by K. D. Lamb
“Oh, really? Where will you go?”
“Haven’t decided yet, but definitely somewhere warm. This past winter was brutal in Virginia. Even though we’re almost through spring, I’m sick of the cold. I’m envisioning a private beach, never-ending supply of gin, and seafood of every type and flavor.”
“Sounds great! Maybe I will join you—ha, ha!” Agent Zimmerman sat back in his seat and relaxed. This was going well. Since her mind was on personal matters, she would probably not even notice the ever-so-slight tension in his voice.
“What can I do for you, Zim?”
This was even better than he hoped. She had used the pet name she had casually started calling him during a very long and bloody investigation in Lebanon a few years back.
He cleared his throat. “I’m calling with a small personal favor. I’m working on a drug investigation and have come across an American name. I’m wondering if you would run the name through your databases and let me know if she’s on the up-and-up?”
“Sounds intriguing. Is she an informant or a principal?”
“She came to us as an informant, but I suspect she’s actually a key part of the operation.”
“And what’s the location of the investigation?”
“I don’t know yet. We think somewhere in the Middle East … or possibly Turkey or Egypt. It involves the worldwide distribution of large amounts of heroin. The transshipment appears to be via the Mediterranean Sea.”
Candace assumed a bored toned. “Doesn’t sound like you have much info yet. How do you know it’s even true?”
Agent Zimmerman was feeling quite cocky now. “We’ve seen the stuff. The American girl gave us a sample brick. It’s high quality. We’ve had it analyzed, and it’s cut with cow’s blood. Apparently, the end result is a more pliant textured product. It’s easier to cut and results in less wastage. This is incredible stuff that’s about to hit the international market … including the U.S.”
What’s the name of the girl?”
“Candace, do I have your word this is just between you and me?”
She feigned a reluctant tone, “Agreed … for now … or until it becomes a national security issue.”
He paused and thought, Well, here goes.
“Kendall Radcliffe.”
Agent Lawrence’s antenna hummed. She had heard that name recently … but where? “Hmm! Can’t say that I’ve ever run across her name before. Do you know which state she’s from?”
“No. I haven’t met her. A low-level investigator came across her.”
“I’ll do a quick check on her, Zim, and will call you back in an hour or so. Okay?”
“Sounds great! Talk to you then. Bye.”
He planned to be far away from his phone when she called back—if she even called back. Agent Zimmerman figured his call would trigger a massive wave of activity within the American intelligence community. They would have tons of questions for him, and he was not about to supply any answers. In fact, he planned to avoid any further communication with his American counterparts in the near future. He hoped Rashid’s operation would be well into play by the time the American intelligence mobilized for all-out war. They would be so far behind in gathering the facts that it would be over before they could interfere. Unfortunately, the collateral damage might not be so good for the Orion people, but the Mossad operatives would at least do their best to rescue them.
Agent Zimmerman was fairly confident that the two Orion executives would be saved. Hopefully, the sick one would survive his illness. But, in the agent’s eyes, it would work better if Kendall Radcliffe didn’t survive. It would be easier to let her involvement die with her. Questions would go unanswered, and the Mossad and Israel could offer any explanation that suited their purposes. She would be unable to refute anything. Just for good measure, they could even add fifty thousand dollars to her bank account at the end and call it a “down payment” from Shazeb. It would surely seal her fate of guilt by implication.
The first wire transfer had been a really stupid move on their part, Zimmerman thought. This time they would make sure the wire transfer began and ended in Switzerland. There would be no tie to Israel. It would look like she was in cahoots with the Afghanistan drug suppliers and distributors. If America put up a fuss, the Mossad would plant a story in the West that Kendall died at the hands of the American intelligence community during rendition. That would cause such an uproar in the U.S. that Israel would be left to its own devices. Granted, rendition didn’t usually happen to U.S. citizens when at home in the U.S., but that was just a technicality. If enough innuendo and disinformation hit the press, the public would eat it up and not notice the inconsistencies.
Zimmerman sat back at his desk at home and smiled. Yes, he thought, the phone call had gone well. And he had high hopes for the remainder of the operation.
CIA Agent Candace Lawrence opened the national intelligence database and ran the name “Kendall Radcliffe.” That triggered an internal alert that had her phone ringing in two minutes flat. As the name and background popped onto her screen, she realized where she had heard that name: in association with the two missing Orion Premier Net Services executives. The proverbial fat was about to hit the fire.
She picked up her phone and answered in the most officious tone she could muster: “Agent Lawrence.”
The call was from a conference room within the Pentagon where a joint meeting of various agents of the NSA, FBI, Secret Service, and Defense Department were present.
The caller identified himself and those present. “Agent Lawrence, you just ran Kendall Radcliffe’s name through the system. Do you have information on the missing people or Radcliffe specifically?”
Agent Lawrence thought fast. It was too late to invent lies at this point. She would surely get caught up in the inaccuracies that were bound to result. No, she reckoned. She couldn’t keep the Mossad phone call from this group. Knowledge was power, and she hated imparting her information before she could work it up.
