“I’ll help any way I can,” offered Tosho. “If you need anything, just pick up the phone.”
“I intend to.”
There is an old Oriental saying that, translated into English, goes something like this: Always watch a nation that uses two sticks to pick up one grain of rice, and one stick to carry two buckets of shit. So I was on my guard as well as my best behavior the next day when I reported to BetaGo’s Asian headquarters on the umpteenth floor of a sleek glass-and-metal tower in Tokyo’s business district. The receptionist sat at a polished wooden table at the far end of an otherwise empty hall. Over the years I have come to understand that Japanese corporations furnish their offices in inverse proportion to their wealth; if you enter a bank with a lot of furniture, go quickly to the teller and withdraw whatever you’ve got there. In this case, the bare room convinced me I should have asked for ten times my usual fee, instead of the mere three times we had settled on.
The receptionist waited for me to say who I was, then bowed her head and told me it was a great honor for the Japanese office of BetaGo to host me. Within seconds, the vice president in charge of Asian operations, Yosiro Fuki, appeared, followed by a phalanx of assistants dressed in identical dark blue suits. Fuki, a short, thin man whose English had a good amount of Texas in it, thanked me for coming so promptly and insisted that we would now have lunch. Having done business in Japan before, I knew it was senseless to resist, and I soon found myself neck-deep in eel sushi. This was just the first course of a day and a half of meetings, none of which actually included any mention of business, let alone any specific problems the company might be encountering. Eventually—in a karaoke bar, if memory serves—we got down to the matter at hand. Fuki said that the decision to hire me had been made in Europe and, while he didn’t agree with it, he didn’t disagree with it either. This was polite Japanese speak for “My bosses foisted you on me and I hate your guts, because you’re nothing but a round-eyed spy trying to screw me out of my cushy setup here.”
I told him I had no problem with making a copy of my report available to him unofficially before supplying it to Europe.
Fuki blinked, smiled, and ordered another round of drinks—“Bombay in honor of Marcinko-san.” From that point on we were best buddies. We even shared the microphone on “My Way” later in the evening.
Skipping some of the wrinkles and off-key drunken singing, BetaGo had a number of systems in place to make sure they weren’t robbed. Money and securities traveled under heavy guard, usually with help from the local police and military units. The bags and other containers were booby-trapped, and the currency was generally marked. There were several other checks in place. Someone might get away with a theft, but the BetaGo people would know they were robbed. Frankly, I could offer suggestions to boost security on this half of the operation simply from what I heard in the bar that night.
Protecting the backup data that they moved around, however, was in many ways much trickier. Aware that the information might be targeted for industrial or commercial espionage, BetaGo had already taken a number of steps to protect it. The most basic of these were tamper-proof bags and around-the-clock surveillance. A layer of ultrasensitive rice paper covered certain envelopes, making it impossible to disturb them without leaving evidence behind. Small radio tags were placed on packages so they could be tracked via satellite 24/7.
Typically, a pair of two-man teams would be used for a mission, with the teams subject to random supervisor checks. Mostly the couriers were low-key; they didn’t pull up in armored cars, for example, and dressed like tourists or businessmen, depending on the situation. (They were all native to the region and fluent in the local language, though not necessarily residents of the country or even Asian.)
Fuki believed that these steps were more than enough. He was not, in fact, convinced that the data—mostly backup files that were being taken to company headquarters for safekeeping—would be useful to all but the most cutthroat competitor. But he acknowledged that he might be wrong, especially since “Europe” had not shown a willingness to spend money on consultants in the past. He was looking over his shoulder, and wondering why.
So was I. The setup sounded secure, which meant there were probably dozens of problems with it. But generally if you have a reason to investigate something, you lay out your suspicions to the investigator, or at least push him in the direction of the problem. I came away from my karaoke session with a sore throat and the impression that my report was going to be used to reassure potential investors or insurers who might have to pay for a screwup.
Like I said, I should have charged ten times my normal fee.
