So we leave Dhar to the Americans? asked Armstrong.
We need to find him, too, given that he was behind the attempted attack on the marathon, Fielding said, turning to Armstrong and adding quietly, Nice of you to pool that one.
Id forgotten how much you liked to share information, Armstrong replied.
I think Marcus is right, Chadwick said. We need to find Dhar. He had always found that steadfastly ignoring tension between departments seemed to reduce it. Dhar targeted the London Marathon, Tower bloody Bridge, for Gods sake. If thats not an attack on the fabric of this country I dont know what is. And its also the only way well ever draw a line under Stephen Marchant. If the two of them did meet, which seems likely, we need to find out why, and what was actually said.
Were sure theres no record anywhere of Stephen Marchant or anyone else recruiting Dhar? Lockhart asked. At this meeting or before? The PM wants specific reassurance on this point.
Weve been through all Marchants files many times, Fielding said. Cross-referenced every database we have. Nothing. No one else in MI6 or MI5 has ever approached Dhar. We think the Indians once tried a deniable approach, but failed.
Armstrong nodded her head in agreement, glancing at Fielding.
And what about his son? asked Chadwick. Do we let the Americans talk to him? You can see it from their point of view: Stephen Marchant meets Dhar, Dhar bombs US embassies; Daniel Marchant meets Dhars running friend; Dhars friend tries to kill US Ambassador.
And Marchant stops him, said Marcus. Thats the point here.
But he knew the point was lost.
9
Later that day, Fielding accepted Chadwicks offer of a sharpener at the Travellers on Pall Mall. He was not a natural clubman, but in the past few years, as Stephen Marchant had begun to waver at the top, Fielding had been wined and dined by various senior Whitehall hands, including Chadwick, while his own suitability as Chief was assessed. He knew there was unease amongst the old guard that he was not married, but times were changing, and the general view was that the Vicar was celibate rather than gay. Fielding could live with that.
The Travellers used to double up as MI6s staff bar, in the days when the Service was situated in Century House, its drab premises in Southwark. Since the move to Legoland, with its plush second-floor bar and terrace overlooking the Thames, where people could drink outside in the summer, the Travellers had become less of a draw for junior staff. But old habits died hard for senior officers, and Fielding acknowledged a couple of familiar faces as he took his seat in the panelled library.
Im offering you a deal, Chadwick said, swirling his Talisker around the glass. He was one of the safest pairs of hands in Whitehall, brought in at the end of a successful but unstartling career to steady the intelligence ship after the fiasco of Marchants departure. Evidence, Fielding concluded, that mediocrity can take you surprisingly far in big organisations like the Civil Service.
The Americans have agreed to drop their investigation of any meeting between Dhar and Stephen, providing they can have access to Daniel Marchant and we leave Dhar to them.
Access?
They want to sweat him.
Why?
Come on, Marcus. I know he was one of your best, but its bloody odd he was there at the marathon. They think he might be able to tell them something about Dhar. And, to be honest, the idea of someone taking Marchant off our hands is quite appealing. We all know hes been drinking too much. The last thing the PM needs right now is another renegade spy on the loose.
Fielding thought about defending Daniel Marchant again. Perhaps it was the effect of his gin and lime, but he was no longer as troubled by Chadwicks proposal as he might have been. A part of him resented having to protect Marchant any longer, given the headache his suspension had caused. Chadwick was right: Marchant had been the most promising case officer of his generation, just the sort of young blood the Service was trying to attract. But Fielding knew, too, that his suspension was entirely because of the accusations swirling around his father. And he needed those accusations to go away: they were continuing to cause too much damage to the Service. The sooner the Americans forgot about any meeting between the former Chief and Dhar, the better for everyone.
There was only one concern, and that was the enhanced interrogation techniques favoured by the CIA. The new President might have banned torture, but old habits die hard in Langley. Despite everything, Marchant was still one of his own, and right now he was fragile.
He mustnt leave the country, Fielding said, finishing his gin. And I want him back alive.
10
Leila headed back to London that night, leaving Marchant to dwell on Fieldings visit over a bottle of malt she had smuggled in with her. He knew he was drinking too much. The training runs with Leila, the impulsive decision to run the marathon, had been an attempt to impose some routine on his life, which had lost all shape since his fathers death. He had never been fitter than when he was working for MI6. The drinking dulled the pain of loss, but it also dragged him back to another life, to dissolute, carefree days at the Nairobi Press Club.
