Dirty Little Secret. Jon Stock

them, imagine they weren’t real. He read them again, holding the paper up in the moonlight.

       … Moscow Centre has an MI6 asset who helped the SVR expose and eliminate a network of agents in Poland. His codename was Argo, a nostalgic name in the SVR, as it was once used for Ernest Hemingway.

       The Polish thought that Argo was Hugo Prentice, a very good friend of your father, and I believe a close confidant of yours. He was shot dead on the orders of the AW, or at least of one of its agents. Hugo Prentice was not Argo.

       That mistake was a tragedy, destroying his reputation and damaging your father’s. The real Argo is Ian Denton, deputy Chief of MI6.

      An hour earlier, while Lakshmi was sleeping, he had tried to call his Chief, Marcus Fielding, but the line was busy. He never liked leaving messages. He would call again when he had gathered his thoughts. Not for the first time, Marchant was struck by the solitude of his trade. He threw another stone towards the sea, harder this time. It missed the water and ricocheted between rocks like a maverick pinball.

      Ian Denton had been good to him over the years, shared his distrust of America. And he was different from the smooth set at MI6, an outsider: a quiet northerner from Hull. But his awkward stabs at camaraderie at the terrace bar, the whispered words of encouragement in the corridor – they had all been a pack of lies.

      ‘Are you OK down there?’ It was Lakshmi, who had appeared at the bottom of the stone steps down to the beach, wearing an oversized dressing gown. Her left wrist was in plaster. Marchant knew as soon as he saw her that this time he would reveal what was in the letter. He understood that look in her eyes, the weariness of isolation. The CIA was about to throw the book at her for failing to bring him in. She had crossed the divide, reached out to a fellow traveller. Fielding had promised Marchant that his own job was safe, but the Americans were after Lakshmi’s head, too. And they would get what they wanted, sooner or later. They always did.

      He held Lakshmi’s gaze and then looked at the stone in his hands, rubbing it between finger and thumb. If only he could break free, leave the distrust behind.

      ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said.

      ‘You were going to share something earlier,’ Lakshmi said, walking over to him. Her feet were bare except for ankle chains, which tinkled like tiny bells as she crossed the stony beach. The sound brought back childhood memories of India, Marchant’s ayah approaching across the marble floor with sweet jalebi from Chandni Chowk.

      ‘Maybe if you told me, you might get some rest,’ she continued, standing beside him now, tightening the cord on her dressing gown as she shivered in a gust of wind. She rested her hand on Marchant’s neck and began to work the tight muscles.

      Marchant breathed in deeply. There was no point being enigmatic. If he was going to tell her, he would be blunt about it. ‘The Russians have got an asset high up in MI6,’ he began, raising a hand up to hers. ‘Very high.’ He needed to feel her warmth. Or was it to stop her slipping him thirty pieces of silver? It was the first time he had told tales out of school.

      ‘I thought he’d been killed.’ Lakshmi’s tone sounded casual, which annoyed Marchant, even though he knew it was unintentional. She was referring to Hugo Prentice, his close friend, fellow field officer and mentor in MI6. Prentice had been accused by the Poles of working for Moscow, and was gunned down in front of Marchant on the streets of London. The Americans had been only too ready to believe that he was a traitor. For Fielding and Marchant, it had been harder to dismiss him so quickly.

      ‘It wasn’t Hugo. None of us wanted to believe it was him, but we did. We forced ourselves, recalibrated our pasts. Now it turns out it wasn’t him after all.’

      ‘And that makes you mad.’

      ‘It makes me feel cheap, sordid. Hugo was a family friend. Close to my father. He looked out for me.’

      ‘Perhaps now you can remember him as he was, without the guilt.’

      Marchant let his hand drop, and picked up another stone. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me who the traitor is?’

      ‘I can’t do that, Dan,’ she said, ignoring his flippant tone. ‘You’ve got a career to return to. You’re a hero, remember? The man who talked Salim Dhar out of killing thousands.’

      Marchant laughed. Sometimes Americans saw things in such black and white: heroes and villains, good and evil. His world wasn’t like that. ‘Try telling that to Langley. To James Spiro. I was in the plane that shot down a US jet.’

      ‘Spiro won’t listen to me.’

      ‘Are you definitely leaving the Agency?’

      ‘I’ve got no choice.’

      ‘Then there’s no harm telling you who the traitor is.’

      This time Lakshmi returned his smile and sat down on the rocks next to him, close, her injured wrist slung playfully over his knees. ‘Let me guess, now. Marcus Fielding?’

      They laughed together, the tension gone for a moment, a sudden brightness in her tired eyes that gave him hope: for them, the lives they had chosen. The thought of Fielding, Chief of MI6, being anything other than loyal was risible, they both knew that. Known as the Vicar, Fielding was the one constant in Marchant’s life. Lakshmi liked him, too. She had met him a couple of times, once at the Chelsea Physic Garden, and had warmed to his professorial ways. He had even visited her in hospital, brought her honey mangoes from Pakistan and Ecuadorian roses.

      ‘It’s true,’ Marchant said. ‘He’s defected to the Royal Horticultural Society – to head up their fight against moles.’

      Lakshmi smiled again and fell silent, running her front teeth over her lower lip. They both knew better than to fall under Fielding’s avuncular spell. A few weeks earlier in Madurai he had turned Lakshmi and Marchant against each other for his own cold purposes, and he would gladly do so again if circumstances required it.

      ‘Spiro once told me that he thought you were a traitor,’ she said, her good hand sliding up Marchant’s leg, working the thigh muscles.

      ‘Sounds like Spiro – the guy thinks he’s James Jesus Angleton. Spiro also suspected my father for years, particularly when he was tipped for the top. I don’t think the CIA ever really got over Kim Philby.’

      ‘Don’t tell me who it is, Dan.’ Lakshmi was serious now, almost whispering, her sweet breath warm on his neck, her hand squeezing the top of his thigh. ‘You’ve got to go on, continue the fight. No one can stop Salim Dhar except you.’

      But Marchant was no longer listening. His phone was vibrating, and there was only one person who rang him at this time of night: Fielding. He stood up to take the call, instinctively turning away from Lakshmi as if to shake off their intimacy, worried he had been caught.

      ‘It’s Paul here,’ the voice said. ‘Paul Myers.’

      ‘Paul? How are you doing?’ Marchant asked, relieved, walking down the beach. He turned and waved a hand of reassurance at Lakshmi, but he could already feel the shutters coming down, protocol kicking in. Myers had been injured when Dhar had bombed GCHQ’s headquarters in Cheltenham after downing the US jet. The bomb was meant to have been dirty, but Marchant had talked Dhar out of it.

      ‘Bit of a headache. Ears still ringing. But I’m back at my desk. Well, working from home. Spent the afternoon at A&E. The doc told me to stay away from GCHQ for a while.’

      ‘It could have been worse, trust me.’ Marchant felt bad that he hadn’t been to visit Myers, but Fielding had insisted on him staying at the Fort in the aftermath of the attack.

      ‘So I gather. I suppose I should be thanking you.’

      ‘Any time. What’s up?’

      ‘I couldn’t help listening in on the crash zone. I should have been resting, but you know how it is.’

      Marchant knew exactly how it was.