The Merchant of Secrets

by Caroline Lowther

  “I’m happy that I don’t have to look at the pictures you have to see, they would horrify me,” I said, recalling my prior experience with some photos of entire families who were struck down by gunfire as they were fleeing government tanks.

  He looked at the floor. “You’re right, there’s one I can’t get out of my head...the image of small children lying on a mattress on the floor in a shack loosely constructed of tin. They had been mowed down by troops loyal to Gaddafy while they slept. The mattress was covered in the childrens’ blood. What threat did they pose to Gaddafy? What does murdering children in their beds while they sleep have to do with the savages keeping their dictator in power? How does that advance Gaddafy’s cause? We should have gotten Gaddafy after he bombed that Pan Am flight over Lockerbie Scotland in the 1980’s but we didn’t because we were afraid of angering the other Arab leaders and God knows we needed their oil.” Colin bent his head toward the carpet, clasping his hands on his head and resting his elbows on his knees. That image of children had been scorched into his mind, and he’d never let it go. It seemed that his job was taking a toll on him now, too.

  “You really hate Gaddafy,” I remarked leaning back on the pillow and staring at the ceiling, tinted blue from the light of the early morning sky.

  “My uncle was on the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie. He murdered my uncle, so yes, I really hate Gaddafy,” he said, nodding his head still bent over, looking at the ground. When it became too burdensome to think about it anymore he changed the subject. He finished his coffee, set the mug down on the trunk, and raised his head. “Mulally’s set you up with a temporary office in Bailey’s building. I guess you’re going to be working together.”

  That was okay with me, I looked forward to working with Bailey.

  After we showered and dressed, we took a taxi to the airport where he rented a car for me on a company credit card issued in his name. When I asked what had happened to my car, he didn’t respond. I figured Todd had one of his guys wiretap it along with my apartment. Colin waved good-bye from the security gate and disappeared into the thick crowd.

  Back at the apartment I wasted no time in hiring a driver to take me all the way from Virginia to Chicago so that I could meet-up with Colin without leaving an airline trail for Todd to track me down. I packed my bags, grabbed the keys, turned off the lights and shut the door behind me. The driver picked me up in front of the apartment, and we stopped at a Seven-Eleven to get snacks for the long road trip ahead. The driver was pleasant enough, but the 15 hour drive was very long. We drove through the night, taking turns behind the wheel until we arrived in Lake Forest, Illinois around noon.

  I checked-in on my grandparents to see how they were doing. Our terrier, Rascal, upon hearing a car pulling into the driveway perked-up, hoisted his upper body to the window by placing his front paws on the window sill with wide black eyes and raised ears. When grandma opened the door he poked his nose through the opening, then slipped out between the door jam and grandma’s legs, and burst into a sprint as fast as his little legs to take him, in a happiness- induced delirium, to offer a properly enthusiastic reception. It was good to be home. Granddad was sitting in his favorite chair in the library still reading the Sunday Times, although this was Wednesday. His bi-focal glasses were balancing at the tip of his nose and he wearing a red flannel shirt that Grandma had given him for Christmas. He looked so frail and sweet. Grandma’s eyes twinkled as she filled me in on the good gossip about high school friends’ marriages and their babies and showed me letters from my cousins. I stayed for dinner, and then they walked with me to the driveway and waved me away.

  In Chicago, after reaching the hotel I checked-in using a fake name and paid for the room in cash. Then I called Colin to describe the positioning of the security cameras. “They’ve got three on the far wall and two more by the door. You’d better come in through the side entrance where there is only one. And wear a hat.”

  On the hotel room floor, I scanned both sides of the corridor before unlocking the door, to make sure I wasn’t being followed.

  While waiting for Colin to walk down the street from his meeting I showered and slipped into some new lingerie that I bought for the evening. I was angry at myself for allowing the extra pounds to creep onto my hips during the last few weeks, and hoped he wouldn’t notice how fat I was getting. Then I popped the cork on a bottle of Champagne.

  “Hey beautiful,” Colin said as he burst into the hotel room flinging his arms wide open. He was wearing jeans, an oxford shirt and a blue sweater, without a tie. He snatched a glass of champagne, turned it upside down drinking it all at once. He laid the empty glass on the bedtable, turned and grabbed me passionately, pulling me onto the bed. “I’ve just got few minutes then I have to get back.”

  “What?”

  “Yea, I’ve got to get back, I can’t stay here tonight,” he replied.

  “ I’ve just driven, I don’t know… 600 miles, to spend a couple of nights with you in Chicago and you’re not even staying here? Colin!”

  “Hey look, I can’t help it,” he said, shrugging. “Everyone from the meeting is staying at the hotel down the street. If I came strolling in tomorrow morning from another hotel, don’t you think they’d notice and ask questions? Oh come on, please don’t sulk. Let’s try to have a good time.”

