CHAPTER 54
Freetown, Sierra Leone
Gathering all the equipment they could find in Alavi’s room, Mike and Lisa hurried back outside the hotel, where the last Range Rover was. While his wife covered him, Mike opened the door of the SUV and searched for Jackson’s suitcase. They were in luck.
“I got it,” Mike said.
“Let’s get out of here,” Lisa replied. “I hear sirens.”
Mike paused to listen. The strident sirens of the Freetown Metropolitan Police cars were fast approaching.
“We can’t use the road,” Lisa calculated. “There’s no way we’ll make it to our truck without being intercepted. We need to go back the same way we came in.”
Mike agreed. As they were moving west amid the bushes they’d used as concealment on their earlier approach to the hotel, several vehicles of the Operational Support Division of the Sierra Leone police roared up the road leading to the Country Lodge. Men wearing paramilitary uniforms and carrying assault weapons were being dropped off along the road.
“If they dropped soldiers farther back down the road, we might come in contact with a patrol,” Mike whispered. They both kneeled down behind a tree. The rain had started again, and they were soaked to the bone. “If we’re caught, we won’t see the light of day for years.”
“What are you saying, Mike?”
“We need to get this material to headquarters,” said Mike, holding the suitcase. “It might provide a way inside the Sheik’s network. That’s the priority.”
Lisa verified the ammunition for her pistol and inserted a new clip. Mike did the same. “Let’s go,” he said.
They were only a few hundred meters from the road, but they moved cautiously. As one of them advanced ten meters, the other covered. They leaped-frogged like this until they were less than twenty-five meters from the road. Mike raised his fist and signaled Lisa to join him. Mike gestured that he had seen one man standing watch on the road. He pointed in the direction of the lone soldier. Lisa nodded. Mike motioned that he wanted the man taken care of. That didn’t necessarily mean to kill him. He was merely giving his wife the authority to do what she thought was needed to stop the man from engaging them.
Lisa stealthily approached the police officer from behind. Mike watched her with some kind of detached admiration. Lisa was like a tigress stalking her prey. Her movements were gracious, precise, and deadly. She stopped about five feet from her target and paused, studying her surroundings and her tactical advantage. A second later, her left arm slid under the soldier’s collar, while she used her right foot to kick the back of the soldier’s right knee to make him lose his balance. Using her weight, Lisa propelled the FMP officer over him. The officer landed on his belly with Lisa still locking him in a choke hold.
Ten seconds later, with the unconscious soldier at her feet, Lisa signaled Mike that all was clear. Not wasting time hiding the body in the bushes, they ran to their SUV and were long gone before the Sierra Leone police realized they were missing a man.
CHAPTER 55
IMSI Headquarters
New York
Within minutes of receiving Mike Walton’s report, Anna Caprini and the rest of the available analysts were running Major Jackson Taylor’s name through all their search engines. Before long, hits started to appear on their screens. An hour later, Mapother was reading the preliminary report his staff had prepared regarding Jackson Taylor.
So, the account we played with belonged to Taylor after all, thought Mapother. The Sheik didn’t appreciate Taylor’s supposed disloyalty and sent Peter Georges—aka Alexander Shamrock—to kill him.
Mapother was about to call Anna to request everything they had on Alexander Shamrock when someone knocked on the door. He pressed the button unlocking the door, and Jonathan Sanchez entered his office.
“I thought you would like to read the info we have on Shamrock,” said Sanchez, handing him a three-page report.
“You read my mind, Jonathan,” said Mapother. “Did you write it?”
“I did. Did you know his father, Steve Shamrock, is the CEO of Denatek?”
“The oil and gas company?”
“Yep,” Sanchez replied. “And that he was married to a woman named Ghayda Al-Assad?”
Mapother raised an eyebrow. “No, I can’t say I did.”
“She was the daughter of Sheik Zefad Al-Assad, once a powerful figure in the UAE.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sheik Zefad Al-Assad’s family owned land on which an important oil field was discovered. An American oil company—for whom Alexander Shamrock’s father was working—negotiated a deal allowing them to drill. However, even though Al-Assad respected all the clauses in the contract, he was killed by the CIA a few years later.”
“Are you sure about this?” asked Mapother, who had stopped reading. Sanchez had his full attention.
“Yes. It’s not clear-cut, but if you read through the lines, you’ll come to the same conclusion. The CIA erroneously believed he was a known terrorist and sent a team to kill him.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Even more so for Steve Shamrock. His wife, Ghayda, was also killed in the raid.”
“Oh shit!”
“My thoughts exactly, Charles. After the massacre, the only Al-Assad family member left was Qasim, Zefad’s son. Within two years of his father’s death, he sold all his family’s territories to the Chinese and swore never to do business with the Americans again.”
Mapother was shaking his head. “So you’re telling me that the son of one of the most powerful men in the oil and gas industry in the United States is a terrorist?”
“The facts are there,” Sanchez said. “And we have to think that Alexander’s father is involved as well.”
God! Jonathan’s right.
Anna Caprini knocking on the door interrupted them.
“What do you have?” asked Mapother.
