by Brad Taylor
I might not monitor.
I moved to the door and looked out the peephole, saying, “You’d better, or you’ll never see her in a bathrobe.”
I cracked the door and my phone vibrated a final time.
I’m telling her you said that.
I let him hear the door slam closed.
We started to leave, and I saw a piece of tape torn at the base of the door. Something I’d missed before in my haste to get in.
I thought, You are sly, but so am I.
39
Yasir entered the lobby to the Park Hyatt convinced he wasn’t under surveillance, but he surveyed anyway, with a practiced eye. He made the right turn to the elevators, and saw nobody take any interest in him. Just as had happened outside.
He’d given the Koreans about a twenty-minute head start—enough time to set up a surveillance box if they were so inclined—and then had left, the sole purpose to identify those following him. He’d conducted a two-hour surveillance detection route on foot, running all over the shopping district of Zurich before finally stopping for dinner. He’d repeated the task coming home, and had found no indication of anyone following him.
He entered the elevator, thinking, They found me because of that damn phone. No telling what malware they have on it. That won’t happen again.
He exited and went straight to his room. He reached the door, checked down, and saw the tape still in place. He entered and stood still. Sensing. Feeling if anything was out of place. He used his eyes and ears, but really, he trusted his subconscious brain to tell him.
He felt nothing.
He went straight to the bathroom, seeing the iPhone X on the counter. He picked it up, set it carefully on the marble floor, and smashed it with his heel. He crushed it repeatedly, then took the pieces and tore them apart, until the phone was reduced to a shattered screen, a battery pack, and loose circuit boards.
He brought the mess into the bedroom and sat in a chair, thinking. He went through his options, but really, there was only one: He had to leave first thing tomorrow. He had a reservation for two more days, but staying here was just asking for the return of the Koreans. He was sure they had his reservation, expecting him to remain, and walking away tomorrow morning, while they still thought they had an anchor, was the only way to remain clean.
He’d conduct another SDR on the way to breakfast, and if he was free of surveillance, he’d just keep going.
His thoughts turned to other ways that the Koreans could find him, and he realized he needed to alert the team. They could still compromise him. He had no idea what games the North Koreans were playing, but he wasn’t going to give them any opportunity to affect this mission. They’d said they were going to alert their killers because of the dead Russians, but the last thing he needed was a kill team from Assad hunting him because he’d supposedly taken regime money and fled. He needed the attack to occur so that—ironically—he could take the money he’d skimmed and flee.
He pulled out the CIA flip phone from his pocket and dialed. When a man answered, he said, “Hello, we have a problem with your credit card.”
He heard, “You’ll have to talk to the owner of this phone. It’s not me.”
Yasir smiled at the bona fides, glad they at least understood operational security. He said, “Is this Bashir or Sayid?”
“Bashir.”
“Listen, you both need to leave tomorrow. Head to Nice.”
“Why? You said we had three days.”
“Something has come up. The people we gained the product from have been acting strange. They showed up at my hotel, which means they might have seen me with you. I don’t think they did, but they might have.”
“And? Why does that matter? They received their payment, yes?”
“Yes, of course. I don’t know why, but it would be better to get away.”
“Get away from what?”
“From the North Koreans. They may have another plan in motion. They said as much. Just get out.”
Yasir heard nothing for a moment, then Bashir said, “Okay, but I’m not sure about using the original plan. Are the assets in Nice compromised?”
“No. Not at all. That was all me. They had nothing to do with it.”
Bashir said, “We’ll leave tomorrow, but we won’t talk to you again. This phone will no longer exist. You no longer exist.”
Yasir heard the words, but didn’t blame Bashir. He would have done the same. He said, “I understand. I’ll keep the phone open, but won’t try to contact you. I’m out of here tomorrow morning as well.”
“Don’t expect to hear from us. Forget we ever met.” And Yasir heard the phone connection close.
He sat for a moment, contemplating his situation. The North Koreans had something more in play, but beyond their money, he didn’t really care. He had the slice of his payment in a Swiss bank account. It was safe, but it wasn’t enough to support his retirement. Not with the luxury he wanted.
He needed to speed up his meeting with the CIA, before the Koreans did something stupid. He dialed a second number, hearing it connect, then: “Twice in one week. That’s a record. What do you have now? The plot that killed JFK?”
He came in hard, saying, “Stop the joking. We need to meet sooner than later.”
“Oh, you having issues in Syria?”
“Yes! I am. We need to meet in Europe, not Turkey. I can’t get to Turkey in the time I need.”
“Because you’re in Switzerland? Seems that would be an easier connection.”
Yasir felt his head swim. How does he know where I am?
He felt his cheeks flush, staring at the phone, realizing he’d been stupid. He maintained a steady voice. “So you’re tracking me?”
“No. Just checking up on you every once in a while. As I’m sure you would want me to. For protection.”
“Well, I need protection now. I have people hunting me, like you warned me about in Monaco, but they aren’t Americans.”
