An Enemy Within Read Online Free PDF

asking her to do what? Twisting the button hard, it soon fell off in her trembling fingers.
    ‘I don’t believe it – you’re asking me to spy for the CIA?’
    ‘We prefer to call it intelligence gathering, Alex. The situation out there is fast-changing. It’s only weeks since we dropped the first bomb and the rats and mice have scurried off to their little hidey holes. We need to know where they are – and when they’re likely to come out to play.’
    ‘But you’ve got your agents out there?’
    ‘Of course. We’ve got a fully-staffed bureau in Baghdad reporting to me here at Langley.’
    ‘So you’ve been promoted? Well, congratulations.’ Then, through clenched teeth, ‘I’m sure your wife will be very pleased – you always said she wanted you to go far.’
    Although Alex had never met his wife, it was clear she was the driving force behind his ambition. Pregnant with their third child, she’d turned him off. Alex turned him on, he’d said. Her off-beat way, such an opposite to his conventional lifestyle, had enthralled him. And, like a fool, she’d fallen for all of it.
    He ignored the jibe. ‘Listen, Alex, you know damn well journalists can find themselves picking up bits and pieces – sometimes it’s all we need to complete the jigsaw.’
    Alex desperately wanted to ask him if he knew how much heartbreak he’d caused her, tell him how much she’d wanted to hear his voice again. She’d rehearsed the scenario a hundred times since they’d split. But not like this. The words just wouldn’t come.
    ‘I… I don’t know,’ she said, lying to him that there was somebody at the door, and hanging up.
    Traipsing over to the seat near the window, she gazed up into a cool grey sky. Confusion reigned. She’d spent the last several months hoping he’d call. Now he had, and she hated him – and for what he’d asked. But if he’d turned up at her door and told her he still wanted her, would she have loved him for it?
    Winner or loser? Which side of that fine divide was she on?
    Angry now, she flung a few more things in her bag hoping Iraq could straighten her out, get her back on track.
    All the time, fearing it wouldn’t.
    *  *  *
    Kowolski noted the change in the drone of the engines of the MC-130 Combat Talon aircraft, guessed they were almost in Basra.
    He shifted, mightily relieved the flight from Kuwait was a relatively short one. How the troops managed for hours in these claustrophobic double-facing rows of canvas-webbed seats was anybody’s guess. He supposed comfort never figured on the agenda for their normal occupants, Special Operations Forces. Some of them were acting as minders now, dressed in black and sitting silently, knee to knee, hardly moving.
    He wondered how their prize cargo was faring. This was a million miles away from a soft office chair in Washington. He glanced along the row. Donald Rumsfeld, co-architect of the invasion, sat at the front end, gesticulating and talking loudly to be heard above the deep resounding roar of the four turbo props. His aides hung on every word.
    Kowolski thought the man sitting opposite the Secretary must be feeling pretty pleased, too. Flying a senior politician into the battle zone only six weeks after the first strike was quite an accomplishment for Lt General David McKiernan, commander of the allied ground-force invasion.
    He tried to catch the eye of the woman opposite, Alex Stead. Just my type, he said to himself. Just his type? If he were honest with himself, they were all his type.
    Slim, Kowolski saw a flash of liveliness about her. Athletic, she looked more springbok than gazelle. Okay, she didn’t have model looks, and her fair hair, pulled back and half-hidden under a black beret, was too short for him and quite plain. With her khaki combat trousers and boots, he thought she could almost pass for one of their special-ops minders. But there wassomething about her eyes, a penetrating grey-green, the sort a man noticed.
    He