As he took out his FBI credentials he looked at the sentry’s big red and blue shoulder patch. The guard was with a private company and armed with a nine millimeter automatic and wore sergeant’s stripes. He is probably the supervisor, Nicky thought.
“Officer, pardon me, this is my first day at work in this building, and I was told to see the senior security officer when I entered.”
“Yes sir, I am the supervisory officer. How can I help you?”
“Officer, I am a retired police lieutenant and I am carrying my semiautomatic pistol. I was told to see you to secure a lock box to store my weapon while I am working in the building.”
“You are an FBI counterterrorism operations specialist, is that correct?”
“Yes sir, I am.”
“Please standby and I will have the FBI Police assign you a gun storage safe in the secure area right over there,” he said, pointing to a bank of small lockers erected against the wall beyond the security check point.
Within a few minutes an FBI police officer appeared.
“Hi Mister Brennan, I am Police Officer Joyce. May I see your FBI credentials, your pistol license, your police ID and your weapon qualification card, please?”
“Yes, please call me Nick. I have it all right here for you,” he said as he delivered up a fistful of papers and cards.
“Thank you. Are you carrying the gun right now?”
“Yes, it is holstered on my right hip beneath my suit jacket.”
“Come right this way, Nick.”
The two walked towards the weapon storage area and Officer Joyce picked out a locker and pointed to a lead container behind the wall in an isolated area.
“Please unload and clear the weapon in the safe container right over there and store it holstered in locker 0305. The combination is written on a document inside the locker and only you and the FBI Police have that combination. This whole area is patrolled by security twenty-four hours a day. 0305 is permanently assigned to only you; many of the other lockers you see here are used daily by other armed visitors, sometimes from other agencies or other active or retired police officers or agents entering our fine facility.”
“Thank you, Officer Joyce.”
“No problem, and welcome to the FBI!”
Nick stored the pistol as he was instructed and briskly walked to the elevators. As he got on the elevator he wondered what he was about to encounter. He was told earlier to go to the conference room on the seventh floor and meet with his team leader. As Nick left the elevator on floor seven, he looked both ways and spied the conference room to his left down the brightly lit long, narrow hallway with its shining linoleum floor that resembled a mirror in the way it reflected the corridor walls and the overhead lights. The cops never kept our floors this clean, he said to himself quietly with a chuckle. He took a deep breath and turned the handle and walked into the conference room. Now I begin yet another job, he thought.
“Nick Brennan, I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m Supervisory Intelligence Analyst Jack Mason,” said a man who walked from behind the long, dark conference table with his hand outstretched, obviously looking for a friendly handshake.
Mason was a man of average size sporting short, thinning light brown hair with hazel eyes and a large forehead. He was wearing a nicely tailored dark pinstriped suit with a crisp white shirt and a bold light blue tie. At about thirty-five, he was several years younger than Nick.
“It is nice to meet you, Mister Mason.”
“Call me Jack,” his new boss said. “How was the training?”
“Good, interesting, but I was away for about ten weeks and getting a bit homesick.”
“I understand. From now on most of your trips away will be of short duration. Let’s get started. Please sit. Nick, most of the work we do requires a secure environment. We work in the sensitive compartmented information facility—SCIF, pronounced ‘skiff’—a highly secured room used to work on and discuss the secret or top-secret SCI we use regularly. As you know, we never publicly acknowledge any SCI processes.”
“Yes, Jack, I am familiar with SCI, which I know is derived from intelligence sources and methods, and the process we use in furtherance of our mission. We were also introduced to the SCIF and the work that is done there.”
“Good, then let’s retire to the SCIF,” Mason said as they stood up and walked out through a door in the rear of the conference room into a second entranceway where Jack flashed a card at a data screen. He waited for an electronic acknowledgement and then entered some numbers on a keypad. The door unlocked and the pair walked through the large heavy metal doorway into a place that resembled a business office inside a bank vault. There, seated at a large desk deep inside the room, were John Planner and Tom Carrillo.
