Games Traitors Play (28 page)

‘How did you know I was involved?' Myers asked, sitting at the bank of computers. There had been two Russians waiting for him in his bedroom, one tall, the second one shorter with rimless glasses. The tall one had frisked him, while the other did the talking, although he wasn't one for idle chatter. It took Myers a few minutes to be sure of his identity. It was Vasilli Grushko, London
Rezident
of the SVR. He had seen his photograph at work, intercepted occasional calls.

‘We have been following your friend Daniel Marchant for some time now,' Grushko said.

‘Was it him who was taken? In London?'

Myers tried to prevent his left leg from shaking, but it was impossible. Instead, he bounced it up and down as if the movement was voluntary. At least they had stopped pointing the gun at his head. After frisking him, the weapons had been put away, but Myers was still all over the place, too many possible scenarios unfolding in his mind. The computers had already been turned on when he entered the bedroom. Had they hacked into GCHQ using his passwords? If they knew about his role with the MiGs, who had they told? Who else knew? He was just glad that he had gone to the bathroom when he first arrived, otherwise he would be pissing himself now.

‘Your concern is almost touching. He is fine. Unharmed.'

‘What do you want from me?'

‘He came to see you. At the Beehive pub near here. Marchant chose the location well, because it was busy, but we think you were talking about the MiGs. Now that we have discovered you bring your work home' – Grushko nodded towards the bank of computers – ‘we know for certain that it was you who helped him.'

‘What do you want from me? Please. There was no harm. Nobody died. It was good publicity for Russia, your air force. Bloody lousy for ours. Air defences like a sieve.'

‘It is quite simple. We want you to help him again.'

Dhar held the cocked gun to Primakov's head. The Russian had entered the hangar full of his usual bonhomie, and had not seen him standing behind the door. Dhar closed it and pushed Primakov into the middle of the building, where Marchant was standing beside a wooden chair, holding a rope in his hand. Marchant felt like a guilty executioner. It was as if Dhar had put their own relationship on hold while he sorted out Primakov. He had asked Marchant to help him interrogate the Russian, a process that Marchant assumed he himself would be subjected to later.

‘Salim, this is unexpected,' Primakov said, nodding at Marchant, who looked away. Whatever else Primakov was, he was dignified, and the next few minutes would be demeaning. Marchant felt a mix of shame and nausea. After Dhar had shown him the gun, they had both slept, but Marchant's sleep had been fitful. He had woken at dawn full of dread, envying Dhar, who was praying calmly on a mat in the middle of the hangar.

‘Is it really?' Dhar asked. ‘Grushko says you have been under suspicion for many years.'

‘A small price to pay for knowing your father so well. May I sit down?'

Dhar kicked the wooden chair towards Primakov, the scraping sound echoing in the hangar. The SU-25 jet that Dhar had flown the day before had been wheeled in through the main entrance overnight, and was now parked at the end of the hangar, the doors closed behind it. Marchant had noted that it was a two-seater, used for training. Apart from the plane, resting up like a vast squatting insect, the hangar was empty.

Dhar nodded at Marchant, who grabbed Primakov's arms and bound his hands tightly behind his back. He tried to do it painlessly, but he was aware of Dhar's eyes on him. Primakov's breathing had become heavier, rasping like a Siberian miner's. Marchant could smell the cologne, mixed now with the strong scent of sweat. If Primakov was going to give him a sign, something to reassure him about his father, it would have to be soon. Time was running out for all of them.

‘Grushko is on his way back to Britain,' Dhar said as Marchant finished tying Primakov's wrists to the back of the chair. ‘He would rather you were dead, but I wanted to ask a few questions first.'

‘About your father?' Primakov was working hard to keep his voice steady, but it was fraying with fear.

‘Grushko does not believe that you recruited Stephen Marchant.'

‘What does he believe?'

‘He accuses my father, our blessed father' – a glance up at Marchant, who remained behind Primakov, to one side – ‘of having recruited you. I don't want to believe Grushko, but he is a meticulous man. He has been going through old KGB archives, file by file. Our father gave you intelligence about the Americans, it is true, but Grushko says that with hindsight much of this information was not as important as it seemed at the time.'

Marchant closed his eyes. It was the first time he had heard anyone on the Russian side question his father's worth as a double agent. But any relief he felt was short-lived. If Dhar decided that his father was not a traitor after all, he would come to the same conclusion about him, too. It was down to Primakov now, balanced on a high wire. He had to reassure two sons about their father, one hoping to hear of his loyalty, the other of his treachery.

