Dark Asset

by Adrian Magson

  As we stepped out of the back door into the open, two of the three men I’d seen waiting by the Land Cruiser moved away to block any chance I had of making a run for it. The third opened the rear passenger door and nodded at me to get in. Three other men were already waiting inside the vehicle, two Europeans and an Asian, I figured Japanese. They were dressed in plain clothes and watched me approach without comment.

  ‘I’m touched,’ I said. ‘All you guys to welcome me? Let me tell you, your unit is either over-manned or you’ve been spun some wild tales about me.’

  ‘Do not talk.’ This from the man in the front passenger seat. He was big-framed but wiry, and what flesh I could see on his arms, face and throat was burned deep brown by the sun. He spoke with a French accent and looked downright unwelcoming.

  ‘Hands on the seat in front of you,’ said the man next to me, the Japanese. He slapped the seat back for emphasis. He wasn’t big but he was all muscle in tight bunches, like a bag of coconuts. A weight freak, I guessed.

  I did as ordered and a pair of handcuffs were slipped over my wrists and shut tight. At the same time, Ratchman tossed my bag into the rear compartment before leaning in and giving me the benefit of his coffee breath again.

  ‘Portman, you’re about to go for a ride with JoJo here, and his men.’ He nodded at the Frenchman. ‘Now, you get maybe twenty klicks to give them whatever you know about a hard drive, or you won’t be coming back. You get me?’

  Twenty klicks, kilometres. It wasn’t far, although with the state of the roads here, that could mean I had an hour to come up with an answer. But the fact that he’d already given me his name told me I wasn’t going to be coming back.

  He slammed the door in my face and walked away, followed by the other men. As I thought about what was likely to happen, the man in the front, JoJo, grabbed my wrists in an iron grip while Hirohito alongside me dropped a cloth hood over my head.

  I’d just become the filling in a handover sandwich.

  The driver took us out of the parking lot and into the street, hitting the horn to clear the way. I could hear voices and laughter outside, then the noise of other vehicles, but other than a flicker of light around the lower edges of the hood, I was blind. Then even those outside noises were lost to me when one of the men turned on a radio and blasted the inside of the car with loud rock music. French rock music.

  That was plain vindictive. I was relieved when JoJo turned it off again. Maybe he was a classical music buff.

  I forced myself to sit back and relax. I figured this was all part of a softening-up procedure, designed to disorientate and intimidate, rendering me sightless and in a world where I couldn’t fight back. They’d effectively taken me out of circulation with nothing left behind and nobody the wiser as to where I might have gone. It had been slickly done and all I could do was wait and see what they had in store for me and, if offered, take my chances.

  The American group I figured were contractors; they didn’t have the stitched-up, ready-to-go-now but controlled attitude of current serving troops or special forces. But the glimpse I’d gotten of this second group told me they looked and sounded like Foreign Legion. They were trimmed down and lean, as if they’d been left out in the sun like lizards, every ounce of spare weight burned away to muscle and sinew.

  If this was a joint effort between US and French forces, it told me who but didn’t tell me why. If what Masse had told me was correct, we should have all been working to the same ends, but right now it didn’t feel like that.

  It didn’t take long to reach the relatively dead sound of empty streets then even emptier roads, moving from the city into the suburbs, then open country. At first I had a sense of travelling vaguely north. Then the light around the lower edges of my hood shifted as we began to turn left and we were moving in a westerly direction. That made sense because driving north from the city centre would eventually have put us in the waters of the Gulf of Tadjoura. I summoned up a mental map of Djibouti the country. If we continued going west we would be heading into the countryside away from the main areas of population. The road surface so far felt good beneath the wheels, no doubt courtesy of western governments to help troop movements in the area. I figured we must be on the RN1 which, if we turned north would take us into a range of low hills or, if we kept on going west, would eventually lead to the border with Ethiopia.

  But that was way further than twenty klicks. We’d either turn off before very long, going directly north, or south into more hills. And both options were one-way trips for me.

