by Geoff Wolak
‘I am, thanks, and I'm thankful your name is not Clint.’
He colleagues laughed.
Upstairs I left Graveson in a side room and entered a meeting room, the CIA Station Chief here, which was odd but not entirely unexpected given the news – the media bloodbath Stateside. I shook hands with the Director of GCHQ, a nod at Tinker, shocked to see Mutch in the room, sat with a tea and a biscuits – but not shocked that he had biscuits.
I greeted David and Mister Kitson and their assistants, a glance at the white boards, our FBI Deep State people listed and linked in. We finally all sat around the table.
David began, ‘We've had a few developments overnight, and this meeting has expanded somewhat. This meeting was to plan and analyse the FBI mob factor, but the White House has threatened the CIA, and our PM has been shouting, and as we all know the media has been going crazy, and they want some answers.
‘The CIA Station Chief is here with us today because he wishes to avoid a firing squad back home, and … Secret Agent Scorpio has made a breakthrough.’
The Station Chief frowned. ‘Ya'll give your people code names like that?’
‘Wilco named him Secret Agent Lard Arse, but he never liked that title for some reason.’
People hid their grins.
‘I prefer Scorpio,’ Mutch told them.
‘What did you do?’ I puzzled.
‘After my gallant action in Gibraltar – where I killed two deadly enemy agents -'
‘Well done with that,’ I told him as I patted him his arm and gave him a thumbs up.
‘Stop taking the piss. As I was saying, after my gallant action I investigated with a purpose, to see where the links were with oil and gas and blood diamonds.’ He gestured towards David.
David faced me. ‘We brought the blood diamonds back here, and our expert said that they were not West African, nor from the Congo, but from southern Angola. We mentioned that to Mutch.’
‘So I did some digging, and I made an inordinate number of phone calls -'
‘He did,’ Tinker quipped. ‘About three thousand quid on the phone bill. MOD queried it, mostly international calls.’
‘So would I query it!' I put in.
‘The phone is my tool. You have a Valmet, I have a phone.’
‘Make your tool cheaper somehow,’ I warned him.
‘We have done,’ Tinker put in. ‘We routed calls illegally through an exchange in Paris, till they notice.’
‘Better,’ I approved with a nod.
‘To continue,’ Mutch cut in. ‘I think we now know who was pay-rolling the FBI chaps and, having made my brilliant deduction, GCHQ ran the links and they confirmed it. The FBI mob was bank-rolled by a subsidiary of Chevron, and what no one other than me discovered was that the head of that division used to be the manager responsible for the mine in Liberia, some sleeper agents to place.’
I held up a hand. ‘We dismantled the oil company that created the sleeper agents..?’
‘Yes, but they were the front, the people you were supposed to find. What I found was that they lost several court cases to this subsidiary of Chevron, large amounts paid over, but when I checked the court papers with a friend in the know he told me that they could have won some of the cases, or settled for way less. So it was suspicious.
‘The one oil company was sending money to the other via legal action, and the lawyers turned out to be part of the same company, and that's a conflict of interest, which highlighted them as dirty.’
‘Who's the subsidiary?’ I asked.
‘WAOG, West Africa Oil and Gas. Been there forty years, rigs off Guinea, all legit.’
‘I have a feeling that some of the issues we faced in West Africa were down to them. Were they linked to the Belgian bank?’
‘In a word, no, they were competitors, no links at all found, a clean cut, and I went back through all the bank details with a team at GCHQ. They hid from each other. Even found a court case where their directors got into a punch-up with the bank people in a hotel in Nigeria twenty years back.’
‘So they're still operating?’ I pressed.
‘They are,’ the Station Chief cut in. ‘But the White House knows, and -' He sighed. ‘- they want it loud and public and bloody.’
I told him, ‘If they follow the money trail they'll uncover a few more congressmen and senators.’
He lowered his head and nodded, looking tired.
I faced David. ‘We had that invite yet from the White House?’
‘They were waiting for you to heal.’
