Dark Asset

by Adrian Magson

  ‘They will need good luck for that. Are you far from home?’ I couldn’t figure out what these men were doing out here, but it wasn’t to fight, not with the old guy along for company.

  ‘Not so far.’ He waved a hand at the horizon behind him. ‘Over there – half a day’s walk, near the border. I am looking for some of my goats; I have many but they are spread out all over this place. I must gather them in and have them ready for the meat buyer who comes around to collect them for shipment to the wholesale market. These two were supposed to be watching them but got distracted.’ He turned his head and spat, then apologized with a soft smile.

  ‘I saw some over that way,’ I told him, pointing to the road. ‘Among some rocks, maybe half a kilometre from here.’

  He smiled, showing me his gums. ‘Thank you. I know the place. I was about to turn back.’ He turned his head and called out to the two men, and they put down their cups and set off at an amble towards the road. He shouted again and they upped their pace to a jog-trot, like a couple of reluctant kids, only carrying lethal weapons of war.

  ‘Do you have sons?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I don’t have the courage. I leave that to men like you.’

  We sat in silence for a while after that, sipping our tea, then the old man looked towards the crows in the sky and said, ‘I observed what happened to the white man. Was he your friend?’

  ‘Not really. I only met him a few days ago. But he was a good man – a teacher.’

  ‘Then Allah will take care of his soul. Is that why you came here – to find him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He studied me carefully. ‘This is not a safe area. You are either a brave man or a foolish one. Do you have a gun?’

  I shifted slightly and revealed the SIG under my thigh, and he smiled. ‘So. Not foolish.’

  I nodded towards where Doney’s body lay under the pile of rocks. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

  ‘A big car from that way.’ He pointed to the east, towards the capital. ‘It stopped by the trees and three men got out. They talked for a while, then went to the car and took another man out. He was struggling and shouting so they beat him until he went quiet. Then they laid him on the ground and bound him to the trees. One of them made a fire while the others stood guard. Then they cut away his clothing.’

  ‘These were all white men?’

  ‘Yes. After a while one of the men took sticks from the fire and the man on the ground began screaming. He did it for a long time. Then he stopped. After that the men began to argue between themselves. They sounded very angry, I think because the man was no longer alive. Then they left him and went away.’ He waved a hand back towards the east. ‘That way.’

  ‘Can you describe them?’

  He hesitated before saying, ‘They were not French. I know the French. Americans, I think, loud and angry.’ He slapped his bony chest and puffed himself out to demonstrate how big they were. ‘Americans here are bigger than the French.’ He shook his head as if in sorrow and added, ‘Too many Big Macs and soda.’

  They must have been the same men who took me out of the hotel. The fact that they’d handed me over to the French had proved to be my lucky day.

  Colin hadn’t been so fortunate.

  ‘And they went back towards Djibouti?’

  ‘The city. Yes.’ He nodded towards the body and gestured at the area all around it. ‘This is a sacred place for my people from a long time ago. It is where we came from, from the earth and the rocks and the dust, and where we will go back. Bringing death is defilement.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ It seemed painfully inadequate but was the only thing I could think of saying. I nodded at the fire I’d built. ‘I didn’t know. I hope I haven’t offended you.’

  He shook his head and leaned forward to lay a wizened hand on my arm. His touch was warm, and light as a breeze. ‘No. You have not. There are no stones or signs here because we do not need them, not like in the towns. Our people know this place because it is part of them.’ He didn’t look or sound angry but his manner had changed subtly, like a small charge of energy.

  ‘You come here often?’

  He nodded slowly. ‘As often as time allows. I come to honour my family and the people before us and give thanks for what we have and what may be.’ He looked at me. ‘But what those men did to the man and to this place was something that should not be forgiven. I am old but I have a duty. It is better the ones responsible do not come back here. If they do they will not leave.’ He lifted a hand and spread his fingers. ‘That is my sacred promise.’

  The way he said it was simple and final, and I knew he meant every word. There was nothing I could say. Whoever Colin’s killers were, they would be back in the city by now, enjoying a cold drink, unaware of what they had done.

  The old man sighed and gathered his bag to him, ready to leave. I noticed him glancing longingly at the box of sugar cubes, so I handed it to him. He tried to refuse but I closed his fingers over the box. They were dry and hard like sticks, brown and lined with age like the trees and the stones on the ground around us. He thanked me with grave courtesy and the box disappeared into his bag.

  ‘Will you take the dead man back?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know that I can,’ I replied. ‘Those men might be waiting and there would be too many questions. I will arrange for somebody to come.’ I felt guilty saying it, as if I was ducking the responsibility, but the old man took that out of my hands.

  ‘Do not concern yourself. I will have these two fools bury him,’ he announced. ‘They will not like it but they will not refuse. It will be another lesson for them for losing my goats. We will come back later with tools.’

  He collected his two tin cups and walked away, eyes on his two reluctant helpers as they herded a dozen skinny goats in front of them, one of them occasionally dashing off to retrieve a would-be escapee. It was a bizarre image, a man with an AK47 chasing a dumb animal.

