Hicks clicked on Tessmer’s record to find out more about him.
Nothing happened. Not even a 404-error message of a bad link. Interesting.
He clicked on other items on Tessmer’s record. Biography, nature of his charges. None of the links worked.
One dead link might have been a technical glitch or a clerical error.
But a page full of dead links meant someone had gone to great lengths to hide something.
Mr. Tessmer was becoming more interesting by the minute.
Hicks backed out of the Bonn police database and had OMNI do a broader search on Willus Tessmer and Wilhelm Tessmer, complete with a facial recognition scan of his mug shot. The search took several minutes. Of all the databases and resources OMNI could access all over the world, the only file OMNI could find was the police record from the Bonn database.
No aliases. No bank records. No news articles. No records in the German court system on any of the dozens of charges leveled against him. Not even a social media account. Even the facial recognition scan of Tessmer’s mug shot came up blank. None of the law enforcement or intelligence agencies in the world had an image of the man, save for the single forgotten file on the police servers in Bonn.
Hicks slowly sat back in his chair. Mr. Tessmer had secrets, and he had a lot of help to keep them that way.
The kind of help a group like the Vanguard might be able to provide.
He looked at the dead-eyed man on the screen. He didn’t know anything about him yet, but he was going to find out.
HICKS PICKED up the phone and called Ronen Tayeb’s encrypted cell phone. He knew the Mossad’s new section chief in Moscow was probably sleeping, but the Tessmer anomaly was worth the call.
Tayeb sounded appropriately groggy when he answered the phone on the fourth ring. “I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your knack for calling at the worst possible times, my old friend.”
The two men were, indeed, old friends. Tayeb had been a fine field agent in his day, but found himself out of favor when a bureaucrat named Emanuel Schneider rose to power within the Mossad. Since Schneider saw field personnel as tools to be used to further his own career, it wasn’t long before Tayeb found himself behind a desk in an obscure office in Tel Aviv.
But with Schneider out of the way, thanks to Hicks, Tayeb was back in the field where he belonged. The Mossad had been understandably angry with Hicks’s involvement in Schneider’s plane exploding over the Atlantic, but their anger quickly subsided when he explained Schneider’s role in assassinating Jabbar on foreign soil without clearance from his supervisors in Tel Aviv. Killing the most wanted person in the country was bad enough, but to do so without permission could prove to be an embarrassment if word got out.
So Hicks did what he had been trained to do. He brokered a deal. He agreed to share the Jabbar evidence with the Israelis on two conditions. The first was that they were not to share the information with any other intelligence agency. The second was that they send Tayeb to Moscow to help hunt for the Vanguard. It was an arrangement he had neglected to mention to Demerest. If he agreed to work together, Hicks would tell him eventually, but for the moment, what the CIA didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.
“Sorry about the hour,” Hicks told Tayeb, “but I’ve found something that might be important.”
“Sleep is important, too,” the Israeli said, “especially if I’m going to continue doing your job for you.”
“Easy, Ronen. The University is footing the bill for all your extra work. I take it the equipment I sent to your safe house is working?”
“It works perfectly and its reach is impressive, though the security measures are a bit ridiculous.”
“But necessary,” Hicks said. To help with their hunt for the Vanguard, he had sent Tayeb’s team a pair of University laptops with very restricted access to the OMNI network. He could always widen their access if they found a lead on the Vanguard, but for now they needed thumbprints and face scans each time they logged on to the OMNI features on the equipment. Any attempt to hack the equipment or broaden their authorization would lock up the system and fry the hard drives.
The measures were necessary. Part of the reason Hicks had ordered Emmanuel Schneider’s plane destroyed was because he had taken Tali Saddon’s handheld OMNI device. He had no intention of allowing the Israelis to have an open door to the OMNI network then. He trusted Tayeb, but only to a point. “I took a big risk sending you those laptops in the first place, so for now the security measures stay in place.”
“You may be risking technology, but my men are risking their lives.”
“They’re only your men because I talked your bosses into giving you a field command again. And I’ve told you my people will be on the ground right beside yours as soon as we get actionable intelligence on the Vanguard.”
“I was behind a desk too long,” Tayeb yawned. “I have forgotten that it’s almost impossible to win an argument with you. I will save time by admitting defeat and ask again why you are calling at this unholy hour.”
“I have a lead on someone who may be part of the Vanguard.”
“It is too early in the morning for maybes, James.”
“Maybe is the best I’ve got,” Hicks said, “and the best either of us have had since we began searching for these bastards.”
“Who is it and how did you come by this information?”
“The lead reached out to Roger about being an investor in his club in Berlin.” Hicks began typing on his keyboard. “I’m sending you the information via OMNI as we speak. Yulian Vasiliev, ex-Spetsnaz. When I began digging into his background, I found police records indicating he worked for Willus or Wilhelm Tessmer in Berlin.”
Tayeb was quiet for a moment. “Never heard of either man. What makes the Spetsnaz man so interesting to Roger? And please don’t tell me it’s because he has a crush on him.”
