Jon Stock - Games Traitors Play

Monika stared at the words, barely able to believe what she was reading. Then she bent double over the lavatory and threw up.

‘Tell me something,’ Primakov said. ‘What ever made you think you could trust them? After all they’ve done to you?’

‘I put my faith in the Vicar,’ Marchant said.

‘A mistake your father never made.’

They were driving back towards Madurai in Primakov’s car. A thick glass partition divided them from the front, where a Russian driver sat without expression. It was evident that he couldn’t hear their conversation. Marchant wasn’t surprised that Primakov had turned up at the airport. More worrying was his lack of concern that Dhar’s mother was now in US custody. Marchant had told him the whole story: Fielding’s assurances about Lakshmi Meena, how the CIA had agreed for Shushma to be taken to the UK. Primakov had been particularly interested in Fielding’s role, asking Marchant to repeat exactly what he had said. Marchant had been happy to tell him. He no longer knew where his own loyalties lay, let alone Primakov’s.

‘Did you know that she was working at the temple?’ Marchant asked.

‘Of course.’

‘Why didn’t you do more to stop the Americans from taking her?’

‘Like you, we had heard she was bound for Britain. I was also a little under strength. Valentin is in the Apollo hospital.’

Marchant didn’t believe him. Moscow could have drawn on more resources to stop Shushma’s departure. But for some reason they hadn’t.

‘Her son won’t be happy,’ Marchant said, trying to steer the conversation towards Dhar. The only thing he knew for certain was that he needed to see him, discuss their father man to man, brother to brother. Primakov had avoided referring directly to Dhar before, but it would be hard not to now.

‘It will confirm his worst fears about the West,’ Primakov said.

And then Marchant began to see things more clearly. Primakov hadn’t flown to Madurai to prevent Shushma’s exfiltration: he wanted to be sure that she was taken. It was the one act that could be guaranteed to get under Dhar’s skin. Whatever the Russians had planned for him, it suited them if Dhar’s blood was up.

‘A son will do anything for his mother,’ Marchant offered.

‘Rage is important. It can persuade others to take you seriously. People who had their doubts.’

For the first time, Primakov looked at Marchant with something approaching knowingness in his moist eyes. Was it a sign at last? A part of Marchant no longer believed Fielding’s reassurances about Primakov’s loyalty to London. The Russian wouldn’t give him anything because there was nothing to give. His brief was simply to keep the jihadi fires stoked in Dhar’s belly, and to persuade Marchant to help his half-brother. There was no hidden agenda, no resurrection of old family ties, no belated clemency for his father. But somewhere inside him, Marchant still hoped he was wrong.

‘Are you angry, too?’ Primakov asked.

‘Wouldn’t you be? I promised Shushma I’d look after her, only to see her renditioned in front of me by James fucking Spiro.’

Even as Marchant spat out the expletive, a sickening feeling had started to spread: a realisation that he had been manipulated, that actions he thought were his own had actually been controlled by others. Rage is important. It can persuade others to take you seriously. People who had their doubts. He was the one raging now, against Fielding, Meena, Spiro, the West. And it would be music to Moscow’s ears.

He closed his eyes. Christ, Fielding could be a cold bastard.

Even Marcus Fielding, working late, was surprised by the swiftness of Moscow Centre’s response. GCHQ’s sub-station at Bude in Cornwall had intercepted a call from Primakov to Vasilli Grushko, the London Rezident , within half an hour of Lakshmi Meena’s departure from a remote airfield outside Madurai. Fielding played the recording again. Primakov spoke first, then Grushko.

‘He has been humiliated, which is always a good moment to strike.’

‘And by his own side. Fielding is more heartless than I gave him credit for.’

‘I can only assume that he wanted to win favour with Langley. By giving them Salim Dhar’s mother, MI6 has gone some way to restoring a relationship they cannot live without for ever.’

‘Where is Marchant now?’

‘I dropped him off at a village. There was a wedding. He wanted some time on his own.’

‘And has he agreed to help us?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then there is no time to waste. He must meet Dhar.’

Fielding sat back, poured himself a glass of Lebanese wine and turned on a Bach cantata. It was a rare moment of triumph. Oleg, asleep in the corner, looked up briefly, sensing the change in mood. There was no longer any talk of dangles, no equivocation in Grushko’s voice. Fielding’s only headache was Marchant. It hadn’t been an easy decision to call on Spiro’s services, let alone Lakshmi Meena’s, but it was the only way to provoke Marchant. He wouldn’t want to talk to his Chief, not for a while, which was why he had sent Prentice to pick him up from the airport, take him out for a meal in town, suck some venom from his wounded pride.

Fielding had told Prentice only the bare essentials of the operation to lift Dhar’s mother. He wouldn’t have expected to be given any detail. Need-to-know was a way of life for both of them. Prentice was unaware of Marchant’s ongoing attempt to be recruited by Primakov, given that it was linked to the Russian’s highly classified past. All he knew was that there had been a change of plan in Madurai, and that Marchant would be upset.

‘We had to screw him,’ Fielding had explained. ‘You know how it is.’

Marchant would be astute enough to work out what had happened, why Fielding had been forced to intervene, pull the strings, but he would still be angry. He could let off steam with Prentice, have a moan about means and ends and Machiavellian bosses.

After he had calmed down, Fielding would have one last talk with him. Then he would be on his own, free to go off the rails, not turn up for work, drink too much. Marchant had form when it came to falling apart. In the months before he had left for Marrakech he had been a mess. And the Russians would lap it up, reassured that he was ready to be turned. Only then would it be time for him to meet Dhar. He owed it to Marchant to prepare him properly, let him genuinely feel what it was like to hate the West. Dhar would detect a false note at a thousand yards.

It was as he poured himself a second glass of wine that another encrypted audio file from GCHQ dropped into his inbox.

Marchant had asked Primakov to drop him off in the centre of Kanadukathan, about ten minutes from the airfield. It was a small village, and Marchant would have described it as poor if it hadn’t been for the vast deserted mansions that dominated the dusty lanes. Meena had talked about them in Madurai. They were the ancestral homes of the Chettiars, a once-wealthy community of money-lenders, merchants and jewellery dealers who had fallen on hard times since the end of the Raj. Used now for storing dowry gifts, the mansions only came alive for family weddings, when the Chettiar diaspora would descend from around the world and fill the pillared courtyards with music and laughter.

Marchant strolled around the village square. The ground was covered in a confetti of paper and cardboard, the remains of exploded firecrackers. He could hear a wedding party in the distance, and wondered if one of Meena’s cousins really was getting married. He had seen the celebrations from a distance on the way out to the airfield. It didn’t matter either way, but he wanted to know. The world of lies and legends had lost its appeal after the scene with Spiro, and he needed to be reassured by something tangible, real.