Hunting LeRoux

by Elaine Shannon

  Cindric and Stouch dug in. Quickly, they realized that the RX Limited pharmaceutical-slinging enterprise was the creation of the same man they were targeting. The discovery heightened the mystery of Paul LeRoux and was the first hint about the innovative way in which he was operating. What was groundbreaking was that there were only tangential links between the infrastructure of RX Limited and his other operations. They were completely stove-piped, except for LeRoux at the top. RX Limited was white-collar crime at worst. The activities Cindric and Stouch heard about in southern Africa were serious, top-tier transnational organized crime and violent crime. Usually, the criminals involved were two different species.

  That’s when intel analyst Carol Dillon discovered, by searching geek and hacker sites, yet another jarring fact about LeRoux. He was the cybersecurity specialist who had written the pioneering privacy program Encryption for the Masses—E4M.

  “A fucking cryptographer!” Cindric beamed. “He’s smart! Like my old man!”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Brown said.

  “Fuck! My old man was a cryptographer. He was the smartest man I ever met. We’re way beyond birthdays now!”

  Brown and Stouch were confused. Birthdays?

  The “birthdays” line was one of Cindric’s mantras. He murmured it when nobody was listening. It came from one of his favorite films, Clear and Present Danger. It was spoken by a CIA computer geek who was helping hero Jack Ryan, played by Harrison Ford, hack into a corrupt official’s computer. The point was, ordinary people made passwords out of their birthdays. The geek discovered that Ryan’s nemesis was a brilliant villain who had devised passwords so complex they could be cracked only with a powerful computer that threw millions of combinations at the problem.

  To Cindric, the birthdays line meant a puzzle that was extremely, delightfully challenging. When he found out that LeRoux was, among his many parts, a cryptographer, he thought about what someone had told him about his father: “Your dad used all quadrants of his brain. That doesn’t happen very often.” Cindric spent most of his life trying to be half as good at his job as his father had been. “I was chasing a ghost,” he said.

  Could LeRoux be another one of those rare human beings who could unleash his brain’s larger capacities? But entirely on the dark side? Cindric dearly hoped this was true. An investigator was only as interesting as the people he investigated. An untouchable cybervillain with an unorthodox approach would be a fabulous creature, even rarer than Viktor Bout, who was highly intelligent and a big shot but very much in the predictable twentieth-century mold.

  Milione picked up on the spark crackling around the room. Cindric could see it in his eyes, which were alive with interest.

  “We need to infiltrate him with a person,” Milione said. “Nobody has tried to infiltrate him in a clean, clear way.”

  Brown, Cindric, and Stouch murmured in agreement. Intelligence agencies used the term “assessment,” which was often based on speculation, assumption, and RUMINT, the latter meaning third-hand accounts and rumor. At worst, an assessment was a WAG—wild-ass guess. Law enforcement officials didn’t talk about assessments. The rules of criminal evidence didn’t allow for speculation, assumption, and gossip. The rules demanded hard, direct proof. Agents and cops took the rules very seriously because they knew that if they didn’t follow every one of them down to the last colon, comma, and footnote, they would lose their cases, get branded as losers, and, worst of all, get transferred to desk jobs where careers went to die.

  In the courtroom, seeing was believing. The agents had to get to someone inside LeRoux’s world. And, because the infiltrator’s credibility would be attacked by defense lawyers, the agents had to make sure LeRoux’s incriminating words and deeds were captured on video and audio.

  The problem was, unlike cartel leaders they had investigated before, LeRoux seemed to be a solo act. Was he close to anybody? Cindric and Stouch sifted through the possible insiders who might be flipped—an ex-wife? A girlfriend? Persian Cat, whoever and wherever he or she was?

  On the other side of the world, Warren Franklin, the DEA’s man in South Africa, got one of those leads that agents dream about. After accompanying Brown, Cindric, and Stouch to Botswana, Franklin returned to the U.S. embassy in Pretoria and ran a routine name check on LeRoux. He asked the CIA station to run LeRoux’s name, too. DEA agents routinely complained that dealing with the CIA was a one-way street, but in this case, a CIA officer generously shared the results. The name LeRoux got a hit in the agency’s database. In October 2010, someone had sent a tip to the CIA’s online threat-reporting link, offering to blow the whistle on Paul LeRoux. No one from the CIA had followed up. However, the CIA database retained the tipster’s name and phone number. Franklin sent the details to Cindric and Stouch.

