Games Traitors Play dm-2 Page 23

  All Marchant had to do now was monitor the blogs and chatrooms. He had left Legoland early, and was sitting in an Internet café near Victoria Station, waiting for the first comments to be posted. The photos would follow, uploaded by twitchers who had spotted a very different flying visitor from Russia. At least, that was the plan.

  By Marchant’s calculation, the two MiG-35s would be entering the UK’s Air Defence Identification Zone in thirty seconds. The Remote Radar Heads at Benbecula and Saxa Vord would already have picked them up, and the Norwegian air force would have tracked and shadowed their progress across the North Sea, alerting NATO allies along their projected flightpath. The order to scramble Typhoons from RAF Leuchars would only be given when the planes entered Britain’s ADIZ — and if the Recognised Air Picture ever reached Air Command at High Wycombe, something that Marchant hoped Myers was about to prevent.

  He looked at his watch again, and then his mobile rang. It was Myers, unbearably nervous, calling from an unknown mobile number.

  ‘It’s done,’ he said. ‘You’ve got two minutes.’

  78

  Thirty thousand feet above a roiling sea, two MiG-35s turned sharply to the south, their cockpits winking in the evening sun. As they began their descent towards the waves far below, both pilots knew that they were taking an unprecedented gamble, but they had been assured their presence would not attract the usual RAF escort. So far they had been left alone, apart from requests for identification from commercial air-traffic control on the ‘guard’ frequency, which they routinely ignored, a brief visit from two Norwegian F-16s, and a mid-air rendezvous with an Ilyushin IL-78 refuelling tanker.

  At 1,500 feet they levelled out and took another, far graver risk. Within the next five seconds they would be entering Britain’s national air space, where they could be legitimately shot down. They set a course for Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, twelve nautical miles away. Then, after wishing each other luck, both pilots hit their afterburners and accelerated to Mach 1.

  In Alnwick, on the other side of the country, the Aerospace Battle Manager on duty at RAF Boulmer froze as he watched the two primary traces on his radar. The Russians were ten miles off the north-west coast, and closing. He had already rung through to Air Command at High Wycombe when the planes first entered the UK’s ADIZ, picked up by the radar head at Benbecula off North Uist, but his was a lone voice. The Russians weren’t showing up on Air Command’s real-time Recognised Air Picture for the sector. On his word, High Wycombe had brought two Typhoon crews at RAF Leuchars to cockpit readiness, but they were reluctant to scramble them until they had more concrete data.

  ‘The skies above the Outer Hebrides are showing clear,’ his opposite number had insisted.

  Clear? He smacked the side of his radar screen in frustration. What the hell was going on? A terrorist strike? Two pilots trying to defect? It didn’t make any sense. He was used to long-range Russian bombers — most recently a TU160 Blackjack — keeping him busy on their eleven-hour flights around the Arctic. Usually, they would head for the North Pole and then hang a left just outside the Scandie’s ADIZ radar coverage and head down between Greenland and Iceland, skirting Britain’s ADIZ.

  Both sides knew the game. The Russian pilots liked to test the range of Britain’s radars at Saxa Vord, Benbecula and Buchan, waiting for a response, which would often be intentionally delayed to confuse them. Moscow was also keen to measure the Quick Reaction Alert Force’s response, and the RAF was happy for the practice, shaving a few seconds off every time. There was no real animosity. (On one infamous occasion, an RAF pilot had held up a Page 3 girl in the cockpit, prompting his Russian counterpart to moon from a window of his bomber in response.)

  But this time was different.

  79

  ‘Any sight of the Sibe?’ a birder in a bobble hat asked no one in particular. The men, more than fifty of them, and a handful of women, were standing in the evening light on a cliff in Stornoway, looking down across Broad Bay, where a group of seabirds were riding on the water. Some of the birders were using digiscopes mounted on tripods, others were looking through telescopes. All had binoculars — Zeiss, Swarovksi, Leica, Opticron. Marchant had given a precise grid reference of where the bird had last been seen, knowing that the modern twitcher’s armoury also included hand-held GPS units.

  ‘Not a squawk,’ someone else said. ‘Time to dip out. They’re all common eiders.’

