Dirty Little Secret (10 page)

He waited to see if the light appeared again, but there was nothing. Dawn had broken but it was still difficult to see clearly. He carried on up the stairs, thinking of Sebbie and how they used to race down them, bouncing on their bottoms. At the door he paused, listening to the story of Sinbad, and glanced behind him. He could see Sebbie’s bed, a toy tiger propped up on the pillow. Taking a deep breath, he turned and opened his own bedroom door.

Dhar was sitting on a pile of brightly coloured Indian cushions, his back to the wall. He had an unusually shaped bottle in one hand, a gun in the other. An empty bottle of vodka was lying on the carpet beside him.

‘You took your time,’ he said, pointing the gun at him.

Denton was touching 100mph in the outside lane of a deserted M4 when he took the call from Spiro on the hands-free. He had been weighing up when to ring the Americans, but Spiro had made the decision for him.

‘I’ve just had word from Lakshmi Meena at the Fort,’ Spiro said. ‘Don’t suppose you know where Daniel Marchant likes to call home? And don’t say Tora Bora.’

Denton breathed in and slowed to 90mph. He was already looking forward to a time when he would be driven by someone else. He needed time to think.

‘We’re on it,’ he said. It was important to keep Spiro sweet, but he didn’t want his heavy-handed men messing things up.

‘Meaning?’

‘We’ve worked out where Dhar was calling from. We’ll have him for you by daybreak.’

‘Good of you to share that, Ian. In case you hadn’t noticed, the whole of the goddamn Western world’s looking for Dhar. I thought you and I had an understanding.’

‘He’s yours, just let us bring him in. He’s half-British, remember, caused us a lot of problems. We’ve got a reputation to restore.’

‘Too damn right you have. Just make sure it’s you and not Fielding who gets the knighthood. And don’t go claiming that reward either. We haven’t got $25 million to spare. I guess you know Marchant’s with Dhar, too?’

Denton didn’t know, and slowed up some more, his hands tensing on the steering wheel as he glanced in the rear-view mirror. He had assured the PM that Marchant was under lock and key at the Fort. It wouldn’t look good if he had escaped. He couldn’t afford to put a foot wrong if he was to become Chief.

‘I thought he was at Fort Monckton.’

‘So did we. My men just took a look. Seems he left a while ago.’

‘We’ll hand him over with Dhar.’

‘I’d appreciate it. And where might this handover be?’

‘How does RAF Fairford sound?’

‘I like the symmetry.’

Denton knew it would appeal. Fairford was not only where Dhar had wounded American pride by shooting down one of the USAF’s most prized jets; it was from there that Marchant had been renditioned after the London Marathon fifteen months earlier.

‘Put a plane on standby,’ he said. ‘I’ll call within the hour. And when you’ve got Dhar –’

‘We’ll pull out of Vauxhall. We’re two peas in a pod, Ian.’

Denton could think of nothing worse, but he knew many such compromises lay ahead. Finding a way to get on with Spiro would be the least of them. His relationship with the military had never been straightforward. ‘There’s a need in this family to make amends,’ Denton’s father, a sergeant major with the Green Howards, used to bark at him when he was growing up in Hull. No one ever talked openly about it, but his grandfather had been a conscientious objector. Denton chose grammar school and Oxford instead of the military, before signing up to MI6. His father had not hidden his disappointment, but it was the closest Denton could get to making amends. He had liked his grandfather, whose objections had been more to the officer class than to war itself.

He glanced at his watch and accelerated again, choosing Miles Davis on the CD player. It suited night-time driving. Before leaving London he had called the SAS headquarters at Hereford and spoken to the MI6 liaison officer. Denton had worked with him once in Basra, and had been present when he had taken the previous year’s IONEC recruits through their special forces training at the Fort. His mantra had been borrowed from the US Seals, whom he revered: ‘The more you sweat in peacetime, the less you’ll bleed in war.’ They hadn’t got on. The officer, public-school educated, now had overall responsibility for the Increment, a covert unit of special forces that MI6 could call upon at any time.

The unit was already heavily deployed in Afghanistan and Yemen, providing MI6 field officers with protection. Its members were drawn mainly from the SAS, but it also recruited from other special forces, including the SBS and the SRR, who provided reconnaissance, and 8 Flight Army Air Corps. After Denton’s phone call, two of its Eurocopter Dauphin helicopters had scrambled and were now making their way to Kemble, each one ferrying ten men.

