Kang Shikun entered the restaurant at ten p.m., alone, wearing a blue blazer and brown slacks. He carried nothing in his hands, and he had no weapon stowed; even his mobile phone and his satellite phone were locked in the glove compartment of the Land Rover he’d parked in front of the establishment.
This place was called Sapphire Valley: a sprawling, parklike wedding, party, and recreational venue on the outskirts of Kumasi, Ghana’s second city. It was owned by Chinese interests and also contained a restaurant and bar on its expansive grounds.
There were a lot of Chinese in Kumasi these days, even with heightened trade tensions between Beijing and Accra, so he didn’t feel out of place as he made his way past a wedding reception full of well-dressed and well-to-do locals and through the gardens, then finally into the back room of the restaurant.
He knew his way around here, and he knew the protocol. Two local men in casual attire met him just inside the doorway; he raised his arms and they frisked him. They weren’t looking for guns or knives or bombs, Kang knew; they were looking for recording devices, hence their search was disrespectfully thorough.
But the Shenzhao Star Global executive from Beijing remained, as always, composed and relaxed.
He was waved through by the men, who then stepped outside and shut the door behind him.
Kang was not alone. The sole other person in the room was in his fifties, with a proud head of black hair that grayed at the temples, a broad chest, and a posture that gave away the fact that he was military, even though he wore an authentic hand-embroidered black, gold, and red dashiki shirt, casual drawstring pants, and leather sandals.
He offered no smile to the man from Beijing, but he did extend a hand and gave a strong shake.
Kang said one word as a greeting. “General.”
Brigadier General Kwame Boatang was the leader of the nation’s Central Command, one of three commands that divided the nation. Northern Command saw the most action; there were extremist elements in Burkina Faso that made their way down over the border and had been causing significant trouble for the Ghanaian military there. Southern Command was in the capital, and although it was considered the showpiece of the military, Kang had determined major weaknesses in their structure, their positioning throughout the city, their readiness, and, perhaps most importantly for his aims, their resolve.
But Central Command was, by Beijing’s estimation, solid. It wasn’t the biggest, the flashiest, or the most battle-hardened of the three commands, but it was the most effectively led, it had the most resolute troops, and, with its recent acquisition of infantry fighting vehicles given to the Ghana Armed Forces by the European Union, it was the most mobile of the three commands in the nation.
Boatang’s force did have one flaw, but Kang saw it as an asset and not a liability.
Corruption in its leadership.
Organized crime elements from China were pervasive all over Africa; they sought minerals, gems, cheap human capital, and oil, and one of the mainland Triads had gotten to Boatang five years earlier, offering him an under-the-table stake in a gold mine in nearby Bibiani if only he’d look the other way while they extorted from businesses in the center of the nation and conducted organized gambling and prostitution.
Boatang accepted the bribe with little thought at the time. After all, his job wasn’t policing the central part of the nation, it was the constant preparation to repel any attacks from a foreign aggressor.
But the police in Kumasi had been similarly corrupted by the Triads, and soon Boatang saw that what the Chinese had bought from him was his promise to look the other way as they operated as they wished in his territory.
The gold mine in Bibiani produced riches for the general, riches the Chinese helped him bank offshore in the Seychelles, and as his accounts grew, the fifty-five-year-old career military man had been satisfied with the relationship overall.
Until nine months ago.
It was then he’d learned that Accra was looking into his dealings with the Triads; for the next few months he’d stayed occupied speaking to investigators, protesting his innocence to his superiors in the capital, and fearing that his world would soon come crashing down.
And then, six months ago, the small mysterious man from Shenzhao Star Global showed up.
Boatang was called to a meeting here at Sapphire Valley, where he usually met with the 24K, the Triad arm who bribed him, so he assumed it would be a normal meeting with the normal participants. That meant he’d expected another one of the big tough Asian mobsters who he’d been dealing with for years to walk into the room, but instead a smaller man in a business suit greeted him with a handshake and a smile, and then he ordered a glass of chardonnay from a waiter.
