Games Traitors Play

‘Send my love to the Vicar,’ Spiro called out. ‘And hey, thanks. We couldn’t have got our hands on this piece of brown shit without you.’

Marchant wanted to run at the plane, pull Spiro down onto the Indian dirt, but there was nothing he could do, not while the American was armed. He thought about Fielding, who had sanctioned the change of plan without telling him, and wanted to drag him into the dirt too. Dhar’s mother was meant to be flown back to the UK. Now she was heading to Bagram, or worse, with Spiro. A deal had been done. He knew he should never have believed in Meena, but this had been brokered far above her head. She was irrelevant. Why would his own Chief let Salim Dhar’s mother — the only lead the West had — fall into Spiro’s heavy hands? It didn’t make any sense.

He watched helplessly as the plane taxied down the decrepit runway, shimmering in the heat as peacocks ran in all directions. It turned and then accelerated, lifting up into the evening sky. As it passed him, he picked up a rock and hurled it at the fuselage. On the far side of the airfield, the female workers were watching too, one of them transfixed by the mad ghora, a load of logs still balanced on her head. Marchant started to walk back towards his car, kicking at the dust, thinking fast what he could do, who he should ring. Fielding wouldn’t take his call, but he wanted to challenge him, make sure his anger was logged by the duty officer in Legoland.

He started to dial London, and then stopped. Up ahead, a black car turned off the dusty road and drove towards him, bumping across the concrete. Marchant stood back as it drew up beside him, a darkened rear window lowering.

‘Your American friends were in a hurry to leave,’ a voice said. It was Nikolai Primakov.

64

Monika had always been relaxed about sex, ever since her first encounter, as a sixteen-year-old, with an English tutor who was five years her senior. It was something that came easily to her, which was a relief, as she was struggling at the time with other areas of her life. Her mother, a teacher, was desperate for her to achieve academic success and study at the University of Warsaw. Her father, a lecturer, had died when she was younger. She was bright, top of her class in languages, but she had no siblings, and life at home as a teenager with her mother could be claustrophobic, until she discovered sex and the freedom it gave her.

But she hadn’t enjoyed sleeping with Hugo Prentice, who was lying next to her now. It wasn’t his habit of smoking before they made love — she wasn’t averse to kicking things off with a joint. And she wasn’t upset that she was doing it for work rather than pleasure. She knew when she signed up to the AW that her job would occasionally require it, and in this case there had been a redeeming motive. What had cast a shadow over the sex was an encrypted text message that had come through from General Borowski. She had ignored her phone beside the bed, even though the unique alert tone indicated that it was her boss in Warsaw.

‘Work can wait,’ she had said, easing herself on top of him. It hadn’t been easy — Borowski only made contact when it was serious — but she didn’t want to arouse Prentice’s suspicions.

Now that he was asleep, she peeled away from his heavy limbs and dressed. Watching him all the time, she went to his bathroom, where evidence of Prentice’s single life was everywhere. The small room wasn’t unhygienic, but it wasn’t clean either. The old iron bath had greenish stains where the brass taps dripped, and the sink hadn’t been cleaned after his morning ablutions. A wooden-handled shaving brush lay between the taps, still covered in lather, and the lid hadn’t been put back on a pot of hair-styling wax.

But none of this bothered her. It was his London pad, and he had been living in Warsaw for the past two years. What worried her was Borowski. She looked at the text again and then replied with a blank message, the agreed protocol. Moving fast, she removed the back of her phone and took out the SIM card, replacing it with another she kept in her purse. It had never been used before. She looked in again on Prentice as the phone rebooted, peering through a gap in the bathroom door. He seemed to stir, scratching himself before going back to sleep. Seconds later, a new message had appeared on the screen.

Monika stared at the words, barely able to believe what she was reading. Then she bent double over the lavatory and threw up.

65

‘Tell me something,’ Primakov said. ‘What ever made you think you could trust them? After all they’ve done to you?’

‘I put my faith in the Vicar,’ Marchant said.

‘A mistake your father never made.’

They were driving back towards Madurai in Primakov’s car. A thick glass partition divided them from the front, where a Russian driver sat without expression. It was evident that he couldn’t hear their conversation. Marchant wasn’t surprised that Primakov had turned up at the airport. More worrying was his lack of concern that Dhar’s mother was now in US custody. Marchant had told him the whole story: Fielding’s assurances about Lakshmi Meena, how the CIA had agreed for Shushma to be taken to the UK. Primakov had been particularly interested in Fielding’s role, asking Marchant to repeat exactly what he had said. Marchant had been happy to tell him. He no longer knew where his own loyalties lay, let alone Primakov’s.

‘Did you know that she was working at the temple?’ Marchant asked.

‘Of course.’

‘Why didn’t you do more to stop the Americans from taking her?’

‘Like you, we had heard she was bound for Britain. I was also a little under strength. Valentin is in the Apollo hospital.’

Marchant didn’t believe him. Moscow could have drawn on more resources to stop Shushma’s departure. But for some reason they hadn’t.

‘Her son won’t be happy,’ Marchant said, trying to steer the conversation towards Dhar. The only thing he knew for certain was that he needed to see him, discuss their father man to man, brother to brother. Primakov had avoided referring directly to Dhar before, but it would be hard not to now.

‘It will confirm his worst fears about the West,’ Primakov said.

And then Marchant began to see things more clearly. Primakov hadn’t flown to Madurai to prevent Shushma’s exfiltration: he wanted to be sure that she was taken. It was the one act that could be guaranteed to get under Dhar’s skin. Whatever the Russians had planned for him, it suited them if Dhar’s blood was up.

‘A son will do anything for his mother,’ Marchant offered.

‘Rage is important. It can persuade others to take you seriously. People who had their doubts.’

For the first time, Primakov looked at Marchant with something approaching knowingness in his moist eyes. Was it a sign at last? A part of Marchant no longer believed Fielding’s reassurances about Primakov’s loyalty to London. The Russian wouldn’t give him anything because there was nothing to give. His brief was simply to keep the jihadi fires stoked in Dhar’s belly, and to persuade Marchant to help his half-brother. There was no hidden agenda, no resurrection of old family ties, no belated clemency for his father. But somewhere inside him, Marchant still hoped he was wrong.

‘Are you angry, too?’ Primakov asked.

‘Wouldn’t you be? I promised Shushma I’d look after her, only to see her renditioned in front of me by James fucking Spiro.’

Even as Marchant spat out the expletive, a sickening feeling had started to spread: a realisation that he had been manipulated, that actions he thought were his own had actually been controlled by others. Rage is important. It can persuade others to take you seriously. People who had their doubts. He was the one raging now, against Fielding, Meena, Spiro, the West. And it would be music to Moscow’s ears.

He closed his eyes. Christ, Fielding could be a cold bastard.