by David Capps
“Jake?” one of the FBI agents asked. “What are you doin’?”
“Come on, Jake, pick on someone your own size,” another agent said.
“Yeah,” another added. “For Christ sakes, Jake, don’t embarrass yourself by doing this.”
Jake bounced around, loosening up. “I’ll take it easy on you.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“I’ve mastered Krav Maga, and Tae Kwon Do. Almost there on two others.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said calmly.
At six-two and one-hundred-ninety-eight pounds of muscle, Jake towered over her by thirteen inches and outweighed her by a hundred pounds. She looked more like a child standing in front of him.
“I’ll be nice. You can make the first move.”
“With all of the disciplines you have learned, there’s something important they neglected to teach you,” she said.
By now every agent in the gym had circled the mats.
“Yeah, what’s that?”
All he saw was a momentary blur and everything went black. When he opened his eyes, he was flat on his back on the mat. The few fellow agents that remained were laughing and walking away, shaking their heads.
“Wha… what happened?”
“That thing they neglected to teach you about all those fancy moves?” she said softly as she knelt over him.
“Yeah?”
“You have to be conscious in order to use them.”
Jake started to get up when a wave of nausea forced him back onto the mat.
“Ahhh…God.”
“Just lie still. It’ll pass in about fifteen minutes.”
This is why Deputy Director Ellington had told her to be nice, Jake realized. A little too late for that to sink in. “Was I out cold?”
“Yep.”
“For how long?”
“About three minutes.”
“What the hell did you do to me?”
“I gave you an opportunity to replace some of your arrogance with a little bit of humility.”
Jake breathed out slowly. If I want her to be nice to me, I have to be really nice to her, don’t I? he thought.
“I was being arrogant, wasn’t I?”
“Yes. And while you’re recovering, you can practice being humble.”
“I’m sorry, Agent Badger, I was being rude and disrespectful. I apologize.”
“Apology accepted, Agent Hunter.”
“So where did you learn to do…what you did to me?”
“I spent part of my childhood and early teenage years in Hong Kong, the rest in Tokyo. My dad worked in the intelligence community. I loved martial arts, and because of my dad’s connections, I got to study with some very talented masters.”
He tried to move and the nausea returned.
“Just relax,” she reminded him.
“But what did you do to me? All I saw was a slight blur.”
She smiled. “It’s a Chinese system. There are twelve master meridian points on the body. Force isn’t required—only speed. All you have to do is tap five of the twelve master meridian points in less than a half second, and the body systems all shut down. I tapped six on you, that’s why it’ll take fifteen minutes for you to be able to move again. With seven points, you’d be down for half an hour.”
“Is it possible to hit all twelve points within that half second?”
“Yes. I can do that.”
“And then what?”
“Then, you die.”
CHAPTER 3
Peter Steinmetz studied the results of the latest test of the solar weapon on the private computer network he had installed in his home. He would normally be at his office, but with his position came a little bit of latitude in his work responsibilities. He had only one person above him at this point, and that person was extraordinarily busy by any standard. So flexibility was the rule of the day.
His wife of twenty-nine years, Ileana, was out shopping. Their two grown children were out on their own and doing well. The boy, Robert, was a commodity trader in Manhattan and the girl, Gwen, was an attorney in the Justice Department.
The solar weapon was on target, but there were variations to take into consideration: the more powerful the CME was, the faster it moved through space, thus impacting the arrival time and placement of the target. Since the surface of the sun and the target were both in constant motion, the mathematical calculations were complex. The saving grace was: the larger the CME, the smaller the target became by comparison.
* * *
Honi decided that despite Jake’s propensity for wandering into remote and arcane pieces of science, he had actually stumbled onto a major international money laundering operation. That and the attitude adjustment she’d administered earned him a second chance. She just needed to bring him up to speed on what the NSA could add to the investigation.
“I’ve got a dozen words that appeared in a contrived context from the phone on the International Funds Transfer Desk,” she said as she handed the list to Jake. “I don’t know what they mean or represent at this point. You have any ideas?”
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean, maybe?”
“Phoenix is on your list. In what context was it used?”
“It could have been a group of people, an organization, or a company, something like that.”
“It’s an organization.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s a working hypothesis at this point, not an established fact.” Jake said.
“So what other words have you figured out?”
“That’s it, so far. You?”
“My hope is that we can find the same words in connecting phone conversations and add to the context. That may lead us to the hidden meanings.”
They arrived at the NSA building just before noon. The building was constructed of a double glass outer wall made with reflective and filtering material embedded in the glass. That combination prevented outside surveillance by any known technology. She walked Jake through the scanning devices and into the security supervisor’s office.
“This is FBI Special Agent Hunter,” she said. “He’s the one I told you about. This is Sebastian Pettigrew, head of building security.”
“Agent Hunter,” Sebastian Pettigrew said as he stood. They shook hands.
“I need his security level upgraded,” Honi said.
“I’m already cleared for all top level security issues.”