  ‘And no sign of the stringer who phoned in the sighting.’

  ‘I saw someone earlier with a nine iron.’

  ‘The closest we’re going to get to a Steller is in the pub. Anyone coming?’

  ‘Hold on,’ an older man said, adjusting his binoculars.

  ‘What are you seeing?’

  ‘Christ. To the right of the big rock, two o’clock.’

  As one, the group of birders raised their magnified gazes out to sea.

  ‘What the — ’

  Three seconds later, the two MiG-35s swept in low over their heads, forcing the group to duck and cover their ears. A couple of them remained upright, taking photos as the planes disappeared into the distance.

  ‘No sign of any Steller’s eiders, but we’ve just been buzzed by another Sibe — a brace of MiG-35s!! Beautiful-looking birds, particularly in supersonic flight. Take a butcher’s at the photos below if you don’t believe me.’

  Marchant read the chatroom message, smiled and sat back, glancing around the Internet café in Victoria. On his walk over from Vauxhall he had been aware of a tail, possibly two, but he had no desire to shake them off. He thought at first that they were Russian, but then began to think they were American: the dispatch cyclist, the woman at the back of the 436 bendy bus, a tourist taking photos on the north towpath. Either way, they were too thorough to be Moroccan, and it would have taken hours to lose them. Besides, their presence was reassuring, evidence he was attracting attention, arousing suspicion.

  He wasn’t sure if it was the Bombardier he had drunk at the Morpeth Arms on the way, or a sense of professional satisfaction, but he felt a wave of happiness pass through him as he stared at the photograph on the computer screen. It was a good one, visual proof that he had done what had been asked of him. He was tempted to intervene, but he knew that he should let the web take its own viral course. The pilots would already have reported back, and Primakov would be relieved that he had passed his final test.

  Then he thought again about the doubters in Moscow. According to Fielding, Primakov’s superiors would be analysing his every move. If they had been listening in on his last fateful meeting with Prentice, they would know he was about to resign. But had they heard? And was that enough? An MI6 agent on the eve of defection would be keen to embarrass the Service as much as possible. Marchant didn’t know how or when Primakov intended to exfiltrate him, just that it would happen quickly. Primakov had promised a heads-up if he could manage it. Marchant realised how impatient he had become, how keen he was to meet with Dhar, talk about their father. The waiting game had gone on long enough.

  He sat forward, copied the image of the MiGs and attached it to an email. Then he sent it to as many news desks as he could remember from his brief stint with I/OPS, writing ‘MiG-35s over Scotland’ in the subject box. He wasn’t as careful as he would normally be on the Internet, but that was the point. He wanted to force Primakov’s hand, get himself out of the country as soon as possible. Dhar wouldn’t wait for him for ever.

  After he was done, he glanced at his watch. Lakshmi had asked him on a date. The invitation bore all the hallmarks of a trap, but he had to go. He hadn’t seen her since the Madurai débâcle. He just hoped nobody would get hurt.

  80

  Fielding stood at the window of his office and looked towards Westminster. A tugboat was towing a string of refuse barges down-river. He knew it was a gamble, but he couldn’t afford anyone to suspect that Marchant’s actions, whatever he was up to, had been sanctioned by him. If the Russians detected Fielding’s touch on the tiller, h
owever light, they would never let Marchant meet Dhar. And that remained the most important thing. Fielding was convinced that only Marchant could stop the jihad that was soon to be unleashed on Britain.

  He had wanted to talk to Myers more, discover what he had been asked to do, just as he had wanted to ask Marchant about the test that Primakov had set him. But he couldn’t. He didn’t trust himself. If Marchant or Myers had told him, he feared a part of him would have demanded action: a visceral response honed over thirty-five years of public duty. That was what he did, why he had signed up. There was also the very real possibility that there might be other Hugo Prentices in the Service, listening in, reporting back to Moscow.

