The Ericksen Connection

by Barry Becker

  “Our pilot program with your EyeD4 Access at MI6 has been operational for the past five months. Our people have expressed confidence in your system, and we should be placing a purchase order soon,” said Moore.

  “It has been six months since you last visited GCHQ, and demon- strated your EyeD4 Comm System. The director told me last week they still can’t decode your communications. As you know they’re one of the best code-breakers in the world,” said Worthington.

  “Sir, the procurement director of GCHQ, told me they would like to send a delegation as soon as they hear back from the CIA and NSA that they officially endorsed the product. Then we’ll be happy to set up a meeting and send a delegation of engineers and security officials to Portland,” said Moore.

  “Sounds good.”

  Howden cleared his throat and fixed his eyes on Sir Derek Worthington. “What do you think Derek?”

  “My God, Kevin, you were right.” Worthington turned to Erick- sen. “I dare say, we’re impressed with your systems.”

  While Ericksen spoke to Worthington, the MI5 Director joined them. Moore took General Howden aside and asked, “How did you find this amazing technology?”

  “I met him in Iraq and Afghanistan when he was the vice-presi- dent for military affairs at Avanti BioSystems. He trained the Amer- ican Special Operations Forces and SAS on how to enroll terrorists and download their biometrics ID templates: fingerprints, iris and facial recognition templates into the FBI Biometrics Database Center in West Virginia and the DoD. I was impressed by him and the tech- nology, and we’ve kept in touch ever since he joined EyeD4 Systems.”

  Howden didn’t mention Ericksen’s military background when he served as a US Special Operations Forces platoon leader in Afghanistan under Howden’s command from January through March 2002. They operated out of Camp Wolverine, their new headquarters base at Kandahar Airport. Ericksen had run a platoon of eighteen individual Norwegian, Australian, British, and Danish Coalition Special Operations Forces under the ISAF Joint Command, and participated in Task Force Iron Guts.

  They left MI6 headquarters and moved into a waiting Jaguar. “I’m looking forward to attending the international distributors meeting next month,” Howden said, and added, “I’ll send you the name of the dive shop.”

  “Thanks.”

  Howden asked, “Would you like to join my wife and me for a home-cooked meal tonight?”

  He raised his eyebrows and sighed. “That’s very considerate of you, but I’m looking forward to a quiet evening and a good night’s sleep before taking my flight back to the States.”

  “How about a rain check?” “You’re on.”

  As the Jaguar pulled up to the entrance to the hotel, the hotel doorman opened the door of the car and Ericksen got out of the back seat.

  He waved his hand at Howden. “I believe we’re going to make a lot of money.”

  “I jolly well hope so,” Howden said.

  21

  he bright, glowing morning sun blazed through the bay windows of his living room as the rays fell on Ericksen’s face. His contemporary Northwest-style home sat anchored

  on a hilly slope, six hundred feet up on Rawhide Drive in West Linn, a suburb of Portland. His home had a majestic view of Mount Hood and was surrounded by beautiful Douglas fir trees and a manicured green lawn, providing him the serenity and space to unwind.

  After completing his fifty minute morning jog at a seven minute mile pace around the hilly area, he showered, spent ten minutes in meditation, got dressed, finished breakfast, activated his home secu- rity alarm, and took off for work. He arrived at EyeD4 Systems in Wilsonville at 8:30. After spending a few minutes in his office, he walked down the hall to the CEO’s office.

  Behind an oak executive desk with his phone to his ear sat Roger Hamilton, a sixty-year-old, tall man with thinning gray hair, wearing a drab gray suit, blue tie, and metal, aviator-type framed eyeglasses. Hamilton had started EyeD4 Systems in 2003 after retiring from a career at IBM. He knocked on the office door and gently opened it. Hamilton caught a glimpse of him, and both men’s eyes met. He motioned for him to enter. He put the phone down and raised his

  voice, “Welcome back. I wish I could give you good news, but I have some bad news. We can’t count on our banks or our angel investors anymore. Our only choice is to bootstrap our growth through our revenues.”

