Games Traitors Play

98

Marchant no longer thought that he had a strong stomach. He had been sick shortly after take-off, when Dhar over-corrected a sudden lurch to the right and put the plane into a 3-G turn. For a painful few seconds, in which he had nearly blacked out, he had wondered if they might not get further than Finland, but he was starting to relax as they flew low and fast over the North Sea towards the east coast of Britain. It was the speed of their progress that he found the most disorientating. At first, it had felt as if he was being dragged along behind the aircraft, like a waterskier. Dhar had told him to look far ahead, to anticipate. Marchant was impressed by how much Sergei must have taught him. He was flying well, untroubled by the G-forces. His only concern appeared to be their ETA.

‘You’re a natural,’ Marchant said over the intercom.

‘Another two weeks of training and you wouldn’t have been sick, but there was not enough time,’ Dhar replied.

‘What’s the big rush?’ Marchant asked. Dhar had synchronised watches before they left, and had regularly asked him to call out the minutes and seconds.

‘There is an important air show today. At a place called Fairford. It only happens once a year. I don’t think they would have delayed it while I improved my flying skills.’

‘Are we topping the bill?’ Marchant asked, calculating the implications. He knew the air show well, having been taken there by his father when he was a child. Red Arrows and Airfix models, candy-floss and Concorde. Fairford held less happy memories, too. It was where he had flown from with a hood over his head and shackles on his feet, when the Americans had renditioned him to a black site in Poland. But his first thought now was of the number of people on the ground. Tens of thousands of potential casualties.

‘That’s one way of putting it.’

‘Sergei mentioned collateral.’

‘I know.’

‘What did he mean?’

There was a long pause. Marchant adjusted his helmet and oxygen mask, thinking that contact had perhaps been lost.

‘One of our LGBs is a dirty bomb.’

Marchant felt sick. It was only a few feet away from him. He thought of the contamination on the ground, the years of cleaning up. A thousand-pound dirty bomb exploding in the middle of a packed crowd would kill hundreds, but many more would fall ill afterwards from radiation sickness. And no terrorist had ever deployed one before. It had become the Holy Grail, not so much for the number of people it killed as for its propaganda value. The problem was its difficulty to assemble, unless you could tap into the caesium resources of a country like Russia.

‘And Sergei didn’t approve?’

Another silence.

‘My mother loved Britain. For a long while I never knew why. Now I know her loyalties were misplaced. Our father’s heart beat for another country. One day I will tell her. Despite Iraq, despite Afghanistan, I never hated Britain in the same way that I detest America. Perhaps I was blind, but it gave shelter to many brothers. Now it has become a legitimate target.’

‘Its people or its politicians?’

Dhar said nothing. Marchant wished he could see his face, gauge his mood from his eyes. It was hard to tell from his voice alone, particularly over the plane’s intercom, but something had shifted. Hairline cracks were appearing. Should Marchant tell him now about their father and Primakov? He instinctively glanced around the cockpit, above and to the sides, checking for threats. Marchant felt vulnerable with his back to Dhar, but there was nothing his half-brother could do except listen. He couldn’t kill Marchant, physically throw him out of the plane, unless he could operate both ejector seats.

‘Vasilli Grushko was right to be suspicious of Primakov,’ Marchant said over the intercom, taking the risk. He would tell it to him straight, give the bare facts. ‘What he found in the KGB archives was true. Primakov used to work for MI6. Our father signed him up in Delhi more than thirty years ago. In order for him to recruit Primakov, our father let himself be recruited by the Russians. It was a risk, and once or twice he handed over more than he should have, more than Primakov was giving to London. But he never once betrayed Britain. All the intel was about America.’

There was another long silence. Again Marchant began to think the intercom was faulty, and adjusted his helmet. He felt so defenceless with his back to Dhar.

‘How do you know this?’ Dhar eventually said, almost in a whisper.

‘I’ve seen the file. Moscow Centre thought it had the Chief of MI6 on its books, when in fact Primakov was working for us. He was, right up until the moment he died.’

Marchant closed his eyes, imagining Dhar’s face behind him. He had to keep it together, not let Primakov’s death choke him up.

‘Until the moment you shot him,’ Dhar said.

‘I’m my father’s son, Salim. I’ve never stopped working for MI6, or believing in Britain. My defection was hollow, nothing more than an elaborate charade, a way of meeting you, my brother.’

‘Is there no truth in your Western life? Is everything lies?’ The aircraft rocked in a pocket of turbulence.

‘Our father disliked America. There was nothing false about that. If the CIA had ever found out what he was telling the Russians about them, he would have been arrested and tried for treason, if they didn’t torture him to death first. I dislike America too. I mistrust its military foreign policy, its corporate and cultural power, its fundamental values, the way it’s started to define what it means to be human. But our father loved Britain with a passion, just as I do. Your mother wasn’t misguided. She was right. And she isn’t in the hands of the CIA. She’s safe, in Britain. I give you my word, just as I gave it to her.’

Marchant was bluffing now, but he was confident that Shushma hadn’t been with Spiro for long in Madurai, that it had just been a ruse by Fielding to get him into the right mental place. And Lakshmi wouldn’t have allowed any harm to come to Shushma, he was sure of that. Despite everything, he realised how much he had come to trust her.

‘So you lied to me about my mother too,’ Dhar said.

‘I had no choice. Unlike you. What is our exact target? Why the dirty bomb, the air-to-air missiles?’

‘Do you know why I agreed to bring you along today?’

‘Tell me.’

‘Because I discovered that Fairford is close to Tarlton, where our father lived, where you grew up with your other brother. I wanted you to show me the village as we flew over, point out the house. It is 18.5 kilometres due west of the airfield.’

Marchant was taken aback by the way Dhar’s mind worked. Everything was thought out, had a reason. For a moment, his task seemed hopeless, but he had to turn around the jihadi juggernaut.

‘I can still show you. Tarlton’s a beautiful place. We used to play in the orchard, Sebbie and me, throw apples into the long grass behind our father’s back, pretend the rustling sound was approaching tigers. He was always fooled — at least, he said he was. Do you know what his wishes were? Why he asked Primakov to bring you and me together? He wanted you to work for MI6. He didn’t expect you to change your views on America — he shared many of them himself, as I do. It’s what unites all three of us. He just hoped to explore some common ground. Find out what each side wants from the other. We need a back channel into the global jihad, just as you need one with the West. It’s what our father most wanted, Salim.’

After another long pause, Dhar eventually spoke. ‘I’ll be of no use to anybody if I don’t go through with this today. The jihadi who almost shot the US President, who almost — ’

‘Almost what? Tell me the precise target.’

But before Dhar could speak, a deafening noise above the cockpit made Marchant duck. He turned around and saw a jet fighter disappearing into the distance.

‘What the hell was that?’ Marchant asked.

‘Another SU-25. From the Georgian air force. And only thirty seconds late. Inshallah, our time has come.’