by Jon Stock
Earlier he had seen a Shivite baba sitting cross-legged in the doorway of the temple courtyard. He would drop some rupees into his lap and ask the way to Om Beach. Sujit had spoken of such people, said they were happy to discuss Eastern philosophies with naïve young Westerners – in exchange for a few rupees, of course.
‘Do you know what “Om” means?’ the baba said, his limpid eyes looking up at Marchant through a blue haze of ganga smoke. Above him, a single strip of tube lighting dangled from the temple’s painted doorway.
‘The sound of the vibrating universe?’ Marchant offered, thinking back to Monika’s words at the airport in Poland. He was still wearing the pendant she had given him.
‘The unstruck sound. Which place are you from?’
‘Ireland. I need to meet someone at Om Beach.’
‘It’s not far from here. Ten minutes in a rickshaw. Ask any driver.’ He paused, gathering his saffron robes around him. ‘I went to England once, with my wife and son. Nottingham.’
Marchant was surprised to hear he had a family. ‘Recently?’
The baba smiled. ‘Before my wife passed away. Om Namah Shiva.’
‘And your son?’ The baba smiled again, but this time Marchant saw only sadness in his watery eyes. ‘How long have you been here, in Gokarna?’ Marchant continued, guilty that he might have disturbed the man’s inner peace.
The baba lifted one hand, palm upwards, turning it from side to side as if he was weighing something. ‘Twenty years, maybe longer. There are five beaches: Gokarna, Om, Kudle, Half-Moon and Paradise. Om is shaped like the Devanagari symbol. It is the most popular with Westerners. Paradise is the most remote. But there is a sixth that few ever reach. Shanti Beach. Ask the fishermen.’ He paused, flicking the faintest glance at Marchant’s pocket. ‘The bond between father and son is never broken.’
Marchant gave him his rupees and left.
38
Fielding’s office clock said 7.30 a.m.
‘Apologies for the early start, but I’m afraid this couldn’t wait,’ Sir David Chadwick said, breezing past Otto, who stood in the doorway, a pained look of failure on his face.
Fielding never liked it when Chadwick set foot in Legoland, particularly when he had Harriet Armstrong in tow. They always had the air of estate agents measuring up a flat. It was no secret that the Chief’s office was bigger than the Director General’s in Thames House. The views were also better, much to Armstrong’s annoyance.
This visit was different. It was unannounced, too early for Whitehall protocol, the bag-carriers and minute-takers. The envy was also not apparent. It reminded Fielding of the day they came for Stephen Marchant.
Fielding nodded reassurance at Otto as he ushered Chadwick and Armstrong into the adjoining dining room. Denton followed.
‘Take a seat,’ Fielding said. The rising sun failed to raise the temperature of the room. Denton glanced at Fielding, but he was looking down at a handful of transcripts and files he had brought through with him.
‘Harriet?’ Chadwick said, sitting down next to Armstrong. ‘Would you care to begin?’
They had chosen two seats at the end of the large oval table, as far away as possible from Denton and Fielding. For a moment Fielding felt as if he was present at a petty dispute in a provincial solicitors’ office.
‘We’ve just had the results back from new tests on the running belt,’ Armstrong said. ‘The lab sent them overnight. As you’re aware, there was a TETRA-enabled detonation device attached to the charges. We knew it could only be operated on the TETRA network. What we didn’t know was the number that a third party would have to call in on to detonate the charges, and who had that number.’
‘We’ve always suspected it was Daniel Marchant,’ Chadwick said, ‘given that he had a TETRA handset with him on race day.’
‘And despite the fact that he saved many lives,’ Fielding said.
‘But there was no proof,’ Chadwick continued, like a politician ignoring a heckler.
‘There is now,’ Armstrong said. She hoped to fix Fielding with a thin grin, but the Chief had sat back, his long legs thrown to one side, his head turned towards the window. Fielding knew what was coming. Leila had been too clever for them all. ‘When we searched Marchant’s flat, we retrieved his old TETRA handset, the one he had with him on the day of the marathon. He’d programmed in some speed-dial numbers – the office, Leila’s phone, his father’s home, and so on. But when we checked the office number, it wasn’t the MI6 switchboard, it was the detonator on the running belt.’
