The Devil's Handshake

14

Langley, Virginia

The United States Department of Defense defines a Covert Operation as “an operation that is so planned and executed as to conceal the identity of or permit plausible denial by the sponsor” while a Clandestine Operation as “an operation where the emphasis is placed on concealment of identity of the sponsor rather than on concealment of the operation.”

So when the Director received the authorization from the President a week ago to enter into a new phase in relations with Russia; Deputy Director Ali Mansoor wasn’t surprised, for Young had made it his personal crusade ever since the focus of the agency shifted to the catching of terrorists under the Bush Administration. It wasn’t a secret, the whole of Langley knew about it.

Ali, an American Pakistani whose family had moved to New York in the seventies, had joined the Agency in the mid-eighties after graduating from Georgetown University, via the U.S. Marine Corps.

Blessed with his unique experience he had gathered from serving with the Recon division he had quickly progressed through the ranks at the Agency due to his special abilities and middle-eastern looks in the fight against Islamic terrorists initially, as a Non Cover Officer in Beirut, then Baghdad, Kabul and finally Lahore. A devout Muslim, Ali absolutely hated the Mullahs who turned the hearts and souls of the less educated into the killers who perpetrated the 9/11 incident. He had made the manhunt of Bin Laden his own personal “Jihad” for the shame he had brought upon his faith. In the preceding years, he had won an “Intelligence Star” and a “Distinguished Intelligence Cross” for his actions in Afghanistan, when against great personal risk he stopped an attack on Kazai, the President at the time. The actions were deemed classified and to this day nobody outside the Agency including his family knew about them for they remained locked up in the Langley vaults, for Officers are never allowed to confirm that they are even a recipient of them.

Age now having now caught up with him and because he had missed his young children growing up, Ali requested a posting to Langley whereby the former director by way of a thank you and his service record had quickly promoted him to head up the elite Special Activities Division known as SAD or in the accounts and personnel files as a Political Affairs Office.

Over the last week, Ali’s team had built up an impressive brief on Thomas Litchfield and the main players in Adwalland to enable them to formulate a recommendation to place Russia on the back foot by the creation of forward operating base in Lughaya. He just needed an asset in the country to be his tool to do it.

As was customary in the SAD, all briefings took place within their Cube, a quiet room that could not be spied on, within SAD’s own restricted entry office within Langley.

Taking his seat the director nodded for Ali and his team to start.

“As you’re aware, Litchfield isn’t the usual Oligarch,” Ali said as his picture appeared on screen.

“We asked our friends at Vauxhall Bridge for some background on him, and they advised us that he is a former Special Forces Officer, fluent in seven languages and has the ability to cross both the worlds of crime and politics,” he started.

When Ali had first read Litchfield overview he had thought immediately thought it had to be too much of a coincidence.

“Special Forces? It can’t be!” he thought as his memory banks went back to that mission all those years in the First Gulf War.

When he looked at his picture, the eyes of Litchfield told him it was. He had heard that only one man had made back from that mission. It appeared that man was Litchfield.

Ali mentally took his hat off to him.

“Do I include it in the briefing?” he had asked himself the night before. He decided it against it for two reasons; firstly that it would mean giving everybody involved in the planning of this operation security clearance. Something despite the electronic age would have meant Ali was going to have fill in at least twenty forms because it involved a mission that the Director was part of it. Something he hated! Secondly, because Young had never met him during that mission it made no difference.

“Better to let sleeping dogs lie!” he had concluded, opting for the second option, instead as Ali continued with his briefing he skipped over it.

“Has a net worth of approximately sixty-billion U.S. dollars with investments and controlling interests in everything from Oil to Media,” Ali continued while the next slide appeared which was Mikhail’s photograph.

“He also maintains a highly trained close protection team all drawn from the Israeli Shabak. When we checked with our counterparts at the Office for any possible weaknesses that we could exploit they told us there weren’t any,” he said using the term of the headquarters of Mossad.

“What, none!” Young answered in disbelief as Ali took a sip of his coffee.

“Yes, none!” Ali said.

“All Yural Diskin said was that Pschenichikov was one of their best!” said Ali, referring to the previous Head of the Shabak.

“Diskin said that?” the Director questioned, equally surprised that ex-head of Shabak had personally vouched for the bodyguard because he didn’t usual bother to make calls of that nature. That told him the man on the screen must have been an exceptional operative before he joined Litchfield’s organization.

