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

wasn’t a professional. In the real world, a sense of caution was the most important quality a spy could possess – more important than flair or bravery, more important even than being successful. Reckless spies lasted as long as reckless astronauts. Secrecy was the artificial air that they breathed; it was what kept them alive.

“I should have listened to those people who told me you are not suitable for this task,” said the vizier. “You are inexperienced, you are impulsive, you do not follow orders.”

The lobby of the building had been empty apart from a single computer on a desk, open at the website of a Turkish celebrity magazine, and a mottled green plant in the corner that slumped like a wounded soldier against a cracked bamboo pole. August headed for the stairs. On the first floor, at either end of a landing, were two doors. Engraved on a brass plaque was the outline of an aeroplane next to the Turkish flag. On the second floor were two more doors in the same position. One of them was reinforced with a metal frame and had an intercom system with an expensive camera. He heard a voice inside and continued upwards, making a note of the information on the company nameplates as he went. August considered the crude assumptions forming in his mind: that his target was a businessman, given his age and the description of a suit and a briefcase; that he was linked, possibly as a client, to one of the companies operating out of the building; that he was based outside Turkey, since he was only here for a limited period of time; and that he was in some way an enemy of IS, whatever that meant. It wasn’t much to go on.

He saw his target two days later. This time August had been left a note in the cemetery informing him that the appointment was at three in the afternoon. The man emerged from the same building, blinking in the sunlight, after exactly one hour, his leather briefcase clasped tightly in his right hand. He adjusted his glasses, smoothed his fluttering grey hair into place and set off in the direction of the nearest metro station. August knew how difficult surveillance could be even for a full team. For one person on their own, it was close to impossible. He stayed on the other side of the street and kept to a distance of thirty metres, setting his pace by the swinging brown briefcase that ticked like a metronome at the edge of his vision.

It wasn’t until they reached the station that it became clear the man was carrying out some form of crude anti-surveillance. Did he know, then, that someone might be following him? At the bottom of the escalator he stopped to tie his shoelace, watching to see who came afterwards, and then slowed his pace to wander into a small arcade. He picked which shops to enter at random and found himself lost and out of place in the aisles of a toyshop and then, several minutes later, a shoe shop, with a bored assistant hovering at his side. He stole nervous glances out of the window while trying on a pair of orange trainers and then fled, clutching the briefcase to his chest. He let two trains go past and crossed to the opposite platform at the last minute to catch one heading in a different direction.

All the while August added to his list of assumptions. That the man didn’t speak Turkish, because of the way he didn’t even glance at a rack of local newspapers, because of the way those people he spoke to tilted their heads and leaned in, puzzled expressions on their faces. That he had been given some rudimentary training in anti-surveillance techniques but was not a professional, because of the way that nothing he did was fluid or instinctive as it is with the best operators, who understand that the art of making the unnatural look natural is to create a series of tiny narratives to explain their otherwise curious behaviour. That he was uncomfortable and believed himself to be in danger, because of the way he touched his glasses, his hair, his fingernails. His eyes, darting first one way and then the other, seemed to fiddle with the world around him, like a child who can’t sit still. On the train he took a file from his briefcase and made careful annotations with a pencil kept in the inside pocket of his crumpled grey suit. When his phone rang he hurried to get rid of the person at the other end, but not before August had caught the edges of three or four words that might have been either Dari or Farsi.

They got off after four stops. The area around the station was grey and dirty; there were no foreigners to be seen. A group of teenagers sitting on a wall shouted at August. One of them threw a glass bottle in his direction and they all laughed when it hit a stray dog.

The man walked directly to a small industrial park less than a mile away. He appeared to have given up on his anti-surveillance drills: he passed up several obvious opportunities to see if he was being followed. He hurried through a black metal fence and disappeared inside a low grey warehouse immediately on the left. August couldn’t stand outside to see what would happen next – there was no street furniture, no cover to explain someone waiting. He had either to go into the industrial park or to return to the station in the hope he could pick up the target later in the day. The sensible option would be to withdraw; there was no need to take unnecessary risks.

But August felt very differently. He wanted to push every encounter as far as it could go – to rattle every door handle and window latch in the hope he might be able to snatch