Jon Stock - The Daniel Marchant Spy Trilogy - Dead Spy Running, Games Traitors Play, Dirty Little Secret

Mother (Farsi): ‘You told me they wouldn’t come. Others here have suffered, too.’

Leila: ‘Never again, Mama. They won’t come any more. (English) I promise.’

Mother (Farsi): ‘Why did they say my family are to blame? What have we ever done to them?’

Leila (English): ‘Nothing. (Farsi) You know how it is. Are you safe now?’

[Line dropped.]

Fielding passed the transcript back.

‘Did you log this, give it to anyone else?’

Myers was silent for a moment, bobbing his head. ‘No. I know I should have done. Leila and I were friends. Good friends. I thought nothing of it. She had talked to me before about the nursing home, the way the staff mistreated her mother. To be honest, I felt a little awkward listening in. Felt like family business.’

‘What made you change your mind?’

‘Well obviously the news that she was working for the Americans. I hated her for that when I heard. It felt very personal, a personal betrayal. I went back to the transcript, read it through again.’

‘And?’

‘I’d overlooked the most important part of it, the transmission data. Leila had always talked about her mother as if she was in a nursing home in Britain. When I heard her talking about a cook, the beating, I assumed it was just about the nursing staff. The call had been made to a UK mobile number, but I checked back through the intercept log and realised that it had been routed via a mobile network in Tehran.’

They had all missed it, Fielding thought. Everyone except the Americans, who had not only learnt that Leila’s mother had moved to Iran, but had used that information to turn Leila. More worryingly, it meant that the Developed Vetting system had failed, the first casualty of the Service’s new policy of casting its recruitment net wider. How many more would slip through in the future?

‘We used to look out for each other,’ Myers continued.

‘In what way?’

‘The odd thing, here and there.’

‘Go on.’

‘At Cheltenham we heard some chatter on the morning of the marathon. I passed it on, told her to be careful.’

‘Did you tell anyone else?’

‘No. At the time I thought it was nothing. I just knew she was running. She thanked me, said she would pass it up the line, but I know she never did.’

‘And you think that’s important now?’

‘Yeah, I do.’

‘Why?’

‘My line manager recently received instructions from MI6 to focus solely on the Gulf. We picked this up on today’s grid. It’s from a phone booth in Delhi. Leila’s voice again. I’ve run it through profiling. She’s trying to talk to her mother–in Tehran.’

He handed Fielding another transcript.

Leila (Farsi): ‘Mama. It’s Leila. Things will be better soon.’

Unidentified Male (Farsi): ‘Your mother’s in hospital.’

Leila: ‘Who is this?’

Unidentified male: ‘A friend of the family. [Male voices in background] She’s fine and, inshallah, will have the best treatment dollars can buy.’

Leila: ‘I want her looked after, that was always the deal.’

Unidentified male: ‘I will tell her you called. And that her health rests in your hands.’

[End]

‘Do we know who the male voice is?’ Fielding asked, passing the transcript back.

Myers paused. ‘Ali Mousavi, a senior officer in VEVAK, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security.’

‘I know him,’ Fielding said. ‘Takes personal pleasure in persecuting Bahá’ís.’

‘Does he also enjoy masterminding marathon attacks?’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve listened again to the chatter I picked up that night, before the race. All we got was one side of a conversation, London end. South Indian accent, clean mobile.’ Myers handed Fielding another transcript. ‘But the call came out of Iran. This afternoon I finally managed to trace the phone. It was used once earlier this year by Ali Mousavi.’

Fielding looked up at Myers. Like everything in intelligence, it wasn’t conclusive, but it was enough for him. He read the transcript:

Unidentified male (English, South Indian accent): 35,000 runners.

Caller: [no data, encrypted, out of Iran]

Unidentified male: Acha. 8 minutes 30.

[End]

Fielding asked for the other two transcripts back, and studied them again.

‘Thank you for showing me these,’ he said, sifting through the pages. ‘I appreciate the risk.’

‘We heard that the Americans were paying for Leila’s mother’s healthcare in return for her working for them. Her mother was a Bahá’í, so they were more than happy to support her.’

‘That’s what we heard, too.’

‘VEVAK believe all Bahá’ís are Zionist agents, get wind of this, turn up at her mother’s house, answer Leila’s call when she rings.’

‘That would be the logical explanation. But if the arrangement between Leila and the Americans was secret, as we must assume it was, then why would she say to an unknown Iranian who answers the phone in her mother’s house: “I want her looked after, that was always the deal”?’

Myers sat quite still, staring at the footwell of the car. For a moment Fielding thought he was going to be sick. Then he looked up and turned towards Fielding.

‘Leila wasn’t working for the Americans, was she?’

‘No, she wasn’t.’

‘And there wasn’t an American mole in MI6.’

‘No. There wasn’t. There was an Iranian one, who is now working for the CIA in Delhi, seventy-two hours before the new US President touches down. I think I need to drop you off.’

Marchant heard the police before they reached his carriage. He lay there, eyes open, Kirsty by his side, listening to the sounds of sleep all around him. In the background he could detect the faint but urgent voices of authority. He disentangled himself from Kirsty’s limp embrace and swung down to the floor of the carriage, making sure his footfall was silent. He knew he had to move quickly. Police were working their way through the train from both ends.

Marchant stepped out of the sleeping area and into a small space at the end of the carriage, where it was joined to the next one. In a cubicle marked ‘Laundry’, a junior-looking train official slept on a fold-down bed, pillows and blankets stacked neatly on shelves above him. The door was ajar. Quietly, Marchant pulled it closed. Then he pushed down on the handle of the outside door and swung it open. The night air was warm, the surrounding countryside flat: paddy fields. Marchant estimated that the train was travelling at 30 mph–not quick, but too fast to jump.

Beside him was a small metal cupboard marked ‘Electrics’. He pulled at its dented front panel. The lock had long since broken, and it opened easily. Voices were now getting louder behind him. He looked up and down the train, then flicked all those switches in the cupboard that were in the up position. Two lights above him went out, along with the dim night lights in the main carriage. It would buy him a few seconds. Checking that no emergency lighting had come on, he stretched down onto the step outside the train’s open door, holding onto the handle beside it. He then put his left foot up onto the door, and lifted himself upwards, glancing at the printed list of passengers that had been glued to the outside of the train in Delhi: name, sex, age.

For a moment, suspended horizontally above the moving ground, he thought he was going to fall, but with his left hand he managed to grip the top of the door, and pulled himself up further. A second later, the train passed a concrete signal post, which brushed against his billowing shirt. The surge of adrenalin made his legs heavy, and he knew he was losing strength.

Glancing both ways, he grabbed onto the lip of the train’s roof, then lifted himself upwards again, pushing with one foot on the small light above the passenger list. The next moment he was lying flat on the roof. He thought of Shah Rukh Khan dancing on the top of a train in Dil Se, but he didn’t feel like a film star as he pressed himself against the dirty train roof, looking out for bridges.