Shift Delete
Page 24
Respondents received an automated reply that he had also prepared, adding to its legitimate look and feel.
Your email verification has been received and processed. Thank you for your cooperation.
This email is for notification purposes only. There is no need to reply or for any further action.
He knew that a company, agency or organization can buy all the cyber security gear in the world, but the employee is the weak link. They need to understand the risks involved in clicking on links in emails, visiting unfamiliar websites or using USB sticks received from trade shows or other unknown, untrusted sources.
Just like companies are embarrassed to report that they have been the victim of a cyber-attack or theft, individuals are loath to report their own lapse if they even realize they’ve been had. In the case of Parovsky’s surgical strike breach of the Motor Vehicle Department, the intrusion was not even detected. No one would notice one car and one driver’s license being deleted from the database, unless a very specific search were made for access using the compromised account’s credentials.
“Hey. How ‘bout we grab a beer?”
It was after 7pm, and Parovsky was sticking around the office waiting to see Layla, but opted to go with Tim for some camaraderie and to avoid suspicions. They drove to a hip Georgetown hangout popular with the college crowd, where they both took pleasure looking at young coeds. They sat at the bar, whose high stools afforded a good viewing vantage. The bar offered a range of draught beers—many of them craft beers, with a bank of taps displaying lesser-known brands like DC Brau, Dogfish Head, 3 Stars and Beltway. They each ordered a mug of Sierra Nevada, whose head foamed over and slid down the side of the chilled mugs onto the cardboard coasters bearing the bar’s name.
As the colonel gawked at a well-endowed woman whose bulging button-down shirt revealed a fair amount of cleavage, Parovsky intentionally spoiled the moment for Tim by asking about his family.
He made a quick transition from gawking to kvelling. “Girls are great. Growing bigger every day. They grow up so fast. They’re like little teenagers already.”
“What does that mean?” Elliot asked sarcastically. “They tell you that they hate you and want nothing to do with you?”
Tim laughed. “Wouldn’t blame them. You know, when I was in the military, I was...”
“You were in the military?!” Parovsky interrupted him with feigned surprise. He gulped some beer and licked the foam mustache it left on his upper lip.
Tim smiled and continued, “I deployed overseas with my carrier group the day after the twins were born. They are definitely mama’s girls.”
“You mean to tell me you left your wife with two screaming babies the day after they were born?”
“That’s the military, my friend. Orders are orders.”
“Wow, you screwed her over big time!”
The colonel looked offended. “There’s a support network. The families help one another.” It sounded to Parovsky like Tim was trying to convince himself that it was alright to abandon your wife with two newborn babies.
“Not in the middle of the night when one wakes up crying and then wakes up the other. Holy Shit! How could she forgive you?”
“That’s part of being a military wife,” Tim answered defensively.
“That’s why they all sleep around!” Tim’s face became serious all of a sudden. He didn’t like what Parovsky was insinuating.
Parovsky didn’t care; he wasn’t going to watch his words with a friend. He continued fanning the flames. “Sounds like a good deal—symbiotic. You screw your wife over by leaving her to raise the kids, and the wives screw over the husbands by sleeping around!”
Tim managed to smile and gave in to the teasing. He volunteered that there were officers who would flirt with the wives of new subordinate officers in their command, which intentionally put the wife in a quandary. “If she rejected the commander’s advances,” the colonel explained, “she jeopardizes her husband’s career advancement. The more willing she is, the more she contributes to her husbands’—and her own—success and standing, as the wives also have a rank in the social pecking order.”
Parovsky smiled and raised his mug in a toast of appreciation to the clear example of harassment. Tim concluded, “So it creates an incredibly ironic situation of a wife cheating on her husband out of love for him, to help him!”
Elliot found it tempting but refrained from noting sarcastically that it’s a good thing Tim’s wife never found herself in such a situation, remembering the rule of never insulting a man’s wife, mother or sister.
It was Tim that continued harping on this topic. “I met a guy— enlisted—who was sent for two weeks to a SAC base...”
Reading Parovsky’s lack of comprehension, he clarified: “Strategic Air Command. Back then, the bombers were ready for war 24/7/365, with crews alternating standby alert duty when they’d be ready to take off at a moment’s notice to obliterate the Soviet Union.” Parovsky noticed a glimmer in Tim’s eye as he spoke of the glory days.
“Anyway, he told me some woman starts up with him at a bar off base and invites him back to her place, which is base housing. ’What about your husband?’ he asks, obviously out of concern for his own safety and well-being and not for her infidelity! Turns out he’s on a standby alert crew, so no chance he’ll be coming home. So off they go.”
“Very patriotic!” Parovsky quipped. He drank some more beer.
Afterwards he asked if he could meet her again, and she told him that she would find him, which she did.” Tim shook his head in disgust.
“Imagine that. He’s out there defending our country, and she’s fucking some enlisted puke!”
Elliot laughed, but Tim did not like it. “If I caught someone messing with my wife, I’d kill the son of a bitch!”
“What about her?” Elliot asked, enjoying that his friend was on the defensive.
