Читать книгу: «Dead Spy Running»
Jon Stock
Dead Spy Running
For Hilary
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.
William Shakespeare
Contents
Epigraph
1
A bright Blackheath morning and it was already hot, too…
2
It took ten minutes for Marchant to find Pradeep again.
3
Paul Myers was unpicking encrypted emails and eating his fourth…
4
Daniel Marchant looked out across the shallow valley and watched…
5
Paul Myers drew heavily on his third pint of London…
6
Marchant watched from his bedroom in the safe house as…
7
Marchant knew that someone was in his room as he…
8
It was a long-held custom that the first half of…
9
Later that day, Fielding accepted Chadwick’s offer of a sharpener…
10
Leila headed back to London that night, leaving Marchant to…
11
The gang of Year Five boys in the corner of…
12
The undisputed waterboarding world champion was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Marchant…
13
Nine hundred miles west of Poland, Marcus Fielding took a…
14
Leila turned the key in the front door and slipped…
15
For a moment, Marchant wasn’t sure if the explosion was…
16
After a bone-breaking, hundred-mile drive through the Polish countryside, Marchant…
17
Marchant knew that the best legend for a spy was…
18
Sir David Chadwick had spent a lifetime brokering compromises in…
19
Hassan was the only asset Leila had ever slept with.
20
Spiro didn’t like the CIA sub-station in Warsaw. He didn’t…
21
Marchant lay on the bed, watching Monika as she undressed…
22
Leila had met Jago, a tousle-haired six-year-old, once before, but…
23
Spiro looked again at the grainy image of a two-tonne,…
24
Six miles south-west of the shopping mall, Daniel Marchant sat…
25
Prentice sent the pre-written text while his hand was still…
26
Daniel Marchant pushed open the blue door, not sure what…
27
‘It was a precaution, Marcus, nothing more,’ Sir David Chadwick…
28
After twenty-four hours in India, Daniel Marchant concluded that he…
29
It was Alan Carter’s first visit to Legoland, but after…
30
Leila took it as a very public expression of gratitude…
31
Marchant felt the weight of a body lying on top…
32
‘Can we assume that Marchant was at the club?’ Fielding…
33
In another life, a different time, Marcus Fielding and William…
34
Paul Myers had been drinking heavily all evening in the…
35
Marchant heard the police before they reached his carriage. He…
36
Fielding had ordered his driver to turn round and head…
37
Marchant stood in the shade of a stall selling strings…
38
Fielding’s office clock said 7.30 a.m.
39
Marchant listened to the rustle of the necklaces slung loosely…
40
Paul Myers hadn’t been hit so hard since he was…
41
Fielding lifted the flute to his lips and began to…
42
Leila listened as Monk Johnson finished running through the itinerary…
43
There was something about the network of cave-like huts on…
44
Fielding put down the phone and looked around the room,…
45
‘Sons turn out in the strangest ways,’ Carter said. ‘My…
46
William Straker sat back in the DCIA’s office in Langley,…
47
Marchant heard the mobile phone begin to ring moments before…
48
Marchant lifted his head towards the cell door and listened…
49
‘The Prime Minister was adamant that you shouldn’t be killed,’…
50
Dhar watched the rickshaw driver’s legs seesaw through the Chandni…
51
Straker took the call in one of the small private…
52
Marchant couldn’t decide if it was a good or bad…
53
Salim Dhar brought the US President into focus with the…
54
‘As far as we’re concerned, she took the bullet that…
55
Marchant stood outside Legoland, on the Thames path, looking across…
Acknowledgements
About the Author
By the same author
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
A bright Blackheath morning and it was already hot, too hot for twenty-six miles. Daniel Marchant scanned the crowd and wondered again why he was about to run a marathon. Thousands of people were stretching in the early sunshine, massaging limbs, sipping at water. It was like the stillness before battle. A woman in a baseball cap strapped an iPod to her arm; the man beside him tied and retied his laces. Another runner poured water over his hair and shook it like a dog, droplets catching the light. Whatever it takes, Marchant thought. In his case, too much Scotch the night before and not enough training.
‘One last try,’ he said, turning to Leila. She was sitting on the grass, leaning back on her hands, staring straight ahead. Why was she taking it so seriously, he thought, as he strolled over to join a long queue for the Portaloos. If the going got tough, they could walk, enjoy the day out. Wasn’t that how she had sold it to him? But he knew that would never happen: they would crawl before they walked. It was a stubbornness they shared, a bloody-mindedness he could sometimes do without.
He inched forward in the queue. The sweet smell of Deep Heat hung heavy in the spring air, reminding Marchant of school changing rooms, the similar imminence of pain. He always felt like this before they went out running in Battersea Park, only for his resentment to subside when the endorphins kicked in; that and the sound of her rhythmic breathing, her easy footfall. He still wondered why he was about to run twenty-six miles, though, and at such short notice. Their longest training run had been the weekend before, eighteen miles down the towpath to Greenwich and back. But how could he have said no when he barely realised she was asking him? That was her job, after all: persuading people to do what they shouldn’t, to say what was meant to remain unsaid.
After queuing for five minutes, Marchant changed his mind and returned to Leila, who had stripped down to her running kit. From the day they had first met, he had promised himself not to fall in love with her, but she had never made it easy. Today was no exception. Her limbs were long, but she touched her toes with ease, shorts tightening against toned muscles. He looked away at the hot-air balloons behind her, swaying in the gentle breeze, desperate to rise up into the brilliant blue sky. In front of them lorries were parked up like a military convoy, piled high with runners’ plastic bags, ready to be transported across London to the finish line.
Marchant took both their bags and handed them in to a marshal. He tried to imagine how he would feel when they were reunited with them again, three, more like four, hours later. Despite his protests, he knew that it was the right thing to be doing. The training, however inadequate, had kept him sane during the last few weeks, helping him to focus on what must be done.
