Games Traitors Play

by Jon Stock

  Meena saw Aziz first, head back and to one side, his mouth wide open, as if he was singing grotesquely in his sleep. But there was no sound, and for a second she thought he was dead. She moved forward, trying to process the scene: the clamp in Aziz’s mouth, the dark, congealed stain on his cheek, the faint rise and fall of his chest, the tools littered across the floor. Her orders were to get Marchant away from Aziz, but where the hell was he?

  She glanced around at the two rows of seats in business class. Aziz was in an aisle seat, its upholstery stained and torn. The seats around were also flecked with blood, the crisp paper headrests ripped or missing. Then Meena saw him, slumped on the floor, his back against the open door of the lavatory, hands by his side. Marchant’s eyes were open, but he was barely conscious. The bottom half of his face was badly bruised, his lips bloodied and swollen like slices of overripe peach.

  ‘Daniel,’ she said, putting the handkerchief to her mouth, as much to reassure herself about her own lips as to cut out the stale smell of burnt flesh, which was suddenly overpowering. She rushed over, but by the time she was kneeling down beside him, Marchant’s eyes had closed.

  28

  Giuseppe Demuro was good at recognising guests. It was part of his job, one of the reasons they came back to his resort year after year. Guests liked to be remembered. Some of his colleagues kept notes on the high rollers, hoping that a personal aside on arrival – namechecking the children, asking after a relative – would secure a more generous tip. But Demuro was in no need of any props. He also had a unique manner, honed over the years into what he hoped was a self-respecting obsequiousness, somewhere between a butler and the boss. But it was his memory for faces that had helped him rise to become manager of one of the most luxurious resorts in Sardinia. It was also why he was in the employ of several of the world’s intelligence agencies, who provided more reliable revenue streams than gratuities.

  These organisations weren’t after state secrets or sexual scandal. (A friend of his at a nearby resort made even more money by tipping off the newspapers whenever politicians came to stay with unsuitable companions, but that was beneath Demuro.) All they wanted to know about was unusual combinations of visitors: patterns. In recent years, the resort had become popular with Russians, from oligarchs who moored their yachts offshore to extended families who paid in cash, stayed mostly in their rooms (always sea-facing), lifted weights in the gym and consumed vast quantities of watermelon and cucumber. If an oligarch’s holiday overlapped with a prominent politician’s, Demuro would ring the relevant contact.

  He liked working for the British the most. There was something glamorous – almost Italian – about the MI6 officers he had met, particularly the man they called the Vicar. He would have preferred working for a priest, of course, but he didn’t complain, provided his monthly retainer was in euros.

  Demuro had no hesitation, then, in dialling a secure London number after the young American woman checked in to a sea-facing room with a recuperating guest. It wasn’t that he recognised her as CIA. Nor that she had a sick companion. The Americans had brought injured people before. It was the fact that a young Russian couple had arrived shortly after them, asking to be near the sea, too.

  Normally, he would have greeted the couple in fluent Russian. The previous winter, in the off-season, he had been sent to study at a language school in St Petersburg for three months. There were now more Russian than Italian guests at the resort during July and August. But something made Demuro hold back, and speak in broken English. As he walked with the couple to their room, pointing out the tennis courts, pool and restaurant, he overheard a brief exchange between them. It was only a few Russian words, but when he repeated them on the phone, the Vicar hinted at a bonus and Demuro offered a quiet prayer of thanks.

  29

  Marchant awoke to the sound of a chipping noise. It took him a few seconds to realise that it wasn’t coming from inside his mouth. He put his hand up to his jaw, which felt disfigured and swollen. His gums were throbbing, but the pain was less than it had been on the plane. Where was he? He was lying on white cotton sheets, in a whitewashed room. The ceiling was high and latticed with cream-coloured wooden beams. On one wall there was a large mirror, framed in pearl mosaic. A twenty-four-inch television screen perched on a chest of drawers, and fruit – peaches and apricots – had been left in a bowl in front of it. Beside his bed, on a writing table, there were several bottles of pills next to an orchid and some mineral water. He leaned across and picked up one of the bottles: it was amoxicillin, an antibiotic. The other was diamorphine.

