Fielding was still a hundred yards away when the President approached the foot of the first flight of steps leading up to the Lotus Temple. The rickshaw had dropped him and Marchant off on the western perimeter of the temple complex, and they had pushed their way through some of the thousands of people who had gathered in the gardens to see the new leader of the Western world.
An armed Indian policeman blocked their way at a checkpoint. He was not letting anyone beyond it, even when Fielding showed his British security pass. Fielding felt a wave of relief as he leaned against the hot metal barrier, suddenly exhausted by the heat. It was up to Marchant now. He was the only one who could stop Leila.
‘You go on alone,’ Fielding said, shaking Marchant’s hand. ‘Good luck.’
The formal gesture surprised Marchant, until he felt the roll of rupee notes pressed into his moist palm. He slipped them into his pocket and moved quickly to his right, following the crowd barriers for thirty yards until there was a gap, manned by another policeman, younger than the first one. Marchant looked around and spotted a vendor selling souvenirs: wooden snakes painted in American colours; toy rickshaws with the President’s name stencilled on their plastic windscreens. He was also selling disposable cameras. Marchant went up to him, and bought a camera for too much. It wasn’t the time to haggle.
Beyond the barrier a group of well-dressed Indians, all saris and
‘I need a good photo,’ Marchant said to the policeman, showing him the camera. A bunch of 500-rupee notes was clearly visible in his hand. ‘Please.’
The policeman glanced up and down the line of the barriers, then looked back at Marchant. His bruised face worried him, but not enough. He took the money with the deftness of a pickpocket, frisked Marchant thoroughly and let him through. There were barely twenty yards now between Marchant and the temple steps. He spotted Leila in amongst a detail of nervous Security Service agents. She was talking to the President, who was just visible in the middle of the group.
The President seemed to be listening intently, his head cocked towards Leila on his right. For a brief moment, Marchant felt proud of her. A group of Bahá’í officials was waiting patiently for the party to reach them at the foot of the steps. As they drew near, the security detail, including Leila, momentarily withdrew, allowing TV crews and photographers to capture the President and the Bahá’ís seemingly on their own, against the dramatic backdrop of the Lotus Temple, framed by the tree-lined avenue. Marchant glanced at his watch: 5.35 p.m.
He needed to get closer to Leila, but it was impossible. Security Service officers were everywhere now, their backs to the President, shouting at people to stop pressing against the metal barriers that separated them from the presidential entourage. The VIPs had grown boisterous, excited that the President had stopped in front of them. Marchant pushed through the crowd, upsetting people as he went.
He thought about calling across to Leila, but she wouldn’t hear him above the noise. Whatever was about to happen, he knew her life was in danger, whether the threat to the President came from elsewhere or from her. Marchant scanned the crowd, searching for something, anything, that might buy him a few seconds.
Leila had now moved back up alongside the President. What was she doing? What had she done? In the same moment, she turned northwards, staring out beyond the gardens and scrubland. Marchant followed her gaze, towards a housing estate in the middle distance, and froze.
‘Leila!’ he screamed.
The atmosphere around the table in the White House Situation Room was tense, the low ceiling adding to the pressure. Dhar had still not been found, and Straker knew his job was on the line. The Director of the Secret Service, sitting to his right, was also feeling the heat. An occasional frozen frame on the screen didn’t help to ease the tension, the images suffering on their way from a military satellite orbiting at 7,000 mph high above the dust of Delhi.
‘Just keep him moving,’ Straker said to no one in particular, loosening his collar. The President had paused for a moment too long at the end of the avenue for the TV crews.
‘We need these images for the morning shows,’ said the Chief of Staff, who was sitting to Straker’s left. ‘Is he looking a bit shiny in the heat?’
‘You’d look shiny in ninety-five degrees,’ Straker said, as the President stopped at the foot of the first flight of steps. Come on, he thought, get your butt inside the safety of the temple.
Straker was to repeat many times what he thought happened next, to colleagues, to Congress, to his conscience. As the President’s protective detail withdrew for the money shot, Leila scanned the crowds and spotted something that alarmed her. She couldn’t be sure, but her training suggested that it was the glint of a telescopic lens caught in the low sun, at a distance of one thousand yards to the north. Without any regard for her own safety, she stepped forward to shield the unprotected President, an American hero to the end.
Dhar’s line of sight was suddenly perfect. He found the President’s choice of a cotton Nehru suit even more offensive than his predecessor’s cowboy boots, but he didn’t need any further incentive.
But as he squeezed the trigger, distilling in that moment a thousand thoughts of anger, from his first day at the American School to the death of his father, a woman stepped forward and stared back at him through the lens. Dhar recognised the big eyes as the high-velocity bullet impacted between them, knocking her backwards and removing part of her skull.
In that shard of time, where there was no place for shock or regret, Dhar knew that he had killed the person who had betrayed his father: her job at the American Embassy, the English-accented Urdu, her seeming affection for Daniel Marchant. They all surfaced at once to shout out her guilt, which should have made missing the President more bearable.
A second shot was out of the question. The President had been thrown to the ground and smothered by a blanket of Security Service officers, as if he was on fire. There would be another opportunity in the future, Dhar told himself, but he knew it was unlikely. It no longer seemed to matter, either. He left the rifle where it was, hidden under the water tank, slid through a hatch in the roof, and made his way down to a rickshaw parked in the street below.
* * *
Marchant saw Leila pirouette to the ground, her spilt blood darkening the President’s white suit. He tried to push through the boiling crowd, but his world was slowing down, falling silent. The women all around him were mouthing muted screams, the men running everywhere and nowhere. A tide of people was carrying him away from Leila, out to the dark depths of the Arabian Sea, to level three. Sebbie was there, lying on the floor of the pool. Then he heard the sound of a police whistle and saw him on the road, twisted and bloodied, alone, eyes open with fear and confusion.
He saw Leila, too, ignored at the foot of the temple steps as the President was bundled away towards Marine One, its blades starting to stir the hot evening air. How could they leave her on her own like that? He was by her side now, lifting her wet head in his hands, shielding her from the downdraft.
‘Leila, it’s me, Dan,’ he said through his tears. ‘It’s me.’
But he knew it was too late. He bent over her, shoulders shaking, and kissed her still warm lips goodbye.
54
‘As far as we’re concerned, she took the bullet that was meant for our President,’ William Straker said on the secure video link. Daniel Marchant turned away from the screen to the window. A Dutch barge was making its way up the river below Fielding’s office. ‘That’s pretty special in our book, a loyal Agency employee who made the ultimate sacrifice,’ Straker continued. ‘The President wants a full state funeral.’
‘And we’ll be there, of course,’ Fielding said. ‘Leila was an extraordinary woman.’
