The Daniel Marchant Spy Trilogy: Dead Spy Running, Games Traitors Play, Dirty Little Secret

A more junior vetting officer was dispatched to interview Leila’s mother at her home in Hertfordshire. Widowed two years earlier, she had been a resident of the UK for more than twenty-five years, after fleeing her job as a university lecturer in Tehran at the time of the Revolution. She was a devout Bahá’í, and had continued to follow her religion in England, joining a small local group.

The subsequent DV report raised no security objections, describing Leila’s mother as a fully integrated member of British society. Along with other Bahá’ís who had left Iran to live in Britain, she was vehemently opposed to the current regime in Tehran, but she was a low-key member of the expatriate Bahá’í community. Significantly, she had not been associated with any of the various political campaigns around the world that called for religious freedom in Iran.

Two months before Leila began her training at the Fort, her mother was interviewed for a second time. She was still at the same address, but there was talk of her moving out to a nursing home in Harpenden. The interview came back clean, and a handwritten note had been added to the file suggesting that further interviews should be avoided if they were not strictly necessary. Much of what she said appeared muddled, and it was concluded that she was presenting signs of early onset Alzheimer’s.

What troubled Fielding was the vetters’ complete failure to pick up on the mother’s move back to Iran, which must have taken place shortly after her last interview. As far as the vetters were concerned, she was still residing in Hertfordshire. It would have been Leila’s responsibility to inform MI6 of any change in her family circumstances, particularly given the West’s sensitive relationship with Iran, but she had clearly chosen not to tell a soul. Within Whitehall it was acknowledged that Developed Vetting relied too heavily on the responsibility of the individual to report such changes, but the system’s fundamental flaws had never been so exposed.

Fielding tried to take the charitable view. If Leila had been aware of her mother’s plans in advance, she would have opposed them, knowing that they could potentially expose her to blackmail. But once she was back in Iran, what could Leila do? She was fiercely ambitious, and her promising career in MI6 would have been over before it had started if she had told the authorities what had happened.

Fielding decided she probably had no warning, just a call from her mother explaining what she had done: instead of moving into a nursing home, she had taken a flight back to Iran. Had the mother’s muddled manner in her last interview been a bluff? Once she was settled in Iran, Leila’s worst fears would have been confirmed. Her mother was soon being targeted because of her faith, and VEVAK came knocking at Leila’s door in London, knowing that she was about to embark on a career with MI6.

Two hundred Bahá’ís had been killed in Iran in the early 1980s, and many thousands had been arrested. In recent years, the Islamic government had renewed its campaign to eliminate all Bahá’ís from the country. Leila must have been given a stark choice: work for VEVAK, or her mother dies. She wouldn’t be the first or the last Bahá’í to be executed.

For a brief moment, Fielding felt sorry for Leila. The files suggested a touchingly strong bond between mother and daughter, made even stronger by Leila’s father’s drinking. They had been united against his excesses, which included violence towards Leila’s mother, but not towards her, although their relationship was far from close. One entry in her file suggested that there was a complete breakdown of communication between the two after Leila had started at Oxford University. She had told her vetting officer that the tears she shed at her father’s funeral, in her final year, were solely for her mother.

Fielding stood up from his desk, stretched and looked out of the window as the first planes into Heathrow stirred London from sleep. There was a knock on the door, and Otto, who had served as a butler for three Chiefs, brought in a pot of Turkish coffee, a small basket of warm flat breads and some labneh cream cheese. Fielding’s tours of duty had left their mark on his palate.

‘You must take some time off, Otto,’ Fielding said. ‘Working late last night, here so early today.’

‘It’s no problem, sir. The duty manager called me. He said you had been up all night and so forth.’

‘The difference is that I’m paid enough to work through the night, you’re not,’ Fielding said, pouring a coffee. He knew that many of MI6’s new recruits bridled at the notion of a butler working in Legoland, until the practicalities of the Chief dining with anyone of importance were pointed out to them. On most days of the week, he lunched with politicians, senior civil servants and colleagues from other agencies, but their conversations were too sensitive for even the most trustworthy restaurants (MI6 had a number of small, security-cleared establishments in central London on its books).

