A Hostile State Adrian Magson (reading e books txt) 📖

‘All of you.’

So it had finally come to this.

Basalayev’s face was a mask. If the remaining members of the committee had looked more closely they might have noticed a slight tic at the corner of one eye. Had they known him better they would have recognized a burgeoning anger, even a resentful fury at the hand he’d managed so adeptly to deal himself.

As the old saying went, to run the wolf-pack you have to run with them … or face the risk of getting bitten.

‘There will be no failures,’ said Basalayev. But this time his voice sounded a little less certain.

TWENTY-FOUR

My bolt-hole apartment in Paris was in a quiet cut-through off the Rue des Pyrenees in the 20th arrondissement to the east of the city centre. I hadn’t used it as much as I’d have liked, as Paris was among my favourite cities for chilling out. It was located in a small block of apartments in a quiet quarter and, like many Paris streets, had plenty of local facilities which meant nobody had to go far to eat, drink or entertain. In a sense, it had a village feel about it which I’d enjoyed.

Now, however, it looked as if I was going to have to move on.

The address titles of all three of my apartments, in Paris, London and New York, were held and dealt with by Belnex, an offshore administration company based in Gibraltar. I’d acquired each property at various times, putting everything I earned into them as a hedge against the day when I might have to think about a change of profession. They were all small but in good locations, which suited me fine. If my neighbours looked on me as an absent professional I didn’t mind. The cities were big enough for it to be very common and it saved having to answer awkward questions.

Disposing of the properties would be a simple matter of a written instruction to Belnex. They would deal with the paperwork and the real estate agencies and I could stay out of it. I was reluctant to sell but now wasn’t the time to take risks by hanging onto them.

Life was a lot more important than property and no security could ever be absolute, especially in the financial sector where data could be hacked and sold. Whoever was after me had already demonstrated that they had the reach in spades to do that. It reminded me that I would also have to dispose of my current credit cards and open new bank accounts.

I arrived at the apartment building and took a stroll around the block. It was late enough for the main flush of office workers to have gone but too early for the tourists to have got their plans going for the day. I stopped for coffee at a café on the corner of the street from where I could watch the front entrance of the building and picked up a copy of the sports daily L’Équipe. I had no particular interest in rugby or football, but it gave me useful cover for scanning the street.

There wasn’t much to see. An elderly woman pulling a shopping basket walked out, followed by two young girls, probably college students looking way too sophisticated for their years. A workman picked up a pile of scaffolding clips left on the side of the street and dumped them in the back of a pickup, and two boys who looked as if they were goofing off from school went by laughing.

After thirty minutes of watching and reading stuff I didn’t care about, I paid up and left the café and did another tour, stopping to buy some fruit on the way. A plastic bag of shopping to go with my backpack and a shuffled gait was all it needed to give the impression of being a nobody going about their nobody daily business. It’s certainly enough to make the eyes pass over a potential target and move on. By the time the eyes come back it’s time to be gone and forgotten.

The building had no concierge and relied on a keypad entry system for residents to come and go. I walked along the street on the same side as the building and waited for a cab to come along and used it as cover to dodge inside the doorway. Only the workman saw me enter and he looked about as interested in me as I was in him, but we both nodded and muttered ‘bonjour’ as was the custom.

I tapped in the entry code and slipped inside the building. The foyer smelled of polish and flowers, a pleasant mix as familiar as the last time I’d been here which was about a month ago. I liked Paris and this place had been a haven in between jobs; always hard to tear myself away from when the next one came along.

I walked up the stairs to the third floor, stepping past two bicycles and a baby stroller on the way. There were three apartments on each floor and very little noise save for a hum of unseen activity which might have been a vacuum, a television or a washing machine. I checked my door for signs of a forced entry but everything looked pristine.

The air inside smelled a little musty and needed a good airing. But I resisted the temptation to throw open the windows in case the place was under observation. It would be a clear tell-tale sign that I was inside and open to attack.

There was very little here that I needed to take away. But there were a couple of items I certainly couldn’t leave behind. I went to a small safe I’d installed in the bedroom and tapped in the code. The door swung open. Inside was a plastic folder containing emergency cash in various currencies, two spare passports in different names, driving documents and Visa cards to match and a Beretta 92SB semi-automatic pistol with a spare magazine. As