A Hostile State

by Adrian Magson

  I got the sense that the pause was deliberate. It certainly caught my attention and I felt a tingle up the back of my neck. ‘Are you going to tell me?’

  ‘It began with a former chief of staff in DC for someone you knew. Remember Senator Howard J. Benson?’

  Benson. I’d heard of the man but never met him, which was probably a good thing. From what little Callahan had told me before, he’d been a CIA hater who’d latched onto me as a specific target while I was on a contract assignment in Ukraine for Callahan. It didn’t matter now because Benson was dead, killed by a sniper at his lakeside home outside Washington. The sniper called himself Two-One, and he’d phoned to warn me off going after Benson because he was already taking care of it. He’d been employed by Benson to dispose of at least two people Benson had seen as a threat to his plans, prosperity and future. In the end Two-One had figured he was likely to be next on the list and had chosen to take care of the senator for good and get out.

  ‘I remember,’ I told Callahan.

  ‘The staffer, named Dalkin, had gotten himself into some serious debt, and decided to get creative by contacting a woman here in DC named Valentina Desayeva, and giving her your details. I won’t bother you with the rest but the FBI have had a low-level watch on her for some time, and one of their random surveillance teams picked up a photo of her and Dalkin in a meeting at a hideaway a couple of hours out of Washington.’ He gave a dry chuckle. ‘Sometimes we get lucky.’

  ‘You said three. If Dalkin and Desayeva were on the outside, that means number three must have been feeding my locators to them from inside.’

  ‘Yeah. Something like that. Just when we think we’ve got the Russians blocked and shocked they go and make a new move. Dalkin made the first approach to Desayeva and she drew him in like warm butter. He would have known everything Benson was working on, including all that business while you were in Ukraine, and saw a way of leveraging some money out of it.’

  ‘So who was the inside leak?’

  ‘A member of our Support Directorate. She’s Dalkin’s cousin and lives a high life which turned out to be way beyond her means. He’s already talking to the FBI and admits he agreed to pay her a lot of money if she gave him information on your real name and current whereabouts.’

  ‘Could she do that? I thought there were firewalls and stuff.’

  ‘She’s very smart; she burrowed right inside our contracts files looking for your code name. It didn’t include your address details, but all she had to do was look at the last date we had contact with you … which showed up your trip to Lebanon. She contacted Dalkin and he did the rest. Unfortunately, even the cleverest people forget that there are always traces left behind, no matter how small. We ran an audit trail and she was done.’

  ‘So that’s how they got onto me there.’

  ‘Yes. After that, though, we think Ledhoffen managed to bypass Dalkin and deal direct with Desayeva, who she was already big buddies with.’ He gave a brief laugh. ‘The Russians were happy to pay Dalkin, anyway, but they probably paid Ledhoffen more. You can imagine how the interrogation team are playing up that one. Dalkin’s mad enough to spit shrapnel.’

  ‘Are these people in custody?’

  ‘They’ve got Dalkin, of course. He’s the weak link in the chain. So far he’s trying to parlay his way out of a long sentence by offering up his cousin. He claims she’s the one who’s been giving away your location each time.’ Callahan sounded tired, as if the machinations had worn him down. ‘Unfortunately Desayeva slipped the net. The FBI was on the point of bringing her in for a little chat when she took off. Her instincts must be well-tuned; she’s probably in Moscow by now, cosying up to Uncle Vladimir and looking for the next assignment.’

  ‘What about the cousin?’ It really didn’t matter to me but I liked to think that all the loose ends had been tied up.

  ‘The FBI is taking care of that today. They’ve got her on a twenty-four-hour watch while they get all their legal checks done. It’s likely to send Langley into a spin when news gets out.’

  ‘And my situation?’ None of this told me whether I was clear of trouble yet, whether the people after me had given up for good or whether I’d have to spend the next few years looking over my shoulder.

  ‘That’s the good news. I’ve been talking to Tom Vale, who seems to know a lot of stuff we don’t. He tells me the people in Moscow have called off the wolves.’

