Dirty Little Secret (30 page)

‘I’m not sure he would have brought her in if he had shot her,’ Munroe said.

‘Do we know where he went afterwards?’

‘Unfortunately, CCTV outside the hospital wasn’t working.’

‘There’s a surprise. What do you expect from the French?’

‘Someone else came to ask about Miss Meena an hour later.’

Munroe passed over another photo. It was of a well-built man talking to a duty nurse.

‘Who is he?’ Spiro asked.

‘DGSE, apparently. According to Harriet Armstrong, her officers followed the same man around London earlier this week. He was tailing Ian Denton.’

‘Denton?’

‘New intelligence chiefs always attract a bit of attention, even from so-called friendly nations.’

‘France isn’t friendly. And the DGSE are fucktards. Before Meena died, she rang me. Said Marchant was lying low with a DGSE officer.’

‘Could it have been this man?’ Munroe asked, nodding at the photo in Spiro’s hand.

Spiro didn’t answer. If it was, what the hell was he doing in London following Denton?

‘Can I give you some advice, Jim? We haven’t always seen eye to eye, but I don’t like watching anyone go down, particularly a fellow American. Don’t get too close to Denton.’

‘Is there something I should know?’

But before Munroe could answer, Spiro’s mobile phone rang. It was his wife.

Salim Dhar was feeling stronger by the hour. A combination of heavy steroids and antihistamines had reduced the swelling on his body to a faint rash. His face still felt bloated, but every time he checked in the mirror of his medical room he was surprised to see that his cheeks were no more than a little puffy. His only concern was the moments of dizziness, when he felt unsteady on his feet.

Ali Mousavi was talking on his phone outside in the corridor. For someone normally so calm and measured, he was unusually agitated. Iran had been goading the West all year with its nuclear programme, he had explained, and now Israel and America were on the point of losing patience. Earlier in the day, a second US Carrier Strike Group had entered the Strait of Hormuz, off the coast of Iran, a development that seemed to have lit a fire in Mousavi’s eyes.

‘I am so sorry, Salim,’ he said now, as he stepped back inside the hospital room. ‘
Inshallah
, the day is drawing closer when we will give America more than a punch in the mouth.’

‘We?’

‘You. With more than a little help from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. I must show you something.’

Mousavi inserted a DVD into the player below the TV screen. He then came over and stood next to Dhar’s bed, operating the DVD with a remote. Moments later, they were watching a flotilla of fast-attack inshore craft surge across a stretch of the Strait of Hormuz. The commentary was in Farsi, but there were English subtitles. From what Dhar could tell, the footage was from a recent Revolutionary Guard exercise entitled ‘Great Prophet Muhammed Six War Games’. A stream of missiles and rockets streaked across the sky, fired from launchers mounted on the boats. When the drama was over, smoke pouring from a forlorn target vessel in the distance, Mousavi turned to Dhar.

‘Impressive, no? The exercise was in April. You might have seen clips on the news, or maybe YouTube. We put them up there to scare the West.’

Mousavi smiled. Dhar thought back to their meeting when he had come to see him in Russia about a possible operation. He hadn’t gone into details, but had hinted at a waterborne attack on America.

‘Our navy is strong, but no match for that of the United States. The only chance to strike at the enemy is with these asymmetric swarm attacks. However many weapons systems their ships may have, what can they do if fifty – maybe a hundred – small boats speed towards them, firing missiles and torpedoes as they go. Their helicopters will take out most of them, but not all. And it only requires one, just one, to get through.’

‘Is this what you have brought me here for?’ Dhar asked.

‘Let’s talk later. It’s important you rest.’

Dhar didn’t like Mousavi’s evasiveness. In the past, he had always controlled his own operations, down to the smallest detail. He had never been answerable to others. The Russians had let him plan the attack on Fairford, happy to provide the hardware and then stand back. The same had been true in Delhi. Iran had sourced the sniper rifle and done little else. It was how he operated. But things were different this time, a sense of impotence hanging over him. Dhar knew he was indebted to Iran for his freedom, but he preferred to be in control of his own fate.

‘Where am I?’ he asked.

‘Is the swaying not a clue?’

Mousavi pretended he was about to fall over, then steadied himself like an unfunny clown.

