The Devil's Handshake (47 page)

Mikhail broke the silence, having caught the
nod between Benny and Rob.

“
Rob, my thanks to you on
behalf of my wife’s brother in getting that bastard!”

“
Don’t mention it, Mikhail,”
replied Rob knowing that his cover was blown and what Mikhail was
referring to.

As they were handing over the five to Ashley,
the now uncovered CIA officer suddenly drew his pistol, pointed it
at the head of Andrew Martin first and released two shots. The
sound rippled across the hanger in loud thuds as he did so in quick
succession into the Guardsman’s head. Then without hesitation did
the same again into the face of a wide-eyed Tony Wilson who were
all rooted to the spot in stunned silence from shock,

Again the thuds echoed around the hanger.

Execution over, Rob coolly reapplied the
safety catch and replaced his weapon back into its holster under
his shoulder.

“
Orders, Sir Thomas,” Rob
offered as he turned back towards Thomas and Mikhail to find
weapons pointing at him as to the justification of why he had just
executed the two men in cold blood. Ignoring them, the Fixer turned
again, this time towards the other equally wide-eyed prisoners at
his side.

As he did so he could see by the look in
their eyes to a man and a woman, they were still in shock and
terrified from thinking they were next.

Instead, Rob coolly walked behind them one by
one and cut their bonds with his Swiss Army knife.

“
Let’s go guys,” he ordered
to them.

“
G, I think it’s time for me
to come home,” Rob said to his Indian friend as they walked up the
steps of the Falcon together leaving the two dead bodies of Martin
and Wilson for Thomas and his men to clean up.

“
Let Badr know they tried to
escape,” Thomas said as he watched the plane engines started up
feeling nothing because these two men were the architects of the
deaths of his Gurkhas.

The next day Sky News exclusively reported
that Andrew Martin of Xerulla and his former Sergeant Major from
the Welsh Guards a Tony Wilson working in partnership with the
Interior Minister were actually the masterminds behind the whole
plan to overthrow the government and were, in fact, the ones
responsible for the massacre at the Mission, not The President’s
Militia.

“
All done so they could
steal all the natural resources rights by getting the Americans to
serve as their security proxy while they tore up the agreements
with the Russians,” said the shocked journalist.

“
Mindboggling!” replied the
experienced anchor.

The Prime Minister promised to investigate
and hold a public enquiry in the actions of the various security
companies that employed former military personnel stating in Prime
Ministers Question Time.

“
Men like Martin and Wilson
cannot bring nations to the brink of the war in the pursuit of
commercial gain!” to sounds cheers and “Hear!” “Hear!” coming from
both sides of the House.

The widow of Andrew Martin and the English
family of Wilson desperately tried to tell the world that it was an
Indian Businessman named Gourgmangi Singh who was actually behind
the plot, but, unfortunately, for them, nobody was interested.

The Presidents of United States and Russia
promised to work together to ensure that incidents of this nature
never happened again between them, and Thomas flew to Nepal to
attend the funerals of the five Gurkhas whereupon it was reported
in the local media that he had set up foundations in their names
and would be providing the men’s villages each a new school,
hospital, and scholarships for the children of the fallen.

The Ambassador of Russia was met by Igor as
he arrived to take up his post in Borama, quickly followed by a
thousand Russian ‘advisors’ to assist the President’s security
forces in rounding up Wasir’s criminals.

The United States of America announced that
it would be opening an Embassy in Borama to support the growing
interest in the country generated by the three American Natural
Resources corporations who had applied for and had been granted
several exploration licenses.

“
The former Interior
Minister remains at large, despite his assets in Dubai being
frozen,” reported the MGN journalist from Dubai.

The Movers column on the Hotels.com website
reported that the development officer of Sheikh’s hotel group was
leaving after thirteen years for a new job in Hong Kong.

A Tuareg shepherd watched by his sons shook
hands on new additions to his goatherd in Mali.

A Frenchman of Ukrainian extraction went
shopping in his local Carrefour in Lyon.

The UN personnel murdered by Wasir were
buried in the respective countries.

The world commodity markets stabilized.

The world returned to normal, or its previous
version of it.

56

London

Looking at his reflection in the mirror
Thomas was lost in his thoughts as he set about putting the shaving
foam on his face.

It had been both a rather hectic month and a
rather expensive one in economic terms, due to the personal
commitment he had made to the President of the United States.

Described by the media and many analysts as
the best piece of business that CORETEXAS had ever made by the fact
that the field in Adwalland was estimated to be worth well over ten
billion U.S. dollars in potential revenues, and it hadn’t cost them
a single cent, he had tried not to think about the cost as he
signed the agreement just yesterday.

Despite James, behind the scenes, heavily
briefing the financial community’s various analysts that it made
sense because of the increased marketing channels that TLH would be
able to tap into, the business community on the whole wondered
whether Thomas had lost his touch.

The only actual benefit the
Englishman-become-Russian had actually received out of his ‘Noble’
act of stopping two of the world’s powers from a confrontation, was
an invite through Jack Fielding for a private dinner with the
President on his next trip to Washington and a Russian Diplomatic
Passport with a title of ‘Special Advisor’ attached to the Embassy
in the United Kingdom as a thank you from the Mayor. An item he
thought of as a ‘poisoned chalice,’ as it now meant he was well and
truly an instrument of the will of Russia.

On the other hand, one person who was
completely satisfied with his gift was Mikhail who immediately saw
it as an excuse to upgrade his security by taking up the option of
contracting Armed Close Protection Officers from the Police due to
him being a designated person in the country of the Russian
Federation.

