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

You are known for your common sense, Freddy, and so I was confident you would agree that these details have lifted us clear of the foothills of mere rumour and speculation. In light of this, I told HADDAD that he clearly had all the natural abilities British intelligence would want in an agent, and that I knew this for a fact because I was among their ranks. He was in equal measures astonished, impressed and flattered (which is exactly the effect I wanted).

If the thought flitting across your mind is that I’ve moved too quickly, that this might all be a hoax, and that we really must get MIT on board, then let me put you at ease. When I said that he should consider becoming an agent, HADDAD became quite emotional and said the one thing that might change his mind was if we were able to tell him where his wife and infant daughter were located. He explained they had crossed by boat to Greece several weeks ago but that by now he expected they might be in Bulgaria, Hungary or even Austria. If we could find out this information for him, he said with tears brimming in his eyes, with a fierce grip on my arm, with his voice wavering, he would be in our debt forever. At this point, he looked around the restaurant and whispered that he was confident he would be able to find out from his friend exactly where in Istanbul the IS emir was staying.

That tingling feeling you’re experiencing isn’t a heart attack, Freddy – it’s excitement. HADDAD doesn’t want money or a passport or any of those things hoaxers typically ask for. He wants one single piece of information, and in return he’ll give us the intelligence prize of the century. You and I will go down in history as the intrepid hunters who netted one of the biggest beasts in the jungle. And HADDAD’s request is the easiest thing in the world for us to deliver. We won’t even have to get Meredith’s agreement. Let’s fire off a message to the European network with his wife’s details and see where she’s registered. Of course, it’s possible nothing will come back. A lot of people don’t survive the crossing, and not everyone registers with local authorities. But as she’s travelling with an infant there’s a reasonable chance that she’s been forced to access healthcare and in the process provided her details.

Let me know the second you get this information back.

Cheerio,

Lawrence

• • • •

VESTIBULE/004

top secret

foia exempt

from:ATY4to:C14B1subject:Re: New intelligence lead in Istanbuldate:21 December 2016

Freddy —

There was really no need to go over my head and inform MIT of this case via their London rep. You and I have always been on the same page – different paragraphs, perhaps, but most definitely the same page. If you refer back to my first message on this subject, you will see that I described HADDAD as “slippery, desperate for work, falling over himself to be friendly” and highlighted the presence of “plenty of red flags”. That we are now getting confirmation of that assessment – of my assessment – as a result of our dialogue with MIT is sound evidence that my operational antennae are bristling, pointed in the right direction and highly sensitive.

(By the way, I see that Meredith has tried to call me a number of times. Can you please make sure that she understands the above? In return I will loudly sing your praises as having been a source of wise counsel throughout.)

We’ve had a flurry of correspondence from MIT following our meeting with them. They have confirmed that Youssef HADDAD made a call from his mobile phone at 0122 on 15/12/16 to the police emergency number. In the recording a breathless and flustered HADDAD can be heard saying the following (in English):

— Hello? Can you speak Arabic or English? Hello? I need the police to come very quickly, there is a man who is a prisoner in a house. He has escaped now but he said I should call you. He is injured, maybe send a doctor also. I do not know who the other man is, the man who did this. Hello? (HADDAD then switches to Arabic and repeats the same message, adding the location of the property and claiming that the prisoner was being held inside a refrigerator.)

The police responded to the call by sending a patrol car to the address within the hour. According to MIT, the police logs show that upon their arrival the officers found an empty house with no sign of any injured prisoners and concluded it had been a hoax call. Follow-up attempts to reach HADDAD on his mobile phone were unsuccessful.

In light of our reporting, MIT sent two of their own officers to the house to conduct a more thorough investigation. They describe it as a remote four-storey residential property in a dilapidated state that is located fewer than fifty metres from the Black Sea shoreline. They note the presence of a stolen car parked outside the house, but their report focuses on a room on the top floor which contained an old refrigerator. Various items were found in the room, including a chain and padlock, an empty bucket and fragments of a glass bottle. The plastic interior of the fridge was cracked and broken in places and smeared with what appeared to be dried blood. The wooden floorboards were also stained with blood in a number of places, and the officers noted that someone had partially destroyed one of the interior walls with a hammer.

Given that the room is clearly a possible crime scene, MIT will work with the police to carry out a full forensic examination. In the meantime they have requested that we arrange to see HADDAD as soon as possible in order to allow them to carry out surveillance