Hicks ignored the jab about Roger’s proclivities. “It’s Yulian’s boss, Tessmer, who interests me. I can’t find anything on him anywhere in any database we can reach.”
Hicks could hear Tayeb get out of bed and maybe turn on a light. “Nothing on any of the networks?”
“Other than an old arrest file on an ancient police department database in Bonn, nothing. No arrest records or newspaper accounts or court papers about his arrests. Not even dismissals. Even raw facial recognition searches of his mug shot came up empty.”
“Sounds like someone worked really hard to turn this Tessmer into a ghost,” Tayeb said. “Send me whatever information you have on both men. I’ll have my people begin digging into them as soon as possible. Perhaps we have something on him in our files back in Tel Aviv. We may have to go back to paper on this one.” The Mossad agent laughed. “There’s a novel concept. I’ll also do some digging here in Moscow. There’s bound to be someone who knows something of them here.”
“Take a light approach first,” Hicks said. “This Vasiliev could be another aging gangster looking to get out of The Life while he’s still got a few good years left. And for all we know, Tessmer could be a skeleton by now.”
“Or they could be the lead we’ve been looking for,” Tayeb added. “I’ll give you daily reports on our progress and let you know if we find something solid.”
“My Adjuncts can be in Moscow within twelve hours if you need them.”
Tayeb laughed once more. “The Deans of the University may change but the efficiency remains the same, eh, James? You will hear from me in a few hours.”
Hicks couldn’t explain why, but felt the need to add, “Just be careful, Ronen. There’s something about this that doesn’t feel right.”
“We are always careful, my friend. Now, at least one of us should get some sleep. It won’t be me. It might as well be you.”
CHARLES DEMEREST had lost complete sense of time. He didn’t know if it was the middle of the night or early in the morning. He didn’t care. The only thing that mattered to him was the document he was reading on his desktop computer.
>
He used his mouse to slowly scroll through the Agency’s preliminary analysis report of the Jabbar information Hicks had given him. The analysis was in: the Jabbar evidence was pure gold.
It was perfect in that it wasn’t too perfect. His analysts would have been suspicious if the information had been a neat narrative, leading them down a clear path to where the terrorist had wanted the reader to go.
But it wasn’t a narrative. Billing records. Travel records. Financial transactions. Meetings recorded on a cell phone camera. Only perspective could allow the viewer to see it in whole. Even then, only a practiced eye could appreciate the importance of what they were seeing.
Demerest had one of the most practiced eyes in the community. And what he was reading now filled in a lot of blanks in what, up until that exact moment, had been the Agency’s passive understanding of what the Vanguard truly was. The information Hicks had given them would start a full-blown investigation into the Vanguard, into what it had been up to all these years, and what it was planning for the future.
He eased back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. The goddamned Vanguard. The Agency had been studying them for years, but they’d been elusive as hell. They would hear them, the way one hears millions of crickets in a forest without ever seeing a single one.
Thanks to Hicks, they not only knew they were there, but what they looked like.
With all the scrutiny the Agency was facing on Capitol Hill, this windfall of information was exactly what it needed to turn down some of the heat.
It was also what Demerest needed to seal the deal on his appointment as Director of National Intelligence. There had been some in Congress and in the administration and even in the community who said Demerest might not be ready for the post. They wondered if he had been tainted by the black site scandal and other intelligence failures over recent years. Snowden and Assange, those little shits.
The Jabbar information would give even his harshest critics no choice but to support his elevation.
The only problem was the timing. People would question where this windfall of information came from. Demerest could dodge publicly, but the same question would haunt him privately. James Hicks and the University were still an enigma to him. The man and the organization had been operating outside the intelligence community for so long, he had no idea if they could really be trusted. Hell, they’d never really been in the community, not since the early days of the Iron Curtain.
If Hicks could be trusted, the man and his University could be an invaluable tool to him as DNI.
But Hicks had proven to be a dangerous man in a short time. He had beaten the DIA taskforce at their own game. He had caught two of the most wanted people in the world entirely on his own. He had turned the tables on the community and brought the wrath of the legislature down on their heads. Demerest remembered the Mossad had lost one of their spymasters, an insufferable prick named Schneider, in a plane crash over the Atlantic a few weeks ago. He re-read the clips. It was the same day Hicks said the Mossad killed Jabbar. It could be written off as a coincidence, but the community didn’t believe in coincidences, and neither did Demerest.
He’d bet his pension Hicks had something to do with that crash. He had caused a lot of trouble for some of the most powerful people in Washington. He had pulled the community out of the shadows and into the light of public scrutiny. A lot of people who weren’t used to being asked direct questions were being forced to answer such questions now. All because they had crossed James Hicks.
A man like that could either make or break Demerest’s career. Could he afford to roll the dice on Hicks?
He picked up his phone and made one of the most important calls of his life.
AN UNFAMILIAR chirping from his desktop computer and handheld device snapped Hicks awake from a half-forgotten dream. He knew it wasn’t his regular alarm. He always woke well before it sounded. This was a sound he had never heard before.
He grabbed the handheld from the nightstand and looked at the screen. It was an automatic emergency message generated directly by the OMNI system.