“What Mike and Lisa sent from Sierra Leone is like a gold mine. We’re only starting to put all the pieces together, but one fact jumped right out.”
Mapother signaled Anna to sit down. “What is it?”
“Major Jackson Taylor was definitely a close ally of the Sheik. We believe he’s the guy who trained most of the Sheik’s men prior to them deploying overseas to wreak havoc.”
“It’s too bad he’s dead,” Sanchez said. “It would have been nice to hear what he had to say, especially after he learned the Sheik had sent someone to kill him.”
“I agree. Anything else?” Mapother asked.
“Does the name Abdullah Ahmad Ghazi ring a bell?”
“I can’t say it does,” Sanchez replied.
“Me neither,” said Mapother. “Why?”
“As I said earlier,” explained Anna, “we’re not quite sure yet, but this Ghazi guy might be the financial link between the Sheik’s organization and Jackson Taylor’s. Years ago, the FBI put Ghazi on a soft watch alert. They believed he was facilitating money transfers between Muslim charity organizations and the Taliban in Afghanistan.”
“Were they successful?” Sanchez asked.
“Not really. Mr. Ghazi disappeared, and the FBI never thought about investigating him further.”
“They have a lot on their plate,” said Mapother. “Should we try to find this guy ourselves?”
Anna shrugged. “We may need to, Charles.”
“Explain.”
“We’ll know more in a few hours, but there’s a high probability the Sheik is about to launch another offensive against us or one of our allies.”
Mapother and Sanchez remained silent, waiting for her to give more details.
“In Major Taylor’s computer we’ve found schematics and maps of installations similar to oil pipelines. I can’t imagine why he had these plans if not for training purposes.”
�
�These guys never train for fun,” said Mapother. “When they put a plan to paper, it usually means they expect to carry it out.”
“But there’s one more thing I should add,” said Anna. “The diary date for the scenarios was last week.”
The IMSI director rose from behind his desk to study the map of the world hanging on the wall. “That means the Sheik’s operatives could already be on their way to their targets. Wherever they are.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“In this case, I concur with your previous assessment. We need to find Abdullah Ahmad Ghazi or Alexander Shamrock before it’s too late. And we need to figure out what the targets are.”
―
For the next few hours, all IMSI personnel worked tirelessly through the intelligence they gathered from Taylor’s laptop. They checked every piece of information and tried to connect them to something they already know. They consulted all the federal databases they had access to, hoping to find something solid enough to justify sending assets to investigate. Ultimately, Jonathan Sanchez found the link—one that would once again send his friend and his wife in harm’s way.
PART 5
CHAPTER 56
Lisbon, Portugal
By using the keywords Alexander Shamrock in the FBI main server, Sanchez detected a money trail linked to seventy million dollars that the CIA had lost during the initial days of the second Iraqi war. A Special Forces team had been dispatched to escort the money sent by helicopter to the head generals of the peshmerga forces, who were fighting alongside the US forces.
The helicopter never reached its destination, however, so nobody had ever learned what happened to that Special Forces team led by a certain Captain Alexander Shamrock. After a few weeks of searching, it was assumed that enemy forces had shot down the chopper and that the money had evaporated. What the CIA had not told the Army was that the money had been marked.
Agents had spent days entering the numbers of more than twenty thousand one-hundred-dollar bills into the system, hoping to learn how the Kurds were going to use the money and to what advantage. The CIA knew that the chances of some of that money eventually showing up in a foreign-held European bank account were high, and they wanted to know whose pockets the American taxpayers were padding.
Two days before, the Portuguese law enforcement agency responsible for policing the country’s large urban area had a takedown in one of Lisbon’s best-known bordellos. Twelve prostitutes and eight patrons were arrested and sent to jail for the night. An amount totaling almost seven thousand Euros was seized.
Hours later, a Portuguese officer ran the numbers of all the seized American bills into his system, and one came back positive. The officer sent a message to Interpol explaining that he had a seized American hundred-dollar bill that had been marked. His message trickled up the Interpol ranks slowly until it was sent to the FBI. IMSI analysts immediately forwarded the information to Mapother.
Mapother instantly made the connection to what Sanchez had found earlier in the day. No wonder the CIA wanted to keep a low profile on this one. There would be hell to pay if it became public knowledge that seventy million dollars had disappeared without a trace. He could understand if a helicopter carrying a couple million had been shot down, but one carrying seventy million? The authorization for that kind of money to travel in a single helicopter was a strategic mistake on the part of somebody very high up the CIA food chain.
Mapother walked by Anna’s office and asked her the whereabouts of Mike and Lisa.
“They’re both still in Sierra Leone, sir.”
“Could you please contact them and arrange a secure link?” asked Mapother.
In less than three minutes, Mapother had his two operatives on the line.
“What can we do to help?” Mike asked.
“Good job, guys. The intel we got from that computer is priceless. It also means, I’m afraid, that you’ll be traveling to Portugal.”
“What’s in Portugal?” asked Mike.
“The scoop is that we might have found a link leading to about seventy million dollars of missing CIA money. And guess who was in charge of protecting that money? Alexander Shamrock,” Mapother supplied. “I’m sending everything we’ve got to your server. Once you get the details, work out a plan and let me know if you need anything.”
