by J. B. Turner
Chisholm stared at the image. “So, how does this help us identify them, Horowitz?”
“Sir, in my opinion, this is the residue from a highly sophisticated attempt to fool a biometric fingerprint scanner.”
“And?”
Horowitz looked up at Reznick and Chisholm. “Low-end optical fingerprint scanners can often be fooled with a simple image, but nowadays the scanners check for electrical current and blood flow. But there are numerous examples of how the characteristics of gelatin are similar to a human finger and can fool high-end scanners.”
Reznick stared at the image and shook his head. “The clear gelatin allows the scanner to read a false fingerprint.”
Horowitz nodded. “Precisely.”
Chisholm picked up a pen and pointed to the gelatin residue on the photo. “What about liveness-detection technology?”
“This type of thing can spoof most of what we have at US airports. That’s the reality.”
“How the fuck have we not sorted this out?”
Horowitz shrugged. “Take your pick—design, cost, political will. As it stands, research is ongoing to find a balance between price, user-friendliness, and security of the system. But the bottom line is, the system is heavily flawed. And determined and sophisticated terrorists can circumvent fingerprint technology used in airports across America.”
Chisholm rubbed his eyes. “OK, so what’ve we got? An attempt by these two individuals to conceal their identities, right?”
Horowitz nodded.
“Who are these people? What about their true fingerprints?”
Horowitz grinned. “Hoped you were going to ask me about that.” He tapped the keyboard, and two side-by-side fingerprints appeared on the screen.
“What are we looking at?” Chisholm asked.
“Digitally enhanced fingerprints showing what we believe the full fingerprints would show, if the minute sliver of gelatin on the fingers was erased.”
“Hang on, so the fingerprints we’re looking at were scanned and signs of the gelatin residue were removed?”
“Right. With a 0.04 percent degree of doubt, these are the real fingerprints of the man and woman with the gunshot wounds.”
“So you’re 99.96 percent certain that these fingerprints on the screen are accurate. But there’s been an attempt to conceal their true identity . . . am I keeping up with you?”
Horowitz nodded. “You got it, sir. And guess what else?”
“What?”
“We got a match. I contacted a source at the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, and they said they had an exact match with our computer-generated fingerprints. That’s why I wanted to speak face to face.”
“Have they communicated the identities of these two individuals?”
“Not yet. They’re waiting to get proper clearance to release that information. But they did tell me two things.”
“What?” Chisholm said, grinding his teeth.
“Both the man and woman were Spetsnaz at one time.”
Reznick’s blood ran cold. “Russian special forces . . .”
“The thing is, they aren’t just Russian.”
“I’m sorry, you’re not making sense.”
The kid blushed.
“So what the hell are they?” Chisholm said.
Horowitz cleared his throat self-consciously. “Sir, they’re also Chechens. Brother and sister. Islamists.”
Thirty-One
Five hours later, the full IDs of the two Chechens were on big screens in a conference room back in McLean. The talk was of another Boston-style bombing.
Chisholm stood, hands on hips, chewing some gum. He glanced at the two sullen faces up on the screens. “This is Anatoly Umarov and his sister, Kristina. Is this the woman Ford knew?”
A deathly hush.
“We don’t know at this stage.” He cleared his throat. “Leave that aside just now. Anatoly is the one to focus on. He is the cousin of Caucasian insurgent leader Dimitri Umarov, and was one of his inner circle. And we believe he would have been acting on direct orders.”
Black stared at the picture, eyes hooded.
“The Umarovs are notorious. They are part of a radical jihadist movement that the State Department has classified as a threat to the United States.” Chisholm pointed at the photo of Anatoly Umarov. “This guy, along with his cousin, reactivated a dormant Chechen suicide battalion, Riyadus-Salikhin. They’re guerilla fighters. They’ve been linked to a series of suicide bombings on the Moscow subway that killed forty people, the bombing of a luxury train that killed twenty-eight, and an attack that nearly killed the president of Ingushetia. He is wanted by Russia for kidnapping, homicide, and treason. And his cousin is the self-proclaimed Emir of the North Caucasus, an unrecognized Islamic state known as the Caucasus Emirate.”
