Dirty Little Secret (40 page)

He checked the oil and fuel gauge dials. They were above a large compass on the instrument panel. In different circumstances he would have relaxed, enjoyed the sensation of carving through the Arabian Sea on a clear night at 35 knots, but now wasn’t the time. The Americans might be tracking them. He hadn’t told his minder why he had wanted to take the wheel. He wasn’t sure himself. But a part of him sensed that in the coming hours he might need to know how to operate a Bladerunner.

He glanced at his fake Rolex Yacht-Master. It was past midnight. They had left Karachi at 8 p.m., after the port official had personally overseen the boat being lowered into the water. The plan was to hug the Pakistan coastline throughout the night, travelling at 35 knots. Any faster and they might attract unwanted attention. The port official had spoken with the Lieutenant Commander (Marine Wing) of Pakistan Coast Guards, who had agreed to turn a blind eye to their transit, but several American warships were on exercise up ahead in the Gulf of Oman.

‘I thought about joining the navy once,’ Marchant said, as much to himself as to his sleeping minder. He suddenly felt very alone on the dark water. The boat was cutting through the waves, but there was still an incessant thud on the bottom of the hull. ‘Always loved boats.’

They expected to reach Iranian waters just after 3 a.m., when they would be met by a Revolutionary Guard patrol boat that would escort them into the port of Chabahar for refuelling. From there it was a seven-hour journey to Bandar-Abbas, travelling at 40 knots. By then he might even have had a conversation with his minder. There was nothing like sharing a boat to get to know someone. The Iranian had made no mention of the phone call from the office in Karachi. Marchant was convinced that he had smelt alcohol on his breath. The port official must have plied him with a quick whisky, something with which to toast his suitcase of dollars.

‘My father used to keep a yacht down at Dittisham,’ Marchant continued. ‘A Westerly 22. Took it across the Channel once, lost the rudder.’

Did he keep on talking because a part of him sensed that his minder was not asleep? If that was the case, he should have sensed that the man had quietly risen to his feet and was standing behind him, a length of plastic tubing in his hand. Afterwards Marchant blamed the hypnotic motion of the boat for his carelessness. All he could do now was try to prevent himself from being strangled.

‘Who did you call from the port office?’ his minder shouted as Marchant gasped for air. Already he was feeling light-headed, his resistance fading. He attempted to get his fingers between his throat and the tubing, but it was too tight. The boat was beginning to veer to starboard, towards the shore. ‘Tell me who you called!’ the Iranian shouted again.

Marchant tried to think, but he was losing consciousness. Should he stick with the girlfriend line? Hope to persuade him that he really did have women problems? The man would know he was lying.

‘OK,’ he managed to say, his legs kicking beneath him like a demented tap dancer. Only the truth was going to save him. ‘I’ll tell you.’

‘Who?’ The tubing tightened.

‘London.’ He felt the minder’s grip slacken a notch, enough to stop him from passing out. ‘I was calling my boss, the Chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. I’m still working for MI6.’

Marchant knew he only had a split second to strike, the synaptic moment in which his assailant’s brain processed the significance of what he had just been told, calculating the implications for the mission, for his own career. In one movement, Marchant clasped his hands together into a single fist and swung them upwards as hard as he could, above his head, as if he was chopping wood. They connected with the soft tissue of his minder’s mouth, flattening his lips and splintering his front teeth.

Marchant leapt out of his chair, pinning the Iranian’s arms by his side. He swung his head into a steel luggage rack by the cabin door, and then again, harder this time, grabbing his hair with one hand as he smacked his head into the rack. The body fell limp.

Breathing hard, Marchant grabbed the wheel, turning the boat back out to sea, and reduced speed to 10 knots. Then he dragged the Iranian up onto the deck, where he removed his phone and wallet. He couldn’t say they had ever bonded, but he hesitated as he heaved the body up onto the gunwale. The man was still unconscious, and wouldn’t survive in the water. After glancing around at the dark, empty sea, Marchant slipped the body over the side. He knew too much. Then he rang Fielding on the Iranian’s phone, tossing it into the night after he had finished.

‘All well at Langley?’ Fielding asked, looking through a sheaf of surveillance photos on his desk.

‘The sun’s shining,’ Spiro replied. ‘But I don’t suppose you’re calling about the weather.’

‘You never know with the British. Thanks for looking in on Paul Myers. He’s making a good recovery.’

