RED Hotel

by Fuller, Ed; Grossman, Gary;

  “Are you suggesting that information was withheld?”

  “How could I possibly know, Senator? What kind of investigations can a hotel chain run on the Islamic State, Taliban, Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Shabaab, and the other fifty-eight terrorist organizations known to be operating in the world today?”

  “Make this as clear as a bell for me. You have no access to information today?”

  Reilly was under oath, so he’d have to talk around the question. “As I’ve previously testified, Kensington Royal has some information. Open State Department warnings and security advisories we subscribe to through private agencies. In addition we employ former intelligence officers now working for major consulting firms. By and large they’re aggregators compiling, publishing, and distributing information. We need to be higher up in the food chain. We need timely, specific, and credible intelligence.”

  “Confidential intelligence flowing into your corporate hands, Mr. Reilly?”

  “I prefer to describe it as advance word to help us save lives, Senator.”

  CIA HEADQUARTERS

  “A couple of birdies told me you caused quite a stir in town yesterday.”

  Reilly laughed at Bob Heath’s comment. “Guess I did.”

  “Pretty ballsy, Reilly.”

  “Well, Davidson pissed me off.”

  “Apparently. I got a call from the director asking about our relationship.”

  “What did you say?” Reilly asked.

  “Enough. No more. That we have a mutual desire to share information.”

  “Then how about sharing,” Reilly suggested.

  “Working on it.”

  “Well then, here’s a question. What came up when you ran the photo? Who the hell is Smug? And have you been talking to the FBI? Because they’ve stopped talking to our head of security.”

  Heath hesitated. “Let’s just say it’s all flowing through the system.”

  “Bob …” Reilly read Heath’s pause as a red flag.

  “What?”

  “Cut the bullshit. You got a match.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You sure as hell did. ‘Still in the system.’ I wasn’t born yesterday. I can read you better than anyone.”

  “Nothing really verifiable,” Heath acknowledged.

  “But you got a hit,” Reilly shot back.

  “Nothing verifiable,” he repeated. “That’s all I can say.”

  “Suddenly I’m a clearance problem?” Reilly thought for a moment. “Or try this on for size. You’re working with the FBI on what you found. Either you, or they, or you both have confirmed something.”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions.”

  “And like I said, don’t bullshit me, Bob. Alan Cannon got shut down at the bureau and I’ll bet you a lobster dinner that you’re doing the same with me right now.”

  “Look, it’s complicated. I can’t say.”

  “Jesus, Bob. It’s me. I brought you the damned video.”

  “We would have seen it eventually. Your buddy gave it to the FBI.”

  “Thank you for the confirmation that you’re talking with them.”

  “We’re talking,” Heath replied uncomfortably.

  “So, Jesus Christ! Just tell me.”

  “Look, I can’t, Danny.” Heath only used Danny when he was feeling contrite with his old friend. “My hands are tied. At least for now. We have to kick this upstairs.”

  “The director?” Reilly asked sharply.

  “Up, upstairs.”

  “How high?”

  “Up, up, upstairs.”

  Reilly got the message loud and clear. The White House.

  26

  MOSCOW, RUSSIAN FEDERATION

  APRIL 9, 2015

  It had been a good day for Boris Litvenko. The retired Russian colonel and head of the reformist party “Russia One” had just won approval from the Justice Ministry to participate in the December parliamentary elections.

  Litvenko had enemies, but Liberal Russia had supporters because of his credibility as an anti-war leader. His stock had risen when he served as vice chair of the Kusinitz Commission, which was established outside of the Kremlin to investigate the inciting incidences that led to Russia’s advance on Crimea. Even though his work was shut down, Litvenko kept the issue alive, forming a committee of human rights advocates, most of whom were openly anti-Gorshkov.

  The wide-eyed, wild-haired reformer was on a mission. But so was the man who was waiting for him near the entrance of his Moscow apartment.

