Games Traitors Play
Re-inventing the spy story for the 21st Century.John Le Carre meets Jason Bourne!Salim Dhar is the world's most wanted terrorist. The CIA is under pressure to hunt him down, after he narrowly failed to kill the US president. The borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan are the target of relentless drone strikes. Echelon, the West's intelligence analysis network, is in meltdown, monitoring all channels for the faintest trace of Dhar. But no one can find him. Only Daniel Marchant, renegade MI6 officer, knows where he is.Marchant has been living in Marrakech, listening to the traditional Berber storytellers as they enthral tourists with tales from The Arabian Nights. Marchant believes that Dhar has shunned technology, retreating to old customs:coded messages for Dhar are being embedded in ancient narratives.When a man flees from the square, Marchant pursues him up into the Atlas Mountains, where he sees an unmarked military helicopter take off and head east. Is someone shielding Dhar to perpetrate an act of proxy terrorism on the West? Or is the CIA right when it claims to have killed him?To discover the truth, Marchant must be recruited by Moscow. But Marcus Fielding, erudite Chief of MI6, doubts that his young intelligence officer has the mental strength to be a double agent. It's a role that will require him to believe his late father was a traitor, an allegation that Marchant fought long and hard to dispel. Now he must rekindle those rumours and confront dark truths about his own loyalties. He must also work with Lakshmi Meena, the CIA's beautiful new liaison officer in London. Can he ever trust a woman-or an American-again after being betrayed by her predecessor?As Britain braces itself for an airborne terrorist attack, Marchant survives torture in Morocco and India in his bid to find and stop Dhar. Will family ties ultimately prove more binding than ideology? In an absorbing thriller that combines the nuances of Cold War Le Carre with the ejector-seat excitement of Top Gun, Marchant discovers that treachery is the greatest game of all.
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JON STOCK
Games Traitors Play
In memory of my father Peter Stock
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
A hot afternoon in Marrakech, and the square was already full of people and promise. If the storyteller was aware of the crowd around him, he didn’t show it. The old man sipped at his sweet mint tea and sat down on a plastic chair, first brushing something off it with his empty hand. Had he looked up, he would have seen men and women surge across the square like iron filings, drawn by the magnetism of his act. But he never raised his head, not until he was ready to begin his tale.
Daniel Marchant wondered if he prayed in these moments, or was just running a mental finger over the bookshelves, choosing his narrative. He had been watching this particular storyteller – or halaka – for a week now, convinced that he held the answer to a question that had occupied every waking hour and all of his dreams since he had arrived in Morocco three months earlier.
From his vantage point on the rooftop terrace of the Café Argana, Marchant was able to watch the half-dozen halakas who worked the northern end of Djemaâ el Fna square. None of the others drew a crowd like this one, with his cobalt-blue turban, untidy teeth and cheap pebble glasses that magnified his eyes. Locals came for the stories, tourists for the photos, unable to understand a word but swept along by the drama.
This halaka could tell a thousand and one different tales of dervishes and djinns, each one recounted as if, like Queen Scheherazade, his own life depended on it. Marchant had learned that storytelling had been in his Berber family for centuries, passed down from father to son. In his hands, the tradition was safe, despite the rival temptations of Egyptian television soap operas. And he knew just when to pause, leaving his story on a knife edge. Only when the money bowl had been passed around would he continue.
On a good day, he was even more of a draw than the Gnaoua musicians from the Sahara who somersaulted and swirled their way through the crowds down by the smoky food stalls. When he was talking, the square’s snake charmers rested their cobras, fire-eaters paused for breath, even the travelling dentists put down their dentures and tools.
Marchant sat up in his chair, sensing that the time had almost come. He wasn’t sure how the halaka judged when the crowd had reached critical mass. The man was a natural showman, milking the moment every afternoon when he finally lifted his sunbeaten face and surveyed his audience with a defiant stare. Marchant reached for his camera, focusing the lens on the top of the man’s turban. The storyteller’s head was still bent forward, concealing his face.
The lens was not the sort that could be bought in a camera shop, but anyone watching Marchant would not have suspected that it was many times more powerful than its innocuous length suggested. He appeared like just another tourist as he slid it through the ornate metal latticework of the restaurant railing and observed the scene below him. Except that a tourist might have taken a few photos, particularly when the halaka finally looked up to address his expectant crowd. But Marchant forgot he was watching through a camera, forgot his cover. He could see that the man in his lens was frightened.
Marchant had come to know the halaka’s assured mannerisms, the tricks of his trade. The street wisdom of yesterday had vanished, his stage presence replaced by fear. He should have been staring ahead, hypnotising his audience with a narrator’s spell, but instead the man’s eyes flitted to the back of the crowd, as if he were searching for someone. Pulling on the hem of his grey djellaba, the local head-to-toe garment, he rocked on his battered baboush slippers, shifting his weight from heel to toe. For perhaps the first time in his life, the storyteller appeared lost for words.