  The agents grinned at each other. They had a name and phone number! Awesome! What were the odds?!

  However, before they started high-fiving each other, they had to admit that this was probably a dry hole. The information was sixteen months old. It came from somebody who was on the run. If that person was smart, he or she would have changed his number and gotten a burner phone, or a handful of them. Even if the phone worked, how would a frightened person react to a cold call?

  Usually, the agents found a middleman to make a friendly introduction and vouch for their sincerity and discretion. In this situation, they had nothing.

  “How do we do this?” Stouch asked.

  Should they try to circle around the tipster and learn more?

  Should they make that epic flight to South Africa, again? He might not even be in Africa anymore.

  Cindric thought a moment.

  “Fuck it,” he said, and started dialing.

  A man with a deep voice and an accent answered.

  “Hello, this is Tom Cindric with the U.S. government. Did you provide some information to the U.S. government a year or so ago?”

  The man said that he did.

  “We’d like to talk to you about Mr. LeRoux,” Cindric said in his most polished voice. He explained that LeRoux sounded like a security threat. If the gentleman on the other end of the line would help make a criminal case against LeRoux, the DEA would protect his identity. He wouldn’t have to worry about LeRoux coming after him because LeRoux would be out of business and locked up tight.

  The man must have liked what he heard. He gave them his real name because he had put it on the CIA form. He said they could call him Jack, the nom de guerre LeRoux had given him. He agreed to meet the agents at Dubai International and fly with them to Larnaca, Cyprus, for a long talk. They chose Larnaca because it was a relatively quiet place, off the beaten track of the arms merchants. Jack didn’t think LeRoux had business or personal interests there.

  Cindric and Stouch headed for Dulles International to catch the next flight to Dubai. They kept their bags packed, because they spent more time in airports and in the air than at the office. That was a good thing, as far as they were concerned.

  In Dubai, the agents walked to the gate for the flight to Larnaca. They had told Jack to meet them there. They spotted him immediately—six feet three inches tall, dark-haired, in his thirties. He looked as if he spent a lot of time in the gym. He had a chiseled face, broad shoulders, and narrow waist. He was quaking—shifting from foot to foot and glancing around as if he were on the lam. Because he was.

  “He’s sweating like a whore in church,” Cindric muttered to Stouch.

  Stouch squinted, which his partner took to mean agreement.

  They greeted him and chatted for a few minutes. He was stammering out of fear and worrying about a guy named Hunter. They couldn’t talk there. There were too many eyes and ears lurking about. Dubai International was the gateway to Baghdad, Kabul, Tehran, Sana’a, Benghazi, and just about any other hot zone. You couldn’t spill a cup of coffee without splashing a soldier, journalist, lawyer, bagman, arms dealer, war profiteer, or spy of some sort. It was a hunting ground for intelligence services of m
any nations. The agents had to assume it was wired top to bottom.

  Besides, Dubai International was a major international hub of the mercenary Facebook. Grab any stool in McGettigan’s Irish Pub, the nearest thing the airport had to a dive bar, and you’d find yourself shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of mercs, also known as PMCs—private military contractors. Jack laughed at their attempts to blend in. He could spot them from the far end of Concourse C. They all wore the same non-uniform uniform, consisting of athletic-casual brands that gave discounts to U.S. military and government employees and contractors: Oakley sunglasses, Under Armour T-shirts, Casio watches, Timberland boots, desert-colored canvas pants, and brown or black North Face jackets. The most gung-ho sported tattoos with skulls, serpents, and inspirational sayings. All of LeRoux’s American and European security men had probably stopped at the Irish pub at one time or another, because it was the only place to get a Guinness and a burger, watch football, and check their email in peace.

  The three men boarded the flight to Larnaca. The agents rented a couple of rooms in the Hilton so they could debrief Jack and let him get comfortable with them, away from LeRoux’s world.

