She held the phone in front of her, tripping and grabbing at Marchant’s arm for support.
‘Who are you ringing? MI5? The networks will be congested,’ he said. ‘Too many people.’
She looked at him again, her face suddenly professional, drained of all emotion, and then she dialled.
‘It’s a TETRA handset,’ she said coldly. The secure encrypted digital network used by the emergency and security services was one of the perks Marchant missed. ‘They’re not answering. Daniel, please. This is not your responsibility, not mine. If what you say is true, it’s one for MI5, Anti-Terrorism Command. We must leave it to them.’
Marchant looked at the road ahead, and reckoned he knew where the runner was, give or take a few hundred people. ‘I’ve got him talking. He doesn’t want to go through with it.’
Leila hesitated, weighing up the options. Had she conceded he might have a role to play? She looked at him again, swallowing hard.
‘OK. If you take my phone, I’ll drop out, find a phonebox and tell Five about the situation. Once the networks have been knocked out, I’ll give you a call on TETRA.’
Marchant was thinking fast now, like he used to in the field. The head of station in Nairobi had once predicted that a glittering career stretched ahead of him; he might even follow his father to the top if he quit the whisky and womanising. Next time they met, Marchant was suspended and burying his father.
‘Alert MI5. I’ll stay with him,’ he said, trying not to think about the funeral in the Cotswold frost, how they had treated his father. ‘My guess is we can’t pull him off the course, even if he keeps running. Deviating from waypoints could trigger the belt too.’
‘Daniel, you shouldn’t be doing this.’
‘I know.’ He also knew there weren’t many alternatives. If they both stopped, it would be almost impossible to find the bomber again. ‘I could tell the Americans. The Ambassador’s got company, and I think they’re wired.’ Leila glanced at him for a moment. They were both reluctant to involve the Secret Service, who didn’t always play by the same rules as everyone else. ‘The Ambassador is the target here?’ he asked.
‘He must be.’
Marchant had missed the adrenalin, but it was draining his energy, too. Lactic acid was building in his legs, weighing them down like lead.
‘Here,’ Leila said, holding out the phone. Their eyes met.
‘No blues and twos, nothing to alert him, OK?’ he said, taking the handset. He was increasingly short of breath. ‘Someone else might have their finger on the button. It’s happened to me once before.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Keep your distance from him.’
‘Who gave you this?’ he asked, looking at the handset again. It was a Motorola MTH800. ‘Just like my old one.’
‘Services. Mine was knackered. If you don’t hear from me in fifteen minutes, try calling the office.’ She paused. ‘Speed-dial 1. They’ll find me.’
Marchant glanced back at Leila as she pulled up on the side of the road, feigning a hamstring injury. She looked up at him, and for a moment he wondered if she might never make the call, leaving him to run on in his imaginary world of bombers and belts.
He knew she had tried to walk away from what they had together–God, how they had both tried–but each time one of them had relented. It wasn’t like him at all. For the first time in his life, a woman had got under his skin. Now they might be at the heart of a major security incident, and his involvement wouldn’t do her career any favours. Suspicion still hung over the Marchant family like a poisoned fog.
She gave a small wave and disappeared in the sea of runners.
2
It took ten minutes for Marchant to find Pradeep again. His head was bowed, his feet scuffing the road, running like a drunken tramp. The American Ambassador was in the group immediately ahead of him, still with company. He was moving strongly, chest out, no signs of tiredness. Worryingly, the field seemed to be tightly bunched around Pradeep, not as spread out as it was further back. And then Marchant saw the reason why: up ahead, just beyond the Ambassador, was an official pacemaker, running with a sign above him: eight minutes a mile. Stick with him and the marathon was yours for three hours thirty minutes. Marchant looked at Pradeep again, and feared that he didn’t have long, maybe ten minutes at most.
‘Pradeep? It’s me. You’re doing great.’
‘It’s too late.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m so tired, too weak.’
‘Do you want to stop, take a rest?’ Marchant said, bluffing. One final check, just to reassure himself about the GPS.
Pradeep’s glance at his belt gave him his answer. He was right.
‘How about we keep running, but turn off the course, up here, say, right at the pub?’
Pradeep shook his head.
‘Is the marathon route programmed into your GPS, your Sat-Runner?’ Marchant asked. That was something else his father had told him, shortly after he’d joined the Service: never ask a question you don’t know the answer to.
Pradeep didn’t respond. He was really struggling now, continually losing his footing. Marchant looked at his frame, lean and sinewy, and thought that in other circumstances he would be a natural marathon runner. No doubt that was why he had been chosen. But the mental pressure on Pradeep was sapping every ounce of his energy. Marchant could feel them slowing moments before the GPS beeped.
‘Come on, Pradeep, we’re going to get through this,’ Marchant said, trying to pick up the pace again. They had to keep running until Leila rang. She would have an answer.
‘Two beeps and we’re gone,’ Pradeep replied, suddenly grinning, almost laughing. Marchant realised Pradeep was losing control. ‘You don’t understand, my friend,’ he continued. ‘The American. I can’t leave him.’
‘The Ambassador?’
Marchant looked up at Turner Munroe, who was five yards in front of him. The Ambassador checked his watch, and for the first time Marchant noticed that its bulky design was identical to Pradeep’s.
‘Eight minutes a mile. He always runs the same,’ said Pradeep, suddenly sounding like a trainer admiring one of his charges.
‘Three hours thirty,’ Marchant said. ‘He’s running a 3.30.’
‘One hour forty.’
‘What?’
‘He reaches Tower Bridge after one hour forty minutes.’
‘And?’
Pradeep smiled again, tears welling now. They had been running for one hour thirty minutes. Marchant desperately wanted Leila to ring, more than when they had first tried to split up, more than after their first date at the Fort, MI6’s training centre in Gosport. He looked at the phone in his hand and saw that the commercial networks had been knocked out. Should he try ringing her? The office would be surprised to hear his voice, but she would have told them and they would patch him through to wherever she was. He lifted his head, looked around, and for a moment he thought he saw his father running ahead of him, trundling along at a surprising speed for his age.
He blinked, wiping the sweat away from his eyes, and looked again at the handset. He had to stay on top of this: Pradeep was wearing a belt of explosives linked in some way to the GPS receiver on his wrist. He seemed to be an unwilling participant, rather than a suicide bomber. If he slowed down, the explosives would detonate: ditto if he took any deviation from the marathon course, the waypoints for which had been entered into his GPS.