The colonel did not answer, but merely responded, “Cheating is disgusting, immoral behavior.”
Elliot was sure Tim had to be wondering if his own wife had been part of this “ecosystem” of abandonment and infidelity, unless this was a sophisticated veiled message. Parovsky couldn’t tell if Tim was wearing his “security guy” hat and giving a lecture admonishing Elliot about extra-curricular activities with Layla that could compromise their security clearances, or just hearing Tim air his conservative family values during a friendly night out.
Tim found post-military life frustratingly boring. He confided to Elliot how unhappy he was, saying that the most exhilarating moments of his life were in combat situations shooting at terrorists and being fired upon. “I’ve never felt so alive in my life!” he told Parovsky of combat while bemoaning that there were no more wars for him to fight. Tim’s way of reliving the past was by talking about his days in uniform. He understood that those days, and days of glory, were over for him. It was easy to understand how sitting behind a desk monitoring employee emails and tracking web usage were such a letdown for him. He dreaded Monday mornings knowing it represented the onset of forty hours of doldrums until another weekend.
He even missed the hierarchy of fistfights, he once told Elliot over a lunch.
“The what?” Elliot had asked, not comprehending.
“You know, fistfights,” Tim responded, explaining, “Guys in the military love to fight. If there were no foreign army guys around to start up with, then we’d have inter-service fights, fighting with guys from the other military branches.”
Elliot had shaken his head in disbelief while Tim went on explaining, beaming with pride. “And if there were no army or air force guys around, guys would fight Marines from other units. And if there were no other units around, they’d fight with one another.”
“Horseplay, you mean?”
“No!” Tim grimaced to highlight that Parovsky was way off. “Real fist fights.”
“If there was no one else to fight with, and there was no choice, then yes,” he beamed.
Elliot shook his head in disbelief at the stupidity of it all while Tim continued to smile a content grin. Then he had to go ahead and ruin everything for Parovsky with another of his remarks that left Parovsky dumbfounded if there were a hidden agenda.
“I remember some serious brawls with British troops when we ran into those guys. Strange how it is. Sometimes your best friends are the ones you need to keep your eyes on.”
27. BEGINNING TO UNRAVEL
Lippnow’s briefcase was full of price offers for various parts, components and raw materials. He was on his way to meet Salami in Istanbul to begin working out transaction specifics. His carry-on bag was packed with toiletries, a few pairs of underwear and socks, an extra pair of pants and three button-down shirts, even though his itinerary put him in Istanbul for only one day, enough time for the meeting, a walk around the city to see sites from the heyday of the Ottomans, and then home again.
The trip had been set in motion by a pair of two-word emails:
From:Darrel Lippnow
To:salaml@gmail.com
Subject:Refinery
Making progress
And the reply
From:salaml@gmail.com
To:Darrel Lippnow
Subject:Refinery
Do tell...
Lippnow had assembled price quotes for nearly the entire list of parts the Iranian had provided him in Warsaw. It had been easy enough to assemble them using his cover story of the Nigerian mega refinery. Given Nigeria’s poor payment reputation, he had offered all suppliers letters of credit issued from first rate European banks. Now it was time to set up the payment mechanism, first and foremost for the most important purveyor: himself. He knew it was time to meet to work out the subsequent steps.
Lippnow needed purchase orders issued by NB1, backed by letters of credit funded by Salami’s side. Salami wanted to see the original price quotes from the suppliers “to verify we’re talking about the correct goods and getting a good deal from them,” as he put it in an email. That meant Lippnow could no longer hide his mark-up; he would need to negotiate it. How much money would he get for his efforts? he wondered. If Salami’s offer wasn’t high enough, he could still walk away, but he couldn’t do this once Salami had possession of all the price quotes and the other fruits of his labor, which he could take and pass on to some other unscrupulous sucker to do the job.
Salami hadn’t expected such a quick turn-around and wasn’t available for a long trip, so they agreed to meet in Istanbul, a close-by solution for the Iranian to travel abroad to meet Lippnow in a non-eyebrow-raising country. Lippnow openly made reservations for the trip through Century Travel and updated Karl, who in turn updated Balducci.
Karl wasn’t the only one tracking this activity. In Washington, Elliot Parovsky had been obsessively following Lippnow’s activities, especially once he started sourcing these interesting-sounding items that had piqued his curiosity and fanned his latent jealousy.
The convenient late-afternoon flight time meant Lippnow missed both morning and afternoon rush hour traffic. The roads were relatively empty on his drive to the airport which he drove way beyond the speed limit, except when slowed by New York’s ubiquitous road construction. He arrived at John F. Kennedy airport with ample time to spare and eased into a parking spot at the Short Term parking area.
At Kennedy Airport, Lippnow bypassed the self- check-in kiosks that he still wasn’t comfortable using and went straight to the business class check-in counter, preferring the personal attention and extra consideration he received as a high status frequent flyer.
After the initial friendly greeting and thanks for being a premier frequent flyer with the airline, the attendant became busy with her computer terminal, with her facial expressions revealing frustration that something wasn’t right.
