Shift Delete

by Gary L. Rashba

  He hoped the opener, although it sounded scripted, might deflect more probing questions. He expected the 5th degree about end use; these were nuclear control devices, after-all.

  With nervous anxiety that comes with entering the unknown, he inhaled deeply, picked up the telephone handset, listened to the drone of the dial tone for a moment before dialing the West Coast phone number.

  “Specialty Metals. How may I help you?” A friendly woman’s voice greeted him.

  It took a second for the words to come, but then the hurdles disappeared and he calmed down, requesting to speak with the sales department to request a price quotation.

  After kindly requesting availability and pricing for exporting twenty tons of C-350 maraging steel, he braced for the probing questions as the company qualified the caller.

  “I need to know the end use application for the maraging steel because it is controlled for export by the U.S. Government,” Specialty’s sales manager noted.

  “No trouble. It’s for Nigeria.”

  “Mind if I ask what it’s for?”

  “I don’t actually know exactly. I mean, I do know,” he stressed the word ‘do’. “It’s a mega refinery project in Nigeria.” His heart was beating rapidly and he shifted in his seat. He could feel his face getting warm. “It’s just that I’m not on the technical side.” He paused. Stay cool and collected.

  “You see, I source U.S.-based suppliers for foreign companies -in this case one in Nigeria—who don’t have the people or aren’t savvy enough to do this themselves.”

  “Well all right. Let’s move ahead then...”

  After hanging up the phone, Lippnow was pleasantly surprised at how easily it had gone. His story was obviously good enough, although he wondered if they knew he was full of shit and just cared more about a sale when they could probably gouge the customer by charging a premium price since Lippnow admittedly had no experience with this product, save for knowing that he was requesting enough steel for several thousand centrifuges.

  But instead, the call went far more smoothly than imagined. Rather than getting the proverbial 5th degree it was more of, “Well Mr. Lippnow. We’ll try to get that price quote out to you just as soon as we can...” Could it be so simple? he wondered. By the time he completed the first call, he had already made misrepresentations and false statements regarding the end user. As far as the law was concerned, he had already concealed prohibited activities and transactions from detection by the United States Government so as to avoid penalties and disruption of the illegal activity; evaded prohibitions and licensing requirements of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Iranian Transactions Regulations, and was working to provide Iran with items they could use to construct, operate and maintain gas centrifuges to enrich uranium. There was no turning back. But it was easier than expected, giving him the confidence to make a second call. Encouraged, he picked up the phone and dialed another supplier, where he was greeted by an automatic answering system. “For sales, press 1. For management, press 2. For Accounting, press 3...”

  Next he set about finding twenty tons each of two types of high strength aluminum: 7075-0 aluminum alloy in 80mm rods, and 7075-T6 aluminum alloy in 150mm rods. His notes from Warsaw indicated the customer insisted on a U.S. source following a bad experience with Chinese aluminum alloy, which was found to be of poor quality. He received pricing several days later ranging from $6,600 - $7000 per ton, but he had no idea whether this was a good price. He opened the calculator app on his computer and began playing with numbers, wondering if he should settle for a 5% mark-up for himself, or 10%. He needed to take care of Karl, who had brought him in on the deal. But these were not huge sums of money involved, considering the risks he was taking. With that mindset, he upped his cut to 20%, which would yield an easy twenty-five grand on this item alone.

  He worked his way through the procurement list, making calls to industries throughout the United States over the coming days.

  He relaxed as he encountered friendly and helpful people on the phone. Some of the questions they asked were simply trying to ensure that he was ordering the right material for his needs, rather than coming from distrust or suspicion. But he was always asked if he was aware these items are export controlled.

  “Not a problem,” Lippnow responded. “These are destined for Nigeria,” before launching into a long explanation of the mega refinery project, sparing no detail about how it will solve their oil self-sufficiency problems, until the salesman had heard more than enough and agreed to get a quote out as quickly as possible.

  To accelerate the process, Lippnow thought it would extend his reach if he did this by email, with fewer time-consuming probing questions. He used the “Contact Us” link found on most websites, figuring he might not get responses from everyone, but he could always follow up with a phone call.

  He emailed a company in Illinois inquiring about metallic strip foil used for high-speed motors capable of reaching 70,000 rpm’s and a company in Ohio about a thermal ionization mass spectrometer and a magnetic mass spectrometer, used to analyze the molecular composition of materials. This was all way beyond his basic understanding of science from the introductory classes he had taken back at American University to meet their science requirement. He inquired about a magnetometer, an electronic instrument for measuring the strength of magnetic fields of ring magnets used in the top bearing of centrifuges. One vendor required a declaration that Lippnow was not a middleman but rather the end user, and that “the products will not be used for biological weapons, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, etc., and stated that the sale was subject to the rules of the United States Department of Commerce Bureau of Export Administration.”

  “No problem,” he answered, promising to send documentation from the Nigerian prime contractor without delay.

  There were Twister speed lathes for machining high precision parts, a TCH600 nitrogen/hydrogen/oxygen analyzer from a company in Michigan, MK.S Baratron pressure transducers for measuring gas pressure within gas piping systems, and pumps, valves and gauges for the assembly of large vacuum pump systems—critical to the operation of centrifuge plants.

