Dead Spy Running

44

Fielding put down the phone and looked around the room, his mind working fast. There was no question Daniel was telling the truth. It all made sense now: the payments each month, authorised by Stephen Marchant, to Dhar’s father. His predecessor hadn’t been trying to bring on a potential asset; it was a personal allowance, prompted by guilt, paid for by the Service.

The dates fitted, too. Stephen Marchant had overlapped with Dhar’s father at the British High Commission for six months at the beginning of 1980, the year Dhar was born. It was then that he must have met Dhar’s mother, in the months before returning to Britain for the birth of Daniel and Sebastian, when he was without his wife in Delhi.

He picked up the phone again and rang Anne Norman, asking to be put through to Ian Denton, who listened quietly to what Marchant had told Fielding on the phone.

‘Where was he calling from?’ Denton asked.

‘He wouldn’t say.’

‘But he was with Salim Dhar.’

‘No, he’d just left.’ There was a pause, too long even for the taciturn Denton. ‘Ian?’

‘We might not have much time.’

‘Can you contact Carter? Straker won’t take my calls any more.’

‘The phone, Marcus. If Daniel was talking on a targeted mobile, Fort Meade will have picked it up and passed it on already.’

‘That’s why we need to speak to Carter.’

‘Isn’t he out of the loop now?’

‘Not yet. He’ll understand what this means.’

‘And you think it’s going to help our case with Langley?’

In the few minutes since taking Daniel’s call, Fielding had felt only relief, finally knowing why Stephen Marchant had travelled to India on an unauthorised visit, a trip that had always troubled Fielding because it had been so out of character. There had been no mention of any name, no mole uncovered, but at least Fielding now knew that the journey had been made for private reasons, not national ones. It might lower Stephen’s reputation in some people’s eyes, but for Fielding it meant professional exoneration for his predecessor. Denton was right, though. He always was. In the American mind — Spiro’s, Straker’s — it would be interpreted quite differently: as further proof that the former Chief of MI6’s loyalties were questionable.

‘Carter will understand,’ Fielding repeated. ‘It explains Stephen’s visit, why he travelled to Kerala. That’s what was bothering them all so much, wasn’t it? He was a philanderer with a conscience, Ian, not a traitor. Doesn’t this prove it?’

‘It will prove only one thing to them: that they were right to go after him.’

Fielding didn’t care any more what the Americans thought. It had always been Stephen Marchant’s dream to recruit someone like Dhar. In recent days, Fielding realised it had become one of his own, too. Wasn’t that why he had let Daniel try to find him? Now they knew who Dhar really was, a high-level penetration of AQ had finally become a possibility. He wasn’t about to let the Americans pass up the chance. There would never be another opportunity like it. And who better to recruit Dhar, he thought, than Daniel Marchant, his half-brother?

‘He never really got over the death of Sebbie,’ Marchant said, sipping at his second cup of cardamom chai. He wished there was something stronger to drink. ‘None of us did.’

‘Was he like you?’ Dhar asked.

‘Sebbie? More serious than I was. Troubled at times. Used to wake me with his nightmares. Shit hot at maths, though. Drove me mad. Always ahead of me at school.’

Dhar smiled. ‘Stephen said that one day you would come.’

Marchant tried to picture the two of them together. ‘Do you think he wanted you to let me know?’

‘I was angry when he first told me, cross that it had taken him so long.’

‘My mother would have died if he had ever gone public about it. She was very vulnerable.’

‘My mother too. That’s why I forgave him. He told me there wasn’t a day in his life when he hadn’t thought about me, wondered how I was getting on. But my mother had made him swear that he would never visit me, never try to make contact, never tell anyone. My father still doesn’t know. He thought the money was from her family. He used to complain that they hadn’t paid him enough dowry. Stephen agreed to her wishes, but said that it had always been his plan to come and find me when I was eighteen.’

‘What delayed him?’

‘Do you know where I celebrated my eighteenth birthday? In a training camp with my Kashmiri brothers.’

‘He might have ruined your reputation.’

‘I might have ruined his. He always sent money, though.’

‘For how long?’

‘Until I was twenty-one. I guess it was him. We weren’t rich. My parents worked in the embassies. My father filed infidel invoices, my mother was paid a pittance for looking after expat children when their parents went out to drink. Both of them were treated like pigs. But we were never short of money. My mother said it was tips. She kept a roll of 500-rupee notes hidden behind the puja cupboard.’

‘Your mother was a Hindu?’

‘Both of them were. I converted to Islam when I left school. Did everything I could to distance myself from my father, his kafir world.’

‘You weren’t close, then.’

Dhar laughed. ‘When I found out he had nothing to do with me, it all made sense. The rows, the lack of any bond like those I saw between other fathers and sons. It was such a relief.’

‘Maybe he did know?’

‘No. He always wanted me to be more like him. To my shame, his favourite job was at the US Embassy. He loved everything American, even wore a cowboy hat and boots to the office fancy-dress party. But he didn’t see it. How they treated him, laughing behind his back. I saw it, and I knew he was so, so wrong. He sent me to the American School in Delhi — the worst years of my life.’

Dhar stood up, slinging a small rucksack on his back. ‘I have to go. You must stay here for a few days, then they will take you back to Om Beach.’

‘Will I see you again?’

‘Never try to contact me, for your own safety. I’m your only brother around here.’

‘And you can’t give me a name?’

‘No.’ He paused. ‘I’ll ask.’

‘Where are you going?’

Dhar turned back at the doorway, smiling. ‘Family business. Inshallah.’