The first weeks of his suspension had been the toughest. In his sober hours, Marchant had thought only of the mole who had supposedly penetrated MI6. It was his way of grieving, channelling his anger. Rising at dawn, head bursting, he had paced the empty streets of Pimlico, holding the rumours about his father up to the early-morning light, looking at them from every possible angle. He would stand on Vauxhall Bridge, watching the barges pass below before turning to look up at Legoland and the buttressed windows of the Chiefs office. Had the whole thing been cooked up as a Machiavellian way of removing his father, or was there a genuine possibility that Al Qaeda had infiltrated MI6?
The terms of his suspension meant that he wasnt allowed to step inside Legoland, or to talk with colleagues about work, or to travel overseas. All his cover passports had been seized. His mornings had been spent in internet cafés around Victoria station (he didnt trust the computer at his flat on Denbigh Street), going over each of the attacks again and again, looking for something that might link a cell based in South India to anyone in MI6, a Legoland colleague with connections to the subcontinent.
Now, at last, he had that link, but it was between his own father and Salim Dhar. Never once had it crossed Marchants mind that his father had brought suspicion upon himself. Fielding was right: meeting Dhar privately was an irregular thing to have done. And Marchant knew, as Leilas whisky burnt his throat, that he too would have to meet him, wherever he was. It was the only way to clear his fathers name. He needed to ask Dhar why the Chief of MI6 had run the risk of meeting with him. The consequences of such an encounter could prove equally disastrous for him, but the reality was that he didnt have much to lose.
As he gazed out across the Wiltshire countryside towards the woods beyond the canal, a grey heron lifted itself heavily from the water and rose into the air. His father used to say that they were like B-52s, but then he had always had a thing about bombers. During the Cuban Missile Crisis he had driven down to Fairford and watched them standing on the end of the runway, engines running, waiting for the order.
Marchant remembered the morning his father had called him with the news that he was to step down as Chief. The power and authority had gone from his voice, as if he had been using a megaphone all his life and someone had suddenly switched it off. Marchant had taken the call at Heathrow airport, on his way back from Mogadishu to London for Christmas.
Have you cleared immigration? his father had asked, almost absent-mindedly.
Im waiting for a taxi. Why? Is everything all right, Dad?
Take the Underground as far as Hammersmith, then a minicab from that place on Fulham Palace Road we used to use. Ask for Tarlton. Theyll know.
Dad, what is this? Is everything OK?
Ive been put out to pasture. Watch yourself.
Marchant had immediately gone on his guard again, as if in a foreign airport. He moved swiftly down to the Underground, trying to work out the implications of their conversation, for his father, for him. He knew pressure had been building in recent weeks. There had been questions in the House about the incompetence of Britains intelligence services, aggressive newspaper leaders about the wave of attacks and what more should have been done to prevent them.
His father paid off the minicab in cash, and insisted on taking his sons two bags. It was a cold December day, and the apple and cherry trees at the front of the house were laced with frozen cobwebs. A thin twist of smoke rose from the chimney. The house was in effect two Cotswold cottages knocked together, surrounded by lawns and a meandering drystone wall. It was a private location, half a mile out of Tarlton, a small hamlet near Cirencester. Marchant always felt strange when he was here. The house had been the only constant in his shifting childhood, a place where they came for brief respites from foreign postings, a home he had once shared with his brother. Its Englishness was overwhelming, not just because of its Cotswold prettiness, but because it had come to represent all that he missed about home: new-mown grass, autumn bonfires, orchards. And, of course, it had always disappointed, unable to live up to childhood dreams of Albion.
Good of you to come, his father said, walking through the back door in front of Marchant. Mind if we go for a drive?
Ten minutes later, they were speeding through the cold open countryside in his 1931 Lagonda, barely able to hear each other above the roar of the two-litre engine. Frost had sharpened the hedgerows, and the road was black with hidden ice. But Stephen Marchant didnt seem to mind, wrapped up in a thick woollen scarf and gloves. Daniel sat next to him. He had forgotten how cold a car could feel.
