by Jon Stock
Now she was here, in the Lotus Temple, waiting for her Security Service colleagues to arrive, and she must try to put her grieving on hold. As an intelligence officer she was used to protecting her emotions, partitioning off her inner life in order to play a part, but she knew that the next few hours would test her skills to the limit.
‘With tearful eyes she fixed her gaze on the Kingdom of Mysteries. Many a night she spent in deep communion with thee, and many a day she lived in intimate remembrance of thee.’
She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue and looked around the temple, drawing strength from its beauty. Monk Johnson would want to walk through the President’s journey one more time, down the avenue, up the five flights of steps and into the protection of Sahba’s petals. Leila felt protected too, with her own declaration card in one hand, a page of prayers in the other, about to convert to the religion of her mother and hoping to be forgiven for the choices she had made and the actions she was about to take.
48
Marchant lifted his head towards the cell door and listened to the bolts being pulled back. Both of his eyes were heavily swollen, and he could hear better than he could see. As far as he could tell, he was in the basement of the American Embassy in Delhi. He had been hooded on the Seahawk flight, his wrists shackled, and then beaten by two men he took for Seals.
There was an avenging energy about their assault that made Marchant wonder if they were the same two who had waterboarded him in Poland. But they didn’t speak, either to him, or to each other, so it was hard to tell. Perhaps they were just venting their frustration that they hadn’t found Dhar, knowing that their own butts would be whipped for having returned empty-handed on the eve of a presidential visit.
Marchant went with the blows as much as he could, but it was a cowardly assault, and his anger stopped him from slipping into unconsciousness as quickly as he would have liked. Instead, he rolled around the cold floor of the helicopter, trying to protect himself by tucking up his knees, and spitting out as much blood as he could to stop it congealing later in his throat.
He was lying on the floor again now as the cell door swung open, letting in a cool draft from the air-conditioned corridor outside. He steeled himself for another beating, but the blows never came.
‘Daniel?’ It was the same voice he had heard on Dhar’s mobile: Harriet Armstrong’s.
He heard her walk towards him as the heavy cell door was closed and bolted behind her. She came over to where Marchant was lying.
‘I was going to ask if you’re OK. Can I get you some water?’
Marchant didn’t know what to say or think. This was the woman who had helped to drive his father from office, and had led the calls for his own suspension. What was she doing here? And why had she phoned him in the jungle?
‘I wasn’t expecting your call,’ he managed to say. Armstrong passed him a plastic bottle. He held it up to his lips with both hands. They were bound together in front of him now, rather than behind his back. He dropped the bottle after a few sips, and Armstrong picked it up, holding it to his lips again. Then she put it on the ground and helped him sit up against the back wall of the cell.
‘Thanks,’ he said. Armstrong said nothing. He heard her walk away from him and knock on the cell door. After a few moments the two bolts were pulled back. Another rush of cool air.
‘Get me some warm soapy water, a cloth and a doctor,’ her voice echoed down the corridor. ‘And if anyone questions you, tell them to call William Straker in Langley.’
‘Sir, I’ve got Carter on the line,’ the junior officer said, standing like a bellboy at the door of the Maurya Hotel’s Presidential Suite.
‘Carter?’ Spiro asked, walking across the main room, his mind on other things – Leila’s ass, when he could be with her again. ‘Is he back at Langley, or still showboating in London?’
He glanced around at the desk, the deep leather armchairs, the plasma screen on one wall and the large glass bowl on the low Rajasthani coffee table. A single lotus flower was floating on the water. Monk Johnson had asked him to take one final look at the suite. Everything seemed to be in order.
‘He’s here, sir, in Delhi.’
Spiro spun round to face the junior officer. ‘Here? What the hell’s he doing here?’
‘He’s at the airport, sir. Flew in on a Gulfstream this morning. The Indians are awaiting our authorisation before allowing him to disembark.’
