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

who’d listen. There was a lesson to be learned there. But it was over. And nothing incriminating had happened, that was the most important thing, nothing that could be pinned down or reported back, just a coincidence or two in a snatch of overheard chat between a bored, talkative foreigner and a bartender, as was undoubtedly happening at that very moment in hotels all around the world. They could try again in a month or two, in a different city and a different setting, ideally with an officer who wasn’t beginning to suspect he had fallen in love for the first time just two days earlier.

Then he saw that the man’s magazine was open to an article about Egyptian prisons, and he thought: Martha might be interested in that. Before he knew what he was doing he said, “What magazine are you reading?”

The professor turned on his stool towards August, flipped the pages over to show him the cover and began talking about General Sisi and his regime, and asking whether August had visited Egypt, and how long he would be in Dubai for, and what was the name again of that publisher he represented? He suggested they squeeze in one more drink before the bar closed. His manner was relaxed and friendly, and he showed an interest in August’s reflections on his visit to Jerusalem several years earlier before talking about his own fondness for English bitter and the Royal Family.

“I drove my first wife crazy,” he said, “dragging her around Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace. A country like yours, Tom, that is able to tell itself stories of its courage and its importance over the centuries, is a lucky country indeed. Your kings and queens, your battles, your writers and universities and scientists – most of the world does not have this luxury. Most of the world tells itself stories of humiliation.”

A white dove flew into the bar and rushed anxiously into one corner and then the other, looking for a way out. Two waiters entered in pursuit, waving their arms in an attempt to steer it back towards the lobby.

“My first wedding was just as noisy as this,” said the professor. One of the waiters was holding a cushion aloft and waving it to startle the bird out of its corner. “I am afraid this is the Arab way.”

“You wouldn’t get this at a royal wedding.”

“I come from a small village in the West Bank near Kafr Kanna, which is where some people say Jesus turned water into wine. You see, even in those days the party was important. You are not married yourself?”

Perhaps he hadn’t even heard August’s blunt, clumsily cast hooks whistling around his head just a few minutes earlier. It was easy for professionals to fall into the habit of assuming everyone was as paranoid and riddled with ulterior motives as they were. They talked for a while about marriage and divorce, and August gently steered the conversation around to an anthology on Palestinian literature he was hoping to commission in the near future.

However much he might have been off his game, he quickly realized that something wasn’t quite right. It was hard to identify what it was. But he had been trained to control the balance of energies needed to get a conversation off the ground while not being too direct or obvious, and he could tell when someone else had their hand on those same dials and levers. The man knew what was happening, that was his conclusion. It might have been August’s clumsy opening gambit, or that he was showing too much interest, or even that the man had once been pitched in another hotel bar by a rival agency. But it was not necessarily a bad thing. There came a point in every recruitment where you had to ease the subject into an understanding of what an intelligence relationship would require of them, and if the man was ripe for the approach, as his file suggested he was, his early acquiescence might save them a lot of time.

“Your little publishing house, Tom,” the professor said with a smile. “People tell you their stories and you do … what?”

“We make sure we understand the material properly, that’s the first thing,” said August. “In some cases we might need a clarification or two. But that’s the author’s work done. Of course, we honour the contract we have signed and make sure they are looked after, that they can enjoy a long and rewarding career. That’s in both our interests. But I don’t want to make it sound too … dry. We’re passionate about the material, that’s why we do this. It’s very much a vocation, both for us and our authors.” He took a sip of his drink. A band struck up in the ballroom across the lobby. “Perhaps you’d be interested in contributing something small yourself one day. That’s the best way to understand how it all works.”

The man chuckled. “Oh, I think I understand how it works. Where I come from there are plenty of publishers. Some of them are famously … what’s the right word? Yes, famously aggressive.”

“You might find us more accommodating.”

“But this is one of the stories that you tell yourselves, no? The mild-mannered Englishman. In truth you are as aggressive as anyone, whether you care to admit it or not. You have read Orwell?”

“We’re only aggressive when it comes to protecting our authors.” August turned on his stool to face the professor, leaned in and lowered his voice. “To be honest, I don’t really see us as an exclusively British company. That might have been the case in the past. But there are lots of important voices out there, voices that aren’t speaking in English, voices that aren’t being heard – at the national level, sure, but also at the European level, at the international level. It’s less about the country these days and more about the values. My job is to make sure that your