Once a Noble Endeavor

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Once a Noble Endeavor Page 20

by Michael Butler


  Mickey pointed out the “telephone box” and they sat down on the archway steps and stared at it for a while. They saw the pole cameras and the CCTV unit designed to protect the front entrance.

  “Mickey, it’s really amazing. I know those distances your colleagues provided are accurate, but from here they look different, shorter, and the place seems more crowded than I ever imagined.”

  “That may be our great advantage, Nick. The evil contact might have thought the same thing—how could you identify one person in this maelstrom?”

  Bob Phillips studied the phone booth. “Did you guys see how many people have used the telephone just while we were sitting here?”

  “That’s why the guy probably got here early. He went in that booth when there was a break in traffic, but it was reasonably close to the arranged time: 4:00 p.m. local, precisely 3:59:10, and it concluded at 4:03:04.”

  Phillips continued his last thought, “The conversation went on for about four full minutes. That’s a long time. There was probably a line of people waiting to use the phone.”

  “We call it a telephone queue, and they are most common throughout the UK,” Mickey offered.

  “Mickey, we can’t see a long line on those cameras right by the booth, and the people would probably stand in front of the booth on the sidewalk, right?” Nick said, pointing up at the poles. “But if people had to move around those waiting, we would see them move back onto the sidewalk on those cameras, right?” he said, pointing toward the pole camera near the attached building.

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  “Well, if we can figure out when the line started, that might help figure out which one of Arthur’s suspects is our guy, right?”

  The sun was setting as Mickey said, “Good point. Let’s work on that tomorrow, right now I want you to meet someone.”

  The trio took a long walk, perhaps ten minutes along a wide sidewalk following the signs in the direction of the residential halls. As they neared their apparent destination, there was a large wooded lot off to the left and a dormitory to their front. Mickey stopped abruptly and sent a text message. He pointed to the wooded area and they all moved in that direction. It was just getting dark as they entered the woods.

  From the other side of the woods a thin young man appeared in an oversized dark winter coat with the collar up. He walked directly to Bradford with his hand extended and open. Mickey handed the youngster an envelope. He immediately looked inside and appeared to be counting as his lips silently moved.

  “It’s all there.”

  “What do you need?”

  “We are looking for someone who either works or lives on this campus. He or perhaps she has used the phone box near the front steps and has come up emailing on the college computers. I will be able to provide you with something approximating a description or perhaps a photograph. We are still working on it.”

  “Mister Bradford, there are thirty-five thousand people on this campus daily, sometimes more. A description?”

  “The person may be Middle Eastern.”

  “That narrows it down to about eight thousand. Keep going.”

  “I will give you what I get, but I just want you to be ready, because once we get started we have to move rapidly.”

  “Is it a teacher, student, research intern, clerk, janitor, undergraduate, post graduate? You see, it has to be narrowed down, Mister Bradford.”

  “Can you get into the computers?”

  “Perhaps, but I need that to be narrowed down too. There are thousands of machines on the campus. Get me the email address.”

  “I’ll be in touch. Good night.”

  ****

  At about ten the next morning Nicky was on the speakerphone with Arthur Banke. “Arthur, any luck with the pictures?”

  “Some.”

  “Listen, Arthur, this morning I went over some of the images. Yesterday we were at the campus. That telephone is super ass busy. For our guy to use the phone on time he had to get there a little early.”

  “That makes sense, but how early? Ten minutes, five, three?”

  “That’s just it. From the camera in front of the attached building you see the sidewalk as the pedestrians walk slightly off of it into the grass just past the booth, and at 3:58:10, a few seconds later, they begin to move back onto the sidewalk.”

  “Okay?”

  “They must be moving around a line at the booth, because like you said our guy would get there early and tie it up to get his call.”

  “I get where you are going. We are looking for someone arriving before 3:58 but leaving almost immediately after 4:03:04 UK time at the end of the call.”

  “Hold the phone. Let me look at our enhanced images. Follow with me even though yours won’t be as clear.” It took Banke five minutes to get back on the line.

  Nick, Bob and Mickey in anticipation had surrounded the desktop screen, waiting impatiently.

  “Alright, Brennan, I’m looking at the pole camera. If you were sitting in the booth looking out it is to the left, the west side of the booth. Start at 3:56:12. Now run it in slow motion forward. All of those people are moving toward the booth but none fits my profile. Look there at 3:56:56, see that guy looking at his wristwatch? That is a hat on his head which is pulled down; that might be good tradecraft. He walks for about forty seconds out of our view, at which point he would reach the booth. The queue starts at about 3:58. It all fits. The call is received at 3:59:10, a little early. Now move up to the front steps camera on the main building looking inward at exactly 4:03:24. There’s our guy from the back. Your resolution isn’t as good, but that is the same hat, a white baseball cap with black lettering on the front and back. The call ended at 4:03:04 and our guy is on the steps 100 feet away about nineteen—well, actually twenty seconds later. Bingo!”

