NCIS Los Angeles

by Jerome Preisler

  In starkest terms they were now racing against time to head off a terrorist strike meant to bring mass murder and destruction to Los Angeles.

  “Okay,” Granger said. “Operations Manager Lange has been keeping me updated about your investigation. But we need to see what we’ve got collectively.”

  Callen glanced at the enlarged image onscreen. He’d seen right off that it was part of a document written in an old Courier typewriter font—the same typeface used in the OSS/Deep Dive report Hetty had put up the other day.

  The document’s header, stamped boldly at the upper margin of the page in red ink, read:

  SECRET ULTRA

  TO BE KEPT UNDER LOCK AND KEY AND NEVER TO BE REMOVED FROM THIS OFFICE. THIS FORM IS FOR G2 INTELLIGENCE MESSAGES ONLY

  Typed beneath was this:

  #224756/18 December 1944

  From: Rear Admiral Hideo Kojima {BERLIN}

  To: Chief Shigero Matsuoka, Military Affairs Bureau, War Office {TOKYO}

  Due the critical war situation, Commander-in-Chief Doenitz has conveyed that the number of nonregular passengers who return to the homeland via MINAZUKI-1 be restricted to two or three persons at a time. (U-437)

  Based on their necessity to the strengthening of the war effort, and in view of the cargo to be transported aboard the ship, my recommendations for the initial passenger list are below:

  Technical Commander Haruo Mori

  Technical Expert Masahiro Tanaka (assistant to Commander Mori)

  Colonel Daichi Suzuki (aeronautics specialist)

  Major Jiro Tarutani (rocket fuel specialist)

  “That’s the decrypt Warren Alders at the Seabee Museum got from the National Archives,” Callen said, reading over the document. “A cable from the Japanese attaché in Berlin to his superiors in Tokyo.”

  “And check out the first name on that list,” Sam said. “Haruo Mori’s the scientist whose journal Alders gave us.”

  Hetty nodded.

  “Your curator emailed this scan to us last night,” she said. “His predecessor at the museum requested—and was granted—its declassification through the Freedom of Information Act.” She paused. “The CIA had no knowledge of this intercept, or another one that was boxed away with it. Otherwise, the Agency’s watchdogs would have ensured they were still classified.”

  “Why?” Sam asked. “And how’d the docs slip past them?”

  “I believe that’s two questions,” Hetty said. “The second is easiest to answer. Intelligence was far less centralized during World War Two than it is today. There were no networked computer databases for people like Eric to hack into.”

  Beale gave a mock shiver from his console.

  “Sounds ghastly,” he said.

  Sam turned to Hetty. “You’re saying the information didn’t flow through OSS channels.”

  “Correct,” she said. “OSS being the CIA’s forerunner, its records likely would have been handed right over. But the cables were netted by U.S. Army crypto specialists stationed in England, then forwarded overseas to G2 Military Intelligence.”

  “And after the war they went straight from G2 into the archives with a gajillion other documents,” Callen said. “Completely bypassing the OSS.”

  Hetty nodded again. Meanwhile, Sam continued to study the screen.

  “Looks like somebody wrote the word ‘U-437’ on there in ink,” he said.

  “Probably an anonymous G2 analyst during the war,” Hetty said. “Minazuki is the traditional Japanese word for June.”

  “The month Alders told us U-437 was scheduled to arrive in Kobe,” Callen said.

  “Making Minazuki-1 a codename for the sub,” Sam said.

  Granger nodded.

  “The suffix ‘1’ indicates it would be the first of the Speermädchen boats to leave for the Far East,” he said, turning to Eric. “Okay… I want everyone to see the relevant section on the boat’s freight manifest.”

  The tech tapped his console, bringing up the document on the plasma screen. It read:

  #224894/2 January 1945

  From: Rear Admiral Hideo Kojima {BERLIN}

  To: Chief Shigero Nakamura, Military Affairs Bureau, War Office {TOKYO}

  1. I am pleased to inform you that Commander-in-Chief Doenitz has approved our requested passenger list of 18 December. All four specialists are presently arranging for travel to MINAZUKI-1’s port of embarkation.