He heard nothing but sarcasm. “Honestly, I would expect as much. I’ve given you all the protection I can, and I don’t like being lied to. You told me you had information we would like, but said you were in Syria. Now you’re asking for my help.”
Aggravated, knowing how this game was played, Yasir said, “I never told you I was in Syria. All I said was I have WMD intelligence. Does the agency want to pay for that information or not?”
Yasir felt the anger coming through the phone. “Don’t say that shit on an open line, you dumbass. I’ll meet you in Turkey, like we agreed.”
Yasir heard him hang up.
He threw the phone on the bed, wondering what to do now. Periwinkle was an issue, but that was something he could deal with tomorrow.
After he ditched the North Koreans.
40
Bashir put his shoulder bag on the floor and said, “You’re still going to wear that Berber coat?”
Sayid said, “Yes, I am. I don’t need these kaffirs telling me how to dress. It just proves why we’re here. If they hate us for it, they’ll reap what they sow.”
Bashir smiled at the reference to the Quran. Now clean-shaven, wearing jeans and cheap shoes he’d bought at a thrift store, he said, “That is true, but we want to be the ones who cause the pain. Not wait in a jail cell for paradise because we were stubborn.”
“I’m not changing my mind. What time is the train?”
Bashir said, “We’ve got three hours before it leaves. Do you think we need to go now? Get out of this apartment?”
It was an hour before dawn, and Yasir’s call had left them little sleep. After that contact, all night long they’d expected someone to break into the room, unsure of Yasir’s loyalty. But they had nowhere else to go. Yasir had arranged the room, and sleeping on the street would do nothing but invite more scrutiny. They didn’t even know what the threat held. All they knew
was that Yasir had been scared, and because of that fear, they, too, worried about the boogeyman.
Sayid paced about, then said, “Yes, we need to leave, but I’m not sure that will solve the problem. I’m not sure of this plan. Not at all.”
Bashir said, “You think he’s setting us up?”
“I don’t know, but he’s not with us. For all we know, he works for Assad.”
The words hit Bashir like a slap. He said, “The regime? That’s insane. What are you saying?”
“He’s not one of us. That I’m sure of.”
“Khalousi said he was a friend.”
Sayid glanced out the window, then fiddled with his bag, saying nothing. Bashir said, “What?”
Sayid said, “Being a friend in the past doesn’t make one a friend now. You know that as well as I do. We have both been betrayed in the past.”
While each held passports from different countries—Egypt and Tunisia—they were both from Syria. Born and raised. The sons of simple merchants, Sayid from Hama and Bashir from Manbij, they had joined the secular protests at the beginning as students, and had suffered the pain from the Assad regime.
Fighting against a despot, having their relatives arrested, tortured, and killed, they’d initially joined organizations that had used peaceful protests, begging the world to stop the slaughter. And the world had turned a blind eye, forcing them to turn to others. Those who would fight, but who also had an agenda. Bashir had fallen into the Nusra Front, while Sayid had embraced the Islamic State. The methods of both were horrific to them, but their commitment to the fall of Assad was resolute, and the deaths each group caused were paltry compared to the regime itself.
It was only a matter of time before the tendrils of hate emanating from the groups corrupted their thinking. What had once been a fight against a brutal regime became a crusade against anyone who thought differently than them, twisting the two into something beyond human comprehension. Turning them into killers who would slaughter just because of a different faith—or even the same faith, if they didn’t pledge allegiance to the cause.
Bashir said, “You think we shouldn’t take the boat to Syria?”
“I think taking a boat to a port controlled by the Assad regime, right next to a Russian base, using passports that are at best sketchy, is not a good idea. Especially since a man we don’t know coordinated it all.”
“What do you want to do? We can’t stay here. The very man you distrust alerted us to the danger.”
“Contact Khalousi. Let him give us guidance.”
Bashir said, “I don’t want to worry him. He believes everything is working.”
“Send the imam a message. See what his thoughts are.”
Bashir put his palms to his eyes, pressing down and attempting to subdue a headache. He sighed, dropped his hands, then bent down to his bag.
He pulled out a laptop, booted it, then double-clicked on an app called Telegram. A unique program developed by a Russian entrepreneur after Edward Snowden had hyperventilated about state surveillance nets, it was an end-to-end encrypted system that allowed them to communicate securely, both to have point-to-point communication and to disseminate propaganda out to a broader audience. Ironically, far from protecting innocents, Snowden’s revelations had only helped those that meant harm. Developed from a misguided fear of the surveillance state, Telegram had become the primary method used by terrorist and criminal groups all over the world.
Bashir clicked on the contacts, chose one, then clicked “Secret Chat”—a way for him to send a message that would self-destruct after the recipient viewed it, and one that would not pass through the Telegram cloud server. Once he hit send, the message traveled with unbreakable encryption, leaving only one way to intercept it—standing over the shoulder of the recipient and staring at the screen. No amount of technology the United States mustered could penetrate the program, and once the imam clicked on the message, it would only exist for two minutes.
