Dead Spy Running

52

Marchant couldn’t decide if it was a good or bad development that his guards were taking him out of his cell. The hood and cuffs should have made him fear the worst, but there was something about their manner that gave him hope. Their body language was routine rather than rough.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked, not expecting an answer. The brightness of a Delhi day was forcing its way through the hood as they walked slowly up some stairs.

‘For a little drive,’ one of the guards said. ‘With your new best buddy.’

The next moment, Marchant felt the full heat of an Indian summer hitting his face like a hair-drier. One of the guards ducked his head and helped him step inside an air-conditioned vehicle of some sort. It felt spacious rather than cramped as he sat down in a back seat. The sound of a sliding door told him it was a people carrier.

He sat in silence as it drove off, aware of a number of other people inside. Nobody talked except for the driver, an Indian, who muttered as he waited to pull out into the traffic. Daniel could smell jasmine incense.

‘So, how old were you when he died?’ a voice from the seat next to him asked. It was Armstrong’s.

‘Who?’ Marchant was troubled by her tone. He guessed that there were five of them in the car altogether: the driver, Armstrong, his two US Marine guards and himself. Armstrong seemed to be addressing the gallery, her maternal manner a distant memory.

‘Oh, come on, Daniel. Sebastian, your brother. The one you’ve blamed for so much in your life. The death you could have prevented, the reason for the survivor’s guilt that drove you to drink.’

Marchant tried to work out what was going on, why she was so obviously talking for the benefit of others. Her approach was unnatural, her tone forced.

‘He was eight. We both were.’

‘Twins. Of course. Tell us what happened.’

‘Where are you taking me?’ Marchant asked, but he already knew. He just wasn’t sure why.

‘To where it all went wrong for Daniel Marchant,’ she said. ‘I thought it might be useful if we returned to the beginning. It might help us work out how it all could end.’

She touched his hand, then spoke more quietly, as if just to him. ‘Here, put your seatbelt on. You’ll need it.’

‘I have a question for you,’ the woman said as she stepped down from the rickshaw. ‘Why did Stephen Marchant, the infidel spy chief, visit you in prison?’

Dhar instinctively looked around, then composed himself. ‘Is it common knowledge?’

‘It was one of the reasons he was removed from his office in London.’

‘The kafir was desperate, tried to recruit me. Why does it matter?’

‘Some of our brothers were concerned. They couldn’t understand what he wanted with you.’

‘He would have been slaughtered if it hadn’t been for my chains.’

‘And the son, they say he came for you too.’

Dhar was worried now, troubled by how much this woman knew. Did others also know?

‘Why should the son wish to find me?’

‘He was a spy for the infidels, like his father. He also lost his job.’

‘Our female comrade in London did well to bring down the house of Marchant,’ Dhar said, managing a thin smile. It wasn’t returned.

‘Some brothers tried to kill the son, at the Gymkhana Club. They were worried about you.’ She paused. ‘But he is on the run, still alive.’

For a moment Dhar thought he detected emotion in her voice, disguised like his own.

‘Not if he finds me.’

They looked at each other, eye to eye, and then she was gone.

‘We were driving back from Chanakyapuri,’ Marchant began. ‘My mother, Sebbie, me.’ His hood tasted of stale clothes. ‘Usually we drove around in our Ambassador, but it was being fixed by a garage so my father had arranged for us to borrow a vehicle from the High Commission. It was used by the traffic police, a desi version of the American Jeep.’

‘Nice wheels,’ one of the guards said from the front. ‘Got one in the garage back home.’

‘Not these.’ Marchant paused. ‘Death traps. No safety belts in those days. Our driver, Raman, was normally so careful, but he was angry that day. The petrol pump attendant had ripped him off, served us up short. Raman disliked that more than anything. My mother was anxious, too. We had an ayah coming for a job interview, and we were late. She hated being late. So we were rushing, heading down towards Saket on a main road.’

Marchant was aware of the car slowing down. When it stopped, his hood was removed by one of the guards. He blinked in the bright sunshine.

‘Was this the place?’ Armstrong asked.

Marchant looked at the traffic all around him. They had pulled over on the side of a busy road, on the edge of a big junction. Then he glanced at Armstrong in the seat next to him, and tried to work out what was going on. He had been right about the number of people in the car. The two Marines were sitting up front with the driver, who was tapping the steering wheel nervously. It was a dangerous place to have parked. Armstrong must have asked them to leave her and Marchant on their own in the back.

‘I can’t be sure,’ Marchant said. ‘It was more than twenty years ago.’

‘Try to remember,’ Armstrong said quietly. ‘Because we’re not going anywhere until you do.’