Fielding continued to stare out of the window. Marchant, he was sure, had handed the phone back to Leila after the attempted attack, and she must have visited his flat after the race and planted it there. ‘Just tell me one thing,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t he blow the bomber sky high, taking the Ambassador and every fucking fun runner in London with him?’
Chadwick winced at the words. He had hoped Fielding would go quietly when he was presented with their evidence. ‘Clearly he had a change of heart.’
‘I’ll say. He saved the Ambassador’s life.’
‘I gather from David that you were working on the assumption it was a set-up by the Americans,’ Armstrong said, glancing at Chadwick.
‘Not unreasonably, given that Leila’s on their payroll.’
‘Daniel was within the press of a button of murdering Turner Munroe. Do you really think the Americans would have risked that?’
Fielding said nothing. He almost felt sorry for Armstrong, with her misplaced admiration for Spiro, for America. It was the FBI’s fault. On a recent visit to New York they had presented her with a jacket and a baseball cap, both emblazoned with the letters ‘FBI’. She had even posed for photos in them. For a buttoned-up Whitehall mandarin, the culture shock had been exhilarating.
‘Marcus, I’m afraid it doesn’t look good for Daniel,’ Chadwick said. ‘I’ve already alerted the PM’s office. We’re going to need the cooperation of the Americans on this one. An MI6 officer nearly killing one of their most distinguished ambassadors isn’t great for the special relationship.’
‘Except that he didn’t kill him.’ It was almost an aside. Fielding had said it too often to care any more. He stood up and walked around the room, avoiding eye contact with Chadwick and Armstrong. His lower back was starting to ache. He had had enough of this game.
‘We all know the Americans have made no secret of their concerns about MI6,’ Chadwick said. ‘But we can’t pin this one on them, Marcus. They’ve been over it with Leila many times. She came off the course to alert MI5 as soon as she became aware of the bomber. She didn’t know if Marchant was involved, but she couldn’t take the risk, particularly in the light of her brief from the Americans.’
‘We don’t know why he had a change of heart out there,’ Armstrong said, ‘but perhaps it was Leila’s presence by his side, in which case we should all be grateful that the Americans had the sense to keep such a close eye on him.’
‘Are you suggesting that Leila talked him out of it?’ Fielding asked. He was at the window now, his back to Armstrong and Chadwick, wishing he was at Tate Britain across the river, before the crowds arrived. The night manager would often open up the gallery for him, let him walk the Pre-Raphaelite rooms on his own in the dawn light.
‘Not directly, no,’ Armstrong said. ‘She had no idea what he was planning. But by being there, we think she had an effect on him, yes.’
‘And she was running by his side because the Americans had turned her, not because of any genuine feelings she might have had for him, feelings that had been no secret to anyone at MI6 since their time together at the Fort?’
‘You still have a very romantic view of Marchant, don’t you?’ Armstrong said, annoyed that she was addressing Fielding’s back. ‘Son of a distinguished Chief, best case officer of his generation, heroically saves the American Ambassador to London from a suicide bomber. How about son of a traitor, picked up where his father left off, gets within an inch of caus
ing carnage in the capital.’
Fielding turned to face them, his tall figure silhouetted against the windows. ‘My point is that we must be grateful they were lovers.’ He paused. ‘But I’m afraid we’ve all got it the wrong way round. It wasn’t Daniel’s love for Leila that stopped the bomb being detonated, it was Leila’s love for Daniel. She was the one who had a change of heart.’
‘We’ve been through this before, Marcus. It wasn’t a set-up.’
‘I know. Because Leila wasn’t working for the Americans.’ He walked around to his seat, picked up the pile of transcripts and files and dropped them onto the table between Chadwick and Armstrong. ‘She was working for the Iranians.’