“Will Support Five be available?”
“Yes, they will.”
“Anything else, sir?” asked Lisa.
“Keep me in the loop and good luck.”
―
True to his word, Mapother sent his agents the mission’s protocols forty-five minutes later. They read the file in silence, then decided that because Lisa was fluent in Portuguese, she would meet with the Portuguese officer, who had written the message to Interpol. They arranged their own separate transportation, and both operatives were out of Sierra Leone the next day.
Once in Portugal, Lisa easily tracked down Officer Geraldo Barros of the commercial crime section of the Polícia de Segurança Pública. When Lisa called the PSP’s general inquiry line, she was transferred directly to Officer Barros.
Meanwhile, Mike checked in at the hotel where Support Five had rented a room for him and contacted them once again to arrange for FBI identification. They met him at a busy café a few hours later, and Jasmine Carson handed over two FBI special agent credentials.
Lisa met Barros at his office in central Lisbon and introduced herself as Special Agent Maria Vincelli of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Officer Barros didn’t hide his surprise at seeing a Portuguese-speaking female FBI agent in his office. He was nevertheless professional, and after verifying Vincelli’s credentials, he shared everything he had, including which brothel they’d raided and where the money had been found.
When he asked Lisa why a single hundred-dollar bill justified a trip overseas to interview the officer who had uncovered it, Lisa used all her charm in answering. “I made the mistake of letting my office know where I was spending my vacation.”
Upon his departure, Lisa hailed a taxi and asked to be driven to Avenue de Liberdade in the historic district. She gave the taxi driver a few extra euros as a tip, then, as a security precaution, climbed out to walk the last half mile to her final destination.
As she walked toward the restaurant where her husband was waiting for her, she noticed that the sidewalk was made of beautiful marble stones hand placed in abstract patterns. This part of Lisbon was gorgeous, and Lisa briefly wondered how much it would cost to live on this street. As she strolled past shops such as Armani, Prada, and Burberry, she couldn’t help but remember her past life, where she would have probably spent a small fortune on children’s and babies’ clothes. She then passed an enormous stone monument dedicated to the fifty thousand Portuguese soldiers who had fought in World War I, seven thousand of whom were lost.
She reached the rendezvous a few minutes later and sat down with her husband, who was a nursing a bottle of mineral water. Mike had chosen a table on the patio far away from any other patrons.
“How did it go?” asked Mike.
“The guy was friendly, and he gave me everything we need.”
“Such as?”
“The location of the bordello and the name of the only patron they seized who paid in American dollars.”
“What do you want to do?”
“You should pay the bordello a visit,” answered Lisa.
“Most brothels have a hidden CCTV to protect the staff,” said Mike. “Did the policeman mention anything regarding a CCTV system?”
“He didn’t, but I didn’t ask either.”
“I’m sure they do have one, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s still there. I don’t think the police would have seized it.”
“Why would they?” Lisa replied. “In Portugal, prostitution isn’t illegal—it’s only illegal for a third party to profit from it, and that law
is difficult to enforce. The PSP probably only raided the bordello to satisfy some angry neighbors. Am I right?”
“You are, honey,” Mike replied, “and I think I know where you’re going with this.”
“Finish my thought, then,” said Lisa, downing the last of her mineral water.
“The PSP knows that a CCTV system protects the bordello’s staff against violent clients. If they were to remove or seize the system or even just seize the tapes, they would put the staff in danger.”
“They could end up with a dead sex worker and a probable lawsuit on their hands,” concluded Lisa.
“Okay then, I guess we’ll have to visit this place after all,” said Mike, signaling a waiter that they were ready to order. “Let’s have lunch and think of a plan for how to gain access to what the brothel has to give up to us.”
CHAPTER 57
Mike entered the small lobby of an Internet café. As Lisa had detailed, instead of continuing toward the pay-per-minute Internet cubicles, Mike opened a red door located on his right that led to a staircase. He went up the flight of stairs and gently knocked on the door. He was glad to see a CCTV camera perched above the doorframe. He looked directly into the lens and saw the reflection of his tiny, distorted image. He was dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a golf shirt. He was also sporting a false beard that he’d applied in the washroom of the restaurant and had added a pair of blue-tinted contact lenses for good measure.
Mike was about to knock a second time when he heard the electric lock buzz. He pushed the door gently and entered the brothel. Unlike his partner, he’d never been in a bordello before, so he wasn’t sure what to expect. But he never thought that it would look like this. Dirty, cheap, soiled—those were adjectives that he associated with brothels. Instead, the light aroma of white tea and essential oils filled his nostrils. The soft, subtle fragrance was a perfect match for the elaborate décor surrounding him. Leather furniture that looked brand-new was impeccably arranged on a rich Persian rug that warmed up the room. Stunning prints and original art works were hung on red walls. It all reminded Mike of a gentleman’s club he had visited in London. The room had no windows, but the ambient light had been adjusted to correspond with the rest of the space. Mike counted two more CCTV cameras in the reception area alone.
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