The Devil's Handshake (27 page)

“
That you’re FUCKING
British! Not FUCKING Russian!” James answered hoping that he had
actually grasped his positioning.

Thomas acknowledged his answer with a nod of
his head knowing he would have been a tad more eloquent than that
though, but, not by much, he reflected just as the Ambassador
decided to introduce himself.

“
I can vouch for that sir,
Jack Fielding,” he said offering his hand with a smile.

“
Oh fuck! Where are my
manners?” said James embarrassed, despite his brilliance in
communications, a double first in Modern and Medieval Languages
from Cambridge, he had missed out the lesson of diplomatic
etiquette. “Ambassador Jack Fielding, may I present Sir Thomas
Litchfield,” he said introducing, now back on track, “and Mikhail
Pshenicnikov,” he added.

The Ambassador started the conversation.

“
I haven’t seen your
interview yet, Sir Thomas, but having been briefed by James and
seen the number of calls that he has been getting I certainly can
see you must have set fire to the ‘blue touch’ paper!” he said
warmly.

“
I just answered it from a
businessman’s point of view, Ambassador,” Thomas replied as he
began to assess the person across the table from him.

“
Well, I can certainly see
why the State Department has been taking an interest in you!”
answered the Ambassador with a small smile of his own and who was
doing the same thing with respect to Thomas.

“
Well, one does like to get
out in the midday sun,” deflected Thomas straight-faced as he began
to look at his menu.

“
Indeed,” replied the older
Statesman as he put his glasses on to read the menu in his
hand.

The dinner was really a fishing expedition
for both men, with the Ambassador providing Thomas with insight as
how the State Department was viewing Russia’s re-emergence,
himself, and of course their proposed base in East Africa, and
finally in an effort to promote himself how he could be potentially
useful within the corridors of the lower and the upper house on the
Hill.

Thomas was impressed. The former Ambassador
knew his stuff and quickly grasped what TLH end game was and
positioning.

“
You know, Sir Thomas, I
think there is a touch of Metternich in you,” Fielding said
suddenly out of the blue as the coffee arrived.

“
Witty or tenacious?” Thomas
offered deadpan with his own light-hearted attempt at the
synopsis.

Smiling back in return if what somewhat
surprised that the man across from him actually knew he was
referring to the great Prince of Austria’s personal overall
character traits who kept the powers of France and Prussia
surrounding him at bay in the 1800s, the Ambassador, having
recovered from his momentary surprise, answered.

“
I was actually thinking
that you’re unquestionably someone who has perfected the shape and
nature of diplomacy of this era is going to take just as he did in
his.”

“
A dokter un a kvores-man
zeinen shutfim,” offered Mikhail.

“
I am sorry, Mikhail,
forgive me. I don’t speak Yiddish,” replied the Ambassador
recognizing the language nevertheless.

“
It means ‘doctors and
grave-diggers are partners.’” Mikhail replied with a smile as he
took a sip of his water. He never drank when on duty.

“
So true! That works too!”
offered the Ambassador with laughter. “So which are you, Sir
Thomas?” he probed again.

“
I will take the fifth on
that Mr. Ambassador,” Thomas answered.

“
So you will support TLH?”
James asked, ignoring the Ambassador’s efforts at intellectual
flattery by pushing him to confirm whether he would act as their
advocate in the corridors of Washington, knowing full well that
Thomas needed him.

“
I would be delighted to
consult for your business, gentleman,” he answered as the bill
arrived.

30

Dubai

Sitting in his villa in the old part of
Jumeirah, Navjot set down his secure sat phone having just finished
briefing Ali on where the operation was with regard to the
seduction of Wasir for the Director’s office. He reflected on their
conversation for a moment.

With the hiring of Andrew Martin, he now had
all the cornerstones in place. Later today he planned to introduce
the future dictator of Adwalland to his new technical advisor, who
had impressed him for, as promised, over the last month he had very
efficiently delivered the recommended equipment on time and within
the budget.

Despite Navjot’s doubts at the time, the
refurbished Mil-17 helicopter had been sourced from Ukraine and was
about to be refitted in Guinea Bissau by the Ukrainians, complete
with its gun pods and rocket launchers.

Then a few days before they were ready to go
they would use Wasir’s front-loading Il-76 plane to pick it up and
fly it into Adwalland, offload it at the airport and then start the
operation to bring into effect a regime change.

The former Guardsman had estimated he needed
about two hundred men. At first Navjot thought that was an
excessive number but to remain in tune with his cover he had
accepted it.

Instead, he had asked. “Why Ukrainians for
officers?”

“
That is simple, dear boy,
Gaddafi had them as officers of Tuareg in his old legion, so there
is a natural mechanism of command for the NCOs.”

“
That essential?” he had
questioned.

“
Very much so, I am afraid
experience tells me that these things have a habit of getting out
of hand, there is no such thing as a bloodless coup. If our friend
Wasir is going to get dirty it is better that his Muslim foreigners
do it for him rather than his Christian Mamluks,” he had said with
sigh, before continuing.

“
So if does happen we need
to make sure up until that point arrives our orders are being
followed,” he had said without emotion.

“
Three degrees of separation
Mr. Singh,” Tony Wilson had offered in support of his former boss
who had sat in on the briefing.

At that precise moment, Navjot despite being
an experienced operative, had started to feel incredibly guilty,
but he had quickly dispatched it. He had done things in the past in
the pursuit of terrorists that in some cases caused innocents to
die this, however, with its capacity to be a bloodbath was
something very different. It troubled him greatly.

