Dirty Little Secret (16 page)

As soon as he was close enough to France to get a signal, he would ring Myers, find out if he had heard anything coming out of Iran.
If you will not help with my escape, I cannot guarantee Britain’s safety.
He was still at a loss to think how he or anyone else in the UK might help to get Dhar out of Bagram, but there might be a way to take some of the credit if the Iranians were successful. Somehow, he had to stop Britain from burning.

‘I want this to go out to all station chiefs,’ Denton said, standing beside Anne Norman’s desk. ‘Immediately.’

Anne still took dictation in shorthand, proudly, even though it added to the amount of paperwork that needed shredding each day. She picked up her pen and pad, crossed her red tights, and started to write as Denton talked.

‘Marcus Fielding stood down from his duties as Chief of MI6 earlier today. The decision was taken by the Foreign Secretary in the light of the attacks on the Fairford Air Show and GCHQ and the role played in them by a serving MI6 officer, Daniel Marchant. For reasons not yet known, Fielding left Britain for Moscow earlier today and was seen arriving at Domodedovo airport at 1700 hrs GMT.’

Anne paused, her hand hovering above the paper. There had been many difficult moments during her twenty-five-year career, which had spanned five Chiefs if she included Denton, which she didn’t. Booking her old boss onto a military flight on 12 September 2001 from Brize Norton to Andrews Air Force base had not been easy. It wasn’t the logistics, although ATC Brize Norton initially refused to clear the flight. It was the fear that she might never see Marcus Fielding again. Taking Denton’s letter was proving harder. Fielding had been good to her, better than any of them. But now he had fled to Moscow, which could mean only one thing. She bit her lip and continued to write:

Jean-Baptiste was waiting on the quay at the French fishing village of Portbail, standing beside an orange Citroën Mehari, the car he kept at his mother’s nearby château for ferrying guests around. It was a plastic jeeplike vehicle used by the French army, who valued its agility, and was powered by the same 600cc engine found in 2CVs. Marchant had been taken for many bumpy rides through the sand dunes in it over the years. He was amazed the car was still in one piece. Jean-Baptiste wouldn’t hear a word said against it.

‘Ah,
la voiture en plastique
,’ Marchant said as he stepped ashore. It was nighttime, but the moon was full, which had made the Channel crossing easier.

‘
Bien sûr
,’ Jean-Baptiste replied, hugging his old friend. ‘You’ve put on weight.’

‘And you’re still ugly.’ Marchant knew that nothing could be further from the truth. Jean-Baptiste always seemed unaware of how attractive he was to women, and he looked even more stylish than usual in his polo shirt and three-quarter-length shorts as he took a rope from the yacht’s bow.

He was tall, big-framed, and at first glance appeared clumsy, but he had better hand–eye coordination than anyone Marchant knew. He lived a sophisticated life in Paris, but he had been brought up rooted in the
terroir
of the Ardèche, and had an earthy assurance about him, one reason why he was such an effective field agent. He could blend into any environment, adopt any cover with ease. And like every self-respecting Frenchman Marchant knew, he preferred his steak
saignant
, drank wine from Madiran and read Carl Sagan.

‘Do you have any bags?’ Jean-Baptiste asked after the boat had been made secure. Marchant had picked up from the owner that it was a twin-keel, which made things easier. The small, sheltered port of Portbail became a muddy sandpit at low tide, and the boat would have tipped over if it had been single-keel.

‘No bags, but I have a passenger.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘There was no time to tell you. Sorry. My credit ran out.’ Marchant could have called back on another of his pay-as-you-go phones when he had rung earlier, but he hadn’t.

‘You sounded different on the phone. Your voice. Like –’

‘Darth Vader?’

‘Him, yes.’

‘Must have been bad reception.’ Marchant would talk to Myers later about his voice modulator.

‘Where is he?’ Jean-Baptiste asked. ‘Your stowaway.’

‘It’s a she.’

Jean-Baptiste gave him a mischievous smile. Marchant wished it was that simple.

‘And she’s not well. I couldn’t leave her behind.’

‘Does she have a name?’

‘Lakshmi,’ Marchant said, speaking quietly, keeping an eye on the boat. Last time he checked, she was in a deep sleep, but he didn’t want her to appear while they were talking.

