We went through the usual pleasantries. Cheryl then told David the story of what happened in Istanbul. I could see David was genuinely distraught at Cheryl’s experience. I don’t like to be reminded of the event, because I should’ve done a better job protecting her. When Cheryl and I got together, it was never my plan to work with her. My hope was to keep Cheryl out of the business. She’s a former Chinese Army Colonel, an experienced agent who worked in Military Intelligence, and later the Chinese equivalent of the CIA—a unit so secret that nobody even knows their real name, so it’s called “Chinese Intelligence.” Actively working with the US Government is a great way for a former Chinese operative to paint a target on their back. This is especially true with Cheryl, because the Chinese government believes she’s dead. It also opens up Trident and our CIA backers to criticism. If our security ever gets compromised or an operation ever goes terribly wrong, it’s very likely a US board of inquiry will point to her as the reason. Cheryl was adamant about getting involved in Clearwater and Mike Guthrie, my CIA benefactor, approved the idea. I eventually relented and allowed Cheryl to become a part of the team. What I never expected was that she would bond so well with the equally strong-willed Professor.
The conversation shifted to the problem at hand. They planned how they were going to use Clearwater’s massive computing power to sift through financial transactions. They had to make requests through Agency channels to request authorization for information controlled by the US Government Intel agencies like the National Security Agency to do some of what they planned.
“You two have a lot of work to do and I’m just getting in the way. I’m going to find the Sam Houston at the marina. If you need me, I’ll be drinking Sam Adams, fishing, and listening to country music.”
“What do you see in this man?” David asked Cheryl, in mock disbelief.
“He’s very handy when I need to reach high shelves, and I find his lack of curiosity can be very calming,” Cheryl said. They both laughed at my expense.
“Well, just for that I’m going to drink copious amounts of Sam Adams and play Montgomery Gentry at max volume. Call me when you figure something out.”
I found the Sam Houston in its usual slip at the end of Kato Paphos Harbor Marina. The yacht was docked closest to the medieval castle and away from the waterfront row of restaurants and cafes which are overrun with Russian tourists during the summer. My little section of the marina is an isolated area that’s a refuge for the year-rounders and Coco the Pelican who is the unofficial mascot of the Marina. Occasionally, the Russian tourists slip past the Marina security in pursuit of Coco for a photo opportunity. In recent years, getting a photo with Coco has become something of a thing on Russian social media. Recently, a drunken Russian lady took her clothes off and went viral with pictures she took with the Pelican in a series of suggestive poses. The antics of holidaying Russians are a popular topic of conversation among the locals.
I hadn’t been on the Sam Houston since Migos and I left for Syria. I did a walk around to check the state of things. McDonald was the last person to captain her. He’s retired Navy, and has more weeks behind the helm of boats than I have hours. The exterior was immaculate, everything was tied up tightly and stored securely. I entered the salon and found the same. On the way to the galley, I checked the bar and the wine cooler. This is where difficulty usually arises after my team has the run of the boat. I was surprised to see only limited damage. This can be attributed to the fact that Migos was with me and not on the boat. At the wheelhouse I checked the gauges, batteries and fuel; they were all good.
I left the boat and walked over to the Kingfisher charter shed, checked on the sea conditions, and picked up some baitfish. Then I disconnected the power and water and untied the boat. I walked up the stairs to the fly deck, and snagged a bottle of Sam Adams Summer Ale from the minifridge on the way to the helm. I started her up and steered for the marina exit. I shut the twin cat engines off when I was about two miles offshore and let the sixty-four-foot yacht drift. The sea was calm with gentle rollers. It was late afternoon on a cloudless day, with only a light wind. I set up a fishing chair on the hydraulic ramp off the stern, turned on the MLB.com replay of last night’s Red Sox-Yankees game with my iPad, and cast my line into the Mediterranean.
After three hours, the baseball game was over, and it was time to return to the Marina. The final score was that I got skunked, and the Sox won 4-1 in a complete game one-hitter thrown by Rick Porcello, who was looking more and more like he did the year he won the Cy Young. I was very happy with that outcome. The empty beer bottles next to my chair may have had something to do with that.
After I finished tying up the boat, I called Cheryl to make dinner plans. She and Dave were working through the night. She told me she’d let me know when they had something actionable. Cheryl didn’t want me at the office. It was beginning to look like I was going to be alone for a few days. I decided to walk over to the Kingfisher shed and meet the fishing charters as they came in to gather some intel of my own. I was going out the next day to catch some tuna and I was determined not to get skunked two days in a row. My experience with fishermen has been that they are a generous breed, sharing information freely. Which is good, because I didn’t want to have to go through the trouble of a night dive to attach satellite tracking beacons onto the charter boats to find the hot spots they were going to.
I fished full time for the next three days. I was grilling a tuna steak on the fly deck when I was interrupted by the distinctive ringtone from the satphone.
“Walsh Fishing Charters,” I said.
“Where are you?” asked Mike.
“I’m on the water; do you need my position?”
“I’m in the region. I’m going to be in Paphos tomorrow morning.”
