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  Marchant was bluffing now, but he was confident that Shushma hadn’t been with Spiro for long in Madurai, that it had just been a ruse by Fielding to get him into the right mental place. And Lakshmi wouldn’t have allowed any harm to come to Shushma, he was sure of that. Despite everything, he realised how much he had come to trust her.

  ‘So you lied to me about my mother too,’ Dhar said.

  ‘I had no choice. Unlike you. What is our exact target? Why the dirty bomb, the air-to-air missiles?’

  ‘Do you know why I agreed to bring you along today?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Because I discovered that Fairford is close to Tarlton, where our father lived, where you grew up with your other brother. I wanted you to show me the village as we flew over, point out the house. It is 18.5 kilometres due west of the airfield.’

  Marchant was taken aback by the way Dhar’s mind worked. Everything was thought out, had a reason. For a moment, his task seemed hopeless, but he had to turn around the jihadi juggernaut.

  ‘I can still show you. Tarlton’s a beautiful place. We used to play in the orchard, Sebbie and me, throw apples into the long grass behind our father’s back, pretend the rustling sound was approaching tigers. He was always fooled — at least, he said he was. Do you know what his wishes were? Why he asked Primakov to bring you and me together? He wanted you to work for MI6. He didn’t expect you to change your views on America — he shared many of them himself, as I do. It’s what unites all three of us. He just hoped to explore some common ground. Find out what each side wants from the other. We need a back channel into the global jihad, just as you need one with the West. It’s what our father most wanted, Salim.’

  After another long pause, Dhar eventually spoke. ‘I’ll be of no use to anybody if I don’t go through with this today. The jihadi who almost shot the US President, who almost — ’

  ‘Almost what? Tell me the precise target.’

  But before Dhar could speak, a deafening noise above the cockpit made Marchant duck. He turned around and saw a jet fighter disappearing into the distance.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ Marchant asked.

  ‘Another SU-25. From the Georgian air force. And only thirty seconds late. Inshallah, our time has come.’

  99

  The Aerospace Battle Manager on duty at RAF Boulmer had been tracking the solitary Russian jet for some time now, ever since the Finns and Noggies had flagged up a warning. It was heading from the north-east directly towards the UK’s ADIZ at 600 mph, and was running out of time to alter course. In a few minutes it would be flying over the Humber estuary. Of equal interest was another trace heading towards the coast in exactly the opposite direction. He had run a check on its assigned squawk transponder code, and it appeared to be an authorised aircraft flying out of the Royal International Air Tattoo at Fairford. It was north of its permitted flyzone, but what concerned him more was that it was on a near-collision course with the incoming jet.

  He had been off-duty when his colleague had cocked up over the MiG-35s, but everyone at RAF Boulmer had been dragged over the coals afterwards. So he didn’t hesitate to call up Air Command at High Wycombe and recommend that two Typhoons be scrambled from RAF Coningsby to intercept, identify and report. Their reaction made him break out into a cold sweat. There were no incoming or outgoing military jets showing up on Air Command’s Recognised Air Picture for the region.

  The crowd at Fairford was loving the Raptor display, particularly in the main hospitality marquee, where the Georgian delegation was now drunk on the spectacle as well as their wine. Each manoeuvre was accompanied by a thumping soundtrack: ‘Saturday Night’s All Right for Fighting’, by Nickelback, for the high-speed pass; ‘Come Back Around’, by Feeder, for the J-turn.

  ‘Major Brandon will now utilise the awesome vector thrust of the twin engines to literally rip the aircraft through the vertical and back to a level flight,’ the commentator continued. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the power loop.’

  The mood was no less ebullient in the static display behind the Georgians. A child in a pram wearing big red headphones arched his back and clapped with joy as the plane made another fly-by in a weapons-bay pass. An American crew in their flying suits was perched on the wings of a Lancer B1 Bomber that had flown in overnight from Texas. They were enjoying the sunshine, heads rocking to the music as they admired their compatriot’s performance.

  ‘Supercruise speed?’ one of them asked.

  ‘1.7,’ another replied, shielding his eyes from the sun as he tracked the plane into the distance. ‘He’s yanking and banking the hell out of it today.’

