“You always said patience was a virtue, Mother.”
“Save the lectures, dear,” Sylvie counters. “I just hope to God my crazy husband’s okay.”
Watt turns away from the screen, letting Collyer’s wife’s remark echo around in his mind as he thinks, He won’t be if I can help it.
The end game is set. A middle-of-the-night flight on a Pentagon jet to a prearranged hellhole in the Middle East and Risstup, Collyer and the nurse will be out of his way for good. The threat to Vector Eleven eliminated.
He clicks off his computer. Checks his watch. So far he’s been on duty almost forty-eight hours straight. So much for the weekend. And his Terps got clobbered by Clemson. No running game, three picks, he was lucky he missed it. Soon he can sleep, eat a thick steak, enjoy a glass of wine with his wife. There will be better days ahead.
His optimism is immediately rewarded as Williams sticks his head in and announces, “Sir, they’ve tracked the computer Collyer used to send the email to his wife. NSA ran it down for us in a matter of minutes. He also used it to send a second email.”
“To who?”
“Blacked out, completely encrypted. And there’s no sending address. All we can tell is that Collyer sent out a second email. We don’t know what it said or to whom it was addressed.”
“Find the machine that sent those emails. If we can get our hands on it, NSA will mine the hard drive and get the goods.”
Watt scratches his neck. His wife dropped off a fresh shirt but it hasn’t been washed enough and the collar’s like sandpaper. The news Williams gave him is equally irritating. He doesn’t like the sound of the second email. It’s been encoded, evidence Collyer is getting help from someone in the intelligence community. Winston Straub at the CIA, Collyer’s college roommate, most likely. They are watching him carefully and have warned him to keep his nose out of their business.
The Pentagon’s a favorite target these days. Everyone has some beef with the Building. Could be another person at the CIA or someone at the FBI, both of those agencies have been taking it on the chin ever since 9/11. Not to mention Homeland Security—any of those outfits would love to see the Pentagon take it in the ear.
Watt clicks on his computer and speaks to the team in the motor home. “Any luck on the machine that sent the email?”
“Yes, sir. It’s registered to a grad student at Carnegie Mellon. We’ll be paying him a visit.”
“Quick, please, we’re running out of time.”
Matt Simon is scrambling to add the finishing touches to his dissertation that’s due in a week. Simon’s advisor is a stickler for details so he’s absorbed in proofing the first section, making notations in the margins, correcting punctuation and spelling and double-checking his footnotes. There’s no reason for him to notice the two men slowly walking through the reading room of the engineering library surveying the faces of the few students still up and studying at this hour.
He only looks up when he hears his name.
“Mr. Simon?”
Simon turns to his left, a man in a plain dark suit pulls up a chair next to him. Buttoned up and buttoned down, very businesslike, too businesslike in contrast to the casually dressed students.
“Yes?”
“We have some questions to ask you.” Simon is aware of someone on his right. He swivels to see the man’s twin, right out of Central Casting. Short hair, scrubbed and cleanly shaven faces. Cops or FBI agents. Straight from a Dragnet rerun. Simon guesses the next thing they’ll do is pull out black leather cases and flip them open to show off their sparkling badges.
“Who are you?” he asks.
“Mr. Simon, did you fill out a United States income tax return in 2004?”
“What business is that of yours?” Simon asks, silently saying a prayer and at the same time knowing it will do no good.
“You had income in 2004, Mr. Simon, over fifteen thousand dollars. Yet you did not file a return. That’s a crime, Mr. Simon.”
Oh shit. His mother had lectured him. His girlfriend said he was crazy. But Simon had taken a calculated risk. The money was for a plum consulting job, paid by personal check, no 1099 issued. He was up against the wall, maxed out on his cards, up to his neck in student loans. He’d had nightmares about this moment. Simon’s chest is beading with sweat. He finds his foot nervously tapping the floor.
“If you give us what you need, Mr. Simon, we’ll put in a good word for you with the IRS.”
“You’re not from the IRS?” Simon squeaks, his voice going south on him.