The last thing Spiro needed was to have Alan Carter in Delhi. He would call Straker, find out what was going on. Carter had been pulled off the Marchant case when he went soft on the British renegade. This was Spiro’s shout now, an opportunity to rehabilitate himself after Poland. The DCIA had charged him with coordinating the Agency’s role in the presidential visit – his last chance, Straker had said. He wasn’t about to let Carter embarrass him again.
‘That’s the first sensible thing they’ve done in days. Let Carter fry. Tell the Indians there’s a problem with the paperwork. I’m sure they’ll understand.’
Salim Dhar pushed his way through the crowded alleyways of Old Delhi, thinking about his contact. Would he be a farangi, or dark-skinned, like his target? All Dhar knew was that he worked at the infidel’s embassy in Delhi. He turned into Kinari Bazaar, sidestepping a woman with a wicker basket of baby aubergines balanced on her head. On either side of him as the lane became narrower, sparkling wedding gear lit up the shop windows: grooms’ turbans, brides’ bangles, embroidered jackets glistening with thick silver thread, garlands made from rupee notes, lace tinsel, giant rosettes.
He felt at home here, reassured by the warren of lanes and Mughal doorways, the call of a nearby muezzin, the teeming company of Muslim brothers. He turned into Dariba Kalan, the street of pearls and precious stones in Shah Jahan’s day, now famous for its gold and silver jewellers. To his left a jalebi wallah scooped out bright orange strands of syrup-soaked batter from a pan of oil and shook sugar over them. On a normal day, Dhar would have stopped to buy some, but today wasn’t normal. He glanced at his watch and moved on towards the Jama Masjid, looking out for a cycle rickshaw.
The arrangement had been designed to mirror the chaos of Chandni Chowk. His contact would pass by the mosque’s main entrance at around midday. More important than the exact time was the person in the back seat of the rickshaw, who would be wearing a black baseball cap. The rickshaw would stop outside the mosque, where its passenger would step out and pay off the driver. Dhar would then climb in and ask to be taken to Gadodia Market, just off Khari Baoli. Before the rickshaw set off, however, his contact would approach and ask if he was going anywhere near the town hall. Dhar would confirm that he was, and they would set off together in the rickshaw through the back streets of Chandni Chowk while he was briefed on the evening’s itinerary.
Dhar liked the plan, because the noisy crowds offered good cover and the congestion would make it impossible for anyone to follow them without being noticed. But he was becoming anxious when, at 12.15 p.m., no cycle rickshaws had stopped outside the mosque. He looked at the people around him, one of whom must be his contact. To avoid attention he had agreed to have his shoes shined, the ‘semi-deluxe’ service.
Then he noticed a rickshaw appear in the distance, in the midst of a sea of people flowing up Dariba Kalan. The scene reminded him of the television images he had seen of the London Marathon, heads bobbing up and down, everyone focused on the road ahead. As the rickshaw drew near, zigzagging through the crowd, he could see someone wearing a baseball cap in the back. He paid off the shoe boy and glanced around. Still there was no one he could identify.
The rickshaw driver was now outside the mosque gates. Dhar stepped in closer, keeping an eye out for similar movement around him. The passenger climbed down from the rickshaw, not looking up. Dhar nodded at the driver, letting him know that he was his next fare, then asked for Gadodia Market. The driver gestured for him to get in. Not a flicker of recognition from anyone. Dhar settled back on the thin plastic cushion.
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br /> ‘Chalo,’ he said to the driver, already admiring the coolness of his unseen contact. And then a figure appeared from nowhere at the side of the rickshaw.
‘Are you going near the town hall?’ The question was asked in perfect Urdu.
Dhar smiled. ‘Get in,’ he said, making room next to him. He hadn’t been expecting a woman.
49
‘The Prime Minister was adamant that you shouldn’t be killed,’ Armstrong said, wiping the last traces of blood from Marchant’s bruised face. She put the sponge back in the bowl, red strands swirling in the soapy water. ‘The Americans weren’t so concerned. Their minds were on other things. We compromised.’