  ‘The British know things the CIA doesn’t? Now there’s a thing.’ It was a low blow but I figured it didn’t hurt for the CIA to have their egos punctured once in a while. If they’d got a leak in Langley it served to show they were not infallible, in spite of what the American public was led to believe. Actually, for that read every intelligence agency in the world; fallibility is built into their very framework because the structures are human. And every now and then proof comes along to show just how susceptible they are … and what the consequences are of pretending they’re not. ‘Did he say who or what kicked it off?’

  ‘It was a pay-back mission. We can’t exactly place a smoking gun in Putin’s hand but we do know it was organized and run by a secret group in Moscow. And on an issue like this they would have operated only if they’d had the nod from the very top.’

  ‘What was the point – and why me?’

  ‘The aim was simple. It was designed to make up for a number of failed missions by FSB and GRU units in the west, and the expulsion of their sleepers including Anna Chapman and the failure of the Skripal poisoning in the UK. What better way to signal their fight-back and show us they weren’t going to take any more of our shit than by knocking off a CIA operative who’s been a particular pain in their collective ass for the past few years. I paraphrase, of course, but that operative just happened to be you.’

  ‘Is that all?’ I wasn’t sure I believed it at first. But given a few seconds of thought I couldn’t deny Callahan was probably right: there was a certain tortured Russian logic to it. If taking out a CIA agent could be seen as a face-saver for past fails, then it made absolute sense.

  It was all about perceived strength. Being the strong man was Putin’s entire game plan and always had been. He’d grown up on it since his days in the KGB, posed picture after picture showing himself as the judo-playing, tiger-hunting man of action, bare-chested and frightened of nothing and nobody – least of all the West. And the people around him would have tapped automatically into the same doctrine because it served them to do so.

  ‘There have been crazier situations,’ Callahan continued. ‘They don’t always make sense to us, but we have to take it at face value. Vale’s information is that the group running the operation has been disbanded. We can both guess what that means.’

  He was right. The harsh reality of failure in Russian military and intelligence circles was simple. Success brought all the plaudits while failure meant nobody got to hear about it again. Ever.

  ‘You shouldn’t throw in the towel,’ I said. I wasn’t sure where that had come from or even if it was my place to say it. But it was out now. ‘Politicians are never around for long. Their turn to go comes sooner or later. And you’re the best I’ve worked with. It would be a waste.’ As endorsements went it was unvarnished and down-to-earth, but I figured he’d understand.

  ‘Thank you,’ he replied. ‘Don’t worry – I’m not done yet.’ He cleared his throat, then said, ‘Send Lindsay home, will you? We have work to do.’

  FORTY-NINE

  It was six a.m. when Special Agent Bill Warner unfolded himself from his car and walked into the apartment block where Carly Ledhoffen had her home. The air in the street felt suitably early-morning fresh and he shivered slightly. He nodded at three other agents on the door and stairs, and was surprised at how calm he felt at what he was about to do.

  No law officer can feel great pleasure at arresting a spy discovered inside a government agency; it’s too close to home and too much of a threat to personal and national security. But Warner couldn’t help but feel a
quiet satisfaction at being able to finish this. It set the seal on a career which had been long and dutiful, made up of successes and failures, like every other agent he knew. But this one at least made up for the number of cases he’d worked on that had ended in a blank sheet. However, that was the way the cookie rolled, as he was fond of telling his younger colleague Special Agent Charles Cahill.

  Cahill was walking several paces behind him with a female colleague alongside him. They were content to allow Warner to go ahead and perform the knock, as it was known. Further back were a number of other agents sent to provide support and keep the press and any early onlookers away, their cars blocking the street at both ends.

  Warner knew his job would not end here, in this high-end section of Woodley Park. There would be paperwork, procedures to go through and a host of careful briefings and reports to endure before this reached anything like a court of law. But that was much further down the line and he was happy to wait, to bide his time.

