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  83

  Marchant knew his defences would drop if he had any more alcohol. Meena was looking more beautiful than he could remember, wearing the same embroidered Indian salwar that she had worn in Madurai. Her body language then had been diffident, hard to read. Tonight she was radiant, the mirrorwork on her neckline reflecting the candlelight, lightening her whole demeanour. He just wished they were meeting in different circumstances, where they could be true to themselves rather than to their employers’ agendas. The last time he had felt like this was when he had said goodbye to Monika at the Frederick Chopin airport in Warsaw, hoping that she would step out of her cover and into his life.

  ‘My mother used to read me a new tale every night,’ Meena was saying as they sat at the small bar in Andrew Edmunds, a restaurant in Lexington Street. Her mask was slipping too. Marchant stuck to his script, trying to stay sober behind the miasma of Scotch. Soon they would be moving from the bar to the cramped dining area, where the lines of sight were less good. In his current position he had a clear view of the main entrance and the door to the kitchen. Tonight he needed to see everyone who came in or out.

  ‘After each story, I would ask if Scheherazade had done enough, if King Shahryar would spare her,’ Meena continued. ‘I was more worried about her dying than anything else. And each time, the King let her live for another night. I was so relieved.’

  ‘And this all took place in Reston? In between trips to the mall?’

  Marchant had eaten a meal in Reston once, as part of a visit to the CIA’s headquarters down the road, in the days before the Agency had become too suspicious to allow him on campus. All he could remember was the piazza at the Reston Town Center, an open-air mall that had boasted Chipotle, Potbelly Sandwich Works and Clyde’s, where he had been taken for lunch by a gym-buffed field agent who swore by its steaks. It was strange to think of Meena living in such a sterile suburb in Virginia.

  ‘Our home was a little corner of India. At least, my bedroom was. Wall hangings, incense, my own pooja cupboard. Mom didn’t want me to forget.’

  Marchant signalled to the barman for another drink.

  ‘I don’t want to sound like your mom, but haven’t you had enough?’

  She was right. Marchant was at the very edge of what he could consume and still be able to react quickly when it happened. There were only a few more hours, maybe less, of playing the drunk. A coded text from Primakov had told him it would be sometime tonight. It wouldn’t be pretty. The American presence had made sure of that. He looked again around the small, candlelit room, scanning the punters. Someone had followed him to the restaurant, but he was confident that they were still outside.

  ‘I don’t blame you for Madurai,’ he said. ‘You had your orders.’

  ‘That didn’t make it any easier.’

  He wanted to ask if Shushma was OK, but he knew he couldn’t. It was better that he could still entertain the possibility that she was with Spiro. The thought of her in CIA custody, the genuine anger the thought stirred, was central to his imminent defection. It might even save his life when he finally met Dhar.

  ‘I’m going away,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve had enough.’

  ‘Of me?’

  Marchant managed a smirk. ‘Of the West.’

  ‘Was that why you helped to give the MiG breach so much publicity?’

  He struggled to conceal his surprise.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Dan, we met here tonight because I’ve got orders to bring you in.’

  ‘Spiro’s?’

  ‘With the Vicar’s blessing.’

  Marchant paused, weighing up the situation. He was pushing it to the limit, and hoped that Primakov would move soon. Meena knew how to look after herself, but he was still concerned for her. And for the first time he felt that she was being straight with him. He wished he could reciprocate, but he knew that he couldn’t, not yet.

  ‘Are you going to ask me to come quietly?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I’m not going to do anything.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘I just want you to tell me what’s really going on.’

  ‘You know I can’t do that.’

  ‘If you did, then maybe I’d know how best to help you.’

  Marchant studied her eyes, calculating the implications. She was speaking too freely to be wired, which made him believe her. ‘You really mean that, don’t you?’

  ‘I want to do one worthwhile thing while I’m still with the Agency, and I’m not sure bringing in a drunken MI6 agent with a penchant for rare Russian seabirds is what I had in mind.’

  ‘The Steller’s eider breeds in Alaska, too, you know.’

