Dark Asset Page 4

  The hotel looked clear, but I circled the block a couple of times before going in. If Masse was still on somebody’s radar I needed to avoid being caught up with him. And the only way to do that was to stay in the background as much as I could. Whatever had happened to him in Mogadishu, he now had a sizeable question mark hanging over him: who was the dead man I’d found on the sixth floor?

  I entered the courtyard through an alleyway at the rear and checked out the clientele before showing myself. There were several tables dotted around an ancient fountain that spouted water in a haphazard fashion, with a narrow overhead walkway running around three of the walls giving access to the rooms. The air smelled of cooked meat, spices and tobacco smoke.

  Masse was sitting alone with his back to the main building, alongside a narrow doorway. I had no idea where it led, but I was willing to bet it was an escape route. He watched me approach and flicked a finger at a grey-haired waiter, who brought two cold beers and placed them on cardboard mats in front of us as if he was on a wire.

  ‘I’m sorry about what happened,’ Masse said, once the waiter moved away, and launched straight into an explanation. ‘But it was unavoidable. I was scouting the route to the building a couple of days ago when I realised I’d picked up a tail in the city centre. I led him on a tour to try losing him.’

  ‘Why didn’t you wait for me to go with you? That’s what I’m here for – to watch your back.’

  ‘You’re right, and I should have done that. But I know Mogadishu and thought it would be a small matter to get out of the way. I wanted to make sure the building was safe before we got there, and one person would be less obvious than two.’

  ‘Why that building?’

  ‘It was my asset’s choice of rendezvous. I knew of it but I hadn’t seen it before.’ He shrugged. ‘It was a mistake. My tail came, too. He was very good – I couldn’t shake him.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘I have no idea. I suspect America … CIA, a contractor, perhaps, or maybe one of their black ops people. Who knows? It’s a hunting ground for all sides over there and we occasionally cross paths. All I know is that he shouldn’t have been following me. Until that moment I’d been absolutely clean and clear.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘To him? I can’t tell you. I watched him check out the area around the building, then he went inside. It was too open to wait around to see what he did next so I decided to head back to my room in the city and wait for my asset to call me. I was planning on suggesting an alternative rendezvous, but if he didn’t agree I was going to check out the building again later so we could still meet there. As it turned out, he insisted on another RV because he was being posted to the south and wanted to complete the exchange earlier than planned.’

  If it had been me I’d have hung around to see where the tail went next. It’s standard procedure if you pick up a watcher to at least try to identify them, because anybody taking such a close personal interest spells danger. Masse was supposed to be experienced, according to my briefing, but maybe he’d lost a bit of edge over the years. He looked tired and seemed to be having trouble focussing. But there were still a couple of questions I needed answering and I was waiting for him to come clean. Recovery could come later.

  ‘Yet you went back to the building. Why?’

  ‘I wish I could tell you.’ He lifted both hands, palms up. ‘Call it instinct, but I wanted to know who the man was, and maybe he’d left a clue in the building. Anyway, I returned in the evening and found him on the top floor. He’d been dead a while by then.’ He shrugged. ‘You saw how it was. He must have hung around too long and got noticed by a local gang. He’d been stripped clean of any ID and valuables. The killers had obviously taken everything.’

  ‘So how come he had a hard drive in his sock?’

  He shifted in his seat. ‘I left it there. I panicked.’ He hesitated and took a long drink, which made him look all kinds of guilty.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A security precaution. As I told you my contact dropped off the packet as arranged, but I didn’t get a chance to check it out. It was too dangerous carrying the drive around with me, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. I knew the body had been searched, but I figured you would still look and find it.’

  ‘And this?’ I took the cell phone I’d found on the dead man and dropped it on the table. It was Masse’s, as I’d discovered by checking through the contents earlier, but it held very little that would have been of interest to a third party. ‘Why leave this behind?’

