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

checked his clothing but there was no sign of a weapon. Just my photo on his cellphone and some French documentation naming him as Marcel Duplessier with an address in Paris. It put him down as a local hire and a spotter not a fighter.

I put the phone in my pocket and left the documentation where it was. Then I dragged him over to a bench and laid him out with his face against the wall and one arm bent across his head.

With luck the first person to find him would take him for a drunk recovering after an all-night bender.

Outside I found Lindsay approaching a man leaning against a grey Renault Mégane. He was tall and stick-thin, and by the fine features and high forehead I guessed his origins to be from Somalia in the Horn of Africa. He stepped away from the car, one hand behind his back, the other down by his side. Loose-limbed and relaxed, he looked harmless.

But his eyes were focussed on me like twin coals, instantly assessing and wary.

THIRTY-SIX

Callahan called Andrews to his office and waited impatiently for the young researcher to arrive. What he was about to do would cause a furore if it got out, as he was about to by-pass internal security conventions and, essentially, spy on his colleagues. It was something he would never have countenanced before, simply because there would never have been a need for it. But to his mind this was justified. He was now fairly sure that he had details of a possible line in and out of the building, but knowing and having proof were two different things.

The downside was he also figured that he was on a short leash, timewise. Broderick would not have forgotten their acrimonious encounter in the meeting, nor the outspoken way Callahan had protested at the treatment of Marc Portman. And, as evidenced by the silence from upstairs, so far Jason Sewell had shown no signs of doing anything to calm the rough waters swirling around him.

When Andrews appeared outside his door he nodded for him to come in.

‘Can you get me internal CCTV footage of a specific area of this building – specifically the area around the communications staff?’

‘Sure. Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?’

‘Gaps in our security set-up here. But that’s not for public consumption. I want you to focus on one area specifically.’

Andrews looked interested. ‘Sure. I mean, yes, can do. Any dates or times? Only there’s a ton of continual footage of all areas and they don’t like to hold onto stuff for too long. If you can narrow it down for me it would help.’

Callahan thought it over. ‘I’d like the last five days of run-time. That should be enough. Can you do it without anyone knowing?’

If Andrews sensed this was going outside normal bounds he kept the thought to himself, but grinned. ‘Will do. I’ll get on it. Can I have the access codes down there?’

Callahan nodded. ‘I’ll arrange it. But you tell anyone and I’ll have to kill you. How long will it take?’

Andrews cocked his head and thought for a moment. ‘Thirty minutes? I’ll send you the links to the files.’

‘Excellent.’

Andrews disappeared and Callahan got down to work on another projected mission plan. It was more to keep a lid on his impatience than anything, since he was fairly sure he was unlikely to see it through. But he was damned if he was going to walk out of the building without an attempt to nail whoever was leaking information and threatening an asset’s life.

True to his word, a fraction over half an hour later Andrews sent through a number of links to CCTV files of footage taken over the past few days.

Callahan took just a few seconds to recognize that it would take too long for him to run through it; he wasn’t sufficiently tuned in to this kind of job. Jumping through vast amounts of video footage was a specialist business and he didn’t want to waste time or miss something vital.

He picked up the phone and called Andrews. ‘Hey, Sparky – grab yourself a coffee and get to my office; I need your eyes on this.’

While Andrews drove the system Callahan sat at his shoulder, checking the layout of the section on-screen and spotting familiar faces. With one eye on the timer at the bottom of the screen he was able to guide Andrews in jumping large gaps when the section would have been vacant or otherwise closed to outside access. He was also using a note of the times when he and Portman had exchanged text messages including location codes, beginning with the hours before the first attack on him in Lebanon.

The screen appeared oddly unreal, with staff moving around the cubicles, some using their chairs to scoot between keyboards, screen and maps, or coming together in huddles before moving apart the way he’d seen them doing a thousand times before, a busy section doing what they were trained to do. It was like watching an ant farm, even more so when Andrews speeded up the film at Callahan’s direction. All these people, he thought, engaged in vital work that would never see the light of day, nor be discussed with anyone outside.

Work that was now threatened by someone who’d been able to access information and get it out of the building.

The days of footage streamed by, with familiar faces and figures zipping beneath the cameras, changing light patterns, the daily run of a busy section in motion. He rubbed his eyes at the unusual intensity of screen focus and began to wonder if he’d chosen an impossible task that might in the long run prove utterly fruitless.

Then, on day three of the recordings, he saw a familiar figure come into view from the door to the stairway leading upstairs. A woman. He watched for a while, impatient to move on and half tempted to give the exercise a miss and ask Andrews to put