The Devil's Handshake (36 page)

So having reviewed the outline with Ali, the
team subsequently recommended that the Agency establish a
completely new platform using the Interior Minister as the lead on
his return from Borama.

“
It cannot cause
embarrassment to the service or the administration by being able to
trace it back if it goes wrong,” said Young to Ali during the
approval oversight meeting in the Cube. Nobody spoke about it but
collectively they all knew that meant ‘plausible deniability,’ a
term coined by the CIA during the Kennedy Administration and what
they were doing now was it in its purest form and hadn’t been
practiced by the Americans since the Reagan Doctrine had ended the
Cold War signaled by the fall of the Berlin Wall. That doctrine had
been originally been designed to diminish Soviet power in the
regions of Latin America, Africa and Asia as part of the
Administration’s overall Cold War strategy.

The new Director was now dusting off the plan
and re-activating it but not using a marketing message to the
voting public of America fighting an “ideology” that threatens not
only your “freedom” and your “way of life.”

The outline put together by Ali and team once
the regime change had been completed was simple in design.

GSG, as the exclusive partner of the in
country asset, was going to swiftly enter into partnerships with
American natural resources corporations who then in turn would then
reimburse and create a profit sharing model with the CIA for its
new counter-intelligence platform.

“
A self-funding platform
‘off the books’ for future counter-intelligence operations of the
CIA using GSG as the funnel,” Navjot had said with a shake of his
head once he had finished reading the proposal when he had been
given his new orders by Ali.

“
Private Sector
Intelligence,” Ali had said joking. Navjot had seen it as
immoral.

“
Invest and resell making a
profit in the process. Was that really what I signed up for when I
was younger?” Navjot had questioned himself as he privately
struggled with the direction the Agency was now asking him to take
in the future.

“
Maybe it’s time to get
out?” Navjot had asked himself.

Fighting terrorists on the basis of faith was
easier to process than that of material gain. Changing governments,
potentially killing hundreds and affecting thousands of people on
the basis of next year’s mobile phone or being able to build and
sell next year’s car was, he had reflected, becoming harder and
harder to process.

It wasn’t until Ali had convinced him over a
lot of coffee in the planning room back at Langley that the
strategy would ensure that the United States of America had access
to the essentials of life that he had begun to feel more
comfortable with what his team’s new management would be taking
it’s ‘raison d’etre’ in the new secret war of the twenty-first
century.

“
The Energy Security
Doctrine,” the Director had coined it when he had presented the
paper to the Secretary of State and the President.

As the Indian closed his eyes, he wondered
somewhat cynically whether the Director had called in an
advertising agency to come up with that new brand identity.

“
I wonder how Don Draper
would brand it?” he half-jokingly asked himself in reference to the
Mad Men character of the show that Lori always recorded for him to
watch when he got home when he was unwinding.

Unfortunate as it was, the news he had just
received from both Wilson and Ali had proved to him that they had
been right to create such a buffer. With the Russians now on their
tails plus the upgrading of their presence in the country; Navjot
knew he needed to make sure that the train didn’t derail at the
first turn with the end game in sight.

He just hadn’t planned for what Wasir would
do to up the ante.

39

Aden Isaaq International Airport

A still fuming Wasir and the resigned pair of
Andrew and Tony met the Indian as he reached the bottom step of the
G-4.

“
Gouramangi, I am glad
you’re here my friend!” said the Interior Minister as he hugged and
kissed him on both cheeks expressively. His embrace provided Navjot
with a whiff of extra strong perfume that was general in the Middle
East plus a rather unsavory deposit of damp sweat from the
minister’s linen shirt onto his.

“
These idiots have placed
great pressure on us!” he added waving his hands towards the
Englishmen at his side.

Yesterday when Wasir had ranted and raved
about them letting him down, at that point Navjot hadn’t committed
to traveling into Borama due to the rest of the plan progressing
well. The two hundred Turaeg soldiers had arrived over the last
week entering variously through Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Somalia
respectively and were covertly being taken to a camp just outside
the city. There, the Ukrainians were going through their weapons
training with the Non Commissioned Officers and finally the armored
vehicles that had arrived in Addis Ababa from China and were being
loaded for transportation through Ethiopia and onto Adwalland.

Having been briefed by Ali to make sure there
weren’t any problems with the arrival of vehicles Navjot had
ordered, in somewhat colorful language, the resident in Addis Ababa
made sure that was the case.

“
There was a time when a
bribe was only a couple hundred bucks here or there!” the resident
had said to the Indian as it was now costing them ten thousand U.S.
dollars.

Again the reliable Reza had made the
transfers to relevant accounts in Dubai and sent some money to the
resident, so he didn’t have to go to the Ambassador for petty cash,
thus avoiding the need to fill in about twenty-five forms of
paperwork, the absolute scourge of every officer since the
austerity measures of the Obama Administration.

“
Don’t worry my friend these
things happen; that is why I am here,” Navjot replied lying to the
Interior Minister as he caught sight of the look of thunder on
Andrew and Tony faces. He did have some sympathy although he didn’t
show it. Working with amateurs like Wasir was never easy, as he
knew through bitter experience during his time working with the ISI
in Pakistan.

“
Tell me what else has been
happening?” Navjot asked in keeping with his cover. A question he
would also ask his team later but first, he needed to hear it from
his expensive pair of contractors having caught sight of
Litchfield’s large private BBJ already parked up to the side of the
runway as they were taxiing in.

“
Litchfield and Jawari are
going to have a meeting with the chieftains from Lughaya and Saylec
this afternoon,” Wasir said with authority. He had been briefed by
one of his men who kept tabs on the different Clans for
him.

“
Is that a problem for us?”
asked Navjot, eyeing up the pirate.

