Friends at Homeland Security

by Carl Douglass

  Secretary Carter and Special Agent Hinckley glare openly at Dr. Norcroft, but think it wiser not to speak for the moment. It is now up to the president.

  President Willets temples his fingers on his forehead and has a moment of quiet thought and decision making.

  “There has been a great deal of friction and chest beating over this case. It is too important to lose more time in silly and unproductive marking of territory and in internecine squabbling. So, this is what we are going to do: I will have a presidential order drawn up. You will all take a breath, step back, and begin anew. In the new world we will create, everybody will cooperate fully; everyone will speak and otherwise communicate with civility; and, above all, every bit of information will be shared. You will meet regularly—weekly, if not daily—to keep everyone posted. Beginning today, CIA will handle the foreign aspects. Homeland will deal with the jihadists and their confederates in this country. NYPD will work in their own way to bring the murder conspirators to justice in New York.

  “As more than an aside, I hereby order Homeland Security to cease and desist with its campaign of harassment and interference with the activities of McGee & Associates Investigations. Their records will be returned in good order and promptly—as in the next forty-eight hours. I will tell you that Mr. McGee has been instrumental in the past to solve a very vexing problem for us. We want him to be included. Any questions?”

  I certainly have none. I have to restrain myself from jumping up and down; my NYPD detective friends make an effort not to present a self-satisfied smirk; and Commissioner Jones and Secretary Carter avoid eye contact with each other. The minor cogs like myself and my detective friends quietly make plans to have a little celebration lunch; and no doubt, the Homeland Security officials are planning a different kind of lunch—heaping plates of crow.

  Chapter Eleven

  David Harger, head of IT, asks me for a meeting.

  “What’s up, David?”

  “I’m not quite sure, boss; but I have some research stuff from the Marcuses you ought to look at.”

  He shows me some rather disjointed printouts with a mixture of complete and partial messages and a lot of gibberish that he tells me is the encrypted material.

  “These are e-mail logs resurrected from the ‘delete’ files. That’s why they look so poorly organized. Most of them come from what we were able to extract from both the Marcus computers. I had to work with the IT department of NYPD to get Howard’s materials since his computer has been impounded. There’s not a lot there that would surprise you; and nothing that links him to his son’s murder. Not that it is our primary concern, but I have copies of several hundred documents which link him to the Sorianos; so, he’s toast on the criminal money laundering charges. It practically took an act of Congress to get the records that Homeland Security sequestered. Quite a bit of that has been redacted—so much for interagency cooperation. What I do have is conspicuous for its absence of any communications with the al-Qaeda sources.

  “The material from Whitehead, McTavish, Oriana Martignetti, and both Sorianos does include encoded communications with a guy named Umar al Sharif who is a known affiliate of a major Taliban cell based in Peshawar and an al-Qaeda cell operating in Al-Awja, Iraq—the birthplace of Saddam Hussein—and a larger town, Tikrit. The Homeland Security people were able to break the encryption code—it is a book code based on the Hadith—and that ties the bank investment unit to the Sorianos and a guy named Muhammad Hassan al-Begat, who seems to be the go-between for the Al-Awja cell, the Russian and American Mafiosos, and the Marcuses, and the other bank execs. We have some printouts that serve more or less as the Rosetta Stones of the case.”

  “That still doesn’t get us the clear link to anybody in the conspiracy to murder Decklin, though, right?” I ask.

  “Not exactly,” David responds, “but there is something very interesting—new, actually—in a couple of the e-mail logs that Homeland decrypted. Look.”

  I am holding a printout that reads:

  “I have the info on Achmed and the directions to move the necessary packages through the hawala people. I will see that the packages are in the warehouse. The contents are untraceable, of course. Now, you need to finish the arrangements with your agent, V.M.”

  “I’ve heard of hawala, but I’m not sure I know exactly what it is,” I tell him.

