Games Traitors Play dm-2 Page 10

  He sat up with some effort. His neck muscles were sore and his head throbbed more when he moved. A net curtain had been drawn across an open window, its white shutters pushed partly open. The branches of a weeping fig stopped them from opening fully. Beyond its leaves, he could see pine trees against a brilliant blue sky. The sun was too bright for Britain, the birdsong too exuberant. As he listened to the chorus, a small bird hovered outside the window for a few moments and disappeared.

  He reached over and examined the bottle of mineral water, reading its label: Frizzante — sparkling — and made by Smeraldina, a ‘product of Sardinia’. Twisting open the metal cap, he drank deeply, resting the bottle gently on his swollen lips. His mind was still too muddled to think clearly. At least he was out of Morocco. It was only when he put the bottle down that he noticed a figure sitting outside on the terrace, beyond the double doors on the far side of the room. He couldn’t see any more than their profile through the net curtains, which moved gently in the breeze. The doors were open a few inches, and the person must have heard him opening the bottle of water, because she stood up and put her head in the room.

  ‘How you feeling?’ It was Lakshmi Meena.

  Marchant tried to speak, but his tongue failed to respond. Instead, he grunted and sank back into the deep pillows, closing his eyes. What sort of a question was that? He had that top-of-the-world feeling that usually followed a trip to a dentist with an aversion to using anaesthetic. Aziz should go into full-time practice when he retired, set himself up in the square in Marrakech. Tourists would be queuing around the block for his gentle touch.

  He heard Meena walk across the marble floor and draw up a cane chair beside the bed. He remembered that she worked directly for Spiro. Someone must have had a change of heart.

  ‘I’m sorry, really. It shouldn’t have happened. I should have done more, protested louder.’

  Marchant wasn’t going to make this any easier for her as he lay still, listening to the chipping noise that had started up again. He realised now that it was workmen, the rhythm of their hammers slowed by the day’s heat. His brain had established some distance between the outside world and the inside of his skull, but the sound was still too familiar for comfort.

  ‘They’re fixing the path outside,’ Meena continued, her manner more businesslike than bedside. Marchant assumed that it was her way of dealing with the situation, which was fine by him. He didn’t want her sympathy. ‘One of the tiles was cracked, so they dug it up and are putting in a new one. Relax if you never made it to Jackson’s Neverland, because it’s right here, in Sardinia. No litter, no crime, sidewalks buffed up at night. I’m not kidding, I’ve smelt the floor polish.’

  The less Marchant acknowledged Meena, the more she talked. He didn’t have enough energy to interrupt, ask her to leave, tell her she was as bad as the rest of them, despite her protests.

  ‘We flew in to Cagliari yesterday morning. You’ve been asleep ever since. The drugs aren’t going to replace your molars, I’m afraid, but they should stop any infection spreading to the bone, brain and lungs, reduce the chance of systemic sepsis. And take the morphine in moderation, only when it’s really hurting.’

  He recalled that Meena had once trained to be a doctor. He opened his eyes, tracing the patterns in the plaster on the ceiling.

  ‘We didn’t get Salim Dhar.’ Marchant looked across at Meena, who was standing now. ‘Killed six of our own Marines instead. Spiro’s butt’s on the line, mine too. I don’t know what you saw up in the mountains, but come to me, not him, if you ever want to talk. I might just listen.’

  Meena turned away when Marchant caught her eye. She had found it difficult enough to look at him when he was sleeping, his bruised mouth distorted as if in accusation. Now that he was awake, she saw in his eyes everything that was wrong with the Agency, everything that was wrong with the decisions she had made in her life. This wasn’t why she had signed up. She also saw something else, but buried the thought as soon as it surfaced.

  The military ambulance had taken Aziz away from the airport, but not before two of his colleagues had threatened to inflict further injuries on Marchant. Meena had talked them out of it, pulling rank, acting the part, then arranged for another ambulance. They wouldn’t allow him to travel in the military one. At the Hassan II Hospital, on route de Marrakech, a doctor had patched Marchant up and prescribed painkillers and antibiotics. He knew better than to ask how the British man had come to lose two teeth. He knew, too, that there could be consequences for helping him, but the American woman had given him a bulging envelope of dirhams as well as reassurances.