‘Too many people,’ Leila said, pushing hair out of her eyes as Marchant rejoined her. He noticed she was holding her mobile phone. He followed her gaze over towards the main start, where an army of 35,000 runners was now massing. Afterwards, he thought, the dead and the wounded would be laid out in St James’s, wrapped in shiny foil.
‘It’ll be fine, a stroll in the park,’ Marchant said. ‘Just like you promised.’ He put a hand on her shoulder as he stretched one calf muscle, searching her large eyes. It was a hint of the exotic that had first attracted him, the dark, lustrous hair, her olive skin. ‘You’re not nervous, are you?’ he asked, trying to sound bullish. There was suddenly something distracted about her, an unsettling distance. She was usually so upfront, eye to eye.
‘Not about the running,’ she said.
‘What, then?’
‘Cheltenham picked up some chatter last night,’ she said quietly, looking around.
‘About the marathon?’ Marchant kept his hand on her shoulder, face close to hers, stretching the other calf. Leila nodded. ‘Now you tell me.’
‘And you know I shouldn’t,’ she said, pushing him away. ‘Paul’s just called, heard I was taking part.’
‘Paul? What’s he monitoring these days? Runners’ World chatrooms?’
‘Come on, Daniel. You know I can’t.’
Marchant had been out of MI6 for two months now, suspended on his case officer’s full pay. Leila knew how angry he still felt about everything that had happened: his father’s death, the rumours that wouldn’t go away. She knew the toll it was taking on his health, too, the late, solitary vigils at the pub. Marchant’s youthful features were tiring around the eyes, a greyness starting to fleck his dirt-blond hair. He was only twenty-nine, but sometimes, in a certain light, Leila looked at him and thought she saw his father.
‘Remember not to go too fast at the beginning,’ she said, changing tack as they jogged over to join the crowded start. Leila still worked for MI6, although she often wondered why. The Service was slowly killing them both.
‘That shouldn’t be a problem.’ Marchant surveyed the sea of people around him, more carefully now. ‘Remind me why we’re doing this?’
‘Because you love running and because you love me.’ Leila brushed her lips against his cheek as a helicopter arced across the South London sky. ‘More than you should.’
She had never kissed him like that before. Earlier she had woken him very differently, pulling him up through the languid hours of dawn with a passion that had almost frightened him.
‘Shouldn’t we be saving our energy for the marathon?’ he had whispered afterwards, the rising sun filtering through the blinds of her Canary Wharf apartment. His eyes ached at the thought of all that daylight.
‘My mother always told me to live each day as if it was the last.’
‘My dad used to say something similar, only in Latin.’
She lay with her head on his chest, eyes open, stroking his stomach. A police siren faded somewhere near the Thames.
‘I’m so sorry about your father.’
‘Me too.’
Later he had found her in the kitchen, stirring a saucepan of porridge for them both as she looked out of the window towards the O2 Dome. There was an empty bottle of whisky on the granite-top island, next to a couple of stacked dishes from the previous night and the remains of a big bowl of pasta. He pedalled the chrome bin and quietly slid the bottle in, his eyes on Leila. She was wearing knickers and an old London Marathon T-shirt with a slogan on the back: ‘Never again…until the next time’. The whisky had been a mistake, he realised that now. The next time he would realise earlier. The pain behind his eyes was spreading.
‘What’s this?’ he asked, picking up a single sheet of paper from the island.
She turned, and then looked back out of the window. ‘You’ve never really been religious, have you?’ she asked.
‘Hey, I was a Sufi once, in my year off in India.’
‘Who wasn’t?’
‘Is this a Bahá’í thing?’
‘It’s not a thing, it’s a prayer. My mother used to make me say it every morning, before I went to school.’
Leila wasn’t particularly religious either, but she had grown interested in her mother’s Bahá’í faith in recent months. Marchant’s own knowledge of it was patchy, based on an internal MI5 briefing that had crossed his desk about Dr David Kelly, the weapons inspector and Bahá’í member who had been found dead in a wood in Oxfordshire.
He looked at the sheet again, and read a passage of the prayer out aloud: ‘“Armed with the power of thy name, nothing can ever hurt me, and with thy love in my heart, all the world’s afflictions can in no wise alarm me.” Is it reassuring?’
‘She said it would protect us.’
Marchant thought he could do with a little protection now, as he looked up at the blur of helicopter blades above Blackheath. He suddenly felt claustrophobic, pressed down upon from above as well as from all sides. There was no room for personal space any more, normal rules of behaviour no longer applied. A runner next to him fumbled at his shorts with an empty plastic drinking bottle. Another hung his head, clearing one nostril, then the other. Somebody else yelled with joy (or was it fear?). The crowd responded, calling back like restless animals. They were all part of the larger herd now, surging forward as one towards the start line.
Marchant instinctively flexed his elbows as people pushed in, trampling on his old running shoes. For a few seconds he lost Leila, then he spotted her again, five yards ahead, turning back to look for him. Despite himself, he loved her more than ever in that fleeting moment, her beauty framed by a thousand strangers. He moved up alongside, squeezed her hand. She smiled back, but her look was far away. The call from Paul Myers had unsettled her.
Above them two helicopters now circled, the drone of their blades more menacing than ever. There was a new sound, too, top notes cutting through the background noise. Marchant couldn’t work out what it was at first, but then he realised. Runners everywhere were synchronising and calibrating, making final adjustments to their bleeping stopwatches and heart monitors. He glanced instinctively at the hands of his own silent watch. In the same instant, the starter’s klaxon hooted, oddly hesitant, an uncertain call to arms. The only thing Marchant could do was run.
It was fifty minutes into the marathon that Marchant first noticed him, tucked behind a small knot of runners twenty yards ahead. The man–Asian, mid-thirties, fragile frame, heavy glasses–was moving at a similar pace to them, but looked uncomfortable, stumbling on the cobbles as he rounded the bow of the Cutty Sark. He was sweating profusely, too, even for this heat; but it was the belt around his waist that had caught Marchant’s well-trained eye.
