Five Years in Yemen

by Luana Ehrlich

  In Part Three, under Methodology, Levin had written: “Once Samir and I arrived in Riyadh, I met with the Saudi Defense Minister, who assured me I would be provided with unlimited funds to develop the MODD system for his country. He also said I’d be able to choose my own team from their brightest and most talented engineers.”

  Levin described how the Saudis had taken him to a large gated compound in a remote desert region of Yemen near the city of Somahi, where he and his team had developed the Saudi version of the Mobile Onsite Drone Detection system.

  Although he didn’t give Gault any details about the compound where he’d been living, he said he’d been there for the past five years and had only left the area for occasional trips to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia and to Aden, a port city in Yemen a few hours’ drive from Somahi.

  It wasn’t until I’d read the Conclusion in Part Four that I fully understood why Levin had decided to get in touch with Gault.

  Levin had written: “For the past four months, we’ve been running field tests on the MODD system, but every one of these tests have ended in failure. I’ve concluded the fault lies somewhere in the computer software and not in the design itself. Would you consider coming to Yemen and installing your own software on the system?”

  Levin outlined the steps Gault would have to take if he agreed to come. Those steps included keeping the project a secret, making sure no one knew where he was going, and planning a six-month absence from his business.

  In return, he promised Gault he would be compensated for his work in the neighborhood of five million dollars.

  “That’s quite a nice compensation package,” I said, when I’d finished reading the document.

  Gault sat back in his chair and smiled. “You can see why I couldn’t turn down his proposal. That kind of money should keep ACS out of the red for years. To be truthful, my company hasn’t been doing all that great.”

  “You agreed to go to Yemen?”

  He nodded. “Jacob called me back two weeks ago, and when I told him I was in agreement with the terms of his proposal, he said he’d send me the information about my travel arrangements to my new email account.”

  He gestured at one of his company’s brochures on the table. “Of course, that meant I had to give all my employees an explanation of why I’d be out of the country for the next six months.”

  “That must have been hard to do.”

  “I finally came up with a story about being selected as a contestant for a survival show. When I get back, I’ll just tell them the show was cancelled.”

  I noticed Gault didn’t seem to have any qualms about telling me his plans, which made me wonder if his openness was because of the release waiver he was about to receive from SSG’s Legal Department, or if something else was going on.

  I decided to ask him.

  “Now that you’ve told me these details, aren’t you concerned SSG will send a team over to Yemen to locate Jacob after I’ve given them this information?”

  “No, I’m not concerned about that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I—”

  He stopped in mid-sentence when his fax machine began printing out a document.

  When he got up and walked over to his credenza to take a look at what he’d received, I took advantage of his absence and began copying the contents of the flash drive onto the hard drive of my laptop.

  The process hadn’t finished before he walked back over to the table.

  While he was looking down at the piece of paper in his hand, I swiveled my laptop around to prevent him from seeing the blue box on the screen telling me the files were being copied.

  As soon as he sat down, the blue box disappeared, and I pulled the flash drive out of my computer.

  “You probably want this back,” I said, handing it to him.

  He nodded. “I plan to keep it in my safe along with this release waiver,” he said, holding up what appeared to be an official-looking document from the SSG Legal Department, although it had been signed by Jeremy Taylor.

  “Oh, yeah, you should definitely keep that document in your safe.”

  * * * *

  Although I had every intention of bringing up the question I’d asked Gault before the fax machine had interrupted our conversation, he was the one who brought it up.

  “You asked me if I was concerned about SSG trying to find Jacob. The answer is no. I’m not concerned about that.”

  “Do you mind telling me why?”

  “Because it wouldn’t be in their best interests to do so.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “If Jacob turns up, not only will SSG stop receiving federal funds, they’ll have government lawyers suing them for allowing Jacob to work on the MODD system project when he appeared to be mentally unstable. In the end, it’s all about the money. You and I both know that.”

  “Does it bother you that Jacob is taking technology developed by our Defense Department and handing it over to the Saudis?”

  He shrugged. “Jacob is the person who came up with the MODD system in the first place, and the Saudis had already planned to purchase it from us. This way, they’ll just get it a little sooner. In the end, that probably means more lives will be saved.”

  “That may be true, but I’ll be honest with you, the whole thing makes me uncomfortable.”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t feel that way if you were trying to keep your business afloat.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’d feel the same way.”

  It might have been my imagination, but I thought he looked a little guilty for a few seconds, but then he quickly changed the subject.

  “I know you plan to tell your bosses at SSG I’ve been in contact with Jacob. I understand you have to do that, but will you also contact the feds?”

  I thought I knew how Carlton was going to use the intel on the flash drive to locate Levin, so I attempted to assure Gault he didn’t need to be worried about me or anyone else at SSG informing the Defense Department about Levin.

  “I doubt if we would want to jeopardize our relationship with the military by alerting the Defense Department about Levin.”