  He found it fascinating as he read about each item he was sourcing, and how each was a piece of a puzzle in a sophisticated and complicated industrial project, while maintaining deniability given the goods were all dual-use and raw materials.

  Lippnow wasn’t the only one looking at the price quotes coming in. Elliot Parovsky had also taken a keen interest. Needing a break from painstaking work investigating yet another major U.S. Government network system breach, Parovsky and the entire DCA team had been putting in long hours trying to determine the full extent of a security breach at the Office of Personnel Management that had compromised background investigation records of 21.5 million current, former, and prospective Federal employees and contractors. As the DCA team investigated, it came to light that sensitive information of individuals who applied for a security clearance was stolen from the OPM background investigation database.

  This issue was a huge embarrassment for the U.S. Government—far more than a DDOS attack or a defaced U.S. Government website. The investigative work was time-consuming, monotonous and tiring, wasting days monitoring computers as they diagnosed all affected records as well as additional databases looking for hidden exploits or other tampering. For Parovsky, the excitement of eavesdropping on Lippnow’s personal correspondence certainly broke the monotony.

  “Hey bud. How ‘bout we go for some cardio?”

  Parovsky was startled since he was reading Lippnow’s private correspondence. It was as if the colonel had walked in and caught him.

  Distracted from his work, he looked up and saw the colonel’s head sticking in his doorway, the rest of his body hidden behind the wall.

  Parovsky understood the colonel meant jogging, his favorite form of cardio-vascular activity, and smiled at his incurable mili
tary friend, who still spoke and, with his close-cropped haircut and fit body, looked like he was in the military. But at work, the colonel had made the necessary switch into the civilian world, easily cooperating with others and taking instructions, not just barking orders and expecting full and immediate compliance.

  It was already late in the afternoon, so Parovsky agreed to take his friend up on the offer. The two jogged on a wooded running trail behind their suburban office park.

  “You never told me about your trip to Russia,” the colonel said to Parovsky, speaking with no visible sign of effort from the exercise.

  “What’s there to tell?” Parovsky struggled to respond. He wiped off some of the sweat dripping down his neck with his hand and flicked it to the ground. “I submitted the report. Obviously the Russians’ offer to hang Snowden out to dry was the highlight. I mean Holy Shit—that’s a big deal, and they pitched it to me. That was pretty exciting.”

  “What else can you tell me about your trip?” the colonel asked.

  What’s he getting at?

  Tim continued. “So Ivan’s back in action.” He didn’t believe in the break-up of the Soviet Union. As far as he was concerned, Estonia and Russia were one and the same. This of course ignored the fact that this Estonia-Russia conflict was about Russia invading Estonia, but he couldn’t be convinced otherwise. It wasn’t clear if he was just saying this stuff for the fun of it, or really believed the Cold War was still on, just in a different configuration. “We were gonna’ stop them in the Fulda Gap, and now they’re attacking us by computer. Hah! Sissies. Who’d have thought this is how it would happen?!”

  “Come in here for a moment!” Lippnow called out. Parovsky was eavesdropping on Lippnow in the background while he went about his work.

  Lippnow’s curvaceous secretary entered his office and stood beside him.

  “Why is this document open on my computer?” he asks, pointing to the screen, and she bends over to see. “Come closer,” he says as he put his arm around her waist and drew her in. He glanced at her cleavage, which did not go unnoticed by her. “Were you doing something on my computer?”

  She shakes her head no.

  Shit, Parovsky thought. / must have been distracted while going through Lippnow’s mails and forgotten to close the document.

  “That’s strange,” he adds. “I didn’t touch this document today.” His hand stays fixed to her waist before slowly sliding down to her buttocks. She grimaces and blinks her eyes repeatedly to fight back both tears and the desire to tell him off, to stop touching her. But then maybe she’s at fault for saying nothing and merely putting up with it. At first, she had been flattered by her new boss’ attention, to which she reciprocated with harmless flirtation. That was fine until it became physical one day, when he groped and fondled her. Now it was chronic outright sexual harassment, but she was too scared to say anything, fearing she would lose her job which she incorrectly reasoned was her fault for not objecting to Lippnow touching her. He took her silence as tacit acceptance, and so it continued.

  The harassment had only intensified since his divorce. He felt nothing; he was satisfied physically without the entanglement of being in a relationship, while she felt ashamed and could not allow herself to be in a relationship with anyone else, feeling she was somehow tied to her boss. Ironically, despite what amounted to sexual harassment and abuse, if he had wanted a relationship with her, she would have assented.

  During Parovsky’s periodic snooping in Lippnow’s email account, he came across the quotes for all sorts of esoteric-sounding equipment, which only fueled his curiosity. Parovsky saw an email Lippnow sent to one of the companies—with the email trail beginning with Lippnow’s approach to the company referencing a phone call they had held—where Lippnow explained that the goods were needed for a refinery project in Nigeria. Could be, he thought. Lippnow had traveled to Nigeria. But then he recalled how the Nigeria trip was booked separately from the rest of his travel itinerary to Germany, which certainly raised some questions. Something didn’t seem right about it all.

