by Ben Coes
Spinale parked the sedan in front of the building as six men emerged and surrounded the car. All of the man were soldiers and wore khaki military fatigues except for one man, a tall figure who wore a Navy blue suit with a yellow and green striped button-down shirt, no tie. The man walked in the middle of the soldiers and approached Marks as he walked up the paved pathway toward the building.
“Señor Marks,” said the man. “I am General Sarijo Qital.”
Marks, Savoy, and Spinale followed Qital to the brick building, Marks carrying a slim steel briefcase, Savoy and Spinale the duffel bag. They walked down a long, windowless hallway and followed him through a door that led to a veranda overlooking miles of jungle.
General Qital sat first in one of the wicker chairs that occupied the deck.
“Thank you for meeting with us, sir,” said Savoy as they sat down.
A soldier brought four bottles of water and placed them on a table in front of them, then left.
“I was ordered to meet with you,” said Qital. “I know of the attacks of the past week, and I understand the extent of your losses, Mr. Marks, and please accept my regrets, but you’ll have to forgive my bluntness: I am a busy man with problems of my own. I don’t appreciate being pressured by my own president to meet with some wealthy American who needs a favor.”
“Our country is at war, General Qital,” said Marks. “And when we’re at war, so are you. Forgive my bluntness, but we need your help to win that war.”
Without looking chastened, Qital subtly softened his voice. “What do you want?”
“Information,” said Marks. “And your discretion. And we need it immediately.”
“Information?” Qital said, leaning back. “Let me give you some information.” He laced his fingers together, as if in prayer, and placed them before his mouth, speaking in audibly restrained tones. “Two days ago, a group of four men entered a schoolhouse an hour from here and opened fire, killing eleven children. Why? Because one of the children is the daughter of a Panamanian who is responsible for buying farmland in Panama on behalf of the Starbucks Corporation, land they can grow coffee on. They killed the man’s daughter, and all of this little girl’s classmates, because the cocaine lords need the land for their own use. Eleven children! Can you imagine? They don’t kill the father himself, no. They kill his daughter, her friends, children. If you think you’re the only one at war, you’re gravely mistaken.”
Marks stared at Qital in silence, nodded. “I understand, General. We will find our information from another source. Thank you for your time.” Marks stood up to leave.
“One second,” said Savoy, still in his seat, now leaning forward and staring Qital in the eye. “What you don’t know is there’s a traitor inside the U.S. government, actively working with the terrorists. That person hired one, maybe two, Panamanian assassins to kill American soldiers and attempt to assassinate a material witness. A photo of the assassin is our only hope of finding the mole, and maybe stopping the terrorists.”
Qital looked intrigued, despite himself. “Obviously I didn’t know that. Please sit down, Mr. Marks.” He whistled. When a soldier came he held up three fingers. The soldier returned carrying four bottles of Heineken. “I’m sorry for my insensitive words.”
Marks and Savoy shared a look, then Marks returned to his wicker chair. In a hostlike gesture, Qital toasted them and took a big sip from his beer. “I know what happened in Colorado, Mr. Marks. I know the feeling to be hunted in your own home.”
Marks nodded and took a drink while Savoy opened the briefcase and removed a manila folder. Savoy pulled a grainy, somewhat blurry photograph from the folder. Despite its low quality, the photo’s subject came through: the startling face of a dead woman, eyes open, staring blankly up into the sky, blood lining her lips, her stunning beauty acting as a disturbing counterpoint to the stark violence the photo implied.
“We need to know who she is, and who she worked for. That’s it. We’ll pay handsomely for the information.”
Qital held the photo for several moments, staring at it. Finally, he shut his eyes and, with his other hand, reached up and rubbed the bridge of his nose in thought.
“Can you help us?” asked Savoy.
“I trained her,” said Qital finally, opening his eyes and looking at Marks. “Her name was Sassa Cortez. We . . . well, we had a very close relationship, one time.”
