The Devil's Handshake (33 page)

He didn’t like the man sitting across the
table from him. Thomas was an example of everything that was wrong
with the Russia emerging from the ruins of “Catastroika.” Ever the
pragmatic though, that certainly didn’t mean he wasn’t useful plus
he had certainly been making a difference in the sectors of the
economy the President had told him to invest in.

As he respected Thomas’s business experience
and contacts this meant the Englishman wasn’t exaggerating the
situation that was fast developing in the Adwalland. It was because
of this he took a decision.

“
I will make sure that
Jawari has a team of suitable advisers he can turn to if he wants
to and I will take your thoughts under advisement,” offered the
Director of SVR before getting up, signaling that their meeting was
over.

Taking his cue, Thomas also rose and followed
him out of the conference room. A brunette instead of blonde met
him this time to show him out of the grey building.

Met by Mikhail, his trusted old friend asked
how it went.

“
He listened!” was all he
said as he got into the Range Rover. He debriefed Mikhail as Barek
drove the off road vehicle back to the house. His trusted driver
offered a piece of information.

“
Boss! I think that means
the team who been observing us in Boroma belongs to Americans
then,” he said as he drove.

“
What team?” Thomas asked
before answering his own question. “I think you’re right,” linking
it to Rebecca’s information before Barek completed his
explanation.

Returning to his office picking up the phone,
the Director of the SVR dialed a number. The person he called was
Sergei Andreyevich Petrov.

A tall man with salt and pepper hair, a
strong jaw and piercing blue eyes Petrov was the forty-nine
year-old commanding officer of the SVR paramilitary unit known as
Zaslon. Numbering just 500 personnel in size and reporting directly
to the Director, the unit had a fearsome reputation.

Established in the late 1990s to perform
covert missions abroad, the unit’s brief ranged from anything
involving hostage rescues to assassinations. To many in the
counter-intelligence community it was considered the counterpart of
the Agency’s SAD, however within the Russian Intelligence as it did
not even have a service badge, it didn’t even exist.

Joining the KGB straight after university
during the last days of the Soviet Union but choosing not to resign
like many of his colleagues after the fall and enter the world of
commerce or organized crime, Petrov stayed to become part of the
new ‘refocused’ SVR under Yevgeniy Maksimovich Primakov.

With his ear for languages and his unique
survival experience, he had been deployed to the United States,
Europe, Afghanistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and
few other places along the way.

A tough no nonsense man, he was a dedicated
professional who cared deeply for his country. He had taken over
the Zaslon unit after his predecessor botched the assassination of
the Chechen leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiev in Qatar in 2003.
Officially, Sergei’s title was Deputy Director of Planning but
everybody in the service knew who he really was.

Although the conversation was warm between
the two men it had been short with a request that Sergei join the
Director for a meeting in his office.

“
Of course, Director,”
replied Sergei in his dress uniform of a blue pinstripe tailored
English suit sitting at his own desk.

One hour later, the pair sat across from each
other.

Old soldiers they went back along the way,
with a bond of trust that had been forged in blood. First working
together in the early days of the 1990s stealing industrial,
scientific, and technological data from American and European
companies, their role changed the moment the Mayor became President
after the Chechen terrorist attacks.

Following that attack and working together as
a team they set up a series of networks in the Middle East and
Pakistan to combat the growing threat from the second Chechen
war.

Bloody and ruthless with neither side backing
down, Alexei and Sergei had both carried out sanctions in the past
in response to the hijackings, the infamous taking of the Moscow
theatre and the worst kind of crime the murder of children who were
only guilty of going to school.

One such operation took place in the UAE.
Sergei and his team had tracked the target to a villa in Sharjah
who was known as the Financier of the Arab Mujahedeen in Chechnya
and the man behind the kidnapping of the four Russian diplomats
that were later executed in Iraq.

“
Acting as the tip of the
sword,” to quote the Mayor, Sergei had shot the Jordanian of
Chechnya heritage in the head as he was coming out of the Villa and
was awarded the Hero of Russia medal for the kill. Clean, efficient
with little collateral damage he was always Alexei’s first port of
call when he needed something handled with kid gloves so to
speak.

Over the last couple of years with the
exception of the successful Crimean Operation, Sergei’s part had
been mostly handling the training of Assad’s militia and the
covering of Moscow’s tracks by ensuring that sensitive military
technology—including new surface-to-air systems—didn’t end up in
foreign fighter hands in Syria.

A war the pair both sadly reflected was
likely to become another Chechnya or Dagestan with it international
funders from America and Wahhabists.

“
I need you to put a team
into Adwalland,” Alexei said once their friendly enquiries into
each other families were out of the way.

“
No problem, Alexei. May I
ask what their role will be?” Petrov asked.

“
Officially to provide
protection services to the new embassy, unofficially to put a
shadow team in theatre to ensure Omar Jawari maintains his position
as President,” answered Alexei

“
Who is the threat?” Sergei
asked because his experience with regard to the country was limited
to the fact that it was new and Russia’s President had reached an
agreement to set a new naval base there similar in size to the one
they currently had in Syria to replace their listening post located
on one of the Yemeni Islands that was being shut down by the
Pro-American Government.

“
According to the
‘Blagorodnyy,’ the threat is coming from an ex-pirate who runs the
Interior Ministry with backing from an Indian with American ties,”
Alexei answered, using Thomas’s codename meaning ‘Noble’ and taking
the intelligence of Thomas as read, even if he hadn’t acknowledged
that he had.

Sergei nodded as Alexei handed in an
encrypted USB stick containing analysis from the famous Support
departments of the Special Services on Adwalland, the key players
and intelligence evidence from the U.S.

