Games Traitors Play

‘Frogfoot One?’ he said, a moment before the missile found its target, embedding itself deep within the left engine and then tearing it apart.

Dhar took the plane on a long sweeping arc away from the airfield, glancing down to his right at the plume of smoke rising from the runway.

‘Now we drop our first bomb.’

‘Salim, we’ve got to stop this!’ Marchant shouted. ‘We’re going to be shot down any minute. Every fighter in southern Britain will have been scrambled.’

‘Frogfoot One, please identify yourself,’ a voice from the control tower demanded on the military emergency frequency. Dhar flicked off the radio. He could see the flames of the Raptor now, the wreckage on the runway, as he continued to bank around to the east. He thought of Sergei, the photos he had shown him of his own crash, the carnage as his MiG had skidded through the crowds, carving families apart. The Raptor had broken up over the runway, causing little collateral damage. But Dhar knew that what he was about to do now would not be so precise. The hospitality marquees were to the left of the runway, just before the control tower. The American military had assembled en masse in the largest tent, entertaining their Georgian counterparts. Enemies didn’t get more legitimate.

‘Tell me the target,’ Marchant said, desperate to engage Dhar. The aircraft had levelled out now, and was about to begin a low approach from the east.

‘The Georgian government is converting their country into a Christian one, turning their back on our Muslim brothers to appease America.’

‘Are they here? The Georgians?’

‘In the marquee next to the control tower. Here to buy F-16s from the Americans.’

So that was why they had flown to Fairford. There was a logic to Dhar, a rationale, however dark, that demanded Marchant’s respect, if not his understanding. He knew that neither the SVR nor Georgia’s Muslim population was keen on the country’s realignment with America. Had Dhar done enough already in the eyes of other jihadis to cool the relationship? Marchant looked down through the canopy. The SU-25’s cockpit visibility was not great, but he could make out a row of stalls, packed with people, immediately behind the hospitality marquees.

‘Don’t do it, Salim. It’s too crowded. Too many innocent lives will be lost.’

Marchant knew he had to keep talking, try to sow seeds of doubt. Despite his self-assurance, Dhar would be questioning his own actions. Marchant had read enough intelligence reports from Guantanamo. Even the hardest jihadis deliberated about the legitimacy of targets, wrestled with how to determine the innocent.

‘The dirty bomb is not for now,’ Dhar said, flicking the weapons select switch on the stick. He opted for the conventional LGB and locked onto the marquee with his gunsight, letting the Klyon laser range-finder retain the target as he approached. Then he closed his eyes and thought again about his father. Deep down, below the layers of prayer and wishful thinking, he knew that Marchant had spoken the truth. It had been too much to hope for the Chief of MI6 to betray the West. At least, in his father’s anti-American stance, there had been some evidence of their shared blood. Stephen Marchant would have approved of the swaggering Raptor’s destruction, the silencing of the hysterical commentator and the incessant rock music.

‘This is not what our father would have wanted,’ Marchant said, scanning the skies. ‘You’ve made your point, given America a bloody nose, screwed the arms deal. Now let’s get out of here.’

Dhar was determined to release the bomb as the plane flew fast along the display line. He had rehearsed it so many times on the simulator in Kotlas and above the ranges of Archangel with Sergei. Please, if you can spare the lives of twenty-three civilians, then do it. For me, for the Bird. Innocent lives would be lost, but the military target was legitimate. Generals, Georgian and American, chests blooming with medal ribbons, plotting their next assault on the Muslim world.

But as he looked down at the marquee, his mind surging with thoughts of Sergei, his father, Daniel, he pulled up at the last moment into a steep climb, the G-forces pushing him back into his seat as if in reprimand for the destruction he had been about to unleash.

‘If I am to retain any credibility,’ Dhar said quietly, as he levelled out at one thousand feet and turned towards the north-west, ‘I must go through with my final target.’

101

Fielding had watched with horror from the lay-by as the Raptor was engulfed in a fireball and fell from the sky. His thoughts were with the pilot, but he was also trying to calculate the damage to Britain’s relationship with America should it ever be known that Daniel Marchant, a serving MI6 officer, was with Salim Dhar in the cockpit of the other jet, as he now suspected was the case.

He had to redo those calculations as he saw the SU-25 turn and begin a second approach. If Dhar attacked the marquee where the American Secretary of Defense was holding court with the Georgians, Fielding knew his career was over. But as the aircraft drew close to its target, he began to sense that his faith in Daniel Marchant had not been misplaced. Dhar was leaving it very late to strike at the marquee. Had Marchant talked him out of it?

His phone rang as the aircraft passed low over the control tower and pulled into a steep climb. It was Harriet Armstrong.

‘Is it true? Dhar’s just taken out an American fighter jet?’

‘It’s true.’

‘And Marchant’s with him?’

‘Yes, he is.’

‘Jesus, Marcus, what the hell do I tell COBRA? And the Americans?’

‘Tell them that Marchant’s just saved the life of the US Secretary of Defense, as well as a tent full of American and Georgian top brass.’

He hung up as he watched the SU-25 disappear into the distance, wondering why Dhar was now heading north-west towards Cheltenham.

The Russians had left Paul Myers shortly after he had begun to corrupt the Recognised Air Picture. He didn’t know how many jets would attempt to violate the UK’s airspace while its defences were compromised, or what their mission was. All he knew was that Daniel Marchant was involved in some way.

‘I suggest you keep the window open for as long as you can,’ Grushko had said, just before he departed with his colleague. ‘Unless you want your friend Daniel Marchant to be shot out of the sky.’

Myers was suspicious that they weren’t remaining with him. It was true that he didn’t want to do anything that might put Marchant in more danger than he was in already. Again he tried to think what Marchant would want, and decided to interfere with the Recognised Air Picture for as long as he could. But the Russians had been in an unseemly hurry to leave.

‘Have you lived in Cheltenham long?’ Grushko had asked just before he left.

‘Ten years, maybe longer.’

‘It’s strange. The poorer parts remind me of Chernobyl, where I grew up. Before the accident, of course.’

After twenty minutes of delaying and corrupting the RAP, Myers had left his flat and driven to work. He wasn’t due in until Monday, but the experience of being held hostage in his own home had left him feeling shaken and vulnerable. He also needed a change of scene after being cooped up in his airless bedroom for twelve hours. GCHQ was bright and airy and, as the director often reminded staff, one of the most secure work environments in the country. He would walk the Street, buy some food and sit out on the grassy knoll in the sunny central enclosure. Then he would ring Fielding back and tell him what had happened, although he suspected that the Vicar already knew.

‘Just so you know,’ Armstrong said, back on the phone to Fielding, who had ordered his driver to head at speed for Cheltenham, ‘there are now six jets closing in on Dhar with orders to shoot him down. I’ve stressed to the Chief of Defence Staff that an officer of MI6 is also on board, but he has been deemed expendable. In your