Downtime was a real bitch! Kante knew this as he lay unstirring on his back on the divan, staring at the off-white ceiling with a pop of cream. Even as the strings of joyous shouts and ululations around him swelled into a grating crescendo in their two-bedroom apartment on West Best Lagoon, he couldn’t think of any other thing than this. Not to mention joining in to celebrate with his comrades, who are responsible for it. Instead, he lay there; arms rigidly folded over his chest, eyes shut against the amber light coming from the chandelier hanging down from the ceiling as if in a self-induced hypnosis. Right from time, he was never the one to favor downtime of any type while on a job. Even though he had been trained to remain sangfroid and unperturbed like the leaves on a tree on a windless Summer day in times like this, he had taught himself not to be fooled by the quiet and tranquility that came with them. Being an Ex-serviceman, he was well aware that moments like this one

Liam Nielson had this strange feeling the moment he watched three SUVs ripped away from the stadium’s parking lot and tore along the Al-Khor coastal road in a whoosh. He was standing in the dusting of snow with his videographer getting ready to record the latest update of their quarterly live spot report when he first noticed some movement at the stadium’s ‘Entrance Gate Four’. This movement as he would later discover turn out to be the tripping of the squat agent from when the director had arrived earlier at the parking lot and a handful of suited agents who trailed after him.Call it the sixth sense. A gut feeling. A hunch. Or whatever. For all Liam cared, it is something that has served him right up until now, and he would be damned to just shrug it off as nothing this time. Or ever!Not surprisingly, his reasons for this rather uncompromising stance hinged upon two sentiments: The first being that; it’s a well-established fact anywhere in the world that, trusting in one’s inst

Several miles from the Green Palace, a wizened grey-haired man in a blue blazer worn over white, razor-sharp creased pants and balmorals paced up and down the expansive terrazzo floor of the command center in silence. Gnarled arms folded and gingerly tucked behind his stooped back. His mind shuttered against the low drones of computers and the beehive chatters around him. But otherwise, fixated on other things.Other things like the closed surveillance footage of the Lusail Arena splashing across the rank of computer screens around him. The conflux of communication—both inbound and outbound—as well as the ongoing strings of investigation into the likely scenarios that might have led to today’s awful events being carried out by half of the room’s occupants. But despite his obvious concerns about these things. The simple fact remains, he wasn’t so much concerned about them as much as he was with one thing in particular: The intercom mounted on a table somewhere in the room.This was

Director Julia shut the door gently behind her. She had managed to escape into the cocoon of her office at last, after spending the last hour between meetings with some concerned personnel of the museum. These meetings as was expected were intended to ensure that Mr. Leigh’s inspectorial visit to the MIA went smoothly and without kinks.Apparently, having something go wrong was the last thing she wanted while he was here. Heaving an obvious sigh of relief, she shuffled from the door toward the center of the room almost hesitantly. Her feet already leaden in her pumps barely left the Persian rug that took up a third of the office space as she made her way to her desk. She didn’t waste time once she got to it. She just slid the swivel chair bracketing it back a little, then plopped right into it. Today, for her had been a most eventful day, to say the least. Aside being the Qatari National Day; one in which they usually received a large turnout here at the MIA. It also happened t

Liam. They had tailed the SUVs all the way from the Sports District in Lusail to the headquarters of the Al-Jazeera in Doha. Of course, it’s not been an easy ride though. They have had to identify themselves to every cop at every road blocks. Liam had even made the best of the situation, seizing the opportunity to make a report of the situation of things across the country. The hardest part had been how to escape the police at every roadblock and Terry stop they encountered on their way here. He was beyond shocked to find a roadblock on every block from the Sports District in Lusail all the way to Doha. But thankfully, the BBC logo on their van, couple with a flash of an ID here and there had proven sufficient enough to buy them a passage at every point of the trip.Thiago Silva was washing out his tinted terracotta hair back to his natural black when his burner rang beside him on the washbasin/vanity. Like the burner which he kept on his person at all times, the disguise—the facemas