  The commentator came over the loudspeaker system again as the Raptor turned sharply at the western end of the runway.

  ‘The pilot will be experiencing something approaching 9G as this fine fifth-generation fighter sweeps through a flat 360,’ he said. ‘On his return to the display line, Major Brandon will perform a slow high-alpha pass at 120 knots, then hit the afterburner and accelerate into a near-vertical climb to 10,000 feet in a manoeuvre we proudly call the “muscle climb”. After that he will be rejoined by the SU-25 Frogfoot, which should be heading back towards the airfield from the east any time now — providing it hasn’t run out of gas.’

  Fielding rang through to Armstrong as he watched the Raptor climb vertically into the sky at the end of the runway. He remembered seeing the Vulcan do something similar in the 1970s.

  ‘Can you hear me? It’s Marcus. Any news?’ Armstrong was sitting at the COBRA table in the underground crisis-management centre, monitoring developments.

  ‘Air Command has just given the order to scramble two Typhoons from Coningsby,’ she said. ‘There’s been a similar systems error with the Recognised Air Picture. They’re not taking any chances this time. It seems a rogue Russian jet is heading your way fast.’

  ‘It’s Dhar,’ Fielding said quietly.

  ‘A ground sighting in the Midlands suggests it’s a two-seater.’

  ‘Dhar and Daniel Marchant.’

  ‘I hope to God you know what you’re doing, Marcus. The Typhoons have orders to shoot it down.’

  The Aerospace Battle Manager at RAF Boulmer was relieved that the two Typhoons had been scrambled, but he was still dealing with the most stressful day of his professional life. The Russian jet was now deep inside British airspace, flying fast and low towards southern England, but what had happened to the outgoing Georgian aircraft? It seemed to have vanished moments after it had passed the Russian one, just off the coast. What was more, the incoming Russian jet was broadcasting exactly the same transponder squawk code as the one that had disappeared off his screens.

  He put an emergency call through to the coastguard, informing them that a plane had gone down ten miles off the coast of Grimsby, and then he rang Air Command again.

  Major Brandon glanced down at the crowds as he flew over them in a dedication pass. After banking, he looked across the airfield towards the east. Frogfoot One had enjoyed its farewell tour of the British countryside and would shortly be rejoining the air show for the finale, a dogfight that would leave no one in any doubt about the superiority of the Raptor. He didn’t really know why the Georgian pilot was bothering to show up again for a humiliating few minutes. It was just a shame that he was only carrying dummy weapons today. Two clicks over the r/t alerted him to someone else on frequency, and he saw a familiar shape closing from the east at his altitude.

  ‘Welcome back, Frogfoot One. You’ve missed quite a party. Give me thirty more seconds before I’m on your six o’clock. I’m about to pull that Pugachev cobra we were talking about. One final treat to keep your generals sweet.’

  Dhar heard the American, but chose to remain silent, just giving two more taps on the PTT switch to signal his assent. He was confident that everyone — the crowds, air-traffic control and the American pilot — would assume that his aircraft was the same one that had left the air show twenty minutes earlier. After all, SU-25s weren’t a co
mmon sight over the Cotswolds. To look at, it was identical — except that the weapons slung beneath its wings were not dummies. A few moments ago, he had held a brief conversation with the control tower at RAF Fairford. The exchange had passed without suspicion, their warm welcome back confirming that the switch of squawk codes had been successful. Dhar had never met the brave Georgian pilot who had been recruited by the SVR. All he knew was that he had orders to ditch his plane and eject after passing him over the North Sea.

  ‘Frogfoot One, do you copy me?’ The American said. ‘I’m proceeding east to west along the display line, with all due respect to Viktor Pugachev. Watch and learn, Frogfoot.’

  Dhar could see the Raptor in the far distance now, rearing its nose as it seemed to almost stall, exposing its underbelly. He flicked the weapons select switch on the stick, just as he had done countless times on the simulator with Sergei. Only this time it was for real. The Vympel under his left wing was a heat-seeking air-to-air missile that travelled at two and a half times the speed of sound. It was packed with a 7.25-kilogram warhead and had a maximum range of twenty-nine kilometres. Dhar was less than two kilometres away now, and closing. Minimum engagement range was three hundred metres. He looked across at the American aircraft, using his helmet-mounted sighting system to designate the target. And then he fired.