  2. The freight hold of MINAZUKI-1 will hold about 35 tons, and German naval authorities are confident that a watertight compartment on deck will take an additional 5 tons of storage. As negotiated with CIC Doenitz, our total loading cargo will therefore consist of:

  Parts for long-range V-weapons: 12 tons

  Plans and Drawings for the above: 650 kilograms

  Special steel for rocket and aircraft construction: 15 tons

  Insulating material: 1 ton

  Optical glass: 10 tons

  Lithium Chloride: 500 kilograms

  (sealed barrels): 2 tons

  “The manifest was another wire between the Japanese attaché and his boss back home,” Granger said.

  “What’s with the two tons of redacted fun at the bottom?” Sam asked.

  “We’ll come around to that in a minute, Agent Hanna,” Granger said. “But let’s look at the numbers. If you add up the weight of the cargo items, it totals just over forty-one tons. One above the German estimate, got it?”

  They all nodded.

  “The next document you’ll see is not declassified,” Granger said. “It’s part of the extensive Deep Dive file prepared by Theodore Holloway in ’forty-five.”

  “We had a peek at it yesterday morning,” Kensi offered. “Well, a short peek at its title page…”

  “The folder itself is several inches thick,” Hetty said. “It contains his reports and substantiating enclosures. Among them are ships’ logs and charts, prisoner interrogation transcripts, photos taken on inspection of the submarines, action reports, and ULTRA radio intercepts that were routed to the OSS… and eventually the CIA. They’ve kept them under lock and key since the war.”

  “How’d we get hold of them?” Sam asked.

  “They found their way into my hands after Tip Holloway’s abduction,” Granger said. “I had questions and did some digging.”

  Sam was silent, the AD’s look telling him he was not intending to discuss the type of shovel he’d used for the job.

  “Mr. Beale, pull up the U.S. Navy manifest of cargo seized from aboard U-437 at Hueneme, please.” Granger said.

  Eric nodded. A moment later this appeared on the screen:

  ENCLOSURE A

  12 May 1945

  CARGO TAKEN FROM ABOARD U-BOAT 437

  Joint Statement of Commander Elias P. Sutton, USN

  and

  Theodore Holloway, Project Director, Deep Dive.

  Sheeting (aircraft grade) – 15 tons

  Lithium Chloride – 500kg

  Insulation material (cork) – 1 ton

  Optical-grade glass – 10 tons

  V-2 rocket components – 12 tons

  Technical blueprints for V-2 rockets – 650kg

  Total weight: 39.15 tons

  Sam looked at Granger. “Everything jibes aside from those sealed drums,” he said. “They’re missing. And something tells me they didn’t jump off the boat on their own.”

  Granger nodded. “Since Hetty tells me everyone was briefed about Deep Dive yesterday, I have a hunch you all suspect what they contained.”

  “Uranium,” Callen said.

  “Make that uranium isotope two-thirty-five… the only type that’s fissile in nature, making it nuclear-weapons grade,” Granger said. “It would have been processed into a fine brown powder. With a radioactive half life of seven hundred million years.”

  “How do we know it was in the barrels?”

  “Try because the Germans painted the number two-three-five on them.”

  “Now there’s a clue,” Deeks said.

  Granger
expelled a silent breath. “Several German sailors mention seeing the barrels—between fifteen and twenty of them—at Kiel harbor in the Deep Dive interrogation reports,” he said. “The loading would have been done by naval dockworkers, so there aren’t any eyewitnesses from the crew who saw them aboard in the hold.”

  “The sub couldn’t have accidentally left them behind,” Sam said. “There are shipping officers to keep tabs on everything. And they have a full staff.”

  “Besides… barrels aren’t exactly easy to miss,” Callen said. “It isn’t like forgetting your wallet in the bedroom when you leave home.”

  “But Sutton and Holloway both signed off on the offload manifest,” Kensi said. “They must have known about the intercepted German manifest. And been aware of a discrepancy in the cargo’s tonnage and contents.”

  Granger held his eyes on her a moment, then glanced around the room.

