pull on some knickers. ‘My mother’s an amazing woman. The only reason I made it to Cambridge. I actually found the vetting process very therapeutic, answering all those questions about her, learning more about the Bahá’í faith, her allegiance to Britain.’
‘Were the vetters worried, then?’
‘Not by the time they’d finished. She’d lived in Britain for twenty-five years.’
‘You never talk about her any more.’
Leila fell quiet. He remembered her tears again and reached up to her waist, gently pulling her down to sit beside him on the bed.
‘What is it?’ he asked quietly.
‘Nothing,’ she said, wiping beneath an eye with the back of her hand.
‘The marathon?’
‘No. It’s OK.’ She rested her head on his shoulder, trying not to lose control, taking comfort in his warmth.
The only time Marchant had ever seen Leila cry was when she had come off the phone to her mother in their early days of training at the Fort. She hadn’t wanted to talk about it. When he tried to raise the matter later, she had resisted.
‘Is it your mother?’ he asked. ‘Have you spoken to her recently?’
Leila remained in his arms. She had once told him that her mother often talked of returning to Iran one day. She wanted to be a widow amongst her own family, her people, and to care for her own, ageing mother. But Leila had told her that it was too risky for a Bahá’í to return to Iran while her religion was being systematically persecuted.
Instead, she had been admitted into a nursing home in Hertfordshire, after showing early signs of Alzheimer’s. Leila said that she was bitterly unhappy there, and was soon complaining of being badly treated by the staff, but it was impossible to prove anything or to work out how much was a result of her confused state of mind. Marchant had offered to accompany Leila on a visit, but she didn’t want him to form his only impression of her mother when she was not herself.
‘You did well yesterday, I hope Fielding told you that,’ Leila said, more together now, walking over to the dressing table. ‘You thwarted a twisted plan.’
‘I couldn’t have done it without your help,’ Marchant said, then paused. ‘Pradeep had a son. He showed me a photo.’
The events of the marathon were finally catching up with him, too. Leila sensed the change in his voice. She came back over to the bed and stroked his neck. ‘They were going to kill the boy if he didn’t go through with it,’ Marchant continued. ‘Do you think they did?’
‘He died trying to carry out his mission, and the London Marathon was cancelled for the first time in its history. Probably not.’
Leila had returned to her usual, unsentimental self. Marchant felt relief. Her professional manner put a distance between them, a reminder not to let her break his heart. He had been unsettled by her earlier display of emotion. It had made him want to talk more about the race, the incessant beeping of Pradeep’s GPS, how such an innocent sound could have announced both their deaths, the exhilarating feeling of being on an operation again, the surprising heaviness of Pradeep’s dead body in his arms. But her coolness now made him feel more detached from the events of yesterday. He knew it was the only way they had survived in their jobs.
‘Fielding also talked about my father,’ Marchant said, raising and lowering his aching limbs. ‘My legs are killing me.’
‘Anything new?’ Leila stood up and went back to the dressing table, where she started to dry her hair.
‘The Americans are leaning on Bancroft. Seems they might have something on him after all.’
‘The Americans?’ she said, turning to face him. ‘What’s it got to do with them?’
Marchant told her what Fielding had said, the pressure MI5 was putting on Lord Bancroft to identify his father as the mole, the Americans’ belief that he had met Salim Dhar before last year’s embassy bombings in Delhi and Islamabad.
‘I remember the Leica,’ Marchant continued. ‘It was like a museum piece, beautifully made. He showed it to me once, at Christmas, just after I’d been accepted by the Service.’ He paused. ‘I’m not helping your case, you know that. I think you should keep your distance for a while.’
She glanced at him in the mirror, her eyes flicking down his body. ‘I’m not going to stop screwing you because of MI5.’
‘I appreciate the loyalty, but it’s not going to do you any favours, that’s all I’m saying.’ He got up from the bed and stood behind Leila, cupping her bare breasts in his hands as they looked at their reflection. His chin rested on her shoulder. ‘If they can suspect my dad, they can suspect me, too.’
‘I thought the Vicar wanted you back,’ Leila said, turning her face sideways to kiss him. ‘Particularly after yesterday.’
‘He does, but it might not be up to him if Bancroft finds against my father.’
‘Your dad never really took to me, did he?’ Leila said, unpeeling herself from Marchant’s arms to apply some mascara.
‘That’s not true.’
‘That time when we went to your home for lunch in the country, he was very ill at ease with me. Almost rude.’
‘He was wary of all my girlfriends, suspicious of women generally. Two boys, you see, no daughters. And a distant wife.’
‘Can’t say it runs in the family.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Wariness of Women gene. I’m not sure he passed it on.’ She smiled at him and he knew she was right, standing there in the evening light. He had never felt less wary of anyone in his life.
8
It was a long-held custom that the first half of the Joint Intelligence Committee’s weekly meeting in the Cabinet Room at Downing Street was attended by senior officers from the American, Australian and Canadian intelligence services. The second half was only for the British. Marcus Fielding could barely wait for the foreign contingent to be shown the door, but for the next few minutes he would have to listen to James Spiro, the CIA’s London chief, who had announced, with his usual hard-man hyperbole, that he had some ‘weapons-grade HUMINT to bring to the party’. Fielding had already got the gist of it earlier that morning, thanks to one of several new listening devices installed at the recently opened American Embassy in Vauxhall (near Legoland), but he sat there, ramrod-straight, as if he was hearing it all for the first time.
‘We are now certain that Stephen Marchant travelled to Kerala and met up with Salim Dhar in jail,’ Spiro began, as ever liking the sound of his own voice. ‘I appreciate Dhar’s role in last year’s UK bombings is far from clear, but there is absolutely no doubt that he tried to bomb the hell out of our embassies in New Delhi and Islamabad. Ask the families of the fifteen dead US Marines.’
So far, nothing new, Fielding thought, looking around the coffin-shaped oak table. The usual mix of Whitehall suspects were in attendance, including the heads of MI5 and Cheltenham, as well as mandarins from various departments, all presided over by the chairman of the JIC, Sir David Chadwick, who was sitting at the far end, in front of the double windows which had buckled when the IRA lobbed a mortar bomb into the Downing Street rosebeds. Everyone had flung themselves on the floor that day, the Cabinet Secretary lying next to the Prime Minister.
If it happened again this morning, Fielding idly thought, Harriet Armstrong, Director General of MI5, would do her best to prostrate herself next to Spiro. She glanced tersely at Fielding, as if reading his mind. They had never liked each other, their relationship chilling even further when she had enlisted Spiro’s support to remove Stephen Marchant.
‘What we do now know, however, thanks to Harriet here, is that Dhar was behind Sunday’s foiled bombing