  ‘Spiro’s fallen for it, hasn’t he?’ Meena said, turning the wine-glass in her hand. ‘He’s seen you go off the rails, but he’s forgotten to ask why. Well, I know what makes a British MI6 agent try to be recruited by the Russians. Because he knows they have someone he desperately wants to meet. Fielding knows it too, which is why he asked Spiro and me to take Dhar’s mother away. You hated the West for that, didn’t you? And it made the Russians love you even more. That helicopter in Morocco — I know now that it was Russian. You were right all along. Tell me what I need to do, Dan. You’re the only person who can stop Dhar.’

  Marchant hesitated before speaking. ‘How many people have you got outside?’

  ‘Two vehicles, six people.’

  ‘Do you know any of them?’

  ‘Some, yes.’

  ‘Good friends of yours?’

  ‘Decent colleagues.’

  ‘Walk out into the street and tell them I’m leaving in five. Then go home. All of you.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I don’t want anyone to get hurt.’

  But he already knew it was too late. He heard the car before he saw it, a black Audi pulling up outside. Two men wearing balaclavas got out from the back and ran into the restaurant while a third stood by the front passenger door, a handgun aimed into the dark street.

  ‘Don’t touch her!’ Marchant shouted, as several diners screamed. The men grabbed him by both arms and frogmarched him out of the restaurant, barking orders at each other and at the diners, and waving a gun at Meena. The men were Russian, and it wasn’t subtle, just as he had predicted. A moment later, the shooting started. The third man fired down Lexington Street towards Shaftesbury Avenue, where a black SUV had stopped at a diagonal, blocking the road. As Marchant was bundled into the back of the car, he looked back at the restaurant. The front window had been shot out, and the noise of the screaming diners was sickening. There was no sign of Meena.

  84

  ‘It just makes us look like such a bunch of bloody fools,’ Harriet Armstrong said, declining Fielding’s offer of a chair in his office. ‘I’ve got Counter Terrorism Command demanding answers, and Jim Spiro can barely speak.’

  A quiet American, Fielding thought. He almost felt sorry for Armstrong, but her recent rapprochement with Spiro had extinguished any sympathy he might have had for her situation. Besides, there was very little he could say to mollify her. MI5 was a bunch of fools.

  ‘Much as I’d like to say that this was Marchant’s work, the facts are these,’ he said, steepling his fingers under his chin and sitting back. ‘One of my agents has been seized on the streets of London by what we think were officers of the SVR — ’

  ‘Come on, we know they were.’

  ‘- and I have urged the Prime Minister to protest in the strongest terms to the Russian Ambassador. Meanwhile, Six’s stations around the world are on heightened alert, and I hope that the same can be said for Britain’s ports, railways and airfields.’

  ‘What’s going on here, Marcus? Primakov was once one of ours.’

  ‘A fact that only a very few people are privy to.’ The last thing he needed was Armstrong spilling state secrets to Spiro.

  ‘I thought Marchant was being sent to see if Primakov could be ours again.’

  ‘He was.
But I should remind you that certain senior figures in the SVR — Vasilli Grushko, for example — were opposed to Primakov’s London posting from the start. They didn’t completely trust him. It’s no coincidence that Primakov left the country in a hurry this morning, and my guess is that seizing Marchant is the SVR’s consolation prize. Marchant will be interrogated about Primakov, who will no doubt shortly be charged with betraying the motherland.’

  Armstrong looked at him, weighing up what he said. She wasn’t convinced.

  ‘You don’t appear to be too concerned that one of your officers has just been taken by a hostile country.’

  ‘It’s not the first time, and I doubt it will be the last.’

  ‘America is not our enemy,’ Armstrong said, walking to the door.

  ‘It was when you and I were in India, fighting for what we believed in. Why are we suddenly being nice to Spiro again?’

  Armstrong paused by the door. ‘Because we’ve got no option, have we?’

  Fielding knew she was right. Britain needed America. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as we hear word of Marchant,’ he said. ‘We’re doing everything we can to find him.’

