Reprisal!- The Eagle's Sorrow
Page 6
Stepping into the large conference room on the second sub-level, after the meet and greet with the troops upstairs, Steven and Chip found a lunch buffet was laid out on the large conference table. The senator and the two men, Richland and Westlyn, the former directors of the FBI and CIA respectively, had arrived a few minutes earlier and had already started lunch. Steven and Chip didn’t waste any time following suit.
“Bill, Robert, it is good to see you again,” Steven stated as he loaded his plate. “Senator Bains, you look lovely, as usual,” Steven quipped. “I believe that you all know each other, already?” he offered as he turned to find a seat. Bill, Bob and the senator all nodded in the affirmative.
“Steven, it’s good to see you, too,” both Bill and Robert replied almost simultaneously. Senator Bains gruffly told him to stop wasting his flattery and hurry up so they could get on with it, though she had a smile on her face the whole time.
“General,” Bill Richland stated as he reached out his hand, shaking Chip’s.
“No general here, Bill. I’m retired now,” Chip stated as he shook hands.
“That was the country’s loss,” Bill replied.
“Chip, you’ll always be a general to me,” Bob Westlyn said as he warmly shook the hand of his long-time friend. “It is good to know we can still make a difference.”
“Senator,” Chip stated as he reached for the senator’s hand and then shook it, despite the fact she didn’t exactly offer it. It wasn’t that she disliked him; she just wasn’t a handshaker. She smiled politely at this invasion of her private space, pulling her hand back as if she had just touched pond scum. Bob snickered at the senator’s reaction, earning him a scowl from her.
“So,” Steven began as he sat down. “What have you come up with?” he asked as he looked at the two former spy masters.
Bill spoke up first. “The intelligence looks very solid,” he said as he lowered his fork. “The terrorists in Cuba appear to have been part of a larger group planning an attack on Chicago.”
“There are terrorists in Cuba?” Senator Bains asked as she looked at Steven, who was busy eating his salad.
“The planning guide,” Bill continued, “has provided the names of every member of the cell, their locations, and the names of those who will provide support for them—the whole network. Plus, it also provides the names of the alternative members should anyone be stopped before they can carry out the attack. It is extremely detailed.”
“What are you talking about?” the senator asked. “What is this ‘planning guide’?”
“A binder detailing the plans for an upcoming terrorist attack on the infrastructure in Chicago,” Bill offered.
“Is this some sort of practice guide for Homeland Security? Where did you get it?” the senator then asked as she looked at Steven yet again.
“It was discovered by a Kilauea Security agent overseas,” Chip interjected.
“Where overseas?” the senator asked, pressing the issue as a lawyer might. After all, she was one.
“Madrid, Spain, in the airport. It was sitting on the chair next to him when he sat down,” Chip replied curtly, hoping that ended the senator’s questions.
“Now, having it is all well and good,” Bill began again, cutting off the senator for the moment, “but the hard part will be to get the intelligence into the hands of someone who can—and will—do something with it. It needs to be someone who won’t look too deeply into where it came from. It’s either that or we’ll have to figure out a way to have it discovered by investigators independent of us.”
“Gentlemen, I need to know more about these terrorists in Cuba and exactly how you came into possession of this planning guide.” The senator fixed her gaze on Steven, who didn’t meet her gaze, but continued to eat his salad.
“Senator, that’s what I’m trying to explain,” Bill said.
“You’re not any better at it now than you were when you were in Washington. Just spit it out already,” the senator curtly replied.
“It will all become clear as we continue explaining the situation, Senator.” Steven did his best to deflect her inquiries.
“But how can I follow what you’re talking about if I don’t have all the necessary facts up front?”
“Be patient, Senator,” Steven suggested as he nodded for Bill to continue.
“I think I have a solution to the evidence problem,” Bill said between bites of his salad. “I can have the binder ‘discovered’ by a local police officer in Dearborn, Michigan. Dearborn and Detroit are home to the largest concentration of Muslims and Arabs outside of the Middle East. Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company, is the person to thank for that. He first petitioned Congress for special immigrant status for the Chaldeans in the 1920s as a way to have cheap labor for his car factories. Congress obliged, providing quick and easy work visas for anyone from the Middle East, as long as they had a sponsorship from the Ford Motor Company. Few, if any, went back home after their work visas expired seven years later.
