“What? No questions? No drawn out chit chat like in the movies?” the minder asked in a sleepy tone.
Henry then placed a small device on the kitchen counter, closed all the windows, and severed the gas connection behind the stove. Before leaving the house, he walked by the coffee table in front of the minder and left a nice farewell card, positioned so that he could read it. It simply read,
Boom. A house for a house.
Henry was back in his car, half a block away, and waiting for the gas to collect in the house. He kept an eye on the kitchen and could see the top of the minder’s head as he lay wasting away on the couch, high as a kite but conscious.
Thirty minutes were almost up. He drove by the house, triggering the timer on the device. A block away, he heard the explosion, followed by a concussion blast. He pulled over and stopped the car, as everyone else did. Getting out, he looked in the general direction, acting shocked and frightened. The house, the minder and any evidence were on fire.
* * *
Henry called Agent Gonzales. Once he had his full attention, he gave him the address where the startup was located. Simultaneously, he triggered an email, with all the details as attachments. He then mentioned the Palo Alto explosion, as part of their plan.
“Tell the story anyway you like, but this terrorist had to go, our way.” He finished.
“Who are you people?” Gonzales asked, angrily.
Henry again hung up on him.
Henry then started his drive back to his house, to meet up with his loving wife, and to share the good news with Jason’s wife.
* * *
That same night, after a long hard day, Henry was back home in his lounge chair. He had his Budweiser, waiting for the ten o’clock news. All three were sitting around having pizza and chatting, when finally the news came on. Topping the news was the raid on a startup in Silicon Valley. The raid uncovered a cache of highly dangerous biohazards, along with manufactured dispersal equipment. The videos showed the entire area blocked off, with hazmat-suited people walking around collecting things. They arrested three Iranians in the process, one a Stanford graduate, and two other local residents.
“Wait, Henry said. I think there might be more.”
A dozen commercials later, Henry yelled, “Here it comes. Pay attention everyone. Pay attention.” The wives refocused on the television.
“In related news, also in Palo Alto, there was an explosion at a house, so powerful that windows were shattered several blocks away. It took fire fighters several hours to put the fire out. Sadly, there was one casualty, the owner of the house. We will release the name after notifying the next of kin. The FBI and local authorities attribute the explosion to a gas leak, unrelated to earlier events.”
Jason’s wife looked at Henry. “So, was this the man?
“Yup, this was the man, and now he’s gone from your life, for good.” Henry smiled back.
Leaning back in her chair, finally free of fear, Amatis looked at Henry, smiling, and raised her bottle towards him.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
She closed her eyes, a tear slowly moving down one cheek.
Where are Jason and Bobby?
36 | The Mountains
The road across Turkey was a combination of rolling hills, deserts with little vegetation, deserts with smooth rock formations and some with jagged formations, intermixed with large swatches of beautiful green vegetation. None of which could be seen from the secret compartment in Erdal’s truck. The father and daughter would have to stay in there until they pulled into the embassy compound in Ankara. Random inspections were a high probability. Missing or inadequate paperwork, or insufficient bribe money, in the wrong part of turkey, could be a prison sentence. The father and daughter seemed to be quite happy sitting in the back, after a long and satisfying conversation talking to Yasmin, the wife, the mother. They were looking forward to the freedom and safety, which they were about to regain within days.
* * *
Jason and Bobby were only halfway between Tabriz and Piranshahr. The mountainous roads to Tabriz were gorgeous, busy but fast. After which, they had to drive down a mountain, around the base of yet another mountain, across a barren flat land, around a lake, and finally up the Zagros mountain range to Piranshahr. The back roads and passages were mostly two lanes, one in each direction, not well paved, winding, and fraught with bad drivers, road bullies, and gun-toting outlaws, and, sparsely scattered in between, the law. Western Azerbaijan was the most thorny part of the driving trip and infamous for being a bit lawless. Jason had travelled this road several times, since the first gulf war, and for many reasons this trip felt more dangerous. Perhaps Bobby had something to do with that. The people in this region were mostly Kurds and fundamentally against the Iranian regime, be it a monarchy or theocracy.
They filled their gas tanks up in Naghadeh, an hour away from Piranshahr. They filled the car and both reserve gas canisters in the trunk. You never knew if a mountain gas station would be out of gas or unwilling to sell at a reasonable price. Snow covered the mountains, and the air was quite chilly. They got some provisions, including food, water, snow chains, and blankets, in case they had to spend the night in the mountains or if they became stuck. They were an hour away from their final rest stop in Iran and hoped to find a place to sleep. They were not going to a tourist destination and had no real reason to be in that town, none at all. They had to be very careful.
37 | The Fire Pit
The Center was reeling from the explosions and fire. Center agents had yet to take stock of the full damage. A small group had established a temporary residence in the Revolutionary Guards’ HQ. In the parking lot, they had two mobile sites. These were their portable surveillance trucks, filled with the latest in tech, used to take the intelligence collection apparatus closer to the more challenging targets visiting Iran, such as the diplomats, who needed 24/7 scrutiny.