Fielding climbed into the back of the cotton-white Ambassador and turned to look at the airport behind him. The Gulfstream was still sitting on the Tarmac, shimmering in the hazy heat. At least it had fuel now, and Denton and Carter would soon be clear of Delhi’s intolerable summer. They had been reluctant to let him go on his own, for their different reasons, but they knew it would have been impossible to smuggle three men out on the fuel truck, even though security at the airport was lax. ‘Don’t let her even get near the President, if only for me,’ Carter had said.

As the car drove off, with Prasannan, the local agent, sitting in the front, Fielding wondered what he would do if he found Leila. He knew he must stop her. It wasn’t enough to know that he had been right and the Americans were wrong. But he was a marked man himself now, on the run like Daniel Marchant. He assumed it was Armstrong who had entered his office in London. She would have loved marching into Legoland with a warrant, tearing the place up, questioning everyone.

‘The traffic is very vigorous today,’ Prasannan said, turning to Fielding. ‘It’s the President’s visit.’ The driver nodded in agreement. He was sitting almost sideways-on to the steering wheel, his back pressed against the door, one leg jigging up and down. Fielding thought he looked unduly anxious, even for someone about to drive through Delhi.

‘Do we have an itinerary yet?’ he asked.

‘I have a copy here, sir, acquired from the city police.’ Prasannan waved a sheet of paper in the air. Fielding thought he looked nervous too.

‘Where’s the President going today?’

‘He started at the Gandhi memorial, then visited the Lokh Sabha, the lower house of parliament. Lunch at the American Embassy was followed by Lodhi Gardens and then the Red Fort.’ Prasannan looked at his watch, then back at the sheet of paper. ‘He should be on his way now to the Lotus Temple, before a state banquet tonight hosted by the Indian President at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.’ He paused. ‘Sir, there is…’

‘What’s the Lotus Temple?’ Fielding interrupted, remembering something he had once read.

‘The Bahá’í house of worship. Built like a giant lotus flower. You will have seen photos of it. Very nice place,’ Prasannan added, rocking his head proudly.

‘Bahá’í? Why’s he going there?’ But Fielding already knew the answer.

‘To show solidarity with the Bahá’ís of Iran. Sir…’

‘We need to be at the temple now.’

‘Sorry, sir, there is one thing else. I have an urgent message from Harriet Armstrong. First we must go to Saket.’

Prasannan fastened his safety belt.

‘The police said later that the traffic lights were faulty,’ Marchant said, speaking slowly. The air conditioning was on, but struggling. ‘I remember seeing a traffic policeman — the thick white gloves — so perhaps the lights were out and he was in charge. Raman thought it was clear to go. We were at the front of the queue, but ten yards back from the junction for the shade. It was hot in the jeep, no A/C, of course. We accelerated forward, in case anyone tried to move in front of us, and then I just remember this awful noise of twisting metal and the policeman’s whistle, a desperate shrill sound that went on and on, as if he was trying to undo what had happened. The bus, a government one, had been coming from the left, and didn’t stop at the junction. Maybe it was going too fast, or the driver just ignored the policeman. It pushed our jeep thirty yards down the road.’

‘And you were unhurt?’

‘I was thrown across the back seat, so was my mother. But Sebbie…’ he paused, thinking back. ‘It was Sebbie’s turn to ride in the front with Raman. He loved Sebbie, loved us both. Sebbie was sitting on the left, by the door. He took the main brunt of the impact.’

Marchant looked up just as the British High Commission Ambassador hit them, pushing its proud Morris bonnet deep into the front passenger side of the people carrier in a shower of glass. Armstrong must have seen it moments before the impact, because she had reached a protective arm across him. The two Marines and the driver had no warning. In the slow, panicked seconds that followed, after their car had been shunted sideways across the junction, Armstrong slid open the side door and nodded for Marchant to get out. One of the guards was conscious, hanging forward in his seatbelt, but the other one appeared to be dead. The driver was slumped over the wheel, his chest jammed against the horn.

‘Bloody hell, I can’t do much more,’ Armstrong said. ‘Find her, and stop whatever she’s started.’

Marchant realised that Armstrong couldn’t move. Her left leg was bent forward at the knee.

‘I can’t leave you like this,’ Marchant said, unscathed for the second time in his life.

‘It’s better I’m found with them. Now go. Get on with it. The Chief’s waiting.’

‘Daniel, over here!’ a voice called from across the road. Marchant turned to see Marcus Fielding in the back of a rickshaw. The three-wheeler swung out into the road, where the traffic had come to a sudden halt, picked Marchant up and drove off in the direction of the Lotus Temple, a policeman’s shrill whistle fading behind them.