66
Even Marcus Fielding, working late, was surprised by the swiftness of Moscow Centre’s response. GCHQ’s sub-station at Bude in Cornwall had intercepted a call from Primakov to Vasilli Grushko, the London
Fielding sat back, poured himself a glass of Lebanese wine and turned on a Bach cantata. It was a rare moment of triumph. Oleg, asleep in the corner, looked up briefly, sensing the change in mood. There was no longer any talk of dangles, no equivocation in Grushko’s voice. Fielding’s only headache was Marchant. It hadn’t been an easy decision to call on Spiro’s services, let alone Lakshmi Meena’s, but it was the only way to provoke Marchant. He wouldn’t want to talk to his Chief, not for a while, which was why he had sent Prentice to pick him up from the airport, take him out for a meal in town, suck some venom from his wounded pride.
Fielding had told Prentice only the bare essentials of the operation to lift Dhar’s mother. He wouldn’t have expected to be given any detail. Need-to-know was a way of life for both of them. Prentice was unaware of Marchant’s ongoing attempt to be recruited by Primakov, given that it was linked to the Russian’s highly classified past. All he knew was that there had been a change of plan in Madurai, and that Marchant would be upset.
‘We had to screw him,’ Fielding had explained. ‘You know how it is.’
Marchant would be astute enough to work out what had happened, why Fielding had been forced to intervene, pull the strings, but he would still be angry. He could let off steam with Prentice, have a moan about means and ends and Machiavellian bosses.
After he had calmed down, Fielding would have one last talk with him. Then he would be on his own, free to go off the rails, not turn up for work, drink too much. Marchant had form when it came to falling apart. In the months before he had left for Marrakech he had been a mess. And the Russians would lap it up, reassured that he was ready to be turned. Only then would it be time for him to meet Dhar. He owed it to Marchant to prepare him properly, let him genuinely feel what it was like to hate the West. Dhar would detect a false note at a thousand yards.
It was as he poured himself a second glass of wine that another encrypted audio file from GCHQ dropped into his inbox.
67
Marchant had asked Primakov to drop him off in the centre of Kanadukathan, about ten minutes from the airfield. It was a small village, and Marchant would have described it as poor if it hadn’t been for the vast deserted mansions that dominated the dusty lanes. Meena had talked about them in Madurai. They were the ancestral homes of the Chettiars, a once-wealthy community of money-lenders, merchants and jewellery dealers who had fallen on hard times since the end of the Raj. Used now for storing dowry gifts, the mansions only came alive for family weddings, when the Chettiar diaspora would descend from around the world and fill the pillared courtyards with music and laughter.
Marchant strolled around the village square. The ground was covered in a confetti of paper and cardboard, the remains of exploded firecrackers. He could hear a wedding party in the distance, and wondered if one of Meena’s cousins really was getting married. He had seen the celebrations from a distance on the way out to the airfield. It didn’t matter either way, but he wanted to know. The world of lies and legends had lost its appeal after the scene with Spiro, and he needed to be reassured by something tangible, real.
He thought again about what had happened with Dhar’s mother. It was clearer now, painfully clear. Fielding hadn’t trusted him to betray, didn’t think he had it in him to persuade the Russians of his treachery. So he had given Marchant a helping hand, asked Spiro to humiliate him in front of Primakov. The American wouldn’t have needed much persuading.
‘Are you angry enough to meet your brother?’ Primakov had asked as he stepped out of the car. Did the Russian suspect what game Fielding was playing? That Marchant’s rage had been conceived five thousand miles away in Legoland?
‘I’d like to see him, yes,’ Marchant had said.
‘And he’d like to see you. But first I want you to do something for me. For Russia. Then we will get you out of Britain.’
Marchant walked around the corner towards the mansion where the wedding was taking place. A crowd had spilled out onto the road beneath loops of bunting that had been strung between tangled telegraph poles. Two women were walking towards him, arm in arm, their bright carmine saris illuminating the dusk. The one on the left reminded him of Meena, the same lambent eyes, the subtle sashay of hips. A stray pie dog lingered in the shadows.
‘Can you help me?’ Marchant asked her, ignoring the field agent’s normal caveats. He was drawing attention to himself in a place where he was already a curiosity.
‘We’ll try,’ she said, masking a giggle with her hand.
‘I had a friend who was meant to be here today.’ He nodded at the house behind them. ‘Over from the States. Lakshmi Meena. You don’t happen to know her, do you?’
‘Sure. She’s my friend’s cousin. It’s such a shame. Lakshmi was meant to be here, but she got held up in Madurai.’
‘Thank you,’ Marchant said. He felt stronger already, as if the world had been veering off its axis and was now spinning true again. He realised, as he walked on, how much he wanted to believe in Meena, believe that she wasn’t another Leila. He was no longer sure he could face a life of trusting no one. Meena was beautiful, there was no point denying it, but it was his sympathy rather than his love that she kept asking of him. She had claimed that she had tried to stop Aziz in Morocco, then admitted that she could have done more. The appearance of Spiro at the airfield appeared to have pained her, but she had still boarded the flight.
He stopped, and turned back to the square, where he had seen a taxi waiting, and thought about Primakov’s request. He was certain it was a test. If he was caught, the consequences would be serious. Should he run it past Fielding? Or was he now expected to play the traitor’s game alone?
68
Monika had always thought she would be able to do it herself, that she owed it to her brother, but she couldn’t. She hoped he would understand. She had the money in cash, £20,000 withdrawn from an emergency AW fund in London that was meant to be used for bribing disillusioned SVR agents.
As she stood outside a snooker hall in Haringey, north London, waiting for her contact to arrive, she wondered if she had any energy left to hide her tracks, to invent a cover story for the money. To begin with, she had resigned herself to being caught. She had imagined standing over him, waiting calmly for the police to arrive, but she couldn’t do that either. Her survival instincts, honed in the field, were too strong. So she had contracted
