Games Traitors Play

29

Marchant awoke to the sound of a chipping noise. It took him a few seconds to realise that it wasn’t coming from inside his mouth. He put his hand up to his jaw, which felt disfigured and swollen. His gums were throbbing, but the pain was less than it had been on the plane. Where was he? He was lying on white cotton sheets, in a whitewashed room. The ceiling was high and latticed with cream-coloured wooden beams. On one wall there was a large mirror, framed in pearl mosaic. A twenty-four-inch television screen perched on a chest of drawers, and fruit — peaches and apricots — had been left in a bowl in front of it. Beside his bed, on a writing table, there were several bottles of pills next to an orchid and some mineral water. He leaned across and picked up one of the bottles: it was amoxicillin, an antibiotic. The other was diamorphine.

He sat up with some effort. His neck muscles were sore and his head throbbed more when he moved. A net curtain had been drawn across an open window, its white shutters pushed partly open. The branches of a weeping fig stopped them from opening fully. Beyond its leaves, he could see pine trees against a brilliant blue sky. The sun was too bright for Britain, the birdsong too exuberant. As he listened to the chorus, a small bird hovered outside the window for a few moments and disappeared.

He reached over and examined the bottle of mineral water, reading its label: Frizzante — sparkling — and made by Smeraldina, a ‘product of Sardinia’. Twisting open the metal cap, he drank deeply, resting the bottle gently on his swollen lips. His mind was still too muddled to think clearly. At least he was out of Morocco. It was only when he put the bottle down that he noticed a figure sitting outside on the terrace, beyond the double doors on the far side of the room. He couldn’t see any more than their profile through the net curtains, which moved gently in the breeze. The doors were open a few inches, and the person must have heard him opening the bottle of water, because she stood up and put her head in the room.

‘How you feeling?’ It was Lakshmi Meena.

Marchant tried to speak, but his tongue failed to respond. Instead, he grunted and sank back into the deep pillows, closing his eyes. What sort of a question was that? He had that top-of-the-world feeling that usually followed a trip to a dentist with an aversion to using anaesthetic. Aziz should go into full-time practice when he retired, set himself up in the square in Marrakech. Tourists would be queuing around the block for his gentle touch.

He heard Meena walk across the marble floor and draw up a cane chair beside the bed. He remembered that she worked directly for Spiro. Someone must have had a change of heart.

‘I’m sorry, really. It shouldn’t have happened. I should have done more, protested louder.’

Marchant wasn’t going to make this any easier for her as he lay still, listening to the chipping noise that had started up again. He realised now that it was workmen, the rhythm of their hammers slowed by the day’s heat. His brain had established some distance between the outside world and the inside of his skull, but the sound was still too familiar for comfort.

‘They’re fixing the path outside,’ Meena continued, her manner more businesslike than bedside. Marchant assumed that it was her way of dealing with the situation, which was fine by him. He didn’t want her sympathy. ‘One of the tiles was cracked, so they dug it up and are putting in a new one. Relax if you never made it to Jackson’s Neverland, because it’s right here, in Sardinia. No litter, no crime, sidewalks buffed up at night. I’m not kidding, I’ve smelt the floor polish.’

The less Marchant acknowledged Meena, the more she talked. He didn’t have enough energy to interrupt, ask her to leave, tell her she was as bad as the rest of them, despite her protests.

‘We flew in to Cagliari yesterday morning. You’ve been asleep ever since. The drugs aren’t going to replace your molars, I’m afraid, but they should stop any infection spreading to the bone, brain and lungs, reduce the chance of systemic sepsis. And take the morphine in moderation, only when it’s really hurting.’

He recalled that Meena had once trained to be a doctor. He opened his eyes, tracing the patterns in the plaster on the ceiling.

‘We didn’t get Salim Dhar.’ Marchant looked across at Meena, who was standing now. ‘Killed six of our own Marines instead. Spiro’s butt’s on the line, mine too. I don’t know what you saw up in the mountains, but come to me, not him, if you ever want to talk. I might just listen.’

Meena turned away when Marchant caught her eye. She had found it difficult enough to look at him when he was sleeping, his bruised mouth distorted as if in accusation. Now that he was awake, she saw in his eyes everything that was wrong with the Agency, everything that was wrong with the decisions she had made in her life. This wasn’t why she had signed up. She also saw something else, but buried the thought as soon as it surfaced.

The military ambulance had taken Aziz away from the airport, but not before two of his colleagues had threatened to inflict further injuries on Marchant. Meena had talked them out of it, pulling rank, acting the part, then arranged for another ambulance. They wouldn’t allow him to travel in the military one. At the Hassan II Hospital, on route de Marrakech, a doctor had patched Marchant up and prescribed painkillers and antibiotics. He knew better than to ask how the British man had come to lose two teeth. He knew, too, that there could be consequences for helping him, but the American woman had given him a bulging envelope of dirhams as well as reassurances.

By the time Meena took Marchant out to the airport, a Gulfstream V had arrived to fly them to Sardinia, where the CIA had a discreet account with a luxury resort on the south of the island. It had the use of a villa away from the thoroughfare of restaurants and tennis courts. Senior officers checked themselves in for some R amp;R after tough tours of duty in the Gulf. NSA officers visiting the listening base in Cyprus also dropped by for a few days to clear their heads from intercepts. And there was always the possible bonus of picking something up from the Russians. Meena hadn’t hesitated to book Marchant in. It was the least she could do. Besides, Spiro had told her to look after him and to send Langley the bill.

‘London knows you’re here,’ she said, standing at the double doors now. ‘You’re on a flight back to Gatwick in a week. Relax, recover. It’s on us.’ She paused. ‘I’ve got to go. Pacify the Moroccans. You nearly killed Aziz.’ She paused again, fighting an urge to go over to him. ‘You’ll be safe here. And, you know, I’m sorry, truly. It was my fault. Should never have happened.’

Marchant stared at her blankly, then drifted back to sleep.