I Spy by Tom Marcus

Author:Tom Marcus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK

10

GONE TO GROUND

I felt a million times better once I was showered, in fresh clothes, with a well-done steak and chips in front of me. Tucking into the first thing I’d eaten in hours, I absorbed the room. Who’s here, how are they sitting, where are my exits and what do they lead to, what’s the biggest threat to me here?

That last one was easy to answer. My own mind was the threat. As I inhaled the food in front of me with the speed of a prisoner of war, my mind was running through an endless loop of different scenarios. I focused on the final minutes before we dropped MAGENTA STOAT and LAST DAWN.

The napkin placed on the coffee counter by LAST DAWN only had a stone wrapped inside, which would suggest this was a dummy dead-drop run. Dead drops are a favourite with foreign spies, a way of passing intelligence material, equipment, instructions or money to an asset or another spy – but only when they believe it’s secure to do so, i.e. when they aren’t being watched by MI5, so they’ll do a practice run first.

If this was a practice dead drop, then they would have likely had at least one or two more people inside the park helping them spot any potential surveillance.

That didn’t explain the reasoning behind the decision to pull out of the area like we did. Had I missed something? Had we been compromised? As the lady from reception took my plate away with a kind smile, then returned with a bowl of extra chips and a wink that said, ‘you look like you need this!’, I continued to work it through.

OK, so we have MAGENTA STOAT, one of our highest priorities, at a football ground. I see him shake hands with the man in the red coat with the fur hood who we now know as LAST DAWN.

Hmm, LAST DAWN. I remembered the older female voice back at Thames House identifying him over the net from my video surveillance in the park. The team leader questioned Base straight away as he thought LAST DAWN was dead. I’d never heard of LAST DAWN but Graeme had been with the teams for years, nearly thirty to be exact. He would have been involved in operations way before my time.

I ploughed through the fresh bowl of thick-cut chips and downed another pint of water. I was desperate not to fall into the abyss of my mind. I was already struggling to sleep and the nightmares were getting worse, sometimes ambushing my sleep every night. I was longing to contact my family but if I was somehow found here by a hostile force, I couldn’t have an electronic link to my home.

Leaving some cash on the table for my meal, I thanked the lady and made my way quietly to my room, where I had a decision to make.

All our technical kit is either encrypted or protected, including the memory storage for our cameras. I had

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