by Van Torrey
*
Yim Soo-wok had made one critical error in his preparations for escaping the Caribbean Star. Instead of jettisoning his tablet computer in the ocean after the attack in preparation for his escape, he had carelessly left it behind in the hovel that had been his cabin on the ship. The FBI forensic team found the tablet and threw it in a canvas bag with other evidence gathered from the area where the Koreans were berthed while on the Caribbean Star. After inventory of the bag the tablet was quickly transferred to analysts at the CIA to determine if it held any useful intel. Clayton Wheatley and Raymond Rollins hoped buried in the electronic memory of the device might be clues to lead them to Yim and his handler.
*
Yim had grown impatient and very uncomfortable waiting inside the Colon. He could remember many times being nearly frozen during the bitterly cold winter in North Korea, but this seemed even worse. Perspiration poured out of his body. Humid air hung like a pall over the small dining room next to the fetid smelling kitchen. Only the bridge and the Captain’s quarters were equipped with air-conditioning but the compressor was broken. Fixing it had not been a priority for Orcharo because to do so would dip into his cash reserves for rum and tobacco. Parts and technicians along the coast were expensive and when they were underway a few miles off the coast the sea breeze was sufficient for basic comfort. Sitting by the dock in Puerto Cortes with the sun beating down the Colon heated the old steel rust bucket up like an oven.
In Miami Yim had a connection to the Internet by going to public places around Little Havana, and he was able to contact Mario two or three times every week. Although they had Wi-Fi on the cruise ship, Mario had told Yim not to use it for fear of compromise. Consequently, the tablet device had fallen into disuse and he had carelessly left it behind. Now Yim had no way of contacting Mario and his frustrations overflowed. He would simply have to wait for Mario to come to him.
The presence of Yim began to become an irritant to Orcharo. Keeping Yim was nothing more than an open-ended job that was tying the Colon to a stifling dock. Orcharo would soon have to start paying docking fees, while Colon could be producing revenue by hauling freight up and down the coast. Orcharo had never taken a liking to Yim and his body language reflected that to the increasingly frustrated Korean.
Yim’s mind began to conjure up improbable scenarios and fantasies including the idea there was a misunderstanding about the protocols of their rendezvous. Perhaps it was Yim, not Mario who was to make himself seen around the docks so Mario could come out of hiding and contact him. Perhaps Orcharo was supposed to be a more overt conduit to making the contact. Was Mario to have contacted the Harbor Master and Yim to do the same in order for contact to be affected? It was becoming increasingly clear that something other than sweating it out in the bowels of the Colon had to be done to get Yim back to Cuba.
*
With the cooperation of the highly secret National Security Agency, using an ultra-high-tech communications tracking and collection algorithm called XKeyscore, the CIA was turning the tablet left behind by Mr. Yim on the Caribbean Star into hard evidence behind the planning and operation of the terrorist attack.
*
Raymond Rollins and Clayton Wheatley were hand-in-glove when it came to the ethics of keeping President Hunter in the intel gathering loop. She was a kindred spirit when it came to them working their craft, and they both felt it was necessary for them to make her aware of the advances that had been made during her absence from being an intel wonk in Washington, D.C. They requested an appointment with the President through Philip Johnson, suggesting what they wanted to discuss would best be done in the White House Situation Room.
As the Director of National Intelligence, Raymond Rollins began the brief to President Hunter. “Ms. President, Director Wheatley and I thought it best that we bring you up to speed on the actual mechanics of how the gathering of electronic intelligence has progressed to the current state-of-the-art. In our opinion, this will help your intellectual understanding of this process and allow you to make or adjust current policy relative to this going forward.”
Rollins continued, “Despite the denials of the Washington intelligence establishment after the defection, and that is what it undoubtedly was, of Edward Snowden to the Russians in 2013, the fact was NSA had the ability to collect and store the electronic metadata of everyone in America who had access to the Internet through their personal computer or mobile communications device. The XKeyscore algorithm enabled analysts to sift through such metadata in its numerous databases and retrieve specific information about people’s identities, location, Internet browsing activity, email metadata, and telephone activity. With the potential misuse of XKeyscore, a large amount of ordinary people’s privacy was a thing of the past. When confronted with this startling revelation, many Americans blanched at the thought of their so-called privacy being violated and objected, albeit weakly, by rationalizing that I have nothing to hide. Besides, isn’t this a violation of the U. S. Constitution? The answer to the former might be relative, but the answer to the latter question came as a surprise to most people. One does not have a specific constitutional right to privacy. In fact the word ‘privacy’ does not even exist in the U.S. Constitution.”
Rollins continued, “The very existence of the Korean sleeper cell, or any suspicion surrounding a Korean by the name of Yim Soo-Wok, insulated them from surveillance by any law enforcement agency prior to the terrorist attack. Now it was necessary to do it after the fact. Despite the contentious debate of its legality or appropriateness among civil libertarians and politicians, XKeyscore was being used as a valuable tool by the FBI and CIA to sift through the content of Yim’s tablet to reconstruct the lead-up to the attack on the Caribbean Star. XKeyscore collected terabytes of metadata from millions of sources that were not suspicious and stored it in vast numbers of servers. That did not mean every conversation, email keystroke, or visit to a website by every individual was investigated. Such activity had to be researched according to a query which, theoretically, under proper conditions of legal protocol, had to be generated by an authorized person under terms of a FISA court warrant. The operative word was ‘theoretically’.”
