Games Traitors Play

‘I’m fine. How about you? I went by your flat, brought you some clean clothes.’

‘Thanks. Was the door open?’ They both smiled. Then she kissed him gently on the lips.

‘I found this, too. It had been delivered. I thought it might be important. The rest of your post was just bills.’

She held up a padded envelope, addressed to him in unfamiliar handwriting. Marchant looked at it, then put it on a table to one side.

‘How’s Spiro?’

‘Mad at me for not preventing your so-called defection.’

‘Even though I stopped him killing your Defense Secretary and his generals?’

‘You still took down a $155-million Raptor. The media lapped that up.’

‘I hope they’re keeping me out of it.’

‘It’s been agreed by London and Washington to airbrush you from the story. It was getting kind of hard to explain.’

‘But it was a two-seater plane.’

‘The media are reporting a bold strike at the West by Salim Dhar and a jihadi brother.’

‘Half right, at least about the brother.’

‘You did well to stop him. I don’t suppose you have any idea where he is now?’

‘Is that you asking, or Spiro?’

‘Most of the Western world.’

Marchant hoped that one day he would be able to tell her that Dhar had been turned, that Britain now had an asset at the heart of the global jihad.

‘Is his mother safe? Shushma?’ At least he could talk to Lakshmi about her.

‘She’s fine. Spiro handed her over to MI6 when we landed back at Brize Norton. That was always the deal with Fielding. He wants a word with you on his own, by the way. I’ll get him.’

‘Will you stay after that? Please?’

‘Is a graduate of the Farm allowed to stay at the Fort?’

‘I’m sure it could be arranged, in the interests of a special relationship.’

Two minutes later, Fielding and Marchant had stepped outside the debriefing room, leaving Lakshmi on her own, and were walking along the perimeter fence that overlooked the sea. A warm wind blew in off the water, lifting strands of Fielding’s thinning hair. It was greyer than Marchant remembered.

‘You did well,’ Fielding said. ‘It was a tough call to make about GCHQ, but the right one. Dhar’s value has soared on the international jihadi markets. The chatrooms were ecstatic after his attempt on the President’s life in Delhi. This time they’re beside themselves. They never thought someone could strike at the heart of Western intelligence.’

‘I gather there were some casualties.’

‘I wanted to talk to you about that. While the government’s been playing down the damage, our stations abroad are exaggerating it to the foreign media. Well-placed sources are talking about cover-ups, crucial computer networks down for months, morale at GCHQ at an all-time low.’

‘And the truth?’

‘One death, thirty injuries. Minimal structural damage. But I’m afraid Paul Myers took quite a hit.’

‘Is he OK?’

‘Conscious, a little confused. He should make a full recovery. He’d been in the central garden, but he was hungry, and was on his way back inside to get something to eat when the bomb struck.’

‘Saved by a doughnut.’

They both laughed and walked on, watching the wind whip off the tops of the waves.

‘And you’re confident that Dhar is ours?’ Fielding eventually asked.

‘This time I am. We found some common ground.’

‘Coastguard located a drifting trawler just off the coast, by the way. Three dead Russians on board, no sign of Dhar.’

Marchant thought back to the sight of Dhar bobbing in the water. Even then, half drowned and semi- conscious, he had been full of confidence.

‘If this proves successful, we have your father to thank,’ Fielding continued. ‘You know we couldn’t have done it without him. A long time ago, he realised where the world was heading, and saw in his two sons a possible solution.’

‘The old man made some mistakes along the way.’

‘Did he?’

‘Trusting Hugo Prentice.’

‘We all did that.’

‘The silly thing is, I miss Hugo, despite everything he did.’

‘For while the treason I detest, the traitor still I love. Lakshmi’s waiting for you. Enjoy your evening. I have a meeting back in London with Denton. If I was a more suspicious man, I might think he was after my job.’

106

Marchant couldn’t sleep that night. It wasn’t that the Fort’s beds were more uncomfortable than he had remembered, or because he was sharing his with Lakshmi. They had made love after dinner in the room in a way that had restored his faith in women. In some ways it had been cathartic to sleep with Lakshmi in the place where he had first done so with Leila, the woman who had so wholly deceived him.

Lakshmi had told him stories of her childhood, and he had opened up about his father and Sebastian in a way he hadn’t done for years. The only person he didn’t talk about was Dhar.

Now, as he lay there listening to the sea wind rattling the Fort’s old leaded windows, his hand on Lakshmi’s sleeping thigh, he remembered the package she had brought from his flat. He slipped out of bed, careful not to wake her, and unwrapped it by the moonlight of the window.

His hands turned cold when he saw what was inside. It was the sketch of the nude that had been for sale in Cork Street, number 14, the one that had been used as a signal by Nikolai Primakov. Someone had stuck half a red sticker onto the corner of the glass, like the one that had once denoted that it was under offer and that the meeting with Primakov was on.

Marchant glanced across at Lakshmi, then turned the picture over.

There was some writing on the back giving the gallery details, the price and the artist. He inspected it more closely, and saw that the brown adhesive tape had been slit open and resealed down one side. He reached across for a knife from their dinner, the remains of which had not been cleared from the room, and cut the backing open. Inside was a letter. He slid it out and read.

By the time you read this I will be drinking Bruichladdich and eating grain-fed Nebraskan steak at the great Goodman’s in the sky. I suspect there will be no other way to bring you and Salim together. Have no regrets. I don’t. Your father was a good man who had faith in both of his remaining sons to do the right thing. He had faith in me too, and I hope I have had the courage to repay it. He saw the future, and in his sons he saw a way forward, an opportunity to stop the conflict. It is up to you now.

What I have to tell you today, as I prepare to leave London for the last time to meet you at Kotlas, is something that I wanted to say in person, but the risks were always too high when we met in London. Moscow Centre has an MI6 asset who helped the SVR expose and eliminate a network of agents in Poland. His codename was Argo, a nostalgic name in the SVR, as it was once used for Ernest Hemingway.

The Polish thought that Argo was Hugo Prentice, a very good friend of your father, and I believe a close confidant of yours. He was shot dead on the orders of the AW, or at least of one of its agents. Hugo Prentice was not Argo.