“Did she work for PPF?” asked Savoy.
“She left a year ago,” said Qital. “I don’t know where she went.”
“Can you find out?”
“Yes,” said Qital. “I will help you. But I have to ask. Why isn’t the CIA digging into this?”
Marks gestured to Spinale, who pulled the duffel bag from behind the chair.
“Earlier I mentioned discretion,” Marks said. “There’s almost ten million dollars in that bag. If you can find out who hired Sassa Cortez and keep it between us, it’s worth that much to me personally to not have to answer that question.”
39
J. EDGAR HOOVER FBI BUILDING
Two doors down the hallway from her office, Jessica walked into the windowless conference room. The table was large enough to accommodate more than twenty people, and it was packed.
“Okay, everyone,” Jessica said as she moved to a seat in the middle of the table. “I apologize for being late. Let’s get moving.”
“Where should we start?” asked a middle-aged man sitting directly across from her, Jessica’s chief of staff Tony Fogler.
“Long Beach,” responded Jessica. “Then interdepartmental, closing with the explosive chain. We need to make it quick.”
“Got it,” said Fogler.
“I’ll start,” said T. J. Chatterjee. “We’re at level red across—”
“No, start with ports,” interrupted Jessica. “Long Beach specifically.”
“Yeah, good point,” said Chatterjee. “Oliver’s running that.”
“Ports are shut down everywhere,” said Oliver Smith. “No boats out, no boats in. We’re scouring employee manifests—”
“Long Beach?” asked Fogler. “Come on.”
“Yeah. We’re looking at every employee who worked at Long Beach in the past two years. There were more than four thousand. It’s taking time. But the new Homeland database is working extremely well. It’s grabbing flags from a bunch of places we would have had a tough time locating, Customs, Interpol, DEA, local police, et cetera.”
“I assume you’re not just running a criminal profile—”
“That’s right. We’re running a criminal profile as well as three ancillary modules. The database is extremely extensible. We have a traveler profile running, looking at any employees who visited the Middle East in the last decade. With few exceptions, it pulls from an Interpol data set, so they would not have had to fly a U.S. carrier nor travel directly to or from the U.S. It’s very powerful stuff. Let me tell you, you travel to someplace in the Middle East and unless you got there on a bike or a camel, you’ll be in the database basically until you’re dead. We’re also pushing employee data against purchase criteria, seeing what, if anything, the credit card companies have.”
“What would that surface?” asked Jessica.
“Weapons, bomb components, certain subscriptions. We’re even running what the credit data people call a ‘cuisine’ profile, flagging anyone who ate at certain types of places in Orange County, falafel joints, that sort of thing, cross-referencing all of it. We’re going to be thorough here.”
“I like it,” said Jessica.
“Same with wireless and wireline data from the telcos,” added Smith. “If any Long Beach employee had Middle East ties, made phone calls over there, we should find it, though, of course, the disposable calling cards don’t get tracked. That said, if they bought disposable calling cards with credit that will get flagged.”
“Make sure you’re hitting service providers,” said Jessica. “Food crews, railroads, trucking companies that do business at the port.”
“Absolutely,” agreed Smith.
“You mentioned the other ports—”
“We’ve shut down all ports in the U.S., including LNG facilities. No boats in or out until Coast Guard does a level-seven screen, then we’ll let them move. Should be tomorrow sometime.”
“Airports?” asked Fogler.
“Every airport has elevated threat level clearance, according to TSA. Things are starting to slow down dramatically, especially in the East, compounded by the snowstorm, which is moving up the coast. You know, when they go from random bag checks to serial the impact is just dramatic, really slows things. We’ve asked the carriers to consider rationalizing schedules in the coming week. But they’re all pushing back. This is a very critical time for them, lots of travelers, profits, you know the drill. That said, cancellations by travelers are spiking since the explosion, as you might imagine.”
“Is Customs working the profile?” asked Jessica.
