Dirty Little Secret Read online

  The staff rolled a stretcher in and laid her down on it. They worked with quiet professionalism, and were more optimistic than he was as they took her away to the Emergency Room. He knew it was too late, but they would do all they could to try to revive her. He explained to the duty nurse that his friend had been shot in the stomach, and she told him he would have to stay in the waiting area until the police arrived.

  That was all he could do for Lakshmi. The moment the nurse turned her back, he was out the doors and walking back through the rain to the Golf. It didn’t feel right to leave her behind, but he had already said his goodbyes. He sat at the wheel for a moment, breathing deeply, watching the condensation form on the inside of the windscreen.

  He felt less strongly about her death, now the seat beside him was empty. The only trace of her was a bloodstain on the upholstery. She had chosen her country above what might have existed between them. He had chosen his. And yet, they had both acted with a knowingness of each other’s position, a mutual respect, an acknowledgement that this was the only way it could be.

  The intelligence services had long been a magnet for patriots, but he had never seen himself as one, not overtly, like his father. The same was true for her. Circumstances had drawn it out of them. Perhaps it had something to do with being abroad, seeing your country from afar, in a wider context. The reports of Britain in flames had gone to his core, reminding him why he had joined MI6, why he was now spending so much time trying to turn Dhar. And her patriotism had been stirred by the thought of Dhar being free to attack America once again.

  His phone buzzed twice before he was aware of it ringing. The only person who had this number was Paul Myers, but it wasn’t him, unless he was calling from a different phone. He thought of not answering, but decided to take the call on the hands-free given to him by Myers.

  ‘We don’t have long,’ a distorted voice said. Marchant wondered if his modulator was playing up, and adjusted the headphones.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘The Vicar.’

  85

  Myers didn’t know where he was, but it was within an hour’s radius of his flat by car. He had focused on the geography of his journey, the time spent blindfolded, as he tried to work out what was happening to him. The two men who had come to his flat had explained that they wanted to take him for a routine security check, but he feared the worst when they showed him into the back of a car with darkened windows. For a brief, unrealistic moment he had thought about running, but he was overweight and unfit. And he was still hurting from the bomb blast of a week earlier.

  No one had been rough with him. Not yet. There had been no intimidation or threats of violence, but he was still more scared than he could ever remember being. At school the bullies had always masked their initial approach with a veneer of kindness, luring the fat boy into dark corners with smiles and false sympathy. It was the not knowing that unnerved him. No one had said a word since he had got into the car. His questions went unanswered, his pleadings ignored. Then they gagged him.

  All he knew was that he was now sitting on a plastic chair in what felt like an aircraft hangar. He couldn’t be sure, because he was still blindfolded, but the acoustics suggested a high roof. He had also heard the sound of an aircraft taking off close by. At one point he had caught an American accent. Perhaps he had been drugged and was in Afghanistan, Bagram. They did that on TV, took people to the scenes of crimes to jog their memories. Was he about to be shown the blast hole in the perimeter wall through which Dhar had escaped? Forced to confront the consequences of his actions?

  He told himself to stay calm. They weren’t going to hurt him. His hands and arms were tied, but he was sure he hadn’t left the country. He was still in Britain, where they didn’t do torture. He just wished someone would remove the blindfold. If they started to play rough, he had already decided that he would tell them everything: the Revolutionary Guard intercept, Marchant’s interest in Dhar’s escape, the voice modulator he had given him. There was nothing in it for him any more. He had helped Marchant enough over the past few years, and their friendship had proved more trouble than it was worth.

  ‘It’s Paul, isn’t it?’

  Myers jumped. He had assumed he was alone. The voice sounded close to him. It was also familiar. He was good on regional accents, global as well as local, even better at people’s attempts to conceal them.

  He tried to reply, but a noise came out instead, as if the gag was still in his mouth, although it had been removed a few minutes earlier. Instinctively, he moved his jaws and licked his lips.

  ‘I hope you’re not uncomfortable,’ the voice went on. He knew who it was now. Ian Denton, the new Chief of MI6, born and bred in Hull – on the eastern side of the city, if he had to be more specific about the accent. ‘The blindfold is nothing sinister, just a security precaution. Someone will untie you in a moment.’

