Games Traitors Play. Jon Stock

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СКАЧАТЬ student cover. He wished he’d thought of it for himself.

      Meena walked over to Marchant’s table in the courtyard, checking her mobile phone before putting it away in her shoulder-bag. Marchant was momentarily wrongfooted by the direct approach. They had met face to face only once before, shortly after Marchant had arrived: a cold exchange in the foyer of a hotel.

      ‘Do what you have to do,’ Marchant had said, trying not to see Leila in Meena’s limpid eyes, her dark olive skin. ‘Just don’t expect any answers from me.’

      ‘You flatter yourself,’ she had replied. ‘We ask questions later, remember?’

      It hadn’t been the beginning of a beautiful friendship. He knew afterwards that he had played it too cool, that she was only doing her job, but he wasn’t in the mood to mix with female field agents, particularly ones who reminded him of a woman who had betrayed him. Meena was taller, her manner more hardened, but there was unquestionably something of Leila in her: an attitude, sexual poise. And Marchant knew that any likeness was no coincidence, that it was a cruel joke by Spiro. Frustrated that he wasn’t allowed to lock Marchant up and torture him again, Spiro had sent someone to remind him of his past. But Marchant ignored the ploy, ignored Meena. For the following few weeks, they had played cat and mouse on the streets of Marrakech, before Meena had finally backed off to Rabat.

      ‘Mind if I join you?’ she asked, taking a seat.

      ‘Go ahead,’ Marchant said, concealing his surprise. A waiter was standing beside them. For a moment, he was back in a pub in Portsmouth, chatting up strangers as part of a training exercise. All new recruits at the Fort, MI6’s training base in Gosport, were dispatched to the city’s bars and pubs to chat up unsuspecting locals and solicit private information: bank-card details, National Insurance and passport numbers.

      ‘Bourbon and Coke, thanks. Daniel?’

      Marchant knew Meena was taking in the scene, measuring the milligrams of alcohol in Marchant’s blood, whether his defences were down. The only consolation was that she wasn’t the sort to flirt. He didn’t think he could handle that right now. Leila had used her sexual charms shamelessly, in the office and in the field, but he sensed that Meena did things differently.

      ‘A Scotch, thanks,’ Marchant replied, nodding at the waiter.

      ‘I thought you’d given all that up,’ she said, fingering her Indian necklace. ‘Gone native.’

      ‘Celebrating. I didn’t think you drank either.’ He had read her files: vegetarian, non-drinker, decaffeinated coffee, herbal tea.

      ‘Celebrating, too.’

      Marchant thought her necklace was from south India, similar to one his mother had once worn. He raised his glass, trying to run his own check on himself, calculate the damage. A drinking session after three months’ abstinence wasn’t a good idea, but he was sober enough to extract some leverage from the situation, fool Meena into thinking he was drunker than he was. At least, that was the plan. His dulled brain could think of two reasons why she had stepped out of the shadows tonight. To say goodbye, having heard that Dhar was dead; or to find out if he knew anything about the helicopter in the mountains. He had a problem if it was the latter.

      ‘You heard the news then,’ she said, glancing around the bar before looking at Marchant, his already empty glass.

      ‘I heard,’ he said, thinking it could still be either.

      ‘Mixed feelings, I guess.’

      He sat back, relieved that she had come to talk about Dhar.

      ‘To be honest, I don’t really know what to say,’ she continued, brushing some crumbs off the table. ‘Langley’s kind of over the moon, as you’d expect. But it’s a little more complicated for you guys.’

      ‘Is it? He tried to kill your President. Now you’ve killed him. End of story.’

      ‘But, you know, the whole half-brother thing.’ Meena leaned in towards Marchant. ‘I realise you didn’t exactly grow up together, but that could have been new territory, for all of us –’

      ‘Why did you come here tonight?’ Marchant was suddenly irritated by Meena’s appearance on his last evening in Morocco, riled by how much she knew, her after-work pub manner. He had been about to leave, take one last walk around Djemaâ el Fna. Now he was in an English bar, having a drink with someone he had avoided for the past three months.

      ‘I figured you’d be pulling out of town,’ Meena said. ‘Thought it would be civil to tie this whole thing off, say goodbye.’

      Marchant allowed the awkwardness to linger for a few seconds, in case there was anything else to flush out. But there was nothing. The Americans thought they had killed Dhar, and he was happy to let them. Marchant wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or sudden empathy for a fellow field officer, but something made him change tack and end the awkwardness, drop his guard.

      ‘Thanks,’ he said, watching the waiter place their order on the table. ‘You know, for coming. We should have had this drink three months ago.’

      She wasn’t so bad, he told himself. He was the one who had been stubborn, too angry with the way he had been treated by the Americans. Meena was younger than him, still believed that she was making a difference. And she could have made his life a lot more difficult.

      ‘I wasn’t really getting the right vibes,’ she said, smiling, putting her hands up in mock defence. ‘Hey, look, I don’t blame you for not trusting us. Not at all.’

      ‘I gave up trusting people when I signed up.’

      ‘We’re not all like Spiro,’ Meena said, sitting back.

      ‘I wasn’t thinking of Spiro.’ For a moment, Marchant wondered if she would take the bait, begin to talk of Leila, but she didn’t, and he was shocked by his own disappointment.

      ‘I don’t know about you, but I joined the Agency in search of some light and shade. It’s why I’m here in Morocco and not in some sweaty UAV trailer in Nevada. I can’t pretend I’m sorry Dhar’s dead, but I was open to other ways of winning this war.’

      ‘I’m sure you were,’ said Marchant. He looked again at Meena, wondering whether he could confide in her, open up, reveal what he had seen in the mountains. But he knew he couldn’t. Despite the unexpected entente, they were working to different agendas.

      ‘What made you choose the Agency anyway?’ Marchant asked. ‘You don’t strike me as –’

      ‘– the right colour?’ She laughed.

      ‘Christ no, I wasn’t going to say that.’

      ‘The right sex?’ She laughed again, and then they both paused, her words hanging between them. Marchant thought he saw a sadness in her eyes, or maybe he was confused by his own nostalgia.

      ‘My father wanted me to train as a doctor. Failing that, he wanted me to marry one. I was studying medicine at Georgetown University, but then, after 9/11, everything changed.’

      ‘Did you lose someone?’

      ‘Not directly. Friends of friends, you know.’

      ‘But СКАЧАТЬ