by Jake Aaron
“She was a shrewd politician. A studied acquirer of power. She was a real chameleon. She wouldn’t purposely alienate any strategic group. Her state has a relatively significant number of Muslims… One thing, she did live with another woman. I know for a fact that Islam does not look approvingly on such relationships… Her partner, as you’ll learn, is apolitical — a dedicated doctor. Sharon still could not look Barb in the eye and focused solely on Zach.
“Listen,” Sharon sought to close with accommodation, “I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot. I can’t think of anything else material. If I think of anything, I’ll give you a call. If we’re through, can you excuse me? I’m running late for an interview with the doctor, Lynn Paige’s significant other, to see how she’s coping. Big story.” Putting the last post in the mended fence, Sharon struggled to redeem herself, “May I have your cards?”
Barb closed with a glinting stare, “We’ll stay in touch… The usual: Don’t discuss our conversation or your source with anyone outside this room from this point on. Do you have any questions?… Thanks for your cooperation,” Barb added with a victorious half smile.
_______________
Zach and Barb compared notes sitting parked in the sedan. “Barb, what was that back there? What did you say to her?”
“I was just my natural sweet self. I hope I wasn’t too syrupy… I knew you could handle her, but I just figured that in our upside-down PC culture, she’d consider herself to automatically have an upper hand — so I leveled the playing field.”
“Yeah, well, nice work. Come on, now tell me what you said to her.”
“Zach, not much really. Just some wholesome repartee.”
“Sounded pretty one-sided to me. Let me guess. Did the words Guantanamo, Patriot Act, IRS, fingernails, or bodily orifices come up?… You know if the b-word came up, I’ll be calling you the Dog Whisperer?”
“Well, you know I’m the Friendly Persuader… I might have told her something about my bite being worse than my bark.”
“Barb — the Dog Whisperer!” Zach proclaimed, playfully hiding sincere admiration.
“Zach, I appreciate the levity to offset the seriousness of the situation. I could remain unimpassioned until we get confirmation that someone out there is truly making good on threats to kill. We’ve got to catch Custos before he kills again. He is making a mockery of our laws — and us. I’m angry!”
Zach decided not to tease her about he choice of pronouns. He knew she was in no mood to joke around. Her eyes had been very intent. When she finished talking, they flashed to the side.
“Barb, I like your passion. It’s hard to see the suicide bombing on television and not revisit the trauma of 9/11. I think most of us who were five-years-of-age or older on that horrific day have a shared PTSD. For me, this investigation is no longer an abstraction, but there are still many unanswered questions about the case… Lunchtime, I’m buying!”
Chapter 17
October 6
FBI Headquarters
Zach and Barb returned to the Hoover Building after visiting the blast zone at Lynn Paige’s home. The seriousness of events suppressed the agents’ usual bantering. Zach wondered out loud, “Congresswoman Paige’s death, que pasa? Makes my head hurt. Is this Custos or al Qaeda or ISIL, or none of the above? Come on, Barb, you obviously aced every multiple-choice test you ever took. What do you think? Which is it?”
“I’d prefer an essay test where I can explain myself fully, Barb began. “One particular piece of evidence from the suicide bombing wound up at the base of the shattered Ford windshield. It is a piece of gold jewelry: star and crescent symbols on a necklace. Congresswoman Paige’s chief of staff told investigators Lynn Paige recently started wearing it. Part of a necklace. Usually associated with Muslims. She was an atheist. The chief of staff identified it as gift from a wealthy constituent in Detroit. Somewhat ironic.”
“That it is, Barb. We’re also tracing flyers that showed up near a mosque in Arlington. This propaganda would pretty much put a bullseye on her head for jihadists. The damaged package delivery van was supposed to be driven by Abdul Malik. He is nowhere to be found, so we presume he was the suicide bomber. One prior arrest in 2004 — suspected of burglary, released. Has worked for the package delivery company just over four years. Good employee. Like most busy workers today, not a lot of time fraternizing at work. Friendly enough. Good work habits. Neighbors report he seemed addicted to electronic games. Parents live in Baltimore. Running DNA to confirm victim’s identity. Counterterrorism Division says it looks like a militant Islamist attack.”
