by Jon Stock
‘Brakes holding, airbrake closed,’ he said to himself as he felt for the switch on the side of the throttle. As jets went, the SU-25 wasn’t a demanding plane to fly. Unlike its more recent successors, it didn’t have a modern avionic suite, but it was a reliable ground-pounder, which was why it had been in Russia’s air force for so long. According to Sergei, his instructor, the SU-25 could operate at very low speeds without ‘flaming out’. Nor did it stall easily. ‘It can take a real beating and still bring you home,’ Sergei had said. But Dhar knew there would be no return flight.
After taxi-ing to the runway threshold and running through his pre-take-off checks, he waited for his clearance from control. At last it came. He took his position on the runway’s centreline, gazing at the white ribbon that stretched away as far as he could see. Engaging the wheelbrakes, he ran the power up to 90 per cent and checked that all the gauges were still in the green. Then he released the brakes and applied full military power, watching the air speed build quickly to 260 kmh.
Something was wrong.
‘Sometimes you need to add a little right rudder as you firewall the throttles,’ Sergei had said, but Dhar remembered too late. His fingers fumbled to deploy the twin drogue chutes, but it was hopeless. There was too little tarmac left. ‘Eject, eject!’ said a voice in his head. But as he overcompensated for the yaw, the plane lurching right, left, right again, the right wingtip hit the ground, breaking off in a shower of sparks and fire. He thought of his mother, closed his eyes and prayed.
51
Fielding took the call in the back of his chauffeur-driven Range Rover on the way to Heathrow. Cars didn’t particularly interest him, but he couldn’t deny that he had been impressed with the latest security upgrades to his official vehicle. Most of them were to do with jamming opportunist electronic eavesdroppers, but the car had also benefited from lessons learned in Afghanistan, where IEDs had caused such havoc. Its floor was now protected by hard steel armour blast plates, and the sides had been reinforced with composite ballistic protection panels.
‘Thank you for ringing back,’ he said, trying to picture his opposite number in America, his Langley office, the bland Virginia countryside. Fielding’s relationship with the DCIA had been at rock bottom during the past year, but he knew that things had to improve sooner or later. Much as it would like to, Britain couldn’t survive indefinitely without America’s intel.
‘What can I do for you, Marcus? No problems with Lakshmi Meena, I hope?’
‘No, she’s fine.’
‘Treat her as yours, Marcus. A shared asset. She’s good.’
Better than the last one, you mean, Fielding thought, but he said nothing. ‘Thank you. She’s briefed me fully about Dhar’s mother.’
‘That’s what she’s there for. Keeping our allies in the loop.’
Like hell, Fielding thought. He looked out of the window at the grey scenery either side of the Westway: tatty tower blocks, car showrooms, digital clocks, vast hoardings. It was such a drab part of London, a depressing first impression of Britain for anyone driving in from the airport.
‘How’s Jim Spiro these days?’ Fielding asked.
‘I never knew you cared. He’ll be touched, truly.’
‘Is he still suspended?’
‘To all intents and purposes. He’s the subject of an ongoing internal inquiry, based largely on evidence provided by MI6.’
‘I need to talk to him.’
52
Daniel Marchant moved quickly around his one-bedroom basement flat in Pimlico, removing a suitcase from underneath the bed that was already packed with three sets of clothes and a wash bag containing a razor, toothbrush and two passports. The cobblers had given him a new spare one after Morocco. He had asked for two, but they had talked about budgets and come back to him a few days later saying that the passport in Dirk McLennan’s name, the snap cover he had used to get out of Morocco, had not been compromised.
Out of habit, he checked the issue date, making sure it was still valid, and then he saw an old Islamabad visa stamp on one of the pages. A trip to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan had been fine for Morocco, but it might cause problems in India. He cursed the cobblers and put the passport on his desk. He paused for a moment, looking at the photo of Leila that he had tried so often to throw out. She was smiling back at him, the bright lights of a carousel blurred behind her. He had taken the photo at the funfair in Gosport, across the water from the Fort, a few hours before they had slept together for the first time. The instructors had given them a rare day off after two weeks of intense training.