  ‘Why am I here?’ Myers asked.

  ‘You won’t be for very long if you answer a few routine questions.’

  When did ‘routine’ become such a dreaded word? Myers wondered. Routine questions, routine tests. Used by police or doctors, it presumed guilt rather than innocence, sickness rather than health.

  ‘About what? Why have I been brought here?’

  ‘Daniel Marchant – you know him, don’t you? Good mates.’

  Myers paused. It was time to cut Marchant free, save himself. ‘Not any more,’ would be the sensible answer. Denton clearly knew they had once been allies. ‘Not any more,’ he repeated to himself.

  ‘Are you friends with him?’ Denton asked again.

  ‘Yes.’

  Myers swallowed and saw himself at a distance, from across the hangar, or wherever he was.

  ‘Do you know where he is now?’ Myers wanted to scream, ‘Tell him everything!’ – but the fat boy couldn’t hear him.

  ‘Fort Monckton?’ he offered. ‘I haven’t heard from him for a while.’

  ‘So you didn’t tell him about the Revolutionary Guard intercept you made the other day? Didn’t tell anyone, in fact.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ If Myers ever made it back to his flat, he would do something about the keystroke-logging software. Denton must have accessed data security at GCHQ, followed the trail back to his terminal.

  ‘The intercept that, if it had been pooled with the appropriate directorates and properly analysed, would have given warning of an Iranian-backed assault by the Taleban on Bagram Air Base?’

  Myers kept silent, trying to work out why he was being loyal to Marchant. Up until now, he had never had any issues with Denton, but if a choice had to be made between him and Marchant, he would side with his old friend every time. That much he knew. And hadn’t Marchant said it would all be worth it? He had always shared Marchant’s distrust of America, and they had once – improbably – loved the same woman, Leila, which should have made them enemies but had brought them closer. If his reluctance to betray Marchant constituted bravery, the motive was overrated. He wanted to throw up.

  ‘Perhaps I’m being unfair,’ Denton continued. ‘You did pool it, just a day later than you should have done. When it was too late.’

  ‘I haven’t been so well recently. I was caught up in the –’

  ‘I know what happened. The bomb dropped on GCHQ nearly killed you. As I recall, your mate Daniel Marchant was in the cockpit. Who needs enemies?’

  ‘I didn’t realise the significance of the intercept,’ Myers said. ‘Not at first. I was working in real time. A lot of the CX is analysed later. When I heard about the jailbreak, I went back over the intercept and pooled it, thinking it might be helpful.’

  ‘Come on, Paul. You’re one of the best Farsi analysts Cheltenham’s ever had, and you didn’t realise the significance of heightened Revolutionary Guard activity on the Iran–Afghanistan border?’

  ‘Not in real time, no. The exchange was heavily coded.’

  ‘The truth is, you deliberately withheld it. At the reques
t of Marchant.’

  ‘The desk is very overstretched. Sometimes we all miss things. It’s human nature. We’ve got more Farsi speakers than the Americans, but we’re still short-staffed. Everyone is, even Mossad.’

  ‘I’m going to ask you this one last time, Paul. Then it’s out of my hands. Did you tell Daniel Marchant about the Revolutionary Guard intercept? And did he ask you to delay pooling it?’

  Myers paused before he spoke, his voice more defiant than he expected. ‘No.’

  ‘Untie him,’ Denton said, as if he was a director suddenly calling ‘Cut’ on a scene. All around him, Myers heard activity, people moving, papers being shuffled. He exhaled loudly, letting out an involuntary whistle of relief, but then Denton spoke again. ‘Then strip him naked.’

  86

  It was twenty-four hours since Salim Dhar had reacted to the hornet sting in Bagram detention facility. His face was still swollen, but his breathing was easier, and it felt as if his body was slowly reclaiming its original shape. He had been seen by two doctors since arriving in Iran. The small medical room he was in now was clean and comfortable, and the only evidence that he wasn’t a regular patient was the silhouette of two armed guards standing outside the door.