‘The Hindu goddess of wealth. What’s wrong with her?’

‘I’m not sure. She works for the Agency. At least she did. She’s in trouble with Langley for helping me. She took a Russian bullet in the arm on my behalf. I owe her one.’

‘She’d better come with us then. Let Clémence take a look at her.’

Marchant could feel Jean-Baptiste’s bonhomie slipping away. He should have warned him about Lakshmi. He was already asking a lot of his old friend. Now he was involving his wife, Clémence, too. She was a doctor with Médecins sans Frontières.

Two minutes later, Marchant stood in the cockpit of the boat with Lakshmi draped in his arms. She was still asleep, wearing an ill-fitting woollen jumper and yellow oilskin trousers. He was aware that it wasn’t a good look, but it had been all he could find after pulling her out of the water.

‘Can you take her?’ Marchant said, checking that nobody was about as he stepped up onto the deck. The quay was deserted, except for two locals fishing off the end of the harbour wall. They had their backs to them and seemed preoccupied.

Jean-Baptiste lifted Lakshmi into his arms and carried her to the Mehari, where he laid her in the back, making a pillow for her out of an old jacket.

‘She doesn’t look well, Dan,’ he said. ‘Is that where she was shot?’ he continued, gesturing at her wrist. Marchant nodded. He didn’t enjoy seeing Lakshmi lying in the back of a plastic car, looking like death and wearing ridiculous clothing. And standing over her felt like an invasion. Perhaps he should have left her at the Fort, where she might have been safer.

‘She doesn’t normally dress like that. Her clothes got wet.’ Marchant had put her jeans and top in a plastic bag, which he raised in explanation. But he knew he owed his old friend more.

They climbed into the front of the car, neither of them saying anything. For a few seconds they sat in silence in the darkness before Jean-Baptiste started up the engine, turned on the lights and accelerated away. The ‘
voiture en plastique
’ was just as Marchant remembered it. The suspension was shot and the seats were threadbare. And there was no room for his long legs, which he had to turn to one side. None of this worried Jean-Baptiste as he drove down la route de la Plage towards the Atlantic, hunched over the wheel as if he was driving a Dodgem.

Marchant had to hold onto the roof bar on the first right-hand corner, which brought them parallel with the sea. After a few hundred yards, the road, now rue Rozé, turned back inland, but Jean-Baptiste drove straight on, taking a sandy track that ran along the top of the beach.

Marchant began to relax, breathing in the sea breeze. The fog of the Channel seemed a distant memory. The stars were as bright as scattered diamonds in the clear night sky.

‘Was the harbourmaster happy?’ he asked.

‘No, but I’ve sorted it.’

‘Thank you.’ When Marchant had rung Jean-Baptiste, as he was passing the Needles, he had explained that he was in a tight spot with the Americans and needed some assistance. His most immediate problem was that he didn’t have a passport, which might have caused difficulties when he arrived at Portbail. (Lakshmi had swum out to the boat with two passports and her phone, sealed in a plastic bag. The passports had survived, but the phone had died.)

Jean-Baptiste was well placed to help, and hadn’t asked any questions. The Americans weren’t his favourite allies in the war on terror. After a brief spell with the Commandos Marine, the French Navy’s special forces, he had joined the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), France’s MI6 counterpart. They had met when Jean-Baptiste was a liaison officer in London, hitting it off after they discovered a shared ambivalence towards authority and a taste for Bruichladdich whisky. Jean-Baptiste was also indebted to him after he had botched an operation to burgle the London offices of China Eastern Airlines. Marchant had assisted with the subsequent cover-up.

‘We won’t stay for long,’ Marchant said as they continued along the edge of the sand. ‘I just need somewhere to work out what I’m going to do.’

Jean-Baptiste shrugged. ‘You can stay as long as you want. We’re here for the summer.’

‘How’s Clémence?’ Marchant had flown back from Morocco at the end of the previous year for their wedding outside Versailles. He had never been to such a stylish event, although the evening was a bit of a blur. Clémence had a younger sister.

‘Working too hard. It’s the first time she’s taken a holiday this year. Travel, travel, travel.’

