“Please, sit down,” said Ibrahim through a fug of cigarette smoke. He fussed around with a coffee machine, grinding beans and finding some small china cups. “And how can I help?”
“The message we just received, did you read it?” I said.
“Of course,” replied the old Zambutan, eyes twinkling from his weathered, cadaverous face. “You need to know about the shipping office on the Via Roma?”
“Yes,” I laughed.
“It is owned by Julius Adoyo. He is from the same clan as President Aziz, so he is a crook.” Ibrahim shook his head, “Adoyo is as you say in English, a front, for the maharamia, the bandits and pirates.”
“How?” said Oz.
“If you need a vessel to get in or out of Afuuma you have three choices,” Ibrahim explained, counting them off on his bony fingers. “First, you can hope the anti-pirate ships are in the area, as they are now. Secondly, you can trust you have enough security on your ship. Third, you can pay Julius Adoyo to speak with the pirates to leave you alone.”
“What sort of cargo are we talking about?” I replied.
“Anything,” he shrugged. “The big shipping companies have gunmen on board nowadays, so the smaller operators need Adoyo, or criminals. If you need to smuggle people or drugs or weapons without the pirates seizing your ship, you pay Adoyo. So do the smaller traders who bring in goods from India.”
“He sounds well-connected,” I said, sipping my coffee.
“Oh, he is,” Ibrahim smiled. “The police are his dogs, the pirates respect him and the Jihadists fear him. He does not care if you are Christian or Muslim or Zambutan or Somali. He is a snake.”
“I think we’ll pay him a visit,” I said. “Can we just walk in there?”
“If you have balls the size of mangoes,” the old man chuckled, looking doubtfully at my groin. “If you do, make sure you have a proper business proposition for him, because he is a difficult man to fool. His business is next door to the police barracks, for extra protection.”
Oz drained his cup, smacking his lips. “If he’s from the same clan as the President, why isn’t he getting out of town? The rebels will be here soon. Surely he’ll be hanging from a rope.”
Ibrahim smiled, revealing a mouthful of gleaming teeth. “When General Abasi’s men arrive, Adoyo will meet them with tributes, girls and bribes. He will do business with them, and the General’s men will spare him. Adoyo can keep the peace in Afuuma for the rebels. They say his skin will shrug off a thousand bullets, that he enjoys the luck of a devil.”
We went back upstairs, the others still dozing. After I briefed them food arrived, plate after plate of rice, beans, fish, mutton and freshly-baked bread. We devoured it all, like we hadn’t eaten for a month. Of all Afuuma’s problems, a shortage of food wasn’t one of them.
Ibrahim’s daughter was called Fathiya, a slim, proud-looking woman in her thirties. She had high cheekbones and narrow, suspicious eyes. She watched us eat. “Have you killed many government troops?” she said finally.
“Yes,” Ruben said solemnly, “but not enough. I’m going to kill more.”
“Good,” Fathiya nodded, eyes flashing. “Both my sons are dead, murdered by those bastards.”
“My brother died forty-eight hours ago,” Ruben replied. “The Chinese killed him.”
Fathiya walked over to where Ruben was sitting and held his head, fingers ringed with henna tattoos. She kissed his cheeks and smiled. “Repay them in blood, promise me.”
He nodded, and she hurried from the room, eyes welling with tears.
It was getting dark outside as I gathered the men together. “We need to Close Target Recce and then establish an OP on Adoyo’s office,” I said. “It’s our only lead to Murray and the others. The problem being it’s right on top of the police barracks and Adoyo has them on the pay-roll.”
“Why is Hugo cutting about in Afuuma?” growled Ruben. “I thought they’d been taken prisoner.”
“That’s the million dollar question,” I replied.
“Damn right,” said Ruben angrily. “And when we find him he’s got some explaining to do.”
I agreed. And I was tempted to let Ruben ask the questions. It would be a short but bloody interrogation.
“The police station bothers me. Why don’t we just slip the local Peelers a grand, ask them to fuck off?” said Bannerman, to guffaws from the others. “It seems to work everywhere else around here.”
“If only,” I laughed. “Seriously, though, how much dough do we have left?”
