Dead Spy Running

39

Marchant listened to the rustle of the necklaces slung loosely around the cows’ necks, made from seashells threaded with coarse coir twine. A small herd had gathered in front of the Namaste Café, meandering slowly towards a promontory of rocks that stretched out from the sand into the Arabian Sea. The café was in the middle of the beach, near the centre of the Om symbol. Marchant had seen the beach’s auspicious shape from the top of the cliffs at the far end, where the rickshaw driver had dropped him.

Now he was watching the sun set, with a Kingfisher beer in one hand, a chillum in the other, thinking he could settle here for a year. His plastic chair was listing badly, its legs sinking slowly into the soft sand, forcing him to cock his head to level the distant horizon. Two human figures stood motionless on the far rocks, looking out to sea, their yogic poses silhouetted against the vermilion-streaked sky. Further down the beach, a group of fishermen squatted around a wooden canoe, mending their nets. Monika would have enjoyed the scene, in real life as well as her cover one. Leila, he thought, would have told all the Westerners to go back home and find proper jobs.

He was beginning to accept now that Leila must have helped the Americans, unwittingly said something that made them think he was trying to kill Munroe at the marathon rather than save him. They had distrusted his father, and they suspected the son too. But had Leila really not known what she was doing? He hoped Salim Dhar would have the answer.

Other stoned travellers were sharing the view, chilled out in seats scattered around the café, chatting quietly. Marchant had two of them down as being from Sweden, two from Israel and one from South Africa. The Israeli couple, he guessed, had recently completed their national service (three years for men, twenty-one months for women). Behind the café was a small row of cubicles, each with a two-inch thick mattress on its sandy floor. Marchant had rented one of them for fifty rupees, and later paid an extra thirty for a mosquito net, when the biting started.

‘It used to be more shanti here,’ said Shankar, the bar owner, bringing Marchant another beer. He hadn’t asked him yet about Salim. The Israeli couple were arousing his suspicion: the occasional look in his direction, the bulge of a mobile phone in the pocket of the man’s shorts. ‘Now there are too many Indian tourists. They come to watch the hippies at weekends. Soon it will be like Goa.’

‘The beer’s good,’ Marchant said, reading from the label, which hadn’t changed since his backpacking days. ‘“Most thrilling chilled.” Is it difficult getting a licence?’

‘I give the policeman 4,000 rupees, they let me sell beer. Which place you from?’

‘Ireland.’

‘I tried it once. The Guinness beer.’

‘And?’

Shankar shook his head from side to side in appreciation, but Marchant could see that he was distracted. He was looking down to the far end of the beach, at least three hundred yards away, where there was another, bigger café. Some sort of commotion had caught his eye. Marchant turned around to see.

‘Baksheesh problem,’ Shankar said. Marchant stared hard into the dying sun, shielding his eyes. He couldn’t see anything unusual.

‘He didn’t pay up?’

‘Maybe. They usually come at start of season.’

‘Who? The police?’

Then Marchant saw them, a group of at least ten officers, led by a peak-capped man with a lathi in his hand.

‘No problem, no problem. They are my friends.’

But Marchant could hear the tension in Shankar’s voice. Without rushing, he stood up and walked around to his room at the rear of the café. There was nothing in it, because he had no luggage. Moving quickly, he removed the plastic bag from the purse belt strapped to his leg, checking that his money and passport were inside. He then went out and walked over to the shade of some coconut trees, where hammocks had been strung between their trunks, and started to dig quickly in the sand. A few moments later he had buried his passport and money. He made a mental note of the nearest tree, and then looked over at the group of policemen. They had stopped at another small café, halfway between him and the end of the beach.

‘I’m off for a swim,’ he said to Shankar, who was busy stacking crates of empty beer bottles at the back of the shack. It was a futile gesture if he was hoping to conceal them. None of the other travellers seemed to have taken much notice of Marchant’s movements.

‘No problem,’ Shankar said. ‘The sea is strong.’

Marchant didn’t want to leave his shirt and trousers lying around. Instead he ran down to the sea fully clothed, trying not to think of Stare Kiejkuty. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and dived into the waves, telling himself that he wasn’t about to drown.

* * *

‘I’m afraid your allegations about Leila haven’t played too well in Langley,’ Carter said, glancing at the newspaper in his hand before putting it down on the park bench beside him.

‘No one likes to hear that they’ve been betrayed by one of their own,’ Fielding said.

‘You know, I was sitting in on a Langley lecture the other day. The guy was telling all the rookies that money’s no longer what traitors do it for. Divided loyalties, that’s what they’re about these days. Mother country calling louder than their adopted one.’

‘So why don’t you believe it about Leila?’

‘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.