  NINE

  André Masse stood in the cover of a stall full of cheap leather goods and watched as the Land Cruiser holding Portman swept out of the parking lot and made its way along the street. It had taken time and a large stroke of luck, but he’d finally picked up a lead on where Portman was staying, and had decided to check things out for himself. Portman had played his movements very carefully, which Masse could respect, but in a city he’d been working in for so many years, there were easier ways of searching for a man than visiting every hotel or guest house in the city. He’d put the word out and been rewarded with three possibles, all recent arrivals. They bore similarities to Portman, but he’d quickly discounted two of them.

  He watched the three men in the parking lot at the rear of the hotel and recognised the type immediately; he’d seen enough of them around. They were Americans with the cold-eyed, purposeful attitude of special forces troops or private military contractors. As for the men inside the vehicle, if they weren’t legionnaires they hadn’t long been out of the service and still bore the lean, honed look of their kind.

  Whoever they were, he didn’t want to meet them; he had enough problems already.

  He debated what to do next. The normal procedure would be to call Petrus. But while he might enjoy letting the high-minded snake know that he hadn’t died in Mogadishu after all, a timely reminder that he had made no attempt to mount any kind of recovery mission, the satisfaction would be short-lived. As for telling him about Portman’s kidnap, he doubted Petrus would care one way or another. Portman was a hired hand and a disposable one at that.

  He could go after the vehicle holding Portman to find out what was going to happen to him. Knowledge was power and it could prove useful if he came head-to-head with Petrus and needed an edge. But he dismissed it as too high-risk to be worthwhile. In spite of the heavy traffic throughout the city there was every chance the men would identify him as a threat. And with former legionnaires that meant taking extreme measures to stop him. It would prove pointless on two fronts: the first in his death, obviously, and second, in retrieving the hard drive from Mogadishu and taking it back to his bosses.

  His ticket back to France.

  Then everything changed. He watched the five men who had taken Portman out of the hotel climbing into two pale 4WDs. Without thinking why, he decided to follow them. He had a good idea who they were but at this point any intelligence was better than none, and he needed to find out if they were in any way connected with the dead man in Mogadishu. If they were, it meant he wasn’t out of the woods until he got the hard drive back and sent it on its way.

  The journey was brief. It took in a series of narrow streets and ended out by the airport, at a nondescript single-storey building at the far end of a cul-de-sac. Other buildings nearby were given over to small business premises and cargo warehouses, but none of them was positioned close enough to allow Masse easy access to overhear anything that might be going on inside. The building itself was surrounded by mesh fencing and unhelpfully devoid of useful cover on either side.

  Masse pulled into the side of the road behind a haulage truck where three young men were transferring packages to a smaller vehicle, and gave them a friendly wave. They stopped what they were doing and waited while he asked directions to a shipping company he’d seen earlier. While they discussed the location and route at length between themselves, he eyed the building where the men in the two cars had stopped before entering a small do
or at the front. The last one in had paused to look around under cover of lighting a cigarette, and it was clear he was checking for signs of surveillance.

  He thanked the men for their help and drove back to the city centre. The building the Americans had entered looked like a short-term rental unit, with no signage, weeds growing around the edges and a general air of despair. Although surrounded by a fence, it was a lot smaller than many others in the area and was probably of little interest to the majority of larger businesses needing storage and shipping facilities. That said, if the Americans were using it, it had to have some kind of function and instinct told him he needed to know what it was. Was it simply their base of operations, or something more?

  Even as he thought about it, he knew he was subconsciously delaying going back to Mogadishu to recover the hard drive. As he’d admitted to Portman, it had been a bad idea conceived in panic. If he’d kept his head, he’d already have the information and be in a position to use some leverage with Petrus. But that was too late now and he was going to have to scramble hard to play catch-up.

