The Devil's Handshake (24 page)

Suddenly dropping the map he had pulled her
towards him. They had met in the middle and kissed each other.

“
I am Chris,” he had said
after breaking away brushing away her long hair from her face
followed by a small smile as he looked into her tear filled
eyes.

“
I am Rebecca,” she had
responded.

“
Will you marry me,
Rebecca?” he had asked this time using her real name, love in his
eyes.

“
Yes, my darling Chris.
Yes!” she had replied as they kissed and then they had made love on
the beach as the waves had rolled in around them.

24

Ras Kamboni 2006

Wasir Osman Hassan, due to his Clan links in
Adwalland, had always had a reputation for delivering. In the
south, on the Kenyan border where the Foreign Islamists were using
the area as a base camp, his links weren’t as strong and as such,
he was suffering.

With the only healthcare available in Ras
Kamboni in the form of a small pharmacy, the Al-Qaeda foreigners
had contracted him to deliver to them their medical supplies from
the Yemen.

Unfortunately, despite a heavy investment of
bribes, Wasir, because the Kenyan coastguards were receiving more
money from the Americans to stop the deliveries, and after the loss
of another boat this morning, had come to the bitter conclusion
that it was time to cut his losses and run.

Unable to fulfill the foreigner’s delivery,
he was in a vile mood as this meant he was now going to have to
purchase another load out of his own pocket to meet the order as
one didn’t stiff or disappoint a client like the Al Qaeda if you
wanted to survive.

His mood greatly improved while sitting in
his little villa picking his teeth when one of his runners briefed
him about an Englishmen in Lamu who was looking for a boat captain
to bring into Ras Kamboni some much needed medical supplies from
the Red Crescent Society for the little pharmacy to distribute.

“
Arrange the meeting!” He
barked at the runner. A plan formed in his mind before getting up
to select one of the terrified young girls that he intended to use
for his evening’s entertainment.

25

Lamu 2006

Small, personal, and considered to be the
perfect resting place after a safari or as a hideaway holiday from
modern life, The Peponi Hotel, run by the Korschen family, who had
opened it in 1967 to look after the hedonistic party seekers from
Gstaad, was the reason why Chris and Rebecca had chosen it for
their romantic weekend.

Walking into the bar of the small hotel,
Wasir Osman Hassan spotted his ‘runner’ sitting in the corner with
a man he was assumed was the Englishman and a very beautiful
woman.

The runner having spotted Wasir as he walked
into the bar immediately got up out of respect to his chieftain in
order to offer his chair to him.

“
It’s good to meet you, Mr.
Wasir,” Chris said as a way of an introduction standing up in
respect earning a single nod in return from Wasir whose eyes were
instantly on Rebecca who in turn felt he was undressing her as he
looked at her.

“
May I introduce my fiancée,
Miss Benson,” Chris said ignoring his lack of acknowledgement or
manners to finish the introductions by indicating her position in
his life to the pirate having spotted his obvious leer in her
direction.

Again, Wasir said nothing; instead he offered
a further nod in return. As far as he was concerned women existed
for pleasure and creating sons, of which he had two from his three
wives, and certainly not for attending meetings between men.

With the arrival of the waiter Rebecca asked
if he would like a drink.

“
Whiskey!” said Wasir
towards the waiter, ignoring her.

26

London –Present Day

For what seemed like ten minutes when in fact
it was just a minute, Rebecca sat in numb shock at the screen of
her computer staring at the face of the man who had killed Chris as
the steaming coffee continued to drip over her desk from the cup
she dropped.

Hearing the coffee cascading off her desk and
shaking herself free of Wasir’s image, on autopilot Rebecca got up
and cleaned up her desk with her emotions in turmoil.

“
It’s the Captain!” she said
out loud, a fact she later confirmed when she had read the notes
from the team in Nice.

“
Interior Minister of
Adwalland, Wasir Osman Hassan boarding The Libertine,” it had
said.

Composing herself, she sat back down to
gather her emotions.

When the Kenyans had told her that
Christopher had been found dead over the border in Somalia she just
couldn’t believe it. He would have never crossed the border.

“
He an experienced aid
worker, I don’t believe it,” she had said to her counterpart in the
NSIS, the Kenyan Intelligence service.

“
Cathy, I am extremely
sorry,” was all he had said.

Because he was found murdered over the border
she had no choice but to tell Michael that Chris was aware of her
true identity because they just became engaged.

His response was immediate. He lifted her out
that day, thereby rendering her powerless to question or make her
own enquiries into his death allowing the official report to
stand.

“
Although he was foolhardy
crossing the border to assess the situation in Ras Kamboni, his
death was not because of kidnapping but instead tragically because
his Toyota hit a landmine,” the report had read.

No mention was made of him illegally
smuggling medical supplies across the border because neither Kenya
nor the Red Cross wanted the embarrassment.

In her heart, Rebecca had always known it was
the Pirate Captain who had killed him and stole the medical
supplies.

Despite many attempts and enquires since his
death, from the reading of prisoner transcripts to intelligence
reports supplied from the Somali’s NSS nobody could find the
Captain she had met in Luma named Wasir. Until now! When out of the
blue when he appears on the yacht of a billionaire she was
investigating.

Over the years out of a sense of loyalty
whilst continuing to contain her emotions by throwing herself into
her work, she had kept an eye on his elderly parents, who only knew
her as Cathy Benson. It was the only time she had grieved as she
stood by his parents and buried him in their small village in
Hampshire and vowed.

“
I will find your killer, my
darling! God punishes! Man takes revenge!” she had said in Yiddish,
her Jewish upbringing spurring her to act and finally, God had
answered her and was going to allow the opportunity for her to do
so.

27

Washington D.C.