34

Bangkok

The sweat caused by the unrelenting heat and
humidity of Bangkok dripped down the back of Ahmet Abylow’s neck as
the air-conditioning was still switched off to save on fuel while
he was going over his final pre-flight checks on the IL-76
aircraft.

The young man had the look of a person on a
personal crusade brought about by years of bitterness over his
circumstances. He was originally educated in Switzerland and the
plan had been to join the air force of Turkmenistan for a few years
to fly MIG-29s before joining his father in his business. The
assassination of his father though had ended that dream abruptly.
Fearing for the lives of his mother and two younger sisters
alongside him, Ahmet had left his homeland forever the night that
happened.

With no access to any of his father’s wealth,
apart from the cash he had hidden away in Dubai, Ahmet had used the
skills for flying to get rated on, IL-76, Airbus A300, and 747’s to
enable him to feed his family by flying beaten-up cargo planes in
and out Africa and Asia.

It wasn’t until 2011 when having gone into
business with the pirate he had met in one of Bur Dubai hotel bars
and was, by a happy coincidence, looking for a pilot to fly cargo
in and out of Somalia that Ahmet had found his life picking up. So
much so he was looking at buying an old 727 to add to the
fleet.

Then earlier this year as he sat in his
friend’s hotel in Borama having an espresso he couldn’t believe who
appeared before his eyes.

The very person, who was known, though nobody
had ever proved it, to have ordered the murder of his father, the
famous Oligarch who had become a legend in Turkmenistan over the
deal he had once done with his father when he had brought one of
his whores, walked through the lobby.

“
Allah, please allow me to
avenge my father!” he had asked spitting on the floor in disgust at
the time. Now it appeared such a chance was going to be
granted.

When he first saw the cargo that was being
loaded up, Ahmet had quickly worked out that his friend and his new
Indian business partner were planning a possible coup d’état.

He didn’t care; he saw it as ‘Kismet.’
Deciding there and then he would kill the Englishman and in his
eyes regain his family’s honor under the law of qan dushar, a term
that means ‘blood reaches’ and a unwritten right still practiced by
the tribes of Turkmenistan that allowed an individual with a common
patrilineal ancestor who is not more than seven generations removed
to seek revenge on the killer and their immediate kin.

The plans of Wasir represented a perfect
opportunity for him to do so.

“
We’re ready, Ahmet!” said
his Bosnian-Croat Co-pilot.

“
Right let’s get this show
on the road,” answered the young Captain.

35

Moscow

On Thursday morning as Sergei Petrov and his
driver pulled up to the gate of Litchfield residence in their black
Mercedes Benz G Wagon, he chuckled as he caught sight of the
standard FSB X6 BMW with its blue light on top sitting across the
street.

It wasn’t lost on his driver either.

“
I bet you one hundred
Roubles he’s on the phone right now telling Dimitri Arkady that we
are about to have a meeting with Blagorodnyy right now!” the tough
looking Crimean said, referring to the Director of FSB and Thomas
as the residences security team went about checking them
over.

“
Ruslan, Don’t be so
horrible!” Sergei replied sarcastically with a smile before
dismissing them from his thoughts due to being more interested in
the professionalism of the men that were now inspecting the
car.

Despite the both of them showing their state
credential cards of the SVR, it was not lost on Sergei that they
had taken their time and reconfirmed everything. Twice over!

“
No lazy dreamers here!” he
thought.

Over the last twenty-four hours, Sergei and
his team had read a considerable amount of intelligence and
analysis on Blagorodnyy’s organization. Made up with ex-military or
policemen it was the sort of protection any high profile Oligarch
would have. So it wasn’t this fact that had impressed him.

“
This Englishman is
certainly no ordinary Oligarch.” He continued.

“
And, it isn’t because the
British have awarded him a Military Cross either, despite the
impressive account on how he had supposedly received it.” He
concluded as he made notes.

No, what had really impressed Sergei was how
he handled the attempt on his life by the ‘Moldovan Mafioso’ and
again it wasn’t over how he handled the gun as the SAS were among
the best in the world at training their men.

The way he had stood by the side of his
wounded head of detail. Protecting him from the FSB and also, over
the following years, taken care of the family of the young man who
had died taking a bullet for him by taking an activate interest in
his children’s lives by acting as their ‘Sendakim”. Proved to the
Head of Zaslon that these weren’t the typical reactions of the
spoiled, arrogant rich men that he had come across in life who
overdosed themselves on the excesses of success.

“
No!” he decided. “This is
the reason why his team were completely loyal to him,”

For as far as Sergei was concerned it was
this reason why they had never given away any valuable intelligence
on his weaknesses and not just the theory promoted by the Analysts
of the SVR “That he is extremely generous with his remuneration of
them all!”

“
Idiots! This man has fought
with them! He is one of them!” he said out loud to himself in the
early hours of the morning.

Having spent the last twenty years of his
life fighting the Clans of Chechnya and Dagestan plus running his
own teams the same way he certainly recognized Clan loyalty when it
was presented to him.

It was that point he dismissed the synopsis
before him and had gone to bed to get some sleep having decided he
would call Alexei in the morning and ask him to arrange a meeting
with the man so he could evaluate him face to face.

“
Intelligence files only
went so far, instinct was what saved you in the field.”

Security checks finished, the gate opened and
in they went. Arriving at the house both men were met by the man
they immediately recognized as his head of detail.

“
Mikhail Olegovich,” Sergei
said offering him his hand in respect one professional to
another.

“
Sergei Andreyevich,” said
Mikhail responding in kind while taking his hand firmly before
asking them to follow him into the house as his personal security
team stayed outside with his men.

Mikhail handled the introductions as both men
assessed one another.