Jon Stock - Games Traitors Play

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I present the most feared combat aircraft in the world, the fifth-generation F-22 Raptor,’ the commentator said, rolling out the Rs. ‘This awesome aircraft enjoys superiority in every conceivable dogfight scenario. It has no rivals. There is no battlefield that the Raptor cannot dominate. There is no battlefield that the Raptor will not dominate. Designed without compromise to sweep our skies of all threats, keeping the peace through strength.’

The Georgian delegation had been joined by a posse of US military top brass and senior executives from the global arms industry. Acting against the CIA’s advice, the US Secretary of Defense had also flown in to join the celebrations. Not everyone was pleased to see him, as he had halted future production of the $155-million Raptor, but his presence was a sign of the strategic importance of the Georgian deal.

After the Raptor came the SU-25, taking off without a soundtrack and eliciting barely disguised disdain from the American commentator.

‘Ladies and gentleman, a plane from another era, a mudfighter from the past, a relic of the Cold War, the SU-25, known without affection in the West as the Frogfoot. In a moment, the two planes will pass from left to right along the display line, where the quantum difference in technology will be plain for all to see.’

‘Frogfoot One, time for your farewell tour,’ Major Bandon, the American pilot, announced over the r/t as both planes banked at the far end of the runway.

‘Copy that, Raptor One,’ the young Georgian pilot replied, peeling away. The plan was to put the Raptor through its paces, while the SU-25 took a sanctioned tour of southern Britain before returning for the mock dogfight. ‘Good luck.’

‘Thank you, Frogfoot. Only sorry you won’t be here to see the fun and games.’

‘Doing anything special while I’m away? To please our generals?’

‘A few tail slides, paddle turns and muscle climbs, the usual. Maybe a power loop or two. If you take your time, I might even pull a Pugachev cobra at the finish. There’s been too much talk in your neck of the woods that we Americans can’t get it up.’

‘Dream on, Raptor One. Out.’

‘And go to hell,’ the American said to himself as he watched the SU-25 head off to the east. He knew the pilot was from Georgia, one of America’s new allies, but the plane was Russian, and old habits died hard.

Marchant no longer thought that he had a strong stomach. He had been sick shortly after take-off, when Dhar over-corrected a sudden lurch to the right and put the plane into a 3-G turn. For a painful few seconds, in which he had nearly blacked out, he had wondered if they might not get further than Finland, but he was starting to relax as they flew low and fast over the North Sea towards the east coast of Britain. It was the speed of their progress that he found the most disorientating. At first, it had felt as if he was being dragged along behind the aircraft, like a waterskier. Dhar had told him to look far ahead, to anticipate. Marchant was impressed by how much Sergei must have taught him. He was flying well, untroubled by the G-forces. His only concern appeared to be their ETA.

‘You’re a natural,’ Marchant said over the intercom.

‘Another two weeks of training and you wouldn’t have been sick, but there was not enough time,’ Dhar replied.

‘What’s the big rush?’ Marchant asked. Dhar had synchronised watches before they left, and had regularly asked him to call out the minutes and seconds.

‘There is an important air show today. At a place called Fairford. It only happens once a year. I don’t think they would have delayed it while I improved my flying skills.’

‘Are we topping the bill?’ Marchant asked, calculating the implications. He knew the air show well, having been taken there by his father when he was a child. Red Arrows and Airfix models, candy-floss and Concorde. Fairford held less happy memories, too. It was where he had flown from with a hood over his head and shackles on his feet, when the Americans had renditioned him to a black site in Poland. But his first thought now was of the number of people on the ground. Tens of thousands of potential casualties.

‘That’s one way of putting it.’

‘Sergei mentioned collateral.’

‘I know.’

‘What did he mean?’

There was a long pause. Marchant adjusted his helmet and oxygen mask, thinking that contact had perhaps been lost.

‘One of our LGBs is a dirty bomb.’

Marchant felt sick. It was only a few feet away from him. He thought of the contamination on the ground, the years of cleaning up. A thousand-pound dirty bomb exploding in the middle of a packed crowd would kill hundreds, but many more would fall ill afterwards from radiation sickness. And no terrorist had ever deployed one before. It had become the Holy Grail, not so much for the number of people it killed as for its propaganda value. The problem was its difficulty to assemble, unless you could tap into the caesium resources of a country like Russia.

‘And Sergei didn’t approve?’

Another silence.

‘My mother loved Britain. For a long while I never knew why. Now I know her loyalties were misplaced. Our father’s heart beat for another country. One day I will tell her. Despite Iraq, despite Afghanistan, I never hated Britain in the same way that I detest America. Perhaps I was blind, but it gave shelter to many brothers. Now it has become a legitimate target.’

‘Its people or its politicians?’

Dhar said nothing. Marchant wished he could see his face, gauge his mood from his eyes. It was hard to tell from his voice alone, particularly over the plane’s intercom, but something had shifted. Hairline cracks were appearing. Should Marchant tell him now about their father and Primakov? He instinctively glanced around the cockpit, above and to the sides, checking for threats. Marchant felt vulnerable with his back to Dhar, but there was nothing his half-brother could do except listen. He couldn’t kill Marchant, physically throw him out of the plane, unless he could operate both ejector seats.

‘Vasilli Grushko was right to be suspicious of Primakov,’ Marchant said over the intercom, taking the risk. He would tell it to him straight, give the bare facts. ‘What he found in the KGB archives was true. Primakov used to work for MI6. Our father signed him up in Delhi more than thirty years ago. In order for him to recruit Primakov, our father let himself be recruited by the Russians. It was a risk, and once or twice he handed over more than he should have, more than Primakov was giving to London. But he never once betrayed Britain. All the intel was about America.’

There was another long silence. Again Marchant began to think the intercom was faulty, and adjusted his helmet. He felt so defenceless with his back to Dhar.

‘How do you know this?’ Dhar eventually said, almost in a whisper.

‘I’ve seen the file. Moscow Centre thought it had the Chief of MI6 on its books, when in fact Primakov was working for us. He was, right up until the moment he died.’

Marchant closed his eyes, imagining Dhar’s face behind him. He had to keep it together, not let Primakov’s death choke him up.

‘Until the moment you shot him,’ Dhar said.

‘I’m my father’s son, Salim. I’ve never stopped working for MI6, or believing in Britain. My defection was hollow, nothing more than an elaborate charade, a way of meeting you, my brother.’

‘Is there no truth in your Western life? Is everything lies?’ The aircraft rocked in a pocket of turbulence.

‘Our father disliked America. There was nothing false about that. If the CIA had ever found out what he was telling the Russians about them, he would have been arrested and tried for treason, if they didn’t torture him to death first. I dislike America too. I mistrust its military foreign policy, its corporate and cultural power, its fundamental values, the way it’s started to define what it means to be human. But our father loved Britain with a passion, just as I do. Your mother wasn’t misguided. She was right. And she isn’t in the hands of the CIA. She’s safe, in Britain. I give you my word, just as I gave it to her.’