He knew it was a weakness to keep the photo, but something about her expression made it impossible to get rid of it. For a few heady months, he had thought it was love in her eyes. It was still hard to accept that he had been deceived. Wasn’t it his job to be vigilant while deceiving others? Perhaps he kept the photo as a reminder, a warning.
‘I guess you still miss her, right?’ He turned to see Lakshmi Meena standing in the doorway. She had dropped him off outside on Denbigh Street. He put the photo back on the desk, annoyed that he hadn’t heard her walk down the iron steps to his flat. Leila could still make him drop his guard, even now.
‘Have you ever had to sleep with someone as part of the job?’ he asked, unnecessarily adjusting the photo frame on his desk.
‘Spiro once tried it on. Said it was all part of the promotion process.’ She could still recall the approach: first month at Langley, fresh from the Farm. Spiro liked to call all the new female recruits into his office for a friendly one-to-one.
‘I don’t mean with our side.’
‘I know we’re not always the good guys, but we’re not the enemy.’
‘Leila wasn’t just working for you. Read the files.’
‘I tried. Hey, way beyond my security clearance. All I know is that she saved our President’s life.’
‘That’s one way of looking at it.’
‘And another way?’
‘She betrayed me.’ Spiro had used similar words when she played him back an audio recording of his advances. A colleague had tipped her off, and she had gone into his office wired, claiming later that she was testing out new equipment and had forgotten to turn it off. It had been a colossal career risk, but Spiro had never bothered her again. If anything, he respected her more.
‘And you can’t forgive her that?’ she asked.
‘Not yet.’
‘Is that why you won’t trust anyone?’
‘Anyone?’
‘Women.’
‘It was a calculated act of betrayal.’
And now, like King Shahryar’s virgin wives, we all stand accused, Meena thought, but she didn’t have time to say anything. They heard a car slow down on the road above them. Marchant glanced up through the basement window at the pavement.
‘Where did you park?’ he asked.
‘Around the corner, Lupus Street. I drove round the block twice first. No tail.’
‘Come, quickly,’ Marchant said, locking the front door to the flat, where Meena was standing, and going through to the bedroom. A pair of french windows looked out onto a small patio garden. He opened them and ushered her outside, glancing back at the front of the flat. Someone was coming down the metal stairs. How had they got his home address? He went into the small adjoining bathroom, turned on the light and the shower and returned to the bedroom. Then he took the key from the inside of the french windows, joined Meena on the patio and locked them from the outside.
‘Spiro’s orders again?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Meena said. ‘The Moroccans are upset Aziz is dead. Very upset.’
Marchant walked across to the back wall, which was about twelve feet high and covered in a wooden lattice for climbers he had never planted. In the corner, there was a rockery. Soon after he had bought the flat, he had built up the rocks at the back to help him climb up the wall, should he ever need to. He had cemented in three bricks above the highest rock, at eighteen-inch interval
s up the wall, that stuck out by half a brick and acted as steps, but he had never got round to trying them.
‘Up there, quick,’ he said, pointing at the corner as if it was the obvious way out of the garden. When Meena reached the top of the wall, she looked back down at him.
‘You forgot to build any steps on the other side,’ she said before jumping. He heard a groan as she landed in the mews below. Then he followed her, glancing back at his flat as he reached the top of the wall. Two men had broken in, and one of them was looking at the passport he’d left on his desk. The other was moving towards the bathroom, gesturing to his colleague. For a moment, Marchant wanted to go back inside and confront them, show them his broken teeth, knock out theirs, but he resisted.
