“Mr. Jenkins,” Pierson said, waving at Mike.
“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Jenkins,” one of the bureaucrats said. “I’m Mr. Mannly.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Mike said, shaking the man’s hand perfunctorily and sitting down.
“Mr. Jenkins,” Bureacrat Two said, sliding a folder across the table. “We have detected what could be called a business opportunity.”
“I don’t work just for money, guys,” Mike said, darkly. “And I have plenty. So let’s cut the horseshit fast or I’ll just go home. Got it?”
“Got it,” Mr. Mannly said, his forehead wrinkling. “The situation involves the Pankisi Gorge… ”
“I told the Russian military attache,” Mike replied, starting to stand up, “and I’ll tell you. The Pankisi is Georgia and Russia’s problem, not mine. See you… ”
“Sit, Mike,” Pierson said, waving at the chair. “Seriously. Listen.”
“Shit,” Mike said, sitting back down. “I do not want to take the Keldara into the Pankisi. They’re not ready by a long shot.”
“Understood,” the colonel replied. “But listen anyway.”
“This is all your fault, anyway,” Pierson said. “You remember that Russian you picked up just before the Balkans op?”
“Mikhail or something,” Mike said, frowning. “What did we ever do with him?”
“I love your prisoner management technique,” Tennis Pro said, shaking his head. “While you were gone some of your people called Colonel Pierson and asked him what to do with the guy. He had no earthly idea, so he called us. We got him to the Russians who bled him dry and got everybody on the trail of this mission. Boss?” he added, looking at Mannly.
“This is a picture of Doctor Tolegen Arensky,” Mr. “Mannly” said, sliding a pic across the table. It had been taken from a distance with a telephoto by the looks, maybe digitally enhanced. Dr. Arensky wasn’t much to look at, short, dark, balding, graying and fat with long side-burns that made him look vaguely like a hobbit trying to look like Elvis. “Dr. Arensky is a Russian scientist who recently dropped off the radar screen. We thought, at first, that the Russians had just taken him fully ‘black’, but then sources indicated that they were looking for him as well. About the same time, technical means picked up the Chechens talking about a weapon that would win the war for them in one blow. The intercept actually used the word ‘world-wide jihad.’ ”
“That’s a phrase,” Mike pointed out. “Even in Arabic.”
“So you’re an Arabic expert?” Tennis Pro asked.
“I can hum the tune and dance a few steps,” Mike replied. “What does this have to do with me? And why the Paniski, which is a bitch and half of an area. I mean just the environmental conditions suck, not to mention the fact that it’s crawling with bad-guys with guns.”
“We’ve been able to build some Humint contacts among the senior mujaheddin,” Tennis Pro said in a pure Cambridge accent. “It hasn’t been easy, but we get information, finally. The information that we got is that Dr. Arensky is providing the Chechens with three back-pack nukes in exchange for sixty million euros in cash, bearer bonds and gems.”
“Woohooo,” Mike said, whistling. He suspected that “Tennis Pro” was better than he looked, he clearly was part of the team managing the Al Qaeda penetration. “That’s an ugly scenario. But backpack nukes… aren’t exactly backpack. Not the Russian ones. They’re in a damned big container, if I remember correctly. Two containers.”
“Not any more,” Manly sighed, sliding a picture across the table. It was of a small tubular device with a ruler for scale. “That’s what we’re looking at. Not huge yield, about ten kilotons, but… ”
“But that’s the same size as Hiroshima,” Pierson pointed out. “And the damn things are easy to smuggle.”
“So this Russian scientist is selling the Chechens nukes?” Mike said, incredulously. “And the go betweens are in the Russian mob? Last but not least: Sixty mil isn’t chump change to the muj. I smell a rat. Is it plausible?”
“The Chechens didn’t have that kind of money,” Bureaucrat Two said. “So they have contacted senior Al Qaeda to try to raise the money. They have finally done so and the trade is scheduled for a month from now. In the Pansiki, which is their most secure area.”
Okay, that placed Bureacrat Two. Some of the discussion had to have been electronic and he was from the National Security Agency, the group that handled electronic intercepts and analysis. It had once been so secret it was called “No Such Agency” but had come a bit more out of the closet in the last couple of decades. They still were very low profile, but very very good.
“The Georgians can’t or won’t get troops into the area,” Mr. “Mannly” said. “And they freak out if Russian troops violate their border.”
“Can’t,” Mike said, definitely. “They’ve tried and gotten handed their ass every time. And I think Svasili would probably turn a blind eye to Spetznaz over this. Spetz might be able to penetrate.”
“They won’t,” Pierson said, unhappily. “We asked. At the highest level. Nor will they let us take care of it.”
“Did you ask about this thing in particular?” Mike asked, frowning. “Svasili is not, in my experience, that much of an asshole.”
“No, just to let us quietly send some spec ops into the Paniski,” Mannly said. “Or let the Russians go in. We were willing to let the Georgians have all the credit if it worked and we’d go black if it went south.”
Which made “Mannly” the CIA case officer managing the investigation. There were various covert ops groups that “Mannly” could use for this mission, but clearly they’d been ruled out. Probably at the level of the White House. The problem would be inserting and extracting them without the Georgians even knowing they were there. Things were too touchy in the area to piss off the Georgians. Among other things, they had gotten close to the US over the Russians for various reasons. And what with one thing and another, nobody wanted to drive them back. Whether it would be worth it over nukes was a question much higher than Mike’s paygrade.
“And they didn’t bite,” Mr. “Mannly” said. “But we just happen to have the precise rendezvous point and time,” he added, removing a CD crystal case from the folder and sliding it across the table.
Mike looked at the CD as if it was snake then picked it up.
“Two questions and a comment,” Mike said, flipping the crystal case open and looking at the unmarked CD inside. “First the comment: There’s a reason that I created a tiddly little militia in the first place. It’s called ‘security.’ Who’s going to watch the store while the Keldara are gone for from a week to a month?”
“This shouldn’t take a month,” Tennis Pro protested.
“I wasn’t asking you,” Mike said, looking at Pierson.
“We can do Rangers again,” Pieson said. “The usual company. Good enough?”
“That should do. Now for the questions: Was this discussed at a higher level? Specifically, at a high enough level?”
“Yes,” Pierson replied, definitely. “It was.”
“Question two: what’s my take?”
“Standard recovery on a nuke is five mil,” Mannly said. “If you recover the full shipment, the vig is twenty-five mil.”
“Okay,” Mike said, blowing out his breath. “I hate to sound mercenary but this is going to cost like crazy; that will do nicely. Nice to have never met you, gentlemen.”
“The shipment of copra is ready for delivery,” Rashid said, slipping into a chair.
The coffee shop in Docklands — a recently gentrified section of London — was a multi-ethnic stew of “traditional” English, islanders, Africans and every version of “brown” from Hindu to pale Berber North Africans. Set close to a major financial district, most of the patrons were business clothes but a few college students from nearby UEL in distressed chic added color. As did the occasional flash of “native” dress.