He had been sitting in this chair, Margo recalled, when she had entered with the search warrant and had him escorted, ranting, out of the office. Other than allowing the techs to dig into his hard drives, she had decided to let everything remain as he had left it, in order to soak up the ambiance of his environment before they began to disassemble it. Margo wanted to gain a feel for the suspect, to attempt to place herself inside his mind. She found the constant murmur of the multiple screens distracting and irritating, and wondered whether William Stavros would have been a different person without the constant bombardment,
Nicholas Reynolds, who was overseeing the related search at the Stavros residence, described to Margo a nearly identical setup there. Stavros had a wall of monitors in his library – where his staff told Reynolds Mr. Stavros spent almost all of his waking time – as well as a duplicate of the media center on a wall of his bedroom. The entire picture created was one of fanaticism. Margo did not need Craig McWilliams’ skills as a profiler to get a handle on William Stavros. He was clearly a control freak with a god complex. She wondered if he ever had a moment of happiness, pleasure, or satisfaction, or if the stream of input he had created for himself was designed to ensure that it never occurred.
Directing her question to the technicians, she asked, “Anything yet?”
One of the two, without raising his eyes from the monitor, answered, “Maybe. Take a look.” He turned the flat panel around to its normal position so it faced Margo. On it, she saw a list of notable names, each with a string of numbers to the right.
“Is it his phone list?”
The tech shook his head. “I thought so, too. They look like phone numbers. But I noticed in other files, where the numbers are obviously financial, that’s the way he typed in dollar amounts. No dollar signs, no commas.”
She looked back at the list, mentally adding in the commas. “Wow. We’re in the millions with these folks. Are they donations from them?”
“Nope,” answered the tech. “I’ve accessed his bank records. There are corresponding withdrawals for those amounts, not deposits.”
“Withdrawals, as in cash?”
“You got it.”
“Then they’re payoffs?”
“Well, since almost everyone on the list is a politician, and looking at the dates, which precede election dates, my guess would be….”
“Campaign donations.” Margo whistled appreciatively. “I think these amounts might exceed federal campaign finance limits.”
The technician chuckled. “You think so?”
Margo continued reading through the list, when the second tech, who was plumbing the contents of Stavros’ personal PC, said, “Bingo!”
He immediately rotated his panel around to Margo. She quickly skimmed the long e-mail which detailed the Times Square attack, listing the names of the attackers, the ordnance used, the addresses of the buildings where the attackers would hide, and the exact time. Margo did not recognize the name of the recipient, but the sender was Stavros. She flopped back in the chair, absorbing what she had read, asking the technician, “Have you found anything between Stavros and Kaval?”
“Not yet,” he answered.
Margo twisted the monitor back around for the tech and said, “Print this for me and keep looking. I want Kaval. One more thing, look for a trojan, spyware, some remote-administrator bug.”
“Will do,” he replied, mouse-clicking on the printer icon. The laser printer instantly began feeding out the e-mail which Margo grabbed as she walked out of the room.
Threading her way through the turmoil of a full-blown major search, Margo walked toward the small office where they were keeping Stavros, when she was stopped by a thirty-ish man wearing an expensive suit. “Excuse me, Director Jackson?”
“It’s just Assistant Director Jackson – Bill Burke is the Director – and I’m busy right now,” she responded brusquely, continuing to walk.
Falling in step alongside her, he said, “I know you’re busy, Assistant Director Jackson. I’m Phil Butterrick, one of Mr. Stavros’ attorneys.”
“I’m glad you’re here, Mr. Butterrick. He’s going to need all the help he can get.”
“Then you’ve found something?”
Margo stopped abruptly, turning to face the lawyer. “Mr. Butterrick, you know the drill. We have a bona fide search warrant, already reviewed by your associates. It allows us unrestricted access to the home, offices, automobiles, and other properties of Mr. Stavros. Whatever we find will be turned over to the Attorney General’s office, which will allow your office access to the materials during the discovery and disclosure process. As counsel to the suspect, you are allowed to observe our search to ensure that we do not exceed the boundaries prescribed in the warrant. In the meantime, you need to stay out of our way. Otherwise, your actions can be construed as interfering with the investigation. As I am sure you know, that is a federal offense.”
She turned away from him without waiting for a response and continued walking down the long hallway. Reaching the office, she twisted the knob and entered without knocking. Accompanying Stavros were two others who, Margo guessed, were also his attorneys, each standing at a separate corner of the office, each speaking quietly into a cell phone. As they saw her enter, both snapped their phones closed without saying good-bye. She strode directly to the small desk where Stavros sat and, without a word, slapped the printout of the e-mail in front of him.
