Dead Spy Running

28

After twenty-four hours in India, Daniel Marchant concluded that he wasn’t under surveillance, but he still took no risks as he was driven in a cream-coloured Ambassador taxi, ordered by Chandar, from Chattapur up into the centre of New Delhi. At Qutb Minar, in Merauli, he asked the driver to pull into the dusty car park, near the landmark monument, where they waited for ten minutes under the shade of some trees, engine and air conditioning still running.

The driver stood beside the car in his white uniform. It was obvious that he was having a smoke, but he still tried to conceal the cigarette, cupping it in his hand as he shifted from foot to foot. A tour guide handed him a leaflet and glanced hopefully in at the window at Marchant, but moved on when the driver swore at him. Marchant wound down the window, felt a wave of hot air, and took the leaflet from the driver. A few sweltering Western tourists were drifting around the complex, being informed about the tower’s 399 steps, how it had been begun in 1193 by Qutbud-din Aibak, the first Muslim ruler of Delhi. No one mentioned the stampede in 1998, when the lights went out in the tower and twenty-five children were crushed. Marchant remembered reading about it at the time. Visitors weren’t allowed up the tower any more.

Marchant watched as the party of tourists climbed back into their minibus. The place was now empty. Nobody seemed to have followed him. Monika and her colleagues had given him a head start, but it would only be a couple of days at most. He also assumed that Prentice had done his best to hamper the Americans on the ground. But he knew it wouldn’t be long before the connection was made between David Marlowe and Daniel Marchant. The CIA had a big station in Delhi. He wondered what the CX from Langley would be saying once they had worked out he was in India: suspended MI6 officer on the run, suspected of trying to eliminate US Ambassador.

Why did they still think he was behind the attempted marathon attack? How could anyone interpret his actions that day as anything other than loyal? Only he and Leila knew what had happened out there on the streets of London, how he had come to be propping up Pradeep as they stumbled towards a deserted Tower Bridge. He wanted to talk to her now, go through the events again to find any ambiguities; and yet, for the first time since they had met, a new emotion had crept imperceptibly over the horizon.

Perhaps it was the change of continents, the physical separation that had been imposed on them. But he knew it wasn’t that. They had been apart before. Again he asked himself, how could the Americans view his actions as suspicious, even through the warped prism of his father’s guilt? Leila was the only other person who knew what had happened. Her explanation should have clarified his role, spared him the waterboard; but it hadn’t, and he couldn’t help resenting her for that.

Before his resentment grew into something more troubling, he realised that he was looking at it all from the wrong end. It didn’t matter whether the Americans thought he was guilty or not. They needed him to be guilty, to damn the father through the son. And in order to do that they had either distorted the evidence, wilfully ignoring the debriefs, or the whole thing had been an elaborate set-up. That would explain why he and no one else had spotted the belt. He knew, though, that the Americans would be unlikely to sanction such a risky plan. Either way, Leila was the one person who could have proved his innocence. Why hadn’t she cleared him?

He sat back in the taxi and closed his eyes. He hadn’t had time to think since he had touched down in India, a land that was so full of conflicting memories for him. His arrival at Indira Gandhi airport late the night before had been much more stressful than he had expected. Passport control hadn’t questioned his Irish passport or the tourist visa in the name of David Marlowe, but the security measures at the airport had surprised him. There had been police officers everywhere, randomly checking luggage. Outside, army trucks lined the main approach road to the city, soldiers sitting in the heat.

The scene reminded him of Heathrow in 2003, when Scimitar and Spartan reconnaissance vehicles had rolled in to guard the terminals. He had been an undergraduate in Cambridge at the time, and had read the chilling newspaper reports: it had been one of those exhilarating, self-affirming moments when he knew what he wanted to do with his life. If only he had acted on it then, been honest with himself and his father, rather than wasting years pretending he wanted to be a journalist, trying to do something — anything — other than follow in his father’s footsteps.

For a moment at the airport, Marchant thought the Indians had been tipped off about his arrival, but then he discovered the reason for the heightened security. According to a newspaper stand, the US President was due to arrive in Delhi in four days’ time. Marchant felt a surge of unease at the news, at the thought of Salim Dhar being in the same country at the same time. The visit was part of a four-country tour of the subcontinent. Arms deals would be signed between Washington and Delhi in a bid to shore up India’s defences against China.