The conversation between Thomas and the
President of Adwalland brought a pensive look from Navjot. Stroking
his beard, he processed the essence of the discussion and after
another moment of reflection and a review of his keynotes, he
looked up into the eyes of his team.

“
Well, that was certainly
interesting,” he said.

“
Did Litchfield just suggest
that they take out Wasir?” Clara Martinez, the logistic planning
officer and the number two of the group, asked.

“
Yep”, Peter Obraniak, the
group’s communications expert replied.

“
Greedy bastard though,
isn’t he?” said Joe Tonelli, his Behavioral Analyst, as if in
support of why Litchfield might have made such a
suggestion.

“
Fifty million U.S. dollars
per year for security to a pirate was steep in anybody’s language,”
Navjot answered as if in agreement.

“
Well, we now know for
certain he appears to be the perfect choice to prod the tribal
chiefs,” Joe offered.

“
So are we going to push it
along Boss?” asked Pete.

“
I think so…let’s get Reza
on the horn and just ‘up’ the time table a little,” Navjot
answered. His mind already processing that if they didn’t get the
ball moving then SAD options were going be limited as it was clear
that Litchfield intended to remove him from the picture with a
bullet.

“
Pete; can you find out what
Andrew Martin is up to?” Navjot then asked.

“
Xerulla?” Clara replied
using the name of Martin’s security business somewhat surprised.
For although they had used him in Iraq to provide contracted
support he was pretty much small fry compared to the firms of Tim
Spicer’s AEGIS and Prince’s Academi, the consultants the Agency
traditionally used for private security operations.

“
Yeah… We going to need some
technical support for Wasir, and it cannot be directly linked to
us,” Navjot countered, answering her question.

Earlier Ali and Navjot had discussed the fact
the GSG were going to need to put some “contractors” on the ground
to provide support for any effort Wasir made to take over the
country or a scapegoat if the operation was scrapped, as had
happened in Simon Mann’s attempt to take over Equatorial Guinea,
they had narrowed the list to a couple of firms that would fit with
an ambitious Indian.

Andrew Martin, a former Lieutenant Colonel of
the Welsh Guards, represented one such individual out of the
original list of about twenty.

They finally settled on Martin because unlike
Princes Academi or Spicer AEGIS that had won the principal
contracts in Iraq, his company had bounced along the bottom.

Martin’s firm was originally formed to
provide law enforcement training, logistics, close quarter
training, and security services to legally recognized governments
in the late 1990s. Over the years, the former Lt. Colonel’s company
had held contracts with multinational corporations and small
carpetbaggers engaged in the extraction of natural resources around
the world. But lately, as the world through improved satellite
communications and exponentially improved iPhone technology, the
use of Twitter, and YouTube, had become aware of some of more
dubious techniques these firms and employed. Consequently, Martin’s
traditional client base had set about trying to change their images
to protect their brand.

A casualty of this change of policy was the
employment of Mercenaries in the mold of Martin. As a consequence,
he had struggled badly.

With a couple of ex-wives, four children, not
to mention a country estate to maintain back in England, together
with the fact that the various mining companies he held stakes in
were running out of money; both Ali and Navjot had reckoned that
former Guardsman would jump at the chance to work for a wealthy
Indian diamond merchant looking to secure his new oil-gas assets in
crisis-torn East Africa.

“
See if you can find
somebody who has links with him so we can use them as a back door
access to recruit him,” offered Navjot thinking that the classic
false flag strategy would work well.

“
Sure, Boss. I will get on
it straight away,” Pete answered.

28

London Two Months Later

On reaching passport control having arrived
at Heathrow on the “red eye” from Washington, a smiling Navjot
presented his NOC Gouramangi Singh British Passport to the officer
on Passport Control desk.

Despite being a proud American through and
through, the SAD operative up to the age of thirteen had been
brought up in Reading, England and as such, he had never lost his
English accent. So much so that when he went to Peary, the famous
Farm located in Williamsburg, Virginia on being selected for NOC
work, his trainers recommended that his cover identities, if
possible, were to be always linked back to a British education.

This meant as far as the British Intelligence
Services were concerned he was undeclared asset on their soil and
by definition ‘illegal.’

Passing through the control without incident,
he walked out of the Arrivals Hall to the pick-up location.

Met by his driver, they joined the early
morning traffic and headed for central London.

The “legend,” is the slang for a NOC
background was an expensive operation to maintain because it was
also a fully-fledged diamond trading business not just a front.

Initially, from a standing start both he and
his blonde, blue-eyed wife Lori, whom he had met at the Farm and
then married, had created the retail business from scratch by
buying and reselling diamonds in Mumbai and Dubai. Then once the
reputation of the business was established they had entered the
Indian community of Dubai. There, they had set about building the
brand of the business, through placements into the society
magazines of the area, sponsorships of various events ranging from
cricket to fashion shows and the establishment of glossy retail
stores in the Five Star Hotels that were being built on money
borrowed against the sands owned by the ruling families, before
finally moving on to Mumbai three years later to establish their
reputations well and truly below and above the line.

Yet it wasn’t until just before the end of
the decade that the company had started to become noticed on the
world stage and in the process had become far bigger than either
they or the Agency had ever originally imagined and all achieved by
an astute investment into an Alaskan diamond production
business.

As to how that had come about was all down to
David Young who was at that time a Deputy Director of the
Agency.

Taking opportunity to upgrade the Legend he
ensured that the CIA’s Private Equity firms and key oversight
committees steered the Alaskan State Government in the direction
the GSG.

To a director like Young, who had internally
supported the view with an argument that the world’s next Cold War
would be fought over resources like water, oil, and gas and rare
metals used in advanced technologies, it made sense. With Al Qaeda
all but defeated, he ordered Navjot and his team reassigned with a
plan for them to act as the United States’ point in this new
battle.