Games Traitors Play

by Jon Stock

‘A local anaesthetic,’ Meena said.

  ‘Correct.’ Fielding walked on, leaving her to look at the plant. She drew level with him again, like a schoolchild catching up with her teacher.

  Fielding stopped at the junction of two paths. He was tired after his journey back from Penzance the previous night, and had hoped the peaceful surroundings of the Chelsea Physic Garden would offer comfort and solace. He had become a member soon after joining the Service, but the garden had grown too popular in recent years to be of any use as a regular meeting place. In the past, he had used it when he met players from foreign intelligence agencies who wanted an encounter on neutral ground. Tonight, a warm July evening, the director had opened it especially for him. Half an hour on his own, the garden empty except for him and Meena, a chance to reacquaint himself with its pharmaceutical beds.

  ‘Listen, we’ve hardly endeared ourselves over the past year or so, I’m the first to admit that,’ Meena said. ‘All I can say is that I think Daniel Marchant is a guy I can work with. And right now he’s the only one who’s gotten close to Dhar.’

  Fielding turned to face her. He was struck again by how similar to Leila she looked in the soft evening sun. Perhaps that was why he had been wary of inviting her to Legoland. She brought back too many bad memories. They had all been fooled by Leila. So had the CIA, which had been out of favour with the British ever since it had renditioned Daniel Marchant.

  The Agency had done little to improve its reputation in the subsequent year, wielding too much power in Whitehall. Marchant’s treatment in Morocco at the hands of Aziz had tarnished its name even further. Now, following the very public death of six US Marines at the hands of a CIA Reaper, the Agency was a full-blown international pariah. Any trust that had started to come back between it and MI6 had turned to dust. But there had been something about Meena’s call to his office earlier in the day that had made him agree to see her. A candidness that he feared he wouldn’t be able to reciprocate.

  ‘Do you think that Daniel was right about Dhar and the High Atlas?’ Fielding asked.

  ‘More right than we were about Af-Pak.’

  ‘A shame that the Agency didn’t let him travel earlier. Did you believe he was right when Spiro sent you to Marrakech?’ Fielding knew it was an unfair question.

  ‘Spiro was my superior. I did as he told me.’

  ‘That’s not what I’ve heard.’

  Fielding had done some research since her call, walked down to the North American Controllerate and asked around. Meena had an impressive reputation for standing up to Spiro, which took courage, particularly for a woman. She had graduated from the Farm with honours, impressing with her language skills but also her integrity, which must have been a novelty for the CIA examiners. In normal circumstances, her posting to Morocco would have been a sideways career move, but her brief was to keep an eye on Daniel Marchant, which reflected her importance.

  Fielding had then spoken to his opposite number in Langley, the DCIA who had famously promised his President – and Britain – to end the bad old ways and then promptly promoted James Spiro to head of Clandestine, Europe. He had been phoning London repeatedly, presumably to try to patch things up, but Fielding had let him sweat. The last time he rang, Fielding had taken the call.

  Spiro, the DCIA explained, had been suspended following the drone strike, and the Agency would be apologising formally for the treatment of Daniel Marchant in Morocco, even though it was at the hands of a foreign intelligence service over which the CIA had little control. ‘And the British know all about that,’ he had added caustically. (The British courts’ decision to make public the torture of a detainee in Morocco hadn’t played well in Langley.) As a gesture of goodwill, the Agency was transferring Lakshmi Meena to London and offering her services as a liaison officer.

  ‘She represents the Agency’s future, Marcus,’ the DCIA had added. ‘And this time she’s above board.’

  ‘Did you ever meet Leila?’ Fielding asked Meena, sitting down on a bench in front of a bed of Digitalis lanata, a plant that he knew better as Dead Man’s Bells.

  ‘No, sir.’ Meena glanced around briefly and then sat down beside him.

  ‘She was a liaison officer for the Agency, too, only nobody ever bothered to tell us. We thought she was working for Six. In the end, it turned out she wasn’t working for either of us.’

  ‘But she saved our President’s life.’

