Any Means Necessary. Shane Britten

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ growl of a dog ready to bite, not the loud bark of a dog who had never bitten. Soft words were exchanged behind me and I heard both Andrew and the kid step back.

      Helen’s cold, soulless eyes were all too familiar – the warm veneer was gone. ‘WOLF,’ she said simply, watching me with the confidence of someone trained in body language detection. Unfortunately for her, my body language was on mute. ‘Why are you attending tomorrow?’ she asked, finally.

      In truth, the question surprised me. The wording was not what I expected. The hackles on the back of my neck raised, something was very wrong with all of this. ‘To find myself,’ I replied, with little emotion.

      ‘Cut the bullshit routine,’ she snapped, which seemed to surprise even the two figures behind me as I heard them shift uncomfortably. ‘Your presence there jeopardises a national security investigation. I’m ordering you to go back to whatever rock you crawled out from.’ Superiority was a comfortable fit for Helen; she had been a senior figure for much of the last decade and was used to issuing commands that would be immediately and unquestioningly obeyed.

      ‘Noted,’ I said evenly and turned to leave.

      ‘Valen,’ she called from behind me. ‘If you show up tomorrow, things are going to get messy for you real fast.’

      I stepped away without replying, which brought me back inside proximity with Andrew and the kid.

      ‘Show some goddamn respect next time, or I’ll teach you some. You couldn’t even imagine how senior she is. If she says to, we will make your life hell,’ the kid sneered.

      A headache was starting to form at my left temple, which only exacerbated my increasingly sour mood. I stepped right up to him. He reacted by trying to shove me back, perfectly illustrating the problem with this new generation of ASIO officers – they were never really trained in hand-to-hand combat. Sure, they went through a few weeks of Krav Maga training, but pitting that against someone who had lived with combat for much of his professional life was a poodle facing off against a lion. This situation was a perfect example of where he should have let me leave and found a salve for his ego some other way, but instead escalated a situation that he was in no position to control. Combined with the move itself, putting both hands within my reach for the sole objective of a shove, and he showed his lack of situational awareness and combat readiness.

      That rapid reflection on young ASIO officers and the headache was enough for me to let his physical indiscretion pass. I smiled at him, more of a smirk really, and reached into my pocket. The flash of fear on his face was more rewarding than I’d imagined, though at least he finally recognised a potential danger.

      I withdrew his ‘freddie’ and flashed it to him. ‘Be careful with your credentials next time, kid,’ I murmured and threw it on the floor a few metres to the side.

      He had a choice now, back down and deal with the embarrassment that had already flushed his face a brilliant scarlet, or try to reassert his authority.

      ‘Morgan,’ Helen snapped, ‘pick it up and let him go.’

      The kid stepped aside and did as commanded. I glanced at Andrew who watched with a somewhat bemused expression, as if the entire episode was from a comedy routine. Without words, I held my hand out, palm up. He handed over the room key card with an almost sheepish smile.

      I left the conference room and stalked to the stairwell, heading up them two at a time. My immediate instinct was to change hotels. I disliked Helen and her cronies knowing where I was. But given my choice to use my real name and failure to bring along an alternative identity with me, I would either be paying cash somewhere rough, or they could reacquire me anyway. I glanced at my phone on the way back to my room and saw a short message from the hotel head of security, a simple, Ok? . It suggested he had seen me leave the conference room on one of the hotel’s internal security cameras.

      My mood remained sour enough to not let him off too lightly. My reply was curt, Next time I want warning. The predictable, Ack came in response.

      I shoved open the door to my room, letting it close and securing it with both the lock and latch. I opened my weapons vault, the operating panel not showing the red light that would indicate attempted tampering, and took out the TSCM scanning case. I carried out another exhaustive scan of the room. Nothing. There might be no devices there now, but I wanted to ensure that I could identify anything added without having to scan multiple times a day. So, I headed to the bedroom and retrieved a small container of talcum powder from my toiletries kit.

      I flicked my knife blade up and used the point to lift the edge of the flat, overused hotel carpet from where it met the metal join under the front door. Leaving the underlay in place, I sprinkled a healthy layer of powder in a semi-circle around the entrance where a first step would happen.

      I carefully replaced the carpet and flicked the switch for the Do Not Disturb light to come on outside my door, removing the chance of a housekeeper confusing my trap. It was a simple trick I had used multiple times while deployed overseas and it gave good indications of the frequency, volume and nature of unwanted visitors to your room.

      I had one more low-tech and one high-tech trap to set. I took one of the many handtowels from the bathroom and folded it in half, laying it behind the right side of the bathroom door. When I left tomorrow, I’d drag it against the door before closing it, so if the door were opened, the towel would move. To the untrained eye, it would look like a discarded hand towel, not an intelligence ‘tell’.

      I then pulled a small alarm clock from my bag and put it on the bedside table. It looked like it belonged, just another piece of hotel room furniture. But when I left, I’d switch on its second feature, which was a motion-activated video camera concealed within the LED screen. If someone moved in the room, the camera would turn on without light or sound notification and start capturing video of the room that would be available on my mobile, which would send me a notification of its activation.

      Back in the lounge room, I took out my cell phone, sending a brief summary of the encounter to Philip via our end-to-end encrypted messaging service.

      I went back over Helen’s wording, considering it further. There was uncertainty in her questioning, suggesting it was a genuine question and she didn’t know why I would be attending. It suggested James hadn’t briefed her on my involvement. It was incredibly poor human intelligence – or HUMINT – tradecraft to start with a question you didn’t know the answer to.

      National security reasons for me to not attend – that was intriguing and suggested they were independently investigating WOLF. Perhaps they were a Plan B by James in case of my failure.

      The thought made me laugh out loud. Knowing James, they were the Plan A and I was the Plan Z. So, now what? My phone vibrated with Philip’s reply, which was characteristically short and gave me a deep frown.

       Any means necessary.

      CHAPTER 7

      It was already warm as I waited in a narrow hallway outside the auditorium of the Four Points Hotel. Half an hour early, I wasn’t the first to arrive and since then, a steady stream of would-be WOLF members had started to fill the waiting area. For much of the wait, I pretended to be on a phone call, cell phone held up to my ear, murmuring one-word responses to the not-present caller every now and again for appearances’ sake. It not only prevented conversation – keeping the eclectic assemblage from trying to talk to me – it also meant I could stare at the crowd absently, seemingly preoccupied with my conversation.

      It СКАЧАТЬ