Boatang could tell immediately that this individual was no Triad. Kang was more urbane, more thoughtful, more strategically minded, more big-picture-thinking.
It didn’t take him long to figure out that this man was a spy.
In that first conversation, Kang gave Boatang intricate details into the investigation against him, things that could have only been known if there were recording devices in the investigators’ offices.
But more importantly, he also proposed a way out for the popular general.
Kang had said, in a soft tone that Boatang would learn to always expect, “They have you dead to rights. There is only one way to keep yourself out of prison.”
Boatang’s voice gave a hint of his desperation. “What is that?”
“You need to control the investigators. You need to control the courts.”
The general had given a rumbling but unsure laugh. “How can I control the courts?”
“Simple. You become president.”
General Boatang was a man of great ambition, and as surprised as he had been to hear this suggestion out of the spy from Beijing, he didn’t send him on his way, because he wanted to know more.
And over the course of several more meetings the plan had been laid out, and the plan had been agreed to.
And now, a half year later, the plan was days away from going into motion.
Tonight they spent the first half hour of the meeting discussing pleasantries, politics, gossip. Kang did the vast majority of the talking. Calmly, with complete self-assuredness. Boatang, for his part, appeared nervous as he ignored his food and sipped scotch.
Boatang was tense tonight, excited by his prospects but nervous about what was to come. “This is very dangerous for me personally. I should not have worked with your people from the beginning, Kang.”
“You did not work with my people. You worked with 24K. The most notorious Triad in the world. I was thousands of miles from here when that all took place. If you are having second thoughts of our plan, General, don’t blame them on me. I am the one who is offering you a way out.”
Boatang had grown mistrustful of the spy, just as he had grown more desperate to find a way out of his perilous legal situation.
He said, “You tell me you will put me in power. How many other people have you told you are going to put them in power?”
Kang laughed at this. “Only one. I told the professor that he would be ensconced in Jubilee House by Sunday night.”
Kwame Boatang flashed a little smile finally, the first of the evening. He said, “If Addo really is a professor, then I’m very glad my kids didn’t study under him. The man is a fool.”
Kang shrugged. “You know academics. The plan I gave him is as intricate as anything he might read in a history book, and he believes what he reads. So why should he doubt me?”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because you are the linchpin. You are the only man with the military power to take the capital, the charisma to lead the nation, and the intelligence to develop a better working relationship with my country, sending the West on their way.”
This had all been decided, it had all been agreed to, but Boatang knew that tonight would be the last chance he had to voice his concerns. “Let me see if I have this right. Addo’s rebels, they will cut power to Accra by controlling the dam, placing mines in it so the army cannot respond. Then they will begin attacking police stations and military checkpoints on the way to the capital. Once there, they will effectively tie up Southern Command, with help from soldiers of fortune you’ve brought into the country, until I arrive with my mechanized forces. My troops will rout the rebels, your mercenaries will slip away, and I will be left standing in the capital, victorious.”
Kang said, “President Amanor and General Tetteh from Southern Command leave late Friday evening for meetings in Brussels. They’ll be in Europe when their nation is attacked. My people will have footage of them lunching at a Michelin-starred restaurant. It’s from an earlier visit, but it will make them look hopelessly out of touch, weak and floundering in response to the attack from Western Togoland, the power outage, and a few other tricks I have planned. My social media campaign will be ready to go for when power is restored, and you will be presented to the nation as the new way forward.
“Parliament will call for an election, you will win, and you will be sitting in Jubilee House within three months of today.”
Boatang hadn’t touched his meal, but he downed the remainder of the scotch that had been sitting in front of him the entire time Kang had been eating. Then he stood and said, “This had better work, Kang. For both of our sakes.”
Kang shrugged. “It will work. But it will work for your sake, not for mine. I will leave Ghana when this is over, move on. You are the one who stands to gain with success, and lose with failure.”
