Dirty Little Secret (12 page)

The passage from the priest hole had brought him up into a group of tall conifers at the back of the garden, forty yards from the house. He had managed to open the hatch without noise or difficulty, even though a thick layer of rotting grass cuttings had been dumped on it by the old gardener who still came once a month. It might have been safer to stay in the tunnel, but Marchant had decided to take the risk. He needed to see the moment when the troops stormed the house. The noise and confusion of those few seconds would provide him with his only opportunity to escape.

As the helicopter swept in low over the fields and hovered above the roof of the house, the tops of the trees swaying in its downdraught, Marchant saw that it was an unmarked Eurocopter Dauphin. At least that was something. The Eurocopter was the SAS’s chopper of choice, which meant the British were running the show. Dhar would have a marginally better chance of not being shot dead on sight. But he began to wonder as a series of loud explosions cut through the noise of the helicopter. Ground troops had emerged from the orchard and hedges and were storming the house from the front and back, throwing stun grenades in through broken windows. At the same time, men were fast-roping down from the helicopter, landing on a flat-roofed extension at the rear of the house and smashing their way in through the top- and first-floor windows. It was time to break cover.

He darted to the stone wall that ran along the back of the conifers, jumped over it and ducked, turning to see if anyone had noticed him. The house was now shrouded in smoke, the early-morning air thick with adrenaline-charged shouting and barked orders. British orders. The helicopter had moved away from the house and was banking around to the south. Marchant assumed it would be used to take Dhar away when he had been captured. In which case it would soon be touching down in the field he was in, the only clear space in the area.

He ran north, keeping his head down and using the wall as cover. After a hundred yards he jumped back over the wall and cut across a paddock where two ponies stood anxiously, frightened by the noise. His sudden appearance scared them even more, and they bolted away from him as he headed for the lane that ran down from Tarlton to Rodmarton.

Crossing the road would be risky – Marchant guessed that the village would have been sealed off before the raid – but there was a covered footpath on the other side that would get him out of the area quickly. He also hoped, as he climbed through a hole in the hedge, that he was far enough out of Tarlton to be beyond any roadblocks. He was wrong.

Dhar felt very close to his mother as the first window shattered and smoke swirled all around him. He remained calm, sitting in the position she had taught him, knowing that any sudden movement would cost him his life. And he felt close to his real father too, here in his house.

The British – he was sure the soldiers now swinging in through the windows were British – were attacking the home of one of their own, a former Chief of MI6. However well trained they were, that would make them tread more carefully, pause a fraction of a second longer before squeezing the trigger. At least, that’s what Dhar told himself as the two men kneeling a few feet in front of him trained their weapons on him.

‘Hands above your head!’ one of them shouted. His voice was muted by the gasmask he was wearing, but Dhar could still hear the anger in his voice, fear mixed with aggression. He was wearing full body armour, his face blacked out, darting eyes unnaturally white.

‘Neptune located,’ the other one said into a radio mike. ‘Top floor, room two.’

‘Higher!’ the first one shouted, almost screaming now.

Dhar raised his bare arms, wondering what weapon the
kuffar
thought he might be about to reach for. The vodka bottle? Moments later, the second soldier took a flash photo of Dhar with a small digital camera. Dhar could hear more soldiers running up the stairs. He began to choke on the fumes, and realised that it was a gas of some sort. The last words he heard were spoken by the second soldier: ‘ID confirmed. It’s Dhar.’

Marchant paused in the hedgerow, cursing his luck. There was a roadblock – two army vehicles, a police car and an Audi – thirty yards to his right. A group of soldiers standing in the middle of the road had a clear view of where he had hoped to cross the lane. He would have to keep going to the end of the paddock, parallel with the lane, and cut across the next field once he had passed the roadblock. There was less cover there, but he could pick up another footpath at the far end of the field that would eventually take him down to the Tetbury road. It was further, but he had no choice.

