by Dana Arama
“Maybe he thought that an innocent Excel file wouldn’t pique anyone’s interest.”
“And you are sure this Excel file belongs to him?”
“It is possible that someone else is using his computer and the owner of the computer is totally unaware. There were a few sheets. Wait, I’m uploading them.”
“Did you put his photos in the cloud as well?”
“I didn’t have time. A picture is a bigger file. It takes time to upload.”
Jonathan fiddled around on the computer, and uploaded a file from somewhere. A neat file, with lots of details. It was outlined significant information on the firearms, and many others as well. I recognized guns, hand grenades, mortars and of course, the cherry on the top -- the special sniper rifles. Those weapons could ultimately supply more than one combat unit. Someone was planning a war.
“I didn’t have time to check all the spreadsheets.” Jonathan said and clicked into the second sheet. It was locked.
“If it is locked with another password, then most likely the owner of the computer doesn’t know what’s in this file. By the way, the third sheet is also locked. The fifth is empty.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because a password is sort of a signature. A personality type. There are those whose passwords are easy to remember like 1234. Those are the easiest to break into. Then there are those types that their password is random on the keyboard. It is quite easy to identify them as well. Others use a specific date and the most interesting are those who use a completely random and complicated password.”
“So if we have one sheet locked with one type of password and another locked with a different type of password…”
“Yes, then most likely we are talking about two different people who own these sheets.”
“Do you think you will be able to crack the more complicated codes?”
“Give me some time. I’ll try and run some programs.”
While the numbers ran across the screen, I wanted to tell Jonathan that if it didn’t work out, I could transfer the file to the specialists in the Mossad. Even though I already considered myself apart from the organization, I still had direct access to the right people. It took ten hair-raising minutes and the file was hacked.
The second sheet, a list of four digit numbers, reminded me vaguely of something I had already seen before. “I think it states hours.” I mused to Jonathan, “Notice that there isn’t a number above twenty three and two other digits and also that there are two zeroes and two numbers. It looks like hours of something.” There was another line of codes of letters and digits. “Something looks familiar…” I mumbled, and carried on examining it.
“Why are you breaking your neck on this? Let’s leave it to Google to show us what it is.”
“Okay… Plug that one in,” I said and pointed at a combination that looked worrying.
And Google really showed us. It was a chartered flight run by EL AL, the Israeli flag carrier.
“I smell trouble…” I mumbled, going over the next combination. That too was an EL AL charter flight, this one to a different location. Was there going to be a massive attack on EL AL chartered flights?
We continued with the third combination. This one was another airline in yet another airport. This was a comforting discovery, but not enough to warm the chill that heralded danger.
The fourth combination showed a fourth airline, this one Canadian. The fifth was a Polish airline. In all we checked thirty-two combinations, out of which five were EL AL chartered flights. There seemed to be no common factors. There were different airlines, flying at different times, to random destinations and scattered airports. What was the common denominator?
“Do you want to check the next sheet?” Jonathan’s voice came to my ears as if from another world.
“Yes, let’s check it.”
There too, many warning lights flickered on. There was a list of cars and motorcycles. All of them could have been part of a private collection of someone, but when one added the FedEx vans and one truck, the level of concern rose.
The last sheet was the one that erased any doubt of danger. As opposed to the others, this wasn’t a list of equipment of some sort, but a list of addresses. The first address was of the Israeli representative in Washington, then in Miami, Los Angeles, New York and in six other cities around the United States. Included in the list were the private addresses of the representatives and consuls, likewise of Israeli companies in the States.
I sent Jonathan to his room to sleep and called my boss, David Gideoni in Israel, to report my findings.
Murat Lenika,
Wednesday, November 11, 2015, 8:00 a.m.
“You are here in the United States because I promised your father I would look after you!” The more he yelled, the redder his face became. “I am supposed to watch over you so that you don’t deal in crime, to make sure that you are not deported back to Europe, and to keep you alive.” I thought he would die of a heart attack before my very eyes. It would be ironic that he should die now because of me and I would inherit from him because of that fact.
“You can’t just decide you are dealing with firearms!” He stopped shouting, but only because he started coughing. “This won’t happen on my watch and not under the noses of the Red Mafia.” I was starting to get annoyed by the scene, but he carried on reprimanding me, quieter now, but still with a strong warning in his voice. “This time they won’t let it slide by. They will find your body floating at Brighton Beach.”
Another coughing fit. I thought, this is what happens when one stops smoking. I crossed my ankles on his desk, as if the office already belonged to me and lit a cigarette. Less because I needed a cigarette, but more to drive him crazy, “We have a chance to bite into the Russian swine, so not to do it?” I asked, with mock calmness.
He answered with one word: “No!”
“Why?” Now I lost my temper. I stood before him and blew smoke into his pudgy face, “Who does business like this these days? Because you obey all the rules in this country like a dog, you have forgotten what it is like to be Albanian. You have forgotten the unpaved roads of our country, the starving masses, the Russian period where they took everything from our people!”
