the same: he despised renegades too. Only once had Marchant lost it, at a pub near Victoria, when an evening had ended in a brawl. A junior desk officer had been dispatched to the police station to release him and smooth things over.
‘Wouldn’t you want to know what happened?’ Marchant replied.
‘I have a pretty good idea already. Tony Bancroft has almost finished his report.’
‘But he’s not going to clear my father, is he?’
‘None of us wanted him to go, you know that? He was a much-loved Chief.’
‘So why did we let MI5 get one over us? There was never any evidence, no proof against him.’
‘I know you’re still angry, Daniel, but the quickest way to get you working again is for you to keep your head down and let Tony finish his job. MI5 don’t want you back, but I do. Once Bancroft is on record saying you pose no threat, there’s nothing anyone can do about it.’
‘But Bancroft won’t clear my father’s name, will he?’ Marchant repeated.
They walked on, Fielding a few yards ahead of him. Marchant had met with Lord Bancroft and his team, answered their questions, and knew that he had no case to answer. He knew his father was innocent, too, but the Prime Minister had needed someone to blame. Mainland Britain had been subjected to an unprecedented wave of terrorist attacks during the past year. Nothing spectacular, but there was enough public fear to keep MI5 on a critical state of alert: electricity sub-stations, railway depots, multi-storey car parks. The evidence soon pointed to a terrorist cell based in South India, drawn from workers who had taken poorly-paid jobs in the Gulf.
The pressure to nullify the threat had grown, but the terrorists always seemed to be one step ahead. Soon the talk was of a mole, high up in MI6, helping the hunted. Daniel’s father had become obsessed with the theory, but he had never managed to prove it, or to halt the bombings. Suspicion had finally fallen on him. When his position as Chief became untenable, the Joint Intelligence Committee, guided by Harriet Armstrong, MI5’s Director General, recommended that he be retired early. The attacks had stopped.
Fielding paused at the point where their path met another. As Marchant joined him, they instinctively looked both ways before crossing, even though the forest was empty. A muntjac deer barked in the distance.
‘Are you still drinking?’ Fielding asked.
‘When I can,’ Marchant said.
‘I’m not sure we can bail you out a second time.’
‘How long will I be kept at the safe house?’
‘It’s for your own security. Someone out there’s not happy you thwarted their attack.’
They walked on together, both at ease with the forest’s noisy dampness. ‘There are no surprises in what I’ve read of Bancroft’s report, no moles uncovered,’ Fielding said, as they began on a loop back towards the car. ‘It’s not Tony’s style, not why he was appointed. Just a summing up of what happened on your father’s watch and a measured assessment of whether anything more could have been done. There were too many attacks, we all know that.’
‘And someone had to take the bullet.’
‘The PM’s a former Home Secretary. He was always going to favour MI5 over us.’
Marchant had heard all this before, but he knew from Fielding’s manner that he was holding something back.
‘Unfortunately, the Americans have been pushing for more, day and night, trying to establish that it was conspiracy rather than complacency on your father’s part. We’ve resisted, of course, but the PM is indulging them. And now it seems they’ve persuaded him to hold back on the report’s publication, saying the CIA have something specific.’
‘On my father? What?’
‘How much do you know about Salim Dhar?’
‘Dhar?’ Marchant hesitated, trying to think clearly. ‘On the shortlist for masterminding last year’s UK bombings, but no evidence to link him directly. Always been more anti-American than British. It’s a while since I read his file.’
‘Educated in Delhi, the American school, then disappeared,’ Fielding said. ‘The Indians arrested him two years later in Kashmir, and banged him up in a detention site in Kerala, where he should be now. Only he isn’t.’
‘No?’
‘He was one of the prisoners released in the Bhuj hijack exchange at the end of last year.’
It wasn’t his region, but Marchant knew the incident had been an almost exact copy of the Indian Airlines hijacking at Kandahar in 1999. Then, Omar Sheikh had been released, amid much international condemnation. It was never made public who was freed at Bhuj.
‘AQ must have rated him,’ Marchant said, wondering where his father fitted in.
‘We had Dhar down as a small-time terrorist until Bhuj. They wanted something spectacular in return for his freedom. Within a month, Dhar was launching RPGs into the US compound in Delhi.’
Marchant had read about the attack, in the blur of grief. It had taken place just after his father had died, before the funeral. Nine US Marines had been killed.
‘What’s this got to do with my father?’
Fielding paused before answering, as if in two minds whether to proceed. ‘The Americans would very much like to find Salim Dhar. After Delhi, he went on to attack their compound in Islamabad, killing six more US Marines And now the CIA has established that a senior-ranking officer from MI6 visited Dhar in Kerala shortly before he was released in the hostage exchange.’
Marchant looked up. ‘And they think it was my father?’
‘They’re working on a theory that it was, yes. I’m sorry. There’s no official record of any visits. I’ve checked all the logbooks, many times.’
Marchant didn’t know what to think. It wouldn’t be unusual for the local station head from Chennai, say, to bluff his way into seeing someone like Dhar, but it would be extremely unorthodox for the Chief of MI6 to make an undeclared visit from London.
‘In the context of MI5’s own inquiries, I’m afraid it doesn’t look good,’ Fielding added. ‘There are those who are convinced that Dhar masterminded the British bombings, despite his preference for killing Americans.’
‘What do you think?’ Marchant asked. ‘You knew my dad better than most.’
Fielding stopped and turned to Marchant. ‘He was under a lot of pressure last year to clean up MI6’s act. The talk at the time, remember, was all about an inside job, infiltration at the highest level by terrorists with some sort of South Indian connection. Even so, why talk to Dhar personally?’
‘Because he couldn’t trust anyone else?’ Marchant offered. For whatever reason, he knew that it must have been an act of desperation on his father’s part.
‘The good news is that details of this visit haven’t crossed Bancroft’s desk yet, and they might never,’ Fielding said. ‘His job was to draw a line under your father’s departure, not to open the whole affair up again. He’ll need to be sure of the evidence before presenting it to the JIC, and there isn’t a lot at the moment.’
‘Is there any?’
‘Dhar’s jailer, the local police chief in Kerala. Someone blackmailed him to gain access to Dhar. It had all the hallmarks of an old-school sting.’
‘Moscow rules?’
‘Textbook. Indian intelligence found the compromising photos hidden in the policeman’s desk drawer. They were taken with one of our cameras. An old Leica.’ He paused. ‘The last time it was checked out was in Berlin, early 1980s. Your father never returned it.’
7
Marchant