Keeping his head low, he ran along the edge of the paddock, hidden from the lane by the hedgerow and trees. As he drew close to the roadblock, out of sight on the other side of the hedge, he slowed down, trying to minimise any noise. His breathing was heavy, more from fear than exercise. The flashing blue light of the police car was visible through the trees, but the foliage provided enough cover for him not to be seen. The soldiers were talking on a radio. Marchant stopped to listen.

‘Neptune’s located, sir.’

‘Any sign of Marchant?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Keep looking.’

Marchant froze. It was Ian Denton’s voice. If the deputy Chief of MI6 was heading up the hunt for Dhar, it meant that Fielding was already finished. And so was he. There were already too many unanswered questions about what an MI6 officer was doing in a Russian plane that had shot down a US jet. He could see where it was all heading: Denton would take the credit for Dhar’s capture; the Americans would anoint him as Fielding’s successor; and the world would never know that he was working for Moscow.

No one could help him now. He crept past the roadblock and climbed over the paddock fence. Checking behind him, he set off across the field, accelerating into a sprint. There was only one thing he could do that might save him and Fielding: prove that Ian Denton was a Russian mole. For as long as Marchant had been with MI6, the Americans had suspected the Service of being penetrated at the highest level by Moscow. At one point they had thought it was his father. He had nailed that lie. Now Denton would make sure that the suspicion fell on Fielding, and by implication himself.

By the time he reached the cover of the footpath, the helicopter had touched down in the field. Marchant turned to watch, hidden behind trees. A group of soldiers was escorting a bare-chested Dhar towards the helicopter. Dhar was stumbling, barely able to walk, and had a black hood over his head. Marchant wondered what the deal was. Would he be handed over secretly to the Americans, or would the British make some political capital out of his arrest? There would be a price to pay if they went public: ‘
There are many brothers who wish to destroy this country. I can only do so much to stop them. They will be angry when I am taken – the talk is of a nuclear hellstorm – and only my freedom will bring you peace.
’

As Marchant watched the helicopter rise into the sky, drop its nose and head south, he considered his options. The search for him would already be widening. Airports, stations and ports would be on full alert. He was small fry compared to Dhar, but Denton – no doubt supported by Spiro – would be on a roll after Dhar’s capture, and wouldn’t stop until both of the men who had been in the cockpit of the Russian jet were captured.

He needed to get out of the country, but he didn’t have access to his own passport or the half-dozen cover-identity passports he kept with it. They were in his flat in Pimlico, which would be under surveillance. He had no money either – just a phone he couldn’t use. Perhaps Lakshmi could help him. He was reluctant to involve her any further, but he had nothing to lose, now that her career was effectively over. He also wanted to be with her – too much.

Whatever he did, speed was of the essence. It was still only 6 a.m. If he could get back to Kemble, he might be able to reach Gosport in the Morris Minor and return it to the car park before its owners noticed it had been stolen. But it wouldn’t be out of honesty. He wanted to borrow something else from them.

Before that, though, there was another person he needed to visit. And Marchant wasn’t sure how pleased he would be to see him.

‘I gather he wasn’t even armed,’ Spiro said, turning to Denton. The two men were in a group of US and British officials, some in uniform, who had assembled in the officers’ mess of RAF Fairford. On a big TV screen in front of them, the Prime Minister was giving a hastily arranged news conference about the capture of Salim Dhar.

‘No resistance at all,’ Spiro continued. ‘Stripped to the waist and sitting cross-legged on a carpet. Just sitting there, drunk as a fiddler’s bitch. Maybe it was a magic carpet, and he was worried about flying under the influence.’

Denton ignored Spiro’s laughter. He was trying to listen to his PM, who had been woken early in anticipation of Dhar’s capture.

‘Today we should all salute the bravery of our British special forces and the intelligence services, who have worked tirelessly to capture Salim Dhar. As is often the case in such matters, those who deserve the greatest praise must remain anonymous. But they know who they are, and it is thanks to them that our world is a safer place this morning.’

‘I guess that made it harder to shoot him,’ Spiro said.

‘And let this be a warning to anyone else who seeks to destroy our values and democracy with violence and terror. We will hunt you down, however long it takes, wherever it takes us …’

‘Our instructions were to capture him alive,’ Denton said.