“All of his inner circle and their families are treated as part of his family. All well paid and rewarded,” Ali said continuing with his briefing.

“This has enabled him to develop a ‘Clan’ feeling amongst them to such an extent that their loyalty is without question,” the psychologist offered in support of his immediate superior, and was about to continue by providing the Director with further support to his hypothesis with an overview on his Homeric beliefs.

Young quickly interrupted him. “Okay, the opportunity to get an asset inside is limited let’s move on,” said the Director, not in the mood for a behavioral science love fest.

Ignoring the disrespect towards his team, Ali pressed on.

“If a sanction is authorized we recommend undertaking the operation in the UK or by drone if overseas, as the chances of assault in a location where his security team would be armed, success would be limited due to their highly skilled individual abilities.”

He paused. “The risk of fatalities to our assault team would be well over the thirty percent threshold,” he stated making reference to a watermark figure a mathematician of Langley had once calculated where the death of service personnel was too vast to maintain the covert nature of the mission.

“Not to mention the point that the target is so high profile it wouldn’t remain covert in any case,” added Young, dismissing a drone strike as an option. “And we will piss off the Brits in the process!” he quickly added, ignoring the use of the threshold as irrelevant and the fact that trying to get a sanction approved by the oversight committee for an operation in the UK would be virtually impossible.

“Indeed sir,” answered Ali already knowing what answer the Director would give.

“Okay, let’s move on, we let State decide,” Young answered, parking it. He recognized a hot potato when he saw one.

“We do though, have a plan that we believe has a good chance of success of disabling the deal on all fronts within the desired timeframe and at this time doesn’t require additional authorization,” offered Ali as the next slide came up on the screen.

Once the briefing was completed three quarters of an hour later, Young got up and gave a singular nod to Ali, satisfied with what had been presented to him.

“Authorized,” was all he said as he left the room.

Ten minutes later Ali made his way back to his desk in his office.

He sat down. He switched on his desktop computer and, then once it was up and running, entered the secured assets area of the central server and typed in a name. Once in the asset’s secure communication packet, he then typed a single predefined message.

If any observer or foreign intelligence agency reviewed it they would think the email was a request for a meeting, to the agent it was a signal that his Controller needed to speak to him.

Finished he picked up the phone and then made a call to one of his most trusted officers who was currently on leave to meet for breakfast.

For many in Dubai, the city-state of the United Arab Emirates has been seen as a playground with every conceivable high-end consumer product in the world available in the Malls to cater for the whims of the socialites together with a duty free zone to repackage and distribute the same commercial goods to the rest of the Middle East, but to others it was a hell hole built on nothing but credit, ecocide, suppression, and slavery. Irrespective of these diverse views to the money-laundering brethren of the world with Dubai’s limited regulation it was one of their places of choice in which to deposit their money.

To twenty-nine-year-old Reza Namazi, an American-Iranian with a degree from Columbia who had been recruited by the CIA at an employment fair while he was still at college, it was home.

Due to his unique experience in finance, his controller at the Agency decided to put him in plain sight, a term used to describe the most stressful form of assignment for many as it meant agents have to operate under their true identities.

Placed as an associate in a top bank in New York to build his creditability, Reza had waited for two years for his chance to enter the field once he had completed his training. That opportunity came when his controller asked him to apply for a job in Dubai at a small boutique private bank.

To many of his friends and colleagues, they just couldn’t understand why Reza would want to give up an incredible job with one of the best banks in the world to join one with a questionable reputation in the “fool’s paradise” of Dubai.

Neither did the recruiting agent who was over the moon when Reza had applied, bearing in mind his other candidates and as such, it was no surprise when the local bank immediately offered him the job.

To maintain his production and to keep his questionable bosses happy and thereby override any suspicions as to his real motives, Langley provided him with one hundred million U.S. dollars in ‘Ops’ accounts that he handled on their behalf as part of his day job for funding agents, sources and clandestine operations as when needed around the world.

Although his role mostly consisted of harvesting information on accounts of questionable persons or organizations around the region and Africa it was a role he was immensely proud of.

Sitting in the Regal Palace nightclub in downtown Dubai with a couple of Russian whores and one of his questionable clients from Uzbekistan, he felt his Blackberry hum and buzz.

Pulling it out of his pocket seeing the message was from Ali Mansoor, he responded with a confirmation that he could meet with him in two days’ time when, in fact, he was saying he would call him on his CODEX phone in the morning as part of their pre-arranged routine before picking up his drink and toasting his Uzbek client’s health.