‘I thought that was my medication. Are we on a boat?’

‘Not quite. An oil platform. The Revolutionary Guard has naval bases on islands such as Abu Musa, Larak and Qeshm, as well as at the Abadan oil terminal. But our most secure one is right here, in the middle of the Persian Gulf. Nobody knows about it. The Americans think we are drilling for oil.’

Dhar was relieved to know that the cause of his unsteadiness lay outside his body. The last time he had been at sea was after he had ejected from the SU-25 and been picked up by the Russian trawler. That seemed a long time ago now.

‘It is earlier than we planned, but the Americans have forced our hand,’ Mousavi said. ‘There is a chance for personal greatness in the coming week, an opportunity to alter the geopolitical landscape in the manner of 9/11. These propaganda videos are all very well, but the boats are old Swedish Boghammars from the 1980s, or poor imitations from North Korea and China. They look good on YouTube, but then they sink. They are rubbish, cheap children’s toys. Half of them are on the seabed since this film was made. We need new boats.’

Like a businessman making a PowerPoint presentation, Mousavi clicked on the remote again. Another expanse of water appeared on the screen. It wasn’t the Strait of Hormuz this time, and there was nothing military about the commentary, which was in English. A sleek, ice-blue powerboat was travelling fast around the southern coast of Britain, the white cliffs of Dover visible in the background.

‘It’s called the
Bradstone Challenger
,’ Mousavi said. ‘A fifty-one-foot long Bladerunner. Top speed is 72 knots – that’s more than 80mph. It circumnavigated the UK in twenty-seven hours and ten minutes, averaging 53 knots, including fuel breaks. A record that still stands. This boat doesn’t go over waves, she cuts through them.’

‘And you want one?’ Dhar asked. The side of him that had thrilled to the fighter jet enjoyed watching the boat as it powered up the English Channel. He had always enjoyed speed, ever since his gaming days at the training camps in Kashmir, where young
jihadis
had whiled away their downtime on counterfeit Xboxes run off car batteries.

‘One? I would like fifty. Sadly, this is a sports model, and only two were ever made, by a British company, with help from a US defence contractor. But one is up for sale, and if we buy it we will reverse-engineer fifty copies. As you can see, it remains stable in rough water, even at high speeds. It doesn’t bounce up and down like our current boats, making it a perfect firing platform.’

‘Why can’t you buy it?’

‘We’re trying, but there’s a hitch. The US Commerce Department’s Office of Export Enforcement’ – he almost spat out the words – ‘has discovered our intentions and is attempting to block the sale. The boat is currently in Karachi. We thought the deal had been concluded in Durban, but delivery has been held up. It is on board an Iranian vessel under a Hong Kong flag. When it docked at Karachi, the Pakistanis said there was something wrong with the paperwork – the Americans had obviously put pressure on them.’

Mousavi paused, watching the Bladerunner scythe through the waves. Then he turned to Dhar. ‘We need someone on the ground in Karachi who can sort it, a Westerner. Someone who can convince Pakistan that the end user is a godless playboy in the Gulf, and not the Revolutionary Guard.’

‘Our British friend?’

Mousavi nodded. Both sides were still treading carefully around the subject of Daniel Marchant, unsure how much to reveal. Earlier, Dhar had confirmed that Marchant must have been the one who was instrumental in delaying the GCHQ intercept, explaining that he had long been waging his own secret war against America.

‘But are you sure you can trust him?’ Dhar asked. It was still a big leap for the Iranians to make. Until recently, Marchant had worked for the foreign intelligence service of the Old Fox, Iran’s historic enemy.

‘You do.’

‘He’s my half-brother.’

‘Without his help, we might not have got you out of Bagram.’

‘But he’s British.’

‘And not welcome at home. I gather he’s wanted by MI6 as well as the CIA. And not for the first time.’

‘Just like his father – my father – Marchant’s quarrel is with America. He still loves his own country.’

‘We have many quarrels with the British, but today our fight is with the US. Will he help us?’

‘If he thinks he’s doing it for me – and acting against America.’

‘Then we must bring him to you.’

Marchant slipped the internet-café owner five hundred dhirams and sat down in front of the computer. He had looked at four cafés before choosing this one. It was in a quiet street off rue Sidi Mohamed ben Abdullah, where he was staying, and had a small booth at the back for private use. The owner was also happy to close for twenty minutes. It was just before 9 a.m., and trade was always slow in the morning.

