‘Except that he didn’t kill him.’ It was almost an aside. Fielding had said it too often to care any more. He stood up and walked around the room, avoiding eye contact with Chadwick and Armstrong. His lower back was starting to ache. He had had enough of this game.
‘We all know the Americans have made no secret of their concerns about MI6,’ Chadwick said. ‘But we can’t pin this one on them, Marcus. They’ve been over it with Leila many times. She came off the course to alert MI5 as soon as she became aware of the bomber. She didn’t know if Marchant was involved, but she couldn’t take the risk, particularly in the light of her brief from the Americans.’
‘We don’t know why he had a change of heart out there,’ Armstrong said, ‘but perhaps it was Leila’s presence by his side, in which case we should all be grateful that the Americans had the sense to keep such a close eye on him.’
‘Are you suggesting that Leila talked him out of it?’ Fielding asked. He was at the window now, his back to Armstrong and Chadwick, wishing he was at Tate Britain across the river, before the crowds arrived. The night manager would often open up the gallery for him, let him walk the Pre-Raphaelite rooms on his own in the dawn light.
‘Not directly, no,’ Armstrong said. ‘She had no idea what he was planning. But by being there, we think she had an effect on him, yes.’
‘And she was running by his side because the Americans had turned her, not because of any genuine feelings she might have had for him, feelings that had been no secret to anyone at MI6 since their time together at the Fort?’
‘You still have a very romantic view of Marchant, don’t you?’ Armstrong said, annoyed that she was addressing Fielding’s back. ‘Son of a distinguished Chief, best case officer of his generation, heroically saves the American Ambassador to London from a suicide bomber. How about son of a traitor, picked up where his father left off, gets within an inch of causing carnage in the capital.’
Fielding turned to face them, his tall figure silhouetted against the windows. ‘My point is that we must be grateful they were lovers.’ He paused. ‘But I’m afraid we’ve all got it the wrong way round. It wasn’t Daniel’s love for Leila that stopped the bomb being detonated, it was Leila’s love for Daniel. She was the one who had a change of heart.’
‘We’ve been through this before, Marcus. It wasn’t a set-up.’
‘I know. Because Leila wasn’t working for the Americans.’ He walked around to his seat, picked up the pile of transcripts and files and dropped them onto the table between Chadwick and Armstrong. ‘She was working for the Iranians.’
39
Marchant listened to the rustle of the necklaces slung loosely around the cows’ necks, made from seashells threaded with coarse coir twine. A small herd had gathered in front of the Namaste Café, meandering slowly towards a promontory of rocks that stretched out from the sand into the Arabian Sea. The café was in the middle of the beach, near the centre of the Om symbol. Marchant had seen the beach’s auspicious shape from the top of the cliffs at the far end, where the rickshaw driver had dropped him.
Now he was watching the sun set, with a Kingfisher beer in one hand, a chillum in the other, thinking he could settle here for a year. His plastic chair was listing badly, its legs sinking slowly into the soft sand, forcing him to cock his head to level the distant horizon. Two human figures stood motionless on the far rocks, looking out to sea, their yogic poses silhouetted against the vermilion-streaked sky. Further down the beach, a group of fishermen squatted around a wooden canoe, mending their nets. Monika would have enjoyed the scene, in real life as well as her cover one. Leila, he thought, would have told all the Westerners to go back home and find proper jobs.
He was beginning to accept now that Leila must have helped the Americans, unwittingly said something that made them think he was trying to kill Munroe at the marathon rather than save him. They had distrusted his father, and they suspected the son too. But had Leila really not known what she was doing? He hoped Salim Dhar would have the answer.
Other stoned travellers were sharing the view, chilled out in seats scattered around the café, chatting quietly. Marchant had two of them down as being from Sweden, two from Israel and one from South Africa. The Israeli couple, he guessed, had recently completed their national service (three years for men, twenty-one months for women). Behind the café was a small row of cubicles, each with a two-inch thick mattress on its sandy floor. Marchant had rented one of them for fifty rupees, and later paid an extra thirty for a mosquito net, when the biting started.
‘It used to be more shanti here,’ said Shankar, the bar owner, bringing Marchant another beer. He hadn’t asked him yet about Salim. The Israeli couple were arousing his suspicion: the occasional look in his direction, the bulge of a mobile phone in the pocket of the man’s shorts. ‘Now there are too many Indian tourists. They come to watch the hippies at weekends. Soon it will be like Goa.’
‘The beer’s good,’ Marchant said, reading from the label, which hadn’t changed since his backpacking days. ‘“Most thrilling chilled.” Is it difficult getting a licence?’
‘I give the policeman 4,000 rupees, they let me sell beer. Which place you from?’
‘Ireland.’
‘I tried it once. The Guinness beer.’
‘And?’
Shankar shook his head from side to side in appreciation, but Marchant could see that he was distracted. He was looking down to the far end of the beach, at least three hundred yards away, where there was another, bigger café. Some sort of commotion had caught his eye. Marchant turned around to see.
‘Baksheesh problem,’ Shankar said. Marchant stared hard into the dying sun, shielding his eyes. He couldn’t see anything unusual.
‘He didn’t pay up?’
‘Maybe. They usually come at start of season.’
‘Who? The police?’
Then Marchant saw them, a group of at least ten officers, led by a peak-capped man with a lathi in his hand.
‘No problem, no problem. They are my friends.’
But Marchant could hear the tension in Shankar’s voice. Without rushing, he stood up and walked around to his room at the rear of the café. There was nothing in it, because he had no luggage. Moving quickly, he removed the plastic bag from the purse belt strapped to his leg, checking that his money and passport were inside. He then went out and walked over to the shade of some coconut trees, where hammocks had been strung between their trunks, and started to dig quickly in the sand. A few moments later he had buried his passport and money. He made a mental note of the nearest tree, and then looked over at the group of policemen. They had stopped at another small café, halfway between him and the end of the beach.
‘I’m off for a swim,’ he said to Shankar, who was busy stacking crates of empty beer bottles at the back of the shack. It was a futile gesture if he was hoping to conceal them. None of the other travellers seemed to have taken much notice of Marchant’s movements.
‘No problem,’ Shankar said. ‘The sea is strong.’
Marchant didn’t want to leave his shirt and trousers lying around. Instead he ran down to the sea fully clothed, trying not to think of Stare Kiejkuty. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and dived into the waves, telling himself that he wasn’t about to drown.
‘I’m afraid your allegations about Leila haven’t played too well in Langley,’ Carter said, glancing at the newspaper in his hand before putting it down on the park bench beside him.
‘No one likes to hear that they’ve been betrayed by one of their own,’ Fielding said.
‘You know, I was sitting in on a Langley lecture the other day. The guy was telling all the rookies that money’s no longer what traitors do it for. Divided loyalties,