  He stopped at a busy bar he favoured and walked inside. He had a couple of hours to go before it would be dark enough to go back and scout out the building, and he needed a drink while considering his next move. First, though, he rang his contact with the plane and told him to cancel the pickup at the airfield tonight and schedule it the following afternoon. It was too late to worry about Portman, who was probably in a hole somewhere, but that was tough luck. He’d have to get across the border and finish the job himself.

  As he took his first sip of a beer, he saw Colin Doney step through the entrance and look around. The English teacher spotted him and waved before wandering across towards him, pausing to greet a couple of other obvious pink-cheeked expats on the way. For a second Masse felt a wash of doubt; was Doney’s arrival right here and now a coincidence … or something else? He forced himself to relax. Djibouti wasn’t a big place and there were just a few bars where incomers found common ground and could meet others in the same position. Besides, he’d introduced Doney to this place himself.

  ‘Hi, André.’ Doney was relaxed and affable as usual, comfortable, as the French would say, in his skin. He ordered a beer and swallowed half in one go. ‘God, I needed that.’

  ‘Busy day?’ Masse gave the expected response, but with one eye on the door.

  ‘Busy enough. Chasing around after expat kids who should be studying. It’s like herding cats. You?’

  ‘Same thing, only my kids are building contractors who don’t stick to their agreements.’

  They switched to mundane matters and were chatting about a new French restaurant rumoured to be opening just down the block when the door opened and two men stepped inside. Masse felt his gut tighten.

  He recognised two of the Americans who had taken Portman out of the hotel.

  He turned away, but not before one of the men caught him looking. It was enough to nail him. He leaned close to Doney and said urgently, ‘I’m sorry – but I have to go. You should leave immediately, my friend, and not talk to anybody.’

  ‘Why? What’s up?’ Doney looked around, sensing trouble, just as the two Americans focussed on him and Masse.

  ‘Don’t argue, please. Go home and do not use this place again. It’s for your own safety.’ He clapped a hand on Doney’s shoulder before turning and walking away past the end of the bar towards the washrooms in the rear. As he turned at the corner, he caught a brief reflection of Doney in the bar mirror, looking confused. Then his view was blocked by a bartender moving to serve a customer.

  The short corridor ran past the washrooms and kitchen to the back door, and acted as an amplifier for the footsteps hurrying after him. He put on speed and pushed through the door into a darkened side street, where he merged quickly with the crowd.

  Inside the bar, Doney looked around as a new customer eased his way through the crowd to stand alongside him and called for a beer. The man was of medium height and broad across the shoulders, with cropped hair and a dark tan, and wore light cotton pants and shirt. He turned and nodded a friendly greeting to Doney and said, ‘Man, is this place always so full?’ He had an American accent and a genial face and gestured at Doney’s glass. ‘Can I get you another one of those? I hate drinking alone.’

  ‘That’s very kind. Thank you.’ Doney finished his drink and placed the glass on the counter, already forgetting André’s oblique warning before he’d disappeared.

  ‘My name’s Carson,’ the American said. ‘You a regular here?’

  ‘I’m Colin. And yes, I suppose I am. You?’

  ‘I’ve been here a while and it’s already way too long. You know what marks out somebody who’s overstayed their time in Djib?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘They don’t spend all their time staring at their cell phones because they know the signals are shit and getting drunk or high is better. Am I right?’

  Doney smiled, wondering how much this man had already drunk. He’d heard the saying a lot and it was true. In fact he’d already given up carrying his cell phone because it was added weight he didn’t need in 100 degree plus Fahrenheit of heat.

  A figure appeared down the corridor from the washrooms. Doney looked up, half expecting to see André coming back, but it was another stranger. He was tall and well built, with a distinctly military look about him. The man was shaking his head as if in frustration and appeared to be looking at Carson. He eased through the crowd until he stood the other side of Doney, effectively crowding him against the bar.

  Carson put his glass down before leaning in close to Doney. ‘What say we go find somewhere quiet for a chat, Colin? My friend Ratch, here, would like to talk with you.’

  ‘With me? Why?’ Doney began to feel the first twinges of alarm, and made to move away. Before he could do so, he felt his elbow gripped tight from behind by the newcomer.

