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

on, and when they did, they would put a stop to it immediately. August had to move things forward before that happened. It was also possible he had misunderstood the situation. Over the years he had encountered plenty of hustlers looking to spin a few threadbare details into something that glittered, and there were any number of people who had tied up agency time with talk of dirty bombs and red mercury that came to nothing. The trade in secret information attracted more than its share of charlatans and liars. The man at the end of the phone might belong in that category, or he might be a fantasist, or a facilitator whose network had been degraded to the point where it no longer functioned. August didn’t want to consider these possibilities. If any of them were true, all he would have left was a job he didn’t want, a hotel room he couldn’t sleep in and a paperback he couldn’t bring himself to open. The thought was intolerable.

“If you prefer Syrian food,” the man was saying, “there is a restaurant —”

“Can we talk about what’s going to happen next?” August said. “I’m ready to get moving. All that time thinking about getting here and now my head’s like a can that’s been shaken up.”

“— a restaurant in the Grand Bazaar. All the food there comes from the city of Gaziantep, near the border, so it is a mixture of Turkish and Syrian cooking. Now tell me – Topkapi, Hagia Sophia, Sultan Ahmed, this is what everyone does on their first day in Istanbul. Which one did you visit?”

“Who cares? What are we talking about this for?”

“I understand your frustration, but you need to be patient. These things take time —”

“I haven’t got time,” August said, raising his voice. “I’ve come all this way… If you can’t help me, I’ll go somewhere else.”

“Where will you go?” The man chuckled. “Everything is under control, everything is progressing correctly. You cannot hurry this. If you act too quickly it will lead to mistakes and then —”

“I don’t care, do you understand? I’m not sitting around visiting museums and eating kebabs while you get your act together. We both know what I came here for. Now tell me what’s going to happen next or that’s it, I’ll disappear.”

The driver of a delivery truck leaned out of his window, less than twenty metres from where August was sitting, to wave his arm and shout at the car in front. There was a burst of horns like the beginning of a scale. When the noise finally died down August realized the man on the phone was laughing.

“I did not realize you were so … excitable,” he said finally. “Like a child. It is funny how a person can seem different when you speak with them directly. We had an agreement, you are correct. You come here and we arrange your immediate travel across the border. We have done this hundreds of times for other visitors. So why am I asking you to wait? I did not intend to discuss this with you at such an early stage, and especially not on the phone. But the truth is that something has happened – an opportunity, let us call it that, an opportunity that will never appear again, an opportunity that one way or another we are determined to seize. I am trying to decide whether you are the right person for the task – this is the reason for the delay. I admire your passion, this is true, but it will not be enough on its own. It will be very difficult. It will demand courage and skill and intelligence, but if everything goes according to plan it will make a big difference to the success of our … our company. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Whatever it is,” August said, “I’ll do it.”

“You do not want to know more?”

“Of course I do. But you’ll tell me at the right time.”

“One minute you are impatient, the next minute you say you can wait. I am not sure what to make of you.”

“Can we meet —”

“Be quiet and listen. You must understand that when you cross the line into this world, into my world, everything changes. The rules that you have followed all your life do not exist here.

“Let me teach you a simple history lesson. The janissary bows his head before the vizier, the vizier bows his head before the sultan and the sultan bows his head before Allah, no one else. The janissary was a young man from the Christian West, hundreds of years ago, who became first of all a Muslim and then an elite soldier in the Ottoman army. He left behind his family and embraced a life of discipline and war and service. It is strange, don’t you think, that the best soldiers, the soldiers the sultan trusted with his life, were the ones who came from Europe, from the heartland of his enemies? They say he loved them so much that he would come to the barracks dressed in their uniform to receive his pay alongside them. In battle they would fight with the passion and ferocity of a hundred soldiers.

“Now close your eyes. Feel the rough wooden handle of an axe, feel its weight, run your finger along the blade. Listen to the battle cry of your brothers all around you. When you swing your arm the axe flashes suddenly in the sunlight and the sand around your feet turns dark with the blood of your enemy. Can you imagine anything more beautiful?”

He was quiet. August wondered if he was still there. He pressed the phone against his ear.

“My friend, you have come home.” The man’s voice was soft and distant as though he was walking away. “You are among your people. Do you understand this? You do not need to be angry with me. I love you. We all love you. But you must be patient and you must