Arabian Collusion

by James Lawrence

  After a quick nap, I walked down the street to Anthony’s Pier 66. Seattle’s downtown has more than its fair share of excellent restaurants. Anthony’s isn’t one of them. I chose it because it’s big and busy, and I knew I wouldn’t be remembered. The weather was overcast with a mild drizzle. I came to Seattle prepared. I had plenty of experience staying wet for weeks at a time in the woods during my junior officer days in the Second Ranger Battalion at nearby Fort Lewis. I was seated next to the window, eating hot clam chowder, looking out at the ferry terminal, when the idea hit me.

  Evan was cocooned by security. His house and office were high-tech fortresses. Without support from Clearwater or the Agency, I had no way of obtaining advance knowledge of Evan’s schedule or tracking his movements. The one thing I did know about his movements was his reliance on a helicopter to travel to and from work. Relying on a helicopter means he’s also reliant on the weather and Seattle weather was guaranteed to force him to occasionally have to cancel his air travel. I wondered what he did when the weather was bad? Did he work from home? Did he use the ferry, or did he use whatever he had in that boathouse I saw a picture of in the magazine article? I decided to find out what was in that boathouse.

  The next morning, I traded my rental Subaru in for a Suburban. Then I went to REI and bought a dark green kayak and a wetsuit. Next, I hit the road. The drive to the tiny town of Brownsville, which is across the water from the Venice area of Bainbridge Island, took an hour and a half. I put the kayak in the water at Brownsville public pier and paddled north up the narrow waterway of Port Orchard. There was a gentle rain with only a light wind. The air temperature was fifty-five degrees, and the water temperature about the same. It took me forty-five minutes to paddle to Evan Moskowitz’s house. I wasn’t the only killer in the water this morning. The Sound was teaming with sea life. An orca sounded less than fifty yards off my port side, its black and white pattern standing out in contrast to the dark blue water and the lush evergreen background. For most of the trip, I was followed by a playful pair of harbor porpoises and the barking of seals was nonstop.

  I slowed when I reached the boathouse, which was connected to the property edge by a small wooden pier. The boathouse door was closed, and I couldn’t see inside. I paddled in closer to the shore and was able to catch a glimpse of the boat through a side window. Based on the dimensions of the boathouse and what little I see through the window, my best guess was what he had inside was a thirty-to-forty-foot cabin cruiser. Given his money, I was sure it would be fast. I loitered until I saw a door open in the house and a security guard emerge. That was my cue to move on. I couldn’t see any cameras on the boathouse or the dock, but there must have been some or the guard wouldn’t have come out. I continued to paddle north another mile up to the Agate Passage Bridge and then turned around and made my way back. The waterway narrows to only a hundred and fifty yards from shore to shore at the bridge and then opens up again. In a commute to his campus in northern Seattle, the shortest route for Moskowitz would be north past the bridge. My reconnaissance confirmed the plan I had mulling around in my head. All I had to do now was secure some equipment. I came to Seattle on a private charter, so I could bring a few weapons and explosives. To complete the rest of the kit I needed, I would have to go shopping on the local market.

  I rented some scuba gear and drove back to Brownsville to make a night dive. I waited until midnight before stepping off the pier. The cold water shocked my system. Eventually, the wet suit and the heat generated from the swim warmed me up. I snorkeled for half a mile until I spotted the lights from Evan’s house. I spit out the snorkel, inserted my regulator, eased the air out of my buoyancy compensator, and slipped under the surface. I kept my depth to only a few feet below the surface. I didn’t use a flashlight, and the overcast sky made for a very dark diving experience. I swam toward the lone illuminated window in Evan’s house. I lost the light when I got close to the boat house and was just about to surface to get my bearings when I bumped into the hull of Evan’s boat.

  I surfaced inside the boat garage, between the bow of the boat and the closed garage door. I removed the adhesive backing from a small RFID tracker I carried in the pocket of my BCD. It was hard to handle the tracker wearing neoprene gloves in the dark, but I managed. I reached up and attached the tracker high on the bow of Moskowitz’s thirty-six-foot Chris Craft Corsair. The tracker was placed just below the top lip and wouldn’t be visible from the deck. Once it was attached, I depressed the rubber button on the bottom, and it flashed green twice to signal it was on. The tracker would go dormant and wouldn’t begin transmitting until the boat moved. I slipped back below the surface and made my way under the garage door and back into the Puget Sound.