“Glad you’re not ethnically profiling,” Barb tried to lighten up the tone in the gruesome aftermath. She wanted to make sure Zach did not consider her too emotional.
“Not at all, Barb. You know I never use gross generalizations or hasty deductions to accomplish my work. I avoid critical thinking. I’m content to passively wait for bad guys to confess. I play it safe. I don’t want to offend anyone. I am nothing, if not politically correct.”
“And I’m the Queen of England!” she laughed. She felt more centered. Zach’s erratic sense of humor had a way of calming her.
_______________
Zach put down the phone and summarized, “No breakthroughs on the Zimmer case… Disposable, untraceable phone again in the Paige case. The techies have already determined the text of the threat sent to the Diogenes: again Custos, if you reverse the letters. So far, as best we can figure, Custos could be a real name — but probably made up.”
Barb added, “I searched the internet. In Latin, Custos means watchman, keeper, or guardian. That would seem to go along with the stewardship theme of keeping government spending in check.”
Zach nodded, “I’ve asked the techies to look at all the hits on the internet for Custos over the last two months, including those in Latin dictionaries online. I said to limit the hits to originating within a 50 mile radius of the attack. A remote shot at finding the perp’s location. A smart perp, though, would use a hardcopy dictionary — knowing the extraordinary capability of the National Security Agency. And what you and I know about is always behind the capability of the ‘black world’ of government technology.”
Barb continued thinking aloud, “Interesting that Custos, if the same perp, went to a different newspaper for publicity, meaning the Diogenes instead of the Log. Probably avoiding our intense monitoring of every phone associated with the Log and its employees.”
“It’s an open secret,” Zach added, “that the National Security Agency has several dozen overarching screens on any data coursing through the ether. I’m sure their ECHELON and sons-of-ECHELON capabilities exceed our wildest dreams, as you know better than I. You can figure there’s surveillance on most communications: satellite transmissions, fiber optic communications, and microwave signals including cell phones. A buddy at NSA told me that they have been selectively recording flagged information for future analysis and intelligence — for many years. Today the press says NSA has more data than anyone ever suspected. My buddy added that the real problem is eliminating all the false positives when screening the vast files. And if NSA doesn’t do it; it will find a proxy to do the monitoring.”
Barb quizzically responded, “You’re not going all intellectual on me now, are you? Ether?
“Ether you get me or you don’t, Barb.”
Barb rolled her eyes in response. “What’s up with sending the message in a backward order?” Barb questioned, almost rhetorically. “Is the answer as obvious as I’m thinking.”
“Yeah, Custos rightly figured we might have NSA looking for wording similar to the previous message in the ether — the cloud, the internet, telephone calls, etc. The National Security Agency apparently has a lot of algorithms to separate the wheat from the chaff. We know some organization, the FBI or NSA, picked up the text. I wonder whether they picked up on the second message in real time. I’ll bet not — although the apparent gibberish itself might set off alarms as some secret code to be
monitored.
“And who knows? Another buddy in our Counterterrorism Division tells me even the tracking of cash is more sophisticated than most of us think. The IRS requires banks to report transactions exceeding $5000 if they believe the deposits are illegally obtained.
Counterterrorism follows a lot more than that. An NSA computer program AGGREGATOR, known as “gator,” uses artificial intelligence to mine for suspicious groupings of cash deposits and withdrawals of all amounts. Very sophisticated algorithm. Above my clearance to know! How else do you think we’ve thwarted over 40 terrorist plots since 9/11? Needless to say, it’s a drug dealer’s worst nightmare.”
Zach continued, “I guess that’s the Willie Sutton corollary: Follow the money. I kid; you know, he’s the famous bank robber who was supposedly asked, ‘Why do you rob banks?’ His reply: ‘That’s where the money is.’”