  Colin’s easy logic was getting a little creepy. The wild mood swings from day to day, and the way he led me all the way to Chicago for nothing overwhelmed me with an anxiety about something that innately was wrong about the relationship but not out in the open yet. It seemed like there were two Colins, and I was a ball being kicked back and forth between them.

  “I wouldn’t have come all this way if you had told me,” I said.

  “Well let’s spend what time we have,” he said looking down at my face with his big, blue, doe eyes. “Then I’ll go back to my hotel.”

  I turned my back to him, facing the wall.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s an important meeting. The rebel factions in Libya are desperate and crying out for help and NATO is sending in aircraft. Mass demonstrations are everywhere in the streets.” He was excited about Gaddafy’s demise although the battle for Tripoli was still months away. “The C.I.A. is slipping guys quietly into the midst of the confusion to gather intelligence. What can I do? Tell them I can’t come to this critical meeting because my girlfriend’s waiting for me at a hotel down the street?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, of course you have to go,” I replied, “but if you can’t carve out a few hours a day that don’t belong to the government then your life’s going off of a deep-end. We can’t have even one whole night together without your work interfering, the government owns you twenty-four hours a day!”

  He grabbed the glass from the bedside table, walked over to the bottle sitting on the desk and poured himself another glass, and emptied that one down his throat, too.

  “Well there’s no point in me staying here while you’re at a meeting. I’m going back to Virginia tomorrow,” I said, in no mood to discuss business anymore.

  The next morning I woke up in an empty bed and knew that something was wrong, but suppressed the messages from a nagging conscience. I went into the shower with a stream of hot water flowing over my head and shoulders to relax me. As the water flowed my back, complex set of emotions was running through my mind. I was occupying a small compartment in Colin’s life. Not fully there, just when he had the time, in bits and pieces.

  I stuffed the lingerie back into my bag and called the driver to take me back to Virginia.

  CHAPTER 15

  At the new temporary office within the IRS building I was issued a badge which I clipped to my pants. Bailey greeted me downstairs like nothing had happened. We rode the elevator upstairs as we had done a few weeks earlier but this time I was allowed to enter through the same door as Bailey. We poured ourselves some bad coffee into Styrofoam cups and walked to the grey cubicle that was to be my temporary office for the remainder of the proje
ct. Mulally had sent over a new laptop which was waiting when I arrived.

  She investigated payments for Qureshi’s apartments in Turkey and Spain which, as it turned out, were both bought with bank wires from the same mysterious company in Kabul, Afghanistan. Then she made some calls to the South East Asia desk at the State Department to request a profile of the company and was told that the company didn’t exist. At that point Bailey’s part of the investigation had hit a wall. We closed her office door and called Keisha and Mulally.

  “Hi Caroline,” Mulally greeted me in a cheerful tone, “sorry to hear that Todd put you through the ringer, how’re you doing?”

  “I’m just fine sir,” I replied.

  “Glad to hear it,” he replied. “Don’t pay any attention to Todd, your clearance is still active and I want you to stay on this project. Okay?”

  It was more than okay. It was great!

  “Sir, did you read that psychological evaluation?” I asked cautiously.

  “Oh, Todd runs a smear campaign on everyone who crosses his path. He pays this same psychologist to write the same report on anyone who’s on his enemy list so he can try to strip them of their security clearance. Don’t take it too seriously.”

  I did take it seriously.

  “Caroline, Jones has been a controversial figure for over a decade. He had a reputation for running his unit in Afghanistan like a mobster with a readiness to kill any who betrayed him. The problems arising with the armed military contractors like Jones went largely undetected until some catalyst sent the details spilling over into the press and then the story broke. The press painted a picture of him as a very controlling and highly paid government contractor who ordered his men to commit acts brutality for his own profit or pleasure, causing most of the local population of the small town in Kandahar to flee in fear of him,” he explained. “Even in a war zone, Jones stood out as a person lacking any trace of moral checks and balances. I understand the corrosive effect that someone like Jones has on those around him, including Todd.”

  “Then why isn’t he in prison?” I asked.

  “He had an influential circle of friends,” Mulally said. “After he was arrested, he was released quickly with the weak explanation that he had been ‘sufficiently disciplined.’ That meant that someone was covering for him.”

  “There are political overtones everywhere, aren’t there?”

  “Yep,” Mulally replied.

  “Was that one of Jones’ guys following me?”

  “I think so.”

  Bailey jumped in with a change of topic. “Sir, we need some surveillance on a P.O. Box in Afghanistan. Adnan Qureshi’s homes in Madrid and Istanbul were paid for with a wire transfer sent from a company in Kabul but the State Department says the company doesn’t exist; it’s just a shadow organization with a P.O. Box. We can’t determine where the money is originating. If we had some identification of who is picking up mail from the P.O. Box for this shadow company maybe we could see who owns the bank account, and determine who is paying Qureshi’s bills.”

  “Okay, that shouldn’t be difficult. I’ll put in the request today. So what kind of operation do you think company runs? Is it part of the Afghan drug trade?”

  “We’re drawing a blank, sir,” she said.