  “Hawala is the informal money transfer system used in the Middle East and often by jihadist terrorist organizations to move money without formal records. It is often friend-to-friend or family member-to-family member, and is based on the complicated mix of performance and honor of a huge network of money brokers. Apparently, there is almost never a breach of security or any theft. It just isn’t done. Even if hawala is the suspected method of transmittal of funds, it is all but impossible to produce tangible proof.”

  “So, the question of the day is: who authored the e-mail?” David says, “It’s not signed, of course, but it came from Mrs. Marcus’s computer.”

  “And, am I to presume that ‘V. M.’ is our own Viachaslau Mazurkiewicz?” I ask.

  “Not for certain, but presumably,” he answers.

  The implications are almost too much to take in, and I have to make my mind work on all sorts of possibilities before I can finally accept what seems to be obvious.

  I get a call on my iPhone from Sybil Norcroft.

  “Hello, McGee, how’re things going today?”

  “Pretty well. We have some e-mail log files that nail the Sorianos and the executives of the bank investment unit at Global Investment Bank. That is a package, and NYPD is wrapping up the evidence for trial. That will take a while because there is so much data to sift through. The most interesting thing from my point of view is that there is some suggestion that Anne Marcus—our victim’s mother—is somehow involved. That is a bit tenuous at the moment.”

  “I called because I have some news, as well,” the DCIA says. “Okay, hit me with it,” I tell her.

  “Company people may have located Viachaslau Mazurkiewicz we think.”

  “Is he in custody?”

  “Not just yet.”

  “Where is he?”

  “As of two hours ago, he is in an apartment on Han Asparuh Street in Varna, Bulgaria. In case you aren’t all that familiar with Bulgaria, Varna is located on the west coast of the Black Sea near the Stone Forest. The Russian mafia moved him there under the protection of the tlM—the Bulgarian mafia, for lack of a better term. They are protected by the Bulgarian Secret Service, a through-and-through corrupt governmental agency. We cannot expect any help from official quarters.”

  “Swell,” I say. “So what do we do?”

  “Two of my best people are watching the apartment as we speak. I have ordered a rapid response team to gather in Varna. They should be there in a day. I have to attend to some Company business in Moscow later in the week; so, I plan to take a small detour and go to Varna myself.”

  “In disguise, I hope.”

  “Of course. We have the best Hollywood makeup artists there are at our beck and call.”

  “Any chance of my guy, Ivory White, and I going along?”

  “Is he the black guy I’ve heard about?”

  “The same.”

  “Actually, his race may prove to be a good cover. Is he as good at field work as I hear?”

  “Better.”

  “Are you up for a little adventure yourself, McGee?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. You couldn’t keep me away.”

  “All right, come by my office at four this afternoon. This is not for communication on an insecure phone. I will lay out the plan then. Bring a toothbrush.”

  As soon as I hang up, I get hold of Ivory and Caitlin for a meeting in my office.

  “Hey, Ivory, how would you like to take a little adventure tour of Bulgaria?”

  “Sure,” he says. “Do I have to pack anything special?”

  “Your best stuff.”

  He nods his understanding.

  �
��When do we leave?”

  “This afternoon?”

  “How about me, boss?” Caitlin asks.

  “You have something more pressing to do. I want you to sift through every paper that David, the NYPD, and Homeland Security has on Anne Marcus. The thick looks like it’s beginning to plotten there. I doubt that Ivory and I will be all that long on our trip, and I would like to have a serious and well-planned talk with the matriarch of the Marcus family when we get back.”

  “Will do,” she says. “Do I presume that your trip is not to be broadcast abroad? Maybe includes a puzzle palace involvement?”

  “Maybe so,” I answer, and flash her one of my patented enigmatic smiles.

  She and Ivory laugh.

