A Hostile State by Adrian Magson (reading eggs books txt) 📗

Copy that. Assignment terminated. Tango no longer in play. Suggest pull out. Report when clear. Further instructions follow.

I acknowledged receipt and shut down the phone. If Tango had been compromised then he was lost for good and there was nothing I or anyone else could do for him. If they’d had him for more than a few hours, he’d have been drained of everything they could get out of him by now, including details of our proposed rendezvous and why we were meeting. The worst-case scenario was that they also had the memory stick, in which case the names on it were toast. But Callahan would know that and would be trying to pull them out already.

In one way it might explain why a couple of shooters had been sent to get me, but what was unusual was the implied finality – and why Russian? Maybe they were mercenaries brought in to do a dirty job. If so they hadn’t exactly been the cream of the crop.

There was also the matter of missed opportunity. Any counter-espionage service faced with an opportunity to intercept and capture a spy or, as in my case, a support asset, would prefer to do it with the person alive. Trophies were always useful as collateral and as a demonstration of how effective the security was in the region to anyone else tempted to come this way. To do that and in this kind of open terrain the usual reaction would be to send in as many personnel as they felt it needed to close down an intruder’s exit route. What they wouldn’t do was send out a couple of snipers. It made no sense. Having a suitably battered and chastened-looking live person to show to the world via internet feeds and video news channels was pure gold. And the possibility of an eventual swap for some agreed benefit further down the line was always worth exploiting; more so than a dead body, which could be written off as fake news. They did it, we did it, it was part of the business.

I heard my phone beep and checked the screen. It was a text from Callahan.

Proceed with urgency to emergency location (follows). Local contact Hunt. Stay safe.

I pulled into the side of the road and took a long drink of water and had a think. With urgency was an expression I could have done without, along with being urged to stay safe. Callahan was an old hand at controlling assets and agents in the field and wasn’t given to showing the mothering gene. If he’d felt it necessary to tell me to stay safe it meant there was something serious in the wind.

Most operatives who work undercover have a natural aversion to being high-profiled. It’s part of the job to stay in the background, presenting only their work persona to the outside world. The threat of exposure is not just an inconvenience; it’s life-threatening. And having your face displayed for anyone to see was more than just a bummer. Knowing these two men had been given my photo and whereabouts – and quite possibly my real name – was a huge concern. How many others had the same photo and the same instructions, to take what is euphemistically referred to in some quarters as ‘extreme prejudice’?

Minutes later I got another beep and received three separate, random words which on the surface meant nothing at all. But they soon would. I called up an app on my phone and fed in the three words. That brought me a map and a pin-point location. The map showed the town of Aarsal, marked with a pin, lying some thirty miles to the north-east of my position. Touching the pin brought up the three random words to confirm the specific location.

That made me uneasy. It put me closer to the Syrian border than I would have liked, but clearly it was the kick-off to an exit route that would get me out of here. Going back to the airport and hoping to get a ride out was no longer an option. Whoever had tried to have me killed would probably by now have decided that their men’s non-reappearance was not a good sign and would be watching for me to make a run for it back the way I’d come in.

I studied the map. Getting to Aarsal wasn’t a problem if you were a crow. Thirty miles was a joy-ride to a bird on the wing, high up where earthly forces didn’t get in your way and all you had to look out for other than the next meal was an even bigger bird doing the same. But the roads here weren’t straight and I would have to cross the mountains and enter the Beqaa Valley. I had no sense of what the state of the road was like but I had a good idea of what to expect if I ran into trouble with one of the militant groups prowling the area. The only thing I had going for me was that I had a lot of time to get there.

The RV point on the digital map was the grandly-named Mansion Café & Restaurant close to the centre of town on the Laboueh Road. I had to be there by eleven a.m. the next day, where I would be approached by the nominated local contact, Hunt, whoever he was.

As I drove off, I hoped there was no significance in the fact that a point shown close to the RV on my map appeared to be the local cemetery.

SIX

After many years in the CIA, first as a field officer and latterly as a controller running officers and agents, Brian Callahan recognized a serious problem when he saw one. Having an asset under fire wasn’t exactly new; it went with the job, although thankfully, it didn’t happen as often as some people thought. But place a man or woman in a hostile territory and there was always