Marchant had tried to recruit Dhar, for whatever reason, had he held some information on Dhar’s father? It was the one possible point of leverage Fielding could find in the file. Salim Dhar appeared to have led a clean life, his only points of conflict inspired by ideology rather than anything more basic. No women, drinking, stealing, corruption — nothing to blackmail him with.
In Fielding’s mind, Stephen Marchant’s tenure in Delhi had been in the late 1970s, while Jimmy Carter had been in the White House. It was there, in the aftermath of ‘Smiling Buddha’, India’s first nuclear test, that Marchant had made a name for himself. Few people in the Service hadn’t heard of him. Partly that was because of his audacious recruitment of a senior player at the Russian Embassy in Delhi, who rose to great heights within the KGB when he returned to Dzerzhinsky Square, but also because of the family tragedy that had engulfed him.
Fielding reopened Marchant’s file and looked through his postings. As he suspected, Marchant had arrived in India in August 1977, as a case officer, moving back to Britain in July 1980 for the birth of his twins (his wife had endured a difficult pregnancy and spent much of it in London, avoiding Delhi’s oppressive heat). But Marchant had returned to India five years later, this time as station head and with his young family in tow. Then, in 1988, disaster had struck when Sebastian was killed in a car accident.
Fielding recalled it all more clearly now. Everyone in the Service had felt wretched about Marchant’s loss, the subsequent deterioration in his wife’s mental health, and his stoic refusal to leave Delhi until his tour of duty was over.
Fielding turned to Dhar’s early life again, checking the dates of his father’s employment at the British High Commission in Delhi. He had started in January 1980, which meant that Marchant and Dhar’s father had overlapped for six months. Delhi was a big mission, second only to the British Embassy in Washington, but there was a chance the two might have come into contact with each other. It wasn’t much to go on, but Fielding knew it was something. He picked up the phone and asked for Ian Denton.
16
After a bone-breaking, hundred-mile drive through the Polish countryside, Marchant found himself in the bar of the brand new British Embassy in Warsaw with a glass of Tyskie beer in his hand. He had been unable to speak for most of the journey, retching from the water still in his system and the potholed roads, drifting in and out of sleep. But he did register Prentice explaining that his interrogation had taken place at Stare Kiejkuty, a former outpost of the SS’s intelligence wing during the Second World War.
Fifteen minutes from Szymany airport, the site had subsequently been used by the Soviet Army, when Brezhnev was planning to crush the Prague Spring. More recently it had been occupied by a secret division of the Wojskowe Słužby Informacyjne, Poland’s military intelligence service, who were more than happy to oblige the CIA’s request for a secure facility in which to interrogate their High Value Detainees — in return for cash, of course. It was a canny, if ironic, choice by the Americans, Prentice had explained. The WSI wasn’t subject to the same levels of public scrutiny as civilian agencies such as the new Agencja Wywiadu, and its officials, many of whom were survivors from the old communist era, could claim protection under NATO because of their military status.
‘You’re in good company — Stare Kiejkuty boasts some fine alumni,’ Prentice had added. ‘It’s where they dunked KSM in 2003.’
The dank cell where Marchant had been waterboarded couldn’t have been more different from the airy, glass and steel edifice he now found himself in. He knew that the sleek new building was a blueprint for British embassies of the future. Delayed and redesigned after the bombing of the consulate in Istanbul, it remained accessible to the public but was now built to withstand a major terrorist attack. It also incorporated a security feature required of all new Foreign Office buildings. In the event of a physical assault, an ‘onion’ layering of doors and walls protecting an inner sanctum that should take at least forty minutes to penetrate would allow sensitive documents to be shredded and hard drives wiped.
The bar was empty except for Marchant and Prentice and a couple of local embassy staff. They weren’t sure what to make of the guest who talked strangely through his nose, and had left a pair of king-size, water-soaked nappies in the wastepaper basket of his guest room.
‘Come, we need to have a proper chat,’ Prentice said, stubbing out his Marlboro cigarette. Marchant followed him through the main atrium entrance of the embassy and down a series of pristine white corridors. ‘This place has just been swept, but we should still use the safe-talk room,’ Prentice said. All embassies had one, an interview room lined with lead beneath the plaster, which not even the most powerful bugs could penetrate. Marchant had spent a good deal of time in them over the past few years, and some were more basic than others. This one, with its crisp white walls and sunken lights, felt like a cross between a Swiss bank vault and a Harley Street consulting room.
‘We’re all still cut up about your old man,’ Prentice said, gesturing at one of two chairs on either side of a rectangular glass table. There was a bunch of flowers in a vase on the table, a clear sign that waterboarding was off the agenda. Prentice closed the heavy door behind him and punched a code into the keypad by the handle, activating a further layer of electronic protection. ‘The word in Warsaw was that the Americans were behind it. Armstrong wouldn’t have got her way without their support.’
‘Sounds about right,’ Marchant said, still aware of his nasal tones. Despite the flowers, the two chairs and the table were strictly functional.
‘So imagine our delight when the call came through from London,’ Prentice said.
‘And the Poles were equally overjoyed?’
‘The new government’s through with renditions, been waiting for an excuse ever since they pulled their troops out of Iraq. Stare Kiejkuty’s run by the WSI, hardline communists who knew their time was up and were grateful for the dollars. What can the CIA do? Protest to the UN that one of their black sites has been blown? It was meant to have been closed down months ago.’
Marchant estimated that Prentice was in his late fifties. Chief of Station, Poland, at his time of his life was not immediate evidence of a brilliant career, but Marchant had heard of Hugo Prentice. Everyone who joined the Service had heard of him. Expelled from Eton for selling marijuana to fellow pupils in the 1970s, he had a rakish air, a full head of greying hair swept back and an expensive taste in platinum cufflinks and Patek Philippe watches.
He had never been a career officer, bent on promotion, but one of those rare people who had signed up to the Service because he loved the spy’s life, wanted to be out there turning people on the ground, persuading the waverers of a greater good with a traditional mix of ideology, subterfuge and, even if not always necessary, brutality. For Prentice it was all about the expenses rather than the salary, the mistresses rather than the marriage.
‘How’s life in Legoland, anyway?’ he continued, offering a cigarette to Marchant, who took one. ‘Is it true the Vicar’s banned fags in the bar?’
‘Only inside. On the terrace is fine. It wasn’t Fielding, though. It was the government.’
‘We’re all screwed if the spooks start listening to the politicians. Christ, who’s going to check? Health and Safety? Your father would sooner have died than listen to the government.’ The conversation stalled awkwardly. ‘I’m sorry. Crass.’ Prentice sat back and blew smoke into the air above them.
‘It’s fine,’ Marchant said. ‘Really.’
‘You look a bit like him, you know — same jawline,’ Prentice continued. ‘I’ll be happy if a quarter as many people turn up for my funeral. But what happened to the PM? Why wasn’t he there?’
‘Too busy, officially,’ Marchant said, thinking back to the people spilling out of the small village church. He didn’t recall seeing Prentice there, but staff had flown in from all over the world. There was, however, a noticeable absence of Establishment figures, a reluctance to honour a possible traitor.
‘The bastard.’
‘Are you sending me back to Britain?’ Marchant appreciated Prentice’s solidarity, but wanted to know where the conversation was heading.
‘Not exactly, no,’ Prentice said, his voice quieter, as if he had suddenly recalled a piece of bad news. Marchant picked up on the change of tone and shifted in his seat. The metal table had chafed his lower back.