  He sat up with some effort. His neck muscles were sore and his head throbbed more when he moved. A net curtain had been drawn across an open window, its white shutters pushed partly open. The branches of a weeping fig stopped them from opening fully. Beyond its leaves, he could see pine trees against a brilliant blue sky. The sun was too bright for Britain, the birdsong too exuberant. As he listened to the chorus, a small bird hovered outside the window for a few moments and disappeared.

  He reached over and examined the bottle of mineral water, reading its label: Frizzante – sparkling – and made by Smeraldina, a ‘product of Sardinia’. Twisting open the metal cap, he drank deeply, resting the bottle gently on his swollen lips. His mind was still too muddled to think clearly. At least he was out of Morocco. It was only when he put the bottle down that he noticed a figure sitting outside on the terrace, beyond the double doors on the far side of the room. He couldn’t see any more than their profile through the net curtains, which moved gently in the breeze. The doors were open a few inches, and the person must have heard him opening the bottle of water, because she stood up and put her head in the room.

  ‘How you feeling?’ It was Lakshmi Meena.

  Marchant tried to speak, but his tongue failed to respond. Instead, he grunted and sank back into the deep pillows, closing his eyes. What sort of a question was that? He had that top-of-the-world feeling that usually followed a trip to a dentist with an aversion to using anaesthetic. Aziz should go into full-time practice when he retired, set himself up in the square in Marrakech. Tourists would be queuing around the block for his gentle touch.

  He heard Meena walk across the marble floor and draw up a cane chair beside the bed. He remembered that she worked directly for Spiro. Someone must have had a change of heart.

  ‘I’m sorry, really. It shouldn’t have happened. I should have done more, protested louder.’

  Marchant wasn’t going to make this any easier for her as he lay still, listening to the chipping noise that had started up again. He realised now that it was workmen, the rhythm of their hammers slowed by the day’s heat. His brain had established some distance between the outside world and the inside of his skull, but the sound was still too familiar for comfort.

  ‘They’re fixing the path outside,’ Meena continued, her manner more businesslike than bedside. Marchant assumed that it was her way of dealing with the situation, which was fine by him. He didn’t want her sympathy. ‘One of the tiles was cracked, so they dug it up and are putting in a new one. Relax if you never made it to Jackson’s Neverland, because it’s right here, in Sardinia. No litter, no crime, sidewalks buffed up at night. I’m not kidding, I’ve smelt the floor polish.’

  The less Marchant acknowledged Meena, the more she talked. He didn’t have enough energy to interrupt, ask her to leave, tell her she was as bad as the rest of them, despite her protests.

  ‘We flew in to Cagliari yesterday morning. You’ve been asleep ever since. The drugs aren’t going to replace your molars, I’m afraid, but they should stop any infection spreading to the bone, brain and lungs, reduce the chance of systemic sepsis. And take the morphine in moderation, only when it’s really hurting.’

  He recalled that Meena had once trained to be a doctor. He opened his eyes, tracing the patterns in the plaster on the ceiling.

  ‘We didn’t get Salim Dhar.’ Marchant looked across at Meena, who was standing now. ‘Killed six of
our own Marines instead. Spiro’s butt’s on the line, mine too. I don’t know what you saw up in the mountains, but come to me, not him, if you ever want to talk. I might just listen.’

  Meena turned away when Marchant caught her eye. She had found it difficult enough to look at him when he was sleeping, his bruised mouth distorted as if in accusation. Now that he was awake, she saw in his eyes everything that was wrong with the Agency, everything that was wrong with the decisions she had made in her life. This wasn’t why she had signed up. She also saw something else, but buried the thought as soon as it surfaced.

