Dirty Little Secret

by Jon Stock

  ‘What time does the store open?’ Marchant asked.

  Jean-Baptiste glanced at the front door, where the opening hours were printed on the window.

  ‘8 a.m.’

  ‘You need to be there.’

  67

  Denton knew it had been a risk going out to the supermarket, but he had enjoyed the frisson. It was a foretaste of what lay ahead. There had been no sign of the DGSE agent who had followed him in his car the day before, but it was good to put others on alert. The French had always spied on the British in London, but it wasn’t usually so obvious. It was something he would have to get used to as Chief.

  After pouring himself a glass of Fleur de Boüard, he thought of what he was about to do. It wasn’t without risk, but tonight was a celebration, a chance to mark his promotion. Besides, the damage had already been done. This time he was sure he was alone. His house had been swept for bugs the day before, partly in response to the French tail, but also as a routine precaution for an incoming Chief.

  He had planned to eat first, but he realised he could wait no longer. Hunger would sharpen his senses. He closed the curtains in the sitting room, checked that the reinforced front door was double locked, and walked into the kitchen. The freezer was well stocked with bags of ice cubes, and he took out a packet, weighing it in his hand. How far was he prepared to push it? He fetched a bowl from under the sink and a pair of scissors from a drawer.

  Upstairs in his bedroom, various thoughts flooded through him as he closed the curtains and began to undress. They always did at this point. The lingering guilt, his attempts to expurgate himself through rational argument. It was a subconscious response to his role in the war on terror, nothing more. Disturbing, but beyond his control. The blame lay with others.

  The visit to Morocco eight years earlier that had triggered it had been deniable, a small group of MI6 officers shown a level of human degradation that should never have been allowed. He hadn’t volunteered to go, he had been sent. It took a while for the scenes to resurface, for him to acknowledge a dark desire to re-enact what he had witnessed. After the first time, he swore he would seek help, but it was futile. He couldn’t stop himself. His only mistake was thinking he had been alone.

  He went over to the bedside table and pulled out a pair of his ex-wife’s old tights. Then he cut off a corner of the bag with the scissors and poured a dozen ice cubes into them, shaking the cubes down to the toe. After glancing at the clock on his radio alarm, he slid a few more ice cubes into the tights. Moving quickly now, he went back to the bedside table and took a solid metal ring from the drawer. It was part of a dog choker chain he had bought from a local pet shop. Attached to it was a smaller ring with a key and a long length of nylon string.

  He slid the tights through the bigger ring until it was resting on top of the ice, then tied them high up on the curtain rail, so the ice-filled leg was hanging down. He placed the bowl on the floor beneath it to catch the drips. Finally, he relayed the string over to the ceiling light, and tied it to the lampshade. He had measured everything up before, but he glanced once more at the hanging ice, and followed the string back to the light above the bed. When the ice melted, the tights would slide through the ring and the keys would swing down on the string to where he was lying.

  Five minutes later he was on his front, legs bent double and hog-tied at the knees and ankles so his heels were clamped against the back of his thighs. He had already inserted a nickel-plated ring into his mouth, locking open his jaws in a way that gave him a look of permanent shock (it was safer than a ball gag). All he had to do now was clamp his wrists into the handcuffs. He knew it was a risk binding his arms behind his back – it would make the key harder to pick up when it swung down onto the bed – but tonight was different. Fifteen ice cubes would keep him busy for at least four hours, longer than he had ever gone before.

  He clicked the handcuffs shut, closed his eyes and imagined he was back at the al-Tamara interrogation centre outside Rabat, bound and gagged and pleading for his life.

  68

  After an early breakfast of a croissant and coffee with Florianne, who was less welcoming than the day before, Marchant looked in on Lakshmi. She was awake, and smiled faintly when she saw him. It was clear she was still heavily sedated. Marchant knew the French liked their pharmaceuticals, and he would have trusted Clémence with his life, but it was still upsetting to see Lakshmi so drugged up. He reminded himself of the phone call, her act of betrayal. But it was hard to imbue the limp figure lying before him with treachery.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.

