by Todd Turner
Each dealer has an allocation of vehicles that is determined by the number sold in the past eighteen or so months. The number of months can vary, and allocations can be changed to reward or punish dealers; but the system as a whole is based on this practice of “turn and earn.” Hot-selling cars can be moved, for example, to dealers who have done well in selling more “distress” merchandise, or to dealers who excel in any number of other performance matrixes. In other words, if a car that was supposed to go to one dealer ends up at another, there would be no red flag, nothing in the system to alert anyone.
June 28, 08:42 EDT
Detroit, Michigan
Craig Stout arrived in Detroit in the middle of the night, knowing that little could be done until GM’s CEO arrived back from Mexico and GM’s headquarters began its daily operations. The FBI man, Zach Thompson, had met him at Selfridge Air National Guard Base forty-five minutes north of Detroit and drove him to the Renaissance Center downtown. In addition to housing GM’s corporate headquarters, the RenCen also housed a full-service Marriott hotel. Craig knew his mind and body needed some down time and he took full advantage of his four hours.
Robert Smith described his plan to a refreshed Craig Stout, complete with a new set of clothes Zach had provided. The plan was fairly simple: send internal instant messages to the five employees of the allocation department then monitor their movements as they proceeded to the CEO’s office. If an employee attempted to make a phone call, her phone would be disabled. If the employee stopped at the restroom on her way, she would be discreetly followed. If the person tried to leave the building, she would be intercepted by building security and escorted to the security office under the guise she was suspected of stealing company property.
As far as the heads up to security, this department was being investigated for leaking corporate information to a competitor.
General Motors, like every major corporation in the technology age, has the ability to monitor nearly every area of its offices. Rather than a fully manned security staff, whose cost is prohibitive, it’s only a matter of a few switches and key punches to activate cameras in a given area and watch employees’ movements in real time.
Stout, introduced as a digital data theft consultant, watched with Smith as each employee received the message.
Every recipient of this message reacted the same way, except for one.
June 28, 09:12 EDT
Detroit, Michigan
All the employees who received the message did pretty much the same thing: they looked around, stood up, paced back and forth for a second and either rubbed their forehead, ears or chin or dug fingers into hair on the back of the head—all signs of stress, indicators of anxiousness. One woman merely seemed irritated she was being called out of her routine, perhaps the least suspicious reaction of all.
Then, proceeding to the elevators, they would avoid eye contact with anyone encountered along the way. Two women stopped at the restroom, one to relieve her bladder, and the other, it was reported, to throw up.
One employee did not look around and did not show signs of stress. She pressed a few keys on her keyboard—later determined to be a command to erase her hard drive—then stood up, took her purse, and pretended to head to the restroom but instead took the elevator. Down.
On seeing the doors close and pressing L for Lobby, imagine her surprise when she felt the car lift instead. At that, she pulled a handgun from her purse. Now it was Smith’s turn to look surprised. To Stout, though, her outward calmness had indicated from the beginning that this woman was not what she appeared to be.
Still, Craig put on a show for the others in the room to support his current role of security consultant. “God, this woman’s a nutcase!”
Four FBI agents, including Zach Thompson, were stationed in the lobby of the RenCen as part of an “antiterrorism exercise.” Like it or not, Stout was now about to tell the GM security detail an entirely new lie.
“Guys, I am actually with the FBI. This woman is wanted by the IRS for tax evasion and by the FBI for money laundering. I just signaled four of FBI’s finest to proceed to this floor. They were in the lobby, but if they aren’t in an elevator yet, can you expedite a car? Bring them to this floor, and shut down the car containing our prisoner until the team can get into position. Make it quick!”
The thought she’d commit suicide was now Stout’s most pressing concern. He needed her alive. The FBI team knew it, and hopefully they’d get to her in time.
Her car arrived at the security level but didn’t open. She remained with her gun pointed at the doors, indicating that for now, at least, she didn’t plan on suicide.
The FBI team’s elevator car arrived twelve seconds later, and they were in position within four seconds. Most people by now would think they were trapped in the elevator, that it had malfunctioned. An idea came to Stout. He turned on the speaker in the elevator. “Is there anyone in this car?” A seemingly stupid question, since everyone knew there were cameras in elevators, but it was important that she believe this car was broken. He needed her to put away the gun.
His ruse seemed to be working. She composed herself, relaxed, but didn’t yet return the gun to her purse. She did, however, pick up the phone. “Is anyone there?” she asked.
“Yes,” Craig’s voice crackled. “We’re sorry, but the elevators are malfunctioning. We weren’t even sure if someone was there.”
“Aren’t there cameras?”
“Seems they are on the fritz also, ma’am. We’re glad the phone is working. We’ve got a crew on the way. They’ll release the doors manually. Should be just a few minutes.”
“OK, fine,” she said, sounding more annoyed than scared.
“You want me to stay on the line with you until they get there?”
