Misled

by Anderson Harp

  The sound of steps came from just beyond the door. But for the stranger’s noise, the woods remained silent.

  Will loosened the grip on his pistol. An intruder with ill intent would not abandon the element of surprise. But the cabin was at least ten miles off of any paved road and the gravel road, although much improved for this part of the world, had not been plowed in weeks. A four-wheel SUV could make it through the snow, as the road was flat and it followed the ridgeline particularly if he kept the gas pedal down, but the driver would have to be extremely determined in order to complete the journey.

  This man was.

  Chapter 15

  Northern Virginia

  Virginia stopped at the entrance to her building and fumbled with the satchel she carried over her shoulder as the morning rush of people moved past her.

  “Damn it.” She turned around, moving against the traffic of people, heading back to her car for her ID card. She kept it under the floor mat, handy for work but unseen by the passersby who might otherwise have seen her photo, name, title (intelligence research specialist), and the Department of Treasury FinCEN logo. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, worked with agencies from all ends of the globe for one purpose.

  While the public might not recognize her job, anyone in finance would know exactly what she did for a living: Virginia followed the money. Like criminals caught because they bragged about their crimes in some late-night drunk in a bar, the flow of funds was the trail that often led back to the scene of the crime. Money was better than a trail of blood. It was an active source of intelligence. Criminals always went back to the money. And the Treasury’s Financial Center, or FinCEN, chased the trail of money.

  First, she found her car, an easy-to-spot Volvo with its University of Pennsylvania decal on the back window and dirty exterior that had not been washed since it rolled out of the dealership several years before. Virginia considered auto care an unnecessary distraction and depended on East Coast rainstorms to keep her automobile clean. Crushed and empty Starbucks coffee cups littered the rear and passengers’ areas, but her ID card was exactly where she’d left it.

  “I’ve got to get a life,” she grumbled as she slammed the door and hit her clicker. This was supposed to be a short-term gig. She would use her accounting degree and Wharton MBA to get a job with Treasury, and in three years her student loans would be repaid. But now, in her fifth year on the job, she still worked sixteen-hour days. She had fallen in love with the hunt. Dates became infrequent, then nonexistent, as her never-ending pursuit of ill-gotten money became increasingly obsessive. Her friends had given up trying.

  Currently, she was following the trail of hawala money, an informal but elaborate and widespread method for transferring funds in the Muslim world. Chasing hawala was the ultimate challenge. The funds circulated around the world like a fog that tantalizingly appeared, only to dissipate and suddenly vanish.

  Virginia ran into the building, through security, and up the stairs to the conference room. She was early for the meeting, as she tried to be for such sessions. Virginia was compulsive about being in her seat well before anyone else walked into the room. Her compulsivity showed in her frame and dress. Her roommate at Penn had called her neurotic. She was tall and lanky and one might have guessed correctly that she’d played center on her high school basketball team. She kept her brown, unusually straight hair pulled back most days in a ponytail. She never wore jewelry and always sought help from her friends with regard to dress and makeup when the office held its compulsory Christmas dinner.

  “Okay,” Virginia said when the meeting began, “I think this is just like the one reported in SAR in 2010.”

  Her computer projected a flowchart onto a large screen in the conference room. Darrel Byrd and his assistant were the only attendees. The Suspicious Activity Report for the second half of 2010 contained data on the case of a hawala dealer. The money would flow from one country to another, eventually surfacing in the form of wire transfers carefully limited to amounts like $9,750 or $8,590, sums that never exceeded $10,000.

  The Bank Security Act of 1970 was a tool used by FinCEN that required banks to cooperate with the flow of money suspected in criminal dealings. The banks were not always crazy about the BSA, but it had long ago become a necessary tool.

  To their bottom line, the banks could make a profit on dirty money just as easily as any other. A million dollars could turn interest no matter who owned it. But the BSA meant that the banks had to carry additional staff to monitor the sources. And this took away from the budget. One accountant for BSA meant one less salesperson pulling in the investment dollars.

  And the hawala dealer Virginia was chasing had used the profits to purchase land, shopping malls, and several Mercedes. With hawala, there would be a small handling fee, and then the dealer would also pay the exchange rates from country to country. Both a legitimate exchange and a useful tool for money launderers, hawala had existed in western Asia for as long as there had been currency of any type. It always beat the bank rates and was based upon an honor system. A hawala dealer received cash in Doha and, with his partner in New York, made an exchange. A small fee would be charged and virtually no records would be kept. The money flew across borders while remaining out of sight.

  “They’re using the deep web to run this.” Virginia flashed another screen that showed the relationship of .onion sites. “The flow involves the Exchequer Bank in the Caymans and a sister bank in the UAE.”

  “Nice job.” Her boss gave Virginia a high five. “What size are we talking about?”

  “Easily a hundred million, perhaps more.” She closed the cover of her laptop computer. “If only we could get into the DW,” she said, referring to the deep web.

