Dead Spy Running

harangued by an Indian businessman. Marchant slipped into the large crowd that had gathered to watch.

‘How dare you come to our country wearing your next-to-nothings and skimpy whatnots, and complain that our men are Eve-teasers,’ the businessman was saying shrilly. The argument appeared to have been running for several minutes.

‘The guy pinched my bloody arse,’ the younger of the two women said. Marchant detected a faint Australian accent, adopted rather than native, as he glanced at her figure. What little clothing she was wearing wouldn’t have looked out of place on a caged go-go dancer. The elder woman was dressed more modestly. Marchant pushed through the crowd, sensing an opportunity. The cover of travelling in a group would be useful. The women were trapped. When the elder of them told the other one that they should go, the crowd pressed together, preventing them from moving. ‘Out of my way, will you?’ the woman said, panic rising in her voice. ‘I need to get on this train. Hey, stop it! Get off me!’

‘Kareeb khade raho,’ the businessman barked as the crowd pressed against the women. ‘Close in, close in. We keep them here until the police arrive. These Western harlots must be taught a lesson.’

‘Kya problem, hai?’ Marchant said as he reached the businessman. ‘Is there a problem?’ He could smell alcohol on his breath.

‘And who are you?’

‘They’re travelling with me,’ Marchant said, glancing at the two women, who were now visibly frightened. Something in his eyes must have told them that he was on their side.

‘So you must be their pimp.’

‘Kind of,’ Marchant said, resisting the temptation to punch him. ‘We’ve just come from filming the new Shah Rukh Khan movie,’ he said, his voice loud enough to be heard by the crowd. Marchant was thinking quickly. While waiting for Uncle K to meet him at the reception of the Gymkhana Club, he had read in the Hindustan Times how the US President had hoped to visit a Bollywood film set while he was in India, but his itinerary was preventing it. Shah Rukh Khan was making a film at the Red Fort in Delhi, a joint production with a Western company. The star had extended a personal invitation to the President to watch the filming while he was in town.

‘Shah Rukh?’ one of the crowd asked excitedly.

‘Sure. We were only extras, though,’ Marchant said.

‘Did you meet him? My God, you met him, didn’t you?’ said another member of crowd. ‘He met Shah Rukh!’

‘Only to say hello to,’ Marchant continued, looking at the businessman, who clearly didn’t believe a word of what he was hearing. But the less educated crowd, as Marchant had hoped, was already beginning to turn.

‘What was he like?’ someone else called out. ‘Did you hear him sing?’

‘No, we didn’t hear him sing. They add the soundtracks later, you know. But we did see him dance.’

‘With Aishwarya? Did you see her dance, too?’

‘Of course. We were in a large fight scene, playing dirty, filthy Westerners of low moral standing. And I apologise for our appearance now. We had no time to change. The sooner we can board this train the better, then we can dispose of these offensive garments.’ Marchant turned towards the two women. ‘Follow me towards the train as soon as the crowd starts to back off,’ he told them quietly.

‘How can you prove this fanciful story?’ the businessman asked, as Marchant put his head down and made for a carriage door. The crowd, as he had calculated, started to part for the Westerners, ignoring the businessman, who found himself being carried away in the tide of people. ‘And why didn’t these two women mention any of this before?’ he called out after them.

Marchant let the two women climb up into the carriage first, then followed them, before turning to wave to the crowd.

‘You’re not fooling anyone,’ the businessman persisted, pushing his way to the edge of the platform. Marchant was aware that the public scene he had created needed to end quickly. The police would arrive soon, questions would be asked, statements taken. Up until now he had avoided using force, hoping to defuse rather than exacerbate the situation. But the businessman had a doggedness about him that troubled Marchant.

‘Drugs only deceive yourself, my friend,’ the businessman said. ‘You don’t fool me.’

‘I know I don’t,’ Marchant said, leaning down towards him, his mouth close to the man’s ear. ‘But what I do know is that if you try to come after us, or talk to the police, or identify us to anyone, I’ll personally break your neck, just like Shah Rukh does in the film.’

33

In another life, a different time, Marcus Fielding and William Straker might have been close. American intelligence officers everywhere had cheered when Straker was appointed Director of the CIA. He was a spy’s spy, a HUMINT man through and through, rising to head the Agency’s Clandestine Service before taking over as its Director. His appointment had softened the blow of the CIA suddenly finding itself answerable to a higher authority, the new Director of National Intelligence. But working for a DNI suited Straker fine. It helped to deflect some of the unwanted publicity.

Not many clandestines made it to the top of a bureaucracy as big as the CIA. Straker was good for the spy’s soul at a time when Congress was questioning the Agency’s very existence. And his Marines background played well with the paramilitaries, too. He was less popular in London. Straker had personally led the drive to remove Stephen Marchant, which, given Fielding’s loyalty to his predecessor, made for a far from special relationship between the two intelligence chiefs.

But Fielding had been suspicious of Straker long before he helped to remove Marchant. He knew that they should have been allies rather than antagonists. Straker couldn’t be more different from the previous Director, a showman who had somehow emerged from the harsh, post-9/11 spotlight as a celebrity clandestine, savouring the international limelight before retirement and memoirs. Straker was different, more like the British. He had always preferred the penumbral. And as such he was a greater threat to the Service, because he played by the same rules.

‘Sirs,’ Straker said, his manner drilled, precise. ‘There’s not a lot of time. One of our top generals was almost killed tonight. I need to know everything we have on the Gymkhana blast. Was Marchant involved?’

Red lights on three small cameras, mounted on a terminal in the centre of the table, glowed discreetly. Carter glanced at Fielding, who nodded and then looked up at the video screen. ‘Sir, as you know, Marchant’s become the subject of a level-five covert. MI6 think he was at the club, but that he wasn’t responsible.’

‘I thought you’d say that. Just like he wasn’t trying to take out Munroe. Marcus?’

‘Will, I know how this must appear, but we’re convinced Marchant’s being set up here.’

‘Not by us he isn’t,’ Straker said.

Fielding read the subtext — Leila hadn’t been used by the Americans to frame Marchant — and ignored it. To look at, Straker reminded Fielding of one of the thickset rugby players his college at Cambridge used to admit, the promise of an impressive performance on the field outweighing any academic shortcomings off it. Only he knew that Straker was the sharpest officer of his generation. Both fluent Arabic-speakers (Straker spoke Russian and Urdu too), their paths had crossed when he and Fielding had talked Gaddafi out of his nuclear ambitions. For a while there had been a healthy intellectual rivalry between the two of them, until Langley claimed all the credit for castrating Gaddafi.

But what bothered Fielding now was the knowledge that the Leila plan would have been personally signed off by Straker, even if it had been Spiro’s operation. A line was supposed to have been drawn after Stephen Marchant’s resignation, but relations between the CIA and MI6 had remained resolutely sour.

‘I’ve got POTUS touching down in Delhi in seventy-two,’ Straker said, ‘and right now I need a very good reason not to bring Marchant in and lean hard on the Indians to take Dhar out.’

‘It would be better to let Marchant find him first,’ Fielding said coolly. He didn’t care for Straker’s bullying impatience.

‘I appreciate that’s an option, Marcus. It’s why I pulled Spiro and put Alan there in charge. But I was hoping