She rolled her eyes with the irritated look of a woman who hated men thinking she need to be taken care of. “No, I’m perfectly fine!” She hung up. Since the man on the phone sounded relaxed and confident, with no hesitation in his voice, she believed him. She slid the gun back in her purse.
She stood back and looked at the doors, willing them to open.
When they did, she hardly had time to see what was in front of her before something hit her in the chest so hard it knocked the wind from her lungs. She fell back and slid down the wall, limp as a rag doll.
June 28, 09:32 EDT
Detroit, Michigan
Rezeya Kundi, the supervisor of allocation at General Motors, was a Pakistani immigrant, or so everyone at the company had been led to believe.
Craig Stout had to deal with less than ideal facilities for Ms. Kundi’s interrogation. The FBI field office in Detroit was not equipped for the sort of sophisticated techniques that had been so effective with Jong-Kip Chung in Asia.
Even so, Craig thought, I doubt those techniques would work on her anyway.
Craig had sent word to his partner in life and the NSA’s chief expert on economic terrorism to meet him in Detroit ASAP.
Not that they were able to greet each other with a hug and kiss as they yearned to, but they were still very happy to see each other.
“I’m not sure I want to be a part of this process. I don’t think I have the stomach for it,” Scott confided to Craig.
“Well, this isn’t going to be what you fear. Yeah, we do that kind of work, but women respond differently to interrogation. They have different motivators.”
“How so?” questioned Scott.
“Self-preservation for women is statistically less relevant—that is, if you believe the bulk of statistics that show women are much more likely to commit suicide, or sacrifice themselves for another. Even more than that, though, pain doesn’t work on women the same way it does on men. Plus, there’s the devotion factor,” explained Craig.
“Ah, you mean that death isn’t a detriment to her, like it was to Chung in Asia?”
“That’s part of it. Chung not only wanted to live, but he also didn’t feel a level of devotion to the cause, at least not
at the level he was willing to trade his life for that devotion.”
“Why?”
“He grew up in North Korea, being indoctrinated with all of Kim Jong-il’s rhetoric claiming how much better off the people in the North were, that they didn’t have to deal with stress or decisions about how to live, or where to live, or even worry about a job. That their society was a sanctuary of fairness and equality. His devotion was already fractured, otherwise I don’t think we would have ever broken him, he would have died with his secrets.”
“Can’t we do that with Rezeya?”
“When Chung was on that flight, it was obvious to agent Lim that he was not just nervous but uncertain who even to trust,” said Craig.
“Oh yeah, that flight. You know there’s still shit hitting the fan over that?” Scott complained wryly, indicating pride in what Craig had accomplished.
“I don’t doubt it, but I also don’t give a crap,” Craig returned slyly.
“If the seeds were already planted with Chung,” Scott wondered, “how do you get Rezeya to turn?”
“That, my friend, is why you’re here,” said Craig with his goofiest grin—the one he knew Scott loved.
“Me? What can I do?”
“You can dive deep into her life. I want to know everything about her. Start with what you know and work backward. I want to know when her father planted his seed in her mother, where they were, what time of day it was, if it was passionate or brutal . . . you get the drift? Oh—and I need all of that yesterday.”
“I already guessed!”
“I plan to start talking with her, see if I can even begin to engage.”
Craig left for the interrogation room, of the type found in any police station. Scott headed over to I.T. He was about to take it over under the authority of the president of the United States.
June 28, 13:10 EDT
Detroit, Michigan
Detroit is a major gateway to the United States, with two international border crossings with Canada, one of which is accessed from Jefferson Avenue right next to the GM Renaissance Center. In addition, Detroit Wayne International Airport is a gateway to several overseas destinations.
Most people are surprised that this small city has offices for the FBI, Secret Service, DEA, CBP, ATF, DoJ and many other federal departments, but this is due to its strategic location, not size. Scott was impressed with both the caliber of talent and level of technology at his disposal.
One call to his supervisor at the NSA with the president’s authority is all it took to command the agency’s supercomputer, a machine that is always on and working, with a backlog of four weeks’ worth of work waiting for it.
To call this Cray a mere supercomputer would be an insult to its power and capability, not to mention price. For what it cost in energy to run (and moreover to cool), the agency could buy a new one every year.
Once Scott was connected via the field office’s secure net connection (precursor to the internet, but with much more restricted access), he was able to submit queries to the NSA computer. These were basically what if scenarios and the computer would search its databases with logic. Yes, in a manner of speaking, it could think.
Scott typed, Who is Rezeya Kundi, Social Security Number: 325-45-9876, Michigan Driver’s License Number 123409877, General Motors Employee Number 987456, known residence Southfield, Michigan, known to live in Pakistan, Married to Said Kundi, believed to have been born March 12, 1968, and pressed Enter.