‘You mean they sent for you. Very reassuring.’
But Marchant was pleased Armstrong had come. He could see out of both eyes now, the cuts in his forehead neatly stitched, and he was wearing a clean, if ill-fitting, set of clothes: jeans and a collarless cotton shirt. Two wooden chairs had been brought into the cell when the doctor had checked him over. The woman sitting in front of him was very different from the frumpy figure he remembered from London, less stiff, more feminine. Perhaps it was the cream salwar khameez, simply embroidered at the front. He had only ever seen her in dark trouser suits.
‘Daniel, there’s something we need to talk about. It’s Leila.’ Marchant had to suppress an involuntary start. It was strange to hear her name again. ‘Marcus Fielding has made some very strong allegations about her since you’ve been away.’
‘She was working for them, wasn’t she?’
‘For who?’
‘Langley. She set me up at the marathon. It’s the only explanation. She could have explained everything, cleared my name, but she didn’t.’
Armstrong paused. ‘Did Leila ever talk to you about her mother?’
‘Not often.’
‘Did you ever meet her?’
Marchant was struggling to work out where Armstrong was going with her questions. ‘She never encouraged it. Why?’
‘But you knew where her mother was?’
‘In a home. Hertfordshire, I think. Leila was embarrassed about her.’
‘Her mother went back to Iran soon after her father died. She never set foot in a British nursing home.’
Marchant said nothing. He thought back to Leila’s tears, the phone calls, the reluctance to talk, her worry that her mother was being mistreated.
‘The Americans knew,’ Armstrong continued. She could have chosen to be triumphant, but she appeared to take no satisfaction in what she was revealing. ‘They used it to recruit Leila. Her vetting officer thought the mother was still in the UK. Leila never informed him that she’d gone back to Iran. The officer’s been suspended.’
‘Did the Americans tell you she was working for them?’
‘Eventually. Chadwick put on a brave face, said we already knew. But they never told us how they turned her. She knew her career would have been over if MI6 had found out her mother wasn’t still in Hertfordshire. The Americans threatened to inform her vetting officer. It kept her loyal to Langley.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because Fielding said something else.’ She paused. Her tone was almost maternal now. ‘He thought Leila was ultimately working for Iran.’
‘Iran?’ Marchant said quietly. He knew as he repeated the word that Fielding was right. It was the final leap he had never been able to make, but the Vicar had, his judgement unswayed by love.
Fielding knew that time was running out. It was almost fifty degrees on the tarmac where the plane was parked, in a quiet corner of Indira Gandhi airport. The aircon unit was on the blink, and the plane didn’t have enough fuel for another flight, even if the control tower gave them clearance, which was unlikely.
Fielding held Carter’s mobile, waiting for MI6’s station head in Delhi to call him back. An alert would have gone out to all the Service’s staff to report immediately if there was any word of Fielding’s whereabouts. But the local station head owed his promotion to the Chief, who had nothing to lose.
The phone rang in Fielding’s moist hand. He looked at Denton and Carter as he listened, both of them stripped down to their shirts, buttons undone, dripping with sweat. Denton was the worse of the two. He had never been good in the heat, always preferring the cooler climes of Eastern Europe. After a few moments Fielding passed the phone back to Carter.
‘They’re sending out a refuelling truck in ten minutes,’ he said quietly.
‘Thank God for that,’ the pilot whispered, his voice drained of all its earlier confidence.
‘They’ll load enough fuel to reach the Gulf. You can make your own way home from there.’
‘What about you?’ Carter asked, wiping his brow.
‘One of our local agents is on board the fuel truck,’ Fielding said. ‘I’m going back with him to the depot, and on from there to find Leila.’
‘Fielding never believed that your presence at the marathon was anything other than chance,’ Armstrong continued. ‘It made him look elsewhere for answers. Leila’s mother is a Bahá’í – a persecuted religion in Iran. The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security saw an opportunity to blackmail Leila in London as soon as her mother touched down in Tehran. If Leila didn’t agree to work for them, they would kill her mother. No one would notice – Bahá’ís are being killed and imprisoned all the time.’
