by Andrew Watts
Chase looked at his GPS and then back at his watch. He had time.
He took off his pack and set it in the dirt, then looked through the thermal binoculars again. Nothing. He lay in wait for almost an hour before he finally saw what he came for.
A figure left the first building and walked in his direction. No one else was in sight. Chase waited fifteen minutes as the lone man, who would be in plain sight if any security were to look that way, made his way towards him. Chase hoped to God that this was legit.
Finally, when the man was close enough to the rendezvous spot, Chase spoke. “Hello?”
“Hello?” a voice said in English. It was dark. Hard to see his face.
Chase stood up, still holding his weapon. “Are you here to meet someone?”
The man walked closer.
“Yes. I was told that you could help me. I was told to tell you that my name is Satoshi.”
*****
At a secluded, rocky shoreline of Abu Musa, Chase and Satoshi listened as the buzz of an outboard motor grew louder. Chase saw the narrow twenty-foot fishing boat pull up to the dock. A skinny dark-skinned boy waved.
“What’s your name?” called Chase.
“Timmy.”
“Timmy, huh?”
“Mr. Elliot said you pay me first.”
Chase reached into his backpack and pulled out an envelope. He threw it to the kid. Timmy counted it. Five hundred US dollars. The kid said, “Okay, mister, you and your friend, get in the boat.”
They sat on wobbly plastic seats that faced backward, toward the driver of the boat. Timmy cranked up the power and the bow moved up out of the water, then settled back down. Chase remained on guard, eying Satoshi, who looked scared. He didn’t blame him.
The island of Abu Musa grew smaller behind them.
Chapter 11
Al Dhafra Air Base, UAE
Three Weeks Later
“Thanks for coming. Please, have a seat.”
Chase thought Elliot’s tone was quite formal compared to the way they had been speaking to each other lately. Their relationship, while always professional, had grown more and more comfortable as Chase had proven his worth. Now, Elliot had the look of a father about to give his son a stern lecture.
“What’s wrong?” Chase said as he sat in the chair across from Elliot’s desk. They were in a small office in the same building as the Tactical Operations Center, on Al Dhafra Air Base. Chase had been working on the post-Abu Musa analysis for the past few weeks.
“I need to let you know something. It’s about Satoshi.”
“What is it?”
“He’s not really Satoshi.”
“I thought we had established that. No surprise. That’s not his real name, right?”
“You misunderstand. I have reason to believe that the man who you recovered from Abu Musa is not doing what he agreed to do.”
Chase’s eyes narrowed.
Elliot and his team had been working with Satoshi to remove any illicit code that had been placed in the Dubai Financial Exchange’s bitcoin interface by the Abu Musa operation. Interviews with Satoshi confirmed that Jinshan had indeed set up an elaborate operation to artificially control the value of the bitcoin-backed currency. He intended to accomplish this via malicious code and a unique hardware connection to the underwater communications cables.
Waleed and Elliot had set the operation up almost as soon as Satoshi had arrived in Dubai. Once Satoshi agreed to remove the malicious programs hidden in the Dubai Financial Exchange, Waleed and Elliot had gone to work on a joint operation to get Satoshi daily access to its computers. It had taken a lot of hard work, but they had executed it flawlessly.
Each day, Satoshi’s software fixes were uploaded to NSA laptops and taken to a building adjacent to the Dubai Financial Exchange. There, Elliot’s NSA contacts had helped set up a long-range Wi-Fi connection to the computers of several employees in the building. They infected these computers with a worm that allowed Satoshi to anonymously edit the trading programs. While their computers weren’t directly connected to any of the servers that handled the bitcoin-backed currency exchange, they didn’t need to be.
Each night, when the employees who used the infected computers had gone home, the NSA’s worm would start their computers up. It would send out electronic signals in any form that the host computer was capable of. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, NFC. It would spread to other computers that were in range, forming a larger network of infected computers. Eventually, some of these computers became connected to external drives and hardware. On and on the spread of the virus went, until three weeks into the operation, they hit gold. One of the NSA-infected computers linked up to the trading server software. This triggered the network of computers to scan and transfer the information that Satoshi needed.
Several of these server-to-external-hardware connections were necessary before Satoshi could begin his work. This week, he had told Elliot, he was confident that his updates would start affecting the system. He had made two changes at Elliot’s request. First, Satoshi had destroyed any of the Abu Musa code, which would negate Jinshan’s ability to anonymously manipulate the value of the bitcoin-based currency. Second, he had implanted software that would allow the CIA to monitor transaction activity.
Waleed and Elliot had set up a secure workspace for Satoshi at the Burj Al Arab hotel. This also sweetened the pot for Satoshi’s compliance. The NSA and CIA teams conducted all of their interactions with him in his hotel room. All the software fixes Satoshi was making to the Dubai Bitcoin Exchange were evaluated first by the NSA and CIA teams before being uploaded to the system. Satoshi had argued that this would greatly slow the operation down, but Elliot would not budge on this security measure.
