Jorge blinked at the confirmation and then looked reflexively at his wristwatch. His eyes widened as he realized he really was a full half hour late. Somehow he’d set his watch incorrectly on the plane just before landing in Paris.
“Sit down now then, ah, Monsieur Ngouabi?” he said to the contact. “We must look like we know each other. Here, sit.” Jorge was gesturing at the chair.
The contact look around casually. He was looking for anyone who looked out of place. He was familiar with Marseille, and the demeanor of its locals and its tourists. He was not sophisticated, but he was keenly wary. He saw only the usual mix, at this time of early evening. He placed his own Carrefour shopping bag on the paving stones and sat down.
Destin Ngouabi was a man of some means and possessed excellent contacts, at least in the narrow and dim world in which he moved. Ngouabi was a professional smuggler. Diamonds and other precious stones, illegal ivory and horn, people; it was all of a piece to him. He had no other side business or front business to act as a buffer in lean times. He had been born forty years earlier in Brazzaville, in Republic of Congo. His father, a businessman and an ethnic Kongo who had owned several dry goods and food market shops, had been killed during a violent civil uprising over military and political control over the part of the Congo river that separated Brazzavile from Kinshasa on the other side in Democratic Republic of Congo.
Destin had been raised by a mother and two older sisters who had managed to hang onto two of the shops. Destin was a child of civil war, a child of the struggles between the Kongo and Bantu tribal power struggles that arose after cessation from the influence of France. He was also a child of the civil wars for independence. When the press gangs came in the night to draft young boys and teenagers for the republic’s army, his mother and sisters had hidden him for days in an insect infested hole in the dusty yard behind their modest house. He’d nearly died of exposure and dehydration. But his mother had performed her act fiercely for the repeated visits of the military’s abduction squads. When the squads finally left Brazzaville, Destin was allowed out of his awful hiding place only during the night and only escorted by one of his sisters. When the rape gangs began their hideous prowling, even that little bit of freedom was again restricted and he was joined in the hiding place by his two sisters.
His mother had instructed him repeatedly after the military was brought partially under control: Do not ever tell anyone where you come from. Let your life be a mystery to all who come before you and to all whom you encounter. Remember the lessons of your life. Trust no one, take what you need to live, work honestly when you can, always take for yourself first so that you can then provide for your family. Do what is necessary to protect what you gain. He had never forgotten the lessons. He was a hard man in a hard world. His calmness came from a clear knowledge of the inevitability of life and of death.
“It is good to meet you, sir,” Destin intoned. “Do you have something for me?”
“Take seven phones from my bag and put them in your own bag,” Jorge said quickly and quietly. “Destroy your old phones. I say again, destroy your old phones. Attempt to reuse your old phones or sell them or keep them for any reason and we will drop our association with you. Is that understood?”
“It is,” the contact replied. “You are, ah, always an, ah, insistent kind of people. We are experienced, Mr. Benson. We know the danger of retaining the old phones. We know what to do. Mon homme, est-ce tout pour aujourd'hui?” As he asked if there was anything else that Jorge needed of him, he was bending down, taking seven phones from Jorge’s bag and putting them into his own.
“Non, rien de plus. Warehouse One,” was all Jorge replied. “Time is short. I, uh, apologize for my lateness, Mr. Ngouabi. Good luck, then.” Jorge shook his head slightly, and then nodded his goodbye. The contact stood and smiled at the apparently nervous Mr. Benson, turned on his heel without another word and walked warily away toward the busy taxicab rank at the top of Vieux-Port.
Jorge watched the contact cover the seventy-five meter distance quickly and get into a waiting taxi at the head of the rank. Jorge checked his watch. He had to rush to the next cafe location to distribute the next allotment phones and he was already late. Once he was done with all that, he would check with his surveillance man to be sure that none of the contacts had been followed to their warehouse destinations. Only then would he travel to each of the four warehouses in turn to ensure that all of the shipping documents, packing and crates were in order.
