Mission Compromised

by Oliver North

  Grisham's call didn't alarm Wilson about the EncryptionLok's cipher having been broken; he was convinced that was impossible. Instead, Wilson had asked where the Marine had gotten the device he was using.

  Grisham replied, “I don't know. I'd guess that they got them from the NSC or the Special Ops people down at Bragg.”

  But a quick check of the EncryptionLok-3 inventory in the NSA's master computer index showed that Newman didn't have an EL-3 signed out to him. And then a subsequent call to WHCA confirmed that all of their EncryptionLok-3 devices were accounted for.

  Could the UN have EncryptionLok-3s without our knowledge? Wilson wondered. He had come down hard on Silicon Cyber Technologies when they tried to sell the device to the UN and NATO, and assumed that was the end of it.

  Now, alerted by General Grisham's call, Wilson swung into action. He picked up his phone and called the NSA Operations duty officer.

  “Major Hammond speaking, sir.”

  “Major, Deputy Director Wilson here. I need you to check something for me. Within the last two hours, an EL-3 encrypted call was made from overseas to the deputy chief of staff for Operations and Plans at the Marine headquarters. I want you to find out the GPS location for that device—from the EL-3 systems tracking profile—and get me its registration number… .” Wilson gave the duty officer the phone number where General Grisham had received the call.

  In less than fifteen minutes, Wilson had a computer-generated report:

  EL-3 LOCATOR NO. DGL/94IS00033744 IS AN UNASSIGNED DEVICE. IT WAS USED FOR A TELEPHONIC VOICE TRANSMISSION TO THE NUMBER INDICATED IN THE TIME FRAME OF YOUR QUERY. GPS DATA FOR THE UNASSIGNED EL-3 UNIT INDICATES THAT THE CALL ORIGINATED FROM SYRIA. INITIAL INSPECTION OF DGL/94IS00033744 INDICATES THAT IT HAS BEEN MONITORED BY UNKNOWN SEQUENCER/INQUIRER LOCATED IN VIC OF 1600 PA. AVE, WASH, D.C.

  IMMEDIATELY AFTER LAST GPS INQUIRY, THE WHITE HOUSE SITE EL-3 MADE A 2MIN 31SEC ENCRYPTED VOICE TRANSMISSION TO A SECOND UNASSIGNED EL-3, LOCATOR NO. DGL/94IS00033753, THAT APPEARS TO BE CONNECTED TO AN UNKNOWN MOBILE SATELLITE VOICE PHONE IN VIC OF LEONARDO DA VINCI AIRPORT IN ROME, ITALY. AFTER TERMINATING COMMS WITH THE WHITE HOUSE SITE, THE ROME DEVICE IMMEDIATELY MADE AN EL-3 VOICE-ENCRYPTED TRANSMISSION TO ANOTHER SATELLITE PHONE CONNECTED TO A 3RD UNASSIGNED EL-3, LOCATOR NO. DGL/94IS00033537, WHICH APPEARS TO BE LOCATED IN BAGHDAD, IRAQ. UNKNOWN INQUIRER AT WHITE HOUSE MADE THREE (3) GPS INQ LAST 48 HRS. OF DGL/94IS00033744. UNASSIGNED EL-3 NO. DGL/94IS00033744 DESTROYED PER SOP 8331.

  GPS LAT/LONG AND UTM COORDINATES WHERE DEVICE WAS LAST USED ARE PRINTED BELOW UNDER SENDER'S LOCATION.' REQ ADVISE ACTION TO BE TAKEN RE EL-3 DGL/94IS00033753 AND EL-3 DGL/94IS00033537?

  Jules Wilson could not believe what he was reading. First, the unassigned EncryptionLok-3 that Newman was using had a serial number that was not even in the range of those that the NSA had authorized for purchase. Second, there were other unassigned EL-3 devices being used in that same serial sequence, and if those numbers were correct, there must be additional thousands of them circulating in the world. He felt a shiver of alarm running down his spine. “The UN has EncryptionLok-3s!” he said out loud, though he was the only person in the room.

