Sea of Lies: An Espionage Thriller

by Bradley West

  “That’s quite enough. Hear me out. Assign Ms. Mukherjee to me. We’ll work independently on the Burma angle. You’ll get a copy of everything we produce. We’ll likely skip these briefing sessions, but you permission us to access the databases pertaining to MH370 or Robin Teller. I’m retiring at the end of March, so you won’t have to worry about me after that.”

  “I’m looking forward to seeing you arrested before the end of the month. You can save whatever you come up with for Matthews, Constantine and your new DEA friends. I’m not interested, and I don’t want any of that garbage contaminating the project drive. You two will have Secret access and no higher.”

  “Melissa, I currently hold Top Secret clearance, and typically work with sensitive compartmented information.” Nolan’s spoke as if he were giving street directions to an advanced Alzheimer’s patient. “So don’t try to restrict my access.”

  “Fine, I’ll see that you have TS/SCI code word clearance for the MH370 project. However, if your girlfriend here sees anything above Secret, I’ll have you both fired for cause.” Melissa turned and walked out.

  Millie looked at Nolan and broke into a laugh. “What a bitch! What did you ever do to her?” He could only purse his lips and shake his head. It was neither the time nor the place to share the story of a passionate eight-month affair. One that imploded when Nolan finally decided he couldn’t leave his wife for another woman after all. Melissa and he hadn’t spoken since that fateful day in October 2011 when he tearfully confessed to his new soulmate that he couldn’t go through with it. Melissa had been humiliated when Constantine’s predecessor transferred her to a smaller role in Japan to maintain the peace locally. Meanwhile, Nolan was consigned to a Hades of Joanie’s design.

  “Hey, about tonight. Would you like to have a working dinner?”

  Nolan was jarred back to the present and found his predicament unchanged. “We’ve got about twelve hours of nonstop work before we even start thinking about dinner. Let’s wait and see. I’ve got to run some non-MH370 errands this morning, and I need you to cover a lot of ground. Start with whatever the DEA and CIA are doing in Rangoon. I’m speaking with Hecker in twenty-five minutes, but you need to check in with everyone else in the meantime and tell me if anything big breaks. There’s a lot happening in Burma today, and they’ll need us to help interpret whatever they come up with. If you have any spare time, I want you to start researching rendition flights.”

  “Rendition flights? What on earth are those?” she asked.

  “You can find a lot in the public domain, but after 9/11 the CIA rented private jets and crews to move al Qaeda and other terrorist operatives between secret jails where Agency staffers coached allied interrogators. Non-US prisoners offshore have no Constitutional rights. As long as they weren’t in Gitmo, then they were eligible for torture—uh, make that enhanced interrogation techniques—provided US citizens didn’t hold the cattle prods.”

  “What does that have to do with MH370?”

  “It’s long odds, but if you come up with the names of the aviation groups that supplied planes and pilots to the Company for Asia, we might trace one of them to Airstrip One.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “I woke up this morning thinking about a commercial jet that’s disappeared, something unprecedented. I’m betting MH370 is never again seen in one piece. The amount of forethought such an operation requires is so great that it’s inconceivable the hijackers didn’t have a plan to extract the high-value targets. The easiest way to do that would be to land a small jet either just before or after MH370 put down—probably after—then turn the plane around, load the HVTs and take off. This type of operation would require military pilots. With Teller involved, maybe the pilots were old-timers, too. If you can trace the small plane, the big plane may come to us.”

  “You are amazing. Truly amazing.”

  He realized then why he found her so attractive: Millie appreciated him. Being almost out of Joanie’s official doghouse was well and good, but he had long ago lost his hero status in his own household. He flashed Millie his biggest, most genuine smile. If she weren’t thirty years his junior . . . . Get a grip, Bob. Get a grip. “I’ll catch you later,” he said as he headed toward the China watchers.

  “I hope you will.”

  With only twenty minutes before he was due on the phone with Hecker, he took the internal staircase rather than wait for the elevator. Swiping in and out of the heavy doors, he mulled over a few plausible stories as he climbed a single flight.

