Jon Stock - Dead Spy Running

‘The Americans are looking for me,’ he began, taking a pack of her cigarettes from the bedside table and lighting up. He had forgotten how it felt to embark on a lie, that exquisite moment when you step off from ordinary life into the shadows of deceit, where anything is suddenly possible. For a moment the thrill was intoxicating.

‘Why?’ She seemed genuinely surprised, resting her chin on both hands to listen.

‘I needed dollars for India, the new bank at the US Embassy was offering the best rate, so I went along. But they wouldn’t let me in without searching my rucksack.’ He paused, relishing the options, wondering which way to take his story. ‘I had a row.’

‘You should have left your rucksack somewhere, like at the station. It’s the same everywhere.’

‘I know. But I’d only just arrived in Warsaw. OK, I also had a bit of puff on board. I didn’t want a scene.’

‘Was it just a row?’ Monika asked, putting one hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh.

‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.

‘Nothing. I just can’t imagine you angry. Did you get very cross? Like really crazy?’

Her manner was coquettish, playful, and he wondered again whether she was playing a game too. ‘There was a bit of mutual pushing. Your police were called, but they weren’t interested.’

‘But the Americans are?’

‘Maybe I’m being paranoid. I had that rucksack with me, that’s all. And they started to ask what was in it when I wouldn’t show them.’

‘No one saw me, Mr Angry-man. And you’re with me now. I checked you out.’ He stared at her through his smoke. ‘From the hostel,’ she added, kissing him.

Leila had met Jago, a tousle-haired six-year-old, once before, but this was her first time on the London Eye. Fielding had emailed her earlier in the day with the unusual time and place, explaining that he would have a godson in tow. Everyone in the Service knew the Vicar had an inordinate number of godchildren (fourteen at the last count). Less well known was how he found time to see them all. They were a lucky bunch, she thought, as Fielding led them through the shadows to an empty capsule, bypassing the long queue. He ushered Leila and Jago before him, nodding at an attendant as the doors closed. It evidently wasn’t Fielding’s first visit.

As Jago swung on the metal handrail, looking fearlessly at the Thames below him, Leila took in London from a new perspective. All around her, as they rose almost imperceptibly into the night sky, buildings coyly revealed parts that had seldom been seen by the public before: pointed skylights, roof gullies, curved domes.

‘We always try to get a sunset flight,’ Fielding said, looking west, where the high clouds were tinged with red. ‘Don’t we Jago?’

But Jago was too preoccupied by a passenger boat making its way up the river, its wake spreading like spilt salt behind it.

‘He’s grown up a lot since I last saw him,’ Leila offered, doubting whether Fielding’s effort to include his godson in their conversation was genuine.

‘They do, you know,’ he said, still looking out west. ‘Sorry to bring you up here.’

‘It’s great. I’ve never been.’

‘We just can’t be sure about Legoland at the moment.’

‘No?’

She presumed he meant MI5, but Fielding didn’t elaborate. ‘Stay away from the doors and these pods are almost impenetrable,’ he continued. ‘At least at the top. Curved glass, you see. Sometimes I reckon there are more of the world’s intelligence services flying the London Eye than tourists. Word’s got out.’

‘Uncle Marcus?’ Jago asked, not waiting for an answer. ‘Are we moving faster than a clock?’

‘A clock? Well, faster than the long hand, slower than the second hand.’

‘What’s the time now, then?’

‘The time?’ Marcus repeated, barely missing a beat. It was why he always accepted invitations to be a godfather: children’s random thought patterns kept his brain nimble. ‘Almost 12 o’clock,’ he said, winking at Leila. ‘When we reach the top it will be exactly midnight.’

‘And then we’ll all turn into pumpkins on the way down?’

‘Every one of us.’

‘Hassan was a disappointment, in many ways,’ Leila said, checking that Jago was distracted again. The boy seemed to be deep in thought, contemplating his imminent transformation.

‘Really?’

‘I think he was just lonely.’

‘Did you…?’

‘Squeeze the pips? Yes.’

‘And?’

‘When pushed…squeezed…he mentioned the Russians, said how they had liked the instability of last year, of seeing the Service wobble.’

‘I’m sure they did. It wasn’t the Russians.’

‘No.’ She paused, squatting down next to Jago. She had forgotten how brusque Fielding could be in his dismissals.

‘What’s that?’ the boy asked, pointing almost directly beneath them.

‘That’s called a carousel,’ she said, looking at a circular disc of colours far below them. They were almost at the top of the wheel now. Midnight was approaching. ‘Horses and music and…’

‘Oh yes, we saw it down there,’ he said, already looking elsewhere, across the river towards Big Ben.

‘There’s something else I need to talk to you about,’ Leila said. She stood up and walked over to Fielding, who was still looking upriver.

‘Of course.’

‘I need a break. From Britain, from everything that’s happened.’

‘As far as I’m concerned, you can have as long off as you want. Travel, see the world as a tourist for a bit. I thought HR had talked to you about this?’

‘I don’t want a holiday. I need to keep myself busy while he’s away. But not here.’

‘Your next foreign tour is, when, next year?’

‘July.’

‘I’m sure we could bring it forward.’

‘I had something else in mind. The CIA’s exchange programme. They’ve just advertised another position.’

He looked at her for a moment, studying her face. She was strikingly beautiful, he thought, particularly in the soft light of the setting sun. ‘Is that what you really want? I’m surprised. Genuinely. Langley’s no fun at all, you know that.’

‘It’s not in America. A three-month tour on the subcontinent. India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka. I’d start in the Delhi station.’

A thought crossed Fielding’s mind with the fleeting transience of one of Jago’s random musings; but it left a trace that was to linger much longer than he would have liked.

Spiro looked again at the grainy image of a two-tonne, dark-blue military truck, standing in heavy traffic on the northern edge of Warsaw.

‘Grom. Polish special forces. When was this taken?’ he asked, pulling hard on his cigarette.

‘20.30 hours,’ Carter said.

The room had gone quiet as everyone stared at the truck.

‘Bring us in closer,’ Spiro said, walking up to the wall as the image grew bigger and more blurred. ‘This part here, the windscreen.’

The truck’s windscreen was highlighted with an animated dotted line, before it expanded to fill the entire wall. The driver could clearly be seen on the right-hand side of the cabin, and the outline of another figure was visible in the passenger seat. But it was the profile of a third person between them that had interested Spiro.

‘Can we rebuild this?’ he asked.

The atmosphere grew tense as Carter and his team exchanged glances with each other, realising that Spiro was about to show them up. They had been more interested in establishing where the truck had gone next, and whether any of the city’s other unreliable cameras had captured its progress.

In a few moments the image had been enhanced enough to reveal the blurred features of a familiar figure. Spiro turned to address the room, one side of the projected figure dappling his own. ‘Hugo Prentice, employee of Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Warsaw station. I guess his mother loved him. Langley wants him fried.’