Spy Games Read Online Free PDF Page B

had long ago learned to read, and which, when correctly decrypted, meant
you swivel-eyed, patronizing husk of a man.
    Mobbs turned to Bastable of Human Resources, leaning close to her to whisper, a little too loudly.
    “And for pity’s sake, less talk of
background
, if you please. You’ll get us all sued.”

5
    Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
    In Kaliti prison, the inmates were not incarcerated in cells. Rather, they were warehoused in vast, corrugated iron structures that rattled under the rain and baked under the sun. Eight zones to the prison, several thousand inmates in each, the whole complex riddled with tuberculosis, it was said.
    Mangan sat in the jeep by the side of the main road. He looked out at the prison walls. The late afternoon had turned overcast, the light a smoky purple. There’d be rain later, turning the sidewalks to mud, leaving the city misty and cool.
    Kaliti housed criminals for sure, murderers, psychopaths, petty pilferers. But it served also as a political waste disposal, into which the ruling party dropped opposition leaders, judges, journalists, activists, trade unionists and persons of unreliable ethnicity should they prove troublesome.
    He’d been waiting two hours. Hallelujah had gone in clutching some clothes and bundles of food, some money to smooth the way. It was delicate. He was to interview an inmate. The inmate was a sallow forty-year-old woman named Habiba Yusuf who had, she said,been distributing alms to destitute Somali Muslims in the east when she was dragged from her car by men in plain clothes. She was in fact smuggling funds to extremist organizations, she learned, and was locked up in Kaliti under Ethiopia’s generous anti-terrorism laws. But her case had become something of an international cause célèbre, and the authorities were grudgingly allowing glimpses of her to demonstrate that she was, at least, alive. Mangan, the foreign correspondent, one of the handful based in Addis, hadn’t been allowed in, so Hallelujah was doing duty for both of them, would share his notes, and hopefully a photo, and Mangan would file for the paper. Habiba had a lump in her breast. The authorities weren’t allowing her to see a doctor.
    Mangan checked his watch. What the hell was Hal doing? He stretched, breathed. The evening air smelled of ozone, kerosene, baking
injera
, some subtle sweetness beneath it all.
    It was almost dark by the time Hallelujah emerged from the prison gate, shoulders hunched, eyes down. Mangan watched him pick his way along the muddy track in his trainers, his thin, dark frame, his air of anxiety. Hallelujah climbed into the car, put his head back and closed his eyes.
    “What took so long?” said Mangan.
    Hallelujah lit a cigarette, made a cursory attempt to exhale out of the window.
    “I am stupid,” he said.
    “Tell me.” Mangan started the car, pulled out onto the road.
    “So they take me in. The guards sit there in the room with us. She’s terrible, Philip. Crying. So sick, she says. I ask the questions. She answers, but the guards keep interrupting, cutting her off. She keeps saying she needs a doctor, she has this lump. She’s terrified. I got a little bit about the conditions. But, really, it was a mess.”
    “Any photo?”
    “Yes, but… well, you’ll see it.”
    “It doesn’t sound too bad.”
    “It gets worse. After fifteen minutes they say, that’s it. Finish. And they take her from the room. They push me out, and as I’m walking back to the gate I snap some pictures of the prison. The courtyard is just… people everywhere. Filthy. No order. Well, the guards see me and get angry and they take me to the guardroom and yell at me for one hour.”
    “Just yell?”
    “Yes.” He shook his head, ruefully.
    “And the pictures?”
    “They took the camera.
Your
camera.”
    Mangan swerved to the side of the road as a truck hurtled by, weaving, its horn blaring.
    “I’m really sorry,” said Hallelujah.
    Mangan sighed.
    “Don’t worry about it,”