  He shook his head, his body tense upon hearing Hamilton’s remarks. “You must be joking. Our cash burn rate can’t sustain itself if we intend to enter the commercial and industrial sectors for our biometrics and encryption software products.

  Hamilton stiffened his lips. “Have you ever known me to joke about finances? Just keep delivering sales and let me worry about receivables,” said Hamilton.

  “What about our future goals in building an international sales organization, and also developing a miniaturized iris camera recogni- tion system embedded within a laptop computer and tablet for mobile communications applications?”

  “Mark you’re not hearing me.”

  Ericksen took a deep breath. “We’ll receive contracts from the French and German governments shortly. Those orders will generate at least three-million in revenue over the next seven months. The Swedish Ministry of Defense and several of their government agen- cies will submit three orders soon for two million dollars. Their government purchased Eye Retinal Biometrics systems from a company called Eyedentify back in 1986 and are quite knowledgeable and supportive of biometrics. We can expect another four million from our government in October when their new budget goes into effect. We could probably raise fifteen million with venture capital alone on those orders.”

  “Mark, I’m not going to do business with venture capitalists, and that’s final!” Ericksen leaned forward. “Don’t forget we’ll be receiving an order from our government at the conclusion of the beta-tests next year, and by their comments to me, the systems are flawless.” He wiped his brow. “My old fraternity brother works as a partner for a VC firm in Menlo Park. I’m sure his group can help.”

  Hamilton leaned back in his chair and snapped. “I’m not inter- ested in diluting our shares and being controlled by venture capi- talists.”

  The Ericksen Connection101

  He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes briefly. He tightened his lips and leaned his head towards Hamilton. “When you recruited me from Avanti BioSystems you made a commitment to me. You told me raising capital would never be an issue, even if you had to go the venture capital way.”

  Hamilton stood up, shook his head and stared at him. “Sorry, but we have to be realistic. The whole country is in a major economic meltdown.”

  Ericksen’s adrenaline shot up. His dreams of building a startup into a success story suddenly appeared to be held hostage by a CEO who feared VC funding.

  “Do you think Amazon, Apple, and Google would be where they are today without a major infusion of venture capital?” asked Ericksen.

  Hamilton’s eyes narrowed. “Let’s drop the subject.”

  “I’m disappointed,” he said, as he left Hamilton’s office. He broke his word. Ericksen drove to Lake Oswego for his eleven o’clock appointment with his psychologist, Dr. Holtzman. He told the doctor about his recent meeting with Delgado and what occurred in Kandahar Province under Dawkins’ command. “I believe Dawkins ordered me to kill Sadozai because he was a witness to their kickback scheme. What do you think?”

  Dr. Holtzman nodded. “I agree. I admire you for being proactive in your search for the truth, but you need to be careful. The warning in London is proof Dawkins doesn’t want you to pursue this path for fear it will lead to him and the group.”

  Ericksen nodded in agreement. “Delgado told me he suspected they murdered Pulaski.” He sighed and shook his head. “I believed he could have led me to Dawkins.”

  Holtzman thought for a moment. “Who have you recently contacted?”

  “Some business associates I’ve worked with at the State Depart- ment, the FB
I, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.”

  Dr. Holtzman walked over to him and firmly placed his hand on his shoulder. “The colonel betrayed the sacred honor of the Amer-

  ican military command structure by his outright lies and duplicity in criminal behavior. He killed Bashir as sure as if he pulled the trigger.” “I’m going to find Dawkins, and I’m not going to stop until I find out where they stored their blood money. Then the Feds can prose-

  cute his ass.”

  22

  Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

  iad, sporting a thick black mustache and wearing the traditional flowing white cotton robe and a headdress, enjoyed eating a hearty lamb and rice dish in a Jeddah

  restaurant. The smell of the spicy Indian curry and other exotic spices permeated the restaurant. In his right hand, he held a cup of Bedouin coffee.

