The Devil's Handshake

15

Borama

Wasir Osman Hassan stood lost in his thoughts waiting in the VIP waiting room in the new terminal at Aden Isaaq International Airport in Borama as he watched his guest arrive from Dubai on in his private jet.

With the landing strip now operational and able to land aircraft of the size of an Airbus A300 and Boeing 737, he inwardly reflected that until the Englishman’s group had built this new runway, the city, served only by a small dirt runway, would never have investors like this arriving keen to explore the opportunities his country offered.

When his Iranian banker from Dubai rang him yesterday and asked whether he could look after a major Indian client and his team who were arriving today looking to invest in natural resources in Awdalland, the ex-pirate had immediately jumped at the chance.

“Of course Reza, I would be delighted to host and assist them in any way,” he had said, mentally rubbing his hands in glee.

“You’re most kind, Minister,” Reza had replied. “Mr. Singh is a powerful man, worth well over a billion U.S. dollars and is very keen to have good relationships with a partner…how do you say?” he paused for effect. “That understands the ways of Africa.”

A carrot that said everything as far as Wasir was concerned.

“I understand, Mr. Reza,” Wasir had replied.

“Excellent, Minister, I think you will both get on well together,” The banker had warmly said before sending him the flight details.

For Wasir, this visit represented a unique opportunity to build his own international network away from the grip of the Russians who had been flooding into the country.

Experience told him that the minute work began to build the port to take large containers ships and naval ships, the President’s grip over the tribes would be complete and with the President’s Russian Military advisers at his side the end result would be the erosion of his influence. Something he was determined to prevent.

What the former pirate didn’t know was that the billionaire that Reza had arranged for him to meet was, in fact, a forty-eight year-old British-born and educated Sikh SAD Operative from Austin, Texas called Navjot Sidhu, known in the diamond trade by his alias, Gouramangi Singh.

When the world of the Internet and mobile communications started to make it harder to create and protect its assets’ cover identities, SAD recognized they needed to become more robust and charismatic to enable them to fit into the money laundering world of the terrorists. That meant the operatives needed to have genuine operations and not just on paper.

To solve the problem they created legitimate private equity houses in New York and London as fronts with a brief to invest and set up physical companies engaged in their foes’ traditional areas of operations, like banking, gem trading, and foreign exchange shops.

For last ten years, the GSG Company and Navjot’s aliases had been painstakingly established through the smart use of sponsorships and carefully placed media management to create his persona into a successful billionaire British-Indian diamond retailer based in London, Mumbai, Dubai, and Antwerp. The alias originally developed for catching terrorists, Mr. Singh’s latest role was now to be used for something completely different.