  The watch officer's initial assessment also indicated to Wilson that the unassigned EL-3 that Newman was using had been queried for its GPS location at least three times in the past two days—from the White House. The final piece of information was that the NSA Operations Center had, in accord with established standard operating procedures, initiated a command-destruct signal for the EL-3 since it was in an area where no EL-3 units were authorized.

  Jules Wilson decided to act. First, he called General Grisham back and told him what he had discovered, and warned him to tell Newman, if he could, that up until the time it was destroyed, the Marine's EL-3 had been GPS-tracked by someone at the White House.

  Wilson then made a second telephone call: to the senior FBI agent serving with his “Comm Hawks.” When the agent returned his call, Wilson was customarily blunt: “David, I want you to quietly open an espionage case against the officers of Silicon Cyber Technologies, the manufacturer of the EncryptionLok-3 device. I have reason to believe that the company may have intentionally compromised U.S. encryption technologies in violation of U.S. law.”

  Newman Home

  ________________________________________

  Falls Church, VA

  Wednesday, 8 March 1995

  2015 Hours, Local

  General Komulakov didn't have many of his former Department V officers in the U.S.—but two Russians—who happened to be running drugs in Brooklyn for the Russian mafia—jumped at the chance to be of help—for a fee, of course. Aleksandr knew the general through a former colleague in his old Dzerzhinsky Square office. Aleksandr had provided the second man—his own son, Vasili. Komulakov had offered each of them one thousand U.S. dollars to clean the Newman house.

  They knew, of course, what their assignment was and started immediately. Under his father's watchful eye, Vasili packed a small aluminum suitcase, lined with lead, that contained some unusual tools, along with their pistols, ammunition, and silencers—and checked it as baggage on their flight from Newark to Dulles.

  They arrived a little after 2030 hours, rented a car at the airport, and bought a local street map at the Dulles Airport gas station. The father-son team then drove directly to Falls Church, found the Newman address, drove past it, and parked several doors away.

  There was a light on in the Newman's bedroom, but none in any of the lower story rooms. They found where the telephone lines came into the home, and cut them, to forestall both a silent alarm to a security company, or a call to the police by a frightened victim.

  Then, following his father's instructions, Vasili forced a basement window on the side of the house that was not illuminated by the street light three doors away. Aleksandr went to the back door of the garage and, using a large pneumatic tube wrapped in a piece of blanket, punched the dead bolt lock through the door with hardly a sound. A second punch took out the doorknob. In less than five seconds, he was inside the garage. He noted that there was no car parked there, and since there was none in the driveway or on the street, he didn't expect anyone to be home. But to be safe, he did his best to muffle the noise as he used the same procedure on the interior door from the garage into the kitchen. Ten seconds later he was inside the house and the kitchen door was swinging uselessly on its hinges.

  The older man took out his silencer-equipped automatic pistol and quietly chambered a round. He switched on a laser-sight and crisscrossed the room with it, seeking a target. He began to silently climb the stairs. He was halfway up to the bedroom level on the second floor when Vasili came up from the lower level. There was enough light coming through the living room windows for them to see each other. The blond killer shook his head; no one was downstairs. Aleksandr pointed in the direction of the closet and bathroom doors off the kitchen. The younger man crept up on each door and, holding his Glock 9mm pistol in front of him, threw each door open. Both rooms were empty. Aleksandr continued up the stairway toward the lighted master bedroom. He had to be careful; military wives often knew how to use handguns. If the woman was inside, she might have a gun pointing at the door right now.

  He crouched, away from the door, by the wall, and quietly listened for any sound coming from the other side. If Mrs. Newman had been aiming her pistol, she'd have three or four rounds off through the door by now. Or she might be in the bathroom and couldn't hear the sounds of their forced entry. Vasili was behind his father now and flat against the wall, covering the older man's back. They both moved away from the door, on either side of it. The son slowly and silently turned the knob. He dipped his head to mark the count of three, then swung the door open and they both raced into the room. The son fired four shots from his silencer-equipped automatic into the bolster lying lengthwise on the unmade bed.

  The two of them looked in the bathroom, the closets, and then they went outside the master bedroom and searched th
e other rooms and closets, but found no one. Relaxing once they had confirmed that the house was indeed empty, Aleksandr took out his cell phone and dialed. He spoke briefly in Russian.

