The Devil's Handshake (35 page)

After taking a spoonful of his crème brûlée,
the Israeli moved on to the offices, explaining in the process that
the Interior Ministry was, in fact, a dressed up villa with the
same structure in terms of men and deployment as the Viper’s own
villa on the outskirts of the town.

“
What is Viper command
structure other than his son?” asked Igor.

“
His number two is a guy
named “Ahmed” we don’t know his full name, but he we know he is a
former member of the National Security Services. He is bright and
well trained, having received training from the CIA in Mogadishu. I
think he is about forty but can’t be sure?” answered
Mikhail.

“
Okay, I will see what we
have on him. The NSS are very sound peddlers of information!”
replied Igor making a mental note to include it within his update
later.

“
What’s next?” Thomas
asked.

“
Jawari’s men,” answered
Igor.

After about a further thirty minutes of
briefing on the friendly forces, Igor gave his initial
assessment.

“
We need to look at the
Americans’ capabilities in Djibouti as well.”

“
Why do you think they would
become involved if there were a coup?” asked Mikhail, thinking that
now it had been smart of Thomas to order them to withhold the
information about the surveillance team Barak had discovered, now
convinced it was American.

“
It never hurts to be
prepared, Mikhail,” answered Igor, but still not explaining
himself.

Thomas didn’t say a word; Igor’s answer was
the exact reason why he had gone to such lengths to ensure he had
his back channels in place.

With supper over, the plane fell silent as
the lights dimmed. Igor sent an encrypted message on his military
grade Getac Notebook to Sergei.

“
FLASH CONTENT”

OPERATION KANJAR

First review attached for the possible
deployment into theatre. Will provide detailed information once on
the ground.

IP

The information was immediately relayed on to
Sergei, who was in bed with his wife at their family Dacha. The
sound of his encrypted ready BlackBerry buzzing woke him. Picking
it up, he read it. Then quickly went back to sleep, deciding it
could wait until morning.

Igor was like a vampire! He never slept!

36

Moscow

The call from Alexei Nikolai in the early
part of the afternoon, outside their formal once a week briefing,
had taken the Minister of Foreign Affairs by surprise.

Listening carefully as he sat in his study at
his weekend dacha, Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov took notes.

Trusted by Russia’s President although he
wasn’t a member of his inner circle, he was nevertheless seen as a
faithful servant rather than a formulator of foreign policy and
thereby trusted for his skills as a tough, reliable, extremely
sophisticated negotiator by all in the diplomatic world. This was
the reason why he had stayed in the role since his appointment even
after the man took power.

“
This might need some fees
to be arranged, Alexei Nikolai?” he further added after going over
his notes.

“
No problem Sergey
Viktorovich, I will take care of anything that needs reimbursing,”
answered the Director of the SVR, understanding what the Foreign
Minister meant.

In the last few days, his analysts had
tracked the whereabouts of helicopter through their assets within
the Security Service of Ukraine having picked up on what they had
previously reported over the last couple of months concerning the
recruitment of individuals by Xerulla.

It had then taken them the rest of the day to
locate the helicopter and send the local resident at the embassy in
Guinea-Bissau to the airport to confirm it was indeed there.

They were able to do this so quickly because
one of the pilots had foolishly left his travel itinerary from his
travel agent on his Gmail account.

“
Give me an hour,” the
Minister asked.

“
Of course sir,” replied the
Director.

Picking up the phone, the Minister spoke to
his personal assistant to ask him to find the man he was looking
for. Ten minutes later, his assistant rang back and connected him
to the person he wished to speak to.

When the call came in on his mobile, The
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of
Guinea-Bissau, Francisco da Silva was at dinner with friends at his
favorite local restaurant, the Enotheque Tinto Fino. Seeing it was
from the Foreign Ministry he answered it immediately only to be
surprised to find the Minister for Foreign Affairs on the other end
of the call. Excusing himself for a few moments, he went outside
and listened.

Two hours later he met with an operative from
the SVR at the famous Night Flight nightclub. He listened to his
request and considered his thoughts for few moments as he took a
sip of his Black Label. He then stated the amount he needed for
expenses before finally outlining what he required to be
transferred to his Swiss account in Zurich for organizing the
arrangements.

Meeting over, the Ambassador finished his
drink, got up, and left the nightclub a very pleased man because he
was now able to buy a house in Lisbon on his retirement. Ready to
celebrate he picked up his favorite big-breasted curvy blonde, left
the bill for the SVR officer to pay, and walked out of the
club.

An hour later the transfers were made. The
first transfer for $100,000 U.S. dollars went to an account in
Jersey, Channel Islands. The second transfer of $200,000 U.S.
dollars went to a small private bank in Zurich.

Four hours after that, the Ukrainian pilots
currently working for a company that had just set up their
helicopter transportation business in Bissau were both arrested by
the State Intelligence Services of Guinea Bissau.

37

Borama

Arriving in the early hours of Saturday
morning and having gotten only the few hours of sleep that they had
all managed to grab on the plane, both Thomas and Mikhail were now
sitting in one of the serviced Private Residences within the secure
compound of TLH’s new five star hotel on the Airport Road known as
‘The Cismah.’

“
Yossi tells me that the
Turkmen’s Il-76 arrived from Bangkok via Mumbai last night with a
rather interesting cargo from Ukraine and various tractor parts,”
Mikhail said rather grimly.

“
Not good!” Thomas answered
quickly knowing that meant the Viper’s planned coup d’état could
literately days away, if not hours.

“
I know!” answered Mikhail
before advising him that he would brief Igor
accordingly.