Satoshi was essentially a prisoner at the hotel, though as prisons went, a room at one of the world’s most luxurious hotels was about as good as it got. For his own safety and the security of the operation, Satoshi was confined to his room. Elliot had several members of the CIA’s security team guarding him closely. Satoshi wasn’t allowed to communicate with anyone unless Elliot approved it.
Jinshan had flown back to China. None of the bitcoin plot had been made public, but there was some back-channel communication between the US, the UAE, and the Chinese that made it clear Jinshan was no longer welcome in either nation. Strangely, there had not been any response from the Chinese government. Not even a denial.
Waleed had not heard from Gorji since Satoshi had been extracted from Abu Musa. He, too, was strangely quiet. All of Waleed’s attempts to contact Gorji and get the rest of the list had failed.
Chase said, “What isn’t Satoshi doing?”
“Well, that’s the funny thing. It appears as though our man Satoshi is not actually trying to remove code. He’s trying to activate it. He keeps complaining that he needs live access to the servers, and that this secure, limited-access setup we’ve established is making it very difficult for him. Well, it’s time I laid my cards out for you, Chase.”
“Sir?”
“I never fully bought into Satoshi.”
“What do you mean?”
“When something is too good to be true, it probably is.”
“You think Satoshi was some sort of Trojan horse?”
Elliot said, “Gorji comes to us with partial truths—your brother being on the list, a leak in Dubai Station—he establishes credibility, then follows that up with a problem that we can solve. It’s classic tradecraft. But this ain’t my first rodeo. So I placed safeguards on our side.”
“Safeguards?”
“I could have given Satoshi access to the Dubai Financial Exchange. Actually, Waleed wanted me to. But that would have been exactly what the Iranians were asking for.”
“But Gorji? I mean, he’s a good guy, right?”
“Maybe. The truth is, I don’t really know. But I do know that he came to us with a problem and asked us to take a certain action to solve it. He told us that the Dubai Financial Exchange was part of the Abu Musa Ope
ration. The only way to fix it was to get Satoshi out of Abu Musa and let him go to town hacking away at the secure code in the exchange servers. Chase, let me ask you, how in the hell did Gorji get Satoshi to just walk out of those secure buildings on Abu Musa?”
“He said he had a contact inside.”
“But he also said that the Abu Musa operation was run by Jinshan’s company, right? And that Pakvar was growing loyal to Jinshan.”
“Something like that.”
“So Satoshi’s been enslaved by Pakvar and Jinshan on Abu Musa for years, right? Then how the hell does Gorji get him off there so easily?”
“I don’t know.” Chase realized that it did seem pretty odd.
Elliot said, “One possibility would be that Jinshan, or whoever is pulling the strings, wanted us to get Satoshi over here. In that scenario, either Gorji is one of them, or he is being played by them. Either way, Satoshi—or whoever you took home from Abu Musa—is not really here to help us debug the Dubai Financial Exchange.”
Chase rolled his eyes. “Well, why send someone at all?”
“I don’t know that either. Maybe their undersea cable connection isn’t working out. Maybe they have other plans that we don’t even know about with the bitcoin currency. But the bottom line is, this character who we’ve been calling Satoshi is not the real Satoshi.”
“So we’ve been giving him access to—”
“No. We haven’t. I’ve had the NSA clean up any malicious code in the bitcoin section of the Dubai Financial Exchange servers. Waleed helped me speak with the Emiratis and got us access. In exchange for our covert ability to monitor transactions, of course.”
“How did they grant you that?”
“Because it would look pretty bad if the Dubai Financial Exchange collapsed in scandal. We allow them to save face, we ensure there is no funny business going on with manipulation of valuations, and we get to track transactional data. Without turning off the entire bitcoin backed currency transition, it’s about the best we could hope for. I’ve also had the NSA evaluate every upload Satoshi has asked us to make.”
Chase nodded. “So you’ve been playing him for the last month?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve been playing me.”
“Need to know. You know how it is, son.”
“I understand. Find anything out?”
“He’s not trying to help us, that’s for sure.”
“Why are you still having him work on it?”
“Espionage 201. Follow the rabbit hole. I want to see where it goes. That’s how the game is played. I want Jinshan and Satoshi to think everything is just fine. Let them keep placing money in the pot until the last card. Until I have the upper hand.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“A few days ago, we allowed Satoshi outside Internet access. He saved a draft of an email. It was just a friendly hello email to someone in his family. But he never sent it. Yesterday, we checked his email account. It had been read by him.”
“I’m not following.”
“We didn’t allow him access to the Internet yesterday. That means someone else accessed his email and read his draft. He was using tradecraft, so that there would be no other source for us to look into.”
“What was he trying to communicate?”
“I’m not sure, but I have a guess.”
“What?”
“I am guessing that he said something to the effect of: ‘I’ve made my changes to the program, so it should be working now.’”
“What’s the next step?”
“We’re hoping that Jinshan will try something and it will reveal his participation. I don’t—”
The phone rang. Elliot picked it up. “Jackson.” He listened to the person on the other end speak. “Christ. I’ll be right there.” He hung up the phone.
Elliot said, “Come on. We are needed in the TOC. This is the second reason I needed to speak with you today.”