The female attorney reached for the paper, but Stavros slapped her hand away, picking it up himself, and began reading. Almost instantly his eyes widened and Margo noticed a vein on his temple visibly start to throb. He said nothing as he read. When finished, Stavros handed the paper to the woman who had been reading it over his shoulder. She was about to speak, when Margo cut her off. “Mr. Stavros, you’re not really this stupid, are you?”
He abruptly raised his eyes to look at Jackson. “What do you mean?” he answered.
“Mr. Stavros, I must ask you not to…,” his attorney cautioned.
“Shut up!” barked Stavros at the woman. He turned back to Margo. “Why do you ask that?”
Margo sat on the front edge of the desk, turned so she was facing him. “You’re too anal. You’re too organized. You’re too damn smart to leave an e-mail like this on your computer. We didn’t have to reconstruct it from a deleted condition. It wasn’t even encrypted. It was in your sent folder!”
William Stavros turned to the two lawyers and said, “Leave us.”
The black man spoke up, “Mr. Stavros, I don’t think you should….”
“NOW!”
The lawyer snapped his mouth closed and turned to leave, followed by the woman. When the door closed behind them, Stavros looked up at Margo and, speaking in a soft and even voice, said, “I’ve never seen this e-mail before in my life.”
“I’m not saying I completely believe you at this point, and we’ve found enough campaign financing improprieties to make your life, and the lives of lots of politicians, miserable for years to come. But that isn’t important right now. I need to know who would do this to you?”
“There’s only one person who would.”
“Who?”
“Suri Kaval.”
He was watching her face, expecting some reaction and seeing none. “You’re not surprised?”
“Hardly. It was an e-mail handed over to us by his receptionist which led us to you in the first place.”
“That bastard! He’s framing me.”
“Look, Stavros, you’re not lily white. You’ve pulled some shenanigans, and you’re certainly not the most pleasant person in the world, but my instincts are telling me the same thing. Unfortunately, my instincts aren’t going to get you out from under this. I need your help, and I need it fast.”
Stavros only considered her words for a moment before saying, “With pleasure. What do you want?”
Margo started to answer, when her cell phone vibrated. Unclipping it from her belt, she glanced at the screen to see Rees
e Johnson’s name on her caller ID. Punching the green button, she just said, “Not now,” into the phone.
Before she could switch it off, she heard Johnson say, “Margo. It’s important. I’m with Elohim, and He just told me that something big is about to happen.”
Standing up, she told Stavros, “I’ll be right back.” He nodded, and she exited to the hallway. From there she found another empty office. “Okay, Reese. What is it? What’s going to happen?”
“He won’t say. All he told me was that the Times Square attack was just a prelude to whatever this is. Apparently it’s going down soon.”
Margo stood silently, the phone pressed against the side of her face, and stared at the blank wall. Finally, she responded, “I might have a way to find out. Thanks, Reese. I’ll get back to you. Keep talking to Elohim. Maybe He’ll tell you something.”
“I’ll try.”
Ending the connection, she re-clipped the phone to her belt and returned to Stavros, who had swiveled around in his chair and was staring out the window. “Mr. Stavros?”
He spun around to face her, saying, “I have a feeling we’ll be spending some time together; please call me Bill.”
“Okay, Bill. We’ve got a problem.”
He could see the look of tense determination on her face and asked, “Is it our friend Mr. Kaval?”
“I don’t know yet. But that would sure as hell be my guess. It appears something else is about to happen, something that makes the Times Square thing look like small potatoes. I’m thinking you know something about it, even if you don’t think you do.”
א
The two men worked without speaking. After the doors to the U-Haul were tightly closed and padlocked, they climbed into the cab of the truck and started the engine, driving slowly, yet not too slowly, out of the parking lot. The dangerous part of this assignment had passed. The likelihood of arousing suspicion had been at its highest during the transfer of their cargo from the container into the truck. From this point on, they would appear to be just like any of the countless others in Los Angeles, moving into or out of an apartment.
As the driver carefully maneuvered the rental truck through Long Beach, heading east, the passenger pulled one of the cell phones out of the deep pocket of his dark green coveralls, snapped in a charged battery, and punched in a memorized number. After one ring, a voice answered, “Hello.”
“Hi, Dad,” he said. “We’ve just left. We’re finally on the road.”
With a surprisingly sincere tone, the other voice answered, “Great. I’m looking forward to seeing you and the kids.”
“Is everyone else on the way?”
“Yes, they all are. It should be a wonderful surprise for your mother.”
“Okay. I’m about to drive into a tunnel, and I’m going to lose you. Love you. See you soon.”
