Dirty Little Secret. Jon Stock
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Secretary. Marchant has form when it comes to persuading jihadis not to blow people up. I should know.’
Fifteen months earlier, Marchant had helped to talk a suicide bomber out of killing Munroe and countless other competitors in the London Marathon. At least, that was Marchant’s story. Spiro had begged to differ. In tonight’s discussions with Washington, Munroe had consistently fought Marchant’s corner, calling for restraint until all the facts were known. But the President’s anger had prevailed. The CIA’s London station was given carte blanche to do all they could to find Salim Dhar, last known location somewhere in UK waters.
Spiro, as head of the Agency’s National Clandestine Service, Europe, was put in charge of the mission. His first call was to surround MI6’s headquarters with a deployment of US Marines who were based permanently at the embassy. He had also given orders for Daniel Marchant to be picked up from Fort Monckton. Fielding couldn’t protect him any longer. Denton had given assurances that Marchant was being held securely, but Spiro knew better than to underestimate Marchant.
‘Go in the back door,’ he had told the captain of USS Bulkeley, a destroyer moored in Portsmouth on a meet-and-greet hosted by the Royal Navy. The captain explained that he would need authority from the Pentagon before giving the order to deploy a unit of Seals against an ally he had just been on exercise with. Spiro had anticipated friction. The US Navy wasn’t in the habit of taking orders from the CIA, or storming British military bases. He gave the captain the name of someone to speak to, and told him to get on with it. ‘And leave the woman out of it,’ he added. ‘She’s one of ours.’
He had expected to hear back from Lakshmi Meena by now, but she hadn’t rung, which made him wary. He had hoped to hear from his wife, too, but that was another story. It had been three days since they had spoken, and he had no idea where she was.
He pushed her to the back of his mind and thought again about Marchant. As a former Marine, he wished he could be with the Seals when they beached at Fort Monckton. It would be the final humiliation of Marchant and MI6. Instead, Spiro had to settle for the lead jeep as it rolled out of Grosvenor Square five minutes later and headed down Regent Street towards Vauxhall. There were six US Army trucks behind him, carrying a hundred Marines in total. The sight of American forces on the streets of London would send a clear message to the Brits, causing acute political embarrassment. Better still, Spiro hoped, it would scare the crap out of Fielding.
‘Ain’t London a beautiful city when it’s empty?’ he said to his driver as they rumbled around a deserted Piccadilly Circus at 3 a.m. Above him, the advert for Coca-Cola flashed in the night.
23
‘I think I know where Dhar might be,’ Denton said, turning to the Prime Minister.
‘Go on.’
The room fell silent as everyone looked down the table at Denton. He paused, calculating the implications one more time. On balance, it was better to share his hunch with COBRA rather than with the Americans, but there wasn’t much in it. He studied the tired, expectant faces and thought that the British establishment had never appeared so weak. If he was going to become a Chief with any power, he would need US support. To win that, he had to give them Dhar on a plate. But he didn’t trust them to capture him. The British were still better at some things.
Just as he was about to speak, an aide to the Chief of Defence Staff came into the room and whispered something to his boss.
‘A contingent of US Marines is currently making its way down Regent Street,’ the Chief of Defence Staff announced, trumping Denton’s announcement. ‘It’s an unauthorised movement. Any US troop activity on UK soil must be cleared first with –’
‘Of course it’s bloody unauthorised,’ the PM said. Denton had often noted how, in times of crisis, the military defaulted to mindless protocol.
Everyone in the room turned to look at the staccato images now streaming live from traffic cameras on Piccadilly Circus. For a moment, Dhar’s location was no longer important. Denton had known it was coming, but the sight of the US military on the streets of London was still chilling. Fielding must have anticipated it too. A few seconds earlier, Denton had received a staff alert informing him that Legoland was in lockdown.
‘They’re heading for Vauxhall Cross,’ the PM continued. ‘Unilateral action, just as the President warned.’ He turned to the Chairman of the Defence Advisory Committee, who had been summoned from his club to join COBRA. ‘It’s too late for the papers, but I don’t want to see these pictures tomorrow morning on The Andrew Marr Show.’
‘That might be difficult,’ the Chairman replied. ‘The best we can do is put out an MoD release explaining that it’s an exercise.’
‘If only it was,’ the PM said. ‘I hope to God Dhar’s not there.’
‘He’s not,’ Denton said. ‘And even if he was, the Americans wouldn’t find him. Fielding’s locked down the building.’
‘That could be interpreted as the actions of a Chief with something to hide.’
‘Just pride.’ Denton paused, looking around the room at his pale, flabby colleagues. Most of them had been up for twenty-four hours. ‘Dhar’s not in London. He’s gone to his father’s house. Stephen Marchant had a big place in the country, in a hamlet called Tarlton, just outside Cirencester.’
A murmur swept around the room, followed by shuffled papers and disbelieving asides.
‘I know it’s been a long night, but are you seriously telling me that Salim Dhar is hiding in the Cotswolds?’ the PM asked. ‘Wouldn’t he want to be as far away from here as possible?’
‘It would explain the MI6 number. As Chief, Stephen Marchant’s home was installed with a secure landline. My guess is that it was never downgraded after he died.’ Denton turned to the Chief of Defence staff. ‘How long would it take for the Increment to reach Tarlton?’
24
Dhar stood by the grave in the half-light, reading the words that had been carved into the stone. ‘Stephen Marchant 1949–2009. Semper occultus.’ He didn’t know what the words meant. If Marchant showed up, he would ask him. Time, though, was running out – for both of them. He had left the pilot in the house, tied up and gagged. He still wasn’t sure why he had chosen to keep the man alive. Perhaps it was for his own self-preservation. One kidnapped kafir wouldn’t be enough to barter with when they came for him, as he knew they would, but it might stop him being killed.
He glanced around and knelt awkwardly, trying to ignore the pain in his leg. His father was buried at the back of a small and ancient church, separated from the main house by a gravel drive. It was the first time he had been to a Christian burial site, and he began to recite the last verses of the Surat al-Baqarah, the second chapter of the Holy Qur’an.
‘… Our Lord! Lay not on us what we have no strength to bear. Pardon us, forgive us and have mercy on us. You are our Protector; give us victory over the disbelievers …’
Tears pricked his eyes as he prayed in the early-morning stillness. A gossamer mist hung over the surrounding fields, and his knees were wet with dew. He was here to honour his real father, whom he had only met once, at a black site in South India, but images of another man kept rearing out of the shadows.
Life had been hard when he was growing up on the fringes of Chanakyapuri in New Delhi, where his parents had worked at various foreign embassies. The man who claimed to be his father used to beat him regularly with a wooden baseball bat: back of the legs, arms, soles of his feet when he slept late. His mother had suffered terribly too, hiding when her husband returned from yet another party at the American Embassy, drunk on bourbon and Coke. Dhar couldn’t blame her for turning to another man.
He leant forward and kissed the top of the gravestone, the sound as his lips touched it exaggerated in the