future.
‘We never knew exactly, but the worry has been there for several months. At first, we thought it was someone else.’
‘Who?’
‘Come on, Marcus. You know there’s little point in our game of causing offence unnecessarily. We have the right man now. That’s all that matters.’
‘And you’re confident the codename matches?’
‘We picked up “Argo” in an intercept last month.’
Fielding closed his eyes. For the first time in years, he felt he wanted to weep. ‘You really should have pooled it. The damage could be irreducible. Ongoing operations jeopardised, entire networks blown.’
‘I’m sorry, truly.’ Borowski paused. ‘There’s something else. We put someone onto him as soon as he became our main suspect. Monika is one of our best agents — you may remember she helped Daniel Marchant earlier last year — but I’m worried. Argo has not only betrayed our country, he has caused the death of several colleagues, most recently her brother. She’s taken it very personally.’
Marchant ordered another Guinness, his smile now slack with alcohol. Prentice liked to provoke him, and the only response was to join battle.
‘I’m surprised you can still eat seafood, after what happened with the sushi at the gallery,’ Marchant said.
‘It wasn’t the food, it was the wine,’ Prentice replied.
‘And there was I thinking you had a strong head. One glass of red and you were arse over tit.’ Marchant paused, thinking back to the evening at the Cork Street gallery. He hadn’t seen Prentice since he had collapsed in the corner. It had been unlike him. ‘Monika was good to me in Poland, that’s all. I wouldn’t want her to get hurt.’
‘She’s a big girl, Dan.’
‘Maybe she’s using you.’
Prentice looked at Marchant for a moment, his gaze cutting through their drunken banter. Marchant was in no doubt that one of them was using the other. He just wasn’t sure why.
‘I’m a father figure. She lost hers when she was young. We’re in the same business, we lie and cheat for the same noble causes.’ Prentice shucked another oyster open with a knife. ‘Where’s the harm?’
CCTV cameras never pointed exactly where you wanted them, but Fielding could see enough from the intercepted live relay in his office to know that both men were drunk, relaxed, laughing. It couldn’t be worse. The reason he had sent Prentice was to reassure Marchant, give him an opportunity to whinge about MI6 and its methods. And that was exactly what the two of them appeared to be doing. He could only blame himself. They were good friends, even closer after Prentice had rescued Marchant from the CIA’s waterboarders in Poland.
Fielding had to move fast. Moscow would be listening to their man, live-streaming every word. It was essential that Marchant played the right music, said nothing that undermined the genuine anger he had displayed in Madurai. If he revealed that it had been fabricated in order to convince the Russians, they would never go near him again. As far as Moscow was concerned, Marchant was ready to defect, not comparing drunken notes with a colleague about an unscrupulous boss. Fielding reached for his mobile phone.
‘Talking of lying,’ Marchant continued, ‘you’ve known Fielding a lot longer than me. Has he ever double- crossed you?’
‘First, he’s using you, now it’s double-crossing,’ Prentice said. ‘What mortal sin did our Vicar actually commit?’
Marchant knew Prentice had been told the basics about his trip to India, that he was there to bring back Salim Dhar’s mother, but it was still an unusual question to ask another officer. Both of them were steeped in MI6’s strict culture of compartmentalisation, Prentice more than anyone. He was one of MI6’s longest serving field men, an old friend of his father’s and one of Fielding’s allies. He should have known better. Marchant decided to keep things general.
‘Fielding told me I was to bring the target home, but that was never the plan. She was always heading further west.’
‘And our cousins couldn’t have renditioned her without your help?’
‘That’s about it.’
‘A premier-league stitch-up. But it’s unlike Fielding. Lakshmi Meena?’
‘Way over her head.’ Marchant suddenly felt protective. He was sure it hadn’t been her plan. ‘Spiro.’
‘What an arsehole. You don’t seem too cut up about it all. Fielding said you’d be out the door.’
‘Did he?’
Marchant tried to gauge where the conversation was heading, what he could reveal. He wanted to confide in Prentice, confess to him that he had failed to play the traitor. But he knew he couldn’t. Prentice had been told nothing of Primakov’s past, or of Marchant’s efforts to be recruited by him. There was something else bothering him too, a distant nagging that he had learned not to ignore.
‘Let’s face it,’ Prentice continued. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time you were on the outside.’
But Marchant wasn’t listening any more. His phone had buzzed in his pocket, and he glanced at the text. It was from Fielding, and it consisted of only one word: ‘Resign.’
He put the phone away and looked at Prentice, smirking. ‘Lakshmi Meena. She wants to buy me a peace drink too.’
‘Will you accept?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Marchant sat back, trying to look relaxed as he glanced around the bar.
A moment later, an Italian motorbike was beside their table on the pavement. Marchant had heard its accelerating engine, but assumed it was heading up Piccadilly, not coming down Swallow Street behind him. The next few seconds seemed to slow down, but he knew afterwards that they had passed with the speed of a professional job. There were two people on the bike, both wearing black leathers and helmets with tinted glass. The one on the pillion raised a silenced, long-barrelled revolver and fired twice at Prentice before the bike roared away, narrowly missing a group of pedestrians walking up from Piccadilly.
Marchant had instinctively turned his back as the shots were fired, lifting his legs and arms to protect himself. When he looked up, he saw a woman standing ten feet away, a hand to her mouth. After what seemed an eternity, she began to scream, a terrible, almost inhuman cry. He turned to look at Prentice, slumped in the metal chair opposite him, his eyes more startled than pained. He had been shot twice in the forehead, two neat entrance wounds beginning to weep thick red tears.
72
‘It’s a bloody mess,’ Fielding said, walking through the graveyard of the small Norman church at Coombe Manor. ‘Officially, we’re mourning the passing of one of the Service’s finest officers. Unofficially, we’re burying a traitor.’
Marchant looked out on the idyllic English setting, down the valley across fields dusted with poppies. It was the sort of pastoral scene his father had loved: rolling hills dotted with small pubs where eighteenth-century cartoons hung on deep red walls and cool slate floors offered respite from the somnolent heat of summer. At the far end of the valley the land rose steeply to Coombe Gibbet, where a group of cyclists was silhouetted against the blue skyline.
The secluded setting was on the borders of west Berkshire, in a green pocket of Albion that was thick with retired ambassadors and politicians. Many of them had turned out today, their dark suits jarring in the July sunshine as they gathered around the grave. Prentice’s younger brother, who worked in the City and lived in the hamlet, had helped to carry the coffin, which was now being lowered into the ground.
‘The Polish evidence is strong?’ Marchant asked as the two of them dropped back from the main group.