“Impressive from a guy who thought college texts were beer coasters,” Barb said punching his left shoulder with her right fist. “You have to wonder where we’re headed as a civilization. Say you plan to type in custom and inadvertently enter c-u-s-t-o-s. You just might wind up waking up to a SWAT team knocking down your front door with a battering ram, and storming your home in the wee hours of the morning.”
Zach volleyed back, “To your point, I distinctly remember my uncle’s off-the-record comment about the murder of Nicole Simpson in 1994. I was a junior in high school enjoying Christmas vacation in Missoula, Montana. My uncle was an Air Force major at Malmstrom AFB. He had a good buzz going from Christmas cheer. The OJ Simpson trial came up. He swore that NORAD could know the truth about who killed Nicole from very precise satellite surveillance. No one would officially confirm that, he said. Nor did the Department of Defense want to open the door to revealing its impressive monitoring capabilities… What’s more, prosecution using that surveillance in this instance would be problematical in a legal sense.
“Makes you think twice about sleeping outside in the nude, anyway.” Zach tried to bring some humor to the situation.
“Yeah, Z-man, you’re gonna have to give that up. Not really my style.”
_______________
“The DNA results just came in. One body was Abdul Malik — matched with trace evidence from his toothbrush. We knew he was supposed to be driving the delivery van. He is not in the TIDE (Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment) database. That list of known or suspected terrorists is now up to 745,000 individuals, by the way. The other body, as expected, is the Congresswoman… So, Barbie, do you have this thing figured out yet?”
“Almost, I was just about to call the Director with the identity of Custos and his address…
Seriously, we have our work cut out for us. Tomorrow, we need to talk to the package delivery company, find those kids who superglued your buddies in their car, and figure out why terrorists might care about excess federal spending.”
“Barb, stop right there. You sound like you’re disparaging the agents superglued in the car. Officially, they’re at fault, but they’re easy targets for Monday morning quarterbacking. I have to tell you that skillful teams of boys that age can overwhelm even a sharp agent. I saw that in Naples, Italy, on a port call when I was a Marine. Bands of children routinely worked in pairs. One or more children distracted while another stole a watch or a purse. Very insidious. Our Glue Gang was skilled at playing hacky sack. Pretty good coordination practice for other less civilized activities.”
“I stand corrected. Are you related to one of those agents? Is that why you’re being so defensive?”
“Barb, we both have been schooled in the no excuse cultures of academies and demanding organizations. Sometimes, I think it’s important to understand why things go wrong. When we do that, I think we can better learn from someone else’s mistake. Recognizing a distraction for what it is, I think, is different from the just do it mentality that rests on denial. It’s a higher plane that allows greater odds of overcoming the deception.”
Barb had a satisfied smile, “Wow, you have learned a lot from me, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, your humility is starting to rub off on me,” Zach parried.
Barb deflected, “Back to our list of things to do tomorrow. I left out tracing the flyers. But I don’t want to keep you from bowling, bag piping, poker — whatever.”
“Actually it’s pool — as in hall — night. Do you want to come — shoot some pool, kick back, have some beers?” Zach asked with great bravado to insulate himself from expected rejection.
Barb ignored the invitation, “I’ll see you in the morning!… Can we sleep in — separately, of course — and meet back here at 6:00 A.M. tomorrow?”
Zach couldn’t resist the macho reply, “I was thinking “O-four-hundred,” but “O-six-hundred, it is.” He hated to admit he needed more shut-eye than his peers. General Patton was a great actor, too, he reminded himself.
Chapter 18
October 7
FBI Headquarters
Zach was staring at the white boards when Barb returned with coffee. “Welcome, java! I just gave Director Vincent a quick update on where we are. When I got back from his office, I heard something very interesting from the techies. They picked up on the last Custos message in real time. Our techies confirmed the apparent gibberish, the backward presentation of word letters, made the message stand out as code, as we guessed it might. Looks as if the GPS on the throwaway cell was off, so we don’t know the origin of the call. I’m sure the sender pulled the battery out of the cell phone after hitting send, for good measure.”