Black leaned back in his seat. “This changes everything.” He looked across the room at Chisholm. “This is clearly an Islamist operation, right?”
“The problem is, General, we don’t have a clear, definitive assessment.”
“What do you mean? This is clear as day.”
Chisholm sighed. “I think it is imperative that we keep an open mind. We’ve got to question assumptions, but also see different perspectives. We don’t understand what the purpose of this mission was. Are they part of a cell? Are these two Chechens the cell? Is there something bigger going on behind the scenes? The analysis, as it stands, is not conclusive by any means, and we’re still trying to see how Ford fits into the picture.”
Black pointed to a senior FBI counterintelligence specialist, Miles Griffin. “How does Ford fit into this? And please, Miles, spare me any management-speak. I’ve had my fill of it.”
Griffin took off his glasses and leaned his elbows on the conference table. “We’re looking at this from multiple angles. Motivation, behavior, counterterrorism, threat analysis, source intelligence, and we’re pulling in CIA and Homeland Security know-how. But, as Sam says, we just don’t get it. The cutouts are there. Jamal Ali has visited Pakistan four times since he got out of jail. His sister is most likely the cutout, as Reznick alluded to from the outset. The most intriguing aspect of all this is—and we keep coming back to this—the role of Ford. How does he fit into this structure?”
Black’s face reddened. “What the hell are you talking about? What structure? Are you saying he’s part of this Islamist cell?”
“Not at all. Let’s leave Ford aside for a second. The latest analysis I’ve seen, within the last hour, does show that there is an escalating risk of terrorist operation in the US in the coming days.”
The color seemed to drain from the general’s face. “What?”
“Timescale is pointing to a terrorist attack, almost certainly Islamist in nature. It’s almost the anniversary of 9/11. That’s flashing us red lights, big time.”
Black nodded. “So all this—taking out O’Grady, Lieber’s disappearance, Meyerstein, not to mention putting the squeeze on Froch . . . It’s all to protect one man?”
“The majority view from my analysis is that this group or cell, whoever they are, are making sure their guy gets a clean run at this. At all costs. But Ford is causing us all a real headache. Who the hell is he? No one knows.”
Chisholm said, “We need to pull him in. Right now.”
Black grimaced. “On what grounds? We have nothing. If we jump on Ford, we don’t know if there is a Plan B, C, or even D. Not to mention the network would still be in place—on the ground, in America. I say the sound strategy would be to watch and wait.”
Chisholm sat down in his seat and shook his head. “With respect, sir, I don’t concur. My concern is that all these signals are going to get lost in the noise from the data that’s pouring in.”
Black glared across at him. “I don’t give a rat’s ass if you concur, Sam, because—from where I stand—no one is able to give me a straightforward assessment.”
Chisholm sighed. “This is not an exact science. We all know that. As it stands, the
range of probability from analysis across the intelligence spectrum suggests that the possibility of a terrorist attack could be from as low as sixty percent up to eighty-nine percent, which can be translated into saying that there is a significant probability that an attack is imminent. Everyone believes Ford fits into this. But they’re not sure how.”
Black’s face was like stone. “I’m finding it hard to get my head around the fact that Ford could be an Islamist. We have no concrete proof. Why the hell would an upper-middle-class white American head down this route?”
“A lawyer in Marin County whose son went to fight for the Taliban didn’t understand either,” Reznick interjected. “A middle-class guy from a good background in California—John Walker Lindh. Remember him? His father described him as a sweet kid. I was there when we interrogated him after the prison uprising near Mazar-e-Sharif. It happens. Good kids go bad. He wasn’t a bad kid intrinsically. He was naive. He wanted to learn about Islam. He developed fluency in Arabic. And then he got radicalized. He took up arms against America. It happens.”
Those around the table were listening intently.
“The possibility must exist that something has happened to Ford. Did he convert, and was he then radicalized?”
