Games Traitors Play (27 page)

‘It just makes us look like such a bunch of bloody fools,' Harriet Armstrong said, declining Fielding's offer of a chair in his office. ‘I've got Counter Terrorism Command demanding answers, and Jim Spiro can barely speak.'

A quiet American, Fielding thought. He almost felt sorry for Armstrong, but her recent
rapprochement
with Spiro had extinguished any sympathy he might have had for her situation. Besides, there was very little he could say to mollify her. MI5
was
a bunch of fools.

‘Much as I'd like to say that this was Marchant's work, the facts are these,' he said, steepling his fingers under his chin and sitting back. ‘One of my agents has been seized on the streets of London by what we think were officers of the SVR –'

‘Come on, we
know
they were.'

‘– and I have urged the Prime Minister to protest in the strongest terms to the Russian Ambassador. Meanwhile, Six's stations around the world are on heightened alert, and I hope that the same can be said for Britain's ports, railways and airfields.'

‘What's going on here, Marcus? Primakov was once one of ours.'

‘A fact that only a very few people are privy to.' The last thing he needed was Armstrong spilling state secrets to Spiro.

‘I thought Marchant was being sent to see if Primakov could be ours again.'

‘He was. But I should remind you that certain senior figures in the SVR – Vasilli Grushko, for example – were opposed to Primakov's London posting from the start. They didn't completely trust him. It's no coincidence that Primakov left the country in a hurry this morning, and my guess is that seizing Marchant is the SVR's consolation prize. Marchant will be interrogated about Primakov, who will no doubt shortly be charged with betraying the motherland.'

Armstrong looked at him, weighing up what he said. She wasn't convinced.

‘You don't appear to be too concerned that one of your officers has just been taken by a hostile country.'

‘It's not the first time, and I doubt it will be the last.'

‘America is not our enemy,' Armstrong said, walking to the door.

‘It was when you and I were in India, fighting for what we believed in. Why are we suddenly being nice to Spiro again?'

Armstrong paused by the door. ‘Because we've got no option, have we?'

Fielding knew she was right. Britain needed America. ‘I'll let you know as soon as we hear word of Marchant,' he said. ‘We're doing everything we can to find him.'

He watched her leave. As with the best lies, there was a strong element of truth in what he had told her. Grushko had long had his doubts about Primakov, but he must have overcome them to sanction the operation in Soho. Such a brazen act on the streets of London could not have gone ahead without the consent of the SVR's local
Rezident
. Which meant that Marchant was in. He had passed all the tests, and would soon be with Salim Dhar. Fielding just hoped that Dhar would believe in him too.

An alert officer at UK Passport Control at Heathrow had picked up Primakov's hurried exit, but they had failed to spot Vasilli Grushko, who had also left Britain earlier in the day, travelling with false documents on a flight to Moscow. He was now standing in the hangar at Kotlas with Primakov and Marchant.

‘Welcome to Russia,' Grushko said, looking out at the rain on the runway. He was a short, wiry man with rimless glasses and sallow skin, in stark contrast to Primakov's rubicund presence. ‘Is it your first time?' There was no warmth in his voice, nothing excessive about him at all, just a cold matter-of-factness that made Marchant wary.

‘Officially or unofficially?' Marchant replied. His head was hurting from the alcohol of the night before, and the journey in an Illyushin cargo plane from Heathrow to Moscow, which he had spent curled up in a container. He had then been flown by an Antonov military transporter to Kotlas.

‘You must be tired after your flight,' Primakov suggested, filling the awkward silence. ‘If it's any consolation, my Aeroflot flight was no more comfortable. Your brother is out flying at the moment. Sleep now, and you will be ready to meet him.'

‘Just one thing,' Marchant said. ‘Was the American woman hurt? In the restaurant?'

‘I am surprised by your concern,' Primakov said, glancing at Grushko, his superior, who remained impassive.

‘She will shortly be leaving the Agency,' Marchant added. ‘Disillusioned, like me.'

‘She is in hospital, a gunshot wound to the arm,' Grushko said. ‘Our men were authorised to kill her if necessary, but she did not resist, and for some reason you asked for her to be spared.'