  I arrived back at the Marriott at five that morning. I took a short nap and then went to work. I returned the scuba gear, and after searching the classifieds, bought a used Jeep and a Jet Ski with cash. I gassed up the Jeep and parked it along my exfil route. I towed the Jet Ski behind my rented Suburban. I did some more shopping at the local hobby store and then checked in at the Suquamish Casino Resort. I picked the hotel because it’s only a hundred yards from the Agate Passage Bridge. I was ready; now all I needed to do was wait for bad weather

  Over the next week, we had two days where the morning fog was unsafe for helicopter flight. Both days, Moskowitz had either stayed in or used the ferry, because his boat didn’t move. The long wait was making my stay at the hotel awkward. The Suquamish Casino Resort (“Truckers Welcome”) is not the kind of place people stay for more than a week or two. The tall guy with the wet suit and Jet Ski was starting to raise suspicion, if not as an executioner, at least as a crazy person.

  On my ninth morning of water watching, the alarm on my iPad sounded; the RFID tracker was transmitting. I threw a backpack over my shoulder and jogged out to my Jet Ski that the hotel generously allowed me to park on the beach. I dragged the Jet Ski into the water and took off toward the bridge. I moved the Jet Ski into position next to one of the center pillars of the Agate Passage Bridge and tied down. The current was strong, and the rope became taut once I shut the machine off. I placed my iPad on the dash and watched the icon move toward me. I removed the night vision head harness from my backpack and slipped it on. The specs on Moskowitz’s boat said it was capable of forty knots. But the fog was so thick, I didn’t think they’d be going more than ten or fifteen knots in the narrow waterway. I was counting on them slowing down even more when they approached the bridge.

  I slid the blasting cap into the well of the C4 and tied the two loose connections to the electric posts of the RF receiver unit. I started the gas engine on a three-foot-long remote-control boat I’d picked up at a hobby store and rested it on my knee. Moskowitz’s boat approached on my iPad tracking app. The map showed the boat only two hundred yards away, the high-pitched noise of the RC boat motor making it difficult for me to hear it approach. I activated a Hot Hands glove warmer by crushing it and slid it under the elastic to keep it secured on the RC boat. I gently placed the RC boat into the water. I picked up the hand-held remote control between my knees and steered the RC into the fog to my front. I dropped the thermal monocular mounted on my night vision harness over my right eye. I had lost the RC boat with my naked eye because of the fog, but once I dropped the thermal I could see a white-hot spot made by the Hot Hands attached to the boat just fine. Evan’s cabin cruiser came into view seconds later.

  The motor boat was approaching down the center of the waterway. I adjusted the path of the remote control boat a little to the right and put it on course for a collision. I drove the RC boat straight into the bow of the approaching craft. When the two hot spots merged on my thermals, I hit the detonator button on the control unit and sent a radio signal to the RF receiver connected to the elastic blasting cap. The muted explosion from a half block of C4 plastic explosive opened a hole the size of a trap door in the bow of the cabin cruiser’s fiberglass hull. The forward speed of the cruiser did the rest.

>   Within five minutes, only the top of the boat’s cabin was visible through my thermals. I started the Jet Ski, untied it from the pillar and approached the wreck. I found three people in the water slowly trying to make it to shore. None of them were wearing life jackets and the freezing cold water was already taking effect. I took the deflated two-man life raft from my backpack. I pulled the igniter, and a C02 cartridge inflated the raft forcing it to fall from my hands. I kicked the raft over to the nearest man. He grabbed onto the side rope, the other two men struggling to swim toward the raft in the unbearably cold water. I studied the group. I intercepted the trail swimmer.

  “There’s not enough room on the raft for three. You can ride with me,” I said to the man the farthest from the raft.

