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

No response. Warner knocked again. Silence. Then a door to an adjacent apartment opened and an elderly lady appeared. She was tall, stick-thin and neatly dressed, with a shopping bag in one hand and purse on a long strap over one shoulder. She locked her door carefully behind her and turned to stare at the three visitors with a look of mild surprise.

‘Can I help you, gentlemen? You look a little lost.’ Her voice carried a hint of a snap as if they’d been caught out misbehaving by a teacher.

Cahill stepped forward and gave her his most innocent boyish smile. ‘We’re not lost, ma’am. We’re here visiting Mr Dalkin—’

She cut him off. ‘I know who and what you are, young man, so stow the ersatz charm. I was with the Bureau before you were born so I recognize the suits and the look.’ She turned her eye on Andrews, adding dryly, ‘Although maybe some standards have been slipping lately.’ She allowed a smile to touch her lips. ‘Darn, if you could see the look on your faces. Dalkin, you say?’

‘Yes, ma’am. Do you know when he’ll be in?’

‘No, I don’t, Special Agent—?’

‘Cahill, ma’am.’ He indicated his colleagues and said, ‘Special Agent Warner and … Mr Andrews.’

The elderly eyes were sharp as they flicked between the two other men, resting briefly on Andrews. ‘Huh. A Mister riding around with the Feds? The world has changed. If you’re not Bureau, what are you?’

‘He’s on attachment,’ Warner explained smoothly before Andrews could speak. ‘Ma’am.’

‘Well, good for him.’ The old lady walked past them saying, ‘Sorry, I don’t know when Mr Dalkin will be in and nor do I care. He’s never given me so much as a nod all the time he’s lived here. He’s one of those stuck-up little Washington staff pricks who doesn’t look kindly on us lower orders. I hope you get him, whatever it is he’s done, and nail his ass to the wall, or whatever the polite terminology is these days.’

They watched as she disappeared down the stairs, back ramrod straight, and turned to look at each other in amusement.

‘We should re-employ her,’ said Warner softly, in awe. ‘She’s scary.’

‘What do we do now?’ Andrews queried. He felt a sense of anti-climax, as if the potentially exciting day in the company of a couple of FBI agents had fizzled out to nothing.

‘We’re going to stay on the stuck-up little staff prick,’ Warner said, testing Dalkin’s door to see if it would give. It didn’t and he looked disappointed. ‘You’re going back to Langley to do whatever it is you whizziwig computer guys do when the oversight committee isn’t looking. Cahill will give you a ride. I’ll stay on here in case I get lucky and fall against the door.’

‘Not a problem,’ Andrews concurred. ‘I do have some digging to do.’

‘I bet you do. Let’s hope it turns up something useful.’ He turned back to the door saying, ‘Keep us in the loop, though, you hear? We didn’t give you this exciting day out for free, us being on the same side and all.’

Andrews was relieved to get back to the familiarity of his desk. He’d enjoyed the momentary thrill of the chase with the two Special Agents, but he much preferred hunting down leads through his keyboard; specifically information on all things relating to Valentina Desayeva and her presence here in Washington, and anything else that his trawling through the archives might turn up.

On the surface, Desayeva was a very open book with no appearance of trying to hide from anyone. She penned articles for magazines and journals on life and social history in Russia, about which, of course, she knew a great deal; she spent a lot of time schmoozing the rich and easily-flattered for donations to a list of socially worthwhile charities, appearing regularly on social media sites and gossip magazine pages in designer dresses; and being escorted to artistic events at the Kennedy Center, often on the arm of some senator or other D.C. worthy.

However, anything related to her back-life was anything but open. There seemed to be no family, regular partner or significant other, and if she had a private life outside her charitable or public persona, it was well hidden. Equally, if any of the usual government agencies interested in foreign residents of Washington had anything on her, there was precious little available for him to trawl through.

No wonder Callahan was annoyed; if she was a spy she was being protected by naiveté if not plain stupidity

Which fact, in Andrews’ experience, narrowed the field of research and made him focus on the people around Desayeva instead.

He decided to build up a photo montage, taking in the faces seen with her on the various social websites. He instinctively dismissed many of them as camera fodder seeking their own publicity, the familiar faces who seemed to thrive solely under the media spotlight. He dismissed, too, any expatriate Russians or members of the Russian diplomatic community who swirled in and out of her circle. Moscow, if they had any direct control over her activities, would not have been so clumsy as to make a direct personal approach to such a public figure.

Instead they would have employed cut-outs, drops and seriously encrypted means of contact to give her orders or receive information. Which meant her ‘approved’ use of back-channels to Moscow for communication purposes were probably sanitized and would take far too long, quite apart from ringing alarm bells in the State Department who, Callahan had cautioned him, had placed her off-limits.

And that was where he firmed up the connection with Dalkin. A case of pure luck, he admitted, along with inter-agency cooperation. But that was the way things should work. The rest was down to some electronic leg-work, at which he excelled. But Dalkin had proved to be his way in.

It was time to talk to Callahan and flip the whole off-limits command on its