Jon Stock - Games Traitors Play

He thought again about what had happened with Dhar’s mother. It was clearer now, painfully clear. Fielding hadn’t trusted him to betray, didn’t think he had it in him to persuade the Russians of his treachery. So he had given Marchant a helping hand, asked Spiro to humiliate him in front of Primakov. The American wouldn’t have needed much persuading.

‘Are you angry enough to meet your brother?’ Primakov had asked as he stepped out of the car. Did the Russian suspect what game Fielding was playing? That Marchant’s rage had been conceived five thousand miles away in Legoland?

‘I’d like to see him, yes,’ Marchant had said.

‘And he’d like to see you. But first I want you to do something for me. For Russia. Then we will get you out of Britain.’

Marchant walked around the corner towards the mansion where the wedding was taking place. A crowd had spilled out onto the road beneath loops of bunting that had been strung between tangled telegraph poles. Two women were walking towards him, arm in arm, their bright carmine saris illuminating the dusk. The one on the left reminded him of Meena, the same lambent eyes, the subtle sashay of hips. A stray pie dog lingered in the shadows.

‘Can you help me?’ Marchant asked her, ignoring the field agent’s normal caveats. He was drawing attention to himself in a place where he was already a curiosity.

‘We’ll try,’ she said, masking a giggle with her hand.

‘I had a friend who was meant to be here today.’ He nodded at the house behind them. ‘Over from the States. Lakshmi Meena. You don’t happen to know her, do you?’

‘Sure. She’s my friend’s cousin. It’s such a shame. Lakshmi was meant to be here, but she got held up in Madurai.’

‘Thank you,’ Marchant said. He felt stronger already, as if the world had been veering off its axis and was now spinning true again. He realised, as he walked on, how much he wanted to believe in Meena, believe that she wasn’t another Leila. He was no longer sure he could face a life of trusting no one. Meena was beautiful, there was no point denying it, but it was his sympathy rather than his love that she kept asking of him. She had claimed that she had tried to stop Aziz in Morocco, then admitted that she could have done more. The appearance of Spiro at the airfield appeared to have pained her, but she had still boarded the flight.

He stopped, and turned back to the square, where he had seen a taxi waiting, and thought about Primakov’s request. He was certain it was a test. If he was caught, the consequences would be serious. Should he run it past Fielding? Or was he now expected to play the traitor’s game alone?

Monika had always thought she would be able to do it herself, that she owed it to her brother, but she couldn’t. She hoped he would understand. She had the money in cash, £20,000 withdrawn from an emergency AW fund in London that was meant to be used for bribing disillusioned SVR agents.

As she stood outside a snooker hall in Haringey, north London, waiting for her contact to arrive, she wondered if she had any energy left to hide her tracks, to invent a cover story for the money. To begin with, she had resigned herself to being caught. She had imagined standing over him, waiting calmly for the police to arrive, but she couldn’t do that either. Her survival instincts, honed in the field, were too strong. So she had contracted out her revenge instead.

She was spoilt for choice in London, but had settled on a Turkish gang with a proven record and an obsession with forensics. They had never been caught, and they asked for more when she told them the West End venue.

‘It’s very public.’

‘Good. I want everyone to know.’

General Borowski would certainly know, but at least this way there was a chance of protecting herself afterwards, providing the political will was there. She was in his hands now.

Dhar listened in silence as Primakov told him about his mother’s rendition. He knew that anger was a weakness, but it took all of his strength to remain calm and listen. The only outward sign of distress was a twitch in his lower left eyelid.

‘This Spiro is the bane of many brothers’ lives,’ Dhar said. He was sitting upright, his hands flat on the table in front of him, on either side of a glass of water. They were talking in the hangar at Kotlas. Outside, it was raining again, rattling the metal roof.

‘He was the one who waterboarded Daniel Marchant.’

Dhar tried not to think where the Americans would take his mother, how she would cope.

Reaching for the glass of water, he watched Primakov walk over to the window and look outside. Sergei was right. There was something about the Russian — other than the mix of cologne and garlic — that made Dhar wary. But he had no option but to work with him. He had come straight from seeing Marchant in India.

‘If it’s any consolation, your British half-brother is distraught,’ Primakov said, turning back to face him. ‘He gave your mother his personal word that she would be taken to London. If Spiro hadn’t been armed, Marchant would have killed him.’

‘He is ready to help us, then?’ Dhar asked, happy to move the conversation away from his mother.

‘Marchant could forgive the West once. But now, following your mother’s rendition, he is struggling to call Britain his home.’

Dhar flinched again at the mention of his mother. He closed his eyes, trying to calm the twitch, control the body with the mind.

‘We need to be sure,’ he said, raising a reluctant hand to steady his eyelid. It was too much. ‘Rendition’ and ‘mother’ were words he never wanted to hear together again. ‘After all that happened to Marchant before, he still went back to work for the infidel.’

‘He wants to meet you. I have told him everything about your father, how I recruited him in Delhi, his twenty years of service to Moscow.’

‘How did he react?’

‘Like you, I think he suspected already. There was relief in his eyes. Let us see. He must pass one final test before he joins us.’

‘I thought I should drive to Heathrow, pick Daniel up,’ Ian Denton said, standing in front of Marcus Fielding’s desk. Fielding was lying on the floor behind it, partly out of sight, trying to relax after another back spasm. ‘He must be pretty cut up after what happened in Madurai.’

‘It’s OK,’ Fielding said. ‘I’ve just sent Prentice. With orders to get Marchant drunk. Look out for him when he’s back in the office, though. He’ll have no desire to talk to me.’

Fielding was touched by Denton’s concern. Despite his cold-blooded demeanour, he had a warm heart. And he had always taken an interest in Marchant’s welfare.

‘Of course.’ Denton paused. ‘Is everything all right with Daniel?’

‘As much as it ever is with him,’ Fielding said. He wanted to confide more in his deputy, but he couldn’t. Denton’s own deep suspicion of the Americans had brought him close to Marchant in recent months, but Fielding knew that the plan to help Marchant defect must remain known only to himself.

‘I’ll leave it to Prentice, then,’ Denton said. ‘And look forward to signing off his exorbitant expenses.’

Fielding sometimes wished his deputy would unbutton a little, let things go, but he could never remember an occasion when Denton had got drunk. After he had left, Fielding unzipped the second encrypted audio file from GCHQ and listened, reading the covering note from his opposite number at Cheltenham. Grushko again, this time talking to an unnamed colleague in Moscow Centre. It had been recorded a few hours earlier.

‘I still have my doubts.’