Leila’s talk of Cheltenham had put Marchant on edge, reawakening old skills. The world around him was suddenly full of threats again, of brush passes and dead drops, and the belt troubled him. It consisted of a number of pouches, each one containing an isotonic energy drink. The drinks were in soft, bulging cartons, silver with small orange screwcaps. He’d seen other runners loading up with drinks belts at the start, but none with so many pouches.
It was just a precaution on a hot day, Marchant told himself, lengthening his stride. Running had always come naturally to him, a benefit of being tall. He caught up with the group as they left Greenwich for Deptford, heading down Creek Road. The crowds were thinner here, but still noisy, heckling runners with the names they had written on their vests. ‘Where’s Grommit?’ someone shouted, as a fun-runner dressed as Wallace ran past. ‘Go Dan!’ two young women screamed. For a moment, Marchant thought they must be supporting someone else, but then he remembered Leila had insisted on writing ‘Dan’ on the front of his own running vest. He turned his head to take another look but they were already lost in the crowd, cheering on other strangers.
‘What are you doing?’ Leila called out from behind Marchant. ‘We were doing fine.’
‘Give me a minute,’ he said. The group of runners ahead of the man also bothered him. Two were heavily set, struggling in the heat and bearing all the unsubtle hallmarks–bulging vests, GI One haircuts–of the American Secret Service. The third man was lean and sinewy, a born runner. He looked familiar.
As Marchant drew near, he knew at once that something was not right. He could taste it in his mouth, like corked wine. His father had always taught him to trust his instinct, whether it was a bad feeling on first meeting a potential agent or pulling out of a rendezvous for no other reason than that it felt wrong. It wasn’t tradecraft; it was more visceral than that.
Marchant positioned himself as close as he could behind the man, trying to get a better look at the belt, but the running field was still tightly packed. He counted six drinks pouches. They were eight miles into a hot race, but none of the pouches had been opened.
Then he noticed what looked like an oversized watch on the man’s wrist. Leila had something similar for long runs. It was a basic GPS receiver, relaying her position, speed and when she should speed up or slow down. (He remembered how she had once said it beeped ruthlessly at her when her pace dropped below a pre-programmed speed.) It wasn’t as sophisticated as the military units he and other case officers had been issued with in Africa, but it wasn’t a toy either.
‘What’s happening?’ Leila said, appearing on his shoulder. ‘We were going so well.’
Marchant nodded at the man in front and slowed up a little, falling away from the group.
‘See the guy with the belt,’ he said, as they both slowed to their former pace. Marchant was short of breath as he continued. ‘I don’t think those cartons are for drinking.’
‘Why not?’ Leila asked.
‘And that man up there, the tall one all in white. Isn’t he the US Ambassador?’
‘Turner Munroe? Dan, what’s going on?’
Marchant knew what Leila was thinking. He was deluded, still drunk from the night before, seeing things where there was nothing to see. He’d watched it himself in other case officers who had been called in from the field and tethered to a desk in Legoland (the name employees had given to MI6’s headquarters in Vauxhall), drinking themselves to death to alleviate the boredom of captivity. In his case, though, he didn’t even have a desk. That was the hardest part: knowing there might never be a way back. And now here he was, hard on the heels of a runner in the London Marathon, convinced that the man was shortly to kill himself and everyone around him, including the US Ambassador to Britain. He’d run agents who were less paranoid.
‘What exactly did Cheltenham pick up last night?’ Marchant asked, breathlessly.
‘Nothing like this.’ He guessed Leila was already making her own calculations, weighing up risks. ‘How can you be so sure about the belt?’
‘By asking him,’ Marchant replied.
‘Don’t be stupid, Dan.’
‘For a drink.’
‘Dan…’
Marchant ignored her and moved towards the runner again, pulling up alongside. The man was clearly in trouble. Sweat was pouring off him as his head bobbed like a donkey’s.
‘Hot one,’ Marchant said. The man glanced at him nervously and looked ahead again, wiping his thick eyebrows with the back of his hand. ‘Did you see that last drinks station?’ Marchant continued. ‘Crazy. Shouldn’t have to queue for water, not on a day like this.’ Marchant smiled at the man, nodding towards his belt. Inside, his stomach turned. He was right. ‘Couldn’t have one of yours, could I?’
‘Who are you?’ the man said aggressively. His accent was thick, from India: another cell from the subcontinent. Marchant knew immediately there would be consequences, for him, for his father, but they would have to wait.
‘No problem. Any idea who that is?’ Marchant gestured at the US Ambassador. ‘Brought his own fan club with him.’
‘Please, stay away,’ the man said.
The two of them ran on in silence. Marchant’s mind was racing. Post 7/7, it was bulky clothing that had attracted attention. Here was a man wearing explosives on the outside, and it was so bloody bold no one had noticed. The pouches must be wired together inside the belt, he thought. But if the man was a running bomb, why hadn’t he blown himself up by now? Why was he warning him to stay away? And if his target was the Ambassador, he could easily have bunched in close to him and his babysitters and taken them all out before now.
He remembered the last suicide bomber he had seen, in Mogadishu. They had been talking in the marketplace, making nervous progress. Then a phone rang. Twice. Marchant had run for his life. The man’s head was found on the corrugated-iron roof of a nearby café. The bomber hadn’t wanted to die, Marchant was sure of that. Afterwards, in the British Embassy bar, as his hand shook the Johnnie Walker out of his glass, he kept telling himself, over and over, that the bomber had not wanted to die. It had made it easier to understand. The handler knew it too, which is why he had detonated the bomb himself.
This time, he had to keep his man talking, establish the method of detonation, hope the mobile networks would be too busy for a phone call from a third party. Like the bomber in Mogadishu, this man was also not a volunteer. He had been forced to wear the belt. It was happening more and more these days: genuine suicide bombers were becoming hard to find. Trust your gut feeling, his father had said.
‘That watch you’ve got there,’ Marchant said. ‘GPS?’