  “Arthur, you are a master! Get back to us when you have more on this person, and send me the enhanced pictures when you can.”

  “You bet.”

  ****

  Late the next morning Banke called Nick again.

  “Thanks for the high-resolution photos. What can we figure out so far?” Nick asked anxiously.

  “Okay, we have a partial lower facial. It is a male, dark skinned, probably about five feet nine inches, 165 pounds and he has a thick mustache. He is wearing a plain white low crown baseball type cap with a black undistinguishable mark on the back and a black capital letter ‘W’ on the front. There may be a Velcro strip on the lower part of the back of the hat. We don’t have enough for the facial recognition software.”

  “How about an approximate age?”

  “The experts put it at about forty-five years give or take five with a 60 percent probability attached to that estimate.”

  “Anyone put the age nearer that of an average college student?”

  “No, but remember these are estimates. They are using the maturity of his body build to make an educated guess.”

  “Thanks, Arthur. If you guys come up with more, let me know.”

  “Yep. We have two teams of analysts working on this fulltime.”

  Bradford spoke up, “I’m going up to my source in Leeds with what we have so far and I hope we can begin to narrow down the pool of suspects. We also have our analysts examining what we have, and they will be looking at a lot of open-source data to see if we can figure who on the campus might fit this profile. ”

  ****

  Professor Kiran Patel was a popular Doctor of Chemistry at Leeds University. Students described his classroom antics as entertaining and at the same time informative. He would run about the laboratory during experiments and yell “Learn, learn, learn,” sporting a big smile. “Our minds are what separate us from the animal kingdom!”

  Though of Indian descent, he was a proud Muslim whose family had probably converted to Islam from Hindu many generations earlier. Patel, born in South London, was a British citizen who studied at the University of Leeds, where he got his bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and finally his doctor
ate. Doctor Patel held the rank of full professor in the chemistry department at the institution and was well known among the student body and faculty, having worked there for more than twenty years.

  The professor was a generally observant Muslin who did not wear a beard in favor of a large, neatly trimmed dark mustache. He quietly attended Friday prayers and he also conformed to many other Muslim customs.

  He would always pronounce God’s name before eating or drinking and only use his right hand. Patel would greet his Muslim brothers with a wish of blessings and peace. He was hygienic in the Islamic tradition and maintained a spotless residence. His wife of twenty-five years, Pinal, had died five years earlier. He had one son, oddly named Mahesh, a popular Hindu name. Patel’s most trusted aide was his research assistant, Hasan Tanweer, an Arabic speaker, age forty, a part-time doctoral student at Leeds University.

  Professor Patel had studied philosophy earlier in his academic career in an effort to develop in each student the ability and desire to do creative scientific research. His studies in chemistry focused on problem solving and self-improvement. He maintained a small office and large laboratory on the fifth floor of the main building on the campus. He was considered brilliant by most of his colleagues, while also a bit of a loner. He spent long hours teaching and researching, yet his off-duty time was spent isolated off the enormous campus. Much of Doctor Patel’s personal research focused on industry, and though he probably could have made far more money in business, he loved the academic environment and the contact he had with inquiring minds. He also enjoyed numerology, something he saw as a harmless pastime. He occasionally played chess.

  Patel, five feet eight inches and 160 pounds, was a reasonably well-traveled man of fifty-two years. He had been to India, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. He had traveled throughout the UK and made many trips to the United States. His favorite American city was Washington, DC and he enjoyed all it had to offer, especially sports and museums.

  Kiran Patel worshipped at the Iigraa Islamic Center in Beeston, a borough of Leeds, and he was acquainted with most of the others who attended the mosque there. It was at the Iigraa Center that Dr. Patel became friendly with Bhiren al Mohammed many years earlier. The Iigraa Islamic Center long had a reputation for attracting a radical element to its activities.

  ****

  Mickey Bradford met his source later that night in the wooded area near the young student’s campus residence. The youngster as always came out of the back of the dormitory unobserved and walked through the woods to the regular meeting spot.

  “Here is a photo. Not a good look at the face, but at least a partial view of the mouth and lower jaw line and this mustache. He is estimated to be forty-five years old, dark skinned, about 175 cm and average weight. Here you can see he wears that white cap and we think he is from the main building. We suspect he might have a background in science, and we know he used that phone box in front of the university.”

  “Forty-five years old. He is not a student, so he is probably a teacher. There are a lot of science professors, but most aren’t in the main building. Let me check it out. I’ll ring you when I have something.”

  “You must use extreme caution and take no chances. It is possible the suspect is capable of very dangerous things.”

  The next morning Nick, Bob and Corey Rooker met in the CIA’s station chief’s office. The identity of the station chief was a diplomatic secret. The chief was a busy man with all kinds of intrigue on his “plate,” but Rooker wanted to meet with him anyway.