  ‘OK. A little sleepy,’ she said, her voice slurred.

  ‘We’re going to stay here for a few days, then head back to Britain.’ He wanted to see how she reacted, establish if her mind was still sharp. Returning to the UK was the last thing someone in his situation would do.

  ‘That’s nice,’ she said.

  Back in the barn, Marchant sat down in front of the computer, trying not to think about Lakshmi. If her body was free of drugs, they could talk properly, and he could find out what Spiro had done to buy her loyalty. Maybe then there would be a way back for her, for both of them. But he couldn’t take the risk of letting her recover.

  He checked his watch. In a few minutes he would ring Jean-Baptiste in London, where he would be waiting for the-supermarket to open. Marchant had been up half the night, researching barcodes. He was convinced that Denton had used the handheld scanner to read information on the pot of Gentleman’s Relish, before placing his own code on a packet of blinis.

  Technology had come a long way since the days of a few lines and numbers denoting a product’s name and price. It was now possible for anyone to convert text into a barcode (and vice versa) and print it out, using free software and an ordinary printer. New two-dimensional QR (quick response) matrix barcodes could contain large amounts of data, including digital photos, which were easy to read with a mobile phone app. Supermarkets weren’t far behind, introducing increasingly sophisticated handheld readers with multimedia colour screens. As a way of uploading and downloading information, it was more subtle than a transmitter concealed in a plastic rock, the method used by hapless MI6 colleagues in Moscow.

  ‘You sound hungover,’ Marchant said when he had connected to Jean-Baptiste.

  ‘I tell myself every time not to drink your warm beer.’

  ‘Someone’s going to come in early and use Denton’s scanner.’

  ‘But you can’t choose which one you’re given. It’s randomly selected.’

  ‘You or I can’t choose, but maybe Denton can.’ Marchant glanced at his watch: 9 a.m. in France, 8 a.m. in Britain. ‘Is the shop opening?’

  ‘Yes, on time. Unlike your buses.’

  ‘Any sign of anyone?’

  ‘There’s a man I’ve been watching for a few minutes. He was in the queue outside the doors. Medium build, suit, close-cropped hair. Ordinary looking, except his eyes. Definitely made in Moscow.’

  ‘What’s he doing now?’

  ‘Walking towards the scanners with his trolley – and past them. Picks up some flowers. White lilies.’

  ‘Damn. Anyone else around?’

  ‘Wait, he’s coming back, taking out his wallet. He’s at the rack of scanners. A tall woman, dyed blonde hair, is in front of him. She puts her card in the machine and – yes – a scanner lights up. Second row down, fourth from the right. She takes it, our man steps forward. This could be a good game, guessing which scanner. If I ever have kids, I’ll bring them here instead of the park. Hours of fun.’

  ‘Just tell me what he’s doing.’

  ‘He’s about to swipe his card. Which scanner is your money on?’

  ‘Top row, far left.’

  ‘Et voilà.’

  Marchant’s palms began to sweat. He tried to think through the best course of action if Denton was using the scanners to communicate with his Russian handler. The barcode might reveal instructions for where and when to meet, whether a m
eeting was on or had been cancelled. Or it might contain more complex information that could be read later by a scanning app.

  It would be hard to prove anything without alerting Moscow. The weakness of the system was the overnight delay between the barcode being placed on a product just before closing time and it being read the next morning as soon as the store opened. If Jean-Baptiste could get access to the barcode during the night, he might be able to read and replace it without raising the alarm. But Denton wasn’t due to go shopping again until next Tuesday, and Marchant couldn’t afford to wait that long.

  For the next few minutes he listened as Jean-Baptiste relayed the Russian’s shopping habits: cold meats, sourdough bread, pickled gherkins, Stolichnaya vodka.

  ‘No blinis?’

  ‘He’s walked straight past them.’

