Chapter Ten: The Gameboard

Kinshasa smelled of diesel, dust, and fear. The air hung thick with humidity, mixing with the smoke of grilled meat and the soft pulse of a thousand different conversations murmuring beneath the surface of the city. At the Grand Hotel lobby, a European pianist tapped away at a polished baby grand while behind him, revolution whispered between the clinks of wine glasses.

Dr. Sule Bello checked in under a fake passport, but the man inside the skin was unmistakably Michael Ogunlade—darker, leaner, meaner than the file photographs any agency possessed. The receptionist smiled politely, unaware she was handing a suite key to a ghost with a national agenda.

Outside, Congo simmered.

The president, Mwana N'Shonda, had become more monarch than man. Corruption flowed like water through the streets—easy to scoop, but polluted to the core. French consultants, Chinese engineers, American diplomats, Russian weapons—all fought for slices of the Congolese pie. But now a new power had arrived in silence.

Nigeria didn't knock. Nigeria entered through the back door.

Michael removed his coat and stood at the window, eyes tracing the city's chaotic skyline. He was not here to make a deal. He was here to end an era. Operation Black Eden had begun.

The first meeting was unmarked. At a brothel operating under the guise of a piano lounge near the old Belgian quarter, Michael sat across from a young woman with dyed red curls and a laugh that could turn men into traitors. Mireille Nkulu poured wine between them, the glass trembling slightly from the vibration of passing trucks.

"You're not with the development bank," she said flatly.

"No," Michael replied, meeting her gaze. "And you're not just an escort with expensive tastes."

Her smile deepened. "I'm the devil's mistress."

Michael leaned forward. "Then introduce me to your husband."

She laughed, throwing her head back as though she'd just heard a lover's promise. That night, Mireille gave him the encryption protocols for N'Shonda's private satellite communications—whispered into his ear between gasps of pleasure in the darkened suite upstairs.

Michael understood her game. She played all sides. And she had leverage over half the Congolese cabinet, either through seduction or surveillance. He didn't need to trust her. He needed to use her before someone else did.

Across the river in Brazzaville, a Russian attaché was found dead in his hotel bathtub—no water, just vodka, blood, and a syringe. The Kremlin suspected CIA. The CIA suspected DGSE. DGSE blamed Nigerian black-ops.

All were wrong. Michael had orchestrated it through a former UN peacekeeper turned fixer named Tshisola, who now worked as a nightclub promoter. He received his instructions through coded lyrics embedded in local pop songs.

Back in Kinshasa, Michael met with General Bisengo under the guise of arranging military aid. The general's compound was filled with empty whiskey bottles and prayer beads. He was a brute, but a useful one—popular in the East, with the loyalty of ten thousand fighters and a lust for power that could be weaponized.

"Why should I trust Nigeria?" Bisengo growled, swirling his drink.

"You shouldn't," Michael replied. "You should trust your own ambition. We're offering you the chair. All you have to do is sit in it after we remove the current occupant."

"And when I'm in the chair?"

Michael smiled. "You'll be too powerful to move. But not too powerful to advise."

They shook hands. In that moment, an unholy alliance was born—one that would set Congo's east ablaze within six weeks.

What no one in Kinshasa knew was that Michael had already made a second deal. MI6, ever the gentleman spy, had reached out through backdoor embassies in Lusaka. They offered a soft cushion of support: satellite imaging, access to GCHQ taps, and European arms embargo loopholes. In exchange, Britain wanted influence. Infrastructure contracts. Leverage.

Michael nodded. He made no promises. Nigeria made demands.

The President in Abuja had given him a single mandate: destabilize the regime, then vanish like a rumor. No footprint. No flag.

At a luxury bar on the banks of the Congo River, Mireille slid her hand into his as they watched the sun bleed into the water. "They'll come for you," she whispered. "All of them. Americans. French. Russians. Even the Chinese. You've stirred too many nests."

He kissed her hand, eyes still on the horizon. "Let them come."

She turned, her voice lowering. "I could protect you. If you give me what I want."

"What do you want?"

"Not power. Not money. Just to be the queen beside the man who remakes Africa."

Michael said nothing. But in his mind, he moved pieces on a board no one else could see.

Three nights later, a CIA safehouse was bombed in Matete. Two agents dead. A laptop stolen. Inside it: an audio file confirming French and Chinese forces had shared intelligence to protect N'Shonda.

That was all the proof Michael needed.

He sent Syren Nwankwo—his most trusted IIS operative—to Lubumbashi. There, she brokered arms through Angolan contacts, arranged tactical training camps masked as vocational centers, and began building the invisible army that would march through the capital.

Kinshasa did not know it yet, but the coup had already begun.

It would not be announced on radios or by gunfire in the streets.

It would unfold like a story written in whispers.

And Michael Ogunlade held the pen.