  ‘Did she?’ Fielding realised that Meena would not know about Leila’s ties with Iran. That information was too classified. But had national loyalties really meant anything to Leila? Fielding couldn’t deny that at the final reckoning in Delhi, she had stepped forward and taken a bullet meant for the US President.

  ‘I appreciate that Leila’s case was not straightforward,’ Meena said. ‘The Agency should have declared her to London as an asset. It was wrong, but those were different times. All I can say is that I’m not Leila.’

  No, but you look like her, Fielding thought. Has anyone ever told you? That in a certain light, your hair falls over your eyes in a way that would have confused even your mothers.

  ‘How did you get on with Daniel Marchant in Morocco?’

  ‘Getting along might be stretching it. I don’t blame him. I should have done more to stop Abdul Aziz.’

  ‘Daniel’s coming back to London today. Quite a toothache, I gather. With respect, can you give me one good reason why he would want to work with you?’

  ‘Listen, we were wrong about Salim Dhar, and we’ve got six dead Marines to prove it. I don’t know what happened in the High Atlas, but I think the DCIA now accepts that the only person who might be capable of finding Dhar is Daniel Marchant. And to that end, I’m here to help him, to help you.’

  ‘I suppose we don’t really see your arrival in London in terms of international aid. From where we stand, all the help would seem to be coming from our side. I’m not quite clear what you can give us in return.’

  ‘I think our Delhi station has just found Dhar’s mother.’

  ‘Where?’ Fielding struggled not to let his interest show. Dhar had always been very close to his mother, who had been identified by MI6’s profilers as a possible weakness. Once it became clear that it was her son who had tried to assassinate the US President in Delhi, she had gone into hiding, unlike her husband, who had very publicly disowned his wife and son, and reiterated his love of all things American.

  ‘They’ve traced her to a temple in south India. Madurai. Given your progress with Dhar and our own catastrophic failure, Langley would like it to be a joint operation. They’re closing in on her now.’

  40

  Marchant walked through arrivals, instinctively checking for cameras, scanning the Heathrow crowds. Prentice was a few yards behind. He had insisted on staying with him after he had picked him up from the far end of the beach, three miles from the resort. He had driven him to Cagliari airport, sat next to him on the plane, made sure no one was offering upgrades. Fielding’s orders. Prentice wasn’t to leave him on his own until he was safely in his Pimlico flat. Marchant couldn’t complain. He’d messed up in Morocco, failed to leave the country under snap cover.

  Marchant spotted Monika a moment before she began waving in his direction. There was little that gave her away as the Polish intelligence officer who had helped him to flee Warsaw more than a year ago, sharing joints and her bed with him, all in the line of duty. The gipsy skirt had been replaced by a jacket and jeans, the braided hair disciplined by a tight bun, but she still had the same carefree gait. Marchant had been travelling under the name of David Marlowe at the time, and he knew that she wasn’t really called Monika, but he would always remember her as that, the woman in the hippy hostel with a flower in her hair.

  He was about to wave back, surprised by the sudden quickening of his pulse, but then he realised that she wasn’t looking at him.

  ‘Recognise her?’ Prentice asked, coming up on Marchant’s shoulder with a grin. The next moment, Prentice and Monika were kis
sing each other across the barrier. Marchant couldn’t believe it was jealousy that made him turn away. He and Monika had both been operating under cover stories when they had met in Poland. He had been on the run from the CIA, she was helping him escape: each living a lie, doing their job.

  ‘Hello, Daniel,’ Monika said, breaking away from Prentice to give him a kiss on both cheeks. He remembered her smell as their skin brushed, and he wondered for a second if it had been more than duty in Warsaw. ‘I’m sorry about Leila,’ she added more quietly.

  ‘Do I still call you Monika?’

  ‘Hey, why not?’

  Because that’s not your name, Marchant thought, but he kept silent. Her English was almost perfect, better than when they had met in Poland. And her smile was still too big, her full lips out of proportion with her petite body. She was no more than twenty-five, young enough to be Prentice’s daughter. Marchant should have been pleased for him, an old family friend. But he wasn’t. Something wasn’t right.