Rezadad spent most of his time in these trucks. He could not stand the Revolutionary Guards’ HQ, the smell, and the religious nature of everything. It all made him sick. Upset by so much loss, he was trying to reconstitute communications, at the very least, to manage the workforce, most of whom were now working from their own homes. The only agents working outside their homes, or who had temporary spaces, were those dedicated to the immediate situation, as well as the existing critical vectors that were in play. As for the Mossad, that was an entirely different intelligence division’s problem.
An analyst sitting at a monitor interrupted Rezadad. “Sir, we’ve just received a report from Parvaresh’s house.”
“What did they find?” Rezadad asked half halfheartedly.
“He wasn’t home and they’ve checked all his hangouts. Someone had ransacked his place and his car was found at The Center parking lot.”
“He’ll show up soon enough, if he’s not dead. What about the data backups and data recovery?” Rezadad interrupted. Parvaresh was not really an issue at this point.
He was happy that this might end the vector he so hated to execute. Maybe, the prisoner getaway was for the best. Besides, he had to get The Center back on its feet. One vector meant nothing compared to the decades of work, research, intelligence, and all that went into building the group.
“The report should be in shortly.” The analyst pinged all onshore and offshore backup sites, requesting immediate updates. Within minutes, he received the updates, which he printed and handed to Rezadad.
The updates started out with technical jargon about the backup process, schedules and timing, encryption key sequencing and rotation, and a series of steps they executed for a partial system restore. All the final set of steps had failed. Rezadad handed the page back to the analyst. “So what exactly does this mean?” he asked.
The analyst looked at it a bit more carefully, reading it over several times, answering cautiously. “It basically says we can’t get our data back!”
“Why not?” Rezadad asked, perturbed.
“In shor
t, all the data was re-encrypted in full. And, we don’t have the key,” the analyst responded nervously.
“WHO HAS THE KEY?” Rezadad asked, now furious.
“Whoever sent the order to re-encrypt sent it from The Center the night of the fire.”
“Oh my god.” Rezadad stood, realizing what had occurred. They could not read the data. They could not move the data. They could not delete the data. All three were impossible, given the limited time and logistics. Their only remaining option was to re-encrypt the data, using the existing security features.
* * *
The hunt for runaway guests went from a non-issue to critical. Now he was angry about the story around the kidnapped cleric’s niece. What a stupid idea. When you create a story like that, you set the stage for what people perceive. In this case, three men and a girl, with the focus being the girl, the least valuable of the bunch. If they couldn’t see the girl, then nothing else mattered, even if the other three men were standing right in front of them.
Rezadad started snapping a set of immediate orders. He had them issue a most wanted alert with a reward for Bobby, and only Bobby. Rezadad then ordered a complete re-encryption of the lost data. He was assuming the data was lost to him, and thus should be lost to anyone who may go after it.
The analyst quickly sent a full-spectrum encryption order, followed by a broadcast message, on a special government security channel, with photos of Bobby, and a simple message: Most Wanted and Reward Offered for any Information. The message instantaneously went to seven thousand locations encompassing all police stations, police cruisers, military stations, airports, bus stations, train stations, border crossings, as well as banks, newspapers, TV stations, government blog sites, and information kiosks, which were at every school and university. They could use this security channel only in unique cases, when there was an imminent flight risk for a person of interest, or if the public was in immediate danger. This was one of those situations.
The hunt for the encryption key was paramount. One of two groups had it, Bobby or the Mossad. Rezadad got out of the mobile unit, going back inside the HQ, to see about having another round of family therapy with the Mossad, if required. He took the elevator to the basement, a slightly more modern area and a bit more sophisticated. He found one of the offices in which his people were located, for a fresh update.
“The email servers and the ERP systems are all back up. Also, we have the last six months of project data back on our temporary servers,” an analyst said to Rezadad’s surprise. He was standing near the door half expecting to get more bad news.
“Where did that data come from?” Rezadad happily asked.
“Apart from our data streams, that are sent to backup sites every month, we create and store rolling six month disks of all project data and infrastructure system files nearby,” the analyst cheerfully replied.
“Good.” Rezadad followed. He then asked for a report on all assets and their whereabouts. In short, an immediate check-in. he wanted the updates every half-hour.
Before leaving for the basement hospital ward, to visit the Mossad agents, he left more instructions. They had to execute certain data searches and to find certain voice files while he was visiting the prisoners, all in a particular order.
The basement had a trauma center, with trauma doctors on hand 24/7, a dedicated cardiologist on call, as well as equipment to manage all manner of related trauma and injury.
You don’t want them to die on you, while they still had some value.
Rezadad walked into the ward. Checking in on the Mossad agents, he found the wounded one had passed away. He now only had three to interrogate. Rezadad began in Gideon’s room. They had handcuffed Gideon to the bed, with an IV tube in one arm, heart monitor electrodes on his chest, with visible and random muscle contractions shaking the bed. He looked up at Rezadad.
“How are my men?”