‘This morning, I ordered Dhar to be handed over to our American allies at RAF Fairford, a historic airfield that symbolises our close relationship.’

If you ignored all the ‘Air CIA’ rendition flights that had passed through Fairford, Denton thought. Politicians had conveniently short memories.

‘Come on, Ian. You know how these things are,’ Spiro said. ‘Trials are wasted on these guys. And they’re too high-maintenance in jail. Nothing but trouble.’

‘Dhar left British soil thirty minutes ago on a United States Air Force plane – an official flight, registered with UK air-traffic control – and will be brought to trial in accordance with international law. I spoke with the President of the United States a few minutes ago, and he assured me that justice will not only be done, but will be seen to be done.’

‘Seems like your President has other ideas,’ Denton said. Spiro wasn’t about to go away, and he had to work out how to deal with the idiot. At least he had kept his word and pulled his troops out of Vauxhall. The bridge had reopened for business by dawn.

‘Dhar’s my prisoner now. It’s anyone’s guess what might happen when he squeals. Where’s Marchant, by the way?’

‘We’re still looking for him. According to Forensics, he was at the house with Dhar shortly before the raid. Left through a priest hole.’

‘A what?’

‘A secret hiding place once used by Catholic priests to flee persecution.’

‘Tell me you’re making this stuff up.’

Denton didn’t have the energy for a history lesson. It was already a matter of acute embarrassment that Marchant had slipped the net.

‘We’ll find him.’

Denton still felt bitter that Fielding hadn’t told him the full facts about Marchant and Dhar.

‘By the way, are we bothering to keep Marcus in the loop, or has Elvis already left the building?’

‘He’s still Chief, and will remain so until the Foreign Secretary decides otherwise. That’s the way these things tend to work in Britain.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ Spiro said, putting an arm around Denton’s shoulders before walking away.

Marchant had only been to Paul Myers’s cramped digs in Montpelier in Cheltenham once, but he could still remember the squalor: empty pizza boxes on the floor, a bike with two flat tyres, remote-control planes and computers covering every surface. If anything, things were worse this time as he picked his way across the floor, cleared a BLT sandwich wrapper off the sofa and sat down. In addition to the bank of computer screens, some of which were on, there was a pile of circuit boards, bits of phones and other electrical equipment scattered across the unmade bed.

‘You need to get a cleaner,’ Marchant said, noticing that the bike was now on its side in the corner.

‘Do you think so?’ Myers asked, coming into the room with two mugs of tea. He was always drinking tea. ‘I thought it was what the magazines call scruffy chic.’

‘You look better than I feared.’

‘Really?’

‘Actually, you look shit. But you’re alive, which is something. And you’re not about to die slowly of radiation.’

‘It’s true about the dirty bomb, then?’

‘It’s true.’

Myers whistled, which always struck Marchant as odd. He didn’t know anybody else who whistled. Then again, he didn’t know anybody like Myers.

‘You’ve seen the latest news?’

‘About Dhar?’ He had heard a scratchy bulletin on the car radio.

‘They caught him in the Cotswolds. That won’t have done much for his
jihadi
credentials. I guess the tourist-information people recognised him when he asked for the nearest tea shop.’

Myers laughed awkwardly, then gulped at his tea when he saw that Marchant wasn’t smiling.

‘You were right about the SAR helicopter,’ Marchant said. ‘He must have got the Russian to make the emergency call, knowing we would have recognised his voiceprint.’

‘And taken the chopper to wherever he wanted to go on his sightseeing trip. What was he playing at?’

‘He went to my father’s house. I was there too.’

Myers nearly choked on his tea.

‘I need your help, Paul,’ Marchant continued. ‘The Americans are on my back.’

‘When weren’t they?’

‘I need a phone that won’t give away my location, some money and regular updates from the GCHQ grid.’

‘Is this about Dhar?’

‘The Americans didn’t take too kindly to one of their jets being shot down.’

‘I won’t ask what you were doing in the cockpit.’