The Insider Threat

by Brad Taylor

  He heard Jacob say, “Yes. It will be done. See you in four days.”

  Omar said, “As-salamu alaykum.” Peace be with you. He clicked off the satellite phone he’d been given by Adnan, finding no irony in the farewell. He stared at the phone in his hand, considering. He had the meeting time and place, but this phone was the one link should anything change. It was the only way the Albanians knew to contact him—but now it was connected to al-Britani like a cancer, and Omar was sure, since he hadn’t called back, that the British fighter was dead.

  Al-Britani had called him in a panic, shouting into the phone that he had been tricked and was moving the assault up immediately, then had said he’d call back later. That had been twelve hours ago, and he’d heard neither from the Brit nor seen any news relating to a spectacular attack in Amman. He had to assume the worst: The attack in Jordan had failed—or, thinking with the glass half full, the planned diversion had succeeded—which meant someone could be tracking this phone right now based on the last call al-Britani had made.

  And Omar had seen what happened when the hated crusaders found a phone. He glanced unconsciously out the window, as if he could hear the vapor trail from the Hellfire missile.

  The vision made the decision for him. He separated the phone from the battery, dropped it on the floor, then smashed it with his boot. If the Albanians changed the meeting time or place, he’d have to deal with it. Best case, when they couldn’t contact him, someone would show up to tell him the change. Worst case, they would have to reassess their attack plan without the special explosives and detonators.

  The explosives were really the least of his worries. They were critical, but he could get other means of attack and still use the Trojan horse Jacob was building right this minute, but such planning would fail if he couldn’t trust Jacob. Al-Britani had said that Hussein was a traitor—and Hussein was a Lost Boy. In fact, he was the man who had recruited the entire team of Lost Boys now executing the mission in Venice.

  That idiot Brit had killed Hussein in a rage, not even bothering to question him, so there was no way to know who Hussein was working for or what he had divulged. Maybe he’d simply been compromised by Jordanian authorities. After all, the entire purpose of the Jordan mission had been a diversionary attack designed to suck in the crusader’s intelligence apparatus and camouflage the primary mission. Maybe that had happened, but Omar couldn’t ignore the ramifications of the Lost Boys.

  Carlos and Devon had embraced the strictures of the Islamic State much like the multitude of Western foreign fighters pouring into Syria, but Jacob was different. He’d shown commitment, but he had always been aloof. He’d sworn allegiance to the Islamic State, but had refused to change his name. He followed orders, but questioned them.

  Omar thought about it, then decided such actions alone tended to show he wasn’t a traitor. If he were truly sent as a spy, if he truly intended to destroy the very attack he was working, would he act in such a manner?

  Omar couldn’t see it, which made him turn back to Carlos and Devon. They acted as he would expect the traitor to act. Perfectly in accordance with the Islamic State. But they were also simpletons, showing no subterfuge or higher-order intelligence.

  Jacob had sounded fine on the phone, asking about Hussein after he was told of the failed attack, but not overtly upset. He’d also detailed an elaborate plan to accomplish the mission, the pride at his work seeping through the phone. The target set had grown from just the group to some unknown female as well, a touch that sounded genuine.

  But Jacob was smart. No doubt if he wanted to trick Omar, he would have woven a tapestry to cover his treachery. In fact, his nonallegiance to the Islamic State may be just that—a double-blind performance designed precisely to protect him from scrutiny, because nobody planning a traitorous operation would act that way.

  Omar snorted at his own paranoia, rubbing his face in frustration. He was doing nothing but spinning himself into the ground, his theories sounding more like the rantings of a crazy man than a leader of all external operations for the Islamic State.

  He wished he could travel to Venice to see just what Jacob was up to.