  The doctor who had just visited him refused to answer any of Dhar’s questions, unless they concerned his medical condition. He had appeared frightened, and shook his head silently when Dhar asked him their exact location. All he would confirm was that they were somewhere in Iran. There was something about the windowless room, though, that made Dhar feel sick. It was almost as if it was swaying. He put it down to his heavy medication.

  Dhar couldn’t remember how he had been extracted from Bagram, or anything about the journey to this place. His last memory was of being stung in his cell, and looking up to see the green eyes of the local Afghani who had brought him his near-fatal meal. It seemed he had been right to trust him, although it had been a dangerous decision to induce an anaphylactic shock. Both doctors had confirmed that the sting had been intentional.

  The Iranians had clearly done their homework. Dhar had only once spoken of his fear of insects, at a training camp in Kashmir, dating it back to a hornet sting that had nearly killed him as a child in Delhi. The information must somehow have found its way to Ali Mousavi and the Revolutionary Guard.

  Dhar felt around on the bed for the TV remote and clicked on the screen in the corner of the room. He had tried to watch it earlier, but had felt too tired. After flicking through some local channels, he found a news programme. It was carrying a report on Britain, where the authorities were still investigating a series of terrorist attacks on critical national infrastructure. He tried to concentrate, but found it difficult. His medication made him drowsy. Drifting in and out of sleep, he managed to establish in his mind which UK cells might be responsible.

  Later, the programme switched to Afghanistan, and an attack on the hospital at Bagram Air Base. There was no mention of his escape. It wouldn’t suit either the Americans or the Iranians to make his disappearance public.

  ‘How are you feeling? I’ve brought you a small gift.’

  Dhar looked up to see Ali Mousavi enter the room, accompanied by an armed guard, who hung back at the door. Mousavi beckoned to the man and he came forward awkwardly, holding a large plastic bowl of apricots. He placed it on Dhar’s bedside table, watched by a beaming Mousavi.

  Dhar didn’t say anything. He wasn’t sure he could speak. Instead he raised one arm in acknowledgement, bending it at the elbow.

  ‘The doctors tell me you will be better within the week,’ Mousavi continued, gesturing for the other man to leave. Dhar hadn’t seen Mousavi in uniform before. He usually wore sharp, Western-looking suits, and he spoke impeccable English with a hint of an American accent. Despite these shortcomings, Dhar liked him. They had worked well together in the past, perhaps because Mousavi wasn’t a typical military man. To look at, he had the appearance of a well-groomed newsreader, tall, with a trim moustache and soft skin. Dhar had always remembered his hands, which were smooth like a woman’s: thin, effete fingers, perfectly manicured nails.

  Mousavi’s background was in academia. He had studied abroad before beginning a second career in VEVAK, Iran’s internal security agency, and then the Revolutionary Guard. A period of study in America had committed him to removing the Great Satan’s stranglehold on the world. And he was intelligent enough to know how to do it. Nobody knew more about the theories of asymmetric warfare than Mousavi. Iran didn’t possess the firepower of its adversaries, but there were other ways to defeat an enemy.

  ‘Our men did well,’ Mousavi said. ‘The Zionists are too embarrassed to tell the world you have escaped.’

  Dhar tried to smile, but the effort hurt, creasing his heavily creamed face. The room began to sway again, and he wanted to ask Mousavi where he was. But when he tried to speak, no words came, just a pain at the back of his throat.

  ‘I was planning to come tomorrow, when the doctors tell me you will be feeling stronger, but I had to see you with my own eyes.’ Mousavi paused. Dhar could see that he was embarrassed, not used to his sentences tailing off into silence. His manner was more suited to coffee-house badinage. Dhar lifted his arm again, to give him encouragement.

  ‘I also have something else I must share with you. It seems we have an ally on the inside, at the heart of British intelligence. According to one of our assets in the UK, somebody at GCHQ managed to listen in to a conversation when we were planning the attack on Bagram. The analyst heard important operational details, but chose to tell no one until afterwards. It may have been an oversight, but it seems the delay was deliberate. The analyst has been arrested. There is a chance that the mission to rescue you might have failed before it had started if this man had reported what he heard.’