  Litvenko stepped out of his car, straightened his grey weave sports coat, and wished his driver a good night. The 52-year-old politician smiled, feeling good about the news coverage he had been getting lately in the West. It had been a good day.

  The stranger approached from behind. Litvenko didn’t hear him as he raised his Makarov pistol equipped with a silencer and shot Litvenko three times in the back.

  Litvenko’s short-sleeve blue shirt turned beet red as he collapsed to the pavement, never to rise again. The assassin ran away.

  Later, the press would report that Litvenko was the eleventh member of the Russian parliament killed in less than a decade. Andre Miklos had not kept count himself. But Nikolai Gorshkov, rising in Kremlin hierarchy, had.

  27

  WASHINGTON, DC

  PRESENT DAY

  Gerald Watts briefed the president. The lanky new CIA director never minced words. He spoke unemotionally and without shading that required any interpretation. Everything he brought to the White House was declarative and important.

  “Are you sure?” the president asked after hearing Watts’ presentation.

  Alexander Crowe, former NASA Space Shuttle astronaut-turned-senator and now first-term US president, was also known for getting right to the point. He’d seen attempts to destabilize the government from outside and within, and encountered people who wanted to take him down and take him out. So when his CIA director came to him with a problem, he listened.

  “Facial recognition is a reliable tool made more reliable when working with picture-perfect images,” Watts replied.

  President Crowe was aware of the breakthroughs with facial recognition technology. Though not so easily admissible in court, he knew his intelligence agencies relied heavily on it from ports of entry to closed circuit cameras peering down on major city streets. Watts gestured to four photographs he had brought that were now on the Oval Office coffee table.

  “I can’t describe any of these as anywhere near perfect,” Watts continued. “They’re out of focus, shot from a distance, or copies that are generations down from the original. We’ve sharpened and enhanced them. When the software sees enough signatures, identifiable markers—eyes, cheekbone structure, one ear lower than the other, teeth—well, then it gives us a probability decision.”

  “100 percent?” the redheaded 51-year-old president asked.

  “Well below that, but a probability worth considering.”

  “Can we get any other backup?”

  This is when the CIA director revealed another detail.

  “The FBI came up with the same possibility at their Quantico facility—independently, and using the same original photograph. More important to me, my chief analyst stands by the assessment.”

  The president leaned back in his wooden captain’s chair, left behind by his predecessor. It had belonged to Admiral Halsey long before that. “Any thoughts on the motive?” he asked.

  “None, Mr. President, only speculation.” Watts explained the possibilities that they had come up with so far. “That said, we don’t know who he is or his motivation.”

  “So at this point we have an offshore attack, no known purpose, and no Americans killed.”

  “But an American-managed hotel. An American corporation.”

  “Yes, Gerald, but in Japan. Not here. Given the speculation and the lack of any evidence, I don’t see any immediate threat to the United States. There’s nothing that is …” the president leaned forward
and continued, “formally actionable.”

  The CIA director left with an oblique order: Nothing formally actionable. Formally.

  A week later, the select committee members filed into KR’s Washington conference room on K Street. They were prompt and ready to work. These were serious men and women, experts in their fields, thought leaders, and influencers who worked in the private sector and often in the shadows.

  Alan Cannon accompanied them from the lobby, and Dan Reilly greeted each at the door. One by one they took designated seats behind name cards around the large oval walnut table.

  “Welcome everyone,” said Reilly, taking a seat near the middle of the table, not the very end. This removed any sense of hierarchy, while giving him a clear view of the invitees.

  “Many of you already know the man to my right, our head of global security, Alan Cannon.”

  Cannon nodded hello again.

  “Next to Alan, Kensington Royal COO, Lou Tiano.”

  Tiano, 55, was a career employee who had helped Edward Shaw grow the company over the decades. He had a warm smile and an open face that often masked the shrewd corporate acumen beneath. Tiano wore a classic light blue Brooks Brothers suit with a white shirt, a gold tie, and expensive Italian shoes. He was the most put-together man in the room.

