“You go your place. Her place mai dai!” She exclaimed.
The woman bustled off, the sound of her flip-flops clacking down the hallway. Glancing down at the paper she handed him, he read the figure of 66,500 baht.
Seems a little expensive for a couple of beers.
Archie shrugged his shoulders. Headquarters was paying the tab, so he wasn’t too worried about the price.
“Hey, how much does she charge?” Archie heard Oliver yell after him as he left the bar with Hom on his arm…
“Yes, I was hoping I could pick my next assignment today. I have some big things going on and I think I can coordinate some of my ops with my current assets so there wouldn’t be any turnover required. I could keep them all and still easily run them from Tahiti, or alternatively, Fiji would work.” Archie paused.
Henningway met Archie’s grinning face with a blank stare. It seemed he blinked fifty times.
“Do you speak French?”
“Well, uh, no but… I figured I could get by,” Archie stammered.
Henningway went back to looking at his computer screen.
“It looks like you’ll be coming to Headquarters to serve as…” He trailed off. A look of disbelief came over his typically blank face. “Chief of Operations of this group,” he finished, somewhat reluctantly….
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s REALLY like to work at the CIA, you will have an awakening when you read my books. My series of short reads, or novelettes, Mingling in the CIA, takes readers into the lives of the CIA officers I met during my time there. You’ve met Annie, you’ve met Bloud…..
This time, join me in Thailand for some debaucherous fun! Are you ready to meet Archie?
…Bloud eventually managed to finagle his way into working outside of the office, instead of being there every day to further poison the atmosphere. It seemed Vicky’s perception of Bloud had changed pretty dramatically and the decision had been made to allow him to become a satellite employee of our office, in preparation for future overseas posting. There were quite a few beach locations that Bloud was proposing as his next assignment, and to my surprise Headquarters was entertaining these requests. For the time being, he was going on very expensive TDYs to different paradises in the Caribbean [text was redacted here]. Written from various barstools in tropical resort towns, his cables never made much sense, just a barrage of babble that someone in our office or at Headquarters had to rewrite. He could not be bothered with actually writing cables documenting his work, a secretary would surely be needed to do this for him. It pained me to see these trips get approved when it was pretty clear they were a colossal waste of money…
As Chief of Operations, Bloud wasn’t very impressive…
…Bloud was in charge while Lawrence was gone, but that was not saying much. He had taken to throwing hissy fits and closing himself in his office any time he received news from Headquarters that he did not like. He would leave the young officers who needed his guidance out in the cold while he sulked behind a closed door. He had also begun a weekly ritual of cooking a slab of meat in a crock pot for the whole office and we were all expected to eat it and listen to him blabber on while the young officers kissed his butt. I dreaded being herded into the office kitchen for these little get-togethers…
The next swamp creature we met in the Mingling in the CIA series was Bloud.
…Bloud was an experienced [text is redacted here] officer, in his fifties, whom I had heard much about. Apparently he had done some pretty exciting things years ago and he loved talking about his experiences, holding a captive audience in the young officers surrounding him. He delighted in telling tales of encounters with tigers and serving time in a hole in the ground somewhere in the Middle East. It was hard to imagine this slovenly, obese man doing anything besides eating pork rinds and drinking beer, but the stories were entertaining. He was given the Chief of Operations or third-in-charge position in the office. I did not have many friends in the office and he seemed like an interesting drinking buddy, so one day after work Bloud and I went to a nearby bar for drinks….
Annie strikes again. Your first introduction to one of the swamp creatures in my series, Mingling in the CIA:
…Her whole career was in limbo and she was going through something called mediation with her former supervisors. This was a process whereby she could contest the citation for bad behavior they had placed in her file. In any other workplace I knew of she would have been fired for not calling in when sick, not to mention dropping the ball on some highly sensitive intelligence during a critical time, but in the Agency there really did not seem to be a way to get rid of people who were bad employees. It was called “passing the trash,” and Annie would just be moved from assignment to assignment for her entire career….
…Annie was another of the many women I encountered at the Agency who made me wonder how on earth she passed the psychological exam to get in. She was a masseuse on the side and she often told me stories about giving married men “happy endings.” Some of the men were Agency employees. She seemed proud of this activity. One day, after I had come back from my TDY medical exam, she loudly proclaimed that I could not possibly be done with my medical travel clearance because I hadn’t met with a psychologist yet. It crossed my mind that maybe she should not be so open about this information. Apparently, if you had red flags in your psychological history, the medical office would have you meet with a psychologist before you were allowed to go on even a brief TDY. I had not met with one, but was granted my travel clearance, so I was set to go. Annie was one of the main people who made me question the Agency’s hiring process…
In anticipation of my newest book’s release and launch, I want to highlight some of the swamp creatures we have met so far in my series, Mingling in the CIA. Having spent most of my career in Washington, DC, I’ve had broad experience with many types of swamp creatures. This experience gives me plenty of material for my books.
