Dead Spy Running

by Jon Stock

  ‘Gokarna?’ the driver asked, smiling in the rear mirror as he throttled the tiny two-stroke engine. ‘Too far, sir, even for Shiva. Airport?’

  ‘Railway station.’

  ‘Gymkhana, firework problem?’

  Marchant nodded, gripping the side bar of the rickshaw to stop his hand shaking. ‘Big problem,’ he said. On the opposite side of the road, a diplomatic car drove past at speed. Marchant turned back to look at the blue number-plate. It was American. For a moment he thought he recognised the female figure in the back of the car.

  32

  ‘Can we assume that Marchant was at the club?’ Fielding asked, off the floor and back sitting upright at the dining-room table.

  ‘It’s a Wednesday night,’ Denton said, glancing at the flat screen mounted on the wall. It was now relaying Sky images of a burning Gymkhana Club. ‘We’ve spoken to Warsaw. Bridge night was all he had to go on.’

  ‘Are you saying you knew where Marchant was?’ Alan Carter asked. He had joined them again after stepping outside the Chief’s office to make a couple of calls to Langley. At Fielding’s request, Anne Norman had reluctantly connected him on a secure line.

  ‘I thought you knew too,’ Fielding replied.

  ‘We knew he was in India.’

  ‘He was to make contact with a colonel who used to work in Indian intelligence. Kailash Malhotra, former number two at RAW. He played in a bridge drive at the Gymkhana on Wednesday nights.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Carter said. ‘The DCIA wants Marchant brought in. I’ve just spoken to his office. He’ll be patched through shortly on the secure video link.’

  ‘I thought you were more interested in Dhar.’

  ‘We are. But we’ve also got our new President flying into Delhi Saturday.’

  ‘We must let Marchant find Dhar.’

  ‘The timing of this bomb couldn’t be worse, Marcus. I’m not going to be able to hold the hawks back if Marchant was at the club. Spiro isn’t completely out of the picture. The Director and him go way back. It’s a Marines thing. After this, Spiro will be telling him to go after Dhar with everything we’ve got. And it’s hard not to agree with him.’

  ‘Except that you don’t know where Dhar is.’

  ‘But the colonel did. He could have told us, told you, saved a lot of time, a lot of lives.’ Carter glanced again at the TV screen. Burnt and blistered bodies were being lined up beneath the club’s Lutyens porch.

  ‘He would never have told us,’ Fielding said. ‘Our relationship with Delhi is better than yours, but Dhar’s an embarrassment to them. RAW tried to recruit him once.’

  ‘But he was happy to tell Marchant of Dhar’s whereabouts.’

  ‘We hoped he might be. He was once very close to his father. But we don’t know what he said. Right now, we don’t even know if Marchant and Malhotra are alive.’

  Carter paused. ‘It doesn’t look great, does it? Daniel Marchant, suspected of trying to kill the US Ambassador in London, now at the scene of a bomb blast in Delhi, three days before the President arrives there.’

  ‘Except that you and I both know that Daniel Marchant wasn’t behind either of those incidents.’

  ‘He just happened to be present at both. I’m losing my nerve here, Marcus. Remind me why Marchant’s on our side?’

  ‘Because he’s being set up. And if it’s not by you, then someone’s got us both by the balls.’

  ‘What makes you so certain?’

  ‘I knew Stephen Marchant. And I know Daniel. If he’s still alive, he’ll make contact with Dhar.’

  ‘Who’s walking around Delhi blowing up clubs.’

  ‘This wasn’t Dhar, Alan. Trust me on this one. Whoever planted this bomb was after Marchant.’

  There was a knock on the door, and Anne Norman’s head appeared. She looked straight at Fielding, ignoring Carter. ‘Sir, I’ve got Langley on the line. The DCIA’s ready to join you.’

  ‘Screen two,’ Fielding said. ‘Thank you, Anne.’

  ‘Mind if I take the lead on this one?’ Carter said as she closed the door.

  ‘He’s all yours,’ Fielding said. William Straker, Director of the CIA, flickered into life on a screen next to the one that showed a smouldering Gymkhana Club.

