The Nabatean Secret

by J C Ryan

  For now, Carter and Mackenzie would remain hidden. The three of them didn’t know who they could trust, and while they wanted to trust the President and Bill, it might depend on who had whispered what into their ears by now.

  They all knew the drill. No communication by electronic means of any kind. Encoded, hand-delivered messages through anonymous go-betweens like the Starbucks delivery boy would be their only form of communication.

  Meanwhile, Sean would get in touch with Dylan and bring him to DC to be briefed before being sent back to Freydís to batten down the hatches there.

  James and Irene would try to get a meeting with the President or Bill to determine whether they knew about the allegations against the Devereuxs and where they stood on the matter.

  Chapter 24 - Between a rock and a hard place

  The INSCOM safe house guards managed to free themselves first. The landline was down, and there were no cell phones left in the house, so they freed the others and then one of them went for help—on foot.

  Once communications had been reestablished, Kelly reported to Terrance Ham, and he in turn reported to his supervisor. At Kelly’s urging, Terrance persuaded his ranking officer to reach out to the FBI for help. At an emergency meeting in the Pentagon, the Director of the FBI agreed to issue an APB for Carter and Mackenzie Devereux. With a little prompting, he also assigned Russell McCormick to work with Kelly. Their directive was to work fast. This was a crisis impacting National Security, and they had the go-ahead to pull out all the stops.

  McCormick convinced Kelly the package she’d received from an anonymous tipster was legitimate. Otherwise, why would the Devereuxs escape rather than stick around to sort things out? Kelly bought it, hook, line, and sinker. At Russell’s urging, she took it to the Director of the FBI to try to convince him that the President and the Director of the CIA were part of it and should at least be suspected of some wrongdoing. And the “it” in question was that the A-Echelon story was only the tip of the iceberg.

  FBI Director Alec Burnett fumbled for his nitroglycerin tablets. This was why he took them. News like this could, no-kidding, cause him to have a coronary. He needed to retire. But before he did, he was going to kill that INSCOM bimbo with his bare hands. And possibly send Russell McCormick to a post in BFE Idaho. Why in tarnation had they sat on this info?

  He perused the documents. Proof that this Carter Devereux had accepted foreign payments for God-knows-what, but it looked like they’d transferred highly sensitive, deadly technology to someone who wanted to destroy the US. Swiss bank records, video clips, emails, and freaking NSA recordings of phone calls. He wasn’t supposed to know about those, though it was common knowledge. It was illegal, for Heaven’s sake. Was he going to have to arrest his counterpart at NSA? Not to mention the freaking President of the United States? Did he even have the authority to arrest the President? Probably not. Then he remembered, the Sergeant at Arms of the United States Senate was the only person with authority to arrest a sitting president.

  What the hell am I thinking? He popped another nitro tablet and then had Kelly White and Russell McCormick summoned to his office and unloaded on them everything he’d felt when he studied the information.

  Kelly was taken aback that she was under fire. “Director Burnett, I couldn’t just hand this over to someone and risk that it wasn’t legitimate. I did my duty. I apprehended the suspects and proceeded to interrogate them to verify these allegations. Before I could, they attacked me and my team and escaped. I considered that to be verification of their guilt and brought it directly and immediately to you through appropriate channels.”

  Director Burnett had to admit she had him there. It still put him between a red-hot rock and a granite-like hard place. The President and the Director of the CIA would not be easy to take on. He wasn’t even sure how it could be done. The President, of course, would have to be impeached before he could be investigated. But that would involve giving every member of Congress sensitive, top-secret, and Q-Clearance information, regardless of their clearances.

  What a nightmare!

  And what if they were in the dark about what the Devereuxs were up to? If the President and Bill Griffin were innocent, the damage to them and the country from the accusations alone was unthinkable. He wanted desperately to believe that none of the people mentioned were guilty. There was no love lost between him and Bill Griffin, but the animosity between them was not bigger than the interests of the country.

  In the end, he determined that the only course of action was to personally confront them with the information and judge for himself based on their reactions. He could believe their involvement with A-Echelon and its activities. He knew more about some of that hocus-pocus, science fiction stuff than the average citizen, and even agreed that some of it should be investigated. But actively betraying their country and selling information to the enemy? He couldn’t even believe that of Bill Griffin, much less the President. Not until he had concrete evidence.

  As he picked up his phone to schedule a meeting with them, he comforted himself by reasoning that if they hadn’t been specifically named in the letter, which they hadn’t, then they probably weren’t involved. If someone wanted to bring down a government, the President or the Director of the CIA would be much bigger fish to land than the two scientists, Carter and Mackenzie Devereux.

  Chapter 25 - Two sources of the information leaks

  Neither Carter nor Mackenzie were inclined to sit on their thumbs and let others solve their problems. If they couldn’t leave the safe house, at least they could try to make sense of the information they’d been blindsided with that morning. They resumed their interrupted perusal of the evidence Special Agent White had handed them and added what they found in White’s and her teams’ briefcases.

  Following a method Mackenzie suggested, they spread everything out on the dining table. They first sorted the true information from what they knew to be false. Someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to manufacture it.

