there had been Leila to think about. Eighteen months on, the line was a forgotten memo and still secure, routed through MI6. But his own mobile phone, despite the encryption, would have been tracked to Fort Monckton, which was why he had removed its battery. He thought of Lakshmi, hoping she was safe. They would come looking for him at the Fort, and she would tell them he had gone to see Fielding.
It was 4 a.m. when he eventually reached Cirencester, two hours after he had left Gosport. He took the road to Tetbury, turning left to Kemble after a few miles. He didn’t want to drive up to Tarlton in the Traveller. There was a chance that the sailors had noticed it had been stolen and had already raised the alarm. He needed to leave it somewhere it wouldn’t draw attention.
At Kemble, he turned right into the railway station and a big car park that he remembered. He used to cycle here from Tarlton in the university holidays when he went up to London, leaving his bike against the railings in a well-tended garden beside the platform. There had been no need to lock it, as it was a sit-up-and-beg Hero his father had brought back from India. Modern bikes were stolen regularly from Kemble, but nobody had wanted this one.
He found a quiet corner, away from the station, and parked the Traveller between two other cars. One was an Aston Martin, the other a BMW. The Traveller might stand out more than he thought. Then he went over to the garden beside the platform, just in case there were any unlocked bikes there. But it was empty, the flowerbeds still well tended. Shivering in the dawn light, he set off back down the road and began the two-mile walk up to Tarlton.
22
James Spiro looked out onto a deserted Grosvenor Square and glanced impatiently at his watch. The Marines were running behind time. In his day, if you weren’t five minutes early, you were late. For a moment, he felt the same churn in his stomach that he used to get in Iraq before a contact. Back in the first Gulf War, the Brits had been allies, decent fighters in Operation Desert Storm. How times had changed.
He didn’t believe Salim Dhar was really holed up in Legoland, but he couldn’t afford to take any chances. After all, who would have guessed that an MI6 officer would be sitting with Dhar in a Russian jet when it took down an F-22 Raptor? He had spent all evening in the crisis centre at the American Embassy, listening to Turner Munroe, the US Ambassador to London, fight a losing battle with Washington. As far as the President and the Pentagon were concerned, there was a good case for withdrawing Munroe in light of the air-show fiasco. The special relationship, if it ever existed, was over, and as Spiro pointed out, it could be argued that Britain had been complicit in an act of war against the US.
But Munroe had displayed a dogged loyalty to Daniel Marchant.
‘Let’s not get too trigger-happy here,’ the Ambassador had said in a lengthy video conference with the White House. ‘We could have been discussing the death of the US Defense Secretary. Marchant has form when it comes to persuading jihadis not to blow people up. I should know.’
Fifteen months earlier, Marchant had helped to talk a suicide bomber out of killing Munroe and countless other competitors in the London Marathon. At least, that was Marchant’s story. Spiro had begged to differ. In tonight’s discussions with Washington, Munroe had consistently fought Marchant’s corner, calling for restraint until all the facts were known. But the President’s anger had prevailed. The CIA’s London station was given carte blanche to do all they could to find Salim Dhar, last known location somewhere in UK waters.
Spiro, as head of the Agency’s National Clandestine Service, Europe, was put in charge of the mission. His first call was to surround MI6’s headquarters with a deployment of US Marines who were based permanently at the embassy. He had also given orders for Daniel Marchant to be picked up from Fort Monckton. Fielding couldn’t protect him any longer. Denton had given assurances that Marchant was being held securely, but Spiro knew better than to underestimate Marchant.
‘Go in the back door,’ he had told the captain of USS Bulkeley, a destroyer moored in Portsmouth on a meet-and-greet hosted by the Royal Navy. The captain explained that he would need authority from the Pentagon before giving the order to deploy a unit of Seals against an ally he had just been on exercise with. Spiro had anticipated friction. The US Navy wasn’t in the habit of taking orders from the CIA, or storming British military bases. He gave the captain the name of someone to speak to, and told him to get on with it. ‘And leave the woman out of it,’ he added. ‘She’s one of ours.’
He had expected to hear back from Lakshmi Meena by now, but she hadn’t rung, which made him wary. He had hoped to hear from his wife, too, but that was another story. It had been three days since they had spoken, and he had no idea where she was.
He pushed her to the back of his mind and thought again about Marchant. As a former Marine, he wished he could be with the Seals when they beached at Fort Monckton. It would be the final humiliation of Marchant and MI6. Instead, Spiro had to settle for the lead jeep as it rolled out of Grosvenor Square five minutes later and headed down Regent Street towards Vauxhall. There were six US Army trucks behind him, carrying a hundred Marines in total. The sight of American forces on the streets of London would send a clear message to the Brits, causing acute political embarrassment. Better still, Spiro hoped, it would scare the crap out of Fielding.
‘Ain’t London a beautiful city when it’s empty?’ he said to his driver as they rumbled around a deserted Piccadilly Circus at 3 a.m. Above him, the advert for Coca-Cola flashed in the night.
23
‘I think I know where Dhar might be,’ Denton said, turning to the Prime Minister.
‘Go on.’
The room fell silent as everyone looked down the table at Denton. He paused, calculating the implications one more time. On balance, it was better to share his hunch with COBRA rather than with the Americans, but there wasn’t much in it. He studied the tired, expectant faces and thought that the British establishment had never appeared so weak. If he was going to become a Chief with any power, he would need US support. To win that, he had to give them Dhar on a plate. But he didn’t trust them to capture him. The British were still better at some things.
Just as he was about to speak, an aide to the Chief of Defence Staff came into the room and whispered something to his boss.
‘A contingent of US Marines is currently making its way down Regent Street,’ the Chief of Defence Staff announced, trumping Denton’s announcement. ‘It’s an unauthorised movement. Any US troop activity on UK soil must be cleared first with –’
‘Of course it’s bloody unauthorised,’ the PM said. Denton had often noted how, in times of crisis, the military defaulted to mindless protocol.
Everyone in the room turned to look at the staccato images now streaming live from traffic cameras on Piccadilly Circus. For a moment, Dhar’s location was no longer important. Denton had known it was coming, but the sight of the US military on the streets of London was still chilling. Fielding must have anticipated it too. A few seconds earlier, Denton had received a staff alert informing him that Legoland was in lockdown.
‘They’re heading for Vauxhall Cross,’ the PM continued. ‘Unilateral action, just as the President warned.’ He turned to the Chairman of the Defence Advisory Committee, who had been summoned from his club to join COBRA. ‘It’s too late for the papers, but I don’t want to see these pictures tomorrow morning on The Andrew Marr Show.’
‘That might be difficult,’ the Chairman replied. ‘The best we can do is put out an
