Dirty Little Secret

by Jon Stock

  105

  The last time Marchant had passed through Dubai airport, he had been on his way back from India. A few hours earlier, he had cradled the dead Leila in his arms, the back of her head removed by a sniper shot from Salim Dhar. The bullet had been intended for the US President, who was visiting the Lotus Temple in Delhi at the time, but Leila had stepped in the way – intentionally or by mistake, he still wasn’t sure. His own head had been a mess too, confused by his love for a woman who had betrayed him.

  His thoughts were clearer now as he walked across the smooth marble floor of the airport’s main atrium, past the yellow Lamborghini Gallardo that was being raffled, and under the fake palm trees that reached up to the glass roof. He was on the way to see Dhar in Bandar-Abbas, where the Iranians were looking after him.

  They were looking after Marchant too. A lanky, unsmiling agent had met him in Paris and flown with him to Dubai, steering him through a channel where passports were not examined. He had been given a new one for each sector, well-crafted forgeries that he hoped one day to show the cobblers in Legoland. In five minutes he would be boarding a fifty-minute flight across the Persian Gulf to Bandar-Abbas.

  His only concern was how to let London know what he was doing. There had been no opportunity in Morocco to call or to buy a phone. Dhar’s men had driven him straight from Diabat to Essaouira airport. One of them had then flown with him to Paris, where he was handed over to the Iranians, who had made it clear that he wasn’t to contact anyone.

  He understood their suspicion – Iran only had Dhar’s word that he could be trusted – but it was still a problem. Fielding would be back as Chief, and expecting him to be in touch. At least he would know by now that their deniable operation to run Dhar as an agent was up and running again, and yielding results. Marchant had caught a news bulletin on the plane about four arrests in Greenwich.

  He tried to slow down as they passed the duty-free counters selling mobile phones, but his minder dropped his pace too. He was good at his job, Marchant thought. Nobody watching would suspect that he was effectively the Iranian’s prisoner. He would try a blunter approach.

  ‘I need to buy a new phone,’ he said, stopping in front of one of the counters. ‘Mine was destroyed in Morocco. Salt water ruins the circuits, you know.’

  ‘You can buy one in Bandar,’ the Iranian said, walking on. If he was irritated by his charge’s request, he didn’t show it.

  ‘They’re cheaper in duty-free,’ Marchant replied. He felt like a teenager pestering his parents. The Iranian came back to where Marchant was standing. The man behind the phone counter began to think he had a customer.

  ‘We currently have a promotion on all BlackBerry products,’ he said hopefully, looking first at Marchant and then at his minder.

  Marchant was considering whether to continue the charade when his eye caught someone looking at phones at the next-door counter. He recognised him at once as Felix Duffy, a fellow recruit on his IONEC course at Fort Monckton. The last Marchant had heard, Duffy was rising fast up the Gulf Controllerate. Was it chance – it was a standing joke that there were more intelligence officers at Dubai airport than passengers – or had Fielding sent him?

  ‘OK,’ Marchant said. ‘I’ll wait till we reach Bandar-Abbas.’ The Iranian was not going to let him buy a phone. Marchant’s main priority now was getting a message to Duffy. ‘But I do need a slash.’

  Two minutes later, he was washing his hands in a bright and airy cloakroom, watched by a young Malayali who was employed to keep the place clean. (Marchant reckoned there were almost as many South Indian workers at Dubai airport as there were spies.) His Iranian minder had stayed by the entrance after first checking the cloakroom, but Duffy was too experienced to enter while Marchant was still inside. It would only have aroused suspicion.

  Marchant looked around him. If Duffy had been sent by Fielding, he would expect a message, word from Marchant on what he was doing, why he was going to Bandar-Abbas. The walls of the cubicle had been too clean to leave graffiti. The South Indian smiled as he passed him a paper towel. Then Marchant noticed a plastic-framed panel on the wall behind him. A list of columns informed customers when the cloakroom had last been cleaned: time, name of cleaner, supervisor’s signature.

