Paul had liked Leila’s boyfriend, too, though only begrudgingly at first. On the surface, Daniel Marchant had seemed to be the archetypal obnoxious MI6 man: Oxbridge, well travelled, smooth-talking, handsome and good at games–everything Myers wasn’t. But then he read his file and learnt about the dark stuff–the benders, the brawls, the twin brother who was killed when he was eight in a car crash in Delhi, the mother who never recovered, dying a depressive–and began to warm to him. Everyone in life was struggling to keep it together, he thought. According to Leila, Marchant had never got over losing his brother, and had been drinking himself slowly to death until he stumbled out of journalism and into the Service. It must have been like coming home, what with his old man running the show.
They might have been friends sooner if Paul hadn’t somehow convinced himself that Leila carried a torch for him, despite the obvious chemistry between her and Marchant. He knew it was insane, an attractive case officer like her falling for a short-sighted, overweight desk analyst, and common sense soon prevailed, but those early feelings for her had stayed with him. Now she was on the phone, breathless and posing one of the most interesting questions he had been asked in months: could he screw up the Americans’ GPS network for a few minutes?
Given the history of the navigation system, and in particular the US military’s policy of ‘selective availability’ in the 1990s, when they degraded the signal’s accuracy for everyone else, Myers relished the opportunity. Bring on Galileo, he thought, Europe’s own network of navigation satellites. The sooner Britain could wean itself off its dependency on GPS, the better.
‘Do you think you can do it?’ Leila asked, knowing that the challenge would appeal. Myers had been at the heart of a recent exercise in the West Country, when the entire network was jammed to thwart a simulated attack by an Iranian missile flying into British airspace on GPS. Car Tom-Toms went haywire, and the papers were full of stories the next day of lorries stuck in narrow country lanes.
‘Technically it’s possible,’ Myers said, warming to his theme. ‘Each of the thirty GPS satellites has its own atomic clock–well, four clocks actually. 2nd Space Operations Squadron in Colorado Springs sends out a navigational update once a day to make sure they’re all telling the same time–’
‘Paul, we don’t have long.’
‘Sure. We’ll get on to 2 SOPS now, find out which four satellites this guy is linked in to, and see if they can accelerate those particular clocks.’
‘Will that help?’
‘It’ll trick the receiver into thinking it’s travelling faster across the surface of the earth than it really is. The Americans aren’t going to like it, but I guess if we tell them their Ambassador is the target…How long do you need?’
‘The Bomb Squad want ten minutes.’
‘Two, maximum.’
‘Two?’
‘We’d have some serious shipping incidents in the Channel if those clocks are out for too long. I don’t even want to think about the main approach to Heathrow. How’s Daniel these days, by the way?’
Myers was aware that Marchant was persona non grata in the Service, but he had always liked his father, and had been upset by the manner of the Chief’s departure and the subsequent news of his death. It had left Marchant an orphan, which struck a chord with Myers. He was adopted, and had always assumed his own parents were dead.
‘Actually, he’s running alongside the guy with the belt.’ Leila had not intended to tell him, but she needed to focus his mind.
‘Daniel?’ The line went silent for a moment. ‘Christ, what’s he doing there? I thought he was suspended.’
‘Not now, Paul.’
‘Sure.’ Paul had changed up a gear. ‘2 SOPS are on the other line. I’ll patch them through.’
Marchant listened carefully as Leila talked him through what he had to do next. Her voice sounded different, faltering, lacking her usual confidence. Tower Bridge had been cleared of all crowds, she said. Half a mile ahead of him, at the twelve-mile point, there was about to be a roadblock, organised by plain-clothed police officers wearing race marshal tops. As he approached they would fan out across the road, using megaphones to order the runners to stop for safety reasons because of the intense heat. It would be the first time the London Marathon had been stopped, but the measure was not unheard of. (The Rotterdam Marathon had been abandoned in 2007 because of soaring temperatures.) In other words, there was an outside chance that the roadblock wouldn’t arouse the suspicion of Pradeep’s handler, should he be watching.
‘Are you all right?’ Marchant asked, after another hesitation from Leila.
‘Of course I’m bloody not,’ she said.
Marchant passed on the basic details of the plan, along with some more jelly beans, to Pradeep, who seemed to grow stronger at the news. The police would delay their intervention as long as possible, to avoid a crowd building up in front of them and slowing their pace. However, they should stick to the right of the road, as close as possible to the pavement, where a channel would be formed to let them pass through. To avoid being mistakenly challenged, Marchant was to call out that he was a doctor and must be allowed to pass.
‘Have you got all that?’ Leila asked.
‘What happens when we’re through the block?’ Marchant replied. His mother had always wanted a doctor in the family.
‘As you near Tower Bridge, the Americans are going to tweak the clocks on four GPS satellites orbiting 12,000 miles above you. When I give the word, you and Pradeep should gradually slow down to a walking pace. The Bomb Squad will join you and disable the belt as quickly as they can.’
‘How long have they got?’
‘Two minutes from the moment you start to slow.’
Marchant didn’t say anything for a few seconds. For the first time, he realised that his chances of survival were slim. Somehow he had assumed that everything would work out, but now he sensed that he might never see Leila again. She had already realised that. His life normally felt fairer in these moments of acute danger. Ever since that dark day in Delhi, he had been burdened with guilt: why had his brother been killed, while he walked away from the crash unscathed? When the odds were stacked against him, the weight briefly lifted: intense relief replaced the fear. The greater the danger, the closer he felt to Sebastian, the more able to look him in the eye.
But that wasn’t the case now. There was no frisson of higher justice or fateful euphoria. His body just felt more tired than it had ever felt in his entire life, even more than when they had found him drunk in Nairobi, face down in the gutter, his last night as a journalist.
‘Are you still there?’ Leila said.
‘I’m here.’ Another pause. He checked on Pradeep, who looked as if he had fallen into some sort of trance, eyes staring straight ahead, unaware of the outside world. But he was still running, that was all that mattered. ‘They’ve let you keep the mike then,’ Marchant continued.
‘Yes. In the circumstances, it was felt to be the best option.’
Drop the formal tone, he thought, but he knew she couldn’t; all the agencies would have live feeds by now: Thames House, Cheltenham, Langley.
Marchant imagined an aerial view of himself, as if taken from one of the satellites far above South London. He could picture the runners, tiny figures moving along toy streets, begin to bunch up in front of the police, who had appeared from nowhere. Zooming in on the scene, he could tell at once that there was no way through. Fifty yards out, he heard himself shouting at the top of his voice that he was a doctor. But no one else heard him. What was wrong with his voice? It sounded so faint, lost in the hubbub of the crowds, who were now jeering, protesting at the race being stopped. He shouted again,