Games Traitors Play

16

James Spiro took the call 35,000 feet above the Atlantic, sitting near the front of the Gulfstream V. He had a soft spot for the plane, which he had used regularly in the rendition years. The line wasn’t good, but he knew immediately that it was Lakshmi Meena. He made a mental note not to call her babe.

‘Lakshmi. What have you got for me?’

Meena explained about the unmarked white helicopter that had been seen in the mountains, then took a deep breath — another one — and told him about his old friend Dr Abdul Aziz, the Dentist, and what he had said about the GICM and their hideout in the Atlas mountains.

‘Where are we running with this?’ Spiro asked, cutting her short. ‘I’m on the red-eye here.’

Meena sensed that their conversation would be over almost before it had started. Spiro was too full of Dhar’s death to listen to a junior officer phoning in with a hunch. ‘Aziz thinks Daniel Marchant was in the mountains,’ she continued, feeling that she had nothing to lose. ‘Stole a bike, took a ride up there at the same time the helicopter was seen.’

‘Tell me you were with him.’

‘I’d backed off, as instructed. The guy’s done nothing but go jogging and read the Koran for three months.’

Spiro thought for a moment. Reluctantly, Langley had agreed with London to leave Marchant alone after Delhi, but he wasn’t allowed to travel abroad. After a year, Spiro had acceded to Fielding’s demands and let Marchant fly to Morocco. There was no doubt in Spiro’s mind that the kid should have been locked up, just as his father should have been. The subsequent revelation that he was related to Salim Dhar only confirmed his worst fears. Now might be the time to take him out of the equation, particularly if everyone was distracted by news of Dhar’s death. Besides, what the hell was his so-called vacation in Morocco all about? The Vicar had called it a sabbatical. As far as Spiro was concerned, if someone needed some R amp;R, they headed for Honolulu, not North Africa.

‘Check him in for some root-canal work,’ Spiro said. ‘Aziz could do with the practice.’

‘That would be a breach of existing protocol, sir,’ Meena said.

‘I think you misheard me, Lakshmi.’

‘No, sir, I didn’t.’

There was a pause, a calculation. Spiro knew she was right, but he wasn’t going to let anyone ruin his visit to London, least of all Daniel Marchant. He cut her off.

It had been a good day in Washington, one of the best of his career. He had personally briefed the President about the drone strike on Salim Dhar. Although it was still too early to go public, the signs were good: no collateral for once, just a clean hit on the world’s most wanted. It didn’t get much sweeter. Now he was on his way to Fairford, and would shortly be making Marcus Fielding’s life a misery, something he always enjoyed.

The CIA was already all over MI5, running its own large network of agents and informers in Britain. As Spiro had discussed with the President, a Pakistani entering the US from ‘Londonistan’ on a visa-waiver programme now represented the biggest threat to America. As a result, 25 per cent of the Agency’s resources dedicated to preventing another 9/11 were being directed at Britain. MI5 wasn’t up to the job, and the CIA had recruited half of Yorkshire in the past few years. Immigration security at all major British airports was being coordinated by the Agency, too. Now he was about to rub the Vicar’s nose in it.

His phone rang again. This time he hesitated before answering it. His boss, the DCIA, only called him in the middle of the night if there was a problem.