he didn’t see Meena or a car in the street outside. He looked up and down the road and then walked over to the barrier, where Meena had arranged for them to be picked up by her redneck tourist friend. No one was about. He went to retrieve his footwear, watching the man take his ticket and turn to a row of hundreds of shoes. A moment later, he was holding two pairs, his and Meena’s. He hesitated and then took both, slipping into his own and walking away with Meena’s in his hand.
Meena had had no time to collect her shoes. Someone other than Valentin must have been outside. He glanced up and down the street, looking for a taxi, and then his mobile phone rang.
‘It’s me. Sorry,’ Meena said. ‘Where are you?’
‘Waiting for you to pick me up outside the temple, as agreed.’
‘We had to go. Head for the airfield. Call me when you get near.’
She had briefed him earlier. The airfield was near Karaikudi, outside a small village called Kanadukathan, and had fallen into disrepair. In the Second World War, the Allies had used it as a base for Flying Fortresses targeting Malaya and Singapore. It was also the place where Meena’s legend was meant to be heading for her family wedding. She was thorough, Marchant couldn’t fault her on that.
Half an hour later, he was out of Madurai and heading east through remote countryside in a taxi with a dodgy horn. To begin with, he had assumed that his driver was simply more eager than usual in his use of it, knowing that in India the horn was like a friendly nod of the head, but it was definitely broken, staying jammed on for ten seconds every time he deployed it.
‘Sir, I will manage it, don’t worry.’ The driver grinned in the rear-view mirror.
Not using the horn would be a good start, Marchant thought, but he knew that would be impossible. He tried to cut out the noise and take in the scenery. The reddish earth was barren and unfarmed, flat and dotted with sparse bushes. In the distance, he could see an outcrop of rock that had had its top sliced off. Earlier, he had passed rainbow-painted trucks carrying quarried rocks back to Madurai.
‘Sir, are you knowing about the tourism business?’ the driver asked, in between sustained blasts of the horn, which was beginning to grow hoarse. ‘I have a good friend — ’
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ Marchant interrupted.
‘Cement sector?’
‘No. Can we go a bit quicker? Faster?’ It was not something he had ever thought he would ask on Indian roads, but he was worried that Meena hadn’t rung again. He had tried to call but her phone was switched off.
‘No problem. Isuzu engine.’
The taxi might have had Japanese technology under the bonnet, but its Indian suspension had long since gone. Marchant found the discomfort oddly reassuring, taking him back to his childhood, driving out of Delhi on a Friday night, the bright lights of the lorries roaring past, waking up at a remote Rajasthani fort. Then he thought of Sebbie and felt a ball tighten in his stomach. It shocked him how much he still missed his twin brother. He stared out of the window at the scenes of rural-roadside life: a woman shaking the coals out of her iron, a threshing machine, schoolchildren cycling home on oversized bikes, their long legs languid in the heat.
‘Sir, am I boring you?’ the taxi driver asked, his face in the mirror now long with concern.
‘Not at all. I’m sorry,’ Marchant said, feeling guilty. ‘Please, tell me about the cement sector.’
63
Meena’s car turned off the dusty road into what at first looked like scrubland. The area was completely flat, covered in green bushes. Peacocks were strutting about, picking at the dry ground, the green sheen of their feathers glinting in the dying light of the day. She knew the airfield was disused, but she had expected a little more infrastructure. In the distance there were a few low buildings, derelict and overgrown. The control tower had long since been demolished. Towards the far perimeter, near a group of trees, a team of local women were loading long logs into stacks and covering them with tarpaulins. Beside the piles of wood someone had laid out cow dung to dry.
Meena left Shushma in the car and walked out into the open expanse. Beneath the vegetation the ground was concrete, but it had broken up over the years, and she wondered if a plane would still be able to land there. As she walked out across the wide expanse, she could see where the main runway had been. It was in better condition than the rest of the airfield’s surface. She had been told that a local flying club had been campaigning for years for it to be reopened, and it looked as if volunteers had cleared away some of the vegetation.
She glanced at her watch and stared up into the dusk sky. There was no sign of a plane. If it didn’t come before nightfall, the operation would be abandoned. A night-time landing was out of the question without any airport lights. She didn’t know whether Delhi was onside or not about the flight, but that wasn’t her problem. She looked again at her watch. A part of her hoped that Marchant would turn up after they had gone, but she owed him an explanation. She turned on her phone and dialled.
‘Where are you?’ she asked.
‘Ten minutes away,’ Marchant said. ‘I’ve been trying to call.’
‘There’s a change of plan.’
‘What sort of change?’
‘I’ll explain when you get here.’
She hung up and walked over towards the car, fighting back a tear.
Marchant saw the plane coming in low over the scrubland. He was still two minutes away, and urged his driver to hurry up. Events were spiralling out of his control. Meena’s tone worried him. Nobody was being straight with anyone. He cursed himself again for going after Valentin, but he had felt better for it.
Marchant asked the driver to drop him off at the edge of the airfield. He ran across the broken surface, watching the plane turn slowly on the old runway, scattering peacocks. It was a Gulfstream V, the CIA’s preferred choice for renditions after 9/11, the plane Spiro had used to fly him out of Britain the previous year. It had taken him to an old Russian airfield outside Syzmany in northern Poland, where they had waterboarded him. He shut out the thought as he approached Meena. Shushma was standing beside her, their arms too close.
‘Glad you made it,’ Meena said, glancing at the plane, which had now drawn up a few feet behind them. The noise of the jet engines made it necessary to speak loudly to be heard. Shushma was not happy, staring at the ground, trying to cut out the world again, or just in shock.
‘Are you?’ Marchant asked.
‘It was your call to go after the Russian,’ Meena said. ‘The operation was compromised. I had no choice.’
‘And if I hadn’t?’
‘There was another Russian on our tail, but we lost him. I know how to look after myself, Dan.’
‘And her, I see,’ he said, nodding at Shushma’s wrist. It was joined to Meena’s with handcuffs. ‘Comforting.’
‘They’re a precaution.’
‘I gave my word we’d take care of her, not treat her as an enemy combatant.’
They both heard the noise of the plane’s door opening behind them. Meena turned around to look, and then faced Marchant again.
‘Daniel, I told you, there’s been a change.’
He detected something dancing in her eyes, but he couldn’t be certain what it was any more: loyalty and deceit had begun to look the same in recent months. Then he glanced up at the open door behind her and saw James Spiro filling the frame, a gun in his hand.
‘We need to get out of this hellhole,’ he drawled.
‘I’m sorry,’ Meena whispered, still looking at Marchant.
‘You knew?’ Marchant said, glancing at Spiro again, trying to process the implications.
‘Ask Fielding,’ she replied, turning towards the plane. Shushma followed, pulled along by her wrist. Then she stopped and faced Marchant. For a moment, he thought she was going to say something, but instead she spat in his face and walked on.
‘Fielding?’ Marchant said, wiping the saliva off his cheek. He couldn’t blame her.