“Let’s just say we’re from a closely affiliated agency.”
“What is it you want?” he asks, pleading more than requesting.
The man on the left points at his laptop, “Bring your computer, let’s find a place we can talk.”
The three stand in unison. Matt Simon shuts his laptop and tucks it under his arm. The two men give him tight smiles and steer him off toward the stacks. They stay close to him, too close. He’s being escorted, but he feels as if he’s under arrest. All for a few thousand dollars.
They enter the dimly lit stacks filled with endless rows of metal bookcases reaching to the ceiling, dark concrete floor, place feels gloomy, the air frosty. The door clicks shut behind them. The two men turn to face him. So this is how it goes down, one minute I’m working on my dissertation, the next I’m being shaken down by two government goons because I failed to report some income on my return.
From his jacket pocket, one of the Feds pulls out a photograph. It only takes a second for Simon to recognize the middle-aged man who borrowed his laptop. Are they after him?
“Mr. Simon, we know this man used your computer yesterday to send two emails from the Bravo Café. Do you know him?”
“Never saw him before. I sat down next to him and I haven’t seen him since.”
“Did he tell you his name?”
“No, we just talked about my dissertation.”
“Why did you let him use your computer?”
“Is that a crime?”
“It very well might be, Mr. Simon.”
It doesn’t take him long to decide to be cooperative. “Look, he asked to use my PC to send out some emails. It was no big deal to me, I was finished using it so . . .”
“Did you get a look at them?”
“Deleted them before he handed it back to me. Made a fuss about that, you know, about deleting them.”
“And then?”
“I said goodbye, took my computer and left. That was it.” Simon feels like he’s back on solid ground. He risks a question: “Can you tell me what is going on?”
The two men shake their heads in unison—robots. One looks at the other. There is a bit of unspoken conversation between the two, eyebrows lifting, slight head nods. As if they’d previously agreed on something. The man on Simon’s left takes out an envelope and points at Simon’s laptop.
“We’re going to have to take that.”
“Beg your pardon?” Simon tightens his grip on his machine.
“Your computer is now government property—evidence.” The man hands Collyer the envelope. “Here is five hundred dollars in compensation.”
“But my dissertation is on it.”
“I’m sure you’ve saved it. You’re much too smart not to have done that. And too bad if you haven’t.”
Simon takes the envelope and surrenders his laptop at the same time. Small price to pay for avoiding the IRS. The men turn to leave. One turns back as he swings open the door to the reading room and says, “One more thing, Mr. Simon. Maybe you’d consider using the money to make a down payment on the taxes you owe. I know the IRS would appreciate it.”
The two men exit out the door they entered through. It slams shut behind them.
Simon is left standing alone in the gloomy light of the engineering library stacks, feeling both victimized and lucky at the same time.
Greg Watt loosens his tie and leans back in his chair. It has been a productive twenty-four hours. They
are filling in the blanks. Overnight his team descended on Collyer’s house, discovering he traveled to Pittsburgh in response to the nurse’s call. After picking up the scent of a lost nuke, with help from the nurse Collyer kidnapped the pilot. He’s emailed his wife and someone else.
Shaking down the grad student was easy, a little IRS cooperation and now the laptop’s in their hands. Soon NSA’s experts will be deconstructing its hard drive. With any luck, he will discover the identity of Collyer’s contact and they will be one step closer to running him down.
But one discovery his team has made is puzzling. Watt doesn’t know what to make of it.
Grossman, the flying squad leader, explained it to him over the secure phone connection. “Someone had been tapping Collyer’s line before we got to it. We saw the signal on our monitors. Someone was definitely bugging it.”
“Who?” Watt snapped.
“Here’s the problem. The minute we saw it we ran a backtrace but the bug disappeared, evaporated as if it had never been there in the first place. Has to be a pretty sophisticated setup to sense a second tap and disconnect that fast.”
Watt thrummed his fingers on the stack of papers in front of him. Who the hell else is involved in this?
“Thing I don’t get,” Grossman continued, “is why in the hell would anyone want to eavesdrop on a kook like Collyer?”