“I know. That’s the only reason they let you in the front door. Everything else in here starts at that level and goes up from there.”
“So what do you need?” Pettigrew asked.
“I need him moved up to code word Gargoyle.”
Pettigrew raised his eyebrows and typed on his computer. His eyes scanned the screen. He typed some more and studied the screen. “I’ve contacted the FBI. They’ll approve the upgrade as soon as the director signs off on it.”
“Can you call him now?” she asked.
“It’s that important?”
“Yeah. It’s that important.”
He picked up the phone and punched in the number. Ten minutes later a woman walked in carrying a plastic card on a lanyard. The light blue card had Jake’s photo and name on it with VISITOR in red letters and a black square on the bottom surrounding a large letter ‘G’. Jake put the lanyard around his neck.
“Thanks, Sebastian.”
Pettigrew nodded.
Honi led Jake out the door, down the hall to the elevators and pushed the down button. They waited until the door closed. She swiped her ID card past the sensor.
“Name?” came a female voice from the speaker.
“Honika Badger,” she replied.
“Voice print confirmed. Level?”
“B6,” Honi said.
“Agent Hunter will be allowed only in area 4 of basement level six,” the voice said. The elevator began descending.
“How did she know?”
“It’s a co
mputer,” Honi said flatly. “And your visitor card is RFID.” She noticed Jake glancing around the elevator. He stopped when he spotted the small camera near the ceiling. She smiled, remembering her first time riding down into the bowels of the NSA. Everything seemed so secretive and strange back then. Most people didn’t even realize there were sub-basements in the building. Now she ran her own section in a place hardly anyone knew existed. Just then the elevator stopped and the doors opened.
They entered a hundred-foot by hundred-foot room filled with small cubicles and a grid of aisles. The carpeting was gray mixed with several shades of blue. The cubical walls were plain gray fabric with black metal edges. Each workspace had a desk with a large monitor centrally located and a keyboard along with a custom-molded mouse. A file cabinet formed the far end of the space with just enough room for a chair to slide back before it hit the other wall.
“Over here,” she said, as she led him through the left side of the maze. She stopped at the opening to a cubical.
“Hey, Brett.”
The man looked up. He was mid-thirties with short dark hair, a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee. “Hey, what’s up?”
“I need a full phone network plot on this number. For now limit the plot to 20 deep, and I also need a phone network subplot that includes these keywords.” She handed him a piece of paper. He looked over the list.
“Where did you get the keywords, from a Disney movie?”
“Just run ‘em, Brett. Is Tracy in?”
“Try the coffee nook. Her brain doesn’t click in until her fourth cup.”
“Thanks, Brett.”
Tracy Corbett was sitting in the break room finishing off her coffee and a muffin.
“I need to follow some money,” Honi said.
Tracy stood. “My favorite part of the job.” They followed Tracy to her cubical. Tracy logged in. “Point of origin and time?”
“Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 15:47 yesterday, give or take a minute.”
Tracy tapped her computer keys. “I have five transfers initiated during that two-minute slot. Any idea where the destination might be?”
“Try the Vatican Bank.”
“You can track money that goes through the Vatican Bank?” Jake asked incredulously.
“Since the Reagan Administration. We’re using the twenty-first evolution of the original Promise software.”
“Okay, here we go,” Tracy said. “Three hundred and three million from FRBNY to VB, three hundred and one point five mill went to the Libyan Central bank in Tripoli, three hundred mill to the National Bank of Italy, fifty mill to a shell corp, which is a front for CSL corporation, fifty mill to the National Bank of Libya in Benghazi and on to another shell corp we know is eventually connected to a terrorist organization, fifty mill to a bank in Maryland and on to another shell…”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Jake said. “You’ve got a maze of banks and shell corporations that’s neck deep. How do you actually know where the money ends up? I mean, this would take me weeks, if not months to track down, and I’d have to guess at a lot of it. How can you do that in just a few seconds?”
Honi and Tracy started laughing.
“Come on, what’s so funny?”
Honi leaned against the side of the opening to Tracy’s cubical, trying to contain her laughter. “This is why you needed the Gargoyle clearance. The NSA wrote all of the banking software for the last thirty years and sold it through vetted companies. Every penny that moves through a bank anywhere in the world, we get a copy of the transaction.”
“Even numbered accounts in Swiss banks?”
“Even those. But our basic problem of not enough people to look at the data remains. There’s just too much information to get a real picture of what’s happening.”
“I thought at least some banks wrote their own software,” he said.
“They do. We just make sure they use a programmer we own.”
“And what made you suspect the Vatican Bank? Why would the Church be involved in something like this?”
“The Vatican is more than the Church, it’s also a sovereign country, and the bank is part of the political side. We’ve used them before for our own covert projects.”
Jake paused, his mouth open. “You said fifty million to a bank in Maryland and then on to a shell corporation?”
“Yes,” Tracy said. “From there it filtered down to twenty-three machining companies and a shipping company, all specializing in automotive replacement parts.”