  Daniel remembered the red-shirted porters from his last visit to India, when he had travelled the length and breadth of the subcontinent by rail. But he had never seen so many of them before, bobbing through the crowded concourse of Nizamuddin station with suitcases on their scarved heads, sweating, sometimes smiling, always shouting, followed by anxious tourists trying to keep up. For once, nobody pestered him. Porters approached and then melted away, clocking that the farangi had no bags. Or was it the blood and soot on his clothes? They probably thought he was a drug addict, one of the many Westerners who end up begging on the streets of India for enough money to fly home.

  He had washed as best he could when the rickshaw dropped him off at the entrance to the station, buying some bottled water at a food stand on the main concourse. It had been the right decision to come straight there, rather than try to pick up his rucksack from the guesthouse. His room would have been searched and ransacked by now. Marlowe’s passport and money were strapped safely to his leg. He would buy new clothes when he was safely out of Delhi. His ticket, third-class, to Karwar, near Gokarna, was in his pocket. All he had to do now was find platform 18, where the Mangala Express to Ernakulam would be leaving in half an hour, twelve hours behind schedule, which wasn’t so bad for a seventy-seven-hour journey.

  As he made his way across the concourse, stepping over sleeping bodies and broken clay chai cups, he became aware of a commotion ahead of him, alongside a train that seemed to stretch forever in both directions. Two Western backpackers, both of them young women, were being harangued by an Indian businessman. Marchant slipped into the large crowd that had gathered to watch.

  ‘How dare you come to our country wearing your next-to-nothings and skimpy whatnots, and complain that our men are Eve-teasers,’ the businessman was saying shrilly. The argument appeared to have been running for several minutes.

  ‘The guy pinched my bloody arse,’ the younger of the two women said. Marchant detected a faint Australian accent, adopted rather than native, as he glanced at her figure. What little clothing she was wearing wouldn’t have looked out of place on a caged go-go dancer. The elder woman was dressed more modestly. Marchant pushed through the crowd, sensing an opportunity. The cover of travelling in a group would be useful. The women were trapped. When the elder of them told the other one that they should go, the crowd pressed together, preventing them from moving. ‘Out of my way, will you?’ the woman said, panic rising in her voice. ‘I need to get on this train. Hey, stop it! Get off me!’

  ‘Kareeb khade raho,’ the businessman barked as the crowd pressed against the women. ‘Close in, close in. We keep them here until the police arrive. These Western harlots must be taught a lesson.’

  ‘Kya problem, hai?’ Marchant said as he reached the businessman. ‘Is there a problem?’ He could smell alcohol on his breath.

  ‘And who are you?’

  ‘They’re travelling with me,’ Marchant said, glancing at the two women, who were now visibly frightened. Something in his eyes must have told them that he was on their side.

  ‘So you must be their pimp.’

  ‘Kind of,’ Marchant said, resisting the temptation to punch him. ‘We’ve just come from filming the new Shah Rukh Khan movie,’ he said, his voice loud enough to be heard by the crowd. Marchant was thinking quickly. While waiting for Uncle K to meet him at the reception of the Gymkhana Club, he had read in the Hindustan Times how the US President had hoped to visit a Bollywood film set while he was in India, but his itinerary was preventing it. Shah Rukh Khan was making a film at the Red Fort in Delhi, a joint production with a Western company. The star had extended a personal invitation to the President to watch the filming while he was in town.

  ‘Shah Rukh?’ one of the crowd asked
excitedly.

  ‘Sure. We were only extras, though,’ Marchant said.

  ‘Did you meet him? My God, you met him, didn’t you?’ said another member of crowd. ‘He met Shah Rukh!’

  ‘Only to say hello to,’ Marchant continued, looking at the businessman, who clearly didn’t believe a word of what he was hearing. But the less educated crowd, as Marchant had hoped, was already beginning to turn.

  ‘What was he like?’ someone else called out. ‘Did you hear him sing?’

  ‘No, we didn’t hear him sing. They add the soundtracks later, you know. But we did see him dance.’

  ‘With Aishwarya? Did you see her dance, too?’

