Dead Spy Running

by Jon Stock

  ‘Grom. Polish special forces. When was this taken?’ he asked, pulling hard on his cigarette.

  ‘20.30 hours,’ Carter said.

  The room had gone quiet as everyone stared at the truck.

  ‘Bring us in closer,’ Spiro said, walking up to the wall as the image grew bigger and more blurred. ‘This part here, the windscreen.’

  The truck’s windscreen was highlighted with an animated dotted line, before it expanded to fill the entire wall. The driver could clearly be seen on the right-hand side of the cabin, and the outline of another figure was visible in the passenger seat. But it was the profile of a third person between them that had interested Spiro.

  ‘Can we rebuild this?’ he asked.

  The atmosphere grew tense as Carter and his team exchanged glances with each other, realising that Spiro was about to show them up. They had been more interested in establishing where the truck had gone next, and whether any of the city’s other unreliable cameras had captured its progress.

  In a few moments the image had been enhanced enough to reveal the blurred features of a familiar figure. Spiro turned to address the room, one side of the projected figure dappling his own. ‘Hugo Prentice, employee of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Warsaw station. I guess his mother loved him. Langley wants him fried.’

  Hugo Prentice wandered through Kolo Bazaar, aware of at least one set of watchers on his tail. He had already counted three of them, and spotted a fourth in the antique mirror on the stall in front of him. They had picked him up after he had left the embassy by car after lunch, following at a safe distance. He knew what their presence meant: they had spotted his image on the traffic CCTV. On the journey down from Stare Kiejkuty he had leant forward in the Grom truck at almost every set of lights, hoping that at least one of the ancient police traffic cameras had been working.

  He walked down to the end of the market, stopping occasionally to look at items that genuinely caught his eye: Russian samovars, iron crosses, old leather sofas. It was important for his followers to believe that they had not been spotted. When he made his move, he must do it with the purpose of an intelligence officer who was taking the usual precautions before meeting his agent, rather than someone who was panicking under surveillance.

  Spiro was agitated, watching Prentice on the main screen as he moved through the market in the fragmented images of the city centre’s CCTV network.

  ‘He’s about to dry-clean,’ he said. ‘Moscow rules, British style. They should put this guy in a museum.’

  Spiro knew what Prentice was up to. Marchant was too hot to be kept at the British Embassy – they needed to deny all involvement – so he had been secreted somewhere in the city. Prentice was now on his way to meet him. Spiro had asked old friends in the WSI for assistance, but he wasn’t sure if they would be in a position to help after the Stare Kiejkuty fiasco.

  ‘Eyes on the tram, unit three,’ he said, as Prentice quickened his pace.

  The number 12 pulled in just as Prentice reached the stop. He stepped aboard, glancing casually at his watch as he did so. The tram was crowded with afternoon commuters, and there were no seats available, but he wasn’t going far. At the next stop he would get off, descend into the nearby underpass by a subway, and then leave from exit four, one of six possible exits, which was at street level. The street was one-way – the wrong way for any vehicle that might have been following the number 12 tram.

  ‘Somebody better be following him,’ Spiro said as Prentice disappeared down the underpass. ‘He’s in dead ground.’

  ‘Unit four?’ the junior officer said.

  ‘The busker’s playing our song,’ a relaxed voice said on the intercom.

  An image of a guitarist, sitting on the floor of the underpass, flashed up on the main screen. Carter allowed himself a nervous smile, pleased that his men were performing well on Spiro’s watch. But Spiro wasn’t impressed.

  ‘Something’s not right here,’ he said. ‘It’s all too predictable, even for the British.’

  ‘Exit four,’ said the junior officer.

  Spiro watched as Prentice sauntered up onto the street.

  ‘We have a problem. It’s one-way.’

  ‘That’s better,’ Spiro said. ‘The old soldier’s warming up.’

