Dead Spy Running

‘He’s probably one of Shankar’s,’ the boat owner said.

Marchant woke before it was fully light, and for a moment he thought he was in his childhood bedroom in Tarlton. The mattress was so thin it had taken him back, in the minutes before he was fully awake, to the time when he and Sebastian used to sleep on the floor in their indoor tent. But as his eyes adjusted to the orange light of dawn, he realised that the cotton above him was not a flysheet but a mosquito net.

He knew that he was lucky to be alive. The sea had drawn every ounce of energy from his body, and then worked on his mind. He had no recollection of being rescued, but he could remember being carried into his tiny room, the voice of Shankar, the café owner, enough to reassure him that he wasn’t on board the American frigate.

He went outside, his legs shaky, and looked up and down the beach. It was empty except for the cows, which were standing in a group between the café and the sea, and a solitary squatting figure in the far distance. The sea was calm, lapping at the shore. And then he saw the angular outline of the frigate, still two miles off, slightly further down the coast. He knew he must find Salim Dhar today.

After retrieving his purse belt from the sand, Marchant came across Shankar at the front of the café, trimming a coconut husk with a knife before chopping its top off and inserting a straw. He placed it on a table next to a row of others, each with a straw sticking out. Overnight a turquoise fishing boat had been pulled up onto the beach, next to the chairs that were still littered across the sand. Its name, Bharat, had been painted in white lettering on the side, beneath the high-pointed bow. Something about the boat looked familiar.

‘Who do I thank for rescuing me?’ Marchant asked, sitting down next to Shankar. ‘The owner of this?’ He nodded at the boat.

‘He says you shouldn’t go swimming with clothes on.’

‘I need to find someone. Brother Salim.’

Shankar stopped cutting at a new husk for a moment, and then continued.

‘Can you help me find him?’ Marchant asked, watching the knife. He knew he was speaking to the right person.

‘So it was you the police were looking for?’

‘Can you help?’

‘The boat goes after breakfast.’

‘Shanti Beach?’

Shankar stood up and walked away, dropping one of the coconuts into his hands. ‘Breakfast. You ask too many questions.’

41

Fielding lifted the flute to his lips and began to play Telemann’s sonata in F minor. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been at his flat during the middle of a weekday. It reminded him of being confined to the sanatorium at school while everyone else was in their classrooms. Dolphin Square had been surprisingly busy when his driver had dropped him off at the side entrance. So life went on after the workers had left their homes for the office.

His driver had asked whether he should wait, and Fielding had hesitated. It wasn’t a question of how long he would be, but of whether he would ever climb into the Chief of MI6’s official Range Rover again. In the end he had told him to go back to the office. Now, as Fielding lost himself in Telemann’s first movement, he hoped to find a reason to return to Legoland.

The most powerful person on the planet was about to be under the protection of someone working for an enemy state. He wished he cared more. The future of the free world might soon be hanging in the balance. But it was up to Straker and Spiro and Armstrong and Chadwick now. They had conspired to turn Leila against him; they must live with the consequences.

He had provided the Americans with all the evidence in his possession, but it hadn’t been enough. It was too circumstantial, the CIA said. More to the point, Leila was their prodigal signing, the agent who had saved an American ambassador’s life. The CIA wasn’t about to have her revealed as an Iranian spy by anyone, least of all by a compromised British spy chief whose ultimate loyalties the Agency also suspected.

Now they had taken Myers, an innocent man who had tried to do the right thing. MI5 were talking about a serious security breach, enough for a public prosecution. Leila would be called as a witness, to confirm that Myers had leaked confidential information on the night before the marathon. Fielding would be summoned too, asked to explain why Myers had taken transcripts off the Cheltenham site.

It took him a few moments to realise his phone was ringing. Very few people knew his home number. He walked over and picked up the receiver. It was Anne Norman.

‘Marcus?’ She had never called him that before.

‘Anne?’ He had never used her first name.

‘There’s someone who’s very keen to speak to you. From India.’

‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Daniel. Daniel Marchant.’

The boat left after breakfast, just as Shankar had promised. Marchant met its owner outside the café and walked with him down to the water’s edge, where his son was stowing a tangle of blue fishing nets in the bow. The owner was jovial, with a proud potbelly, and was soon joking with Marchant about his misfortune the previous evening.

‘You were floating in the water like a great big jellyfish!’ he said, slapping him on the back.

Their laughter stopped, though, when Marchant nodded towards two local fishermen smoking bidis, who had stepped out from the shade of the coconut trees at the back of the beach and were walking across the sand towards them. He knew at once from their detached manner that they had come to take him to Dhar. They looked on silently as the owner and his son struggled to launch the boat, helped by Marchant. Once it was afloat, the two men waded out into the shallow water and climbed aboard, ignoring the son’s offers of assistance. The owner threw Marchant a nervous glance, started up the engine and steered the boat out towards the headland.

To his relief, Marchant couldn’t see the frigate on the horizon any more. He looked inland at the rocky coastline and the hills beyond, one of which was topped with a communications mast covered in satellite dishes and aerials. In the past, he would have been depressed by its presence in such a rugged, timeless setting, but he knew they were everywhere in modern India, and today the sight of its distinctive red and white stripes reassured him.

After twenty minutes, Marchant spotted a small beach where some huts, made of laterite bricks cut from the local Konkan soil, had been built into the hillside. He thought he could make out one or two Westerners on the beach, but the owner kept going down the coast. If it wasn’t for the two silent men sitting behind him on the boat, Marchant would have enjoyed the spray and the sunshine of the open sea, but their stony presence was a constant reminder of what lay ahead.

An hour later, the owner finally nudged the tiller away from him and steered the boat towards the shore. The son jumped out first, and dragged the boat ashore. Marchant stepped down into the shallow blue water and walked up onto the beach, followed by the two fishermen. It was in a small cove, barely fifty yards across, and sheltered on both sides by steep cliffs. At the top of the beach was a tatty shack made from wood and woven palm leaves, and a few hammocks hung in the dappled shade of some coconut trees. A sign said ‘Shanti Beach Café’, painted in the colours of the Indian flag. There were no Westerners around, no sign that anyone was staying here. As Marchant took in the view, the two men pushed him forward, signalling for him to walk on.

He followed them to the shack, and they led him in through an open doorway. Inside was a small table, and a man standing with his back to them, talking on a mobile phone. He turned briefly to look at Marchant, a cigarette in his hand, and continued to chat quietly in what sounded like Kannada, the local language. He was better dressed than the fishermen, new jeans, printed shirt, sunglasses perched on the top of his head. For a moment his boyish good looks reminded Marchant of Shah Rukh Khan. Marchant glanced at the faded postcards that had been stuck