Dead Spy Running

8

It was a long-held custom that the first half of the Joint Intelligence Committee’s weekly meeting in the Cabinet Room at Downing Street was attended by senior officers from the American, Australian and Canadian intelligence services. The second half was only for the British. Marcus Fielding could barely wait for the foreign contingent to be shown the door, but for the next few minutes he would have to listen to James Spiro, the CIA’s London chief, who had announced, with his usual hard-man hyperbole, that he had some ‘weapons-grade HUMINT to bring to the party’. Fielding had already got the gist of it earlier that morning, thanks to one of several new listening devices installed at the recently opened American Embassy in Vauxhall (near Legoland), but he sat there, ramrod-straight, as if he was hearing it all for the first time.

‘We are now certain that Stephen Marchant travelled to Kerala and met up with Salim Dhar in jail,’ Spiro began, as ever liking the sound of his own voice. ‘I appreciate Dhar’s role in last year’s UK bombings is far from clear, but there is absolutely no doubt that he tried to bomb the hell out of our embassies in New Delhi and Islamabad. Ask the families of the fifteen dead US Marines.’

So far, nothing new, Fielding thought, looking around the coffin-shaped oak table. The usual mix of Whitehall suspects were in attendance, including the heads of MI5 and Cheltenham, as well as mandarins from various departments, all presided over by the chairman of the JIC, Sir David Chadwick, who was sitting at the far end, in front of the double windows which had buckled when the IRA lobbed a mortar bomb into the Downing Street rosebeds. Everyone had flung themselves on the floor that day, the Cabinet Secretary lying next to the Prime Minister.

If it happened again this morning, Fielding idly thought, Harriet Armstrong, Director General of MI5, would do her best to prostrate herself next to Spiro. She glanced tersely at Fielding, as if reading his mind. They had never liked each other, their relationship chilling even further when she had enlisted Spiro’s support to remove Stephen Marchant.

‘What we do now know, however, thanks to Harriet here, is that Dhar was behind Sunday’s foiled bombing of the London Marathon, an attack that I don’t need to remind you was targeted at our Ambassador to London.’

Fielding looked up. This had not been in the transcript he had read in the car coming over from Vauxhall. He glanced across at Armstrong, who was studiously avoiding his eye. It was a stitch-up. Until now, any connection between Dhar and the London Marathon had been purely circumstantial, based on the nature of the target and Dhar’s historical predilection for attacking Americans. If his involvement could now be proved, as Spiro claimed, it would cast Stephen Marchant and his son in a new and far more compromising light.

‘I’ll leave the domestic implications of this to the second half of your meeting, but clearly Dhar has just become a priority one target, and I’d be grateful if, on this occasion, the Service leaves him to us.’

‘Marcus?’ asked Chadwick, sounding as if Spiro had raised a mere technicality, rather than made it considerably more likely that the former Chief of MI6 had betrayed Queen and country. His clandestine meeting with Dhar had taken place two weeks before the attack on the American Embassy in Delhi.

‘Dhar is of great interest to the UK, too,’ Fielding said, buying time. ‘Given his — apparent — role in the attempted London Marathon attack, I would expect a joint operation at the very least.’

‘I’m sorry, Marcus, but this one just got personal,’ Spiro said. ‘Dhar’s problem is clearly with us: the embassy attacks last year, now our Ambassador to London.’

‘An attack which was foiled by one of our agents,’ Fielding replied.

‘With a little help from Colorado Springs, I gather,’ Spiro continued, turning to Chadwick. ‘Which brings me to my next point. Can we have a little chat with your suspended superhero?’

‘Daniel Marchant? That shouldn’t be a problem,’ Chadwick said. ‘Harriet?’

‘Marcus?’ Armstrong deflected the question.

‘Is he not with you?’ Chadwick asked.

‘Right now, we’re taking care of him,’ Fielding interrupted. ‘Given he’s still on our payroll.’

‘Well, Marcus, I’ll repeat my question to you,’ said Spiro. ‘Can we have a talk with Marchant Junior? Preferably when he’s not been on the sauce.’

‘If we’re working together on Dhar, I’m sure we can cooperate on Daniel Marchant,’ Fielding replied coolly.

Spiro turned towards Armstrong for support.