  * * *

  Prentice slowed down to look in the window of a shoe shop, checking for trams as he did so. Number 23 was coming down the road, but was still fifty yards from the stop. If he increased his pace now, he just might make it. But he needed his tail to catch the tram too, and he was still packing up his guitar in the underpass.

  The lights ahead changed, delaying the traffic enough for Prentice to walk slowly towards the stop. He didn’t need to check that the busker was behind him. Prentice climbed on board at the front of the tram and worked his way down, searching for a seat. The busker was good, Marchant thought. He never once looked up to see where Prentice had sat, which made him think he was wired. He would know in a few seconds. Just as the front and rear doors were about to close, Prentice slipped back out onto the street, synchronising his exit with the moment when the busker had a ticket in his hand.

  The doors closed with the busker still inside.

  ‘Textbook,’ Spiro said.

  ‘Unit 3’s approaching now,’ Carter said, watching the screen.

  ‘Reminds me of my first surveillance op in London,’ said Spiro. ‘The Russian was sitting in the last carriage of the subway train, front end. When the train pulled into Charing Cross, Northern Line, he walked off just before the train left. I tried to follow, but the last set of doors don’t open at Charing Cross. I must have been the only spook in London who didn’t know. I swear the guy waved as the train pulled out.’

  ‘Sir, target’s on the move again,’ one of the junior officers said. ‘Boarding a 24, heading uptown.’

  ‘Stay with him,’ Carter said. ‘These guys can take all day to clean up.’

  * * *

  Prentice, it was true, had been known to spend twenty-four hours establishing that he wasn’t being followed, but he didn’t have that luxury today. Instead, he took the tram towards the central railway station, getting off on the corner of Jerozolimskie and Jana Pawla II. The next ten minutes would be critical. He walked past the station’s entrance and headed towards Zlote Tarasy, the latest in a series of huge shopping malls to have opened in the capital in recent years. Prentice knew the Varsarians loved to shop, but even he was surprised by Zlote Tarasy’s opulence and range of familiar Western names. He could have been in Bluewater.

  He headed for the escalator that would take him down to the lower ground floor. At the bottom, he moved confidently around to the base of the up escalator and rode back to the ground floor, glancing across at the escalator he had just come down on. He knew the Americans wouldn’t fall for it, but today was about maintaining appearances. The CIA’s watchers had never rated the Service’s counter-surveillance skills, and he was more than happy to play down to their expectations.

  He glanced at his watch and then headed for a café on the ground floor, where he ordered a black coffee, sat down at a small corner table, and started to read a copy of the International Herald Tribune that he had picked up from the counter. His table was discreet, with an empty seat opposite him.

  For a few minutes he looked through the paper, concentrating on stories rather than just pretending to read them. He was always reminding his officers that the best counter-surveillance watchers were trained to spot eye movements. The vibration of his mobile phone interrupted a story on Belgium beer prices. Prentice reached inside his jacket pocket and read the text.

  ‘This is it,’ Spiro said. ‘All units, I want Daniel Marchant brought in the moment he shows. Alive.’

  24

  Six miles south-west of the shopping mall, Daniel Marchant sat sipping a black coffee too. Monika was next to him, drinking mint tea in a tall glass and wearing a faded purple salwar khameez. A large rucksack covered in stickers was propped up beside her
. The Terminal One departure hall at Frederic Chopin airport was crowded, and they had been lucky to get a table in the bustling café, but Monika seemed to know everyone, and after a brief chat with one of the baristas a reserved sign on the corner table had been removed.

  If Marchant had had to select a spot that afforded views of the entire departure hall, and also offered the observer cover and protection, their table would have been his first choice. Their backs were to the wall, denying anyone the chance to approach them unsighted, the seating area was raised above the main concourse, and the entrance and exit onto the road outside was almost beside them. Anyone who entered the departure hall would have to pass beneath them, where they could be easily observed.