  “Hello, Robert,” said Ho Ee Ling. Pushing sixty and not much in the looks department, Ee Ling might have been the most beautiful person in Singapore station, Nolan thought. Certainly that morning she was.

  “Ee Ling, my dear, how are you?”

  “Her Royal Highness Melissa Shook came by yesterday to chew me out, saying all Singapore Agency research staff, including me, should be on her MH370 task force. Her task force? What a joke. As soon as that email went out, I went right to the chief and told him I wasn’t working on any project that prima donna oversaw. Dick agreed with me, but I’m still down my best research librarian. So what brings you up here other than neighborliness? Say, aren’t you retiring soon?”

  Ee Ling didn’t receive many visitors, but was an ace at tracking the many sundry agents, stringers and clandestine payments the MSS had running through Singapore. She served as the chief portal through which in-house staff posed China-related inquiries.

  Nolan had his opening. “Ah, I’m glad you mentioned Melissa, because she’s the reason I’m here. Somehow, Shook has it in her head that a high-ranking MSS officer was on that missing plane. She didn’t even give me a name.” The old hands knew that Melissa—despite being a superstar—was insecure and withheld information to maintain an edge. “I have an order to identify every MSS field office within thirty miles of a town called Kaiping, which is deep in Guangdong province. Apparently this bigwig is either based in, or is from, Kaiping. I need to give Shook enough clues so she can claim credit if she turns over a rock and finds a snake.” He’d overstated Melissa’s modus operandi, but Nolan was playing to Ee Ling’s well-known enmity toward her much younger, blonder and better-looking associate.

  “I already have your answer: zero. Any fool knows the Ministry of State Security has an external remit. Their office in Guangdong province will be in the capital, Guangzhou. They won’t be out in the sticks. However, it is true that from time to time MSS will base people out of the Public Security Bureau offices, basically the police stations. If you want, I can tell you whether the PSB has an operation in Kaiping or nearby.”

  “That would be very helpful. Melissa’s got a thing about maps right now. Could you pinpoint on a map of the region—hell, I don’t care if it’s a Google map—where the two or three closest offices are, and then email it to me? I’m afraid I need it by this afternoon.”

  “It’s going to be all in Chinese.”

  “Excellent. One more thing to torment her with,” Nolan said with a wink. Ee Ling chortled as he walked toward the stairwell.

  “Let’s do lunch before you go,” he heard behind him.

  “Sure thing,” he replied, turning his head to catch a twinkle off the silver frames of Auntie Ee Ling’s bifocals, a smile on her face.

  * * * * *

  “I know that motherfucker is crooked and helping hide Teller.” Hecker said, wasting no time. “Do you know what Matthews did last night? He met the Golden Elephant chairman Myat Noe at her home on his own. Nothing taped. No one with him, not even a bodyguard. He came out an hour later and sent an email to Ambassador Martin, as if that stuffed shirt could take a decision, saying that Golden Elephant admitted to building an airstrip for the junta, but the project concluded over a month ago. The transfer was complete. There was no reason for Toffer or his security detail to be anywhere near Airstrip One. Myat Noe was sufficiently disturbed that she told Matthews she was firing Toffer. So what good does that do us except alert everyone that we
’re after Toffer/Teller? For all we know, GE was sheltering him all along and is tied up in this mess.”

  “Jesus Christ. That’s unbelievable. And he emailed the ambassador and you?”

  “No, just the ambassador. Martin forwarded it to me for comment, which means he also smells a rat, as normally he and I don’t even speak. This is a smoking gun to be certain. To top it all, as of a half hour ago, 8 a.m. local time, Matthews sent an all-heads embassy memo declaring that the Airstrip One investigation was now wholly a CIA matter. He also assigned embassy security to handle the investigation into Dara’s shooting. Abrahams is a good Marine, but he’s no detective, doesn’t speak a word of Burmese and has zero police connections.

  “The memo ended with a statement that the DEA was not involved in this investigation, and that any questions from the DEA should be forwarded to Matthews. This guy is so busy covering his ass, he doesn’t know he’s standing naked on a 360-degree stage.”

