Perkins’ countenance could not have expressed greater astonishment.
“Let me give you a word of advice, Mr. Perkins,” said Alton. “I consider it unlikely to have escaped our scrutiny, but if you have contacted a Briggsfield competitor, I’d recommend you discontinue that correspondence immediately. It could be bad for your health.”
Perkins nodded wordlessly, the neural synapses of his brain too overworked to articulate a response.
Alton turned to Amy Newton, prompting her to avert her gaze. “Mrs. Newton, I understand you’ve been learning Arabic.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“We know you met your husband, Muhammad Sali, at a pharmaceutical conference in the Bay area about three years ago. About half a year later, you two were married, just before his project in the US ended. You must have been a little surprised when Muhammad, a Sudanese national, announced his intention to return to Sudan within a few months.”
“He explained that,” said Newton. “He was asked by political opponents of the current Sudanese government to return to Sudan to help defeat them in the next election.”
“That’s what he told you, was it?” said Alton. “Did he mention that the leader of Hezbollah—Sudan’s most powerful terrorist organization—is his first cousin?”
“He didn’t mention that, no,” said Amy, her head bowed, “but Muhammad is a leading intellectual of his country. His opinion carries weight. Who better to fight for democratic reform than someone whose family ties might otherwise incline him to join the terrorists?”
“Indeed,” said Alton. “Actually, Mrs. Newton, I’m inclined to agree with you, at least partially. Our research indicated that Muhammad does communicate constantly with Sudan’s peaceful opposition party.” Newton visibly relaxed upon hearing this. “However, he also communicates regularly with his cousin Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Sudan’s Hezbollah movement.
“I know you’ve been learning Arabic for a couple of years now,” continued Alton. “For your own peace of mind, I’d recommend you ask your husband if you can take a peek at his correspondence with Cousin Hassan. Frankly, I don’t know whether they’re trading high school stories or bomb-making instructions. What I do know, however, is that Agent Wilson and I didn’t find any evidence that Hezbollah or any other foreign organization is intervening in the Rabinil project.”
Newton acknowledged the advice with a nod, and Alton remained silent.
Sutton nodded. “Agent Wilson, Mr. Blackwell, it appears you’ve cracked this case wide open. We’ll need to document the evidence you’ve compiled before we can press formal charges, of course. But assuming you have the evidence to support your assertions, we’ll have a strong case against both Colonel Drake and Jeffrey Finch. Congratulations on conducting a worthy investigation.”
“There is one more aspect to this puzzle we haven’t addressed,” replied Alton.
CHAPTER 67
Washington, DC
The room was heavy with anticipation for Alton’s next words.
“A few days ago, I stumbled across a note in Mark Sutton’s car,” said Alton. Sutton raised an eyebrow in surprise.
“The note contained a list of famous landmarks in east-coast cities. Embedded within the writing on the note were several curious mistakes: ‘House White’ instead of ‘White House’ and ‘the Liberty Ball’ instead of ‘the Liberty Bell.’ These are typical mistakes for, say, a recent immigrant who hasn’t mastered English, so if Sutton had said the note was from his lawn guy, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But he said it belonged to his brother, who is a renowned lawyer. It’s inconceivable that an attorney would make these kinds of mistakes. So Sutton’s comment was perplexing. If the note wasn’t from Sutton’s brother, whose was it? Does Sutton have another brother that we were unaware of? It didn’t seem like a big deal, but for some reason, this discrepancy continued to bother me. To tie off this loose end, I looked into Sutton’s family tree, something even I could do since only public records were needed to discover the answer. I made an interesting discovery. Not only does Sutton not have any other siblings, he doesn’t have any cousins, either.”
“And that’s meaningful because…?” sneered Sutton.
Alton continued evenly. “At the beginning of this investigation, you told Agent Wilson that your cousin Emily works for Briggsfield, ostensibly to explain your familiarity with the company. You don’t have a cousin. You do, however, have an FBI employee named Emily Thatcher who has been working as a mole at Briggsfield.”
