The Devil's Handshake

38

Dubai International Airport

Navjot walked up the steps of the G-4 and once onboard settled himself into his seat with the aim of ‘switching off’ and give his brain a few hours off during the trip to Borama.

The fact that he already had his team of Clara, Pete, and Joe in theatre under the guise of Non-Government Officers to monitor the operation discreetly meant this trip shouldn’t have been necessary, and more importantly because of his cover, he shouldn’t have been anywhere near the country. Unfortunately though, the Section Chief felt he had no choice due to the events of the last twenty-four hours.

Yesterday when Tony rang him to inform him that the helicopter gunship they had purchased had been picked up by the Guinea Bissau intelligence services, he had in keeping with his character expressed his anger to his head of security. Yet inwardly he was anything but. His instincts immediately kicked in.

Convinced that there was more to the incident, despite Wilson’s assertions to the contrary expressing that it been down to a piece of bad luck, he had asked Ali to check it out whether it was or not.

Unfortunately, because the Agency didn’t have intelligence assets in the small African country, this meant Ali had to go through Homeland Security, as the only Federal Agency to have assets in the tropical country was the DEA.

With a population of approximately one and half million, a political history of non-stop coup d’etat’s and a seemingly endless array of coastal inlets and islands that had made the country an ideal staging ground for Latin American cocaine that was bound for Europe this made logical sense. Before 9/11, he would have used the inter-agency liaison, and if he were honest would most likely have gotten nowhere because the DEA and the CIA hated each other, a direct result of the CIA giving up the DEA agents to the drug cartels of South America. However with the role of Homeland Security to pull intelligence into one source so as to ensure all Federal agencies actually shared their information without favor, politics, or fear of security breaches he now could go through them. Although Ali didn’t have access to the actual assets at the very least he could get a request looked into.

By eleven o’clock last night, Navjot finally heard back from Ali.

“You’re telling me that the Ukrainians were picked up on request from the Russian Ambassador?” Navjot asked.

“Yep,” replied Ali who himself had only just heard back from the Homeland Security liaison.

Yet it was when Clara informed him that Litchfield had returned from Moscow with a number of extra-unidentified personnel and a large number of equipment that was off-loaded from the aircraft that he was firmly convinced that the Russians were deploying a team just like them into the country. Ali and Navjot quickly come to the conclusion that the Russians were on to the plot.

That meant it was now a race against time. In the buildup of the operation, the team had spent a considerable amount of time assessing whether they could use the Agency’s existing platform in Somalia quickly dismissing it for one reason only: That it was focused around the trading of intelligence or capture of a small number of individuals rather than a platform built for affecting change.

In the aftermath of 9/11, the Agency had funneled over twenty million U.S. dollars into Somalia, initially funding the Warlords through the Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism only to see them all disappear by the end of the decade with the arrival of the Islamic Courts Union, which then in turn disintegrated and re-formed as Al Shabaab. The idea had ended in disaster because the Agency didn’t put into place a strategic framework. This also meant, albeit unwittingly, the United States had assisted in the creation of Adwalland through the fact that they had forced the tribal leaders to become proactive to protect their own areas.

Having failed in that program and now facing a collective of mini self-governing states within the failed nation they then began funding the Somali National Security Agency directly, an organization who had worked out collectively that having the intelligence agencies around the world funding them was better than relying on the aid agencies. Not to mention the pay was better.

All this led Navjot and his team to the same conclusion: “The moment we attempt to use assets on the CIA platform they will brief the SVR and the mission would be over.”

So having reviewed the outline with Ali, the team subsequently recommended that the Agency establish a completely new platform using the Interior Minister as the lead on his return from Borama.

“It cannot cause embarrassment to the service or the administration by being able to trace it back if it goes wrong,” said Young to Ali during the approval oversight meeting in the Cube. Nobody spoke about it but collectively they all knew that meant ‘plausible deniability,’ a term coined by the CIA during the Kennedy Administration and what they were doing now was it in its purest form and hadn’t been practiced by the Americans since the Reagan Doctrine had ended the Cold War signaled by the fall of the Berlin Wall. That doctrine had been originally been designed to diminish Soviet power in the regions of Latin America, Africa and Asia as part of the Administration’s overall Cold War strategy.

The new Director was now dusting off the plan and re-activating it but not using a marketing message to the voting public of America fighting an “ideology” that threatens not only your “freedom” and your “way of life.”

The outline put together by Ali and team once the regime change had been completed was simple in design.

GSG, as the exclusive partner of the in country asset, was going to swiftly enter into partnerships with American natural resources corporations who then in turn would then reimburse and create a profit sharing model with the CIA for its new counter-intelligence platform.

“A self-funding platform ‘off the books’ for future counter-intelligence operations of the CIA using GSG as the funnel,” Navjot had said with a shake of his head once he had finished reading the proposal when he had been given his new orders by Ali.

“Private Sector Intelligence,” Ali had said joking. Navjot had seen it as immoral.

“Invest and resell making a profit in the process. Was that really what I signed up for when I was younger?” Navjot had questioned himself as he privately struggled with the direction the Agency was now asking him to take in the future.

“Maybe it’s time to get out?” Navjot had asked himself.

Fighting terrorists on the basis of faith was easier to process than that of material gain. Changing governments, potentially killing hundreds and affecting thousands of people on the basis of next year’s mobile phone or being able to build and sell next year’s car was, he had reflected, becoming harder and harder to process.

It wasn’t until Ali had convinced him over a lot of coffee in the planning room back at Langley that the strategy would ensure that the United States of America had access to the essentials of life that he had begun to feel more comfortable with what his team’s new management would be taking it’s ‘raison d’etre’ in the new secret war of the twenty-first century.

“The Energy Security Doctrine,” the Director had coined it when he had presented the paper to the Secretary of State and the President.

As the Indian closed his eyes, he wondered somewhat cynically whether the Director had called in an advertising agency to come up with that new brand identity.

“I wonder how Don Draper would brand it?” he half-jokingly asked himself in reference to the Mad Men character of the show that Lori always recorded for him to watch when he got home when he was unwinding.

Unfortunate as it was, the news he had just received from both Wilson and Ali had proved to him that they had been right to create such a buffer. With the Russians now on their tails plus the upgrading of their presence in the country; Navjot knew he needed to make sure that the train didn’t derail at the first turn with the end game in sight.

He just hadn’t planned for what Wasir would do to up the ante.