Jon Stock - Dead Spy Running

Fielding held Carter’s mobile, waiting for MI6’s station head in Delhi to call him back. An alert would have gone out to all the Service’s staff to report immediately if there was any word of Fielding’s whereabouts. But the local station head owed his promotion to the Chief, who had nothing to lose.

The phone rang in Fielding’s moist hand. He looked at Denton and Carter as he listened, both of them stripped down to their shirts, buttons undone, dripping with sweat. Denton was the worse of the two. He had never been good in the heat, always preferring the cooler climes of Eastern Europe. After a few moments Fielding passed the phone back to Carter.

‘They’re sending out a refuelling truck in ten minutes,’ he said quietly.

‘Thank God for that,’ the pilot whispered, his voice drained of all its earlier confidence.

‘They’ll load enough fuel to reach the Gulf. You can make your own way home from there.’

‘What about you?’ Carter asked, wiping his brow.

‘One of our local agents is on board the fuel truck,’ Fielding said. ‘I’m going back with him to the depot, and on from there to find Leila.’

‘Fielding never believed that your presence at the marathon was anything other than chance,’ Armstrong continued. ‘It made him look elsewhere for answers. Leila’s mother is a Bahá’í — a persecuted religion in Iran. The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security saw an opportunity to blackmail Leila in London as soon as her mother touched down in Tehran. If Leila didn’t agree to work for them, they would kill her mother. No one would notice — Bahá’ís are being killed and imprisoned all the time.’

‘What made her go back to that?’ Marchant asked, but he already knew the answer.

‘Her mother country. It tends to call loudest when it’s in trouble.’

Leila had spoken about it once, how her mother longed one day to return to her place of birth. She must have finally decided that time was running out. Her husband was dead, and Iran, despite its problems, held more for her in old age than Britain ever would. It had only been her daughter who kept her there, and she was embarking on a life of foreign postings.

‘And the rest of you believed I was trying to take out the US Ambassador at the marathon?’

‘The TETRA phone evidence seemed incontrovertible.’

‘It was Leila who gave me the phone.’

Armstrong paused again. ‘We managed to establish that it was linked to the explosives on Pradeep’s running belt. There was a pre-programmed speed-dial number, listed as the main switchboard at MI6. If you’d rung it, Pradeep, you and many others would have died.’

Marchant had been so close to calling Leila on that number. She had even urged him to dial it. He felt sick. ‘ If you don’t hear from me in fifteen minutes, try calling the office. Speed-dial 1.’ He remembered the exchange vividly, like much of what was said that day.

‘You know it wasn’t my mobile,’ he said, swallowing hard, still thinking of the look in Leila’s eyes when she had handed him the TETRA unit. ‘My old one maybe, but it was Leila who brought it with her.’

‘That’s what Fielding said, what you told us in your debrief. But I’m afraid we all believed Leila, who debriefed very differently. MI5 was finally allowed into Legoland yesterday. We found the person who signs out the handsets, sweated the truth out of him.’

Marchant knew what that meant, but he felt no sympathy. All he could think of was that Leila had been prepared to kill him.

‘It seems she used her charms to check out your old phone without actually signing for it. She told him it was for sentimental reasons.’

For the first time, Armstrong’s tone was condemnatory, as if she could stomach the treachery, but not the promiscuity. Marchant’s response was entirely personal, too. The implications for his country would have to wait. Leila had betrayed him.

He had come to accept that her failure to exonerate him after the race could not be easily explained. Some sort of collusion with America had been the most likely reason, but now he knew it was worse than that. Far worse. He tried to hang on to the fact that she had chosen not to separate him and Pradeep into a thousand body parts. ‘ Did you try ringing me? Don’t, OK? Please. Just don’t. ’ Her voice had been insistent, but it wasn’t much consolation. Leila was the mole. His heart was hardening instinctively, to protect him from the blast, but he knew it was too late.

He remembered that night at the Fort when she had come into his room at dawn, how he had told her he wanted to keep their relationship separate from the deceit of their chosen profession. But he had slowly relented, won over by her laughter and love. Now it appeared that there had been no distinction for her. It had all been work: one big, dirty, duplicitous job.

Was that the Leila he had known? He had to believe that a part of what they had meant something to her. The Iranians must have presented her with such a hideous alternative that she was forced to go along with their plan.

‘So are you and Fielding best friends again?’ he asked.

Armstrong ignored the sarcasm. ‘He’s disappeared. We think he’s here in India, trying to find Leila.’

‘Is she here too?’ Marchant couldn’t conceal his interest.

‘She asked for a transfer to the CIA station in Delhi, before Fielding found out.’

‘Why Delhi?’

‘She wanted to protect the President.’

They looked at each other for a moment. An image of Leila and Dhar together flashed through his mind. He had to get out of there.

‘Have you come to release me? We need to find her.’

‘That’s not in my gift, I’m afraid. We failed to convince Langley that Leila has betrayed them as well as us. I’m not sure we ever will. At least Straker’s allowed me to debrief you about Salim Dhar. He remembered your stubbornness in Poland. You’re meant to be my prisoner.’

She looked at the bowl of bloody water.

‘You can tell him that Dhar headed north, two hours before the Seals arrived.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And that he likes shooting US presidents for target practice.’

Dhar watched the rickshaw driver’s legs seesaw through the Chandni Chowk traffic. ‘You will only have one chance,’ the woman next to him said. ‘At 5.35 p.m. the President will pause at the foot of the five flights of steps leading up to the Lotus Temple entrance. He will be greeted by a delegation of senior Bahá’ís. One will present him with a garland of flowers. At this point, and this point only, his security detail will withdraw a few steps. Your line of sight should be clear.’

‘I won’t miss,’ Dhar said. ‘ Inshallah .’

They sat in silence, watching the sea of faces flow past them on either side. She had already been through all the practical arrangements for the evening and there was a sense that their meeting should now come to an end.

‘It must have been difficult, so much time-passing with the kafir ,’ Dhar said. Across the street, two Western tourists, money belts slung below their thick waists, were taking photos of a man with no legs, perched on a board with wheels, pushing himself along with raw knuckles.

‘Those who work with animals get used to the smell.’

They were still wary of each other, both retreating to the muscled vernacular of the jihadi . There was no reason for either of them to trust each other beyond this short encounter. But there was something about the woman that intrigued Dhar. Her head was wrapped in a black scarf, concealing most of her face except for her big Meenakshi eyes. She spoke perfect Urdu, but with a slight accent that Dhar couldn’t quite place.