“We’re going to have an intel briefing tomorrow morning. Cheryl said they’re making headway and expect to have something to report.”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m coming in. Clearwater has been making frequent requests for data from the Agency. We can’t release anything without knowing the reason, so we’ve been kept up to date. The techies in our building have been really impressed with the work Clearwater is doing.”
“I don’t want to take too much credit for it. It’s just basic leadership. It comes naturally; it’s a gift, really,” I said.
“What is it you’ve been doing anyway?”
“Inspiring from a distance. At the moment, I’m grilling a fresh bluefin steak basted lightly with lemon and butter. I have a 1982 Pomerol that I’ve decanted to celebrate my historic victory over the dreaded tuna population.”
“How do you live with yourself? Your battered girl is working slave hours, and you’re drinking premium vino on a yacht.”
“It sounds kind of bad when you put it that way.”
“I’m envious, is all. The crisis is getting out of hand. I’m operating on fumes. It’s worse than Arab Spring. There’s a real chance the Saudi government could fall.”
“I’ll see you in the bat cave.”
Chapter 18
Paphos, Cyprus
The full team was assembled around the table in the briefing room. Mike sat at the head of the table as the senior member in attendance. McDonald, Migos, Burnia, and Jankowski were bright and alert. Mike had bags under his eyes and was on his second cup of coffee. Neither Dave nor Cheryl had made an entrance. I hadn’t seen either for four days. We were all making small talk, working on a box of donuts, when David Forrest made his entrance with Cheryl in tow. Cheryl looked great. The bruising was no longer visible, and the swelling around her eyes was gone. She was wearing tight blue jeans, a white t-shirt, and ponytail. Both Cheryl and David had a buoyant, enthusiastic cheer that can only come from a big win. Since neither was susceptible to false or premature celebration, I prepared myself to be wowed.
The lights dimmed and the big wall-sized screen at the end of the table came to life. We watched a CNN summary of the calamitous conflict that had erupted in the Mi
ddle East. Footage of demonstrations in Egypt, battles in Israel and Lebanon, and riots in Saudi filled the screen.
“Clearwater has been tasked with identifying the vector that triggered the latest unrest we are seeing in the Middle East.”
David then went into his full college professor mode and detailed the search process with which he engaged his supercomputer and artificial intelligence software. It was an interesting brief. What I found most surprising, was the amount of intel the US Intel agencies shared with Clearwater. As if reading my mind, Mike spoke up.
“The amount of conflict we’re experiencing is way out of proportion to the discovery of a lost Quran. There’s something more going on, and we’ve had every intel service in the US focusing on figuring out what that is. The updates from Clearwater have given us reason to believe that they had the best path to figuring this out and the DNI made the decision to open the floodgates in response to your data requests.”
Cheryl then took the lead as head briefer.
“We’ve identified seven people who’ve made trades that are sufficiently out of the pattern of predictable activity that they deserve to be looked into.”
“What does that mean?” Mike asked.
Cheryl touched the computer mouse and the screen filled with a photo and biographical information.
“This is Mustafa Abbas. The computer identified him as having the most atypical investment behavior. The three key indicators are when he made the investment, the size of the investment relative to the size of his investment portfolio, and his net worth. And finally, the degrees of separation between him and one of the potential targets of the Quran release.
“Abbas receives a predictive score of 83% as a vector for the following reasons. He made his investment in the London Brent Crude market two days before the public release of the Quran on Friday, June 15.
“Abbas’s investment of two million, three hundred and sixty-seven thousand pounds represents one hundred percent of his investment portfolio and is eight times larger than his net worth. The futures market is very high risk because it’s leveraged. Abbas lacks the ability to answer a margin call. A relatively small drop in oil prices would have canceled his contract and lost him many times more money than he’s worth. He borrowed against his properties in Saudi and Lebanon to make this investment, and he maxed out his credit cards and a line of credit he had for his business with his bank. Abbas is an attorney, and he illegally drained an escrow account he manages for a client to scrape up 1.3 million of the pounds he invested in this futures position.
“The third indicator is a connection to a potential victim of the Quran’s release. Abbas’s legal work includes corporate clients who are owned by several prominent Saudi Arabian citizens. Foremost among these prominent citizens is Prince Turki bin Talal Abdulaziz.
“Prince Turki bin Talal Abdulaziz is one of the victims of the Saudi Crown Prince’s anti-corruption crackdown. He spent several months in the Ritz in Riyadh, and he had a significant amount of his own wealth confiscated by the Saudi government. Estimates go as high as sixty billion dollars. Prince Turki sold many of his assets to settle with the Saudi government. One asset he did not sell was his stake in Twitter.
“Prince Turki owns fifteen percent of Twitter; he was one of the first investors. The connection between Turki and Twitter matters, because it helps to explain an element of this crisis that Mike alluded to, and which we were having the most trouble explaining. Why are millions of people being driven to revolution about a book most of them can’t even read?