“Love you, son.”
At both ends of the terminated conversation, the men pulled the batteries out of the phones. One of them dropped the dead phone into a large bowl of water; the other, the man in the U-Haul, popped open the lid on a Big Gulp and slipped the cell phone into sixty-four ounces of Dr. Pepper.
The passenger turned to the driver and said, “Everyone’s en route.”
The driver just nodded as he accelerated the truck up an on-ramp, merging with the heavy traffic on the Harbor Freeway.
א
Ricki Darling stood behind the operators, watching them scrutinizing their terminal monitors. One of them pressed the eject button on his CD tray, lifting a disc out and offering it to her. “This one sounds like the last,” he said as she took the disc.
Adding it to the stack of others, she left the room. They did not need to be told to continue monitoring the list of phone numbers. The walk from her area to the Director’s office was a brief one normally, shortened even further by her hurried pace. As usual, Bill Burke’s door was open, and she went straight in, dropping the discs on his desk.
“I think we have the full first round,” she said, as Burke lifted the top CD and slid it into his waiting drive. They both listened to all seven conversations in order, neither saying anything until they reached the last, hearing the “dad” say he had heard from all of the others, and they were already on the road.
“Do we have locations?”
“Because the calls are so brief, we only get a rough fix, the cell they are in, maybe an adjacent one. The last one was Long Beach. The others are Seattle, Phoenix, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta, and San Francisco. Dad is here, in D.C.”
“There are no clues in any of the conversations?”
“None that I notice. The computer gang is tearing them all apart for some significant background sound which might give us a hint.”
Bill leaned back in his chair, trying to relax his tightening muscles. “Thank God Margo got the list of prepaid cell phones Stavros bought for this guy. Otherwise, we wouldn’t even have this much.”
“Burke, we really don’t have shit. All we know is that something is happening in seven major US cities. We don’t know what the plot is. We don’t know when it’s happening.”
“I think we know it’s soon.”
“That we do.”
The phone on Bill Burke’s desk chirped. He glanced at it and said, “It’s Margo,” punching the button on his direct line, and putting her on the speaker. “What do you have?”
Margo Jackson sounded excited. “Bill, I think we might have something helpful. I don’t know if Kaval was using Stavros out of convenience or just wanted to set him up for whatever is going down today, but he had Stavros’ people book the U-Haul trucks. They were all prepaid, and we have the list of locations as well as the names of the people who were going to pick them up.”
Burke sighed. “Margo, we already have seven locations from the cell companies. I’m sure the names are all bogus. I guess we could send agents to the rental locations, hoping to put together an ID or something, but we don’t have that much….”
“Bill,” Margo interrupted. “You’re forgetting something. After Oklahoma City….”
Ricki Darling interrupted Margo, “GPS!”
Margo went on, “Right. Most of the rental companies now use GPS transmitters in their rentals. If these guys are smart enough, they might have found them and disabled them, but it’s worth a shot.”
Ricki nodded. “I doubt they disabled them. That would immediately set off an alarm at the rental company. They would get suspicious, probably call the police immediately. Besides, they don’t think we’re on to them.”
Burke, getting excited also, slapped his hand on the desk. “Ricki, get back to your people and get them started on this.”
“I’ve already sent the rental information to your e-mail, Ricki.”
Darling was already up from the chair and nearly dashed out of the Director’s office.
Burke picked up the phone. “Good work, Margo.”
“Thanks.”
“I thought you were going out on a limb giving Stavros the benefit of the doubt, but it looks as if you might have been right.”
“I don’t know if he’s clean or dirty. And, at this point, I don’t care. I just had the feeling that we were running out of time and needed somebody who could tell us something. We don’t have weeks or months to figure it out.”
“It was a good gut-call.”
“Well, the call I got from Reese, with the warning from Elohim, really clinched it.”
Pausing for a moment, Burke said, “I just hope we’re in time.”
“I don’t want to think about that.”
Margo broke the connection and turned to re-enter the small office where Stavros still waited, when she saw one of the computer technicians trotting toward her.
“I found something.”
“What?”
“On Stavros’ personal PC…it’s a variation on the commercial program which allows you to have access to your computer from anywhere. Except it works totally in the background.”
“Just tell me what i
t did.”
“It’s responsible for the e-mails we found. They were planted.”
“Can you find its source?”
With a grin, he answered, “Already did,” handing Margo a sheet of paper.
She looked at the sheet, smiled, and started to reach for her cell phone again, when the technician said, “There’s something else.” He reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a CD stored in an evidence bag. “This was on his desk in a storage case. You might want to listen to it soon.”
א
The Harvest Page 57