To Jorge Tudor, smuggling was not a crime but rather an art form. He really didn’t care what he was smuggling or who he was helping. Jorge disliked this phone distribution task. It was not his specialty. Meeting strangers was a variable that he did not like. Jorge saw only problems in such open-air meetings. To Jorge, clandestine was just that; secret, unseen and certainly the opposite of broad daylight meetings in the middle of a world-class tourist trap. But Marc Dominican had insisted, again, so Jorge had co-operated.
“There has to be a way out from under Dominican!” he exclaimed just as a middle-aged tourist couple passed him as he double-timed to the next cafe. He realized, too late, that he was so angry that he was talking out loud. He clamped his mouth shut, nodded at the two tourists, and quickened his pace toward the next stop.
***
The evening sun was still quite warm as Jorge walked the short distance up Rue de la Paix Marcel Paul to Le Moyen-Orient cafe. It was literally around the corner from La Galiote. The outside tables would be well out of the sun at that hour, so Jorge knew he’d feel more comfortable being away from the bright blaze in which he’d been sitting at the place on Quai de Rive Neuve.
He arrived after only another minute of walking to find that at 19:45 the restaurant and the patio were almost fully packed. It was unusual for Marseille; the restos didn’t usually load up until 20:30, but the tourists seemed to be swarming the small side street. After another couple of minutes Jorge managed to catch a waiter’s eye, holding up two fingers to indicate his need. To Jorge’s surprise, the waiter waved him over to a tiny table jammed up against the wall of the building that jutted half a meter into the patio area. It was a terrible table but Jorge wasn’t going to be there long.
As the waiter spread a white table cloth and plunked down a straggly flower in a thin vase, Jorge ordered a bottle of house red with two glasses.
“Alors, monsieur,” Jorge rapped in his clipped French, “Seule une bouteille de vin rouge s'il vous plaît. Vin de la maison. Deux verres. Je ne serai pas ici depuis longtemps.”
The waiter frowned, very briefly, at the demanding patron who’d just announced that he wouldn’t be around long but then shrugged and nodded as he took off to keep up with the busy pace. If all the American wanted was a bottle of wine and two glasses, he would not linger and take up a table in the tourist trap. That suited the waiter just fine.
Before Jorge could fully establish his bearings, a squat, swarthy-looking, middle aged man wearing a linen Trilby pulled down low enough at the brim to obscure his eyes, had pushed his way through the clutch of people gawking at the menu near the patio entrance and was wedging himself into the small remaining chair next to Jorge.
“Hallo, Benson,” the man growled in a cigarette-roughened baritone, saying the false name as though he’d been referring to Jorge that way for years, “and how goes the world?”
The man was Orest Demarchuk, formerly of Ukraine, formerly of the upper administrative circle of the old and now long-disbanded Soviet Ministry of General Machine Building, former influential step-and-fetch-it for Yeltsin’s ultimately failed regime. When Gorbachev had declared “No Mas!” Orest had taken—or more accurately, stolen—tens of millions in manufactured machine parts (along with the expensive machines used to fabricate the parts) and sold the whole works for hard currency to several of the actual and soon-to-be breakaway states. Most of the newly independent states hated the suddenly defunct soviet regime. They’d hated Gorbachev for his perceived mismanagement, and they
hated Yeltsin afterward for hanging on too long and embarrassing them by association. Orest had spoken their language. “Take what is yours for a fair price! What will Moscow do? Threaten you with an army full of soldiers they can’t pay? Drop bombs on you from aircraft that have no fuel?”
They paid, and paid well. U.S. dollars and British pounds were the common currency while Yeltsin was still in power and supported by his hand-picked series of puppet prime ministers. But young Orest Demarchuk was noticed by Yeltsin’s business-based PM appointee and that would never do. The PM was vaguely honest, and was looking to make a name for himself. Orest would have bolted out of Moscow and out of the country if not for Yeltsin’s appointment of Pavel Sergeyevich Grachev, known behind his back as ‘Pasha Mercedes’ because of his taste for German luxury vehicles.
