The Merchant of Secrets

by Caroline Lowther

  As he spoke into the phone his body had gone limp and was resting against the table. It made me feel sad to see Mulally suffering under this terrible strain, he had shown so many glimpses of brilliance during the day and shouldn’t have been taking it so hard.

  We spent a horrifyingly tense next few hours waiting for each company that received the trial copy to report back to us telling us whether or not they had finished their compatibility tests which would have been the first step taken prior to installation of Irongate’s software. The test verifies whether a new software is compatible with their existing system and can be installed. Then, if the software passed the compatibility test we’d ask if the company had followed- up with installation of the software and if they had installed it already, we’d help them download the patch.

  When the calls started coming in from the companies that had received the software, only one company had actually installed it and put it to use in operations. Unfortunately, that one company was a major aircraft manufacturer that designs most of the airplanes deployed on the warfront. Compounding the crisis, over the next few hours the CEO of the aircraft manufacturing company alarmed everyone by informing us that flowcharts and operational manuals of a new advanced weapon system had been downloaded from someone logging in with an Irongate password. We asked how the information was downloaded, and he said it was from one of their computers belonging to an employee who was on vacation.

  “So what’d Dave Jones do?” Jose asked, “Tailgate somebody on foot as they were walking through the security door to get into the building?”

  “No, the employee reported the laptop as having been compromised,” The CEO replied. “Before we could revoke the access rights, and destroy the local files, the files had already been accessed.”

  Mulally jumped in “We’re getting off track now. We want to keep our focus on the crucial element which is identifying what was leaked and to whom. How Jones picked up the downloads is not the most important thing for us to worry about right now. We’ve already got a way to stop him from downloading more data; by applying the patch.”

  He was absolutely right. But there were other issues.

  “Sir? I have one more thing to mention, I’m hesitant to add to our current level of stress but I think I have to bring it up. Once Jones logged into the system with an Irongate password, he could have whitelisted email addresses and websites. You know those sites and the addresses that are blacklisted because they contain viruses that spy on the whole network? When they’re whitelisted they’re taken off the blacklist so that the network has no firewall effectively,” I said.

  “Yea but if the information is sent electronically we can trace the vector to the device where it was downloaded,” Hugo said, shrugging it off.

  “Hugo!” I anxiously replied, “That’ll be too late! We don’t want to learn after the fact that databases have been downloaded to the Ukraine or North Korea thanks to Jones whitelisting the email address of foreign cyber-spies.”

  Mulally turned pale with worry as the stress increasingly took its toll on him. He thought he had the crisis under control but now he seemed overwhelmed as he melted into a chair and closed his eyes cupping his hands over his face. I patted his shoulder and whispered in his ear ” the penetration testing will let us know, then they can shut down the system and install a new firewall which will keep it safe going forward.”

  Removing his hands from his face he took a deep breath. “What’s our real exposure here Caroline?”

  “Well, the airplane manufacturer will install a second sign-on screen requiring an additional password for the employees to access the network, so than when Jones tries to log-in now, he can’t get in because after he inputs the first passcode, another, second log-in screen will appear he won’t be able to get past the second sign-on screen. He doesn’t have the codes for it. The airplane manufacturer will also be running their pen-testing which will identify Trojans and other malware, and they’ll get rid of them. Then they’ll install a new firewall. It’ll happen overnight. Once they do that, as you said, our worries are contained to the information that has already been downloaded and leaked. That’s our real exposure at this point.”

  It had been a long day and we were getting hungry so Hugo left to pick up some pizza for all of us. Our necks and backs were getting stiff from hovering over laptops all day long. There was a song that had been stuck in my mind so I put on earplugs clicked into You Tube, and while the song was playing I moved my shoulders and hips back and forth to the beat softly enough that I didn’t think anyone would notice. Hugo entered the living room carrying the pizza and when he saw me, he couldn’t resist the tease. “Oh! Everyone look at Caroline bustin’ loose with her moves! C’mon baby, let it all out!”

  Mulally and Jose looked up at me, and with Hugo burst into side-splitting laughter. Bent over and gasping for air these guys were quite an audience. I got up from my chair and walked through the kitchen and through the glass sliding door leading onto the back patio. Seeking reprieve from the laughter and everything else, I took a short walk outside to call Colin who was still in the U.K.. On any other occasion this attention would have been mortifying but on that day their teasing was clearly a byproduct of the extreme tension of the moment.

  “Hi honey, I was just thinking of you,” I said as Colin answered the phone. “How are your parents?”

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll be back soon. Gotta go..” Colin replied with an unusual economy of words before quickly ending the call. I was beginning to seriously rethink my relationship with him when the sliding glass door to the patio opened and Mulally’s labrador bounced outside, tail wagging, followed by his master carrying two beers. “Are you okay?” Mulally asked in a gentle tone.

  “Sure,” I replied. He was an oasis of rational thought in a business infused with large egos, turf wars and backstabbing.

  “Have a beer?” he offered with a smile.

  “Thanks,” I replied, accepting the bottle from his hand.