The capital had set about cleaning its streets and whitewashing its walls in febrile anticipation of the visit. The road from the airport to the Maurya Hotel, where the President’s entourage would be staying, was being transformed into a corridor of cleanliness. The city of Agra was also sprucing itself up. Thousands of litres of cheap perfume had been reportedly emptied into the Jamuna river, beside the Taj Mahal, in an effort to reduce the smell of the city’s effluent. Tigers, too, had been corralled into a corner of Ranthambore wildlife sanctuary to ensure a presidential sighting. Marchant knew he did not have long to find Dhar.

After collecting his tatty rucksack from the luggage carousel, Marchant had taken a deep breath and walked out of the arrivals hall into a wall of heat, knowing that, as a backpacker, he wouldn’t have the budget for a taxi. (The thousand US dollars given to him by Hugo Prentice was carefully split between his money belt and a purse strapped to his shin beneath his cotton trousers.)

A horde of shouting people, mostly in white kurta pyjamas, had jostled for his custom, tugging at his backpack, calling out snatches of German, French and Italian as well as English. He had eventually settled on a Sikh auto-rickshaw driver, for no other reason than that he was bigger and more dignified-looking than his rivals. After an early, unpromising stop for fuel, the driver smiled in the wonky rear-view mirror and drove down the main highway into New Delhi, turning to make inaudible remarks about American presidents.

On either side of the road, road sweepers pushed their straw brushes idly in the heat while painters daubed thick yellow emulsion on the railings that ran down the central reservation, removing shirts and saris that had been hung there to dry. Occasionally, parts of the road itself had been cordoned off for potholes to be filled and new tarmac laid, tribal women trailing damp rags on the big wheels of the steamrollers to keep them moist.

The rickshaw took Marchant all the way to Pahaganj, north of Connaught Place, where his Rough Guide promised cheap accommodation and the company of other backpackers. The Hare Krishna guesthouse wasn’t exactly the Oki Doki, but with its permit room (‘for quenching thirst’) and rooftop restaurant overlooking the bazaar, it was perfect for David Marlowe. His flight from Poland, with a four-hour change at Dubai, had been tiring, and he slept deeply, despite the heat of the night and the rhythmic rattle of the ceiling fan.

Now, as he watched an orange sun set behind Qutb Minar, he knew his search for Salim Dhar must begin. He was wearing the least tatty clothes he could find in the rucksack, and he hoped that the taxi, an extravagance for David Marlowe, would not attract attention when he arrived at the Gymkhana Club.

As he was driven into town, the flow of traffic was busy on the other side of the road as commuters streamed out of the scrubbed-up city towards the suburbs. The sight of an elephant, ambling along in the slow lane, brought back memories of childhood birthdays at the high commission, always shared with Sebastian. He turned back to look at the animal, admiring the unrushed fall of its padded feet. An elephant used to be obligatory at expat parties, a telephone number for bookings written in chalk between its eyes. Children would be lifted up onto the unsteady palanquins to ride around the commission compound, thrilled and scared by the muscular sashay of their mount’s huge haunches.

Marchant remembered the time he fell out of love with the birthday elephant, or at least with the mahouts who brought them up from the slums by the river. He and Sebastian were sitting at the front of a gaggle of children, directly behind the mahout, when he saw the metal spike that had been driven deep into the animal’s thick and bloodied neck. The mahout twisted the spike whenever he barked an order, desperate to assert his waning authority over the animal.

The Gymkhana Club felt as if it had been waning for the past hundred years. A chowkidar at the gate searched under the car with a mirror before waving them on. Marchant told the driver to wait for him in the car park to the side of the whitewashed Lutyens building, explaining that he might be back in five minutes, or maybe an hour. ‘Koi baat nay,’ he replied, rocking his head gently from side to side before driving off.

Marchant paused beneath the large porch, catching the perfume of bougainvillea tumbling over the nearby perimeter wall. Above him, crows were roosting, their cries faintly eerie. He hadn’t been here before, but his father often used to talk about the place. Under British rule it had been known as the Imperial Gymkhana Club, but the Imperial had been dropped after 1947, and now its tennis courts, Lady Willingdon swimming pool, library and bridge drives were for the exclusive use of Delhi’s social elite, many of whom had waited thirty years to become a member.

Non-Indian guests were welcome, but Marchant remembered his father telling him of an unsettling custom at the bar that if a ‘Britisher’ bought a round of drinks, he couldn’t expect the favour to be returned. Marchant’s father had liked his Kalyani Black Label beer, but had found that the only way to quench his thirst was to keep standing rounds for everyone. Buying a drink solely for himself would have caused offence, and given that British diplomats often ventured to the Gymkhana Club to gauge the military’s current level of hostility towards neighbouring Pakistan, a subject about which they were especially prickly, it was important to keep the members onside.

