Kiss, Commander, Promise

Not that any of the countries involved had displayed open hostility in the face of the Casablanca affair. Our position, as the men and women of the intelligence services, was to hope for peace but prepare for war.

And then came JAWS.

His story was simple: He was a former Commander of the Egyptian Navy who was dishonourably discharged following a dramatic fallout with his superiors. Coming from the disciplined forces, his insubordination (described as ‘Conduct Unbecoming to an officer’ in his termination papers) was unacceptable and he was given his marching orders. Angry and vengeful, he came to Kenya with a treasure trove of information concerning Egypt’s naval strength and future plans.

He was tall, slim and wore blazers a lot. His hair and carefully-trimmed beard were white, speckled with grey. He smoked a hookah pipe, read a lot of newspapers and books, and even though he was polite and by no means snobbish, he mainly kept himself to himself.

His first piece of intelligence was a video clip that apparently showed a brand new Egyptian Moray 1400 submarine being tested in the Mediterranean Sea. It was moving slowly and gracefully, submerging for several minutes and then dramatically rising up, surrounded by white foam like a whale coming up for air. The date of the exercise was not indicated. Accompanying the secret footage were documents detailing the ship’s characteristics – builder, range, weapons, missiles, countermearsures and so forth.

This information was hailed as ‘pure gold’ at the Bureau of Intelligence as indeed were many of the ex-Commander’s subsequent reports. He was code named JAWS because much of his intelligence product centered on submarines which maneuver silently underwater like sharks. But as the months wore on, some skeptical minds back at headquarters began to feel that JAWS’ intelligence product was ‘too good.’ The intelligence chiefs began to suspect that it was part of a disinformation ploy by the Egyptians. An arms buildup was in progress up north, all right, but it seemed that the truth was being protected by a bodyguard of lies.

Which brings me to the reason why I’m sitting in the front passenger seat of a parked Hyundai at night, watching JAWS as he leisurely seeps a cup of coffee in an uptown café. It has come to the attention of ‘the suits’ (our bosses) that every Friday night, JAWS goes out on the town and is believed to meet secretly with his Egyptian contacts. If this is true, that JAWS is receiving instructions and false information from Egyptian controllers, then not only is he a security risk to the country but all the information he has so far been giving us will be trashed: Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus - If one is false, then they’re all false.

My assignment, then, is to monitor him closely and see if he talks to any mysterious characters or attempts to make a brush pass with someone on the street, or if he makes a dead drop. For the record, I’m an intelligence officer, not an ‘agent’ (OK, so I’m not James Bond, big deal.) If my agency sent me to a foreign land or if a foreign agency recruited me to be ‘their man in Nairobi,’ then I’d be an agent.

My partner, Johnny, suddenly opens the driver’s door and clumsily bundles himself in, his bulk rocking the whole car. A gust of cold air rushes in as he slams the door shut. He had gone out for coffee – to keep us awake and bolster us against the cold – but I notice he has brought something else as well, wrapped in brown sugar paper.

‘Want some cassava?’ he inquires.

I take my coffee and a piece of cassava but refrain from thanking him.

‘Some guy was roasting them on the roadside as I came back,’ Johnny says.

I don’t respond. You have to understand that Johnny is the person I hate the most on earth. When I was paired with him for surveillance duty, I almost resigned. We’re so different, we’re like the quarrelling lead characters in the movie The Odd Couple. If we were soldiers in a war and Johnny got shot, I swear I’d leave him to his fate. Hell, I might even be tempted to finish him off myself.