“Yes,” said Chatterjee. “It’s all we have at the moment. So far, there have been several dozen flags, three of which are being detained for further questioning.”
“What are we doing with them?”
“Two were East Coast. Boston, Baltimore. They’re both at Quantico. But there’s nothing there.”
“The third?”
“Customs flagged someone at LAX last night. Iranian on a student visa, coming in from Puerto Rico. We have him at FBI regional. We have a team that began an interrogation sequence last night. So far, it’s been unproductive; we may need Lou’s authorization for a pharmaceutical package.”
“Get the paper,” said Fogler. “Run it through me.”
“Borders?” asked Jessica.
“Lock down,” said Sarah Wells. “The Canadians have been somewhat helpful. If anything, we’re seeing lines building up getting out of the U.S. We have a book profile going and so far nothing relevant has popped.”
Jessica reached forward, grabbed a glass, poured herself some water, and took a sip.
“Barry, what about the explosive?” she asked. “Anything?”
“Yes,” said Barry Urquhart. “We have two tracks going and we might have gotten lucky in, of all places, Canada. The team we sent up to Savage Island was unable to take any kind of water or soil samples. It’s basically open ocean now. There’s just too much current and the throughput is too cold to spend a great deal of time in. Whatever was there is gone. What we were able to pull out was a bolt, part of some steel rebar. It was a monumental effort. One of our divers almost drowned. But we have the piece. It has trace factors of the octanitrocubane on it. By tonight, we should have a quick test on the material.”
“Meaning we’ll have the sniff test that soon?”
“Yes, and we’ll FedEx it immediately to TSA, Customs and Border Patrol, DEA, and any other government entity that has canine capability set. By around 9:00 P.M. tonight, keep your fingers crossed, we’ll be sniffing for octanitrocubane at every travel or shipment nexus in the United States. East Coast will have it by supper time.”
“Get it overseas.”
“Absolutely, done. FedEx is preparing literally thirty-seven thousand envelopes as we speak. They’ve agreed to put more than a thousand workers against this. We owe them a thank-you. This stuff will move out of Memphis as soon as we get it there.”
“Good work. Give that diver a raise.”
“I will.”
“What about the source?” asked Fogler.
“I’ll take that,” said Katherine Fawcett. “We’ll ask local law enforcement—here and overseas—to spearhead that. We’re waiting for the data run from Commerce. Once we have that, we should have a large but addressable universe of possible places this stuff was manufactured. We’ll just have to go one by one, knocking down the list. That’s the plan.”
“Okay, that’s a wrap,” said Jessica. “Anything else?”
“Yes,” said Fogler. “Before you came in, we were talking about resources, Jess. To summarize the mood generally, coming from all departments: we don’t have enough people. Down through the ranks, nobody minds working 24/7. But there just isn’t enough manpower.”
“I hear you,” said Jessica. “Unfortunately, we would normally turn to the National Guard around now. But they’re at full deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan. All I can tell you is lean on your interdepartments. Especially local police forces. T. J., get Homeland to use their fire department affiliates to do some of the port work. I know it’s tough right now. The key is putting in place the foundation that will hopefully produce a lead, a link. Make sure everyone knows what they’re looking for and what to do if they think they found it. That’s the key. It won’t be a tidal wave that washes up on the beach and brings a bunch of guilty people with it. It will be one boat, one skiff, one dinghy in the ocean. We need to find that dinghy.”
“Got it,” said Fogler.
“I want to reconvene tonight,” said Jessica. “Don’t worry about dinner; I’ll order Chinese. One thing I want to say: you know what I would do. Like you all, I’m stretched thin right now. Take a ready, aim, fire approach. When in doubt, act. I have your back. Just try and be smart about it.”
Jessica stood, turned, and walked out.
Back in her office, Jessica’s phone buzzed. She hit the red speaker button.
“Tanzer,” she said.
“You want to see me, Jess.”