‘Listen, Marcus, I’m kinda busy right now. Trying to find Salim Dhar. You know how it is.’

‘Congratulations on the job, by the way.’ Fielding had heard that Spiro, far from being sacked, was heading up a new unit tasked with finding Dhar. The Agency never ceased to amaze him. ‘I had the DCIA on the phone earlier,’ he continued.

‘Uh-huh.’ Fielding had his attention now.

‘He was asking about your wife. Whether I’d heard the rumours she’d been in the West Bank.’

Spiro didn’t say anything.

‘No actual evidence, of course, just canteen talk.’

‘Thirty-year marriages provoke a lot of jealousy around here,’ Spiro said.

‘I’m sure. I told him I knew nothing about it. Which isn’t strictly true. The West Bank’s long been a personal interest of mine, a former beat. One of my old contacts in Ramallah emailed some images this morning.’ Fielding looked more closely at a photo of Linda Spiro, camera around her neck, a rock in one hand. ‘“Photography for Peace”, I think they’re called.’

There was a pause. ‘What do you intend doing with these images?’ Spiro asked, his voice quieter now.

‘Nothing. If Daniel Marchant reaches Bandar-Abbas.’

Fielding’s timing was suspiciously immaculate, Spiro thought as he stepped back into the operations room.

‘Sir, we have an unidentified vessel approaching Iranian waters,’ a junior officer said. ‘One mile off the Pakistani port of Gwadar, travelling at 35 knots.’

Spiro looked up at a video image of a powerboat. The footage was being relayed from the electro-optical camera of an RQ-170 Sentinel drone fifty thousand feet above the Gulf of Oman. Operated by the USAF in Nevada, the drone’s main role in the region was flying over Iran in search of radioactive isotopes found in nuclear weapons facilities, but it had been repositioned to monitor Iran’s recent naval exercises.

‘What the hell’s that?’ Spiro asked.

‘We’re just working on it,’ the junior officer said. An adjacent screen flickered as maritime recognition software scrolled with dizzying speed through a series of photographs – Iranian fast-attack gun boats, private launches, small military hovercraft. It stopped when it had found a match.

‘It’s called a Bladerunner 51, sir. There’s a dealership in Dubai, and –’

‘– and there’s one impounded in Karachi,’ Spiro said. ‘At least, that’s where it’s meant to be. Jesus, whose frickin’ side are the Pakistanis on?’

‘Sir, this came through earlier,’ another officer said, handing Spiro a report and a stack of photos. Spiro sifted through them. One was of Daniel Marchant entering a dock building in Karachi, taken with a long lens. Marchant looked more suave than Spiro remembered.

‘Is this boat armed?’ Spiro asked. ‘Can we zoom in? Get a better still from the Sentinel’s synthetic-aperture radar?’

Spiro watched as the video feed was replaced by a high-quality still image of the Bladerunner.

‘According to the file, it wasn’t armed when it originally left Durban.’

‘I wouldn’t put it past the Pakistanis to have added a bit of firepower,’ Spiro said, walking over to take a better look at the image. ‘Although it doesn’t appear to have any obvious weapon systems.’

‘It may have been fitted with torpedoes,’ the junior officer said. ‘That’s what we told the Bureau of Industry and Security before they issued their stop order.’

The BIS could go to hell, Spiro thought, as he studied the silhouette of someone in the cockpit of the boat. Was it Marchant? If it was, he cut a solitary figure, but a part of Spiro envied him, out there in the field. What was his game? Was he going to meet Dhar? He thought again about Fielding, his threat about the photos.

‘Sir, five minutes before the Bladerunner enters Iranian waters,’ another officer said. ‘If we’re going to disable it, we need to act now.’

‘Let it go,’ Spiro said.

‘Why do you want to see him?’ Ali Mousavi asked.

‘He brought us the boat, didn’t he?’ Dhar said. ‘I wish to thank him – and to say goodbye.’

Dhar watched as Mousavi walked around the medical room. The Iranian had arrived on the oil platform a few minutes earlier. He had come from the military shipyard in Bandar-Abbas, where the Bladerunner was being checked over and fitted with its supercavitation torpedoes.

‘He killed one of my men. A loyal colleague. Why would a friend of ours do that?’