  ‘Of course. We were in a large fight scene, playing dirty, filthy Westerners of low moral standing. And I apologise for our appearance now. We had no time to change. The sooner we can board this train the better, then we can dispose of these offensive garments.’ Marchant turned towards the two women. ‘Follow me towards the train as soon as the crowd starts to back off,’ he told them quietly.

  ‘How can you prove this fanciful story?’ the businessman asked, as Marchant put his head down and made for a carriage door. The crowd, as he had calculated, started to part for the Westerners, ignoring the businessman, who found himself being carried away in the tide of people. ‘And why didn’t these two women mention any of this before?’ he called out after them.

  Marchant let the two women climb up into the carriage first, then followed them, before turning to wave to the crowd.

  ‘You’re not fooling anyone,’ the businessman persisted, pushing his way to the edge of the platform. Marchant was aware that the public scene he had created needed to end quickly. The police would arrive soon, questions would be asked, statements taken. Up until now he had avoided using force, hoping to defuse rather than exacerbate the situation. But the businessman had a doggedness about him that troubled Marchant.

  ‘Drugs only deceive yourself, my friend,’ the businessman said. ‘You don’t fool me.’

  ‘I know I don’t,’ Marchant said, leaning down towards him, his mouth close to the man’s ear. ‘But what I do know is that if you try to come after us, or talk to the police, or identify us to anyone, I’ll personally break your neck, just like Shah Rukh does in the film.’

  33

  In another life, a different time, Marcus Fielding and William Straker might have been close. American intelligence officers everywhere had cheered when Straker was appointed Director of the CIA. He was a spy’s spy, a HUMINT man through and through, rising to head the Agency’s Clandestine Service before taking over as its Director. His appointment had softened the blow of the CIA suddenly finding itself answerable to a higher authority, the new Director of National Intelligence. But working for a DNI suited Straker fine. It helped to deflect some of the unwanted publicity.

  Not many clandestines made it to the top of a bureaucracy as big as the CIA. Straker was good for the spy’s soul at a time when Congress was questioning the Agency’s very existence. And his Marines background played well with the paramilitaries, too. He was less popular in London. Straker had personally led the drive to remove Stephen Marchant, which, given Fielding’s loyalty to his predecessor, made for a far from special relationship between the two intelligence chiefs.

  But Fielding had been suspicious of Straker long before he helped to remove Marchant. He knew that they should have been allies rather than antagonists. Straker couldn’t be more different from the previous Director, a showman who had somehow emerged from the harsh, post-9/11 spotlight as a celebrity clandestine, savouring the international limelight before retirement and memoirs. Straker was different, more like the British. He had always preferred the penumbral. And as such he was a greater threat to the Service, because he played by the same rules.

  ‘Sirs,’ Straker said, his manner drilled, precise. ‘There’s not a lot of time. One of our top generals was almost killed tonight. I need to know everything we have on the Gymkhana blast. Was Marchant involved?’

  Red lights on three small cameras, mounted on a terminal in the centre of the table, glowed discreetly. Carter glanced at Fielding, who nodded and then looked up at the video screen. ‘Sir, as you know, Marchant’s become the subject of a level-five covert. MI6 think he was at the club, but that he wasn’t responsible.’

  ‘I thought you’d say that. Just like he wasn’t trying to take out Munroe. Marcus?’

  ‘Will, I know how this must appear, but we’re convinced Marchant’s being set up here.’

  ‘Not by us he isn’t,’ Straker said.

  Fielding read the subtext – Leila hadn’t been used by the Americans to frame Marchant – and ignored it. To look at, Straker reminded Fielding of one of the thickset rugby players his college at Cambridge used to admit, the promise of an impressive performance on the field outweighing any academic shortcomings off it. Only he knew that Straker was the sharpest officer of his generation. Both fluent Arabic-speakers (Straker spoke Russian and Urdu too), their paths had crossed when he and Fielding had talked Gaddafi out of his nuclear ambitions. For a while there had been a healthy intellectual rivalry between the two of them, until Langley claimed all the credit for castrating Gaddafi.

  But what bothered Fielding now was the knowledge that the Leila plan would have been personally signed off by Straker, even if it had been Spiro’s operation. A line was supposed to have been drawn after Stephen Marchant’s resignation, but relations between the CIA and MI6 had remained resolutely sour.

