Marchant put the letter down. His first thought was to ring Fielding, but there was no knowing if the line was secure. He went over to the door and checked that it was locked. Then he walked to the window and glanced around. It was a full harvest moon, and its reflection stretched out across the water from the horizon. No one was about, and he knew the Fort was secure, but old instincts had kicked in. If Denton was working for Moscow, then no one was safe from the Russians, least of all him. He had tricked the SVR into a false defection, and sabotaged Dhar’s Russian-sponsored attack on the Georgian generals.
He put the letter back in its hiding place behind the nude sketch, and climbed into bed. Suddenly he felt exhausted, more tired than he had felt for years. Lakshmi was stirring. Marchant lay there, thinking of Prentice and Primakov, friends of his father, both of them now dead. Then he turned and hugged Lakshmi, linking a leg over hers.
‘Is everything OK?’ she whispered, half asleep.
But he didn’t answer. He didn’t want to lie any more, not to her. Instead, he held her head gently between both hands and kissed her warm lips. Eventually, after they had made love again, he sat up in bed.
‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ he said, thinking of Dhar, the burden of running him on his own. He could tell her now. She wasn’t like Leila. Hadn’t Fielding said she could be trusted? Then he thought of Denton, the threat he presented. He could tell her about him, too, confide his fears. He wasn’t sure he could cope with the loneliness of deceit any more, the isolation of espionage. He craved companionship, the truth of honest love.
‘What is it?’ Lakshmi asked. Marchant paused, looking at her lying naked in the moonlight. Then he spoke.
‘There was once a king called Shahryar, whose wife was unfaithful to him. He executed her, and from then on he believed that all women were the same, until finally he met a virgin called Scheherazade, who told a thousand and one stories to save her own life.’
‘And did he trust her?’
‘He did.’
Lakshmi looked at Marchant for a moment, her eyes moistening. ‘Was that all you wanted to tell me?’
‘That’s all.’
