‘She wasn’t born in Iran.’
‘She might as well have been. Close to her Iranian mother, fluent in Farsi. That’s why we recruited her. She represented the future of the Service.’
They watched the stream of morning commuters cut through St James’s Park up to Whitehall, a few runners weaving in and out of them. A cleaning van was making its way slowly along the path, its hazard lights flashing. To the left of their bench, a man was unchaining a stack of deck chairs. Spring had arrived, and the trees all around were blurred with blossom. In the distance, the London Eye rose above the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It was where Fielding had first had his doubts about Leila, high above London in a capsule with Jago. Sometimes he longed for the innocent outlook of his godson, the untroubled optimism.
‘They’re disputing the Ali Mousavi mobile evidence, reckon the maltreatment of the mother was part of the bigger Bahá’í picture, nothing more. They don’t buy that Leila was blown, Marcus. I’m sorry.’
No need to apologise, Fielding thought. She’s working for you now, protecting your President. ‘So I gather. Armstrong and Chadwick were the same. They think it’s sour grapes on the Service’s part. My revenge for Leila working for the Americans.’
‘Are you safe? The job?’
‘For the moment. Chadwick was brought in to steady the ship. He doesn’t need two Chiefs taking early retirement. And you?’ Fielding had heard rumours.
‘I’ve been called off the Marchant case. Straker’s brought back Spiro. He’s flying into Delhi this morning.’
‘Daniel Marchant wasn’t trying to kill your Ambassador, you know that,’ Fielding said.
‘I wanted to believe it, Marcus, I really did. But we’ve been blindsided by Armstrong’s TETRA evidence. The guy was within a speed-dial of blowing Munroe’s head off.’
‘Leila gave him the phone, trust me.’
‘But it was Marchant’s handset.’
‘His old one. It was taken away from him when he was suspended. I’ve been through the records. Someone managed to check it out again, without signing for it.’
‘It could have been Marchant, then.’
‘He was suspended. Leila gave it to him during the race, and he handed it back to her afterwards. She must have planted it in his flat.’
They sat in silence, watching a squirrel approach them, looking for food. ‘For a while, I thought our time had come,’ Carter eventually said. ‘Our chance to remind the world about the real meaning of intelligence. With Marchant’s help, we could have found Dhar, played him back, started to whip AQ the old-fashioned way. Straker gave us our chance–twenty-four hours, he said. Now he’s shuttered it. He wants Dhar dead, Marchant too. No nuances, no shade. The soldiers are running the show now.’
‘Are those Spiro’s orders?’
‘I’m afraid so. And he only deals in dead-or-alive.’
‘Does anyone know where Dhar is?’
‘Somewhere on the Karnataka coast. The Indians are cooperating fully. They want the President’s visit to go ahead as much as we do. A frigate from the Fifth Fleet is standing by.’
Marchant spotted the distinct outline on the horizon as he trod water, careful to keep his head above the surface of the sea. The ship was about two miles offshore, and looked like one of America’s Littoral combat ships, the sleek, angular profile designed to reduce its radar signature. A large flight-deck was just visible, silhouetted against the orange horizon. Beneath the water, the new class of frigate had a trimaran hull for speed: forty-five knots.
Marchant’s first thought was that it must be part of a wider security umbrella for the President’s imminent visit, but he was only flying into and out of Delhi. Gokarna was hundreds of miles away, south of Goa. He looked again at the ship and tried to determine if it was on the move. After a couple of minutes, he decided that it was stationary. Its presence troubled him, and he turned back to face the beach, 400 yards away. He felt better looking at the land, more in control of the water around him.
The police had combed the beach’s entire length, stopping at every café, and were now making their way back to the far end, where there was a way out onto the small road that led back to Gokarna. Marchant calculated that if he started his return now, they would have passed the Namaste Café and be almost off the beach by the time he reached the shore.
It was after two minutes of swimming that he noticed he was making no progress. While he had been treading water, watching the police, he had kept an eye on a small outcrop of cliffs, monitoring his position in case of currents. There had been little lateral movement, but he now realised that he had been drifting slowly out to sea. He should have gone easier on the chillum.
He kicked harder, and increased the frequency of his strokes. But when he stopped to look up, he knew that he had slipped further out to sea. He glanced behind him at the frigate, still out there on the horizon. For the first time, he felt a rising sense of panic. His arms felt heavier, the sea colder, deeper. He would be fine if he kept his head above water.
The sea was calm, but he faltered in his next stroke and swallowed a mouthful of water. As he choked, he remembered the cloth in the back of his throat, being worked in a circular motion, forcing itself deeper. He retched, seawater sluicing up his nose. The shore seemed to be slipping further away with each stroke, dropping beneath the gentle swell. The clingfilm would be next, a hose relayed into his mouth, deep down into his stomach.
But he never reached level three. Instead, he took a deep breath and dipped below the waves to a place where he could stretch his arms, kick for the shore. Here in the silence he could take control and confront the fear. Sebastian was by his side now, no longer lying still at the bottom of the pool, but swimming up to the surface, smiling. He pushed on through the darkness, growing stronger with each stroke, until his lungs began to burst.
40
Paul Myers hadn’t been hit so hard since he was bullied at school. He could have put up with the pain of a broken nose if it wasn’t for his glasses, which had been knocked to the floor with the impact. They had been taken off him when he was blindfolded, and put back on over his hood, to the amusement of his attackers.
The sound of them being crunched under a heel hurt even more than the second punch, which split his top lip like a burst grape. Instinctively he curled up into the foetal position, but it was no good. There were at least three of them, and he was soon being kicked in the back. Their feet were accurate, targeting his kidneys. He had always been useless at fighting.
Myers had gone from one bar to another after Fielding had dropped him off in Trafalgar Square, hoping to drown his memories of Leila. He also had nowhere to stay (the friend’s flat in North London had been a lie). It was as he was wandering across St James’s Park at about 9 a.m. that the van had slowly pulled up, hazard lights flashing. The usual park maintenance markings were visible on its sides, but the men who jumped out of the back doors weren’t interested in sweeping leaves.
The journey lasted fifteen minutes. He had no idea where he was being taken, except that the sound of the van’s engine echoed shortly before it stopped, suggesting that they had driven into a garage. Somehow he thought Leila was behind it, but he blamed her for everything in his life since he had discovered her betrayal.
As soon as the van’s back doors were opened, the beating started. They dragged him out onto cold concrete, and the fall from the van should have hurt him, but he was so drunk that he didn’t feel their kicks. He didn’t even recognise the voice of Harriet Armstrong as she ordered his attackers to stop.
The three fishermen spotted the Westerner two hundred yards off the port bow of their wooden, fifteen-foot boat. The owner had told his son to alter course and pick him up. It wouldn’t be the first tourist they had rescued, nor the last. They were usually drunk,