Games Traitors Play

63

Meena’s car turned off the dusty road into what at first looked like scrubland. The area was completely flat, covered in green bushes. Peacocks were strutting about, picking at the dry ground, the green sheen of their feathers glinting in the dying light of the day. She knew the airfield was disused, but she had expected a little more infrastructure. In the distance there were a few low buildings, derelict and overgrown. The control tower had long since been demolished. Towards the far perimeter, near a group of trees, a team of local women were loading long logs into stacks and covering them with tarpaulins. Beside the piles of wood someone had laid out cow dung to dry.

Meena left Shushma in the car and walked out into the open expanse. Beneath the vegetation the ground was concrete, but it had broken up over the years, and she wondered if a plane would still be able to land there. As she walked out across the wide expanse, she could see where the main runway had been. It was in better condition than the rest of the airfield’s surface. She had been told that a local flying club had been campaigning for years for it to be reopened, and it looked as if volunteers had cleared away some of the vegetation.

She glanced at her watch and stared up into the dusk sky. There was no sign of a plane. If it didn’t come before nightfall, the operation would be abandoned. A night-time landing was out of the question without any airport lights. She didn’t know whether Delhi was onside or not about the flight, but that wasn’t her problem. She looked again at her watch. A part of her hoped that Marchant would turn up after they had gone, but she owed him an explanation. She turned on her phone and dialled.

‘Where are you?’ she asked.

‘Ten minutes away,’ Marchant said. ‘I’ve been trying to call.’

‘There’s a change of plan.’

‘What sort of change?’

‘I’ll explain when you get here.’

She hung up and walked over towards the car, fighting back a tear.

Marchant saw the plane coming in low over the scrubland. He was still two minutes away, and urged his driver to hurry up. Events were spiralling out of his control. Meena’s tone worried him. Nobody was being straight with anyone. He cursed himself again for going after Valentin, but he had felt better for it.

Marchant asked the driver to drop him off at the edge of the airfield. He ran across the broken surface, watching the plane turn slowly on the old runway, scattering peacocks. It was a Gulfstream V, the CIA’s preferred choice for renditions after 9/11, the plane Spiro had used to fly him out of Britain the previous year. It had taken him to an old Russian airfield outside Syzmany in northern Poland, where they had waterboarded him. He shut out the thought as he approached Meena. Shushma was standing beside her, their arms too close.

‘Glad you made it,’ Meena said, glancing at the plane, which had now drawn up a few feet behind them. The noise of the jet engines made it necessary to speak loudly to be heard. Shushma was not happy, staring at the ground, trying to cut out the world again, or just in shock.

‘Are you?’ Marchant asked.

‘It was your call to go after the Russian,’ Meena said. ‘The operation was compromised. I had no choice.’

‘And if I hadn’t?’

‘There was another Russian on our tail, but we lost him. I know how to look after myself, Dan.’

‘And her, I see,’ he said, nodding at Shushma’s wrist. It was joined to Meena’s with handcuffs. ‘Comforting.’

‘They’re a precaution.’

‘I gave my word we’d take care of her, not treat her as an enemy combatant.’

They both heard the noise of the plane’s door opening behind them. Meena turned around to look, and then faced Marchant again.

‘Daniel, I told you, there’s been a change.’

He detected something dancing in her eyes, but he couldn’t be certain what it was any more: loyalty and deceit had begun to look the same in recent months. Then he glanced up at the open door behind her and saw James Spiro filling the frame, a gun in his hand.

‘We need to get out of this hellhole,’ he drawled.

‘I’m sorry,’ Meena whispered, still looking at Marchant.

‘You knew?’ Marchant said, glancing at Spiro again, trying to process the implications.

‘Ask Fielding,’ she replied, turning towards the plane. Shushma followed, pulled along by her wrist. Then she stopped and faced Marchant. For a moment, he thought she was going to say something, but instead she spat in his face and walked on.

‘Fielding?’ Marchant said, wiping the saliva off his cheek. He couldn’t blame her.

‘Send my love to the Vicar,’ Spiro called out. ‘And hey, thanks. We couldn’t have got our hands on this piece of brown shit without you.’

Marchant wanted to run at the plane, pull Spiro down onto the Indian dirt, but there was nothing he could do, not while the American was armed. He thought about Fielding, who had sanctioned the change of plan without telling him, and wanted to drag him into the dirt too. Dhar’s mother was meant to be flown back to the UK. Now she was heading to Bagram, or worse, with Spiro. A deal had been done. He knew he should never have believed in Meena, but this had been brokered far above her head. She was irrelevant. Why would his own Chief let Salim Dhar’s mother — the only lead the West had — fall into Spiro’s heavy hands? It didn’t make any sense.

He watched helplessly as the plane taxied down the decrepit runway, shimmering in the heat as peacocks ran in all directions. It turned and then accelerated, lifting up into the evening sky. As it passed him, he picked up a rock and hurled it at the fuselage. On the far side of the airfield, the female workers were watching too, one of them transfixed by the mad ghora, a load of logs still balanced on her head. Marchant started to walk back towards his car, kicking at the dust, thinking fast what he could do, who he should ring. Fielding wouldn’t take his call, but he wanted to challenge him, make sure his anger was logged by the duty officer in Legoland.

He started to dial London, and then stopped. Up ahead, a black car turned off the dusty road and drove towards him, bumping across the concrete. Marchant stood back as it drew up beside him, a darkened rear window lowering.

‘Your American friends were in a hurry to leave,’ a voice said. It was Nikolai Primakov.