Games Traitors Play

70

‘I thought I should drive to Heathrow, pick Daniel up,’ Ian Denton said, standing in front of Marcus Fielding’s desk. Fielding was lying on the floor behind it, partly out of sight, trying to relax after another back spasm. ‘He must be pretty cut up after what happened in Madurai.’

‘It’s OK,’ Fielding said. ‘I’ve just sent Prentice. With orders to get Marchant drunk. Look out for him when he’s back in the office, though. He’ll have no desire to talk to me.’

Fielding was touched by Denton’s concern. Despite his cold-blooded demeanour, he had a warm heart. And he had always taken an interest in Marchant’s welfare.

‘Of course.’ Denton paused. ‘Is everything all right with Daniel?’

‘As much as it ever is with him,’ Fielding said. He wanted to confide more in his deputy, but he couldn’t. Denton’s own deep suspicion of the Americans had brought him close to Marchant in recent months, but Fielding knew that the plan to help Marchant defect must remain known only to himself.

‘I’ll leave it to Prentice, then,’ Denton said. ‘And look forward to signing off his exorbitant expenses.’

Fielding sometimes wished his deputy would unbutton a little, let things go, but he could never remember an occasion when Denton had got drunk. After he had left, Fielding unzipped the second encrypted audio file from GCHQ and listened, reading the covering note from his opposite number at Cheltenham. Grushko again, this time talking to an unnamed colleague in Moscow Centre. It had been recorded a few hours earlier.

‘I still have my doubts.’

‘About Marchant?’

‘About everyone. Marchant, Comrade Primakov.’

‘The Muslim is keen to see his brother.’

‘I just think we should use him.’

‘Argo?’

‘That’s what he’s there for, isn’t it? Moments like these.’

‘It’s a risk. Warsaw is on to him.’

‘They get on well. Marchant will confide in Argo if he’s genuinely upset. He should try to meet him at the airport when he arrives back in Britain.’

The recording ended suddenly. ‘Argo’ was an unusual choice, nostalgic. It was the codename the KGB had assigned to Ernest Hemingway in the 1940s. Fielding tried to linger on the historical detail, delay the realisation, the rising nausea, but it was impossible. In one awful moment, he had traced the line of succession, identified the inheritor. He reached for the phone, too heavy in his hand, and dialled General Borowski, head of Agencja Wywiadu, Poland’s foreign intelligence agency, at his home on the outskirts of Warsaw.