Chapter Forty-Five #2
Beside him, Charles Mpassi sat upright, phone in hand, and Westcott could hear the man’s thumbs darting angrily across the screen as he replied to several encrypted messages.
Westcott gave him a quick glance. Mpassi was clearly agitated.
Westcott had first assumed Mpassi’s tension came from the delays.
Westcott got it. Mpassi was punctual by nature, and today’s timetable had already been derailed, thanks to the overlong meeting they’d left only minutes ago.
But now, as the minutes ticked by, he began to suspect something else was bothering his associate.
“Something wrong?” Westcott asked, not looking up from the legal memorandum in his lap.
“Nothing I can’t handle, sir,” Mpassi replied, still tapping.
Westcott looked at the man, studying him. Mpassi didn’t rattle easily. He’d served in hostile territories and often negotiated with tribal leaders without breaking stride. If something had him worked up, it deserved attention.
“Charles,” Westcott said, “what is it?”
“With respect, sir, I’m handling it. I’ll bring you up to speed after your meeting with the senator.”
“No,” Westcott said, setting the memorandum aside. “Tell me now.”
Mpassi paused, then lowered his phone with a sigh.
“Verena Kaine’s dead. And Mia’s hurt—”
Westcott heard the rest, but the words didn’t land.
His mind had stopped processing new information the moment Mpassi had mentioned Mia.
The girl—well, a woman now—wasn’t just an asset, she was something more.
She was the daughter he never had. He loved her.
Not the way he’d loved his wife, Nailah, of course, but it was still love.
Mia did dangerous work. He knew that. Every assignment came with a risk.
But she was brilliant, disciplined, and he had given her the tools to succeed, hadn’t he?
She’d never failed him. She’d walked through hell more times than he could count and emerged without a scratch.
Somewhere along the way, he’d begun to believe Mia was invincible.
“Everett,” Mpassi said gently, “did you hear what I said?”
“What?” he asked, realizing he had been holding his breath.
“She’ll be okay,” Mpassi said. “She’s being patched up now. One of our people is with her.”
“She’s going to be fine?”
“That’s what I said. A bullet fragment clipped her ear. It bled a lot, but that’s all. She’ll recover. Though we might have to pull her from the performance in Budapest, and the one next week in Dubrovnik.”
“And Verena?”
“Mia killed her.”
Westcott closed his eyes, feeling like he was missing part of the story. In Mallorca, Mia had made the decision not to kill Verena on the Veloce. What had triggered Mia’s change of heart in Valencia?
Shit. Can it get any worse? he thought.
Apparently, it could.
“Mia believes Blackstone Security has been identified as the entity who chartered Veloce.”
“How? By whom?”
Mpassi winced, as if whatever he was going to say next hurt him.
“Mia confirmed it’s the same man,” he said. “The one from Port de Sóller.”
Westcott shot his Office of Special Projects director an angry look.
“What you meant to say is that he’s the same man who killed Verena’s crew. One of the two operatives who escaped your trap in Turkey, and the same man you’d promised me was no longer a threat.”
“I’m aware, sir,” Mpassi said, meeting his gaze. “I . . . misjudged them.”
“No,” Westcott said, shaking his head. “You underestimated him and the woman who he’s with.”
This time, Mpassi didn’t reply, knowing better than to argue.
But Westcott wasn’t just worried about the operative; Blackstone Security was now a concern too.
Their leader was dead, and their structure was compromised, which meant their deniability was obliterated.
He had known this reckoning would come and that, eventually, he would have to sever all ties between Hearts United and Blackstone.
But he’d hoped to be further along in the DRC initiative before doing so.
Westcott’s hands curled into fists. Since losing one of his key assets in Tanzania, he’d been reluctant to deploy them without backup.
Even in Aruba, he’d insisted Mpassi send Henry to support Mia.
Valencia, however, had been pitched as a simple reconnaissance mission, a quick in-and-out intel-gathering operation.
And it had turned into a goddamned firefight.
“Scrub everything,” Westcott said. “All ties to Blackstone. I don’t want a single thread left behind.”
