“How long did you say before you are expecting an attack?”
“Imminent, sir. Hours . . . Days.”
“I can’t unleash that much firepower over that period of time, Brooke.”
“Sir, twenty-four hours then.”
“You’re that sure?”
“Sir, just give us this day.”
“Quoting scripture won’t help your cause, Brooke.”
“It’s part of a prayer, sir. And I am praying we are still in time . . .” Brooke listened but all she heard was the president’s breathing. She closed her eyes, trying to will him to say yes over the phone. She decided to break the silence and protocol. “Jim, please . . . give us this day!”
“Director Burrell . . .”
Brooke immediately wished she hadn’t gotten that familiar with the commander in chief. She tensed for what was coming next.
“Burrell, are you still there?”
“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“The package just walked in. I’ll get back to you.”
Brooke let out a deep breath as she hung up the phone with great care. She shouldn’t have called him by his first name, not now, not under these circumstances.
Remo came in with the coffee.
Brooke nodded in appreciation and watched as he ripped open three packets of sugar and dumped them into his small coffee. She took that first sip then, switching gears, said, “So brief me on what you fellas came up with last night.”
“Brooke, the highest probabilities are one, electrical service disruption and two, Internet.”
“How far down was nukes?”
“Less than five percent.”
“Thank God. I never want to go through that again.” Brooke actually shook with the memory of the Hammer of God affair, a foiled suitcase nuke attack that fizzled on Thirtieth Street where the giant lead-lined egg now sat. “Points of attack?”
“The power grid. There are thousands of spots where you can wreak havoc, mostly localized; but there are also safety measures in place all along the wires, so it would be a quick hit but probably not too sustaining.” Kronos shrugged his shoulders.
“So why plan a power grid attack if it’s not going to give you a big yield?” Brooke asked.
“Good question. That may throw all the cards to Internet disruption,” Remo said.
“Same issue. It’s just a little bigger, that’s all,” Kronos said.
“So it doesn’t seem like you would fire a missile into an office building just to take us off the trail of a hack.”
“Brooke, what you are saying is that they must have a bigger plan. Something that has wide-spread devastation, something out of the box.”
“Look, so far they’ve been anything but stupid, so I am going to go with the big bang theory. But it makes sense to shore up the usual security on the grid and whatever is vulnerable on the Internet. So do it.”
“Brooke, I can’t do that,” Remo said.
“What do you mean? Why can’t you?”
“I mean, I don’t really work here. Who in the government is going to take my orders?”
“Sorry, I forgot. I’ll have Director Barnes sound the alarms. Write up what we want.”
Just then George came in. “You wanted to see me?”
She handed George the folded blue-jacketed subpoena. “Go see what this is all about. It’s our case against the professors who are charging profiling. If you have to, just take the tongue lashing and leave. The judge has been fair till now, but he probably can’t stem the tide.”
Chapter 38
Kevlar
“Why isn’t Miss Burrell here herself?” Judge Kelley said with just a hint of annoyance.
“Sir, Director Burrell is deeply involved in critical government business at this juncture.”
“Why is it that people in government always think the law doesn’t apply to them? Well, Mr.”—he looked down at his card—“Stover, I am not accepting this . . . In fact, my chambers, now!”
Plaintiff’s attorney, Brenda Nussbaum and government lawyer, Jules Fienberg walked towards the chambers.
“Just Agent Stover, counselors.”
Once inside the chambers, Judge Kelley motioned to a chair across from his desk. He took off his robe and hung it on a standing coat rack as he passed it. He sat down, folded his hands, and looked at Stover like a father who was about to administer corporal punishment to his seven-year-old son. “Agent Stover, I should hold Burrell in contempt, but I am not. Instead I am going to ask that you sit in this office and just think about what considering yourself above the law means to a free and open democracy. Do you have a smart phone?”
George was thrown by the question. “Er . . . yes, yes I do.”
“Good. While you sit, you might consider calling her and telling her to get down here.”
Stover was mildly shocked. This guy is really a hard ass.
“Or don’t call her. Just sit here and ponder the big picture.” Then he slid a folder in front of George. “Sit here and when you are ready, come out and tell me how she is not coming. I’ll rule from the bench.” He got up, put back on his robe, and headed for the door. “Oh, and take all the time you want. It’s going to take me twenty minutes to award the case to the professors.”
George sat, a bit confused, then he looked down at the folder; it contained all the information on the lapsed visa “students” that Brooke was trying to find out about in the first place. “Son of a bitch,” George said as he took out his iPhone and snapped a shot of every sheet.
Out in the court room, Nussbaum was concerned. “Your Honor, what’s the federal agent doing in your chambers?”
“If he listened, he may be trying to get his superior down here.”
“Can we proceed without her?”
“Certainly. I am going to ask the clerk to read your complaint into the record.”
“Is that necessary, Judge? My clients would certainly wave the right to have it re-entered,” Nussbaum said.
“Owing to the nature of this case and the possibility of reversal, I feel it’s prudent at this juncture to err on the side of caution and ensure it’s all in the record.”
