by Barry Becker
“Of course,” the driver said.
The FBI surveillance teams followed in two unmarked vehicles on the road back to Portland. One of the FBI agents heard a ring and picked up his smartphone.
“Hello. What did you find out?” The agent said.
“McDonald Custom Limo told me their destination is the Marriott Hotel on Front Street,” an FBI agent said.
“Thanks.”
An hour and forty-five minutes later, the driver went several blocks out of his way and pulled up to the front entrance of the Benson Hotel. The driver unloaded their luggage, and Abdullah and Beltermann carried it in themselves. They went directly to the eleva- tors and punched in the lower level floor. When they got off the elevator, they turned right and walked down the corridor to the parking garage.
One FBI agent called the front desk and confirmed two men entered the hotel with their bags and walked directly to the elevators. “Teams two and three, get to the Benson immediately,” the FBI lead agent said.
Abdullah spotted the blue Ford SUV with Nevada plates along with the driver from the Nevada sleeper cell, who stood alongside the vehicle. Beltermann noticed a gray Chevrolet SUV with Texas plates and the driver from the Texas sleeper cell inside behind the wheel. They entered the vehicles with tinted windows, changed shirts, put on baseball caps, left the garage, and drove to the I-5 ramp heading south towards Salem.
The FBI agents finally entered the hotel lobby and checked with the registration desk. Recognizing that the men hadn’t registered,
they went down to the parking garage. But it was too late for the FBI Counterterrorism squad. A missed opportunity.
Thirty minutes later both Beltermann and Abdullah arrived at the La Quinta Hotel in Wilsonville. They entered the cell operators’ rooms, shaved their beards off, and changed clothes.
Abdullah’s secure smartphone rang. “Hello.”
“When I email you the date for the meeting place with your contact, the actual date will be the day before. Tell Watchmaker too,” Khalid said.
The sleeper cell operators paid for their rooms with two phony credit cards. Both men and their respective drivers left the motel and headed south on I-5.
Ziad checked in for his American Airlines flight to Houston and placed his new custom-designed laptop computer in baggage along with his personal luggage, and Khalid’s laptop computer was a carry- on. Upon arrival in Houston, he would transfer to another flight to Zurich.
Geneva, Switzerland
Ziad walked to the Botanical Gardens near the lake. After viewing the various plants and flowers, he saw an empty bench not far away. Caldwell monitored his movements and waited for his next move. He took a sandwich out of his brown paper bag and orange juice to drink. Ten minutes later he finished his meal and threw the bag into a trash bin next to the bench. Ziad looked both ways and gently opened his briefcase, placed a sealed zip-lock bag containing an empty glass and a USB flash drive into a paper bag, and hid it behind a large rock next to the bench. He stood and left, taking a stroll along the promenade.
Caldwell strolled over to the bench, sat down, looked to see if anyone was in sight, retrieved the paper bag, and placed it in her backpack.
46
Al-Bustani’s Mansion
n a hillside overlooking Marbella, Spain, in the Sierra Blanca section of town, Khalid stood on the veranda of his fifteen thousand square foot mansion, enjoying the
ambiance and tranquility his Spanish vacation home offered to him and his family. His mega-yacht, The Dolphin Prince, was docked only a few miles away at the marina in Puerto Banos. Quite a few celebrities, artists, wealthy jet-setters, and aristocrats spent their summers frol- icking in this sun-drenched resort town in the Andalusian Province on the Costa del Sol. The whitewashed buildings dotted this area, a remembrance of the Moorish architectural influence dating back to the invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 711.
Khalid had spent every summer of his youth at his family’s villa near here, achieving proficiency in Spanish. The mansion was built in 2005. It had two levels, ten bedrooms and bathrooms, two game rooms, an indoor and a large outdoor pool, a large gymnasium, kitchen, living room, dining room, family room, cinema room, five fireplaces, and a beautiful garden on ten acres of land.