“What about the employees?” Mpassi asked. “What kind of severance are we offering?”
It wasn’t really a question about benefits.
They both knew that. What Mpassi was asking was if they were going to silence them permanently.
Truth was, with most of his operational assets already committed in Africa, Westcott didn’t have the manpower for that.
And even if he did have the manpower, hunting each Blackstone Security employee would be logistically impossible without raising flags.
“Have legal prepare NDAs. Let’s do six months’ salary,” Westcott said. “For all of them.”
Mpassi nodded. “Understood.”
“Where’s Mia now?”
“Still in Spain. She’s recuperating. She’ll be fit to travel tomorrow. You need her somewhere?”
Westcott shook his head. “She’s done enough, don’t you think? Cancel Budapest and Dubrovnik. Let her go home. Tell her to take a week to herself.”
“A week?” Mpassi asked, raising an eyebrow. “You really think she’ll sit still that long?”
“If she ends up doing it or not is up to her,” Westcott said. “But I want her to know it’s fine if she wants some time to herself.”
They sat in silence for a moment, the hum of the Escalade and the horns coming from angry drivers filling the void. After a while, and while still ten minutes from his office, Westcott began to walk Mpassi through his conversation with President Mutombo and the UN secretary-general.
“And now you’re wondering how to take down Prime Minister Bongonda,” Mpassi said when Westcott was finished.
“I am,” he admitted. “But we can’t eliminate him. We need a scandal, one big enough to fracture the Assembly. One juicy enough that Mutombo could regain the ground he lost among the Assembly members.”
“How fast do you need this to be done?”
“As soon as possible. Every day Bongonda gains more influence.”
“Budget limitation?” Mpassi asked.
Westcott frowned at the question. “Why do you ask?”
“Because getting to him physically inside the DRC would be complicated. But—”
Westcott snapped. “Aren’t you listening to a word I said? I specifically told you I don’t want him killed. I know how difficult it is to get to these assholes inside the DRC. That’s why we waited until Tchangana and Mpanga were abroad. For God’s sake, what’s wrong with you?”
“Sir, I wasn’t about to suggest we take him out,” Mpassi said. “What I was going to say is that we’ve gained access to the DRC’s internal network infrastructure. We can plant whatever we need, including emails and financial records.”
That was news to Westcott. He didn’t know they had this kind of access. He’d given Mpassi a lot of latitude on how to manage the DRC operation, but Westcott was starting to feel that he might have given the man a bit too much autonomy. Still, he considered what he had just learned.
“Okay . . . what do you have in mind?” he asked.
“You want him embroiled in a scandal? No problem. I can make it happen. But it needs to be big enough for people to notice. And care.”
“I get what you’re saying. The good people of the DRC expect their leaders to be corrupt,” Westcott said.
“A small scandal wouldn’t do the trick. People would just assume it’s business as usual.
” Now thinking out loud, he continued, “We need diverted aid funds, preferably to an offshore account and laundered through a shell foundation linked to the Congo River Alliance.”
Mpassi was all smiles now. “Exactly.”
The Congo River Alliance, which among its members included the brutal, Rwanda-backed M23 rebels, was quickly gaining territory in the eastern part of the DRC and had recently captured Goma, a city of two million people and the capital of the North Kivu province.
Since the Alliance had taken over, hundreds of thousands of people had been displaced, with several hundred—held on accusations of supporting the Congolese army during the fighting—being sent to overcrowded, unhygienic cells.
Westcott had read reports about prisoners being tortured with electric cables and engine belts.
If he could somehow manufacture a direct link between Prime Minister Bongonda and the Alliance, it would shatter the National Assembly’s trust in the man.
“What would ‘big enough’ look like to you, Charles?” Westcott asked.
“Twenty million dollars,” Mpassi replied.
“And you could do this with no blowback?” Westcott asked.
“I guarantee it. In fact, we’d be the one to tip off the ANR,” Mpassi said. “I still have plenty of contacts within the agency.”
The ANR, or Agence Nationale de Renseignements, was the intelligence agency of the DRC.
Westcott nodded once. “Do it.”