We first met Annie in my book, Single in the CIA:
…Annie was a twenty-something-year-old, borderline obese girl with the mentality of a twelve-year-old. She had been hired into the Agency by way of the Office of Security, where she was sent to training to become a background investigator. Apparently she had some issues while there, and also did not pass the investigations training class, so she was told to find another job within the Agency. At this point in time, the NCS was pretty desperate for SOOs, and Annie got a job there – the NCS, the directorate most people think of when they think of the CIA and national security – the “tip of the spear.” I noticed this happened a lot – when a newly hired officer was identified as having some issues, instead of documenting it or perhaps even terminating the employee, they were just moved to another position in the Agency. Part of this phenomenon was likely due to the high cost of the CIA’s hiring process and clearing someone for access to classified information – Top Secret clearances did not come cheap, nor did they happen quickly….
It’s no secret that many countries across the globe are clamoring for their piece of the action on the resource-abundant African continent. We have all heard of China’s influence and expansion into Africa, but the United Arab Emirates has also been very active in the African region. One African country, Zimbabwe, has seen a 300% increase in trade with the UAE in the past three years. The UAE is now Zimbabwe’s second largest trading partner.
On July 20, 2022, a vision of Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa was actualized. President Mnangagwa held a groundbreaking ceremony for Zim Cyber City, the first real estate investment in Zimbabwe channeled through the Zimbabwe Global Investments (ZGI) Special Economic Zone (SEZ) program. Touted as the “smartest city of our age”, Zim Cyber City will be spread over 2.5 million square feet of land and is expected to have a shopping mall, luxury villas and apartments, cyber technology offices and other facilities, to include Mulk Tower, projected to be the tallest building in Africa.
Dubai-based billionaire Mr. Shaji Ul Mulk met with President Mnangagwa at the 2020 Dubai Expo in the UAE and what followed was the vision for many future investments in Zimbabwe. Zim Cyber City is the first embodiment of this futuristic vision and Mr. Mulk promised there will be many more to come. The President’s decision to allow UAE businesses to invest in Zimbabwe will bring more investment in the future, and as President Mnangagwa stated, “Zimbabwe is open for business”.
President Mnangagwa stated that his desire is to transplant Dubai to Zimbabwe and to build a smart city even better than Dubai. Declaring that Zimbabwe will not be left behind, the President is certainly ensuring that Zimbabwe is developing a culture of continuous innovation and an environment for economic growth.
The cyber city’s goal is not only to offer economic benefits to commercial enterprises combined with lavish, uptown living, but to create an easy system for blockchain and crypto exchange companies to operate, where digital currencies can flourish. With Zim Cyber City, located in Mount Hampden, New Harare, we will witness the successful integration of blockchain and crypto technology and premium, residential living.
President Mnangagwa has granted Mulk International an exclusive license to establish a blockchain and digital assets special economic zone and investors in Zim Cyber City will benefit from the many tax and import incentives offered through the ZGI Special Economic Zone program.
Mulk International is a multinational conglomerate with diversified business interests spanning primarily four sectors – building materials, plastics, healthcare and cricket assets. For more than two decades, Mulk International has been owning and managing a group of 18 companies under the leadership of Chairman Nawab Shaji Ul Mulk.
Mr. Mulk is quite an inspirational figure himself. Mulk gave up his US dreams of going to the Wharton Business School to pursue the dream of being an entrepreneur. He once fixed films on windows in the UAE, but is now worth over $2.7 billion. He had moved to the UAE originally to save money for college and prepare for his GMAT exams. He took a job at his brother-in-law’s small company that dealt in solar panel glass covers, working in the installation department. Three days into the job, he moved from installation into sales. Within a few months he was feeding the company’s capacity 100%. Then he got into sub-contracting work and within a year had saved $30,000 to pay his college fees. A week before he was to leave for the US he asked a friend for advice. The pull of entrepreneurship was strong. He then gave up his Wharton’s admission to stay in the UAE and pursue business. His calculated risk of giving up his admission to the prestigious college has paid off in spades. Now, a man who used to clean window panes and install panel sheets on windows, who had to take various forms of transportation just to get to work every day, drives a Rolls-Royce Phantom, among other luxury cars. His company has a global annual turnover of $1.8 billion.
Mulk is a man who is not afraid to take a calculated risk. Teamed up with President Mnangagwa, the transformative project of Zim Cyber City will most certainly help Zimbabwe reach its goal of seeing an upper-middle income by 2030, giving multitudes a better life and building Zimbabwe into one of the dominant countries in Africa.
This article was originally published on OpsLens.