How to Betray Your Country by James Wolff (pocket ebook reader txt) 📗

She even had me call your hotel to see if you’d checked in.” Which explained the loud knocking at his door that morning, not that August had paid it much attention. “I don’t know if there’s anything for you to do until she’s free. Beatrice likes to be the one to set the scene – you know, manage people’s first impressions. She’ll want to make sure you understand that all of this” – he held up his hands to take in the unpainted walls, the wires and the puddle – “is evidence of a company moving fast and breaking things. A PR woman to the ends of her fingers and toes. Do you know what you’re going to be doing?”

I don’t even know what the company’s called, August almost said, stopped only by the mention of PR. He had to start thinking about such things – he had applied for the job, after all, and there would be little sense in getting fired on day one.

“Not a clue,” August said. “Beatrice is the boss then, is that right? My phone interview must have been with her.”

Three o’clock in the afternoon, four weeks earlier, an autumn London downpour outside. August had been sitting in his dressing gown and thinking about a drink when the phone rang. He had forgotten about the interview, arranged during a brief period of engagement with the outside world that had also seen him speak to his parents, do his laundry, take out the rubbish and discover that he was days away from having his electricity cut off. He thought about letting it ring. Once he heard who it was he thought about telling Beatrice that he didn’t know anything about distribution channel evaluation, or that he was emotionally incapable of holding down a job, or that he’d made up so many aspects of his application that it was basically worthless. None of those things would have made any difference, he suspected. “A job like this will look great on your CV,” she had said almost immediately, her desperation audible down the line. “Managing budgets, significant stakeholder interaction, the opportunity to really make your mark. And if you want to return to government at a later stage, well, the embassy here is our principal customer, involved on a weekly basis and keen as mustard on the work we’re doing. You could easily go back in but at a significantly higher level.” I very much doubt that, thought August. He wondered how much trouble the company was in to be this short of staff. “The private sector would bite your arm off too,” Beatrice added quickly, in case she’d misjudged her pitch. “Not many people in strategic comms have such a unique opportunity to experience the digital front line. I like to describe our little frontier outfit as a sort of press office for the moderate opposition in Syria, that’s my shorthand for it – promoting their leaders, highlighting their military successes, showing them to be a force for good. It’s all completely above board, funded by the British government’s conflict and stability fund. In practice that means videos, military reports, radio broadcasts, news and magazine articles and social media content, all pushed out into the regional and global marketplace. What do you think?” It might have been the only question she’d asked.

William took out a packet of cigarettes. “Did Beatrice explain what we do?” he asked.

“Mmm. Propaganda.”

“She doesn’t like us using that word.”

“I bet she doesn’t,” said August.

William peered at him. “What … um … what did you do before this?” he asked, lighting his cigarette.

Now that he was in the propaganda business, August thought, he should be able to do a better job than the plain truth, which was that he had been doing a fair amount of sitting, a lot of walking, too much drinking and nowhere near enough sleeping.

“Civil service,” he said.

“Ah, got it – another spook. You might know our new contact at the embassy, then, a guy called Larry. A real charmer. Arrived here last week.”

Larry? It couldn’t be him, unless he had rebranded himself. Even then…

William’s phone beeped.

“She’s heard us talking,” he said. “She wants me to make sure you don’t disappear. That happens a lot – people turn up and then they disappear. One chap was arrested, someone else was attacked on the street outside. Plenty of others have just gone home.” He lowered his voice. “Beatrice isn’t the easiest boss. Let me get you a coffee as an incentive to stay.” Stepping carefully around the puddle, he led August into the kitchen. “So what brought you out here?”

An easier question to answer. He needed a job. He needed money. He needed to do something that reduced the time available for sitting, walking and drinking, something that made him hungry enough to eat and tired enough to sleep. The last time he had slept for more than three hours in one stretch had been in an Antwerp hotel, four months earlier, at the end of a long day of discussions with a twenty-four-year-old dual British–Belgian national who had returned from Syria after seeing his best friend executed by IS for desertion. It was a day that had also seen August’s wife knocked off her bicycle at a busy junction near King’s Cross and pulled under the wheels of a ten-wheel lorry carrying a delivery of lilies from Aalsmeer. Not that August had known anything about it until the following morning. Hospital staff had called a number for his office they had found on her phone, but the switchboard operator, accustomed to fending off callers asking vague questions about what kind of office it was and who worked there, hung up before they could grasp what had happened.

He didn’t want to see anyone after that. He stopped answering the doorbell, ignored calls from his colleagues, dealt with his parents by letter. He informed the coroner’s office that he wouldn’t attend the inquest and then slipped into the back row a few