Dead Spy Running

18

Sir David Chadwick had spent a lifetime brokering compromises in Whitehall meeting rooms, but even he was struggling to keep Marcus Fielding and Harriet Armstrong apart.

‘Before this gets referred to the PM, as it will, I need to know exactly what you’re alleging here, Harriet,’ he said, looking across his oak-panelled office at Armstrong, who was on the edge of her seat.

‘The Poles must have been tipped off by someone,’ Armstrong said, glancing at Fielding. He was sitting at a safe distance, equally upright though less on edge. On his lap was a clipboard, covered in a patchwork of blue and yellow Post-it notes. Armstrong had often wondered what Fielding wrote on them. No reminders to bring home dinner for his wife, because he had never had one, a fact that still intrigued her.

‘Marcus?’ Chadwick asked.

‘I think we’re underestimating our friends in Warsaw. The new government’s been looking for a way out of these renditions for some time now. I imagine someone was keeping the airbase under surveillance and decided that they no longer wanted a corner of their country run by America.’

‘Marcus, you rang me about the flight,’ Harriet said. Fielding’s poise riled her. Everything about him riled her: his equanimity, the Oxbridge intellect, those safari suits. And how could someone be ‘celibate’, as he had apparently defined his sexuality to the vetters, explaining that he was simply not interested in sex of any kind, with anyone? Her ex-husband had once accused her of something similar, but she hadn’t consciously chosen to deny him; it had just gone with the long hours.

‘True?’ asked Chadwick.

‘As you both know, we monitor all flights in and out of the UK, particularly ones that file dummy flight plans. To avoid confusion, I suggest that the next time the PM decides to authorise an undeclared CIA flight through British airspace, someone has the courtesy to tell us.’

‘Harriet?’ asked Chadwick, turning back towards her like a centre-court umpire.

‘It was agreed that the Americans could talk to Marchant,’ she said.

‘Talk to him, not try to drown him,’ Fielding replied. ‘And I think we said it should be in this country.’

Fielding’s last comment was addressed to Chadwick, who didn’t care for the look that accompanied it. ‘Oh, come on, Marcus,’ Chadwick said, a nervous smile creasing his pale jowls. ‘It must have felt like home from home, given the number of Poles over here.’

Harriet returned the smile, but Fielding stared out of the window onto Whitehall, watching an empty 24 bus make its way up towards Trafalgar Square. He didn’t have time for cheap jokes about immigrants. He didn’t have time for Chadwick, sitting behind his oversized desk like a child who had broken into the headmaster’s office.

‘So where is he now?’ Fielding asked him.

‘I was rather hoping you’d tell us.’

‘I want my man back alive. That was the other part of our deal.’

‘If you haven’t got Marchant, then who has?’ Chadwick turned back to Armstrong.

‘Spiro flew out to Warsaw this afternoon. They think he’s still in Poland.’

‘He lost him, he can bring him back,’ Fielding said, rising from his seat. ‘I’ve asked Warsaw station to keep a lookout.’

‘Prentice,’ Armstrong said coldly.

‘You know him?’ Fielding was now at the door, clipboard under one arm.

‘Only by reputation.’

‘Quite. One of the best in the business.’

‘And once Marchant’s found?’ Chadwick asked, standing too, sensing another altercation.

‘Then it’s our turn to ask him about Dhar,’ Armstrong replied.

Fielding opened the door to leave.

‘Just make sure we don’t lose him again,’ said Chadwick. ‘Twice would be careless. Thank you, Marcus.’

Fielding closed the door behind him, leaving Armstrong and Chadwick alone.

‘Whatever the differences between you two, I don’t want it affecting operations on my watch, Harriet.’ Chadwick had remained standing.

‘Spiro’s livid.’

‘I’m sure he is. But it should surprise no one that the Service looks after its own. It always has done. Is this Hugo Prentice protecting him?’

‘Quite possibly. We could throw the book at Prentice if we want. He’s had run-ins with Spiro before. He’s had run-ins with everyone. Any other agency would have got rid of him years ago.’

