A Hostile State

by Adrian Magson

  ‘Indeed we can. Luckily for us we have access to an inside source who can follow his progress during the exit transition of his current assignment and provide Seraphim with a location whenever we need it. Seraphim will pass that detail to us the moment she has it.’

  ‘Inside source?’ Irina Kolodka queried. She lifted an elegant eyebrow. ‘You mean inside Langley?’

  ‘I cannot confirm that, and in any case it does not matter where the source is. Suffice to say we are being given information that will allow us to complete this task satisfactorily.’ He looked at his watch. ‘In fact, I understand we may already have a new location for Portman. Is that not so, Grishin?’

  The former general, who had been given the task of collating and verifying the information received from the source in Washington, nodded. ‘Correct. Portman is still in Lebanon in the company of a woman. We haven’t yet identified her, but that is not important. We have his new location in the Bekaa Valley in the north-east of the country.’ He nodded towards Dolmatov, subtly and effectively placing him once more in the spotlight. ‘I believe Anatoly’s new team will shortly be setting off on the next stage of the mission.’

  Dolmatov said nothing, but nodded.

  ‘Good,’ Basalayev said. ‘Back to work, gentlemen … and lady.’

  TEN

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked as Isobel swerved to avoid another donkey, this one loaded with giant bales of something wrapped in tarpaulin. The man walking alongside waved angrily at us and showed a line of black teeth in a deeply tanned face. Whether it was because we’d frightened his donkey or because he disapproved of women drivers I wasn’t sure.

  ‘There’s a safe-house outside town. Why, do you have somewhere else you’d rather be?’

  ‘The nearest international airport and a flight out would be top of my list. And I’d like to get there in one piece.’

  She waved my concerns away with one hand and hooked a hard right turn down a narrow street, pounding on the horn to clear the way of pedestrians, kids and scavenging dogs.

  ‘The only international airport of any note would be too dangerous. With the number of protests and the level of violence going on at the moment, all foreigners are being scrutinized carefully. Paranoia rules. Anyway, it isn’t all about you, you know. I have to get out of here, too. Do you have a real name, by the way? I can’t keep calling you Watchman; it makes you sound like one of those super-hero movie characters. You’re not wearing Spandex under those clothes, are you?’

  ‘Not this trip. It’s Marc. With a cee.’

  ‘Fine. Marc-with-a-cee. The other thing is, this my ride. So, as you Americans would say.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I get to call the shots.’ She threw me an engaging smile which changed her face entirely, and I got the feeling she was enjoying herself acting out a little. ‘Actually, that’s not strictly true; it is mostly about you and I’m just hitching a lift on your coat-tails. But I do know the location of the safe-house so that’s my main input to this trip. It won’t be quick getting there, I can tell you that. It’s not very far but the roads can be God-awful with traffic and we’ll probably get held up or stopped more than once.’

  ‘But once we do get there?’

  ‘We wait for someone to pick us up. From there we’ll be taken to a location where a plane will be waiting. At least, that’s the plan.’

  It sounded too simple and probably wasn’t, but I’d heard worse plans and even worked on a few with less obvious signs of potential success. ‘Good to know.’ After a few minutes of silence I asked, ‘I know why I’m getting out, but what’s next for you?’

  ‘Hell, I don’t know. Orders is orders … and I think my time’s up, anyway. It happens. All I can tell you is that my controller said to drop what I was doing and leave right now, today, and to pick you up on the way. I think we’re both persona non grata, so that’s the end of our stay here.’

  ‘It happens.’

  ‘Not to me it doesn’t. A couple of others I know, in other locations, but that was a while back.’ She gave me a look. ‘My cover was as an agency for assisting aid efforts in the region. It worked, too, for a while. But I had a feeling it couldn’t last. Hezbollah are so fucking suspicious of anyone and everyone, even little old ladies who get kicked by shitty camels.’

  ‘What changed?’ I nearly laughed at her choice of language, but held it in.

  ‘The local security office kicked out a couple of small aid agencies recently for “suspicious activities not consistent with their stated aims”, if you can believe that. They didn’t grease the right palms is probably the real reason. I did but it clearly wasn’t enough.’ A short pause, then, ‘What did you do wrong to get you under the gun?’