  ‘Did I tell you?’ Prentice asked him when they were a few yards from the main exit. Monika had fallen behind a crowd of arrivals and was out of earshot.

  ‘What’s there to tell?’ Marchant said, trying to play things down.

  ‘That I’m sleeping with the enemy.’

  ‘Were you in Warsaw?’

  ‘You know me better than that.’

  Marchant didn’t miss the sarcasm. Relationships within MI6 weren’t unusual, but they weren’t encouraged, and they seldom ended happily. ‘Don’t poke the payroll’ – it had been one of Prentice’s first bits of advice to Marchant when he had arrived at Legoland. Seeing someone from another intelligence agency was more complicated, but clearly not impossible, particularly for an agent as experienced as Prentice.

  ‘Last time I checked, Poland was an ally,’ Marchant said.

  ‘Let’s just say it’s easier now I’m back in London. Listen, sorry to be neckie, but can you get yourself to Pimlico on your own? It will buy me some time with the office. You know how it is. She’s only over here for a few days.’

  Monika was standing beside Prentice now, an arm through his, tugging him away. She was playing the sexually outgoing coquette, just as she had with him.

  ‘Of course I bloody can.’ Marchant had had enough of being chaperoned. And he needed a drink.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ Monika asked him. He searched her eyes, but he no longer knew what he was looking for, or why he even cared. Was this the real Monika? Screwing an old rake like Prentice? She had never once been herself with him in Poland, not even at the airport, when he hoped their masks might have finally slipped. For a moment, Marchant wondered if he would ever know anyone properly.

  ‘Everything’s fine,’ he said. ‘I never got the chance to thank you.’

  And with that he lost himself in the crowds. He was happy to have left Prentice behind, but by the time he reached the escalator down to the Underground ticket hall he was aware that someone else was following him. When he reached the bottom, he looked at his watch and took the elevator back up again, scanning the faces of the people coming down. Most were looking ahead, but a tall man in a beaten leather jacket had his face turned away, taking too much interest in the electronic advertising posters. If it wasn’t Valentin from Sardinia, he had a twin in London. Hit back hard, Prentice had said.

  The thought of Valentin following him to Britain was irritating. Marchant had expected him to have been arrested at the resort in Sardinia and flown back to Russia in disgrace for exposing his leader’s sexual preferences to the world, but here he was, about to follow him home to Pimlico.

  Marchant turned and took the elevator back down again. The Russian was now at platform level, peeling off left to the westbound platform. Marchant just had time to clock his shoes: fashionably long with narrowed, flat toes. ‘Look at the footwear,’ his father had always told him. It was something he had never forgotten, whether it was colleagues in Legoland or targets in the field. Often it was the one thing that they failed to change when outfits were swapped, snap covers adopted in a hurry.

  By the time Marchant had reached the bottom of the escalator, there was no sign of the Russian. He tried to turn left, but the crowds were almost spilling onto the tracks. He had lost him. He pushed his way to the platform edge. First, he looked left down the long line of people waiting for a train, then to the right. Twenty yards away, a pair of shoes was sticking out beyond everyone else’s. He had found his man.

  Marchant moved as quickly as he could through the crowds, feeling the warm wind of an approaching train on his face. Thirty seconds later, he was positioned behind the Russian. It was definitely Valentin. He must have decided to drop off his tail, suspecting that he had been spotted, and was now standing with his legs apart on the platform edge, trying to steady himself against the crush of people swarming in different directions.

  A member of the station staff asked over the Tannoy for people to move to the far end of the platform. He was unable to disguise his concern. The station was overcrowding. Marchant glanced at the tourists around him, holding anxiously to their suitcases, and then looked again at Valentin, who was only inches away. His hairline was edged with a thin strip of pale skin, suggesting that he had had his hair cut between leaving Sardinia and arriving in London.