  “What about the CIA?” he asked.

  “After five years, I can’t imagine why they’d be interested in Jacob.”

  “The spooks are always interested in anything happening in that part of the world.”

  “And with good reason,” I said. “Look at what happened on 9/11.”

  He nodded. “Jacob was worried about another 9/11, only this time, he said the terrorists would use drones instead of airliners. It was his obsession with drones that led to his concept of the drone detection device in the first place."

  Although I tried to be subtle about it, I encouraged him to talk about Levin. Even though he told me basically the same thing Zachary had told me about Levin’s behavior, it was obvious Gault considered Levin’s quirkiness more a by-product of how smart he was, rather than a symptom of some kind of mental disorder.

  As our conversation seemed to be winding down, I asked, “When will you be leaving for Yemen?”

  He hesitated. “I’m not sure I should tell you. Jacob emphasized I shouldn’t tell anyone.”

  “Don’t your employees know when you’re leaving on your survivalist adventure?”

  “I told them I would only get a two-day notice, so I couldn’t give them an exact date.”

  I nodded and started putting my laptop inside my briefcase.

  “Why all the questions?” he asked. “Why do you care when I’m leaving?”

  I shook my head. “I was just curious, that’s all. It makes no difference to me.”

  As I snapped the clasps on my briefcase, I was hoping what Zachary had told me about Gault was true. He’d mentioned Gault wasn’t good at keeping secrets. If he was right, then perhaps my reverse psychology would work on him.

  “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to tell you,” he said. “I’m leaving a week from today, next Friday, December 4.”

  A
week wouldn’t give Carlton and the Ops Center much time.

  * * * *

  As soon as I walked out of Advanced Computer Solutions and got inside the Suburban, my cell phone rang. When I saw the number on the screen, I drove out of the parking lot before accepting the call.

  “I thought I might be hearing from you,” I said.

  Jeremy Taylor said, “We need to talk in person.”

  “Are you anywhere near Gault’s building?”

  “I’m just across the street, but there’s a coffee shop a block south of here. Let’s meet there.”

  “On my way.”

  Joe’s Java was not a jumping joint as the name on the marquee promised it would be. In fact, there were fewer than ten people inside, and most of them had earbuds in their ears.

  That was fine with me.

  I ordered some kind of fancy-sounding coffee concoction, and before my name was called, Jeremy Taylor walked in.

  He greeted me with a head nod, and, as he stepped up to the counter to order, I took my coffee and headed to the back of the coffee shop where there were several empty booths.

  When he sat down across from me, he pointed to the name on my cup and asked, “Should I call you Jared?”

  “Well, Jeremy, since the two of us are sitting here in Joe’s Jumping Java Joint, I thought that would be appropriate.”

  My attempt at a little humor barely got a smile from him.

  “Yesterday, when you told me you’d set up a meeting with Stephen Gault, you said you’d made the appointment by pretending to be a potential client.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You never said anything about posing as Jared Russell from the Southridge Security Group. What happened? What made you change your mind?”

  “I never expected to bring you into the picture, so I didn’t tell you I was going to drop the prospective client scenario once Gault and I were alone in his office. When he began giving me his spiel about his company, I pulled out my Jared Russell business card and began threatening him with a lawsuit for failing to inform SSG about Jacob Levin’s odd behavior.”

  “I remember you said you wanted to catch him off-guard.”

  “It was more like he caught me off-guard when he blurted out he’d recently talked to Jacob Levin and then he—”

  “Wait a minute. Are you saying the phone call from Yemen was definitely from Levin?”

  “I’m getting to that. He refused to tell me anything until he had a duly executed waiver from SSG’s Legal Department saying he couldn’t be sued for failing to live up to his contract.”

  “I get the picture now.”

  I took a sip of my coffee. “I appreciate you bailing me out. It would have been problematic for me to contact Langley.”

  “I figured that. Sandusky found the SSG logo for me online, and I was able to do the rest on my laptop. It was just a matter of filling in the blanks and sending Gault the fax.”

  “That document was good enough to fool him into telling me what was going on with Jacob Levin.”

  I took another sip of my coffee.

  Taylor watched me.

  When I raised my cup to my lips again, he set his cup down and demanded, “So, what gives? What did he have to say about Levin?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”

  Taylor looked hot enough to roast his own coffee. “You mean after the way I—”

  I held up my hand. “I know, and I really appreciate what you did for me, but until Douglas gives me permission to talk to you, I can’t tell you anything.”

  He shook his head. “There’s not much chance of that happening, is there?”

  “Maybe; it all depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Do you speak Arabic?”

  “Ah . . . I’m not sure what that has to do with anything, but, yeah, I speak Arabic. Everyone in our Middle Eastern unit speaks Arabic. Why?”

  “When I talk to Douglas about the new intel from Gault, I’ll suggest he add a DIA officer to our operation, and I’ll mention your name.”

