Games Traitors Play

by Jon Stock

  After washing in a bucket of lukewarm water that had been left by the side entrance, Marchant looked again at Dhar’s corner. Checking the door, he walked over and pulled back the curtain. There was a mattress and bedding on the floor, with a small wooden cargo crate beside it for a bedside table. A copy of the Koran lay shut, a letter inside it acting as a bookmark.

  He recognised the handwriting at once. Glancing at the door again, he picked up the Koran and slid the letter out. The paper was creased, and looked well read. It was from his father, written in the same hand and in exactly the same words as the one Primakov had given to him. For a moment, he wondered if it was a forgery, but he was sure it was his father’s hand.

  To Salim, the son I never knew

  If you are reading this, it must mean that you have finally met Nikolai Ivanovich Primakov. I will not try to guess at what path led you to him, only to offer reassurance that I have trodden a similar one before you. You are old enough, of course, to make your own judgements in life, but in the case of Nikolai, I merely wish to assist you, because other influences will be in play. He is, first and foremost, a friend, and you can trust him as if he was a member of our family.

  He put the letter back in the Koran, which he placed back on the crate. In front of him, pinned to an old pilots’ briefing board on the wall, were several photos. One was of a group of jihadis at a training camp, possibly in Kashmir. Another was of a young Salim Dhar sitting in what looked like the cockpit of a crashed Russian jet. The background scenery suggested it was in Afghanistan. Then he saw a photo of himself, taken with a long lens. He was outside Legoland, on the street opposite the main entrance, peering into the window of the motorbike showroom that he used to frequent in his lunch breaks.

  ‘I used to ride an old Honda in Afghanistan,’ a voice said behind him. Marchant spun round to see a man standing by the curtain, wearing a flying suit and holding a helmet in one hand. It was Salim Dhar.

  86

  Myers had drunk one too many Battledown Premiums at the Beehive and was struggling to slot the key into the lock of his Montepelier flat in Cheltenham. It was sometimes stiff, but tonight he wondered if he had got the wrong door. He looked up at the front windows to reassure himself, and then tried again. The door opened and he fell into the hall, gathering up the post that was on the doormat: the latest issue of Fly RC, a magazine for remote-control plane enthusiasts, and a takeaway pizza flier.

  At the back of his addled mind he wondered if the lock was stiff because it had been tampered with, but he dismissed the thought. He had become paranoid since carrying out Daniel Marchant’s request, seeing people on street corners, lurking behind curtains. As far as he could tell, no one had managed to establish a cause for the temporary delay in the Recognised Air Picture data at RAF Boulmer, let alone follow it out of the Tactical Data networks to Cheltenham. He had covered his tracks carefully, and he couldn’t deny that the result had been spectacular. Whatever Marchant was up to, he was doing it with style. A pair of MiG-35s over bloody Scotland!

  He tore open the magazine as he stumbled into the kitchen, idly flicking through the pages. A sport-scale park flyer of the Russian jet would be entertaining down at the recreation ground, but he couldn’t find one listed. It might also attract unnecessary attention to himself, given the furore over the breach of airspace. Relations had plummeted between London and the Kremlin in the twenty-four hours since the incident. They weren’t helped by the subsequent kidnapping of an MI6 officer on the streets of Soho.

  For a moment, when he first heard the news at work, Myers had thought it might be Marchant, but his old friend was too streetwise to be picked up by the SVR in central London. He didn’t dare ring him to check. Myers was nervous about making any calls after his brief chat with Fielding. Besides, Marchant was clearly up to something big, and he didn’t want to be further implicated. He had already done too much.

  After taking a leak that seemed to last for ever – he almost fell asleep as he stood swaying at the bowl – Myers headed for his bedroom. He knew he should drink some water, but he wanted to check his emails, maybe surf a few porn sites before crashing. He always kept the door to his bedroom locked because of the computers inside, but as he fumbled for the key fob in his pocket, he saw that the door was ajar. The sobering effect was instant. His brain cleared as an adrenaline rush ripped through his body, making his legs feel so heavy that they almost buckled.

