Games Traitors Play. Jon Stock

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СКАЧАТЬ posting in Delhi, the family had presented Chandar, their cook, with one, to replace his old Hero bicycle. Chandar used to maintain it lovingly, showing Marchant, then eight years old, how to start it, both of them laughing as Chandar pedalled furiously in his chef’s whites until the engine coughed into life.

      Marchant checked that the Mobylette’s wheel forks weren’t locked. Nothing he had done since his arrival in Marrakech had aroused any attention from the authorities. That was part of the deal, one of the conditions he had agreed with MI6 in return for being sent to Morocco and allowed to operate on his own. He hadn’t wanted back-up or support. It was, after all, a very personal quest: family business, as his father would have called it. Marcus Fielding, the professorial Chief of MI6, had agreed, knowing that if anyone could find Salim Dhar, it was Marchant. But Fielding had warned him: no drinking, no brawls, no break-ins, nothing illegal. He had caused enough trouble already in his short career.

      Marchant had kept his side of the bargain. For three months, he had stayed off the sauce, savouring life outside Legoland, MI6’s headquarters in Vauxhall. The CIA had prevented him from leaving Britain in the aftermath of the assassination attempt, but after a frustrating year, Fielding had finally prevailed, much to Marchant’s relief. London was no place for a field agent.

      He had studied hard in Marrakech’s libraries, researching the history of the Berbers and taking the opportunity to reread the Koran. It had been required reading during his time at Fort Monckton, MI6’s training base on the end of the Gosport peninsula. But he read it now with renewed interest, searching for anything that might help him to understand Salim Dhar’s world.

      In the cool of the early mornings, he had gone running through the deserted medina. The first run had been the hardest, not because his body was out of shape, but because of the memories it brought back: the London Marathon, Leila, their time together. He had returned after two miles, in need of a stiff drink, but he managed to keep his promise to Fielding. After two weeks, he no longer missed the Scotch. In a Muslim country, abstinence was easier than he had feared it would be. And he realised that he no longer missed Leila. It felt as if life was starting anew.

      In the year following Leila’s death, he had been unable to go running. He had missed her every day, seen her face wherever he went in London. The coldness that had encased his heart since he arrived in Morocco had shocked him at first, but he knew it had to be if he was to survive in the Service. His trained eye had spotted one suicide bomber amongst 35,000 participants, but he had failed to identify the traitor running at his own side, the woman he had loved.

      Now, though, he was about to cross a line, and for a moment he felt the buzz he’d been missing. It was hardly a big breach, but if someone reported a foreigner stealing a Mobylette, there was a small chance that the local police would become involved. A report might be filed. He would show up on the grid, however faintly, and he couldn’t afford to do that. London would recall him. He would be back behind a desk in Legoland, analysing embellished CX reports from ambitious field agents, drinking too much at the Morpeth Arms after work. But he couldn’t afford to lose his man.

      He glanced up and down the street. No one was around. He sat on the Mobylette, which was still on its stand. He checked the fuel switch, then began pedalling, thinking of Chandar as he worked the choke and the compressor with his thumbs. The engine started up, and he rocked the bike forward, throttled back and set off down the road. It wasn’t exactly a wheelspin start.

      As the Mobylette struggled to reach 25 mph, the only thing on Marchant’s mind was where the man could be heading on a motorised pedal bike. Marchant had assumed all along that if he was right about the halaka, the contact would carry his message south into the High Atlas mountains, to Asni and beyond to the Tizi’n’Test pass, where the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM) was known to run remote training camps (it had others in the Rif mountains, too).

      The GICM had its roots in the war against the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and had forged close ties with al Q’aeda, providing logistical support to operatives passing through Morocco. After 9/11, it had become more proactive, and a number of sleeper cells were activated. The synchronised bombings in Casablanca in 2003, which had killed forty-four people, bore all the hallmarks of GICM, and the leadership had helped with the recruitment of jihadis for the war in Iraq. Marchant was convinced, after three months in Marrakech, that the organisation was now shielding Salim Dhar in the mountains. But the smoking bike ahead of him would struggle to reach the edge of town, let alone make it up the steep climb to Asni.

       5

      Lieutenant Oaks had worked the wet gag loose enough to speak. It was still in his mouth, but the tension had gone and he was able to make himself heard.

      ‘Everyone OK?’ he asked, breathing heavily. He could tell from the grunted responses that the others had been propped against the wall on either side of him, two to the left, two to the right. Only one of them hadn’t replied.

      ‘Where’s Murray?’ Oaks asked. There was a faint reply from across the room. At least he was still alive. Outside, the noises of an Afghanistan night offered little comfort: the distant cries of a pack of wild dogs. The Urdu had stopped a few minutes earlier, and Oaks was now certain whose voice it had been.

      ‘We don’t have long,’ he said, edging himself across the floor to what he hoped was the centre of the hut. Movement was difficult, painful. His legs were bound tight at the ankles, and his wrists had been shackled together high up behind his back, his arms bent awkwardly. No one moved, and he wondered if any of them had understood his distorted words.

      ‘We’ve got to get into the centre, right here,’ he continued, falling on his side. He lay there for a few seconds, his cheek on the mud floor. It smelt vaguely of animals, of the stables he had visited in West Virginia for a childhood birthday. They had minutes to live, and he only had one shot at saving them. ‘Get your asses over here!’ he shouted, his voice choking with the effort of trying to right himself. ‘Jesus, guys, don’t you get it?’

      He heard the shuffle of fatigues across the floor. ‘Is that you, Jimmy? Leroy? Bunch up tight, all of you.’ Slowly, the Marines dragged themselves into the centre of the room, even Murray, who was the last to arrive, rolling himself over on the dry mud. He lay at Oaks’s feet, listening to his leader, breathing irregularly.

      ‘That voice,’ Oaks said, composing himself, frustrated by his distorted words. He was sounding like the deaf boy in his class at high school. ‘It was Salim Dhar’s.’ He worked his jaw again, trying to shake off the sodden gag. No one said anything. They still hadn’t realised the implications. ‘A UAV will be on its way, you understand that? A drone. The fucking Reaper’s coming.’

      Murray let out a louder moan. Oaks tried not to think about the two Hellfire missiles he had once seen being loaded under an MQ-1 Predator at Balad airbase in Iraq. The kill chain had been shortened since then. There was no longer the same delay. And the MQ-1 Predator had become the MQ-9 Reaper, a purpose-built hunter/killer with five-hundred-pound bombs as well as Hellfires.

      America had learned its lessons after it had once seen Mullah Omar, the one-eyed leader of the Taleban, in the crosswires of an armed Predator. It was in October 2001, a few weeks after 9/11, and the CIA had wanted to fire at Omar’s convoy of 4x4s, but the decision was referred upwards to top brass in the Pentagon, who consulted lawyers and withheld the order while Omar stopped to pray at a mosque. The moment passed, and the story, true or false, entered military folklore. Americans had been trying to make amends ever since, taking out hundreds of Taleban and al Q’aeda targets with pilotless drones, or UAVs, but Oaks knew that the military had never quite got over the Omar incident. Now the Taleban was taunting them again.

      ‘We’ll СКАЧАТЬ