As he jumped from the top of the wall, a car turned into the quiet mews, driving too fast for a resident. Marchant got to his feet and rushed at its sweeping headlights, ignoring a shooting pain in his ankle. He knew he had to move fast. Without hesitating, he opened the driver’s door and grabbed the driver, pulling him out onto the road. He was aware of Meena doing the same on the other side. It was only as he pinned the man up against the wall, holding him by his throat, that he realised it was one of Armstrong’s watchers.
He held the man for a moment, then released him.
‘They’re Five,’ Marchant called across to Meena, who had wrestled the passenger to the ground and was holding both his arms behind his back. He made a mental note that she was no slouch when it came to unarmed combat. Marchant’s man dropped to his knees, one hand massaging his throat.
‘Christ,’ he said, out of breath. ‘Armstrong sent us.’
‘I’m sorry. I thought — ’ But he suddenly felt too tired to finish.
‘Two men are in Daniel’s flat,’ Meena said, taking over, reluctantly releasing her man. She made no apology for the mistake. ‘Moroccan intelligence.’
‘That’s why we’re here,’ the other man said, getting up off the road. ‘They showed up on the grid this evening.’
A bit late, Marchant thought, recalling the trouble he’d had earlier in Grosvenor Square.
‘Delay them, will you?’ he said. ‘We need to get to the airport.’
53
Salim Dhar sat back and stared at the screen, watching his plane spin in a sickening cartwheel of flames.
‘You forgot to add some right rudder,’ Sergei said, coming over to the simulator with a cigarette hanging limply from the corner of his mouth. He was tall and loose-limbed, wearing a flying suit and holding a helmet in one hand. His face was awkward and angular, almost avian in its features. Dhar assumed that was why comrades called him the Bird.
After the air-show crash, Sergei had been stripped of his wings, tried and sent to prison, where he would have remained for the rest of his life if it hadn’t been for the unusual summons to train up a surly Muslim for an SVR black op. He knew enough not to ask any questions, that he was expendable if he played up. ‘They will shoot me after I have served my purpose,’ he had once said, only half jokingly, to Dhar.
The daily training sessions took place in an airless hut across from the hangar where Dhar was living at Kotlas airbase. Dhar didn’t know where the Bird roosted at night. They didn’t do small talk. No one else was in the hut, and there were two armed guards positioned outside the door.
‘How will you ever learn to deploy your missiles if you’re always crashing on take-off?’ Sergei continued. ‘We’ve one week left and you’ve only got the Grach airborne twice.’
Dhar sat in silence, his hands resting on his legs. He tried to filter out the instructor’s tone of voice and focus on the content. He was right. Just then a jet roared low over the hut, mocking Dhar with its menacing ease.
‘Let’s do it again,’ Dhar said calmly. ‘In formation this time.’
Sergei looked at him for a moment and smiled.
‘OK,’ he replied, tossing away his cigarette as he walked over to the other simulator. ‘So the Bird is your wingman.’
54
The lights were off in St George’s Chapel, but Marchant could make out the tall figure of Marcus Fielding sitting quietly at the back of the airless room, in front of the font. It was Heathrow’s only chapel, built into the basement like a vaulted crypt. Marchant had found it quickly. Its location between Terminals 1 and 3 was well signposted. He was sure he had been here before, a long time ago, coming from or going to India. His father had sat outside with him in the memorial garden, where he could picture a large wooden cross. It must have been not long after the death of his twin brother, Sebastian.
Fielding didn’t look up as he entered the room, and for a moment Marchant wondered if the Vicar was praying. His eyes were closed. Marchant hesitated by the door, looking at a plaque that commemorated the crew of Pan Am Flight 103, who had died 31,000 feet above Lockerbie. Then he walked over and sat down on the brown padded seat next to Fielding. Still the Vicar said nothing, his eyes closed behind his rimless glasses. Finally, he spoke.
‘Did he give you anything?’
‘Nothing. He told me he’d passed information to my father, low-grade product, but that it was the least he could do in return for the quality of RX my father was giving to the Russians.’
Fielding’s face creased into a smile as he opened his eyes.