  CIA Special Agents Mac Young and Ed Simonsen are sitting in a small outdoor café on Varna’s Sveti Kliment Street near its intersection with Han Asparuh Street. They have a well-shaded table in a nondescript internet café with a good view of the Armenian Church, Plaza Ekzarh Jossif, and the Draguz Apartment building on Han Asparuh. For the past two mornings they have unobtrusively scoped out the streets for evasion and escape routes, and are satisfied that they are in as good a location as any to prepare for their assault. They have been there all this morning. Mazurkiewicz was seen entering the building at two in the morning after a heavy drinking party at a secret service general’s house near the Sea Gardens on very upscale Bulevard Primorski. The area was quiet all night and is still just beginning to wake up this morning. The only people that Mac and Ed take note of are four obvious security agents—burly thugs—who make hourly patrols around the block where the Draguz Apartment building sits. The two agents presume that the men are secret service. The bulges in their ill-fitting jackets suggest strongly that they are well armed.

  Sybil, two seasoned female, and two male agents from covert-ops at Langley, McGee, and Ivory, arrive in two cheap nonmetered cabs they got from the cabstand at the airport. The cabs are old Soviet vintage sedans, battered and of questionable reliability. A tourist would be very hesitant to get into such a taxi and with good reason. However, Ivory’s presence makes the idea of robbery, mayhem, kidnapping, or murder less enticing in the minds of the drivers and their associates from tlM. Sybil is an old hand at haggling, and the two taxis are hired for a ridiculously cheap fare.

  They get out in front of the Armenian Church and saunter in the direction of the internet café where Mac and Ed are sitting and separately find empty tables for themselves. They order plates of Sirene and Kashkaval [salty white cheese and cow’s milk cheese, respectively], a selection of banitsa pastries, moussaka, and bowls of tarator [cold yogurt and cucumber soup]. The food is restorative after the long flight and bumpy cab ride.

  Ed gets up and heads toward the restrooms. Sybil waits a few minutes then excuses herself and leaves in the direction of the lady’s room. She and Ed meet in the backyard of the café amidst the sights and smells of cooking, garbage, and the sounds of pigs being slaughtered the old-fashioned way.

  “How does it look, Ed?” Sybil asks, getting right to the point. “So far so good, boss. He went into the building late last night and hasn’t been seen since. We have a woman posing as a cleaning lady who is keeping an eye on his apartment. As far as she can tell, he has stayed in his rooms all night.”

  “Which floor?”

  “Fifth.”

  “Guards?”

  “Four. They are almost certainly secret service; so, they are not as dumb as they look. And anything they lack in brains, they make up in brawn. Those guys were probably brought in from the farm where they used to eat hay and pull a plow. They are huge and maintain a rigid no-nonsense schedule. The good news is that they have a highly predictable schedule, night and day.”

  He looks at his watch.

  “They will be walking past each other in front of the apartment building in a couple of minutes.”

  “Where can we take them out?” Sybil asks pragmatically, with no more sympathy than if she were discussing the fly problem in the café.

  “The backyard is perfect. It’s full of junk. No self-respecting person would venture anywhere near there in the dark. If the sharp-edged trash doesn’t get you, then the things that go bump in the night will. We can slip in there with night vision goggles one at a time and set up an ambush. The guards do drink and won’t be at their best by around three.”

  “Sounds like a plan. We can’t sit around in the café all day. What can we do with ourselves?”

  “We have a room in a flophouse on Knyaz Boris. It’s a rundown section within walking distance. Nobody pays any attention to anybody else over there. It is one of the few laws the people who live there obey. All of our stuff is in the room. We have some lunch meat, cheese, and Pirinsko beer. It’s all pretty good, and keeps us going.”

  “Sounds good. We’d better split up over the next twenty or thirty minutes and get to the room. We can each take turns watching Mazurkiewicz’s apartment building,” Sybil says, having some difficulty pronouncing Mazurkiewicz’s name.

  “Easy for you to say,” Ed laughs.

  Sybil crinkles her nose at him, and they split up and return to their tables.

  The team holes up in their rooms until late evening. Their quarry has not been out all day. A woman visits him during the late afternoon and leaves at seven. Otherwise, there is no evident activity on the part of Mazurkiewicz. The team holds a meeting and determines a plan, selects and sets aside the equipment they presume they will need, and pours over a detailed city map to be doubly sure of their escape route. A baking company van will be just around the corner from the apartment building ready to cover the extraction.