‘Sat-Runner,’ the man replied. Better, Marchant thought, much better; a gear and gadgets man.
‘Useful piece of kit.’
The man nodded. Then the GPS beeped. Both of them looked at it. ‘Please, you must go,’ the man said to Marchant. They weren’t the words of a suicide bomber hoping to take as many people with him as he could.
‘Why’s it beeping?’ Marchant asked, recalculating the risk to himself, to others. His lungs tightened, making words difficult. ‘Does it do that when you slow down, when your pace drops?’ he asked, trying to remember how Leila had explained it, cursing himself for not showing more interest at the time.
The man nodded. He had been coerced into this, Marchant repeated to himself, which meant that he could be talked out of it.
‘Then what?’ Marchant glanced down at the belt again.
‘Can you help me?’ They looked at each other for a moment, gauging the fear in each other’s eyes.
‘I can try. What’s your name?’
‘Pradeep.’
‘Keep it going, Pradeep. You’re doing fine. Just fine. Don’t go anywhere. I’m coming straight back.’
Pradeep glanced over his shoulder, stumbling again, as Marchant dropped back down the field to search for Leila, but he couldn’t see her in the crowd. How much faster than her had he been running? He slowed up some more, looking at everyone who overtook him. He shouldn’t have left her, he knew that now. There were too many people, too much noise.
Above him the helicopters circled low again, drowning out the jazz band playing on the roof of a pub. Children by the roadside cheered, holding out bags of sweets. Stout women from St John’s Ambulance were offering outstretched hands of Vaseline. And then he spotted her, over on the far side of the road, hidden behind a small group of club runners. He cut across the flow of people to join her, almost tripping on the heels of another runner. His legs were tiring, more than they should have been at this stage of the race. He was desperate for more water, too.
‘Leila, we’ve got a problem,’ he said, short of breath. ‘A big problem.’
‘Where have you been? I couldn’t see you anywhere.’
In between swigs from her drinking bottle, he told her about the GPS, and how he thought it was linked in some way to the pouches around Pradeep’s waist, which he was now convinced contained explosives–enough to kill dozens of people if he was in a tightly bunched group. He knew how he sounded: a has-been desperate to prove himself in the field.
‘My guess is, if he drops below a certain pace, the isotonics will blow,’ he added.
‘Daniel…’
Leila’s face told him she was struggling to comprehend the situation, trying to decide whether his reading of it was deluded or credible. She was momentarily tearful.
‘You’ve got to leave this to others,’ she pleaded. ‘You must. You’re no longer…I need to make a call,’ she said, removing her mobile phone from a pocket at the back of her running shorts.
‘You won’t get a signal,’ Marchant said, glancing at the phone. With its stubby, inch-long aerial, the unit looked very familiar.
She held the phone in front of her, tripping and grabbing at Marchant’s arm for support.
‘Who are you ringing? MI5? The networks will be congested,’ he said. ‘Too many people.’
She looked at him again, her face suddenly professional, drained of all emotion, and then she dialled.
‘It’s a TETRA handset,’ she said coldly. The secure encrypted digital network used by the emergency and security services was one of the perks Marchant missed. ‘They’re not answering. Daniel, please. This is not your responsibility, not mine. If what you say is true, it’s one for MI5, Anti-Terrorism Command. We must leave it to them.’
Marchant looked at the road ahead, and reckoned he knew where the runner was, give or take a few hundred people. ‘I’ve got him talking. He doesn’t want to go through with it.’
Leila hesitated, weighing up the options. Had she conceded he might have a role to play? She looked at him again, swallowing hard.
‘OK. If you take my phone, I’ll drop out, find a phonebox and tell Five about the situation. Once the networks have been knocked out, I’ll give you a call on TETRA.’
Marchant was thinking fast now, like he used to in the field. The head of station in Nairobi had once predicted that a glittering career stretched ahead of him; he might even follow his father to the top if he quit the whisky and womanising. Next time they met, Marchant was suspended and burying his father.
‘Alert MI5. I’ll stay with him,’ he said, trying not to think about the funeral in the Cotswold frost, how they had treated his father. ‘My guess is we can’t pull him off the course, even if he keeps running. Deviating from waypoints could trigger the belt too.’
‘Daniel, you shouldn’t be doing this.’
‘I know.’ He also knew there weren’t many alternatives. If they both stopped, it would be almost impossible to find the bomber again. ‘I could tell the Americans. The Ambassador’s got company, and I think they’re wired.’ Leila glanced at him for a moment. They were both reluctant to involve the Secret Service, who didn’t always play by the same rules as everyone else. ‘The Ambassador is the target here?’ he asked.
‘He must be.’
Marchant had missed the adrenalin, but it was draining his energy, too. Lactic acid was building in his legs, weighing them down like lead.
‘Here,’ Leila said, holding out the phone. Their eyes met.
‘No blues and twos, nothing to alert him, OK?’ he said, taking the handset. He was increasingly short of breath. ‘Someone else might have their finger on the button. It’s happened to me once before.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Keep your distance from him.’
‘Who gave you this?’ he asked, looking at the handset again. It was a Motorola MTH800. ‘Just like my old one.’
‘Services. Mine was knackered. If you don’t hear from me in fifteen minutes, try calling the office.’ She paused. ‘Speed-dial 1. They’ll find me.’
Marchant glanced back at Leila as she pulled up on the side of the road, feigning a hamstring injury. She looked up at him, and for a moment he wondered if she might never make the call, leaving him to run on in his imaginary world of bombers and belts.
He knew she had tried to walk away from what they had together–God, how they had both tried–but each time one of them had relented. It wasn’t like him at all. For the first time in his life, a woman had got under his skin. Now they might be at the heart of a major security incident, and his involvement wouldn’t do her career any favours. Suspicion still hung over the Marchant family like a poisoned fog.
She gave a small wave and disappeared in the sea of runners.