Any search engine is highly capable, and they are getting better and better every day; but Computer (so named by its Trekkie engineers) would take each separate inquiry, find the answers, then relate them all before cross-referencing with every police, commercial, government, and even hacked database in the world. Computer could comprehend that believed to have been born on a certain date was different from the phrase DOB, and could question the results of that query as though it were a question, and look for other information that might be more accurate.
It is not the exclusive domain of criminals to use malware planted on computers that effectively turn the computer into a “bot” or a slave to another computer when connected to the internet. Criminals use them to gather personal banking and credit card information for the purposes of fraud, yet some of these “viruses” are written for the NSA. They plant themselves on mainframes and personal computers around the world and if they find data deemed of relevance, they send it to Computer.
Scott got up, knowing the computer would be chewing on the query for a while. “I need a coffee,” he said to the empty room, locking the keyboard with his password.
June 28, 13:25 EDT
Detroit, Michigan
“Mrs. Kundi? Is it all right if I call you Mrs. Kundi?” Craig inquired politely. She ignored him, not even giving an indication that she’d heard him.
“Mrs. Kundi, we are going to be spending all of our time together for as long as it takes. I hope you don’t think for a moment that reality is any more palatable to me than it is for you.”
She casually took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and remained silent. Her unambiguous body language said, You can keep me here forever. I’ll never say a word.
Craig looked exhausted, and that didn’t help his situation one bit. Rezeya got the impression she could easily outlast him.
“When did you start to work at GM?” Craig asked.
No answer.
“How long have you been in the United States?”
Nothing.
“How many friends have you made here?”
Silence.
“Did you make any friends? Or was everyone to you just a meaningless actor in your play?”
A sideways glance and an audible sigh.
“I am sure many of the people you went to school with or worked with, maybe even your neighbors, considered you a friend.”
No response.
“But to you they were no more than pawns, bit pieces you could use and later discard. Merely expendable pieces in your game of strategy and revenge?”
A bodily movement, a repositioning in the chair and shifting of the arms, ending with her folding them even more tightly across her chest. That last bit struck a nerve. Something was making her uncomfortable. Was it the reference to the pawns or mention of revenge? Only one way to find out.
“Is that true? The people who took you into their hearts, who believed you were a good person, a friend, were just stepping-stones for you, useful to you just for your cover?”
“You are all the same, with your arrogant Western Judeo–Christian thought. You think you are the only ones who value human life, who treasure the beauty of life and friendship and love,” she said defiantly.
“Maybe it seems that way because of your eagerness to take others’ lives even if it means sacrificing a few of your own,” Craig said. “Maybe Western cultures can’t understand a desire so strong to end life that you’d even end your own just to take a few of us out with you.”
“Of course you don’t understand, but then you don’t even try to. You don’t even desire to understand. You much prefer to just fear us, keep us away, or better yet, under surveillance, you watch us, waiting to catch us, believing we are all going to hurt you. If not now, it’s only a matter of time.”
“Well, sometimes that suspicion is well founded,” said Craig.
“What are you accusing me of?”
“Accusations? No, no, I don’t think you understand. The time for accusations came and went. We’re way beyond that. We know who you are, we know what you’ve done, and we even have a good idea why you did it. So, no ma’am, this isn’t about accusations. This is about salvation—yours.”
“If you really knew everything and already had all the answers, there would be no need for me and I’d already be dead.”
Craig was still waiting for intelligence from Scott, having nowhere to possibly take this interrogation until it arrived. The signal for him to come out of the room was a massive relief, as he hoped it meant Sco
tt had something for him.
It was Scott, and he was smiling, so there was good news.
Scott began. “So it’s not a lot, but here’s a bit of information about where she comes from.”
Craig read it over and looked up at his companion with raised eyebrows to indicate how impressed he was. He wanted to say, “Thanks, hon” but instead said, “Thanks, Scott. I can use this now.”
Craig walked into the room where Rezeya was waiting and began immediately reading what Scott had discovered so far.
“So, you wanted to know what we know about you. We know that your given name is Rezeya Kashani. You were born in Iran but moved to Afghanistan when you were six years old. After the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, many of those responsible for the implementation and execution of the airplane attacks of nine eleven escaped into the mountainous region that creates the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. We know that the mastermind of that plan, and several other plans that never were executed by Osama bin Laden, was none other than Mohammad Hafizullah Kashani, and we know he is your father!”
Taking advantage of her shell shock, Craig kept at it. “What we also know is that you allocated certain cars to certain dealerships. We know how many cars have been equipped with your group’s version of a special option. The reason you are alive is we quickly need to know where the hell you sent those cars. And since you’ve erased all trace of those cars, you do have value to us alive, for now. Millions of lives are at risk. However, we did suspect you might try something as you did in terms of wiping your hard drive, and before you were alerted to come to the CEO’s office a restore point was created by the I.T. department, so it’s just a matter of time for us to restore that data.”
