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

understood Jonas from the moment she opened the door, and patiently, gently, lovingly put him at ease, to the point that he talked at length about the books he enjoyed, the countries he wanted to visit, the plans he had to leave government work and return to academia.

It had happened soon afterwards. First a grainy photograph of an old man in an orange jumpsuit, then a crazy ransom demand. Everyone expected Jonas to stop working, but he kept coming into the office, kept attending meetings and writing reports and disappearing for hours on end with as many files as he could carry. August knew something was going on. Others said it was just Jonas’s way of dealing with it all, to bury himself in work. It would be odd if there wasn’t erratic behaviour, they said, if he didn’t look exhausted, if there wasn’t the occasional day he turned up late or appeared distracted.

But they hadn’t been there when Jonas had taken August into a stairwell and asked him how he should go about recruiting an agent. In theory, he added quickly. It depends, August said: on their character, their circumstances, how much time you have with them. Who is it?

“I don’t want to get you involved,” Jonas said.

“Don’t be silly. I want to be involved.”

“Do I have to make them like me first?”

“It helps. But it’s not everything. It’s more important that they respect you. What do you know about them?”

Jonas had taken his time answering, obviously reluctant to give too much away.

“He’s … he’s older than me, European. He has a drinking problem. I don’t know what information is relevant. He’s a priest.”

“Is there anything you can do for him? Anything you can offer him? That can be an important part of the conversation.”

“I don’t know. I can’t imagine…”

“Listen, Jonas, think of it as a conversation. A recruitment is just a conversation. You’re trying to understand what his motivation to help you might be and then developing those ideas so they become central in his mind. But what’s this about? What are you going to do? Let me approach this person for you.”

“You’d get into trouble. More trouble than you can imagine.”

“Listen, I’ve never told anyone in the office about this before, and I’m only mentioning it because I know you’ll be discreet, but I’ve done things that would —”

“I know about all that.”

It was the last thing August had expected to hear.

“They asked me to look at the INKWELL file,” said Jonas. “About a year ago. They wanted me to study the incidents and work out who was responsible. It was all very secretive, I wasn’t allowed to take the file out of their room. Don’t worry, I told them it was impossible to find out, that whoever it was had covered their tracks.” He smiled. “Only one very small mistake. But what I’m talking about doing is completely different. It’s in the open. Once it happens there’ll be no way of hiding – they’ll come for me with everything they’ve got.”

“I don’t care about that. Let me —”

“What about Martha? If anything happened to you…”

“What’s going to happen to me? Listen, Jonas, I want to help.”

“You are helping. Just by talking to me about it. Tell me, it sounds so complicated. What do you do if you say the wrong thing?”

“Don’t think like that. If it goes in an unexpected direction just find a way to keep the door open to a second conversation, and then one after that. It’s like a series of chess moves. You can recover from what might look like a mistake. Not that you’d know, the way you play, I doubt you’ve ever —”

Above them a door swung open and someone shouted August’s name.

“Don’t worry, Jonas,” he said quietly. “This’ll stay between us. But let’s talk again very soon. Somewhere away from the office. Tell me everything you know about this guy and together we’ll work out a plan.”

But he disappeared three days later. No one knew where he’d gone. The message filtered down from on high that he’d been granted an indefinite period of leave to deal with what was described as “a complex set of personal circumstances”. There were rumours – that he’d moved home to look after his mother, that he’d done an interview with the BBC to generate publicity for his father’s case, that he’d been sectioned under the Mental Health Act. One person said he’d flown to Beirut, another said they’d spotted him dancing like a lunatic at a club in Ibiza. August tried to call him numerous times. When he went round to his flat in east London he spoke to a neighbour who said she hadn’t seen him for over a month.

And then out of nowhere came news of the rescue of Jonas’s father on the Syrian border. There were reports of four British nationals being killed; their relatives confirmed they were a group of school friends who had left in the back of a lorry to join IS three years earlier. The media speculated endlessly about what had compelled them to take a Western hostage from the relative safety of Raqqa into such uncertain territory. But there was no news of Jonas, in the press or in the office, and before long the received wisdom was that he’d formally resigned to spend time with his parents. Understandable, really. And in some ways he’d never really seemed to enjoy working in the office. Probably better for everyone this way.

August couldn’t leave it there. He had approached the director of HR and asked for the address of Jonas’s parents. It would be odd not to contact them, he explained. He simply wanted to check that everyone was all right and see if he could help. And he had an item to return. But the director told him that Jonas had been extremely clear with the office that he didn’t want to see or hear from anyone as he considered that chapter of his life to