Prentice, it was true, had been known to spend twenty-four hours establishing that he wasn’t being followed, but he didn’t have that luxury today. Instead, he took the tram towards the central railway station, getting off on the corner of Jerozolimskie and Jana Pawla II. The next ten minutes would be critical. He walked past the station’s entrance and headed towards Zlote Tarasy, the latest in a series of huge shopping malls to have opened in the capital in recent years. Prentice knew the Varsarians loved to shop, but even he was surprised by Zlote Tarasy’s opulence and range of familiar Western names. He could have been in Bluewater.
He headed for the escalator that would take him down to the lower ground floor. At the bottom, he moved confidently around to the base of the up escalator and rode back to the ground floor, glancing across at the escalator he had just come down on. He knew the Americans wouldn’t fall for it, but today was about maintaining appearances. The CIA’s watchers had never rated the Service’s counter-surveillance skills, and he was more than happy to play down to their expectations.
He glanced at his watch and then headed for a café on the ground floor, where he ordered a black coffee, sat down at a small corner table, and started to read a copy of the
For a few minutes he looked through the paper, concentrating on stories rather than just pretending to read them. He was always reminding his officers that the best counter-surveillance watchers were trained to spot eye movements. The vibration of his mobile phone interrupted a story on Belgium beer prices. Prentice reached inside his jacket pocket and read the text.
‘This is it,’ Spiro said. ‘All units, I want Daniel Marchant brought in the moment he shows. Alive.’
24
Six miles south-west of the shopping mall, Daniel Marchant sat sipping a black coffee too. Monika was next to him, drinking mint tea in a tall glass and wearing a faded purple
If Marchant had had to select a spot that afforded views of the entire departure hall, and also offered the observer cover and protection, their table would have been his first choice. Their backs were to the wall, denying anyone the chance to approach them unsighted, the seating area was raised above the main concourse, and the entrance and exit onto the road outside was almost beside them. Anyone who entered the departure hall would have to pass beneath them, where they could be easily observed.
All of which made him genuinely drawn to Monika, because it confirmed what he had suspected: she was an intelligence officer, most probably with AW. The text she had discreetly sent while fetching the sugar had also smacked of the covert, but he had already begun to realise at her flat: her bringing his rucksack over from the hostel, his extreme sleepiness, the way she had confined him indoors, changed his flight. And then, finally, her announcement that she had managed to buy a ticket on the same flight and was coming to India with him.
He knew she wasn’t, but he couldn’t confront her, in case it jeopardised her operational cover: the Americans might have had them under surveillance for days. A part of him also wanted to believe that it was true. He was flattered that she trusted him to play the game, and he admired her thoroughness: he hadn’t had such good sex since his own year off.
So he was still David Marlowe and she remained Monika, and together they talked about their shared love for the human drama of arrivals and departures, and whether India’s airports would be any different.
‘The queue for the check-in is short. We should go now,’ she said, resting her hand on his.
‘OK,’ Marchant said, glancing across at the row of desks. He made a cursory sweep of the hall, but by now he was confident that his departure from Poland for India, via the Gulf, was in the safe hands of AW.
‘Is there something wrong?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’ He paused. ‘It’s just the end of my European adventure, that’s all. I’ve grown quite fond of Poland.’
‘Really?’ she said. ‘Even after your experience with the Americans?’
For a moment, their separate masks slipped. As he looked at her, he wondered what her real name was, whether she had a boyfriend, if she made love differently when she wasn’t in character.
‘It’s amazing how quickly you get over these things,’ he said, thinking back to Stare Kiejkuty. ‘Water off a duck’s back.’
* * *
Spiro watched Prentice read his newspaper on the big screen, wondering from which direction Marchant would join him. He knew a part of him envied Prentice’s reputation as a maverick; he could never have the confidence to disobey orders, to do his own thing in the way Prentice had done on numerous occasions over the years. The CIA didn’t allow for freewheeling field agents, not any more. Gone were those glory days in Afghanistan, when he and others were dropped into Kabul with suitcases stuffed full of hundred-dollar bills and instructions to win the war on terror. Everyone now had to be accountable in a way that would have been unthinkable ten years ago. Did Prentice wilfully disregard his briefs from London, Spiro wondered, or had London learnt not to brief him too specifically, knowing that it would be futile?
Either way, Spiro knew Prentice had the better hand, which made what happened next all the more galling. Prentice folded his newspaper, glanced at his watch and finished his coffee.
‘This could be it,’ Spiro said to no one in particular, but Carter concentrated even harder on the panel of visual feeds in front of him.
Everyone in the room watched as Prentice pulled a phone out of his jacket pocket and dialled a number.
‘Did we get a shot of that?’ Spiro asked.
The main screen changed to a close-up of Prentice, focusing on the phone in his hand. The images then played back in slow motion. Carter called out the digits as Prentice’s fingers moved from one number to the next. But his voice started to trail off as the sound of Spiro’s own ringtone filled the room.
25
Prentice sent the pre-written text while his hand was still in his jacket pocket, but neither Spiro nor Carter, or any of his team, suspected him of doing anything other than making a phone call. The only person who knew was Monika, whose phone buzzed in the back pocket of her jeans as they approached the check-in desk for their flight to Dubai.
Spiro didn’t take the call immediately, letting the phone ring five times while his brain linked the image on the screen with the sound of his own phone.
‘Prentice. What a pleasure,’ he said at last, refusing to catch the eye of anyone in the room, although all of them were hanging on his every word. Prentice had humiliated him once before, in Prague a few years earlier, and he knew he was about to do the same again.
Prentice looked around the mall, as if trying to spot Spiro.
‘I can offer you a deal,’ Prentice said, not revealing that he knew he was being filmed. He had noted all the CCTV cameras as he came into the mall, and was tempted to face the one nearest to him, like a newsreader, but he didn’t want to give an impression of being in control. Not yet.
‘And there was I thinking we were on the same side,’ Spiro said.
‘It’s a good deal.’ Prentice paused, looking around the café again.
‘Are all units in place?’ Spiro asked briskly, muting his phone. Carter nodded. ‘Try me,’ Spiro continued to Prentice.