“What happened?”
“I’ll explain as we walk. I heard from Lisa Parker.”
*****
Chase looked around the Tactical Operations Center. He counted ten people. That was twice the usual number, and all of their eyes were glued to the same screen. Elliot was there, looking pissed off.
There were over a dozen flat-screens on the front wall. Some of them were tactical displays showing various contacts of interest in the operating area. Other screens showed rows of information concerning reconnaissance and other air missions that would be checking in and the times they were expected.
Several of the monitors were the actual video feeds from these surveillance aircraft. Drones and manned aircraft alike linked secure data down to the TOC. But today, people only cared about one of these screens.
Underneath this particular screen was a bright red digital display that said SHORTSTOP 23. That was the call sign of the US Air Force RQ-180 drone that was transmitting the video feed from several miles up.
The screen showed a truck blocking a highway. Three black cars were stopped in front of it. There were bodies strewn about the road, and a firefight was in progress.
“You see that?” Elliot said.
“See what?” Chase replied.
“Zoom out.” He looked around for the person controlling the drone. “Zoom out!”
An Air Force first lieutenant sitting in front of a mass of computer screens and joysticks clicked a few buttons. The screen flashed and then showed a wider, more distant view of the scene. Chase could see a beach to the south and a naval base with ships to the southeast. There was an airport over to the west. Bandar Abbas. Home to Iran’s largest naval base, it was positioned just north of the Strait of Hormuz.
With the view zoomed out, everyone could see another truck—a troop transport by the look of it—barreling down the highway, toward the firefight.
“This is going to get worse. I counted three heat signatures still in that truck that started the shooting.”
Chase leaned over to Elliot and whispered, “So what did Lisa’s email say?”
Elliot kept clenching and unclenching his jaw. “Very little. Just that the ‘operation’ was on. And then she listed these GPS coordinates written down below with this time and date.” He nodded up at the screen, implying that the coordinates were the same location the drone was observing. “I came over here to make sure that we had surveillance coverage of the location and told the duty officer to let me know if she saw anything suspicious. The thing is, Lisa sent that message to me over unclassified email. It was addressed to me and a few of the higher-ups in Langley. Like she wanted it to be picked up by outside sources.”
Lisa hadn’t been heard from in several weeks.
Until now.
Until the email that Elliot had just received. It implied that she was part of a CIA operation near Bandar Abbas. A few weeks ago, she had saved Chase and Waleed from getting shot by Pakvar and company in the Dubai Mall.
Days later, she had headed off to Langley for official business. At least, that was what Chase had been told. She was there when they debriefed the Dubai Mall incident with Elliot. She claimed that she was there to meet another asset when she heard the gunfire, that it was a coincidence that she was there at all. In the aftermath of that incident, with the amount of activity going on, this explanation had seemed reasonable to Chase. Now he felt like a fool.
Going over the events with Elliot, a different story became clear. When Chase arrived back from Abu Musa, he finally had time to sit down with Elliot and go over everything in detail. Lisa had not, in fact, been cleared by the counterespionage team, like she had told Chase. She was being sent back to Langley because the counterespionage team had recommended to Elliot that she be reassigned. Apparently, she’d had several inconclusive answers on her polygraph. She would perform administrative duty at Langley while the investigation proceeded.
But Lisa Parker had never shown up at Langley. Airport footage showed her getting off her flight at LAX, which seemed
normal. The subsequent footage showing her as she walked out of the airport—and not onto her connecting flight—was decidedly abnormal. That was the last time anyone at the CIA had heard from Lisa Parker. Until yesterday, when Elliot received his cryptic email.
So why had she lied to Chase about being cleared by the counterespionage team? Was she the leak in Dubai Station? Chase didn’t want to believe that. He had been close to her over the past few months. He didn’t want to think that she was capable of this. Between his brother and her, he wasn’t sure what to think anymore.
Chase had come clean to Elliot and let him know that he had talked to Lisa about David being on the list, not realizing that Lisa hadn’t been cleared. Elliot had been disappointed, but he’d understood the conflict. Elliot had read Chase the riot act and told him to consider that his mulligan.
David, too, was still missing.
Elliot had reported David Manning’s inclusion on the list up through the CIA’s chain of command. But having come from an Iranian source, the information was deemed only somewhat reliable. Elliot was in the process of evaluating the claim with investigators near Washington, D.C.
Then came Victoria Manning’s voice mail to Chase, letting him know that David had gone missing from outside his home in Northern Virginia. Police said that it looked like a mugging or kidnapping. Pizza boxes were spilled outside his parked car, its door left open. Elliot felt awful for not acting sooner. Chase blamed himself. He realized that David had gone missing over three weeks ago now. He couldn’t believe that it had been that long.
“Elliot?” the duty officer, phone to her ear, called over to him. “We’ve confirmed that the passengers in the car are Ahmad Gorji and his wife. They were attending a ceremony at the Bandar Abbas Naval Base.”
Elliot shook his head. He whispered, “Son of a bitch. This is an assassination. She’s making it look like the CIA is assassinating Gorji.”