“Anyway, the person I have in mind to discover it is a friend of mine, and we go way back. The story will be that he found it in a booth at a local restaurant when he stopped for his lunch break. Seeing that it is in Arabic, he will turn it over to the Detroit office of the FBI, avoiding any connection to us,” Bill stated.
“Who’s the friend that can make this happen?” Chip asked.
“He’s an old friend who happens to be on the Dearborn Police Force. His name is Ali Husain. He’s a captain on the force, born and raised in Dearborn’s east end. I served with him in the Army years ago. He’s a Chaldean Christian. We’ve kept in touch, and I’ve worked with him several times when the Bureau had to go into Dearborn after Arab suspects,” Bill explained.
“He’s well-respected at the Bureau, as well as in the community,” Bill continued. “Plus, most of the guys down at the Bureau wouldn’t think twice about the authenticity of evidence of terrorism found in the Dearborn area,” Bill concluded.
“Won’t he want to know where it came from?” Steven asked.
“He might, but he’ll accept that I can’t tell him,” Bill offered.
“He’d better, or we’re sunk,” Steven interjected.
“If you think he can be trusted, do it,” Chip stated with authority.
Senator Bains looked at Steven when Chip spoke up, expecting him to say something, but Steven followed Chip’s lead and quipped between mouthfuls of food, “I agree.”
“Can we discuss that other bit of intelligence we gathered?” Bob asked as he looked back and forth between Steven and Chip. The senator noticed that both men nodded and then Bob spoke.
“All right, then. The David Ashrawl information is incredible. He has given us the names of the top seven members of the ‘Brotherhood of the Sword,’ their governing council, if you will,” Bob started to explain, but the senator interrupted.
“The ‘Brotherhood of the Sword’? Who are they?” she asked.
CHAPTER NINE
“Oh, of course. I’m sorry, Senator,” Bob stated, knowing that she had never been briefed on the Brotherhood. “They are the masterminds behind all of the racial Islamic terror networks worldwide,” Bob replied flatly.
“I thought that was Al-Qaeda?” she answered with a puzzled look on her face.
“It is…and it isn’t,” Bob said cryptically.
“Cut the crap, Bob. Why haven’t I heard of these guys before? I’m the chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee, damn it!” The senator’s hair-trigger temper was starting to rear its ugly head again, as it did whenever she felt out of the loop.
“I was about to tell you!” Bob quickly snapped back at her.
Actually Bob and the senator were old friends, and taking verbal jabs at each other was just their way of communicating. In years past, they had turf to protect in the ever popular Washington power grab game, and they had used the verbal sparring to conceal their friendship from those who would try to take advantage of it.
“Yeah, I’ll tell you, all right,” Bob sarcastically quipped and then eyed the senator playfully for a moment before continuing. “The Brotherhood of the Sword is a radical group consisting of about one hundred members who control the purse strings behind the scenes for all Islamic terrorism worldwide. They are from every Islamic nation on the planet and have been, up until now, just a shadow that was only rumored to exist. In fact, until Ashrawl confirmed the rumors and provided the names, we had no evidence at all on the group,” Bob explained.
“The rumors have consistently indicated that they control the money and choose the targets and the timing of all major terrorist attacks worldwide. Everyone involved belongs to the elite families of each Arab nation, but the Brotherhood isn’t your typical radical group of Muslims.
“They are the wealthy and the powerful of the Middle East. They’re oil sheiks, the Muslims we consider the moderates of the Islamic world. The group is rumored to have formed in response to the establishment of Israel back in the 1940s shortly after World War II. Their express purpose is to drive Israel and the World War II allies out of the Middle East,” Bob explained.
“Right after the war is when oil exploration in the Mid-East began in earnest. It was first discovered to be of commercial potential in 1933, but it didn’t become of major interest until after the Second World War. Then, in the early fifties, the major Saudi oil fields were discovered, and that was when the Brotherhood really ramped up. It is rumored that they have been behind every war between Israel and its Arab neighbors, starting with the first war in 1947 through today.” Bob paused for a drink of water, allowing Senator Bains to interject.
“They don’t have a very good track record for winning wars, do they?” the senator quipped, then inquired, “So how do you know what David Ashrawl has been saying? The last I heard, he was refusing to talk unless he received a deal for witness protection.”
Ignoring her question, Bob continued, “David Ashrawl was a terrorist sympathizer and financer. He worked behind the scenes to help facilitate the attacks on Houston and San Antonio. He was part of the network that moved the money needed to support such attacks around the world. He had personally sponsored over three hundred young Arab men for visas based on their attending school in the U.S. Most of those men, if not all, have failed to register for any school and are currently off the grid, doing who knows what, here in the States.
