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

your colleagues to do something about him, Lawrence, but they tell us they don’t have enough evidence to arrest him. So what next, August? He throws away the piece of paper and…

august: It had directions on it.

elif: And you went there.

august: I went there. It was a —

lawrence: Hold on, why did you do that? Why didn’t you just hand the piece of paper to the authorities at the airport?

august: It seemed like a good idea at the time.

lawrence: What? Speak up – I can barely hear you.

elif: Come on, August. Tell the story, please.

august: I thought there might be a message waiting for Billy. Or some money, or directions to a meeting place. I really don’t know. I was curious. It was only when I got there that I found that someone was waiting for him. An Iraqi man – a Daesh facilitator, or at least that’s what I assumed. He seemed to have some sort of arrangement with Billy that he’d get him across the border into Syria. I was in a difficult position. [Sound of coughing.] Billy and I don’t look too unlike, give or take ten years. We both have dark hair, we’re both tall. So I went along with it. The man gave me a phone, said he’d be in touch. My plan at this point, Elif, was to wait until I had something solid to pass on and then get in touch with you through Lawrence and his colleagues.

elif: But you knew this was a stupid idea, right?

august: Can I have some water?

elif: Help yourself. I mean, it’s about the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. You had no idea who this man was, you had no idea if he was dangerous, you had no idea if we were already following him around.

august: I was looking for distraction. I guess that blinded me to how stupid it was. Anyway, as I said, I went along with it. He tried to delay things, and when I got impatient he told me there was another thing I could help out with while I was waiting. He said there was an Iranian scientist in Istanbul, and he asked me to follow him around.

elif: Okay. So Daesh asks you to follow an Iranian scientist around a foreign city and you say yes. Why not? As long as it keeps you from getting bored.

august: Then he told me that I should travel to the border area —

elif: Wait, wait – the Iranian. What did you do? I assume you understood that they probably would want to kill him.

august: I followed him to a warehouse. Another time I searched his hotel room. That was it. But he doesn’t exist, Elif – there is no Iranian. It was just the Daesh guy pretending to be an Iranian scientist to keep me busy. I’d told him I was in such a hurry to get across the border that he must have come up with this whole Iranian scientist scenario just to make me think I was doing something worthwhile here. I know it sounds… Then the whole border thing happened. He called one morning and told me to go to Gaziantep immediately. I stalled and eventually talked him into meeting me just outside Istanbul at this empty house I’d been to for work. I guess you know the place I mean. But when I got there he pulled a knife on me and locked me inside a fridge. [Sound of coughing.]

lawrence: For God’s sake drink some more water.

august: He tried to sell me to Daesh as a hostage. But it’s clear that he’s not with them any more. They’ve had some sort of falling-out. You know who he is, right?

lawrence: Let us worry about that. Can you explain why he would be kidnapping hostages for them if they’ve fallen out?

august: My best guess? He finds himself on the run in Turkey with nothing – no money, no friends, no papers, no way out of the country. So he goes online, creates an Instagram account, pretends to be a facilitator or radicalizer and starts fishing for a gullible white convert in Europe who wants to get into Syria. He knows that as far as IS are concerned, any white British hostage would be hugely valuable – the person doesn’t have to be famous or important. All that matters is that he can pass them off as a non-Muslim. And he finds Billy. He tells him to fly here, shave his beard, dress like a tourist and lie low while he negotiates the money with his former friends in Daesh. It’s a clever plan, when you think about it. Using a social media account to net a valuable asset. It’s not perfect, but he was working with nothing. And it worked, two Daesh guys came to the house to do the deal. The beauty of it is that Billy does all the hard work – if things had gone to plan he would even have transported himself to the border to be sold. The only reason it didn’t work was Youssef. He got me out of the house.

elif: And the Daesh guy?

august: He left in a hurry. He had a small boat moored fifty metres from the shore. Listen, Youssef has done both of you a big favour. If it wasn’t for him, Lawrence, you’d be dealing with another hostage in Syria, and the Turkish government would be trying to explain how all this had happened under their noses.

lawrence: If you’d left it there, maybe. But then you told him to approach me with a fabricated story about a friend of his who runs errands for IS.

august: Everything Youssef told you is true. Every fact he gave you about the emir is true – his appearance, his age, his links to the UK. None of that was fabricated. I wanted you to have that information so you could work with Elif to catch him.

lawrence: If he’s even in Turkey. There’s nothing to say that you