by Jon Stock
‘Working off dinner,’ Marchant said, continuing to walk.
‘Fielding said I might find you around here. He wants us to talk.’
‘Well, now you can tell him we have.’
Marchant stopped, glancing back down the road, scanning the pedestrians for signs, shoes. He could see four of them in total. They had broken cover, making no attempt to conceal themselves. Their body language was more lynch mob than watcher. Marchant recognised the one at the back from Sardinia. He opened the door of Meena’s car and climbed in.
‘Aziz is dead. Last night in the military hospital in Rabat,’ Meena said, looking in the rear-view mirror as they drove off. ‘Complications unrelated to his original injuries, but clearly he wouldn’t have been in there if you hadn’t ripped half his mouth off.’
‘Are they lodging an official protest?’
‘Not their style. They don’t want to draw attention to what they did to you first.’
‘On your orders.’
‘Spiro’s.’
‘And you do whatever he says.’
Meena pulled up at a red light and glanced again in the mirror, her knuckles whitening on the steering wheel. ‘Look, I’m sorry for what happened. Truly.’
Marchant felt the gap in his gum with his tongue, but decided not to say anything. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Your flat, then Heathrow.’
‘Heathrow?’
‘Fielding wants us to go to India. Our flight’s tonight, and you need to pack.’
‘Our flight? Not so fast. I’m not going anywhere until I’ve spoken to him.’
Marchant shifted in his seat. He hadn’t been back to India since the US President’s trip, Leila’s death.
‘Fielding’s meeting us at Heathrow. He’ll explain everything. How was Primakov, by the way?’
Marchant hesitated. A new arrival at the Russian Embassy in London would arouse even the doziest CIA desk officer, but her question still surprised him.
‘The sous-chef at Goodman’s is one of ours,’ she continued by way of explanation. ‘It’s one of the most popular Russian restaurants in town. You showed up on our grid before you’d even ordered your herring with mustard. How can you eat that stuff?’
‘You’re not from Calcutta then?’
‘Reston, Virginia, actually. Why?’
‘Bengalis like their mustard.’
‘I meant the fish.’
‘They like that too. Primakov was fine. Fatter than I remember him. He was an old friend of my father.’
‘Friend?’
‘Sparring partner.’ He paused. ‘So who showed up first on your grid? Me or Primakov?’
Meena hesitated. ‘OK, I’ll admit, we don’t have a great deal on Primakov. Cultural attaché, brought out of retirement, medium-ranking KGB officer before the fall.’
‘But you have a bulging dossier on me. Says it all, doesn’t it? So where in India are we heading?’
‘The south, Tamil Nadu. Where my parents are from.’
‘Great. Meet the in-laws time. A bit premature, isn’t it? We haven’t even slept together.’
Meena drove on in silence, glancing in the rear-view mirror.
‘I’m sorry,’ Marchant said, more quietly now. It had been a crass thing to say. Sometimes it was easy to forget Meena’s Indian heritage. She talked like a ballsy, confident American, trading coarse comments with colleagues, but there was an inner dignity about her that he recognised as uniquely subcontinental.
‘Actually, we’re going to find your father’s lover.’
He looked across at her for more.
‘Our Chennai sub-station is closing in on Salim Dhar’s mother. Fielding thought you should be there when we bring her in.’
50
Salim Dhar turned the navigation lights on as the canopy closed, and took a deep breath. Then, after running through the cockpit checks he had practised so often on his ancient PC, he leaned forward and flicked the switch to start the right engine. The RPM dial in front of him spooled up to 65 per cent, and the exhaust-gas temperature rose to 300 degrees. He did the same with the left engine, lowered one stage of flap and used his thumb to reset the trim to neutral.
