Games Traitors Play

4

Marchant had nearly lost the man several times in the network of narrow lanes off Djemaâ el Fna. He appeared to be heading south, walking fast down the rue de Bab Agnaou, occasionally looking behind him, but only at junctions, where he could pass off the glances as normal behaviour. The man knew what he was doing. Marchant kept as much distance as he dared between them, but he was on his own. In normal circumstances, a surveillance team of six would be moving through the streets with him, ahead of and behind the target like an invisible cocoon, covering every possibility. Marchant had no such luxury.

He kept one eye out for a taxi as the street widened. It was a less popular part of town for foreigners, and he needed to work harder to blend in. Instead of shoe shops selling yellow baboush and stalls piled high with pyramids of dates and almonds, there were noisy industrial units, larger and less welcoming than the tourist-friendly workshops in the medina. Marchant would follow the man like-for-like. It helped the pursuer to think like his target, to try to anticipate his choices. If he had a car parked somewhere, Marchant would find a car. If he got onto a bicycle, Marchant would find a bicycle.

The man had stopped outside what seemed to be a small carpet factory. Marchant hung back in the shadow of an empty doorway, fifty yards down the street. He could hear the sound of looms weaving, shuttles shooting. Bundles of wool hung from an upstairs window, the rich cupreous dyes drying in the low sun. A woman came to the factory entrance. She chatted briefly with the man, looking up and down the street as she spoke, and pressed a key into his hand.

Without hesitating, the man walked around the corner, started up an old motorised bike and drove off slowly, blue smoke belching from the two-stroke engine. For a moment, Marchant wondered if it would be easier to pursue him on foot, but he checked himself: like-for-like. Despite being in a hurry, the man had specifically chosen low-key transport. He was trying not to draw attention to himself, which suggested he was worried about being followed or watched.

Marchant crossed the road to a row of parked mopeds. Marrakech was overrun with Mobylettes and other Parisian-style motorised bikes, a legacy of when Morocco was a French protectorate. They weaved in and out of the tourists and shoppers in the souks, taking priority like the cows in the markets of old Delhi, which he used to visit on his ayah’s shoulders as a child.

He glanced at the selection. There was an old blue Motobecane 50V Mobylette, top speed 30 mph, and a couple of more modern Peugeot Vogues. The Mobylette was slower, but it would be easier to start, and the man was already out of sight, the noise of his engine fading fast. It also held a certain appeal for Marchant. For years, the Mobylette was made under licence in India. A few months before his father finished his second posting in Delhi, the family had presented Chandar, their cook, with one, to replace his old Hero bicycle. Chandar used to maintain it lovingly, showing Marchant, then eight years old, how to start it, both of them laughing as Chandar pedalled furiously in his chef’s whites until the engine coughed into life.

Marchant checked that the Mobylette’s wheel forks weren’t locked. Nothing he had done since his arrival in Marrakech had aroused any attention from the authorities. That was part of the deal, one of the conditions he had agreed with MI6 in return for being sent to Morocco and allowed to operate on his own. He hadn’t wanted back-up or support. It was, after all, a very personal quest: family business, as his father would have called it. Marcus Fielding, the professorial Chief of MI6, had agreed, knowing that if anyone could find Salim Dhar, it was Marchant. But Fielding had warned him: no drinking, no brawls, no break-ins, nothing illegal. He had caused enough trouble already in his short career.

Marchant had kept his side of the bargain. For three months, he had stayed off the sauce, savouring life outside Legoland, MI6’s headquarters in Vauxhall. The CIA had prevented him from leaving Britain in the aftermath of the assassination attempt, but after a frustrating year, Fielding had finally prevailed, much to Marchant’s relief. London was no place for a field agent.

He had studied hard in Marrakech’s libraries, researching the history of the Berbers and taking the opportunity to reread the Koran. It had been required reading during his time at Fort Monckton, MI6’s training base on the end of the Gosport peninsula. But he read it now with renewed interest, searching for anything that might help him to understand Salim Dhar’s world.

In the cool of the early mornings, he had gone running through the deserted medina. The first run had been the hardest, not because his body was out of shape, but because of the memories it brought back: the London Marathon, Leila, their time together. He had returned after two miles, in need of a stiff drink, but he managed to keep his promise to Fielding. After two weeks, he no longer missed the Scotch. In a Muslim country, abstinence was easier than he had feared it would be. And he realised that he no longer missed Leila. It felt as if life was starting anew.

In the year following Leila’s death, he had been unable to go running. He had missed her every day, seen her face wherever he went in London. The coldness that had encased his heart since he arrived in Morocco had shocked him at first, but he knew it had to be if he was to survive in the Service. His trained eye had spotted one suicide bomber amongst 35,000 participants, but he had failed to identify the traitor running at his own side, the woman he had loved.

Now, though, he was about to cross a line, and for a moment he felt the buzz he’d been missing. It was hardly a big breach, but if someone reported a foreigner stealing a Mobylette, there was a small chance that the local police would become involved. A report might be filed. He would show up on the grid, however faintly, and he couldn’t afford to do that. London would recall him. He would be back behind a desk in Legoland, analysing embellished CX reports from ambitious field agents, drinking too much at the Morpeth Arms after work. But he couldn’t afford to lose his man.

He glanced up and down the street. No one was around. He sat on the Mobylette, which was still on its stand. He checked the fuel switch, then began pedalling, thinking of Chandar as he worked the choke and the compressor with his thumbs. The engine started up, and he rocked the bike forward, throttled back and set off down the road. It wasn’t exactly a wheelspin start.

As the Mobylette struggled to reach 25 mph, the only thing on Marchant’s mind was where the man could be heading on a motorised pedal bike. Marchant had assumed all along that if he was right about the halaka, the contact would carry his message south into the High Atlas mountains, to Asni and beyond to the Tizi’n’Test pass, where the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM) was known to run remote training camps (it had others in the Rif mountains, too).

The GICM had its roots in the war against the former Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and had forged close ties with al Q’aeda, providing logistical support to operatives passing through Morocco. After 9/11, it had become more proactive, and a number of sleeper cells were activated. The synchronised bombings in Casablanca in 2003, which had killed forty-four people, bore all the hallmarks of GICM, and the leadership had helped with the recruitment of jihadis for the war in Iraq. Marchant was convinced, after three months in Marrakech, that the organisation was now shielding Salim Dhar in the mountains. But the smoking bike ahead of him would struggle to reach the edge of town, let alone make it up the steep climb to Asni.