On this day, Khalid had brought two of his three wives to spend
all of August at the mansion. Their six children, from two of the wives, ranged in age from eight to thirty. They enjoyed all kinds of activities, notably horseback rides at a nearby stable. His favorite wife, Mona, had celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday a week earlier. She had two children from him, ages two and five, who were back in his Swiss summer home in Zug. Khalid had two of his Arabian horses boarded at an Andalusian ranch owned by an old friend. He loved to ride one of the Arabian geldings whose sire was Falcon Dancer.
The temperature rose to a comfortable eighty five degrees, and the mild wind came from the northeast. The refreshing, sweet aroma from the jasmine trees had a calming effect as it blew onto the veranda and filtered into the large living room.
Khalid picked up his secure smartphone and called. “Hello, Iron Fist here,” Dawkins answered.
“I need someone to take care of a little business for me. My friend lives in Falls Church, Virginia. He needs to leave this world.”
“Where and When?” Dawkins asked.
“He’ll be traveling south on Highway 95 on August 28 for a birthday party, somewhere near Fredericksburg, Virginia. I’ll provide you more details soon.” Khalid then hung up.
Sitting down on a large couch upholstered in leopard skins were three men, all dressed casually. They were all flag officers of the Saudi Army, Navy, and Air Force. His chief asset, Colonel Al-Gosaibi, sat near the fireplace. Silence permeated the room for several seconds while their eyes were all glued to Khalid’s face as he spoke in Arabic, “Within the next seven weeks another major event will devas- tate the Great Satan – we will no longer tolerate the West’s exploita- tion of our oil resources or culture. Nor will we ever tolerate their obsession with any future occupations of Muslim lands. Soon, we will begin a plan to overthrow the Royal Family, thereby eliminating their corrupt and nepotistic ways.”
Everyone responded, “Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.”
47
bdullah opened up his laptop at a table in Seattle’s Best Coffee Shop within a Borders Bookstore in Las Vegas, Nevada. He loaded his USB flash drive in the port and
started the palm vein pattern biometrics log-on at ten in the morning. He heard a ping denoting the arrival of an encrypted email from Khalid:
“Go to the Venetian Hotel’s coffee shop on Friday morning at ten- thirty. Look for a man wearing a NY Yankees baseball hat. He will hold a gold coin in his left hand. Ask him if the seat next to him is taken. He’ll say no. You say in Spanish – Muchas Gracias. He’ll reply Falcon Dancer. You’ll say Black Stallion. His authentication reply will be Casino. He is your Las Vegas lead operator. Over the next several weeks, he’ll help you survey the targets with his two Alpha team members, and get you important maps and schematics. You’ll also meet his two Bravo team members who’ll also provide you informa- tion on our other target. Keep your eyes open like the Falcon. Best regards, Falcon Dancer.”
Abdullah sent a reply to Falcon Dancer. “Confirmed, Black Stallion.”
Beltermann took a sip of his coffee at the Starbucks Coffee Shop in Houston’s Galleria. He looked at his cellphone which read twelve o’clock in the afternoon, August 3, opened up his laptop, placed his USB flash drive in the port, and activated his log-on with his live palm vein pattern biometrics in real time to match the template. He heard a ping and clicked on the encrypted email:
“Go to the Deerbrook Mall on Friday at 10:00 am and get a cup of coffee at Borders. Look for a man wearing a U of Texas baseball hat. He’ll hold his eyeglasses in his right hand. Ask him if you can sit down at his table. He’ll say – only if you’re a Longhorn fan. You’ll reply Watchmaker. He’ll answer with his code:
Cowboy. He’s your lead operator in Houston. Over the next several weeks, he’ll help you survey our two targets. He has two teams, Charlie and Delta. Keep your eyes open like the Falcon. Best Regards, Falcon Dancer.”
Beltermann sent a reply to Falcon Dancer. “Confirmed, Watchmaker.”
National Security Agency, Ft. Meade, MD
Subject: EYES ONLY – TOP SECRET!
TO: Directors Campbell; Sullivan; Geiger; and Secretary of Homeland Security Lucas.