“
I feel less naked now!”
Mikhail said as he waved his hands dramatically about in defense of
the fact that he wasn’t allowed to carry firearms when in the UK
when a furious Saul had found out the cost of the team of officers
per year was going to be half a million pounds.

“
The Mayor is not going to
be paying for this is he?” Saul had said to Mikhail in
disgust.

“
Just keep the old man
happy,” Thomas had said to the CFO with a hand on his
shoulder.

Yet despite the heavy cost to his fortune on
a personal level, it had been a rather good one as Thomas had
finally asked Nara to marry him.

It was a decision that he had made as the
consequence of surviving the grenade that had fallen just short of
his position in Borama. At the time the blast had knocked him off
his feet. It wasn’t until he looked down while momentary dazed to
find shrapnel lodged in his chest amour next to his heart that he
had his epiphany.

“
Fuck!” he had thought as
the bullets and smoke whizzed around him as it had suddenly dawned
on him that his first thoughts weren’t about himself they were
about Nara and Victoria for the first time in his life, before
switching back on to instantly to take up position again by the
window.

As he did, so he made a vow. If he survived
he would marry his Turkmen wild spirit.

The look on his beautiful life’s companion’s
face was one he would never forget. They were on The Libertine off
the Amalfi coast. He had woken and finding she wasn’t there he had
gotten up from the bed to look for her only to find her, as she
often did when on the yacht, on the deck outside their bedroom
looking out to sea, watching the sunrise.

Taking a moment to gaze at her as he did so
he was more convinced than ever she had never looked more beautiful
than she did at that moment just as a touch of wind had caused her
loose coal-black long hair to flutter about as she sipped on the
glass of water that she was holding with both hands.

“
Good Morning, my Thomas,”
she had said as he had come up behind her and wrapped his arms
around her while water lapped against the yacht. Her scent mixed
with the smell of the clear blue sea was almost
aphrodisiacal.

“
My lovely lady,” he replied
as her hand went around behind his head and pulled his hair before
turning around to look up him. Her eyes sparkled like
diamonds.

As she set about kissing him on the lips,
sucking him deeper and deeper into her mouth while flicking out her
tongue, he stopped her for a moment. The fact he had done so upset
her.

“
Have I done something
wrong?” she had asked concerned.

“
No,” he had replied with a
serious look. “My darling, I just want you to let me put this on
your finger,” he had said as he lifted her hand up to his chest
before showing her the beautiful large pink pear shaped diamond
ring on a rose gold setting that he had collected from the famous
Bond Street jeweler and somehow had managed to keep hidden from her
the day before.

The significance of his actions immediately
caused Nara’s eyes to water.

“
Oh, … My T-h-o-m-a-s, yes!”
she said, answering him before he could ask her.

“
Will you marry me?” he
asked anyway, determined to have his moment.

“
Yes! Yes! Yes! My, My
Beautiful T-h-o-m-a-s,” in Turkmen she replied excitedly as she
reached up into his face with hers before kissing him over and over
again, sucking his lips and licking his mouth hungrily as she
went.

57

St Ageranus School, Somerset

Sitting concealed among dense underbrush by
the school’s playing field quietly observing the growing crowd of
parents, teachers and children was the former security chief of
Adwalland’s Interior Ministry.

This last month had been incredibly
challenging for him, a wanted man by the United Nations and now
vilified by the world as a war criminal of the worst kind, meant
that they had only just managed to escape from Adwalland.

Bitter and twisted, the Chief wanted revenge,
and the focus of which was the Englishman.

“
No! Ahmed I want his entire
seed taken out!” Wasir shouted at him as they sat together in the
rented villa in Nouakchott licking their collective wounds when he
had suggested they use a sniper to kill him.

“
Ybeeldaaje,” the man
answered resigned to the fact that an order like that would be
extremely difficult if not expensive to undertake in
England.

If it wasn’t for the pilot friend of the
Ybeelaadje suggesting that maybe the best place to take him would
most probably be at the school sports day of his daughter, the
battle harden Clan fighter Ahmed would still be wondering just how
he was going to carry out such an attack without dying in the
process.

“
Chief, the Englishman is on
the field by the running track,” offered one of his spotters, in
Somali, a young teenager he recruited from the East London’s exiled
community.

Using his binoculars, Ahmed immediately
spotted him cheering away, with his woman and the guards alongside
them both as the children began their race.

Counting the numbers around him, he could see
he had a team of seven around him.

“
Good our numbers are
equal!” he thought smiling.

“
Take up positions! Wait for
my signal!” he commanded on the radio.

“
Ybeeldaaje,” came back over
the radio.

The tactic was simple in design; a standard
L-shaped formation in the heavy trees to the right and a team of
three led by him in front of them.

Because the Englishmen bodyguards were
professionals, Ahmed had reasoned that this would mean once the
attack started that they would almost immediately form up into a
circle to protect the principal.

But he theorized that with the children and
parents in the way taking fire from the team confusion might rain,
and if they broke to the left, they would move into the fire of his
flanking team. If they moved to the right, then the flanking team
would paint their backs. If they tried to move forward, then they
would walk straight into his central team that would be advancing
forward, again giving him the opportunity to create a lethal
killing zone. Finally, if they chose to turn around and try to move
out towards the school then, his central team would be able to
paint their backs.

Either way they took, Ahmed was confident
that with all the panic and screams, the killing zone would be a
place that nobody would want to be for unlike them the Englishman
men would be able to return fire as they wouldn’t be armed because
of the laws of the country. Something he again took as a sign of
Allah granting the wish of his Chief.

As the loud repetitive cracks of gunfire,
sounds all of Mikhail’s team immediately recognized as Mac-10s,
over the cheering and shouting, launched the security team into
action.