  I packed up the stove, billy pot and mugs, and when I looked next they were gone, the three men and their animals dissolved into the raw landscape as if they had never been.

  FIFTEEN

  It was late afternoon before I got back to the city. I was tired and angry and covered in a layer of gritty dust, and looking forward to a shower. Then my phone buzzed. I checked the screen. It was blank. I made do with a ‘Yes?’ aware that somebody I didn’t wish to speak to might have located my number. I was hoping it might be Masse.

  It was Tom Vale calling from London.

  ‘I have some information you need to know,’ he said without preamble. There was emphasis on the word ‘need’. ‘Are you anywhere civilized?’

  ‘About thirty minutes out from Djibouti.’

  ‘Good. One of my people has copped a ride on a German military flight landing in one hour. She will wait for you in the passenger terminal and give you a briefing. She’s flying out again immediately but this is important enough to warrant a face-to-face chat. Can you do that?’

  Her. A she. Well, it made sense; I figured MI6, like most intelligence organisations, was an equal opportunity employer. I said I would meet her. ‘How will I know her?’

  He gave a brief chuckle. ‘Oh, you’ll know her, don’t worry.’ Then he was gone.

  I drove straight to the airport and left the car in the parking lot, then walked into the terminal building and through a couple of security checks. When I was done, I looked around for an unaccompanied woman with a London tan – pale in other words – and spotted a familiar face watching me from a table at a small café in one corner.

  Vale hadn’t been kidding about me recognising her. The last time I’d seen Angela Pryce she had been stumbling out of the basement cellar of an abandoned villa on the coast of Somalia. She and a colleague, Doug Tober, had been held captive by a group of al-Shabaab pirates looking to make a trade after luring the two operatives into a negotiation for the lives of two UN personnel being held among a group of aid workers. The reality was, there was no negotiat
ion and both MI6 officers were to have ended up in the hands of an al-Qaeda cell further north. The propaganda coup for the terrorists would have been huge and the hostages would not have survived the transaction.

  I’d been hired by Vale to go in and pull them out if possible. I’d done it but it had been a close call.

  She stood up as I approached and held out her hand. ‘Marc. It’s nice to see you again. Can I get you a drink?’ She looked cool and relaxed, but her lightweight cottons were showing signs of a hectic travel schedule. I figured Vale must have snatched her in between assignments to come and see me. If so, it was a sign of how important this meeting must be.

  ‘Soda, please – a double.’ It was comfortable in the terminal but the tea I’d shared with the old man had furred my tongue. I needed the fizz of something cooler to cut through it.

  We didn’t speak until we had drinks in our hands and the waiter had moved away. There was nobody real close so we were good to talk.

  ‘How are you?’ I asked. The last time I’d seen her she wasn’t looking too good after her incarceration, but holding up gamely all the same. She had guts and determination to spare, and Tom Vale rated her highly, which was good enough for me.

  ‘I’m well, thank you.’

  ‘And Doug?’ Tober was one of MI6’s hand-picked specialists in a unit called the Basement. They were not unlike the CIA’s Special Activities Division. Seconded from the British Special Boat Service, Doug had been wounded on the mission with Pryce but had pulled through.

  ‘He’s fine. Still working underground. If he knew I was here he’d tell me to say hi.’

  With preliminaries over, I said, ‘Vale said you had some information for me.’

  She nodded. ‘I hear you’re working with the French.’

  ‘That’s right. At least, I was. Things may have got skewed over the past forty-eight hours, though.’ I gave her a summary of events involving Masse and Doney, so she knew the score and didn’t have the wrong perspective on what was happening. The need-to-know rule of all intelligence organisations is well and fine; burden a person with details they neither need nor care about, and you have a potential leak if they fall into the wrong hands or talk out of turn. But there are occasions when the bigger picture helps explain a lot. In this case the fact being that there was more going on here than a straightforward fetch-and-carry job.

  She listened in silence and showed no surprise at what I told her. Neither did she question that I might be being indiscreet in telling her what I knew about the focus on oil.

  ‘We knew about the oil thing,’ she said at last. ‘It’s been on the cards for some time but there’s been a lack of companies willing to take the risk. We believe the front runners are a consortium of French and US producers and venture capitalists, and the war chest is supposed to be considerable. It will have to be to get any oil out of this region. But if it works, the returns will be huge.’

  ‘Is the UK involved?’

  ‘No. Our government wasn’t invited and chose not to offer anything. The view was that in the current economic climate it doesn’t seem a viable issue – at least, not yet. There was also the question of al-Shabaab’s involvement. The best judgement was that it would end in tears one way or another because terrorists are terrorists; they’re made up of disparate groups and clans and that makes them volatile. Hussein Abdullah was the original lead man – the only one, in fact, until he got hit by a drone strike, but he was at best untrustworthy. His deputy, Liban Daoud is almost as bad in our view, but he does have a lot more influence than did Abdullah.’

  ‘That doesn’t make him a good bet, though, does it?’

  She shrugged. ‘The French and Americans seem to think so; they’re placing their trust in him to make this thing happen. All we can do is watch and wait.’