  “Okay, just keep on it” he said and hung up. He had a meeting to attend on Pakistan. The CIA had a strong presence in Kabul and would be able to piece together who owned the mailbox by identifying who picked up the mail.

  Bailey and Keisha picked a code name for me. It was “cloud sheriff’ making reference to my job watching over a national security network to detect harmful vectors attacking U.S. targets. Bailey was “Queen B.” and Keisha kept her longtime nickname of “Boots.” We agreed that I would be Project Manager along with Keisha, of course subject to approval from above. We decided to name the project “Hades’ Drone” with reference to the Greek god of death and Jones’ company that manufactures drones.

  The IRS was given primary jurisdiction over the case as it pertained to illegal wire transfers. Anything else came under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security. Any funds recovered from the operation would be split equally between the IRS and the Defense Department.

  C.I.A. agents on the ground in Afghanistan were loaned to our project to keep an eye on the target but at first the information that came back was fragmented. Eventually they informed Mulally that unidentified couriers arrived each day peddling a bicycle to pick- up mail from the P.O. Box and carried it to a house in the center of Kabul. Combing through our office connections to enquire if anyone knew about the house, we came up empty; there was no record of who owned the house. But Keisha had connections with the troops in Kabul and told us that the house where the couriers were delivering the mail belonged to one of Qureshi’s brothers. Qureshi was from a large family with 5 brothers and a sister, but they were a poor family by western standards and wouldn’t themselves have had the money to buy their brother properties in Spain and Turkey. Most likely, they were being used to collect money on behalf of their brother and to send it to him.

  Mulally ordered surveillance on the mechanic’s vehicle at the car dealership in McLean, and on Qureshi’s too, tracking his movements to Sara’s house and to the club, and to the car dealership and few other places. Agents had installed satellite receivers underneath the frame of the vehicles so that a team of our own guys at the office could monitor Joe and Qureshi’s movements 24 hours a day. Checking his past travel records, “Joe” they found, had made a trip to Beijing departing out of Dulles airport and we strongly suspected that the contents of Qureshi’s gym bags went with him.

  That’s where the trail ended. It was our job to pick up the pieces and to close the loop.

  Keisha came over to our office at the I.R.S. building later that week to conference with us about Kabul. The U.S. had been at war in Afghanistan for ten years and the military had a lot of experience to share about a major city in one of the most violent countries in the world. The popularity of Americans and the cooperation with our armed forces on joint training missions varied from province to province but overall it was a tense alliance. We had in the past used Pakistan to broker discussions with Kabul but U.S. relations with Pakistan were now a low point and their assistance could no longer be relied upon.

  Bailey showed Keisha and me a data dump of all incoming wire transactions into Qureshi’s brother’s account in Kabul. It was a significant amount data to be sorted so we spent the next couple of days entering and re-entering the “special attributes” i.e. the search terms, into the program. The program didn’t like what we were doing, and punished us with error messages over, and over, and over again. Finally on a Saturday afternoon we found what we were looking for, incoming wire transfers to the Kabul bank from an obscure bank in Shanghai, corresponding to the day that “Joe” arrived in China. It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. On paper we outlined the trail. David Jones from PFG gives classified information to Qureshi in a gym bag at the club, who then drives to the dealership and hands it off to Joe, who passed without notice through the airport when he flew to Beijing. When the contents of the gym bag were received, cash was wired to Kabul.

  Bailey decided to take a second detailed look at the Kabul bank account, and saw again the wires which paid for the apartments in Turkey and Spain but she also found something else. Wires were going to a bank in Abu Dhabi.

  We set up a breakfast conference with Mulally and Flumm at a restaurant at Tyson’s Corner, Virginia.

  “Good morning,” I said to Mulally and Flumm as they walked into the room. It was a private dining room where we could have a conversation without being overheard, except by the one server who stood against the wall waiting to attend to our needs. The table was covered in white tablecloth, with a silver tray overflowing with breakfast pastries, and miniature jars of jam. A silver coffee pot was waiting with cups and saucers. Mulally smiled back at me, “Good to see you Caroline” he said, “and you too Bai
ley” he added, nodding in her direction.

  Flumm, stared at Bailey, totally taken-in by her good looks, so Bailey just ignored him.

  “Good Morning sir,” she said. “We’ve got some interesting information, a good piece of the money trail.”

  “Glad to hear it, let’s sit down” Mullaly instructed, as he unbuttoned his suit jacket before settling into a large arm chair.

  We opened up our laptops and Bailey started with the log of wires going from Shanghai, to Kabul, Afghanistan. We sorted the data showing that the dates of the wire transactions into Kabul from a bank in Shanghai occurred on the very same day that Joe arrived in China. Then we continued with the money trail showing how the houses in Turkey and Spain were paid.

  Then we showed him the money trail to Abu Dhabi where the trail ended. Mulally, was impressed.

  “Can we get our UAE station to find out what happened to the money when it arrived in the bank in Abu Dhabi?’ I asked.