“Welcome aboard, Nicky!” said Planner with a mischievous laugh.
“I told you we’d get you here, Brennan,” added Carrillo with a broad smile.
“Oh, hell it’s great to see you guys!” Nick responded. “Seeing you two, well, I’m really happy to have joined the bureau!”
“Let’s get down to business,” Mason stated while the three exchanged handshakes.
John, Tom and Jack all pulled their chairs closer to the desk and began to rustle through an enormous pile of papers on the large, otherwise barren desktop.
“John, why don’t you begin to update Nick?” Mason suggested as Nick took a seat.
“Okay, Nicky. NSA knows from several confirmatory intercepts and stored email messages at a variety of servers that Bhiren was responsible for the attempted bombing here in New York and that horrible tragedy—if tragedy is even an appropriate word—in London.” Planner reached into the pile of papers and pulled out a sheet and continued, “We estimate, and I think you guessed right, that Aaffia Khan was delegated the task of collecting the peroxide over a rather long period of time, and we now suspect that Bhiren al Mohammed is back in the UK.”
Looking down at a chart, Planner went on, “We have a signature for his satellite phone, but that has gone silent. He tends to occasionally use several different cell phones, but that hasn’t happened in a while either. We are not sure how he is coordinating with his cohorts or exactly where he is.”
Carrillo picked it up from there. “Nick, as you probably know, I am working for the Defense Intelligence Agency, the DIA. We analyzed with the CIA, NSA and FBI the hard drive and flash drives Aaffia had in her Brooklyn apartment. There were several interesting messages between and among the correspondents associated with the emails we collected, but none seemed to directly connect al Mohammed to the communications or help us a lot.”
Looking at a top-secret document. Jack Mason continued the narrative, “Nick, the method attempted here and used on the school bus in London was exactly the same. A review of the evidence indicates Bhiren favors a highly unstable peroxide mix probably detonated by a cell phone or custom-made detonator. The mules that transport these devices are carrying highly volatile explosives that generate an enormous amount of energy. The bombs are relatively small and can generally be hidden in a vest, a backpack or a small container.”
Nick, now feeling a bit overwhelmed with the quick details and fumbling for words, slowly asked a question, “Is Bhiren a chemist or a scientist of any kind?”
“He studied biology at Nottinghamshire University in the UK, but we believe he is an operational guy, not a bomb designer. He might be able to construct a bomb, but he probably has help. We don’t believe he can do the calculations to create a custom device,” Tom Carrillo suggested.
“That’s the deal, Nick. We have to figure out who Bhiren talks to and who is his chemistry teacher. From there we can probably figure out where he is and grab him before he kills again,” Jack Mason said, speaking slowly and solemnly.
“Could he… I mean, is it possible he is in the US right now?” Nicky inquired.
“Possible, but we don’t think so. The CIA has a source who reports to our embassies, usually different ones, from time to time. He was t
he guy who tipped us off on the Grand Terminus Plaza attempt. He has a pretty good track record and he wants to come to the US. There is a cable right here you can look at that tells the whole story,” Tom said as he handed Brennan a long Teletype message.
“Anyway, our CIA source says al Mohammed is in England somewhere, and after discovering he was being followed by Scotland Yard in that tube station he has gone to ground. He is probably not going to move a lot, and he avoids electronic communication.”
“He killed those kids after going to ground. He moved then. Can’t he move again?” Nick said with a furrowed brow.
“Nicky, that was a local job. He was able to bomb that bus because he shook that covert surveillance. It was preplanned. He might move, but we believe he will stay in or more likely near London.”
Mason took a deep breath and added, “But remember he has pretty much free movement throughout the rural UK. All of the CCTV cameras tend to be in the big cities.”
“He probably won’t cross international borders,” Tom offered.
“What animates this guy?” Nick wondered out loud.