Marchant didn’t want to dwell on what the booth was used for. Watching hardcore porn downloads, he guessed, or explicit live webcams. All he knew was that it suited his purposes. The computer had a working camera mounted above it, and the background behind him – a pale blue wall – was anonymous.

According to Armstrong, COBRA would be reconvening in five minutes. It had been sitting on and off ever since the terrorist strikes began a week ago. Marchant had been the subject of a few COBRA meetings in his time, but he had never attended one, virtually or in person. He tried to picture the scene around the table. It was unfortunate that the VOIP video connection would only be one-way. He would like to see Denton’s face.

Marchant knew it had been a risk taking Harriet Armstrong into his confidence, but it was a calculated one, based on her dislike of Denton. It would also allow her to bank some of the credit for identifying Denton as a Russian mole, which MI5 had so far failed to do. Marchant hoped she would return the favour. Already she had arranged for extra Special Branch officers to be on standby in the building, and she had agreed to oversee the patching through of Marchant to COBRA’s video-conferencing bridge.

All he had to do now was download Tor, the anonymous routing network, and choose a suitable proxy server to mask the internet café’s IP address. To keep Myers happy, he would use a botnet too.

After Tor had downloaded, Marchant checked the lock on the door – he had insisted on a key – and dialled up a VOIP address for COBRA that Armstrong had given him. COBRA used its own secure video-conferencing network, but it could receive VOIP calls from the outside world. As he waited for a connection, he ran through the precautions he had taken, hoping they would be enough to conceal his location. All COBRA’s incoming internet traffic was submitted to Deep Packet Inspection, technology that was being increasingly used by the NSA and GCHQ for online surveillance, filtering and intercepts. Iran and China were big users of DPI too.

He glanced at his watch. It was 9 a.m. The line began to ring.

Ian Denton had left Myers’s body out of shape but intact. He needed more time, something he didn’t have. Circumcision had failed to break him. On the drive back up from Fairford to London the previous night, he had begun to doubt whether Myers had talked to Marchant and whether, between the two of them, they had helped in any way with Dhar’s escape. It was a wild allegation for Spiro to have made, but Denton was happy to pursue anything that might further discredit Marchant. Spiro’s talk of him staying with a DGSE agent in France had been unnerving, particularly if it was the same agent who had followed him around London.

He would wait to see what others had to say at the morning COBRA meeting that was convening now. Dhar was top of the agenda, and security was tight. More Special Branch officers than usual had been present downstairs, checking bags at the entrance to the Cabinet Office building. There had been another attack this morning, on a small technology firm in Edinburgh that made hydraulic parts for America’s nuclear submarines. Nobody had been killed, but the premises had been destroyed by fire. The attack had badly damaged morale. It was the first for a few days, and the British public had begun to believe the wave of terror was over.

Just as proceedings were about to get under way, Spiro walked into the low-ceilinged room and sat down beside Denton. Denton thought he looked a mess, unshaven, his sunken eyes heavy with exhaustion. It wasn’t normal for the Americans to attend COBRA meetings, but Spiro’s presence was a sign of the times. Despite Dhar’s escape, the US’s influence in Whitehall remained as pervasive as ever.

Denton acknowledged Spiro, wondering how long he would remain in London. Earlier, he had told him about the lack of progress with Myers. Spiro had sounded weary, almost resigned. He was a shadow of the man who had ordered his Marines to surround Legoland. If he went, Denton must take care not to be dragged down with him. He wouldn’t go quietly, and Denton suspected he had come here today to point the finger at Britain for Dhar’s escape.

‘Welcome, everyone,’ the PM began. ‘We’re pleased to have Jim Spiro with us – and particularly pleased that he’s alive and well after the horrific events in Bagram. Jim will update us on Salim Dhar’s current status, then we’ll focus on the new and specific threats to Britain and how we’re combatting them.’

But moments after Spiro began to talk – ‘To cut to the chase, we believe Salim Dhar is currently hiding in Iran’ – the distinct, insistent sound of an internet call was heard in the room. Spiro fell silent as others stopped shuffling papers to listen.