“
No,” replied Wasir, lying
to his face because, despite his growing commercial control through
the Interior Ministry in the country, it wasn’t the case due to the
fact he belonged to the Bima, a sub-clan of the Gadabuursi’s Dir
so, therefore, unfortunately was still bound by the decisions of
his Chieftain, something no foreigner couldn’t possibly
understand.

The background to this tie of blood, a fact
of everyday life in Somalia, was founded in the civil war that
followed on from the revolution in 1969. After the breakdown and
bloodshed of the brutal civil war and eventually sick of the
bloodshed, the Clans of the North finally “stopped digging in their
hole,” to quote President Bill Clinton, and met at a conference
entirely organized by the elders in the early 1990s. The outcome of
the conference was that all parties agreed to return to customary
law and to form a grassroots assembly through which Clan leaders
would oversee.

Overnight, this had the effect of legalizing
the Clan structure and introducing a bicameral system consisting of
Upper and Lower houses. The Clan elders predominant in the Upper
house, and all from the Issa Clan took over security and helped
hold the region together. The Lower house all from Bima Clan
considered the educated ones became responsible for the
legislation, which used Sharia law as its base.

Because Wasir belonged to a sub-clan under
the Lower house it meant that despite his appearances to Navjot,
even he had to bend to the will of the Upper house on matters of
security. It was a bitter pill to swallow for the ambitious Wasir
Osman Hassan who had funded and paid taxes over years from his
piracy and had ensured that his Indian friend made a contribution
of a million U.S. dollars to each tribal chief to gain power.

Yet, the simple truth was that because Jawari
was a member of the Upper house through the blood of his uncle and
furthermore maintained a close relationship with his area’s Upper
house Chieftains, it meant that the man’s position was still
stronger than his own due to his hereditary rights.

The deal offered by his Indian friend in
Dubai with his white mercenaries had allowed Wasir a unique
opportunity to change the natural order of things. He didn’t care
about whether the Russians liked it or not. He was only interested
his own power base within Adwalland. If the Indian and his friends
wanted him to break the agreement with the Russian oil companies
and the Englishman, so be it. Being an opportunist though he
recognized this was the only chance to do it, because he knew the
moment the Russian soldiers arrived, the power of Jawari would be
absolute with his friends acting as guarantor.

He had seen how they had stood by the Syrian
leader despite international pressure and they had always kept
their promises.

With his friend’s adviser’s plan to bring in
Gaddafi’s mercenaries to assist in any difficult operations of what
Martin described as “sensitive,” Wasir immediately recognized what
he could use them for: “A takeover in Lughaya then blame it on
Jawari and his militia.”

His plan simple in design within the confines
of his mind guaranteed him as the Minister responsible for security
that the militia under his authority was sent in to restore order
with the direct result being the unfortunate death of the incumbent
Clan leader, Reer Rooble Ali.

What Wasir hadn’t bothered to explain to his
Indian friend was that the difficult part of the operation, despite
explaining otherwise, was the acceptance of him as Jawari’s
replacement as he belonged to a Lower house Clan.

The only real way that he could ensure this
happened was to slaughter Jawari and Rooble Ali’s entire immediate
Clans and some of his own for appearances plus a unique group of
VIPs. Together that decision represented the lives of over two
thousand men, women, and children. Despite his friend and his
Englishman’s tough talk, Wasir knew this final part of the plan
would be something even they would hesitate over on fear of the
world media finding out about it. Something that appeared to always
be their first consideration in every decision he noted but still
not understanding as to why.

It was because of this that Wasir had decided
that he was only going to tell his Indian friend after the
event.

“
Excellent!” replied Navjot
with a false smile.

“
Let’s head back to the
hotel so I can take a rest and then meet up this evening for
dinner,” Navjot offered, just as a runner who had been observing
started to call his supervisor on his cheap handset to let him know
that a foreigner had arrived and been met by the Minister, knowing
as he did so he would earn a hundred U.S. dollars, half a year’s
salary for his family.

At about midday with the air conditioning
working overtime as the heat continued to build outside sitting
with Igor and his number two, Mikhail and Benny were at the suite’s
dining table with Jawari’s head of security reviewing the security
arrangements around the President and the different areas of
importance around the city.

“
I cannot put our men around
the television center,” said Badr before explaining that the
Interior Ministry had full responsibility for the security of the
place.

“
What about the telephone
exchange?” Igor asked.

“
The same again,” replied
the experienced battle-hardened veteran of the civil war in Arabic,
before adding as the mobile masts are here in the Cismah Hotel
grounds, he would make sure the internet and mobiles of TLH network
had their security increased with men that were loyal to the
President.

“
That will work,” thought
Igor.

As long as they had a key piece of
communications infrastructure under control, by giving Badr’s men
loaded up burner phones, they could communicate at will on the TLH
Network with all the President’s loyal fighters.

“
Whatever happens, Badr,”
said Igor. “You must hold the communication towers,” he instructed
the Somali.

“
I understand,” the man
grimly nodded.

Earlier Mikhail had briefed Igor on the
arrival of the Il-76 despite the intelligence being something Igor
already knew about having been notified by Moscow who was
monitoring all air traffic through their listening post in Yemen.
The next piece of information from Mikhail’s update he certainly
wasn’t aware of.

“
The ten transporters,” Igor
said, shaking his head. He hated surprises. This news definitely
fit into that category.

“
Should take them about nine
hours to get to Addis,” continued Mikhail.

Fearing that the transporters could be
picking up tanks or armored personnel carriers, Igor sent an
immediate flash message to Sergei Andreyevich in Moscow asking for
a confirmation of anything unique or unusual being reported from
the local resident in Addis. Then things got worse.