Couriers moved from Japan to China, then to Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, and back to Japan. Pickup times varied, but the days didn’t.
Why, you ask? I know I did. Apparently the company spent a lot of money on airplane tickets for the couriers and backup teams. Trying to save some money, the comptroller had negotiated a bulk discount. You guessed it: The terms of the contract called for certain flights to be used. Well, duh. And I bet the comptroller got a raise that month.
I spent the next two days following couriers around Japan, noting problems in their security structure that were only slightly more subtle. BetaGo’s operations were far from the worst I’ve ever seen. The people who worked there had gone through background checks. They were required to demonstrate their proficiency on the gun range every few months. (Shooting paper, but at least they knew where the trigger of the weapon was.) They were also decently paid, with regular bonuses and time off. If I were grading security on an A–F scale, I’d give them a C-minus.
While I was honing my karaoke, the other members of Red Cell International were having fun in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. After he disposed of Ali Goatfuck, Danny and his shooters checked around in Pakistan for potential links back to Saladin and his organization. The slim leads they had withered quickly. By the time someone in Pakistani military intelligence sent a warning that Goatfuck’s demise had been linked to “unknown Americans visiting Islamabad within the past five days,” Danny and team had left the country. The shooters got two weeks paid vacation. Danny flew to Afghanistan to take Doc’s place lending a helping hand to our operations there.
Speaking of Doc: He was within twenty yards of the Egyptian submarine when it pulled into its slip at Alexandria. He could have been closer, but the spot gave him a better vantage point to film the crew. It took him, Grape, and Big Foot about thirty-six hours, but they were able to confirm that no crew members were missing. The submarine’s log put it where it was supposed to be on the night of my adventure on the Sicilian coast. (How did they get a look at the log? Let’s just say there’s an interesting entry in Doc’s expense vouchers for that month entitled “research” and leave it at that.)
This wasn’t definitive proof that the submarine hadn’t been there—I wouldn’t record illegal activity in a log book either. But it wasn’t promising. Doc wanted to spend a few more days investigating the captain and other members of the crew. He had to stay in Egypt anyway, in case Shunt turned up anything from the key loggers I’d planted, and to “service” the bugs I’d planted at Bakr’s. I told him to give it a few more days, but to be ready to pack it up if he were needed elsewhere.
I was willing to admit that I’d made a mistake about the submarine. But I’d seen something. What was it?
“Maybe you just need to get your eyes examined,” snapped Trace when I spoke to her. “Face it, Dick, it could have been any small boat on the water with a flashlight.”
“I saw a conning tower. I’ve seen them often enough to know what I was looking at.”
She grumbled something I couldn’t understand—probably an Apache word for “stubborn,” though I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction by asking. The boat the dead tangos had used had still not been found, nor had any real progress been made on the investigation into the attempted takeover at St. Peter’s.
“How did these people inve
nt spaghetti?” said Trace, venting her frustration with the Italian authorities.
“They did it the old-fashioned way,” I told her. “They stole it from the Chinese.”
China happened to be the next stop in my review of the BetaGo operation. I decided to take two runs through. One would be announced—the couriers’ supervisor would know I was there, though the couriers themselves wouldn’t be informed. I’d also talk to the local subsidiary and some of the people who used the service. Ordinarily, I’d’ve done none of this, but BetaGo’s Japanese executives had already decided to help me out by informing the Chinese what was going on. When I found that out, I made sure everyone knew my exact schedule. Then I arranged to be in China two days ahead, so I could pick up the couriers on the run just before the one I was supposed to watch.