  Along with what they’d already seen was quite a bit more, White had not shown them yet—most of it more bogus information.

  And then there was the true stuff. Disturbingly accurate, and on the surface of it damning, information about A-Echelon activities. They supposed that James and Irene must have cooperated fully with the investigation. Whether that meant those two were also involved in the entrapment… they didn’t want to believe it. A happier explanation would be they’d been duped by Special Agent White. Her modus operandi earlier in the day, when she “asked a few questions” was ample demonstration of her capability to deceive.

  How was it possible to produce such a perfect face of Carter on video and match his voice so flawlessly? Mackenzie could have sworn it would even match on a digital voice analyzer.

  “Mackie, this was done so professionally it would convince anyone—even our best friends. Unless technical specialists can expose this hoax, we’re in the worst trouble conceivable.”

  Mackenzie stared at him. “I’m sure the CIA has the technical knowhow to repudiate this. Let’s hear what Sean can do to help when he gets back.”

  Digging through all the pockets and compartments of the briefcase for more hidden evidence, Mackenzie found a pen-sized digital recorder. Could White have been using this to record their interrogation? She tried to turn it on, but the battery was dead. In another compartment, she discovered the charger and set it up to charge while they continued to go through the evidence.

  Now that they knew the extent of the information, both true and false, Mackenzie’s method required they reorganize it, putting like with like to form an idea of what the bad guys were trying to accomplish with it. The immediate connection confirmed their instinctive suspicion that the Nabateans were behind it all. Mathieu Nabati, the Swiss banker, had the means to fabricate the false evidence concerning Carter opening the Swiss account.

  “It’s their revenge, right?”

  Carter nodded slowly. “When Perrin Durand handed over X
avier Algosaibi’s laptop and flash drive to the CIA, we seriously disrupted their organization. They came to within a hairsbreadth of total exposure.”

  Carter was referring to the shadowy Council of the Covenant of Nabatea, and specifically to Nabati and his mother, Graziella Marie Nabati, head of the Council of twelve and the only members whose names they’d discovered. Mother and son had vanished when they were compromised by the information retrieved from the laptop and flash drive.

  “That attack on Freydís was their first attempt at revenge,” Carter continued. “The Chinese interference in our Alboran Sea expedition was the second. This is their third attempt, and it’s going to be ferocious. They’ll throw everything they have at us.”

  “It scares me to think they have the technological capability to create, assemble, and somehow insert all this fake evidence into the record. I don’t even want to begin to think about the levels to which they have infiltrated our government or any other government in the world,” Mackenzie replied. Her famous temper was about to go on full display again; the gold flecks in her eyes were sparking flame-colored.

  Carter had the fleeting thought that if he put Mackie up against Mathieu Nabati when she was in this mood, the Nabatean wouldn’t know what had hit him. It caused him to smile fleetingly. But there was serious business afoot, and his amusement didn’t last long.

  “We’ll have a better idea what to do about it when Sean gets back. I can’t believe James and Irene would buy into this, but I’d give my fortune to know whether they’re aware of it. On the other hand, if they saw the same evidence you and I saw over the last few hours, no one could blame them if they believed us guilty. And I can’t even imagine what the President and Bill Griffin think. They don’t know us like James and Irene do,” Carter remarked.

  “You can’t think—” Mackenzie began. Tears formed in her eyes as she considered what it would mean if they’d lost the trust of their two friends as well as the President and the Director of the CIA.

  The children. When will I see my children again?

  Carter recognized the moment when her temper gave way to doubt. He put his arm around her. “We’ll know soon enough. And once we know, we’ll make a plan, whatever we face. We’ll get through this, Mackie. We will.”

  Mackenzie nodded, remembering her months of captivity in that hellhole in Saudi Arabia. She almost gave way to despair again, but then she remembered her vow never to give up fighting this evil force until it was utterly destroyed.

  She gave Carter a tremulous smile and patted his cheek. “I know, love.”

  They were still speculating about how that video of Carter in the Swiss bank and the telephone conversations he supposedly had with his Russian, Iranian, and Saudi clients could have been composed when Sean returned.

  It was after midnight.

  “Glad you’re up. Let me brief you—”

  “Before you start,” Carter interrupted, “Mackenzie and I want to look you in the eye and tell you we aren’t traitors. We didn’t do this—whatever they’re accusing us of. Whatever ‘evidence’ they produce, we’re not traitors.”

  Sean stopped, momentarily nonplussed. “Did you think I ever, for one minute, doubted you? What do you take me for? It’s not worth talking about.”

  “Sean, I—we—are grateful for that. But first you’ll have to look at the ‘evidence’ on that table,” Mackenzie pointed to the table where she and Carter had sorted the information into categories.

  An hour later, Sean looked at them in turn and said, “One thing is as clear as daylight. These people are on the warpath, and they have the means and resolve to cause immense damage. But this hasn’t changed my mind about your innocence."

  Mackenzie rushed over and hugged him.

  “Thank you.” Carter nodded.

  Sean said, “Okay, now we have that settled, let me tell you about the meeting with James and Irene.”