  “I have one final document to show you,” he said. “A letter from Holloway to General Leslie Groves.”

  “Wait,” Sam said. “Is this the same Groves who headed the Manhattan Project?”

  “I think you know the answer,” Granger said, nodding to Eric.

  He put the letter up onscreen:

  From: Theodore P. Holloway, Project Director

  To: Leslie R. Groves, Brigadier General

  Attachment: 2

  20 May, 1945

  Dear General Groves,

  Our cataloguing of Minazuki-1’s (U-437) freight load has been completed and all items removed from the captured vessel. Mindful of the expectation of its special cargo, I am writing to inform you that the barrels described in ULTRA intercept #224894 of 2 January 1945 were not found aboard the hold or deck compartment. Nor were the four Japanese technical experts named in a previous signal aboard the submarine.

  Although POW testimony indicates the barrels were seen on shore during preparations for Minazuki-1’s embarkation, it is my conjecture that Germany canceled or delayed the shipment shortly before the boat set sail. The absence of the above mentioned scientific personnel suggests a change in overall plans.

  I am aware of the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s interest in obtaining the material, and was prepared to expedite its delivery to the facility under armed guard. It is therefore with great disappointment that I report this news.

  Attached are German and U.S. Navy shipping/receiving manifests. It seems clear that the former was a working copy and not the Kriegsmarine’s final version.

  Again, I regret having to share this information with you. We are hopeful that further and ongoing interrogation of prisoners will shed greater light on the shipment’s disposition.

  Yours Truly,

  THEODORE P. HOLLOWAY

  T.P. Holloway, Lt.

  Port Hueneme, California

  “Man oh man,” Callen said. “Holloway’s lying outright about the Japanese passengers.”

  “Or Haruo Mori, at least,” Sam said. “His journal proves he was on the sub.”

  “And Holloway tried to burn it,” Callen said. “You have to ask why… and what happened to those scientists.”

  “I think the ‘why’ is crystal clear,” Hetty said. “Holloway’s lie about the scientists was part of a bigger deception.”

  “The uranium was aboard the sub when it came into Hueneme,” Callen said. “It’s the only explanation. He and Sutton deliberately falsified the receipt manifest. Made the barrels disappear.”

  Sam shook his head. “Path to Glory,” he said. “I’m thinking they’ll have to change the title of the admiral’s book if it’s ever reissued.”

  “One thing,” Deeks said. “There were around seventy German crewmen. How can none of them have mentioned the Japanese when they were interrogated? I mean, unless…”

  “The interrogation reports were altered,” Kensi said. “If you’re going to hide two tons of uranium and cover up the presence of four scientists, editing the interrogation transcripts is small potatoes.”

  “You’d think some of the sailors would let something slip after the interrogations,” Deeks said. “They had nothing but time on their hands in the POW camps.”

  Hetty shook her head in emphatic disagreement.

  “The submariners took oaths of secrecy to the Reich,” she said. “They wouldn’t have wanted to talk—it was an act of treason. They also may have been coerced or threatened into silence as prisoners.”

  “Speaking of treason,” Sam said. “Holloway and Sutton ripping off the uranium fits smack into my definition.”

  “Indeed,” Hetty said. “It would have been worth a tidy ransom on the black market back then. The Cold War was beginning, there were a great many nations that would have paid them handsomely for fissile material.”

  Granger gestured impatiently.

  “We can only speculate about their motives,” he said. “For whatever reason, it doesn’t seem the uranium was sold after its theft. Our concern right now is where they stored it.”

  “The train tracks behind Building Thirty-One at Hueneme linked up to the national railroad grid,” Sam said. “They could have moved it anywhere. Especially with Holloway’s family connections.”

  “Except Isaak Dorani told us not an hour ago that they stockpiled it right here in SoCal,” Deeks said. “Not that he’s a walking, talking shrine to honesty.”

  “But his story makes sense,” Callen said. “According to him, the hacker… what was his name…?”

  “Erasmo Greer,” Kensi said.