  All of which made him genuinely drawn to Monika, because it confirmed what he had suspected: she was an intelligence officer, most probably with AW. The text she had discreetly sent while fetching the sugar had also smacked of the covert, but he had already begun to realise at her flat: her bringing his rucksack over from the hostel, his extreme sleepiness, the way she had confined him indoors, changed his flight. And then, finally, her announcement that she had managed to buy a ticket on the same flight and was coming to India with him.

  He knew she wasn’t, but he couldn’t confront her, in case it jeopardised her operational cover: the Americans might have had them under surveillance for days. A part of him also wanted to believe that it was true. He was flattered that she trusted him to play the game, and he admired her thoroughness: he hadn’t had such good sex since his own year off.

  So he was still David Marlowe and she remained Monika, and together they talked about their shared love for the human drama of arrivals and departures, and whether India’s airports would be any different.

  ‘The queue for the check-in is short. We should go now,’ she said, resting her hand on his.

  ‘OK,’ Marchant said, glancing across at the row of desks. He made a cursory sweep of the hall, but by now he was confident that his departure from Poland for India, via the Gulf, was in the safe hands of AW.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ He paused. ‘It’s just the end of my European adventure, that’s all. I’ve grown quite fond of Poland.’

  ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Even after your experience with the Americans?’

  For a moment, their separate masks slipped. As he looked at her, he wondered what her real name was, whether she had a boyfriend, if she made love differently when she wasn’t in character.

  ‘It’s amazing how quickly you get over these things,’ he said, thinking back to Stare Kiejkuty. ‘Water off a duck’s back.’

  * * *

  Spiro watched Prentice read his newspaper on the big screen, wondering from which direction Marchant would join him. He knew a part of him envied Prentice’s reputation as a maverick; he could never have the confidence to disobey orders, to do his own thing in the way Prentice had done on numerous occasions over the years. The CIA didn’t allow for freewheeling field agents, not any more. Gone were those glory days in Afghanistan, when he and others were dropped into Kabul with suitcases stuffed full of hundred-dollar bills and instructions to win the war on terror. Everyone now had to be accountable in a way that would have been unthinkable ten years ago. Did Prentice wilfully disregard his briefs from London, Spiro wondered, or had London learnt not to brief him too specifically, knowing that it would be futile?

  Either way, Spiro knew Prentice had the better hand, which made what happened next all the more galling. Prentice folded his newspaper, glanced at his watch and finished his coffee.

  ‘This could be it,’ Spiro said to no one in particular, but Carter concentrated even harder on the panel of visual feeds in front of him.

  Everyone in the room watched as Prentice pulled a phone out of his jacket pocket and dialled a number.

  ‘Did we get a shot of that?’ Spiro asked.

  The main screen changed to a close-up of Prentice, focusing on the phone in his hand. The images then played back in slow motion. Carter called out the digits as Prentice’s fingers moved from one number to the next. But his voice started to trail off as the sound of Spiro’s own ringtone filled the room.

  25

  Prentice sent the pre-written text while his hand was still in his jacket pocket, but neither Spiro nor Carter, or any of his team, suspected him of doing anything other than making a phone call. The only person who knew was Monika, whose phone buzzed in the back pocket of her jeans as they approached the check-in desk for their flight to Dubai.

  Spiro didn’t take the call immediately, letting the phone ring five times while his brain linked the image on the screen with the sound of his own phone.

  ‘Prentice. What a pleasure,’ he said at last, refusing to catch the eye of anyone in the room, although all of them were hanging on his every word. Prentice had humiliated him once before, in Prague a few years earlier, and he knew he was about to do the same again.

  Prentice looked around the mall, as if trying to spot Spiro.

  ‘I can offer you a deal,’ Prentice said, not revealing that he knew he was being filmed. He had noted all the CCTV cameras as he came into the mall, and was tempted to face the one nearest to him, like a newsreader, but he didn’t want to give an impression of being in control. Not yet.

