Dead Spy Running (21 page)

There was something about the network of cave-like huts on the hillside that reminded Marchant of Tora Bora. He'd never been to Afghanistan, but he had seen the satellite images, the route Osama Bin Laden had taken when he had given the Americans the slip. Each of the wooden shacks had been built deep into the red Konkan hillside. The one he was now sitting in went back twenty feet, although from the outside it looked like a small, single-room shack. There was no one else inside it apart from Salim Dhar, who had a restless energy about him as he brewed up a saucepan of milky cardamom
chai
on a small gas stove. Outside the door, a man sat on a plastic chair with an AK47 across his knees, smoking a cigarette.

‘We have so much in common, you and I,' Dhar said in perfect English.

‘Except that I put the milk in afterwards, and you boil it all together, along with a couple of kg of sugar.'

‘And who has the better teeth?' Dhar said, turning to hand Marchant a stainless steel beaker of tea, holding it by the rim. His smile was perfect white.

Marchant was struggling to understand the warmth of Dhar's welcome. From his Africa days he was used to the hospitality of enemies, that polite respite from hostilities while warring factions broke bread together before the slaughter. But there was something different going on here, and he didn't know what it was.

From the moment Dhar had greeted him at the bottom of the hill with a wide smile and a warm embrace, Marchant's mind had raced with possibilities. The taller of his two escorts had been dispatched up the hill, where Marchant noticed a number of men dotted around the rocky ridge. The second fisherman had accompanied Marchant and Dhar down through a deep valley of coconut groves and dense jungle, at the other side of which was the collection of huts. At least ten men were sitting around, some smoking, all with guns.

Marchant clocked a mix of nationalities: North African Arabs, Middle Eastern. No one seemed too bothered by his arrival. He wondered whether Dhar had concocted a cover story to reassure them about his presence. But did Dhar really know who he was? Was he aware that, until a month ago, his visitor spent his days and much of his nights working for an organisation dedicated to eliminating people and places like this? But Dhar had appeared relaxed, asking about his journey, the Westerners on the beaches, how he found the climate – the small-talk of casual acquaintances.

Now, though, as Dhar sat down at the flimsy table opposite him, his head beading with sweat, Marchant sensed that the conversation was about to change. Possibly his life, too. He thought of his father visiting Dhar in jail, and felt the pit of his stomach tighten. Had he been welcomed equally warmly? Were the Americans right to question his father's loyalty to the West? Marchant reminded himself that Dhar had attacked two US embassies in cold blood, killed many US Marines.

‘You look a bit like him, you know,' Dhar said in English. ‘A family likeness is there – the good looks.' Marchant sipped his tea, grateful for its spiced sweetness. Dhar was wearing a T-shirt cut off at the shoulders, revealing muscles that could only have been toned in a gym. He was tall, his face long and angular, with a skin colour much lighter than that of the local Karnatakans. The nose was prominent, the eye-sockets deep, but none of it seemed out of proportion or surprising. Perhaps it was habit, but Marchant kept glancing at Dhar's low, distinctive earlobes. They were the hardest parts of a face to disguise.

‘It's good of you to see me,' Marchant said.

‘My fight is not so much with the British, although your government's support for the infidel is craven.' At a flick of a switch, Dhar's voice had hardened into the familiar tones of the
jihadi
. ‘I received a message that you might be coming.'

‘Who from?'

‘An old family friend.'

Marchant assumed it must have been Uncle K. ‘I need to know why my father visited you in Kerala.'

Dhar smiled at Marchant again, in a way that disarmed him. He was holding all the cards.

‘He wanted a name. Someone in London.'

At last, Marchant thought. He had come a long way to hear this. ‘Why did he think you would tell him?'

Dhar paused, glancing out of the door at the guard. His voice became quieter.

‘Because I had once – foolishly – agreed to assist our family friend.'

‘And did you give my father a name?'

‘No. I couldn't help him.'

‘Couldn't?'

