by Oliver North
By 1997, Hallstrom was one of the FBI's most senior counter-terrorism agents, with access to information and materials from other U.S. intelligence agencies as well. He was able to send the new Russian Foreign Intelligence Service packages of photocopied documents of CIA files, NSA intercepts and other secrets, along with highly sensitive FBI counter-intelligence documents.
In the 1980s when Komulakov “retired” from the KGB—reassigned to diplomatic service by the Soviets—Hallstrom, the most productive mole in the U.S. government, was handed off to another Russian KGB officer. Hallstrom continued to leave secrets at dead drops that he alone would select and, in return, they would leave him packages of cash and diamonds. He had made it known to his handlers that he was especially fond of diamonds—they were much harder to trace and easy to exchange for cash. And because the quality of the information he provided was so good, his normally penurious KGB go-between willingly complied with packages of money and jewels.
In the '90s, when the USSR collapsed and the Russian Federation was formed, the world was told that the KGB had been disbanded. But in fact only the name had changed, and Julio Morales, as the Russians knew him, continued as the Russians' mole for the successors to the KGB, the new Federal Security Service, or SVR.
On the night of 29 January 1998, Hallstrom was surfing through the FBI's Counter-Terrorism database computer files, looking for new information to sell to the Russians, when he came across Agent Glenn Wallace's file on Peter Newman/Gilbert Duncan. He read it quickly, not seeing anything of tremendous value, when he suddenly saw a quite familiar name: General Dimitri Komulakov. Wallace's report was based on speculation from an airline pilot named Vecchio about some kind of secret mission involving a Marine officer named Newman, who had served on the NSC staff, and his being misidentified as an IRA terrorist named Duncan. Wallace had also included Vecchio's “confession” that he'd had an affair with the Marine's extremely attractive wife, if the file pictures were any indication. The information was titillating, but hardly worth the attention of the FBI. However, in the backup material, Agent Wallace had attached a 1995 FBI interview with Dr. Simon Harrod, in which the former National Security Advisor emphatically insisted that Newman had been tragically killed on a highly sensitive UN-directed mission—and that the operation had been compromised by the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations—Dimitri Komulakov, Hallstrom's former handler.
Fascinated by what he was reading on the computer screen, Hallstrom looked for any follow-up on the National Security Advisor's '95 allegations. He could find none.
He did a computer search in the FBI's Automated Case Support system to see if there were any files that were related to this case file submitted by Agent Wallace. The ACS search turned up three others. The first was a duplicate of the 1995 interview with Harrod that a senior Justice Department official had sent to the President in November of that year.
Hallstrom found a second file in a CIA database that was apparently a copy of a British MI6 interview with a Special Air Service officer attached to the United Nations under Komulakov. The SAS officer, Lieutenant Colonel Wilbur Ellwood, had apparently given testimony—before his untimely death—that General Komulakov had compromised a United Nations operation, but Ellwood was unable to provide proof of Komulakov's complicity, so the British had never followed up the charge. However, the report also gave additional details of a failed UN mission in Iraq in March 1995, the same one referred to in the Harrod debrief. In Ellwood's deposition, he claimed Komulakov had compromised the mission and then blamed Newman. The British officer also alleged that Komulakov had caused international arrest warrants to be issued for the Irish terrorist, Gilbert Duncan, but that Duncan was really a U.S. Marine officer—Lieutenant Colonel Peter Newman.
Hallstrom opened a third entry, an FBI file dated April 1997. A special agent in the Washington Field Office had received the file from former Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North. Hallstrom read the file with renewed interest. It contained a transcript from some computer files—submitted by a retired CIA officer, William Goode. Apparently it was information taken from a laptop computer that more or less proved Komulakov's complicity in a UN-directed attempt to assassinate known international “lawbreakers,” including names like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, during an attack on Saddam's palace in Tikrit on 6 March 1995. The information provided by North and Goode also pointed to the complicity of Simon Harrod, and to a Silicon Valley defense contractor, along with Komulakov and some “freelance” Russian agents. Yet no one had yet connected the dots and gone after those mentioned in the allegations.
