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

a monitor assisting another comms operator. He caught her eye and gestured for her to follow him when she was free.

While he was waiting he checked his messages and found two. One was from Vale, advising him that the plan was for Portman and Hunt to be flown out of Lebanon to a location in Cyprus, precise details to follow.

The second message was from Portman himself, consisting of a three-word locator signalling his position. He almost smiled at the brevity and felt even worse for the position they’d both been forced into. This wasn’t how professionals should be treated.

‘Close the door,’ he said softly, when Lindsay appeared minutes later. He sat down and gestured for her to do the same.

‘Is everything all right, sir?’ she asked, a tiny frown forming.

He realized she knew his moods better than most people and could tell when things were piling up. Right now he guessed he must look like a pot about to simmer over. A lot had been happening in the background as far as Portman was concerned, and he had to think of the best way of bringing Lindsay up to date on the situation.

‘Portman’s on his way out of Lebanon,’ he said. ‘London’s coordinating that with their operative on the ground, a woman named Hunt.’ Rather than us, he felt like saying, but decided against it. There was no need to bring Lindsay in on his conflict with the State Department. That would be a mismatch made in hell.

‘How do we get involved, sir?’

‘We don’t, not yet. If there’s a change of plan for any reason they will keep on top of it.’ And fingers crossed on that, he thought. Changes of plan were common to all intelligence assignments, usually governed by forces outside the operative’s control. As he’d learned very early on in his career, having a plan B was essential because plan A was always open to going wrong.

‘As of this moment I want you to be ready to drop what you’re doing and focus on supporting them where necessary. For now all we can do is provide an oversight role, but we must be ready to step in if we can find a way of doing so without any fanfare echoing further than this room. You understand?’

‘Sir. That doesn’t sound good.’

‘It’s not good, it’s anything but good.’ He breathed deep and scowled for a moment as if coming to a momentous decision. Then he said, ‘This is for your ears only, Lindsay. As of the meeting a few minutes ago Watchman is on his own. That means we don’t speak to him, we don’t support him, we don’t send back-up and we don’t do anything to rock the political boat vis-à-vis our current relations with Moscow. By “our” I mean the State Department and the White House.’

She looked stunned. ‘But that’s … I don’t understand.’

‘You will in time. As of now we use absolute care when communicating with Portman, we do not disseminate copies of comms records and we use exclusive-restricted channels only. You don’t mention having any connections with Portman or use the Watchman code name and be very careful who you speak to.’

‘I understand.’

‘Good. You wanted to speak to me yesterday. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop right then. What was it about?’

‘That’s all right, sir. It wasn’t important. I think I was concerned for Portman, that’s all. As you’ve said before, he’s part of the team.’

‘And rightly so. Because of that it’s even more important that we be honest with each other. What was worrying you?’

Put so directly there was no way out. She had intended forgetting all about Carly Ledhoffen’s odd approach in the cafeteria and brushing it off as the woman’s attempt at spreading her circle of contacts among the lower orders. She still hadn’t figured out why, nor what Ledhoffen thought she could gain by it; but then, she had never understood people of Ledhoffen’s kind of ambition and the tortuous extents to which they would go to achieve their goals. Now she was wondering if there had been an odd convergence of events that led to this moment, and realized she had better come clean about it.

First she described the feeling that someone had been in her workspace, and included an apology for her carelessness at leaving the code word out for anyone to see.

‘Do you think your computer was accessed?’ Callahan asked when she finished. It was an instinctive question given their situation.

‘It wasn’t. I checked with security. The last access codes used were mine earlier in the day. In any case, there’s nothing on there that could be useful. It was more a feeling of things having been moved. It’s never happened before. I hope I was imagining it.’

‘Could it have been the janitors?’

‘I thought about that but I don’t think so. They’re short-staffed at the moment and are focussing on the most-used areas where there’s a concentration of traffic and waste. I haven’t used my space much over the last week or so while I’ve been helping out with the other comms operators.’

Callahan chewed his lip, then said. ‘What else?’

She related her conversation with Carly Ledhoffen and how unusual it had seemed, and how Ledhoffen had never even spoken to her before. ‘I’m sorry,’ she concluded. ‘I didn’t want to seem like I was telling tales.’

To her surprise, Callahan looked almost nonplussed. ‘I understand. Did she mention who this asset might be?’

‘No. She didn’t use a name. What I don’t understand is why she should have approached me. Is there any way she would know I’ve been Portman’s comms support?’

‘It’s possible. I would always prefer anything conducted in this section stays here, but that’s not in my control. Because of potential overlap some details of mission reports have to be disseminated to other sections and agencies.’ She knew he was probably referring to the NSA, Air Force Intelligence, Army Intel, Naval Intel, FBI, DEA and a lot of others in between the bricks and mortar of the US Intelligence