“One shipping company?”
Tracy checked. “Broadway Shipping and Expediting Service.”
Jake pulled his cell phone out to call Briggs. No service. “How can there be no service in here?”
“Encrypted phones only,” Honi said. “You’ll have to use mine.” She handed him her phone. He punched in the number.
“This is Hunter. I need a customs check on Broadway Shipping and Expediting,” Jake told Briggs. “Where are they located?” he asked Tracy.
“Norfolk, Virginia.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “Out of Norfolk.” He listened. “Destination? … Thanks.”
“Well?”
He handed her phone back. “The key words you picked out? I think I know what two of them mean.”
“Which two?”
“Cars and Benji. Each month, Broadway Shipping sends out five shipping containers on one freighter – Carsini Shipping Lines.”
“Cars,” Honi replied.
“And the CSL shell corporation in our system,” Tracy added.
“Among the destinations for the freighter is Benghazi, Libya.”
“Benji.”
“What is a country like Libya doing with fifty million in replacement automotive parts every month?” Jake asked.
“Obviously, there can’t be that many cars in need of repair in Libya.”
“Not even close.”
“So if the machining companies aren’t making automotive parts, what are they actually making?” Honi asked.
“That’s what we need to find out next.”
* * *
Honi chucked a duffel bag in the back seat of the car that Jake had checked out of the FBI impound lot. The plan was to visit each of the machining companies and try to get a good look at what they were producing without tipping them off to the investigation.
“What’s in the bag?” Jake asked.
“I just like to be prepared.”
He eyed the bag suspiciously. “You aren’t going to tell me, are you?”
“You don’t trust me? Go ahead and search the bag.”
Yeah, he thought. I fell for the martial arts bait. I’m not stepping into this one. “Just curious.”
They arrived at the first machining company on their list. Jake parked a half block from the address and pulled, from the sun visor above him, the folder containing a set of blueprints.
“You’ve got the ear bud in?”
“Yeah. Between you on one side and the earbud on the other, you’re in stereo. It’s like an echo.”
“Panic word is ‘picture’. If it sounds like I’m in any kind of trouble, call for backup.”
“Got it.”
Before Jake could get out of the car, a large man came out of the front door of the machine shop. He was bald with a mustache and a full reddish beard. He wore motorcycle colors, leather pants and heavy black boots, tattoos visible on his arms. The man paused momentarily as he looked at Jake and Honi. He swung his leg over the red Harley, started the engine, and rode off.
Jake got out and entered the machine shop. In the office, an older man with gray hair stood up from behind his small desk.
“Can I help you?”
“I hope so. I need twenty of these parts machined up.” Jake handed the blueprints to the man, who quickly looked them over.
“We’re really booked right now. We can’t do the job.”
“Could you give me an idea of what it would cost?” Jake asked.
The man handed the bl
ueprints back. “We can’t do the job, sorry.”
“Thanks anyway.” Jake left.
It was the same story at the second and third machining company.
“With so many people out of work and the economy struggling, what do you think the odds are of three companies in a row being unable to take on any more work?” Jake asked.
Honi scoffed. “Did you notice at two of the places, the building next door was for sale? How good can business be?”
“Exactly.”
As they arrived at the fourth company on their list, there, next to the curb, sat the same red Harley Davidson motorcycle a hundred feet from the machine shop. Jake drove by and parked around the corner, out of sight of the motorcycle. He pulled his cell phone and called the FBI office.
“I need you to run a motorcycle plate.” He gave the number and a description of the bike. “Run a quick background check on the owner, too.” He waited.
“No wants or warrants from the DMV check. Running background now.” He glanced over at Honi. “No background information, no Social Security Number. ID is fake.”
“Thanks,” Jake said and disconnected. “Whoever it is, he’s using a fake identity. I may need your special help to take this guy down so we can find out what he’s doing in the middle of our investigation.”
“No problem.” She leaned into the back seat, unzipped the duffel bag and pulled out a baby-sized rubber doll and a baby blanket.
He looked at her suspiciously.
“You’ll see.”
Jake got out, rounded the corner and walked past the motorcycle. When he opened the door to the machine shop, the large, bald man was talking softly to a man in an oily shop apron. The large man glanced at Jake, said a few more words, turned and walked past him to the door. The size of the guy made Jake feel suddenly shrunken. The guy was six-five to six-six, around two hundred and eighty pounds and very muscular.
“It’s him,” Jake whispered. “We need to ask him some questions.”
“Sit tight.”
Jake approached the man in the shop apron and showed him the blueprints. As the man studied the blueprints Jake wandered back to the door and looked out the window. The large man walked quickly toward the motorcycle as Honi approached him from the street corner. She carried the doll wrapped up in the baby blanket. He could hear her talking to the doll in his ear bud as she closed in on the man. “We’re going to go see daddy, sweetheart. You’re just a little daddy’s girl, aren’t you?”