Hallstrom quickly realized that if others in the FBI put all this information together, there would be enough information for the FBI to arrest Komulakov if he ever returned to the United States. He also wondered what the other U.S. intelligence agencies might have done or would be doing with the new information that Agent Wallace had stumbled upon.
Hallstrom checked to see where the Wallace files had been sent. As far as he could tell, there were only five addresses. One was the Attorney General's, another copy went to the President, one each to the directors of the FBI and CIA, and a final copy to the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Central Command: Lieutenant General George Grisham, USMC
The FBI spy saved the file to a three-and-a-half-inch floppy disk. After the information had downloaded, he closed the files, logged out, and shut down the computer. Just before the screen went black, Hallstrom removed the floppy disk with the copied files, slipping it into his attach é case.
When he got to his car in the parking garage beneath the State Department, Hallstrom removed a five-by-seven-inch manila envelope from his glove compartment and wrote on it, “Pass along to General Dimitri Komulakov—VERY URGENT—From Julio Morales.” Hallstrom sealed the disk inside. Then, instead of proceeding directly to the E Street Expressway and across the Roosevelt Bridge as he normally would have on his commute to his home in Vienna, Virginia, Hallstrom traveled up Twenty-third Street to Washington Circle. There, he made a double loop of the circle to make sure he wasn't being followed, and on his second loop suddenly turned north on New Hampshire. Once again checking his rearview mirror for any sign of a tail, he made another quick left—turning north on Twenty-second Street, then a hard right on Q.
Just after crossing Twentieth Street, Hallstrom pulled his car over and parked in an open spot. He stayed there long enough to be certain that he had slipped away from anyone who might be following him, and then he put on a pair of thin leather driving gloves. Reaching under the seat, he retrieved a roll of one-inch, white adhesive tape. From the roll of tape, he tore off a foot-long strip and taped it to his shirt under his jacket. Then Hallstrom got out of his car and walked quickly, less than seventy-five feet to the intersection of Twentieth and Connecticut Avenue. There, on the north side of a utility pole, so that it could be easily seen by traffic proceeding south on Connecticut, he reached under his jacket, took the strip of adhesive tape, and placed it vertically on the pole, about seven feet above the sidewalk.
Confident that his prearranged emergency Call Out signal would be spotted by a Russian “diplomat” the following day, Hallstrom returned to his car, removed his gloves, pulled out of his parking spot, turned right on Connecticut, and proceeded south where Connecticut turned into Seventeenth Street. He pulled over once again, this time opposite the Old Executive Office Building, to make sure yet again that nobody was following him, then made a right turn onto New York Avenue, onto the E Street Expressway, across the Potomac, and into Virginia on Route 66.
Hallstrom exited the interstate as he usually did, at Nutley Street, but instead of going directly home, he made several turns in Vienna, then headed down Creek Crossing Road to the entrance of Foxstone Park. He stopped the car and opened his trunk, removing a green garbage bag. He placed the manila envelope in the bag and stuffed it inside the north-facing side of the storm drain underneath the blacktop drive into the park.
Feeling satisfied with his e
vening's work, Hallstrom drove home for a late supper with his wife, who would have already fed the children. The kids would all be doing their school homework—disciplined just as he had trained them to do.
Amarah Prison
Southern Iraq
Friday, 30 January 1998
0905 Hours, Local
An iron door clanged against the limestone wall of the ancient prison and awoke the prisoner with a start. He shivered in the damp cold of the cell. British Special Air Services Captain Bruno Macklin was lying on a concrete slab in the corner of the eight-foot square, windowless room, clad only in a dirty T-shirt and a pair of baggy prison dungarees. Almost three years earlier, he had been stripped of his desert camouflage uniform. He knew that even if he had it, it would no longer fit his shrunken frame.
Captain Macklin was a survivor of the mission headed by Lieutenant Colonel Peter Newman and assumed that he was the only one to make it. He often wondered if those who were dead had been the lucky ones.