  He stood there for a few seconds, listening for a noise, pressing his heels into the carpet to stop his legs shaking, but there was only silence, broken by the noise of a solitary car passing outside. He took a deep breath, pushed open the door, and walked in.

  ‘Don’t say a word,’ a voice said from the darkness. A moment later, Myers felt the cold metal of a barrel against the racing pulse in his temple.

  87

  ‘I became too fond of this in Morocco,’ Dhar said, pouring out two glasses of mint tea. ‘It is my one other luxury.’ He had already offered Marchant some dried apricots from a paper bag on the floor between them. He was sitting cross-legged, his posture upright. He had changed out of his flying suit and was now wearing a long white dishdasha of the sort that Marchant had seen in Marrakech and a matching kufi skullcap. His austere appearance was reflected in the formality of their conversation. There was a stiffness to proceedings that was making Marchant tense. He was also struggling to sit comfortably on the ground. His crossed legs were cramping up, forcing him to rock forwards. He knew it made him look nervous.

  ‘How long were you in Morocco for?’ Marchant asked, taking the hot glass by the rim. ‘Did you go there straight after Delhi?’ He was hoping to slip into small talk, but knew at once that it was the wrong question to ask a man on the run.

  ‘Please,’ Dhar said. ‘Let us talk first of family. My journey is of no concern. All that matters is that we are once again reunited.’

  Dhar had hugged him when they first met in southern India. This time there had been no such warmth. Marchant had been caught snooping around his possessions, which didn’t help, but there was also a different tension in the air: a pressing sense of expectation. Fielding had warned him that he would be killed if Dhar suspected anything. Embrace your worst fears. They may be the only thing to keep you alive when you meet Dhar.

  ‘Dad wrote me a similar letter,’ Marchant said, nodding at the Koran on the crate.

  ‘Dad,’ Dhar repeated, mocking the word. ‘Father. Papa. Pop.’ He reached forward and took another apricot. ‘All those years I never knew him, never knew he was waging the same wars against the kuffar. It must be harder for you. Coming to the crusade so late. In some ways, I am closer to him than you ever were, even though I met him only once.’

  Marchant could feel himself bridling inside, but he remembered why he was here, why Dhar had wanted to see him. They were the sons of a traitor, united in family treachery.

  ‘It’s true,’ Marchant said. ‘The man I thought I knew was someone else.’

  ‘And it wasn’t a shock? Primakov said you were relieved.’

  ‘It was like finding the missing piece of a jigsaw. After the way I was treated by the Americans –’

  ‘The waterboarding.’

  ‘Yeah, after being nearly drowned at a CIA black site in Poland, I was beginning to wonder, you know, about our great Western values. When Primakov told me about Dad, my life began to make sense.’

  ‘Brother, come here,’ Dhar said, beckoning Marchant to stand. Both men rose, and hugged each other long and hard. Marchant was expecting it to feel awkward, but it wasn’t. He hadn’t been embraced by his own flesh and blood since his father had died. And as he held Dhar, breathing in the faint aroma of apricots, he wondered if this was what it would have been like to hug Sebastian if he had survived into adulthood. He had told Dhar all about his twin when they had met before, explained how his death had cast such a long shadow over his life, but, for the first time in years, Marchant no longer felt like an only child. When they let go of each othe
r, both men’s eyes were moist.

  ‘My life made sense, too,’ Dhar said. ‘Can you imagine how hard it was for me when I first discovered that my father was the head of an infidel intelligence agency?’

  Dhar managed a laugh in between wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his dishdasha. Marchant smiled, too, as they sat back down on the floor. It was a rare moment in a spy’s life. Marchant had crossed over, immersed himself in a role like a seasoned actor, forgotten that he was playing a part. But no sooner had the spell been cast than it was broken. All the old fears came tumbling down around him again. Why had he found it so easy to celebrate his father’s treachery?