39
Marchant listened to the rustle of the necklaces slung loosely around the cows’ necks, made from seashells threaded with coarse coir twine. A small herd had gathered in front of the Namaste Café, meandering slowly towards a promontory of rocks that stretched out from the sand into the Arabian Sea. The café was in the middle of the beach, near the centre of the Om symbol. Marchant had seen the beach’s auspicious shape from the top of the cliffs at the far end, where the rickshaw driver had dropped him.
Now he was watching the sun set, with a Kingfisher beer in one hand, a chillum in the other, thinking he could settle here for a year. His plastic chair was listing badly, its legs sinking slowly into the soft sand, forcing him to cock his head to level the distant horizon. Two human figures stood motionless on the far rocks, looking out to sea, their yogic poses silhouetted against the vermilion-streaked sky. Further down the beach, a group of fishermen squatted around a wooden canoe, mending their nets. Monika would have enjoyed the scene, in real life as well as her cover one. Leila, he thought, would have told all the Westerners to go back home and find proper jobs.
He was beginning to accept now that Leila must have helped the Americans, unwittingly said something that made them think he was trying to kill Munroe at the marathon rather than save him. They had distrusted his father, and they suspected the son too. But had Leila really not known what she was doing? He hoped Salim Dhar would have the answer.
Other stoned travellers were sharing the view, chilled out in seats scattered around the café, chatting quietly. Marchant had two of them down as being from Sweden, two from Israel and one from South Africa. The Israeli couple, he guessed, had recently completed their national service (three years for men, twenty-one months for women). Behind the café was a small row of cubicles, each with a two-inch thick mattress on its sandy floor. Marchant had rented one of them for fifty rupees, and later paid an extra thirty for a mosquito net, when the biting started.
‘It used to be more shanti here,’ said Shankar, the bar owner, bringing Marchant another beer. He hadn’t asked him yet about Salim. The Israeli couple were arousing his suspicion: the occasional look in his direction, the bulge of a mobile phone in the pocket of the man’s shorts. ‘Now there are too many Indian tourists. They come to watch the hippies at weekends. Soon it will be like Goa.’
‘The beer’s good,’ Marchant said, reading from the label, which hadn’t changed since his backpacking days. ‘“Most thrilling chilled.” Is it difficult getting a licence?’
‘I give the policeman 4,000 rupees, they let me sell beer. Which place you from?’
‘Ireland.’
‘I tried it once. The Guinness beer.’
‘And?’
Shankar shook his head from side to side in appreciation, but Marchant could see that he was distracted. He was looking down to the far end of the beach, at least three hundred yards away, where there was another, bigger café. Some sort of commotion had caught his eye. Marchant turned around to see.
‘Baksheesh problem,’ Shankar said. Marchant stared hard into the dying sun, shielding his eyes. He couldn’t see anything unusual.
‘He didn’t pay up?’
‘Maybe. They usually come at start of season.’
‘Who? The police?’
Then Marchant saw them, a group of at least ten officers, led by a peak-capped man with a lathi in his hand.
‘No problem, no problem. They are my friends.’
But Marchant could hear the tension in Shankar’s voice. Without rushing, he stood up and walked around to his room at the rear of the café. There was nothing in it, because he had no luggage. Moving quickly, he removed the plastic bag from the purse belt strapped to his leg, checking that his money and passport were inside. He then went out and walked over to the shade of some coconut trees, where hammocks had been strung between their trunks, and started to dig quickly in the sand. A few moments later he had buried his passport and money. He made a mental note of the nearest tree, and then looked over at the group of policemen. They had stopped at another small café, halfway between him and the end of the beach.
‘I’m off for a swim,’ he said to Shankar, who was busy stacking crates of empty beer bottles at the back of the shack. It was a futile gesture if he was hoping to conceal them. None of the other travellers seemed to have taken much notice of Marchant’s movements.
‘No problem,’ Shankar said. ‘The sea is strong.’
Marchant didn’t want to leave his shirt and trousers lying around. Instead he ran down to the sea fully clothed, trying not to think of Stare Kiejkuty. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and dived into the waves, telling himself that he wasn’t about to drown.
