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

This isn’t connected to all that INKWELL stuff, is it? Has someone at the top decided that August has to go and come up with this kangaroo court as a way to force him out?

imogen: You’ll have a chance to express your views at the end. Lawrence, please continue.

lawrence: Thank you for the vote of support, Imogen. Let me pick up where I left off. Fact number six: exactly five days after August arrived in Egypt, a British diplomat living in the Cairo district of Zamalek reported his vehicle licence plate stolen. Number seven: according to an official letter of complaint later delivered to our ambassador by the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, on that same day a British official helped WINDMILL POET’s wife escape from house arrest.

desmond: Now we’re getting to the nub of it.

lawrence: The letter states, I’m quoting here, that at approximately 1300 a British embassy official arrived at the building in the suburb of Dokki in which WINDMILL POET’s wife was being held under house arrest. The soldiers on duty reported that the individual had a diplomatic passport and drove a vehicle with official embassy plates. Unfortunately they didn’t take a note of the number. They hadn’t been told that a consular visit was a possibility and so didn’t know the standard procedures, something our mysterious diplomat no doubt exploited. In reality such a visit would have been organized in advance between the embassy and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Fact number eight: August was issued with an alias diplomatic passport in 2013 for an unrelated operation. Despite that operation coming to an end, the passport was never returned. August claims it has sat unused in his cupboard throughout this time.

bill: I’ve got a cupboard full of passports, the oldest probably from twenty years ago. That doesn’t mean anything.

lawrence: Let me admit, Bill, before you point it out helpfully for us —

bill: Excuse me?

lawrence: — that we are standing firmly in the territory of assessment here. I am merely pointing out that August had the means necessary to execute this plan. It is perfectly possible that he made his way to Cairo without his phone, met up with WINDMILL POET, carried out basic surveillance of the house where she was being held —

bill: Basic surveillance? Lawrence, this is crazy stuff. You’re displaying a complete ignorance of operations. I know you’re relatively new to the office, and I’m sure there’s merit in bringing in bankers and consultants as middle managers to broaden our impossibly narrow perspective on the world, but are you really suggesting that August, operating completely on his own, conducted surveillance of foreign soldiers in a capital city where the counter-intelligence threat is considered to be extremely high?

lawrence: August, possibly, or WINDMILL POET, or one of WINDMILL POET’s friends. The opposition is quite sophisticated in what they can do – they’ve learned the hard way. They have access to equipment, people, vehicles, local knowledge. It may well be that August’s role was to devise a plan, allocate the roles, coordinate and play the part of the diplomat. He may have had someone else steal the licence plate, for example. Bill, hold on, let me finish. With all due respect… Listen, I’m not denying that this was an exceptionally risky thing to do. A plan like this would never have made it past your desk, or the desk of anyone in this building. But we’re not talking about an official operation. We’re talking about an individual acting on his own with complete disregard to matters of risk and reputation. We’re talking about an individual, and I know this is not within my remit, but we’re talking about an individual who has clearly gone off the rails since his wife’s terrible accident… All right, I’ll stop there, but everybody knows it. And you can’t point to any part of this that would have been impossible, can you? Nobody is claiming that August parachuted in at night, scaled a wall and shot the guards. We’re claiming that he drove up to a building in the middle of the day, wound down the window, held up an official document and with nothing but brass neck argued his way inside. We’re claiming that he built rapport, projected a mixture of authority and deference, told a joke at the right moment, shared a packet of cigarettes around, found a way to hint that they’d get in trouble if they didn’t let him in. We’re claiming that he planned, improvised and took his chances as they came. Isn’t that exactly what you tell your officers to do every day?

desmond: You can’t deny that we’re looking at something fishy here, Bill. The cash, the travel, the licence plate, the appearance of a British official with a diplomatic passport. The bottom line is that if we were looking at a terrorist network and saw a series of coincidences like this we would be all over it. You would too, old chap, with your team, come on – don’t pretend otherwise. None of us wants to believe this is true, especially after everything that’s happened recently. Another good man careering off the rails. Stop shaking your head. Listen, I know better than anyone else here the impact of that whole episode – I was on the ground in Beirut. But at some point we’ve got to draw a line in the sand and make it clear to this new generation that the word loyalty means something. You pay a fee when you join this club, and that fee is agreeing to follow the rules and keep your mouth shut. Corvus oculum corvi non eruit and all that. Why don’t we get to the end of the story. Lawrence, chop chop, how are you going to tell us he smuggled her out?

lawrence: Number nine: at 1412, approximately ten minutes after the diplomat was finally allowed to enter the building, a small fire was reported in the garden of a villa belonging to a general two hundred metres away.