Staff knew not to disturb their Chief during his swim, taken without exception at 3 p.m. every afternoon, when the pool was clear of the workers who used it during their lunch break. (Fielding didnt realise it was actually empty because nobody wanted to be in the pool while the Chief was steaming up and down the fast lane.) Now, though, his phone was ringing with an internal tone. He headed for the steps and took the call, trusting that it was important. It was from Fieldings deputy, Ian Denton, a former head of the East European Controllerate and one of his closest allies. He wanted an urgent meeting. Dripping with water, Fielding told him to come up to his office and wait. He knew Denton tried to deal with as much of the Chiefs day-to-day business as he could, never bothering him unless there was a serious problem.
Weve picked up an undeclared flight into Szymany, northeastern Poland, Denton said ten minutes later, as Fielding looked out of his window at a solitary sandpiper bobbing in the Thames mud. Denton had spent much of his early career behind the Iron Curtain, where the fear of being overheard had become an obsession for Western case officers. As a result, his voice was so quiet that it was a struggle for anyone to hear him. But Fieldings ear was fine-tuned, and he prided himself on never once having asked Denton to speak up.
Cheltenhams analysed the data strings, Denton continued in a whisper. ADEP was Fairford, and multiple onward dummy flight plans were filed. It was operating under special status.
Theres a surprise, Fielding said, his back still to Denton, who was wrong-footed by the Chiefs apparent lack of concern. Denton northern grammar school, Oxford, keen on carp fishing began to regret his request for a meeting. All undeclared CIA flights anywhere in Europe had become a priority for MI6, following a personal request from the Prime Minister, who wasnt as relaxed about them as his predecessor.
Whats strange is that it wasnt picked up here, Denton continued. Usually MI5
I know. Fielding turned and fixed Denton with a wry smile. Leave it with me, Ian. Thanks.
Denton was so thorough, Fielding thought, as he left the office. He liked that in an officer. His big break had come in the 1980s in Bucharest where, as a junior officer working under diplomatic cover, he had spent every weekend fishing for carp and bream at a lake on the edge of the capital. Nobody knew why until, nine months later, he hooked the head of Romanias secret police, a fellow carper.
Fielding smiled. Maybe that was why Denton whispered: he didnt want to scare the fish. Below him a yellow London Duck emerged out of the Thames, water pouring off it, and drove up the slipway that ran alongside Legolands outer perimeter wall. It was the only place the Second World War amphibious vehicle could get in and out of the water. Fielding had always wondered what the captain told the tourists as they passed by Legoland. One day he would take a ride and find out. Denton could come along too, with his rod.
Harriet Armstrong took Fieldings call in her official Range Rover, on her way to spend the weekend at Chequers. Fielding had heard about the invitation, one which had yet to be extended to him.
Hope I havent disturbed you, Fielding began, failing to sound sincere.
If youre calling about Marchant, I cant help you, she said brusquely. We passed him on to Spiro.
I know. And I thought you should know, given youre seeing him this weekend, that well be filing a report to the PM on an undeclared CIA flight which left Fairford for Poland this morning. I seem to remember he was quite keen to know about such flights.
So keen, he signed this one off himself, Armstrong said. Ill tell him you called.
Fielding briefly considered phoning Sir David Chadwick, to remind him of their agreement at the Travellers that Marchant wasnt to leave the country, but other measures were now needed. Armstrongs increasingly close relationships with Spiro and the PM were beginning to irritate him. She might have removed Stephen Marchant from his post, but he had no intention of giving her the same satisfaction as far as he himself was concerned.
He called through to his secretary. Get me Brigadier Borowski of the AW in Warsaw on the line.
14
Leila turned the key in the front door and slipped into Marchants basement flat in Pimlico, across the river from Legoland. She was shocked by its untidiness, the unmade bed, clothes strewn across the floor, bottles spilling out of the wastepaper basket under his desk. Had the place been searched? She used to be a regular visitor here, and it had always been kept immaculate, almost too tidy. When he was suspended they had stopped staying over at each others places, except for the night before the marathon, when she had insisted he stayed. Marchant was determined to limit the fallout from his fathers departure to himself and no one else. They had stolen the occasional night away in the country, but Marchant had found it hard to relax. Until he had cleared his fathers name, he couldnt be himself.