  He reached out and I pulled him by his arm up onto the jet ski, making sure he was between me and the handle bars. He was shivering so badly his teeth were chattering. From my seat behind him, I stabbed him in the side of the neck with a syrette of Ketamine. In a matter of seconds, he was unconscious. I spun the Jet Ski and turned back to the raft.

  “I need to get your friend to a hospital; he’s in a bad way.” I didn’t wait for a response. I hit the gas, and in seconds disappeared in the fog. The men on the raft were trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t make out what was being yelled over the roar of the Jet Ski. The nearest help was the Resort I’d been staying at under an alias. I estimated it would take them ten to fifteen minutes to get there, floating as they were with the current. My transfer point was ten minutes away in Point Wells, just a few miles north of Seattle.

  I raced through the fog and beached the Jet Ski next to a parking lot adjacent to a tank farm. I lifted Evan onto my shoulder and hiked up the hill to my waiting 1978 Wagoneer. I cut Moskowitz’s clothes off him in case he had a personal locator beacon or an electric device that could be tracked. I laid him flat in the back area of the SUV. I flex cuffed his hands and feet, and threw a wool blanket over him for concealment, and to keep him from dying of hypothermia.

  It took ten hours to reach the Airbnb cabin I’d rented for three nights in Sun Valley, Idaho. The mountain cabin was isolated. I was able to check in electronically with a burner phone. Moskowitz had been awake and vocal for the last two hours of the trip; I ran out of Ketamine syrettes in Spokane. I carried him into the dining room and left him on the tile floor. Then I got back in the Jeep and drove two miles back down the mountain to the grocery store we passed on the way up.

  I gave Evan a bottle of Ensure.

  “Drink this, it’ll give you energy and you’ll be able to keep it down with the nausea you must be feeling from the drug.” I poured half the liter bottle into him. He gulped it down.

  “What do you want? Is it money?”

  “I don’t want money. Our task here is discovery.” I set the tripod and camera up.

  “You’re going to detail everything you did, and everything that needs to be undone to stop the internet manipulation against the government of Saudi Arabia. Passwords, the whole bit. Next, you’ll be describing how you got access into the FBI files. What files you took. Where those files are, the works.”

  “Are you with the government?”

  “When we’re done with the FBI files, I’ll need the names and conditions on all of the people you blackmailed. Finally, I’m going to need to know who else you’re working with— Turki, Abdullah, etc. It’s going to be a long conversation.”

  “I want to talk with whomever you’re working for. I’m not giving you anything until I speak with the top man and get a guarantee that you’ll release me.”

  “Evan, you’re going to give me that information to stop the pain. That’s the deal I’m offering you. I get the information I want, and you get to keep your body parts. It’s a very straightforward arrangement. Don’t overcomplicate it.”

  “I want to talk with your boss.”

  Moskowitz was tied to a wooden kitchen chair. His arms and wrists were tied to the arm rests. I reached over and snapped his right index finger. I bent it so far back it touched his wrist. He screamed. That’s all it took. Nobody will ever accuse Evan Moskowitz of physical bravery.

  The interrogation lasted two full days. Moskowitz had an amazing memory and he was extremely cooperative, almost bordering on being ingratiating. When it was over, we drove north on Highway 21. It was cold in the mountains. There was frost on the road. Moskowitz was still unclothed. He was shaking in the back seat of the truck.

  “Where are we going? We had a deal. You were going to let me go,” he whimpered.

  I didn’t say anything. I pulled off onto a logging trail and drove into the woods for another thirty minutes. Moskowitz was screaming and yelling in panic as the truck bumped along the dirt trail. He started to bang his head against the headrest behind him. I opened the back door, pulled him out and threw him onto the ground. I withdrew the HK VP 9 pistol I was carrying in my waistband and aimed it at him. He stopped yelling and froze; he was lying flat on his back looking up at me as I stood over him. I pulled the trigger. The bullet hit where I aimed it—one inch above his forehead. He passed out.

  He regained consciousness on the way back to the cottage.

  “My name is Pat Walsh, but you already know that. You must have studied my files when you broke into Clearwater. Clever of you not to mention your part in that attack.”