“Little brat! What do you know of the Russian era, or of starvation, or of Albania of the unpaved roads? You were born in England and have lived the life of a spoiled prince!” He raised his hand and moved as if to slap me. If he had the courage, he would have done it, but he was a lamb in a wolf’s skin.
Instead of hitting me, he withdrew and moved towards the window. When he turned around again, he had calmed down. “I am here by the command of your father, my elder brother. Our casino is legal by your father’s command, you are here by your father’s command. So, you’d better think how and what to do with this transaction, so it can disappear from the sight of the authorities and at the same time, from the sight of the Red Mafia.”
“Atlantic City is dying and if this casino doesn’t start opening up to other ventures, it will die with this city. In Philadelphia, they are receiving permits for casinos and when they open, they will dry us up! The gambling market is flooded!” I yelled at him. “We are alive only because I found this niche of customers and these customers love receiving perks from me, things that are forbidden at home and all the extras that I am good at obtaining for them. I am about to close a complicated deal,” I declared, “So I hope you won’t interrupt me.”
“Complicated?” He confirmed more than asked. What annoyed me the most was the disparaging raised brow. Or maybe what annoyed me was my status in this household as his protégé. Because of it, I felt I needed to explain myself.
I sat down once again in the same position I knew he hated, with my feet up. I said, “The story is very simple. They arrived at the casino to gamble and turned to me for prostitutes.” It wasn’t as if I lied. I merely
revealed a small part of the story. “A group of young men who had arrived from the Middle East, I think from Iraq. They rented a place for themselves. I also helped them with that. An isolated house in a certain neighborhood. We started talking and it turned out they needed firearms. And I already had the equipment from the robbery in Germany. All that was left was to transfer them over here, and this is where you come in.”
I didn’t actually need him. I had already organized the transferal. I just wanted my uncle to take responsibility in front of my father.
“Are you involving the casino in terror activities?” His voice rose, but a moment before his shouts started to escalate to hysterical shrieks, he paused. Maybe he realized it was not a sentence any eavesdropper should hear outside the walls of the office.
In accordance with his reaction, I kept quiet. What would he say if he knew that I had not only involved the casino with terrorist activity? What would he say if he knew that we weren’t only renting out limousines, but other vehicles that the group requested, and that I was taking advantage of our transport business to transfer firearms into the country?
He sighed. “What is the rest of the deal?”
“They are transferring money directly to the drug cartel. I receive the drugs and distribute them, and we are in business. This is the best possible time because there is a serious deficiency of heroin and crystal meth in the area.”
He shook his head. “Terror, drugs… exactly what you’re not allowed to bring in here.” The look on his face was something between disgust and despair. “Have they already transferred the money?”
I nodded my head, “A serious down payment.” In principle, I also didn’t want to deal with terror. It was totally not my style. But what can one do if terrorists have the need for special sniper rifles? I smiled at my uncle, and said, “Now you are getting to the point. I used it. At long last I could pay off the gang that broke into the German factory.”
“Now you will have to think how to make it up to the Muslims when the firearms don’t reach them, and how are you going to make it up to the Mexican cartel when the rest of the deal doesn’t go down.”
That erased the smile off my face. I jumped up from my chair and stood in front of him. I was a head taller than him and I assumed my posture was threatening. “Are you about to harm my business?”
“To harm your business? Mmm… I guess so, if you insist that this is your business. Because the heads of the family -- your father and I -- insist that the casino remain legal. I insist that the limousine rentals remain legitimate and only because I have to, I insist on keeping you alive. You are being hosted by me and by the Besa code, the Albanian host code, which binds me for life to keep you alive, otherwise you know… I will lose my honor, and what is a man’s life worth without honor?” He ended his words with a smile that should have reassured me. “I want you to remember that any deviation from the original economic plan will ruin the general plan of your father and that neither of us want such a thing, right?”
I wanted to strangle my uncle. I settled for punching the wall, “Damn it,” I cursed and in my head I added a few more curse words on the reign of the elders. “I am tired of smiling at every cop that passes by in the street,” I hissed at him, even though I knew it wouldn’t help. The Besa is deeply ingrained in every Albanian soul. “You don’t understand that I can do a whole lot more than just watching out for all the Americans that come to the casino and feel on top of the world just because they were born here.”
“By the way, talking about looking after the Americans,” he said, “today is ‘Veterans Day’, I think you should go to the hall and start doing your job. Their holiday is our working day.” I hated his patronizing smile.
I left his office, furious. Even though my hand hurt like hell, I wanted nothing more than to take a gun and shoot someone in the head. Actually, not just anybody. I knew that what I really needed to do was to return to the room, draw a gun and shoot him. Absolutely. But then I might get in trouble with my old man, who, although he lived on another continent, still domineered over the Albanian mafia.
Alex bumped into me in the hallway, “Hey, where did you disappear to?” he asked.
