WEST OF QUETTA
"Goddamn it, woman! Why do you want?" Christopher glared.
"Trust, sense of partnership. More importantly, understanding of what Sangar is capable of if we get into a firefight. I don't want anything that will breach operational security. Only information I can use if we get into a nasty situation." Alexandra sauntered over to the motorcycle.
"Remember Sir William's murder victim? Miriam, I mean." He leaned the bike back on its kickstand. "She worked for me in Basra. She and Sangar were a team that acquired information on Iranian incursions into the region. We had to ensure that certain Shiite militias were monitored or we would have had a shitload of problems like the Americans were experiencing in Al Anbar Province. I used Sangar as a part of my team."
"Aaaaah! So that's why the children were with Miriam's mother. What happened to his wife?" She stood up and adjusted the weapons under her chadri.
"She was killed in 2006. I teamed him up with Miriam in 2007. Any more questions?"
"One more. And be careful how you answer this, Colonel."
Christopher folded his arms and leaned against motorcycle.
"Why didn't Sangar just quit and go back to London with his children? How did you really recruit him?" She studied his reaction to her question. "Didn't think I would figure it out, did you?"
"Figure what out?"
"Figure out that there is more to the story of Sangar than what you have disclosed. You don't even have him registered in our secure files. Why all this secrecy?"
Christopher removed his goggles and began cleaning them with its special lens cloth. "I suggest you do the same because we won't have much of a chance once we're in transit. I knew we had a mole somewhere in ours or the American command structure in 2006. We were getting pounded by the Shia militias. That's why I withheld all the names of my contacts. I knew the Americans would bleed them dry and never assist them to resettle in the US. By the way, we were only slightly better in protecting our assets, we settled about 60% of ours in Britain after we withdrew."
"But Sangar is British, isn't he?" She mirrored his actions with her goggles. "He wouldn't have had any resettlement problems."
"No, but our spooks were working hand in glove with the CIA and their contractors. A lot of our informants were just sacrificial lambs for our 'great cause'. They died while we played patty cakes with some "War on Terror". We used the same damned tactics being used on us by the terrorists. We used drones and bombers – they used suicide bombers. And both sides claimed justification."
The sarcasm in his voice caused Alexandra to stop her response.
"So I took my people off the net and buried them deep outside the net with Sir William's permission. That's why he got fired from the Ministry of Defence ..."
"And that's why you're retiring," Alexandra interrupted. "Continue."
"I hid them all except for Miriam. Not enough time. Before I knew it, the Americans had worked out a deal with our command and she was sent to Al Anbar. I couldn't ensure that she was guaranteed resettlement privileges for either country. So I had a private discussion chat with some friends in Jordan who in turn had some private chats with the UAE military."
Alexandra nodded. "That explains where the accused murderer comes into play. Hamed Al-Addabi or Captain Al-Mezroui must have been assigned as her control. But why was he tortured in Bagram?"
YOU ARE READING
The Shaddad Conspiracy
Adventure“Your murder victim was not an innocent, naive woman. She was on our terrorist watch list. The fact that she escaped from Basra and lived a normal life in London buggers belief, but she was planted here by a foreign government to wreck the Taliban p...