  “I didn’t recognize you. I knew the name Pat Walsh, but there were no images.”

  “You killed four of my people.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

  “The CIA wants me to kill you. Mostly because the people the CIA reports to want you dead.”

  “They want me dead?”

  “Yeah, you’ve been very bad. They sent me to kill you. You work for me now.”

  “I work for you.”

  “I’m going to let you go, and I’m going to tell the CIA that you’re my asset. The next time you step out of line, I won’t go through the trouble of kidnapping you. I’ll just kill you. You’ll never see me coming. Understood?”

  “Thank you. Thank you. I won’t step out of line. I’ll never disappoint you. I promise. Thank you.” I looked though the rearview mirror; tears were running down his face.

  Chapter 35

  Abu Dhabi, UAE

  Mike and I were seated at the 99 Sushi Bar in the Four Seasons Hotel in Maryah Island, Abu Dhabi. Mike’s a foodie and figured if I wowed him with a great dining experience, he’d process his anger all the quicker. He was mad though, about as mad as I’ve ever seen him.

  “This is called haute Japanese cuisine. Its new and you’re going to love it. They have a sommelier for sake.”

  “Sake sounds perfect.”

  I called the waiter over and told him to get the sake guy. I ordered for both of us. I chose sea urchin, prawns, toro, black cod, steak, and about everything else on the menu. Afterward, I told the sake guy to take his cue from the dishes and surprise us. It was a magnificent meal. We had five different sakes, and the sommelier did an excellent job of explaining each one. It wasn’t until we were both feeling good, and about to attack our passion fruit mochi dessert, that the topic of work came up.

  “Why did you let Evan go?” he asked.

  “Because he beat David Forrest and he did it without a supercomputer powered by artificial intelligence. He did it alone, by himself.”

  “That’s what makes him a threat. It’s why he had to be dealt with.”

  “He can be controlled; he was following orders from Turki. Now he works for us.”

  “Can we control him?”

  “I think so. It’s worth a shot. If he goes maverick, I’ll kill him.”

  “He killed your guys. Why the compassion.?”

  “I’m just being pragmatic. I’m feeling more and more like a dinosaur these days; the future of the business is with the David Forrest and the Evan Moskowitz types. Moskowitz is a horrible person, but you need to have a weapon of his caliber in your pocket or what happened to us in Paphos is goi
ng to happen again.”

  “I’ll buy that.”

  “It’s like taking the Nazi scientists after WWII and using them for our space program. We don’t have to like these people, we just need to recognize that the opposition is after the same thing and we need parity, or we risk oblivion.”

  “How sure are you that he’s firmly under your control?”

  “He’s not completely free of his old obligations. Turki and Abdullah still have influence over him, because they’re holding thirty-one billion dollars of his paper. We need to remedy that. It was Turki that gave the order for the attack on Paphos. He’s the top guy in this conspiracy. Both Turki and Abdullah need to die.”

  “Abdullah is acting on behalf of the State of Qatar. We’ll deal with him differently. Let me handle that one. You find Turki and no more of this catch and release stuff.”

  “Turki is in Tangier, Morocco.”

  “Did Evan tell you that?”

  “Yes, they communicate through a chat room on a video game. Evan was able to trace him.”

  “What do you have Evan doing now?”

  “He’s removing the filters and changing the algos that were distorting the search rankings for the anti-Saudi content, and he’s standing by for further instructions.”

  Chapter 36

  Tangiers, Morocco

  The sail from Paphos to the Gibraltar Strait took a week. We diverted to Spain for a day to take on some gear we were going to need in the mission ahead. Migos, McDonald and I spent some of our time aboard the Sam Houston reviewing the replacement candidates for Jankowski and Burnia. We spent the remainder preparing for the operation.

  Tangier, Morocco, sits only ten miles off the southern tip of Spain. The narrow waterway between the two land masses of Morocco and Spain is the Strait of Gibraltar. Gibraltar is also the boundary between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a busy place for sea transport. We anchored the Sam Houston south of the shipping lane and three miles north of Turki’s property. It was already dark by the time we reached our destination—too dark to see the cliffs to our south.