‘I’ll talk to Spiro.’ Chadwick paused, shuffling papers needlessly on his desk. ‘We want this contained, Harriet. The Americans need Marchant back.’

* * *

Fielding found Ian Denton, folder in hand, waiting for him in the room outside his office, making quiet conversation with his secretaries. The Chief of MI6 was entitled to three of them: his personal assistant, a letters secretary and a diary secretary. Anne Norman had been PA to the previous four Chiefs, all of whom had valued her brusque phone manner, particularly when taking awkward calls from Whitehall. She had resigned over the Stephen Marchant affair, only to be talked into staying on over a long lunch at Bentley’s with Fielding. A formidable spinster in her late fifties, she was the archetypal bluestocking, except that she always wore bright red tights, usually with red shoes. Fielding had often meant to ask her why, but he was in no mood for small-talk after his meeting with Armstrong and Chadwick.

‘Come,’ he said, walking through to his office. Denton followed, closing the door behind them. ‘What have you got?’

‘Marchant’s with AW,’ Denton said, quieter than ever.

‘And the Americans?’

‘Spiro’s turning Warsaw upside down. Prentice says they won’t find him.’

Fielding hesitated a moment. ‘What about Salim Dhar? Any progress?’

Denton pulled out a sheaf of papers from the folder he was holding. He, like Fielding, lived an ordered life, and he had grouped the sheets into clear plastic files. He handed the top file over to Fielding with the confidence of someone who knew he had done well. It was a printout of an old bank statement.

‘Dhar’s father, his current account in Delhi,’ Denton said. ‘This deposit here was his monthly salary payment from the US Embassy.’

‘And this one?’ Fielding asked, pointing to another payment that had been circled with red biro.

‘As far as his Delhi branch manager is concerned, it was a regular payment from relatives in South India. Paid in rupees from the State Bank of Travancore, Kottayam. Works out at about £100 a month in today’s terms.’

‘Not bad for an administrative officer. You’d expect someone with a job in Delhi to be sending money back to his family in the south, not receiving it. So who was paying him?’

Denton paused for a moment, knowing that he would be blamed in some indirect way for what he was about to say. ‘We’ve followed the financial trail back further.’

‘And?’ Fielding glanced up at him irritably.

‘Cayman Islands, one of the Service’s old offshore accounts.’

‘Christ.’ Fielding tossed the file onto his desk.

‘Set up by Stephen Marchant in 1980.’ Denton pulled out another file, made up of sheets more faded than the first, and handed it to Fielding, hoping that it would become the new focus for his anger. ‘We found this in the FO’s employment files. Seems like the first payment was put through shortly after Dhar’s father was sacked from the British High Commission. There was a small disciplinary hearing, at which various references were read out, including this one from Marchant. He felt very strongly about it, thought the man had been shabbily treated.’

‘So strongly he set him up with an index-linked agent’s pension.’ Fielding pushed his chair back towards the big bay windows that looked across the Thames towards Tate Britain. Denton was still standing. ‘It doesn’t add up. A junior member of the commission’s admin staff — perfectly decent man, I’m sure, but not exactly a high-value intelligence asset. Is there any record of him providing information to the Service?’

‘Nothing so far. For what it’s worth, the monthly payment was roughly equal to the difference between his British salary and his new, lower income from the US Embassy.’

‘Very fair. Except that Marchant didn’t have the authority to set up something like this. Even back then.’

‘It never caught the eye of our auditors.’

‘He always did know how to handle the bean counters. Are the payments still being made?’

‘No. They stopped. 2001.’

‘Why then?’

Denton shook his head. ‘We don’t know yet. But there’s one other thing. We’ve found a second payment Marchant requested after he’d left India. To his driver, one Ramachandran Nair. Same account, gave him a pension of £50 a month.’

‘And we’re still paying him?’

‘Seems so, yes.’

‘Dear God, no wonder we’re always over budget. Do whatever you have to, Ian. I need to know why Marchant was paying Dhar’s father. What was it he did for him?’