John Planner explained, “Like most terrorists, al Mohammed is aggrieved. He sees Western Europe and America as tyrannical and imperialistic, especially against Muslims. As a predominantly Christian country, the US is a premier enemy, and Bhiren is still fighting against the Crusades, which results in a profound hate for Catholics generally. He uses half-truths to make an argument and always offers a radical solution. By the power of his personality and rhetoric he converts moderates into soldiers; many just like him, native-born Brits.”
“Nick, I want you to read all of this information in hard copies, then I will get you started with your computer and email accounts. We have a lot of work to do, and you will be better prepared after you have read up on our mission,” Jack said, again staring at the pile of papers on the desk.
Planner interjected another thought, “Be creative, Nick. Bhiren is smart, wily and dangerous. NSA will provide all the help we can, but communications-related intelligence has its limitations, as does humint,” he said, referring to human sources of intelligence. He continued, “It is the human factor that often makes the difference. Our ability to think abstractly, logically and critically, to get into the enemy’s brain. And hey, a little bit of luck never hurt, either.”
The newly minted FBI OS Nick Brennan spent the entire day reviewing the files he was given. As he sat in his assigned cubicle, he wondered how they were going to figure out where one guy was hiding among sixty-two million people in the UK. How could he and his team be expected to locate a target that the NSA, Metropolitan Police of London with all their cameras, the British MI 5, the FBI, CIA and DIA couldn’t find? As Nick thought back, he remembered how ASA had found its targets in Vietnam. The bad guys always have to communicate somehow, he remembered being taught. Why, that’s it, he decided as he paged through those many secret documents.
****
The next morning Nick reported to the conference room and met with his squad, Team 1, the elite team assigned to identify, track and locate Bhiren al Mohammed. There were six members, all intelligence analysts detailed as operations specialists. The OS is a front line analyst who works with agents and surveillance specialists on counterterrorism missions that affect the US or US citizens anywhere in the world.
Team 1 was responsible for operations principally in Western Europe that were often related in some way to the jurisdiction of the New York Field Office. Team 1 was stationed at 290 Broadway in Manhattan but frequently worked out of satellite offices in Chelsea on the Westside of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island. The different locations provided some measure of identity security to these confidential employees in the event the main office was being watched by an enemy agent. They also provided a base of operation should a lead arise outside of the lower Eastside of Manhattan, including perhaps railheads, highways or tunnels, airports, or other transportation facilities located away from downtown. The other teams that resided at the out stations provided local expertise and collected intelligence in those communities. Brooklyn was particularly important as the home to large Middle Eastern and Jewish populations.
The team leader was Jack Mason, a former CIA intelligence analyst, and the other members of the squad provided a variety of impressive experience as well. There was a former US Treasury agent, Alfred Franks, who was highly skilled at tracking currency and uncovering money laundering. The team’s only female member was Kristin Roberts, a retired NYPD police detective who was a crime scene and forensic specialist. Larry Ford had started his career at the NSA and was trained as an intelligence analyst working on electronic networks widely known as traffic analysis. Bob Phillips, a graduate of Princeton University, had a master’s degree in cultural studies and served as a liaison to linguists and interpreters in the FBI and other organizations. Finally, Kevin Cleary was a retired US Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in various embassies throughout the world and was considered something of an expert in diplomatic relations. Kevin maintained contact with military counterparts. Nicky, the only lawyer and former police supervisor on Team 1, was humbled to be assigned to a squad with so many outstanding members.
After all the introductions and a hearty welcome by Team 1, Nick sat down in the SCIF with his squad to collect their opinions regarding the location and plans of Bhiren al Mohammed. Nick knew he needed to be brought up to date and figured these were the people to do that.