The route ran from Shanghai to Nanjing to Wuhan, down to Nanning and then into Thailand, where the main stop was Bangkok, the capital. The couriers used commercial airlines to get from Japan to Shanghai; from there leased aircraft were used. Again, cost consciousness at headquarters—and maybe an inside deal with the Chinese—had conspired to make this a very weak link in the operation. The airplanes were always leased from the same company, which was owned by two retired Chinese army generals. Its entire fleet consisted of two Xian Y-7-100s (Chinese versions of Russian military transports) surplussed by the Chinese military a few years before. Watch the airplanes, and you knew the couriers’ schedule. Infiltrate the ground crew at the airports—admittedly not as easy as in the U.S., since in most cases the military ran things—and you had complete access to the couriers’ cargo until the plane left for Bangkok. From that point, a number of carriers were used on a seemingly random basis for transport to Korea and back to Japan.
I picked up my Chinese visa—multiple entries, just to be safe—and arranged to see Tosho to hand over the guns I’d borrowed. We ended up at a police gun range, shooting for our dinner—loser paid. It took nearly three hundred rounds before Tosho finally faltered and missed the bull’s-eye. I knew better than to accept an offer of double or nothing. He paid off handsomely, with dinner and cocktails at STB 139, one of the classiest (and most expensive) restaurants in the city. We hit the bars after that, progressing from Kirin to sake to Bombay and back again. I skipped sleep—why sleep when you can hoist a few with an old friend? Besides, if you’re not sleeping or fucking, why be in bed?
I ended up at Tokyo airport about an hour before the first flight to Shanghai. I’m sure I looked like a madman and smelt like one, too: perfect dirtbag cover. (SEAL Team Six and the original Red Cell always traveled out of uniform—way out of uniform, with beards and long hair to match the civilian outfits. This was one of the keys to our success. Rumor has it that after I left, Red Cell members got new T-shirts and grooming standards. The brass never could figure out why the unit’s effectiveness plummeted. Then again, the admirals were probably happy, since making the unit members stand out decreased the number of embarrassing reports on security deficiencies.)
When I booked my flight to China from Japan, I knew only the day that the couriers were leaving, not who they were or which flight they would take. But there were only three flights to Shanghai from Tokyo that day, and I guessed that a company scrimping on airfare wouldn’t bother to route the couriers through a third country and pay for the extra stop. I booked seats on all three flights, using slightly different variations of my name to confuse the computers tracking suspicious activity. (“Mar Cinko” may be instantly recognizable to a person as “Marcinko,” and thus easy to explain to the clerk at the desk as an operator error made by one of the coworkers. But to the computer, the names are very different and don’t set off any alarms.) Fifteen minutes after I got to the airport and checked in, four young men with very bad haircuts and loose-fitting jackets entered the gate area. I’d been expecting just two couriers, but I noticed that one of the men had a carry-on bag tagged with a brown ribbon similar to one I’d seen a courier in Japan use. I discovered a “problem” with my ticket that took me to the desk area just behind them. There were ribbons on all of their bags, even though they were using passports from different countries (three from Korea, one from Thailand). I gathered that I was behind the main team and its backup, which turned out to be correct. Ordinarily they stayed far apart, but in their minds the job didn’t begin until they touched down in China, and so there was no harm showing up at the airport together.
I took photos of each with my new Japanese cell phone. I emailed them to an address I could access later, but it would have been just as easy to send them to an accomplice in China.
What if I’d been wrong? What if the men were a third of an international basketball team, traveling together?
Then I would have been in Shanghai early enough to watch the other two flights. But I wasn’t wrong. After we reached Shanghai and had our visas sniffed, the men split into two groups. I followed the trail team as they headed toward the new subway line that runs from the airport to the city. That meant leaving my driver outside to catch up with me in the city. It wouldn’t matter to him. I’d worked with Lo Po in the past, and not only did he know what to do, he knew he’d be paid no matter what happened.
My Chinese was not the best, even though I’d spent a few hours brushing up on the plane ride with a “long-hair dictionary” and a handy book on idioms. I did, however, have a secret weapon—a prototype of a new Phraselator handheld translation machine leant to me by a friendly ex-SEAL named Ace J. Sarich.