‘Get me on a flight, tonight, inviting myself to the Pentagon to chat to … say … General Boltweir, then let the White House know when I'm in the air.’
‘What'll you do?’ the Station Chief asked.
‘Given the outrage felt about trying to kill me, he'll want to meet, and I think I might be the only person on the planet that could talk him around, to make this go away quietly.’
‘You are the only one would could,’ David noted. ‘You have the ratings Stateside, and you are the injured party here.’
‘Book a plane please.’
David glanced at his assistant and that man stepped out with his phone.
‘And some security,’ I added.
‘FBI will want to handle that,’ the Station Chief put in.
‘I'll sort MPs from the Pentagon. Not the fucking FBI.’ I faced Tinker. ‘Get me a GPS tracker, and you – you do those proximity hits every five minutes.’
He drew one from his pocket. ‘Take mine, we use it for testing. Fresh battery. Turn it off on the plane.’
‘No one will go for you Stateside,’ the Station Chief suggested. ‘Not with all the publicity out there.’
‘If they do we nab them,’ I told. I faced Mister Kitson. ‘Are you happy about the sweep of the CIA men, and ladies, here?’
‘GCHQ ran the list many different ways, and we followed up the leads, and we have no more good leads to follow, they all track to the States. We do have a face file for you to look at.’
‘Yes, today, before I go. And that guy we found dead in my canal, I recognised him from somewhere, can't think where.’
‘We have a hypnotist that can help, he evokes smells and shapes and you touch things with different textures. It does work, police use him.’
‘If we have time, but he's dead and gone. Any phone hits at GL4 unsolved?’
‘Over the years, yes,’ the Director of GCHQ put in. ‘We have them in the database in case they crop up, but it looks like the men were careful, early day reconnaissance of GL4.’
‘One recent hot one,’ Tinker put in. ‘But it looks like he killed the sim card soon after. He drove from London and back, then nothing.’
‘Could have been any one of a dozen groups,’ I said with a sigh. ‘Oh, Berlin FBI chief is linked in.’
‘He is?’ the Station Chief loudly asked. ‘I know him.’
‘Best start digging then.’
‘Shit...’ He rubbed his forehead.
Men exchanged looks.
I told them, ‘Our Russian friend in Prague was just the hired help at the end of the phone, he knew nothing and we got nowhere to go. He helped with the ship carrying the uranium.’
‘Found dead sat on a toilet, his trousers down,’ the Station Chief noted. ‘Toilet was locked from the inside, window too small for someone to get out of it.’
I smiled, imagining Tiny naked and easing out the window.
‘What?’ he asked me.
‘Just imagining the look on the faces of the police. Was it suicide?’
‘Since he was shot in the temple with a .22, not found at the scene, I'd say no,’ the Station Chief testily put in. ‘Was it your people?’
‘Yes, we have a midget agent,’ I quipped, getting a look from him. I took in their faces and held my hands wide. ‘Are we all happy that London is as safe as it can be from rogue CIA agents?’
They exchanged looks.
‘No hot leads left to follow up,’ Mister
Kitson put in.
‘Do we do anything about this oil company?’ I asked.
‘FBI and DOJ is all over it,’ the Station Chief warned. ‘You'd be tripping over them.’
I turned to Mutch. ‘Find a way to hurt them, just in case.’
‘A well placed bomb would do that, at their oil pipeline, but then the beaches of Guinea would be a bit mucky for a lot of years.’
‘That's not an option,’ David told him.
I asked Mutch, ‘They have licenses from the government in Guinea?’
‘Yes.’
I faced David. He began, ‘We can apply pressure to revoke the licenses on … environmental grounds.’ He made a note.
I faced Mutch. ‘If they have security staff, and a head of security, I want their details.’
‘I can get that, yes. Their head of security is South African.’
‘He just made it onto my list,’ I warned Mutch. I faced Tinker. ‘We go chat to him.’
Tinker nodded.
