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

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      ‘Didn’t he once work at our embassy?’

      ‘For a number of years, yes.’

      ‘So why was Marchant paying him? Dhar was just a kid.’

      ‘I know.’ It was the one question Fielding didn’t have an answer to.

      ‘But you think this makes Dhar a good guy, rather than confirming our worst fears about Stephen Marchant? Forgive the Monday-morning quarterbacking, but from our point of view this doesn’t exactly look like asset cash well spent: two US Embassy attacks, the London Marathon.’

      ‘No one’s saying he’s ours, sir,’ Carter said. ‘But we think he might be persuaded to work for the British.’

      ‘And Daniel Marchant is the only person who can find out,’ Fielding added. ‘Dhar would be the highest ranking member of AQ the West has ever run. We’d be prepared to pool on this one.’

      There was another pause, and for a moment Fielding thought the link with Langley had dropped. But he knew the plan would appeal to the clandestine streak that ran deep in the Director.

      ‘I can’t have Marchant and Dhar running around India when the President arrives. The DNI just wouldn’t buy it. And I wouldn’t blame him.’ He paused again. ‘You’ve got twenty-four to figure out which side Dhar’s on, then we’re bringing them both in.’

      The two women, Kirsty and Holly, had tickets for three-tier A/C on the Mangala Express, which was considerably more comfortable than Marchant’s bare-benched economy carriage. Their entire compartment was open plan, but it was loosely divided up into separate areas by curtains. The lights had already been turned down, even though Delhi was only an hour behind them, and the atmosphere was like that of a well-behaved school dormitory, a faint murmur of snoring rising above the rattle of the wheels. Marchant’s carriage, by contrast, was a seething mass of people who were clearly intent on eating, burping and arguing all the way to Kerala, 1,500 miles south. There were no beds, just hard wooden seats.

      The two women’s area consisted of a pair of three-tier bunks facing each other. They were sleeping on the top two bunks, and a Keralan family, with one child, occupied the lower decks. The bunk directly below Holly was empty, and it was on this that Marchant was now lying, talking up to Kirsty.

      ‘You can stay there the night, if you want to,’ she said, glancing across at Holly. ‘She’s already asleep. There were three of us, but Holly and Anya had a bit of a falling out, so Anya stayed in Delhi. You’re on her bed.’

      ‘I’ll see if the ticket guy’ll upgrade me,’ Marchant said. He could hear the inspector making his way down the carriage. Earlier, a member of staff had eyed him suspiciously while he distributed sheets and blankets around the carriage.

      Holly and Kirsty, both English and in their early twenties, were going to Goa. They were on a six-month world tour and had been travelling in India for two weeks. Holly, the younger one, was already at war with the subcontinent, railing at its food, the weather, the men, her bowel movements and the state of the public lavatories, before falling asleep. The argument at the station had clearly exhausted her. Kirsty had a more relaxed manner, and was obsessed with neither the weather nor her bowels. Something about her laid-back approach to life reminded Marchant of Monika, and they had immediately hit it off.

      ‘D’you hear that?’ Kirsty asked, nodding down the carriage. Marchant listened as someone protested about not being allowed to stay in an empty seat. The inspector explained about waiting lists, three-month advance bookings, the police. Marchant’s and Kirsty’s eyes met.

      ‘Quick, come up here. You can hide under my blanket.’

      Marchant looked below him. The man from Kerala, an engineer who had earlier given him his business card, was snoring. The woman was also sleeping, but the toddler, who was cradled next to her, had his big brown eyes open and was staring up at him. Marchant smiled, putting a finger to his lips. ‘Sshhh,’ he said, stretching his leg across onto the edge of the opposite bunk, where the Keralan family had stowed some of their luggage. Then he heaved himself up onto the narrow top bunk. Kirsty giggled as she shuffled across to the edge, trying to make some room for Marchant beside the wall.

      ‘They’re tiny, these beds,’ Marchant whispered, feeling her body warmth as he pulled the wool blanket over him. Its coarseness reminded him of school.

      ‘The man’s coming,’ Kirsty said, pulling her rucksack up from her feet to provide a screen. Marchant lay still, listening out for the ticket collector. He heard him stir the family below as Kirsty reached across to wake Holly.

      When the inspector had gone, Marchant stayed where he was for a few moments, lulled by the carriage’s rhythmic motion. The last time he had been on a train in India, in his gap year, he had travelled to Calcutta on what had once been known as the Frontier Mail.

      ‘David?’ Kirsty said quietly. ‘He’s gone now.’ Marchant came up for air, and the two of them lay there, looking up at the metallic-blue 1950s interior, with its rivets, brass switches and bakelite fittings. The style reminded Marchant of the inside of an old naval ship.

      Earlier, they had talked about the incident on the Delhi concourse. Both women thanked him for his gallant rescue, asking if any of what he said had been true. Marchant chose to maintain the deceit, a harmless one for once, and told them that he had spent two days working as an extra up at the Red Fort, and that Shah Rukh was shorter in the flesh. He needed to keep his liar’s hand in.

      Holly had sensed the chemistry between Marchant and Kirsty, and had retreated to her bunk in a sulk, leaving the two of them to sit on the open doorstep of the train, watching Delhi’s suburbs slide by. Their conversation had been unforced, as if they had known each other for years. No questions or accounting for lives, which suited Marchant.

      He learnt little about Kirsty, except that she wanted to practise Ashtanga on a beach in Goa, and had the lissom figure of a yoga babe. All Kirsty thought she knew about him was that his name was David Marlowe, his rucksack had been stolen from a guesthouse in Paharganj, and he was originally from Ireland. They were strangers, in other words–much more so than Kirsty would ever know.

      But Marchant felt there was something about their carefree encounter, lying on the narrow top bunk bed of a night train to Goa, listening to the long, droning horn of the engine, somewhere far ahead of them, that made it inevitable she should link a leg over his. He was about to reciprocate the gesture when, below them, the child from Kerala coughed. Marchant smiled as Kirsty moved her leg away. Instead, they lay there together, their colliding worlds moving apart from each other again, as the Mangala Express pushed on through the darkness towards the Arabian Sea.

      34

      Paul Myers had been drinking heavily all evening in the Morpeth Arms, watching the lights of Legoland across the Thames burning brightly into the night. He knew that what he was about to do could lead to his dismissal. It was also a betrayal of Leila, one of the few people he had been able to call a friend. But she had betrayed him, and he now realised that he was left with little option. Draining his fifth pint of London Pride, he stood up and walked outside, making his way across the Embankment to the pavement by the river.

      He watched the dark water running silently beneath him as he dialled the personal mobile of Marcus Fielding. Very few people knew the number, and even fewer were allowed to ring it. But when you worked at GCHQ, with the security clearance of a senior intelligence analyst, there were ways. Myers looked up at the Vicar’s office as the number СКАЧАТЬ