‘I’ve come to talk to Kailash Malhotra,’ Marchant said to the khaki-uniformed man at the colonnaded reception.

‘Colonel Malhotra?’ the man checked him.

Marchant nodded, taking in the colonial setting — high ceilings, the whiff of floor polish, a sign saying that ‘bush’ shirts were prohibited — as the man looked through a list on a clipboard. Marchant could detect cigar smoke coming from somewhere, and it took him a few moments to realise that a distant clinking sound was the noise of billiard balls colliding. Marchant would be back at his Wiltshire boarding school if he smelt boiled cabbage for dinner.

‘He’s playing bridge in the card room,’ the man said finally.

‘I thought they didn’t get underway until eight.’ Marchant had made a call earlier.

The man looked at Marchant’s crumpled shirt for a moment, unable to conceal his disdain, then glanced at a large clock on the wall to his right. ‘Right now they are having sundowners in the bar. Is he expecting you?’

‘Yes. Could you tell him David Marlowe’s here?’

Ten minutes later, Marchant was sitting opposite Colonel Malhotra in a corner of the bar, sipping a ‘burra peg’ of Chivas Regal.

‘When you were a naughty little boy — my God, you were so naughty — you used to call me “uncle”,’ the colonel said, laughing, one hand patting Marchant’s knee. ‘You can still call me uncle. Uncle K. It’s the name your dear father always used.’

Marchant had only very distant memories of Uncle K: watching Mother India and other old Hindi movies on a Sunday afternoon at his house, where he and Sebastian would eat pistachio kulfi and be told off by their mother for complaining that it didn’t taste like real ice cream. Uncle K used to sing along to all the songs, tears often streaming down his face. Afterwards, he would retire with Marchant’s father to another part of the house and talk in low voices while his mother fielded the children.

When Monika had mentioned the name Malhotra at the airport, he couldn’t be certain it was the Uncle K of his early childhood. It was only when the colonel had walked towards him in reception, open-armed, that Marchant knew for sure it was the same man. Now, as they talked, more memories came back: the discreet acceptance of a gift of Scotch brought over from Britain; the blunderbuss on the wall, once used for shooting tigers; the touché shaking of hands after cracking a gag; Uncle K’s avuncular kindness when Sebastian was killed.

‘Your father was very keen that you didn’t grow up resenting India because of the traffic accident,’ he said. ‘It could have happened anywhere.’

‘He did a good job. It’s great to be back.’

Marchant didn’t tell him that he hadn’t visited Delhi since they had left as a grieving family twenty years ago. He had backpacked through India in his year off, paving the way for David Marlowe, but he had made a point of travelling through the south, and then up into the Himalayas, consciously bypassing Delhi.

‘I fear your mother never got back her health, though,’ Uncle K said.

‘No,’ Marchant replied, but he was no longer listening. His attention had been distracted by a man who had walked up to the bar, briefcase in hand.

‘I still feel bad about your father’s funeral. It just wasn’t possible.’

‘No. Can we talk about our mutual friend?’ Marchant asked, turning back to Uncle K. ‘We might not have much time.’

‘Tell me what you want to know.’

‘Why did my father visit him?’

Uncle K paused, glancing around the bar. ‘I tried to recruit him once, a couple of years back. I was called out of retirement especially, told the whole thing was deniable. There was some sympathy there, but his hatred of America? It was too much. We had to drop him.’

‘Was my father trying to recruit him too?’

Uncle K lost his smile. ‘There’s something else you should know about Salim Dhar, but I’m not the person to tell you. It can only come from him.’

Marchant glanced again at the man at the bar, who was looking back at them. He was still holding his briefcase, gripping the handle too tightly.

‘Can you show me around this place?’ Marchant asked the colonel, interrupting him.

‘What, now?’

‘I need a bit of fresh air.’ He gestured at the table next to him, where a brigadier was drawing on a large cigar.

‘Of course,’ Malhotra said, picking up on Marchant’s anxiety. ‘It’s safe to talk here, I know them all,’ he joked, nodding at the brigadier as he rose from his chair. ‘They’re all far too busy discussing today’s hodgepodge with the cricket to listen to us. But why not? Let me show you round.’

Marchant knew they were too late when the man at the bar looked at them again. All he had time to do was duck.