We emptied our escape funds onto the bed.
We had over thirty thousand US dollars left. Ruben swore he’d ‘lost’ his, and I let the blatant theft go. It was an impressive amount considering the average yearly wage for a Zambutan was less than a hundred and fifty.
“So, what’s the plan?” said Oz.
“If you can recce with Duncan and come up with some ideas for an OP, me and Alex will go into the target and see what the score is. Ruben, you’ll run protection for us.” I saw the murder in Ruben’s eyes, wanted to keep him on a close leash.
“This might help,” smiled Bannerman suddenly, pulling a black plastic box from his Bergen. Inside was the spare PD-100 drone. He carefully took the palm-sized aircraft and checked it. “I’d forgotten about this wee fucker.”
Oz nodded. “We just need to sit out of sight and fly it in.”
“Cal, can we go back to the part where you and me go into Adoyo’s office?” said Alex, suddenly alarmed.
“Sure,” I replied. “You’re perfect.”
“Nobody’s ever said that to me before,” he grinned.
“I get it,” said Oz, raising an eyebrow. “Are we resurrecting Mikhail Susenov?”
The rest of the team looked puzzled.
“Yeah, sort of,” I grinned. “He was last seen being hunted in Kurdistan, right?” I still had the Russian ink.
“You’ve lost me Cal,” Bannerman deadpanned. “It sounds cool, though.”
“We’d better get going, Duncan,” said Oz. “This recce ain’t going to do itself.”
“Yeah, but what the hell are you talking about?” said Bytchakov.
“Welcome to the mafia, Sasha,” I said to him in Russian, slapping him on the back. “Tomorrow we’re going into the organised-crime business.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“I’d like to see Mister Adoyo,” I growled in heavily-accented English. I felt more confident being someone else, especially a gnarly Russian Mafioso like Mikhail Susenov.
Behind me Bytchakov, dressed in a cheap black suit and shades bought from the souk, glowered. And behind him was Ruben Grey, who needed no instruction on gangster-like behaviour. He loitered like a poisonous smell, a sneer on his lips and his hand on a gun.
We stood at the lock-studded door of Adoyo Shipping and Transit, a fortified blockhouse overlooking the beach. Last night’s recce with the miniature drone had revealed a path to the rear of the building, leading to the police station next door. A small fleet of luxury cars were stored in the compound, BMWs and Mercedes. Three guards came and went, all armed with submachineguns.
The first guard was a big Zambutan wearing green Vietnam-era body armour. He leant by the door smoking, an Uzi slung across his chest. A thick rope of gold hung at his throat, a pistol strapped to his belt. “Is Mister Adoyo expecting you?” he grunted.
I smiled. “I doubt it. A friend suggested he might help.”
“Who is your friend?”
Bytchakov was warming to his role. “Tell this dipshit we don’t talk to the fucking asshole on the gate,” he growled in Russian.
“What did he say?” said the guard.
“He’s getting impatient,” I shrugged. “Your attitude annoys him.”
The guard spat noisily at my feet. I was wearing the most garish and expensive shoes I could find in the souk that morning, pointed patent leather efforts with brass studs. They looked bloody horrible, but would suit your average knuckle-dragger from Solntsevo.<
br />
Ruben Grey pushed his jacket to one side, revealing the pistol stuffed in his waistband.
“You are behaving like an idiot,” I smiled. “We are Russian. You understand? We will end up killing you. We’ll piss on your corpse. Then we’ll speak to your boss anyway.”
“Fuck Russians. Who shall I say is asking after him?” the guard shrugged. He’d seen Bytchakov’s pistol, held loosely by his side and had wisely come to the conclusion that he was prepared to use it.
“My name is Mikhail Ivanovich Susenov,” I announced proudly, as if surprised he didn’t already know. The name was common as muck in Russia, roughly translating into Michael Ian Smith.
“Wait here,” barked the guard. He pressed the button on an intercom and muttered something in Swahili. A few moments later, the door swung open. “This one waits outside,” he said, pointing at Ruben.
I nodded at the ex-marine. “Please, Pyotr, grab a coffee, have a smoke.”