  “He’s a genius,” Jack began. His next words spilled out in a rush.

  “Look, he doesn’t do anything like anybody else. Nobody has ever figured him out. Nobody has any idea what is in his mind. He’s had many partners, but he controls everything himself. Nobody else could make any decision without him. He’s a narcissist. He’s a sociopath. He’s a nice guy one day. The next day he can wipe out your whole family with one call.”

  Over two days, several cases of water and many carafes of coffee, Jack told the agents his story and as much as he knew of LeRoux’s story. He told them about the fishing business that turned into an arms business and the meth business. He described LeRoux’s strange manners—friendly at first, then menacing.

  “His craziness only grew with the more money he got,” Jack said. “The more he got away with it, the more people that died, that made him feel that he was untouchable.”

  Untouchable! Jack didn’t know how much the agents loved that word. Cindric and Stouch glanced at each other. They didn’t want to look overjoyed. They needed things to stay cool, no sudden moves, sort of like inching up to a bird that had flown through the window and needed rescuing before his head slammed into a plate-glass window. They were the only way out for Jack, but he might not know that yet. The squints and twinkles that passed between them signaled that they were close to ecstatic. They knew they were incredibly lucky to have found a phone number that led to a guy who knew their target well and who might be willing to talk about him. That sort of thing just didn’t happen in their world.

  Jack knew he was taking a monumental risk. He was looking at two Americans who wanted something from him that could cost his life or blow up the one he’d patched together with Anya. But maybe they could give him and Anya a new life.

  Yes, he was scared, but he wasn’t a coward. He proved that in Somalia. He proudly showed the agents a video of the battle with al-Shabaab, which he had made with his cell phone. He watched with satisfaction as their faces reacted to the explosions and screams emanating from the tiny speaker.

  Dealing with LeRoux was a different kind of stress. He felt like one of those rats trapped in a maze. He had set off this chain of events when he gave his phone number to the CIA. Having grown up watching thrillers, he’d expected somebody from the CIA to get back to him and do something. He didn’t know how to deal with silence. And suddenly, here were guys from another American agency that he’d never heard of. He didn’t know anything about the DEA, but he was inclined to like these guys because they looked like what they were, cops. Clean-shaven, short hair, open faces, dressed like blue-collar workers. They weren’t mysterious. They seemed sincerely interested in him.

  He thought about Anya. He couldn’t ask her to share his life so long as LeRoux and Hunter were roaming the world, looking for him. LeRoux held a grudge forever. Hunter was desperate to please LeRoux. They’d persevere. These two ordinary-looking Americans were his best shot at a somewhat normal future. If he could see that LeRoux and Hunter were locked up or dead, he and Anya could go where they pleased, without buying fake passports and sweeping their hotel rooms for hidden electronics for the rest of their lives.

  Stouch watched Jack hesitate. What sensible person wouldn’t? But Stouch had done this before, and he knew how to tilt the game. He leaned toward Jack, smiled his warmest freckled-farm-boy smile, and asked gently, “Wouldn’t you feel better if he weren’t in the picture? If he got locked up for good?”

  Jack nodded vigorously.

  “Too many people have died for little or no reason,” he said. “It has to stop.”

  “We can do that,” Cindric said, giving him his honest-cop baby blues. “But we’re going to need your help.

  “Okay, these guys mean business,” Jack said to himself.

  He stuck out his hand. Yes, they had a deal.

  The deal, as they explained it, was for Jack to go back inside LeRoux’s organization, this time as an undercover source. He had to work his way back into LeRoux’s confidence, record their conversations, share all their communications with the agents, and let the agents write his emails and texts to LeRoux.

  Jack was sure he could manage that. He thought that LeRoux had forgiven him when they last talked. He didn’t expect LeRoux to be surprised and suspicious when he offered to come back. LeRoux’s flaw was that he allowed his reality distortion field to work on his own head. He convinced himself that he was the Boss and no one who had ever met him would dare double-cross him.

  The agents flew Jack to New York. On February 22, 2012, they escorted him into the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan and filled out the paperwork that put him on the DEA payroll as a confidential informant.

  They walked him across the street to City Hall Park, sat on a bench looking at the Brooklyn Bridge, and had Jack call LeRoux on a recorded line.