“Yes.”
In a minute, Jessica’s door opened. A tall Hispanic man with graying hair entered the room. He was slightly overweight, and had a somewhat disheveled look; his tie was askew, one of the front flaps of his button-down shirt hung down over his wrinkled khakis.
“What do we have on the mole, Hector?”
Hector Calibrisi was, like Jessica, one of nine FBI deputy directors, in charge of international affairs. Calibrisi was a former CIA agent and Jessica’s closest friend inside the FBI. It was he whom Jessica had asked to run the mole hunt.
“We’re twenty-four hours into it, Jess,” said Calibrisi. “What can I tell you? We have twelve people who were in that meeting where the Madradora exfiltration was discussed. In addition, there were four other individuals who were made privy to Madradora. All of them were at DOD.”
“And what have we found?”
“Let’s start with what we’re looking at, okay? I want to make sure I’m not missing anything. I’ve never run a mole hunt before.”
“You’re an ex-agent,” said Jessica. “You know where to look.”
“Ah, so in other words, you think I was, or could have been, a double agent and therefore could use the extensive knowledge I already have of hiding funds, communicating with the enemy, that sort of thing, to find our mole?”
“Exactly,” said Jessica, smiling. “I mean, look at your wardrobe, Hector.” She glanced at his wide, cheap polyester tie and old shirt. “Hermès tie. Armani suits. Was that shirt custom-made?”
“Actually, no. Only the food stains are custom. This one’s from a burrito I had for dinner last night.”
Jessica laughed. “Thanks,” she said. “I needed that more than you know.”
Calibrisi sat down in one of the two chairs in front of her desk.
“So, all kidding aside, here’s what we’re doing,” said Calibrisi. “I have about a dozen agents on this—”
“You have authority to go up to thirty if you want.”
“Yeah, I know, but I don’t need to. A lot of this is just data mining. We’re looking at everything about the people in that meeting, including you, by the way, Jessica. Cell records, e-mail, Web use, travel, purchases, relationships, professional background. We’ve also got surveillance across the group. Of course, most of our time is being spent on finances.”
“And do we have anything so far?”
“No. Nothing yet. But I do have suspicions about one person in particular. Maybe it’s just because I spent so many years over there.”
“Vic Buck?”
“Yes. The guy has just done a lot. Tr
aveled a lot. He lived in Beirut for six years. Beijing, Hong Kong, Kiev, St. Petersburg, Cape Town. He’s been to every city in the Middle East at least half a dozen times.”
“So how close are you to turning something up?”
“It’s going to be hard to prove anything, to pick the wheat from the chaff. He will have an argument for any suspicious activity we front. Alibis, reasons he was in a certain place, with a certain person, at a certain time. Even if we thought we had him on something, if we develop a connection, it’s going to be really hard to prove it. The second thing, we’re probably not going to be able to get at the places and modalities Buck would use if he was working with whatever group is behind all this. I mean, there is a lot of dark activity we are just not even aware exists. For example, do you remember that cell phone that was found on the corpse of al-Libi, the guy who ran Al-Qaeda’s main training camp in Afghanistan? It had its own frequency and satellite. Think about that; he had his own satellite. If Buck’s doing something, he’s going to do it using things like that, and it’s going to be nearly impossible to get access to them. He runs National Clandestine Service for the Central Intelligence Agency. He knows what the hell he’s doing. Look, I reported to the guy for a decade. He’s arguably the best operative in the U.S.”
“What about other members of the group?”
Calibrisi shook his head. “Nothing. A bunch of Cub Scouts. Jane Epstein has more than a million bucks in her savings account, but she inherited it. Look, we’ll keep digging, but the bottom line is, it’s Buck. It has to be him. Just by the process of elimination.”
“So what do we do?” asked Jessica. “Bring him in? Interrogate him?”
“I . . . don’t know. That’s for you, Lou, maybe even the president, to decide. That’s a tough one.”