Otto was originally from Yugoslavia. He had arrived in London in the 1960s, having learnt his English entirely from reading 1950s spy novels. The dated turns of phrase had gradually disappeared over the years, but he still surprised people with the occasional ‘ruddy’ expletive, a ‘chin chin’, or even, the office’s favourite, ‘We meet again.’ Fielding often wondered what the outside world would once have made of the Chief of MI6 employing a butler from Eastern Europe. Now, of course, there was nothing unusual about his nationality, but at the height of the Cold War it must have raised a few eyebrows in Whitehall.

‘Family keeping well?’ Fielding asked, as Otto cleared away some cups from the night before and headed for the door.

‘Yes, sir. Thank you. Mr Denton is here. Be seeing you.’

Fielding’s brief moment of sympathy for Leila passed as quickly as it had arrived when Ian Denton, unshaven and carrying a coffee from the canteen, reminded him of what her work for the Iranians might have entailed: not only betraying her country by facilitating a wave of terrorist attacks, but personally destroying his predecessor’s career.

As Fielding filled Denton in on the night’s developments, he became increasingly certain that Leila was the mole who had done so much to destabilise the Service in the past year, leading to Stephen Marchant’s early retirement, ill health and death. Britain had made no secret of its opposition to Iran’s nuclear programme, and although the government had fallen short of supporting America’s calls for a military invasion, Fielding was only too aware of the Treasury funds that were currently being channelled through MI6 to opposition parties, bloggers and students in Iran who supported regime change.

He and Denton both knew, though, that it would take time to prove Leila’s role in the wave of bomb attacks that had preceded Marchant’s departure. An unknown cell in South India, with links to the Gulf, was thought to be behind the blasts. But the trail had invariably gone cold, the network analysis maps always had holes. The terrorists had been at least two steps ahead of MI5, prompting fears that they had inside help. MI6’s role had been to explore the overseas links, and Leila, working for the Gulf Controllerate on the second floor of Legoland, had been a part of the team liaising with MI5. It was all so obvious now.

South India had been in the frame again for the attempted London Marathon attack, although the chatter and network analysis had increasingly pointed to a Gulf connection. That speculative link had since become a reality, thanks to Paul Myers, whose transcripts pointed to Iran’s involvement, as well as Leila’s.

‘Should we have suspected her earlier?’ Fielding asked. He was worried about Denton, who worked too hard and was always ill when he took leave, which was not often enough. (Fielding had to persuade him to use up his annual holiday allowance.) He had never seen him unshaven before, either.

‘It depends on when we think she started to work for VEVAK,’ Denton said.

‘From the off, I fear. They must have made their approach soon after her mother returned to Iran, and before Leila started at the Fort.’

‘And the Americans? Did they know from the beginning?’

‘No. It took them the best part of a year to notice her mother was back in Iran.’

‘A year quicker than us.’

‘Quite. Once Spiro had got wind of the mother’s whereabouts, he used it to recruit Leila.’

‘And Spiro had no idea she was already working for the Iranians?’

‘None. Leila must have convinced him that she hadn’t been compromised by her mother’s move. The CIA was looking for someone close to the head of MI6. Who better than the lover of the Chief’s son? Leila agreed to work for them. She could hardly believe her luck. It was her insurance policy against any future mole-hunt in Legoland.’

Fielding took a piece of flat bread and spread it with labneh. He gestured at Denton, inviting him to share his breakfast, but he declined. Denton preferred a sausage sandwich from the canteen.

‘Leila’s been very smart, Ian,’ Fielding continued. ‘If the West queries her actions, she knows they’re consistent with her undercover role for the Americans. Why did she find herself near the American Ambassador, one runner in 35,000? Because she was working for the CIA, who were worried about an attack. Did she set up Marchant at the marathon, giving him his old phone? Maybe, but if she did, it was on behalf of the CIA, whose distrust of the Marchants was well known.’

Agreeing to spy for America, in other words, had provided Leila with the perfect operational cover for her real job: spying for Iran. A part of Fielding admired her technical prowess. The Service’s instructors at the Fort spent weeks insisting on the need for good legends. Leila must have been listening.

