Jon Stock - Dead Spy Running

‘Some people are saying that the Americans were behind the jihad in Britain, the petty squabbles of the enemy doing our work for us.’

‘Is that what they say?’ she asked.

‘The talk is of nothing else. The American infidel recruited someone to destroy its allies from the inside.’

Dhar had a question for his passenger before he dropped her off at the town hall: the name of the insider in London. His father, whom he had met only once, was dead, but he still needed to know, for himself, for his brother.

‘The enemy within has succeeded,’ she said. ‘The Britishers are facing turmoil.’

‘ Inshallah .’ The rickshaw speeded up, free of traffic now. ‘Your work is at the infidel’s embassy. You must know who this person is in Britain.’

‘Why do you ask?’

Because his jihadi world, so recently turned upside down, would begin to make sense again if he could be certain that it was an American who had betrayed his father. But he said nothing.

‘The infidels believe it was one of their own,’ she continued, ‘but the credit lies elsewhere. Not with Britain or America, but with someone, a woman, who tricked them both.’

‘Another woman?’ Dhar shifted in his seat. ‘It would be an honour to meet her,’ he said quietly, without conviction.

‘An honour?’ she asked. ‘What’s honour got to do with it?’

‘It can’t have been easy. Like you, she was living amongst the infidel, but acting in the name of Allah.’

‘Was she?’

But even Dhar wasn’t sure any more.

Straker took the call in one of the small private booths in the White House’s refurbished Situation Room complex. Moments before, he had stepped out of the Telecommunications Room next door, where the Vice President, the Director of National Intelligence, the White House Chief of Staff and a raft of other security advisers who wanted his job had been waiting for him to assess the threat matrix in India. It was a meeting he had been postponing ever since word had reached him that Salim Dhar had not been captured in Karnataka.

‘Harriet, I hope you have some decent CX for me. Otherwise I’m going to have to dunk our friend Marchant’s head in the Arabian Sea. Tell me he knows where Dhar is.’

‘Marchant was meant to be my prisoner.’

‘He was alive, wasn’t he? That’s all your PM wanted.’

‘Barely. Dhar left two hours before you reached the hideout, heading north.’

‘Great. Marchant told you nothing else?’

‘Dhar was shooting at Texans before Daniel reached him.’

‘Texans?’

‘A target in the shape of your previous President.’

‘Jesus, we need to take this guy down.’

‘Leila too. She might be working with Dhar.’

It was at moments like this, when he needed to punch someone, that Straker wished he brought a basketball into the office, as other DCIAs had been known to do, but it wasn’t his style to bounce balls down the corridors of power.

‘I’m touched by your interest in an Agency employee, Harriet,’ he said, failing to conceal his anger. ‘Really, I am. But we’ve run the rule over Leila many times. Monk Johnson is the most paranoid man I know, and he’s happy to have her meet his President. She saved the Secret Service’s butt in London, remember? Spiro’s looked into her case. Every goddamn analyst in Langley has taken a look. It doesn’t stack up. She’s clean, she did us a favour, she saved one of our ambassador’s lives. She’s a fucking hero, for God’s sake.’

‘Daniel Marchant thinks she was working for the Iranians.’

‘Marchant? We’ve just airlifted the kid out of a terrorist’s hideout in the Indian jungle. Give me a break here, Harriet. He tried to kill Munroe. He’s an enemy combatant, like his father, another one of Dhar’s British buddies.’

Armstrong looked around the room she had been given in the American Embassy. It had started with Straker’s crass attempt to destroy Chadwick’s reputation, but now her disillusionment with America had grown into something more general, a weariness with its ways that she had once so revered.

‘Give me a little longer with him,’ she said.

‘Do what you have to, Harriet. We need to neutralise Dhar. I’ve told the embassy that Marchant’s yours, but we don’t have much time.’

Armstrong hung up and dialled through to the guardroom in the basement, where Marchant was being kept. Then she made an encrypted call on her mobile to the MI6 station chief in Delhi, one of Fielding’s old friends. If the Chief was in town, he would know.

Marchant couldn’t decide if it was a good or bad development that his guards were taking him out of his cell. The hood and cuffs should have made him fear the worst, but there was something about their manner that gave him hope. Their body language was routine rather than rough.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked, not expecting an answer. The brightness of a Delhi day was forcing its way through the hood as they walked slowly up some stairs.

‘For a little drive,’ one of the guards said. ‘With your new best buddy.’

The next moment, Marchant felt the full heat of an Indian summer hitting his face like a hair-drier. One of the guards ducked his head and helped him step inside an air-conditioned vehicle of some sort. It felt spacious rather than cramped as he sat down in a back seat. The sound of a sliding door told him it was a people carrier.

He sat in silence as it drove off, aware of a number of other people inside. Nobody talked except for the driver, an Indian, who muttered as he waited to pull out into the traffic. Daniel could smell jasmine incense.

‘So, how old were you when he died?’ a voice from the seat next to him asked. It was Armstrong’s.

‘Who?’ Marchant was troubled by her tone. He guessed that there were five of them in the car altogether: the driver, Armstrong, his two US Marine guards and himself. Armstrong seemed to be addressing the gallery, her maternal manner a distant memory.

‘Oh, come on, Daniel. Sebastian, your brother. The one you’ve blamed for so much in your life. The death you could have prevented, the reason for the survivor’s guilt that drove you to drink.’

Marchant tried to work out what was going on, why she was so obviously talking for the benefit of others. Her approach was unnatural, her tone forced.

‘He was eight. We both were.’

‘Twins. Of course. Tell us what happened.’

‘Where are you taking me?’ Marchant asked, but he already knew. He just wasn’t sure why.

‘To where it all went wrong for Daniel Marchant,’ she said. ‘I thought it might be useful if we returned to the beginning. It might help us work out how it all could end.’

She touched his hand, then spoke more quietly, as if just to him. ‘Here, put your seatbelt on. You’ll need it.’

‘I have a question for you,’ the woman said as she stepped down from the rickshaw. ‘Why did Stephen Marchant, the infidel spy chief, visit you in prison?’

Dhar instinctively looked around, then composed himself. ‘Is it common knowledge?’

‘It was one of the reasons he was removed from his office in London.’

‘The kafir was desperate, tried to recruit me. Why does it matter?’

‘Some of our brothers were concerned. They couldn’t understand what he wanted with you.’

‘He would have been slaughtered if it hadn’t been for my chains.’

‘And the son, they say he came for you too.’

Dhar was worried now, troubled by how much this woman knew. Did others also know?

‘Why should the son wish to find me?’

‘He was a spy for the infidels, like his father. He also lost his job.’