  Taylor looked skeptical. “A joint operation between the CIA and the DIA takes months of planning. You said you were going operational in January.”

  “Yeah, but with the new intel I got from Gault, it’s obvious the timeline for the operation will have to be moved up.”

  “Sooner than January?”

  “A lot sooner. This operation needs to go live next week.”

  Chapter 16

  After promising to keep Taylor informed about the results of my discussion with Carlton, I left Detroit and headed back to Flint.

  When I arrived at the hotel, I immediately went up to my room and opened the files I’d copied from Gault’s flash drive. Since I’d downloaded everything from the flash drive, I wasn’t surprised to find other files on the drive besides the proposal.

  The other files turned out to be the emails Gault had exchanged with Levin, including the last email, which contained detailed instructions about how Gault would be traveling to Yemen next Friday to meet him.

  After skimming through the documents, I immediately texted Carlton and told him I was sending him the contents of a flash drive I’d obtained from Stephen Gault.

  Although it probably wasn’t necessary, I told him we needed to talk as soon as he’d read them. He texted me back a few minutes later and said he was on his way back to Langley from The Meadows, and he’d call me within the hour.

  While I waited, I gave Nikki a call.

  She and Carla had made plans to spend the day together discussing wedding plans, but I had begged off by telling them I wanted to visit an old college buddy of mine who lived in Detroit.

  “Hi, Nikki, I just wanted to let you know I’m back at the hotel now.”

  “How was your visit?”

  “Very successful. I’m glad I went to see him.”

  “I can’t wait to hear all the details. Right now, Carla and I are on our way over to a bridal shop to look at wedding dresses, but she said to tell you we’ll be eating dinner at six tonight, and she’s made your mother’s turkey casserole.”

  “Sounds delicious. I’ll be there.”

  “You’ll be happy to know Carla has helped me pick out a date for the wedding.”

  “As long as it’s not next week, I should be fine with it.”

  “What’s happening next week?”

  “Nothing we can discuss right now.”

  “Your boss gave you an assignment?”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t know it yet.”

  * * * *

  When an hour had gone by, and Carlton still hadn’t called me, I used my Level 1 access code and logged into the Agency’s restricted website.

  Once I was cleared, I clicked on the Daily Briefing Summary.

  The DBS was an analysis of significant events happening around the globe. It was compiled by all the players in the American intelligence community and was available to anyone with a classified security clearance.

  Although it was general in scope and contained very few specifics in the way of intelligence product, I was curious to see if there was anything in the summary about what was happening in Yemen right now.

  Yemen had been involved in a civil war ever since the Arab Spring and the country was now evenly divided—at least politically—between the north and the south.

  The territory in the north, with its capital of Sanaa, was controlled by Iranian-backed rebels called Houthis—named after their founder, Hussein al-Houthi—and the area south of there was controlled by a coalition of Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the U.S. The Saudi-led coalition had its headquarters at the port city of Aden, located at the southern tip of Yemen.

  There was nothing in today’s DBS about Yemen, so I clicked on the archived copies for the past week.

  In Tuesday’s DBS, the Defense Department had an extensive write-up about Iran’s plans to establish a permanent military base in Yemen. At the end of their report, they admitted their intel on the
proposed base was sketchy and hadn’t been verified yet.

  A State Department analyst had noted that if the Iranians moved into Yemen with a massive force, the U.S. would be obligated to support their Saudi allies with additional aid as well as military personnel, which meant the U.S. could become engaged in a ground war with Iran in Yemen.

  As I was about to log out of the DBS archive, I suddenly realized I needed to check the daily summaries for any reports of the Saudi military’s development of a drone detection device around the time Levin had first contacted Stephen Gault.

  Although there was nothing in the reports about such a device, two weeks ago, the Agency had included a field update from Mason Barron, our chief of station in Saudi Arabia. He had been reporting on recent losses the Saudis had suffered in Yemen as a result of the rebels’ use of armed drones to attack a military convoy.

  If that was happening on a regular basis, I could understand why the Saudis were willing to pay Gault a substantial amount of money to work on the MODD system’s computer software in order to make it operational.

  As I was logging out of the DBS archive, Carlton called me back.

  He didn’t bother greeting me.

  “I suspect I shouldn’t ask you how you were able to obtain the flash drive from Gault.”

  “Don’t worry, Douglas. You don’t have to send anyone to Detroit to dispose of a dead body, and I assure you Gault doesn’t have a clue I copied the files.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  I didn’t ask him whether he meant he was relieved about the lack of a dead body or the lack of Gault’s knowledge.

  * * * *

  I expected Carlton to immediately bring up the contents of the flash drive. Instead, he told me he’d just finished listening to the Ops Center’s recording of my meeting with Jeremy Taylor.

  “You obviously had a productive meeting with Taylor,” he said, “but, frankly, I was surprised to hear Gault had been contacted by someone in Yemen.”

  “The NSA never informed you about the phone call?”