  Reilly continued the introductions. Sitting next to Tiano was the company’s CFO, Pat Brodowski. Tall, blonde, and shrewd, she had been recruited from Citibank to bolster the company’s financial department. A year into the job she was promoted to chief financial officer. It was no surprise Reilly seated her within whisper distance of Tiano.

  “Now to my left, our head of legal, Chris Collins.” Ever the lawyer, Collins’ yellow pad was already filled with questions.

  “Chris is here to keep us honest,” Reilly said, realizing that honesty wasn’t necessarily first and foremost on the invitees’ minds. They were primarily in the intelligence, security, and safety businesses, after all.

  Beside Chris was KR’s lead corporate public relations officer, June Wilson. Next, the company’s IT chief, Spike Boyce. The youthful, blond, and casually dressed Boyce tipped his pencil as a salute to the committee.

  Directly opposite him was former CIA Director Carl Erwin, a veteran Navy SEAL. Now retired at 67, Erwin was a go-to high-level security consultant, and arguably one of the most experienced in the world. To his left was retired army general BD Coons, and to his right, former assistant FBI director Jay Reardon. Reardon, ten years younger than Erwin, had collaborated with the CIA chief on many investigations. His specialty was terrorism. That gave him a key seat at Kensington Royal’s table.

  One more over was the mystery man in the room. The scarred and barrel-chested Donald Klugo was president and CEO of GSI, a company that operated out of Jordan. Global Security Initiatives provided guns for hire, a mercenary force with boots able to quickly hit the ground once flown into danger zones on their two Airbus Beluga Super Transporters. Klugo had worked with each of the invitees, but there was no official records of any of his missions.

  Each of the invited experts would earn $50,000 for the first two-day session and one-day follow up.

  Now Alan Cannon took over.

  “Here’s the schedule. We work from now until 10:00 a.m. We’ll take a ten-minute break, then back with a working lunch brought in at 12:30. Another break at 2:00 p.m., and we’ll wrap at seven. Help yourself anytime to coffee and pastries on the sideboard. Of course there will be no audio or video recording. No attribution. Accordingly, we encourage brutally honest thinking to make this company more responsible and more capable of handling today’s threats against our industry.”

  “Brutally honest?” BD Coons immediately interrupted.

  “Yes, General.”

  “You should have had this meeting ten years ago. Anything you implement now will be catch-up.”

  Cannon was about to respond, but Reilly cut him off.

  “I’ll take it, Alan,” he said. “You’re right, General. But I’m committed to making changes starting now.”

  The general looked at the other KR executives. “You said ‘I’m committed,’ Mr. Reilly. Unless everyone is committed, this will be a royal waste of time and effort.” His sarcastic use of the company name was not missed. Coons stared at each of the executives, testing them. Lastly he settled on Tiano.

  The COO returned the look. “General Coons, this has the endorsement of the president of the corporation,” said Tiano.

  “Not good enough,” Coons argued. “I don’t see him here. So don’t waste my time or the time of my colleagues. As far as I’m concerned, any one of you on the business side can sink it. If Ms. Brodowski is not on board, money won’t be there. Mr. Collins needs to embrace the legal risks and look the other way if there’s something he doesn’t want to see. Ms. Wilson will have to carefully control outbound messaging, while Mr. Boyce surely will have to rebuild his IT network. So with all due respect to your venerated president, I ask again, is everyone committed?”

  He gave each of the company’s power holders another deep stare.

  Brodowski nodded. Wilson reported in with a clear, “Yes.” Boyce gave a thumbs-up. Realizing that was too casual, he added a strong verbal, “Yes, sir.”

  Only KR’s attorney held back.

  “Mr. Collins?” General Coons said in an accusatory tone. “Are you with the rest?”