“There is no proof of that,” Black said.
“The possibility exists. And think about it. What phenomenal cover . . . White middle-class American, covertly protected by white Chechens. Easy for them all to blend in, right? We all have the picture in our head of the Middle Eastern-looking guys with beards, toting machine guns or semiautomatics. Well, I’ve got news for you: the two Chechens in the morgue may just be the tip of the iceberg. These Islamists are willing to lay down their lives to avoid giving themselves up.” He pointed at the pictures on the screen. “Anatoly Umarov shot his sister and then shot himself to avoid us getting them alive. They faked their fingerprints. That may point to a highly sophisticated operation. They may also be well funded. I’m telling you, we’ve got a major problem on our hands.”
“Froch was set up and has confessed that he was being blackmailed. This may point to a foreign government,” Chisholm said. “Russia? We don’t think so, but we can’t rule them out. We’ve got to focus on the possibility that the Chechens may be proxies for a Middle Eastern power. Syria? Iran? We just don’t know. There might also be a parallel operation going on—the possibilities are endless.”
Black said, “Let’s focus on what we do know. Tell me more about these Umarovs.”
Chisholm sat down and flicked through his papers. “A few years back, the Umarovs denied that the Chechen separatist movement was linked to al-Qaeda or any jihadist groups, and claimed they only wanted independence from Russia. But Anatoly Umarov’s cousin—as recently as 2011—expressed solidarity in an intercepted cell phone conversation with, and I quote, ‘brothers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Palestine.’ Interestingly, his cousin has publicly attacked America, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Israel for oppressing Muslims. He believes in Sharia law. And he was implicated in the Beslan siege.”
“Here’s something else to consider,” Reznick interjected. “We were identifying an Iranian Shia connection from early days. But I think we can say that, if Chechens are involved, this is far more likely to be a Sunni Islamist threat.”
Black said, “Wahhabis, like al-Qaeda—is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m not an analyst, but that has got to be a possibility. But I think you have to remember that bin Laden wasn’t a Wahhabist. Most Islamic extremists follow the ideology of Sayyid Qutb, not Wahhabism.”
One of the FBI intelligence experts was nodding. “That’s a very good point indeed, and easy to overlook. Wealthy Saudis—and to an extent the Saudi government—are the paymasters for Muslim Brotherhood chapters and hard-line Islamists. And they’re pulling the strings in Syria with their jihadist links.”
Black’s eyes were hooded.
“What about a foreign government pulling the strings?” said Reznick.
Chisholm stared back at him but said nothing.
“You know how it works, guys—a government doesn’t want to leave their fingerprints on an operation. I don’t think we can rule out the Iranians. The Chechens are nice cover for them. Look at Bosnia way back in the nineties. The Iranians were involved in supplying Bosnian Muslims with large numbers of multiple rocket launchers and huge caches of ammunition. This included 107mm and 122mm rockets. All made in Iran. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard was very active on the ground in Bosnia, and the CIA estimated that around four hundred had been detached for future terrorist operations.”
Black frowned. “Chechens being used as proxies?”
Reznick sighed. “The problem with all this conjecture is that we still can’t pin down how Ford is involved. The doctor who likes to do good. The doctor who likes to row. The doctor who saves lives. The doctor whose ex-girlfriend is in a psychiatric unit, accusing him of drugging her, and another girl who is missing. Wouldn’t that bother you—if a girl you knew was missing?”
“But wasn’t Caroline Lieber the one who was obsessed with him?”
Chisholm pinched the bridge of his nose. “Goddamn.”
Reznick said, “If we’re saying Ford may be an Islamic convert, when did this happen? His ex-girlfriend didn’t mention any Muslim sympathies or ties.”
Chisholm said, “I really think we need to bring him in.”
“And say what?” Black said. “Are you in the middle of a terrorist operation, doc? I mean, come on. Besides, he’s under surveillance twenty-four seven.”
