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

She pushed her salad around her plate, her appetite gone and wary of being drawn into something. Cafeteria talk existed here as it did in any other work situation; it was even considered healthy amid such high-pressure personnel, as long as certain boundaries were observed. Curiosity was a natural trait and showing concern for a fellow worker was natural, even if they were unknown to you.

She took another sip of juice, trying to read in the older woman’s face just how much she knew. ‘Was it an asset or officer?’ There was a difference; officers were insiders, assets were not. But both were valuable.

Ledhoffen didn’t respond immediately, but picked at her sub, peeling back one half to reveal something pale and lifeless that might have been turkey or pork or a dead fish. She let it drop and reached instead for the apple, which she rolled around in her fingers. Lindsay wondered when she would come to the point.

Eventually Ledhoffen said, ‘I hear it’s an asset.’

Lindsay’s heartbeat went up a notch but she kept her face blank. Was she referring to Marc Portman? Maybe, maybe not. Portman wasn’t the only one out there; other agency sub-contractor missions were currently ongoing with assets whose activities she also helped monitor as and when needed.

‘You really didn’t know?’ The touch of incredulity in Ledhoffen’s voice was carefully controlled, but evident.

‘How could I? Closed-comms means just that. The day before that was the same and in between I took breaks in the dorm downstairs.’ Closed or restricted comms meant nobody came or went from a comms room while an operation was in progress unless to take a necessary sleep or meal break, both snatched within the building. This was to guard against loss of focus and continuity on the part of comms operators who had live personnel on the end of the line; personnel whose safety could be put at risk by a moment’s inattention. It didn’t stop there; there was often an outside support network involved with the potential to roll back up the line like dominoes falling. It was a brutal part of the work requiring absolute commitment but she enjoyed it. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard.’

‘Holy shit.’ The word was somehow devoid of vulgarity coming off Ledhoffen’s lips, as if the rouged skin was Teflon-coated. ‘Better forget I said anything, then. We don’t want anyone coming after us for tittle-tattling, do we?’

With that she gave a wink and stood up, leaving her tray and walking out of the cafeteria without looking back, her sleek figure the focus of three people just entering, one set of eyes male and two female. Ledhoffen’s gyrating ass, it seemed, inspired equal parts admiration and envy by both sexes.

What the hell, Lindsay thought. She was showboating. Had to be. But why come and dump the knowledge on me? She cleared away her tray, feeling faintly and inexplicably unsettled. Maybe Ledhoffen had been in need of a boost in personal morale, and had chosen Lindsay as the first pair of ears she’d seen to show off what she knew.

She walked back to the comms section with a feeling of unease – and she wasn’t just thinking about Portman. There could be another, more sinister reason for the approach, although it had come across as a bit clumsy. Unless that was part of the technique: make it too smooth and it would fool nobody. What if the leggy security officer had been sent down to sow a wild seed, drop a snippet of gossip in the comm’s ear, to test where it might lead? If the snippet became a flow around the building after speaking to Lindsay, it wouldn’t take much to pinpoint the beginning of a line of indiscretion.

But why choose the comms section to run a test? Had there been a leak pinpointed in the department somewhere? Or had Ledhoffen been blowing smoke just for the hell of it to feed her own sense of self-importance?

She unlocked her office door and scooped up a pencil from the floor beneath her desk with a huff of irritation. She hated untidiness around her workstation and wondered how she’d missed it. Like her boss, Brian Callahan, a senior Clandestine Service Officer who spent most of his time at his desk running officers and assets rather than out in the field, she preferred everything tidy and controlled. She didn’t have quite his level of what some people claimed was OCD but she’d learned early on here that distractions in the office could lead to an eye off the ball for those people outside; people like Portman who depended on maximum focus to complete their missions.

The screens and servers were all quiet, her latest assignment now over, and she just had to fill out a report to submit to Callahan, as part of the process of getting it signed off. She adjusted the position of her keyboard and tilted the monitor back a touch to its normal position.

A copy of a security memo lay in the centre of her desk, and she scanned it briefly before realizing she’d seen it already. She made a mental note to speak to the janitorial section to ask them not to touch stuff in here. Coming in on a rush job meant being able to use everything that was hers without having to resettle it first. Like jumping in her car and having to move the seat back into its slot, something she always had to do if one of her house-mates borrowed it for a date.

She’d discovered before that if anyone else used her work station while she was away or on vacation, they never left things as they’d found them. Instead there would be a mess of drawers churned over, coffee rings on the desk top, headphone wires tangled like spaghetti or screens left on when they were no longer in use. Damn, she better not start picking up their bad habits, otherwise Callahan might decide to get in someone matching his own