Nussbaum turned from the bench and rolled her eyes as the clerk read the four-page document aloud. Two minutes in, George emerged from the chambers. The judge held up his hand to stop the clerk. “Well, Agent Stover?”
“I’m sorry. Director Burrell-Morton is completely unavailable for this proceeding.”
“After rendering this verdict I will rule on her disposition. You are free to go.”
Fienberg spoke up. “Your Honor, may I have a word with my client’s representative?”
“Yes, but not in here.” The judge waggled his fingers towards the doors at the rear of the courtroom.
Outside, Fienberg waited for the door to close. “What happened in there?”
George was about to tell him but then thought twice. Even though Fienberg was a government attorney, he was still an officer of the court. If George told him that the judge had given the government everything they wanted to catch these bastards right before reprimanding the government for attempting to do the very same thing, he might feel duty bound to report the judge. George also understood it was he who’d opened the folder; the judge might deny giving his permission. George would be liable. “I thought better of calling Brooke so I sat there and passed the time.”
“I think Nussbaum has won this one, so her appearance here wouldn’t have changed a thing. Tell her I’ll appeal any contempt rulings he makes. Not to worry.”
“I assure you, this is the last thing on her worry list.”
.G.
“Pay dirt!” George said as he unceremoniously burst into Brooke’s office.
“What happened in court?”
“You lost. We won,” George said.<
br />
“Sounds good . . . I think?”
“The judge chewed me a new one about you not showing, then ordered me into his chambers.”
“He was that upset?”
“Yes, but upset with his having to rule against you, probably . . . because he left me in there with one of the evidence folders. I just printed out these pics I took.” He handed Brooke the folder.
“Wow. All fifty-seven are here?”
“Sixty-two!”
She handed them back to him. “Okay, George, I want these destroyed.”
“Huh?”
“Still have the pictures of the dossiers on your phone?”
“Yeah . . . but . . .”
“Erase those too, but first scan the contents into text. I don’t want any court documents surviving to hang our friend the judge. He risked his career and possibly jail time to help protect this city. He deserves our protection. Keep the mug shots, but erase the forms. Only the text survives.”
“Got it. Twenty minutes tops.”
“I’ll have the team waiting to go through them,” Brooke said.
.G.
In two hours, the team was finishing up in the large conference room. Everyone had taken three dossiers and got right to searching and tapping INS databases and other TSA files.
George took the lead in presenting their findings to Brooke. “We got four likelies that fit in with the probable target percentages. First is Yusuf Boutros, studied electrical engineering in Egypt, got his masters in France. For a short time he worked at Électricité de France then in 2006 he was transferred as chief engineer of high voltage operations to their then new British subsidiary, EDF Energy. He entered Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson on a student visa seven months ago; Georgia Tech has no record of him ever attending. Checking employment database at Con Ed, a similar-looking man, Yusuf Botros, spelled differently, works as a control operator at the Ravenswood number three plant in Long Island City. We have the head of Con Ed security on the way over.”
“Wow, now here’s a guy who can play a terrorist right out of central casting . . . Get a load a that mug,” Harris said, looking at the pockmarked, straggly bearded face with cold, dead eyes.
“Make sure we don’t rattle Yusuf too early or we may lose the trail.”
“Gotcha. Next is Dequa Quraisha. He’s a real cutie. Former member of the mujahedeen, they say he was the equivalent of a general. Also holds a master’s in electrical engineering. His name rang a bell at the CIA. They suspect him of all kinds of nasty stuff against the Russians in Afghanistan during the 80s. He is a person of interest in two Al-Qaeda-claimed bombings in Amsterdam and Lagos, Nigeria.”
“Sounds smart and deadly,” Brooke said.
Harris just couldn’t help himself. “Hey, I know I’m a guest and all here, but you feds really screwed the pooch on these guys. How the hell could you let them into our country? Is anybody awake down there in Washington? . . . Hello!”
“The hand we’ve been dealt, Rolland.”
“Great. Just great. Our own government is stacking the deck against us.”
Kronos took the next one. “This guy is interesting, Waleed Maghadam. Chemical engineer but here again never reported to Rochester Institute of Technology after entering seven months ago. He could be the same man CIA has a rough sketch of as being the bomb maker for Al Han Nasuri. A high-value bull’s-eye for the US.”
“The Fifth Avenue truck and the upstate quarry?” Brooke asked.
“Highly possible. He’s got the chemical chops to make the brew that goes boom,” Kronos said.
Remo pointed to the next picture. “And now the best for last and this pays for the whole endeavor if everything else is wrong. Number four is your old friend, and guy you shot on the ricochet, Shamal. That was a hundred-to-one shot, by the way. He also came in seven months ago, but all we have on him is that he played soccer and minored in geological surveying; he was probably aiming for surveyor work at an oil company or something. We figure he was muscle.”
“That son of a bitch killed Nigel just to lure me out. If we connect him to any of these men, I want to personally nail their butts to the wall.”
“I’d have liked to put a few rounds into his cranium for Joe,” George said.
Brooke had to think for a second. Joe . . . Joe Garrison; the decapitated man on the subway that was supposed to have escaped all this with a schoolbook. “So this Shamal was also the one who pushed or forced Garrison to leave the train between the cars?”