The plan was for one team to proceed on foot from Kemble to Tarlton, where they would isolate the hamlet, surround Stephen Marchant’s house and carry out as much surveillance as they could. Once they had confirmed Dhar’s presence, they would call in the second team, who would come in low by helicopter. As they fast-roped onto the roof of the house, the first team would enter by the ground floor. Denton would be waiting a mile down the road, ready to accompany Dhar to Fairford once the operation was complete.

He dialled through to the liaison officer at Hereford again.

‘It’s Ian,’ he said. ‘Daniel Marchant might be with the target.’

‘One of yours, isn’t he?’

Denton heard the contempt in his voice, and told himself it was mutual. Neither side appreciated the other’s skills. Just as MI5 didn’t enjoy working with the police, so MI6 resented being increasingly asked to share operations with the military.

‘He was.’

‘Expendable?’

Denton paused. It would be easier if Marchant was out of the way, but Spiro was expecting him. ‘No.’

He hung up, and thought about what lay ahead. After a discussion with the Chief of Defence Staff, the Director of Special Forces and other military top brass who had been summoned from their beds to attend COBRA, the PM had authorised the mission to capture Dhar. It was short notice, but it wasn’t as if the target was hiding in hostile territory. He was in the Cotswolds. If anything went wrong, the operation could be dismissed as an exercise.

The PM’s main concern was to pre-empt the Americans. A raid by the US on British soil would be politically humiliating, possibly fatal, for the coalition, which still had to deal with the problem of Vauxhall Cross. However, the PM had agreed for Dhar to be handed over to the Americans at the earliest opportunity. The government would win global credit for capturing the world’s most wanted terrorist, the special relationship would be back on track, and Denton’s right to take over as Chief of MI6 would become unarguable.

‘Turn it off,’ Dhar said, waving the gun at the wood-encased record player in the corner. ‘Then sit down.’

Marchant went over to the old HMV, given to him by his father, and lifted the needle off
Sinbad the Sailor
. After clicking a switch, which released a dusty hiss, he sat down on the carpet, cross-legged like Dhar, and tried to gauge the extent of his drinking, the state of his mind. His words were clear, but his eyes, usually as bright as onyx, were unfocused. It was the one scenario he hadn’t expected. Injury had always been a possibility, the reason Dhar had sought sanctuary here. There was a patch of blood on the carpet, and his trousers were ripped. But alcohol? That was meant to be Marchant’s curse, not Dhar’s.

‘I wasn’t expecting us to meet again so soon.’ Marchant nodded at Dhar’s leg. ‘What happened?’

‘It’s nothing.’ Dhar winced, taking another sip of vodka from the bottle.

‘Looks painful.’

‘I said it’s nothing,’ Dhar repeated, raising his voice. He was still holding the gun loosely in one hand. Marchant felt like someone who had released an animal back into the wild, only to find it on his doorstep the next morning, tired and hungry. Dhar’s life couldn’t be in graver danger. Didn’t he know they would be coming for him? After a pause, Dhar spoke again, quieter this time. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you came.’

‘They’ll have tracked your call, you know that.’

‘And you will protect me.’

‘That wasn’t the deal.’

Christ, Marchant thought. He really does expect the UK to offer him sanctuary.

Dhar smirked. ‘The Russians weren’t so pleased to see me.’

‘I can’t do anything, Salim. It’s too late.’

‘It’s OK, I know. I don’t expect you to. Not now. Maybe later. Share a drink with me.’

Dhar passed the unusually shaped bottle to Marchant, who glanced at the label, trying to get his head around the situation. Binekhi was a brand of Georgian
chacha
, or grape vodka, that Nikolai Primakov used to give his father. Dhar must have found it in the drinks cupboard downstairs. For the past year, Marchant had stayed off the booze, except on his final night in Marrakech. It had been easy to stay sober in Morocco, a Muslim country. Now he was being offered a drink by Salim Dhar, of all people. To refuse would cause tension. He closed his eyes and let the vodka slip down smoothly.

‘There was nowhere else for me to go,’ Dhar said, taking the bottle back. ‘Besides, I have always wanted to see this place for myself.’

Marchant watched Dhar take in the bedroom as if it was his own, a rare smile on his drawn face. He had missed the drink, despite the trouble that inevitably followed.