I faced David. ‘No orders from the Cabinet Office regarding Kosovo?’
‘Not so far.’
‘And the ambassador?’
‘Will meet an hour from now.’
‘Ambassador?’ the Station Chief queried.
‘The Serbian Ambassador,’ David told him.
‘What the hell you meeting him for?’
I responded, ‘If you were a Serb, and you knew my entire team was waiting in the woods for you...’
‘I'd shit myself, and rethink the strategy.’
‘As he may do, a negotiated settlement. First the threat.’
‘Shit, The Ghost back in the woods. That'll make the front pages in Serbia!'
‘About time that stupid book did some good,’ I told them. ‘It might save lives, Serb lives, enlisted men with families to go home to. I have no desire to kill large numbers of them.’ I took in the their faces. ‘Any opinions on Kosovo, gentlemen?’
The Director of GCHQ began, ‘We could place devices along the border, assuming that the Serbs will send men over the border.’
David told him, ‘They could sit there a while doing nothing, this could drag on. And the question is … will the Serbs send divisions in to fight us, knowing that they can't win?’
‘With a NATO air campaign, I'd say no,’ Mister Kitson put in. ‘They're out-gunned ten to one.’
The Station Chief put in, ‘My people are reluctant to send our troops in, we want it an all-European affair, we'll do the aircraft.’
‘That seems to be the plan,’ David told me.
‘The American Wolves might go in,’ I told them. ‘But would do so under my command, so … still a European affair.’ I faced Mutch. ‘You want some time in-country?’
‘What?’ he stumbled with as people laughed.
I faced David. ‘I think a second letter of commendation is due.’
‘Indeed. He cracked the case.’
I faced Mutch. ‘Keep digging, I want affiliates, right back twenty years. But tell me, that Russian killed in the toilet in Prague, was that you?’
They laughed.
‘Yes,’ he curtly told me. ‘I went out the small window!'
‘Good work,’ I commended with a nod.
Outside the meeting, I called Bob and told him to get Tiny on a flight to Washington tonight, and to wake her up.
An hour later, at the Foreign Office, a perplexed Serbian Ambassador and his assistant joined me in a meeting room with David and a fat old guy from the Cabinet Office. They were shown to seats without introductions made nor hands shaken, and they sat opposite me.
‘I am Major Wilco, The Ghost.’
They were both shocked. ‘What … what is the purpose of this meeting?’ came heavily accented.
‘I'd like to save lives in Kosovo, the lives of young Serb soldiers just doing their jobs, men that want to go back to their families. You see, NATO wants to liberate Kosovo, regardless of the basis of majority rule – such as the slow creep of Albanian Muslims wandering across the border and claiming the land.
‘Yes, I know the history, and … don't agree with it. If the Muslims in Yorkshire became the majority, and voted to break away, you can be certain that the British Government would resist. Majority rule is OK in some areas, not others.’
The Cabinet Office guy shot me a look.
I asked him, ‘Would you give up Yorkshire?’
‘Hell no.’
‘Exactly.’ I faced the Ambassador. ‘I follow orders, and I may be ordered into Kosovo, and I have men there already. I was told to observe and record the Serbs attacking Kosovan Albanians, yet we found mostly KLA men attacking Serbian civilians, so I made sure that the story, the truth, made it out.
‘I don't like men raping and attacking women, robbing people, burning down houses in ethnic cleansing – on any side. At the moment, it seems to be the KLA provoking you. So, we’re here today to see if we can avoid some bloodshed.’
‘How?’
‘Will you send infantry divisions across the border and fight us?’
‘They are our lands,’ was not much of an answer.
‘And you have the right to defend them. So, do you think that you will send infantry divisions across the border and fight NATO troops?’
‘I think it unlikely, they would be bombed from the air.’
‘I now have five hundred men that I trained, and trained well in how to move quietly through the woods, live off the land, ambush patrols, avoid dogs. Last time it was just me, this time there are five hundred of me. If I place them on the border, what do you think will happen to your men?’
