Jon Stock - Games Traitors Play

‘I don’t blame you for Madurai,’ he said. ‘You had your orders.’

‘That didn’t make it any easier.’

He wanted to ask if Shushma was OK, but he knew he couldn’t. It was better that he could still entertain the possibility that she was with Spiro. The thought of her in CIA custody, the genuine anger the thought stirred, was central to his imminent defection. It might even save his life when he finally met Dhar.

‘I’m going away,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve had enough.’

‘Of me?’

Marchant managed a smirk. ‘Of the West.’

‘Was that why you helped to give the MiG breach so much publicity?’

He struggled to conceal his surprise.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Dan, we met here tonight because I’ve got orders to bring you in.’

‘Spiro’s?’

‘With the Vicar’s blessing.’

Marchant paused, weighing up the situation. He was pushing it to the limit, and hoped that Primakov would move soon. Meena knew how to look after herself, but he was still concerned for her. And for the first time he felt that she was being straight with him. He wished he could reciprocate, but he knew that he couldn’t, not yet.

‘Are you going to ask me to come quietly?’ he asked.

‘No. I’m not going to do anything.’

‘Nothing?’

‘I just want you to tell me what’s really going on.’

‘You know I can’t do that.’

‘If you did, then maybe I’d know how best to help you.’

Marchant studied her eyes, calculating the implications. She was speaking too freely to be wired, which made him believe her. ‘You really mean that, don’t you?’

‘I want to do one worthwhile thing while I’m still with the Agency, and I’m not sure bringing in a drunken MI6 agent with a penchant for rare Russian seabirds is what I had in mind.’

‘The Steller’s eider breeds in Alaska, too, you know.’

‘Spiro’s fallen for it, hasn’t he?’ Meena said, turning the wine-glass in her hand. ‘He’s seen you go off the rails, but he’s forgotten to ask why. Well, I know what makes a British MI6 agent try to be recruited by the Russians. Because he knows they have someone he desperately wants to meet. Fielding knows it too, which is why he asked Spiro and me to take Dhar’s mother away. You hated the West for that, didn’t you? And it made the Russians love you even more. That helicopter in Morocco — I know now that it was Russian. You were right all along. Tell me what I need to do, Dan. You’re the only person who can stop Dhar.’

Marchant hesitated before speaking. ‘How many people have you got outside?’

‘Two vehicles, six people.’

‘Do you know any of them?’

‘Some, yes.’

‘Good friends of yours?’

‘Decent colleagues.’

‘Walk out into the street and tell them I’m leaving in five. Then go home. All of you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I don’t want anyone to get hurt.’

But he already knew it was too late. He heard the car before he saw it, a black Audi pulling up outside. Two men wearing balaclavas got out from the back and ran into the restaurant while a third stood by the front passenger door, a handgun aimed into the dark street.

‘Don’t touch her!’ Marchant shouted, as several diners screamed. The men grabbed him by both arms and frogmarched him out of the restaurant, barking orders at each other and at the diners, and waving a gun at Meena. The men were Russian, and it wasn’t subtle, just as he had predicted. A moment later, the shooting started. The third man fired down Lexington Street towards Shaftesbury Avenue, where a black SUV had stopped at a diagonal, blocking the road. As Marchant was bundled into the back of the car, he looked back at the restaurant. The front window had been shot out, and the noise of the screaming diners was sickening. There was no sign of Meena.

‘It just makes us look like such a bunch of bloody fools,’ Harriet Armstrong said, declining Fielding’s offer of a chair in his office. ‘I’ve got Counter Terrorism Command demanding answers, and Jim Spiro can barely speak.’

A quiet American, Fielding thought. He almost felt sorry for Armstrong, but her recent rapprochement with Spiro had extinguished any sympathy he might have had for her situation. Besides, there was very little he could say to mollify her. MI5 was a bunch of fools.

‘Much as I’d like to say that this was Marchant’s work, the facts are these,’ he said, steepling his fingers under his chin and sitting back. ‘One of my agents has been seized on the streets of London by what we think were officers of the SVR — ’

‘Come on, we know they were.’

‘- and I have urged the Prime Minister to protest in the strongest terms to the Russian Ambassador. Meanwhile, Six’s stations around the world are on heightened alert, and I hope that the same can be said for Britain’s ports, railways and airfields.’

‘What’s going on here, Marcus? Primakov was once one of ours.’

‘A fact that only a very few people are privy to.’ The last thing he needed was Armstrong spilling state secrets to Spiro.

‘I thought Marchant was being sent to see if Primakov could be ours again.’

‘He was. But I should remind you that certain senior figures in the SVR — Vasilli Grushko, for example — were opposed to Primakov’s London posting from the start. They didn’t completely trust him. It’s no coincidence that Primakov left the country in a hurry this morning, and my guess is that seizing Marchant is the SVR’s consolation prize. Marchant will be interrogated about Primakov, who will no doubt shortly be charged with betraying the motherland.’

Armstrong looked at him, weighing up what he said. She wasn’t convinced.

‘You don’t appear to be too concerned that one of your officers has just been taken by a hostile country.’

‘It’s not the first time, and I doubt it will be the last.’

‘America is not our enemy,’ Armstrong said, walking to the door.

‘It was when you and I were in India, fighting for what we believed in. Why are we suddenly being nice to Spiro again?’

Armstrong paused by the door. ‘Because we’ve got no option, have we?’

Fielding knew she was right. Britain needed America. ‘I’ll let you know as soon as we hear word of Marchant,’ he said. ‘We’re doing everything we can to find him.’

He watched her leave. As with the best lies, there was a strong element of truth in what he had told her. Grushko had long had his doubts about Primakov, but he must have overcome them to sanction the operation in Soho. Such a brazen act on the streets of London could not have gone ahead without the consent of the SVR’s local Rezident . Which meant that Marchant was in. He had passed all the tests, and would soon be with Salim Dhar. Fielding just hoped that Dhar would believe in him too.

An alert officer at UK Passport Control at Heathrow had picked up Primakov’s hurried exit, but they had failed to spot Vasilli Grushko, who had also left Britain earlier in the day, travelling with false documents on a flight to Moscow. He was now standing in the hangar at Kotlas with Primakov and Marchant.

‘Welcome to Russia,’ Grushko said, looking out at the rain on the runway. He was a short, wiry man with rimless glasses and sallow skin, in stark contrast to Primakov’s rubicund presence. ‘Is it your first time?’ There was no warmth in his voice, nothing excessive about him at all, just a cold matter-of-factness that made Marchant wary.

‘Officially or unofficially?’ Marchant replied. His head was hurting from the alcohol of the night before, and the journey in an Illyushin cargo plane from Heathrow to Moscow, which he had spent curled up in a container. He had then been flown by an Antonov military transporter to Kotlas.