2
It took ten minutes for Marchant to find Pradeep again. His head was bowed, his feet scuffing the road, running like a drunken tramp. The American Ambassador was in the group immediately ahead of him, still with company. He was moving strongly, chest out, no signs of tiredness. Worryingly, the field seemed to be tightly bunched around Pradeep, not as spread out as it was further back. And then Marchant saw the reason why: up ahead, just beyond the Ambassador, was an official pacemaker, running with a sign above him: eight minutes a mile. Stick with him and the marathon was yours for three hours thirty minutes. Marchant looked at Pradeep again, and feared that he didn’t have long, maybe ten minutes at most.
‘Pradeep? It’s me. You’re doing great.’
‘It’s too late.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m so tired, too weak.’
‘Do you want to stop, take a rest?’ Marchant said, bluffing. One final check, just to reassure himself about the GPS.
Pradeep’s glance at his belt gave him his answer. He was right.
‘How about we keep running, but turn off the course, up here, say, right at the pub?’
Pradeep shook his head.
‘Is the marathon route programmed into your GPS, your Sat-Runner?’ Marchant asked. That was something else his father had told him, shortly after he’d joined the Service: never ask a question you don’t know the answer to.
Pradeep didn’t respond. He was really struggling now, continually losing his footing. Marchant looked at his frame, lean and sinewy, and thought that in other circumstances he would be a natural marathon runner. No doubt that was why he had been chosen. But the mental pressure on Pradeep was sapping every ounce of his energy. Marchant could feel them slowing moments before the GPS beeped.
‘Come on, Pradeep, we’re going to get through this,’ Marchant said, trying to pick up the pace again. They had to keep running until Leila rang. She would have an answer.
‘Two beeps and we’re gone,’ Pradeep replied, suddenly grinning, almost laughing. Marchant realised Pradeep was losing control. ‘You don’t understand, my friend,’ he continued. ‘The American. I can’t leave him.’
‘The Ambassador?’
Marchant looked up at Turner Munroe, who was five yards in front of him. The Ambassador checked his watch, and for the first time Marchant noticed that its bulky design was identical to Pradeep’s.
‘Eight minutes a mile. He always runs the same,’ said Pradeep, suddenly sounding like a trainer admiring one of his charges.
‘Three hours thirty,’ Marchant said. ‘He’s running a 3.30.’
‘One hour forty.’
‘What?’
‘He reaches Tower Bridge after one hour forty minutes.’
‘And?’
Pradeep smiled again, tears welling now. They had been running for one hour thirty minutes. Marchant desperately wanted Leila to ring, more than when they had first tried to split up, more than after their first date at the Fort, MI6’s training centre in Gosport. He looked at the phone in his hand and saw that the commercial networks had been knocked out. Should he try ringing her? The office would be surprised to hear his voice, but she would have told them and they would patch him through to wherever she was. He lifted his head, looked around, and for a moment he thought he saw his father running ahead of him, trundling along at a surprising speed for his age.
He blinked, wiping the sweat away from his eyes, and looked again at the handset. He had to stay on top of this: Pradeep was wearing a belt of explosives linked in some way to the GPS receiver on his wrist. He seemed to be an unwilling participant, rather than a suicide bomber. If he slowed down, the explosives would detonate: ditto if he took any deviation from the marathon course, the waypoints for which had been entered into his GPS. And for some reason it seemed that Pradeep had to stay close to the Ambassador, possibly because of a similar GPS receiver on his wrist.
Suddenly Leila’s TETRA phone was vibrating in his hand. A couple of runners ahead of him glanced around at the sound of the loud ringtone.
‘Leila?’ he said, hearing the panic rise in his own voice. He had to remain calm.
‘Did you try ringing me?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Don’t, OK?’ she insisted. ‘Please. Just don’t. There’s some sort of problem with TETRA. Are you still with him?’
‘Yes.’ Marchant glanced across at Pradeep, managed a smile, then pulled back a few yards, out of earshot.
‘Listen very carefully,’ Leila was saying. ‘I’m on the grid at Thames House. MI5 picked up someone in Greenwich and have been sweating him all morning. You’ve got to get the GPS off the Ambassador’s wrist.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s just like you said. The Asian guy’s GPS receiver is linked to his belt using Bluetooth. Only we think the belt can be triggered by Munroe’s GPS too.’
‘If Munroe drops off the pace as well, you mean,’ Marchant said.
‘Yes.’ Marchant thought of Pradeep’s words, how he said he couldn’t leave the Ambassador. ‘And maybe if the link between the two GPSs is broken, if they’re separated,’ Leila added. ‘Technical’s working on the permutations now.’
Marchant could hear other people in the background. He imagined the scene at Thames House, MI5’s headquarters, as news of the situation spread and increasingly senior people arrived, duty officer giving way to Harriet Armstrong, MI5’s Director General, who had helped to hound his father out of office. Leila would be consulted less and less, particularly once his own involvement had become clear. It was a nightmare for MI5: having to rely on someone from MI6, and a discredited case officer, too. It would confirm their worst suspicions about their rivals south of the river. And then the US Secret Service would try to take over, reigniting old turf wars.
‘What about the Americans?’ Marchant asked. ‘Are they running the show now?’
‘Not yet. They wanted to lift Munroe and for us to escort the bomber down a side road, away from the crowds, but the risk of collaterals is too high. We don’t know how quickly the belt might be triggered by removing Munroe.’
‘So I get to wear the Ambassador’s GPS, then what?’
Leila paused. ‘You both keep running while Cheltenham tries to intercept the satellite signals.’
‘Tries?’
‘They’re keen to pull you out, Daniel, put someone else in.’
‘I bet they are.’
‘But it’s going to take time, and we haven’t got any.’
‘Pradeep’s knackered.’
‘I know. We’ve got a feed from the BBC helicopter above you now.’