  By the time Meena took Marchant out to the airport, a Gulfstream V had arrived to fly them to Sardinia, where the CIA had a discreet account with a luxury resort on the south of the island. It had the use of a villa away from the thoroughfare of restaurants and tennis courts. Senior officers checked themselves in for some R amp;R after tough tours of duty in the Gulf. NSA officers visiting the listening base in Cyprus also dropped by for a few days to clear their heads from intercepts. And there was always the possible bonus of picking something up from the Russians. Meena hadn’t hesitated to book Marchant in. It was the least she could do. Besides, Spiro had told her to look after him and to send Langley the bill.

  ‘London knows you’re here,’ she said, standing at the double doors now. ‘You’re on a flight back to Gatwick in a week. Relax, recover. It’s on us.’ She paused. ‘I’ve got to go. Pacify the Moroccans. You nearly killed Aziz.’ She paused again, fighting an urge to go over to him. ‘You’ll be safe here. And, you know, I’m sorry, truly. It was my fault. Should never have happened.’

  Marchant stared at her blankly, then drifted back to sleep.

  30

  ‘I think someone should be with Marchant,’ Denton said, wondering if Fielding had heard him. His Chief was standing at the window of his fourth-floor office, lost in thought, watching a pair of Chinooks fly up the Thames towards a setting sun. The Union flag outside the window was rippling in the evening breeze. Sometimes Fielding’s apparent indifference to his own staff frightened Denton, but he told himself it was just his manner.

  ‘Do we know what happened?’ Fielding asked, turning around suddenly, as if trying to make up for his previous inattention.

  ‘The Americans handed him over to Abdul Aziz. Marchant proved a difficult patient.’

  ‘You think we should have protected him more, don’t you?’

  ‘I just — ’

  ‘Don’t go soft on me, Ian. It doesn’t suit you. Daniel Marchant knows how to look after himself. Besides, we had an agreement with Langley.’

  ‘For what it was worth,’ Denton said. He liked Marchant, and feared for his health if he was subjected to more trauma at the hands of the CIA.

  ‘Spiro saw his chance. He thought the world would be looking the other way, watching the death of Salim Dhar on YouTube. Who’s out in Morocco for them? Still Lakshmi Meena?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Young enough to be my granddaughter.’

  Except that you don’t have one, Denton thought. No grandchildren at all, in fact. No children, wife or lover of any description. Just a dog called Oleg and an extended tribe of godchildren. There had been talk once of an elderly mother, somewhere on the south coast — Brighton, or was it Eastbourne? — but that was long ago. Denton used to have a wife. A shared love of jazz and canal boats had brought them together, the Service had driven them apart, as it eventually did with most of its married employees. She still worked as a librarian in the House of Commons, down the river, but they no longer saw each other. There were no children, just a few Miles Davis albums still to be returned. Perhaps Fielding’s chosen path of apparent chastity was the only way to arrive at the top of MI6 without any baggage.

  ‘She said the Agency was putting Marchant up for a few days — Sardinia — but she had to get back to Morocco,’ Denton said.

  ‘Send Hugo Prentice. Marchant helped him out in Poland. And he knew h
is father.’

  Denton had never liked Prentice, but now wasn’t the time to object. There would come a time, in his new role, when he could set the record straight, not just question Prentice’s expenses, but his very worth. They had both worked the SovBloc beat, in very different styles, Denton’s discretion in marked contrast to Prentice’s public-school flamboyance. Both had done long spells in Poland. Everyone knew Prentice gambled, drank too much, but for as long as he continued to come up with good product, Fielding turned a blind eye. Denton knew a part of him envied Prentice. He was still out there in the field, where agents belonged, while he himself had chosen to climb Legoland’s greasy pole.