  Marchant thought they had been hit when the missile scorched away from under the plane’s left wing. Then he realised what was going on.

  ‘Jesus, Salim, what are you doing?’

  ‘Exploring the common ground.’

  100

  At first, the crowd assumed that the missile streaking across the sky was all part of the spectacular show, and a cheer went up. Major Brandon was less ecstatic. His heart missed a beat when an alarm in his cockpit warned that an incoming missile had locked on to the infra-red heat of his F-22’s exhaust. His first thought was that the aircraft’s flat vector nozzles were meant to disguise the heat. His second thought, honed in hours of training, was to deploy his Chemring flares, but he wasn’t carrying any because their use had been banned by the air show’s organisers. The last thought he ever had was that he was a sitting duck, nose stuck in the air and travelling at a hundred knots.

  ‘Frogfoot One?’ he said, a moment before the missile found its target, embedding itself deep within the left engine and then tearing it apart.

  Dhar took the plane on a long sweeping arc away from the airfield, glancing down to his right at the plume of smoke rising from the runway.

  ‘Now we drop our first bomb.’

  ‘Salim, we’ve got to stop this!’ Marchant shouted. ‘We’re going to be shot down any minute. Every fighter in southern Britain will have been scrambled.’

  ‘Frogfoot One, please identify yourself,’ a voice from the control tower demanded on the military emergency frequency. Dhar flicked off the radio. He could see the flames of the Raptor now, the wreckage on the runway, as he continued to bank around to the east. He thought of Sergei, the photos he had shown him of his own crash, the carnage as his MiG had skidded through the crowds, carving families apart. The Raptor had broken up over the runway, causing little collateral damage. But Dhar knew that what he was about to do now would not be so precise. The hospitality marquees were to the left of the runway, just before the control tower. The American military had assembled en masse in the largest tent, entertaining their Georgian counterparts. Enemies didn’t get more legitimate.

  ‘Tell me the target,’ Marchant said, desperate to engage Dhar. The aircraft had levelled out now, and was about to begin a low approach from the east.

  ‘The Georgian government is converting their country into a Christian one, turning their back on our Muslim brothers to appease America.’

  ‘Are they here? The Georgians?’

  ‘In the marquee next to the control tower. Here to buy F-16s from the Americans.’

  So that was why they had flown to Fairford. There was a logic to Dhar, a rationale, however dark, that demanded Marchant’s respect, if not his understanding. He knew that neither the SVR nor Georgia’s Muslim population was keen on the country’s realignment with America. Had Dhar done enough already in the eyes of other jihadis to cool the relationship? Marchant looked down through the canopy. The SU-25’s cockpit visibility was not great, but he could make out a row of stalls, packed with people, immediately behind the hospitality marquees.

  ‘Don’t do it, Salim. It’s too crowded. Too many innocent lives will be lost.’

  Marchant knew he had to keep talking, try to sow seeds of doubt. Despite his self-assurance, Dhar would be questioning his own actions. Marchant had read enough intelligence reports from Guantanamo. Even the hardest jihadis deliberated about the legitimacy of targets, wrestled with how to determine the innocent.

  ‘The dirty bomb is not for now,’ Dhar said, flicking the weapons select switch on the stick. He opted for the conventional LGB and locked onto the marquee with his gunsight, letting the Klyon laser range-finder retain the target as he approached. Then he closed his eyes and thought again about his father. Deep down, below the layers of prayer and wishful thinking, he knew that Marchant had spoken the truth. It had been too much to hope for the Chief of MI6 to betray the West. At least, in his father’s anti-American stance, there had been some evidence of their shared blood. Stephen Marchant would have approved of the swaggering Raptor’s destruction, the silencing of the hysterical commentator and the incessant rock music.