  “Chief, we have a lead on the attempted bombing in New York and the school bus bombing here in London.”

  “What have you put together?”

  “MI-5 has an undercover working at the University of Leeds. We have a partial photo, general description, and a baseball cap, and of course, as you know, we have the public telephone and email that resolves to that location.”

  “Do you have any possible names or other information?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Okay, I will speak to the case officer and have him have the agents he is running look over everything you have. They will listen up, let’s see what they get, okay?”

  “Yes sir.”

  ****

  Later that afternoon Mickey’s undercover student began examining the University’s website and the latest yearbook. He began to look through some of the recent photos connected with the different science departments.

  Operating in alphabetical order, first he looked at the Biology Department. One possible, he thought. Next, the Chemistry Department had a picture of each of its instructors, including full, assistant and associate professors. The images were action photos with Dr. Kiran Patel featured during a classroom demonstration. He is a smallish man, average weight with a mustache and dark skin. Could be, he thought. When he had finished reviewing all of the science departments, he had only two possible targets. None of the others pictured fit the description.

  Next he went to the college directory and discovered both men had offices in the main building. The biologist was lodged off towards the back of the structure with a laboratory down the hall from his office. The more senior, Doctor Patel, was off the center hallway in the front of the building with his laboratory attached to his office. The undercover agent went into the biologist’s office first.

  “Professor Orwell, hi. I’m a first-year student and interested in perhaps majoring in biology. Do you have any literature I could look at or course material that could help?”

  “Not here, young man, but in the dean’s office’s waiting room there is a stack of information.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Definitely not the right guy. Not really dark skinned, the moustache is too small, and he is about 179 cm, he guessed.

  As Mickey’s amateur spy entered the Chemistry Professor’s laboratory, he found him fully engaged in what appeared to be an experiment of some kind, leaning over a test tube filled with liquid.

  “Pardon me, Professor Patel, I have heard so many great things about your teaching style,” he said, recalling it from the yearbook. “I was wondering if I could perhaps talk to you for a few minutes and look around the laboratory.”

  “Certainly, son. Go ahead and look around. I will be with you in a minute.”

  Patel seemed pretty close, but still the photograph wasn’t much help. With the hat pulled down and just a part of the moustache exposed, he couldn’t be sure.

  “Go over there to my office and have a seat after you look over the lab. I’m almost done here.”

  The undercover went into the office. There was a desk piled with papers, a chair, a few certificates on the paneled wall, including one from the Iigraa Center, and a view out toward the telephone booth. A small PC sat on the desk. Maybe he had seen enough, he thought as Patel entered the room and sat down.

  “What are you interested in?”

  “Well, Professor, I’m not sure. Do you have any literature for a student thinking about majoring in chemistry?”

  “Let me see… No, I don’t think I do, Let me look over here.”

  The professor opened the closet door behind the young student and pulled out a box of papers with a white baseball cap on top. The cap fell to the floor as the instructor moved the box and quickly retrieved it. Putting the hat back inside the closet door, the MI-5 source saw a large black ‘W’ on its front.

  “A baseball cap, professor?”

  “Yes, an American team—just an old souvenir cap from the Washington Nationals. I like baseball.”

  ****

  Mickey Bradford was in his office when he got a text message from his student agent requesting a meeting. So soon? Bradford quizzically thought. On the long drive up to Leeds, Mickey began to consider the possibility that the source had an ID. But that was unlikely, since it had only been about two days since the suspect’s information had been uncovered, and the FBI and MI-5 weren’t even close to solving the puzzle.

  Later in the wooded lot, Mickey, show
ing a bit of impatience, said, “What have you found?”

  “I found the guy you are looking for, that’s what.”

  “Who is it?”

  “It is a well-known chemistry professor, Kiran Patel. Here he is in the yearbook.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, the guy fits the bill: just about the right height and weight, mustache, dark skin, works in the main building. I saw some certificates on his office wall and I think he is a Muslim in the infamous Iigraa Muslim Center in Beeston. And get this, he had a white ball cap in his office closet with the capital letter ‘W’ in black on the front. I saw it!”

  “You went ahead and just spoke to him? I can’t believe it. Is he suspicious?”

  “No, he just thought I was a student looking for curriculum information. By the way, there is only one computer in the lab and his office. It sits right on his desk.”

  Mickey Bradford was speechless. He knew the Iigraa Muslim Center had radical elements and Bhiren al Mohammed had attended the mosque there, and now everything fit like a glove. Patel is our guy, he decided, now we must figure out our next step.

  ****

  At the embassy in London, Brennan, Phillips and Rooker were thrilled with the quick results. Time was precious, and they knew that the sooner they got on al Mohammed’s trail, the better the odds he wouldn’t have a chance to strike again.

  When Bradford finally arrived in Rooker’s office, the CIA station chief was impatiently sitting there with the other three. He was introduced to Mickey, who had no prior contact with the intelligence boss.

 

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