“They’re being taken care of.” No mention was made of the dead one.
“I’d like to ask you some questions, in a civilized manner,” Rezadad said recapping the information they collected already. He added a little more, which they knew or extrapolated, making the collected intelligence seem like a great deal more.
“As you can see, your team is being very helpful. And, I appreciate their cooperation.” He assured Gideon that, if he too cooperated, he could go home to his family as part of a planned prisoner swap.
“My men will never speak out of school,” Gideon whispered.
“Your faith in your team is admirable,” Rezadad said, “But, for now, I’m interested in only one thing, a simple question. Who, in your group, is your computer and systems expert?”
“All of us. None of us,” Gideon replied in a weakened voice.
Rezadad walked over to the phone on the wall. He dialed a number and softly spoke, “Kill the wounded Mossad agent, and bring his body here when you’re done.” He then coldly sat back down.
“I will ask you only two more times. Who is your computer and systems expert?”
Gideon turned away, staring at the wall, thinking it was a bluff. He had played the same game before, interrogating Palestinians for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Minutes later, the door to his room opened. A nurse rolled in a gurney with a body. It was Gideon’s colleague and friend.
“Bring it closer to the bed.” Rezadad ordered. “And now go to room #4 and wait for my call.”
“I ask you again….” Rezadad said, in his most calm voice.
“Fuck you,” Gideon shouted.
Rezadad got up and walked to the wall phone. He dialed a number and again softly spoke his orders, “Kill him, and bring the body over to this room, but first make him suffer.” He hung up, and sat back down.
This time he said nothing, just waited. A man screaming down the hall shook Gideon to the core. The man was in pain, in deep agony, suffering. Every so often, you could hear his muffled and unclear voice, yelling in Hebrew. Gideon did not react in any way. Rezadad got up and picked up the phone. He dialed again.
“Please begin on the next one. Thank you.” Before he could hang up, Gideon begged him to stop.
“I will as soon as you tell me what I want to know,” he said as the screaming continued, from two directions.
“Now, who is your computer and systems expert?”
Gideon offered a name. Thankfully, it was not the dead man.
“What level of expertise does he have? And what was he tasked with?” Rezadad asked.
Gideon explained their entire operation inside the building. He started with detailing his colleague’s technical expertise, nothing along that of a cyber-hacker, but enough to get around. He then explained their mission, to find the much-rumored Center and damage the facility, primarily to slow down or set back their operation.
The background screams continued unabated.
“Please stop.” Gideon begged.
Rezadad got up, making a call, ordering the stop. He sat back down.
“Please tell me more.”
Gideon detailed every second of their time inside The Center. At the end of the conversation, Rezadad thanked him, and walked out pushing the gurney with the dead Mossad agent, leaving him in the hallway for pickup. He visited each of the other Mossad agents. They were all fine and inquisitive about the screaming and yelling in Hebrew, and if their friends were fine.
“Everyone is doing fine.” Rezadad reassured them all. He made one final stop in the room with his people, to thank the analyst for the great torture sound tracks.
It worked wonders.
38 | The Inn
By dusk, Jason and Bobby had made it to Piranshahr. They spent another thirty minutes driving up and down the three main boulevards just to get their bearings, and looking for places to sleep, a hotel, an inn, or anything resembling one. There were no hotels, just inns with poor signage. Most of these were converted homes, open on their own schedule. The only reason anyone would be in that town was that they were born there, or were on their way
in or out of Iraq. This was one of many cities, on either side of the border, which considered themselves part of the borderless nation of Kurdistan. Jason settled for the second largest square away from the main city center. It too was a large traffic circle, with a two-story shopping mall, several restaurants, and two inns around the edge.
He parked the car near the first inn. He asked Bobby to wait while he got out and walked to the second inn. He knocked on the door and waited, and waited. Eventually an older man opened the door about an inch or two, looking out with one eye, to see whom it was. He was wearing traditional Kurdish clothing, baggy pants and shirt, a black cummerbund around his waist, and a beautifully beaded and stitched skullcap. Sporting a thick white mustache with years of tobacco stains yellowing the part under his nose, he asked in Kurdish. “What do you want?”
Jason replied in Farsi, “A room for the night.”
“Are you coming or going?” the innkeeper asked pryingly.
Jason decided to tell him the truth but not the direction. “We’re coming, and on our way to Tabriz.”
“Well, the rooms are 100,000 Tomans. I only have one left. How many are you?” He said looking around and behind Jason, with the door now half way open.
“Me and my nephew,” Jason replied.
“That’ll be 150,000 Tomans. Pay now!” He said, extending his hand. His hands looked like they had toiled in the fields for decades, growing whatever would feed them.
Jason dug through several pockets and put together the money. “All I have is 140,000. Would you take it?”
The man paused briefly, shaking his head in disgust. Grabbing the money, he opened the door all the way. Counting the money, he began to walk. He showed Jason to his room, halfway down a hall.
“This is your room. It has two beds and a washbasin. The toilet is down the hall.”
The Minders Page 21
