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.