‘Have you had a look around?’ he asked. For a moment, Dhar reminded him of his father. He had never noticed it before, but when Dhar smiled, one of his cheeks dimpled in the same way, creasing the skin around his hollow eyes. His father had been a drinker too. Bruichladdich whisky. Maybe they would move on to that when the vodka was finished. Already he was feeling less concerned, adjusting to their dangerous predicament.

‘I’ve seen your brother’s bedroom,’ Dhar said. ‘It must have been a painful loss. I’m sorry.’

Marchant didn’t want to go down that route, not now, but he suddenly felt Sebbie’s presence, here in the house they once shared. He gestured for the bottle again, and drank long and deeply, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘We were close. Mates, brothers. The twin thing. He died in Delhi. 1988. A government bus hit us at a crossroads, shunted our jeep thirty yards. Sebbie was in the front seat, didn’t stand a chance. My mother survived, but never really recovered. I’m over it now.’

Dhar seemed happy to buy into the lie. ‘I found a photograph of my mother,’ he said, changing the subject.

‘Shushma?’ Marchant asked.

‘It was in our father’s bedroom, hidden behind a photo of your mother.’

Marchant didn’t like the idea of Dhar snooping around his father’s possessions, but then he checked himself. He was Dhar’s father too. In similar circumstances, he would have done the same.

‘I also visited our father’s grave.’

Marchant glanced across at the window that overlooked the tiny church.
Always secret, always loyal
. He knew the grave was not as well tended as it should have been. When all this was over, he would come back and cut the grass, maybe plant some flowers.

‘Tell me something about him,’ Dhar said. ‘What he was like when you were growing up.’

‘Our father?’ Marchant paused. He took another swig and passed the bottle back to Dhar. ‘Well, because of his job, we didn’t see him so much, but when we did, he made up for it. Spoilt us rotten. Drove us too fast through the countryside in his old Lagonda, took us wild swimming in the Thames, up near Lechlade. He’d grown up in Africa, you see, always liked big open spaces. The great outdoors.’

‘We all do.’

‘And he used to take us camping in Knoydart.’

‘Where?’

‘The remotest place he could find on mainland Britain. No creature comforts. Just moss to wipe our bums, fish he’d caught in the loch, and a mouldy old canvas bell tent. He always bought us kippers at Mallaig after the ferry back. Sebbie hated them.’ Marchant paused, remembering how his father used to pinch Sebbie’s nose with one hand and spoon in kipper with the other. ‘We were very young when we lived here, before we moved to Delhi. After we came back, things were different.’

‘No Sebbie.’

There was a long silence before Dhar continued. ‘When they take me, I want you to promise something. You must help with my escape.’

Was it the vodka talking, Marchant wondered. What was he thinking? That the Americans would send him on community service? ‘That might not be so easy.’

‘The
kuffar
will take me to Bagram. Maybe later they will transfer me to Guantánamo.’

‘Two of the most secure prisons in the world.’

‘You will find a way to help. The Iranians want me to work for them again. We share a dislike of America. If it’s Bagram, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will secure my freedom – they have many friends in Afghanistan. And it’s been done before – four brothers escaped in 2005. But they might need assistance. And if it’s Guantánamo, I’m sure your female American friend will help you.’

Marchant tried not to react, but Dhar’s comment took him by surprise. How did he know about Lakshmi?

‘And when I’m free –’ Dhar said. He paused, looked around the room and then lowered his head, speaking more quietly. ‘I will keep my promise, and do all I can to protect Britain.’

Marchant closed his eyes, his head beginning to spin. It was the first time he had heard Dhar confirm their arrangement: he was prepared to work for MI6. That was what he couldn’t tell Lakshmi when she had asked why he hadn’t killed Dhar. And it was what Fielding hadn’t been able to tell anyone either. Between the two of them, they had agreed that Dhar would be more valuable as an MI6 asset than dead. ‘A back channel into the global
jihad
,’ as Fielding had put it.

So Marchant hadn’t killed Dhar when they had met in Russia. He had tried to turn him as they had approached Britain, flying at five hundred feet. It had been an incalculable gamble, but now it was worth it. Seeking refuge in Tarlton had seemed suicidal for Dhar, but his confident talk of freedom had given the operation new life. Marchant just had to figure out a way to honour his side of the deal.