  He didn’t even hesitate. ‘The same thing. The man was about the same build as me, so I thought it would be a way of putting off anybody looking for me if they thought I was dead. It wasn’t clever, I admit, but I was reacting to events as I found them.’ He picked up the phone and checked it still worked, thumbing through the icons on the screen.

  His explanation was too slick for my liking. If Masse was as experienced as I’d been led to believe, his trade craft had holes you could drive a bus through. However, I knew what it was like to stumble on a shifting pattern of circumstances in a live mission with no immediate way of getting advice or back-up, so I decided to let it go. I might give him the benefit of the doubt now, but I didn’t have to believe him all the way.

  ‘Do your bosses know you’re alive?’

  ‘No. I haven’t told anybody yet. If the man who followed me was part of an organisation, I think it’s better to stay below the radar until the job is completed.’

  ‘Don’t you trust your own people?’

  He looked conflicted, and I wondered if it was part of the stress he was under. ‘I trust them, of course. But I cannot guarantee some of the people they’re working with.’

  ‘Like who?’

  He shrugged. ‘They’re using outside sources – people I’ve never met before.’

  People like me, I thought, but let it hang. Trust was a commodity hard-won but easily lost in this game. Lose even a hint of it and you were left not knowing who you could truly rely on. Masse evidently knew more than I did about the people working with his own organisation, but wasn’t about to elaborate.

  I said, ‘What exactly do you want from me? I’ve handed over the hard drive, so my job’s done.’

  He gave me a shifty look. ‘Not quite. The one you found was a blank. It contains nothing of any use.’

  I wondered if I should just take out my gun and shoot him. Playing games like he’d done had put me in jeopardy and all for no reason. He must have seen something in my face because he added, ‘I’m sorry, Portman – but I had no guarantees that either of us would get the hard drive back across the border. It was all I could think of … on the hoof, as you Americans say. Besides, if you had been stopped there was nothing incriminating on it that would have led to your arrest. Eventually they would have let you go.’

  ‘You still haven’t told me why you need my help, or why I shouldn’t just walk away now and go home. And what is so hot about this information that you’re risking our lives to get it?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that. All I can say is that it’s of huge strategic importance to your country as well as mine, and it’s vital we get the information to Paris.’

  Terrorism. It had to be. Or oil. They were the only two growth industries in the region, although with the constant terror threat from al-Shabaab and other groups, I’d have put oil very much in second place to bombs and guns.

  ‘Presumably you have the genuine hard drive, so where’s the problem?’

  ‘Unfortunately, I don’t.’

  ‘Say again.’

  ‘It’s still in Mogadishu. On the way back to my hotel I saw the same two men on three occasions. It was too much of a coincidence and I couldn’t take a chance of being stopped with the original hard drive, so I headed straight for the airfield and got a plane back here.’

  If I’d had any bad feelings before about this, they had just gone into overdrive. ‘So what am I supposed to do about tha
t?’

  ‘I need you to come back over there with me and get it back.’

  SIX

  ‘You’re kidding me.’ I could see he wasn’t but it was an instinctive reaction. Going back into a hot situation like Mogadishu was a definite no-no until the heat died down. Masse was already a known face having been there for several days, and probably many times before that if he’d been operating in this region for so long like he’d said. If anyone had got a good look at me as well, they would have an easy time picking up either one of us.

  ‘I wish I were. The fact is we have to do it.’ He shrugged. ‘Petrus expects it and we haven’t completed the job until we get that hard drive. You know the rules.’

  As if I needed reminding. A good reputation in my line of work is gained by finishing what you start and bringing home the cookies. Short of random interference from the opposition or a slip-up in procedure that led to calling off an operation, you stuck with it to the end. Anything else is failure, and that’s bad for business.

  It made me wonder about Masse’s skills background. He undoubtedly had some nerve and courage, working and living out here the way he did, and would have had some weapons training with the DGSE, if only for defensive purposes. But how would that translate into meeting a heavy confrontation head-on?