‘But she'll be OK?' Marchant asked, thinking back to the chaotic scene, his shout to protect Meena.

‘She's fine,' Primakov said. ‘She should be grateful for the injury. Her superiors are already a little surprised that she did not do more to stop you being taken. We will leave you now. You did well with the MiGs. Your brother was impressed. We all were.'

Primakov turned to Grushko, hoping for some supportive words, but none came.

‘Do not step outside,' Grushko warned. ‘The guards have orders to shoot.'

Marchant had passed two armed guards standing by the side entrance to the hangar when he had arrived. After Grushko and Primakov had gone, he looked around the empty space. Some camouflage nets had been hung on one wall, otherwise there was little to soften the oppressive concrete surfaces. So this was where the world's most wanted terrorist had been hiding, in a draughty hangar, surrounded by rain-soaked woodlands in a remote corner of a Russian military airfield in the Arkhangelsk oblast.

He turned away from the large doors, and saw a curtained-off area at the far end of the building. He assumed it was where Dhar lived. A mattress and some bedding had been put in the opposite corner for Marchant, along with a towel, a bar of unwrapped soap and a change of clothes. It wasn't exactly a defecting hero's welcome.

After washing in a bucket of lukewarm water that had been left by the side entrance, Marchant looked again at Dhar's corner. Checking the door, he walked over and pulled back the curtain. There was a mattress and bedding on the floor, with a small wooden cargo crate beside it for a bedside table. A copy of the Koran lay shut, a letter inside it acting as a bookmark.

He recognised the handwriting at once. Glancing at the door again, he picked up the Koran and slid the letter out. The paper was creased, and looked well read. It was from his father, written in the same hand and in exactly the same words as the one Primakov had given to him. For a moment, he wondered if it was a forgery, but he was sure it was his father's hand.

He put the letter back in the Koran, which he placed back on the crate. In front of him, pinned to an old pilots' briefing board on the wall, were several photos. One was of a group of
jihadis
at a training camp, possibly in Kashmir. Another was of a young Salim Dhar sitting in what looked like the cockpit of a crashed Russian jet. The background scenery suggested it was in Afghanistan. Then he saw a photo of himself, taken with a long lens. He was outside Legoland, on the street opposite the main entrance, peering into the window of the motorbike showroom that he used to frequent in his lunch breaks.

‘I used to ride an old Honda in Afghanistan,' a voice said behind him. Marchant spun round to see a man standing by the curtain, wearing a flying suit and holding a helmet in one hand. It was Salim Dhar.

Myers had drunk one too many Battledown Premiums at the Beehive and was struggling to slot the key into the lock of his Montepelier flat in Cheltenham. It was sometimes stiff, but tonight he wondered if he had got the wrong door. He looked up at the front windows to reassure himself, and then tried again. The door opened and he fell into the hall, gathering up the post that was on the doormat: the latest issue of
Fly RC
, a magazine for remote-control plane enthusiasts, and a takeaway pizza flier.

At the back of his addled mind he wondered if the lock was stiff because it had been tampered with, but he dismissed the thought. He had become paranoid since carrying out Daniel Marchant's request, seeing people on street corners, lurking behind curtains. As far as he could tell, no one had managed to establish a cause for the temporary delay in the Recognised Air Picture data at RAF Boulmer, let alone follow it out of the Tactical Data networks to Cheltenham. He had covered his tracks carefully, and he couldn't deny that the result had been spectacular. Whatever Marchant was up to, he was doing it with style. A pair of MiG-35s over bloody Scotland!

He tore open the magazine as he stumbled into the kitchen, idly flicking through the pages. A sport-scale park flyer of the Russian jet would be entertaining down at the recreation ground, but he couldn't find one listed. It might also attract unnecessary attention to himself, given the furore over the breach of airspace. Relations had plummeted between London and the Kremlin in the twenty-four hours since the incident. They weren't helped by the subsequent kidnapping of an MI6 officer on the streets of Soho.