Captured when his Quick Reaction/Extraction Force unit crossed into Iraq from northern Turkey to rescue any survivors of the doomed mission, he had been mercilessly beaten by his captors. His nose and left wrist were broken, and he had a number of lacerations that festered with infection and never healed properly.
A guard stood outside his cell, apparently the cause of the noise that woke him. The guard, a skinny kid about eighteen, wore an ill-fitting Iraqi Army uniform; he had rolled up his sleeves so they wouldn't hang down past his hands. Fortunately he was also able to blouse his pant legs over his boots or he'd likely trip over his cuffs. The kid called out in broken English, “Hey, you get food now. Come, eat.”
Macklin looked at the tray his guard was carrying. It was a piece of cardboard box, on which the kid had balanced a tin cup of water and two small pieces of hard bread. It was the only nourishment he was likely to get today. But the delivery of this meager ration was enough to break the monotony. He would eat the bread and conserve the water. Then—if it was a good day—he would be able to go back to sleep.
Although Macklin never knew it, it was an elite unit of Hussein Kamil's fierce SSS that had captured him. Hussein Kamil, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, had been given detailed information on the UN raid—even the exact route to be taken by the British officer and his QRF. The information had been provided by UN Deputy Secretary General Dimitri Komulakov and passed along to Kamil by Komulakov's “business partner,” Leonid Dotensk, who had just sold three nuclear weapons to Kamil, stolen from the former USSR. With the detailed intelligence supplied by Dotensk, Kamil was able to ambush the QRF's vehicles just after they crossed into Iraq as they sped southward along the Tigris River toward the prearranged “Zulu” pickup coordinates just north of Lake Tharthar and east of Tikrit, the site of the failed UN-directed attack on Saddam Hussein and his terrorist associates. Macklin did not remember being thrown from the four-by-four when it was hit by the rocket-propelled grenade and being knocked unconscious by the fall.
In the firefight that followed, the small Quick Reaction/Extraction Force was outgunned twenty to one. It was a massacre. All the others were dead in minutes. At first his attackers had thought Macklin had been killed by the RPG blast; his apparently lifeless body sprawled grotesquely on the rocky ground. It wasn't until the Iraqi soldiers were searching the bodies for maps, intelligence, or just plain souvenirs that one of the soldiers noticed the SAS officer was still breathing. The Iraqi had raised his rifle, had pointed it at the British captain's face, and had been about to pull the trigger when an SSS officer ordered him to stand down.
“We will take him back as a prisoner,” he had told the soldier. “Perhaps we can get him to talk.”
The first thing that Macklin remembered was being dragged into a helicopter hangar and brought before Hussein Kamil, who ordered an Amn Al-Khass major to blindfold the prisoner, take him to one of the other hangars, and guard him until he could be interrogated.
Two hours later, Kamil was about to start the interrogation when Qusay Hussein, the dictator's son, arrived. “I am sorry I underestimated you,” he told Kamil. “How were you able to predict the American-British attack and destroy it so effectively, dear brother-in-law?”
Kamil grinned and then lied. He wasn't about to reveal to his rival the role of Dotensk or the delivery of three “special” weapons, so he said, “You always underestimate me, my dear Qusay. I have a very secret source at the top of the United Nations and a direct link from the UN command center. We knew everything about the planned mission, and we were always one step ahead of them.”
Qusay, surprised at Kamil's response, pondered how his sister's husband had been able to intercept the UN's communications. However, he decided that he would wait until later to wring more from Kamil. Instead, pointing to the prisoner, he asked, “What are you going to do with him?”
“I was about to execute him.”
“No...not yet,” Qusay said.
Macklin remembered looking into Kamil's eyes at that moment. He had no way of knowing why the commander of the Iraqi SSS did not want any witnesses left alive. But Kamil could not tell Qusay that some of it related to his plans to soon defect to the West, and so he simply asked, “Why not kill him?”