  ‘I don’t know. I came in under the radar and other than buying some supplies, I stayed out of everyone’s way. Then I didn’t.’ I saw no need to tell her that the ‘supplies’ I’d bought included a gun and ammunition from a local armourer who did favours for the right kind of money. It had occurred to me briefly that he might have been the leak but that didn’t fit.

  Logistically there simply hadn’t been time for him to contact anyone and get them on my tail because he didn’t know where I was headed. Ergo, not him and probably not his hawk-faced cousin the car dealer, either. But who?

  ‘Well, sweetie,’ she said philosophically in a truly terrible American accent, ‘shit happens and nobody asks our permission. Ain’t that the way?’ She yanked on the wheel to dodge a car broken down at the side of the road outside a small supermarket and waved cheerfully to the owner who stood open-mouthed, spanner in hand and watched us go.

  ‘The ordinary Lebanese civilians are a lovely people,’ she continued, waving a hand in apology. ‘Unfortunately they’re under the hammer here on all sides, from the government, Hezbollah, terrorists, militants and the presence of Palestinian and Syrian refugees. You might as well throw in Hamas further south, I suppose. All that has knocked the country off-balance and there are regular protests in built-up areas and cities which bring everything to a stop but achieve very little. Aarsal looked calm enough just now but there’s been a lot of violence there, too. Don’t be surprised if we come across armed patrols and roadblocks.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘No. There’s violence all over this area of the Bekaa Valley. It’s sporadic and unpredictable and sectarian as well as terrorist-fuelled. Foreigners are targets at any time where there isn’t a heavy police or army presence, and sometimes when there is. They like to hit restaurants, cafés and markets, wherever they think they can score some shock value for whatever cause they espouse.’ She shook her head. ‘But you probably know that.’

  I did. I’d been to other places with similar problems, like Somalia and the Gulf regions, where the sheer unpredictability was a part of daily life, something you had to expect and accept, otherwise you’d never go anywhere. Trying to factor in who might kill you next was an exercise in futility and fuel for paranoia.

  As we drove I could sense the looming influence of Hezbollah everywhere, on every hoarding and telegraph pole, with flags or posters bearing the familiar AK-47 symbol on a red, green or yellow background, contrasting with political posters bearing unsmiling faces and slogans no doubt urging the populace to vote if they knew what was good for them. And everywhere there were signs that violence had passed this way like a bulldozer, with wrecks of vehicles and houses, of walls and infrastructure, and the collateral damage of blackened rubble lying everywhere. Yet all around, daily life seemed to go on, albeit at a pace unique to the local area.

  Isobel pulled off the road at regular intervals. Once was to buy water and fruit, the other stops were at a filling station and other roadside pull-ins to allow other vehicles to go by. That and the crazy attitude of drivers on the road slowed our rate of progress but I wasn’t about to argue; we had plenty of time and she knew the country better than I did. It also demonstrated that she believed in a reassuring level of caution.

  A
t the town of Laboue we turned north onto the Baalbek–Qaa Highway. Once out of the town we could see the hills rolling away into the distance, patterned with the regular shapes of a farmed landscape which was Lebanon’s agricultural heart. Settlements covered the slopes like a rash, the pale structures reflecting the sun and faintly misted under the heat rising from the parched earth.

  ‘Don’t be fooled by what you see,’ Isobel said at one point, and nodded to the east where a hillside a couple of miles away was dotted with white and blue squares in neat rows. She pulled off the road into a make-shift truck stop, and we studied the far hillside. The mist hung over the scene, screening the fine detail of what lay there. The coloured squares might have been an agricultural layout but I had a feeling it was nothing of the sort. ‘It looks almost peaceful, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I’m guessing it’s not.’

  ‘It’s a Syrian refugee camp. One of many around here. They slip across the border through the mountains. Not all of them make it during the winter months. It’s like a never-ending tide and it’s taking a lot of the country’s resources to deal with them.’ She put the jeep into gear and moved out into the flow of traffic. ‘And the sad thing is, even if they wanted to, there’s precious little for them to go back to.’