Ruben grunted his acknowledgement and stalked across the road, towards a kid selling sodas on the beach. It gave a good view of the blockhouse. Oz and Bannerman were parked up in the Toyota nearby, heavily armed and ready to go on Ruben’s signal.
The door to the blockhouse swung open, revealing a bare concrete corridor. A lonely fly did loop-the-loops around a naked bulb. Two wary guards stood at the end, Uzis readied. Both had spliffs, thick as my thumb, dangling from the corner of their mouths.
“Your weapons,” the first guard ordered, pointing to a rusty metal box.
“Sure,” I smiled. I surrendered the Chinese automatic I’d taken from the dead MSS guy. My knife was secured to my shin with medical tape, the suppressed Walther taped to the small of my back.
Swearing in Russian, Bytchakov also surrendered one of his many concealed weapons. We were escorted up a flight of stairs, to a plainly furnished office. It was cool inside, the only light coming from a window overlooking the sea.
Sitting behind a desk was a gaunt African man in his early sixties. He wore the local business uniform of slacks and an untucked white shirt with short sleeves. His hair and carefully trimmed beard were grey, eyes hidden behind shades. Apart from the gold-and-diamond Rolex strapped to his wrist, he looked like an accountant.
“I am Julius Adoyo,” he said in perfect English. He smiled and stood up, shuffling to a drinks cabinet. He had a pronounced limp. “It isn’t often we have the pleasure of Russian visitors in Zambute.”
“I am Mikhail,” I replied in the same language. “This is my associate, Sasha.”
Adoyo produced a bottle of vodka and three glasses. “I believe this is customary in your country,” he said pleasantly.
“Yes,” I grunted, taking the drink and tossing it down my neck. “Thanks, this is good vodka.”
It really was. Smirnoff Black, no doubt from some unfortunate cargo ship.
“I speak Russian,” said Adoyo in that language. “I learnt it at university in Volgograd, in the late seventies.”
“Russian or English is fine by me,” I replied.
“So, how can I help you gentlemen?” he smiled. He put his vodka down untouched and returned to his desk. He motioned at two faux-leather chairs and invited us to sit.
“We’ve been in Nairobi, looking for some people who owe my organisation money,” I lied. “We know they crossed into Zambute.”
“Then they are desperate,” said Adoyo. “Why else would you seek refuge here?”
“They think we won’t look for them here,” I replied. “We asked around for a man who might help us find them. Your name was mentioned.”
“Who gave you my name?” he said coolly.
I smiled, ignoring the question. “If you can help me, I can pay you a percentage of my finder’s fee. I can also put some profitable business your way.”
“What sort of business?” he replied.
“A business partner of mine wants to move thirty girls a month from Marsajir to Yemen. His clients enjoy beautiful young Zambutan women. Kenya is too well-policed and Somalia is impossible to work from. He is prepared to pay a fixed rate for safe passage from Afuuma to Aden.”
“And where do these girls end up?” asked Adoyo politely.
“Massage parlours and brothels,” I replied. “Very few in Russia, most go to Germany and Austria, where old pale men are prepared to pay extra for young, dark meat.” I gave the creepiest smile I could muster.
Julius Adoyo nodded and looked out of the window. He sat and played with a string of prayer beads for a moment. “I might be able to help you,” he said finally. “But first I would speak with your man who trafficks girls.”
“Of course,” I replied. I put the satellite phone on the table in front of me. “I would expect the same.”
“But first I would like an arrangement fee for my time,” he smiled. “This is customary in Zambute.”
I shrugged and pulled a wad of dollar bills from my pocket. “There’s a thousand.”
“Three thousand,” he said flatly. “This isn’t the Crimea. You don’t hold any sway here.”
“Two.”
Adoyo smiled, “a deal, Mikhail.”
I pulled another wad of cash and placed both on the desk in front of him. He took the money, counted it and locked it in a drawer.
I punched a number into the phone, an old contact I hadn’t seen since my last operation. It had taken an hour of frantic phone calls to find him, but when I did he was prepared to help. There was a condition, which I’d anticipated, that the favour would need to be returned.
“This guy is a German,” I said. “His name is Bernard.”