  Instead, he had put his faith in Marchant, trusted him to defect responsibly and in isolation. He wasn’t sure why he trusted anyone any more. He had relied on Prentice too much since Stephen Marchant’s departure and death. In some ways, his old friend had been a hopeless choice of ally. Prentice had never been interested in fighting Foreign Office battles or playing Legoland politics. But it was what he represented that had appealed to Fielding: an old-fashioned field man who had repeatedly turned down promotion in favour of gathering intelligence. Prentice had been immune to legal guidelines on human rights, tedious departmental circulars on personal-development needs, blue-sky meetings and resource planning. Mistresses had appealed more than marriage, rented digs more than mortgages. He had just wanted to get on with his job. Nothing more, nothing less. Except that it hadn’t been as simple as that.

  ‘Ian for you,’ Ann Norman said over the intercom.

  The next moment, Ian Denton was standing in the middle of Fielding’s office, looking a new man.

  ‘Good news and bad news,’ his deputy said, louder than usual. ‘All our old SovBloc networks appear to be intact. Out of some perverse sense of loyalty, Prentice only seems to have burned Polish agents.’

  Everyone knew that Denton had never liked Prentice.

  ‘He did it for the money, Ian, not to skewer us,’ he said, unsure why he was defending Prentice. But Denton’s triumphant tone was irritating. He preferred his deputy when he was bitter and quiet.

  ‘Does that make it any better?’

  ‘Less personal. The bad news?’ Fielding knew it would be Marchant. His line manager had filed a formal complaint about him earlier in the day, citing poor hours and a disruptive attitude. HR had added a note on his file asking if Marchant was drinking again. All was going to plan.

  ‘We’re getting word of a major security incident in the Outer Hebrides. The JIC is being convened, and we’re being blamed. Oh yes, and Spiro’s back.’

  81

  ‘Your brother has excelled himself,’ Primakov said, walking around the bare hangar at Kotlas that had been Dhar’s home for the past month. ‘Do you not want for any more comforts?’

  ‘I have all that I need,’ Dhar said dispassionately. He was sitting at a bare wooden table, a copy of the Koran open in front of him. The austerity made Primakov crave a drink, a nip of whisky, but he had learned not to offend Dhar on the few occasions they had been alone together.

  ‘He has proved that it is too easy to penetrate British airspace. You will have no problems.’

  ‘Won’t they be more alert now?’

  ‘If Marchant can knock out the system once, it can be done again.’

  ‘When is he arriving?’

  ‘We will lift him tonight. The Americans are closing in on him.’

  ‘And you are sure?’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘About Daniel Marchant.’

  Sometimes, Primakov found Dhar’s stare too chilling. He looked away, out of the window, steeling himself, then turned back to face him, hands clutched tightly behind his back.

  ‘Your brother is ready.’

  82

  In normal circumstances, Fielding would have objected to the presence of James Spiro at the Joint Intelligence Committee table, but their relationship was now one of delicate expedience. Spiro had been useful in Madurai, unknowingly helping to build up Marchant’s credentials for defection. In return, Fielding had agreed with the DCIA to drop British opposition to Spiro’s rehabilitation. He had been suspended from his position as head of Clandestine, Europe, but was now back at his desk at the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square.

  Everyone knew Spiro had messed up over the drone strike, but the truth was that the CIA needed people like him, and they didn’t have anyone to replace him with. What Spiro didn’t know, as he addressed the meeting in tones of barely disguised vindication, was that he was still dancing to Fielding’s tune.

  ‘I’m sorry to do this to you again, Marcus, but Daniel Marchant has got a lot of questions to answer.’ Fielding had to admire Spiro’s resilience. A few weeks earlier, he had been sitting at the same spot at the table, his career in tatters, listening to Paul Myers humiliate him.

  ‘Are you saying that Marchant in some way facilitated the breach of airspace?’ the chairman of the JIC, Sir David Chadwick, said, looking across at Fielding.

  ‘“Facilitated” is one way of putting it,’ said Spiro. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me if he was standing on the shores of Stornoway with a couple of paddles and a fluorescent jacket, instructing the MiGs where to taxi.’

  A chuckle rippled through Sir David’s jowls, then he checked himself when he realised that no one else was laughing. He was an odious chairman, Fielding thought, obsequious in the extreme, always looking to see where the real power lay. Not so long ago, Spiro had been trying to frame him in a child-porn sting. Now he was cosying up to the Americans again.