  “The FBI says they’re close, but I don’t believe it,” said her boss. “I’ll share this with the Agency and see what their thoughts are.”

  Virginia’s boss met regularly with the CIA, as well as the other intelligence organizations. In a world run by digital money, the small and mostly unknown Financial Operation Center had grown greatly in importance.

  “I’ll let you know what I find out. You do the same,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter 16

  Parker’s Cabin in Alaska

  “William Parker.” The man had pulled down his hood. His hair was much longer and grayer than Will remembered. He had put on weight and lost that sharp edge that the two Marine Corps lieutenants had shared when they passed through the Basic School at Quantico.

  “Yeah.” Will hesitated for a second as he took another look and confirmed his initial reaction, then slid the HK down to the table near the door. “Wade Newton?”

  “That’s me.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  Newton knocked the snow off of his parka and boots. The wind had been blowing into the porch, so when the door closed the cabin’s temperature immediately rose several degrees. At the same time, the timer on the spotlight went out, and everything became dark—both the outside as they closed the door and inside, where the only light came from the fireplace.

  “I know you weren’t expecting me.” Newton’s voice was humble. “In fact, I guess I wouldn’t be on your invite list anytime.”

  Will didn’t say anything.

  Newton was close to the truth. They had been assigned roommates at the Basic School, which served as the first school for Marine officers in the Corps. New officers would spend six months learning the necessary ropes. It was the beginning of their Marine career. Uniforms were fitted and salutes were learned, along with the myriad military abbreviations used in the Corps. Roommates were assigned randomly. N for Newton and P for Parker landed up together. Newton was aviation and wanted to be on track to fly jet fighters. Parker was on the ground track, expecting to end up somewhere in one of
the military occupational specialties of infantry or special operations. Parker finished first in the class, which had rankled Newton, who thought of himself as being smarter.

  It wasn’t the only thing between them.

  A young lieutenant had fallen on the obstacle course and struck his head on one of the posts. Will had stopped to give the man first-aid assistance, trying to keep him alive. He told Newton to get the medic, but Newton’s lack of speed cost the young Marine his life.

  “What can I do for you?” Will closed the front door.

  “I need your help.”

  “Okay.” He pointed to a coat hook on the wall near the front door. “Something to drink?”

  “Yeah.” Wade Newton looked worn-out.

  “Take that chair near the fire.”

  “Thanks.” He mumbled the words. It didn’t seem to be the same fighter pilot.

  As he took a chair near the fireplace, he seemed the epitome of a man beaten down by life.

  Will poured cognac into a fresh cup of coffee and handed it over. “I heard you were with FedEx.” He knew that once the F/A18 ride was over, jet pilots moved on to other occupations that involved flying. The transition typically went from fighter jets to either cargo carriers or passenger carriers. It was a long way from a single seater that moved at nearly 1200 miles an hour, but it kept the man in the air.

  They didn’t always make the best pilots in the transition. A jet jockey could thread his aircraft through a needle. But Delta wanted a calm—if anything, boring—trip. A cargo transport gave someone like Newton a little more room to push the aircraft through its numbers.

  “Yeah, big haul from New York to Europe.”

  “You picked up oh-six?” Will was referencing the promotion to colonel.

  “I ended up with the C-130 squadron in New York.” Newton was talking about the turboprop cargo ships of VMGR-452 (the Marine designation for heavier than air, Marine, General Refueling squadron). It all translated to a four-engine cargo ship that had been the mainstay of the US military since the first Hercules flew in 1954.

  “What do you need?” Will asked as they settled in front of the fire. He sipped his drink as the fire flickered.

  “I understand you’re the go-to guy for Marines in desperate straits.”

  “Not sure what you mean.”

  “My gunny at 452 told me about you and what you’ve been doing.” Wade Newton’s gunnery sergeant at his squadron no doubt knew another particular gunny. Will made a mental note to talk to a certain Marine gunnery sergeant who was painting houses back in Georgia. Although Will’s missions into North Korea, Somalia, and Afghanistan were to be kept top-secret by the government and military, he had always assumed that something would get out.

  “Oh? And what did Moncrief tell your gunny, exactly?”

  “It’s not like anyone was broadcasting it,” Newton explained quickly, then sat back, took a swig from his laced coffee, and buried his head in his hands.

  Will decided that Kevin Moncrief needed to get back to painting houses, Moncrief’s civilian job, but he couldn’t ignore the pain wracking the man in front of him. “So, what’s the deal?” he asked.

  “It’s bad, Will.” Newton looked up, tears glistening in his eyes. “I killed my son.”

  Chapter 17

  A Dacha on the Istrinskoye Reservoir West of Moscow

  “Does he ever go to sleep?”

  The Russian huddled outside the guardhouse at the dacha deep in the woods north of Moscow was looking in the direction of the main building. His collar was pulled up and his head was stuffed well into his ushanka fur trapper hat. The all-white uniforms of the guards matched the snowdrifts that surrounded the cabin. He pulled a final drag from his cigarette and took a swallow directly from the bottle. The label was missing from the vodka bottle, but it didn’t matter. Russians bought the liquor by price, not name. The cheapest vodka was the favorite of the day.