‘We’d clearly like to talk to Marchant again, too, in the light of Dhar’s role in the marathon,’ Armstrong obliged. ‘Perhaps we could take care of him?’

‘Our own debrief is still ongoing,’ Fielding said.

‘Shouldn’t that read “detox”?’ Spiro said, smiling around the table. Only Armstrong smiled back.

‘We will, of course, circulate our findings once we’re finished with him,’ Fielding said. He had always known that there was little he could do about Stephen Marchant, whose reputation was ultimately in other people’s hands, but he had hoped he could do something for his son. MI6 had fished Daniel Marchant out of the international pool of inebriated hacks, and turned him into one of the Service’s best officers. Fielding wasn’t going to let him go lightly, if only for his father’s sake. Marchant’s presence at the marathon, however, was beginning to look too much of a coincidence. He doubted whether Armstrong had any hard evidence — it was too soon — but the link with Dhar had been made, and would be duly recorded in the JIC’s minutes. In the light of his father’s meeting with Dhar, Daniel Marchant’s role looked less heroic by the minute.

After further curt exchanges and an offer from Chadwick to square Fielding and Spiro’s differences, the foreign contingent left the room, leaving the British to assess Spiro’s ‘weapons-grade HUMINT’.

‘Well gentlemen, Harriet, do we believe him?’ Chadwick began, looking around the room, still sounding unruffled.

‘There’s no reason for them to lie about Stephen Marchant,’ Armstrong said.

‘Unless they want to go after Dhar themselves,’ Fielding replied. ‘Until we see the evidence, we have no way of knowing whether Stephen Marchant did or did not meet Dhar.’

‘Let’s be quite clear about this,’ Chadwick said. ‘If they do hand over the evidence, hard proof that Marchant met Salim Dhar, we would have to pass it on to Bancroft. His report would then become an investigation into whether the former head of MI6 should be posthumously investigated for treason.’

‘The PM wouldn’t buy it,’ said Bruce Lockhart, the Prime Minister’s foreign adviser. Fielding got on with Lockhart, liked his bullish Fife manner. ‘I thought Bancroft was given this job to quieten things down, not stir them up.’

‘The Americans aren’t trying to make trouble,’ Armstrong said. ‘Quite reasonably, they want to stop Dhar attacking their assets and to establish why the Marchant family seem to be helping him.’

‘Helping him?’ Fielding interjected. ‘Let’s not get carried away here. Bancroft has so far found nothing to substantiate any suspicion that my predecessor was anything other than complacent. For the record, I happen to think the Americans are right: Stephen Marchant probably did meet up with Dhar. I’m just not sure why. Until we find out, it remains idle conjecture, and Bancroft shouldn’t touch it.’

‘So we leave Dhar to the Americans?’ asked Armstrong.

‘We need to find him, too, given that he was behind the attempted attack on the marathon,’ Fielding said, turning to Armstrong and adding quietly, ‘Nice of you to pool that one.’

‘I’d forgotten how much you liked to share information,’ Armstrong replied.

‘I think Marcus is right,’ Chadwick said. ‘We need to find Dhar.’ He had always found that steadfastly ignoring tension between departments seemed to reduce it. ‘Dhar targeted the London Marathon, Tower bloody Bridge, for God’s sake. If that’s not an attack on the fabric of this country I don’t know what is. And it’s also the only way we’ll ever draw a line under Stephen Marchant. If the two of them did meet, which seems likely, we need to find out why, and what was actually said.’

‘We’re sure there’s no record anywhere of Stephen Marchant or anyone else recruiting Dhar?’ Lockhart asked. ‘At this meeting or before? The PM wants specific reassurance on this point.’

‘We’ve been through all Marchant’s files many times,’ Fielding said. ‘Cross-referenced every database we have. Nothing. No one else in MI6 or MI5 has ever approached Dhar. We think the Indians once tried a deniable approach, but failed.’

Armstrong nodded her head in agreement, glancing at Fielding.

‘And what about his son?’ asked Chadwick. ‘Do we let the Americans talk to him? You can see it from their point of view: Stephen Marchant meets Dhar, Dhar bombs US embassies; Daniel Marchant meets Dhar’s running friend; Dhar’s friend tries to kill US Ambassador.’

‘And Marchant stops him,’ said Marcus. ‘That’s the point here.’

But he knew the point was lost.