Dead Spy Running

45

‘Sons turn out in the strangest ways,’ Carter said. ‘My youngest is in a goddamn thrash band.’ Carter was sitting in the back of a black people carrier, Fielding and Denton opposite him at a small foldaway table. They were heading west on the M4, planes landing at Heathrow in a steady procession to their left. He had never seen the Vicar so quiet. ‘Besides, Marchant was sending his family money long before he became a jihadi warrior.’

‘Straker won’t buy it, though, will he?’ Denton said.

‘No, he won’t. Which is why we have to get ourselves out to Delhi. I’m not going to sit here quietly while our new President’s life is on the line. Hell, I voted for him. You’re still the Chief, Marcus. I’m still head of Clandestine. Let’s pull some rank here while we’re both in play.’

‘I shouldn’t have taken the call,’ Fielding said, looking through the tinted glass as another plane came in to land. It was a sight that still made him nervous, after what had nearly happened at Heathrow a few years earlier. ‘If Daniel had just called the switchboard, he could have been dismissed as a renegade trying to come in from the cold. But he asked to speak to me, and I took the call.’

‘So we’re heading for Fairford,’ Carter said. ‘In my untracked vehicle, not yours.’

Denton’s phone started to ring. He answered it, listened, then hung up. ‘That was Anne. They’ve come for you in the office, Marcus.’

Marchant had been lying on the charpoy for over an hour, waiting for his moment. The guard stood up from his chair, glanced in his direction, and walked down the hill towards another man who had called him. They were both laughing at something.

Marchant had spotted the old Nokia handset while he had been talking to Dhar, but assumed that he would take it with him. It was partially hidden under a copy of The Week, an Indian news magazine, in a pile on the dusty floor. Had Dhar left it there on purpose, knowing he would find it? To create a diversion, buy Dhar some time? He swung off the bed, one eye on the doorway, and picked up the phone. He pressed the power button and rolled it up in his shirt, hoping to muffle any start-up tone. It vibrated briefly.

He knew that there was a high risk that it was a targeted unit, but he had to get news about Dhar and his father to Fielding. He may not have the name of a mole in MI6, but at least he had an explanation for the unorthodox trip to Kerala that had so concerned the Americans. He pressed at the familiar digits with shaking fingers, praying that the phone had international access. Then he heard the ringing tone of a London number, and breathed in deeply, a sound that was heard two thousand miles away, in the headphones of a young operator at the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland.

Denton clipped the safety belt across his lap, and looked around the small cabin of the Gulfstream V: six seats, all buttermilk leather and chrome, a single divan and a mahogany-panelled buffet unit. Fielding fastened his belt opposite him, and caught Denton’s wry smile. The irony of senior intelligence officers fleeing Britain in a plane used for rendition flights was not lost on either of them. Carter was up with the pilot, briefing him on the route. He lifted a headphone from one ear and turned back to talk to them.

‘The pilot’s just filing some dummy flight plans,’ he said, louder than he needed to. ‘We’re operating under special status, but he says UK traffic control’s gotten a little stricter in recent months.’

‘Like hell it has,’ Denton whispered to Fielding, as Carter put his headphone back on and faced the front again. ‘Did you see where they put them?’

‘I didn’t want to look.’

‘Behind the buffet. Enough to put you off lunch.’ Denton had glanced through the door that separated the back of the plane from the main cabin. The contrast with the plush interior couldn’t have been greater. All the fittings had been stripped, leaving the bare-ribbed shell of the plane. Fixed to the matt metal floor were two small steel rings, three feet apart. There was a dark mark between them, where Denton assumed the human cargo had sat, feet and hands restrained. It might have been blood, or something worse, but the traces of pain remained. Had Daniel Marchant been shackled there on his flight to Poland? And, before him, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

‘Welcome to Air CIA,’ Carter said, sitting down next to Denton. ‘Twelve hours till touchdown in New Delhi.’

Denton hadn’t heard him. He was watching the blue flashing lights on the road beyond Fairford’s perimeter fence. At the same moment, the pilot called for Carter to return to the cockpit. Denton caught Fielding’s eye, and nodded out of the window.

‘There’s still time for you to go, Ian,’ Fielding said. ‘You don’t have to be here.’

Denton ignored his Chief. He knew they were right about Leila. Earlier, the three of them had entered the airbase with little difficulty. As far as the RAF was concerned, Fairford was now a standby facility. The USAF ran the place, keen to ensure the safety and secrecy of its B-2 Spirit Stealth bombers, as well as the occasional rendition flight. The guards on the main gate knew Carter well and had waved him through, but Denton feared that the phones would be ringing in Whitehall and Washington. It all depended on how much authority Carter still wielded, whether Straker had done the maths, and concluded that he was working with Fielding.

The twin turbojet engines whined as the pilot nursed the plane across the tarmac towards the end of the three-kilometre-long runway. Denton unclipped his seatbelt and went forward to Carter. For a moment, Fielding thought he was taking up his offer to get off the plane.

‘Everything OK?’ Denton asked.

‘We’re just clarifying with Langley that I’m on official Company business,’ Carter said.

‘You mean a rendition flight.’

Carter laughed. ‘Routine Clandestine work.’

‘Have you seen the police activity on the perimeter?’

‘Relax, it’s nothing. Just a bunch of plane-spotters, happens all the time. Guess the Spirit’s flying today. We always ask your police to clear them away. Nobody knows the Vicar’s on board, Ian. We don’t do passport control on these planes.’