  It made my problems seem almost minor by comparison. At least I had a means of getting out of the country, which the refugees did not without considerable risk. As we continued north, passing more military trucks and local traffic, I saw other settlements and camps along the way, some with a solid building as a focal point, and clear signs of order in the layout.

  ‘Aid agencies at work,’ said Isobel, reading my mind. ‘That one’s new … Médecins Sans Frontières, I think. There are plenty more. MSF has the political muscle to resist getting pushed around too much, but even that’s no guarantee.’

  Moments later, as we rounded a hillside we ran into a roadblock.

  ELEVEN

  Lindsay Citera was enjoying a late salad lunch in the CIA Langley comms section cafeteria when a tall, elegant woman approached her table, carrying a tray.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ the newcomer asked, sliding effortlessly into a seat across from Lindsay, bringing with her hint of expensive perfume. Her tray held a bottle of water, a thin sandwich and an apple, the standard low-calorie lunch of figure-conscious champions.

  Lindsay nodded and drank some apple juice. She didn’t need to look around her to see that the cafeteria was quiet, with a lot of empty tables; maybe the woman needed company, although she doubted it.

  Carly Ledhoffen was in her early forties, tall and willowy, with enviable legs and the kind of high-end dress sense that seemed to get her invited to all the ‘right’ parties, according to the sisterhood washroom cat-chat. Employed in the agency’s Directorate of Support, she was reputed to have private family means and a cool apartment in Woodley Park, although nobody was sure where the family money came from. She was smart, with a bagful of degrees including law and mathematics, and had been around in the agency for a good while occupying a vague but clearly middle-management role. Like many other government organizations the CIA had a level of pecking-order snobbery, and ‘Laid-often’ as she was known down-river, was reputed to play it like a flute. Nobody had proof of anything to substantiate the nickname, but all agreed that she certainly had a talent for sucking up to people of influence. The fact that she rarely appeared to speak to anyone outside her own tight circle unless her work demanded – and certainly not to low-graders like Lindsay – made this approach unusual.

  ‘It’s Lindsay, right?’ Ledhoffen uncapped her bottle of water and took a tiny sip, eyes flicking around at the adjacent tables, all unoccupied. When she looked back at Lindsay, her gaze was piercing. ‘Comms section.’

  ‘Citera. Correct,’ Lindsay confirmed, and felt a ripple of nerves. She knew enough about the Directorate of Support to know they dealt with internal security among other things, and wondered if Ledhoffen had sought her out on some obscure kind of fishing trip. Why on earth would she be of interest to them … unless it was considered that she had stuffed up in some way?

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Ledhoffen smiled, showing surface warmth only, as if her facial muscles were merely activated as part of an auto-response mechanism required of the situation, colleague-to-colleague. Then she placed the bottle on the table and looked around, before leaning an inch or two closer as if they were long-time buddies.

  ‘You’ve probably heard the news,’ she said quietly, ‘about an agency asset burned in Lebanon? There’s quite a storm raging about it upstairs.’ The way she flicked her eyes towards the ceiling, indicating the upper reaches of the organization, was meant to convey that she was, of course, privy to the kind of upper-management scuttlebutt not available to most others on the lower floors. ‘I just wanted to check if there has been any talk about it down here.’

  ‘I haven’t heard any,’ said Lindsay. ‘I don’t think I’m on the right wavelength for hearing that kind of detail anyway.’ She felt the ripple increase in tempo, and wondered where this was leading. There were always stories circulating, even in this ultra-secret organization or maybe because of it. But she preferred not to be fed by the rumour-mill because that way lay the risk of being seen by senior personnel as indiscreet. And her job in the comms section demanded the highest level of discretion at all times.

  ‘Really?’ Ledhoffen looked surprised. ‘How strange. I thought all ops division staff would be on top of the latest buzz, seeing as how you’re all … well, pretty closely involved.’