  49

  Chris Fulbright hustled about his small room, moving one suitcase to the bed to get him access to the minibar. Right on the water on the southern edge of the island city-state, the Hotel Savoia e Jolanda was pricey, but still adhered to the Venetian rules of lodging. The room was the size of a postage stamp. Not that he’d be doing anything but sleeping in here anyway. He’d laid out cash from a tax-deferred mutual fund for his love nest, two thousand dollars dropped into a pay-as-you-go credit card. He’d pay the penalty to the IRS, but his wife would never know.

  He popped a beer, not caring that it was probably twelve dollars. He’d find some way to claim it. Fax from the business center, Internet usage, something. After all, he was chosen for this excursion precisely because his company did business in Italy. For the boys, this was the trip of a lifetime, but for him, it was work. Well, he’d call it work, anyway.

  His company had aggressively attempted to gain an entry into the European continent, and through his efforts, they’d found a possible Italian contract for their services. While the Italian company was based in Rome, the key player of that endeavor lived in Venice. The perfect cover for his planned tryst. A little work, and a little head.

  He thought again about the gondola ride, and took a swig of beer, wondering if the boys could see through his excuse for tonight. Tomorrow was taken care of. The boys knew he’d be working all day, but leaving each night was a risk. He was still crafting his story when he heard a small snick under the door.

  He saw an envelope on the hardwood floor, as if he were checking out. He padded over to it in his socks, picked it up, seeing nothing on the outside. He opened it, unfolding cheap printer paper stained with poorly reproduced images.

  He saw the first one and collapsed on the bed, feeling his world sucked into a black hole.

  He flipped through them until he came to a grainy picture of him kissing Christine on the gondola, the most damning thing in the stack. He felt faint.

  Chris returned to the photo and thought, Why, why, why? Who would do this? Why did I do this? What was I thinking?

  Chris Fulbright was a comfortably happy forty-five-year-old man in charge of a small marketing department for a start-up company developing 3-D printers. Originally fighting tooth and nail for survival, they’d managed to cut a pretty good niche in the market, with foreign buyers wanting their services. Tax breaks in Florida had brought the company there, and he’d followed, believing in the inherent success about to be achieved. He’d worked hard, and had made a name for himself by landing the overseas accounts in Italy.

  Now, all of that would mean nothing. He loved his wife. He loved his kids. He truly did . . . and then he’d met Christine, at, of all places, a Staples graphics center.

  In a crunch for time, he’d needed to buy unforeseen posters for a launch of a product. His usual supplier had had no ability for a quick turnaround, and, in a panic, having run out of options, he’d walked into a Staples business store near his office. And seen Christine. Or, more correctly, had seen her breasts.

  She was a community college dropout, fully fifteen years his junior, but she was vivacious and engaging. More to the point, she was interested in him.

  They’d laughed at the similarities of their names, forming a connection that had led to a longer visit than his order took, and he’d then gone on his way, but he’d developed an itch. He’d found himself going back to that store more and more often. Eventually, he’d broached a date. Nothing but drinks, he’d promised. A little small talk, since it was closing time and all.

  It had become a weekly habit, and he’d dared think about the next step. As a leader of the youth group in his church, he’d landed this sweet gig of chaperoning three altar boys over to Europe to meet the pope, and he’d hit upon a bold idea. A once-in-a-lifetime vacation for Christine, in a place where
nobody knew either of them.

  On their sixth “date,” having done nothing but enrich the same bar, he’d broached the trip. Surprising him, she’d agreed. Nothing was said explicitly. There was no overt discussion of payback, but in her acceptance, he knew it was understood.

  He had intended to close the deal tonight. Break his marriage vows forever by dropping into the abyss of Christine’s lily-white breasts. Instead, he had a pack of pictures on his lap that would explode his world.

  What the fuck had he been thinking?

  He looked at the images again, and began focusing more clinically. Who would do this? They had a single competitor for their 3-D services on the European continent: a group out of Germany that had threatened them with all manner of European patent infringements. Because the technology was so new, it was open season, with the patents up for any number of attacks, and Chris had convinced the CEO that they were bluffing. But now it looked like they were playing hardball.

