Rigged

by James Rosone

Seth looked down at Wen, disappointment written on his face. He then moved over to one of the small boxes and opened it. Inside was a syringe and a vial of clear liquid. He pulled them out and proceeded to fill the syringe with 3 ccs of the clear fluid. He flicked the syringe and pushed the plunger up a little bit to remove an air bubble before he looked at the guard.

  “Hold him,” Seth ordered.

  The guard moved forward and grabbed Wen firmly by the shoulders. Wen tried to squirm as Seth grabbed Wen’s left arm with a death grip. He then stuck the needle into his deltoid muscle and depressed the plunger. When all the liquid was pushed out, Seth pulled the needle out and moved back to the small box, where he placed the used syringe and the small vial. The guard behind Wen released his grip and moved back a couple of paces behind him, awaiting further instructions.

  While Seth let the drug start to work its way through Wen’s bloodstream, he moved over to the corner of the room and grabbed the tripod and camera he had leaned against the wall. He set it up and double-checked that it was properly aimed at Wen before he turned it on and started the recording.

  It took about twenty more seconds for the medication to have its desired effect, but once it began to settle in, Wen’s entire demeanor changed. His eyes became a little glassy, and he seemed incredibly relaxed. Seth let the drug work a little longer before he started to ask Wen some very generic questions about Wen’s childhood, where he had grown up, what his favorite food was, his first girlfriend, his first childhood crush—all the things that elicited a happy memory for him. Seth knew this would put Wen in a happy mental state and distract him from his current surroundings.

  Now that Wen was properly primed, the real questioning began in earnest.

  “Wen, you said you work for the Silk Road Bank in Skopje. Who do you really work for?”

  Wen smiled a goofy smile. “I don’t work for the Silk Road Bank. I work for the Ministry of State Security.”

  Now we’re getting somewhere, Seth thought.

  “What’s your job with the Ministry of State Security?” asked Seth.

  Rolling his head a bit, Wen answered, “My job is to undermine the United States government and foment anti-US feelings among the Muslim communities in southeast Europe.”

  “What is your relationship with Rexhepi?” Seth asked. He was getting into the groove of asking questions now.

  “I’m his handler. He’s my asset, silly. He does what I tell him to do,” Wen replied sarcastically. “Can I get some water or a stiff drink? I could really go for a stiff drink right about now,” he added.

  Not wanting to distract from his happiness, Seth nodded for the guard to go get them something to drink. Seth knew they had a bottle of rakia, a type of brandy that was popular in the Balkans, sitting out by the analysts for just this type of situation.

  “Did you order Rexhepi to carry out a terrorist attack against the US?” Seth asked.

  Smiling a mischievous smile, Wen confessed, “I sure did. It’s my masterpiece. Years of planning and millions of dollars later, I achieved a bigger success than I ever thought possible.”

  “Who ordered you to carry out this attack?”

  “The Ministry of State Security, of course. We Chinese do exactly as we are told, unlike you Americans. We don’t go rogue. We’re good communists,” he replied jovially. “Man, what kind of drugs did you give me? I feel great. I haven’t felt this happy in…I don’t know how long.”

  Seth smiled. “I’m glad you’re liking them. I have plenty more I can give you. What was your involvement with the Kosovo hacker group two years ago?” He wanted to see if there was a connection between these two events.

  Shaking his head, Wen said, “KHS was just a cover. I needed to find out what tariffs or economic sanctions President Sachs was going to implement on my country after your 2018 midterm elections. My government needed to know what your government was planning to do.”

  Seth was surprised by the response. It was a bit more than he thought he would have gotten, but it sure explained an awful lot about why the Chinese had been responding toward the US the way they had. They had an inside track on what the President was going to do, so they could sidestep him at every turn.

  An idea suddenly popped into Seth’s head. “Is the Ministry of State Security going to interfere in the US presidential election?” he asked.