  “So what will you do?” Nolan asked.

  “Do? We’re already doing it. Hanny teamed up with Zaw’s men, and this morning they raided eight of Teller’s Golden Elephant paramilitary guards simultaneously at six o’clock. We got six of the bastards. Well, five if we’re counting live ones. Shot one of those fuckers climbing over his back fence. Plenty of weapons and ammo seized from their homes. Zaw’s guys are working over the prisoners, but nothing as of yet on Teller’s whereabouts. The other murdering sons of bitches are on the run. Abrahams knows and will lend us cover, but he’s otherwise not involved.

  “With Martin’s unofficial sign-off and acknowledgement from President Thein’s office, Travis is taking the Wild Bunch into Hutchison’s port offices. I decided to go big, so all the Spec Ops men plus three DOE techs with their decontamination equipment are going to lock the port down and go box by box until they find something that chatters. It might take a few days, but no ships are sailing at present.”

  “That’s incredible. How did you pull that off?”

  Hecker laughed. “You won’t believe this story. It seems Obama was busy, so VP Biden made a call to President Thein. He said a sniper targeted the DEA head honcho’s wife and infant son, and that we believed the killers were hiding in the container port. Could they let us conduct an investigation in conjunction with the police? So of course the topic of the US underwriting further UN funding for opium eradication in fiscal 2015 came up. A couple of million dollars later, it was looking better. Then President Thein said what would really seal the deal was if he could meet Crusher.”

  “Crusher?”

  “Yeah, Crusher Thompson, the action hero. It turns out the junta members are all big Melvin Thompson fans. He comes out to Asia a couple of times a year and plays golf with dictators and generals around ASEAN, and these guys end up awarding defense contracts to Thompson’s clients. So Burma’s president is upset that Crusher has never been here. Biden says, ‘Can you hold the line for a moment?’ Thompson is a big Democratic campaign contributor. Biden gets Crusher on the phone, and voila, it’s done. So we can take our time at the port, but in April or May Thompson’s Embraer executive jet will land here for a day of golf and an evening of gentlemen’s entertainment with unsavory people.”

  “Let’s hope Thein can understand Philly-accented grunts,” Nolan said. “Have you got any lab results back on the airstrip samples?”

  “Man, are you out of the loop. The report has been out for hours. The radioactivity’s coming from U-235, just as you suspected. I thought it might be from reactor fuel rods, but that isn’t the case. Most likely the uranium came from centrifuging uranium hexafluoride gas. It’s what the new nuclear nations like Pakistan and India use to compile critical masses of weapons-grade fissionable material.”

  “Or Iran.”

  “Iran? What about Iran?”

  “Iran’s been trying to build the bomb since the 1980s. Their program at one point had over nine thousand centrifuges doing what you just said: spinning uranium hexafluoride gas to produce traces of U-235. In late 2009, over eight hundred of the centrifuges stopped working properly, and by late 2010 the Iranians discovered that a computer worm called Stuxnet was causing them to malfunction. Stuxnet set their program back about three years. But Iran still has a lot of bomb-grade U-235 hidden away. We’re not certain if they’ve got a working nuke or not. It’s hotly debated in-house.”

  “OK, thanks for the history lesson. I checked and Malaysia isn’t building a bomb. They’re allies of the US and signed the nonproliferation treaties, though admittedly that might not mean much. But I spoke with my Kuala Lumpur DEA crew, and the Malaysians are clean. So if this came off MH370, it makes no sense. Why smuggle U-235 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing? China’s making plutonium weapons—friggin’ hydrogen bombs—and doesn’t need U-235. They can mine it in Outer Mongolia or wherever and enrich it in their own reactors. So I don’t see how MH370 fits into the picture.”

  “I agree. It’s perplexing.” Nolan was seldom at a loss for words. “What about the organic material?”

  “You were right. Mangosteens it was. Why is that such a big fucking deal?”

  Nolan had explained this all in detail yesterday, but went through it again, describing the four crates plus the gunman’s expelling the half-eaten fruit at the guardhouse.

  Hecker whistled, “I’ll be damned. So we’re back with Plan A and MH370.”