  ‘Pen?’ Marchant asked, spotting one in the attendant’s top pocket.

  The man wobbled his head from side to side as he retrieved a felt-tip. Marchant pulled out his passport and found a ten-dollar bill left over from Morocco. After swapping the bill for the pen, he glanced around the empty cloakroom, smiled at the cleaner and signed in the supervisor’s column.

  SINBAD, he wrote, copying the staccato uppercase of the previous signature.

  The Iranian was waiting for Marchant when he came back out onto the concourse. As Marchant suspected, he told him to wait while he went to check the cloakroom. A few seconds later he returned, and informed him they were late for their flight to Bandar-Abbas.

  106

  ‘What makes you so certain there’s a second cell?’ Fielding asked as he poured Armstrong a large glass of Talisker in his office. It was late in the day, the western sky smudged red by the setting summer sun. She had declined his offer of Moroccan tea.

  ‘Forensics have found something on a hard drive retrieved from the house in Greenwich,’ Armstrong said. ‘Another wave of attacks is planned. It seems there’s a completely different network of cells out there, with different targets. This time they’re not interested in infrastructure, they want civilian casualties – as many as possible.’

  ‘And there was nothing more specific?’

  Armstrong looked a wreck, Fielding thought. If you chose to dress formally, as she did, the cracks were more obvious when things went wrong.

  ‘The two networks were operating in isolation from each other. The Americans aren’t pooling anything. They’re doing their own thing and shoring up security on all US assets in the UK. We’ve asked about making Dhar’s escape from Bagram public – the attacks might stop if his supporters knew he was free – but Washington won’t hear of it.’ Fielding knew where the conversation was leading. ‘Has Marchant been in contact again?’ she asked, as if it wasn’t a non sequitur.

  ‘As it happens, he’s just shown up on the grid in Dubai,’ Fielding said, pushing his chair back and stretching his long legs out to one side of his desk. ‘One of our assets in Paris immigration recognised him boarding a flight to Dubai. We alerted our UAE station and made contact.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what? Marchant wasn’t able to communicate freely, but I hope to have more for you soon.’

  Fielding thought again about the message from Dubai. Marchant had managed to make contact, leaving a single word for Felix Duffy, who had passed it on, unclear of its significance. But Fielding knew exactly what it meant.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Harriet. You know as well as I do how difficult these things can be. Dhar is no ordinary source. He can’t be bounced into providing product. My biggest concern is keeping the CIA off Marchant’s back. If they discover he’s in Dubai, they’ll lift him, and Dhar’s usefulness to you and me will be at an end. He would never communicate with anyone else.’

  ‘Of course. It’s just that I’m not sure the country could cope with another wave of attacks.’

  What you mean, Fielding thought, is that you couldn’t cope. He had never seen her looking so worn out. Ironically, he himself was feeling ready for the fight that lay ahead, fresh from his time off in Poland.

  ‘Right now,’ Armstrong continued, ‘Dhar remains our only lead. And quite frankly, I don’t care what he’s got planned for the Americans, as long as he gives us another address.’

  Ten minutes later, Fielding was alone in his office, standing at the buttressed bay window. The Service’s centenary cartoon by Matt was back on the wall, its fairy spook still making him smile, the London Eye turned in the distance, and Anne Norman was keeping ministers at bay with her usual robust charm. He
could hear her now on the phone, deflecting another call from Whitehall. When he had arrived back from Warsaw, she had given him ten minutes to get his feet under his desk, but then the floodgates had opened: a tirade of complaints about the acting Chief.

  Ian Denton’s worst offence, it seemed, had been to ask for two Yorkshire teabags in his mug. ‘It looked like mud, and must have tasted far worse,’ she had fumed. Never mind Denton’s dubious sexual proclivities or his apparent allegiance to Moscow, Fielding thought. Ann was a simple snob at heart, shamelessly allergic to northerners.