“Why would I want to do that?” asked Sutton.
“That’s the very question we asked ourselves, so we started digging a little deeper. What kind of work did you do before the FBI, Agent Sutton?”
“I can’t imagine how that’s relevant here.”
“Of course, we all know you were in the Air Force,” continued Alton. “You’ve made no secret of that. But we discovered that you were deployed in Afghanistan with the Joint Command’s Outreach program, heading a squadron of Air Force negotiators with a stated mission of establishing friendly US ties with tribal leaders in Kandahar Province. You had a second mission, though, that not even your Air Force squadron was aware of: you also worked for the National Security Administration’s Special Operations Command, which conducts the NSA’s most clandestine operations. Your NSA mission was to spot terrorist cells and relay their location back to the NSA’s Tactical Drone Division. You’d leave, and a few hours or days later, the drones would strike with high explosives.”
“This is a fascinating story, but not a shred of it can be proved,” said Sutton. “Yes, I was in the Air Force, but I was never in Afghanistan. I never worked with drones or in any other capacity there.”
“Ah, you believe that all records of your involvement there have been altered or destroyed,” said Alton. “Plus, in your NSA role, you never used your real name when communicating outside the NSA, so how could anyone know? We do have your records, Sutton, thanks to Agent Wilson. She knows how to track down the most tenuous paper trail, and she has the security clearance to see virtually all federal records.”
“Not even she can read NSA files. Neither can I, for that matter. They’re all encrypted,” replied Sutton.
“True, but that’s where I came in,” said Alton. “Encryption software is a two-way street; it can also be used to decrypt. Figuratively speaking, I picked the lock to the safe, and Agent Wilson knew how to locate the right files once inside. We were eventually able to access the NSA’s personnel records, including each person’s field assignment.”
Alton continued to address Sutton. “While serving in these dual Air Force and NSA capacities, you struck up a particular friendship with Nahim Agha, one of the most powerful Kandahar tribal leaders. You discovered that Agha had made a fortune selling heroin overseas. He wanted to use the drug money to buy better weapons, which he could use to fight Al-Qaeda and, probably, his rival leaders in Kandahar. He approached you to make a deal, but you didn’t have time to present this offer to your NSA supervisors. On your last NSA mission, you spotted a terrorist training camp on the outskirts of Erazi, a small town southeast of Kandahar City. Throughout your time in Afghanistan, you had worked with Colonel Drake to coordinate ground force movements with drone strikes. For security purposes, the colonel knew you only by your moniker, ‘Red Snake.’”
At this mention, the colonel gave a start and stared at Sutton, incredulous.
“For the Erazi mission, you moved back your own Air Force squadron and told Colonel Drake to pull back his ground troops by five p.m. The colonel, though, was not happy with the idea of attacking with drones, which let any surviving terrorists escape. So he decided to attack and defeat the terrorists’ camp before the drones were scheduled to arrive. He moved in his ground troops and attacked the camp in mid-afternoon. Unfortunately, his troops became pinned down and were still engaged in an intense firefight when the drones hit. Fourteen US troops died from the drone strikes. The colonel was responsible, but t
o save his career, he secretly reported that he was told—by you—to engage the enemy forces, not retreat, prior to the drone strike. Consequently, you were unfairly blamed for these ‘friendly fire’ casualties and were forced to resign from the NSA. The colonel gave his version of events directly to General Clarke, his commanding officer, so he figured you’d never get wind of it. But the colonel made a mistake, didn’t he, Sutton? You wanted to know how you came to be blamed for the Erazi debacle. So just before leaving the NSA, you used your clearance to discover that the colonel had implicated you.”
The color drained from Colonel Drake’s face.
“The colonel never knew you found him out, Sutton,” said Alton. “But, you still couldn’t save your career, so when your Air Force enlistment ended five months later, you returned to the US.”