Kang Shikun could see the same look in the general’s eyes as he’d seen in the eyes of the young rebel commander. A lust for power that for so long had been out of his grasp.
The Chinese operative could tell he had played the correct chess pieces for this match.
They shook hands. Boatang said, “Will I see you again?”
Kang shook his head. “In person, never. I’ll be out of Accra by the time the smoke clears, but I’ll be supporting you in the shadows until you attain the presidency. Then you will forget about me.”
The Ghanaian general nodded. “I truly hope so.”
Minutes later the intelligence operative was back behind the wheel of his black Land Rover, heading for the airport. He’d hop a quick flight to Accra, then be picked up by his people and taken to his operating base in the hills to the north of the capital, from where he would watch his coup take place.
As he drove, he allowed himself a moment to think over what was about to happen.
His plot, he would freely admit, was an utterly cynical one. First, arm and poorly train rebels, promise them they had Chinese and mercenary support for an attack on the capital, and popular and military support, as well, and then use Ghanaian troops in China’s back pocket to eradicate the rebels and seize power with “legitimacy.”
And Kang would also employ Islamic extremists to both tie up the armed forces in the north of the country and sow panic and chaos in the south.
Just like with Conrad Tremaine, the general didn’t know about the jihadis, because Kang knew neither man would willingly work with them, but Kang’s relationship with Iran had given him an opportunity to create the bedlam and confusion in the capital he needed to ensure his plan’s success.
Boatang’s people would destroy the small extremist cells when they got there, but by then the jihadis would have the public utterly terrified and beyond disdainful of the government.
For all this to happen, for it all to work as planned, Kang Shikun knew that several things had to be true.
One, Tremaine’s men needed to be a true force multiplier. The seventy mercenaries were a much more potent force than the four hundred forty-eight rebels, and by moving Sentinel around the country in small teams, they could make it appear as if the rebel army was materializing from all directions, perhaps even rising up out of the local citizenry.
Another thing that had to happen was for all communications in the country to be disrupted, at least for the first several hours of the coup. This would allow Kang’s chess pieces to move to the most advantageous locations on the chessboard, so that when comms were restored, the coup would be a fait accompli.
Tremaine’s people would deal with mobile and landline infrastructure, but Kang had his own Chinese technical specialists here to help jam satellite communications, television, Internet, and cable.
Kang Shikun had been involved in three other coups in the past four years, but Ghana was different. A stable democracy, a better infrastructure than the other countries Kang had worked in.
But while Ghana presented more challenges, it also presented more opportunities. Ninety gold mines dotted the nation; it was the second largest producer of gold on the continent. Several diamond mines had shown promise, as well.
The nation’s warming relationship with the West was also a black mark on China’s expansion efforts in Africa.
Bringing Ghana back into the fold, installing leadership in Accra that truly appreciated China’s development efforts and business relationships, would go a long way to showing the other nations on the continent that resistance, in the end, was futile.
If Ghana went full partnership with China, the thinking in Beijing went, everyone else would, too.
But it was crucial for Kang to keep Beijing’s involvement a secret in this. His Chinese technicians were ostensibly private contractors, just as he was, here in the nation to improve the country’s communications system. The mercenaries were principally Russian, and Kang planned to exploit this fact when the time was right to do so.
The Dragons of Western Togoland would take the blame for the coup, and if word of foreign involvement did get out, well then Kang had fifty Russians, all former military, whom he could implicate, putting the focus on Moscow and not on Beijing.
He had the rebel, Addo; he had the general, Boatang; he had the Iranian, Zahedi; and he had the South African mercenary, Tremaine.
Kang Shikun’s job was nothing less than “acquiring” Africa for China. He wasn’t the only one doing this; China had emissaries of all sorts, commercial and diplomatic. But Kang was the one sent in to seize territory by irregular warfare, to prop up helpful leaders and depose unhelpful ones.
And Ghana was by far the biggest target he’d ever had in his sights.