MOSCOW: CROATOAN
He sat up in bed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He must have read the message wrong. It didn’t make any sense.
He blinked his eyes clear and read the screen again. The message remained the same.
MOSCOW: CROATOAN.
He threw aside his blankets and got to his desktop. CROATOAN was University code for a facility that had gone completely off-line, derived from the North Carolina settlement that had mysteriously vanished without a trace in 1590.
OMNI was programmed to automatically generate the message if all communication devices for a particular facility suddenly went off-line without warning. A preliminary alert would have sounded if there had been a blackout and all devices went to battery power. He searched the log for such a warning, but didn’t find anything.
The message didn’t make any sense. Ronen Tayeb had ten Mossad in the Moscow office. The CROATOAN warning meant the entire unit had gone completely dark without warning at the same time.
Something was wrong.
He called Tayeb’s phone, but it went straight to voicemail. Tayeb’s phone never went to voicemail.
Hicks had OMNI begin checking the international wires for reports of blackouts in the Moscow area. He ran a search for reports of disturbances in Moscow overnight, a reported terrorist attack or a massive power outage, anything that might explain why the entire Mossad facility had suddenly gone off-line.
But the city of Moscow had enjoyed a quiet evening. Nothing on any news sites or the municipal sites hinted there was any trouble, just the usual news about local developments, national politics, sports, and the weather.
He toggled over to the duty roster of the Mossad’s Moscow office. Ronen Tayeb and the names of his nine support staff members were listed in alphabetical order. The word INACTIVE blinked in red next to each of their names.
All their University equipment was off-line. So was every cell phone Tayeb had reported using, including his own.
He wasn’t surprised when his phone rang and it was Jason.
“I just got the CROATOAN message,” Hicks told him. “Something definitely happened. I’m not finding—”
“Sir, you’ve got to get the hell out of there,” Jason said. “Now.”
Back when Jason had been his boss, he always made it a point to cut Hicks off, dismissing his reports and belittling his findings. But since Hicks had become the Dean, Jason had never cut him off. He had never been one to overreact, either.
If he was telling Hicks he had to move, it was for a damned good reason.
He put the call on speaker as he began to get dressed. “What’s going on?”
“NORAD has just detected an unknown aircraft entering U.S. airspace over Long Island, heading straight for New York City. They’re treating it as an armed incursion and are scrambling jets to intercept. Every air traffic controller on the East Coast is diverting flights away from the city airports. OMNI detects that it’s making a beeline for your location.”
Shit. Hicks pulled on his Kevlar tactical vest, then his sweatshirt, and shrugged into his holster with the Ruger. “Projected ETA?” He buttoned his jeans.
“OMNI predicts it’s exactly four minutes out from your position, but closing fast.”
He slipped into his boots and then pulled on a black Kevlar tactical jacket from the armory. “Any idea what it is?”
“NORAD and OMNI confirm the radar signature matches a Valkyrie-class drone,” Jason reported. “They’re assuming it’s armed.”
Hicks grabbed the black knapsack that served as his bug-out bag from the armory and threw it over his left shoulder. It contained an M4 with a collapsible stock, several dozen rounds of ammo for the rifle and the Ruger, a tactical knife, and a battlefield first aid kit complete with anti-coagulant, water, and protein bars. It wasn’t enough to survive an apocalypse, but it would be enough to keep him alive for the next day or so. “
My position? How the hell does it know where…?”
His handheld and desktop began blaring a proximity alert generated by OMNI, the same alert that had sounded in his car when the DIA had used a Valkyrie drone to try to kill him two months before. The drone’s weapons system had just locked on to his location.
“Drone’s weapons system just went hot,” Jason reported. “Jets are still scrambling, but won’t be there in time.”
Hicks pocketed the handheld and slipped the tiny earpiece into his ear as he opened the hatch and moved up to the apartment. A Valkyrie-class drone could carry anything from a Hellfire missile to a biological weapon. The scrubbers on the bunker’s ventilation could neutralize a bio-attack and the bunker had been designed to withstand a nuclear bomb detonating somewhere in Manhattan. But it wouldn’t withstand a direct hit from a Hellfire missile.
And if whoever had sent the drone knew where he was, they would know enough to arm the drone with a bunker-busting payload.
He heard the hatch hiss shut behind him as he reached the apartment above. “Any idea if it’s ours? Can you hack the drone’s system? You’ve done it before.”
“Not this time. This guidance system is something neither OMNI nor NORAD has ever seen before. Even the weapons signature is reading odd, like it’s a two-part system. NORAD didn’t respond like this during the drone attack on you a couple of months ago, so this is definitely not an American operation. You’ve got less than three minutes now, sir.”
Two-part weapons system? Why were they using a two-part weapons system? Was someone guiding the drone from the ground?
Hicks knew time was running out, but he stopped by the side door to the apartment. He pulled out his handheld and accessed the facility’s external cameras. He wanted to make sure someone wasn’t trying to flush him out of the bunker and into a trap.
A Conspiracy of Ravens Page 6