Black Flag

by David Ricciardi

  As was Pickens’s custom, the surveillance detection route took them through a particularly rough area of town where armed men loitered about and the few cars on the road were easy to spot.

  Jake had a cable from headquarters waiting for him back at the safe house. The Agency had created a dossier on the Somali banker, with everything from his phone contacts and known associates to email traffic and internet browsing history. He’d been active in Mogadishu for decades, initially as a facilitator for the pirate syndicates, helping them collect ransom money and hide it from the international authorities.

  But as the era of open-ocean kidnapping drew to a close, the man’s reputation as a money-laundering expert gave him entrée to the arms dealers and the warlords who kept the country at war. Jake pored over the dossier, looking for commonalities and building an association matrix—cross-referencing his phone records with shared contacts, dates, and events. The deeper Jake dug, the more links he found with one specific arms dealer, Cawar, and one specific warlord:

  Yaxaas.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  DESPITE THE EVER-INCREASING amount of circumstantial evidence that pointed to Yaxaas, CIA still had only a single piece of human-source intelligence indicating that the warlord was leading the pirates. And though the Agency didn’t need a witness who could stand up in court, they needed more than an accusation coerced from a man who’d thought he was going to be beheaded.

  Jake needed to speak with the banker.

  Pickens chose to skip the meeting, concerned that he’d crossed paths with the banker at some point during his weapons purchases. It was a legitimate concern, but Jake had wanted him along. Human-source contact operations were an art, and not Jake’s specialty. Slowly cultivating the banker over weeks or months wasn’t going to work when he had only two days left until Athena’s deadline to turn her ship around.

  Jake needed the information now.

  He started his reconnaissance at noon, driving past the banker’s office several times, using different cars and different disguises. It was a lot of time in chaotic traffic, and tempers were short on the already dangerous streets of Mogadishu. He saw a pickup truck driver ram a Bajaj that had cut him off and a fender-bender escalate into a gunfight, but he also developed a good mental map of the bank, noting security cameras and routes of ingress and egress, and, with another IMSI catcher on the seat next to him, he’d tracked the man’s mobile phone number and verified his presence inside the building.

  Jake returned home, switched to the Toyota Surf SUV that he hadn’t used all day, and returned to the bank’s parking lot just before closing time. The banker emerged twenty minutes later.

  Jake eased the SUV between the banker and his car. Though Jake was still wearing a fake beard and sunglasses, he was careful to shield his face from the surveillance cameras.

  “Mr. Zakaria!” he said in English.

  The banker turned and smiled politely. He didn’t recognize the man, but he didn’t feel threatened by him either.

  “The bank hasn’t closed for the evening, has it?” Jake asked.

  “I’m afraid it has.”

  “A shame. My flight was delayed leaving Zurich.”

  The banker’s ears perked up. He’d laundered a lot of money through Switzerland.

  “Have we met before?” he said.

  “We have not, but Mr. Kengeter is a mutual acquaintance.”

  He was the Swiss intermediary who’d been taking the targeting information from Athena’s shipping agent and passing it to the banker.

  “I have a business proposition for you,” Jake said as he opened the passenger door. “Please, join me.”

  Zakaria looked around, debating his course of action. He and Kengeter had gone to great lengths to not be seen in person together and now this “mutual acquaintance” had arrived completely unannounced?

  “I’m sorry,” said the banker, “I have a prior—”

  Jake’s pleasant tone and fake German accent disappeared.

  “I know who you are, I know what you do, and I know who you do it for. If you cooperate, it remains our secret. If you don’t, the local press will run a story that U.S. authorities have had great success working with a local banker in a yearlong investigation into money laundering for the warlords of Somalia.”

  Jake held up his cell phone and took a picture of the man’s face.

  “They’ll even run a picture of you,” Jake said. “You have five seconds to decide.”

  Zakaria climbed into the SUV, clearly displeased with the turn of events since he’d finished at the bank.

  Jake pulled into traffic.

  “Who are you?” Zakaria asked.

  “Explain the money trail,” Jake said. It was the thing he cared about least, but he was trying to bluff the banker into thinking that he knew everything else—as if they were simply two men chatting about a topic of mutual interest.

  Zakaria exhaled deeply. “I get a wire transfer after the cargo is sold—usually from Mauritius or the Isle of Man. I split it up and layer it through a series of accounts and intermediaries in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland until it’s integrated into the financial system. It usually takes a few months.”

  “Then what does he do with it?”

  “Some he keeps locally in gold and precious stones, but once it’s laundered, the bulk of it stays offshore in foreign currencies, mostly dollars and euros.”

  “He’s a careful man.”

  “And dangerous,” said the banker. “There is no one is Somalia more feared than Yaxaas.”

  Yaxaas, Jake thought. He’d found what he was looking for. “Tell me about the takedowns.”

  “I don’t know the specifics.” The banker looked over his shoulder again as Jake turned down an empty side street.

  “Then tell me what you know.”