  “Mmm.” The other guard barely made a sound. It required too much effort in the subzero temperatures. He also glanced over his shoulder toward the dacha.

  “Fucking light stays on all night.” He took another swig while glancing over his shoulder.

  A green light glowed through the blinds of an upstairs window. It was well past midnight. The snowstorm had covered all of the tracks of the vehicles on the road that led up to the cabin. The main highway, P-111, although no more than two lanes, was plowed regularly during the winter, but it lay a quarter of a mile away. The dacha stood on an isolated site, which was precisely the point.

  “The fucker has a better life than us,” the guard said of the man who lived in the dacha. He drank from the bottle and lit a new cigarette.

  He was right.

  The dacha stood on eleven hectares of land and by the shore of the Istrinskoye reservoir. Food was brought in on a weekly basis. The main cabin did not stand out from the others on the lake because of its size—it had only two bedrooms upstairs and a downstairs cigar room that had been turned into a computer room. Although relatively near Moscow, it still lay more than five miles from the nearest village.

  “Stop talking.” The other guard flapped his arms to keep warm. The guardhouse had a small wood stove, but it went through kindling too quickly to be useful. They always ran out well before the end of their twelve-hour shift.

  “You think his girl will come back?”

  Michael Ridge’s girlfriend had left some time earlier, returning to the United States.

  “Nyet.”

  “Not bad-looking.” The guard shared the usual male analysis of the female guest with his fellow soldier.

  “Did you hear their fight last week?” The guard danced in his boots, trying to keep his legs warm.

  “Da.”

  “If Alina said that shit to me….”

  “You’d take it. I’ve seen Alina.” The other guard laughed at his joke. “Give me that.”

  They exchanged the bottle. The second man took a long draw of the vodka and let out a huge belch. It was the wrong thing to do in Russian society, but in a guardhouse, in the middle of a frigid winter—after most of the bottle was gone—it all fell on deaf ears.

  “When will they let us kill this fuck?” The first guard slid his AK-47 around as if preparing to use it.

  “Why, you want to go to Syria?”

  The talkative one suddenly got silent. But not for long.

  “They say this guy is important.” The talkative one was also the taller of the two. He stood more than a foot taller than the other.

  “The American?”

  “Da.”

  “Maybe this week.”

  “What?”

  “The FSB comes.” He tossed the empty bottle into the woods behind the guard shack. “And takes him away.”

  Chapter 18

  A Government Facility In Anchorage

  NCEZID had a small sign above the entrance to its lab in Anchorage not far from the Ted Stevens International Airport. NCEZID, the Center for Disease Control’s office of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, was the watchdog for any disease coming to Alaska. The quarantine lab stopped and seized anything suspicious that came through Alaska’s ports and airports. It was also home to a branch that had a more ominous name: the Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology. And this led to the sub-office of Poxvirus and Rabies, and to Dr. Karen Stewart’s desk.

  Will hit the button on the door.

  “Parker for Dr. Stewart.” The CDC staff all knew Parker and they knew who he was visiting.

  “Hold on.” The security guard called up to Stewart’s office. “Dr. Stewart, you’ve got a visitor.”

  “Okay.”

  The guard buzzed the door and the lock clicked.

  “Hey, Will.” The security guard was armed. It was not a casual job. Much of what came through th
ose doors and the loading dock were marked Extremely Dangerous. They always started first with treating the animal or plant as if it could do great harm. And with good reason. The fire ant had come through a US port. Killer bees, after escaping from swarms quarantined in Brazil, also came across the border like illegal immigrants, after working their way across South America and Central America. The job done at the ports in keeping dangerous creatures or plants out was both important and vital.

  “What’s up, George?” Will knew the guard well. He had served with 3/1 in the second Gulf War, a Marine battalion that was well respected for the fight it had taken to the enemy in the Gulf.

  “Heard about your crash.”

  “Landing.”

  “Yeah, landing.” The guard smiled at his fellow Marine. “She said the same thing.”

  “She did?”

  “Yeah, she corrected me too.” The guard continued to smile. “I was in one of those landings in a CH-forty-six near Bridgeport.”

  “No one hurt?”

  “No, but the landing cost the Corps about twenty million.”

  “Okay, I get it.”

  Dr. Stewart came around the corner. Although she had on the scientist’s white lab coat, her typical work attire underneath was blue jeans and a pair of Nikes.

  A moment of awkward hesitation transpired between Will and her.

  “How about a quick cup of coffee?” he asked.

  Karen hadn’t seen him since their return from the wilderness. He could sense her hesitation, but she smiled.

  “Sure.”

  The break room was in the basement. There, a small Starbucks concession kept the scientists awake on long days looking down their microscopes. The two got their coffees and took a table near the back of the room.

  “When are you going back up?” Will asked as soon as they sat down.

  “Hopefully tomorrow.”