Games Traitors Play

102

‘There it is,’ Marchant said, looking down at the circular silver roof of GCHQ, shimmering like an urban crop circle on the outskirts of Cheltenham. Its grassy centre was surrounded by the ring of the main building and, further out, radials of parked cars. The town was to the east, and the M5 to the west. It had taken two minutes to fly the twenty miles from Fairford. For a moment, Marchant thought the building would make an excellent substitute for Wimbledon’s Centre Court.

‘So this is the place that has led the global hunt for me and many of my brothers,’ Dhar said. ‘It is smaller than I thought.’

Marchant was thinking fast now, measuring opportunities against risks. His priority was to persuade Dhar not to drop a dirty bomb on a densely populated area. But it was also evident that Dhar was willing to consider working for MI6. This was a hope that Marchant had held onto ever since he had first met Dhar in India more than a year ago, when he had found out they were half-brothers. It was why he had travelled to Morocco, chased leads into the High Atlas, flown to Madurai and faked his defection to Russia. And it was why Nikolai Primakov had died in a draughty hangar in Kotlas. He owed it to his father’s old friend to turn Dhar.

The risks of running him would be considerable, not least the problem of London’s relationship with Washington, which would want his head more than ever after the attack at Fairford. Dhar would never stop waging his war against America. If he did choose to share information with Britain, spare the land of his father from the full wrath of his jihad, the rest of the world must never know.

But would Dhar’s stock have risen after taking out the US Air Force’s pride and joy at an air show? It was brave and spectacular, in a Top Gun sort of way, but not exactly another 9/11. If Dhar was to be an effective British asset, he would have to do more. Which was why Marchant was desperately trying to think through the implications of an attack on GCHQ.

A dirty bomb dropped into the middle of the doughnut would partially disable the facility for months, if not years, and would be a massive propaganda victory for jihadis everywhere. Air filters and life-support systems in the underground computer halls were designed to ensure that basic services continued in the event of a surface nuclear attack, but the disruption to the offices above ground would still be considerable. Caesium was particularly difficult to clean off metal surfaces such as the building’s aluminium roof.

Then there was the population of Cheltenham to consider. It was too late to evacuate the town, even if it was possible. The panic as people fled after an attack would cause chaos as well as deaths; and then there would be those who died later from radiation-induced cancer.

‘A conventional thousand-pound bomb would do it,’ Marchant said. It seemed that it had been Dhar’s plan to drop the standard LGB on Fairford and the dirty bomb on Cheltenham: one for the SVR, one for himself, both sides happy. Marchant had talked him out of the first; now he had to do the same with GCHQ.

‘Do what?’

‘Give you front-page headlines around the world and destroy much of the building.’

‘But I hate this place, and the people who work there,’ Dhar said, banking the plane around to the south. ‘They are the foot-soldiers of Echelon. Do you know how it feels to be hunted day and night, searching the skies for satellites and drones, not knowing if you can breathe at night for fear of being heard?’

‘You tricked them easily enough about your location in North Waziristan,’ Marchant said. He was surprised to hear Dhar namecheck Echelon, the Western computer network that sorted and analysed captured signals traffic. The hunted had finally found the hunter.

‘That was the fools at Fort Meade. They are easier to shake off. The people down there have been on my tail for years. I will never have a better opportunity.’

‘We’ll be shot out of the sky any second now, trust me. But if they know we’ve got a dirty bomb on board, they might just think twice before firing.’ Marchant paused. ‘Drop the conventional bomb on GCHQ.’

Dhar seemed to hesitate, long enough to give Marchant encouragement. It was so frustrating to be sitting in front of him and not face-to-face. A conventional bomb was the lesser of two evils. Marchant knew that the GCHQ building had been built to withstand a plane crashing into its roof. The glass was bombproof, too. With a bit of luck, a thousand pounds of explosive dropped into the central garden would cause only minimal damage. Again, it was about finding common ground.

Dhar would get his headlines, and it might buy them some time to escape, although the SVR’s exit strategy did not inspire confidence. The plan was to head south-west after Cheltenham and eject in the Bristol Channel, where Dhar would be picked up by a Russian-manned trawler. Marchant would have to make his own way in the water.

‘I need to use the radio, tell traffic control we’re carrying a dirty bomb,’ Marchant said, but he was interrupted by an alarm signal in both cockpits. The aircraft’s internal and external fuel tanks were almost empty. ‘And I need to ring my friend at GCHQ, get everyone to move away from the windows.’

‘No warnings.’

Before Marchant could argue, Dhar had banked again and was flying straight towards the building.

‘I need to call traffic control,’ Marchant insisted.

‘Afterwards,’ Dhar said, as he locked his gunsight onto the grassy heart of GCHQ.