How to Betray Your Country by James Wolff (spicy books to read .TXT) 📕

aliases and only trusting long-standing associates. He surfaced in 2014 as an adviser to a member of the Military Council, and again in 2015 in a senior role within the Amniyat, responsible for identifying and executing spies within IS (including a number of British and American agents who had been deployed upstream). Things then went quiet again until last month, when a flurry of CIA reporting indicated that he had been acting as emir of the foreign fighter battalion, following the killing by US drone of the previous incumbent, and that a dispute had led to his removal from the post and his departure from Syrian territory. The same reporting suggested (with a low to medium degree of confidence) that he had been sighted in Baluchistan.

12. The only coverage we have of LEG IRON at present comes from SIGINT of long and angry telephone conversations between his wife and her parents in which they complain that his flight from IS has placed them at significant personal risk.

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VESTIBULE/003

top secret

foia exempt

from:ATY4to:C14B1subject:Re: New intelligence lead in Istanbuldate:19 December 2016

Freddy —

It was an enormous pleasure to talk to you this morning, and to have Meredith call just a few minutes later to convey the same message all over again with characteristic charm and diplomacy. (I do hope for her own sake that she finds a way to deal with her bitterness at missing out on the top spot.) I note your wise words of counsel and can assure you that I will a) exercise “due caution” b) keep a “proper written record of decisions and judgements” and c) most definitely not “rush headlong into something that will take time, expertise and patience to understand fully”. As I noted in my last message, I am fully aware that “rumours” of this kind surface from time to time and must be treated carefully. There really is nothing for you to worry about. The last thing I want is to be the cause of your inevitable heart attack. Credit for that should go to the mountain of Turkish delight I intend to deposit on your desk when I’m next in town.

I also note your observation that GCHQ traces on Youssef HADDAD’s phone indicate that he made a call to 112 (the Turkish equivalent of 999) four days ago, and your suggestion that this MIGHT mean he has already tried to volunteer the information about the IS emir to the Turks. This is a plausible hypothesis and should be factored into our thinking. HADDAD’s credibility will certainly be damaged if it transpires that he has attempted to offload this intelligence elsewhere. This possibility should not, however, act as a handbrake on the excellent forward momentum I have engineered. Your recommendation that we discuss this matter with MIT and ask them for details of the call between HADDAD and 112 is a sensible one, but would you mind if we parked it for now? Talking to them will complicate and slow the case down to the point that we might lose access to HADDAD. MIT is obviously a competent intelligence agency and our natural partner in Turkey for a conversation of this kind, but once we go to them with this there is no turning back, as they will insist on being involved. I’ve already had a few run-ins on other matters with one of their deputy chiefs, a woman called Elif, and once she gets her painted nails into something there’s no shaking her loose.

Freddy, a broader point, if I may. There is a potentially UNIQUE opportunity in front of us. Can you see that, with your focus on risk and liaison equities? Noisy teeth-sucking in London is only going to distract those of us toiling in the field. Please allow me the leeway to develop this further. There is skill and artistry involved in cultivating this relationship, and what I need more than endless words of caution is a brief moment of hush from the cheap seats to see whether I can pull this off. Would that be all right? Would you be able to do that for me?

In anticipation of securing your agreement, I met HADDAD for a second time this morning. (Calm down – when you hear how well it went you’ll be telling everyone it was your idea all along.) It took several attempts to reach him on the number he had provided, and even then he protested that he had nothing further to say, but after some persuasion he finally agreed to meet. I intercepted him at the metro station, fed him a story about the interview room being redecorated and took him instead to a quiet corner of a local restaurant, where I proceeded to order a mountain of food (enough to keep even you happy). He repeated early on that he didn’t want to become an “informant” and had simply felt it was his duty as a proud Syrian to pass on information that might weaken IS. I told him I understood and respected his position, and that the meal was simply a way of thanking him for his important contribution.

I moved the conversation along briskly, putting him at his ease with topics such as the weekend’s football results, favourite Syrian dishes, the importance of family and future career aspirations. Once things were humming along nicely, it didn’t take more than a couple of sly verbal pivots to get us back onto the subject of his friend, and he soon disclosed that he had bumped into him by chance the previous evening at a Syrian café they both frequented. With my interest in the matter in the back of his mind, HADDAD said he had raised in hushed tones the subject of the exiled IS emir, and over the course of the evening had been able to elicit the following information from his friend: that the man is in his mid-fifties; that he has the physique of a weightlifter; that he previously worked