passenger would step out and pay off the driver. Dhar would then climb in and ask to be taken to Gadodia Market, just off Khari Baoli. Before the rickshaw set off, however, his contact would approach and ask if he was going anywhere near the town hall. Dhar would confirm that he was, and they would set off together in the rickshaw through the back streets of Chandni Chowk while he was briefed on the evening’s itinerary.
Dhar liked the plan, because the noisy crowds offered good cover and the congestion would make it impossible for anyone to follow them without being noticed. But he was becoming anxious when, at 12.15 p.m., no cycle rickshaws had stopped outside the mosque. He looked at the people around him, one of whom must be his contact. To avoid attention he had agreed to have his shoes shined, the ‘semi-deluxe’ service.
Then he noticed a rickshaw appear in the distance, in the midst of a sea of people flowing up Dariba Kalan. The scene reminded him of the television images he had seen of the London Marathon, heads bobbing up and down, everyone focused on the road ahead. As the rickshaw drew near, zigzagging through the crowd, he could see someone wearing a baseball cap in the back. He paid off the shoe boy and glanced around. Still there was no one he could identify.
The rickshaw driver was now outside the mosque gates. Dhar stepped in closer, keeping an eye out for similar movement around him. The passenger climbed down from the rickshaw, not looking up. Dhar nodded at the driver, letting him know that he was his next fare, then asked for Gadodia Market. The driver gestured for him to get in. Not a flicker of recognition from anyone. Dhar settled back on the thin plastic cushion.
‘
‘Are you going near the town hall?’ The question was asked in perfect Urdu.
Dhar smiled. ‘Get in,’ he said, making room next to him. He hadn’t been expecting a woman.
49
‘The Prime Minister was adamant that you shouldn’t be killed,’ Armstrong said, wiping the last traces of blood from Marchant’s bruised face. She put the sponge back in the bowl, red strands swirling in the soapy water. ‘The Americans weren’t so concerned. Their minds were on other things. We compromised.’
‘You mean they sent for you. Very reassuring.’
But Marchant was pleased Armstrong had come. He could see out of both eyes now, the cuts in his forehead neatly stitched, and he was wearing a clean, if ill-fitting, set of clothes: jeans and a collarless cotton shirt. Two wooden chairs had been brought into the cell when the doctor had checked him over. The woman sitting in front of him was very different from the frumpy figure he remembered from London, less stiff, more feminine. Perhaps it was the cream
‘Daniel, there’s something we need to talk about. It’s Leila.’ Marchant had to suppress an involuntary start. It was strange to hear her name again. ‘Marcus Fielding has made some very strong allegations about her since you’ve been away.’
‘She was working for them, wasn’t she?’
‘For who?’
‘Langley. She set me up at the marathon. It’s the only explanation. She could have explained everything, cleared my name, but she didn’t.’
Armstrong paused. ‘Did Leila ever talk to you about her mother?’
‘Not often.’
‘Did you ever meet her?’
Marchant was struggling to work out where Armstrong was going with her questions. ‘She never encouraged it. Why?’
‘But you knew where her mother was?’
‘In a home. Hertfordshire, I think. Leila was embarrassed about her.’
‘Her mother went back to Iran soon after her father died. She never set foot in a British nursing home.’
Marchant said nothing. He thought back to Leila’s tears, the phone calls, the reluctance to talk, her worry that her mother was being mistreated.
‘The Americans knew,’ Armstrong continued. She could have chosen to be triumphant, but she appeared to take no satisfaction in what she was revealing. ‘They used it to recruit Leila. Her vetting officer thought the mother was still in the UK. Leila never informed him that she’d gone back to Iran. The officer’s been suspended.’
‘Did the Americans tell you she was working for them?’
‘Eventually. Chadwick put on a brave face, said we already knew. But they never told us how they turned her. She knew her career would have been over if MI6 had found out her mother wasn’t still in Hertfordshire. The Americans threatened to inform her vetting officer. It kept her loyal to Langley.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because Fielding said something else.’ She paused. Her tone was almost maternal now. ‘He thought Leila was ultimately working for Iran.’
‘Iran?’ Marchant said quietly. He knew as he repeated the word that Fielding was right. It was the final leap he had never been able to make, but the Vicar had, his judgement unswayed by love.
Fielding knew that time was running out. It was almost fifty degrees on the tarmac where the plane was parked, in a quiet corner of Indira Gandhi airport. The aircon unit was on the blink, and the plane didn’t have enough fuel for another flight, even if the control tower gave them clearance, which was unlikely.
Fielding held Carter’s mobile, waiting for MI6’s station head in Delhi to call him back. An alert would have gone out to all the Service’s staff to report immediately if there was any word of Fielding’s whereabouts. But the local station head owed his promotion to the Chief, who had nothing to lose.
The phone rang in Fielding’s moist hand. He looked at Denton and Carter as he listened, both of them stripped down to their shirts, buttons undone, dripping with sweat. Denton was the worse of the two. He had never been good in the heat, always preferring the cooler climes of Eastern Europe. After a few moments Fielding passed the phone back to Carter.
‘They’re sending out a refuelling truck in ten minutes,’ he said quietly.
‘Thank God for that,’ the pilot whispered, his voice drained of all its earlier confidence.
‘They’ll load enough fuel to reach the Gulf. You can make your own way home from there.’
‘What about you?’ Carter asked, wiping his brow.
‘One of our local agents is on board the fuel truck,’ Fielding said. ‘I’m going back with him to the depot, and on from there to find Leila.’
‘Fielding never believed that your presence at the marathon was anything other than chance,’ Armstrong continued. ‘It made him look elsewhere for answers. Leila’s mother is a Bahá’í — a persecuted religion in Iran. The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security saw an opportunity to blackmail Leila in London as soon as her mother touched down in Tehran. If Leila didn’t agree to work for them, they would kill her mother. No one would notice — Bahá’ís are being killed and imprisoned all the time.’
‘What made her go back to that?’ Marchant asked, but he already knew the answer.
‘Her mother country. It tends to call loudest when it’s in trouble.’
Leila had spoken about it once, how her mother longed one day to return to her place of birth. She must have finally decided that time was running out. Her husband was dead, and Iran, despite its problems, held more for her in old age than Britain ever would. It had only been her daughter who kept her there, and she was embarking on a life of foreign postings.
‘And the rest of you believed I was trying to take out the US Ambassador at the marathon?’
‘The TETRA phone evidence seemed incontrovertible.’
‘It was Leila who gave me the phone.’
Armstrong paused again. ‘We managed to establish that it was linked to the explosives on Pradeep’s running belt. There was a pre-programmed speed-dial number, listed as the main switchboard at MI6. If you’d rung it, Pradeep, you and many others would have died.’
Marchant had been so close to calling Leila on that number. She had even urged him to dial it. He felt sick.