  Laughing at the question, Wen just shook his head. “You have no idea what’s coming. We’re not interfering in your election. We’ve already picked your next president and there isn’t a damn thing you or anyone else can do about it!”

  Just then, the guard walked back into the room, a bottle of rakia and a couple of shot glasses in his hand.

  “Ah, about time you got back with the good stuff,” said Wen. “Pour me a drink, and I’ll tell you all about the puppet regime we’re setting up here in the Balkans…and your new president.”

  Chapter 12

  Dominos Falling

  October 28, 2020

  Washington, D.C.

  Department of Homeland Security

  The weather had moved from an Indian summer to decidedly cold in the span of a few days in D.C., which Patricia felt was a sign of things to come. The more she read of the report from Kosovo, the more she felt like she was going to throw up. She put the folder down and stared at her computer monitor. It still had the video of the interrogation paused on it. She had watched it but paused it midway through so she could read the actual report and the analysis that went along with it to help her put the entire thing into context.

  She had to admit, what she was reading was nothing short of absolutely horrifying. It was the government’s absolute worst fear about what could happen during an election, and it didn’t seem like there was anything they could do to stop the wheels from falling off this wagon train.

  An hour went by as she sat numbly in her office, watching the interrogation video and reading through the report. When she was done, she knew she had to start bringing more people into the loop. This was about to get deadly serious, and her department had to do whatever was necessary to get ahead of it.

  By 11 a.m., she had assembled several of her deputies and department heads, along with the group that was handling election security. Joining them for the meeting, much to her relief, was the Deputy Director of the FBI, Joseph Latrell, along with a senior official from the CIA and NSA. It was all hands on deck as they tried to figure out what to do next.

  Seeing that everyone who needed to be present had arrived, Patty called the meeting to order. “Thank you, everyone, for coming over on such short notice. I know you all are busy, and worse, it’s nearly the end of the week, so everyone wants to get things finalized before the election. However, we are here today because our nation is about to be attacked by Islamic extremists. Our presidential election is about to be interfered with by foreign actors.”

  A murmur could be heard in the room as many of the people shared nervous glances with each other.

  “Because of the gravity of what has recently been uncovered, we have several folks from our interagency partners here to help bring us up to speed on certain aspects of what has been discovered. With that said, I’m going to hand the meeting over to Mr. Latrell,” she said as she nodded for him to begin.

  Joe cleared his throat as he prepared to give his remarks. “For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Joe Latrell, and I’m the Deputy Director at the FBI. Thanks to the hard work of our military overseas, and efforts by the CIA and the NSA,” he said as he nodded toward the two agency reps, “in the last couple of days, we’ve become aware of two new terrorist attacks that are planned against our country.

  “According to intelligence, the next attack is supposed to happen on Halloween, October 31st. Then a second attack is slated to happen on election day, November third. Unfortunately, we don’t know who the attackers are just yet. Our forces in Kosovo are working hard to uncover that information for us as we speak.

  “What we’ve been able to trac
k down from the lone attacker that was taken into custody after the October 24th attack is that we’re dealing with an Albanian terrorist organization that goes by the name of the Islamic State of Kosovo, or ISK. All, and I want to emphasize this, all of the October 24th attackers had previously fought with ISIS in Syria and Iraq. They all originated from Kosovo and a small Albanian enclave in Macedonia. The ringleader for this organization is a man by the name of Luan Rexhepi, a forty-four-year-old ethnic Albanian Kosovar. He fought against the Serbs in the 1999 war and was suspected of a number of atrocities committed against ethnic Serbs. In the mid-2000s, he traveled to Afghanistan and then later Iraq to fight against US forces. One of his brothers was among the attackers as well.