“Agent Lawrence, are you there?” an irritated voice sounded.
“Yes, Sir. I—uh—received a call a few minutes ago from Israeli intelligence inquiring about Radcliffe’s background.”
“I see. Was this agent a Mossad Agent?”
Damn, she thought. She was not going to be able to push anything into the grey area. It was going to be all the facts up front … now.
“Yes. It was Benjamin Zimmerman.”
At the news, there was a murmur of voices in the background. This was no low level agent. Director Zimmerman was well known within the upper echelons of the international intelligence community as a son-of-a-bitch in the Mossad. In fact, if one needed to contact the Mossad to seek assistance or cooperation, it was only after first securing the approval of the director. He was a hard man to get close to. He trusted no one outside the Mossad and only rarely shared bits of information—never the entire piece. How interesting that the tables were turned and it was he that now requested information.
“Why you, Agent Lawrence? Do you know him well?”
“We have worked on some of the same investigations … obviously from different angles … over the past several years.”
There was discussion around the table about anyone else having a professional relationship with the Mossad or Zimmerman. A few heads at the table had worked with Zimmerman on one or more occasions as he rose through the Mossad leadership ranks. But it was decided they needed to minimize the interest of the U.S. intelligence community for the time being, while very little info was fed to Zimmerman. In fact, he would be getting basically public info.
“Agent Lawrence?”
“Yes?”
“What else did he reveal in his conversation?”
“He said they were working on a large scale investigation involving heroin manufacture and distribution.”
“Where?”
“His exact words were somewhere in the Middle East … possibly Turkey or Egypt with transshipments via the Mediterranea
n Sea.”
The meeting of intelligence experts confabbed and a faceless voice finally summed it up. “We know that Kendall Radcliffe went missing on a chartered flight that also involved the two top executives at Orion Premier Net Services, Paul Fields and Glenn Carson. What do the disappearances have to do with a major, possibly Middle East, drug investigation and Israel? And even as important, what is Radcliffe’s role? She received $10,000 recently via wire transfer from an Israeli offshore corporate banking account, most likely the Mossad. How could the wire transfer trail be so transparent? Why was it so sloppy? Did they want us to find it? Possibly. But why?”
Again, many theories were put forth. It was finally decided that Agent Lawrence needed to be brought into the inner circle of the investigation. She would begin by calling Mossad Director Zimmerman. She would reveal that Radcliffe worked for a high-tech company in the Pacific Northwest as the director of operations. That she had no criminal history, and she appeared to be an ordinary American citizen. If the Mossad director pressed for more info or expressed irritation that she was holding back, she could reveal the company, its business, and the city in which it was headquartered.
The committee rang off, after receiving Agent Lawrence’s assurance that she would send a scrambled coded email “For Your Eyes Only” providing the details of the conversation.
As the meeting attendees from the various U.S. intelligence agencies filed out of the secure conference room venue at the Pentagon, three agents from the NSA stayed behind. Two of the members had not offered any comment during the meeting of the larger group. They sat amongst the others and observed, with technical administrative functions only. As agreed upon prior to the meeting, two of the smaller group (Alex and Ping) were secretly recording an audio of the meeting. The other individual, Frank Reynolds, had arrived early and installed several hidden video cameras that were feeding everything to a private computer not associated with the massive U.S. intelligence network.
They now sat at one end of the large conference room. None of them were taking notes.
“What is Prophecy telling us, Alex?”
“There is nothing unusual happening anywhere, except at the Orion offices … which is to be expected. Even there, they don’t have a clue what’s happened to their people.”
“Prophecy has been a godsend for us,” Frank stated. “But I can’t help wonder if it isn’t somehow related to the Orion people’s disappearances.”
Alex nodded. “Do you think it’s time we reveal Prophecy’s existence?”
Both Ping and Frank vehemently countered at the same time, “No way!”
Frank, the leader of the group, was the elder of the three and a former fraternity brother and good friend of Paul Fields. He was emphatic: “We can never reveal Orion’s secret technical tool to our fellow agents or even to anyone … ever! You both know that. This would not only be on our shoulders … in the form of treason and spying, but it would turn the domestic and international intelligence communities on their collective ears. No one would trust anyone. The mere existence of such a technical phenomenon would cause other countries to seek the like, just knowing that it was possible. The bottom line is that a lot of people would go to jail, starting with us. More would lose their jobs, and a very large U.S. company—a major asset—would go out of business, just like that.”
Ping was the quiet one of the trio. His job was to make sure the data feeds coming from Orion were clean, and to modify the code to establish new feeds outward. He nodded and said, “It could also turn country against country and companies against companies.”
Alex, the youngest of the three, was frustrated, and threw up his hands. “I can’t believe there isn’t a way to use Prophecy to locate the Orion people. Do we know who at Orion wrote the code for Prophecy? If so, we could enlist their help!”
Frank Reynolds shook his head. “Nope. That was the deal I made with Paul Fields at the very beginning. In exchange for getting access to and being able to use Prophecy for U.S. investigations, we were not to know anything about its development … or developer. He has to be one smart bastard, though! I would love to meet him … or her.”