  ‘Make a sound,’ the man said in his ear, ‘and I’ll break your arm.’

  Carson took his other arm and steered him away from the bar as if they were best buddies. Seconds later they were in a side street and Doney was being pushed inside a battered Mercedes saloon and wedged in tight against the far door by Carson. The other man, Ratch, slipped into the front passenger seat and said to the driver, ‘Go. Get us out of here.’

  ‘Hey – what’s going on?’ Doney tried to push back, but it was futile; Carson had hands like steel clamps and the car was already moving fast along the street, the driver clearing the way by leaning on the horn. The man named Ratch made a softly-worded phone call that lasted less than thirty seconds.

  Twenty minutes later the Mercedes stopped in a deserted street in the suburbs. Ratch turned and stared at Doney with the coldest eyes he’d ever seen. He was holding a gun which looked huge.

  ‘So now …’ Ratch paused and looked at Carson. ‘What’s his name again?’

  ‘Colin.’

  ‘Colin. People call me Ratch and I’m probably your worst nightmare. I’m also in kind of a hurry so you don’t wanna piss me off. I have one question: what were you and the frog talking about back at the bar?’

  Doney’s mouth had gone dry as dust and he badly needed a drink. ‘Frog?’

  ‘Masse. The Frenchie.’

  ‘What – I don’t know … I mean, why are you asking me? I only just met him.’

  The gun barrel came up and stared Colin in the eye. ‘Now that’s the kinda thing that annoys me, Colin. Y’see, I ask the questions and you give me some answers. It’s a simple procedure and if we stick to the programme, you’ll get to go home before lights out. Now, again, what were you talking about?’

  Colin wished he could tear his eyes away from the gun and that the man’s voice would go away. But that clearly wasn’t going to happen. ‘Is this about the corruption thing?’ he managed to say. ‘He didn’t tell me the details, just that he’d stumbled on something.’

  Ratchman pursed his lips. ‘Corruption. Well, I guess that’s a kind of answer. But it ain�
�t the one I was looking for.’ Without warning he leaned over and punched Colin hard in the face. The pain in his nose was unbearable and he felt a flood of warm blood spreading down his face and dripping onto his chest and knees. ‘Did the frog give you anything … anything to keep for him?’

  Colin coughed, spitting blood onto the seat and floor. ‘No. Noth – nothing. We hardly know each other!’

  ‘Well, that’s a real shame.’ Ratch slapped his cheek. ‘Come on; don’t go soft on me now. Tell you what, Colin, we’re gonna get ourselves a change of vehicle because you’ve just messed this one up and I hate the smell of blood. Then we’ll drive to whatever shithole you live in and you’re gonna let us search the place, during which we’ll smash and tear every item you hold dear unless you come up with something useful. After that I’m going to get seriously pissed. Understand?’

  Colin tried to protest but his throat was clogged with blood and mucous and his head was spinning. He wanted to resist, to fight back and tell these morons where to get off, to show them he wasn’t afraid. But the truth was, he was more terrified than he’d ever been in his life.

  TEN

  JoJo ordered a stop after about an hour of listening to his driver cursing about the state of the roads, the indiscipline of animals and pedestrians, and having had to negotiate the mess around two bad traffic accidents. Both times JoJo had prodded me with what was clearly a gun and told me to put my head down between my knees and stay quiet until we got clear.

  The reason for this latest stop was simple: the driver said he needed a break. JoJo had grunted assent and told him to make it quick. Minutes later the car slowed and bumped over a patch of rough ground before stopping. The engine was turned off and the driver climbed out, letting in a rush of heavy air.

  The silence after the engine noise was intense. Seconds later the hood was removed and I screwed up my eyes ready for strong sunlight. But it wasn’t necessary; we were parked in a small depression beneath a jumble of large rocks, and whatever sun there was had dropped behind them, throwing the car and the surrounding area into shadow. Darkness couldn’t be far off and would come quickly. Maybe that would be my one opportunity.