I answered, “The old man had something to say… he thinks he is wise.”
“To say about what?” he asked. “About the new deal? Did you tell him? It’s a great continuation of a great operation.”
His words managed to calm me down. I said, “You know, in retrospect, that burglary didn’t need to be so sophisticated and involve so many people.”
Alex smirked. “Not so sure. How could we have brought over the intelligence? The factory was in the middle of nowhere. Between the highway and the park. There weren’t any facilities or anything of the sort, and take into account that surrounding it was a high wall. Not so simple to bring over information, to arrive without anyone seeing you already from over a kilometer away.”
“Yes, I suppose. The idea of the innocent family picnic in the park, and the competition of the quadcopters.”
“That was the most brilliant part of the plan. Even the kids participated in the competition and the cameras that were on the quadcopters brought in excellent intelligence!” He smiled, and it was a contagious smile.
“You know that if we had planned it to happen here, we all would have been arrested,” I noted. I started feeling somewhat hungry but continued towards the control room.
“But in Europe it works differently. Do you remember that in minutes the guards were already there?”
“Of course some guards came. The laughing of the kids and the enthusiastic cries of everyone brought them. Those Germans… they don’t interfere with Muslims that aren’t causing havoc. On second thought, they don’t interfere with Muslims that do cause havoc.” We both laughed.
We carried on walking along the corridor and down the stairs to the control room. All those thoughts of the operation were still spinning in my head and caused a feeling of contented happiness. My blood filled with adrenaline from the memories alone: The mapping of the factory, the revealing of the correct gates, the human intelligence that the cargo would be priceless. And the operation itself took place a week later. The truck left the factory, the cars that followed it, each time a different car. At the right moment I overtook the truck and put on my emergency break. The truck braked, its tires grinding to a halt. I thought then that if the truck wasn’t able to brake in time, he would have crushed me to death in the little Audi I was driving, but he stopped a few centimeters behind me.
As if he had read my thoughts, Alex said, “I was sure he wouldn’t manage to stop. That he was going to ram into you. When we got out with our heavy weapons to burst his tires and ruin their radio contact, I wanted to go and see if you were alright. When you got out and shot the driver and the guard sitting next to him, I was sure that it was from being pissed at them for almost running you over.”
What we hadn’t take into consideration was escaping the Russian Mafia. What an inflated ego they had. Not allowing others to deal with firearms, as if a few rifles were going to ruin their control over the market.”
“And the havoc that’s been created from the fact that someone is biting into their business,” Alex smiled, “And that is how we found ourselves here. All in all, much better here than at the bottom of the river.”
I peeked into the control room, which was still relatively empty of shift workers. It was important for me to have the same shift workers from yesterday. So I suggested to Alex that we go find ourselves something to eat. I wanted to sit with him and reminisce about the operation. It would relax me after my annoying conversation with my weak uncle.
“Because the robbery had to do with firearms, the German police started shaking the Russian Mafia rats out of their hiding holes,” Alex said.
“And because the Russian Mafia didn’t like it, they sent their long tentacles into Germany and from there
to other countries in Europe. They are a lot more effective than Interpol. The only information they had was about the picnic, families who spoke a foreign language. As soon as they found out it was Albanian, they sought out my father. That happened long before the Interpol and just as well he negotiated with them. If Interpol had found me before I left the continent, everything would have ended a differently. But my father promised them that if one of his people did it, then the goods would be transferred to them, and also that his people would never deal in firearms.”
“In my eyes you are my idol. You refused to give up the rifles.” Alex patted my shoulder, then continued. “And your father understood that to keep his youngest son alive he needed to get him out of England as soon as possible.”
“So what I have now is not trading in firearms, but an opportunity to get rid of them, and even if it means to help the terrorists, so be it. It is a whole lot easier to do it this way, because I know the buyer personally. He is a childhood friend. Though, if I close this deal, it means my father broke both his promises… but he is in Europe and I will be selling in the United States and I believe the distance has its advantages. Besides, a promise made in one continent does not count in another.”
We sat ourselves down in the casino restaurant and without saying another word, the best delicacies were laid down on the table before us. I thought the disguise of the hero I made out to be in front of Alex wouldn’t apply if I had to stand up before my father. My father was one of the first Albanians to arrive in Europe. He was a ruthless, unstoppable and especially cruel man, and as such, he raised the level of violence in the streets. The Europeans hadn’t yet met with his type before.
I was the polar opposite, having grown up with a silver spoon in my mouth. I’d never had to be cruel. That was something my older brothers were known for. I arrived in the States to escape the violence only to land myself in the cruelty of the South American cartels. The Mexican cartel, the Columbian cartel…. These guys were cruel in ways I had never known, probably because most of their activities were done under the influence of the heavy drugs they cooked for themselves. The result was that I learned how to get what I needed, not through violence, but through business. The business world, so I quickly learned, was the most ruthless world of them all.