For a moment, when he first heard the news at work, Myers had thought it might be Marchant, but his old friend was too streetwise to be picked up by the SVR in central London. He didn't dare ring him to check. Myers was nervous about making any calls after his brief chat with Fielding. Besides, Marchant was clearly up to something big, and he didn't want to be further implicated. He had already done too much.

After taking a leak that seemed to last for ever – he almost fell asleep as he stood swaying at the bowl – Myers headed for his bedroom. He knew he should drink some water, but he wanted to check his emails, maybe surf a few porn sites before crashing. He always kept the door to his bedroom locked because of the computers inside, but as he fumbled for the key fob in his pocket, he saw that the door was ajar. The sobering effect was instant. His brain cleared as an adrenaline rush ripped through his body, making his legs feel so heavy that they almost buckled.

He stood there for a few seconds, listening for a noise, pressing his heels into the carpet to stop his legs shaking, but there was only silence, broken by the noise of a solitary car passing outside. He took a deep breath, pushed open the door, and walked in.

‘Don't say a word,' a voice said from the darkness. A moment later, Myers felt the cold metal of a barrel against the racing pulse in his temple.

‘I became too fond of this in Morocco,' Dhar said, pouring out two glasses of mint tea. ‘It is my one other luxury.' He had already offered Marchant some dried apricots from a paper bag on the floor between them. He was sitting cross-legged, his posture upright. He had changed out of his flying suit and was now wearing a long white
dishdasha
of the sort that Marchant had seen in Marrakech and a matching
kufi
skullcap. His austere appearance was reflected in the formality of their conversation. There was a stiffness to proceedings that was making Marchant tense. He was also struggling to sit comfortably on the ground. His crossed legs were cramping up, forcing him to rock forwards. He knew it made him look nervous.

‘How long were you in Morocco for?' Marchant asked, taking the hot glass by the rim. ‘Did you go there straight after Delhi?' He was hoping to slip into small talk, but knew at once that it was the wrong question to ask a man on the run.

‘Please,' Dhar said. ‘Let us talk first of family. My journey is of no concern. All that matters is that we are once again reunited.'

Dhar had hugged him when they first met in southern India. This time there had been no such warmth. Marchant had been caught snooping around his possessions, which didn't help, but there was also a different tension in the air: a pressing sense of expectation. Fielding had warned him that he would be killed if Dhar suspected anything.
Embrace your worst fears. They may be the only thing to keep you alive when you meet Dhar.

‘Dad wrote me a similar letter,' Marchant said, nodding at the Koran on the crate.

‘Dad,' Dhar repeated, mocking the word. ‘Father. Papa. Pop.' He reached forward and took another apricot. ‘All those years I never knew him, never knew he was waging the same wars against the
kuffar
. It must be harder for you. Coming to the crusade so late. In some ways, I am closer to him than you ever were, even though I met him only once.'

Marchant could feel himself bridling inside, but he remembered why he was here, why Dhar had wanted to see him. They were the sons of a traitor, united in family treachery.

‘It's true,' Marchant said. ‘The man I thought I knew was someone else.'

‘And it wasn't a shock? Primakov said you were relieved.'

‘It was like finding the missing piece of a jigsaw. After the way I was treated by the Americans –'

‘The waterboarding.'

‘Yeah, after being nearly drowned at a CIA black site in Poland, I was beginning to wonder, you know, about our great Western values. When Primakov told me about Dad, my life began to make sense.'

‘Brother, come here,' Dhar said, beckoning Marchant to stand. Both men rose, and hugged each other long and hard. Marchant was expecting it to feel awkward, but it wasn't. He hadn't been embraced by his own flesh and blood since his father had died. And as he held Dhar, breathing in the faint aroma of apricots, he wondered if this was what it would have been like to hug Sebastian if he had survived into adulthood. He had told Dhar all about his twin when they had met before, explained how his death had cast such a long shadow over his life, but, for the first time in years, Marchant no longer felt like an only child. When they let go of each other, both men's eyes were moist.

‘My life made sense, too,' Dhar said. ‘Can you imagine how hard it was for me when I first discovered that my father was the head of an infidel intelligence agency?'