For a moment, he was back in Afghanistan, sitting in the cockpit of the crashed SU-25. He remembered a solitary poppy pushing up through a broken dial. It was the first time in his adult life that he had been happy. The camaraderie at the training camp had made him realise how little friendship he had found until then. The darkest days of his childhood had been at the American school in Delhi, where his father had insisted on sending him. There were a few Indian pupils, sons of New Delhi’s business elite, but he was not like them, nor was he like the diplomats’ children, who made no effort to talk unless it was to taunt him – Allah yel’an abo el amrikaan’ala elli’awez yet’alem henaak (God damn the fathers of those Americans and whoever wants to study there!).
He turned the landing lights on, requested taxi clearance from the control tower, and again flicked the trim switch, setting it for take-off. Then he tested the wheelbrakes as he ran the throttle up to 70 then 80 per cent.
‘Brakes holding, airbrake closed,’ he said to himself as he felt for the switch on the side of the throttle. As jets went, the SU-25 wasn’t a demanding plane to fly. Unlike its more recent successors, it didn’t have a modern avionic suite, but it was a reliable ground-pounder, which was why it had been in Russia’s air force for so long. According to Sergei, his instructor, the SU-25 could operate at very low speeds without ‘flaming out’. Nor did it stall easily. ‘It can take a real beating and still bring you home,’ Sergei had said. But Dhar knew there would be no return flight.
After taxi-ing to the runway threshold and running through his pre-take-off checks, he waited for his clearance from control. At last it came. He took his position on the runway’s centreline, gazing at the white ribbon that stretched away as far as he could see. Engaging the wheelbrakes, he ran the power up to 90 per cent and checked that all the gauges were still in the green. Then he released the brakes and applied full military power, watching the air speed build quickly to 260 kmh.
Something was wrong.
‘Sometimes you need to add a little right rudder as you firewall the throttles,’ Sergei had said, but Dhar remembered too late. His fingers fumbled to deploy the twin drogue chutes, but it was hopeless. There was too little tarmac left. ‘Eject, eject!’ said a voice in his head. But as he overcompensated for the yaw, the plane lurching right, left, right again, the right wingtip hit the ground, breaking off in a shower of sparks and fire. He thought of his mother, closed his eyes and prayed.
51
Fielding took the call in the back of his chauffeur-driven Range Rover on the way to Heathrow. Cars didn’t particularly interest him, but he couldn’t deny that he had been impressed with the latest security upgrades to his official vehicle. Most of them were to do with jamming opportunist electronic eavesdroppers, but the car had also benefited from lessons learned in Afghanistan, where IEDs had caused such havoc. Its floor was now protected by hard steel armour blast plates, and the sides had been reinforced with composite ballistic protection panels.
‘Thank you for ringing back,’ he said, trying to picture his opposite number in America, his Langley office, the bland Virginia countryside. Fielding’s relationship with the DCIA had been at rock bottom during the past year, but he knew that things had to improve sooner or later. Much as it would like to, Britain couldn’t survive indefinitely without America’s intel.
‘What can I do for you, Marcus? No problems with Lakshmi Meena, I hope?’
‘No, she’s fine.’
‘Treat her as yours, Marcus. A shared asset. She’s good.’
Better than the last one, you mean, Fielding thought, but he said nothing. ‘Thank you. She’s briefed me fully about Dhar’s mother.’
‘That’s what she’s there for. Keeping our allies in the loop.’
Like hell, Fielding thought. He looked out of the window
at the grey scenery either side of the Westway: tatty tower blocks, car showrooms, digital clocks, vast hoardings. It was such a drab part of London, a depressing first impression of Britain for anyone driving in from the airport.
‘How’s Jim Spiro these days?’ Fielding asked.
‘I never knew you cared. He’ll be touched, truly.’
‘Is he still suspended?’
‘To all intents and purposes. He’s the subject of an ongoing internal inquiry, based largely on evidence provided by MI6.’
‘I need to talk to him.’
52
Daniel Marchant moved quickly around his one-bedroom basement flat in Pimlico, removing a suitcase from underneath the bed that was already packed with three sets of clothes and a wash bag containing a razor, toothbrush and two passports. The cobblers had given him a new spare one after Morocco. He had asked for two, but they had talked about budgets and come back to him a few days later saying that the passport in Dirk McLennan’s name, the snap cover he had used to get out of Morocco, had not been compromised.