‘And did you begin to doubt him?’
‘Who? My father?’
‘Yes.’
Marchant didn’t say anything. Instead, he tried to read the words on another plaque, by the font, which had been put up by Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter had died over Lockerbie, too.
‘Moscow was all ears,’ Fielding said. ‘I told you he’d give you nothing.’
‘Were you able to listen?’
‘I heard enough to be worried.’
‘About Primakov?’
‘About you. Perhaps it was asking too much. No one likes to hear his own father being branded a traitor.’
Marchant bridled at the implied criticism. Did Fielding think he wasn’t up to the job? ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Please.’
‘Did you ever doubt him?’
Fielding paused, long enough for Marchant to look up, for more thoughts to ferment.
‘Your father always talked about this country as an island, our sceptred isle. It wasn’t shared democratic values with America that made him go to work in the morning. It was the mist rising from fields at dawn in the Cotswolds.’
‘I take it that’s a “no”, then.’
Fielding didn’t answer, closing his eyes instead. For a moment, Marchant wondered if he hadn’t heard. He hated it when Fielding did this. The ensuing silence unnerved him enough to keep talking, just as Fielding intended. It was how he got people to reveal more than they wanted to.
‘I still thought Primakov might give me something — a look in his eye, a scribbled note on a napkin, the smallest hint that we both knew. But nothing. Just a letter.’
Fielding opened his eyes. ‘From whom?’
‘My father. It told me to trust Primakov as if he was family.’
‘Well, there’s your sign. If you trust your father, then you must trust Primakov, too.’
‘And if I don’t trust Primakov? If I don’t believe he’s one of ours?’
Then you must accept that your father was a traitor. It didn’t bear thinking about. Fielding clearly thought the same, as he chose to ignore Marchant’s question.
‘Did Primakov mention Dhar?’ Fielding asked.
‘He wants me to meet him.’
‘That’s good. But you mustn’t appear too keen. Not yet.’
‘Which is why you’re sending me to India with Lakshmi Meena, the delightful dental assistant.’ Fielding had met Meena in the chapel before Marchant. She was now waiting in departures.
‘Our new Leila. At least this time we know she’s working for the CIA.’
‘And for anyone else?’
‘She’s different, Daniel. You can trust her.’
‘Thanks
for the advice.’ The Vicar as agony aunt, Marchant thought. God help us all.
‘I want Dhar’s mother brought back to the UK. It won’t be straightforward. The Russians have got wind of her too, and will try to bring her in.’
‘What about the Americans?’
‘I’ve spoken to the DCIA. Provided we pool everything, he’s happy for her to be brought here for questioning, given their recent track record with Dhar. But they want Meena to run the operation. That’s the deal.’
‘Is that wise?’
‘They won’t try anything with you on board. They need you.’
‘That didn’t stop them in the past.’
‘That was before they killed six of their own Marines in a drone strike. The truth is, it’s too dangerous for us. We can’t jeopardise London’s relationship with Delhi. An unauthorised flight into Indian airspace is a risk the Americans can afford to take. We can’t.’
Fielding stood up and walked towards the door, stopping to read the names of the Pan-Am crew. Marchant followed him.
‘Tell me, Daniel, do you think Salim Dhar still wants to make contact with you?’ Fielding asked.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Why?’
It was a question Marchant had been wrestling with ever since Dhar had failed to make contact in Morocco. In the early days, he had genuinely believed that Dhar might be turned, persuaded to work for Britain, the country his real father had served. But now he was less sure.
‘Why does Dhar want to see me? Because we’re lonely half-brothers? I doubt it. I think he wants to meet up because he believes I’m a traitor, just as he believes our father was.’
‘At the moment it’s more a case of hope than belief. Primakov will have told Dhar exactly what he told you about your father: that he was a Soviet mole at war with the West. And he will also have told Dhar about your treatment by the CIA, your growing disaffection with the West. Dhar sees you as a potential ally, which is a good start.’