  He crumpled the pictures on the bed, thinking of how he could extricate himself from the situation. Clearly, European operations were no longer in the equation. What he needed to do was ensure that the competition was willing to delete his transgressions. Permanently. A note accompanying the pictures gave instructions for a meeting, but nothing as to a demand. He’d have to determine that tonight.

  He remembered Christine, but no longer felt any excitement. He only wanted to get her on the first plane back to the United States. At the end of the day, Chris was a married father of two. There was no way some copy girl from Staples could interfere with that.

  He sent her a message saying he would have to delay their date tonight, and thought about just breaking up with her in the email, but he knew he couldn’t. She’d have questions, and he’d need to meet in person to answer them. He realized she might not take it well, and was another possible leak. At that thought, he put his head into his hands.

  He sat on the bed for the rest of the day, alternately squeezing his fists until his knuckles were white and unabashedly weeping.

  50

  The connecting door opened to my room, and Jennifer came in, followed by Knuckles. He said, “This is convenient. I figured you’d want a room that connects to the TOC, but I guess we all have our priorities.”

  Jennifer elbowed him in the gut, causing a woof of air. He backed up, rubbing his belly, saying, “Touchy, aren’t we?”

  She said, “This is serious. No joking around.”

  I saw her expression and knew she was about to make trouble. As if I didn’t have enough to deal with. I was analyzing Google Maps, trying to figure out the best observation points to conduct surveillance of the Internet café, the only anchor we had, and I wasn’t happy with the interruption. I preempted her, saying, “You guys finish with the plane? You got everything we need?”

  While the Gulfstream was invaluable for infiltrating kit past customs, it was a pain in the ass to get said kit out of the aircraft and into our tactical operations center. A lot of back-and-forth, running “checklists” and doing “maintenance.”

  Knuckles said, “Retro’s getting the last of the optics. We’re good to go with weapons and commo. Believe it or not, the front desk helped bring it up.”

  Knuckles saw my glare and said, “I know, I know, but those guys won’t take no for an answer. Me and Jennifer were toting damn near a hundred pounds of weaponry in three Gucci luggage bags. If we had waved off, they’d have become suspicious. They didn’t seem to mind. Probably do that shit all the time for the Albanian mafia.”

  We were staying at the Sheraton Hotel, a five-star affair snuggled between the city and a giant green space, Tirana’s version of Central Park. The hotel itself was probably the nicest property in the city, and it seemed the management knew it. They acted a little embarrassed to be working there, like the rich guy who brought home a normal date, now apologizing for the manservants and thousand-dollar espresso machines. It was annoying, but this was the only place we could find with high-speed Wi-Fi, and a lack of that was a nonstarter on this mission. Although having the management tote up our weapons was a bit much.

  Jennifer said, “Hey, I’ve been going over the data from the Taskforce, and I think I’m on to something. I ran it past Knuckles, and he thinks so too.”

  I said, “Unless it involves a French terrorist of Algerian descent, I do not care. Do you realize what we’re up against? The damn guy is using an Internet café right next to the US embassy. Like he’s taunting us. Or planning an attack.”

  I stabbed my finger at the laptop screen and said, “He’s using our own security to prevent us from snatching his ass. Maintaining eyes-on of that café is going to be damn near impossible. It’s surrounded by police, all who work for the embassy, which we’re not allowed to coordinate with.”

  Knuckles said, “Can’t be that bad. It’s a US embassy. We can get eyes-on from a distance. At least past the blast radius.”

  He was referring to a document called the Inman Report, produced after the 1983 bombing of our embassy in Beirut, which mandated certain standards for standoff and blast protection. Standards that grew more urgent after the 1998 bombings in Africa. It stipulated US embassies maintain at least a modicum of defensive capability, with standoff distances from vehicle-borne explosives and even glass construction specifications. Unfortunately, like a lot of quagmire in the US government, the design parameters apparently hadn’t made it to Tirana, Albania.

