‘Please, put something on,’ he said. More memories, scent, taste. ‘A dressing gown, clothes, anything.’
‘Clothes? It’s 40 degrees outside and you want me to put something on? Relax. You’re on holiday.’ She was sitting now, one leg tucked under her, head tilted, hair dryer in hand.
‘Where’s Lakshmi Meena?’
‘You ask too many questions. Please, try some of this.’
She picked up a plate piled high with watermelon and walked over to him, placing it beside the bed. Then she slid a piece into her mouth, holding it carefully between thumb and finger. A small trickle of juice escaped from her lips as she crushed the fruit. She gathered it in with her tongue, which lingered a moment longer than was necessary.
‘Do you know why Russian men like watermelon so much?’ she asked. Marchant had sat up now, careful to cover himself with a sheet.
‘I need you to leave,’ he said, strength returning to his voice, his body. More memories: Morocco, the mountains,
‘Of course. I’ll go to the beach. Join me in the restaurant when you’re ready. I’m Nadia, by the way.’
He watched her walk over to a wardrobe and put on a black bikini. The bottom was decent enough at the front, but hardly covered her buttocks. Again, she knew she was being observed, which annoyed Marchant, who turned away when she catwalked towards the sliding glass doors. As she started to close them behind her, she leaned back into the room.
‘Watermelon juice is a natural Viagra, at least that’s what our men believe. Yes, it’s sweet too, and we love sweet things in Russia, but this is not the main reason. Enjoy.’
She slid the door shut, the click of the catch cutting into Marchant’s thoughts. Once he was sure she had gone, he lifted the receiver on the hotel phone, but the line was dead, as he expected. He stood up, unsteady on his feet, and went over to the wardrobe, where he had seen some of his clothes. His wallet was there, complete with some Moroccan
After taking a shower, washing off any traces of what might have been, he put on a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, sunglasses and some flip-flops that someone — Meena? Nadia? — must have bought from the resort shop for him. They all fitted well enough. He glanced in the mirror, put a hand to his bruised jaw, and stepped outside into the midday sun, watched discreetly by a gym-toned man lying on a sunbed outside the adjacent villa.
33
‘I want you to hold back,’ Fielding said, standing up to rub his lower back. No one had fixed the grandfather clock that stood against the far wall of his office. It had been built by Sir Mansfield Cumming, the first Chief, and had worked well enough until the Service’s move from Southwark, since when it had kept stopping. Fielding meant to do something about it, but there was never enough time.
‘It’s too late anyway. She’s all over him.’ Prentice was back in the resort now, standing in some shade beside a rack of red bikes for hire. Behind him he could hear children playing football on an Astroturf pitch: German, English, Italian and Russian voices. He had taken a look earlier. The football facilities were provided by Chelsea, the club he’d followed since childhood, and there were huge posters of all the top players on the fencing around the ground.
‘Has he met the man yet, or just the woman?’
‘He’s sharing a pizza with them both now. Down by the sea.’
‘And no one’s seen you?’
‘Not yet.’ Prentice glanced at a nearby CCTV camera, hidden in the bushes. He doubted the guests knew that every inch of the resort was being filmed, day and night, low and high season. The cameras were very discreet, he had to give them that. He had already checked out the control centre, behind the main reception building, where a bank of screens captured most things that went on at the resort. As far as he could tell, it was also from there that the master satellite TV signal was distributed to all the villas.
‘Get him on your own after lunch and try to limit the damage.’
Prentice hung up, surprised by the Vicar’s calmness.
‘We want you to meet someone in London,’ Nadia said. ‘An old friend.’
‘A friend of your family,’ her partner, Valentin, added. He had joined them from the sunbed a couple of minutes after their arrival at the beachside restaurant. Marchant assumed that he had followed him from his room, in case he tried to leave the resort. But Marchant didn’t have the strength to escape. Not yet. Valentin was tall, muscular, wearing a T-shirt as tight as his skin. Marchant was struck by his small, Prussian-blue eyes.
‘I don’t have any family,’ Marchant replied.
He was sitting in the shade of their table’s brightly coloured umbrella. It reminded him of the parasols that kept the
‘Our friend knew your father. He always speaks very highly of him, and would like to meet you. Talk about old times.’
‘Which friend?’ Marchant asked, his mind racing. The only Russian he could recall was someone his father had known in Delhi, but Marchant had been a child at the time, and the memories were distant. He knew there must have been many others, his father’s illustrious career in MI6 being built on successes behind the Iron Curtain. Some he was aware of: the ones who had been blown and were dead now, executed by Moscow Centre after Aldrich Ames had exposed them. He would never know about the others who were still alive, still betraying their motherland, their files known only to a select few in Legoland.
‘All we ask is that you meet him once,’ Valentin said, ignoring Marchant’s question. ‘One meeting, nothing more. In London.’
Marchant wanted a name, someone to run past Fielding, who had known his father better than anyone, but they weren’t playing. More important, he told himself, was the approach itself. The Russians’ interest in him gave him hope that he could be right about Dhar, the mountains, the helicopter. And that thought banished any lingering effects of the medication, his brain suddenly as fresh as a forest after rain.
‘He will attend an exhibition opening,’ Valentin said, passing Marchant an embossed invitation card. ‘In Cork Street. The artist is from the Caucasus, South Ossetia. He is very accomplished, but not as well known outside Russia as he should be. Picture number 14, a nude sketch, has been reserved with a half-dot on the price label. It’s a very beautiful work. You may recognise the model.’ He looked across at Nadia and smiled. ‘Your contact will confirm the purchase on the night, towards the end of the evening. If it already has a full red dot beside it when you arrive, the meeting has been cancelled.’
Standard SVR tradecraft, Marchant thought. The plan was a little elaborate, but it implied intent. They meant business. A crowded place had been chosen, a venue where contact could be accidental, ambiguous, denied.
Marchant glanced around at the restaurant, trying to spot any watchers. It was one of his best skills as a field agent, the thing that had most impressed his instructors at the Fort. But this time he was struggling. More than half the diners were Russian. A senescent man with an eighteen-year-old escort in a short skirt; another, younger Russian businessman more interested in his BlackBerry than his gorgeous wife. She was wearing diamante jeans, listlessly following their young son as he tottered around the tables with a beach ball almost as big as him. Maybe Nadia and Valentin were operating on their own.