And now she would be asked to take care of Lakshmi, Marchant thought.

‘I guess you heard about Salim Dhar’s arrest,’ he said.

‘I may be on holiday in the sand dunes, but I’m not an ostrich, Dan. Of course I heard. But that’s old news now. Did the radio on your boat not work?’

‘You mean the oil refinery attack.’

‘And the ones in Cornwall.’

‘No?’ Marchant could feel his stomach tightening.

‘Britain is no longer linked to America by fibre-optic cable. The special bond has been broken. Explosions have been reported at various sites on your west coast. All of them are where these cables reach land.’

Dhar had always been precise in his targeting. Now, it seemed, his followers had struck at the heart of Britain’s relationship with America, severing its umbilical cord. He felt another sharp pang of patriotism. His country was under attack, and it was within his power to protect it.
Only my freedom will bring you peace
.

‘I thought that’s why you left Britain,’ Jean-Baptiste joked. ‘You’re better off here in France.’

Marchant returned his friend’s smile. They were happy to be in each other’s company. For a moment, Marchant forgot about Lakshmi lying in the back. Then she groaned and he turned to check on her, making sure her head wasn’t knocking against anything as they bumped along the dusty track.

‘She’s asleep again,’ he said, but Jean-Baptiste’s mind seemed to be on other things.

‘Was it really you in the Russian jet with Dhar?’ he asked.

Marchant didn’t say anything. News of the attack had gone around the world, but he had hoped that his own role in it was known only to Britain and America’s intelligence agencies. But Jean-Baptiste had always been well-connected.

‘I won’t ask what you were doing,’ he continued. ‘I will just assume that it is why you are now on the run in France without a passport.’

Marchant paused before he spoke. ‘I was trying to turn him.’

Jean-Baptiste seemed to think about this for a moment. Usually they avoided speaking about their work, unless they had to, but Marchant had just broken the rule. It was the least he could do in the circumstances. There was a limit to how much he could take without giving something in return. Jean-Baptiste wouldn’t buy a cover story.

‘Ambitious,’ he said.

‘And I got burnt. The only person who knew about the operation was Marcus Fielding, who I doubt will be Chief of MI6 for much longer.’

‘I heard that too.’

‘It’s official?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Christ. I’m in a bigger mess than I thought.’

‘So they caught Dhar, and now they want to catch you, thinking that you were working with him when in fact you were trying to turn him.’

‘That’s about it.’

‘Why has Fielding left?’

‘The Americans must have forced him out. It was hard for him to explain what one of his officers was doing with Salim Dhar in a Russian jet.’

‘That is a tricky one,’ Jean-Baptiste said, laughing.

Marchant was grateful that Jean-Baptiste wouldn’t ask any more questions, even though his own explanation was inadequate. That was the nature of their friendship. But he was surprised that Jean-Baptiste’s smile fell away so quickly.

‘Are you sure nobody followed you across the Channel?’ he asked, glancing in the rear-view mirror. Marchant knew better than to look around. They had left the beach and were now driving inland on a main road.

‘I’m sure.’

‘There’s a car that’s been behind us since Barneville-Carteret. If it follows us at the next turning, we’ve got company. The road only leads to our house, and we’re not expecting guests.’

Marchant tried to think who might have tracked him across the Channel. Denton and Spiro were the people who most wanted to find him, and they both had assets that could be mobilised in France. He was confident that no one had seen him board the boat at Gosport. There was a possibility that the NSA or GCHQ had listened in to his phone call to Jean-Baptiste, but they would have to have been monitoring Jean-Baptiste’s number, which was unlikely. The French were very protective of their agents, particularly against the prying eyes and ears of America.

‘Hold on,’ Jean-Baptiste said as he stepped on the accelerator. The fiberglass frame of the Mehari shook as he took the speed up to 110kph. He kept the needle there along the long straight road, braking slightly as it curved to the right. After the bend, he braked sharply and turned off to the left through two stone posts and down what Marchant remembered was the final approach to his family château. But instead of proceeding along the tree-lined avenue, Jean-Baptiste parked up, jumped out and swung a high wooden gate shut. The car behind would have not seen them turning off.