“This is just wild speculation on your part,” said Sutton. “However, I will say that I believe those who work for the NSA do so to protect our country.”
“Absolutely,” replied Alton. “I imagine at that point in your life you felt pretty bitter. You had served your country diligently, only to face an unmerited ‘quit-or-be-fired’ decision. Due to the secrecy surrounding the NSA, your dismissal didn’t leave a paper trail that anyone outside the NSA could see, so you were able to land a job with the FBI and quickly became a supervisor.
“Part of your supervisory role is to support the Department of Homeland Security with domestic surveillance. One of your responsibilities in this capacity is to review the mandatory reports that pharmaceutical and fertilizer companies submit to Homeland Security each quarter. These reports track the flow of dangerous materials that potentially could be diverted by terrorists, ensuring that all materials are accounted for and that the government is aware of new, possibly-dangerous materials—such as drugs or explosives—that are under development. Before Briggsfield started falsifying its safety record on the Rabinil project, you read about it and the result of the accidental human exposure at their Research Triangle site, where a lab tech almost died from a drug that was supposed to inoculate humans, not harm them.
“Then you remembered Nahim Agha, your tribal-leader friend who was interested in buying weapons. You figured this was your chance to cash in on your NSA experience at the expense of a country that had turned its back on you. What if the development of Rabinil, an already-powerful drug, was redirected towards its use as a biological weapon? How lethal would it be? You contacted Agha to see if he would be interested in a biological weapon, and it turned out he was very interested. This was your chance to make a fortune. Why not? Your country hadn’t treated you fairly.
“However, you faced a formidable challenge: how could you direct Rabinil to be developed as a weapon and sold to an Afghanistan tribal leader, all without being noticed by the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, or the Pentagon? To fly under the radar, you knew the first challenge was cost: the ‘improved’ Rabinil had to be produced cheaply. You knew that if the costs of manufacturing the drug were too high, someone would notice. So you did a little research and found that one of Rabinil’s key ingredients is mercury. Now, normally mercury is expensive, difficult to obtain, and heavily regulated by the government. But you also discovered that much of the world’s mercury is obtained as a by-product of refining natural gas. With Afghanistan’s vast natural gas fields, mercury would be plentiful and cheap. That took care of the cost issue.
“Knowing that Rabinil could be mass-produced cheaply,” continued Alton, “your next challenge was to oversee the drug’s development in such a way that you would personally benefit from the sale of the weapon, but no trail would lead back to you. How could you pull this off? The key was your former role with the NSA. You re-contacted Colonel Drake, who was a Pentagon desk jockey by then. Due to the extreme secrecy surrounding your branch of the NSA, Drake had no way of knowing you were no longer an NSA employee. Once you communicated with him as “Red Snake,” he naturally assumed that there was no long-term fallout from the Erazi episode and that you were still working as an NSA operative. You told him the NSA was interested in developing Rabinil as a field weapon and asked him to reprise his role as an NSA interface. You told the colonel he would work with Briggsfield on developing an airborne weapon on behalf of the NSA. You also told him the weapon’s development must remain secret, since deploying it would violate the Geneva Convention. You didn’t present his participation as a choice, but Colonel Drake didn’t mind, did he? The whole project fed his propensity for cloak-and-dagger melodrama.”
By this time, all the occupants of the room except Sutton were mesmerized as Alton continued to reveal the chain of events.
“You arranged for Colonel Drake to contact Jeffrey Finch, Briggsfield’s R&D director, and claim the military wanted a rabies vaccine that would eliminate the threat of rabies from US troops deployed overseas, a growing problem. To ensure Rabinil would continue to be developed as an aerosol—the required delivery method of the weaponized version—Colonel Drake told Finch that the Rabinil vaccine would be sprayed from the air, probably by C140s or transport helicopters. You learned of Finch’s passion to develop a vaccine after his son’s ordeal with rabies, which made it easy to keep the project moving forward in the face of experimental casualties.