  He gave them a quick summary of what James and Irene had told him.

  By then, the recorder pen had finished recharging, so they played the recording of their interrogation.

  As they listened, Carter closed his eyes to visualize the evidence as a Venn diagram—his own method of organizing information. He’d bet anything that where the circles intersected, they’d find the source of the leak. But no matter how he mentally placed the evidence, nothing intersected.

  Suddenly, he had it. His eyes flew open, and he sat up straight, startling Mackenzie and Sean.

  “There are two sources of information leaks. The first, concerning the activities of A-Echelon operations over the past few years, has the President, Bill, James, Irene, and us in the crosshairs.

  “The second has to do with the technical information about the antimatter bomb coming out of the A-Codex, which has placed only Mackenzie and me in the crosshairs so far."

  Mackenzie and Sean waited for him to pull it together for them.

  “Don’t you see? The first type of information isn’t in the Codex, while the second is. The first type could only have come from someone who had access to what James, Irene, the President, and Bill know. I’d swear on the lives of my kids that none of them leaked it. Even so, just think about it. They aren’t the only ones who have the information. Besides the three of us and Dylan, who I’d also swear didn’t leak it, the National Security Council, in part or in whole, and the Chief of Staff know about A-Echelon and its activities. It’s got to be coming out of there.”

  None of them were naïve enough to believe it couldn’t happen. They’d already flushed out one Nabatean plant, the former Vice President. It didn’t require a stretch of the imagination to know that the Nabateans’ ability to infiltrate the hallways of power to the Vice-Presidential level would make the penetration of the National Security Council a walk in the park.

  Sean and Mackenzie, accustomed to Carter’s eidetic memory, were not surprised when he began to name each of the dozen or more members from memory, along with their titles. In addition to the statutory members—the Secretaries of State, Defense, and Energy; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and the Director of National Drug Control Policy—there were plenty more who were non-statutory but always invited, as well as some who were invited to meetings pertaining to their responsibilities.

  One or more of them had to be the leak. Most likely this informant, Shadow, was either one of them or was being fed information by one of them.

  Mackenzie was the first to regain her power of speech after Carter had shocked them to the core. How could it have happened again? They thought they’d flushed out the rat when the late Vice President’s cover was blown. Now they had too many suspects to get a handle on. “How are we going to figure out who it is when we can’t even leave this house?”

  “We’ll use EA, of course,” Carter replied “And we’ll start with those who are regarded as the most important members, because they’re probably privy to more of the secret information than the others. If it isn’t one of them, we’ll work our way down through the ranks.

  “Sean, we need to turn the lives of the Secretaries of Defense, State, and Treasury, and the Attorney General inside out. Covertly,” Carter added.

  Sean rolled his eyes.

  Mackenzie said, “Carter, you said there were two sources of the leaks.”

  “Yeah. The technological information coming out of the A-Codex. That’s a different story altogether. A superficial look at our process of keeping the translations secure shows it’s impenetrable, and the only way it could leak is through one or more of the people handling that information.

  “Obviously, Kelly White came to the same conclusion, especially after she got the nice video of me, the recording of my telephone calls, and banking information. Given that ‘evidence’,” Carter made air quotes, “I don’t blame her for pointing at me. Although I would have appreciated it if she’d made a bit more of an effort to substantiate her so-called evidence.”

  Mackenzie seized on “superficial” as the operative word. “What ma
de you say, ‘superficial look at our process’, Carter? We designed it to be impenetrable. Isn’t it?”

  Sean turned a curious look on Carter as well. “Yeah, isn’t it?”

  “Well, I don’t know enough about computers to express an expert opinion or give you a technical explanation of how it could be exploited. But I do know the Nabateans have quantum computing technology. And I’ve been told with that technology, any encryption, no matter how sophisticated, can be broken in seconds. A few minutes at the most.”

  “But Carter, that means they’d have to get their hands on the mass storage devices, plug them into a quantum computer somehow, break the encryption, and copy the data, all without being detected,” Mackenzie protested.

  They all knew the rest of it. Retinal scans were required to open the boxes in which the storage devices were transported. Once in the vaults at CIA headquarters, only the President, Bill, James, or Irene could open them.

  Speaking her thoughts aloud, Mackenzie said, “And we know none of them did it… or should we have second thoughts?”

  “No. Not at all. I’m still adamant none of them did it,” Carter said.

  “So, let’s assume that no one in the translation team and no one on the CIA side nor the President is involved. What other possibilities are there?” Mackenzie asked.

  “Again, it’s out of my league to explain, but they obviously have technology we don’t,” Carter said. “I mean, look at that video clip of me doing something I never did, in a place I’ve never been, or having a telephone conversation I’ve never participated in!

  “What if they have the technology to access the data off the devices even when they aren’t connected to a computer? What if they can do it remotely, without having to open the boxes or the vault doors? In other words, doing it without leaving a trace.”

  “If you hear hoofbeats,” Sean muttered.

  “I know. Assume it’s a horse, not a zebra. Do you have a better explanation?” Carter demanded.