Free Dirty Little Secret by Jon Stock

based permanently at the embassy. He had also given orders for Daniel Marchant to be picked up from Fort Monckton. Fielding couldn’t protect him any longer. Denton had given assurances that Marchant was being held securely, but Spiro knew better than to underestimate Marchant.
    ‘Go in the back door,’ he had told the captain of USS
Bulkeley
, a destroyer moored in Portsmouth on a meet-and-greet hosted by the Royal Navy. The captain explained that he would need authority from the Pentagon before giving the order to deploy a unit of Seals against an ally he had just been on exercise with. Spiro had anticipated friction. The US Navy wasn’t in the habit of taking orders from the CIA, or storming British military bases. He gave the captain the name of someone to speak to, and told him to get on with it. ‘And leave the woman out of it,’ he added. ‘She’s one of ours.’
    He had expected to hear back from Lakshmi Meena by now, but she hadn’t rung, which made him wary. He had hoped to hear from his wife, too, but that was another story. It had been three days since they had spoken, and he had no idea where she was.
    He pushed her to the back of his mind and thought again about Marchant. As a former Marine, he wished he could be with the Seals when they beached at Fort Monckton. It would be the final humiliation of Marchant and MI6. Instead, Spiro had to settle for the lead jeep as it rolled out of Grosvenor Square five minutes later and headed down Regent Street towards Vauxhall. There were six US Army trucks behind him, carrying a hundred Marines in total. The sight of American forces on the streets of London would send a clear message to the Brits, causing acute political embarrassment. Better still, Spiro hoped, it would scare the crap out of Fielding.
    ‘Ain’t London a beautiful city when it’s empty?’ he said to his driver as they rumbled around a deserted Piccadilly Circus at 3 a.m. Above him, the advert for Coca-Cola flashed in the night.

23
    ‘I think I know where Dhar might be,’ Denton said, turning to the Prime Minister.
    ‘Go on.’
    The room fell silent as everyone looked down the table at Denton. He paused, calculating the implications one more time. On balance, it was better to share his hunch with COBRA rather than with the Americans, but there wasn’t much in it. He studied the tired, expectant faces and thought that the British establishment had never appeared so weak. If he was going to become a Chief with any power, he would need US support. To win that, he had to give them Dhar on a plate. But he didn’t trust them to capture him. The British were still better at some things.
    Just as he was about to speak, an aide to the Chief of Defence Staff came into the room and whispered something to his boss.
    ‘A contingent of US Marines is currently making its way down Regent Street,’ the Chief of Defence Staff announced, trumping Denton’s announcement. ‘It’s an unauthorised movement. Any US troop activity on UK soil must be cleared first with –’
    ‘Of course it’s bloody unauthorised,’ the PM said. Denton had often noted how, in times of crisis, the military defaulted to mindless protocol.
    Everyone in the room turned to look at the staccato images now streaming live from traffic cameras on Piccadilly Circus. For a moment, Dhar’s location was no longer important. Denton had known it was coming, but the sight of the US military on the streets of London was still chilling. Fielding must have anticipated it too. A few seconds earlier, Denton had received a staff alert informing him that Legoland was in lockdown.
    ‘They’re heading for Vauxhall Cross,’ the PM continued. ‘Unilateral action, just as the President warned.’ He turned to the Chairman of the Defence Advisory Committee, who had been summoned from his club to join COBRA. ‘It’s too late for the papers, but I don’t want to see these pictures tomorrow morning on
The Andrew Marr
Show
.’
    ‘That might be