But there was one thing that troubled him above all: why had she remained committed to working for VEVAK? If she was so concerned for her mother’s safety, couldn’t she have asked the Americans to protect her when they discovered that she was living in Iran? They agreed to pay for her mother’s private hospital treatment, so why didn’t she take them into her confidence, explain that VEVAK was threatening to kill her? Perhaps she was in too deep; but Fielding felt there was something else.

‘We still don’t know why she sabotaged the London attack,’ Denton said, interrupting Fielding’s line of thought.

‘No.’ Fielding picked up the transcript of the first conversation between Leila and her mother, on the evening after the marathon, and handed it to Denton. A section of the dialogue had been highlighted in green marker pen:

Mother (Farsi): ‘You told me they wouldn’t come. Others here have suffered, too.’

Leila (Farsi): ‘Never again, Mama. They won’t come any more. (English) I promise.’

Mother (Farsi): ‘Why did they say my family are to blame? What have we ever done to them?’

‘You can see that the mother was clearly told that her family–Leila–was to blame,’ Fielding said, watching Denton as he read the dialogue. ‘When word reached Tehran that the bomber hadn’t detonated his belt, VEVAK turned up and beat her mother’s much-loved cook. If there was a deal between VEVAK and Leila, she had clearly broken it by preventing the attack.’

‘And she didn’t go through with it because of Marchant?’ Denton asked, passing back the transcript. ‘Because she didn’t want her lover to die?’

Fielding hoped so. It would prove that Leila had a weakness–and spies lived for human flaws.

‘Maybe her relationship with Marchant counted for something, I don’t know. Perhaps she felt, for some reason, that a successful attack would have blown her cover. Either way, the Iranians stuck with Leila because she wasn’t just working for MI6, she’d wormed her way into the CIA too. A priceless asset, in other words, who deserved a second chance. And she knows she can’t afford to mess up again. We need to get to Delhi.’

But before Fielding had reached for his jacket, there was a commotion outside. He heard Otto swear–twenty-first-century expletives this time–and then the door swung open. Harriet Armstrong stood there, Sir Marcus Chadwick by her side.

‘We need to talk about Daniel Marchant,’ Chadwick said.

37

Marchant stood in the shade of a stall selling strings of sweet-smelling jasmine, watching a group of bare-chested temple workers stride down the middle of the road. Their manner was urgent, almost sexual, with their shaven heads and toned bodies, wrapped in thin cotton lunghis. Further down the street, they turned into the main entrance of Mahabeleshwar Temple, the religious centre of Gokarna. A young Western couple passed by in the opposite direction. They were stripped to the waist too, except for her bright orange bikini top and his loose-fitting waistcoat. They both looked stoned.

Earlier, Marchant had walked around the temple’s outer courtyard, where cows mingled freely with Hindu pilgrims. He had left his sandals beneath a sign saying ‘Footwears Prohibited’, and watched people going into the candlelit inner sanctum at the centre of the temple complex. The priests stopped Westerners from entering, unsure if they had bathed. Marchant caught a whiff of his own clothes, and conceded that they had a point.

According to Sujit, the man who had sat next to him on his bus journey to Gokarna, the town derived its name from the legend of Lord Shiva, who had once emerged here from the ear of a cow. Another story said it was the home of two brothers, Gokarna and Dhundhakari. Gokarna, born with cow’s ears, wandered the world as an ascetic, while Dhundhakari became a notorious criminal. Marchant had enjoyed talking to Sujit, who worked as a journalist in Mumbai and had family in Gokarna, but he had resisted asking too many questions. Instead, he spent much of the time feigning sleep, thinking back to his earlier train journey.

He had stayed on the roof of the train until the next stop, where he had climbed down on the opposite side from the platform and stepped across the tracks to a deserted part of the station. He had told Kirsty and Holly that he was going as far as Vasai, further down the line. It might buy him some time, divert the police. He was still wary, though, and stayed on the platform for the rest of the night, like a stray dog hiding in the shadows, before heading for the bus depot at dawn.

The train search had worried him. Were they looking for someone in connection with the bomb at the Gymkhana Club? Or had the man on the platform at Nizamuddin station reported him? At least Gokarna would provide some cover. A steady flow of Westerners passed down the street in front of the flower stall, some with backpacks, others, like him, with no luggage.

