Page 203 of Secrets Beneath the Waves

“How did you get here?” I ask.

“I was out running when they grabbed me. Trying to clear my head. There were two men in a van. No shouting. No chaos. Just a needle in my neck that knocked me out. I woke up here, with no idea how much time had passed.”

“You know what day that was?”

“I don’t know. Three. . .maybe four days ago.” He scrunched his brow as if he were trying to remember. “It was the day I was supposed to meet Mariam for lunch.”

“What happened next?” I press.

“I couldn’t tell if it was day or night most of the time. This place has no windows. They rotated guards.” He closes his eyes for a moment. “They believed I was disrupting their supply routes, so this was as much for payback as it was for information.”

“What did you tell them?”

“As little as I could,” he says. “I did everything I could to stall them, including feeding them misinformation, but they kept me awake, with lights shining in my eyes. Kept me confused. They told me that whoever I was working for in intelligence had abandoned me, and showed Mariam in a video telling me she’d sold me out. I knew it all had to be fabricated evidence, and yet, I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe it was true.”

I want to tell him Mariam hadn’t sold him out, but I can’t tell him something I don’t know is true.

“What about the information on the arms exchange?” I ask, glancing at my watch.

“I was planning to come to you the day they grabbed me. I’d just intersected the last piece of information and knew I needed to put it somewhere safe.”

“What information?”

“Offshore routing numbers, shell company names, payment trails, and encrypted chats about the transactions, plus specific details about the impending arms deal.”

“And your source?” I ask.

“Most of it comes from intercepted communications between the broker of the arms deal and General Keïta’s second-in-command. The encrypted chats were given to me by someone who’s been feeding me intel for months.”

“Someone you trust?” Graham asks.

“An ally. Someone just as anxious to shut down these networks as I am.” Oumar took a long drink of his water. “You need to understand that this impending arms transfer. . . It’s an attempt by the Koumana Syndicate to push the Russians out of the Sahel.”

“Wait. . .” I glance at Graham, not expecting this twist. “We thought it was an outside player, but General Keïta is the one who’s actually behind this?”

Oumar nods. “Everything I have is in a secure cloud storage account to keep it safe. I just need computer access.”

Graham brings over the computer and sets it in front of Oumar, allowing him to enter his login credentials and passphrase.

“Can you stop the deal from going through?” Oumar asks, handing the computer back to Graham as soon as he’s done.

“We’ll do everything we can,” I say while Graham works to transfer the intel on a secure channel. “My team in Paris will need to verify the information you have and then look tocoordinate with our military and any local allies. It will take some time.”

Oumar shakes his head. “We don’t have time.”

“I know,” I say. “Is there anything else you can tell us?”

“There was a second reason Kozlov took me.”

He takes in a deep breath, and I can tell he’s getting tired. On top of that, I’m worried about staying here much longer.

“There is a book—I’ve heard it called ‘the black ledger’—it contains Cold War black ops secrets.”

“What kind of secrets?” I ask, glancing at the door.

“Basically, it’s rumored to be an internal log of every illegal arms deal, bribe, and off-the-books operation involved in recovering or redistributing arms.”

“Do you have access?”