  The military ambulance had taken Aziz away from the airport, but not before two of his colleagues had threatened to inflict further injuries on Marchant. Meena had talked them out of it, pulling rank, acting the part, then arranged for another ambulance. They wouldn’t allow him to travel in the military one. At the Hassan II Hospital, on route de Marrakech, a doctor had patched Marchant up and prescribed painkillers and antibiotics. He knew better than to ask how the British man had come to lose two teeth. He knew, too, that there could be consequences for helping him, but the American woman had given him a bulging envelope of dirhams as well as reassurances.

  By the time Meena took Marchant out to the airport, a Gulfstream V had arrived to fly them to Sardinia, where the CIA had a discreet account with a luxury resort on the south of the island. It had the use of a villa away from the thoroughfare of restaurants and tennis courts. Senior officers checked themselves in for some R&R after tough tours of duty in the Gulf. NSA officers visiting the listening base in Cyprus also dropped by for a few days to clear their heads from intercepts. And there was always the possible bonus of picking something up from the Russians. Meena hadn’t hesitated to book Marchant in. It was the least she could do. Besides, Spiro had told her to look after him and to send Langley the bill.

  ‘London knows you’re here,’ she said, standing at the double doors now. ‘You’re on a flight back to Gatwick in a week. Relax, recover. It’s on us.’ She paused. ‘I’ve got to go. Pacify the Moroccans. You nearly killed Aziz.’ She paused again, fighting an urge to go over to him. ‘You’ll be safe here. And, you know, I’m sorry, truly. It was my fault. Should never have happened.’

  Marchant stared at her blankly, then drifted back to sleep.

  30

  ‘I think someone should be with Marchant,’ Denton said, wondering if Fielding had heard him. His Chief was standing at the window of his fourth-floor office, lost in thought, watching a pair of Chinooks fly up the Thames towards a setting sun. The Union flag outside the window was rippling in the evening breeze. Sometimes Fielding’s apparent indifference to his own staff frightened Denton, but he told himself it was just his manner.

  ‘Do we know what happened?’ Fielding asked, turning around suddenly, as if trying to make up for his previous inattention.

  ‘The Americans handed him over to Abdul Aziz. Marchant proved a difficult patient.’

  ‘You think we should have protected him more, don’t you?’

  ‘I just –’

  ‘Don’t go soft on me, Ian. It doesn’t suit you. Daniel Marchant knows how to look after himself. Besides, we had an agreement with Langley.’

  ‘For what it was worth,’ Denton said. He liked Marchant, and feared for his health if he was subjected to more trauma at the hands of the CIA.

  ‘Spiro saw his chance. He thought the world would be looking the other way, watching the death of Salim Dhar on YouTube. Who’s out in Morocco for them? Still Lakshmi Meena?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Young enough to be my granddaughter.’

  Except that you don’t have one, Denton thought. No grandchildren at all, in fact. No children, wife or lover of any description. Just a dog called Oleg and an extended tribe of godchildren. There had been talk once of an elderly mother, somewhere on the south coast – Brighton, or was it Eastbourne? – but that was long ago. Denton used to have a wife. A shared love of jazz and canal boats had brought them together, the Service had driven them apart, as it eventually did with most of its married employees. She still worked as a librarian in the House of Commons, down the river, but they no longer saw each other. There were no children, just a few Miles Davis albums still to be returned. Perhaps Fielding’s chosen path of apparent chastity was the only way to arrive at the top of MI6 without any baggage.

  ‘She said the Agency was putting Marchant up for a few days – Sardinia – but she had to get back to Morocco,’ Denton said.

  ‘Send Hugo Prentice. Marchant helped him out in Poland. And he knew his father.’

  Denton had never liked Prentice, but now wasn’t the time to object. There would come a time, in his new role, when he could set the record straight, not just question Prentice’s expenses, but his very worth. They had both worked the SovBloc beat, in very different styles, Denton’s discretion in marked contrast to Prentice’s public-school flamboyance. Both had done long spells in Poland. Everyone knew Prentice gambled, drank too much, but for as long as he continued to come up with good product, Fielding turned a blind eye. Denton knew a part of him envied Prentice. He was still out there in the field, where agents belonged, while he himself had chosen to climb Legoland’s greasy pole.

