Five minutes later Josh stood by an open patio door; rain poured outside but the noise was all but drowned out by the conversation and the music coming from speakers around the living room. Ambassador Dunnigan sat on a sofa ten feet away, chatting with an EU diplomat and the Ghanaian minister for the interior. Jay Costa was closer to the ambo; it was his job as the bodyman to get her up and out if the need arose. Chad was close to the entrance of the room, so Josh was here protecting the back patio access in case they needed to evacuate back to the motorcade parked outside.
Josh eyed the rest of Aldenburg’s eight-person security team from the EU, sprinkled around the room just as he, Jay, and Chad were. All but one were male, and all wore suits and ties. They appeared to be in their thirties and forties, carried themselves like soldiers, and looked like they knew what they were doing. They all remained well positioned but unobtrusive, and Josh respected that.
He saw a man in his fifties stroll into the room wearing a blue blazer and gray slacks. A glass of red wine in his hand, he appeared no different than a dozen others here at the party, meaning he wouldn’t have earned more than a single glance from Josh if not for one thing.
The guy was looking right at him.
Josh thought the new arrival might have been eyeing the patio behind him, but instead he walked directly to Josh, turned around, and began looking back into the crowded rooms in front of him, as if he were mimicking the DS special agent’s pose.
Josh fired a quick glance to the man on his right. “Evening,” he said.
“Evening. I’d shake your hand, but I know you’re working.” He spoke with an American accent; he sounded like he might have been from Chicago.
The man didn’t look familiar, but Josh hadn’t met half of the Americans at the embassy yet. “Something I can do for you?”
“You’re Josh Duffy.”
“I am.”
“Bob Gorski. Pleased to meet you.”
“Mr. Gorski.” Duff glanced his way again, looking the man over quickly. His first thought was he was CIA. In his contracting days in the Middle East and North Africa, Josh had become adept at determining the agencies that Americans worked for. That said, a lot of people he pegged as Agency personnel turned out to be defense attachés or DEA agents, so he knew better than to make too hasty a conclusion.
Gorski said, “I read all about your exploits in Mexico a couple of years ago. Gotta say, you impressed the hell out of me.”
Josh moved a step to his left when someone in front of him partially blocked his view of the American ambassador. Gorski followed, and Josh said, “A lot of what was written was wrong.”
Gorski chuckled and took a swig of his wine. “That’s a given. Anyway, despite inevitably fucking up some details, I believe the gist of what I read about what you went through over there. You showed a hell of a lot of guts, intelligence, and resolve. My mom used to tell me, ‘Bobby, you’ve got pluck.’ Well, kid, you’ve got pluck.”
Josh smiled politely, looking ahead. “Thank you.”
“I’m OGA, in case you hadn’t guessed.” OGA was “other governmental agency,” a low-profile way of saying “CIA” when you didn’t want to say “CIA” out loud.
“Had a suspicion,” Josh admitted. He noticed Costa looking his way now, then looking at Gorski and making a face of annoyance, as if he knew the man and didn’t think much of him.
To Gorski, Josh said, “Haven’t seen you around. You’re not Accra station, are you?”
“No, no. I’m just visiting. Heard you were here, so I just wanted to drop in and say hi.”
Josh was confused by this. “You came to this party at the French ambo’s house to meet me?”
“I did.” Then he shrugged. “And the caviar. You’ve got to try the toast points. I used to be stationed in Russia. It’s better there, but the French can definitely pull it off, I’ve got to say.”
“Are you trying to recruit me?”
Gorski laughed and tipped back more of his wine, and Josh began to wonder if the man might be a little drunk. “No. But having said that, if you ever want to make the leap over to the intelligence side, I’d steer you towards the appropriate people.”
“Thanks, but I’m good. My wife and I are trying to build the right life for our kids, and we get to do that at State…I bet your job makes that sort of thing tough.”
“Thrice divorced, no children, fifty-two. Not exactly the right guy to sell a family man on following in my footsteps.” He laughed good-naturedly. “Still…it’s nice to know there’s another good egg around here, even if you aren’t working for us.”
Josh moved a little as Dunnigan rose and began mingling around the room, and Gorski walked along next to him, grabbing a glass of white wine now from a tray on the bar.
“So, again—” Josh said, but Gorski broke in before he could repeat his question as to why Gorski had come to speak with him.
