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

She picked up an A4 legal notepad on the corner of her desk. It wasn’t a comms pad which had to be stripped of notes at the end of each day and locked in the safe in the corner of her office, but a plain paper pad she used for innocuous in-house tasks such as noting upcoming courses, times and dates, keeping on top of knowledge streams and job development programmes. Getting ahead in the agency meant not standing still, even if you didn’t aspire to the upper echelons of the organization.

She opened the pad where the corner of a page was folded back and straightened it out. It was a blank page apart from a square doodle in one corner. Squares. She was always drawing squares, often with elaborate borders and containing words usually related to something on her mind. A roommate at college had noticed it and once said it was a classic demonstration of anxiety syndrome. Lindsay hadn’t been able to fault her. Yes, she had anxiety issues like every other person on the planet, but nothing out of the ordinary. At least, she hadn’t considered a desire for success in exams and course work at all unusual.

Watchman.

The word was written in the centre of this particular square.

Damn. How careless could she be? She ripped out the page and fed it into the shredder in the corner. A brief buzz and it was gone, reduced to a mini-confetti in the drum beneath, unreadable and beyond any attempt at reconstruction.

She felt a pulse throbbing in her temple, and told herself to get a grip. OK, that was a mistake, leaving a code name on a notepad ready for anyone to see. Especially that particular code name. She turned and scanned the rest of the small room. Was that all she’d left on show? God, she needed to get her head in order. The recent closed comms sessions had been demanding, but this wasn’t the first time she’d done them, nor would it be the last.

She checked the desk drawers, telling herself she was letting her imagination get the better of her. A pencil on the floor was no biggy; it could have rolled off the desk as she was getting up to go to lunch and hit the carpet without a sound. And the pad was … well, yes, she’d been beyond careless doodling an operative’s code name on it. She would have to mention it to Callahan, just in case. In case of what – in case someone had been in here and might report it? But who would that have been?

She paced the office, trying to steady her thoughts. She knew what was happening: she’d been in a position once before where someone – a senator in the all-powerful Intelligence Community – had come into her office and subsequently attempted to bully and threaten her for no other reason than to undermine the CIA. He hadn’t succeeded, but it had been an unsettling experience that had left her feeling vulnerable.

She checked her watch. Twenty-eight minutes, give or take one. That was how long she’d been gone. Easily enough time for … and now she really was being paranoid. Is that what this place did to you in the end? A job involving endless smoke and mirrors, staring at screens and imagining all manner of scenarios going on in the big outside world, working like a rat in a science lab.

She left the room, locking it behind her and walked along the corridor to Callahan’s office. He was just leaving and opened the door as she was about to knock.

‘Sorry,’ he said, stepping around her. ‘Big meeting on.’ He paused and smiled. ‘Can it be quick?’

‘No.’ She shook her head, noting his sense of urgency. She desperately wanted to say that, no it couldn’t wait, but decided not to. ‘I’ll catch you later.’

‘Great.’ He started to turn away, then paused. ‘I’ve heard you did good work the last few days. Glad to hear it.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ She flushed at the compliment. ‘It was a bit intense but interesting.’

‘What’s it been, ten-hour stretches at a time?’

She smiled. Callahan knew how long it was to the minute. ‘Eight, actually.’

‘Long enough. Go. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ With that he waved and was gone.

TWELVE

Callahan hurried up two flights of stairs to a meeting he could have happily done without this late in the afternoon. He would have preferred going for a coffee somewhere well away from here and staring at the traffic for a couple of hours instead. Something mundane where he wouldn’t have to think about life-or-death situations where an agent’s existence might hang in the balance. He liked seeing the ordinary world going about its business, and a part of him wondered how easily he might find it to one day settle into a life of everyday domestic routine instead of the push-and-shove of intelligence work.

But duty called and, if what he’d heard earlier from Portman was true, this was no blow-in flash of panic, of the kind you got from an inexperienced agent in the field who’d sailed too close and carelessly to the wind, or who thought they’d been blown after spotting the same face twice or receiving a phone call followed by an immediate hang-up.

What had happened to Portman had been of the highest-level threat and would call for the same degree of reaction.

Not that Portman did panic. He didn’t have ice in his veins, but Callahan was pretty sure that whatever flowed in them was permanently set at a low temperature and not easily disturbed.

He arrived at the nominated meeting room on the heels of a small group of other attendees who’d been summoned by Assistant Director Sewell. Sewell was already seated, he noted, as was his custom. He’d been around too long to waste everyone’s time and they all knew it.

While the six other attendees arranged themselves in order of importance, Callahan arrowed in on a seat near the far end