  The embassy was right in the heart of a neighborhood, with alleys snaking behind the back wall of the compound. It made me cringe wondering how easy it would be to obliterate, but my mission was in the Internet café tucked next to the east wall, underneath a bar called, appropriately enough, the American Bar.

  It was going to be hard keeping surveillance on Rashid, because the embassy had traded standoff distance for uniformed officers of Albania. They were everywhere.

  But clearly, that wasn’t why Jennifer had dragged Knuckles to my room. She had something more important in mind.

  She said, “I went through the Taskforce reports.”

  I countered, “Are Shoshana and Aaron back yet? I need some input on bumper locations. And we need to develop a schedule. We’re easy, but they’re going to get smoked doing a fifty-fifty stakeout.”

  Jennifer crossed her arms and gave me the death stare, knowing I was trying to get her off whatever subject was coming. Knuckles said, “They haven’t come back. I think you should hear Jennifer out. She’s on to something.”

  Jennifer gave him a grateful nod, and, because he couldn’t stand to back her up with me in the room, he said, “I mean, she appears to be thinking with something other than her dick.” He glanced at the connecting door and said, “Unlike you. Although, after that last punch, I’m not so sure she isn’t hiding a penis.”

  She whirled to him, shouting, “Do you constantly have to fight me because I’m female? Do I threaten you that much?”

  The tone of her voice broke me away from my computer. Only half listening earlier, I was all ears now. It was beyond sharp. She’d always been good-natured about the ribbing before, but today, she was out for blood.

  I saw Knuckles with a look of shock on his face, his hands in the air. He said, “Whoa, whoa . . . calm down. Jesus, Jennifer, what’s up with you lately?”

  She stopped and glared at him, but I could see the embarrassment coming through at her outburst.

  I said, “Hey.”

  She flicked her eyes to me.

  “What is up with you?”

  She stomped away, getting a bottle of water from the small desk below the television. She unscrewed the cap, then sat down. She said, “You guys have been second-guessing me since al-Britani was killed. I had nothing to do with that. I am not Shoshana.”

  And I saw what was happening. It wasn’t us second-guessing. It was her. Which made all the difference.

  51

  Nobody blamed Jennifer for what had happened. Every single one of us had been in her shoes at one ti
me or another and made a decision that had ended badly. We’d dealt with it by talking to the team, and she felt she couldn’t, because she believed she was unique. A female. She regretted the outcome of the mission in Jordan and was internalizing it.

  I leaned forward, the team leader wanting to say something profound and uplifting, but before I could, Knuckles took a different tack.

  He spit fire at her.

  “Are you shitting me? Cut that crybaby crap. Is that why you’ve been acting like you’re on your period? Fuck, girl, I was almost good to go with a female on the team. Now I have to deal with this hormonal bullshit?”

  Her eyes flew open at his words. She leapt to her feet, fists clenched. He stood firm and said, “What? You want a piece of this? Bring it on. I’m sick of Pike protecting you all the time.”

  He looked at me, and I gave a slight nod, letting him know I was good with it. Showing him I understood where he was going.

  He advanced on her and said, “You think you made a bad call, and you very well might have, but we all do. We all do. You want to talk about it, I’m all ears, but spare me the song and dance that I don’t trust you anymore.”

  I saw confusion, then suspicion. She said, “You don’t mean that.”

  He smiled, looked at me, and said, “You want to tell her about Sudan?”

  I said, “No. I’d rather leave that fuckup in the classified dictionary of what not to do.”

  He returned to her and said, “That’s my dictionary, by the way. You want to tell lover boy here what you found? Or just keep pining away because you don’t actually have a penis?”

  Her face grew red at the insults, stiffening her will to resist. I halfway stood, knowing what was about to happen, because she was one bullheaded woman . . . person . . . whatever.

  Then I saw her reflect on what he’d said. Like in Nairobi, she realized he was actually patting her on the back and giving her an out.