“The United States' National Security Advisor met with our ambassador to the UN and offered us a deal. He guaranteed that the Americans will not interfere with our attack on the Iraqi traitors in the North and that the U.S. will stop all military assistance to the resistance movement. But in return, they do not want us to reveal to the world the story of their attack on Tikrit. The United States would be implicated, and they are willing to concede the North to us if we keep quiet. They also gave us their veiled acquiescence to make sure there are no survivors from the UN Special Forces operators.”
“Yes, I know...that is why I planned to execute this prisoner.”
“I have other plans. My father taught me that sometimes it is better to keep some prisoners alive. The time might come one day when you need them...for negotiation purposes.”
Neither of the Iraqis knew that Macklin understood their language and heard everything that they had just revealed to him about the role of senior U.S. and UN officials in the failed attack. Macklin had made a vow that moment that, God willing, he'd somehow get out of Iraq and tell people what really happened when their UN-sanctioned mission was compromised.
But now, rotting in this filthy prison cell for nearly three years, Captain Bruno Macklin was beginning to wonder if he would ever again see freedom. The interrogations, torture, and beatings had stopped a little more than a year ago. Now, he simply subsisted on meager rations, too little water, and the faint spark of hope that he was being held as a bargaining chip in case the Americans or the British ever had something that Saddam wanted. Meanwhile, he counted the days and tried to rebuild his strength. Getting out of here was a long shot, but it was all he had left to hope for.
TRACKED DOWN
CHAPTER ONE
Café Al-Rabat Bayram
63 Al-Wad Street
Old City of Jerusalem
Saturday, 7 March 1998
0730 Hours, Local
How did you find me?” the startled, bearded man asked. He had just stepped out of the little Arab coffee shop onto the narrow, cobblestoned street called Al-Wad when the athletic black man emerged from the long, gray, early morning shadows. The bearded man was clearly wary and, for just an instant, the fight-or-flight reaction of his adrenal cortex was evident in his eyes.
Sensing the man's alarm, the younger black man replied in a voice barely more than a whisper, “I came here to find you and was told where to look, sir.” Though a Chicago Cubs baseball cap covered his completely shaved head and shadowed his eyes in the colorless dawn, it couldn't hide his wide, white smile. He wore a black T-shirt, khaki slacks, Nike sneakers, and a lightweight gray-green jacket with no insignia of any kind on it. Now that he was closer, the bearded man could see it was a U.S. Marine-issue windbreaker.
For an awkward moment, the two men stood in the open doorway of the shop, just out of earshot of the two Arab men inside. Above their heads, Rabat Bayram was printed in Arabic, Hebrew, and English on a battered Coca-Cola sign. In the bearded man's right hand was a brass tray with two glasses of boiling-hot, rich, black Turkish coffee and two glasses of water, in the custom of the region. In his left hand he had hot rolls, wrapped in paper and smelling of yeast, almond paste, and anise. The coffee and bread were steaming in the early morning chill, and the aroma of both surrounded the two men.
When the man made no reply, the black man reached out with his left hand, took the coffee tray out of the bearded man's right hand, and then gripped it firmly in his own right hand, leaned forward and whispered, “It's good to see you again, Lieutenant Colonel Newman.”
Newman smiled for the first time and just as quietly responded, “It's good to see you again, too, Staff Sergeant Skillings.”
“Yes, sir...except now it's Gunnery Sergeant Skillings. You've been gone a long time, Colonel.”
At this reminder, Newman stepped back as if suddenly remembering where he was, that there were photos of his clean-shaven face on Interpol BOLO posters all over the world. He quickly scanned the street, inspecting not just the sidewalk level but the windows and tiny balconies above as well; they were decorated with clothing, bed sheets,and carpets of every color and description—and he saw the ubiquitous surveillance cameras of the Israeli security service.
Had it not been the Jewish Sabbath, the narrow avenue would have been crowded with pedestrians, even at this hour. As it was, the two men were alone on the shaded byway, and Newman could see a video camera in its protective casing, mounted on an electric utility pole, pointed directly at the intersection where they stood. He suspected that somewhere within an Israeli police station a digital record was being made of this unusual meeting between two men who were obviously neither Israeli nor Arab.