Sujit had said that most budget travellers stayed at the Hotel Om, which was next to the government bus stop. They remained there for a day or two, recovering from their bus journeys, usually from Hampi, before leaving their luggage with reception and heading down to Gokarna’s famous beaches in search of bongs and bhang lassi. Should he check in at the hotel, ask around about Om Beach? Uncle K had specifically mentioned the Namaste Café.

He decided against it. If the search for him should intensify, the police would focus on places popular with backpackers. Instead, he set off back down the street towards the temple, passing a large stable block, its studded wooden doors ajar. Through the darkness Marchant glimpsed a huge ceremonial juggernaut, standing at least twenty-five feet high.

He moved on, glancing at the local tribal women. They wore marigolds in their hair and nothing beneath their sari tops. Two Brahmins stopped to chat by a stall selling votive lamps and ghee, a solitary thread across their bare oiled shoulders. Marchant could feel the sap rising in Gokarna.

Earlier he had seen a Shivite baba sitting cross-legged in the doorway of the temple courtyard. He would drop some rupees into his lap and ask the way to Om Beach. Sujit had spoken of such people, said they were happy to discuss Eastern philosophies with naïve young Westerners–in exchange for a few rupees, of course.

‘Do you know what “Om” means?’ the baba said, his limpid eyes looking up at Marchant through a blue haze of ganga smoke. Above him, a single strip of tube lighting dangled from the temple’s painted doorway.

‘The sound of the vibrating universe?’ Marchant offered, thinking back to Monika’s words at the airport in Poland. He was still wearing the pendant she had given him.

‘The unstruck sound. Which place are you from?’

‘Ireland. I need to meet someone at Om Beach.’

‘It’s not far from here. Ten minutes in a rickshaw. Ask any driver.’ He paused, gathering his saffron robes around him. ‘I went to England once, with my wife and son. Nottingham.’

Marchant was surprised to hear he had a family. ‘Recently?’

The baba smiled. ‘Before my wife passed away. Om Namah Shiva.’

‘And your son?’ The baba smiled again, but this time Marchant saw only sadness in his watery eyes. ‘How long have you been here, in Gokarna?’ Marchant continued, guilty that he might have disturbed the man’s inner peace.

The baba lifted one hand, palm upwards, turning it from side to side as if he was weighing something. ‘Twenty years, maybe longer. There are five beaches: Gokarna, Om, Kudle, Half-Moon and Paradise. Om is shaped like the Devanagari symbol. It is the most popular with Westerners. Paradise is the most remote. But there is a sixth that few ever reach. Shanti Beach. Ask the fishermen.’ He paused, flicking the faintest glance at Marchant’s pocket. ‘The bond between father and son is never broken.’

Marchant gave him his rupees and left.

38

Fielding’s office clock said 7.30 a.m.

‘Apologies for the early start, but I’m afraid this couldn’t wait,’ Sir David Chadwick said, breezing past Otto, who stood in the doorway, a pained look of failure on his face.

Fielding never liked it when Chadwick set foot in Legoland, particularly when he had Harriet Armstrong in tow. They always had the air of estate agents measuring up a flat. It was no secret that the Chief’s office was bigger than the Director General’s in Thames House. The views were also better, much to Armstrong’s annoyance.

This visit was different. It was unannounced, too early for Whitehall protocol, the bag-carriers and minute-takers. The envy was also not apparent. It reminded Fielding of the day they came for Stephen Marchant.

Fielding nodded reassurance at Otto as he ushered Chadwick and Armstrong into the adjoining dining room. Denton followed.

‘Take a seat,’ Fielding said. The rising sun failed to raise the temperature of the room. Denton glanced at Fielding, but he was looking down at a handful of transcripts and files he had brought through with him.

‘Harriet?’ Chadwick said, sitting down next to Armstrong. ‘Would you care to begin?’

They had chosen two seats at the end of the large oval table, as far away as possible from Denton and Fielding. For a moment Fielding felt as if he was present at a petty dispute in a provincial solicitors’ office.

‘We’ve just had the results back from new tests on the running belt,’ Armstrong said. ‘The lab sent them overnight. As you’re aware, there was a TETRA-enabled detonation device attached to the charges. We knew it could only be operated on the TETRA network. What we didn’t know was the number that a third party would have to call in on to detonate the charges, and who had that number.’