“
There’s something else as
well,” offered Mikhail before he went on to explain that he had
learned from one of Barak’s sources—that all of Wasir’s
transporters had just left Borama for a cargo pick up in
Ethiopia.

“
I will call the President
and ask for a meeting,” replied Thomas quickly, even more fully
convinced than he ever was before that Adwalland was a matter of
hours away from having a coup-d’etat on its hands.

“
I will get going and brief
Igor on the transporters,” offered Mikhail somewhat grimly. In
every military operation throughout history, despite the best
intentions of the strategists, nothing ever runs to plan and
depending on what side you are on this will be either fortunate or
disastrous.

“
What do you mean, Mr. Tony,
‘there is a problem with the helicopter?’” asked Wasir, anger
rising as he received his briefing from Tony and Andrew who had
been told by their runner in Bissau that their expensive helicopter
gunship had been impounded.

Earlier, Andrew had sworn loudly using every
swear word in his vocabulary when informed of the news, but now as
he briefed the warlord he just sighed and took a sip of his
bitter-sweet coffee.

“
The authorities have
apparently arrested one of our Ukrainian pilots on the back of one
of them getting into a bar fight over a whore during which he had
killed the whore’s pimp at the small hotel they were staying at,”
Andrew explained. “Unfortunately for us they arrested the second
pilot when they checked on what they were doing at the hangar at
the airport and found the packed-up weapons systems,” he further
added.

The rage that followed over the next couple
of minutes contained a variety of insults towards both Andrew and
Tony, ranging from their lack of professionalism in English to a
curse about their parentage, something that neither man understood
as he said it in Somali before finally ending with Wasir telling
them to get out of office, but not before he had told them at least
his men had left this morning and were making their way to Addis to
collect the armored personnel carriers from his contacts.

“
I thought he took that
rather well all things considered!” Tony said as they drove off.
Andrew chose to ignore him. He just thought all the
dictators-in-waiting were the same the world over. This one was no
different.

“
Just think of the money!”
he told himself with a heavy sigh.

38

Dubai International Airport

Navjot walked up the steps of the G-4 and
once onboard settled himself into his seat with the aim of
‘switching off’ and give his brain a few hours off during the trip
to Borama.

The fact that he already had his team of
Clara, Pete, and Joe in theatre under the guise of Non-Government
Officers to monitor the operation discreetly meant this trip
shouldn’t have been necessary, and more importantly because of his
cover, he shouldn’t have been anywhere near the country.
Unfortunately though, the Section Chief felt he had no choice due
to the events of the last twenty-four hours.

Yesterday when Tony rang him to inform him
that the helicopter gunship they had purchased had been picked up
by the Guinea Bissau intelligence services, he had in keeping with
his character expressed his anger to his head of security. Yet
inwardly he was anything but. His instincts immediately kicked
in.

Convinced that there was more to the
incident, despite Wilson’s assertions to the contrary expressing
that it been down to a piece of bad luck, he had asked Ali to check
it out whether it was or not.

Unfortunately, because the Agency didn’t have
intelligence assets in the small African country, this meant Ali
had to go through Homeland Security, as the only Federal Agency to
have assets in the tropical country was the DEA.

With a population of approximately one and
half million, a political history of non-stop coup d’etat’s and a
seemingly endless array of coastal inlets and islands that had made
the country an ideal staging ground for Latin American cocaine that
was bound for Europe this made logical sense. Before 9/11, he would
have used the inter-agency liaison, and if he were honest would
most likely have gotten nowhere because the DEA and the CIA hated
each other, a direct result of the CIA giving up the DEA agents to
the drug cartels of South America. However with the role of
Homeland Security to pull intelligence into one source so as to
ensure all Federal agencies actually shared their information
without favor, politics, or fear of security breaches he now could
go through them. Although Ali didn’t have access to the actual
assets at the very least he could get a request looked into.

By eleven o’clock last night, Navjot finally
heard back from Ali.

“
You’re telling me that the
Ukrainians were picked up on request from the Russian Ambassador?”
Navjot asked.

“
Yep,” replied Ali who
himself had only just heard back from the Homeland Security
liaison.

Yet it was when Clara informed him that
Litchfield had returned from Moscow with a number of
extra-unidentified personnel and a large number of equipment that
was off-loaded from the aircraft that he was firmly convinced that
the Russians were deploying a team just like them into the country.
Ali and Navjot quickly come to the conclusion that the Russians
were on to the plot.

That meant it was now a race against time. In
the buildup of the operation, the team had spent a considerable
amount of time assessing whether they could use the Agency’s
existing platform in Somalia quickly dismissing it for one reason
only: That it was focused around the trading of intelligence or
capture of a small number of individuals rather than a platform
built for affecting change.

In the aftermath of 9/11, the Agency had
funneled over twenty million U.S. dollars into Somalia, initially
funding the Warlords through the Alliance for the Restoration of
Peace and Counter-Terrorism only to see them all disappear by the
end of the decade with the arrival of the Islamic Courts Union,
which then in turn disintegrated and re-formed as Al Shabaab. The
idea had ended in disaster because the Agency didn’t put into place
a strategic framework. This also meant, albeit unwittingly, the
United States had assisted in the creation of Adwalland through the
fact that they had forced the tribal leaders to become proactive to
protect their own areas.

Having failed in that program and now facing
a collective of mini self-governing states within the failed nation
they then began funding the Somali National Security Agency
directly, an organization who had worked out collectively that
having the intelligence agencies around the world funding them was
better than relying on the aid agencies. Not to mention the pay was
better.

All this led Navjot and his team to the same
conclusion: “The moment we attempt to use assets on the CIA
platform they will brief the SVR and the mission would be
over.”