‘I didn't know it. He said someone in London was destroying all that he had worked for. From the inside. I couldn't help him.'

‘Do you know the name now?'

‘No. These things are kept separate.'

Marchant was suddenly very tired, even more tired than he had felt in the marathon. The hike had been bearable in the heat, knowing that ahead lay a chance, however slim, to restore his father's reputation. But now he was finally here, sitting opposite Salim Dhar, one of the world's most wanted, and it had all been a waste of time. Dhar didn't know a damn thing.

‘My father lost his job shortly afterwards,' Marchant said, angry now. ‘Then he died, of shame.'

‘Some say it was the infidel Americans. Doing our job for us. Someone in MI6, close to the Chief.'

Marchant looked up at him. ‘But you don't have a name.' He paused. ‘Why did you agree to see me?'

‘Why?'

‘You had no choice with my father. You were in prison when he visited. But with me, you could have had me killed.'

‘Because there's something you need to know. Something Stephen told me.' Marchant flinched at the use of his father's first name, his mouth turning dry. Dhar's liquorice eyes had begun to glisten. ‘He was my father too.'

Fielding put down the phone and looked around the room, his mind working fast. There was no question Daniel was telling the truth. It all made sense now: the payments each month, authorised by Stephen Marchant, to Dhar's father. His predecessor hadn't been trying to bring on a potential asset; it was a personal allowance, prompted by guilt, paid for by the Service.

The dates fitted, too. Stephen Marchant had overlapped with Dhar's father at the British High Commission for six months at the beginning of 1980, the year Dhar was born. It was then that he must have met Dhar's mother, in the months before returning to Britain for the birth of Daniel and Sebastian, when he was without his wife in Delhi.

He picked up the phone again and rang Anne Norman, asking to be put through to Ian Denton, who listened quietly to what Marchant had told Fielding on the phone.

‘Where was he calling from?' Denton asked.

‘He wouldn't say.'

‘But he was with Salim Dhar.'

‘No, he'd just left.' There was a pause, too long even for the taciturn Denton. ‘Ian?'

‘We might not have much time.'

‘Can you contact Carter? Straker won't take my calls any more.'

‘The phone, Marcus. If Daniel was talking on a targeted mobile, Fort Meade will have picked it up and passed it on already.'

‘That's why we need to speak to Carter.'

‘Isn't he out of the loop now?'

‘Not yet. He'll understand what this means.'

‘And you think it's going to help our case with Langley?'

In the few minutes since taking Daniel's call, Fielding had felt only relief, finally knowing why Stephen Marchant had travelled to India on an unauthorised visit, a trip that had always troubled Fielding because it had been so out of character. There had been no mention of any name, no mole uncovered, but at least Fielding now knew that the journey had been made for private reasons, not national ones. It might lower Stephen's reputation in some people's eyes, but for Fielding it meant professional exoneration for his predecessor. Denton was right, though. He always was. In the American mind – Spiro's, Straker's – it would be interpreted quite differently: as further proof that the former Chief of MI6's loyalties were questionable.

‘Carter will understand,' Fielding repeated. ‘It explains Stephen's visit, why he travelled to Kerala. That's what was bothering them all so much, wasn't it? He was a philanderer with a conscience, Ian, not a traitor. Doesn't this prove it?'

‘It will prove only one thing to them: that they were right to go after him.'

Fielding didn't care any more what the Americans thought. It had always been Stephen Marchant's dream to recruit someone like Dhar. In recent days, Fielding realised it had become one of his own, too. Wasn't that why he had let Daniel try to find him? Now they knew who Dhar really was, a high-level penetration of AQ had finally become a possibility. He wasn't about to let the Americans pass up the chance. There would never be another opportunity like it. And who better to recruit Dhar, he thought, than Daniel Marchant, his half-brother?

 

‘He never really got over the death of Sebbie,' Marchant said, sipping at his second cup of cardamom
chai
. He wished there was something stronger to drink. ‘None of us did.'

‘Was he like you?' Dhar asked.