  He walked to the door, leaving Fielding in preoccupied silence. Not for the first time in his career, Denton felt that he had merely confirmed information already known to his Chief rather than told him something new. It was in such moments that he felt destined to be a deputy, one of life’s permanent number twos. He glanced back at Fielding, pacing his spacious office, and closed the door with more force than was necessary.

  Fielding didn’t like to exclude Denton from anything, but sometimes it was unavoidable. The thoughts in his head were forming too fast to share even with his loyal deputy, the implications backing up like a restless queue. He went back to his desk, opened a drawer and removed a file on Nikolai Primakov.

  31

  The next time Marchant woke, it was to the sound of a Russian voice, talking on a mobile phone on the terrace outside his room. Marchant’s Russian was rusty, but good enough to understand what was being said.

  ‘Yes, he’s here.’ A woman’s voice, not Meena’s. ‘Still sleeping.’ He could see her outline through the net curtain, turning towards him, holding something in her hand, a photo perhaps. ‘The American woman’s gone, left yesterday…He’s a little under the weather, but it’s incredible, he looks just like his father.’

  Marchant tried to rouse himself, but he couldn’t even turn over. It was as if he was lying in thick treacle, the sort his father used to pour over sponge puddings on those rare occasions when they spent Christmas in Britain, at the family home in the Cotswolds. It was his father’s only contribution in the kitchen. He stared at the lace curtain, billowing gently in the breeze, and tried to work out where he was, who the woman might be, why he didn’t care. His mouth wasn’t hurting any more, but he couldn’t distinguish one part of his body from another. A numbness had cocooned him. He looks just like his father — the words floated around his medicated head until he drifted back to sleep again.

  ‘Marchant’s got a babysitter,’ Prentice said, grinding a cigarette into the dusty ground outside the roadside bar with his heel. The pine trees were shading him from the hot Sardinian sun, their roots pushing up through the dry soil, moulding it like a plasticine map of mountainous terrain. He had taken a walk out of the resort’s gates and down to a collection of shops eight hundred yards along the straight main road. The only shop that was open was a deserted supermarket, where he had bought two bottles of chilled Prosecco, a packet of Marlboro cigarettes and too many Lotto tickets. Next door was a closed fishmongers and an empty bar, run by a woman in a short skirt whose red-lined eyes and swollen stomach suggested she drank more beer than she served.

  ‘She’s called Lakshmi Meena,’ Fielding said, getting up from his desk in Legoland.

  ‘Not unless she’s dyed her fanny hair.’

  Fielding knew Prentice was trying to shock him. He had a habit of being crude at inappropriate moments. Perhaps it was a reaction against his own proper background, or frustration at never having taken to the stage. Like so many agents Fielding knew, Prentice was a natural actor, the office joker who could mimic everyone in authority. (Fielding had once overheard Prentice’s impression of his own voice: a combination of camp archbishop and repressed Eton housemaster.) Give or take a few venial sins, he was also one of the best agents he had in the field.

  ‘Oh yes, and she’s speaking Russian.’ Prentice winked at a small boy who had appeared at the end of the bar, legs crossed, one hand in his mouth, the other tugging at his mother’s nylon skirt. Prentice turned his back and walked away from the bar, cutting across the scrubland that lay between the shops and the main highway to Cagliari. He stepped carefully over the pine roots as he went. Despite the dust, his polished yard boots glistened in the high sun.

  ‘Is she on her own?’ Fielding asked, surprised at the speed of events in Sardinia.

  ‘She checked in to a double room, near Marchant’s. On the beach. Two sets of flip-flops outside the door, couple of towels. Husband-and-wife cover.’

  ‘But you haven’t seen the husband yet?’

  ‘I only reached here last night. What do you want me to do? Get him out of here? She’s a swallow, sent to seduce him.’

  ‘And Meena’s definitely gone?’

  ‘Checked out yesterday.’

  ‘A little too hasty, no?’

  ‘We met at the airport. She was embarrassed. Told me Marchant’s room number, the medication he was on, then buggered off. Marchant’s a sitting duck if the Russians want to compromise him.’

  ‘They probably have already.’