  Everyone is bored stiff and hungry for something more exciting than lunch meat and yogurt. Mac has reconnoitered a café that looks to be reasonably safe; so, they take a small risk and walk in pairs and at separate times to get something to eat. The traditional Bulgarian grill—Skara-tatarsko kufte—shishcheta [shish kabobs], karnache [sausage with spices]—sarma from the main entrée menu, and dessert baklava are excellent and sits well on their empty stomachs. The food buoys them up. They are ready for action when they leave the café at midnight. It is a long and boring three-hour wait before they can go into action.

  Mac and Ivory make one last scouting trip at two-thirty and report back to the team that everything is still quiet. Another woman has come and gone between midnight and one thirty, but Mazurkiewicz is presumably sound asleep when Mac and Ivory leave the vicinity of the apartment building. Everything looks to be safe.

  “Okay,” Sybil orders, “one at a time. See you in the backyard.” The men and women carry fairly heavy backpacks. One male and one female agent and McGee are selected to be sentries for the team. The rest—Sybil, Mac, Ed, and Ivory, along with three covert ops agents—make their way through the shadowy streets and pick their way into the areas of larger pieces of trash in the backyard of the seedy apartment building.

  The team determines two escape routes and silently sets up three ambush sites. Sybil checks everything four times before she is satisfied. They work even as the security guards make their rounds, stopping only when the guards get too close. Sybil and her CIA team, McGee and Ivory, are ready.

  Chapter Twelve

  Caitlin and her two assistants, and David Harger and his senior technical assistant, put in ten-hour days gathering anything and everything ever written or photographed by or about Anne Marcus. It is largely an exercise in tedium, but the occasional nugget pops out of the sluice. Taken in aggregate, the nuggets are becoming a growing gold bar of useful information. Caitlin looks in the New York Times archives and finds nothing until she decides—on a whim—to go through a couple of decades of the social column. In 2011, there is a large picture of the executive staff of the Global Investment Bank at a fund-raising gala for charity. That is not in and of itself remarkable, but—as the saying goes—the devil is in the details. The name of the charity rings a bell for Caitlin. It is Universal Islamic Assistance Foundation. Receiving a
n enthusiastic hug is Usama ibn al Bakr, the foundation’s president. The woman hugging him is Anne Marcus. It is a very clear color photograph. The reporter commented on Mrs. Marcus’s perfect choice of an evening gown by Vera Wong for the occasion, and the magnificence of her diamond jewelry. Mrs. Marcus is quoted in the article describing al Bakr, as “my dear friend.”

  The only other photograph shows the executives of the Global Investment Bank’s internal banking investment group and their wives at a retreat at the Four Seasons Hotel on Nevis Island in the Caribbean, the most successful off-shore banking system in the Caribbean—more secure for American investors seeking anonymity from the IRS, the FBI, private creditors, and divorce attorney forensic accountants than the Cayman Islands. It cannot be a coincidence that Usama ibn al Bakr is standing next to Anne Marcus in an apparent tête-à-tête.

  David and his forensic accountants bring up several nuggets of their own. They produce four receipts signed by Mrs. Marcus at the Four Seasons, and—also not a likely coincidence—they find four receipts at the same hotel for ibn Bakr. Although not related directly to ibn Bakr or to the bank, there are multiple hotel receipts from around the world that appear to indicate that attractive Mrs. Marcus does a considerable amount of traveling without her husband. It is evident that the socialite has an active social life without her family. One final nugget is concrete evidence that both the Marcuses and the Sorianos have accounts in Nevis banks; and, more importantly, that Anne has an account under her own name in addition to the joint accounts. The forensic accounting equivalent of a coup de grâce comes in the form of the discovery of a heretofore unreported account at the main branch of the Bank of America in San Francisco under Mrs. Marcus’s maiden name—Warren. The account yields a complex financial history with the bottom line being holdings of $350 million. There is no reasonable accountancy for the source of such a vast sum. McGee’s forensic accountants are not so designated for light and transient reasons.