Dirty Little Secret - Jon Stock

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      Her wrist was not the problem, it was the rest of her body that was in pain. Lakshmi didn’t know why Marchant was in such a hurry to leave, but it clearly had nothing to do with Fielding. All she knew was that she wanted him to go, to leave her alone for what she needed to do. She tried to think about what she had seen earlier: Marchant with his back to her, holding the phone that had woken her from her troubled sleep with its insistent vibrating. And the words she had glimpsed on the screen: ‘Dad – Home’. Then she thought about her own father, the anxiety in his voice.

      ‘OK,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll go to the gatehouse.’

      ‘Thank you.’

      ‘And if anyone discovers that you’ve left?’

      ‘Tell them I’ve gone to see Fielding.’

      16

      Fielding worked fast after the PM had hung up. First he rang Marchant, but his phone went straight to voicemail. He didn’t leave a message. Then he called the duty officer at Legoland, giving a password that authorised an emergency lockdown. The main green gates of the pedestrian and vehicle entrances on Albert Embankment were always shut at night, but within moments a second set of barriers rolled into place behind them. At the same time, steel blinds closed on all the windows and the order went out that nobody was to leave – or enter – the building until further notice.

      The last time Legoland had shut down in anger was in 2000, when the IRA had damaged an eighth-floor window with a Russian-built RPG-22, launched from Spring Gardens across the railway track. Fielding tried not to dwell on the fact that this time the threat was from Britain’s closest ally.

      These latest developments were beginning to remind him of the 1960s, when relations between Britain and America had been at an all-time low. Fielding had been rereading the files, hoping to learn lessons from the past. Washington, still reeling from Kim Philby’s defection, had been appalled at the election in 1964 of Harold Wilson, whose Labour government was against the US’s Polaris nuclear-missile programme. President Johnson was equally suspicious of Britain’s intelligence establishment, believing that it was still riddled with Soviet spies. The President duly dispatched two spooks to London to review the effectiveness of MI5. Accompanied by the CIA’s London head of station, they were granted widespread access, including to MI6’s headquarters, without anyone on the British side knowing their real purpose.

      Their damning report concluded that the UK had insufficient counter-espionage resources, and that MI5 was leaderless under its Director General, Roger Hollis. If James Angleton, then head of counter-intelligence at the CIA, had got his way, MI5 would have been run by Americans and become an outpost of the CIA’s London station. Plus ça change …

      The most recent analysis to cross Fielding’s desk suggested that 40 per cent of the CIA’s efforts to prevent another atrocity in homeland America were now being directed at the UK. What was the ghastly phrase someone at the Agency had used to describe Britain? ‘An Islamic swamp,’ Fielding recalled, as he tried to ring Marchant again.

      17

      The captain of the thirty-two-foot yacht was relieved they had finally reached Portsmouth. He didn’t much care for Spinnaker Tower, but it was good to be drawing close to it at last, having seen its sail-like profile on the horizon for what seemed like an eternity. In a few minutes they would moor for the rest of the night in Gosport Marina. It had been a tiring crossing, taking longer than it should have done, and both he and his future son-in-law, brewing tea below, were exhausted. They should have arrived before sunset, but the wind had been against them, making them miss the tide coming around the Needles.

      But at least the trip had been a success. Jacana, an old Seadog ketch he had owned since the 1970s, was lower in the water than normal, thanks to the haul of wine that was stacked up in boxes below decks. His daughter’s wedding was in a few weeks, and she thought it would be fun to buy the wine in France. He had spent far too much in the cellars of Saint-Vaast, where the prices were inflated for British visitors, but they had enjoyed tasting the wines, and the trip had been ‘a chance to bond’, as his daughter had put it.

      It was as he adjusted his woolly bobble hat, the butt of many family jokes, that he heard the call. How far away the person was, he wasn’t sure, but he knew at once that someone was in the water, on the port side.

      ‘Hello?’ he called out, cupping his hands. ‘Who’s there?’

      ‘Over here!’ the voice shouted. Then he saw a waving hand and a figure clutching to a yellow racing buoy, fifty yards away.

      ‘We see you!’ he called back, turning the wheel hard to port. ‘Coming across now!’ He leant in to the cabin. ‘Forget the bloody tea, and get yourself up here! There’s a man overboard!’

      Daniel Marchant watched the yacht as it adjusted course and headed towards him. He had spotted it from the shore fifteen minutes earlier, and timed the hundred-yard swim out to the buoy. He didn’t think he had been seen by the two security cameras mounted high up on steel poles either side of the beach. As he had slid off the rocks and into the sea, the cameras had stayed pointing to the left and right, scanning the public footpath that ran along the shoreline. He reassured himself that they were set to detect people trying to breach the Fort’s defences, not to escape from them. Lakshmi, too, must have kept her word. He was worried about her.

      Now, though, he had to concentrate on his escape. There had been no opportunity to create a cover story. Instead, he would have to improvise, judge the mood. The boat was bigger than he had thought, and he hoped there wouldn’t be too many people on board, too many questions.

      ‘What the hell happened to you?’ the captain asked, manoeuvring the yacht alongside the buoy. A younger man had already lowered a rope ladder over the gunwale and was holding out a boathook for Marchant to grasp.

      ‘Long story. Bet someone I could swim across to Portsmouth.’

      ‘Are you drunk?’

      ‘Not any more,’ he said, hauling himself up onto the rope ladder.

      ‘We can take you into Gosport Marina, but then you’re on your own.’

      ‘Suits me.’

      Five minutes later, Marchant was in the cockpit with a blanket wrapped around him, cradling a mug of steaming tea. He wasn’t as cold as he looked. There seemed to be only two people on board, a father and son perhaps. Their bags were packed, but the older man, who spoke with a faint Glaswegian accent, had explained that they were going to spend the night on board, as they were too tired to drive home. Marchant needed to establish only one thing: the whereabouts of their car keys.

      After finishing his tea, he climbed down into the cabin and placed the mug on the draining rack beside a tiny sink. He paused a moment, looking around at the cupboards, the foldaway table and a bank of electrical equipment on the other side of the cabin doorway. An old leather Morris Minor key fob was hanging next to the depth finder. His father used to sail a Westerly 22 out of Dittisham when Marchant was young. He too had kept the car key hanging up in the cabin, beside an ancient VHF radio. Marchant slipped the key off its hook, slid it into his jeans pocket and returned to the cockpit. Just his luck that they drove a car even older than their boat.

      ‘Thanks for the tea,’ he said. They were decent people, and he regretted having to steal their Morris Minor, but he needed to reach Dhar before dawn.

      18

      Ian Denton had taken the decision to represent MI6 on his own at the COBRA meeting. The committee was sitting through the night, but key players had dispersed for a few hours’ sleep, replaced by deputies. Now, though, heads and chiefs had all been recalled, with the exception of Marcus Fielding. Nobody objected to his absence.

      ‘Marcus has assured me that Dhar is not being held at Vauxhall Cross,’ the PM began,

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