Cant trust the house, his father said, changing down the gears as they approached a junction. Home, Marchant knew, had been wired to a level of protection befitting the Chiefs weekend retreat. Now that security was working against him.
MI5? Marchant asked, the smell of musty canvas and hot oil taking him back to another distant part of his childhood. He and his father had always been close, both of them at ease in each others company, seldom needing to explain or open up. Even when Marchant had been expelled from school, his father hadnt been angry, just annoyed that he had been caught.
Im becoming a threat to national security, he shouted, releasing the brake lever on the side of the car and accelerating away towards Avening. Marchant hoped he would age as well as his father, whose silver hair was blowing about in the strong breeze. He had thick, fair eyebrows and a compact, square face, like a barn owl, Marchant always thought. And then there were those famous family ears, which had only got longer, more distinguished, with age. Tribal lobes, his father had once called them.
After twenty minutes, Stephen Marchant pulled the Lagonda up in a lay-by at the top of Minchinhampton Common, on the brow of a hill looking west towards Bristol. He switched off the engine and they sat there for a few minutes in silence, absorbing the timeless landscape as steam rose off the bonnet. Below them the Cotswolds stretched out in a necklace of icy hamlets, threaded with quiet country lanes, each with its handsome manor house, enduring church, frosted green. Thin drifts of snow covered the shaded corners of fields.
I look at this and wonder out of which pore of our beautiful country its seeping from, Stephen Marchant began. A bead of moisture had gathered on the end of his cold nose. Do you know what they said?
Tell me, Marchant replied, noticing the emotion that had slipped into his fathers voice.
That they can no longer be sure my interests coincide with the countrys. He paused, struggling to keep control. Thirty years service and I have to listen to a group of jumped-up pricks in shorts telling me that.
And its all coming from the DG? Daniel asked.
Of course. Apparently Im obsessed with the enemy within, and have taken my eye off the greater threat.
Dinner at the Travellers didnt do the trick, then.
God, no. Total disaster. Shes not like the women you and I know, Daniel. This ones got balls, and Ive been shafted, well and truly. They dont want me back in the office after Christmas. Im afraid theyre also talking about suspending you. Sins of the father. Im so sorry. Marchant turned away, his mind racing instinctively to calculate the threat, assess the damage. He hadnt expected it to affect him. Then he stopped, guilty that he had thought of himself rather than his father, whose career was in tatters after half a lifetime of service.
Dont worry about me. You know Ive never asked for help. I can look after myself.
The Service cant. If MI5 gets its way, Legoland will be sold off to the Japanese tomorrow and turned into a Thameside hotel. Come on, the idiots have arrived.
Marchant looked behind them, and saw a white saloon car driving slowly up the hill.
Do you know the best way to shake off a tail? his father asked, firing up the Lagonda again in a plume of blue smoke. Better than anything they might have taught you at the Fort?
What? Marchant said, watching the car in the mirror as it slowed to a crawl four hundred yards behind them, its exhaust loitering in the cold air.
Drive faster than them.
11
The gang of Year Five boys in the corner of the playing field knew all of the helicopters that flew through the Wiltshire airspace above their primary school: Chinooks were their favourite, flying low down the route of the canal, the sound of their twin blades reverberating like thunder in their tender eardrums. They knew their Merlins from their Sikorski Pumas, and barely commented these days on the black-and-yellow Wiltshire Police helicopter, which flew in every Friday for low-level practice over Bedwyn Brail. So when the boys saw the MD Explorer coming in towards the village from Hungerford, it was such a familiar sight that nobody noticed that it was a Thursday, not a Friday.
Half a mile south-west of the school, Daniel Marchant crossed over the two bridges and turned right onto the towpath of the Kennet canal. He smiled to himself as he remembered how his father had dropped down from Minchinhampton at more than 90 mph, the Lagondas low chassis threatening to shake itself apart as they raced through the frosty hedgerows without any real brakes, until their pursuers had finally given up.
Marchant wasnt sure if he could run faster than his minders, but he wanted to find out. The marathon was five days ago, and this was his first run since he had arrived at the safe house. He knew he couldnt keep going like this: the drinking followed by the guilt-runs. One of them had to prevail. The babysitters from MI6 had been replaced the previous evening by heavier-built types from MI5. Relations chilled accordingly, and conversation had all but dried up.