  ‘This is not what our father would have wanted,’ Marchant said, scanning the skies. ‘You’ve made your point, given America a bloody nose, screwed the arms deal. Now let’s get out of here.’

  Dhar was determined to release the bomb as the plane flew fast along the display line. He had rehearsed it so many times on the simulator in Kotlas and above the ranges of Archangel with Sergei. Please, if you can spare the lives of twenty-three civilians, then do it. For me, for the Bird. Innocent lives would be lost, but the military target was legitimate. Generals, Georgian and American, chests blooming with medal ribbons, plotting their next assault on the Muslim world.

  But as he looked down at the marquee, his mind surging with thoughts of Sergei, his father, Daniel, he pulled up at the last moment into a steep climb, the G-forces pushing him back into his seat as if in reprimand for the destruction he had been about to unleash.

  ‘If I am to retain any credibility,’ Dhar said quietly, as he levelled out at one thousand feet and turned towards the north-west, ‘I must go through with my final target.’

  101

  Fielding had watched with horror from the lay-by as the Raptor was engulfed in a fireball and fell from the sky. His thoughts were with the pilot, but he was also trying to calculate the damage to Britain’s relationship with America should it ever be known that Daniel Marchant, a serving MI6 officer, was with Salim Dhar in the cockpit of the other jet, as he now suspected was the case.

  He had to redo those calculations as he saw the SU-25 turn and begin a second approach. If Dhar attacked the marquee where the American Secretary of Defense was holding court with the Georgians, Fielding knew his career was over. But as the aircraft drew close to its target, he began to sense that his faith in Daniel Marchant had not been misplaced. Dhar was leaving it very late to strike at the marquee. Had Marchant talked him out of it?

  His phone rang as the aircraft passed low over the control tower and pulled into a steep climb. It was Harriet Armstrong.

  ‘Is it true? Dhar’s just taken out an American fighter jet?’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘And Marchant’s with him?’

  ‘Yes, he is.’

  ‘Jesus, Marcus, what the hell do I tell COBRA? And the Americans?’

  ‘Tell them that Marchant’s just saved the life of the US Secretary of Defense, as well as a tent full of American and Georgian top brass.’

  He hung up as he watched the SU-25 disappear into the distance, wondering why Dhar was now heading north-west towards Cheltenham.
r />   The Russians had left Paul Myers shortly after he had begun to corrupt the Recognised Air Picture. He didn’t know how many jets would attempt to violate the UK’s airspace while its defences were compromised, or what their mission was. All he knew was that Daniel Marchant was involved in some way.

  ‘I suggest you keep the window open for as long as you can,’ Grushko had said, just before he departed with his colleague. ‘Unless you want your friend Daniel Marchant to be shot out of the sky.’

  Myers was suspicious that they weren’t remaining with him. It was true that he didn’t want to do anything that might put Marchant in more danger than he was in already. Again he tried to think what Marchant would want, and decided to interfere with the Recognised Air Picture for as long as he could. But the Russians had been in an unseemly hurry to leave.

  ‘Have you lived in Cheltenham long?’ Grushko had asked just before he left.

  ‘Ten years, maybe longer.’

  ‘It’s strange. The poorer parts remind me of Chernobyl, where I grew up. Before the accident, of course.’

  After twenty minutes of delaying and corrupting the RAP, Myers had left his flat and driven to work. He wasn’t due in until Monday, but the experience of being held hostage in his own home had left him feeling shaken and vulnerable. He also needed a change of scene after being cooped up in his airless bedroom for twelve hours. GCHQ was bright and airy and, as the director often reminded staff, one of the most secure work environments in the country. He would walk the Street, buy some food and sit out on the grassy knoll in the sunny central enclosure. Then he would ring Fielding back and tell him what had happened, although he suspected that the Vicar already knew.

  ‘Just so you know,’ Armstrong said, back on the phone to Fielding, who had ordered his driver to head at speed for Cheltenham, ‘there are now six jets closing in on Dhar with orders to shoot him down. I’ve stressed to the Chief of Defence Staff that an officer of MI6 is also on board, but he has been deemed expendable. In your absence, Ian Denton has signed off on it. I’m sorry.’