He unhappily took in the faces. ‘There would be a great deal of bloodshed, yes. You will send your men into Kosovo?’
‘That's down to my government. But if my men do go into Kosovo, and they see Serb villages being attacked, they'll shoot the men doing the attacking, as they already are. My men will have orders to kill all KLA men who behave badly. You see, I'm an officer in the British Army, and we can't just sit by when women are attacked and killed. We have rules.’
The Cabinet Office guy shot me a look.
I added, ‘From what I've seen so far, I think the KLA would best be sat at home. Maybe my government will communicate that point to them, to stop raping and killing the women.’
Again the Cabinet Office guy shot me a look. ‘We will make our concerns clear to them.’
I eased forwards. ‘Ambassador, NATO will move in, and you will lose if you oppose them, so how about you think of a way to save lives, and … my men will prevent Serb villagers from being massacred and mistreated, acting as policemen, or if you like … peacekeepers.
‘Although my government may have a political agenda, and NATO may have a political agenda, I don't, and I don't like gangs of men that rape and kill, and in Africa we shoot such men and bring peace. If there are no Serbs causing problems in Kosovo, just KLA men, then – I guess – we'll end up shooting a great many KLA men.’
The Ambassador could see how uncomfortable the Cabinet Office guy was getting.
The Cabinet Office guy finally said, ‘Of course, if the KLA are upright and law abiding, no one will get shot, no one at all.’
‘That would be good,’ I told him with a false smile. ‘Saves the cost of the ammunition.’
He offered me an equally false smile. ‘Indeed.’
I told the Ambassador, ‘I am available for further discussions about how we can avoid bloodshed. But make no mistake; if you send your infantry across the border, and my men are sent in, none of your soldiers will return home. None of them.’
He took the threat, swallowed, and was led out by David.
The Cabinet Office guy finally said, ‘So, you do follow orders then...’
‘Some of the time.’ I loudly added, ‘And if those fucking shitbag KLA men keep raping women and killing them I'll bury the lot of the fuckers! We don't sit back and watch that!'
He backed away, David returning, hands shaken with false civility.
> I drove around to the MI5 building, soon sat looking at photos as they made me a coffee and chatted about the para drop onto the ship. I took out five photos and placed them to one side, a tiring half-hour going back through the others, some of them attractive women.
‘That's it, those are the only faces I know.’
‘Well three of these have no contact with you, none at all,’ they told me.
‘Must have, I know them,’ I tapped a photo. ‘Very familiar.’
They made a call.
‘That man's file says he never met you.’
‘I want him arrested, now!' I growled, and they called the Station Chief. I held the picture. ‘Where's that fucking hypnotist?’
‘Try this. Look at the picture. Is it raining?’
‘No.’
‘Night time?’
‘No.’
‘Is he in uniform?’
‘Yes.’
‘American uniform?’
‘Yes.’
‘A rifle?’
‘Shit, he's one of Castile's men, Delta Force. He was on a fucking job with us.’ I called Colonel Mathews and he called Castile, asking Castile to call me back.
‘Wilco, you after me?’
I held the photo and turned it over. ‘One of your men, Tony Liberanto.’
‘What about him?’
‘What's he doing working for the CIA in London?’
‘What! He don't work for the fucking CIA.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘On leave.’
‘And just being arrested in London.’
‘What!'
‘I need you to pass up the line that he has nocturnal activities, and right now. Then change some procedures, he's been reporting out.’
‘I'll kill the bastard myself.’
‘Get in line.’
I called the Station Chief. ‘It's Wilco.’
‘That man is on the run. Literally.’
‘He's Delta Force, so I hope you have fast legs.’
‘Delta Force?’
‘Yes, that's his day job.’
‘Son of a bitch. He just became our most wanted.’
‘Quietly, eh. And his file said that this man never met me, so I'm thinking that his line manager needs a torch shone up his arse.’
Mi5 and the Met Police jumped into gear, a massive man hunt to organise.
