Two vaguely “Arabic” gentlemen in business suits were hardly out of place.
Mohammed Al-Kariya looked up from his laptop and tapped pudgy fingers together thoughtfully.
“Allah is benevolent,” he replied. “The copra is first quality?”
“Impossible to tell until we examine the shipment,” Rashid replied. “I have the proper reagents They were difficult to obtain. But I found them.”
“As Allah wills,” Al-Kariya breathed. “The umah shall be secure. Forever. The payment side is arranged, all as agreed. Arrange the transportation. With all due care.”
“Copra?” The technician leaned back in his chair and looked around. “We got a code-link for copra?”
“Situational,” the analyst across the van said. “Could be anything. He’s bloody happy, though. Hard to tell with Kari-Lad but he is. Whatever it is it’s big. And Rashid is not one of his usual middle-man. Says he mostly works with KLA and sometimes the Chechens.”
“I hope somebody has a clue,” the tech said, spinning back around and fiddling with the filter on the shotgun mike. “Because I’m sodding clueless.”
Mike took a sip of his mocha and then flipped a page without looking around.
He wasn’t sure if it was good trade-craft or lousy but he was, as instructed, sitting at an outside table at the Perk’s Coffee Shop on N. Fairfax Street in Alexandria, Virginia, reading a book called “Spy Dust” about intelligence operations and methods during the Cold War.
As far as he could tell from the book, the tradecraft was lousy. On the other hand, he didn’t expect the KGB to come arrest him. Or the FBI for that matter.
“Mr. Jenkins?”
Mike looked up and nodded as the businessman sat down. Nice suit, good shoes, great tie. Middling height, thin, ascetic face, brown eyes, light brown hair. Could be anywhere from forty to sixty. He looked like a thousand other guys wandering around Alexandria. The eyes really got caught by the tie. Bright yellow. Silk, for sure. Probably Thai. And one purchased overseas. Not the sort of thing you could pick up even in an expensive shop in the US.
“Mr. Jay?”
“Just Jay, please,” the man said with a winning smile. “And may I call you Mike? Or would Kildar be more appropriate?”
“Mike works,” he replied. “The whole Kildar thing is a little strange.”
“Not really,” Jay said with a shrug. “An international security specialist needs shooters. I understand that the Keldara are coming along nicely. I suppose you could hire Ghurkas, but the really good ones are getting very expensive these days. But I understand that Vanner isn’t getting the job done.”
“Not the way I’d say it,” Mike said with a frown. “Vanner’s sigint. I need humint. Vanner is probably at your level on sigint or very close. Less of a rep, admittedly, but he’s very good.”
“I accept the clarification,” Jay said. “I take it, though, that if I work with you I won’t be working for him.”
“No,” Mike said. “I’m not even sure exactly how a chain would look. I’d suggest that you two work it out. Frankly, I’m sure that there are plenty of times Vanner would prefer somebody with more experience around. But try to work together. If you start working at cross purposes we’ll have a problem.”
“Agreed,” Jay said. “Payment?”
“Hard to say,” Mike replied. “I can give you a salary number if you wish, but what I think would work better is to just say: Tell me what you want. That is, besides your salary, you’re going to have expenses. I’m not going to nit-pick those. All I ask for is results. You tell me what kind of money you need and if I can’t afford it I’ll lay out my books and show you why. I’m running a very expensive operation. I make quite a bit of money on ops, enough to run it so far, but there’s an upper limit. However, I’d put the upper limit on a million a year. I’d prefer that you tell me what you want to get paid, but understand that that is part of the budget. And if you don’t use it all, that’s fine too. I’m not going to ask why you paid some guy twenty-grand. You’re not doing this for the money, anyway, or I wouldn’t be talking to you. You’re doing it for the fun, the excitement, the professional challenge and because you’re a patriot.”
“I am, am I?” Jay said with a slight smile. “You’re sure.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Mike replied.
“Very well,” the man said, smiling more broadly. “What are the parameters? Be aware that there are reasons DC hates humint. For one, it’s slow. You have to take time building networks. For another, it’s uncertain. You’re depending upon what people tell you. People lie. Everyone lies all the time and especially in the intelligence world. So I may get a piece of information that looks good and it will be terribly wrong. For a third, any intel is a two-edged sword. If you use it, you’re often going to burn a source. That, in fact, was why I quit. I got tired of the State Department under our last president using my intel in negotiations and burning my networks.”
“You ought to hear Vanner some time when he’s going on about Clinton revealing we had OBL’s satellite phone number and were listening in every day. I mean, the guy called his step-mom every damned day he could. And naturally she wanted to know what he was doing to further the jihad. And then our lovely president goes and talks about it on national TV.”
“And, of course, there was the Chechen attack because the Russians revealed you were intercepting their calls,” Jay said, nodding.
“You have good sources,” Mike replied. “You going to stay out in the cold or you want to come to Georgia?”
“I wouldn’t necessarily say that Georgia is in the warm,” Jay replied.
“You’d be secure,” Mike pointed out. “As secure as anywhere forward and arguably more secure than here. You’re also going to need support. I’m not sure how much the Keldara can do along those lines, but they’re there. I don’t know what kind of support, exactly,” he added, holding up the book, “but I keep realizing how much I’d depended on support staff back when I was working for Uncle Sam.”
“But there’s that long damned drive to the airport,” Jay pointed out, smiling very slightly and quickly. The smile was just with the lips, not the eyes, and come and gone so quickly it was almost invisible. “However, I understand that the perks are great.”
“I’m eventually going to get a helicopter,” Mike said. “I don’t like the drive, either.”
“Oh, yes, now that would be covert,” the man replied, snorting. “But your comment about support staff is germane. I don’t suppose they sew?”
“All their own clothes,” Mike said, nodding.
“I’ll need to get some stuff to set up a shop,” Jay replied. “Initial outlay may be high.”
“I’ve spent better than four million outfitting the Keldara,” Mike said with a grimace. “Higher than that?”
“Uh, no,” Jay said with another fleeting smile. “I see a vast number of issues, however. I know just about every skill or task related to supporting my job. Except some of the more esoteric chemistry. However, passing those skills on will require time on my part.”