  He watched her leave. As with the best lies, there was a strong element of truth in what he had told her. Grushko had long had his doubts about Primakov, but he must have overcome them to sanction the operation in Soho. Such a brazen act on the streets of London could not have gone ahead without the consent of the SVR’s local Rezident. Which meant that Marchant was in. He had passed all the tests, and would soon be with Salim Dhar. Fielding just hoped that Dhar would believe in him too.

  85

  An alert officer at UK Passport Control at Heathrow had picked up Primakov’s hurried exit, but they had failed to spot Vasilli Grushko, who had also left Britain earlier in the day, travelling with false documents on a flight to Moscow. He was now standing in the hangar at Kotlas with Primakov and Marchant.

  ‘Welcome to Russia,’ Grushko said, looking out at the rain on the runway. He was a short, wiry man with rimless glasses and sallow skin, in stark contrast to Primakov’s rubicund presence. ‘Is it your first time?’ There was no warmth in his voice, nothing excessive about him at all, just a cold matter-of-factness that made Marchant wary.

  ‘Officially or unofficially?’ Marchant replied. His head was hurting from the alcohol of the night before, and the journey in an Illyushin cargo plane from Heathrow to Moscow, which he had spent curled up in a container. He had then been flown by an Antonov military transporter to Kotlas.

  ‘You must be tired after your flight,’ Primakov suggested, filling the awkward silence. ‘If it’s any consolation, my Aeroflot flight was no more comfortable. Your brother is out flying at the moment. Sleep now, and you will be ready to meet him.’

  ‘Just one thing,’ Marchant said. ‘Was the American woman hurt? In the restaurant?’

  ‘I am surprised by your concern,’ Primakov said, glancing at Grushko, his superior, who remained impassive.

  ‘She will shortly be leaving the Agency,’ Marchant added. ‘Disillusioned, like me.’

  ‘She is in hospital, a gunshot wound to the arm,’ Grushko said. ‘Our men were authorised to kill her if necessary, but she did not resist, and for some reason you asked for her to be spared.’

  ‘But she’ll be OK?’ Marchant asked, thinking back to the chaotic scene, his shout to protect Meena.

  ‘She’s fine,’ Primakov said. ‘She should be grateful for the injury. Her superiors are already a little surprised that she did not do more to stop you being taken. We will leave you now. You did well with the MiGs. Your brother was impressed. We all were.’

  Primakov turned to Grushko, hoping for some supportive words, but none came.

  ‘Do not step outside,’ Grushko warned. ‘The guards have orders to shoot.’

  Marchant had passed two armed guards standing by the side entrance to the hangar when he had arrived. After Grushko and Primakov had gone, he looked around the empty space. Some camouflage nets had been hung on one wall, otherwise there was little to soften the oppressive concrete surfaces. So this was where the world’s most wanted terrorist had been hiding, in a draughty hangar, surrounded by rain-soaked woodlands in a remote corner of a Russian military airfield in the Arkhangelsk oblast.

  He turned away from the large doors, and saw a curtained-off area at the far end of the building. He assumed it was where Dhar lived. A mattress and some bedding had been put in the opposite corner for Marchant, along with a towel, a bar of unwrapped soap and a change of clothes. It wasn’t exactly a defecting hero’s welcome.

  After washing in a bucket of lukewarm water that had been left by the side entrance, Marchant looked again at Dhar’s corner. Checking the door, he walked over and pulled back the curtain. There was a mattress and bedding on the floor, with a small wooden cargo crate beside it for a bedside table. A copy of the Koran lay shut, a letter inside it acting as a bookmark.

  He recognised the handwriting at once. Glancing at the door again, he picked up the Koran and slid the letter out. The paper was creased, and looked well read. It was from his father, written in the same hand and in exactly the same words as the one Primakov had given to him. For a moment, he wondered if it was a forgery, but he was sure it was his father’s hand.

  To Salim, the son I never knew

  If you are reading this, it must mean that you have finally met Nikolai Ivanovich Primakov. I will not try to guess at what path led you to him, only to offer reassurance that I have trodden a similar one before you. You are old enough, of course, to make your own judgements in life, but in the case of Nikolai, I merely wish to assist you, because other influences will be in play. He is, first and foremost, a friend, and you can trust him as if he was a member of our family.

