Contents
Cover
Also by Adrian Magson
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Acknowledgements
Also by Adrian Magson
The Marc Portman thrillers
THE WATCHMAN *
CLOSE QUARTERS *
HARD COVER *
DARK ASSET *
The Harry Tate thrillers
RED STATION *
TRACERS *
DECEPTION *
RETRIBUTION *
EXECUTION *
TERMINAL BLACK *
The Riley Gavin and Frank Palmer series
NO PEACE FOR THE WICKED
NO HELP FOR THE DYING
NO SLEEP FOR THE DEAD
NO TEARS FOR THE LOST
NO KISS FOR THE DEVIL
* available from Severn House
A HOSTILE STATE
Adrian Magson
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2021
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.
Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA in 2022
by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
This eBook edition first published in 2021 by Severn House,
an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.
severnhouse.com
Copyright © Adrian Magson, 2021
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of Adrian Magson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 9780727850270 (cased)
ISBN-13: 9781780297705 (trade paper)
ISBN-13: 9781448305087 (e-book)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.
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To Ann. The best hunter-gatherer ever!
And BHT – gone but not forgotten.
ONE
It’s been claimed that you don’t hear the sound of the bullet that kills you. Whoever said it wasn’t speaking from experience. Idle thoughts like this tend to slide into your head when death comes too close for comfort.
What I did hear was the snap of a shot passing my face, leaving a ripple in the atmosphere. It was followed by the crack-and-whine as the bullet exploded off a rock three feet away. I ducked instinctively and way too late, feeling the spiteful sting of Lebanese sandstone peppering my cheek. A sound in the background might have been the rolling echo of the shot, but I ignored it. If I’d heard anything at all I was still good to go. I was also busy trying to compute where the shooter might be and whether I was rolling into a position where he could have another go at blowing my head off.
I kept moving, rolling to one side and hugging the earth. Sounds can be confusing in hilly areas, bouncing off rocks and coming back from somewhere different, leaving behind fragments you can’t quite place and leading the unwary to pop up and look the wrong way. Bang, end of game. I hadn’t caught any tell-tale muzzle smoke, but from the angle of the bullet striking the rock it had to have come from the high ground somewhere to my side and rear.
That thought made me go cold. Whoever had pulled the trigger had been looking down at me and I hadn’t even been aware of their presence. But how? I’d been in the country barely twenty-four hours on a last-minute rush arrangement with instructions to sit and wait for a local intelligence source to show up. In that time I’d had minimal contacts and left no footprints. Those I had contacted wouldn’t have been in any position to give me up as illicit gun dealing is frowned upon, even in Lebanon.
The source’s name – it had to be a him because the locals in this part of the world didn’t have much time for women in positions of responsibility and therefore access to what was probably classified information – was top secret, but his DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency) code-name was Tango. Anything else about him was on a strict need-to-know basis and it had clearly been decided I wasn’t on that list, which suited me fine. Using sources is like that; the fewer people who know their real name the less likely it is to blow back in everyone’s face if they get rolled up.
But it didn’t answer the fundamental question of the right-here-and-now. How the hell had someone got onto me so quickly? Had I inadvertently shown up on radar on the way here and tripped an alarm? Always possible but I wasn’t so sure. I’d been extra careful coming here because that’s the way I work. The only people who knew I was here were back in Langley, Virginia, the home of the CIA.
The here in question was on a hillside; a dry spit from the Yammoune nature reserve in the northern half of Lebanon. The briefing I’d had on the area told me it featured a lake and a Greco-Roman temple, but I didn’t think I’d be doing any sightseeing on this trip. Violence had been sweeping the country for decades, from terrorist groups, Sunni and Shi’ite extremists and the twin forces of Hamas and Hezbollah, both outlawed