  It would be very easy to make it look like an accident, Marchant thought as the train approached, sounding its horn. For a moment, he pictured Valentin rolling onto the live rail, looking back up at him. His father had seen a jumper once, said it was the rancid smoke that had shocked him the most. The image of Valentin’s burnt body wasn’t as unsettling as it should have been. Which friend of his father’s did they want him to meet? And why did they talk about him in that familiar way? He realised now how angry he was, how humiliated he felt by the events in Sardinia. Uncle Hugo had been sent to rescue him. Christ, he wasn’t a new recruit any more. He was thirty, with five years’ experience under his belt, a promising career ahead of him.

  A couple of seconds before the train reached the point where they were standing, Marchant looked over his shoulder. ‘Hey, stop pushing,’ he shouted, and grabbed Valentin’s arms as if to steady himself. Then he shoved the Russian forward as hard as he could.

  41

  ‘Betrayal requires a great leap of faith,’ Fielding said, looking out of the window of his office. Marchant was standing beside him, watching the Tate-to-Tate ferry head down the river, trying to understand what Fielding had just told him.

  ‘You’re sure it’s Primakov who wants to see me?’ he asked.

  ‘Who else would it be? A good friend of your father suddenly turns up in London after years out in the cold. It’s hard to imagine that they’d want you to meet anyone else.’

  Marchant didn’t reply. Before the approach in Sardinia, he had forgotten all about Primakov, but the mention of his name began to sharpen blurred memories. The Russian had been a regular visitor to their house in India, a short man always arriving laden down with gifts for the children, peering over the top of them. It was so long ago. There had been an Indian toy, a mechanical wind-up train that went round a tiny metal track. His mother had taken it away because of its jagged edges.

  ‘There’s something I need to show you,’ Fielding continued. ‘A document that you would never normally see, not unless you become Chief – an appointment that would first require North America to sink beneath the sea.’

  The CIA hadn’t stopped his father becoming Chief, Marchant thought, ignoring Fielding’s attempt at humour. Instead, they had waited until he was in office before humiliating him. Fielding stepped out of the room and told Ann Norman and his private secretary that he didn’t want to be disturbed, then closed the door and went over to his desk. But he didn’t sit down. Instead, he turned to the big safe in the corner behind him.

  ‘Give me a moment,’ he said, and bent down in front of the combination lock. Marchant instinctively looked away, out of apparent politeness, then watched in the window reflection as Fi
elding punched in some numbers – 4-9-3-7 – into a digital display and turned a large, well-oiled dial beneath it. His brain processed the movements in reverse: one and a half turns clockwise, two complete opposite turns, a final quarter-turn clockwise. Everyone who had ever been in the Chief’s office had wondered what secrets the safe held, which British Prime Ministers had been working for Moscow, which trade union leaders had been Russian plants.

  ‘Let’s sit over there,’ Fielding said a moment later, like a don about to discuss a dissertation. In his hand he held a brown Whitehall A4 envelope. He gestured towards two sofas and a glass table at the far end of his office, below the grandfather clock that Marchant had yet to hear ticking. Before he sat down, he placed the envelope on the table and put both hands on the small of his back. ‘The combination changes twice a day, by the way,’ he said, stretching, ‘should you ever think of opening it.’

  ‘I’d expect nothing less,’ Marchant said, trying to hide his embarrassment. He sat down on the edge of the sofa, watching Fielding unpick the quaint brown string that kept the envelope closed at one end. In addition to the normal security stamps on the front, Marchant saw another one, in faded green, that read ‘For C’s eyes only.’

  ‘I don’t need to stress the classified nature of what I am about to show you,’ Fielding said.

  ‘God’s access?’ Marchant asked. Fielding nodded. Product didn’t come more secret.

  ‘Your father was one of the most gifted officers of his or any other generation. We both know that. He recruited more valuable assets behind the Iron Curtain than anyone else. But the most prized of them all was Nikolai Primakov.’

  ‘I remember him from Delhi. At least, I remember he used to bring us presents.’ Marchant could also recall big smiles and warm laughter, but he couldn’t trust his memory. Why hadn’t there been the normal household caveats about Primakov, given that he was from a hostile country? After the family had left India for the final time, he had never seen the Russian again, although his father talked of him often.