  ‘After he had been to see me in Kerala, the clouds began to clear,’ Dhar continued. ‘At first, I was confused by the visit, some of the things he said, but when I met Primakov and he told me everything – the nature of the American intelligence our blessed father had once passed to Moscow – it was like being reborn.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your mother,’ Marchant said, trying to steer the conversation onto safer territory. He had been genuinely angry about what had happened in Madurai, regardless if it had been fabricated by Fielding, and knew he could talk about it with conviction. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could listen to Dhar extolling their father’s treason.

  ‘I’m sorry too. This man Spiro…’

  ‘I promised your mother I would look after her. I feel I failed her, and you.’

  ‘Inshallah, the time will come when such things will not happen again.’

  ‘The deal was that we would bring her back to Britain, keep her away from the Americans. I gave her my personal undertaking that she would be safe. I can never forgive myself for what happened. I let her down, Salim. She trusted me, against her better judgement. I persuaded –’

  ‘Enough.’ Dhar held up a hand, as if he was halting traffic. Had Marchant pushed it too far? Dhar was angry, his equanimity disturbed by talk of his mother. He moved his raised hand to his eye as he turned to look out of the window.

  ‘Do you trust Primakov?’ Dhar asked, changing the subject.

  ‘I don’t know him well, but I respect our father’s judgement. You read the letter. “Trust him as if he was a member of our family.”’

  ‘Grushko, the Russian who came today, has his doubts.’

  ‘Grushko doesn’t trust anyone. I think he even doubts me.’

  Dhar turned to look at him with an intensity that Marchant had never seen in anyone before. In a certain light, his brown Indian irises shone as black as onyx.

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘I don’t blame you. It doesn’t look that convincing on paper, does it? MI6 agent bonds with jihadi half-brother.’ Marchant was keen to lighten the mood, but Dhar wasn’t smiling.

  ‘What I am struggling to understand is why you returned to your old job in London. After all that had happened. The waterboarding in Poland, the way the Americans treated our father. How could you continue to be a part of that?’

  ‘Because I wanted to meet you again. Remaining in MI6 was the only way. I wanted to come sooner, but the Americans wouldn’t allow it.’

  ‘The Americans,’ Dhar repeated, smirking. ‘You could have travelled on your own.’

  ‘I thought I’d be more useful to you if I still had a job with MI6.’

  ‘Such a Western way of looking at things. The job more important than the person. You’re family. You got my text? Yalla natsaalh ehna akhwaan. Let’s make good for we are brothers. It was sent more than a year ago.’

  ‘I got it. It was impossible to come sooner without losing my job. I couldn’t have helped you – arranged for the MiGs to fly over Scotland – if I was on the outside, on the run again.’

  ‘Tell me one thing. Your return to MI6, after Delhi, was before you discovered our father had been working for the Russians.’

  Dhar’s probing was beginning to worry Marchant. He was right. He had gone back to his desk in Legoland with his head held high, proud of his father’s innocence rather than celebrating his guilt.

  ‘There was a time when I believed in Britain, I can’t deny that. Just as there was a time when our father believed in his country too. But the doubts were growing when I returned to MI6. About what I was doing, why I was doing it. I’m sure you’ve sometimes questioned what you do too.’

  Dhar didn’t respond.

  ‘And those doubts became something stronger when Primakov showed up in London with the letter,’ Marchant continued.

  ‘We are blessed to have had such a brave father.’

  Dhar smiled, and Marchant thought he was through the worst of it. But he wasn’t.

  ‘There is only one problem. Grushko is convinced that Primakov is lying.’

  Dhar leaned over to his bed and took a pistol from under the pillow. He brushed the handle with his sleeve, then cocked it with the assurance of someone familiar with firearms. ‘And if Primakov is not telling the truth, then neither are you.’

  88

  ‘How did you know I was involved?’ Myers asked, sitting at the bank of computers. There had been two Russians waiting for him in his bedroom, one tall, the second one shorter with rimless glasses. The tall one had frisked him, while the other did the talking, although he wasn’t one for idle chatter. It took Myers a few minutes to be sure of his identity. It was Vasilli Grushko, London Rezident of the SVR. He had seen his photograph at work, intercepted occasional calls.

  ‘We have been following your friend Daniel Marchant for some time now,’ Grushko said.