  ‘I’ve got POTUS touching down in Delhi in seventy-two,’ Straker said, ‘and right now I need a very good reason not to bring Marchant in and lean hard on the Indians to take Dhar out.’

  ‘It would be better to let Marchant find him first,’ Fielding said coolly. He didn’t care for Straker’s bullying impatience.

  ‘I appreciate that’s an option, Marcus. It’s why I pulled Spiro and put Alan there in charge. But I was hoping Marchant would lead us to Dhar, not try to take out General Casey at the Gymkhana Club.’

  ‘We think Dhar might be a potential asset,’ Carter said, glancing at Fielding, who was happy for him to take the lead. Since the discovery of the payments to the Dhar family, Fielding had been wondering how to break the bad news to the Americans. Letting one of their own be the messenger seemed as good a solution as any.

  ‘An asset? Am I missing something here? Right now, Salim Dhar’s our new Ace of Spades.’

  ‘Sir, we think he could be turned.’ Carter looked back again nervously. Fielding gave the discreetest of nods.

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘MI6 have turned up some interesting CX on Dhar,’ Carter continued.

  ‘Will, we think he might be one of ours,’ Fielding said, acknowledging Carter, who had drawn enough of the Director’s fire. He would take it up from here.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Stephen Marchant set up a retainer for his family back in 1980, when he was posted to Delhi.’

  ‘Christ, Marcus, why didn’t you mention this sooner?’

  Fielding pointedly ignored the question. ‘Monthly payments to his father, following his dismissal from the British High Commission.’

  ‘Didn’t he once work at our embassy?’

  ‘For a number of years, yes.’

  ‘So why was Marchant paying him? Dhar was just a kid.’

  ‘I know.’ It was the one question Fielding didn’t have an answer to.

  ‘But you think this makes Dhar a good guy, rather than confirming our worst fears about Stephen Marchant? Forgive the Monday-morning quarterbacking, but from our point of view this doesn’t exactly look like asset cash well spent: two US Embassy attacks, the London Marathon.’

  ‘No one’s saying he’s ours, sir,’ Carter said. ‘But we think he might be persuaded to work for the British.’

  ‘And Daniel Marchant is the only person who can find out,’ Fielding added. ‘Dhar would be the highest ranking member of AQ the West has ever run. We’d be prepared to pool on t
his one.’

  There was another pause, and for a moment Fielding thought the link with Langley had dropped. But he knew the plan would appeal to the clandestine streak that ran deep in the Director.

  ‘I can’t have Marchant and Dhar running around India when the President arrives. The DNI just wouldn’t buy it. And I wouldn’t blame him.’ He paused again. ‘You’ve got twenty-four to figure out which side Dhar’s on, then we’re bringing them both in.’

  The two women, Kirsty and Holly, had tickets for three-tier A/C on the Mangala Express, which was considerably more comfortable than Marchant’s bare-benched economy carriage. Their entire compartment was open plan, but it was loosely divided up into separate areas by curtains. The lights had already been turned down, even though Delhi was only an hour behind them, and the atmosphere was like that of a well-behaved school dormitory, a faint murmur of snoring rising above the rattle of the wheels. Marchant’s carriage, by contrast, was a seething mass of people who were clearly intent on eating, burping and arguing all the way to Kerala, 1,500 miles south. There were no beds, just hard wooden seats.

  The two women’s area consisted of a pair of three-tier bunks facing each other. They were sleeping on the top two bunks, and a Keralan family, with one child, occupied the lower decks. The bunk directly below Holly was empty, and it was on this that Marchant was now lying, talking up to Kirsty.

  ‘You can stay there the night, if you want to,’ she said, glancing across at Holly. ‘She’s already asleep. There were three of us, but Holly and Anya had a bit of a falling out, so Anya stayed in Delhi. You’re on her bed.’

  ‘I’ll see if the ticket guy’ll upgrade me,’ Marchant said. He could hear the inspector making his way down the carriage. Earlier, a member of staff had eyed him suspiciously while he distributed sheets and blankets around the carriage.