Violence of Action by Brian Andrews

Author:Brian Andrews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 2022-03-03T18:31:36+00:00

CHAPTER 24

british aero defense headquarters building

new malden, united kingdom

2030 local time

Qasim rode the elevator down to the lobby from his office feeling completely consumed but unable to put his finger on what was consuming him. It wasn’t a thirst for vengeance, or at least for vengeance alone. It felt more like a calling—a duty to fulfill some supernatural purpose that Allah had set aside for him. His burst of anger at the hacker safe house the other night had been more than just his frustration boiling over. It had been him finding his inner strength.

Violence is a necessary part of my evolution—my rebirth into the man I need to be.

To fulfill his true calling, he had to be more than just an engineer, more than just a victim of Western aggression, and more than just one of Hamza al-Saud’s loyal followers. He had to grow into the al Qadar leader that Hamza had encouraged him to be. He could no longer afford to allow anyone to regard him as less. He could no longer allow people to disrespect him. Even the armed, rough fighters he’d feared when he’d first met Hamza in Pakistan must come to fear and respect him.

He crossed the lobby and gave a cursory nod to the friendly night security guard behind the reception desk.

“Burning the midnight oil again I see,” the guard said.

“For God and country,” Qasim said with a chuckle, his Received Pronunciation getting better by the day.

He’d been working diligently at stripping the Afghan undertones from his speech to sound more like a native-born speaker. He’d become quite the chameleon of late, and he was getting better at managing the two identities always warring for his attention. At times, it seemed almost inconceivable that his career at British Aero had once been his real passion and joy, and not just a cover for his secret life. At other times, when sussing out a thorny aeronautical engineering challenge, it felt like his other life as an al Qadar warrior was a hangover memory from a terrible nightmare. But this was his life.

He was Janus—the two-faced god of beginnings and endings, duality, and change.

Qasim left the building, exiting onto the B283 just south of Dukes Avenue. Tonight he was meeting Hamza, but he needed to perform a series of countersurveillance activities before he did. London was the CCTV epicenter of the universe, so he had to be methodical and careful.

Assume people are watching you and behave in a way that makes them feel foolish for bothering to do so, Hamza had told him.

So Qasim walked to the corner and then feigned a sudden realization he had forgotten something. He turned back and entered the Tesco convenience store at the corner of Apex Tower. Once inside, he forced himself not to scan the store for anyone who might be watching him. Instead, he wandered to the aisle where the over-the-counter medicines were located and selected two different brands of painkillers, flipping them over as if to compare the ingredients.

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