  “When Rexhepi returned to Kosovo sometime in the late 2000s, he tried to form a terrorist organization with the intent of overthrowing the government and instituting a Sharia government led by him. He spent a couple of years in jail for sedition, but upon release from prison, he went right back to radicalizing people in his village. Sometime around 2017, ISK started to receive some large financial donations from an unknown source. The Treasury Department is still looking into where the funds originated from. With added money, he began to buy loyalty and new followers. For the next two years, his organization grew and trained. It’s suspected that his group has somewhere around two hundred members scattered across Kosovo, Macedonia, and Albania.

  “What we’ve been able to ascertain about the Halloween attack is that this particular one will be carried out by a sister organization, the Islamic State in Bosnia. The election day attack is going to be carried out by the Islamic State in Serbia, also a sister organization to the ISK.”

  For the next several minutes, he continued to lay out the history of the three organizations and who was responsible for and planning the terrorist attacks. Then he explained that the military had apprehended Rexhepi two days ago in Kosovo.

  “Was this that Special Forces raid we saw on the news that took place in Macedonia with those two helicopters landing in the center of the highway near the Greek border?” asked one of the DHS department heads.

  Joe shook his head. “No. That was the apprehension of another man by the name of Wen Zhenyu. He is ultimately the reason why we’ve called this meeting.”

  As he shook his head, Riku Tanaka asked, “What does a Chinese national have to do with this Albanian terrorist group that attacked us?”

  “I’m getting to that,” Joe said. “If you all can please stay patient a little bit longer, everything will become clear. During the apprehension of Rexhepi, the NSA intercepted a phone call between him and Mr. Wen. Jill, would you go ahead and play the conversation?” Joe asked.

  Jill nodded and pulled a small digital recorder out of a padlocked pouch she had brought with her. She gave the crowd a very stern look before declaring, “What I’m about to play for you is classified top secret. Its contents are not to be discussed outside this room. If they are, it won’t take the NSA long to figure out who leaked it, and I can guarantee you, that person will be prosecuted.”

  The warning was so severe, even Patty felt a shiver of nervousness going down her spine.

  The conversation between the two played aloud, and Patty watched as many of the people in the room grew angry and surprised that this Chinese national was not just helping this known terrorist but appeared to be actively involved in the planning of future attacks.

  When the tape ended, Joe added, “During the interrogation of Mr. Wen, we learned that he is actually a covert agent for the Ministry of State Security, the Chinese version of the NSA, CIA and FBI all rolled into one. In addition to the two terrorist attacks, he revealed a much larger plot that is already underway to subvert our presidential election.”

  Patty saw several people place their hands over their mouths in shock while others muttered a few curse words under their breath.

  Joe continued, “Our agents are in the process of arresting more than two dozen sleeper agents that were going to carry out these attacks. Unfortunately, there is another cell that’s responsible for the election day attacks, and we have not yet identified who their members are or where they are hiding. All we know is this second cell is tied to an Albanian enclave in Serbia known as Presevo. I’ll let our agency rep tell you more about that.” He nodded to the Director of the CIA, Marcus Ryerson, to take over.

  Ryerson lifted his chin up as all eyes turned to look at him. “During our interrogation of Mr. Wen, we learned that he also funded a separate terrorist organization that has loose ties to Rexhepi’s group in an Albanian enclave called the Presevo Valley. That area has been a hotbed of Albanian Muslim extremism dating back to the Bosnian-Serbian war in the 1990s. It’s seen an increase in extremist activity with the rise of ISIS in the Middle East. The Serbs estimate close to three or four hundred young men and women from this area have traveled to Syria in the mid-2010s.

  “We’re currently working with the Serbs right now on trying to track down who the cell leader may be, and who from that region had mentioned traveling to the US or may have already left for America. I’m afraid we do not have a lot of information on this second group just yet. What I can tell you is we are experiencing an enormous amount of pushback from every government in the region once we apprehended Mr. Wen. Prior to his arrest, all the Balkan countries were bending over backwards to help us hunt down these terrorists. Once we took Wen into custody, it was like a switch was turned on and we immediately hit heavy resistance.