‘What made her go back to that?’ Marchant asked, but he already knew the answer.
‘Her mother country. It tends to call loudest when it’s in trouble.’
Leila had spoken about it once, how her mother longed one day to return to her place of birth. She must have finally decided that time was running out. Her husband was dead, and Iran, despite its problems, held more for her in old age than Britain ever would. It had only been her daughter who kept her there, and she was embarking on a life of foreign postings.
‘And the rest of you believed I was trying to take out the US Ambassador at the marathon?’
‘The TETRA phone evidence seemed incontrovertible.’
‘It was Leila who gave me the phone.’
Armstrong paused again. ‘We managed to establish that it was linked to the explosives on Pradeep’s running belt. There was a pre-programmed speed-dial number, listed as the main switchboard at MI6. If you’d rung it, Pradeep, you and many others would have died.’
Marchant had been so close to calling Leila on that number. She had even urged him to dial it. He felt sick. ‘If you don’t hear from me in fifteen minutes, try calling the office. Speed-dial 1.’ He remembered the exchange vividly, like much of what was said that day.
‘You know it wasn’t my mobile,’ he said, swallowing hard, still thinking of the look in Leila’s eyes when she had handed him the TETRA unit. ‘My old one maybe, but it was Leila who brought it with her.’
‘That’s what Fielding said, what you told us in your debrief. But I’m afraid we all believed Leila, who debriefed very differently. MI5 was finally allowed into Legoland yesterday. We found the person who signs out the handsets, sweated the truth out of him.’
Marchant knew what that meant, but he felt no sympathy. All he could think of was that Leila had been prepared to kill him.
‘It seems she used her charms to check out your old phone without actually signing for it. She told him it was for sentimental reasons.’
For the first time, Armstrong’s tone was condemnatory, as if she could stomach the treachery, but not the promiscuity. Marchant’s response was entirely personal, too. The implications for his country would have to wait. Leila had betrayed him.
He had come to accept that her failure to exonerate him after the race could not be easily explained. Some sort of collusion with America had been the most likely reason, but now he knew it was worse than that. Far worse. He tried to hang on to the fact that she had chosen not to separate him and Pradeep into a thousand body parts. ‘Did you try ringing me? Don’t, OK? Please. Just don’t.’ Her voice had been insistent, but
it wasn’t much consolation. Leila was the mole. His heart was hardening instinctively, to protect him from the blast, but he knew it was too late.
He remembered that night at the Fort when she had come into his room at dawn, how he had told her he wanted to keep their relationship separate from the deceit of their chosen profession. But he had slowly relented, won over by her laughter and love. Now it appeared that there had been no distinction for her. It had all been work: one big, dirty, duplicitous job.
Was that the Leila he had known? He had to believe that a part of what they had meant something to her. The Iranians must have presented her with such a hideous alternative that she was forced to go along with their plan.
‘So are you and Fielding best friends again?’ he asked.
Armstrong ignored the sarcasm. ‘He’s disappeared. We think he’s here in India, trying to find Leila.’
‘Is she here too?’ Marchant couldn’t conceal his interest.
‘She asked for a transfer to the CIA station in Delhi, before Fielding found out.’
‘Why Delhi?’
‘She wanted to protect the President.’
They looked at each other for a moment. An image of Leila and Dhar together flashed through his mind. He had to get out of there.
‘Have you come to release me? We need to find her.’
‘That’s not in my gift, I’m afraid. We failed to convince Langley that Leila has betrayed them as well as us. I’m not sure we ever will. At least Straker’s allowed me to debrief you about Salim Dhar. He remembered your stubbornness in Poland. You’re meant to be my prisoner.’
She looked at the bowl of bloody water.
‘You can tell him that Dhar headed north, two hours before the Seals arrived.’
‘Thank you.’
‘And that he likes shooting US presidents for target practice.’