  Parovsky searched the internet for information about the various items Lippnow was sourcing. For all he knew, it could very well be an oil refinery. The steel he was trying to procure has aerospace and defense uses, but also high performance shafting and gears. The aluminum is used in high stress structural parts, including aerospace and defense, but also industrial parts like gears, shafts and valve regulating parts. But Parovsky just didn’t trust this guy. He likened himself to a criminal investigator, or even a Private-Eye detective acting on a hunch. Rather than searching Google for each item individually, he searched for several of them together. And that’s where he hit pay dirt in the form of a paper from the Institute of Science and Security all about Iran’s nuclear smuggling efforts. The items Lippnow was so busy trying to get his hands on, according to the online paper, “can be used to construct a device capable of producing or utilizing atomic energy materials, such as a gas centrifuge to enrich uranium.”

  “Fucking A!” Parovsky blurted out loud as he realized what he had uncovered.

  As he mulled over what he had discovered about Lippnow, Parovsky realized there was little he could actually do. He felt vindicated at his hunch about Lippnow having never changed from the scumbag he always was. Parovsky felt he could not allow Lippnow to get away with this. Operating outside the boundaries of the law, Parovsky knew he couldn’t very well report Lippnow; all he could do was throw hurdles in his way. This was better than turning him in; this way he would act as a vigilante, like something out of an action movie, just without the shootouts and exaggerated theatrics.

  Lippnow collected the price quotations, being sure to thank each company for its speedy reply and advising that he was evaluating the quotations received and would advise soon of his intentions. This all seemed so easy. In the cutthroat world of weapons deals where he had begun his international trading, finding a customer for available weapons and supplies or available weapons and supplies for a customer were the most difficult challenge in every deal. Could it be this easy? he wondered, with a captive customer eager to get his hands on anything he could provide? He had so many quotations for the various items that he had to make order in a three-ring binder notebook, with dividers detailing each item on the Iranian’s wish list.

  There were still things he needed to figure out, like the issue of payments for the goods to be ordered, and how to secure his mark-up. Payment should come from Nigeria to “prove”—falsely of course— that the end user was indeed Nigeria. On the other hand, given Nigeria’s shady banking reputation, who in their right mind would accept a letter of credit from a Nigerian bank? He personally didn’t plan on fronting any money. This all needed to be negotiated, as well as the mark-up he was tacking on to each item procured. He emailed his questions to Karl.

  The familiar audio cue announced an incoming email. It was from Karl.

  From:Karl Leinhos

  To:Darrel Lippnow

  Subject:Moving Forward- Refinery

  Hello Darrel!

  Because people are wary of dealing with the Nigerians, the customer is prepared to use a letter of credit from a first-rate European bank, and even make a down-payment as a confidence-building measure.

  The down-payment was an old technique to lure in the business partner. Once he received money from the Iranian, Lippnow would be in too deep and not likely feel right about backing out. It was common practice in advertising with free samples. Once you are a user of a product—even a free sample—it is easier psychologically to buy it.

  25. HOSTING THE RUSSIANS

  A mechanism was in place for the exchange of information, and for regularly-scheduled meetings. Parovsky hosted the second meeting at DCA with both Grigoryev and Bashlykova coming over for the meetings.

  Bashlykova, the more junior of the two Russians, wore his brown three-piece suit. Obviously the only suit he owned,<
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  Parovsky thought. Parovsky couldn’t help but peek at his socks, and was relieved to see that this time he wore more suitable dark ones, recalling the turquoise children’s socks he wore when they first met. The older and more senior Grigoryev was better dressed for this visit in a grey suit.

  The visit began with a closely-monitored tour of DCA’s facilities. There were no real secrets here—just a situation room supported by advanced analytical tools that provided predictive analysis, cyber threat forecasting and social media event collection, and enterprise-wide visibility, awareness and alerting capability. Still the U.S. counter-intelligence folks did not like this one bit, commenting that it was like giving a burglar a tour of your house and explaining the type of alarm system you have installed. But DCA acceded to the tour in the spirit of cooperation, despite the security guys’ reservations. That was the bilateral agreement after all.

  After what the Russians felt was a wasted day, the two sides settled in the DCA conference room off the SIC for a summary and wrap-up session. The blinds were drawn and the Russians intentionally seated facing away from the SIC, with their names printed on place cards. Some protocol person Parovsky never even knew about had come up with full-size Russian and American flags to be placed in the corner of the room, and it was she that suggested the SIC hide the world threat map showing attack origins, since so many come from Russia. The colonel was there, and had evidently notified other agencies since both NSA and FBI sent representatives over to keep their eyes on the tour and meetings. Parovsky figured one of them was fluent in Russian.

  Even CISO saw fit to find time in her schedule to join part of the visit, where she spoke of the necessity for international cooperation in this age of nearly unrestrictive cyber skirmishing. Parovsky had drafted her remarks, at her request, to which she had made some cosmetic changes just to claim the remarks as her own, he was sure. It must have appeared overwhelming for the two Russians being so outnumbered. It certainly was not conducive to any meaningful exchange.