“I hear you’ll be going along with the ambo, the president, and the high rep on the development mission tomorrow.”
“I guess I won’t ask where you heard that, seeing who you work for.”
“Yeah, the details aren’t public knowledge for security reasons, but honestly, that hardly took any cloak-and-dagger work.” Gorski took one sip of the white, then put it down on the bar and grabbed a fresh pinot noir from a tray there. He said, “I wonder if I could ask a little favor.”
“A favor?”
“Yeah. I’m hearing some rumblings in the bush.”
Josh turned to him now. “Rumblings?”
“Yeah.”
“In the…in the bush?”
“That’s right. Ghana is quiet, for now, but the rest of West Africa is a shit show. Coups in Burkina Faso, Mali, Benin, and Niger; it’s not looking good for Togo. On top of that, there’s Islamic extremists all the fuck over the place.”
Josh’s brow furrowed. “Up north, yeah. Over in Nigeria, sure. But not here in Ghana.”
Gorski shrugged. “There are a lot of factors coming together we need to keep an eye on. The economy is in the shitter, the politics over in the east, on the other side of the Volta River, foreign influence, foreign money. I just thought you could let me know if you saw or heard anything…interesting.”
“Are you talking about possible unrest here in the country? A danger to the delegation?”
Gorski shook his head. “We’ve got absolutely nothing indicating any uprising in the short term. The rebels don’t have weapons, makes it tough to force anyone’s hand in Africa with nothing more than a machete.”
“That’s how they did it in Rwanda,” Josh replied, still watching the ambo and those around her.
Gorski shook his head. “No, they did it in Rwanda by having tens of thousands of committed killers with machetes. Here? If there’s two hundred fifty military-aged males out there in the east who want to make trouble for Ghana I’d eat my hat, and again, they’re all but unarmed.”
Gorski grabbed another caviar toast point off a passing tray. “But the problem isn’t really the rebels. It’s the Chinese.”
Josh kept his attention on his duties, but he was most definitely interested in what the CIA officer had to say.
“How so?”
“They’re pissed about the new port we’re building, the dam we’re refurbing, the schools, the industrial park. Hell, all the infrastructure the EU and the U.S. are supporting here. They don’t like us nudging our way back into partnerships, and they don’t like President Amanor in Jubilee House making nice with the West at the expense of Chinese access to the gold and diamond mines here. Beijing doesn’t have the money to blow to counter us dollar for yuan, but I can’t help but wonder if it might be in their interests to make some trouble. We’ve seen and heard inciting things, in print and on the radio. Just low-level bitching about Accra. About President Amanor and his cabinet. Stuff on social media, too, way too sophisticated to come out of the jungles of fucking Togo.
“Professor Addo and his radio show are pumping up the anger at Accra, but we think all this hype is being produced in Beijing.” Gorski downed a healthy sip of his pinot noir and said, “It’s exactly the same shit we used to do in Central America, everywhere else.”
By “we,” Josh took that to mean the CIA.
“What are you asking me to do?”
“Like I said. Just let me know if you see or hear anything.”
“I’m just an ARSO. I’ve been in country like…eleven days. I’m not…I’m not whatever it is you are asking me to be.”
“I’m just asking you to be another set of eyes. You’d be scanning for threats even if I didn’t ask you to. I’m suggesting you pull out your Iridium sat phone and give me a ring if you see something, anything, that might be of interest to an old Africa hand who’s tracking Chinese involvement in the area.”
Josh didn’t get it. “There are five American dips heading out on this movement, including the ambo. There’s two other DS agents who are way senior to me, there’s our Foreign Service National Investigator and our Local Body Guard force of four knowledgeable ex-cops. Why come to me for help?”
Gorski seemed to consider this, then said, “Because I figure you know what trouble looks like better than most.”
Josh raised an eyebrow, but he kept his attention on Dunnigan as she chatted with partygoers. Finally, he said, “You’ve got a card?”
“No, but I’ve got your sat number. I’ll send you a message so you have mine.”
Josh nodded, though he didn’t know how the CIA had the number to his satellite phone.
Gorski said, “One more thing. In all your years as a merc, did you ever—”
“I wasn’t a mercenary. I was a private military contractor.”