Marchant had forgotten about it, hovering high above him. So Armstrong could see them, he thought. He could never forgive what she and others in MI5 had done to his father. Stephen Marchant was a man who had lived and breathed for the Service, only to be accused, at the pinnacle of his career, of the very thing he had always despised in others. Some people died of a broken heart; his father had died of shame, within weeks of being forced to retire as Chief. There was nothing more important to his father than loyalty. Even the best assets he had recruited, the ones who made his reputation in Delhi, Moscow, Washington, Paris, had filled him with a deep loathing for mankind and its willingness to betray.
‘Don’t Munroe’s babysitters have a radio link?’ Marchant asked. Things might become easier for him and Leila after this; the family’s reputation might be restored; he might get his old job back.
‘They’re linked to each other,’ Leila replied, ‘not to the outside world.’
‘That figures. Is there a code for this yet? Something to reassure the Ambassador I’m not from Albania when I relieve him of his watch.’
‘Tell them it’s a Defcon Five. Try “Operation Kratos” if that doesn’t work. Once you’ve got the GPS, persuade Munroe to leave the course as soon as possible. He must be out of there before Tower Bridge.’
‘What is it with the bridge?’ Marchant asked, remembering Pradeep’s words.
‘It’s where the biggest crowds are, apart from the finish. We’re trying to clear the area now. Bomb disposal are on the way. We’ve got blues assembling in all the back streets, from you to Tower Bridge.’
The line suddenly dropped. There was not much more to say. Marchant moved up to join Pradeep again.
He had some jelly beans on board for the final few miles, but he decided to pull the bag out from his pocket now and offer them to Pradeep, who visibly rallied at the sight of them.
‘Beats the gels,’ Marchant said, taking a couple himself after Pradeep had grabbed a desperate handful. ‘I’m going to talk to the Ambassador, then I’m coming back,’ Marchant said. ‘It’s going to be OK. I promise. Sab theek ho jayega, Pradeep. Everything’s going to be fine.’
Marchant hoped his rusty Hindi had reassured Pradeep as he moved up towards the Ambassador. He knew a bit about Turner Munroe, who had arrived in London six months ago. He was a hawk, best known for his outspoken views on Iran, where he favoured regime change by military intervention. And he had fought in the first Gulf War, serving with distinction. Marchant now knew that he was also a fitness fanatic, who liked to run with an iPod.
Experience had taught Marchant to stick to protocol when dealing with the Americans (it reduced the chances of being shot), so he approached the Ambassador’s outriders first. When he explained that they were in the midst of a critical, Defcon Five incident, they asked him for some ID, as Marchant knew they would. They finally agreed to let him approach the Ambassador when he name-checked one of his old CIA contacts who was still based in London, but only after they had briefed their boss.
‘How you doing?’ Munroe asked, taking an earpiece out of his right ear. Marchant swore he was listening to Bruce Springsteen. ‘Tell me you’re kidding about the Defcon Five.’
‘No, sir, I’m afraid it’s true,’ Marchant said, knowing Munroe would appreciate the ‘sir’.
‘You realise I’ve never run a 3.30 before? Boston: 3.35.10, Chicago: 3.32.20. Right now I’m heading for 3.29.30, and you’re telling me to quit?’
‘You might never be able to run again if you hang around here,’ Marchant said.
‘Is that so?’ Munroe said sarcastically. Marchant glanced at one of the sweating Security Service officers, who was nodding towards the side of the road.
‘Sir, we need to break off,’ the officer said, moving alongside the Ambassador. At the same time, his colleague closed in on the far side.
‘But first I need your Sat-Runner,’ Marchant said.
‘Am I being mugged here?’ Munroe said. ‘That’s what it feels like. Mugged on the London Marathon. Can you believe it?’
‘I really need the GPS,’ Marchant said, as the Ambassador’s babysitters began to ease him across the road. ‘And please don’t slow down.’
Munroe looked at him as he undid the strap and handed the receiver over. ‘3.29.30. A PB was on the cards here, never mind the heat. Somebody’s going to pay for this.’
He watched as Munroe was almost lifted to the kerb, where he stopped, reluctantly. Then Marchant strapped the GPS to his own wrist. Pradeep was now ahead of them, glancing anxiously over his shoulder.
‘We’re in this together now,’ Marchant said, coming up on Pradeep’s shoulder and showing him his wrist.
3
Paul Myers was unpicking encrypted emails and eating his fourth Snickers of the day when he took Leila’s call. He’d always liked her, ever since she had attended his course on jihadi chatrooms and had asked the first question, filling the awkward silence that always followed his introductory talks. All MI6’s new recruits were invited up to GCHQ in Cheltenham for a week, to give them a break from training at the Fort, and, Myers thought, to show them where the real work was done.
Paul had liked Leila’s boyfriend, too, though only begrudgingly at first. On the surface, Daniel Marchant had seemed to be the archetypal obnoxious MI6 man: Oxbridge, well travelled, smooth-talking, handsome and good at games–everything Myers wasn’t. But then he read his file and learnt about the dark stuff–the benders, the brawls, the twin brother who was killed when he was eight in a car crash in Delhi, the mother who never recovered, dying a depressive–and began to warm to him. Everyone in life was struggling to keep it together, he thought. According to Leila, Marchant had never got over losing his brother, and had been drinking himself slowly to death until he stumbled out of journalism and into the Service. It must have been like coming home, what with his old man running the show.
They might have been friends sooner if Paul hadn’t somehow convinced himself that Leila carried a torch for him, despite the obvious chemistry between her and Marchant. He knew it was insane, an attractive case officer like her falling for a short-sighted, overweight desk analyst, and common sense soon prevailed, but those early feelings for her had stayed with him. Now she was on the phone, breathless and posing one of the most interesting questions he had been asked in months: could he screw up the Americans’ GPS network for a few minutes?
Given the history of the navigation system, and in particular the US military’s policy of ‘selective availability’ in the 1990s, when they degraded the signal’s accuracy for everyone else, Myers relished the opportunity. Bring on Galileo, he thought, Europe’s own network of navigation satellites. The sooner Britain could wean itself off its dependency on GPS, the better.
