The Devil's Handshake

27

Washington, D.C.

The conversation between Thomas and the President of Adwalland brought a pensive look from Navjot. Stroking his beard, he processed the essence of the discussion and after another moment of reflection and a review of his keynotes, he looked up into the eyes of his team.

“Well, that was certainly interesting,” he said.

“Did Litchfield just suggest that they take out Wasir?” Clara Martinez, the logistic planning officer and the number two of the group, asked.

“Yep”, Peter Obraniak, the group’s communications expert replied.

“Greedy bastard though, isn’t he?” said Joe Tonelli, his Behavioral Analyst, as if in support of why Litchfield might have made such a suggestion.

“Fifty million U.S. dollars per year for security to a pirate was steep in anybody’s language,” Navjot answered as if in agreement.

“Well, we now know for certain he appears to be the perfect choice to prod the tribal chiefs,” Joe offered.

“So are we going to push it along Boss?” asked Pete.

“I think so… let’s get Reza on the horn and just ‘up’ the time table a little,” Navjot answered. His mind already processing that if they didn’t get the ball moving then SAD options were going be limited as it was clear that Litchfield intended to remove him from the picture with a bullet.

“Pete; can you find out what Andrew Martin is up to?” Navjot then asked.

“Xerulla?” Clara replied using the name of Martin’s security business somewhat surprised. For although they had used him in Iraq to provide contracted support he was pretty much small fry compared to the firms of Tim Spicer’s AEGIS and Prince’s Academi, the consultants the Agency traditionally used for private security operations.

“Yeah… We going to need some technical support for Wasir, and it cannot be directly linked to us,” Navjot countered, answering her question.

Earlier Ali and Navjot had discussed the fact the GSG were going to need to put some “contractors” on the ground to provide support for any effort Wasir made to take over the country or a scapegoat if the operation was scrapped, as had happened in Simon Mann’s attempt to take over Equatorial Guinea, they had narrowed the list to a couple of firms that would fit with an ambitious Indian.

Andrew Martin, a former Lieutenant Colonel of the Welsh Guards, represented one such individual out of the original list of about twenty.

They finally settled on Martin because unlike Princes Academi or Spicer AEGIS that had won the principal contracts in Iraq, his company had bounced along the bottom.

Martin’s firm was originally formed to provide law enforcement training, logistics, close quarter training, and security services to legally recognized governments in the late 1990s. Over the years, the former Lt. Colonel’s company had held contracts with multinational corporations and small carpetbaggers engaged in the extraction of natural resources around the world. But lately, as the world through improved satellite communications and exponentially improved iPhone technology, the use of Twitter, and YouTube, had become aware of some of more dubious techniques these firms and employed. Consequently, Martin’s traditional client base had set about trying to change their images to protect their brand.

A casualty of this change of policy was the employment of Mercenaries in the mold of Martin. As a consequence, he had struggled badly.

With a couple of ex-wives, four children, not to mention a country estate to maintain back in England, together with the fact that the various mining companies he held stakes in were running out of money; both Ali and Navjot had reckoned that former Guardsman would jump at the chance to work for a wealthy Indian diamond merchant looking to secure his new oil-gas assets in crisis-torn East Africa.

“See if you can find somebody who has links with him so we can use them as a back door access to recruit him,” offered Navjot thinking that the classic false flag strategy would work well.

“Sure, Boss. I will get on it straight away,” Pete answered.