That self she had fallen for in those early days smiled up at her now from the photo of their final day at the Fort, propped up on his desk in the corner of the room. A group of them were in the SOE memorial room, posing in front of the wall where previous members of the Service had been honoured. Marchants arm was slung casually around her shoulders, like a college friend, giving no clue that they had slept together for the first time the night before. Already they were learning to deceive in love, mixing up their jobs with their private lives, just as Marchant had feared.
Next to the group photo was a picture of his father up a ladder in the orchard at Tarlton, in happier, idyllic Cotswold days. An eight-year-old Marchant in shorts was lying in a hammock strung between two apple trees, grinning confidently up at the camera. His twin brother, Sebastian, was lying next to him. They werent identical, but they shared the same smile. Sebastians face was turned towards his mother, who was standing at the bottom of the ladder, a basket of fruit in her arms. She was strikingly beautiful, confident, at ease with motherhood.
Marchant had only talked about the crash once, after they had both nearly drowned during survival training at the Fort. Sebbie, as Marchant sometimes called him, must have died a few weeks after the photo had been taken, in a traffic accident when they had returned to Delhi at the end of the English summer. Marchant had been in the jeep too when it collided head-on with a government bus, but he and his mother had survived unscathed.
Marchants family had stayed on in Delhi until the end of his fathers tour, which surprised colleagues. Later, he told Marchant that he hadnt wanted to return home immediately because his family would have spent the rest of their lives hating India, and he couldnt countenance that.
Marchants seemingly easy manner, Leila knew, dated back to those Delhi days. Everyone who met him now thought he was relaxed, charming, sociable (his ayah had described him as easy go happy), but it was his way of protecting a place he wasnt prepared to go with anyone: a place where he was still an eight-year-old child, staring at his brother beside the wreckage of the car, watching the bus driver flee from the scene; a place she knew he had revisited when his father had died. His fathers death had meant that Marchant was the only one left of his family. She sometimes felt like that too, her mother as good as dead to her, her father no longer alive. He had never been a happy presence in her childhood, either away on work or distant when he was at home, drinking too much at night and showing her mother too little respect.
Leila went over to Marchants unmade bed and lay on it, turning her head to one side and inhaling his faint aroma on the pillow. He would try to make contact, let her know he was all right. The confinement of a safe house would drive him crazy, but he was better off there than in the outside world. He was now a marked man, wanted not just by MI5 but by whoever had sent Pradeep.
Sometimes, when they lay side by side after making love, in those brief moments before they headed back to the airport and their separate lives, they had talked about where in the world they would most like to be. Marchant always spoke first, about dreams of the Thar Desert, the African savannah rangy, open spaces, wide skies or sometimes the shady apple orchards of Tarlton in a Cotswold summer. When it was her turn, she would fall quiet, the memory of her one, all too brief visit to Iran silencing her with its beauty, before she began to speak of the bare mountains that circled Ghamsars fertile plains, the scent of rose water, the village workers with cloth bags full of fragrant petals hanging from their necks.
Her mother had painted other pictures of Iran when she was younger, keen to keep the country alive for her daughter. She told her bedtime stories of Isfahan, homilies from the poems of Hafez, and, when she was older, tales of drinking Turkish tea in Tehrans cafés with elderly academics in berets and black suits. But it was always to Ghamsars rose gardens that Leilas thoughts returned, an aching glimpse of what might have been.
Leila must have been asleep for at least an hour when her phone woke her. For a moment she expected it to be her mother, but it was Paul Myers, on an encrypted call from his mobile.
The Americans have got Daniel, he said.
What? Leila sat up on Marchants bed, barely awake, confused by her surroundings and now by the sound of Myerss voice.
I cant say any more, he said, choosing his words carefully. Even on an encrypted call, he knew key words might alert someone. Seems he left on a flight to Poland.
When? Fielding must have given in to the Americans, been persuaded of a link between the Marchant family and Dhar.
Hard to say. Last couple of days? Myers paused. Its not exactly a sight-seeing trip.
No.
Hell cope, right? Myers said, surprising Leila with his sudden, urgent concern. Hes tough as they come, doesnt everyone say that?