‘Do you think you can do it?’ Leila asked, knowing that the challenge would appeal. Myers had been at the heart of a recent exercise in the West Country, when the entire network was jammed to thwart a simulated attack by an Iranian missile flying into British airspace on GPS. Car Tom-Toms went haywire, and the papers were full of stories the next day of lorries stuck in narrow country lanes.
‘Technically it’s possible,’ Myers said, warming to his theme. ‘Each of the thirty GPS satellites has its own atomic clock–well, four clocks actually. 2nd Space Operations Squadron in Colorado Springs sends out a navigational update once a day to make sure they’re all telling the same time–’
‘Paul, we don’t have long.’
‘Sure. We’ll get on to 2 SOPS now, find out which four satellites this guy is linked in to, and see if they can accelerate those particular clocks.’
‘Will that help?’
‘It’ll trick the receiver into thinking it’s travelling faster across the surface of the earth than it really is. The Americans aren’t going to like it, but I guess if we tell them their Ambassador is the target…How long do you need?’
‘The Bomb Squad want ten minutes.’
‘Two, maximum.’
‘Two?’
‘We’d have some serious shipping incidents in the Channel if those clocks are out for too long. I don’t even want to think about the main approach to Heathrow. How’s Daniel these days, by the way?’
Myers was aware that Marchant was persona non grata in the Service, but he had always liked his father, and had been upset by the manner of the Chief’s departure and the subsequent news of his death. It had left Marchant an orphan, which struck a chord with Myers. He was adopted, and had always assumed his own parents were dead.
‘Actually, he’s running alongside the guy with the belt.’ Leila had not intended to tell him, but she needed to focus his mind.
‘Daniel?’ The line went silent for a moment. ‘Christ, what’s he doing there? I thought he was suspended.’
‘Not now, Paul.’
‘Sure.’ Paul had changed up a gear. ‘2 SOPS are on the other line. I’ll patch them through.’
Marchant listened carefully as Leila talked him through what he had to do next. Her voice sounded different, faltering, lacking her usual confidence. Tower Bridge had been cleared of all crowds, she said. Half a mile ahead of him, at the twelve-mile point, there was about to be a roadblock, organised by plain-clothed police officers wearing race marshal tops. As he approached they would fan out across the road, using megaphones to order the runners to stop for safety reasons because of the intense heat. It would be the first time the London Marathon had been stopped, but the measure was not unheard of. (The Rotterdam Marathon had been abandoned in 2007 because of soaring temperatures.) In other words, there was an outside chance that the roadblock wouldn’t arouse the suspicion of Pradeep’s handler, should he be watching.
‘Are you all right?’ Marchant asked, after another hesitation from Leila.
‘Of course I’m bloody not,’ she said.
Marchant passed on the basic details of the plan, along with some more jelly beans, to Pradeep, who seemed to grow stronger at the news. The police would delay their intervention as long as possible, to avoid a crowd building up in front of them and slowing their pace. However, they should stick to the right of the road, as close as possible to the pavement, where a channel would be formed to let them pass through. To avoid being mistakenly challenged, Marchant was to call out that he was a doctor and must be allowed to pass.
‘Have you got all that?’ Leila asked.
‘What happens when we’re through the block?’ Marchant replied. His mother had always wanted a doctor in the family.
‘As you near Tower Bridge, the Americans are going to tweak the clocks on four GPS satellites orbiting 12,000 miles above you. When I give the word, you and Pradeep should gradually slow down to a walking pace. The Bomb Squad will join you and disable the belt as quickly as they can.’
‘How long have they got?’
‘Two minutes from the moment you start to slow.’
Marchant didn’t say anything for a few seconds. For the first time, he realised that his chances of survival were slim. Somehow he had assumed that everything would work out, but now he sensed that he might never see Leila again. She had already realised that. His life normally felt fairer in these moments of acute danger. Ever since that dark day in Delhi, he had been burdened with guilt: why had his brother been killed, while he walked away from the crash unscathed? When the odds were stacked against him, the weight briefly lifted: intense relief replaced the fear. The greater the danger, the closer he felt to Sebastian, the more able to look him in the eye.
But that wasn’t the case now. There was no frisson of higher justice or fateful euphoria. His body just felt more tired than it had ever felt in his entire life, even more than when they had found him drunk in Nairobi, face down in the gutter, his last night as a journalist.
‘Are you still there?’ Leila said.
‘I’m here.’ Another pause. He checked on Pradeep, who looked as if he had fallen into some sort of trance, eyes staring straight ahead, unaware of the outside world. But he was still running, that was all that mattered. ‘They’ve let you keep the mike then,’ Marchant continued.
‘Yes. In the circumstances, it was felt to be the best option.’
Drop the formal tone, he thought, but he knew she couldn’t; all the agencies would have live feeds by now: Thames House, Cheltenham, Langley.
Marchant imagined an aerial view of himself, as if taken from one of the satellites far above South London. He could picture the runners, tiny figures moving along toy streets, begin to bunch up in front of the police, who had appeared from nowhere. Zooming in on the scene, he could tell at once that there was no way through. Fifty yards out, he heard himself shouting at the top of his voice that he was a doctor. But no one else heard him. What was wrong with his voice? It sounded so faint, lost in the hubbub of the crowds, who were now jeering, protesting at the race being stopped. He shouted again, but his voice was too weak, barely audible above the sound of his own breathing, the megaphones, the helicopter above them. Pradeep looked at him in desperation as they began to slow down. And then Pradeep’s receiver beeped.
‘Leila, Leila, there’s no fucking way through!’ Marchant shouted into the phone. His hands were wet with sweat and he gripped the receiver tightly as he ran, like a relay baton. He could hear her talking urgently to other people in the background. ‘Jesus, Leila, we’re slowing down with five hundred people backing up in front of us.’
‘Head left, head left!’ a voice was suddenly saying. It wasn’t Leila’s. Left? For a moment, all Marchant could think of was the blue tartan shoes he had as a child, ‘L’ and ‘R’ embroidered in red on the toes. Then Pradeep pointed ahead of them at a marshal who was beckoning frantically. He was trying to direct them over to the far side of the crowd, where marshals were pushing runners back, making a channel.