“The answer to that question is a professional, highly advanced social media campaign, the kind of campaign that could only be conducted by someone with a lot of money and inside knowledge, and perhaps even access to the root programming and algorithms of Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
“We don’t know yet who’s conducting this social media campaign or even where it is coming from. At this stage, we’re very confident Abbas learned of the Quran plot from his client Prince Turki. Given his perilous financial condition, we believe he sought to capitalize on what he learned from his client in the Futures Market. His original, 2.3 million-pound investment is currently valued at over 57 million pounds, and if the price of oil hits two hundred dollars— which it’s on course to do—he’s going to make twice that amount. Prince Turki is our new target. The Israelis believe Omer Aslan had someone behind him funding his operation. We believe that someone is Prince Turki.
“We recommend Abbas for capture and interrogation. We recommend intense surveillance of Prince Turki with the purpose of finding, and then taking down the social media campaign. We believe shutting down or, ideally, white-hatting the social media campaign will go a long way in defusing this crisis.”
The lights in the room brightened.
“That concludes our briefing,” Cheryl said with a stoic facial expression. I could see in her eyes that she was beaming. She and David had accomplished an amazing feat. I smiled at her; I was very proud of my Chinese spy.
“That was definitely worth the trip. This is a major breakthrough,” Mike said.
“Do you want us to pick up Abbas?” I asked.
“Yes, but you’re going to have to get your intel support from Langley. We need Clearwater to focus on the social media angle.”
“This is a first; the intel geeks are taking priority over the operators. I’m not sure if I can adjust to my newfound insignificance.”
“Get used to it, Pat. You were right when you said Clearwater has capabilities we don’t have in Langley. This could be a game changer. We need to retake the initiative. Capture Abbas and Omer.”
“Won’t that spook Prince Turki?” I said.
“I’m willing to take that risk, as we don’t have the time for lengthy surveillance and collection. I’m tempted to bring Turki in, but I’m afraid he’s not going to talk or help us shut the revolution-making machine down. We’ll collect on Turki, and capture the other two and see if they can give us something we can use against Turki.”
“OK, boss. I guess that means no fishing today.”
“Where’s Abbas now?” Mike asked.
“He’s in London, hovering around his broker’s office,” Cheryl answered.
“What about Omer?”
“Ankara, Turkey,” said Cheryl.
“On second thought, I’ll have an Agency team pick up Abbas; we need to work friendly with our cousins. Pat, your guys will take Omer. Try to do it quietly. I know you have some pent-up hostility toward the Turkish at the moment.”
“Turkey’s a hostile country these days. The last thing I want is to fight my way out of it. A bloodless snatch and grab will be the goal.”
“You don’t need to involve Langley. We can do the targeting package from here on Omer. Most of the work is already done. We’ve known about him for a while. It won’t take away from our efforts on the social media angle,” Cheryl said.
“All right, fine. I’ll leave you to it. Let me know if you need anything. I have a flight to catch.”
I walked with Mike to his government jet that was parked outside the Trident hangar.
“You should up the security around the hangar,” he said, as we were approaching the stairs on his ride. There’s more to this than we know, and we shouldn’t underestimate these guys.”
“Will do.”
“Clearwater is paying off.”
“The Scottish professor and the Chi-com defector. Who’d have thunk it?”
“The Director wants to bring them in-house.”
“I don’t think either one of them will go for that.”
“That’s what I told him.”
“Have a safe flight. I’ll let you know once we have Omer in flex cuffs.”
“His Grey Wolves brutally murdered that Archaeology Team in Syria. Don’t underestimate him either.”
“I won’t.”
“Any thoughts on how you’ll get in and out of Ankara?”
“We do a fair amount of business with MKE
and several of the other Turkish defense companies. I think we’ll arrange an urgent delivery of something that doesn’t require an export license and fly in with the C130 to make the pickup.”
“That will allow you to arrive armed and leave with Omer?”
“Yeah, we’re probably going to need to go in heavy.”
“Don’t get caught; we won’t have the ability to do much for you if you do. Erdogan isn’t working friendly with the US at the moment.”
“I’ll let you know if we need anything.”
When I returned to the hangar everyone had dispersed from the conference room. I found Cheryl asleep in the bedroom adjacent to her office. Putting in the bedroom was a smart idea; she had planned ahead for future marathon work sessions. I crawled in beside her in the twin bed as quietly as I could, because I didn’t want to wake her.
“Don’t you have work to do?” she said in a sleepy voice.
“Nothing that can’t wait a few minutes. I missed you.”
“She turned around and hugged me. She fell back asleep in seconds.”
I held her while I worked out the logistics of going to Ankara in my mind.
Chapter 19
Ankara, Turkey
Our C130 touched down in Ankara’s International Airport as it was getting dark. We taxied to the farthest corner of the cargo area nearest the fence-line and dropped the ramp. Bill Sachse, the loadmaster, signed for an incoming shipment of engineering barrier materials and stored it in pallets next to the aircraft. I stayed inside the aircraft and took a nap until one in the morning, when it was time to move.
It took four of us to roll the MH/6S Little Bird down the ramp. The aircraft is the size of an economy car and its big bubble cockpit gives it the shape of a giant insect. The MELB version is remotely piloted and has an array of cameras and sensors surrounding it. The Little Bird has a bench seat on both sides of the empty cockpit which are mounted above the skid to externally carry passengers. We left the dumpster-sized QUADCON aluminum shipping container with the ground control station inside the aircraft.
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