Out of habit, he checked the issue date, making sure it was still valid, and then he saw an old Islamabad visa stamp on one of the pages. A trip to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan had been fine for Morocco, but it might cause problems in India. He cursed the cobblers and put the passport on his desk. He paused for a moment, looking at the photo of Leila that he had tried so often to throw out. She was smiling back at him, the bright lights of a carousel blurred behind her. He had taken the photo at the funfair in Gosport, across the water from the Fort, a few hours before they had slept together for the first time. The instructors had given them a rare day off after two weeks of intense training.
He knew it was a weakness to keep the photo, but something about her expression made it impossible to get rid of it. For a few heady months, he had thought it was love in her eyes. It was still hard to accept that he had been deceived. Wasn’t it his job to be vigilant while deceiving others? Perhaps he kept the photo as a reminder, a warning.
‘I guess you still miss her, right?’ He turned to see Lakshmi Meena standing in the doorway. She had dropped him off outside on Denbigh Street. He put the photo back on the desk, annoyed that he hadn’t heard her walk down the iron steps to his flat. Leila could still make him drop his guard, even now.
‘Have you ever had to sleep with someone as part of the job?’ he asked, unnecessarily adjusting the photo frame on his desk.
‘Spiro once tried it on. Said it was all part of the promotion process.’ She could still recall the approach: first month at Langley, fresh from the Farm. Spiro liked to call all the new female recruits into his office for a friendly one-to-one.
‘I don’t mean with our side.’
‘I know we’re not always the good guys, but we’re not the enemy.’
‘Leila wasn’t just working for you. Read the files.’
‘I tried. Hey, way beyond my security clearance. All I know is that she saved our President’s life.’
‘That’s one way of looking at it.’
‘And another way?’
‘She betrayed me.’ Spiro had used similar words when she played him back an audio recording of his advances. A colleague had tipped her off, and she had gone into his office wired, claiming later that she was testing out new equipment and had forgotten to turn it off. It had been a colossal career risk, but Spiro had never bothered her again. If anything, he respected her more.
‘And you can’t forgive her that?’ she asked.
‘Not yet.’
‘Is that why you won’t trust anyone?’
‘Anyone?’
‘Women.’
‘It was a calculated act of betrayal.’
And now, like King Shahryar’s virgin wives, we all stand accused, Meena thought, but she didn’t have time to say anything. They heard a car slow down on the road above them. Marchant glanced up through the basement window at the pavement.
‘Where did you park?’ he asked.
‘Around the corner, Lupus Street. I drove round the block twice first. No tail.’
‘Come, quickly,’ Marchant said, locking the front door to the flat, where Meena was standing, and going through to the bedroom. A pair of french windows looked out onto a small patio garden. He opened them and ushered her outside, glancing back at the front of the flat. Someone was coming down the metal stairs. How had they got his home address? He went into the small adjoining bathroom, turned on the light and the shower and returned to the bedroom. Then he took the key from the inside of the french windows, joined Meena on the patio and locked them from the outside.
‘Spiro’s orders again?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Meena said. ‘The Moroccans are upset Aziz is dead. Very upset.’
Marchant walked across to the back wall, which was about twelve feet high and covered in a wooden lattice for climbers he had never planted. In the corner, there was a rockery. Soon after he had bought the flat, he had built up the rocks at the back to help him climb up the wall, should he ever need to. He had cemented in three bricks above the highest rock, at eighteen-inch intervals up the wall, that stuck out by half a brick and acted as steps, but he had never got round to trying them.
‘Up there, quick,’ he said, pointing at the corner as if it was the obvious way out of the garden. When Meena reached the top of the wall, she looked back down at him.
‘You forgot to build any steps on the other side,’ she said before jumping. He heard a groan as she landed in the mews below. Then he followed her, glancing back at his flat as he reached the top of the wall. Two men had broken in, and one of them was looking at the passport he’d left on his desk. The other was moving towards the bathroom, gesturing to his colleague. For a moment, Marchant wanted to go back inside and confront them, show them his broken teeth, knock out theirs, but he resisted.