  “Wait until she comes home? Why? We should leave immediately.” He listened a bit longer, then shrugged and ended the call.

  After he put his cell phone away, he said to his son, “Look around—find his computer. We will take it with us. You can take whatever else you see that you like. We are to make it look like a robbery. Her jewels are mine.” And he turned to the task of ransacking Rachel's dresser and closet.

  They waited until after 0300 and when Rachel still had not come home, the son left the house to bring back their car. He pulled it into the garage and closed the door while they put the computer, a TV set, VCR, some jewelry, and a few things from Newman's closet into the trunk of the rental car. Then they left for a local motel, to await further instructions.

  Aboard USAF C-17, Special Air Mission Flight T-43

  ________________________________________

  Andrews Air Force Base

  Wednesday, 8 March 1995

  2105 Hours, Local

  Rachel heard the familiar sound of jet engines and felt the landing gear thump into the wheel wells as General George Grisham's C-17 lifted off the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base. For a change, she hadn't had to give the pre-flight safety brief, and wouldn't have to get up to check on the passengers' comfort. As she leaned back in the comfortable executive package seats of the big U.S. Air Force transport, she contemplated her last twenty-four hours.

  After the call from Peter, almost twenty hours earlier, Rachel had tried unsuccessfully to sleep for a few more minutes. After tossing and turning for half an hour, she had gotten up and taken a shower. By the time she had toweled and dried her hair, it was almost 3:00 A.M. She then decided to call the number on the card he had given her the day he left.

  I'm supposed to use the cell phone, she remembered. She put on her jogging suit, slipped into her running shoes, went down the stairs, out the front door, and walked down Creswell Drive toward the cul-de-sac at the end of her street. Standing beneath the streetlight, she dialed the number. Oliver North's pager offered two options. “For a numeric message, press 1. For a voice mail message, press 2.” Rachel pressed 2.

  “Colonel North, this is Rachel Newman. My husband called me and is in trouble and he told me to call you.” She gave her cell phone number and ended the call.

  In less than a minute, North had called her back.

  She had told him about Peter's call, and when she finished, North had asked where she was. When she told him, the retired Marine had given her very specific instructions: “Go back to the house, pack enough comfortable clothing for a few days—just as though you were making an overseas trip for TWA. Nothing formal. Pack for comfort. Go immediately to a hotel that you know. Get some food to eat in the room because you shouldn't be going out. Use another name. Pay in cash. I'm going to call a friend. After you get settled at the hotel, call me back using the cell phone.” He gave her the number for his cellular phone.

  Rachel had followed the instructions exactly. She raced back into the house, packed some clothing in her black TWA-issued flight bag, and grabbed the one thousand in cash that she kept in an envelope in a dresser drawer. She didn't even take time to make the bed. But just before running out the door to jump into her car, she stopped and ran back up the stairs to pick up the study Bible that her friend Sandy had given her several weeks before. It's heavy, but I might as well stay with my new routine.

  Rachel drove along Broad Street to Old Town Alexandria. She knew of a Hampton Inn there where commercial airline flight crews often spent the night when they had a D.C. layover. Even though the streets had been empty, uncooperative traffic lights had turned the ten-mile drive into a half-hour trip. From Broad Street she had turned left onto King Street, past Dangerfield Road—seeing some irony in the street sign—and then one block past Diagonal Road to the Hampton Inn in “Old Town” Alexandria.

  On the form provided by the bored young man behind the counter she printed her middle name and maiden name and her parents' address. She asked for a non-smoking room on the second floor, paid cash in advance for one night, and waited while the clerk made her room key.

  When she went back to her car, Rachel saw the sign for the parking garage in the rear, and drove around and parked inconspicuously in a corner between two vans.

  Then Rachel took her carry-on out of the back seat and headed for her room.

  She took the elevator to the second floor, looked for the number plan on the wall in the hallway, and then walked to room 207. She unlocked the door, reached in and found the light switch, flicked it on, looked inside, and finding it empty, went into the room. Rachel tossed her carry-on onto the bed and double-locked the door.

