Jon Stock - Games Traitors Play

‘I was hoping for twin beds,’ she said.

‘We’re married, remember?’

‘I know. I’ll sleep over there, on the sofa.’

‘It’s OK. I will.’

There was silence for a few seconds as Marchant watched her go through her suitcase. She was wearing white trousers and a cream-coloured shirt with long sleeves. On the plane, she had been in tight jeans, but she had changed in the lavatory, explaining about temple etiquette. Marchant had reminded her that he used to live in India, promising he wouldn’t wear shorts and a T-shirt, however hot it was.

‘Thanks for not making all this any harder than it is already,’ she said quietly, her back to him as they stood on either side of the bed. ‘Blame my strict upbringing.’

Ever since they had boarded their flight to Chennai in London, Marchant had done only the bare minimum that was required for them to appear as a couple. In his experience, intelligence officers the world over usually took husband-and-wife cover as an opportunity to flirt with colleagues, a brief and unconditional escape that often led to more, but he could see how much Meena struggled with it. She seemed troubled, not her usual sparring, confident self. Her sexual poise had disappeared. She hadn’t spent long with Fielding on her own, but whatever the Vicar said had left her even quieter. Marchant suspected he had laid down a few ground rules, reminded her about Leila.

‘Come on. Let’s go and be ignorant Western tourists together,’ Marchant offered, trying to lighten the mood.

Meena seemed to rally at the thought of the task that lay ahead of them. She found the map she had been looking for in her suitcase and spread it out on the glass coffee table in front of the windows.

‘We think Dhar’s mother is working in the centre of the temple complex, near the main shrine to Shiva,’ she said, pointing at the map. ‘We’ve got two of our people inside, posing as temple staff, and two more outside.’

‘Indian origin?’

Meena gave him a sarcastic smile. ‘Yeah. It kind of helps them to blend in.’

‘I didn’t know Langley was so enlightened.’

‘We’re getting there. And there’s someone from our Chennai sub-station — OK, white guy, redneck — who’s hanging around Madurai as a tourist. Have you been inside a temple like this before?’

‘Not since my gap year.’

‘Believe me, it’s one big crazy city in there. Shops, animals, ponds, people, food. Worship is just a part of it.’

‘Did you used to come here when you were younger?’

‘As a little girl, yes. We moved to the States when I was seven. I grew up near Karaikudai, where we’re meant to be going for my cousin’s wedding.’

‘So this was your local big temple.’

‘I guess so. I don’t remember a lot about it. Just that it was very full-on inside. Let’s go,’ she said, hooking her arm through Marchant’s and heading for the door.

Salim Dhar looked at the photo of Daniel Marchant on his wall as another jet took off outside. Kotlas airbase was busy today, more activity than usual. He was meant to be flying with Sergei, but they had been grounded on account of the increased air traffic. More classroom theory, more work on the simulator.

He tried to think back to the time he had met Marchant in India. The Britisher’s appearance had been different then, a crude cover identity. His hair had been shorter, his clothes more dishevelled, like those worn by the Westerners he had seen and despised in Goa. He reached out for the photo, gently prised it from the wall, and studied it more closely. According to Primakov, it had been taken by a young SVR agent from the top of a number 36 bus in London. Marchant was in a suit, looking through the window of a motorcycle showroom, across the road from MI6’s headquarters in Vauxhall.

Dhar had never been to London, but he felt he knew the city well. Although he had studied at the American school in Delhi, his education had been heavily influenced by Britain. He didn’t know why at the time, but his mother used to bring home books about London, talk to him about the country in a way that he realised now expressed a heartfelt affection. She had only been employed briefly at the British High Commission in Delhi, before he was born, but she had loved the place and its values. Dhar remembered playing Monopoly with her under a lazy fan, wondering at the names on the board: Old Kent Road; The Angel, Islington; Marylebone Station.

He had thought about the game again when the London Underground was attacked on 7 July 2005: Liverpool Street, King’s Cross. For some reason, his mother had always liked to buy up the stations.

‘Mama, but the maximum rent is only £200,’ he used to tease her.

‘I know,’ his mother had said, smiling, with a knowing tilt of the head. ‘But there are four stations, and only two or three of everything else.’

Dhar was in Afghanistan at the time of the London attack, fighting American troops, but he hadn’t joined in the cheering when news reached his camp of the bombings.

‘Why do you not salute our brothers in Britain, Salim?’ the commander of the camp had asked.

Dhar had walked off. Such methods had never been his style. His approach had always been to target the West’s troops and political leaders rather than its people. It was why he preferred to operate alone whenever he could, outside al Q’aeda’s indiscriminate umbrella. But he knew it was something else, too. In his mind, it was his mother’s world that the 7/7 bombers had desecrated; a board-game fantasy, but still her world. It was only later that he had understood why: it was his father’s, too.

It would have been easy for Dhar to dismiss Marchant’s bond of half-brotherhood as worthless. In his childhood he had had countless ‘cousin brothers’, distant relatives who played up family connections whenever it was convenient. It was acutely compromising, too, for a jihadi to be related to a Western spy Chief. But now that Dhar understood his father’s loyalties, he knew that he had to see Marchant again. The Britisher had been a potential ally when they had met in India. He was a man on the run from the CIA, but who had returned to a job at the infidel’s castle on the shores of the Thames, ignoring his coded text to join him in Morocco. Now, according to Primakov, he was finally ready to betray his country, to follow in their father’s footsteps.

Dhar pinned the photo of Marchant back on the wall. He knew there was another in London who could help him, but he had insisted to the Russians that it should be Marchant, telling them that the mission was off if it was anyone else. It wasn’t ideology. It was curiosity. There were too many questions he wanted to ask him. How had he coped with being waterboarded by the Americans? Who was the beautiful woman in Delhi he had shot instead of the President, the woman whose meenakshi eyes had haunted him ever since? And, most of all, what was their father like, the man who had hoodwinked the West for so long?

There was a queue of people waiting to enter the Meenakshi temple by the east gate. A female police officer checked the women, frisking their saris with a lollipop-shaped metal detector, while a male officer did the same with the men. No one was wearing any shoes, not even the police. Marchant and Meena had left theirs around the corner at a stall with thousands of others, not expecting to see them again.

Marchant approached the policeman and stood with his arms out and legs apart. Security seemed to be tight today, he sensed — thorough rather than a gesture — and he wondered if the temple was on a heightened state of alert. It wouldn’t have anything to do with Salim Dhar’s mother, but it might make things more difficult when they lifted her. They had already had to abandon their plan of using their wires in the temple, as they would have been picked up by the police detectors.