Dead Spy Running

Marchant hoped his rusty Hindi had reassured Pradeep as he moved up towards the Ambassador. He knew a bit about Turner Munroe, who had arrived in London six months ago. He was a hawk, best known for his outspoken views on Iran, where he favoured regime change by military intervention. And he had fought in the first Gulf War, serving with distinction. Marchant now knew that he was also a fitness fanatic, who liked to run with an iPod.

Experience had taught Marchant to stick to protocol when dealing with the Americans (it reduced the chances of being shot), so he approached the Ambassador’s outriders first. When he explained that they were in the midst of a critical, Defcon Five incident, they asked him for some ID, as Marchant knew they would. They finally agreed to let him approach the Ambassador when he name-checked one of his old CIA contacts who was still based in London, but only after they had briefed their boss.

‘How you doing?’ Munroe asked, taking an earpiece out of his right ear. Marchant swore he was listening to Bruce Springsteen. ‘Tell me you’re kidding about the Defcon Five.’

‘No, sir, I’m afraid it’s true,’ Marchant said, knowing Munroe would appreciate the ‘sir’.

‘You realise I’ve never run a 3.30 before? Boston: 3.35.10, Chicago: 3.32.20. Right now I’m heading for 3.29.30, and you’re telling me to quit?’

‘You might never be able to run again if you hang around here,’ Marchant said.

‘Is that so?’ Munroe said sarcastically. Marchant glanced at one of the sweating Security Service officers, who was nodding towards the side of the road.

‘Sir, we need to break off,’ the officer said, moving alongside the Ambassador. At the same time, his colleague closed in on the far side.

‘But first I need your Sat-Runner,’ Marchant said.

‘Am I being mugged here?’ Munroe said. ‘That’s what it feels like. Mugged on the London Marathon. Can you believe it?’

‘I really need the GPS,’ Marchant said, as the Ambassador’s babysitters began to ease him across the road. ‘And please don’t slow down.’

Munroe looked at him as he undid the strap and handed the receiver over. ‘3.29.30. A PB was on the cards here, never mind the heat. Somebody’s going to pay for this.’

He watched as Munroe was almost lifted to the kerb, where he stopped, reluctantly. Then Marchant strapped the GPS to his own wrist. Pradeep was now ahead of them, glancing anxiously over his shoulder.

‘We’re in this together now,’ Marchant said, coming up on Pradeep’s shoulder and showing him his wrist.

3

Paul Myers was unpicking encrypted emails and eating his fourth Snickers of the day when he took Leila’s call. He’d always liked her, ever since she had attended his course on jihadi chatrooms and had asked the first question, filling the awkward silence that always followed his introductory talks. All MI6’s new recruits were invited up to GCHQ in Cheltenham for a week, to give them a break from training at the Fort, and, Myers thought, to show them where the real work was done.

Paul had liked Leila’s boyfriend, too, though only begrudgingly at first. On the surface, Daniel Marchant had seemed to be the archetypal obnoxious MI6 man: Oxbridge, well travelled, smooth-talking, handsome and good at games — everything Myers wasn’t. But then he read his file and learnt about the dark stuff — the benders, the brawls, the twin brother who was killed when he was eight in a car crash in Delhi, the mother who never recovered, dying a depressive — and began to warm to him. Everyone in life was struggling to keep it together, he thought. According to Leila, Marchant had never got over losing his brother, and had been drinking himself slowly to death until he stumbled out of journalism and into the Service. It must have been like coming home, what with his old man running the show.

They might have been friends sooner if Paul hadn’t somehow convinced himself that Leila carried a torch for him, despite the obvious chemistry between her and Marchant. He knew it was insane, an attractive case officer like her falling for a short-sighted, overweight desk analyst, and common sense soon prevailed, but those early feelings for her had stayed with him. Now she was on the phone, breathless and posing one of the most interesting questions he had been asked in months: could he screw up the Americans’ GPS network for a few minutes?

Given the history of the navigation system, and in particular the US military’s policy of ‘selective availability’ in the 1990s, when they degraded the signal’s accuracy for everyone else, Myers relished the opportunity. Bring on Galileo, he thought, Europe’s own network of navigation satellites. The sooner Britain could wean itself off its dependency on GPS, the better.

‘Do you think you can do it?’ Leila asked, knowing that the challenge would appeal. Myers had been at the heart of a recent exercise in the West Country, when the entire network was jammed to thwart a simulated attack by an Iranian missile flying into British airspace on GPS. Car Tom-Toms went haywire, and the papers were full of stories the next day of lorries stuck in narrow country lanes.

‘Technically it’s possible,’ Myers said, warming to his theme. ‘Each of the thirty GPS satellites has its own atomic clock — well, four clocks actually. 2nd Space Operations Squadron in Colorado Springs sends out a navigational update once a day to make sure they’re all telling the same time — ’

‘Paul, we don’t have long.’

‘Sure. We’ll get on to 2 SOPS now, find out which four satellites this guy is linked in to, and see if they can accelerate those particular clocks.’

‘Will that help?’

‘It’ll trick the receiver into thinking it’s travelling faster across the surface of the earth than it really is. The Americans aren’t going to like it, but I guess if we tell them their Ambassador is the target…How long do you need?’

‘The Bomb Squad want ten minutes.’

‘Two, maximum.’

‘Two?’

‘We’d have some serious shipping incidents in the Channel if those clocks are out for too long. I don’t even want to think about the main approach to Heathrow. How’s Daniel these days, by the way?’

Myers was aware that Marchant was persona non grata in the Service, but he had always liked his father, and had been upset by the manner of the Chief’s departure and the subsequent news of his death. It had left Marchant an orphan, which struck a chord with Myers. He was adopted, and had always assumed his own parents were dead.

‘Actually, he’s running alongside the guy with the belt.’ Leila had not intended to tell him, but she needed to focus his mind.

‘Daniel?’ The line went silent for a moment. ‘Christ, what’s he doing there? I thought he was suspended.’

‘Not now, Paul.’

‘Sure.’ Paul had changed up a gear. ‘2 SOPS are on the other line. I’ll patch them through.’

Marchant listened carefully as Leila talked him through what he had to do next. Her voice sounded different, faltering, lacking her usual confidence. Tower Bridge had been cleared of all crowds, she said. Half a mile ahead of him, at the twelve-mile point, there was about to be a roadblock, organised by plain-clothed police officers wearing race marshal tops. As he approached they would fan out across the road, using megaphones to order the runners to stop for safety reasons because of the intense heat. It would be the first time the London Marathon had been stopped, but the measure was not unheard of. (The Rotterdam Marathon had been abandoned in 2007 because of soaring temperatures.) In other words, there was an outside chance that the roadblock wouldn’t arouse the suspicion of Pradeep’s handler, should he be watching.

‘Are you all right?’ Marchant asked, after another hesitation from Leila.

‘Of course I’m bloody not,’ she said.

Marchant passed on the basic details of the plan, along with some more jelly beans, to Pradeep, who