  He finished his meal, paid his bill, and left the restaurant. He walked down Falasteen Street, stopped occasionally, and glanced through the store windows at the merchandise displayed in the window. He wasn’t interested in the products, only the reflection off the windows to see if someone had been following him.

  He entered Jarir’s Bookstore and immediately went to the history section. He went down a row of aisles and turned to the second shelf from the top, and saw a book about the history of Saudi Arabia. Ziad took the book down from the shelf, dropped his pen, bent down to retrieve it, casually looked both ways, saw one person at the end of the aisle, and their eyes met. He opened the book and put a tiny piece of paper with one sentence on the first page of the book, and closed

  it. He tapped on the hardback book twice, placed the book on the second shelf protruding three inches from the shelf. Then he left the aisle. Ziad walked to another section of the bookstore slowly, aided by his cane. He picked up BusinessWeek magazine, paid the cashier, and left the bookstore.

  An Arab man in his fifties with a large nose and beard observed him from the moment he entered the history aisle, saw and notice Ziad tap on the book. Jamal Al-Kharusi walked down the history aisle, casually checking a few books on the same shelf, then picked up the book, opened the first page, and glanced at a sentence on the tiny piece of paper. He put the paper in his pocket, walked to the cashier, paid for the book, and left the bookstore.

  Jamal entered his dental office, walked past his male receptionist, and continued until he reached the back of his office. He closed the door behind him and locked it. He took the piece of paper out of his pocket and read the sentence in Arabic: “One of the best scuba diving experiences in the Red Sea is off the coast of Hurghada, Egypt.”

  He slid his bookcase to the right, exposing a small hidden room. He opened a cabinet and retrieved a special viewer and placed it over the period after the word Egypt. This action brought the microdot into sharp focus. The sentence read: “Islamic terrorists plan to attack the conference at The Grand Beach Hotel in Hurghada on Sunday, May 10, at 0700 hours.”

  Jamal opened up a drawer and removed a USB flash memory drive. He inserted it into a USB port on his laptop computer. This drive had a built-in encryption software program. He scanned the decoded message on the printer, converted it into a PDF file as an attachment, and sent it to an overseas server that changed the IP address every second until it reached its final destination. A couple of seconds later he deleted the sent email message.

  General Mohammed Al-Jabr sat behind his cherry wood desk in the executive office, adjoining the king’s quarters at King Abdullah’s Palace in Riyadh. He dressed in the traditional Saudi attire and smoked a cigarette. With his right hand, he gently cupped his trim gray mustache. He coughed and coughed again. He put out the cigarette.

  He heard a blip sound from his laptop computer on his desk. He clicked on the email and read the message with his eyes intently focused on the screen. Suddenly his mouth opened up, and his eyebrows rose with a shocked expression. I must warn the Saudi dele- gation. He wrote on the back of a business card, Sunday, May 10, 0700 hours, deleted the email, placed the business card in a letter-size pad holder, and abruptly left his office with it.

  Three hours later, General Al-Jabr presided over a meeting at King Abdullah’s Palace. In attendance were several government offi- cials: Chief of Saudi’s foreign intelligence agency, the minister of the interior, their staff, and Colonel Al-Gosaibi of the Royal Guard. They were discussing the upcoming intelligence and counterterrorism summit meeting in Hurghada, and the planned terrorist attack on the Grand Beach Hotel.

  Colonel Al-Gosaibi, impeccably dressed, twitched his nose and scratched his dark, full mustache while glancing around the well- appointed conference room. He stared at General Al-Jabr and asked in Arabic, “General, I’m sure your sources are excellent but have you confirmed the veracity of this threat sufficiently?”

  Al-Jabr’s face briefly tensed, showing disdain for the colonel’s question. He looked right at the colonel, raised his right hand, palm up, and thrust it forward.

  “My operative has produced actionable intel before. He is connected to this Islamic terrorist group.” The general thought for a moment: This pampered prince has balls questioning me. Al-Jabr looked directly at the General Director of Saudi Intelligence. “Immediately warn Egyptian Intelligence.”