  “Boss, it’s not working out here in Dubai,” Jack said. “If you have a job for me, I’m ready to start.”

  “Sounds good,” LeRoux said.

  He rang off.

  They waited on the park bench. In less than ten minutes, LeRoux called back with an offer.

  “Okay, I want you to go to Africa,” he said.

  LeRoux wanted Jack to bribe officials of various small African governments to give him bogus end-user certificates for small arms that LeRoux wanted to buy from Eastern Europe and China. Despite Jack’s departure, he clung to his vision of building an Amazon-for-small-arms, and he was still searching for reliable suppliers. He had found that arms factory managers all wanted to see end-user certificates from official bodies. This was a CYA exercise. Nobody checked to see whether the certificates were genuine. So long as the paperwork had official stamps and seals, they were good to go.

  The job would pay Jack three thousand dollars a month, a paltry sum. LeRoux promised to supplement Jack’s base pay with expense money and bonuses for completed assignments.

  “Take it,” Stouch told Jack.

  “Cheap Charley again,” Jack thought. The agents would pay him an informant’s fee, plus all expenses, and in the end, the prospect of freedom from fear of LeRoux. Priceless!

  Cindric, Stouch, and Jack cooled their heels for seven full days. They whiled away the time setting up Jack’s phone and laptop so they could control them and preserve all communications to and from LeRoux.

  On February 29, 2012, LeRoux sent an email to Jack with detailed instructions on how to get African bureaucrats for end-user certificates to provide cover stories for his purchases of small arms. He explained:

  For example let us say that you go to Eritrea (smaller countries work better for this, avoid big countries like ethiopia or heavily monitored countries that are involved in wars) then u get a contact in the police or security ministry, you find out what offices issues end user certificates, then u bribe them to produce a document that st
ates that the police of Eritrea want to buy 100 x AK47 from Pakistan (we will supply the information on the products and the suppliers details) then they print it on their letter head and stamp it and sign it we pay as follows 25 000usd to the contact when he produces the document 25 000 usd when the document is accepted in pakistan as legit.

  LeRoux emailed Jack a list of rules. Jack had heard them many times before, but LeRoux was pompous and liked to lecture. The rules: Never give anybody his real name. Never meet in his own hotel. Always use at least two phones, one to reach contacts, the second to call LeRoux. Always use the laptop that LeRoux had set up with encryption software. Never give anybody money up front. Concentrate on low-level bureaucrats—those with just enough power to sign end-user certificates.

  “Do not fly in and expect to meet the president,” LeRoux wrote. “It does not work. They are too high and will want too much money.”

  Jack promised to obey. He took off for Africa to start his new job, working for LeRoux and lying to LeRoux. The second part was harder. Jack wasn’t a great liar, but he was learning.

  Cindric and Stouch went back to Washington to talk endgame with Brown and Milione. They had to get LeRoux to go someplace where government officials would expel him when presented with a warrant from the United States government.

  That ruled out the Philippines, where LeRoux had based his pharmaceutical operations since 2004, and Brazil, where he was in the process of relocating. LeRoux had recently taken up residence in a condo in Barra da Tijuca, an upscale beachfront neighborhood south of Rio. Now that his Plan B to build a new city in Somalia had fallen apart and he still hadn’t connected with Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Rio was his Plan C—his sanctuary city if things got hot in the Philippines. Brazil’s diplomatic relations with the United States were severely strained. Brazilian courts were unlikely to honor American extradition or expulsion requests, even for foreign nationals like LeRoux. Jim Sparks, an enterprising agent in the DEA São Paolo office, which covered Rio, had persuaded the Brazilian counternarcotics police to tap LeRoux’s phone with a warrant based on the Minneapolis RX Limited case. The Brazilian cops were happy to pitch in. DEA agents like Sparks had been cultivating them for decades. Like other cops all over the world, the Brazilian cops and the DEA agents hated two things: dopers and politicians. The transcript of a wiretapped call showed LeRoux boasting that he had gotten a Brazilian mistress pregnant. Once she gave birth, he would qualify for Brazilian residency, and extradition would be off the table.