Marchant couldn’t dredge up another word, let alone shout that he was a doctor, but in the end there was no need. They were suddenly through the roadblock, running on their own, the din of the crowd receding fast behind them. The marathon behemoth had spat them free.
Eight hundred yards ahead lay Tower Bridge, flags flying, eerily deserted. Marchant managed a faint smile, but not for long. Up until the roadblock, Pradeep’s mission would still have had the appearance of viability to any observer. Now, as the two of them ran on alone up the empty road, the suicide operation was blown. All Marchant could hope for was that Pradeep’s handler, if he had one out there, would wait until the iconic setting of Tower Bridge to cut his losses. The Ambassador wouldn’t die, there would be no ‘Carnage at the London Marathon’ headlines, but a suicide bombing at one of the capital’s most famous landmarks would still be worth something.
‘Leila?’ Marchant asked, still short of breath, struggling to grip the phone.
‘We copy you,’ an American man’s voice said.
‘Where’s Leila?’ he shouted. ‘Put Leila back on the line, do you hear?’
‘It’s OK, Daniel,’ a voice said. ‘She’s still here. We just patched you through directly to Colorado Springs. You’re now talking to me, Harriet Armstrong, in London.’
The bitch, he thought, but he said nothing. He was too tired.
‘They’re going to slow you down in a couple of minutes,’ Armstrong continued. ‘We’ve got two from the Bomb Squad waiting on the north side of the bridge. As soon as you’re walking, they’ll move in. Try to get more out of Pradeep. Cell names, contacts, who’s running him, anything. We’ll call you back in two minutes.’
It felt strange to run the London Marathon through deserted streets. He had always liked empty spaces, big yawning skies, mountains, the open sea. In cities he felt trapped, but he could live here if it was always like this. He suddenly thought of the Thar Desert, trudging over sand dunes with Sebastian on a camel beside him, their parents up ahead, smiling back at them.
As far as Marchant could tell, the police had cleared a corridor a hundred yards either side of the route. For a moment, he imagined that he was leading the field with Pradeep, having broken away from the leading pack in a ruthless final kick for home. Then his legs reminded him how tired he felt.
‘Where are you from, Pradeep?’ he asked. ‘Which part of India?’
‘How do you know I’m from India?’
‘I used to live there.’
‘Which place?’
‘Delhi. Chanakyapuri.’
‘Very nice,’ Pradeep said, moving his head from side to side, managing a faint smile. Talk of home seemed to give him strength.
‘All I remember is the yellow blossom of the laburnum trees. I was very young.’
For a few seconds their steps were synchronised, rising and falling together. They both noticed it, momentarily entranced. ‘Are we going to die?’ Pradeep asked.
‘No. We’re not.’
‘My home place is Kochi.’
‘Kerala?’
‘My wife, she is also from there. We have one son, living with us in Delhi. They will kill him if I don’t do this today.’
‘Who’s “they”?’
Pradeep didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled out a small photo from a pouch at the front of the belt and showed it to Marchant.
Marchant looked at the young face that smiled back at him. This hadn’t been a part of his calculations. Pradeep might have been a reluctant bomber, but he now had a motive to see it through. His heart sank. Pradeep had missed his target, the Ambassador, but he could still honour his word by blowing himself up at Tower Bridge to save his son. Marchant glanced at his watch: one hour thirty-nine minutes.
‘But you don’t want to go through with this, do you?’ he asked. ‘You don’t want to die.’ Before Pradeep could answer, Marchant’s phone started to ring. It was Colorado Springs.
Again, Marchant imagined himself from high above, the bridge looking even more like a child’s model than it did from the ground. He listened to the young American on the phone, calm and authoritative, talking to him, to Armstrong, to someone else. And then, at last, it was time to slow down.
‘If the GPS makes any sound at all, increase your speed immediately, do you copy that?’ the American asked.
‘Copy that.’
‘Now take it down slowly, sir. Your window is open. Two minutes and counting.’
Marchant looked at Pradeep, suddenly unsure of his cooperation. For so long he had wanted him to keep on running; now he was praying he would slow down. But Pradeep’s pace remained constant, his eyes looking straight ahead. If anything, he was growing stronger. He was hanging on until they reached the bridge.
‘Remember, you’ve got time to speed up again if the GPS doesn’t like it,’ the American said. ‘Ease it down now. One minute forty-five and counting.’
Marchant moved closer to Pradeep and grabbed his arm. ‘It’s OK, we can slow down. We can stop. We’ve done it.’ They were at the edge of the bridge, approaching the first tower, still not slowing. Marchant knew that tears were mixing with Pradeep’s sweat as he tried to struggle on, for his young son, to the middle of the bridge. But his legs were beginning to buckle, first one, then the other, and soon he was in Marchant’s arms, sobbing, as they slowed to a walking pace. Marchant glanced at his receiver to check their speed: it still said that they were running at eight minutes per mile.
Marchant never established the exact order of what happened next. He remembered two bomb disposal officers, weighed down with protective khaki clothing, running across from the far side of the bridge, shouting at him to remain where he was. And he later learnt that at the same time, somewhere in the skies above Heathrow, two passenger planes started their final approaches sooner than they should have, setting themselves on a collision course that was only averted by an extra-vigilant air traffic controller.
The double-tap gunshot that rang out on the bridge, jerking Pradeep’s head back, must have been fired just before the bomb disposal squad reached them. Marchant remembered holding Pradeep’s limp body for a second and then slumping down with him to the tarmac. The two dum-dum bullets had spread out inside Pradeep’s skull, rather than passing through it. The back of his head felt like moist moss.
The belt was cut free and disarmed in the subsequent blur, but as Marchant was led away in a cacophony of sirens, all he could recall thinking about was Pradeep’s son, and whether he would now be allowed to live.
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