Kristin Roberts, age forty-three, was a rather tall, thin, auburn-haired woman with big green eyes and a serious demeanor, perhaps even a bit intense. “I believe he is in Leeds, UK, and I think he will strike again as soon as he can come out of hiding without great risk. The simple explosive devices he uses are very effective, and I don’t think he will change his methods. We are not likely to pick him up on a wire, roving or not!” she said, referring to a wiretap that tracks whatever phone the target uses.
Larry Ford, the eldest of the group, agreed but added, “If al Mohammed gets complacent or makes a mistake, the team might get a break.”
Al Franks, average height and slightly overweight, didn’t seem very confident about tracking the money. “Look, this guy doesn’t use credit cards, debit cards, checks or shekels. He doesn’t pay taxes, go to casinos and cash in chips or run a business out of his house. He is funded by someone, but we don’t know who.”
Nick looked at Bob Phillips and asked him what he thought. “Well, Nick, the guy is a British citizen who speaks Arabic. He is not out of place in the UK or US. He is a second-generation Pakistani who is believed to read the Koran daily. I also believe he is hiding in Leeds, but more specifically Beeston, a suburban area of the city. He is camera shy right now, and Beeston provides camouflage and contacts. A lot of radicals live there.”
Cleary, with a fashionable marine high and tight style haircut and a toothy smile, finally offered his assessment. “Bhiren is married to the battle. He is prepared to die for the cause, but he won’t kill himself—he thinks he is too important. He kills kids because they are defenseless and he gets big headlines. Blowing up children is a force multiplier. The dead will always be Western children, and he prefers Christians, maybe even Catholics. His training in Pakistan gives him operational skill, but I believe like the others that someone is helping with the science. That’s the guy we need to find, ‘The Chemist.’”
“Where do I begin?” Brennan only rhetorically asked the group, but an answer came nonetheless.
“Nick, go over the flash drives and the hard drive from Khan’s apartment and the pocket litter like we did, read them with fresh eyes and read them again. I went bleary eyed and I just couldn’t glean anything from them, but maybe a new OS can,” said Ford with a bit of a frown on his face. “We have been at a dead end for months now, and we need a lead of some kind.”
Nick left the meeting disappointed. The team’s morale was low, and there was probably nothing anyone could do about it. He remembered how he coul
d shake up his old intelligence squad with new information and some creative questions. Nicky vowed to “dive” into the info on the thumb drives and the computer hard drive and come up with something.
****
Nicky’s eyes were glued to the computer screen as he looked at all the email messages Khan had sent and received from her base in Brooklyn. Most were innocuous rants about the mistreatment of Muslims in the Western world. Her contacts were numerous. Brennan had access to all of Aaffia’s messages which she had stored on her computer, as well as those still available at the time of the attempted bombing, which had been stored by her email server, known as an Internet service provider or ISP. Through translation Brennan could read almost everything, although there were still some cryptic expressions.
There were almost forty different email addresses with whom Khan corresponded. All of them resolved or were located outside the US. Most of them, twenty-eight in all, were located in Pakistan or Afghanistan. A few others were in Somalia and Saudi Arabia, and the last few resolved to Western Europe including the UK. The messages exchanged often made reference to the Koran, and some quoted verses directly out of the holy book. To Nick, some of the citations and quotes from the Koran seemed to flow from the idea that Christian faiths got it wrong, especially with reference to the Trinity—the dogma that held a single God expressed as three entities: the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit. One common and pervasive verse transmitted back and forth between and among the group was simple but perhaps had more meaning, Nick thought. Brennan called it the “4.171 lecture”.
[4.171] O followers of the Book! Do not exceed the limits in your religion, and do not speak against Allah, but the truth; the Messiah, Isa son of Marium is only an apostle of Allah and His Word which He communicated to Marium and a spirit from Him; believe therefore in Allah and His apostles, and say not, Three. Desist, it is better for you; Allah is only one God; far be It from His glory that He should have a son, whatever is in the heavens and whatever is in the earth is His, and Allah is sufficient for a Protector.
Once a Noble Endeavor Page 15