  ‘Only if it involves a team on an ongoing mission.’ Lindsay wondered how much explaining she should do. Say too much and she could be accused of blabbing; say too little and someone might think she had something to hide. God, was she being paranoid? ‘I’ve been busy in closed-comms sessions elsewhere,’ she said, ‘so I guess I’m out of the loop. Was it anyone we know?’

  It wasn’t a question she wanted to ask, in view of what Callahan had told her, but she figured it might look odd if she didn’t show at least a modicum of interest. Without outlets and input gossips don’t have anything to pass on.

  Ledhoffen shrugged. ‘I really shouldn’t say.’ She made the zipper gesture across her lips, a gesture Lindsay found oddly childish. Yet the way it was done in a slow, almost teasing motion would probably have some of the male officers around here swallowing their tongues. ‘But the way I’m hearing it, it’s not good news, although I don’t have all the dirty details just yet.’ Ledhoffen gave a ghost of a smile to indicate that she knew of course but really couldn’t divulge anything at this point to anyone in the lower orders.

  She was bluffing, Lindsay decided; trawling for details after she’d picked up a hint of something upstairs. She pushed her salad around her plate, her appetite gone and wary of being drawn into something. Cafeteria talk existed here as it did in any other work situation; it was even considered healthy amid such high-pressure personnel, as long as certain boundaries were observed. Curiosity was a natural trait and showing concern for a fellow worker was natural, even if they were unknown to you.

  She took another sip of juice, trying to read in the older woman’s face just how much she knew. ‘Was it an asset or officer?’ There was a difference; officers were insiders, assets were not. But both were valuable.

  Ledhoffen didn’t respond immediately, but picked at her sub, peeling back one half to reveal something pale and lifeless that might have been turkey or pork or a dead fish. She let it drop and reached instead for the apple, which she rolled around in her fingers. Lindsay wondered when she would come to the point.

  Eventually Ledhoffen said, ‘I hear it’s an asset.’

  Lindsay’s heartbeat went up a notch but she kept her face blank. Was she referring to Marc Portman? Maybe, maybe not. Portman wasn’t the only one out there; other agency sub-contractor missions were currently ongoing with assets whose activities she also helped monitor as and when needed.

  ‘You really didn’t know?’ The touc
h of incredulity in Ledhoffen’s voice was carefully controlled, but evident.

  ‘How could I? Closed-comms means just that. The day before that was the same and in between I took breaks in the dorm downstairs.’ Closed or restricted comms meant nobody came or went from a comms room while an operation was in progress unless to take a necessary sleep or meal break, both snatched within the building. This was to guard against loss of focus and continuity on the part of comms operators who had live personnel on the end of the line; personnel whose safety could be put at risk by a moment’s inattention. It didn’t stop there; there was often an outside support network involved with the potential to roll back up the line like dominoes falling. It was a brutal part of the work requiring absolute commitment but she enjoyed it. ‘It’s the first I’ve heard.’

  ‘Holy shit.’ The word was somehow devoid of vulgarity coming off Ledhoffen’s lips, as if the rouged skin was Teflon-coated. ‘Better forget I said anything, then. We don’t want anyone coming after us for tittle-tattling, do we?’

  With that she gave a wink and stood up, leaving her tray and walking out of the cafeteria without looking back, her sleek figure the focus of three people just entering, one set of eyes male and two female. Ledhoffen’s gyrating ass, it seemed, inspired equal parts admiration and envy by both sexes.

  What the hell, Lindsay thought. She was showboating. Had to be. But why come and dump the knowledge on me? She cleared away her tray, feeling faintly and inexplicably unsettled. Maybe Ledhoffen had been in need of a boost in personal morale, and had chosen Lindsay as the first pair of ears she’d seen to show off what she knew.

  She walked back to the comms section with a feeling of unease – and she wasn’t just thinking about Portman. There could be another, more sinister reason for the approach, although it had come across as a bit clumsy. Unless that was part of the technique: make it too smooth and it would fool nobody. What if the leggy security officer had been sent down to sow a wild seed, drop a snippet of gossip in the comm’s ear, to test where it might lead? If the snippet became a flow around the building after speaking to Lindsay, it wouldn’t take much to pinpoint the beginning of a line of indiscretion.