Ping, the brilliant mind of the group, was curious. “Does the Prophecy developer know about us having knowledge of and using Prophecy?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“What was its original purpose?”
“You’re asking that now?”
“Well, it might help us to understand its technical capacity.”
Frank was wired. “Oh, how I wish I had asked Paul Fields more questions way back when. I was just so excited that I had a tool that could quickly get intelligence answers. I reasoned that it would not hurt anyone … just the bad guys. I was too busy climbing the proverbial ladder, looking for any way I could to further my NSA career.”
Alex laughed. “Well, it worked! You’re only a level below a cabinet position, and you have the ear of the State Department. You are well thought of, and people trust your judgment.”
Ping snickered at the irony that Frank’s judgment or intuition was in reality due mostly to Prophecy.
Agent Reynolds looked at his team. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Ping, you make sure the feeds are open and establish any new ones … like to Israel … so we can monitor their waves. Then help Alex analyze the data for any reference to Middle East drug investigations or the Orion people. Call me on your burned phones if you find anything.”
The men left the room after removing their various planted devices.
Agent Reynolds sat in his office and contemplated the events of the day. He knew that he didn’t need to issue warnings to his two young NSA agents. They were both loyal and beholden to him for their jobs. He had basically rescued them from obscurity or at the very least, from the back room of some institution or corporation that promised to be the most boring job in the world. He had brought Alex on board when Prophecy was first up and running. He realized he needed someone to analyze the info coming in. He had made Alex believe that Prophecy was a secret tool he had been commissioned to develop for the nation’s intelligence community. After a few years, Alex had figured out that no one else used it. He had also learned that Frank and Paul Fields were best buddies. It didn’t take much intelligence to put two and two together.
Ping, on the other hand, was rescued from his own self-destructive tendencies. He had first come to Frank’s attention as a possible intern shortly after Frank was introduced to Prophecy. Ping was a brilliant math and science student at Stanford University. He had a dark side, though. He had been adopted at birth and could not reconcile that his mother had given him up. He partied hard and managed to rack up a couple of misdemeanor charges involving alcohol—Minor in Possession and a DUI—before Agent Reynolds learned of him and plucked him from his destructive pathway. Frank gave him a purpose and offered him a new life doing what he liked best: intelligence work that involved high-tech tools. Prophecy was more than Ping could ever have hoped for. He was excited to come to work each day, and couldn’t wait to learn more about the individuals and companies under investigation. It helped him forget about his personal issues. For the time being, he was content to have relocated from Stanford, California, to the Virginia suburbs.
Reynolds wondered what Paul and Orion used Prophecy for. Since Orion seemed to always come out ahead of its competition, he surmised that Prophecy was being used to check out the competition’s latest technical advancements. He and Paul never discussed Prophecy. It was a done deal that worked well, and nothing more needed to be said. The computer and network to which the data was streamed was not housed in any of the nation’s intelligence offices. It was situated in a large fortified commercial warehouse along Chesapeake Bay. The exterior of the building was one of marked disrepair, including tons of rust and dented exterior walls. Any attempts at determining ownership met with overlapping holding companies and trusts.
With the help of Ping, it had been easy to set up the companies and purchase the bui
lding by diverting money during a deliberate power surge in the midst of a multi-agency transfer of funds. In the ensuing internal investigation, chaos reigned, and the political party in power buried the story about the missing funds to save face. Needless to say, since then Agent Reynolds was a believer in big government.
He was quite concerned about his frat buddy and good friend, Paul Fields. Where was he? How could he just drop off the radar? Why didn’t any of the cell phones ping from a tower close by? Worse, what if the disappearances related to Prophecy? The horror of that info getting out was too much to contemplate. On the other hand, if no one else knew about Frank’s involvement, and the Orion people turned up dead, then the secret would be buried with them. Frank might lose his technical ace if the data link unexpectedly closed up, that is, if Prophecy stopped working. It wouldn’t be the worst thing that happened. But it might affect his career going forward. He still had another ten years before retiring.
Agent Reynolds was weary from his scattered thoughts replaying different scenarios. He knew he was overthinking the situation. It was going to have to play out on its own. He could only hope that Prophecy revealed more details. But the failing of Prophecy was that he didn’t know where to direct the data streaming … to or from. He was anxious to get more answers but even more fearful of what might be revealed.
CIA Agent Candace Lawrence hung up the phone and sat back. She thought it very odd that her phone call had gone to voice mail. She expected Mossad Director Ben Zimmerman to be literally waiting next to the phone for her call. But he didn’t pick up. She had an uneasy feeling that she had been played. But why? For what purpose? Well, two can play this game, she thought. She set about working on a plan to further engage Ben Zimmerman. In the meantime, she duly notified the multi-agency investigative team of the upshot of her attempted phone call. Candace desperately wanted to be part of the investigation, and she was determined to get ahead of the others, even if it meant a little underhanded dealings and withholding of essential details.