  He put the letter back in the Koran, which he placed back on the crate. In front of him, pinned to an old pilots’ briefing board on the wall, were several photos. One was of a group of jihadis at a training camp, possibly in Kashmir. Another was of a young Salim Dhar sitting in what looked like the cockpit of a crashed Russian jet. The background scenery suggested it was in Afghanistan. Then he saw a photo of himself, taken with a long lens. He was outside Legoland, on the street opposite the main entrance, peering into the window of the motorbike showroom that he used to frequent in his lunch breaks.

  ‘I used to ride an old Honda in Afghanistan,’ a voice said behind him. Marchant spun round to see a man standing by the curtain, wearing a flying suit and holding a helmet in one hand. It was Salim Dhar.

  86

  Myers had drunk one too many Battledown Premiums at the Beehive and was struggling to slot the key into the lock of his Montepelier flat in Cheltenham. It was sometimes stiff, but tonight he wondered if he had got the wrong door. He looked up at the front windows to reassure himself, and then tried again. The door opened and he fell into the hall, gathering up the post that was on the doormat: the latest issue of Fly RC, a magazine for remote-control plane enthusiasts, and a takeaway pizza flier.

  At the back of his addled mind he wondered if the lock was stiff because it had been tampered with, but he dismissed the thought. He had become paranoid since carrying out Daniel Marchant’s request, seeing people on street corners, lurking behind curtains. As far as he could tell, no one had managed to establish a cause for the temporary delay in the Recognised Air Picture data at RAF Boulmer, let alone follow it out of the Tactical Data networks to Cheltenham. He had covered his tracks carefully, and he couldn’t deny that the result had been spectacular. Whatever Marchant was up to, he was doing it with style. A pair of MiG-35s over bloody Scotland!

  He tore open the magazine as he stumbled into the kitchen, idly flicking through the pages. A sport-scale park flyer of the Russian jet would be entertaining down at the recreation ground, but he couldn’t find one listed. It might also attract unnecessary attention to himself, given the furore over the breach of airspace. Relations had plummeted between London and the Kremlin in the twenty-four hours sin
ce the incident. They weren’t helped by the subsequent kidnapping of an MI6 officer on the streets of Soho.

  For a moment, when he first heard the news at work, Myers had thought it might be Marchant, but his old friend was too streetwise to be picked up by the SVR in central London. He didn’t dare ring him to check. Myers was nervous about making any calls after his brief chat with Fielding. Besides, Marchant was clearly up to something big, and he didn’t want to be further implicated. He had already done too much.

  After taking a leak that seemed to last for ever — he almost fell asleep as he stood swaying at the bowl — Myers headed for his bedroom. He knew he should drink some water, but he wanted to check his emails, maybe surf a few porn sites before crashing. He always kept the door to his bedroom locked because of the computers inside, but as he fumbled for the key fob in his pocket, he saw that the door was ajar. The sobering effect was instant. His brain cleared as an adrenaline rush ripped through his body, making his legs feel so heavy that they almost buckled.

  He stood there for a few seconds, listening for a noise, pressing his heels into the carpet to stop his legs shaking, but there was only silence, broken by the noise of a solitary car passing outside. He took a deep breath, pushed open the door, and walked in.

  ‘Don’t say a word,’ a voice said from the darkness. A moment later, Myers felt the cold metal of a barrel against the racing pulse in his temple.

  87

  ‘I became too fond of this in Morocco,’ Dhar said, pouring out two glasses of mint tea. ‘It is my one other luxury.’ He had already offered Marchant some dried apricots from a paper bag on the floor between them. He was sitting cross-legged, his posture upright. He had changed out of his flying suit and was now wearing a long white dishdasha of the sort that Marchant had seen in Marrakech and a matching kufi skullcap. His austere appearance was reflected in the formality of their conversation. There was a stiffness to proceedings that was making Marchant tense. He was also struggling to sit comfortably on the ground. His crossed legs were cramping up, forcing him to rock forwards. He knew it made him look nervous.