  ‘He’ll be back. What’s he doing now?’

  ‘Talking on his phone. Wait, he’s heading round to the smoked salmon again – and to the blinis. I can move in from behind and get in quite close here.’

  ‘Be careful.’

  ‘He’s picked up a packet, thirty-six cocktail blinis, from the back of the shelf. It’s the same packet Denton handled last night. Now he’s scanning it.’

  For a few seconds, Jean-Baptiste said nothing. Marchant thought the line might have dropped. He told himself to relax. Jean-Baptiste had said he was standing close to the Russian. He was just being careful, couldn’t talk. Then he spoke, his voice breathless, as if he was running.

  ‘I’m blown. I’ve got to get out of here.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I could see the screen of his scanner when he read the barcode.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was a photo.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Me.’

  69

  Dhar sat cross-legged on the floor of his cell, staring at the two hatches in the steel door. One was at ankle height, the other waist height. At the top of the door was an observation aperture covered with a sliding steel plate and a grille. For twenty-three hours a day he was on his own like this. It didn’t bother him, not yet anyway. By his reckoning, he had been in Bagram for three days.

  Every eight hours the middle hatch opened and a tray of food was passed through. Once a day, both hatches slid open and he was asked to stand close to the door, his hands together in front of him. A silent guard then shackled his wrists and ankles, let him out of the cell and led him to a caged area measuring five feet by fifty feet. Known as ‘the dog kennel’, it was where Dhar was allowed to exercise for one hour. There was no natural light anywhere.

  Dhar was indifferent about his exercise break. He was content in his cell, his mental strength and Samyama routines more than enough to allow him to deal with the solitude and the crude attempts to confuse his body clock. The single lightbulb had been left on for the first twenty-four hours, then he was in darkness for what felt like a further twenty-four. He presumed mealtimes were also being altered, but he listened to the rhythm of his body, forcing regular patterns of behaviour onto the empty days.

  It was something he had learnt at the training camps, where he had survived longer than most in solitary confinement. While others had talked about their brains atrophying, the desperate need to talk to others and then to themselves, Dhar had encountered no such problems. To cope with the boredom and disorientation, he would choose a particular day from his past and live in it, second by second, hour by hour.

  The day when he had met his real father, Stephen Marchant, was a favourite. It was the first and only time they had seen each other, in a black site in South India. His world had shattered and come together in those few moments when Marchant had told him that he was his son.

  Today he would have no reason to live in the past. But he didn’t know that when the middle hatch slid open. He rose from the cell floor to take the plastic tray. The food usually smelt worse than it tasted, and noxious vapours were rising off the small serving of dhal. Dhar didn’t bother to acknowledge the American guards who brought him the food, but this time the tray bearer caught his eye through the observation aperture. He was an Afghani.

  After taking the tray, Dhar held eye contact with the man, whose striking green eyes looked frightened behind the thick safety glasses worn by all the guards to protect them from anything thrown or sprayed at them by inmates. Small and wiry, the Afghani was one of many LECs who worked at Bagram. He nodded at the tray, the rubber seal of his glasses pressed against his glistening eyebrows. The chapatti was usually served flat. This time it was folded into a neat square, like a napkin. Dhar glanced at it and then looked back at the Afghani, who slid the middle panel shut and walked away.

  There was only one place in the cell where Dhar could not be observed, and he sat there now with his back to the wall. The tray was in front of him on the floor. He leant forward, and was about to pick up the chapatti when he thought again about the Afghani. He sat back. The man had been trying to signal something to him. Was Iran about to keep its promise?

  He recalled the last meeting with Ali Mousavi, his old ally in Iran, who had made contact while he had been training in Russia for the attack on Fairford and GCHQ.

  ‘We have a job for you that would suit both our purposes,’ Mousavi had said. He went on to give enough details for him to agree in principle. Dhar was losing what little enthusiasm he had for the Russians – there had been another clampdown on Muslims in Dagestan. The proposed Iranian operation was in the Strait of Hormuz and the target was American.