  For now he was interested in getting Ledhoffen’s first statement, if any, which would open up the game, and making sure he had everything prepared so that some clever lawyer could not wipe the case off the board.

  The air inside the apartment block smelled nice, faintly perfumed with what he thought of as class. The fact that his reason for being here rendered that description largely fake didn’t matter. He’d been in too many places where desperation and death had been long absorbed in the brickwork and seeped out at you the moment you walked through the door, invariably following you out as you left and taking a long time to dispel.

  He wondered what Ledhoffen would say when she was told cousin Bradley Dalkin had rolled over on her and provided the proof needed that would nail her feet to the floor. She would undoubtedly lawyer-up, which would be interesting to see as it might prove whether she really did have as many close friends in Washington’s elite as she had claimed.

  His bet was that most of them would run for the hills and want nothing to do with her. The sour taste of treachery was like that; it tested friendships and divided families. It would certainly send seismic ripples through the Intelligence community like no other. The CIA would be the one to suffer most, and he felt for the hard-working and proud Americans who worked there. It wasn’t their fault that they had harboured a traitor in their midst, but they were the ones who would have to live with that knowledge.

  By the time Cahill and the female agent caught up with him he was leaning on the bell to Ledhoffen’s apartment. Seconds later the door opened and the woman herself appeared. She blinked owlishly in the light, looking as if she had been torn from a deep sleep. Her usually immaculate face, which he’d seen from many of the photographs sent to him by David Andrews, was devoid of make-up and looked a little puffy. But along with the faint look of query on her brow was a hint in her eyes of, what – realization?

  Being woken at such an early hour when you figured life was yours to enjoy, with all the benefits you had acquired, probably did that to you, he decided wryly. Which was why early-morning arrests were chosen as the most effective by most law-enforcement agencies.

  ‘Miss Carly Ledhoffen?’ he asked politely, and held out his wallet and badge.

  As he did so, he wondered if, along with giving away the locator information on the CIA asset to the Russian sleeper, Desayeva, this woman had also sent her the message which had led to Desayeva leaving her apartment and disappearing out of the country just before he and his colleagues had closed her avenue of escape.

  If they could prove that, no way would she be able to claim innocence.

  Ten minutes later the three Special Agents walked Ledhoffen out in handcuffs and led her along the path to one of the cars. They were watched in silence by the other agents in the street, their faces blank. Ledhoffen looked pale and drawn, stumbling a little with shock as she walked, and staring around as if unable to believe this was happening to her. She was placed in the rear alongside the female agent, who had stayed with her while she dressed in jogging pants and a loose top.

  Nobody spoke, nobody showed any emotion. It was their job.

  Minutes later they were gone, the street deserted of the agency cars and the atmosphere back to normal. Only a few moved curtains, disturbed by the sight and sound of so much low-level movement at this early hour, were evidence that anyone had seen them.

  FIFTY

  Talking to Lindsay proved to be a lot easier while we’d been on the move. Sitting across a lunch table from her in the Poule au Pot restaurant near the Palais Royal in Paris was where it all went to pieces.

  I mean it was more than pleasant and I could have done it a lot more, soaking in the atmosphere and enjoying her company, satisfied that the events of the last few days were finally over. But somehow, even in this romantic city, facing her with a table set for two between us just seemed to gum up the works, conversation-wise.

  There’s a no-go area in my business, a line marked in the sand. That line says you don’t mix it with colleagues. Not that everyone observes it to the letter; some do and it rarely ends well. But working alone the way I do, I’d never had to worry about it. My closest colleague was usually a voice thousands of miles away, on the end of a comms channel or watching my back from an eye in the sky.

  Except now that colleague was right here sitting across the table, not just a remote voice but a living, breathing and attractive being. And the mixer was we’d been through a lot together and that had given us a special bond. Now we were out the other side of the mission and I didn’t want to make any stupid mistakes.