‘Sebbie? More serious than I was. Troubled at times. Used to wake me with his nightmares. Shit hot at maths, though. Drove me mad. Always ahead of me at school.'

Dhar smiled. ‘Stephen said that one day you would come.'

Marchant tried to picture the two of them together. ‘Do you think he wanted you to let me know?'

‘I was angry when he first told me, cross that it had taken him so long.'

‘My mother would have died if he had ever gone public about it. She was very vulnerable.'

‘My mother too. That's why I forgave him. He told me there wasn't a day in his life when he hadn't thought about me, wondered how I was getting on. But my mother had made him swear that he would never visit me, never try to make contact, never tell anyone. My father still doesn't know. He thought the money was from her family. He used to complain that they hadn't paid him enough dowry. Stephen agreed to her wishes, but said that it had always been his plan to come and find me when I was eighteen.'

‘What delayed him?'

‘Do you know where I celebrated my eighteenth birthday? In a training camp with my Kashmiri brothers.'

‘He might have ruined your reputation.'

‘I might have ruined his. He always sent money, though.'

‘For how long?'

‘Until I was twenty-one. I guess it was him. We weren't rich. My parents worked in the embassies. My father filed infidel invoices, my mother was paid a pittance for looking after expat children when their parents went out to drink. Both of them were treated like pigs. But we were never short of money. My mother said it was tips. She kept a roll of 500-rupee notes hidden behind the
puja
cupboard.'

‘Your mother was a Hindu?'

‘Both of them were. I converted to Islam when I left school. Did everything I could to distance myself from my father, his
kafir
world.'

‘You weren't close, then.'

Dhar laughed. ‘When I found out he had nothing to do with me, it all made sense. The rows, the lack of any bond like those I saw between other fathers and sons. It was such a relief.'

‘Maybe he did know?'

‘No. He always wanted me to be more like him. To my shame, his favourite job was at the US Embassy. He loved everything American, even wore a cowboy hat and boots to the office fancy-dress party. But he didn't see it. How they treated him, laughing behind his back. I saw it, and I knew he was so, so wrong. He sent me to the American School in Delhi – the worst years of my life.'

Dhar stood up, slinging a small rucksack on his back. ‘I have to go. You must stay here for a few days, then they will take you back to Om Beach.'

‘Will I see you again?'

‘Never try to contact me, for your own safety. I'm your only brother around here.'

‘And you can't give me a name?'

‘No.' He paused. ‘I'll ask.'

‘Where are you going?'

Dhar turned back at the doorway, smiling. ‘Family business.
Inshallah
.'

‘Sons turn out in the strangest ways,' Carter said. ‘My youngest is in a goddamn thrash band.' Carter was sitting in the back of a black people carrier, Fielding and Denton opposite him at a small foldaway table. They were heading west on the M4, planes landing at Heathrow in a steady procession to their left. He had never seen the Vicar so quiet. ‘Besides, Marchant was sending his family money long before he became a
jihadi
warrior.'

‘Straker won't buy it, though, will he?' Denton said.

‘No, he won't. Which is why we have to get ourselves out to Delhi. I'm not going to sit here quietly while our new President's life is on the line. Hell, I voted for him. You're still the Chief, Marcus. I'm still head of Clandestine. Let's pull some rank here while we're both in play.'

‘I shouldn't have taken the call,' Fielding said, looking through the tinted glass as another plane came in to land. It was a sight that still made him nervous, after what had nearly happened at Heathrow a few years earlier. ‘If Daniel had just called the switchboard, he could have been dismissed as a renegade trying to come in from the cold. But he asked to speak to me, and I took the call.'

‘So we're heading for Fairford,' Carter said. ‘In my untracked vehicle, not yours.'

Denton's phone started to ring. He answered it, listened, then hung up. ‘That was Anne. They've come for you in the office, Marcus.'

 

Marchant had been lying on the
charpoy
for over an hour, waiting for his moment. The guard stood up from his chair, glanced in his direction, and walked down the hill towards another man who had called him. They were both laughing at something.