  ‘These are serious allegations,’ Fielding said. ‘Sorry to sound so old-school, but do we have any evidence?’

  ‘I appreciate that this is the last thing you need, after the Prentice affair,’ Spiro said, hoping to pile on the public embarrassment. Although he owed his own rehabilitation to Fielding, he couldn’t resist the moment. There was too much history between the two of them, their respective organisations. ‘One Soviet mole could be construed as careless. But two…’

  ‘The evidence, please,’ Sir David said, convincing no one with his attempt at neutrality.

  ‘Where do we start?’ Spiro asked, shuffling some papers and photos in front of him. ‘The covert meeting with Nikolai Primakov in central London?’ He waved a couple of photos in the air, one of Marchant entering Goodman’s restaurant, the other of Primakov.

  ‘“Covert” might be pushing it,’ Fielding said. ‘I seem to remember the dinner — sanctioned by me — took place at a well-known Russian restaurant in the middle of Mayfair. We were listening.’

  ‘So were we,’ said Spiro, ‘until the Russians jammed the entire area. Must have been quite an important meeting. Then we have Madurai, south India. After we took Dhar’s mother off your hands, Marchant hitched a ride back into town with — guess who? — one Nikolai Primakov.’

  He waved another surveillance photo in the air. ‘I’m not sure I want to ask why Marchant’s meetings with Primakov, former director of K Branch, KGB and now high-ranking member of the SVR, were sanctioned by MI6, so let’s not go into that here. It kind of brings back bad memories when you discover Primakov had been good friends with Marchant’s father. Of more interest to today’s meeting is what Marchant was doing in an Internet café yesterday — after knocking off work early and dropping in for a warm beer or three at his favourite pub — forwarding photos of the MIG-35s to various national newspapers.’

  Another sheaf of documents was waved in the air, this time press cuttings, as a murmur went around the room. Fielding was conscious that all eyes were on him now, but he had read the cuts in the car into work, smiled at the quotes from the twitchers. He was a bit of a birder himself, when he had the time, although these days he was reduced to spotting oystercatchers on the bank of the Thames below his office window.

  ‘He used an anonymous Gmail account,’ continued Spiro, ‘but our people at Fort Meade narrowed the IP address down to three Internet cafés in Victoria. They nee
dn’t have bothered. All emails leaving that particular café go out with marketing headers and footers — unless you switch them off, which Marchant failed to do. I don’t know how much evidence you need, Marcus, but we have photos of him entering the café five minutes before the anonymous emails were sent out.’

  Fielding didn’t reply. Instead, he was thinking of Marchant, the intentional trail he was leaving. Primakov must be close to exfiltrating him. According to the UK Border Agency, the Russian had left on a flight to Moscow earlier in the day, which Fielding took as a good sign. Marchant had been smart to attract the attention of the Americans: it was the easiest way to reassure Moscow Centre that it had the right man, that he was ready to defect, keen to meet Dhar. But it was a risk if the Americans got to him first. He hoped Marchant had his timing right.

  ‘Marcus?’

  ‘Let’s bring him in,’ Fielding said. He had no choice. He must be seen to be hard on Marchant.

  ‘I kinda hoped you’d say that,’ said Spiro. ‘He’s with Lakshmi Meena as we speak. Having yet another drink. She’s ready when we are. I just thought that, you know, in the interests of resetting our special relationship, I should inform you first.’

  Spiro looked around the table. His eye was caught by Harriet Armstrong.

  ‘Would you like us to handle Marchant?’ she asked. Fielding turned away. It was an unusual offer, a blatant challenge to MI6 that had all the hallmarks of their old turf wars. She was also reaching out to Spiro, a man she had once admired before she had fallen out of love with America. Fielding knew that she had felt increasingly sidelined by Six, but he was still surprised by the move.

  ‘That’s kind of you, Harriet,’ Spiro said. ‘And unexpected. I appreciate it. But I think, if it’s OK with the assembled, this has now been upgraded to a NATO Air Policing Area 1 issue. And as such, we’d like to take care of it.’