  “Greer stumbled onto the truth about the uranium a few weeks before Holloway was kidnapped,” he said. “Dorani claims he gained backdoor entry to Holloway’s computer via an online dating site the old hound frequented…”

  “A cheater’s site,” Nell said. “The Lexi Parks website has thirty thousand paid subscribers. Men wanting to discreetly date married women and vice versa.”

  “And then it got infamously hacked,” Kensi said. “Nobody knew who did it or exactly why…”

  “But now we know it was Greer,” Callen said. “Again according to Dorani, he sent malware packets out to subscribers’ computers over the Internet, turning their hard drives and cloud vaults into data grab bags.”

  “And then went poking around for valuable goodies,” Deeks said. “Information he could sell or use to blackmail people.”

  “While he’s doing it, Greer lucks into horny, ninety-something Tip Holloway’s system,” Kensi said. “That’s where he finds his notes about the uranium.”

  “And then he decodes those notes and learns where the drums were stashed away all those years ago,” Sam said.

  “Approximately where they’re stashed,” Callen said. “The exact location wasn’t on Holloway’s computer.”

  Sam nodded. “He and Sutton were slick enough to divvy the information between them so it wasn’t all in one place,” he said.

  “Anyway, when Greer gets hold of the info, he contacts his friend Isaak to see if he can rustle up paying customers,” Kensi said. “Isaak’s his man on the street…”

  “A career wheeler-dealer,” Deeks said. “Probably knows every shady character from here to Tijuana…”

  “One of them being a guy named Gaspar affiliated with the Secret Army Commandos,” Kensi said.

  “The Armenian Secret Army Commandos,” Granger said. “We can’t afford to forget that.”

  Kensi nodded. He was right, naturally. But the one thing all terrorist flakes did, whatever their beef, was foist their real or perceived woes on innocents, bringing on wreckage for wreckage. Her job so often involved dealing with the bloody effects of their violent hatred—and doing it on the run—that she couldn’t stop to look at its origins.

  “When the Secret Army bit, things got serious,” she said. “They were ready to pay for the location of the uranium. But they wanted the full location…”

  “And Greer didn’t have it,” Deeks said. “He’d sifted through every byte of info in Holloway’s system without any luck…”

  “Whi
ch left them hoping the old man stored it on external media like a backup drive or memory stick.”

  “That’s why they did the break-in and kidnapping at Holloway’s condo,” Deeks said. “They were after whatever storage devices they could find…”

  “Including Holloway himself,” Kensi said. “For all they knew, he’d kept the information locked away in his head…”

  “The hardest type of external media to crack, when you consider it,” Deeks said. “Greer basically ran the show. He told the Secret Army he could disable the senior watch systems at Bel Air Palms with his jackrabbits, and had Isaak set them up for him.”

  “Then he sent Isaak into the apartment to grab the storage devices…”

  “While the SA grabbed the old man and drove him out to their hideaway somewhere in the desert,” Kensi said. “Unfortunately for them, the information wasn’t on the backup media, and Holloway was a lot tougher than they imagined. They couldn’t coerce him to talk. Threats, physical force, nothing worked.”

  “Till they drugged him,” Deeks said. “Even then, he didn’t totally open up. But he spilled something about Elias Sutton having what they were after.”

  “So they dumped him in the Mojave and started to plan the Sutton burglary,” Kensi said. “Isaak thought it was a nice little fluke that he knew Sutton’s driver.”

  “More than just knew him,” Callen said. “They were bosom buddies from prison.”

  “Holy jailhouse serendipity,” Deeks said.

  Sam smiled a little. “My mom used to say kings and crooks have all the luck.”

  “Valli didn’t have a clue he was being milked,” Kensi said. “But he gave Isaak—and the Secret Army—the precise gen they needed for the job.”

  “Namely the layout of Sutton’s property,” Callen said. “And a direct line into his daily routines.”

  Granger was listening closely.

  “A second burglary would have been risky even if Sutton wasn’t a well-known person,” Granger said. “Do we know whether Greer tried hacking Sutton’s machine or cloud storage?”

  “He did, but there was no backdoor in,” Kensi answered. “Sutton was the polar opposite of a web junkie. He barely used email… didn’t shop online…”