  ‘You have to go back to Washington,’ I said, as we walked through the Tuileries Gardens afterwards. The sun was warm and the atmosphere a million miles away from what we’d both experienced recently. People around us were laughing and chatting, a typical summer’s day in one of my favourite cities in the world. Gone were any thoughts of guns and killers, of being followed and targeted for execution by unidentifiable hit teams; gone, too was a host of work-life habits, of the need-to-do-next thinking that had occupied me for many years. And although I was keeping a weather eye on our backs out of instinct and habit, the trade craft too ingrained to lose completely, my instincts told me we were safe.

  My future now, from this minute, was going to be utterly different and unpredictable. An open book to be tested and explored, new pages opened and old ones nailed shut. Even my travel patterns up to now were no longer safe and they would have to change radically, no matter what Callahan had been told.

  And that was another odd situation: though Callahan hadn’t said so, I figured our conversation yesterday had been our last.

  She looked across at me. ‘Are you trying to get rid of me?’

  The glint in her eye told me she was teasing. It was something else I wasn’t accustomed to. Colleagues in my line of business make jokes, usually of the darker kind to alleviate the tension surrounding some of the things we witness. But teasing, not so much.

  ‘No. I’m not. You have a job to do and I know Callahan won’t be able to cover for you for ever.’

  We were walking a little apart as if by silent agreement that getting too close was not a good idea – that line in the sand thing. Since catching up with Lindsay after the events near Beauvais, we’d been circling around the idea that this was probably going to be the last time we’d see each other. I had no idea what Lindsay thought about that but even with all my instincts about not forming close relationships because of my work, I was finding it tough to contemplate.

  I’d taken another room at the same hotel as Lindsay and used the excuse of tiredness and the need for some quiet time to shower, to wash off the tensions and smells that always come with you after a collection of actions and near-misses.

  The bit about quiet time was real enough; going through the kind of events I’d seen in the last few days is not something I’ve ever been able to brush off casually, as if none of it mattered. The adrenalin rush and energy, followed by the inevitable sharp deceleration, even if you
survive with a slight leg scratch, can leave you hanging with no easy way of dealing with it. Some would call it a form of withdrawal release, and maybe it is. My usual way of coping was to get away from everyone for a while until I was sure I could string a few words together without sounding as if I might be about to rip someone’s head off for being nice. At least, that was the way I felt.

  With Lindsay there was no way I could leave her alone any longer than I already had. She had questions I could answer and a lot more I couldn’t, and part of her getting over what she’d seen was sharing it. I’d made her come to Paris for her own safety, but now I needed to make her aware that she was safe and secure and not just push her to one side. So, I rested up briefly, followed by some civilized conversation and a walk.

  How did that kind of normal human activity suddenly get so tough?

  ‘You’re trying to think of a way of leaving.’ Her voice was calm, reflective. ‘It’s all right – I understand.’

  I stopped suddenly right in the middle of the path because walking and trying to explain something I could not was multi-tasking. Put a gun in my hand and have me execute a game-plan while entering a building full of danger and watching my back at the same time and I’d be away, no problem. But this was different.

  ‘Yes.’ When in doubt, say little.

  She tilted her head. I couldn’t read her expression but if I could have taken a photograph of it I would have gladly done so. Missed opportunities.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked finally.

  ‘Do?’

  ‘You’re getting out of the business, aren’t you? Now your cover’s blown.’

  Good question. ‘I haven’t decided yet. I’ll find something.’

  She ducked a hand into her purse and showed me the edge of an envelope.

  ‘My tickets back to DC,’ she explained. ‘And in case you’re wondering, part of me wants to stay here for a bit longer … maybe a lot longer. But there’s also a bit telling me I have to get back to what is normal.’ She waved a hand around us, and her smile turned down at the corners. ‘This … this is not really normal … although I’d like it to be. It’s fabulous. With you it’s …’ She stopped and took in a small gulp of air. ‘I have to go home.’ Then, before I could say anything she stepped in quickly and flung her arms around my neck and hung on tight enough to stop me breathing. Her own breath was warm against my skin and I felt a trace of wetness on one cheek.