“Right. Okay, in all your years as a private military contractor, did you ever run into a guy named Conrad Tremaine?”
Duff’s eyes widened. He stopped scanning the room and turned to face Gorski. “South African?”
“Yeah.”
Josh nodded slowly, his eyes suddenly unfixed. “Yeah. I worked under him for a while when I contracted for United Defense.”
Gorski seemed to know this already. “You were working for United when you lost your leg in Lebanon, right?”
Duff sighed. This guy knew everything somehow. He said, “Yeah, but I knew Tremaine before, when I was in Afghanistan. He made quite an impression.”
“Positive or negative?”
“Definitely negative. He’s a merc. Always was. He’s a piece of shit. Got fired for working with some guys in big Army to steal a consignment of rifles. Tried to rope me and a few other Joes in with him, got a guy killed in the process.”
“Damn,” Gorski said softly.
Duff shook his head to clear it of the memories. “Tremaine lost his contract, but I heard he found another gig soon after.”
Gorski nodded at this. “He now works for a company called Sentinel.”
“Never heard of them.”
“You have. When Armored Saint, the company that fucked you over in Mexico, went bankrupt, the principals and a lot of the contractors joined up with former United Defense employees, and they re-formed under the name Sentinel Security.”
Josh knew none of this; he’d been too focused on his future to pay attention to things that he was sure were firmly in the past. He wasn’t a contractor anymore, and never would be again.
“Why are you asking me about Tremaine?” For the first time since he’d entered the French ambassador’s residence, his full attention was directed at something other than his duties here protecting Dunnigan.
The CIA man stepped closer. “He was photographed by an agent of mine at a grass landing strip in Togo two and a half weeks ago. We don’t know what he was doing there, but where he goes, trouble often follows. If you don’t know already, Togo’s border with Ghana…how should I put it?”
“Does not exist,” Duff said.
“That’s exactly how I should put it.”
Josh just nodded. Slowly he looked back to the ambo.
Gorski said, “Anyway, if you run into any mercs out there on your little junket into the bush, if you hear rumblings of China or tall tales of armed rebels or South African hired guns…or if you just want to talk…give me a ring.”
Gorski patted Josh on the shoulder, put his half-empty wineglass down on a side table next to a sofa, and headed for the front door.
When Ambassador Dunnigan stepped into the ladies’ room ten minutes later, Jay Costa shouldered up to Duff outside the door. “I see you met Crazy Bob.”
Josh turned to his boss. “Why do you call him crazy?”
“He’s been in Africa for twenty years, all the hell over. Was station chief in Mogadishu, Deputy Chief in Angola. Now he’s kind of a roving shit-starter. Tied to Africa desk at Langley and not to a station on the continent. He’s always out there chasing worst-case scenarios, making trouble at whatever embassy he shows up in.” Costa laughed. “Langley loves him for some reason. He’s got friends on the Seventh Floor, I guess, but Dunnigan and the other ambos on the continent won’t give him the time of day.”
Josh said, “He mentioned a South African contractor I used to know. Said he was seen recently just over the border in Togo.”
Costa squeezed Duff’s forearm and widened his eyes like he was having a heart attack. “A mercenary was seen in Africa? Stop the fucking presses.” The older man shrugged with a little laugh. “It’s always like that with Gorski. He ‘connects’ a few dots that don’t really connect, and then he says all hell’s about to break loose. He called it right a couple of times over the years, a blind squirrel finds a nut, but he’s been wrong a lot more than he’s been right.
“Look,” Costa added, “we got our briefing from Accra station about this movement tomorrow, and they are the in-country experts.” He added, “Don’t let Crazy Bob’s conspiracies waste space in your brain.”
Josh, Chad Larsen, and Jay Costa followed Dunnigan into the gallery a minute later, and here Josh saw his wife speaking with her boss and some of the other political officers.
He decided right then and there he wasn’t going to tell Nikki about his conversation with the CIA man. There was nothing to worry about, and he didn’t want to burden her, because she had a lot on her plate for this trip already.
He himself put most of what “Crazy Bob” said out of his mind, but he couldn’t stop thinking about Tremaine.
Gorski had been right about one thing, of this Josh was sure. Where Tremaine goes, trouble follows.
Whatever the hell Condor was doing, Josh hoped like hell that the son of a bitch would stay over the border in Togo and do it there.