  Then, feeling a little out of breath, she sat on the chair by the desk and opened her purse. She took out Peter's cell phone and dialed Oliver North again. It was 4:10 A.M., but he answered right away. Once again, he had instructions: “In case someone else is listening on my line, don't mention where you are in the course of this call or any other until we know that we can get someone to you to protect you. I'm going to give you a phone number. As soon as we are done, I want you to call the number immediately. The last two digits of the number will be a kind of code that only you and I understand. If you understand my little code tell me ‘yes,’ hang up, and call that number. That way, you will have completed the call by the time anyone who might be listening can break the code. Tell the person who answers what you told me an hour ago. He will give you instructions. Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  North gave her the first eight digits of a telephone number, but instead of the last two digits in the sequence, he then said, “And the last two are the numbers of the unit that Peter and I were serving in when you two came over and had dinner with Betsy and me.”

  His wife Betsy. We were at Camp Lejeune. … 1980, the 2nd Marine Division. … Third Battalion, 8th Marines. … three, eight!

  “Yes! I've got it.”

  “Good,” North had replied. “Call that number now, and do as he says.” North hung up.

  Rachel had called the number immediately. It, too, rang only once, and the voice said simply, “Grisham.”

  In the hours since that first call to General Grisham, the sun had come up and the rest of the world had gone to work, braving the notorious Beltway commute. The general had told her to stay put, to get some rest, and to call him back at 4:00 P.M., using the cell phone. Rachel did as instructed. She had watched the news, studied some from her Bible and probably would have slept soundly for a few hours but for the maid who had come by to freshen the room. Rachel had sent her away and called down to the front desk to extend her stay. The manager had required her to come down and pay in advance for another day since she hadn't left a credit card. Other than the brief trip to the lobby office, she had been in the room all day.

  At precisely 4:00 P.M. she called General Grisham. It wasn't a pleasant call.

  “General, it's Rachel Newman again. Have you heard anything more about Peter?”

  General Grisham's calm and reassuring voice came back on the line. “Not yet, Mrs. Newman … but I'm gathering a fair amount of information, and I'm hopeful that this is going to work out for the best. Unfortunately, there seem to be some other people in this government who want it to turn out differently. Mrs. Newman, are you somewhere where there's a TV?”

  “Uh … yes, I have one here.”

  “Turn on the news. There's a press conference, and it concerns your husband. I'll hold while you turn it on,” General Grisham said.

  Rachel reached for the remote and clicked the TV set on. She found the news and turned up the volume just as the anchor said, “… has brought you this report live from outside the White House, and that was our correspondent, Brian Penner. We've just seen and heard the announcement that the United States government and the U
nited Nations have joined Interpol in an international manhunt for the Irish Republican Army Terrorist, Gilbert Duncan—suspected of planting the bomb that brought down the United Nations Humanitarian Relief flight over Iraq on Monday. The U.S. government has offered a $2-million reward for Gilbert Duncan—dead or alive.” As the newsman droned on about the IRA denying any connection to the crash that had supposedly killed all aboard, a photo of Rachel's husband was added to the top right of the TV screen, with the name “Gilbert Duncan” below the photo.

  Rachel was flabbergasted. She had so many thoughts going through her head that she didn't comprehend half of what she heard. But she had seen the picture and heard key words that made her react with stark fear—“fugitive … terrorist … dangerous killer … fanatic … bent on a suicide mission … sought by U.S. agencies … Interpol … wanted dead or alive.”

  “Uh … General … what's happening? That was Peter—but not his name. Have they made a terrible mistake? I don't know what's going on. Why are they saying these things about Peter? And why didn't they use his real name?”

  “Mrs. Newman, I don't know what's going on. I've known your husband since he was a second lieutenant. I do know that he's not a terrorist and I believe that someone is trying to frame him, and use him for purposes that are dishonorable at best, and treasonous at worst. I would very much appreciate it if you would stay in touch with me from right where you are. Would you please call me back at 6:00 P.M.?”

  Rachel was sure that if she hadn't brought her Bible with her, she would have gone crazy watching the digital alarm clock by the bed slowly click to 6:00. By the time she called the general's number, the cable news networks had all repeated the story twice about the “terrorist Gilbert Duncan,” each time showing a picture of her husband.