  ‘What did you do?’ I asked him, ‘before you joined DGSE?’

  He hesitated for a second, then said, ‘I was in Naval Intelligence. Is that a problem?’

  ‘Not at all. I take it you’ve had combat training?’

  ‘Some, naturally. We all do the courses. Is that what you are expecting – that we will have to fight?’

  ‘I hope not. But I prefer to be prepared for anything; it’s Somalia, not the Champs-Élysées.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s dangerous for some that is true. But only those who go looking for it.’

  I ignored that. For a man in his line of work he was either very naïve or putting on a brave front. ‘Petrus is your immediate boss, right – your controller?’

  His eyes went a bit opaque at that, like curtains being drawn. He clearly didn’t like my line of questions. ‘One of them. Why?’

  ‘Because I’m going to call him and ask the same question I asked you: what is this mission really about?’

  He looked alarmed, as if I’d suggested spray-painting the Élysée Palace with the Stars and Stripes. ‘No. You should not do that. Please.’

  ‘Why not?’ Actually, as a freelance I could do what I wanted; I wasn’t part of the French or the US intelligence apparatus and if anybody had a degree of latitude in not following orders blindly without question, it was someone like me. I didn’t have the same need-to-know restrictions as flagged-or-badged field operatives, so I could walk away if I really felt this was an uncontrolled situation with a dead-end outcome.

  ‘Because he will not tell you … and if he thinks we are not in harmony he will recall me.’ He hesitated then said, ‘I need to finish this assignment. Recalling me will be the end of my career.’

  So he had a hard-line boss who’d yank him off the mission if he thought things weren’t going well. It wasn’t unusual in this profession and made practical sense. But Masse looked genuinely worried. ‘OK. But one of you had better fill me in. I was hired to escort you into and out of Mogadishu to retrieve a piece of electronic hardware, and we already have a dead body, a bunch of trigger-happy soldiers and you’ve switched the real deal for a fake. I’m not asking what’s on the hard drive, just the background to it. You owe me that much.’

  He gave it a good try, but in the end he caved. I think he could tell I was about to walk and he knew it was with good reason. I didn’t doubt that he’d find a way of going back in without me if it looked like he was going to get canned. Bring home the prize; that was the only thing he could do.

  ‘It’s about oil.’

  Oil. So much for my expert analysis. I should stick to shooting people.

  ‘The Somalis are desperate for oil revenue,’ he explained, ‘but they face huge obstacles, such as continued threats from al-Shabaab and similar groups, and a real danger of tankers moving in and out of the area being targeted by pirates. In addition they have a problem with negotiating contracts because the central government does not have a defined regulatory system in place to do that. There are too many different regional bodies involved, and any energy companies signing up to an agreement would be facing years of protracted negotiations and high costs.’

  ‘But somebody found a way round that?’

  ‘Yes. My country and yours. At least, commercial organisations within both countries along with the assistance of the Somali government. But it requires the cooperation of all sides. Without it there would be nothing.’

  Al-Shabaab. He hadn’t included them in the list but he’d mentioned them before; it was where the information on the hard drive had come from.

  ‘Don’t stop there.’

  He sighed but relented. ‘The various … discussions that have gone on have involved very few people – for obvious reasons. One of the main stumbling blocks was al-Shabaab and their affiliates. We managed to get to a man named Hussein Abdullah, a deputy emir in the region, and included him in the discussions. He was in charge while his leader is in hospital … but that man has since died, so the leadership situation is up for grabs.’

  ‘How did you get to him, exactly?’ It’s not as if you can simply walk up to a senior al-Shabaab member and ask for a private chat.

  ‘I don’t know how. That was accomplished by others working through back-channels. All I do know is, without his cooperation, the talks would not have begun. If successful, we would have had his guarantees that there would be no attacks on exploration and drilling sites in the region and free movement of oil.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘Everybody benefits.’

  ‘I’m sure they do. What does this Abdullah get out of it?’

  ‘He would have been paid a lot of money … and possibly other benefits – if he had survived.’

  ‘Survived?’ I realised he’d been talking in the past tense for a while, but I’d put that down to language.

  ‘His base was targeted in error by an American drone strike. Abdullah was killed and everything was destroyed. At first that was not a problem; all we had to do was find the next person in the chain of command and start again. Then it was revealed that Abdullah had been a student of information technology … and had probably recorded all the proposals and video discussions on a hard drive.’

  ‘They spoke to him on-line?’ Jesus, how naïve was that?

  Masse shrugged. ‘I know. Fortunately I was approached by a man who said he had been to the site of the attack and found a computer and hard-drive inside a strong box. He offered to sell them to me.’

  ‘And you said yes.’

  ‘Of course. At first I thought it was a scam. But as soon as I took a brief look at the hard drive I knew it was dynamite. If ever it became public that we were talking with a terrorist group for commercial reasons, without a full programme of explanation and benefits beforehand, the fall-out would be colossal. Enough, I think, to bring down our governments.’

  I wasn’t sure that was true; modern governments aren’t that fragile or honourable anymore, and soon find the means to spin their way out of sticky situations. But it would certainly raise an outcry and any potential commercial gains would be outstripped by the political and public fury. No wonder Masse and his bosses were keen to retrieve the information.

  It made me wonder if anybody outside the three countries involved knew anything about it; like the Russians, the British or the Dutch, to name three. Maybe they had decided they didn’t want to dirty their hands with terrorist-assisted oil money.

  ‘What will happen to this information once we get it back?’

  He shook his head. ‘That is above my head. All I have been told is that if it gets out it will be a disaster.’

  I stood up. Pity nobody had thought of that before. I was tempted to walk, but a part of me knew
that there was enough political trouble in the world already; adding another scandal of this proportion wouldn’t help anyone. ‘If I do agree to help, where do we go from here?’

  He looked instantly relieved, and smiled. ‘I’ll arrange everything and call you. We’ll fly in with the same pilot you used already. He makes lots of cross-border trips so he knows the best places to land. For an extra fee he’ll drop us close to Mogadishu and make sure we have transport waiting. Where are you staying?’

  I didn’t answer but he didn’t take offence. We’d exchanged phone numbers and that was all we needed for now. I left him to it and took a cab out to the airport to check on flights out and book a couple of seats at different times over the next three days. I figured we would need to be in Mogadishu as short a time as possible before we got noticed, after which we’d have to bug out fast. And that included not spending any longer in Djibouti than was necessary.

  It was getting late and the desks at the airport were quiet, so I got served quickly and efficiently. I picked up my confirmation stubs and began feeding in the details to my cell phone. As I finished doing that I turned to see a flush of passengers coming through from the arrivals hall. Those not dragging baggage carts and wheeled suitcases were hurrying through with the brisk step of the seasoned traveller heading for a lead position in the cab rank before all the available rides disappeared.

  One of them was Victor Petrus. He was busy talking and had his head turned the other way, so he didn’t see me. He looked all business, with one hand guiding another man by the elbow, and indicating a young guy in tan pants and shirt and a double-short haircut waiting the other side of a rope barrier. This one looked familiar and I soon realised why: it was one of the security guys I’d seen with Petrus at Mogadishu airport.

  Without thinking about it I lifted my cell phone and took snaps of all three men.

  When in doubt about anything you’ve seen, heard or been told, the simple rule is to check and double-check because your life and liberty may depend on it. Right now I had a bundle of facts I wasn’t sure about and no easy way to verify them. But something about the guy with Petrus had me puzzled. He was in his forties, with broad shoulders and the brisk walk of a fitness addict … or a military man. He had close-cut brown hair with grey flecks and the eyes of somebody unaccustomed to taking prisoners. As they passed by, I heard him say something about making a phone call from a secured landline.