  A rush of conversation nearby washed over us as a group of men approached and stood close by, chatting. The accents were American, and Angela said, ‘Can we do this outside? I don’t have much time.’

  ‘Sure. I figured Tom diverted you from somewhere else.’

  She smiled. ‘Well, it’s not a city I’d choose for a vacation. I hear you’ve been across the border. Are you going back?’

  I studied her eyes as she asked the question, and thought I saw a faint flicker deep down. After what she had gone through in Somalia with Tober, it would have been understandable if the idea of ever going back there had given her sleepless nights. But there was something in the tone of the question that made me wonder.

  ‘Maybe. Probably. It depends on what you’re about to tell me.’ I led the way out to the front of the terminal, where we could stand in the shadow of the building out of earshot.

  Angela took out a cell phone and showed me the screen. It held a photo of Lunnberg. He was in uniform but there was no mistaking him. ‘Colonel Clay Lunnberg,’ she recited. ‘I believe Tom gave you a summary of his career?’

  ‘A snapshot, sure.’

  ‘Lunnberg’s a sort of modern-day Oliver North, only smarter. He’s managed to move out of the military and into a role with the Defense Clandestine Service where he gets to act as a go-between brokering deals with all the gloss of the US government without necessarily involving anybody signing off his work. This oil business is one of them. He’s very tough and smart, and willing to go where others won’t. That makes him a valuable asset for this kind of assignment. So far we haven’t been able to find anyone remotely close to the White House, the State Department or any other official body who will admit to knowing anything about him other than what’s on his public résumé. That made us think this was one of those back-door operations that has more to do with big business than the administration. In fact we’re certain of it.’

  ‘He’s a rogue operator, in other words.’ Lt Colonel Oliver North had been working for the National Security Council and earned himself a lifetime reputation by selling arms to Iran to release US hostages in Lebanon, then funnelling the money through shell companies to support Contra rebels in Nicaragua. He’d broken several laws in the process but he’d survived, rogue or not.

  ‘It looks like it. We’ve discovered four names linking Lunnberg to major power brokerage deals in the past couple of years, mostly names that came out of nowhere but with high net worth. I won’t bore you with the details but these are extremely wealthy, mostly venture capitalists fronting groups of energy investors who like to stay in the shadows. These recent deals are unique in that they involve people and regimes you wouldn’t want to get into bed with, all anxious to trade oil, gas or minerals and agreeing to cooperate in exchange for large down payments of cash to smooth the way.’

  ‘So we’re not talking Exxon or Chevron.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about the French side of the deal?’

  ‘That was a surprise. On the surface it seems logical, if risky, given the region and circumstances, and it makes sense bringing in the French because they know the area better than anybody.’ She gave a wry smile which implied there was a but.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘We’re not sure the French are completely aware of everything being discussed, or how much they will benefit from any arrangement. In fact we’re certain it won’t be as beneficial as they think.’

  I waited, wondering what else there could be.

  ‘Vale contacted some people in Washington, mainly US intelligence community watchers and internet geeks. The kind who dig up rumours and gossip about the CIA, DIA and NSA, and trade it between themselves for fun and kudos. They’re like the UFO watchers who like to trade film of so-called landings, little green people and stories from Area 51.’

  ‘So-called? You mean none of that’s true?’

  She smiled patiently. ‘A lot of what they find is groundless. But a story that keeps coming up is that Lunnberg has a dedicated team working with him; former special ops people, intelligence pros and others. They jump when he calls and operate worldwide, apparently independently of the DCS but using their facilities when necess
ary.’

  She was right; I’d met a few of them, led by Ratchman and Snake-Eyes.

  ‘The latest rumour is that Lunnberg recently lost one of his team. Nobody knows where or how, but a former sergeant named McBride dropped off the grid within the past few days. Until a few months ago he was an undercover army intelligence specialist. He resigned and was last reported heading for Djibouti. After that, nothing.’

  ‘If he’s undercover, there might be a good reason for that. He could be having a comms problem.’ I was thinking about Mogadishu and the poor signal reception down there.

  She shrugged. ‘Possibly. The thing is, Lunnberg doesn’t believe in transparency – it’s the way he operates and why people use him. He also likes to stay one step ahead. With that in mind, it’s not such a long hop from here to Mogadishu, and even if Lunnberg is working this thing in tandem with the French, it would be a natural move for him to run a side-operation without telling anybody.’

  I nodded but I was thinking of something else. Since Masse had turned out not to be the dead man in the deserted building in Mogadishu, leaving aside the introduction of an unknown element into the equation, we were left with only one possibility. It had to be McBride.

  ‘This hard drive you mentioned,’ Angela continued, ‘is supposed to carry details of the transactions and negotiations with Hussein Abdullah, right?’

  ‘That’s what I was told.’ By the tone of her question, I got the feeling I’d been sold a pup. She confirmed it.

  ‘We think that’s a cover – a genuine one, because there would definitely be a lot of questions asked if and when such talks became known, especially involving al-Shabaab. You don’t get to keep a secret like that for long, especially in today’s world of instant communications.’