“Your last challenge was keeping Finch—or anyone else—from realizing that Rabinil was being developed as a weapon, not a vaccine. So you planted Emily Thatcher, an FBI junior employee, as a mole at Briggsfield. You worked behind the scenes to have her hired as Finch’s Administrative Assistant and counted on her patriotism to keep her quiet. You told her she was supporting a Pentagon anti-terrorist weapons project. You claimed that Briggsfield had the best chance of developing the formula quickly but—being a private company—was restrained and slowed down by clinical trial rules. So Agent Thatcher helped the project along by concealing the formula’s efficacy in killing humans. As an ‘administrative assistant,’ it was natural for her to spend most of her days—and sometimes evenings—on the computer. This gave her the systems access she needed to send the actual test results to you and then alter the Briggsfield records to conceal the lethality of certain formulas. It was through these e-mails from Thatcher to you, Sutton, that we discovered the key elements of your plan.”
“This is paranoid rambling,” said Sutton. “Plus, even if such e-mails did exist, how would you have ever known to look for them?”
“Once we learned that Thatcher wasn’t your cousin,” said Alton, “we realized you had committed two falsehoods: one regarding your relation to her, and the other regarding the landmarks paper in your car. Why would you, an FBI supervisor, mislead in such a random fashion unless there was something you were deliberately trying to conceal? With Agent Wilson’s clearance, it didn’t take long to discover who Thatcher really was. Once we understood who she was, I used Kruptos software to track down and decrypt Thatcher’s e-mail messages, the ones in which she e-mailed the real Rabinil formulas to you before modifying the test records in Briggsfield’s database. Those messages led us back to you. Once we understood your involvement, we were able to track down your prior e-mails with Nahim Agha and your prior employment by the NSA. Of course, those e-mail messages weren’t sent from your normal accounts, and they took more time to find, but we located them eventually.
“Agha was totally on board with your plan. In fact, once you and he agreed for him to come to the US to exchange the final formula for cash, Agha decided to take advantage of his time here and visit some of the historic US sites he had heard about. That was the note I found in your car. It was written by someone learning English—to be exact, by a native speaker of a Middle Eastern language.”
Alton paused. “Before Agha’s visit, though, you had to wait for Briggsfield to develop a sufficiently lethal Rabinil formula. Yes, there was ‘collateral damage’ along the way, but you’ve never let that interfere with your mission. Some casualties were accidental, like my friend Zach Lambert, who had the misfortune of camping too near the Briggsfield field-test
facility. Other casualties were deliberate; you had to eliminate a few people who began to learn the truth. As the lab supervisor, Luis Romero personally recorded the results of the final, weapons-grade formula, so you directed Colonel Drake to kill him. But I have—in my pocket—a container of Rabinil based on that last formula, the formula Romero tested and which was used to kill him, the formula that will be used to lock you away for life.
“You also had to eliminate Laura Peterson, the CDC analyst who provided Agent Wilson and me with the CDC’s analysis of the Briggsfield “hemophilic anomaly” deaths. As best we can tell, you took care of Peterson’s hit-and run murder yourself. Along with the assassinations, you also directed Colonel Drake to order the CDC to remove the Rabinil-based anomalies from their records in the interests of ‘national security.’”
“You have a vivid imagination, Blackwell,” said Sutton. “How could I have possibly known about Luis Romero and this Laura whoever? I never visited Briggsfield or the CDC.”
“Finding out about Romero was easy. In her undercover role, Agent Thatcher wasn’t just sending you the real test results. She was also sending you the names of the people involved in the testing, and Romero was at the top of that list. For Laura Peterson, you used the FBI’s standard surveillance cookie on the CDC server files used to store information about the hemophilic anomalies caused by Rabinil testing. When Laura downloaded the hemophilic-anomaly files and saved them onto a flash drive, the cookie flagged the activity and signed her death warrant. Normally a court order is required to plant those cookies, but that wouldn’t do in this case, would it?”
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