“That’s the guy whose picture the subway eye-witnesses picked out of a stack,” George reminded the group.
“How’s Beesly doing?” Brooke said.
“Let’s go find out,” Remo said.
.G.
Remo and Brooke entered the office where they had set up Wallace Beesly with a fast computer.
“Wallace, what do you have for us on Kitman?” Brooke said.
“Oh God . . . wait till you hear.”
“No, I can’t wait . . . There’s a whole tick-tock thing going on here, Wallace.”
“Okay . . . so first Kitman Global is clean as a whistle.”
“Where’s the ‘Oh God’ part?” Brooke said.
“When I started digging into Kitman’s personal history I found something funny.”
“Wallace, what did you find?” Brooke’s impatience was starting to show.
“He’s like two different people. His high school yearbook picture has him heavier. But in recent photos he’s a string bean. Also, there must have been a typo. They have his name under his picture as Barry Kidman.”
“So lots of guys change after high school,” Remo said.
“I dunno, he seems to have gone from being large-framed to medium-framed; that’s skeletal . . . But even if I buy that, he grows up a kid in an orphanage, does his senior year of high school on a catholic scholarship, then joins the Peace Corps and winds up in Afghanistan in the 80s helping refugees. Ten years later, he comes back and suddenly he’s a financial wizard,” Beesly said.
“Is there an Afghanistan MBA program?” Remo said.
“I’ve heard enough. I’m kicking this over to FBI for a full background check. Nice work Wallace. Now, can we attach his finances so we can track them?”
“That’s the bad news.”
“Didn’t know there was bad news,” Remo said.
“The majority of his wealth is in Kevlar.”
“Wait, Kevlar, as in a bulletproof vest?” Brooke said.
“More like bomb proof. We may never get to his money.”
“How do you figure that? We are the feds, you know.”
“Kevin ‘Kev-Lar’ Lawrence. He’s a top financial transaction lawyer. Best in the biz. Makes bulletproof financial entities. Credited with inventing the Paper Safe.
“The what now?” Remo said.
“Most transaction attorneys attempt to protect assets, which have been negotiated as collateral, in big multi-billion dollar bank loans. Kevlar makes a stack of documents that lock the money up, away from judges and creditors—like it was in a safe, a safe made out of papers, a Paper Safe.”
“The courts and attorneys can’t crack paper?” George said.
“Prescott mentioned a Paper Safe, but I thought it was a generic term,” Brooke said.
“Then he started to say ‘Kev’ when I interrupted. Sorry Brooke,” George said.
“The average transaction attorney’s fee for big deals runs around two hundred k; Kevlar’s minimum fee is five hundred thousand dollars.”
Kronos whistled. “Why does he get so much ’scarole?”
“What?” Brooke’s aide, Betty, who was acting as recording secretary, writing everything down in shorthand in a steno book, asked, raising her hand.
“It’s neighborhood for money, Betty, green like escarole . . . the Italian vegetab
le. Fuggedaboutit.” Kronos waved his hand. It was futile.
Beesly picked up. “Why is his fee that high? Because all his deals held during 9/11 and again through the 2008 financial crisis when the biggest players were going belly up and the courts were attaching everything to get liquidity; all his deals were untouchable. All the islands he created to hold money were impenetrable and immune to judicial invasion.”
“Yo, I just got it. Double meaning. His papers keep the money safe; he makes safes out of paper,” Kronos said.
“Don’t mind our friend here with the 168 IQ. He’s a little slow if he doesn’t get a Ring Ding and chocolate milk every few hours.” Remo gave Kronos a slight burn.
.G.
“I sink this putt and you owe me a Delmonico steak, in Monaco,” Kevin said.
“It’ll have to wait until my G5 is out of the shop,” Jonas said as he winked and hitched his elbow at one of the other’s in the foursome. It was a joke of sorts because he actually owned a G6 private jet.
“A likely excuse . . .” Kevin waggled, then checked the distance for the tenth time. He exhaled and brought back the putter head. Suddenly, a heavy thumpeting noise rose up. Everyone on the eighteenth hole looked east as the huge helicopter flared and landed in the fairway just beyond the green. The large letters FBI on the side swung into view as the pilot rotated the craft.
“Uh, oh. Charlie, quick, use the golf cart to get away. They’re onto you,” one of his foursome laughed.
The prop wash blew Kevin’s ball further away from the cup and it rolled down the side of the elevated green. “Oh c’mon, it was a gimme,” Kevin complained as he threw down his putter.
The men watched as a woman exited the copter followed by two men. The first thing she did was remove her heels and throw them back in the bird, then she strode up the side of the green to the foursome. “Which one of you is Kevin Lawrence?”
“The green shirt,” Beesly said, pointing.
“Hey, it’s Wallace Beesly,” Charlie said to the others, and then turned to Beesly. “I lost a lot of money because of you.”
.G.
Brooke walked right up to Kevin. “Mr. Lawrence, I am Director Brooke Burrell-Morton attached to FinCEN. Sir, I need you to come with us.”
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