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

of the head and in the kidneys before taking his wallet and running off. He’d spent just under a week in hospital. Everyone had been alarmed by that. Violence and spying didn’t go together. Spying was all about maintaining the appearance of a smooth, untroubled surface, as though nothing untoward had ever taken place, and that was the opposite of physical violence. It was different when it came to psychology. On the psychological level everything was permitted. That was the place where spies brawled, where teeth were knocked loose, where blood was spilled.

Looking back, it should have been obvious that something was about to happen. But his mind was preoccupied with the events in the cemetery the night before, and the urgent need to tell Lawrence the whole story as quickly as possible, to let him take responsibility for finding the vizier. August had messed up, it was as simple as that. There was no way the vizier would contact him again, not after he had arrived late and drunk and fallen asleep underneath a tree. There was no way they would trust him with something as important and sensitive as the Iranian scientist. He pulled his coat around him and hurried through the late-afternoon gloom towards the café where he had arranged to meet Lawrence.

Still, he thought afterwards, the warning signs had been there. But the information came to him in unintelligible stages, like downloads encrypted by darkness, rain, fatigue and alcohol. A recurring figure at the blurred edge of his vision; the wet uneven slap of accelerating footsteps; the sound of laboured breathing; and the sudden application of something cold and metallic to the side of his face as he turned to see what was happening. He stumbled sideways and put his hand up to shield his head from a second blow. It must have hit the wall during its descent because he heard a soft, pained grunt and something hard landed on his shoulder and clattered into the gutter to his right. The skin above his eye screamed with pain. He went down on one knee. A fist came swinging into his back and another skidded across the top of his head. Feet scuffled in search of a better position. It came to him that it was one man, that he had little experience of such things – it was apparent in the hesitancy of his strikes, changing direction even as they fell, in his obvious confusion about what to do next, in the decision to use his hands rather than his knees or his feet. People who knew what they were doing rarely used their hands. There was an awkward pause as though a conversation had run its course. August felt a hand go to his back trouser pocket, which was empty, and come round to paw at the front of his jacket, looking for a way in. To his surprise, a tie swung into view, patterned with Playboy bunnies. He took hold of it with both hands and yanked it forward and down while pushing up off his knee, and the man gurgled and rolled into the wall and would have got up and run away if August hadn’t taken hold of his ankle.

“Please!” he cried in a strangled voice.

August hit him solidly in the stomach. It was at least a minute before either of them could do anything. Then the man started to fumble at his tie, yanked high and tight and hard like a noose after the drop. August leaned over and rearranged it for him.

“It’s twice now that tie has been your undoing,” he said.

“I don’t like to take it off.”

“It’s your neck.”

They were in an alleyway off a busy shopping street. On one side was a bin and on the other a pile of wooden boxes. A few metres away a cat nuzzled at a half-eaten bowl of food. August touched the wound above his eye and examined his fingers but in the darkness it was hard to tell the difference between blood and rain. Neither of them said anything for a while. The rain sounded like a voice, low and anxious and insistent, in a hurry to get something off its chest.

“I’ll be on my way then,” August said finally. “Unless there’s something else I can help you with, Youssef.”

“I don’t want your help.”

“Is it money you’re after?”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

“That’s not how it looks from here.”

“It was an accident,” said Youssef, getting to his feet. “I was running around a corner at great speed and I lost my balance on the treacherous ground.” He smoothed his tie over the dented mound of his belly and winced. “If anyone should be furious, it is me.”

“I’m sure that’s how the police would see it too.” August bent down to pick up the metal bar from the gutter. “Don’t forget your weapon.”

“The police?” Unsure what else to do with it, he put the bar in his pocket. “Naturally they will take your side.”

“They may take into account the fact that your fingerprints and my blood are all over that piece of metal. But I’m no expert. See you around.”

There are many ways to draw the line, thought August as he walked away, but that’s probably as good as any: on one side, people who assume the police are there to help, on the other, people who know from experience that the opposite is true. He found a coffee-stained napkin in one of his pockets and pressed it to his eye. He stumbled and leaned against a wall. In his state it was hard to tell the difference between the alcohol, the blow to the head and the wet, uneven ground: they were all ranged indivisibly against him like an army. He made it around a corner and a few dozen steps further before someone shouted at him in Turkish and a torch pointed in his direction.

“Everything is all right,” he said, holding his hands out to show they were empty.