The Daniel Marchant Spy Trilogy: Dead Spy Running, Games Traitors Play, Dirty Little Secret. Jon Stock

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СКАЧАТЬ said nothing, matching Fielding’s silences with one of his own.

      ‘There’s something else you should know,’ he said. ‘MI5’s had a breakthrough on the running belt. As we suspected, there was a remote-detonation option from a mobile phone. But it was configured to work only on the TETRA network.’

      Chadwick sensed that, for the first time that evening, he had unsettled Fielding. TETRA was only used by the emergency services and the intelligence agencies. Terrorists would love to have access to TETRA–it would allow them to detonate a bomb even if the main mobile networks had been knocked out–but its use was tightly restricted (although not tightly enough for Fielding’s liking).

      ‘And?’

      Chadwick went over to the mahogany sideboard, where a brown A4 envelope lay next to the silver drinks tray. He pulled out a photo, glanced at it and walked back over to Fielding by the window.

      ‘Take a look at this,’ he said, handing it over. The photo was a grainy image of the London Marathon, a screen-grab from the BBC’s helicopter camera. In the middle of the picture was Daniel Marchant, surrounded by other runners, and holding a mobile phone in his right hand. The unit had been circled in yellow marker.

      ‘You can just make out the short aerial,’ Chadwick said. ‘MI5’s certain it’s a TETRA handset. Motorola.’

      ‘Of course it bloody is,’ Fielding said. ‘How do you think we were able to talk to him out on the course? I understood he borrowed Leila’s.’

      ‘Apparently not. He brought his old one along, according to her. The one he should have handed in when he was suspended. We’ve checked the phone records at Thames House, and she’s right. She rang him on his old encrypted number.’

      Fielding wasn’t convinced. He knew Marchant’s suspension hadn’t been as thorough as it might have been, partly because of his own reluctance to withdraw one of his best agents from the field; but failure to return an office phone, particularly an encrypted one, would not have been missed by even the most routine of Legoland’s security checks. He needed to make his own enquiries.

      ‘Has it ever occurred to you that someone might be setting Daniel Marchant up here?’ Fielding asked, looking at the photo for a few seconds before passing it back. ‘Knowing what a weak case there was against his father?’

      ‘Setting him up? Why?’

      ‘Oh, come on, David. You know as well as I do that there are plenty of people who would rather the Service didn’t dine at top table any more.’

      ‘I’m not sure even the Americans would risk the life of one of their own ambassadors to frame an MI6 officer.’

      ‘I don’t know.’

      ‘Is that why you’re protecting Daniel? You still believe he’s innocent?’

      ‘We’re not protecting him, not now.’

      ‘Prentice gave Spiro the runaround in Warsaw. You know Langley’s recalled him?’

      ‘The man’s a fool.’

      ‘Where is Daniel, Marcus?’

      ‘I’ve no idea. Clearing his father’s name, I assume.’ Fielding finished his drink. ‘And if you really want to see the Service’s reputation restored, I suggest we let him.’

      28

      After twenty-four hours in India, Daniel Marchant concluded that he wasn’t under surveillance, but he still took no risks as he was driven in a cream-coloured Ambassador taxi, ordered by Chandar, from Chattapur up into the centre of New Delhi. At Qutb Minar, in Merauli, he asked the driver to pull into the dusty car park, near the landmark monument, where they waited for ten minutes under the shade of some trees, engine and air conditioning still running.

      The driver stood beside the car in his white uniform. It was obvious that he was having a smoke, but he still tried to conceal the cigarette, cupping it in his hand as he shifted from foot to foot. A tour guide handed him a leaflet and glanced hopefully in at the window at Marchant, but moved on when the driver swore at him. Marchant wound down the window, felt a wave of hot air, and took the leaflet from the driver. A few sweltering Western tourists were drifting around the complex, being informed about the tower’s 399 steps, how it had been begun in 1193 by Qutb-ud-din Aibak, the first Muslim ruler of Delhi. No one mentioned the stampede in 1998, when the lights went out in the tower and twenty-five children were crushed. Marchant remembered reading about it at the time. Visitors weren’t allowed up the tower any more.

      Marchant watched as the party of tourists climbed back into their minibus. The place was now empty. Nobody seemed to have followed him. Monika and her colleagues had given him a head start, but it would only be a couple of days at most. He also assumed that Prentice had done his best to hamper the Americans on the ground. But he knew it wouldn’t be long before the connection was made between David Marlowe and Daniel Marchant. The CIA had a big station in Delhi. He wondered what the CX from Langley would be saying once they had worked out he was in India: suspended MI6 officer on the run, suspected of trying to eliminate US Ambassador.

      Why did they still think he was behind the attempted marathon attack? How could anyone interpret his actions that day as anything other than loyal? Only he and Leila knew what had happened out there on the streets of London, how he had come to be propping up Pradeep as they stumbled towards a deserted Tower Bridge. He wanted to talk to her now, go through the events again to find any ambiguities; and yet, for the first time since they had met, a new emotion had crept imperceptibly over the horizon.

      Perhaps it was the change of continents, the physical separation that had been imposed on them. But he knew it wasn’t that. They had been apart before. Again he asked himself, how could the Americans view his actions as suspicious, even through the warped prism of his father’s guilt? Leila was the only other person who knew what had happened. Her explanation should have clarified his role, spared him the waterboard; but it hadn’t, and he couldn’t help resenting her for that.

      Before his resentment grew into something more troubling, he realised that he was looking at it all from the wrong end. It didn’t matter whether the Americans thought he was guilty or not. They needed him to be guilty, to damn the father through the son. And in order to do that they had either distorted the evidence, wilfully ignoring the debriefs, or the whole thing had been an elaborate set-up. That would explain why he and no one else had spotted the belt. He knew, though, that the Americans would be unlikely to sanction such a risky plan. Either way, Leila was the one person who could have proved his innocence. Why hadn’t she cleared him?

      He sat back in the taxi and closed his eyes. He hadn’t had time to think since he had touched down in India, a land that was so full of conflicting memories for him. His arrival at Indira Gandhi airport late the night before had been much more stressful than he had expected. Passport control hadn’t questioned his Irish passport or the tourist visa in the name of David Marlowe, but the security measures at the airport had surprised him. There had been police officers everywhere, randomly checking luggage. Outside, army trucks lined the main approach road to the city, soldiers sitting in the heat.

      The scene reminded him of Heathrow in 2003, when Scimitar and Spartan reconnaissance vehicles had rolled in to guard the terminals. He had been an undergraduate in Cambridge at the time, and had read the chilling newspaper reports: it had been one of those exhilarating, self-affirming moments when he knew what he wanted to do with his life. If only he had acted on it then, been СКАЧАТЬ