‘Comrade Grushko will find whatever he wants to find in the archive to support his case,' Primakov said, treading carefully. ‘The files are endless, and so is his jealousy. Your father was a priceless signing. At the time, I was fêted by the Director of the KGB, hailed as a hero. Within months, I was awarded the Order of Lenin. I could do no wrong. I admit that on some occasions the intelligence was gold, at others it was dust. But I knew your father better than many – and all I can say is that he detested America to the day he died. Whether that makes him or me guilty of treason, I leave to others.'

Marchant looked down at Primakov. His chest was heaving, his voice beginning to crack under the strain. One wrong word and Marchant's cover would be blown, but he still needed something.

‘Salim, Daniel' – a cock of the head towards Marchant – ‘I don't know why you have suddenly decided to listen to Comrade Grushko, but before you give him too much time, there is something you should both know.' A pause as he gathered himself. More rasping. ‘My instructions were quite clear: I was asked to bring you two together. A rising
jihadi
and an ambitious MI6 officer. Now that I have done my job, I may rest peacefully.'

‘And whose instructions were they?' Dhar asked, walking up to Primakov. Marchant could hear his suspicion, his mounting anger. Primakov was wobbling on the wire. This was the moment, the sign Marchant had been waiting for.

Primakov paused. ‘Your father's. He had witnessed the birth of Islamic terror, watched it grow in strength, knew that one day it would pose the greatest threat of all – to everyone: Britain, America, Russia.'

With no warning, Dhar whipped the pistol across Primakov's face.

‘You are lying!' he shouted. Marchant had never heard him raise his voice before. ‘It was Moscow Centre that asked you to bring us together.'

A trickle of blood was dripping from Primakov's mouth.

‘So it was Moscow Centre,' he said finally, with the air of a condemned man. ‘But at my suggestion, and your father's wish.'

‘A lying
kuffar
,' Dhar muttered, walking over to the window.

‘Salim, your father had always followed your progress from the other side of the world, but when there was a chance to meet you in person, he took it, knowing there might be some common ground between you.' Primakov was talking with difficulty, his cut lips bleeding, distorting his words. ‘And of course he had another son, Daniel, carving out a career in intelligence in the West, despite the best efforts of the CIA. There was some common ground there, too, between all three of you. On the last occasion I saw him, your father made me promise to bring the two of you together when the time was right. He said you would both know what to do. That time has now come.'

Dhar walked past Primakov and stood with his face inches from Marchant's. The smell of apricots was strong and sour now.

‘Do you want to, or shall I?' he asked, holding out the gun. ‘We cannot let him continue to insult our father in this way.'

Marchant's heart was racing. He knew it was a test, one final challenge. If Dhar suspected Primakov, he suspected him too, but for the moment it appeared that Dhar wanted to believe in his father, his half-brother – his family.

‘I saw something in our father's eye when I met him,' Dhar continued, now looking down at Primakov. ‘And do you know what it was? Approval. Anything to stop the American crusade: MI6 officers passing US secrets to Moscow,
jihadists
shooting the President in the name of Allah. And now that he has gone, it is left to you and me.'

He turned back to Marchant, who hesitated for a moment, looking at the gun that was still in Dhar's outstretched hand. Suddenly he saw Dhar as a child, desperately seeking a father's endorsement, something he had never been given in his childhood. If his real father hadn't been a traitor to the West, Dhar would be left with nothing. Dhar had to believe in his father's treachery, dismiss Primakov's talk of another agenda. In his mind, Moscow Centre had brought Dhar and Marchant together for one simple reason: they were both their father's sons.

Marchant listened to the sound of Primakov's wheezing, the loudest noise in the hangar. The Russian had finally told him the truth, knowing that he would pay for it with his life. He had avoided any admission that he was working for the British – that would have implicated Marchant, too. Instead, he had told Marchant that his father had wanted him to meet Dhar, explore their common ground. That was enough. And Marchant knew now exactly what he had to do.

‘Let me,' he said, taking the gun.

‘I shouldn't be here, but I wanted to thank you in person,' Fielding said, standing at the foot of Lakshmi Meena's hospital bed. One arm was heavily bandaged and she had bruising below her left eye, but she seemed in reasonable spirits.

‘For what?'

‘For letting them take Daniel. It must have gone against everything you were taught at the Farm. I brought you these.'

He waved the bunch of full-headed Ecuadorian roses he was holding, and put them on the windowsill. He had also brought a box of honey mangoes from Pakistan.

‘Thank you. I wasn't armed. There were at least four of them. In the circumstances, I had no choice but to protect myself. Have a seat.'

She gestured at a chair, but Fielding remained standing.

‘Is that what you told Spiro?' he asked.

‘It took a while for him to accept that they weren't your people.'