  Now Denton was out of the way, all should have been well with the world, but Fielding knew it wasn’t. London had never felt more unsafe. Down to his left, a police roadblock on Vauxhall Bridge checked traffic, while helicopters circled above. At Armstrong’s request, the UK threat level had returned that afternoon from ‘severe’ to ‘critical’, meaning a terrorist attack was once again imminent. All police leave had been cancelled and the army had been put on standby.

  He thought again about Armstrong. Dhar’s intel had saved many lives, including her own, but it didn’t make the operation to run him any easier. The risks couldn’t be greater for everyone, including himself. He trusted Marchant’s judgement, but what exactly were the terms he had struck with his half-brother? They must have come to some sort of agreement when they met at Tarlton. Dhar seemed committed to halting the terrorist attacks on Britain, even if they had been launched in his name after he was captured. But had Marchant agreed to help with Dhar’s escape in return?

  Denton had believed as much, accusing Marchant’s friend Paul Myers of sitting on a GCHQ intercept that might have prevented the jailbreak. Myers had denied everything, in an act of loyalty that had cost him his foreskin and very nearly his life. A few minutes earlier, Spiro had called to tell him that Myers was in the medical unit at RAF Fairford.

  ‘I’ve done all I can for the guy, Marcus,’ he had said. ‘He’s not in a good way, but he’ll survive.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ Fielding had asked.

  ‘Seems like Denton prefers Roundheads to Cavaliers.’

  It had been an unusually cultured quip for Spiro. His career would be over this time. For years Washington had been looking for a Russian spy in MI6. Finally, it had found one, but it had been Spiro’s man. He was having wife trouble too, if the rumours were to be believed. But then, most people in intelligence ended up single.

  Anne Norman’s voice came through on the comms console.

  ‘I’ve got the station chief in Dubai on line two. Says it’s urgent.’

  ‘Put her through.’ Fielding walked back over to his desk. Esther Bannerman was good, one of a bright new generation of women fast-tracking their way through the Service, possibly to the top.

  ‘We’ve just watched Marchant board a flight to Bandar-Abbas,’ she began.

  It was as Fielding thought. ‘No more communication?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing. He’s being babysat all the way by the Iranians.’

  ‘And the CIA?’

  ‘We kept them looking the other way. I don’t think they saw him. The Russians were in town too, but this is Dubai. It might have been a coincidence.’

  ‘I doubt it. You sound anxious.’ Fielding knew she had once carried a torch for Marchant.

  ‘I don’t know what Dan’s planning to do in Bandar, but we’ve just heard that the Revolutionary Guard is about to embark on another naval exercise, bigger than Prophet 6 in April. And the second Carrier Strike Group is currently in transit in the Strait. We’ve warned all our assets.’

  ‘You mean he’s entering a potential war zone.’

  ‘I suppose I do, yes. This time the stand-off is more than sabre-rattling.’

  ‘All the more reason to have people on the ground.’

  Fielding hung up and walked around his office, hoping to shake out the tension in his lower back. He was certain now that the Iranians had helped to spring Dhar from Bagram – with or without Marchant’s help – and were shielding him in the naval port of Bandar-Abbas. The first and last letters of SINBAD, the word Marchant had written in Dubai airport, were ‘SD’, Salim Dhar’s initials, leaving ‘INBA’ – in Bandar-Abbas.

  Dhar and the Iranians had worked together once before, narrowly failing to assassinate the US President in Delhi. The military build-up in the Gulf was nothing new, but Dhar’s presence in the region changed things. So did Marchant’s. Had he been summoned by Dhar, or was it his own decision to visit, hoping for more information about imminent attacks on Britain?

  Fielding’s fear was that the Iranians planned to use Dhar in another act of proxy terrorism. If Marchant was drawn into it too, Fielding would have to cut him free. He wouldn’t be able to defend him – or protect himself – if an MI6 officer was complicit in a second attack on America. The downing of a US F-22 had destroyed what was left of the special relationship. There would be no more product from Dhar, but sometimes the price for good intelligence could be too high.

  107

  Marchant held his arms up while two armed guards frisked him. He had already been searched when he boarded an oil-platform supply vessel in Bandar-Abbas, posing as an international worker about to begin his shift. And he had been checked again after arriving on the platform. It was nothing personal, he told himself. All the oil workers he had arrived with – Ukrainians, Indians, Iranians – had been subjected to the same high level of security.