* * *
‘I’m afraid your allegations about Leila haven’t played too well in Langley,’ Carter said, glancing at the newspaper in his hand before putting it down on the park bench beside him.
‘No one likes to hear that they’ve been betrayed by one of their own,’ Fielding said.
‘You know, I was sitting in on a Langley lecture the other day. The guy was telling all the rookies that money’s no longer what traitors do it for. Divided loyalties, that’s what they’re about these days. Mother country calling louder than their adopted one.’
‘So why don’t you believe it about Leila?’
‘She wasn’t born in Iran.’
‘She might as well have been. Close to her Iranian mother, fluent in Farsi. That’s why we recruited her. She represented the future of the Service.’
They watched the stream of morning commuters cut through St James’s Park up to Whitehall, a few runners weaving in and out of them. A cleaning van was making its way slowly along the path, its hazard lights flashing. To the left of their bench, a man was unchaining a stack of deck chairs. Spring had arrived, and the trees all around were blurred with blossom. In the distance, the London Eye rose above the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It was where Fielding had first had his doubts about Leila, high above London in a capsule with Jago. Sometimes he longed for the innocent outlook of his godson, the untroubled optimism.
‘They’re disputing the Ali Mousavi mobile evidence, reckon the maltreatment of the mother was part of the bigger Bahá’í picture, nothing more. They don’t buy that Leila was blown, Marcus. I’m sorry.’
No need to apologise, Fielding thought. She’s working for you now, protecting your President. ‘So I gather. Armstrong and Chadwick were the same. They think it’s sour grapes on the Service’s part. My revenge for Leila working for the Americans.’
‘Are you safe? The job?’
‘For the moment. Chadwick was brought in to steady the ship. He doesn’t need two Chiefs taking early retirement. And you?’ Fielding had heard rumours.
‘I’ve been called off the Marchant case. Straker’s brought back Spiro. He’s flying into Delhi this morning.’
‘Daniel Marchant wasn’t trying to kill your Ambassador, you know that,’ Fielding said.
‘I wanted to believe it, Marcus, I really did. But we’ve been blindsided by Armstrong’s TETRA evidence. The guy was within a speed-dial of blowing Munroe’s head off.’
‘Leila gave him the phone, trust me.’
‘But it was Marchant’s handset.’
‘His old one. It was taken away from him w
hen he was suspended. I’ve been through the records. Someone managed to check it out again, without signing for it.’
‘It could have been Marchant, then.’
‘He was suspended. Leila gave it to him during the race, and he handed it back to her afterwards. She must have planted it in his flat.’
They sat in silence, watching a squirrel approach them, looking for food. ‘For a while, I thought our time had come,’ Carter eventually said. ‘Our chance to remind the world about the real meaning of intelligence. With Marchant’s help, we could have found Dhar, played him back, started to whip AQ the old-fashioned way. Straker gave us our chance – twenty-four hours, he said. Now he’s shuttered it. He wants Dhar dead, Marchant too. No nuances, no shade. The soldiers are running the show now.’
‘Are those Spiro’s orders?’
‘I’m afraid so. And he only deals in dead-or-alive.’
‘Does anyone know where Dhar is?’
‘Somewhere on the Karnataka coast. The Indians are cooperating fully. They want the President’s visit to go ahead as much as we do. A frigate from the Fifth Fleet is standing by.’
Marchant spotted the distinct outline on the horizon as he trod water, careful to keep his head above the surface of the sea. The ship was about two miles offshore, and looked like one of America’s Littoral combat ships, the sleek, angular profile designed to reduce its radar signature. A large flight-deck was just visible, silhouetted against the orange horizon. Beneath the water, the new class of frigate had a trimaran hull for speed: forty-five knots.
Marchant’s first thought was that it must be part of a wider security umbrella for the President’s imminent visit, but he was only flying into and out of Delhi. Gokarna was hundreds of miles away, south of Goa. He looked again at the ship and tried to determine if it was on the move. After a couple of minutes, he decided that it was stationary. Its presence troubled him, and he turned back to face the beach, 400 yards away. He felt better looking at the land, more in control of the water around him.