  ‘And there was I thinking we were on the same side,’ Spiro said.

  ‘It’s a good deal.’ Prentice paused, looking around the café again.

  ‘Are all units in place?’ Spiro asked briskly, muting his phone. Carter nodded. ‘Try me,’ Spiro continued to Prentice.

  ‘You can talk to Marchant, but I need to be present,’ Prentice said.

  ‘He’s a proven threat to America,’ Spiro said.

  ‘Who isn’t these days?’

  ‘The deal was that we could talk to him.’

  ‘I know. And you can. Just without the watersports. Your new President banned torture, remember?’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘I’m at a café, ground floor, Zlote Tarasy.’ Prentice knew he didn’t have to tell Spiro, but he still wanted his old rival to feel empowered. ‘When Marchant sees we’re on our own – don’t piss about, he’s good – he’ll come and join us for a latte.’

  Marchant and Monika handed their passports over the airline counter. The luck of the Irish, he thought, as the check-in woman took his green passport and studied it. He presumed Monika’s passport had been cleared already. How far was she going to take this pretence? All the way to the plane?

  He wasn’t sure if she was on her own or had back-up. He still hadn’t noticed anyone who might be AW, but they both clocked the man pushing a luggage trolley past them while their passports were being checked. Neither of them reacted when he looked in their direction for a moment longer than a stranger would, or when he reached for his phone, talked briefly as he glanced at Marchant again, and then quickened his walk to the main exit.

  Carter looked hard at the image on his screen of Marchant and Monika as they waited for their passports to be handed back. There was something about them that troubled him: the lightness of skin around the man’s hairline that suggested he had shaved his head recently; the pairing of Irish and Polish passports.

  ‘Sir, I think you should take a look at this,’ he said, turning to Spiro.

  ‘Are all airport units on their way to the mall?’ Spiro asked, ignoring him.

  ‘They’re mobile, sir, but I think you should…’

  ‘Every floor, every exit. I want Marchant in a van before he’s even smelled Prentice’s coffee,’ Spiro said.

  As Spiro took his coat and strode out of the room, Carter hung back and looked again at the live feed from the airport. Marchant and Monika were moving out of the image towards passport control. Then his phone rang.

  Operational cover was something that an agent never dropped, not until the job was done, but Marchant hoped that Monika might make an exception now. Their flight had been called, and they were queuing
to board. He wasn’t in India yet, but the dangers of the departure hall were behind them, and there was little that the Americans could do now. And he knew, from the way that they had hung back, waiting to be last in the queue, that she wouldn’t be flying with him to India after all. These were to be their last few minutes together.

  ‘I think we can drop…’

  ‘Ssshh…’ she said, putting a finger on his lips and nodding at the three check-in staff. There were still twenty people between them and the gate.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, gently taking her hand from his face and holding it. ‘I won’t forget this, the time we had together.’

  ‘Here, take this,’ she said, pulling out a chrome pendant from her pocket. It was small and silver, attached to a piece of thread. She took it in both hands and slipped it over Marchant’s head. ‘It’s an Om symbol, the sound of the universe. You can’t go backpacking around India without one.’

  As Marchant looked down at it she leant forward, kissed him on the lips, then hugged him. He wanted to taste her mouth again, but before he could, she was whispering in his ear, holding his head tightly in her hands.

  ‘There’s a man in Delhi called Malhotra. Ask for him, Colonel Kailash Malhotra, at the Gymkhana Club. Plays bridge there every Wednesday night. You may remember him; he knew your father. And he knows where to find Salim Dhar.’

  Before he could reply, she peeled herself away, nodded at the check-in supervisor, and disappeared. Two minutes later, in the departure hall, she texted Prentice to tell him that he could finish his coffee and disappear too.

  She didn’t recognise Carter as she left the exit, but he noticed her, and reached for his mobile. Two thousand miles away, a phone began to ring in the crucible of a Delhi summer.