16
Solo, Indonesia, Monday morning, EST + 12 hours
Abu El-Khadr stumps along the wooden sidewalk just feet from the choking traffic, the metal peg replacing his right foot clunking on the boards. The streets are bustling with vehicles, cars and scooters, trucks and bicycles, a teeming mass of popping and roaring machinery belching smoke and soot into the air mixing with the din of honking horns, irate shouting, music blaring from everywhere, all orchestrating into a deafening cacophony that’s amplified by the metal roofs overhead so that the sweltering 105° temperature in the mid-sized Indonesian city seems even more stifling.
In his younger days, he was careless with plastic and paid the price. Now honored with his face on thousands of wanted posters and a five million dollar bounty on his head, he’s in the top echelon of the organization and has people to do his dirty work.
The armpits of his dishdasha are stained with sweat, the front garnished with tomato sauce that slid off the slice of double cheese pizza he was enjoying with his new recruit, who though twenty years younger and unencumbered by a peg leg and middle-age pounds, still has to hustle to keep up.
Speaking to Naguib in hushed tones in a Yemeni dialect that none of the Indonesians scarfing down lunch in the restaurant could understand, Abu El-Khadr outlined the task. His message was simple and direct. When Naguib completes this assignment, he has the job. It’s both his initiation and a guarantee he will never leave. For once you kill for the organization, it has you by the heart. El-Khadr calls it taking ownership of the position, winking to let the younger man know it’s his idea of a joke.
“You will escort Hamil out to lunch on the pretext of getting to know him. Hamil’s bladder is weak so he will get up to use the WC. Follow him as if you have to go too,” El-Khadr explained. “And when he squats over the hole to do his business, helpless and half-naked with his garment hiked up around his chest, that is when you will put one bullet between his eyes, another in the throat for insurance and as his body crashes backward, a third in the heart for good measure.”
Naguib’s face went ashen at the directive and he quickly hid his trembling hands under the table. Abu El-Khadr continued with his instructions. “The restaurant owner is one of us. He will take out the garbage for you. Once you have completed the task, you can return to your lunch. If you still have an appetite,” El-Khadr joked without cracking a smile.
Abu El-Khadr clomps down the steps and hustles down the narrow alley leading to his headquarters, sending a pack of mangy dogs scurrying for the shadows. Naguib’s tagging along after him, still reeling from the task he’s facing.
Solo is in the center of Java, its main island, and for three years has been El-Khadr’s base of operations. Though the Americans have a major presence in Jakarta, few are seen in Solo. The ones who do visit get their business done in a hurry for it is well known that the city is a terrorist haven, and it is much too easy in the swarm of people for someone to slide a flashing blade into an American’s back or roll a grenade under an embassy sedan crawling through traffic.
El-Khadr stops at the battered wooden door of the former auto body shop that has been converted into an offshore call center. The sign over the door reads Far East Phone Marketing and though nothing’s being sold inside, it provides convenient cover. No one would guess that the banks of computers inside and the staff that comes and goes at all hours would add up to anything more than another offshore call center fielding calls from cranky Americans about their balky computers.
His chunky fingers tap a quick code into the dial pad and he whispers two sentences in Arabic into the speaker.
In the front section of the call center, behind a reinforced steel partition, the middle-aged Egyptian programmer named Hamil jumps as he hears the sharp clap of a door slamming behind him. The tea sloshes in his cup as he swirls around.
Abu El-Khadr stalks in swinging his signature riding crop, his chubby face beet-red. Meek-looking, an accountant by profession, his cherubic face ringed by a thin black beard and framed by granny glasses, his rotund body makes him look like a Middle Eastern Santa Claus. Only his cruel and high-pitched snarl, ominous and animal-like, gives any hint of his ruthless nature. His resume is impressive. He can describe in detail the smoking ruins of the Khobar Towers barracks in Saudi Arabia, the USS Cole listing at the dock at Aden with a thirty-foot gash ripped amidships, as well the pile of rubble swarming with rescue workers that was once the American embassy in Dar es Salaam.