‘We haven't had to resort to kidnapping our own officers on the streets of London. Not yet.'

‘I don't suppose you're going to tell me what Dan's up to.'

He hesitated. ‘All I can say is that you were right to trust him. I'm sorry about your arm.'

‘You're asking a lot of him. To stop Salim Dhar on his own.'

Fielding glanced towards the door at the mention of Dhar's name. Through the frosted glass panel, he could see the profile of an armed policeman standing guard outside. He wanted to tell Meena that Marchant's orders weren't just to stop Dhar, but to turn him as well, but he couldn't. The stakes were too high. If Marchant could persuade Dhar to work for the West, it was not something Britain would ever be able to share with any of its allies, least of all America, whose President Dhar had come so close to killing.

‘No one else can,' Fielding said, moving towards the door. ‘It's family business.'

‘Please place a flower on my daughter's grave,' Primakov whispered, leaning forward, his whole body shaking now. ‘And may your father forgive you.'

Marchant wanted to look away as he fired. It took all his strength to pull the trigger, leaving him with no will to watch. But he knew Dhar was scrutinising his every move. Primakov's head lurched forward as if in a final drunken bow, and then he fell to the floor.

As the sound of the single shot faded in the echoing spaces of the hangar, Marchant prayed for the first time in years. He tried to tell himself that Primakov would have been executed by Grushko or Dhar if it hadn't been by him, but it didn't make it any easier. He had never killed anyone in cold blood before. Primakov deserved better. He had been one of his father's oldest friends, a courageous man who had carried out his wishes to the last. He hoped to God his death was worth it.

Dhar looked on impassively, then took the gun from Marchant without a word and walked over to his living area.

‘Our father told us to trust him as if he was family,' Marchant called after him, feeling the need to explain himself as he tried not to stare at Primakov's slumped figure. A pool of blood had formed around his disfigured head, dust floating on its surface like a fine skein of flotsam.

‘He made an error of judgement,' Dhar said. ‘Primakov had other interests.'

‘Like stopping the global
jihad
?' Marchant asked, regaining some of his composure. He needed to reassure himself that Dhar had moved on, no longer suspected him. ‘He must have known you wouldn't like what he said.'

‘Primakov was working to his own agenda. There are many within the SVR who are at war with Islam. He was trying to turn you against me, suggesting that our father had somehow sent you here from beyond the grave to halt my work.'

‘Was he anti-Russian, too?' Marchant asked, thinking that was exactly what their father had done. His question was a risk, but he needed to know what Dhar thought.

Dhar fixed Marchant with his eyes, now shining blacker than ever. ‘No. I do not believe Primakov was a British agent, if that's what you are asking. Grushko was simply trying to frame him. As Primakov said, there were people in Moscow Centre who were jealous of him when he recruited our father. His signing was quite a coup.'

Marchant couldn't ask for more. Dhar not only still believed that Primakov was working for Moscow, he was also sure that their father had been too. Primakov had chosen his words carefully. Thanks to him, Marchant was now safe, free from suspicion. He looked again at Primakov's body, remembering his final wish.

It was the first time Marchant had heard that Primakov had a daughter. He would make enquiries when all of this was over, find out where she was buried and put flowers on her grave. It was the least he could do.
And may your father forgive you.

‘Now I must prepare to fly,' Dhar said.

‘Where are you going?' Marchant asked as casually as he could, glancing at the aircraft at the end of the hangar. From the moment Primakov had requested him to help with the MiG-35s' incursion, Marchant had assumed that Dhar's plans involved an airborne attack of some sort. All he had to do now was persuade him to take him along.

‘To the land of our father,' Dhar said, patting him on his shoulder.

‘Then let me come with you,' Marchant said instinctively. It was the only chance he had of stopping Dhar. ‘We still have so much to discuss. And I know the country well.' He managed a light laugh. ‘I could show you the sights.'

Dhar paused for a moment, smiling to himself as he seemed to consider Marchant's offer. There was something Dhar wasn't telling him that made Marchant think that he had a chance. ‘That is true. And it is a long flight. Have you flown in a jet before?'

‘Only a Provost. But I have a strong stomach.' Marchant was thinking fast now, improvising. The last time they had met, Dhar had abandoned him on a hillside in south India when he left to shoot the US President. Marchant wasn't going to let him get away again. He had to be in the cockpit with him, find out what the target was, get a message to Fielding.

‘You know they won't allow another Russian jet to enter UK airspace,' Marchant continued. ‘I might be able to help, talk to traffic control. It could buy us a crucial few minutes before we're shot down.'

‘Grushko has already taken care of that. He's with your friend Myers in Cheltenham now.'