  Collins skimmed his notes, all prepared in advance to bring the session into line with his legal concerns. He nervously cleared his voice.

  “Mr. Collins?” Coons demanded.

  Chris Collins looked at his pad one more time. Taking a deep breath, he turned it over and met Coons’ eye.

  “Yes. Yes, I’m onboard.”

  “Good,” Coons said. “Then I’m here to work with you.”

  Dan Reilly was grateful that Coons had put the entire group to the test. As only an outsider could, the two-star cut through the crap. He imagined how Coons had done the same thing in the field, the Pentagon, and in the White House.

  The general smiled. “I believe you were speaking, Mr. Reilly?”

  “Thank you,” said Reilly. He then began explaining the immediate goal. “We,” Reilly emphasized, “must develop practical procedures to assess threats. We have to establish relationships, whether open or covert, with American and global intelligence networks to access and act upon information. And by acting, we become proactive, a global leader in our industry, and a company that has entered the fight against terrorism. With that, I open the floor.”

  “Mind if I start with a little history?” former CIA director Carl Erwin asked.

  Reilly encouraged him to continue.

  “The first hotel bombing in modern history was carried out in 1946 at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. The terrorists, assuming you accept the term in this case, were an underground militant Jewish organization. The hotel served as headquarters for the British authority ruling over Palestine, the Secretariat of the Government of Palestine, and the British Forces in Palestine and Transjordan. The bomb took out much of the southern wing of the hotel, the quadrant that housed intelligence records. This suggests it could have been an inside job—an Israeli spy within the British and Palestinian administration. It is something for you to consider in your own properties. Can you trust your own people? But back to that July 22 attack—91 people died. It became a model for strikes to come. The lessons since tell the same story. Hotels represent the countries where they’re headquartered and, by association, often that government. They are soft targets, difficult to protect, relatively porous, and easy to penetrate. You have a constant flow of people rarely identified by security, and in our realm, they offer a clear field.”

  These were the cold hard facts made all the more real because the danger had come home.

  “So, the question is, what can be done to affect the terrorist attack cycle? An inevitability today.”

  “Attack cycle?” COO Lou Tiano asked.

  “I’ll take that,” former
FBI agent Jay Reardon said. “It’s a systemized plan. The steps terrorists take. But first, let me make this clear. You are not the police. You are not the military. I’m pleased to see Don Klugo here for the sake of discussion, but you do not have a paramilitary force. You are plainly and simply the target. You have to learn what to look for, and then get professionals in to help.”

  Tiano had a KR embossed pen in hand ready to write on his notepad.

  “In order, here’s the attack cycle: target selection, strategic planning, final preparation and staging, the actual attack, exfiltration if the intent is not suicide, and media exploitation.”

  Collins was writing now, too. “Can you go slower?”

  “Yes,” Reardon said. “Number one. Selection of the target. Is the target symbolic? Will it create impactful media attention? Can it cause maximum physical damage and loss of life? Will it be successful? Drilling down deeper, any attacking forces will conduct surveillance on multiple hotels, maybe as many as ten to twelve in an area. They collect basic intel and prepare target folders. We call it the CARVER matrix. CARVER for Criticality, Accessibility, Recuperability, Vulnerability, Effect, and Recognizability. OSS agents in World War II came up with the acronym for the French underground to ID possible targets, and it became a mainstay for US Special Forces in Vietnam. Through the process, the most vulnerable building in the target zone becomes the best target.”

  “Can’t it be turned on itself for defense?” Reilly asked. “To think like a terrorist and therefore foil a threat?”

  “Absolutely. They surveil for visible security, locations of closed-circuit cameras, retractable steel bollards and cement barriers, metal detectors, and dogs. You should be making sure you have some or all in place. Take ease and opportunity off the table and you’ll save lives.”

  Reardon stood up and walked over to the coffee urn. He continued to talk as he poured out a cup and returned to his seat.