  ‘First, though, I have a difficult mission in Britain,’ Dhar had replied. ‘I may need your assistance if I fall into the hands of the infidel.’

  ‘Once your work is done there, we will help you all we can, wherever you are.’

  Dhar was certain that Mousavi’s offer had been genuine, and that Iran wanted to use his global popularity to win wider support for their own jihad against America.

  He studied the tray of food, wondering what, if anything, was inside the folded chapatti. For a moment he thought it might be a key. He cursed the thought – it would take more than a key to get out of Bagram. Perhaps he had imagined the look of honesty in the Afghani’s eyes, and was about to fall into a trap. Spiro would prefer him dead, particularly after their chat about his wife. But he had always trusted his instinct, and now it told him to trust the Afghani.

  He leant forward and picked up the chapatti. There was definitely something inside it, bulging beneath the top fold. His hands were shaking. Or was it the chapatti? It seemed to be vibrating. Slowly, he undid the thin bread, peeling back the layers with his index finger and thumb. Then he saw it: a two-inch-long Asian giant hornet. Before he could remove his hand, the confused insect twitched its carapaced abdomen in an aggressive arc and stung Dhar’s finger.

  The pain was instant, like a burning nail being driven up through his hand and along his arm towards his heart, but it was the memory that scared Dhar more. He was back in Delhi again, a seven-year-old child playing in a British expat’s garden, his throat and tongue swelling as he struggled to breathe. ‘Amma!’ he screamed. ‘Amma!’ His mother had waved to him a few minutes earlier from a top window of the house, where she was babysitting.

  He started to wheeze; his airway felt blocked. He didn’t know if any words came as he cried out again, looking for his mother in the grille of the prison door. A heavy paralysis crept up his arm, the skin of which was already turning a deep red. White lumps bubbled up over the back of his hand and his knuckles. But it was his face that frightened him the most. He could feel it swelling up like a balloon, as if someone had attached a bicycle pump to his finger and was inflating his head through his arm.

  Why had he trusted the Afghani, he thought, as he began to lose consciousness. This was Spiro’s work, revenge for having taunted him about his wife. It wouldn’t be the first time. The CIA had somehow discovered his phobia, just as they had known about Abu Zubaydah’s fear of insects when they had interrogated him at Guantánamo.
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br />   ‘Amma!’ he tried to shout again, writhing on the floor of his cell. He didn’t care if Spiro saw him crying like a baby. He wanted his mother. The last memory he had was of the Afghani’s pellucid eyes peering in at him. They still looked honest.

  70

  Marchant threw some of Jean-Baptiste’s clothes into a bag and looked around the room, checking he hadn’t left any evidence of his stay at the château. Clémence was in the main house with Lakshmi. He hadn’t told either of them that he was going. It wouldn’t be too long before Jean-Baptiste would be back. After his face had shown up on the Russian’s scanner, he had left the supermarket as quickly as he could, driving straight to Heathrow, from where he had emailed Marchant some photos of Denton and the Russian. There was no point in him staying on in London if his cover had been blown.

  ‘You must leave too,’ he had said. ‘At once. If they know about me, they know about you.’

  He had told Marchant where he kept a sheaf of spare passports. All of them were French except one, which was British.

  ‘Get yourself to Orly. I’ll be at passport control to make sure you get on a plane. Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Essaouira would be good.’

  Marchant took the keys for the Citroën Mehari and headed over to the barn where it was kept, thinking about Morocco. His last few minutes with Dhar in Tarlton had been surreal, raising glasses of vodka and whisky to their shared jihad moments before British special forces had stormed the house. Marchant had asked how Dhar would contact him, if – once – he had managed to escape from Bagram. ‘A camel herder in Essaouira,’ Dhar had said, grinning, sounding like someone out of the Arabian Nights. Last time, it had been a storyteller in Marrakech. He trusted his followers in Morocco.