Games Traitors Play

106

Marchant couldn’t sleep that night. It wasn’t that the Fort’s beds were more uncomfortable than he had remembered, or because he was sharing his with Lakshmi. They had made love after dinner in the room in a way that had restored his faith in women. In some ways it had been cathartic to sleep with Lakshmi in the place where he had first done so with Leila, the woman who had so wholly deceived him.

Lakshmi had told him stories of her childhood, and he had opened up about his father and Sebastian in a way he hadn’t done for years. The only person he didn’t talk about was Dhar.

Now, as he lay there listening to the sea wind rattling the Fort’s old leaded windows, his hand on Lakshmi’s sleeping thigh, he remembered the package she had brought from his flat. He slipped out of bed, careful not to wake her, and unwrapped it by the moonlight of the window.

His hands turned cold when he saw what was inside. It was the sketch of the nude that had been for sale in Cork Street, number 14, the one that had been used as a signal by Nikolai Primakov. Someone had stuck half a red sticker onto the corner of the glass, like the one that had once denoted that it was under offer and that the meeting with Primakov was on.

Marchant glanced across at Lakshmi, then turned the picture over.

There was some writing on the back giving the gallery details, the price and the artist. He inspected it more closely, and saw that the brown adhesive tape had been slit open and resealed down one side. He reached across for a knife from their dinner, the remains of which had not been cleared from the room, and cut the backing open. Inside was a letter. He slid it out and read.

By the time you read this I will be drinking Bruichladdich and eating grain-fed Nebraskan steak at the great Goodman’s in the sky. I suspect there will be no other way to bring you and Salim together. Have no regrets. I don’t. Your father was a good man who had faith in both of his remaining sons to do the right thing. He had faith in me too, and I hope I have had the courage to repay it. He saw the future, and in his sons he saw a way forward, an opportunity to stop the conflict. It is up to you now.

What I have to tell you today, as I prepare to leave London for the last time to meet you at Kotlas, is something that I wanted to say in person, but the risks were always too high when we met in London. Moscow Centre has an MI6 asset who helped the SVR expose and eliminate a network of agents in Poland. His codename was Argo, a nostalgic name in the SVR, as it was once used for Ernest Hemingway.

The Polish thought that Argo was Hugo Prentice, a very good friend of your father, and I believe a close confidant of yours. He was shot dead on the orders of the AW, or at least of one of its agents. Hugo Prentice was not Argo.

That mistake was a tragedy, destroying his reputation and damaging your father’s. The real Argo is Ian Denton, deputy Chief of MI6. The SVR asked Denton to meet you at the airport on your return from India, but Fielding, by chance, had already sent Prentice. Go carefully. Denton’s treachery is destined to extend much further than Poland.

Marchant put the letter down. His first thought was to ring Fielding, but there was no knowing if the line was secure. He went over to the door and checked that it was locked. Then he walked to the window and glanced around. It was a full harvest moon, and its reflection stretched out across the water from the horizon. No one was about, and he knew the Fort was secure, but old instincts had kicked in. If Denton was working for Moscow, then no one was safe from the Russians, least of all him. He had tricked the SVR into a false defection, and sabotaged Dhar’s Russian-sponsored attack on the Georgian generals.

He put the letter back in its hiding place behind the nude sketch, and climbed into bed. Suddenly he felt exhausted, more tired than he had felt for years. Lakshmi was stirring. Marchant lay there, thinking of Prentice and Primakov, friends of his father, both of them now dead. Then he turned and hugged Lakshmi, linking a leg over hers.

‘Is everything OK?’ she whispered, half asleep.

But he didn’t answer. He didn’t want to lie any more, not to her. Instead, he held her head gently between both hands and kissed her warm lips. Eventually, after they had made love again, he sat up in bed.

‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ he said, thinking of Dhar, the burden of running him on his own. He could tell her now. She wasn’t like Leila. Hadn’t Fielding said she could be trusted? Then he thought of Denton, the threat he presented. He could tell her about him, too, confide his fears. He wasn’t sure he could cope with the loneliness of deceit any more, the isolation of espionage. He craved companionship, the truth of honest love.

‘What is it?’ Lakshmi asked. Marchant paused, looking at her lying naked in the moonlight. Then he spoke.

‘There was once a king called Shahryar, whose wife was unfaithful to him. He executed her, and from then on he believed that all women were the same, until finally he met a virgin called Scheherazade, who told a thousand and one stories to save her own life.’

‘And did he trust her?’

‘He did.’

Lakshmi looked at Marchant for a moment, her eyes moistening. ‘Was that all you wanted to tell me?’

‘That’s all.’