  ‘Well it looks like we’re getting this under control, thanks for your help,” he said, taking a sip.

  “No problem sir.”

  He laughed, “C’mon Caroline. This isn’t the army. Call me Mike.”

  As he removed his professional armor a three dimensional person was beginning to emerge with moods and opinions and he was becoming less and less just my boss. Our communication had a subtle simplicity to it as we stood in silence and looked at the sky.

  “Where are you living now?” he asked.

  “Bailey’s.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “Well I’m wearing out my welcome, I think. I need to find my own place.”

  “You can stay here if you want,” he suggested carefully, “there’s plenty of room.”

  Hugo ripped open the door, “Sir!” he shouted. “The information just arrived on the Iranian guy who picked up the cash in Abu Dhabi.” Hugo sensed that there was something intimate going on between Mike and me, but wasn’t sure so he ignored it. “That’s it! The final piece of the puzzle!”

  “Thanks Hugo, I’ll be there in a second.”

  We looked at each other and smiled at the moment lost. Then he turned around and went inside.

  Iran desperately wanted to become the dominant power in the Middle East and as the center of the Shiite Muslim population, it also wanted to convert Iraq which is a Sunni country, into another Shiite country like itself. To enhance that effort the Iranians wanted to buy highly sophisticated weaponry to build itself up to becoming a powerhouse among its neighbors, but thwarted as they were by strict trade embargoes placed on them by the U.S. and its allies, they were forced to buy lesser sophisticated armaments from places like China and India. The Iranians paid their friends in China and India handsomely for military technology which they funded with oil money but with U.S. and European trade sanctions in place also hindering their effort to sell their oil, their cash reserves were running low. The Iranian involvement with the transfer of f
unds in an arms deal was predictable.

  At that point we had information from our friends in the U.K. to indicate that Jones was desperate for cash and trying to sell PFG drone systems to foreign governments which is a violation of federal export law, but if we had him arrested at that time we weren’t completely sure we could prove it beyond a reasonable doubt in court. Worse, we still didn’t have the device or network where he stored and transferred the information he was selling. And we didn’t know what information had been leaked to Beijing.

  Beijing clearly wasn’t interested in PFG’s designs; PFG was a relatively unknown company at that time. Jones needed something else to sell, and he was coerced by Beijing into stealing Top Secret files which China could use in its drive to expand its military presence in the Pacific theatre. Designs depicting the construction of advanced weapon systems including instructions on how to load and launch the weapons from aircraft, was worth a fortune to the Chinese military. Jones already had the passcodes that Irongate had provided six months earlier, all he needed to do was to try out the passcodes on the major defense companies one-by-one to find which system would be responsive, and break into their files.

  Mike updated us on PFG’s finances. PFG had borrowed a sum of money greater than the entire book value of the company to build the prototype of their new unmanned aircraft with state of the art sensors and updated software. They had bet the fortunes of the company on the prototype’s success. But when the President told the Secretary of Defense to cut the budget by $400 billion, PFG’s proposal was rejected by the Department of Defense, which put PFG in a tough cash flow position because it still had to make a significant payout to subcontractors including a company in California that helped design the tactical telecommunications software for the downloading of images from PFG Drones flying in the sky to the U.S. military on the ground. While no money was coming in from the sale of the drones, the company was still legally obligated to pay their vendors and subcontractors.

  Now it appeared that the subcontractors in California would sue PFG to collect their money. PFG was squeezed from every direction; they had to pay out the subcontractors and employees while the anticipated revenues from sales to the Pentagon never materialized.

  There had been a plan to make PFG public company once they got the federal contracts, and investment bankers had been contacted in anticipation of lucrative Pentagon contracts which would align PFG’s finances to some matrix of anticipated profitability and put them in a position to launch an attractive initial public offering. To the executives of PFG, their world revolved around the money it received from the Department of Defense. The US government would have been PFG’s biggest customer.

  CHAPTER 20

  It was late, Mike was tired and wanted to go to bed. Deep wrinkles lined his face that bore the sun parched texture of a man in his late forties. He asked me to write-up a report and to fax it to the Attorney General’s office so that a search warrant could be issued for Dave Jones’ residences and the PFG corporate offices, then he slipped away up the stairs. Hugo and Jose had fallen fast asleep on the sofas in the library.

  My report explained that Jones had turned to Qureshi out of desperation following an unsuccessful attempt to sell the PFG drones to the U.S. and to the U.K.. Jones had contacted Qureshi to find a buyer whereupon Qureshi put together a deal with the government in Beijing and personally transferred stolen material between Jones and the mechanic so that Dave Jones wouldn’t be directly tied to the person delivering the stolen information to China. Qureshi, having a banking background, designed the roadmap for the transfer of funds because he had some level of expertise in wiring funds in- and- out of obscure banks without detection. Qureshi arranged for “Joe” to take the information stolen by Dave Jones using the passcode software, to Shanghai , in exchange for Shanghai to wire funds to Kabul Bank, which was then re-wired to a bank in Abu Dhabi from where an Iranian man collected the money and took it to another bank where Dave Jones had an account. Qureshi was the middleman and dealmaker who put it all together for a slice of that payout which was collected for him by his brother in Kabul. Despite the Iranian man’s role picking up the money at one bank in Abu Dhabi and physically walking it to another bank in the same city to destroy the money trail, our colleagues were able to make the connection.

