserted. Everyone was at sea. He estimated there were about a hundred boats, maybe more. On the far horizon, towards Oman, he could make out the profiles of several warships, including the distinctive angled outline of the USS Harry S. Truman. Was that the target?

  An array of the world’s most sophisticated weapons stood between the swarm and the Truman, but it had never had to deal with more than a hundred hostile boats approaching at once. It would only need one to get through. Was Dhar in the Bladerunner?

  Marchant went back inside. He needed to find the indoor boatyard that Dhar had mentioned, and try to get out into the Strait on the mocked-up Bladerunner. Dhar had apparently been on it with an instructor, so he knew it was seaworthy. He hoped it hadn’t been requisitioned for the swarm attack.

  He headed down the corridor, trying to calculate where the boatyard might be. As he turned a corner, he heard voices approaching and slipped into an open doorway, one of his guns drawn. Two men in bright orange overalls walked past, chatting in Hindi. He waited until they had gone, then continued along the narrow corridor to a door at the far end. He looked through a glass panel, but inside was just a staff canteen, deserted except for a solitary oil worker.

  There was only one place left to try. Turning right, he followed another corridor, surprised by the size of the living quarters. It was like being on a big ship: a maze of endless narrow walkways, metal staircases and portholes. Up ahead there was a heavy door with a wheel-lock that suggested tighter security. He held one of the electronic keys he had removed from the guards’ pockets against a panel on the wall, but nothing happened. He tried the other key, and this time there was a click. Turning the wheel, he swung the heavy door open. The place was deserted. It was just as Dhar had described: a small indoor working boatyard. In front of him was what he was looking for: a crude copy of the Bladerunner, suspended from a launch derrick like captured booty.