He typed out a concise message, stating their predicament and asking for guidance, then waited. Khalousi would have to connect on the secret chat channel before he could do anything else. Bashir looked up from the computer and said, “We should at least start on our journey to Nice.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. I think we should head to Turkey, like we planned. There is no way we’re going to take a boat to Tartus and be able to penetrate hundreds of kilometers of regime-held territory, and then penetrate hundreds of kilometers more through Rojava. If Assad doesn’t torture us to death, the Kurds will skin us alive. We should come from their rear, through Turkey.”
Telegram beeped, and Bashir leaned over, reading the message. “The imam says to go to Nice, but not to travel to Syria. He’ll give us further instructions from there.”
Sayid said, “What? Why?”
Bashir finished reading, then looked at him and said, “He doesn’t trust our contact.”
“Meaning that guy is bad?”
Bashir stood, shutting down the computer. He said, “No. Meaning that guy is a risk because he knows what we’re trying to do.”
“But that was always the case. Why is it a problem now?”
Bashir stuffed the computer into his bag, shouldered it, and said, “Because Khalousi thinks he’s going to be captured.”
41
I looked at the transcript on the screen, and knew we’d lost our target. He was in the wind. I sagged back and said to Veep, “Call them home. Break down the box. He’s gone.”
Earlier, our target had entered our surveillance box in the lobby and we’d begun to track him. Within minutes, Brett had called, saying he feared the target was conducting an SDR—which was basically a route over time and distance to smoke out a surveillance effort, all the while making it look like a natural flow of travel. Done correctly, it was damn near impossible to tell if it was an SDR or just a normal route.
Five minutes later, he’d called, “I’m off, I’m off. Target is definitely conducting an SDR.”
Jennifer had cut in, “This is Koko. I have the eye. Knuckles, run a parallel.”
In our TOC, as surveillance chief, I’d called, “Blood, Blood, how sure are you?”
“I’m positive. He’s tracking for surveillance, and he’s been trained. He’s using reflective surfaces, choke points, channeling, the whole nine yards.”
I’d then made the decision I was now regretting. “Koko, Knuckles, break off. We know his bed-down. Let him go. Build the box back here for a follow-on effort. I don’t want to burn the mission. He’ll be back.”
Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20, but I knew I’d made the correct choice with the information we’d had. We were building an intelligence package for the Taskforce, and getting burned by the target would be, to put it mildly, less than a good outcome. Not only would my team no longer be of any use, but the target himself would realize he was being hunted, making any follow-on effort by a second team that much harder. But now, with the transcript in front of me, I knew I had made a bad decision.
Creed had promised it by six in the morning, but it had taken longer than that, because part of the transcript was in Arabic, forcing the Taskforce to translate, and that had meant waiting until some nine-to-fiver linguist showed up. Eventually, they had, and the transcript was damning. Through our television hack, we could only get one-half of the conversation, but two bullets in the report stood out.
* Something has come up. The people we gained the product from have been acting strange. They showed up at my hotel, which means they might have seen me with you. I don’t think they did, but they might have.
* From the North Koreans. They may have another plan in motion. They said as much. Just get out.
So that asshole most definitely was doing something bad, and had terrorists he was controlling. This was enough evidence to go to Omega immediately, as I had no doubt the appearance of the North Koreans yesterday
was what he was talking about, and had been what spurred the panic. Unfortunately, it was too little, too late, because a final bullet told me he was in the wind.
* I understand. I’ll keep the phone open, but won’t try to contact you. I’m out of here tomorrow morning as well.
He was gone, and with it, so was our ability to prevent whatever was about to occur. The handset we’d tracked to the Hyatt had dropped off the face of the earth, and it was hoping against hope that he would be stupid enough to turn it back on. We could crack into his room and do an in-depth search of the luggage he’d left behind, but I was positive we would find nothing. He wouldn’t be smart enough to trick us by leaving before his reservation was complete, walking out without his luggage, only to hand us a golden egg when he knew we’d search the room.
There were still the North Koreans, but from his conversation, it didn’t sound like they were exactly friends. We could take them out, but it wouldn’t lead to the men he’d passed the weapon to, even if we found them again.
Jennifer and Knuckles entered the room, saying, “What’s up?”
The bathroom door opened, and Amena stuck her head out, saying, “Are you guys done? Can I come out?”
I said, “Not yet. Did you finish your game?”
I’d given her an iPad, pumping in twenty dollars on iTunes for her to purchase whatever she wanted, then made her wait in the bathroom with the television cranked up to mask any calls that came in. She said, “You can’t finish this game. You can only keep playing it, and I’m getting tired of it. I can’t get past a level.”
She saw I wasn’t moved, and said, “Okay, okay. I’ll go hide in the bathroom again.”
I smiled, and she closed the door. I stood up, giving Jennifer the seat and letting her read the screen. I said, “He’s gone. Done. He’s not coming back. Knuckles, you and Veep head on up to his room and search it. I don’t think you’ll find anything, but let’s cover the bases, and I want to get in there before the maids do.”