The NSA, the computer engineering manager, keyed in the message on his computer screen:
“Captured the I.P. address of Abdullah’s and Khalid’s laptop computers. Activated backdoor operations. A few minutes later, we received Beltermann’s and Khalid’s biometrics templates, their key encryption software, and are now decoding the encryption. Will send you the completed intercepts within the next ten to twenty minutes.”
McLean, Virginia
Geiger, Lucas, Campbell, Sullivan and t staff were at the National Counterintelligence Center.
“We’ve identified the cities: Las Vegas and Houston,” Campbell said.
“We updated drawings of what Abdullah and Beltermann might look like without their beards,” Geiger said.
Campbell leaned forward. “GPS revealed Abdullah used his laptop at a Borders bookstore in Las Vegas, and Beltermann received his email at Starbucks in the Galleria Mall in Houston.”
“I’ve alerted the FBI’s HRT (the Hostage Rescue Team). “Homeland Security and the Department of Energy will begin
preparations. Once we get intel on the targets in those cities, we’ll be able to move in fast.”
“Steve, any luck with the Kremlin on Ryzhkov and Kupchenko?” asked Geiger.
“They claim they are rogue operators and there isn’t a trace of them anywhere,”
Campbell said.
“Sure,” countered Sullivan sarcastically.
48
yzhkov and two lab technicians he bribed, smuggled plutonium and uranium out of the nuclear power station in Novosibirsk, Siberia. The particles were packed into
lead-lined steel pipes and fastened to a trigger mechanism within each of the selected four suitcases. Each suitcase had enough fission- able plutonium and uranium when activated by a clock to generate the equivalency of more than one kiloton of TNT.
They were carefully transported by truck to Minsk, where they arrived on August 8 to an off-site location where Kupchenko’s men unloaded the truck and placed them on another vehicle on August 9 to Leipzig, Germany. They arrived at the Duppelstein factory on August 10.
Four employees tied to Kupchenko’s organized crime group received the goods that evening and worked into the early hours packing them. The suitcases were loaded into four ice chest-freezer cartons, with each carton measuring 61” L x 29” W x 35” H. Their weight was listed as two hundred twenty-five pounds, but they were each fifty-five-pounds heavier than what the carton stated on the outside. The C-4 packed into twelve ice chest-freezer cartons had been protected by lead and other materials that would throw off any
explosive detection machines. They were a part of an order calling for sixteen ice chest-freezers and ten side-by-side deluxe refrigerators measuring 36” L x 30” W x 69” H. Each weighed three hundred eight pounds and was loaded on a pallet. Then placed them on 40” x 48” pallets with the designated bill of lading and shipping manifests, loaded them onto a forty-foot ocean container, and placed them on a railcar on August 12 headed for Hamburg harbor with an arrival of August 13. Their ultimate designation on the documentation listed Schultz Furniture and Appliance Store in New Orleans, LA.
49
Banque Matthias Reiter
acobson and Scharz approached the entrance to the entrance to the building at 6:00 pm on August 10. “Please slip your IDs through the slot,” said the security supervisor in French.”
Their IDs listed them as employees of Berthier Les Services de Conciergerie. After reviewing their IDs, he opened the front door to let them enter, and gave their IDs back.
“Your manager said you replaced Pierre and Dominick. Where did they go?”
“They were transferred to one of the watch companies in Bienne.” They walked down the hall and picked up some janitorial supplies, a vacuum cleaner, a small ladder, dusting cloths, and a cart for the collection of waste material. They worked their way up to the fifth-floor via the service elevator and entered Reiter’s office. Jacobson first installed a key logger, then he stood on the ladder and mounted a covert video camera with an audio recorder inside a recessed section of the vent in the ceiling. It had a clear view of Reiter’s desk and computer. He also managed to place another covert video camera in a vent in the corner that faced Reiter when he sat in his
chair. Just as Jacobson climbed down from the ladder, they heard someone walking down the hall. They started to empty the trash into a bag connected to the cleaning cart. They closed the door and locked Reiter’s office.