Grachev was a disgraced former minister of defense, brought back by Yeltsin into the Kremlin fold and appointed as chief military adviser at Russia's state-owned arms exporter at the time, Rosvooruzhenye. While Orest was still a wet-behind-the-ears hick from a small town outside Kherson, newly hired as a junior administrator in the Ministry, Grachev had started ‘borrowing’ Orest for special bookkeeping assignments. Orest knew a lucrative scam when he saw one, and nearly got in on some of the action himself. Dear old Grachev had taken one for the team when his corrupt and ignorant military management and the horrible messes he’d made of Chechnya had finally come to the alcohol-besotted attention of Yeltsin and the Duma. Orest had been questioned. They had interrogated him fairly roughly because of his association with Grachev, but he didn’t give up his occasional boss. When Yeltsin brought Grachev back into the fold, Grachev remembered his friends and Orest got his chance to make some real money.
It had all come to a sudden end when Putin came to power and decided that Rosvooruzhenye was better in his hands than Grachev’s, let alone the hands of the actual government of Russia. Rosoboronexport was born, and Orest knew when to cut and run. Putin was nobody to mess with and Orest already had tens of millions in hard currency well-hidden outside the country.
“What are you doing here?” Jorge exclaimed, then quickly lowered his voice. “You’re showing up personally for a pick up? Where’s Alb . . . I, uh, I mean where’s your guy?”
“I heard from mutual friend, actually,” Orest replied casually. His English grammar and syntax still lacked refinement. “And he think my presence may help cement difficult connections later tonight. I travel on my, eh, special passport and I have security. I am unconcerned.” Demarchuk said “special passport” as though he had only one false ID package to his name. In fact, Demarchuk had enough enemies to cause him to develop a carload of diversionary identities over the years.
Jorge looked around. Sure enough, it was easy to spot Orest’s security team. Jorge spotted four for sure, and he suspected at least two more. Expensive suits, open necked white shirts, combat boots, elbow and knee pads showing as telltale bulges, wary eyes and grim looks. It was a type and breed and it said stay away as clearly as a giant LED sign.
“Why would our mutual friend contact you directly? It is unusual to say the least.”
“Evidently,” Orest said, tightly, as he sniffed at the open wine bottle, “our friend’s political contact react negatively to recent, eh, incursion in Cameroon? Tak?” he said, using the Ukrainian word for yes. “Disruption of operations, especially by American operative known for his, eh, efficiency? Is an unanticipated wild card.”
Jorge was still running late and he couldn’t afford any chit-chat. But he was suddenly vaguely alarmed.
“And is their information suggesting that this, um, wild card, is still on the job? I certainly knew about the incursion, but it was not clear whether the local authorities or Interpol or the operative’s own people pulled him out. Or some other agency?”
“Not pull out,” Orest said quietly, shaking his head. He looked up from the wine bottle to look directly into Jorge’s eyes. “What you think of that, eh, Benson?”
Jorge was angry about having been forced into the field, but he was experienced and he was not new to this world. He had gotten himself under control before Orest looked up.
“I think that we are being tracked, then,” Jorge replied with a slight smile, nodding his head. “That is what I think. But my drop locations and the assembly points are secure. I chose them myself. The suppliers only found out about the locations yesterday, which was at a time when the operative had to be in-transit. We are secure.”
Orest stared at Jorge for a few more moments, then shook his head.
“I advise you double-check arrangements,” he said mildly. “Eh? Make some calls. Find out who talks to who.”
“Warehouse two. Your allotment is eight units,” he said to Orest. “Take them please.” Which is what Orest did. “Destroy all existing phones. No exceptions.”
“Of course,” Orest said as he began to squeeze past the tables on the crowded patio. He stopped suddenly, and turned back to Jorge for a moment. “You, eh, you try to relax, Benson. You give yourself heart attack.”
Jorge left twenty euros on the table, grabbed the phone bag and stepped over the low railing of the patio as he pulled out his own secure sat phone and punched in a series of numbers. It took a full minute for the first clicks and buzzes to begin in the earpiece, indicating that the call was connecting. It was another half minute before a familiar voice answered.