  He walked to the door, leaving Fielding in preoccupied silence. Not for the first time in his career, Denton felt that he had merely confirmed information already known to his Chief rather than told him something new. It was in such moments that he felt destined to be a deputy, one of life’s permanent number twos. He glanced back at Fielding, pacing his spacious office, and closed the door with more force than was necessary.

  Fielding didn’t like to exclude Denton from anything, but sometimes it was unavoidable. The thoughts in his head were forming too fast to share even with his loyal deputy, the implications backing up like a restless queue. He went back to his desk, opened a drawer and removed a file on Nikolai Primakov.

  31

  The next time Marchant woke, it was to the sound of a Russian voice, talking on a mobile phone on the terrace outside his room. Marchant’s Russian was rusty, but good enough to understand what was being said.

  ‘Yes, he’s here.’ A woman’s voice, not Meena’s. ‘Still sleeping.’ He could see her outline through the net curtain, turning towards him, holding something in her hand, a photo perhaps. ‘The American woman’s gone, left yesterday…He’s a little under the weather, but it’s incredible, he looks just like his father.’

  Marchant tried to rouse himself, but he couldn’t even turn over. It was as if he was lying in thick treacle, the sort his father used to pour over sponge puddings on those rare occasions when they spent Christmas in Britain, at the family home in the Cotswolds. It was his father’s only contribution in the kitchen. He stared at the lace curtain, billowing gently in the breeze, and tried to work out where he was, who the woman might be, why he didn’t care. His mouth wasn’t hurting any more, but he couldn’t distinguish one part of his body from another. A numbness had cocooned him. He looks just like his father – the words floated around his medicated head until he drifted back to sleep again.

  ‘Marchant’s got a babysitter,’ Prentice said, grinding a cigarette into the dusty ground outside the roadside bar with his heel. The pine trees were shading him from the hot Sardinian sun, their roots pushing up through the dry soil, moulding it like a plasticine map of mountainous terrain. He had taken a walk out of the resort’s gates and down to a collection of shops eight hundred yards along the straight main road. The only shop that was open was a deserted supermarket, where he had bought two bottles of chilled Prosecco, a packet of Marlboro cigarettes and too many Lotto tickets. Next door was a closed fishmongers and an empty bar, run by a woman in a short skirt whose red-lined eyes and swollen stomach suggested she drank more beer than she served.

  ‘She’s called Lakshmi Meena,’ Fielding said, getting up from his desk in Legoland.

  ‘Not unless she’s dyed her fanny hair.’

  Fielding knew Prent
ice was trying to shock him. He had a habit of being crude at inappropriate moments. Perhaps it was a reaction against his own proper background, or frustration at never having taken to the stage. Like so many agents Fielding knew, Prentice was a natural actor, the office joker who could mimic everyone in authority. (Fielding had once overheard Prentice’s impression of his own voice: a combination of camp archbishop and repressed Eton housemaster.) Give or take a few venial sins, he was also one of the best agents he had in the field.

  ‘Oh yes, and she’s speaking Russian.’ Prentice winked at a small boy who had appeared at the end of the bar, legs crossed, one hand in his mouth, the other tugging at his mother’s nylon skirt. Prentice turned his back and walked away from the bar, cutting across the scrubland that lay between the shops and the main highway to Cagliari. He stepped carefully over the pine roots as he went. Despite the dust, his polished yard boots glistened in the high sun.

  ‘Is she on her own?’ Fielding asked, surprised at the speed of events in Sardinia.

  ‘She checked in to a double room, near Marchant’s. On the beach. Two sets of flip-flops outside the door, couple of towels. Husband-and-wife cover.’

  ‘But you haven’t seen the husband yet?’

  ‘I only reached here last night. What do you want me to do? Get him out of here? She’s a swallow, sent to seduce him.’

  ‘And Meena’s definitely gone?’

  ‘Checked out yesterday.’

  ‘A little too hasty, no?’

  ‘We met at the airport. She was embarrassed. Told me Marchant’s room number, the medication he was on, then buggered off. Marchant’s a sitting duck if the Russians want to compromise him.’