They saw the bank security supervisor wave his hand, walk down the hall and push the elevator button. Jacobson and Scharz continued to clean the remaining offices and left at eight-thirty.
Two Days Later
Scharz and Jacobson re-entered Reiter’s office. Jacobson powered up Reiter’s desktop computer. The computer screen asked for a pass- word, and he keyed in Matterhorn 55. The desktop icons appeared. He clicked on programs and scrolled down until he reached BMR client accounts and clicked. A file listing of private numbered accounts came up, the first three letters BMR, seven numbers, the JR/1 designation of wealth manager who manages the account at that bank office. Then up came activities, balances, and dates in Swiss francs, and in parentheses appeared the word File plus a number symbol and the number.
A review of the folder showed that Reiter apparently had respon- sibility for 250 private numbered accounts with total assets of two billion US dollars. He had ten assistants who managed the majority of the accounts, leaving Reiter to personally handle fifty, with total assets of seven hundred fifty million US dollars. The bank’s total revenues exceeded over thirty billion dollars.
Jacobson downloaded the information onto the flash drive. He removed the video camera and audio recorder from the vent. Then they cleaned the rooms and left the bank one hour later.
50
ullivan and Lucas sat in box seats two rows behind first base at the Orioles Park at Camden Yards. The game, featuring the Oakland Athletics against the Baltimore Orioles, started
at 7:05 pm. Four members of their security detail sat behind them. Another security detail was one hundred feet behind their box seats. The teams were part of the Agency’s Special Activities Division.
Director Sullivan had spent the last twenty-nine years with the Agency. Lucas developed a friendship with Sullivan in 2002 when Lucas became the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, after retiring from the Pentagon, as the Director of the Defense Intelli- gence Agency.
The temperature was enjoyable for the start of the night game, seventy five degrees. In the top of the fourth inning, the Athletics’ Landon Powell hit a home run. “Thatta boy,” said Lucas. He gave Sullivan a jab at his right arm. “Maybe the Athletics will win this game.”
Sullivan chuckled. “We’ll have to see, won’t we?”
Lucas’s secure smartphone vibrated. He pulled it out from his pants pocket. “Hello.”
A few seconds later. “Sure. I’ll tell Mom you’ll be home next week.
I’ll call you a little later.” “Must be your son.”
“He graduates next year from North Carolina and still hasn’t made up his mind what he wants to do.”
Sullivan said, “You shouldn’t worry, he’ll figure it out one of these days.”
“I wanted him to take ROTC and become an officer like your son Ryan, but he told me he has no interest in fighting stupid wars.” He looked at Sullivan and placed his hand on his shoulder. “I know how proud you were of him.”
Sullivan nodded. “There’s not a day that goes
by without thinking about him. It’s been four years since Ryan, and his teammates were killed by an IED in Anbar Province.” He tensed up. “IEDs killed over 1,000 American soldiers and wounded over 13,000 because we sent them into combat with unprotected Humvees. My son was one of them. One of the gutsy things Secretary Helms demanded when he took office was the production of the Mine Ambush Protected Trucks (MRAPs) in 2007. But the invasion and occupation of Iraq will go down as one of the dumbest foreign policy decisions ever made by an American President and his administration.”
“Bill, you’re wrong. We had to get rid of Saddam because he threatened the flow of oil throughout the Persian Gulf, and stability in the region.”
Sullivan rolled his eyes and shrugged his shoulders. “Give me a break. You know our intelligence assessments proved Saddam had no ties to Al-Qaeda or possessed nuclear weapons. The administration fabricated the intelligence and perpetuated this propaganda so the mainstream media would buy into it and sell it to the American people. Their actions became a game changer after they occupied the country and dismantled the government’s ministries and military. It caused the resurrection of Iran, the leader of terror in the world. Besides Iran, the real winners were China and Putin’s Russian Federation.”
Lucas motioned with his right hand, “I agree with you on one point-Saddam had no links to Al-Qaeda, but the administration