Chisholm stared at him. “We don’t have to be so obvious. We could say that we’re in the middle of an ongoing investigation, and ask if he could help us. Ask him to fill in the blanks of his past. If he can’t—why not?”
A few nods from around the table.
Black said, “Look, we’re watching him. His new cell phone is being tracked. We’ve got all the agencies working on this—”
Just then, there was a sharp knock. Everyone turned around as the door opened.
Walking in, ashen-faced, head held high, was Assistant Director Martha Meyerstein.
Thirty-Two
Reznick looked across at Meyerstein. Her face was drawn, and her carefully applied makeup could not hide the dark circles around her eyes and the pallor of her skin. She looked fragile, almost vulnerable. She took the seat next to Black and reached for a glass of water, her hand betraying a slight shake. She looked at those around the table and smiled.
“Against my doctor’s advice . . . and probably my better judgment, I’m taking charge again,” she said.
Some forced laughter, before a palpable sense of relief swept through the room.
Chisholm smiled. “Great to have you back, Martha. Are you up for this already?”
“I’m here. OK, so where the hell are we?”
A five-minute overview briefing followed, outlining the latest theories about the two Chechens and the blackmailing of Froch. Meyerstein listened intently but remained silent.
Then Black said, “This Chechen link, in light of what happened to you and with what happened in Boston still fresh in all our memories, has to make us wonder if there are others. I for one don’t believe these two are acting alone.”
Meyerstein nodded. “Look, I’m coming at this cold. I need to get up to speed—and quick. I’m going to read all the briefings, updates, and threat assessments we’ve got. So before I disappear for a couple of hours, what’s the latest on Ford?”
Chisholm said, “He’s on our radar. But we’re still missing part of his history. Something’s not adding up. Roy’s guys are busting a gut on this. They’ll get it.”
Meyerstein’s gaze went around the rest of the room. “But when? Look, this guy Ford, something’s wrong, and I can’t put my finger on it. So let’s get some answers. And damned quick.” A few nods. “OK, meeting adjourned. Let’s meet up in four hours’ time. Let’s get to it.” A shuffling of papers, and everyone began to drift out of
the room.
Meyerstein approached Reznick and took him aside.
“Hey, I believe I owe you one. Thank you.” She held his gaze for a moment and smiled. “I mean it.”
Reznick felt uncomfortable and shrugged off her gratitude. “Forget it. All part of the service.”
Meyerstein gave a tired smile. “I need to speak to you and Sam in private. Couple things I’d like to run past you. But not here.”
Chisholm and Reznick followed her out of the building and into the back of a waiting car. Meyerstein sat up front. They were driven in silence all the way to FBI Headquarters in Washington, each lost in their own thoughts. Reznick sensed something was up. She knew something. But what?
Meyerstein stared ahead, occasionally glancing at her BlackBerry when its red light flashed, indicating she had a message.
The more he thought of it, the more he realized the investigation was in deep trouble.
The car pulled up at the security gate before being waved through. They took the elevator to the seventh floor of the Hoover Building and headed along a corridor to an electronic door. Meyerstein punched in a four-digit code and they went on through. Down another corridor, flanked by the offices of the most senior FBI agents, until they reached Meyerstein’s. Her name and rank were etched in silver on the glass door.
Meyerstein led them inside, where a young agent wearing a sharp suit and tightly knotted tie was standing by a window, waiting for them.
Meyerstein shut the door behind her. “Take a seat.”
Reznick and Chisholm did as they were told. The young agent remained standing.
Meyerstein sat down behind her desk. “This is Larry McNair. Before you ask, he’s new. He’s a counterespionage expert. Electronic surveillance, all that stuff.”
Reznick nodded at him, and McNair smiled.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since I got out of the hospital. It’s given me time to reflect on the investigation and how it has developed—or not, as the case may be. And I started thinking about how I’d gotten involved. It was right that I was assigned to head this, with the missing State Department official and all that. But then I started thinking about the special access program. What was the rationale behind that? I didn’t give it much thought earlier. I just assumed the rationale was sound. Why wouldn’t it be, right?”