‘We’ve always suspected it was Daniel Marchant,’ Chadwick said, ‘given that he had a TETRA handset with him on race day.’

‘And despite the fact that he saved many lives,’ Fielding said.

‘But there was no proof,’ Chadwick continued, like a politician ignoring a heckler.

‘There is now,’ Armstrong said. She hoped to fix Fielding with a thin grin, but the Chief had sat back, his long legs thrown to one side, his head turned towards the window. Fielding knew what was coming. Leila had been too clever for them all. ‘When we searched Marchant’s flat, we retrieved his old TETRA handset, the one he had with him on the day of the marathon. He’d programmed in some speed-dial numbers–the office, Leila’s phone, his father’s home, and so on. But when we checked the office number, it wasn’t the MI6 switchboard, it was the detonator on the running belt.’

Fielding continued to stare out of the window. Marchant, he was sure, had handed the phone back to Leila after the attempted attack, and she must have visited his flat after the race and planted it there. ‘Just tell me one thing,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t he blow the bomber sky high, taking the Ambassador and every fucking fun runner in London with him?’

Chadwick winced at the words. He had hoped Fielding would go quietly when he was presented with their evidence. ‘Clearly he had a change of heart.’

‘I’ll say. He saved the Ambassador’s life.’

‘I gather from David that you were working on the assumption it was a set-up by the Americans,’ Armstrong said, glancing at Chadwick.

‘Not unreasonably, given that Leila’s on their payroll.’

‘Daniel was within the press of a button of murdering Turner Munroe. Do you really think the Americans would have risked that?’

Fielding said nothing. He almost felt sorry for Armstrong, with her misplaced admiration for Spiro, for America. It was the FBI’s fault. On a recent visit to New York they had presented her with a jacket and a baseball cap, both emblazoned with the letters ‘FBI’. She had even posed for photos in them. For a buttoned-up Whitehall mandarin, the culture shock had been exhilarating.

‘Marcus, I’m afraid it doesn’t look good for Daniel,’ Chadwick said. ‘I’ve already alerted the PM’s office. We’re going to need the cooperation of the Americans on this one. An MI6 officer nearly killing one of their most distinguished ambassadors isn’t great for the special relationship.’

‘Except that he didn’t kill him.’ It was almost an aside. Fielding had said it too often to care any more. He stood up and walked around the room, avoiding eye contact with Chadwick and Armstrong. His lower back was starting to ache. He had had enough of this game.

‘We all know the Americans have made no secret of their concerns about MI6,’ Chadwick said. ‘But we can’t pin this one on them, Marcus. They’ve been over it with Leila many times. She came off the course to alert MI5 as soon as she became aware of the bomber. She didn’t know if Marchant was involved, but she couldn’t take the risk, particularly in the light of her brief from the Americans.’

‘We don’t know why he had a change of heart out there,’ Armstrong said, ‘but perhaps it was Leila’s presence by his side, in which case we should all be grateful that the Americans had the sense to keep such a close eye on him.’

‘Are you suggesting that Leila talked him out of it?’ Fielding asked. He was at the window now, his back to Armstrong and Chadwick, wishing he was at Tate Britain across the river, before the crowds arrived. The night manager would often open up the gallery for him, let him walk the Pre-Raphaelite rooms on his own in the dawn light.

‘Not directly, no,’ Armstrong said. ‘She had no idea what he was planning. But by being there, we think she had an effect on him, yes.’

‘And she was running by his side because the Americans had turned her, not because of any genuine feelings she might have had for him, feelings that had been no secret to anyone at MI6 since their time together at the Fort?’

‘You still have a very romantic view of Marchant, don’t you?’ Armstrong said, annoyed that she was addressing Fielding’s back. ‘Son of a distinguished Chief, best case officer of his generation, heroically saves the American Ambassador to London from a suicide bomber. How about son of a traitor, picked up where his father left off, gets within an inch of causing carnage in the capital.’

Fielding turned to face them, his tall figure silhouetted against the windows. ‘My point is that we must be grateful they were lovers.’ He paused. ‘But I’m afraid we’ve all got it the wrong way round. It wasn’t Daniel’s love for Leila that stopped the bomb being detonated, it was Leila’s love for Daniel. She was the one who had a change of heart.’