“Aye?” It was the voice Jorge expected to hear, but the situation felt fluid after Demarchuk’s suggestion that there might be a network leak amongst Jorge’s people.
“It is your friend,” Jorge replied.
“I have no friends,” came the pre-arranged response.
“I have heard that someone uninvited wants to meet us.”
“No,” came the response after a brief pause, “that is not so. I have not seen any interest. I have not met or spoken with anyone.”
“You are sure?” Jorge asked insistently. “This is important. We do not need anyone new as you know.”
“I am sure. I am well. I know of no uninvited guests.”
“Thank you for your time, then. Do call me if you hear anything.”
“I will, of course.”
Jorge rang off. He was annoyed that several of his colleagues were worried that the mysterious agent who’d made an appearance in Cameroon might be here. They panic easily, Jorge thought as he was navigating the tourist crowds to get to his next drop as quickly as possible.
In Douala, in the office CamFreight Express, the sergeant of police jammed the muzzle of his sidearm a little harder into the neck of the small-time shipping broker who’d just hung up the phone after his call with Jorge Tudor.
Chapter Twelve
At 20:17, Bishop’s laptop erupted with a shockingly loud screech. It wasn’t particularly loud. Bishop had just been sitting for so long in utter silence that the little beep-beeeep sounded like a banshee in his earphones.
Bishop wheeled around in the tattered and creaky old office chair to scan the laptop screen. Sure enough, there was plenty of movement at warehouse one. A Marseille taxi had pulled up in front of the warehouse and triggered the motion sensor connected to the exterior camera. As Bishop peered at the little window, a medium-sized Ford Luton box truck pulled up to the large warehouse roll-up door. The passenger who’d gotten out of the taxi was very tall and walked with a bit of a swagger as he headed to the driver’s side of the Luton.
“Huh,” Bishop said aloud, tapping the screen lightly. “Looks like we’ve got some ex-military here.” Bishop couldn’t see the man’s face, but he felt a vague sense of recognition. The tall man spoke briefly to the truck driver, then walked over to a control panel mounted on the outside wall, inserted a key, and hit a button. The truck proceeded into the warehouse as soon as the door was high enough to clear the box. As the door started its downward descent, Bishop switched the window to the interior feed.
The truck had barely come to a full stop when the passenger side door opened. Two men g
ot out and went to the back of the truck. As they were opening the rolling door of the box, the driver got out as well and walked over to the tall man.
“Destin,” the driver spoke first, “you look well. How is your mother these days?”
Bishop sat up a little straighter in his chair. He’d spent hours poring over file after file of every known smuggler and player that Interpol had been able to provide. Destin Ngouabi, unmistakeable now. Not surprised that you’re involved, but why are you actually at a live drop site in the first place? You never do this sort of exchange or hand-off in person. Who has you so directly involved?
“Thank you, Archange. She is quite well. Just so. And you? What word is there from Douala?”
“We lose some men,” Archange the driver replied less enthusiastically, “but that is business. Mkutshulwa was a casualty. He is quite dead.”
“How did it happen? One of his own?”
“No. Not at all.” Archange paused for a moment to yell at his crew who were struggling with something in the back of the truck. “Eh, comme ça marche, quoi!?”
“Oui, bon Archange! C’est trop cool, Archange,” one of the men called out. “La caisse est lourde!”
Archange, shaking his head slightly, turned back to Destin. “When will the contact be here? I was to be paid directly, but I don’t see anyone here but us.”
“As far as can be told,” Destin replied, “the man is running late. We are in the clear, I believe, so we can be patient. Besides this, you are not due at Port-du-Vos for at least three more hours. The logistics manager who controls this warehouse has been well paid. No one will be here until dawn. We will be long gone by that time.”
***
Bishop was recording it all. A few phrases here and there were muffled, but the activities were clear enough. The contact would arrive to check and tag this shipment, which meant to Bishop that the contact would also likely be checking and tagging the shipment drops that were supposed to appear in the other three warehouses.
All The Big Ones Are Dead Page 15