Games Traitors Play

18

Spiro looked in the mirror and straightened his tie. The Joint Intelligence Committee was already assembling down the corridor, but there was still time. Entering and locking a cubicle behind him, he marshalled two lines of cocaine on the porcelain surface of the cistern, using his Whitehall security card. Then he stopped, held his breath. Someone had come into the room, humming. It sounded like Fielding. Did the Vicar know more than he did? Cheltenham would have picked up the jihadi website before Langley had shut it down.

Spiro waited for him to leave, listening to the crisp discipline of the Vicar’s unhurried ablutions, the way he dispensed the soap with two short stabs, turned the taps, tore the paper towels. A man in control of his life, unhurried. Spiro envied him, but he knew that he too would have that feeling in a few seconds. When the Vicar was gone, he leaned over the powder, a rolled ten-dollar bill shaking in his hand. The next moment he was flushing the cistern, the tumbling water masking his snorts. Steady, he told himself. He had to hold it together.

Spiro unlocked the cubicle door and rinsed his hands, glancing again at himself in the smoked mirror. At moments like this he could take reassurance in his ageing face, find comfort in the lines of experience, each one a reminder of a hardship survived, one of life’s obstacles overcome: brought up in Over-the-Rhine, then a rough quarter in downtown Cincinnati; an abusive father; the first Gulf War; his cheating wife; their disabled son and his desire to make the world a better place for him.

Few people saw him that way. The British had him down as an ex-Marine who had forgotten to leave his battle fatigues at the door, which was fine by him. He hadn’t been hired to be nice. Christ, he hadn’t been born to be nice. One of his first jobs at Langley had been to oversee the freelance deniables the Agency regularly hired to do its heavy lifting. They were all ex-military, like him, and they got along with him fine, respecting his distinguished career in the Marine Corps.

He knew, though, that he had been lucky to hold on to his job. The end of the rendition programme and the fall-out from the so-called ‘torture memos’ had led a number of staff to leave, sapping the morale of those left behind. Spiro had thought about jumping into the private sector before he was pushed, but he had stayed on, never doubting that his approach to intelligence would be in demand again in the future. He just hadn’t figured it would be so soon. Salim Dhar was to thank for that. The jumped-up jihadi’s long-range shot at the President had changed everything, including Spiro’s career prospects.

‘Thank God, I didn’t fire you,’ the new DCIA, a moderate, had joked after promoting Spiro to head of the National Clandestine Service’s European operations. ‘The bad-ass guys are back in town.’

But his job now looked to be in doubt again. Dark clouds were rolling in from Afghanistan. The tone of the DCIA’s voice on the phone in the Gulfstream V had reminded him of the consultant who had broken the news about their disabled child. Mom and baby were doing fine. They just needed to run some tests. Euphoria qualified.

According to the DCIA, a jihadi website was claiming that six kidnapped US Marines had been killed in a drone strike. The website had been flooded immediately by Fort Meade, temporarily shutting it down, but the signs weren’t good, and the news, true or false, would soon come out elsewhere. The thought made Spiro want to throw up. He had served in the Gulf alongside one of the soldiers, Lieutenant Randall Oaks, knew his wife, heard they had a young daughter.

‘Don’t beat our drum too loud in London,’ the DCIA had said. ‘We might need our friends in the days ahead.’ So it was with a deep breath that Spiro splashed water on his weathered face, dried himself with a paper towel and hoped that the Vicar might offer a prayer for the dead.