Dhar managed a laugh in between wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his
dishdasha
. Marchant smiled, too, as they sat back down on the floor. It was a rare moment in a spy's life. Marchant had crossed over, immersed himself in a role like a seasoned actor, forgotten that he was playing a part. But no sooner had the spell been cast than it was broken. All the old fears came tumbling down around him again. Why had he found it so easy to celebrate his father's treachery?

‘After he had been to see me in Kerala, the clouds began to clear,' Dhar continued. ‘At first, I was confused by the visit, some of the things he said, but when I met Primakov and he told me everything – the nature of the American intelligence our blessed father had once passed to Moscow – it was like being reborn.'

‘I'm sorry about your mother,' Marchant said, trying to steer the conversation onto safer territory. He had been genuinely angry about what had happened in Madurai, regardless if it had been fabricated by Fielding, and knew he could talk about it with conviction. He wasn't sure how much longer he could listen to Dhar extolling their father's treason.

‘I'm sorry too. This man Spiro…'

‘I promised your mother I would look after her. I feel I failed her, and you.'

‘
Inshallah
, the time will come when such things will not happen again.'

‘The deal was that we would bring her back to Britain, keep her away from the Americans. I gave her my personal undertaking that she would be safe. I can never forgive myself for what happened. I let her down, Salim. She trusted me, against her better judgement. I persuaded –'

‘Enough.' Dhar held up a hand, as if he was halting traffic. Had Marchant pushed it too far? Dhar was angry, his equanimity disturbed by talk of his mother. He moved his raised hand to his eye as he turned to look out of the window.

‘Do you trust Primakov?' Dhar asked, changing the subject.

‘I don't know him well, but I respect our father's judgement. You read the letter. “Trust him as if he was a member of our family.”'

‘Grushko, the Russian who came today, has his doubts.'

‘Grushko doesn't trust anyone. I think he even doubts me.'

Dhar turned to look at him with an intensity that Marchant had never seen in anyone before. In a certain light, his brown Indian irises shone as black as onyx.

‘So do I.'

‘I don't blame you. It doesn't look that convincing on paper, does it? MI6 agent bonds with
jihadi
half-brother.' Marchant was keen to lighten the mood, but Dhar wasn't smiling.

‘What I am struggling to understand is why you returned to your old job in London. After all that had happened. The waterboarding in Poland, the way the Americans treated our father. How could you continue to be a part of that?'

‘Because I wanted to meet you again. Remaining in MI6 was the only way. I wanted to come sooner, but the Americans wouldn't allow it.'

‘The Americans,' Dhar repeated, smirking. ‘You could have travelled on your own.'

‘I thought I'd be more useful to you if I still had a job with MI6.'

‘Such a Western way of looking at things. The job more important than the person. You're family. You got my text?
Yalla natsaalh ehna akhwaan
.
Let's make good for we are brothers.
It was sent more than a year ago.'

‘I got it. It was impossible to come sooner without losing my job. I couldn't have helped you – arranged for the MiGs to fly over Scotland – if I was on the outside, on the run again.'

‘Tell me one thing. Your return to MI6, after Delhi, was before you discovered our father had been working for the Russians.'

Dhar's probing was beginning to worry Marchant. He was right. He had gone back to his desk in Legoland with his head held high, proud of his father's innocence rather than celebrating his guilt.

‘There was a time when I believed in Britain, I can't deny that. Just as there was a time when our father believed in his country too. But the doubts were growing when I returned to MI6. About what I was doing, why I was doing it. I'm sure you've sometimes questioned what you do too.'

Dhar didn't respond.

‘And those doubts became something stronger when Primakov showed up in London with the letter,' Marchant continued.

‘We are blessed to have had such a brave father.'

Dhar smiled, and Marchant thought he was through the worst of it. But he wasn't.

‘There is only one problem. Grushko is convinced that Primakov is lying.'

Dhar leaned over to his bed and took a pistol from under the pillow. He brushed the handle with his sleeve, then cocked it with the assurance of someone familiar with firearms. ‘And if Primakov is not telling the truth, then neither are you.'