  Dhar closed his eyes, feeling his blood pulse through his swollen eyelids. The room was no longer swaying. He hadn’t thought about Marchant since his arrival in Iran. The delay at GCHQ had all his hallmarks, getting someone else to do the dirty work.

  ‘Do you know who this person might be?’ Mousavi asked in a voice that suggested he knew already. Dhar would have sat up if he could. Instead, he tried to clear his thoughts, chase away the fog of medication. How much did the Iranians know about Marchant? They would be aware that the Englishman was his half-brother, and that he had been in the cockpit with him over Fairford. But they couldn’t know about the deal they had struck at Tarlton.

  As far as the Iranians were concerned, Marchant was on the run, suspected of treachery and sympathetic to Dhar and his anti-American views. Dhar would keep it that way. There was no need to tell Mousavi about the finer details of their pact, that Dhar had agreed to shield Britain as best he could from the global jihad.

  Dhar rocked his head from side to side. In time they would talk about Marchant, but not now.

  ‘Whoever this person is,’ Mousavi said, ‘we owe him a great debt of gratitude.’

  Dhar managed a smile, ignoring the pain in his lips. He would thank Marchant, in his own way and in accordance with their private arrangement. When he was stronger, he would send messages to Britain, halt the attacks. It was the least he could do in return for his freedom.

  87

  Marchant watched the fishermen on the sea wall in Essaouira as they gutted their catch. In the blue sky above, seagulls circled, swooping in to catch entrails as they were tossed into the air. The scene was equally chaotic below. Wooden handcarts laden with glistening fish – red snapper, sea bass, flounder and cartons of sardines arranged in neat lattice patterns – were being wheeled into the fish market to be auctioned off. Some would make it to the row of cafés around the corner, where tourists could choose fish from elaborate displays and eat them with chips on draughty benches.

  Marchant had walked past them earlier, escorted by a pushy waiter. ‘You want Jew fish?’ he had said. Apparently, salmon had been popular with Essaouira’s once-thriving Jewish population, before it had migrated to Israel in th
e early 1950s. ‘Maybe fish and chips? Better than Harry Ramsden’s.’

  It had been windy ever since he had arrived in the coastal town, sand blowing in from the Sahara. In the distance, Atlantic waves were bursting into bloom against the high city walls of the medina, while across the bay, kite-surfers soared into the sky. They seemed to defy gravity as they hung in mid-air, thirty feet above the waves. Marchant had learnt how to do it back in Britain, at Watergate Bay, on a weekend break from Fort Monckton. If circumstances had been different, he would have given it a go.

  Today, though, he had other things on his mind as he left the fish market and headed back up the narrow lanes towards his riad in the heart of the medina. Marchant liked this part of town, the rich mix of Arab and French cultures. It reminded him of happier days in Marrakech. The buildings were four storeys high, and the alleyways sometimes too narrow for the handcarts. Occasionally they would break out into sunlit squares, where old men sat on plastic chairs drinking coffee. At other times they took him further and further into the old part of town, a labyrinthine world where Berber workers ate lamb chops off smoky coals and Muslim women emerged from ancient hamams, faces glowing.

  ‘Schoof, schoof,’ someone urged as he passed a shop selling Djembe drums from Mali. ‘Look, look.’

  Marchant declined, moving through the crowds, always vigilant. To his left, a carpet-seller from the Sahara limped up and down outside his shopfront, a cigarette wobbling in his mouth. Occasionally he singled out a wealthy-looking tourist and asked him to venture inside to see his shop. ‘I am from Zagora. Only the best-quality rugs.’ Up on the right, a man was selling individual swigs of milk from a jug.

  Marchant had considered staying in his riad but he wanted to know if the Russians had tracked him to Morocco. He was confident they hadn’t. After leaving the hospital in Caen, he had driven fast to Orly airport, where Jean-Baptiste was waiting for him. He had given him the keys for the Golf and the Mehari, apologising for the damage to both, and explained that he feared Lakshmi was dead.