Barb gave her update, “The bomb used C-4 as an explosive. Only the military has access to it. Otherwise, C-4 is a black market item, probably smuggled in from Iraq or Afghanistan. The bomb contained ball bearings and something new — kids’ jacks — instead of nails. The TV anchorwoman got that right. Experts are delving into the technology of the bomb. I’m surprised that there was enough around to identify the makeup of the device. Apparently, though, that’s usually the case; parts of everything are there as trace, no matter how small. Anyway, the experts say the detonator was manual — no remote trigger or cell phone detonator. So Abdul knew he would die.
“Only Custos has claimed credit so far. The terrorism angle can’t be overlooked. The technology can be found on the internet, to include Inspire, the al Qaeda online magazine… The use of jacks as missiles has created a lot of hysteria, as if ball bearings are not bad enough. It’s a first, as far as I can tell.
“Abdul had worshipped at the mosque where the flyers were found. Our sources say he hasn’t been seen there for the last six months… Of course, that’s part of the jihadist tradecraft, isn’t it? Cut incriminating connections well before an attack.”
“That is a trend… Good brief,” Zach nodded in respect. “What you say about jihadists’ tradecraft is true. The terrorists update their tactics every time some moron leaks sources and methods from classified information!… I’m taking a deep professional breath now, calming down, centering myself… Okay.” Treasonous, selfish leaks to the press about close-hold government secrets set Zach off as if he’d drunk 5 Red Bulls. “The flyers — anything on them? Can we trace them back to some printer, some location, someone?”
Barb, fluidly answered, “So far a dead end, but a row we had to plow — to mix metaphors. The techies said, of the six recovered pages, two different grades of paper were used. Most likely from a large copy machine or machines — not a home computer printer. Whoever made them was smart enough to turn off the watermark option… However, if we had the location from a watermark, we could very likely recover the electronic document saved in the memory of the copier. The copier is almost like a computer these days. Knowing the source copier, we could interview staff or bystanders for the identity of the person making copies. But as I said, we don’t have a watermark to get to a location or locations.”
“You’re telling me some things I haven’t heard before about copies. Good to know, Barb. One more thing: A review of faces in th
e crowd around Lynn Paige’s house in the aftermath of the explosion gave us no new leads. We checked all the public photos taken at the time and solicited help from folks in the crowd in the explosion aftermath. Twenty-three citizens came in with their digital cameras. Nothing creates unity like a common threat.”
“In short,” Barb went on, “going macro, Congresswoman Paige’s death could be Custos orchestrating a radical jihadist attack or Custos claiming credit for an independent event. In some respects, it’s Zimmer all over again. Other than the bill sponsor link and Custos’s claims, I don’t see a pattern yet.”
“That’s about it, Barb. I doubt that jihadists are hiding behind Custos; they usually want credit, sometimes even when they don’t orchestrate the attack… The heat is obviously on to get somewhere on this investigation. I’ll see what our Counterterrorism Division and the National Counterterrorism Center have so far. On our own, we need to find out if the CIA has anything on possible foreign links to Congresswoman Paige’s death.”
“We? Doesn’t the FBI have some kind of liaison to do that?`” Barb quizzed.
“Yeah, our formal liaison should be doing this, but I’m not inclined to wait. You know the wheels of the federal bureaucracy grind slowly. We’ve got an alphabet soup of organizations trying to coordinate with each other on terrorism: FBI, CIA, NCTC, JTTF, FinCen, and CIFA, to name few. Not to mention such entities as the Office of Counterterrorism at the Department of State. As a result, the stove piping in separate organizations persists. Hinders information sharing. We need to go direct ourselves. That’s job security for those of us with initiative. Of course, I don’t need to preach initiative to the Dog Whisperer, do I?”