Bernard Schmidt, the people-trafficker who’d helped me take down The Hunt, knew it was better to have me as a friend than an enemy. We’d spoken the night before, to go through our story.
“Trust Bernie,” he’d laughed. “I know the top three traffickers in Kenya and Tanzania.”
I didn’t trust Bernie Schmidt, and never would. But he was all I had.
Adoyo took the offered satellite phone from me. I only caught one side of the conversation, which was in English. Adoyo asked about Bernie’s contacts in Zambute and quizzed him about money and logistics. As good as his word, the German had the right answers.
Finally Adoyo ended the call. “Your friend knows the right people, but his business is new to Zambute,” he said. “Working here is more difficult than Nairobi or Dar-es-Salaam. I might be able to help. We will see.”
“Excellent,” I said. I helped myself to more vodka. “Mister Adoyo, now we need to speak of my other problem.”
“Who are you looking for?”
“A young guy, Chinese-looking but really he’s English,” I said. “He is a con-man, a computer hacker. He has upset my organisation.”
“I presume that was a stupid thing to do,” said Adoyo.
“Very fucking stupid,” Bytchakov replied.
“The British are the stupidest bastards,” I shrugged. “They think the rest of the world plays by their idiotic fucking rules. This kid has ripped us off for twenty million dollars.”
I saw Adoyo’s snowy eyebrows appear above the rim of his shades. Everybody has got something that gives them a hard-on. I could tell that with Julius Adoyo it was the oldest aphrodisiac of them all: money. “Mikhail, what is your fee for recovering this stolen money?”
“A million-and-a-half US Dollars,” I shrugged. “I cut you into ten per cent of that when I have the kid. Not bad for a ten-minute meeting, eh?”
“You might need to do better than that,” Adoyo purred. “I might have done business with this young man and made assurances concerning his safety.”
I leant forward. “And you might need to be less fucking greedy, Mister Adoyo. I’m cutting you into a serious deal, just for giving up a name.”
He thought about it for a moment then took off his sun-glasses. One of his eyes was milky-white, the other golden brown. The effect was unsettling. “We have a deal,” he said, offering his hand. I shook it. It was soft and warm, a hand
that had never dug a ditch or laid a brick. He tightened his grip suddenly, fixing me with that dead white eye. “I learnt Russian at your KGB School for ‘Progressive Elements.’ This eye was lost under torture, when I was in the Zambutan Communist Party.”
I saw Bytchakov tense. Instruction for ‘Progressive Elements’ was old-school Soviet speak for terrorist training camps. President Aziz himself was a graduate of the KGB academy in Minsk.
“So don’t insult me, in my own office,” he continued calmly. “If you try to fool me, or are even thinking of not paying me, you will never get out of Afuuma alive. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” I said coolly in Russian. “But I would remind you, old man, to be a bit more respectful. I imagine we are all men with dirt under our fingernails.”
“Personally,” said Alex Bytchakov in his strangulated voice, going for an Oscar, “I’d welcome the chance to fight my way out of here and kill your pig-shit stupid guards.” He produced his hidden pistol and slapped it on the desk. “If I was going to kill you, I’d have done it by now.”
I took the satellite phone from the desk and pushed a button. “Mister Adoyo, our deal stands. Please tell me about the British guy and I won’t call my associates on the other side of the road. They have an RPG aimed at this window. I’ll walk out of here and you will die.”
Adoyo shuffled to the slit in the concrete wall.
“They’re in the Toyota pickup, do you see them?” I smiled.
The crook nodded and returned to his desk. “The British man calls himself John Moon, but he looks Chinese and speaks their language. He came to see me yesterday, asking for me to broker a meeting with a contact of mine. I also arranged safe passage out of Afuuma.”
“Where does he want to go?” I asked.
“Sri Lanka, after that I do not know. He’s paid me for his party to travel on a freighter carrying sugar to India. It is called The Cleopatra.”
“Who was the contact he wanted to meet?” Alex asked.
Adoyo looked uneasy. “A man called Muxsin Ahmed, a Somali.”
Alex Bytchakov slid his pistol back into his pocket, “and why is Muxsin Ahmed so important?”
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