Hamil doesn’t recognize the stranger shadowing him. Tall and thin, he wears casual clothes, jeans and a T-shirt. He is also Middle Eastern, Hamil guesses, Yemeni or Saudi. The stranger is cool and composed in contrast to El-Khadr, who’s as pissed off as Hamil has ever seen him, storming toward him brandishing his crop over his head.
Hamil knows he’s in for it. Too much has unraveled over the past two days. And he’s going to pay. He’s going to make an example of me for this stranger, Hamil thinks, cowering under the crop looming high above him.
“You are supposed to be a computer genius and you can’t even track an old man, a woman and a retiree? What the hell good are you?” he screeches in Arabic. Hamil ducks as Abu El-Khadr brings his riding crop crashing down on his shoulders. Once, twice, three times. The monitors in the back have been switched on so the entire operation can watch. A lesson no one will forget. He flails the crop down again, grunting dramatically for his audience.
“You are becoming the bane of our existence. You’ve packed the sites with so much information they crash all the time.”
Responsible for coding communication, Hamil is sequestered from the rest of El-Khadr’s people who sit in a series of control rooms in the back staring into computers, watching satellite screens and talking on sat phones. Working different shifts and all sworn to silence, Hamil has counted over thirty people staffing El-Khadr’s operation. Plus a security detail of eight surly Yemenis dressed in black carrying Kalashnikovs, hand grenades dangling like fruit off their armored vests, who lounge around chewing khat, the narcotic sticks many Yemenis are addicted to, and grooving on their MP3 players to pop music they’ve downloaded from radio stations in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital. That’s close to forty people just in Solo. Who knows how many operatives he has scattered over the globe helping to carry out his mission?
Hamil knows there is no point in offering an explanation, the bearded leader would have none of it.
“You’ve made the communication so complicated, it’s no wonder you lost him,” El-Khadr continues. “All this nonsense about flowers is a distraction. You spent so much time and energy encoding you let him get out of sight. Track Co
llyer down. He must be found immediately.” He gives Hamil one last crack for emphasis.
Hamil can feel the sting down to his toes. El-Khadr must be under pressure, Hamil guesses. And he’s taking it out on him—though his encoding has nothing to do with losing Collyer. They had intercepted the call from the nurse and followed him to Pittsburgh, had them right up to the point when they pulled into the airport parking lot. Three hours later, they realized they’d lost them. Where they went from the Pittsburgh airport was anyone’s guess.
“I am putting out queries, it is only a matter of time before we reconnect with Collyer. He will be found, I guarantee.”
El-Khadr sneers and stalks off to his private office, the stranger following him, the door slamming behind them.
Hamil gingerly runs his fingers over the welts left on his back by El-Khadr’s crop. I will find Howard Collyer, with the help of Allah, I will, Hamil thinks. He left his father’s prosperous Internet business in Cairo five years ago to join the organization, and now he’s involved in a project holding the key to its future. I will succeed, Hamil tells himself, I will not fail. I will not let El-Khadr down.
It is El-Khadr’s life’s work and the success of the mission will be his shining moment. As they had turned commercial aircraft into weapons of jihad, this time a neglected bomb would be used to create the ultimate catastrophe. Though it was easy to build a dirty bomb with radioactive materials bought on the black market, importing the materials was the problem. As they had with the planes strategy, the decision was made to find a source inside the United States.
Options were limited. Power plants and nuclear facilities were heavily guarded, the radioactive materials cumbersome and hazardous to even move. Breaking into Los Alamos or Oak Ridge where a large stock of weapons-grade uranium is stored was the best option until a young Iranian engineer dedicated to the cause uncovered an obscure American website.
After two months of research, Mehran Zarif took his astounding discovery up the line. Sitting on the dirt floor of a hut in North Waziristan, he detailed the plan. The decision was made. Los Alamos and Oak Ridge were shelved and all resources were diverted to the new opportunity. The leaders of the movement funneled funds, resources and personnel to the mission.
Sleeping Dogs Page 12