Dhar didn’t know, but he presumed that Marchant had tried to make contact with London and had been caught. According to Mousavi, the minder had been sent with Marchant expressly to prevent any contact with the outside world. But when the boat had been met by Revolutionary Guards as it entered Iranian waters, the minder was missing.

‘What does Marchant say?’ Dhar asked.

‘He claims they were attacked by pirates. There are many Somalis in these waters, but they do not have boats to match the Bladerunner’s speed. No one does. Marchant is lying.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘Here, on the platform, where he will stay. It is best for everyone.’

Dhar walked up to Mousavi, closed his eyes as if in prayer and then opened them. ‘Bring him to me.’

His tone was cold and threatening. It was meant to be. He was running out of time. Mousavi stared back at him. For the first time, Dhar saw fear in his eyes. It was as if he was weighing up the whole operation that lay ahead of them, the swarm attack, the Bladerunner, wondering if he had chosen the right person to lead it or was being drawn into something beyond his control. Dhar waited for him to look away.

‘Of course,’ Mousavi said. ‘You are brothers. I cannot stand between you. But I must be present, I insist. We can no longer trust this man.’

A small flame of doubt began to flicker in Dhar’s own mind. He hoped Mousavi hadn’t noticed. ‘Would he have delivered the boat to us if he was still working for the West?’ he asked, hoping to extinguish the thought.

‘Perhaps that is
why
he was able to deliver it,’ Mousavi said. ‘We were never expecting him to complete the journey. The Bladerunner is classified as “military use technology” by the Americans. It’s on a US Treasury watchlist, the subject of international sanctions. How is it possible for such a boat to travel across the Gulf of Oman without being intercepted by the CIA or the US Navy?’

Another flicker. Dhar didn’t have an answer. It was the British who wanted the address of the second cell in London, and the British who knew that Marchant had to deliver the boat in order to get it; but they wouldn’t have the authority to allow the Bladerunner free passage. Only the Americans could do that. Was his half-brother playing them all?

Five minutes later, Marchant was shown into the room by two armed guards. He was handcuffed, his face bloodied and his clothes dishevelled, stumbling as he walked. Dhar guessed he had been blindfolded as well as beaten up. He kept his head bowed as his eyes adjusted to the neon lighting. Mousavi nodded at the guards, who returned to their position outside the door. Dhar looked at his half-brother and then at Mousavi.

‘Are you working for the Americans?’ Dhar asked. He knew as soon as he had spoken the words that it was an unfounded charge. Of course Marchant wasn’t. He had suffered more than most at America’s hands, spent much of his adult life on the run from the CIA, culminating in him being renditioned and waterboarded. America didn’t treat its own agents like that. Not yet. He wanted to be angry with Mousavi for suggesting the idea, but instead he turned his frustration towards Marchant.

‘Answer me!’ he shouted, kicking him hard in his downturned face.

Marchant looked up, his face full of disdain.

‘Our hosts here think you are,’ Dhar continued, already putting distance between himself and the accusation. He hoped Marchant would notice.

‘What do you think?’ Marchant said. His lips were swollen, his voice slurred.

‘I think you were lucky to travel from Karachi to Bandar-Abbas without being intercepted by the Americans. Perhaps too lucky.’

Marchant paused before answering, wiping something – blood, spit – from his mouth with the backs of his shackled hands.

‘A US warship tried to make contact on Channel 16 after we’d been jumped by the Somalis, but we ignored it. For the whole journey we stayed in Pakistani waters and then Iranian waters, never more than twelve miles offshore.’

Was this enough to satisfy the Iranians? Dhar glanced across at Mousavi, who seemed to have relaxed. He was happier too. And feeling guilty for doubting his half-brother. It was time to give him the address in London.

‘Like our father, your loyalty is to Britain and our common enemy is America,’ Dhar said, walking around Marchant as if he was inspecting an animal at market. ‘Thank you for bringing the boat.
Inshallah
, it will help us to strike a mighty blow against the infidel oppressor.’ He paused, judging the moment. It was now or never. ‘I wish I had been able to stay longer in your country. Perhaps gone to London. I’ve never been there.’

Marchant lifted his head, as if he understood the importance of what was about to be said. Dhar doubted whether Marchant would manage to find a way to communicate with London, but if they were both to die today, as seemed likely, he wanted to honour their deal. As it said in the Holy Qur’an:
Those who take a small price for the covenant of Allah and their own oaths – surely they shall have no portion in the hereafter, and Allah will not speak to them.