Marchant had spotted the old Nokia handset while he had been talking to Dhar, but assumed that he would take it with him. It was partially hidden under a copy of
The Week
, an Indian news magazine, in a pile on the dusty floor. Had Dhar left it there on purpose, knowing he would find it? To create a diversion, buy Dhar some time? He swung off the bed, one eye on the doorway, and picked up the phone. He pressed the power button and rolled it up in his shirt, hoping to muffle any start-up tone. It vibrated briefly.

He knew that there was a high risk that it was a targeted unit, but he had to get news about Dhar and his father to Fielding. He may not have the name of a mole in MI6, but at least he had an explanation for the unorthodox trip to Kerala that had so concerned the Americans. He pressed at the familiar digits with shaking fingers, praying that the phone had international access. Then he heard the ringing tone of a London number, and breathed in deeply, a sound that was heard two thousand miles away, in the headphones of a young operator at the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland.

 

Denton clipped the safety belt across his lap, and looked around the small cabin of the Gulfstream V: six seats, all buttermilk leather and chrome, a single divan and a mahogany-panelled buffet unit. Fielding fastened his belt opposite him, and caught Denton's wry smile. The irony of senior intelligence officers fleeing Britain in a plane used for rendition flights was not lost on either of them. Carter was up with the pilot, briefing him on the route. He lifted a headphone from one ear and turned back to talk to them.

‘The pilot's just filing some dummy flight plans,' he said, louder than he needed to. ‘We're operating under special status, but he says UK traffic control's gotten a little stricter in recent months.'

‘Like hell it has,' Denton whispered to Fielding, as Carter put his headphone back on and faced the front again. ‘Did you see where they put them?'

‘I didn't want to look.'

‘Behind the buffet. Enough to put you off lunch.' Denton had glanced through the door that separated the back of the plane from the main cabin. The contrast with the plush interior couldn't have been greater. All the fittings had been stripped, leaving the bare-ribbed shell of the plane. Fixed to the matt metal floor were two small steel rings, three feet apart. There was a dark mark between them, where Denton assumed the human cargo had sat, feet and hands restrained. It might have been blood, or something worse, but the traces of pain remained. Had Daniel Marchant been shackled there on his flight to Poland? And, before him, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

‘Welcome to Air CIA,' Carter said, sitting down next to Denton. ‘Twelve hours till touchdown in New Delhi.'

Denton hadn't heard him. He was watching the blue flashing lights on the road beyond Fairford's perimeter fence. At the same moment, the pilot called for Carter to return to the cockpit. Denton caught Fielding's eye, and nodded out of the window.

‘There's still time for you to go, Ian,' Fielding said. ‘You don't have to be here.'

Denton ignored his Chief. He knew they were right about Leila. Earlier, the three of them had entered the airbase with little difficulty. As far as the RAF was concerned, Fairford was now a standby facility. The USAF ran the place, keen to ensure the safety and secrecy of its B-2 Spirit Stealth bombers, as well as the occasional rendition flight. The guards on the main gate knew Carter well and had waved him through, but Denton feared that the phones would be ringing in Whitehall and Washington. It all depended on how much authority Carter still wielded, whether Straker had done the maths, and concluded that he was working with Fielding.

The twin turbojet engines whined as the pilot nursed the plane across the tarmac towards the end of the three-kilometre-long runway. Denton unclipped his seatbelt and went forward to Carter. For a moment, Fielding thought he was taking up his offer to get off the plane.

‘Everything OK?' Denton asked.

‘We're just clarifying with Langley that I'm on official Company business,' Carter said.

‘You mean a rendition flight.'

Carter laughed. ‘Routine Clandestine work.'

‘Have you seen the police activity on the perimeter?'

‘Relax, it's nothing. Just a bunch of plane-spotters, happens all the time. Guess the Spirit's flying today. We always ask your police to clear them away. Nobody knows the Vicar's on board, Ian. We don't do passport control on these planes.'