“It is believed that they are part of a sleeper cell network run by the Brotherhood. They’re hiding in plain sight in Arab communities throughout the country waiting for the signal to act.” Bob paused, letting the information sink in.
“When did Ashrawl start talking? And isn’t he in the custody of the CIA?” the senator asked again.
Bill looked first at Chip and then at Steven for their approval before he answered. “Yes, he was. They were holding him at a CIA safe house in West Virginia…until his death two days ago.” Bill answered her question, but not as she had expected.
“What?! He’s dead? How did that happen?” the senator asked, sounding very surprised by the news. “Why wasn’t I told about it?”
“As near as we can tell, a team of assassins showed up posing as NSA interrogators. They had very authentic-looking written orders stating they were there to use extreme measures to terminate David Ashrawl. The order carried an extremely good forgery of the director of the NSA, Roger Bascome’s, signature. After calling in to CIA Headquarters to confirm the order, the CIA guards allowed the assassins to interrogate Ashrawl in private per the orders.
“The supposed interrogators proceeded to beat the man almost to death and then waterboarded him until he drowned. When the NSA team finished, they simply drove away leaving the authorization letter and Ashrawl’s body with the CIA guards. No one knows who the interrogators were. When questioned about the orders, Roger Bascome denied the order was authentic and claimed the signature was forged.”
“Could Bascome have had him killed? I wouldn’t put it past the man, but why? Even more concerning is how you found out. Why wasn’t I informed?” she demanded, obviously perturbed by the news.
“I still have a few friends in high places who are in the loop,” Bill said, not wanting to let her know that he had full access to all of the government’s computer systems.
The senator, sensing she wouldn’t get a complete answer, changed her approach to the subject and asked again, “How do you know what Ashrawl said?”
“I have contacts the world over, Sarah,” Bob smiled. “Before the FBI picked him up in Baghdad, someone else had captured him and interrogated him. That ‘someone else’ provided us with the information.”
The senator looked skeptical but seemed satisfied as she moved on to the next subject. “Who are the members of the Brotherhood?” she asked.
“I’ve a copy of the list for each of you,” Bill stated as he handed the copies out. “I’ve included what we know about each of them and the role the State Department has assigned each of their countries. Notice that not a single one is listed as either a terror sponsor or sympathizer. Now, I wouldn’t discount the fact that there may well be some unseen players in the game because the Brotherhood is bound to have other men across the globe facilitating the money laundering services and visa procurement, much as Ashrawl was doing in New York. They also will need to have men purchasing weapons and coordinating transportation to and from the targets.
“We know for a fact that most of the openly hostile Muslim countries provide training facilities for new recruits in exchange for financial payments from the Brotherhood. They use ex-KGB operatives to train the recruits in infiltration techniques. The Brotherhood has been very careful, though, not to have any training facilities in any country other than those that we consider radically controlled already.”
Bob took a quick breath and continued, “We have an additional source for the confirmation of the group. It seems that Kilauea Corp. has had some eavesdropping operations going on at the OPEC meetings, and one of the operatives picked up a conversation between two of the men on the list, providing us with proof they were behind the attacks in Houston and San Antonio.”
“What? Are you saying that you are spying on OPEC?” the senator blurted out at Steven in an accusatory tone. “I don’t believe OPEC is plotting against us.”
“Oh, no. OPEC has nothing but the best intentions towards America and the other Western powers,” Steven stated, sarcasm dripping from every word. “Senator, I run a large, multi-national corporation, and we have to protect ourselves from the other corporations who want to steal every last secret we possess,” Steven offered as justification for his corporation spying on other corporations, including OPEC.
“Gentlemen, I cannot condone this type of behavior. This must be highly illegal,” the senator preached. “I cannot be a part of this.”
“Senator, there are no microphones or cameras here. You can’t be that naive to believe that the rest of the world doesn’t spy on every major corporation in America,” Chip quickly interjected, taking her to task. “Hell, the French are the biggest offenders on the planet.”
“I personally believe,” Bob said quickly, jumping back into the conversation seeing that the senator was about to explode at Chip, “that the Brotherhood is also behind the fluctuation in the stock markets and the run up of the oil futures. They have the money to control almost everything on the planet. With just a bit more money, they could very well dictate the price of everything if they chose to do so—food, fuel, clothing, water, medicine and even housing.