“Sir, I am very sorry,” the attendant said in a slightly excited Hispanic accent, “But your passport is not valid. The system is not allowing me to process you for this flight.”
“What do you mean? The passport is right there in front of you. It’s valid. Do it again!”
“Sir. I already checked three time.”
“Check it again. Obviously you’ve made a mistake, so fix it now!” He raised his voice with the last three words. “Do you even know what you are doing?” His nostrils flared in anger and a vein protruded from his forehead. Stupid woman, he thought.
The attendant tried to maintain her composure in face of the unruly passenger’s abuse. Remaining firm and professional according to the training she received, she responded, “Sir, I am trying to resolve this matter for you.”
“You need to solve this problem; you made the mistake. My passport is valid.” Raising his voice as he pointed to the passport open on the desk before her, he shouted, “Look at it!” He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration.
Attendants seated on both sides of the woman stopped what they were doing and looked over, as did other passengers waiting in line.
“Sir, I’ll call the supervisor.”
One of the attendants next to her asked if she should call security, loud enough for Lippnow to hear.
A supervisors’ intervention failed to resolve the problem. They invited him to look at the incomprehensible airline computer system when they entered his passport number, but they assured him the same code that repeatedly came up was one that rejected the passport, explaining that otherwise the system would have automatically processed him and issued a boarding pass. And with more apologies, they suggested he go urgently to the nearest passport office to sort out the problem, and the airline would accommodate him by rebooking him on the next available flight to Istanbul.
After stepping out of line, Lippnow used his Samsung Galaxy to email Karl that there was some administrative error and his passport was rejected. Then he made a phone call.
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on!” he said into his cell phone so loudly that other passengers looked his way. “I’m at the airport and they said my passport isn’t valid.”
“Didn’t you check it before you left home?” the voice on the phone asked.
“Of course I fucking checked it. I’m fucking checking it right now. It’s valid for another three years.” After a pause, he asked, “Can you fix this for me?”
“Let me see what I can do. I’ll talk to someone at the State Department. Read me the number.” Lippnow read off the passport number and hung up.
Still hoping this could be sorted out in time, Lippnow sat down on an airport bench, holding his head up with both hands with his elbows resting on his carry-on in front of him.
He was full of anxiety; he found himself tapping his foot from nervousness or pacing, always with the cellphone in his hand so he would not miss the call back. Check-in time for his flight was nearing, while Lippnow looked repeatedly at his bulky show-off watch and again at his cellphone in the unlikely event he missed Balducci’s return call. Pulling his carry-on, he walked a short distance down the terminal to a bar where he ordered a double scotch. Worked up with anger and frustration, he quickly downed the drink and asked for another. His cell phone rang.
“What’s up?” he asked. This was no time for niceties.
“Hey, it’s Tom.”
“I know. What’s up?”
“I spoke to State. Someone checked and told me there’s no record of the passport number you gave me. Are you sure you gave me the right number?”
“I read it to you right from the passport itself,” he answered, annoyed. “Do you want the numbers in an email?”
“No, just read the number off to me again.”
Opening his passport, Lippnow read off the nine digits into the phone, clearly enunciating each
number to avoid any possible misunderstanding. Balducci confirmed that that was the number he had checked, and that State had no record of it.
It didn’t make sense since he had traveled with it repeatedly and had multiple entry and exit stamps. It had to be some freak administrative error.
“All they could suggest,” Balducci added, “was for you to apply for an emergency passport. Tell them you’ve got business in Istanbul and need to be overseas in a hurry, and they should be able to straighten it out for you.”
“You can’t do anything more than that?” He wasn’t hiding his anger.
“You know the rules, Darrel: No fingerprints. Keep me posted.” He hung up the phone, drank down his glass of whisky and ordered a beer.
Lippnow was so worked up with a cocktail of alcohol and frustration and anger that he hardly gave it any thought when the bartender told him his credit card wasn’t working. He merely paid in cash and stumbled his way back to his car in the short term parking garage.
28. THE QUINTESSENTIAL T.L.A.
“Godammit!” Susan Molan slammed the phone down. The long-term CIA veteran found it easier getting her anger out slamming down a desk phone; pushing the disconnect button on a cellphone just didn’t have the same feel to it. She had just been informed by Balducci that Lippnow failed to board his flight to Istanbul.
Molan was Balducci’s connection to the president’s top secret plan to allow the mullah’s in Iran to get their nuclear bomb, above and beyond what was authorized by international agreement. She also led the CIA’s shadow war against the White House’s effort, due to intentional ambiguities the White House factored in for deniability in the event their plan leaked and they were forced to answer for their actions.
It was easy enough for the Agency to monitor Balducci’s email and phone calls to track his activities. The CIA was working to stop Iran’s nuclear program because that was the government’s official policy. If the White House decided to assist Iran in going nuclear, as far as the CIA was concerned, that was not U.S. policy—the CIA therefore continued to do all it could to thwart the Iranian efforts, in this case by hacking presidential advisor Tom Balducci’s account for starters.