Jon Stock - Games Traitors Play

He hit out hard and instantly, knocking the Russian to the ground. His father was no traitor. Without hesitating, Marchant fell on him and struck again and again, ignoring the voices, Valentin’s, his own, others’.

‘Stop, please,’ someone was repeating behind him.

Marchant stood up, wiping his mouth, and backed away from Valentin, who lay bloodied and unconscious on the floor. It had felt good, too good.

The sun was setting, but it was still bright outside compared to the gloom they had left behind in the temple complex. Meena was surprised by Marchant’s behaviour. He had been disciplined in Marrakech, which had impressed her. She was also concerned about her two colleagues inside the temple. They were meant to have delayed the Russian, kept him away from the exits. She knew mobile reception was patchy inside the complex, but neither was answering his phone.

Cars weren’t allowed up to the east gate, so Meena had agreed to bring Shushma to the end of the closed-off street immediately opposite the entrance. It was a walk of about two hundred yards. She glanced up and down the road. A parked car had already caught her eye. Someone was sitting in the driver’s seat, but she couldn’t see their face. There was no time to collect her shoes.

She kept walking, her arm still linked through Shushma’s. The older woman had remained silent since Marchant had left them. Meena thought again about her conversation with Fielding at Heathrow. She trusted him, but it didn’t make what was about to happen any easier, particularly after her chat with Marchant at his London flat. King Shahryar would continue to distrust his wives.

At the end of the road, beyond a barrier, a white Ambassador had pulled up. Meena and Shushma climbed into the back. Meena glanced again at the car down the street.

‘Where’s your British friend?’ the driver asked, dropping his tourist manner.

‘We must leave without him. Let’s go, challo .’ Shushma looked up and felt Meena’s arm tighten around her own.

Marchant brushed off the member of the temple staff who was attempting to hold him. He glanced down at the Russian. His eyes were closed and swollen, but he was trying to open them. Marchant turned and fled the hall, pushing away another temple worker who had heard the disturbance.

He thought he was heading straight for the east exit, but found himself in an open courtyard. A group of elderly priests, naked to the waist, were sitting on the ground in a circle, talking quietly as they ate food from stainless-steel tiffin boxes. One of them — bushy grey chest hair, forehead streaked with vermilion — was speaking on a mobile phone. He glanced up at Marchant and then looked away. Marchant asked one of the other priests for directions to the east gate and then set off again, walking fast.

He knew the authorities would soon be looking for him, and his heart sank as he turned the corner and saw a group of four policemen running down the corridor. But something about their manner made him hold his nerve. They hadn’t reacted when he came into view, and were now turning off the main corridor. He glanced after them and saw a crowd gathered around the edge of the Golden Lotus Pond. Two bodies were lying still on the stone floor, surrounded by devotees. Marchant couldn’t be sure, but one of them looked like the CIA officer Meena had met at the Lakshmi idol. Clearly, Valentin had been busy.

It took him longer to get out of the labyrinthine temple than he had intended, so he wasn’t surprised when he didn’t see Meena or a car in the street outside. He looked up and down the road and then walked over to the barrier, where Meena had arranged for them to be picked up by her redneck tourist friend. No one was about. He went to retrieve his footwear, watching the man take his ticket and turn to a row of hundreds of shoes. A moment later, he was holding two pairs, his and Meena’s. He hesitated and then took both, slipping into his own and walking away with Meena’s in his hand.

Meena had had no time to collect her shoes. Someone other than Valentin must have been outside. He glanced up and down the street, looking for a taxi, and then his mobile phone rang.

‘It’s me. Sorry,’ Meena said. ‘Where are you?’

‘Waiting for you to pick me up outside the temple, as agreed.’

‘We had to go. Head for the airfield. Call me when you get near.’

She had briefed him earlier. The airfield was near Karaikudi, outside a small village called Kanadukathan, and had fallen into disrepair. In the Second World War, the Allies had used it as a base for Flying Fortresses targeting Malaya and Singapore. It was also the place where Meena’s legend was meant to be heading for her family wedding. She was thorough, Marchant couldn’t fault her on that.

Half an hour later, he was out of Madurai and heading east through remote countryside in a taxi with a dodgy horn. To begin with, he had assumed that his driver was simply more eager than usual in his use of it, knowing that in India the horn was like a friendly nod of the head, but it was definitely broken, staying jammed on for ten seconds every time he deployed it.

‘Sir, I will manage it, don’t worry.’ The driver grinned in the rear-view mirror.

Not using the horn would be a good start, Marchant thought, but he knew that would be impossible. He tried to cut out the noise and take in the scenery. The reddish earth was barren and unfarmed, flat and dotted with sparse bushes. In the distance, he could see an outcrop of rock that had had its top sliced off. Earlier, he had passed rainbow-painted trucks carrying quarried rocks back to Madurai.

‘Sir, are you knowing about the tourism business?’ the driver asked, in between sustained blasts of the horn, which was beginning to grow hoarse. ‘I have a good friend — ’

‘No, I’m afraid not,’ Marchant interrupted.

‘Cement sector?’

‘No. Can we go a bit quicker? Faster?’ It was not something he had ever thought he would ask on Indian roads, but he was worried that Meena hadn’t rung again. He had tried to call but her phone was switched off.

‘No problem. Isuzu engine.’

The taxi might have had Japanese technology under the bonnet, but its Indian suspension had long since gone. Marchant found the discomfort oddly reassuring, taking him back to his childhood, driving out of Delhi on a Friday night, the bright lights of the lorries roaring past, waking up at a remote Rajasthani fort. Then he thought of Sebbie and felt a ball tighten in his stomach. It shocked him how much he still missed his twin brother. He stared out of the window at the scenes of rural-roadside life: a woman shaking the coals out of her iron, a threshing machine, schoolchildren cycling home on oversized bikes, their long legs languid in the heat.

‘Sir, am I boring you?’ the taxi driver asked, his face in the mirror now long with concern.

‘Not at all. I’m sorry,’ Marchant said, feeling guilty. ‘Please, tell me about the cement sector.’

Meena’s car turned off the dusty road into what at first looked like scrubland. The area was completely flat, covered in green bushes. Peacocks were strutting about, picking at the dry ground, the green sheen of their feathers glinting in the dying light of the day. She knew the airfield was disused, but she had expected a little more infrastructure. In the distance there were a few low buildings, derelict and overgrown. The control tower had long since been demolished. Towards the far perimeter, near a group of trees, a team of local women were loading long logs into stacks and covering them with tarpaulins. Beside the piles of wood someone had laid out cow dung to dry.