  “I don’t have to tell you how much the Serbs hate Kosovars, Albanians or Muslims. Their hatred of each other goes back hundreds of years. Hell, they’ve ethnically cleansed entire villages over how much they hate each other. But right now, all of them are singing one unified voice, saying that we must release Mr. Wen and stop our unilateral abduction of these Islamic extremists.”

  Patty saw the puzzlement on the faces of many in the room. She felt it too.

  Director Hogan chimed in at this point. “I think we should talk about why the Chinese are so adamant about us releasing Wen, and what he told us. We can’t solve this problem if we don’t disclose to everyone the full truth of what we’ve discovered.”

  All eyes now turned back to FBI Deputy Director Latrell.

  Joe sighed and nodded. “We noticed some irregularities with about a dozen postal workers who appeared to be receiving significant sums of money. When our agents looked into it, they discovered that these postal workers were responsible for picking up and dropping off bulk mail at nursing homes and various retirement communities. At first, we didn’t know what to make of this common link they all seemed to have. When we questioned one of the postal workers about the large sums of money she had suddenly found herself inundated with, she broke down in tears and confessed what she was doing.”

  Joe shook his head as though he didn’t want to be discussing this topic. “She told us a man she had been dating said he had a friend who would pay her fifty dollars per absentee ballot she collected and turned over to his friend.”

  Audible gasps and grumbling broke out in the room.

  Riku Tanaka jumped in. “This sounds like a wild story that’s been spun to give an excuse if the administration loses the election next week.”

  More than a few people shot Riku a dirty look at the comment.

  Joe immediately jumped in. “Now, hold on a second. My agents didn’t make this crap up, and we aren’t ginning something up to give an excuse to any one particular group in case they lose the election.”

  “Come on, what are we talking about?” Riku retorted. “A few hundred absentee ballots at most. This is a red herring.”

  Joe slammed his hand on the table, startling half the people in the room. “It’s more than a few hundred ballots. This group in Charlotte alone bought more than 30,000 ballots. In south Florida, it’s more like 65,000 ballots. We’re talking about enough votes to swing the election in five states that have previously decided the election by less than 30,000 votes.”

&nb
sp; Several people shook their heads in disbelief.

  Director Ryerson stood up and leaned forward on the table, leering over them all. “You want more proof—ask Director Hogan to share the interrogation video of Mr. Wen with you. She’s seen the proof. The Chinese have stolen this election before we’ve even had it! They’ve financed these terrorist groups to carry out these attacks against us and then weaponized the videos of them on social media to tear us apart. If you think the Russians interfered in the 2016 election, the Chinese have outright manipulated the vote and weaponized our social media against us. The bigger question we have to ask is now that we know what’s been done, what do we do about it?”

  “This is a farce. The Chinese can’t possibly manipulate the vote,” Riku exclaimed angrily. “You said these were absentee ballots, so we have no way of knowing if they took away votes from the Democrats or Republicans. For all we know, this is a desperate last gasp by an administration that looks to be losing a close election.”

  “Enough, Riku,” Patty insisted, rebuking him publicly for his outburst. “We’re being given factual intelligence by the FBI, CIA, and NSA of direct foreign interference in our election. It doesn’t matter what the polls say, or what our opinion is of the current administration. Our duty is not to the administration but to the Constitution of the United States and our country. We have clear proof. As a matter of fact, here it is.”

  She pulled out her government-issued laptop and brought up the interrogation, turning the computer around so everyone else could see it. “This is the interrogation of Mr. Wen. This is about an hour into the interrogation. I’ll let you listen to the interrogator ask him the questions, and you can hear Mr. Wen’s response with your own ears.”

  For the next ten minutes, the group listened to the interrogator methodically question Mr. Wen about the election tampering. He went into detail about how they had chosen the specific districts and roughly how many absentee ballots they needed to intercept in order to reduce the number of votes to tilt the election result in each of those states to have the desired result.