When he was at the Farm, the lecturers had
once made the trainees debate the thought process behind Winston
Churchill’s decision to not to warn the residents of Coventry that
Hitler was planning to level the city as a requiem to the Luftwaffe
dead to protect the fact that they had broken the German Enigma
Codes used for their coded radio messages. One thousand souls had
lost their lives that night. In a war of attrition, terrible
decisions had to be made, Churchill did not shirk them, nor would
he. He suddenly remembered Jeremy Bentham’s famous quote, “It is
the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the
measure of right and wrong.”

That didn’t make it any easier though. On his
last operation in Pakistan before he was reassigned he had ordered
the death of twenty people, some of them children, just so they
could get a high value Al Qaeda operative who happened to be on the
bus with them.

“
No,” stopping his train of
thought in mid flow. “Deal with this later once you get back home
with the Langley shrinks,” he had lectured himself as he responded
with a single nod of his head without emotion.

“
I understand, Gentleman,”
he had answered.

With the rest of the weaponry arriving from
Thailand, it was not lost on Navjot that Martin deliberately used
five brokers to make sure the purchases stayed below the radar.

“
Clever,” he had said
respectfully nodding his head towards the former
Guardsman.

Finally, the ten refurbished Type 63
personnel carriers from North Korea would be delivered to Addis
Ababa by way of China and then transported across Ethiopia on
Wasir’s trucks to the border ready for deployment. Although he
couldn’t show it as he wasn’t supposed to hold any knowledge of
military matters and planning nevertheless Navjot was completely
satisfied by the proposed plan from Martin.

So much so he had instructed Reza to wire the
money through their British Virgin Islands front companies to the
relevant lawyers Martin had used in each part of the world in
readiness for immediate payment.

All he needed now was the Devil’s handshake
with Wasir Osman Hassan.

Navjot picked up his mobile and called his
asset in the Burj Al Arab, whom he had recruited when they had met
at one of his friend’s Mahesh Tourani’s famous parties when he was
establishing the Gourgamangi Singh identity in the early years when
he was living in Dubai. Over the years, the asset had become an
essential part of the SAD monitoring function on the comings and
goings at the famous hotel often making sure Langley received
excellent intelligence from the staff, who were always ignored
while serving the targets.

It was not though until one particular
operation that they realized just how unique he was. On that
occasion when having spotted and reported that a senior dealmaker
of Hamas was staying at the hotel with no minders as a guest of one
of the Sheikh’s of a country sympathetic to the cause, he was asked
to take him down in a joint operation with the Israelis.

At the time, Navjot and Ali had both been
dead set against it, saying that he wasn’t trained for that kind of
operation, but having been overruled by their immediate superiors
they reluctantly lent him to the Israelis who had not been able to
get a team in place fast enough with strict orders not to reveal
his identity. Watching and waiting until the terrorist leader was
in the sea with his young Jordanian girlfriend on the hotel’s
private beach he coolly took the opportunity to swap his cell phone
with a one that had been cloned. This cloned cell phone however
contained fifteen grams of RDX explosives that young Israeli
Shinbet courier had given him the day before.

Later that evening having followed terrorist
out of the hotel and on into Deira, located on the other side of
Dubai creek far away from the hotel cameras, the asset had waited.
Then as the terrorist walked out of the offices he was visiting
answering the call on his mobile phone he coolly and without
hesitation remotely detonated the device killing the man instantly
before calmly walking away as though nothing had happened, got into
his Range Rover, and drove back to the hotel to carry on with his
day job.

“
Masterful and cool in his
approach an absolute credit to your country,” the Shinbet Chief had
written when he sent his thanks to the Director.

It was that point Ali and he realized they
had recruited a very unusual operative.

The Israelis may have gotten the credit and
had the Dubai Police running around trying to trace the steps of a
phantom kill team, not to mention trying work out how the Israelis
had done it—indeed this was one of reasons why they had gone over
the top when they did actually send in a kill team in to take out
Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh. One thing was absolutely sure about this
operation was nobody suspected it was Sheikh of Dubai’s ‘hotel
man,’ as he was known in the Emirate.

Quietly, when the man was on leave after he
had traveled to Langley to obtain his Intelligence Star for that
operation, he went onto the Farm for special training so they could
upgrade his status. They had stood together in the reception room
for his private ceremony surrounded by men and women who had never
met him nevertheless saluting his bravery.

Asking if he was okay, fearing it was one
thing to pass information along another to be asked to kill, for
until an agent is faced with an extremely prejudiced situation
despite all the best training in the world it stands for nothing
until you have processed the baggage that comes with it, he
received his answer.

“
Never better, G!” he had
replied with a smile.

“
Because of me, the children
on the West Bank get a chance to live whether they’re Arab or
Israeli,” he had replied, as if touched by Navjot’s show of
concern. “Don’t worry. I sleep like a baby at night,” he had
rejoined. Navjot never doubted him after that as could see he meant
it.

The click on the end of the line had brought
his friend and asset on the line.

“
Hi Rob…” he had said
letting him know who it was.

“
Gourgamangi! Great to hear
your voice again,” he had replied with genuine warmth.

“
I need favor old chap,” he
had asked.

“
Don’t you always, G!” he
had laughed reverting to his nickname.

In a lightweight dark blue suit with a light
blue silk tie, the typical color of hotel managers all over the
world sitting in his office of the famous Burj Al Arab awaiting the
arrival of Wasir Osman Hassan, was Robin “Rob” Ashley.

British born, single, with no ties he had
joined the famous hotel group in early days of early of the Dubai
boom at the end of 1990s. Tall with a strong chin and dark brown
eyes, he was to all intents and appearances a loyal servant of the
Sheikh of the Emirate serving as the organization’s development
director and in a less visual role of a ‘fixer’ of deals when
required by the Ruler’s Office. Although he hadn’t been originally
trained as an intelligence officer, Rob nevertheless had all the
natural skills to be one, with his ability to recognize that
information was a tradable commodity and being able to act as
necessary and coolly under a great deal of stress.