  Zakaria scowled. There was no winning in his current situation—only degrees of losing—but it was a situation of his own making. Partnering with the pirates had always been fraught with risk—but mainly from the pirates. Ironically, their success was the source of this new trouble.

  “There’s a mothership,” he said. The banker fidgeted as he explained what he knew about intercepting and taking control of the tankers.

  Jake asked more questions about the fate of the crews, how and where the oil was sold, and where the ships went when they were empty. Jake kept pressing and the banker knew more than he’d let on. The two men spent another half hour discussing specifics until Jake stopped the car a block from the bank and motioned for Zakaria to get out.

  “We’re done for now,” Jake said.

  The banker looked as if he were turning something over in his mind as he stepped out of the SUV.

  “I wouldn’t tell anyone about this conversation,” Jake said. “Yaxaas won’t look kindly on someone sharing his entire operation with a foreign intelligence service.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  IT’S YAXAAS,” JAKE said upon returning to the safe house.

  “The banker confirmed it?” Pickens said.

  Jake nodded.

  “What about Badeed?”

  “Not involved,” Jake said. He pulled out a small notebook and dropped it on the kitchen table. He had an excellent memory, but he’d recorded the entire exchange with Zakaria and summarized it in the notebook after the two men had parted.

  Pickens was reading it intently when Jake’s laptop began to trill.

  “That’s probably Graves,” Jake said. “I left him a message.”

  Jake opened the secure videoconferencing software on his computer.

  “What do you have?” said Graves. He was in a nondescript office building in suburban Virginia.

  “We’ve validated the target.” Jake said. “It’s Yaxaas.”

  “Confidence level?”

  “Ninety-five percent,” Jake said. He typ
ed on the computer as he spoke. “I just sent you our files. We’ve got communications intel and now multiple-source human intel confirming it.”

  Graves scratched his chin.

  “What’s your assessment of this banker?”

  “Highly credible. It was a cold approach we developed through the Romanos family—there’s no way he invented those details on the spot and under pressure.”

  “All right,” Graves said. He spent a few seconds staring at the monitor before he spoke again. “I’ve got a few special-mission teams deployed in-country. I’ll reassign one to you. They should be in Mogadishu in a couple of days. You’re going to need some support for the next phase of the operation.”

  For years, the Central Intelligence Agency had been funding and training Somali intelligence operatives, intent on helping the country develop its own counterterrorism capability against al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda, and Daesh. The Agency also conducted joint, direct-action raids with U.S. and African military forces, and CIA’s manpower contribution was from a paramilitary organization within the Special Activities Center known as Ground Branch. The special-mission team that Graves was sending to Mogadishu was composed of hardened combat veterans, handpicked from elite military special-operations units.

  Trigger-pullers.

  “What’s the plan for Yaxaas?”

  Graves sat back in his seat and crossed his thick forearms in front of his chest. Then he smiled.

  Jake knew Ted’s body language, and while he didn’t know what was coming next, he knew he wasn’t going to like it.

  “What’s the plan for Yaxaas, Ted?”

  “I want you to talk to him,” Graves said. “Convince him to work for us.”

  “You want him to work for the government of the United States?”

  “He’s not going on the payroll, Jake.”

  “He tried to kill me with an IED.”

  “Fortunately we don’t need him for his bomb-making skills.”

  “Is this about al-Shabaab?”

  “Anybody can fight al-Shabaab. We need Yaxaas to keep doing what he’s doing.”

  Though the two men held enormous respect for each other’s professional abilities, Jake believed firmly in the concepts of right and wrong while Graves’s beliefs were more nuanced.

  Significantly more nuanced.

  “Which is what, exactly?” Jake asked.

  “Making ships disappear without a trace.”

  “How does that help the United States?”

  “We pick the ships.”

  “That sonofabitch has killed a hundred fifty innocent sailors plus who knows how many on land. I’m not working with him, Ted.”

  “Watch yourself, Keller. You know that insubordination is cause for termination.”

  Termination.

  It was Agency-speak for firing someone. Foreign assets were terminated, employees and contractors were terminated. Their relationships with CIA ended, but their hearts kept beating.

  It was widely suspected that Ted Graves had a different definition of the word.

  The Special Activities Center had always had the highest rate of officers killed in the line of duty—it was the nature of the paramilitary mission—but three of Graves’s men had met unfortunate ends soon after known confrontations with their boss. Two had been killed by foreign intelligence services and the other had simply disappeared. Their stars had been etched into the Memorial Wall and their names inscribed in the Book of Honor. No accusations had been leveled, no connections had been found, but suspicions lingered.

  Jake and Ted maintained an effective working relationship, but venom flew in both directions when Jake voiced any reservations about his boss’s questionable intelligence activities.

  Unspoken threats lingered below the surface.

  “The end always justifies the means, doesn’t it, Ted?”