  Referring to his printout of the cargo manifest, Nolan added that MH370 was also carrying five hundred pounds declared as lithium batteries, and almost five thousand pounds described as radio accessories and chargers. “Whatever you’re looking for is big enough that it’s on pallets. It might even be encased in lead, though from the shed samples that’s not likely.”

  “Sure, Bob, that’s useful. Let me pass that along to Travis and the boys.”

  “Before you go, how are Sophie and CJ? Did Zeya get out alright?”

  “The family’s good. They’re better protected than Fort Knox. I’m still hanging at the safe house, though that seems stupid given the amount of embassy muscle at Dubern Park and how under-gunned we are here. On the positive side, it keeps us away from Matthews, so we’re staying here for the time being. Plus, at night, we’ll have enough Spec Ops manpower on-site to hold off a regiment of Teller’s mercs. Zeya made it into Thailand. He’s a tough son of a bitch and wants to find whoever is behind the shooting. Dara and him were close.”

  “Thanks for that. I will track Teller from my end to try to find out who hired him. I’ll keep you posted. Let me know what you find at the container port. I’m back on my cell phone, but better to text or email unless it’s urgent that we speak live. I’m not certain how much longer I’ll be on the airwaves.”

  * * * * *

  Back at his tiny cubicle, Nolan saw his El Chapo replacement passport on his desk awaiting signature. Millie was elsewhere, which was a relief. He couldn’t afford to think about his feelings for her while he was working, not if he wanted to get anything done. He logged on to his laptop to check on his security status. Humph. Irrespective of his exchange this morning with Melissa, he was down to Secret with zero code word clearance secure compartmented information carve-outs. That would not do. If his buds in IT and Flynn couldn’t sort it out, then he’d be forced to pursue alternative courses.

  Next up was his long-overdue report to Matthews and Constantine, bcc’d to Hecker. Never had he devoted so little effort to something so important. Neither recipient was inclined to believe him nor act on his recommendations. Hecker’s DEA team was the linchpin and already on board. Either Nolan’s credibility was so low that nothing he said carried weight, or the apathy bordering on antipathy he was encountering was due to something else. He didn’t have time to speculate. Forty-five minutes and two pages later, he was done with his declaration that MH370 had landed, cargo (and possibly people) were offloaded, and the ill-fated 777 was scuttled somewhere else. He promised proof to follow, but not if they walled him off from in-house intel or failed to restore his security clearanc
es.

  Nolan furtively hunched over his laptop, typing furiously to peel away layers of security protecting in-house archives he was now being denied access to.

  “Bob, you have a minute?” asked a newly returned Millie.

  Nolan jumped like he’d been caught looking at Playboy in seventh-grade English class. “Oh, hey, hello. Where’ve you been?” In an instant, his flying fingers left only a Google homepage in view.

  “As per your request, I’ve been sitting in a guest office. That is, until I was evicted three minutes ago. Most of the time I was emailing back and forth with Rangoon, but I also spoke live to Ryder twice and Gonzalez once.”

  “Sam and I talked about an hour and a half ago. I know Zaw picked up some of Teller’s men, and Matthews tried to shut down the MH370 angle and bring the investigation back into Rangoon station where he’ll no doubt strangle it. What else?”

  “The DOE team hit the jackpot on the third container handling crane they surveyed, finding trace radioactivity on the grapplers. Apparently their equipment is so sensitive it can detect down to the fifty rad level. Ryder said that was lower than the radon gas reading in my Cupertino basement. Anything remotely hot that came into contact with the cranes would leave a trace. The last crane jiggled the needle whereas the other two box movers in Thilawa were clean. That narrowed the search, as crane number three loaded only two ships in the last forty-eight hours. Right now they’re unstacking boxes from the SS Bandana, an Australia-registered 1,100 TEU vessel. The 6,000 TEU Star of Seoul under a Korea flag was prepping to sail when the port authority pulled her clearance papers. So the Star is at anchor and isn’t moving until the government gives them the all clear.”

  “Get back on the line with Ryder and find out where those ships were headed.”