Dead Spy Running by Jon Stock Read Free Book Online Page A

not look too good for him.’
    â€˜OK by me. I shouldn’t have told you anyway. The guys in Colorado Springs thought he was a bloody hero,’ Myers continued, draining his glass. ‘Any chance of kipping at your place for the night? Missed the last train back to Cheltenham.’
    â€˜You can sleep on the sofa,’ Leila said, surprised by his confidence.
    As they walked out onto the empty Embankment, looking for a cab, Leila turned to Myers. ‘You never thought it was true, what they said about his father?’
    â€˜No. We would have known. We hear about everything at Cheltenham, sooner or later. It was political, expedient. They didn’t trust him. The PM. Armstrong. The whole bloody lot of them. Not because he was a traitor. They just didn’t understand him. He was old school, not their type.’
    â€˜I sometimes wonder if there really was ever a mole,’ Leila said, looking out across the water towards Legoland, lit up in the night sky like some sort of rough-hewn pyramid.
    â€˜It wasn’t Stephen Marchant, that’s all I know,’ Myers said, momentarily unsteady as he took in her legs. ‘Or his son. I can’t understand why they suspended him. No, Daniel’s one of the good guys. Good taste in women, too.’
    Half an hour later, Leila lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling in her Canary Wharf flat, regretting that she had let Myers stay on her sofabed. He was already fast asleep, his body lying as if he had been dropped from a great height, and snoring loudly.
    Leila thought again about her mother, how she had sounded on the phone the night before. The doctor who had first suggested a nursing home had told her not to worry, that she must expect her mother to sound increasingly confused, but it was still alarming. Sunday was not a day she usually called her, but the marathon that morning had left her frightened and tired. Alone in her flat, after four hours of questioning at Thames House, she had felt like a child again. When she was younger and needing to talk, she had never turned to her father, who had made little effort to know her. She had always confided in her mother, but now her voice had scared Leila even more.
    â€˜They came tonight, three of them,’ her mother had begun in slow Farsi. ‘They took the boy – you know him, the one who cooks for me. Beat him in front of my eyes.’
    â€˜Did they hurt you, Mama?’ Leila asked, dreading the answer. The confused stories of mistreatment grew worse each time she rang. ‘Did they touch you?’
    â€˜He was like a grandson to me,’ she continued. ‘Dragged him away by his feet.’
    â€˜Mama, what did they do to you?’ Leila asked.
    â€˜You told me they wouldn’t come,’ her mother said. ‘Others here have suffered, too.’
    â€˜Never again, Mama. They won’t come any more. I promise.’
    â€˜Why did they say my family are to blame? What have we ever done to them?’
    â€˜Nothing. You know how it is. Are you safe now?’
    But the line was dead.
    Leila wanted to be with Marchant now, to hold him close, talk about her mother. If only they had met in different circumstances, other lives. Marchant had often said the same. But their paths had tangled and could never be undone, even though both had learnt to keep a part of themselves back that no one – agents, colleagues, lovers – could ever touch. Marchant, though, was unlike anyone she had come across before. He was driven, pushing himself to the limits of success and failure. Nothing in his life ever happened in half measures. If Marchant drank, he would keep drinking until dawn. When he needed to sleep deeply, he could lie in until midday. And when he needed to study, he would work all night.
    She remembered the day, two weeks into their new entrants’ course at the Fort, when she woke early after a fitful sleep. The wind had been blowing in off the Channel all