Games Traitors Play. Jon Stock
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the jihadi website before Langley had shut it down.
Spiro waited for him to leave, listening to the crisp discipline of the Vicar’s unhurried ablutions, the way he dispensed the soap with two short stabs, turned the taps, tore the paper towels. A man in control of his life, unhurried. Spiro envied him, but he knew that he too would have that feeling in a few seconds. When the Vicar was gone, he leaned over the powder, a rolled ten-dollar bill shaking in his hand. The next moment he was flushing the cistern, the tumbling water masking his snorts. Steady, he told himself. He had to hold it together.
Spiro unlocked the cubicle door and rinsed his hands, glancing again at himself in the smoked mirror. At moments like this he could take reassurance in his ageing face, find comfort in the lines of experience, each one a reminder of a hardship survived, one of life’s obstacles overcome: brought up in Over-the-Rhine, then a rough quarter in downtown Cincinnati; an abusive father; the first Gulf War; his cheating wife; their disabled son and his desire to make the world a better place for him.
Few people saw him that way. The British had him down as an ex-Marine who had forgotten to leave his battle fatigues at the door, which was fine by him. He hadn’t been hired to be nice. Christ, he hadn’t been born to be nice. One of his first jobs at Langley had been to oversee the freelance deniables the Agency regularly hired to do its heavy lifting. They were all ex-military, like him, and they got along with him fine, respecting his distinguished career in the Marine Corps.
He knew, though, that he had been lucky to hold on to his job. The end of the rendition programme and the fall-out from the so-called ‘torture memos’ had led a number of staff to leave, sapping the morale of those left behind. Spiro had thought about jumping into the private sector before he was pushed, but he had stayed on, never doubting that his approach to intelligence would be in demand again in the future. He just hadn’t figured it would be so soon. Salim Dhar was to thank for that. The jumped-up jihadi’s long-range shot at the President had changed everything, including Spiro’s career prospects.
‘Thank God, I didn’t fire you,’ the new DCIA, a moderate, had joked after promoting Spiro to head of the National Clandestine Service’s European operations. ‘The bad-ass guys are back in town.’
But his job now looked to be in doubt again. Dark clouds were rolling in from Afghanistan. The tone of the DCIA’s voice on the phone in the Gulfstream V had reminded him of the consultant who had broken the news about their disabled child. Mom and baby were doing fine. They just needed to run some tests. Euphoria qualified.
According to the DCIA, a jihadi website was claiming that six kidnapped US Marines had been killed in a drone strike. The website had been flooded immediately by Fort Meade, temporarily shutting it down, but the signs weren’t good, and the news, true or false, would soon come out elsewhere. The thought made Spiro want to throw up. He had served in the Gulf alongside one of the soldiers, Lieutenant Randall Oaks, knew his wife, heard they had a young daughter.
‘Don’t beat our drum too loud in London,’ the DCIA had said. ‘We might need our friends in the days ahead.’ So it was with a deep breath that Spiro splashed water on his weathered face, dried himself with a paper towel and hoped that the Vicar might offer a prayer for the dead.
Marchant had a contingency plan for leaving Morocco, the first part of which he had already put in place. The ticket he had booked on the morning flight out of Marrakech was in his own name. But the passport he now held in his hand as he sat in the back of the speeding taxi was in the name of Dirk McLennan, a ‘snap cover’ stitched together by Legoland’s cobblers before he had left. The biography was not as detailed as an operational legend, but it was good enough to get him out of Morocco. And the airport he was heading for was Agadir, not Marrakech.
Marchant didn’t miss his previous cover identity, the backpacking student who had done such an efficient job of getting him to India when the CIA had been on his case in Poland. He had enjoyed winding back the clock, smoking weed and getting laid by Monika, the hostel receptionist, but it had been complicated, raised too many issues. His new identity was far more straightforward: a libidinous snapper who ran residential photography courses in Marrakech, mainly for parties of single British women of a certain age.
And this time there was none of the cobblers’ bitterness that had characterised his last legend, no biographical flaws echoing the tragedies of his own life. Dirk McLennan was a good-time cover, full of joie de vivre: girlfriends aplenty, all-night benders and an interesting sideline in glamour photography. In short, Marchant saw it as a gift, his bonus from Legoland for a difficult year.
He checked the passport, his business card and the Billingham bag of cameras and lenses that he had kept in his flat, then caught a glimpse of himself in the driver’s mirror and adjusted the sunglasses that were perched on the top of his head. McLennan’s hair was slightly darker than his own, which was dirt-blond, but he had had no time to dye it. After spotting Meena, he had collected a small overnight bag from his flat and jumped in a taxi, ordered by a man he could trust in the medina.
Now, as the taxi drove down the highway to Agadir, Marchant thought back three months to when Fielding had called him into his office on the morning he had left for Marrakech. The Vicar had reminded him of his responsibilities, the need to keep his head down. They had both survived a challenging time together in India, and their relationship was close, at times almost like father and son. Fielding had risked his own career to support him, something Marchant would never forget. The ensuing year in London had not been easy for either of them. Confined to Legoland by the Americans, Marchant had drunk too much and caused trouble in the office. Fielding had grown tired of having to bail him out. They both knew that Marchant was the only person who could find Dhar, and he wasn’t going to do it chained to a desk in London.
‘The Americans have retreated, lifted the travel ban, but they insist that you remain a legitimate target for observation,’ the Vicar had said, sipping at a glass of the sweet mint tea he had asked Otto, his Eastern European butler, to prepare for the two of them. ‘We’ve protested, of course, but there’s no movement.’
‘And our rules of engagement, have they changed?’
‘Despite everything that happened, to you, to me, to Harriet Armstrong, America remains our closest ally,’ Fielding said. ‘Remember that. The appalling truth is that we can’t live for long without them or the intel they share with us.’ He paused. ‘Langley is on record as having cleared you and your father of any wrong-doing. That counts for something. Salim Dhar is the enemy combatant here, not you. But we both know that your relationship with Dhar presents the CIA with a problem. If they ever cross the line again, hold you against your will, interrogate –’
‘Waterboard,’ Marchant interrupted.
‘Yes, well – you may have to cross the line, too.’
‘And the real reason for my presence in Marrakech remains deniable,’ Marchant said.
‘Utterly. As far as the Americans are concerned, you are in Morocco on sabbatical. Marrakech is a natural place for you, an Arabist, to sort your life out. HR have signed off on it, citing ill-health and low office morale. Given the disruption you’ve caused in Legoland over the past year, they are only too pleased to see the back of you.’
Marchant reckoned that the circumstances he found himself in now satisfied Fielding’s conditions. Lakshmi Meena had crossed the line. The woman Langley had sent to keep an eye on him was suddenly on his case after weeks of inactivity. He might be wrong, of course, but it was odd that Meena had come back to watch him late in the night after their meeting at the bar anglais. The only explanation was that she must have heard about the helicopter incident and Marchant’s presence in the mountains. But who had seen him? He assumed it was a local informer. The CIA was closer to the Moroccan intelligence services than MI6, particularly after the courts in London had revealed details of torture at a Moroccan black site.
By the time he reached Agadir airport, Marchant was confident that nobody had followed