As he jumped from the top of the wall, a car turned into the quiet mews, driving too fast for a resident. Marchant got to his feet and rushed at its sweeping headlights, ignoring a shooting pain in his ankle. He knew he had to move fast. Without hesitating, he opened the driver’s door and grabbed the driver, pulling him out onto the road. He was aware of Meena doing the same on the other side. It was only as he pinned the man up against the wall, holding him by his throat, that he realised it was one of Armstrong’s watchers.
He held the man for a moment, then released him.
‘They’re Five,’ Marchant called across to Meena, who had wrestled the passenger to the ground and was holding both his arms behind his back. He made a mental note that she was no slouch when it came to unarmed combat. Marchant’s man dropped to his knees, one hand massaging his throat.
‘Christ,’ he said, out of breath. ‘Armstrong sent us.’
‘I’m sorry. I thought –’ But he suddenly felt too tired to finish.
‘Two men are in Daniel’s flat,’ Meena said, taking over, reluctantly releasing her man. She made no apology for the mistake. ‘Moroccan intelligence.’
‘That’s why we’re here,’ the other man said, getting up off the road. ‘They showed up on the grid this evening.’
A bit late, Marchant thought, recalling the trouble he’d had earlier in Grosvenor Square.
‘Delay them, will you?’ he said. ‘We need to get to the airport.’
53
Salim Dhar sat back and stared at the screen, watching his plane spin in a sickening cartwheel of flames.
‘You forgot to add some right rudder,’ Sergei said, coming over to the simulator with a cigarette hanging limply from the corner of his mouth. He was tall and loose-limbed, wearing a flying suit and holding a helmet in one hand. His face was awkward and angular, almost avian in its features. Dhar assumed that was why comrades called him the Bird.
After the air-show crash, Sergei had been stripped of his wings, tried and sent to prison, where he would have remained for the rest of his life if it hadn’t been for the unusual summons to train up a surly Muslim for an SVR black op. He knew en
ough not to ask any questions, that he was expendable if he played up. ‘They will shoot me after I have served my purpose,’ he had once said, only half jokingly, to Dhar.
The daily training sessions took place in an airless hut across from the hangar where Dhar was living at Kotlas airbase. Dhar didn’t know where the Bird roosted at night. They didn’t do small talk. No one else was in the hut, and there were two armed guards positioned outside the door.
‘How will you ever learn to deploy your missiles if you’re always crashing on take-off?’ Sergei continued. ‘We’ve one week left and you’ve only got the Grach airborne twice.’
Dhar sat in silence, his hands resting on his legs. He tried to filter out the instructor’s tone of voice and focus on the content. He was right. Just then a jet roared low over the hut, mocking Dhar with its menacing ease.
‘Let’s do it again,’ Dhar said calmly. ‘In formation this time.’
Sergei looked at him for a moment and smiled.
‘OK,’ he replied, tossing away his cigarette as he walked over to the other simulator. ‘So the Bird is your wingman.’
54
The lights were off in St George’s Chapel, but Marchant could make out the tall figure of Marcus Fielding sitting quietly at the back of the airless room, in front of the font. It was Heathrow’s only chapel, built into the basement like a vaulted crypt. Marchant had found it quickly. Its location between Terminals 1 and 3 was well signposted. He was sure he had been here before, a long time ago, coming from or going to India. His father had sat outside with him in the memorial garden, where he could picture a large wooden cross. It must have been not long after the death of his twin brother, Sebastian.
Fielding didn’t look up as he entered the room, and for a moment Marchant wondered if the Vicar was praying. His eyes were closed. Marchant hesitated by the door, looking at a plaque that commemorated the crew of Pan Am Flight 103, who had died 31,000 feet above Lockerbie. Then he walked over and sat down on the brown padded seat next to Fielding. Still the Vicar said nothing, his eyes closed behind his rimless glasses. Finally, he spoke.