  ‘Was it him who was taken? In London?’

  Myers tried to prevent his left leg from shaking, but it was impossible. Instead, he bounced it up and down as if the movement was voluntary. At least they had stopped pointing the gun at his head. After frisking him, the weapons had been put away, but Myers was still all over the place, too many possible scenarios unfolding in his mind. The computers had already been turned on when he entered the bedroom. Had they hacked into GCHQ using his passwords? If they knew about his role with the MiGs, who had they told? Who else knew? He was just glad that he had gone to the bathroom when he first arrived, otherwise he would be pissing himself now.

  ‘Your concern is almost touching. He is fine. Unharmed.’

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘He came to see you. At the Beehive pub near here. Marchant chose the location well, because it was busy, but we think you were talking about the MiGs. Now that we have discovered you bring your work home’ – Grushko nodded towards the bank of computers – ‘we know for certain that it was you who helped him.’

  ‘What do you want from me? Please. There was no harm. Nobody died. It was good publicity for Russia, your air force. Bloody lousy for ours. Air defences like a sieve.’

  ‘It is quite simple. We want you to help him again.’

  89

  Dhar held the cocked gun to Primakov’s head. The Russian had entered the hangar full of his usual bonhomie, and had not seen him standing behind the door. Dhar closed it and pushed Primakov into the middle of the building, where Marchant was standing beside a wooden chair, holding a rope in his hand. Marchant felt like a guilty executioner. It was as if Dhar had put their own relationship on hold while he sorted out Primakov. He had asked Marchant to help him interrogate the Russian, a process that Marchant assumed he himself would be subjected to later.

  ‘Salim, this is unexpected,’ Primakov said, nodding at Marchant, who looked away. Whatever else Primakov was, he was dignified, and the next few minutes would be demeaning. Marchant felt a mix of shame and nausea. After Dhar had shown him the gun, they had both slept, but Marchant’s sleep had been fitful. He had woken at dawn full of dread, envying Dhar, who was praying calmly on a mat in the middle of the hangar.

  ‘Is it really?’ Dhar asked. ‘Grushko says you have been under suspicion for many years.’

  ‘A small price to pay for knowing your father so well. May I sit down?’

  Dhar kicked the wooden chair towards Primakov, the scrap
ing sound echoing in the hangar. The SU-25 jet that Dhar had flown the day before had been wheeled in through the main entrance overnight, and was now parked at the end of the hangar, the doors closed behind it. Marchant had noted that it was a two-seater, used for training. Apart from the plane, resting up like a vast squatting insect, the hangar was empty.

  Dhar nodded at Marchant, who grabbed Primakov’s arms and bound his hands tightly behind his back. He tried to do it painlessly, but he was aware of Dhar’s eyes on him. Primakov’s breathing had become heavier, rasping like a Siberian miner’s. Marchant could smell the cologne, mixed now with the strong scent of sweat. If Primakov was going to give him a sign, something to reassure him about his father, it would have to be soon. Time was running out for all of them.

  ‘Grushko is on his way back to Britain,’ Dhar said as Marchant finished tying Primakov’s wrists to the back of the chair. ‘He would rather you were dead, but I wanted to ask a few questions first.’

  ‘About your father?’ Primakov was working hard to keep his voice steady, but it was fraying with fear.

  ‘Grushko does not believe that you recruited Stephen Marchant.’

  ‘What does he believe?’

  ‘He accuses my father, our blessed father’ – a glance up at Marchant, who remained behind Primakov, to one side – ‘of having recruited you. I don’t want to believe Grushko, but he is a meticulous man. He has been going through old KGB archives, file by file. Our father gave you intelligence about the Americans, it is true, but Grushko says that with hindsight much of this information was not as important as it seemed at the time.’

  Marchant closed his eyes. It was the first time he had heard anyone on the Russian side question his father’s worth as a double agent. But any relief he felt was short-lived. If Dhar decided that his father was not a traitor after all, he would come to the same conclusion about him, too. It was down to Primakov now, balanced on a high wire. He had to reassure two sons about their father, one hoping to hear of his loyalty, the other of his treachery.