How to Betray Your Country James Wolff (fun to read txt) 📖

they will call in reinforcements, and vehicles will begin to sweep the neighbouring streets, and cameras will be checked. What the team leader should have done as soon as he rounded the corner was alert his team to my possible disappearance, which would have allowed them all to close in. But my gamble is that because of his status and character he will be more reluctant than any of his colleagues to call in the loss of control, and that this will give me valuable extra minutes to get clear of the area.

I zigzag away, keeping to a steady pace. After a certain period of time the only way they’ll be able to find me is by examining camera footage, and it’s incredibly hard to find one person when it’s dark and busy and everyone is walking at the same speed. If my judgement is correct, at this minute the team leader will be hurrying towards the front desk to ask whether I’ve gone up to my room, and ordering them to send someone upstairs to confirm this, and considering the best way to frame this unfortunate sequence of events to his subordinates and to Elif. I cut away into a residential area, changing direction frequently and pausing every ten minutes to confirm I’m not being followed. The ground-floor windows on both sides of the narrow street are protected by metal bars, and it feels as though I am walking down a long prison corridor. But there’s no need to rush at this point. I have a strangely calm feeling that the events of this night have already been set in motion and will follow in the necessary order whatever I might wish to do, like the opening moves of a chess game before the confusion and sacrifice that must inevitably follow.

By the time I reach the cemetery it’s after one o’clock. The black metal gate groans and scrapes as I slip through into a kind of liquid darkness in which the only discernible movement is of trees, of grass, of clouds scudding across the night sky. I follow the path in a slow arc in the direction of the north-eastern corner until a small clearing near the middle. The earth is damp from yesterday’s rain and comes up easily in my hands.

The hole is half a metre deep before I hear anything.

“I am surprised you buried it here.”

He sounds unhurried, as though he has been considering the situation for a while.

“It makes little sense,” he says, stepping out of the shadows. In the last ten days he has lost weight. I can smell the sweat on him from fifteen paces. “To come back to the place we used to meet.”

It comes as a shock, after everything that has happened, to recall my first impression of this man, that the most dangerous thing about him, beyond the physical power, beyond the total indifference to what another person is experiencing, beyond even the metal object glittering at this moment between the closed fingers of his left hand – the most dangerous thing about him is his mind. It wastes no time in stepping into your space.

“There is no one else here,” he says. “You made sure of that.”

It forces you into a corner, it leans into you, it presses the air from your lungs.

“Is this a trap?” he asks.

“Not in the way you think.”

He considers the possibilities.

“What do you think?” he asks.

“I think you’re in the right place.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you think I am in the right place then almost certainly I am in the wrong place.”

He takes a step towards me. There’s something to be admired about a person whose response to the realization they’re in the wrong place is to step forward.

“I think you would have enjoyed it, at the end, watching their surveillance team run in circles,” he says. “You left it very late. By that point I was also certain that you were returning to the hotel.”

“Were you getting your white cane ready? Would you have come knocking at my door tonight?”

“I searched your room yesterday. I know it is not in there.”

“Yesterday? You didn’t think of waking me up to ask?”

“You do not remember? I tried to wake you up. I was … ready. But perhaps it is fortunate that you were sleeping. It would have been noisy, certainly, and we both know they had a man in the lobby downstairs. All it would have taken was another guest walking past the room at the wrong moment.”

“I’m not sure sleeping is the right word.”

“I understand why you would not keep it in your hotel room. But I find it difficult to believe that it is here.”

“Yet you’ve come.”

“When I saw them running around I thought it was finished. That you had disappeared, that you would head for the border immediately. This is the last place I thought you would be. But it was the only possible place in the whole city I could look. You knew that. You knew that I would come here.” He takes another step forward. “What about them? Do they know about this place?”

“I didn’t tell them.”

“Good.”

“I know that if you’d seen any sign of them around here you’d have disappeared forever.”

“So we do not have to hurry. Where is it?”

“The money?”

He smiles. “Yes, the money.”

“It’s not here.”

“I can see that. But you know where it is?”

“You’re not having it.”

“That was not my question.”

“I’m just trying to save you time.”

“Ah, you English,” he says, stepping forward again. “Always so considerate.”

He relaxes the fingers of his left hand and from inside his sleeve a metal spike slides down until the point is level with his knee.

“Can you imagine how many times someone has refused to tell me what I want to know? For a while this was everything I did. You have no idea what is possible.”

“I have some idea.”

“What?” He smiles. “Oh, in the house? That was nothing.”

“Do you think the money is in, I don’t know, let’s