Sarich’s company, VoxTec, is based in Annapolis. The original Phraselator saw service in Afghanistan in 2002. About the size of a Palm Pilot personal digital assistant, the unit has also been supplied to police, hospital workers, and EMTs. (Hold on, tourists—there’s a slimmer model in the works.) The standard version uses memory cards that contain nearly sixty languages and 15,000 phrases in a library that can be customized depending on a client’s needs. Chinese is easy—try Arabic, Urdu, Pashto, and Dari, which are all offered. You can either say the word you want and get the translation, or scroll to what you want and let the machine do the talking. There are a couple of other nifty features—it’s modular, which means you can take off the speaker and microphone and mount a GPS. And while it normally runs on lithium rechargeables, in a pinch you can slot in two AAs. My prototype allowed for two-way conversation in real time without having to hit a lot of different switches or swap cards around. Ace says it will be about ten years before the two-way version hits the market; if it’s as good as the beta I was playing with, I’d advise putting your order in now.
The hotel was near the World Financial Center and the first team wandered around the area before checking in. Either they were lost, sightseeing, or checking to see if they were being trailed. They eventually made it to the hotel. When I was sure they had checked in I called Lo Po on his mobile and told him where to meet me.
Calling Lo Po my driver may give you the wrong impression about his abilities. His father was an American citizen who moved to Hong Kong to do business soon after Nixon visited the mainland in the seventies. From Hong Kong he set up shop in Shanghai, where he eventually married a local woman; Lo Po is the product of that marriage.
Lo runs a “research bureau” that aids overseas business people. The company is a cross between a detective agency and a security firm. I met him a while back when I was giving a terrorism seminar in D.C.; Lo Po asked so many damn questions during the Q&A that I had to invite him for drinks afterward to get him to shut up. I introduced him to Bombay Sapphire, and in return he straightened out my pronunciation of Mandarin curse words. Lo will never be a better-than-average shot as long as he insists on using his piece-of-shit Chinese Type 59 pistol, but otherwise his skills are above average. He can fly helicopters and is rated as a parachute instructor. His English is good, his German better. And he’s inherited his father’s ability to deal with Chinese bureaucracy.
We didn’t need too many of his skills that afternoon as the couriers made their run. The heavy
traffic in the city made it easy to follow their car, a Toyota they had leased ahead of time. Lo Po had rented us motor scooters, but we could have done just as well walking. They had two pickups in the city, and I was able to get close enough to take pictures with the camera-equipped cell phone both times. They were picking up backup files and some papers, physically transporting them out of the country. The files were stored on tape cartridges and DVD disks; everything fit neatly into two medium-sized suitcases.
After their second stop, they headed toward Hongqiao, an airport near Shanghai used mainly for domestic flights. I suppose I could have contented myself with the photos, pointing out that I had spotted the couriers and gotten by their trail team without being stopped. But somehow that seemed too easy.
The couriers’ airplane met them at a terminal used for charter flights, rather than at the hangar; they had to pass through a common lobby and a security area. Just as the couriers approached the security checkpoint, an angry policeman pulled them aside.
“Mai yuk!” said the officer. “Don’t move.”
The two men stopped quickly, asking politely what was going on. The police officer demanded to see the bags. Standing next to him was a taxi driver—Lo Po—who said two identical bags had been stolen from a passenger. The policeman might have been doubtful, but in a difficult situation he would trust the word of a countryman over a foreigner, which the couriers’ passports showed them to be.
Lo could have pressed his case and probably come away with the bags. The trail team was still outside the building, parking the cars; we could have had the two couriers locked behind bars before they realized anything was up.
The couriers and trail team reunited in the waiting area assigned to their charter. Lo, wearing a new cap and shirt, watched from the tarmac as they walked out from the building to the plane, waved at the pilot, and got on board, folding up the small ladder from the rear hatchway after them. Security at the airport was provided by the Chinese military, but as Lo observed, once you were past the gate, the privates on duty to a man assumed you were where you were supposed to be, as long as you looked certain about it. And like soldiers anywhere, the few who might question a civilian would undoubtedly shy from stopping an officer.
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