Free The Templar Legion by Paul Christopher Page A

airstrip and ship the finished goods from there.”
    “But not without this lunatic Kolingba knowing.”
    “No, sir, and not without his Two-IC knowing, either.”
    “I was never actually in the army, Faulkener, so terms like Two-IC don’t impress me.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “You mean his second in command, this Gash fellow. The American.”
    “Rwandan by birth, sir. He did spend time in the United States.”
    “Can we deal with him?”
    “Perhaps at some later point,” suggested Faulkener. “Right now his loyalties lie with Kolingba. His cash cow, so to speak.”
    “Has he been approached?”
    “Only obliquely. He met with one of his bankers a few days ago in Banqui, the capital city of the Central African Republic. The banker sometimes works for us. He asked Gash’s opinion about the possibility that a change of leadership might be more fruitful—that is, profitable.”
    “And?”
    “Gash quoted the adage about birds in the hand being more valuable than those in the bush. Our man didn’t pursue it.”
    “Can we deal with Kolingba at any level?”
    “I doubt it, sir. He is a practitioner of Bwiti.”
    “Bwiti?”
    “It’s a religion, sir. He thinks he’s the high priest. He takes huge doses of a plant-based drug called Tabernanthe iboga. It gives him visions, which he then acts on as domestic policy. He once had an iboga dream or a vision of boiling a traitorous man alive, his cousin, actually.”
    “And he acted on this?”
    “The very next day, sir, along with the man’s wife. In a fifty-gallon drum, as I understand it.”
    “He’s mad, then,” said Matheson.
    “As a hatter, sir.” Faulkener nodded.
    “Oh, well,” said Matheson. “I suppose he really will have to go; there’s no other option.” He stared down at the maps. “What about Harris, by the way?”
    “He dealt with Ives, but as the Americans say, he’s dropped the ball. Witnesses who have to be dealt with. The Israeli archaeologist who put us onto the whole thing in the first place, as a matter of fact.”
    “He’s out of it, then?”
    “I’m afraid so, Sir James, unless he suddenly gets very lucky.”
    “Then find me someone else to deal with Kolingba,” said Matheson quietly. “And do it quickly. Too many people know about this already.”
    “Yes, sir.”

8
     
    Oliver Gash—the former Rwandan refugee turned Baltimore narcotics kingpin, turned secretary of state and foreign affairs for an insane African king—hadn’t risen to his exalted position by being stupid. Even as a runner for the gangs in McElderry Park he knew the value of good intelligence. The cops used paid informers, so he did, too, except he paid his people better. By the time he was moving real weight through the I-95 corridor he was using encrypted satellite phones, GPS, social networking sites with peepers and listeners on his payroll from the state’s attorney’s office to the police garage. If something was going down he wanted to hear about it before it happened. As Solomon Kolingba’s second in command, if somebody was even thinking about doing something he wanted to know about it first.
    Right from the start he’d had trouble with the whole Limbani thing. In public Kolingba insisted that Limbani died in a cell in Ouanda Djallé prison three years ago. Nobody was about to call Kolingba a liar but there had been persistent reports of the doctor’s survival almost from the beginning. At first Gash had put it down to wishful thinking and mythmaking, but now he wasn’t so sure. Only a few moments ago one of his “listening posts”—a man named Aristide Lundi who operated a banana beer and palm wine stand in Bangara village—reported that a half dozen men in camouflage fatigues had appeared out of the jungle. Two of them had gotten drunk and told Lundi that they were members of CALA, the Central African Liberation Army led by Amobe Limbani. Their hope, of course, was that Lundi would give them their beer out of fear but Lundi also reported