  His geographical knowledge of the Strait of Hormuz was patchy, but he reckoned he was near the shipping lanes to the south-west of Bandar-Abbas, and north of the Tunb islands that were disputed between Iran and the United Arab Emirates. He had seen them from his cabin porthole on the journey over in the supply ship. They sat in the middle of the lanes, and were a permanent source of anxiety for the West. The Revolutionary Guard was known to use them as bases for naval exercises, making them a threat to the oil – 33 per cent of the world’s seaborne supplies – that passed through the Strait each day.

  After the guards were satisfied, one of them nodded, and opened the door for Marchant. The room appeared to be in a medical wing, and he wondered if he would find Dhar ill in bed. But it wasn’t Dhar who was waiting for him. It was an Iranian military officer. Had he walked into a trap?

  ‘Welcome,’ the officer said, extending a hand. ‘My name is Ali Mousavi. I hope your journey was not too tiring.’

  Marchant nodded, detecting a faint American accent.

  ‘Take a seat, please, relax,’ Mousavi said, gesturing at a chair. Some mineral water and a plate of dates had been laid out on a small table. Marchant sat down, glancing around the small, windowless room – the bed, the TV in the corner – checking that he hadn’t missed Dhar. The meeting could go either way, despite Mousavi’s apparent hospitality.

  ‘Your brother will be here shortly,’ Mousavi continued. ‘He speaks very highly of you.’

  Marchant remembered now where he had heard the name before. It was an Ali Mousavi who had recruited Leila.

  ‘I just wanted to thank you in person,’ Mousavi said.

  ‘For what?’ Marchant’s mind was racing as he thought back to Leila’s treachery, her death in Delhi. He needed to focus, stick to the part he must play. Dhar would have told them of his anti-American credentials, his run-ins with the CIA. It was the only reason the Iranians would trust him.

  ‘Somebody in your country omitted to pass on intelligence that might have stopped Salim Dhar from escaping.’

  ‘It was the least I could do,’ Marchant said, not missing a beat. He was relieved that Myers’s omission had been noticed. It meant Dhar would know he had helped with his escape, which was the basis of their deal.

  ‘Did you work for GCHQ?’

  ‘No, but an old friend does. He’s a Farsi analyst. I called in a favour, told him to sit on anything relating to Dhar.’

  ‘It’s a mystery how someone in GCHQ heard our conversation, but your brother is free, and he clearly has you to thank.’

  Mousav
i wasn’t taking any chances. Marchant didn’t blame him. He wanted to be certain that the Englishman in front of him could be trusted. Relations between Britain and Iran had never been worse. But trust him for what? They wouldn’t have let him visit Dhar unless it suited their own agenda.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ Mousavi said. ‘It’s a little left-field.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ Marchant replied, trying not to be distracted by the Americanism.

  ‘Did you really think you were drowning when the CIA waterboarded you?’

  ‘It’s a trick of the mind,’ he said, fixing Mousavi with a stare. He was determined not to be unsettled by the question. ‘Your body isn’t really about to drown, your brain just thinks it is.’

  ‘Salim said you resisted longer than most.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to give the Americans the satisfaction of breaking me.’

  ‘Quite.’

  Had Marchant passed the test, or should he do more, compare notes on what it was like to be an enemy of America? What else had Dhar told Mousavi?

  ‘I also understand that you still love your country,’ Mousavi continued, smiling. ‘The Old Fox.’

  Marchant felt his mouth go dry.

  ‘To love a country is one thing, living there is quite another.’

  ‘An international warrant exists for your arrest, issued by the British. It wasn’t so easy bringing you here.’

  ‘And it will be difficult for me ever to return.’

  ‘That’s hardly surprising. Your attack on the F-22 was spectacular, the stuff of American movies, Top Gun. It suddenly made all things seem possible. If they ever forgave you, would you work for MI6 again?’