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

It later turned out to be an old mattress soaked in lighter fluid. A minor incident, but one that caused the general’s wife to call the general in a state of panic and an order to go out to all troops in the area to respond immediately. This took at least one of the soldiers away from their duties, maybe more. Number ten: at 1420, shortly before the diplomat attempted to leave in his vehicle, a small group of student activists arrived at the house and demanded to see WINDMILL POET’s wife. They got into an argument with the soldiers and one of the female students alleged that she had been struck. Some of her colleagues began to record the altercation on their phones.

bill: Where’s all this from? The Egyptians didn’t put all this in their letter, did they?

lawrence: There’s some additional sensitive reporting around the incident. I can’t say any more than that. Anyway, in the subsequent internal investigation, the Egyptian soldiers claimed that while dealing with the fire in the general’s garden and the group of angry students they also carried out a thorough search of the diplomat’s vehicle as he left. Make of that what you will. Nevertheless, number eleven: twenty-one hours later WINDMILL POET’s phone pinged on the border with Libya. Number twelve: the next day, on Saturday 24 September, WINDMILL POET and his wife appeared on the manifest of a Libyan Wings flight from Tripoli to Tunisia and from there on to Stockholm.

daphne: Well, that’s quite an escape. So she came out in the diplomat’s car while the soldiers were distracted.

lawrence: That’s for you to judge. But there’s more, and fact number thirteen might be the most damning of all. A brand-new CIA source with links to the student opposition movement reported last week that what he calls “a foreign expert” was brought in from outside to rescue WINDMILL POET’s wife.

bill: “Brand-new”, eh? Well, I guess that settles the matter. I’ve only got one question, Lawrence. What does “brand-new” mean in this context? All its parts working, under warranty, all shiny and clean?

lawrence: Someone they’ve recently recruited, I imagine. Isn’t it obvious? I don’t really see —

bill: You say “brand-new” as though it is a positive thing. Do you have any experience of agents, Lawrence? Another word for “brand-new” is “untested”. “Brand-new” means they have no idea what the source’s access is or where he gets his information from. It means they don’t know what his motivation is. It means he might be making it up. “Brand-new” – we’re not talking about a toaster here, Lawrence, for Christ’s sake, we’re talking about a person. We might well be talking about some clown who’s wandered in off the street hoping to pick up some cash in exchange for rumours. Did the CIA’s “brand-new” source say anything about Iraqi WMD while he was at it?

imogen: It’s still relevant —

bill: Speaking of relevant, Lawrence, where’s the stuff from Stockholm in this steaming pile of horseshit you’ve put together?

imogen: Bill, you can’t speak to —

bill: I know you sent someone out to Stockholm to speak to WINDMILL POET last week.

imogen: Bill, however much you might want to defend —

lawrence: It’s all right, Imogen, it’s no secret he’s friends with August. I was surprised to hear that he’d been appointed to this panel, to be honest. Perhaps that’s something for us to follow up on at board level after this is over. Here it is. Last week, after multiple requests, WINDMILL POET agreed to be interviewed in Stockholm. He was described by our officer as friendly and courteous but unwilling to discuss the matter in great detail. He claimed to be astonished by the suggestion that August was involved in the rescue of his wife and said he had organized it himself with the help of a few friends.

bill: Did he offer a version of events?

lawrence: He said that his sister knew the cousin of one of the soldiers on duty and that he was able to pay a bribe so that they’d look the other way. He said this is how things are done in the Middle East. According to him, he simply got a relative to take her out of a side door. He said nobody pretended to be a diplomat or an official of any kind and that this was probably a story made up by the soldiers to cover their backs.

bill: Anything else?

lawrence: Nothing relevant.

bill: What did he say, Lawrence?

lawrence: Only that he had never thought August was particularly capable and that pulling off something like this would have been way beyond his abilities. He said he was surprised August could get himself dressed in the morning without help let alone make a plan to rescue a political prisoner from house arrest in a police state. He called him a jackass and an idiot and said he’d never in his life met such a — What’s the matter, August? Why are you laughing? Do you think this is funny? Do you really think we can’t see through this absurd cover story you’ve fabricated with WINDMILL POET to hide your involvement? If only Martha was able to see —

[Loud noises and shouting. End of recording.]

20

It wasn’t the first time August had been attacked. There had been any number of playground beatings, briskly designed to bring the new boy up to speed (lessons in history, lessons in geography), and the time he’d turned the corner and found himself in the middle of a fight between rival football fans, and plenty of routine skirmishing outside nightclubs during his Cambridge years. A kid on a moped had once lashed at him with a car aerial and snatched his mobile phone. He couldn’t complain; he’d been an active participant in violence on other occasions. The only time it had threatened to get out of hand was when two men in Lisbon had followed him to the port, where he was due to meet an agent, and hit him around the back