  Jones couldn’t sell his own company’s product, so he sold the designs of his competitors and kept the passcodes to himself because he intended to keep using them over and over again, as long as there was a willing customer to buy stolen information in exchange for the money he needed to keep PFG afloat. I summarized it all by describing Jones as a dangerous criminal whose actions had the potential to damage our capabilities and cripple our national defense.

  After finishing the report I knocked on Mike’s bedroom door which he answered all bleary-eyed and dressed in his pajamas with a navy robe sashed at the waist. I didn’t want to wake him up but I needed him to sign-off on the report before faxing it to the Justice Department, with a copy to Bailey and to Keisha. By 4:00 a.m., it had been an excruciating and nerve-racking twenty-four hours. I poured myself a glass of wine from an opened bottle and starting thinking again about Sara. When Qureshi came to Washington to work with Jones he accidently met Justin who unknowingly led him to Sara. My poor unwitting friend was used as a pawn to justify Qureshi’s stay in Virginia while he managed the financial operations for Jones.

  Dawn would be breaking soon, so I found a spare guest room to try to catch a couple hours of

  sleep.

  CHAPTER 21

  By early the next morning, a search warrant had been issued and the FBI along with a team of armed IRS agents simultaneously executed a search warrant upon Jones at his townhouse in Alexandria, Virginia and at his villa in Manalapan, Florida. We decided to catch a flight to Florida to help in the search, just the four of us, Mulally, Hugo, Jose and me. We had substantial knowledge of the material to be recovered and were the most appropriate people to aid in the search, we thought. It occurred to me that Sara would be of help, too as she was the only one who had been inside David Jones’ residence in Florida. I called and asked her to come along with us.

  Mike arranged for us to ride on the private corporate jet. It would have been scrubbed for any hidden devices before we boarded and allowed us to speak freely. As Mike and I sat side-by-side on the plane we started to discuss events in the Middle East. I wondered why PFG had not tried to cut a deal to sell the intelligence gathering drones to any of our Arab allies, especially in the Sunni countries like Jordan and Lebanon who have a stake in trying to contain the Shiite regimes in Iran and Syria. We didn’t have any trade embargoes on those countries, they’re our allies. Maybe he could have gotten permission from the Department of Defense to sell to them. But Mike explained to me that the anti-aircraft systems in Syria were so advanced that they would’ve easily detected PFG’s drones and would have shot them down. Our Arab allies weren’t very interested in buying drones to spy in Syria.

  Changing the subject I asked Mike if he knew when Colin would be coming back to work. Mike turned and asked, “Why?”

  “We just get along well, obviously, that’s why we’re dating.”

  “Dating? You’re dating Colin?” he asked, appearing surprised and upset.

  “Yes, off and on, didn’t you know? I thought our friendship had generated buzz around the office. I know it’s against the policy, and one of us will have to find another job…”

  Mike seemed angry.

  The plane touched down in Palm Beach where F.B.I. agents were waiting for us with a couple of S.U.V.s., and three patrol cars from the sheriff’s office. Driving in a procession down I -95 the vehicles exited at the Lantana exit. Turning left onto a two lane road that runs from Palm Beach to Boca Raton we drove slowly, behind a crazy bicyclist darting in between cars in the road. The beach was swarming with joggers and sunbathers enjoying the 80 degree weather. Sailboats were cruising along the shoreline.

  The sheriff’s car l
ed the way to a ten- foot privacy wall divided by large iron gates on a stone driveway located along a residential road. There was a button to the left of the gates which the sheriff pushed to confirm that the electricity had been shut-off by the power company as per his instructions before we arrived. Sara remained in the back seat of a sedan, eyes wide in wonderment; this was the first time she had seen me on the job.

  The house had previously belonged to an investment banker from New York until he passed away and it was put up for sale, remaining vacant for months until Jones purchased it in 2008, about the same time the stock market was crashing and millions of people were put out of work.

  One of our SUV‘s was driven within inches of the wall for the purpose of using the roof of the car as a ladder upon which to hoist ourselves over and into the property. “Let’s do it!” the lead agent cheered us on. I slipped out of my high heels, and clutched them in my left hand as I climbed over the wall and landed barefoot in a damp, squishy, dirt bed behind a row of bushes. One by one, the others did the same. There was momentary hesitation while the agents scanned the scene of the grand Mediterranean style, stucco building a few feet ahead, with an orange terra-cotta roof and an elaborately carved front door so thick that the sheriff decided to pry open a window with a crowbar instead. The agents fanned out over the property hunched over, guns at the ready, and eyes wide behind their sunglasses, alert for any sign of the unexpected. The breeze from the ocean was blowing hair into my eyes.