  “Well, look who took a philosophy course in college. Why don’t you ruminate on this: You’ve been chained to a ceiling, hooked up to a car battery, and seen your teammates die in front of you. You’ve seen what the other side is capable of, Jake, and you know that protecting this nation is bare-knuckles brawling, 24/7. So you can either stick your head in the sand and pretend it isn’t happening or get into the fight and do something about it.”

  Jake wasn’t naïve about the evil in the world. He had indeed experienced it firsthand, but he didn’t like the idea of working with a warlord. There would have to be a damn good reason to partner with a man who viewed human life as a commodity.

  “What do you have in mind?” Jake said.

  “I’m glad you asked,” said Graves. The anger disappeared from his voice as quickly as it had come. Jake wondered if there was anything genuine about the man at all—anything Ted didn’t alter to suit his most immediate need.

  “Africa is the world’s largest home of radical Islam: al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda, Daesh, and half a dozen other extremist organizations are recruiting, training, and terrorizing the second most populous continent on earth. In another decade, the two billion people living in the failed states of Africa are going to present a catastrophic threat to world stability. The continent has been a nexus for smugglers and arms traffickers for five hundred years, and now Iran, North Korea, Russia, and a dozen others are operating outside the law and bleeding it dry. With the United States pulling out of the region, the continent is going to implode. Tens or maybe hundreds of millions of people will die.”

  Jake didn’t dispute a word that Graves had said. Fueled by corruption and illicit weapons, Africa was on a downward spiral into anarchy.

  “Black Flag is about developing a covert instrument of national power,” Ted continued. “China is already playing the long game. They’re mining raw materials there now, but they’ll use that as justification to ‘stabilize’ the region when their investments are threatened by political collapse. Do you think a China that dominates Asia and Africa might possibly present a threat to U.S. security?”

  “All valid points, but we could address the maritime threat with naval patrols.”

  “The oceans are too vast for denial forces, Jake. Hell, the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean are almost thirty million square miles. We might need Yaxaas once a year or once a month, but with our intel and his capabilities, we’ll be able to prevent a lawless Africa from knocking the world off its axis.”

  “You’re going to use Yaxaas as a CIA navy?”

  “We’re going to use a local solution to a local problem.”

  Jake wasn’t happy with the idea of working with the warlord, but the logic behind it wasn’t as hollow as he’d first thought.

  “It does give us deniability,” he conceded.

  “Better than deniability,” said Graves. “Our involvement won’t even be suspected. Some of these shipments may not be illegal, but they’re unquestionably not in the best interests of the people of Africa or the United States.”

  “Do you think you can trust Yaxaas?”

  “Not even close, but you and the Ground Branch team are going to make him understand that there will be severe consequences if he deviates from our agreement.”

  Jake kept pressing, but Graves had an answer for every question. The man was unconventional, but that was part of his brilliance. Few people thought as radically as Ted Graves.

  “I think I convinced Athena Romanos not to go to INTERPOL,” Jake said, “but their next ship will be in the Arabian Gulf in two days, and she’s going to turn it around the second she finds out we haven’t rolled up the pirate ring.”

  Graves scowled. “You’re covered as State Department, right?”

  Jake nodded.

  “Then I suggest that you get your ass back to Greece and practice some diplomacy. If Yaxaas spooks before we make contact, this whole operation will go up in smoke.”

  * * *

  —

  “A
RE YOU CRAZY or do you have some kind of death wish?” said Pickens.

  He’d been off-camera during the videoconference, sitting at the kitchen table.

  “I’m not afraid of Graves,” Jake said. “I just don’t like the idea of partnering with a warlord.”

  “Look, Jake, I respect your idealism, but this is Somalia. The whole goddamn place is corrupt. Everybody is on the take. Hell, the new president was sitting in a cubicle in Buffalo, New York, working for the state department of transportation before the warlords bought the election for him. You’ve got to get your head around the fact that until somebody better comes along, the warlords make the rules.”

  “That doesn’t mean we have to perpetuate the system.”

  “This isn’t the West, Jake. Hell, the average Somali thinks the warlords have supernatural powers, and it’s all about power down here. So unless you’ve got some way to enforce your values on the entire population, you’ve got to work within ‘the system.’”

  Jake was pacing around the small kitchen.

  “What do you think Graves does if we tell him we’re not going to do it?” Pickens said.

  “He’ll replace us with someone who will.”

  “Exactly. It’s a lawful order. Our job is to follow it.”

  Jake stopped pacing.

  “It still sucks,” he said.

  “Brother, I don’t like Yaxaas any more than you do, but let’s talk to the man.”

  “All right,” Jake said.

  “All right,” said Pickens, “but first you’ve got to go to Greece and buy us some time.”

  THIRTY

  IT WAS RAINING in Athens when the Agency Gulfstream touched down.

  Jake declined an umbrella from the aircrew and walked slowly across the tarmac, savoring each cool drop as it hit his face. Having grown up on the east coast of the United States, where rain was largely considered an inconvenience, he’d come to take it for granted, like light or air, but living amid the famine that was killing man and beast in the Horn of Africa made Jake appreciate its life-giving power like never before.