  The Saudi intel chief nodded. “Consider it done, General.”

  23

  t 1300 hours in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Khalid Al-Bustani, wearing the traditional Saudi robe and a headdress, sat in the back seat of his Rolls Royce limo as the vehicle drove

  through town.

  When he heard a couple of rings from his secure smartphone, he picked it up with his right hand and brought it to his ear, brushing the phone against his trim beard. On his middle finger, he wore a bright, large gold ring engraved with a horse’s head, and a small etched inscription, Falcon Dancer. “Hello,” he said in Arabic.

  Marwan Haidar spoke in English in a calm voice, “This is George. The birthday party has been moved to Cleopatra’s Resort Hotel – same time.”

  “Give the boy my best wishes,” Khalid Al-Bustani said in English.

  The Red Sea

  A few minutes later, a 280-foot mega-yacht, The Dolphin Prince, had been cruising at fifteen knots when it slowed down and floated in the

  sea with a drift anchor, twenty-five miles southeast of Hurghada, Egypt.

  In the main salon, Abdullah Al-Suhaimy’s penetrating black eyes surveyed a map of the Red Sea. His satphone rang. “Hello,” said Abdullah in Arabic.

  “The party has moved to Cleopatra’s Resort Hotel, same time,” Khalid said in English.

  Abdullah and a driver boarded a twenty-foot Zodiac speedboat alongside the mega-yacht. The temperature having reached one hundred degrees, they were wearing t-shirts, khaki shorts, and sandals. They waved goodbye to the crew and the captain of The Dolphin Prince.

  The speedboat raced across the Red Sea and two hours later pulled up to the Hurghada Marina. He got out, and the speedboat driver took off. An Arab driver met Abdullah at the Marina, greeted him, opened the SUV passenger door, and invited him in. They drove through the old section of Hurghada, past the sights and smells of bazaars, restaurants, and food markets.

  Ten minutes later they pulled up to up to a scrap iron yard. Abdullah got out of the SUV, walked up to greet seven Arab men, hugged each man, and planted a kiss on each man’s cheeks. A slim Arab man with a thick black beard walked alongside him. As they passed a panel truck and a pick-up truck, they entered a storage shed. The slim man lifted a canvas cloth for him to gaze at the 1,600 pounds of C-4 explosives.

  “Good work, my Saudi brother. This should be enough to send the infidels to hell. Praise be to Allah for this opportunity. Allahu Akbar!” Abdullah said in Arabic.

  “Allahu Akbar,” the slim man said.

  24

  ricksen rested by the EgyptAir gate at Cairo International Airport, and watched a British comedy show. At 1530 hours, He boarded his EgyptAir flight for Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt,

  a on
e hour flight.

  He arrived at the baggage area at the Sharm El-Sheikh International Airport with his scuba backpack, suitcase, and computer case, looking like a person who hadn’t slept in a long time. He cleared customs and strolled into the reception area in his wrin- kled blue short-sleeve shirt and tan khaki shorts in search of the hotel driver. He spotted the hotel driver who held a sign with his name on it and continued with the baggage cart. The driver loaded the luggage into the parked van alongside the curb. The sign printed on the side of the SUV read: Regal Crown Resort Hotel. The drive from the airport to the hotel took thirty minutes.

  The hotel van pulled up to the entrance to the hotel. The bellman took Ericksen’s luggage out of the van and placed it on a luggage cart as he entered the hotel lobby. A panel truck and SUV drove slowly up the driveway to the front entrance of the hotel, followed by a pick-up driven by Omar, a slim, Arab man, with a baby face and a straggly

  black beard. The panel truck, the SUV, and the pick-up followed the circular driveway and re-entered the highway.

  The lobby of this luxury hotel was full of people. The desk clerk smiled as Ericksen approached the front registration desk.

  The hotel desk clerk asked, “Welcome to the Regal Crown, sir… your name please?”

  “Mark Ericksen.” He handed over his passport and visa to the hotel clerk to verify it and received the keys to his room.