  32

  The woman made no effort to cover herself as she stepped from the shower, walked across the bathroom and removed a towel from the radiator. She tilted her head, drying her blonde, shoulder-length hair as she looked over at the bed and smiled. Marchant wondered if she had been waiting for him to open his eyes. Her actions had a rehearsed choreography about them, more subtle than a porn star’s but no less calculated.

  He knew before she began to speak that it was the same woman who had been sitting on the terrace earlier, whenever that might have been. Bells were ringing so loudly in his head that he thought, for a moment, that they were the reason he had woken. He hoped that something visceral in his sleeping state had raised the alarm. An uninvited Russian woman in his hotel room was about as bad as it could get for an MI6 field agent, the sort of scenario they taught on day one at the Fort.

  If the implications weren’t so serious, his situation was almost funny. Textbook honeytrap, perfected in the 1960s, fell out of fashion after the Cold War, seemingly back with a vengeance. A British diplomat had recently been fired after he was filmed by the FSB with a couple of Russian tarts in a hotel room.

  His head was clearer now, but he couldn’t be sure how long he had been lying in bed. Several days, at least. Where was Lakshmi Meena? Why had no one from London been to visit him? Hadn’t she said that MI6 knew where he was? And what was a naked woman doing in his bathroom?

  He propped himself up in bed and took in his surroundings, tried to order random memories. He was in Sardinia, brought here by Meena after the Americans had handed him over to Abdul Aziz. He touched his mouth again, which was less swollen. He looks just like his father.

  ‘You’ve been sleeping for three days,’ the woman said. Her English was good, but there was no disguising the Russian mother tongue that thickened her cadences. She was standing in the doorway now, between the bathroom and the bedroom. Her shoulders were broad, like a swimmer’s, her breasts high and firm. Marchant estimated she was in her early thirties. Despite himself, he began to stir. Her pubic hair was tidy, trimmed rather than shaved, its soft brownness framed by tanned thighs.

  ‘I tell you this because I know how much the British men like to be in control,’ she smiled, glancing at the sheet covering Marchant. ‘On top of things.’

  For a moment, Marchant felt pity for her, the wooden lines spoken with all the conviction of a hard-up lap dancer. But something about the way she moved across the hotel room and picked up a hair dryer made Marchant’s hands begin to sweat. And it wasn’t because of any desire she might have roused. Despite the air of a performance, her manner had a lover’s familiarity, an easiness born of intimacy. Instinctively, he felt about on the sheet next to him, trying to be discreet. It was damp.

  ‘Please, put something on,’ he said. More memories, scent, taste. ‘A dressing go
wn, clothes, anything.’

  ‘Clothes? It’s 40 degrees outside and you want me to put something on? Relax. You’re on holiday.’ She was sitting now, one leg tucked under her, head tilted, hair dryer in hand.

  ‘Where’s Lakshmi Meena?’

  ‘You ask too many questions. Please, try some of this.’

  She picked up a plate piled high with watermelon and walked over to him, placing it beside the bed. Then she slid a piece into her mouth, holding it carefully between thumb and finger. A small trickle of juice escaped from her lips as she crushed the fruit. She gathered it in with her tongue, which lingered a moment longer than was necessary.

  ‘Do you know why Russian men like watermelon so much?’ she asked. Marchant had sat up now, careful to cover himself with a sheet.

  ‘I need you to leave,’ he said, strength returning to his voice, his body. More memories: Morocco, the mountains, Nye strelai. The woman might have some information on Dhar, but he wasn’t in control. He needed time to think, rid his head of the drugs he must have been given with his morphine, work out how to play the hand in front of him, but she held all the cards. ‘Ten minutes. Some time to wash, freshen up. Recharge.’ He managed to garnish the last word with a twist of innuendo.

  ‘Of course. I’ll go to the beach. Join me in the restaurant when you’re ready. I’m Nadia, by the way.’

  He watched her walk over to a wardrobe and put on a black bikini. The bottom was decent enough at the front, but hardly covered her buttocks. Again, she knew she was being observed, which annoyed Marchant, who turned away when she catwalked towards the sliding glass doors. As she started to close them behind her, she leaned back into the room.