“Some fundamental information available from the tablet itself, and the names given to Chance Lyon and John Olyphant during their initial interview with Detainee Number One that helped get the query to XKeyscore moving along and producing data. That information, along with the names “Yim”, “Mario”, Yim’s email address, and the respective IP addresses of the tablet and Mario’s IP address, was enough for a query to go forward. With that to build on, certain relevant facts began to emerge.”
Director Wheatley rose and went to the podium in the Situation Room and addressed the President. “Ms. President, I hope you will indulge us while we present what we know up to this point in the form of a Power-Point presentation. This will allow us to present this data in a logical sequence.”
“Please precede, Director. I thought I had seen my last Power-Point show when I left Stanford,” she smiled.
“Thank you, Ms. President. Here are the analytics in this matter.”
‘Mario’ was an alias for a person with presumably the ‘real’ name of Miguel Montial, a Cuban national employed by the DPRK Embassy in Cuba.
“Mario’ was using an ISP with origins in Cuba (a rarity, available only to well-connected Cubans).
It was confirmed that ‘Mario’ used his cell phone in Cuba and during his travels in Mexico, and the USA.
There was no correspondence using either mobile device with any North Korean ISP.
The electronic traffic between the DPRK Foreign Ministry and the DPRK Embassy in Cuba collected and decoded by NSA had no relevance to this investigation.
The electronic communication between the Cuban (‘Mario’) and Yim did involve information relevant to the terrorist attack.
‘Mario’ had an ‘encrypted’ satellite phone that he had most recently been using. His only problem was that the encryp
tion of this device had been broken by NSA.
In summary, analysis of the data produced by the XKeyscore query established the following:
⚪Yim was sent to the USA by the government of the DPRK.
⚪Yim was the leader of the terrorist sleeper-cell.
⚪Yim entered the USA illegally and committed criminal acts while here.
⚪His handler was a Cuban national, one Miguel Montial, a.k.a., ‘Mario,’ a Cuban employee of the DPRK Embassy in Havana.
⚪The two men conspired to commit a terrorist act against American citizens.
⚪Yim was probably responsible for the murder of members of the sleeper cell after the terrorist act took place.
⚪The Cuban (‘Mario’) and Yim were to reunite in Honduras and make their way to Cuba after the latter’s escape from the Caribbean Star.
⚪A Columbian-flagged coastal freighter vessel, the Colon, and her Captain, Manuel Sanchez Orcharo, were complicit in the escape of Yim and, therefore, accessories to the terrorist act itself.
⚪‘Mario’ is now believed to be in Belize making arrangements for a charter boat to take him to Honduras to pickup Yim.
*
This analysis, and the facts that were produced as a result, gave Rachel Hunter all the justification she needed to give her FBI Director, Clayton Wheatley, the go-ahead to use all the civilian resources at his disposal to find and apprehend Yim, Mario, and the Captain of the Colon. It went without saying that these same FBI resources could also question these men, as well as any associates, in an effort to get information about precisely who was behind the planning, financing, and operational control of the terrorist attack. It also went without saying that any such questioning would not take place on American soil.
*
Once the real identity of the mysterious Mario had been established as Miguel Montial, a Cuban male with diplomatic credentials who had passed through Mexican and American customs many times, a complete physical profile, including multiple pictures of his face and body, was now available. This information would be very valuable in the future tracking of the Cuban.
Since Detainee Number One knew of no photos that existed of Yim, the FBI sent a forensic artist to interview him on board the USS Reagan. With descriptive information provided by Detainee Number One, the artist completed a composite sketch that astonished Number One with its accuracy. The XKeyscore algorithm determined that one of Yim’s favorite places to access the Internet had been a Miami public library branch on the edge of Little Havana. It was just a matter of doing a date and time search of Internet access by the IP address of Yim’s tablet and coordinate that with tapes from the library’s security camera archives of those dates. A tedious search of these tapes eventually revealed several Asians accessing the library around a specific time window. When these images were compared with the forensic sketch a match was made identifying Yim with what the software indicated was 98.5 percent accuracy. After sequencing the multiple images through facial recognition software, an eight by ten inch photographic image of Yim was produced and emailed to all FBI offices, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices, Official Points of Entry into the United States, and Interpol. The image was also sent to Chance Lyon, landing on his cell phone and sat phone simultaneously. With photo images and physical profiles in hand of both Mario and Yim, there would be no question about the identities of these two men if and when they were actually confronted by Lyon and Olyphant, or immigration officials.
*
On the fifth day of confinement on the Colon, Mr. Yim decided to take matters into his own hands. There was still no sign of Mario, and Captain Orcharo’s passive aggressive behavior toward Yim, coupled with the fact he or the other crew rarely spoke to the Korean, were signs he was wearing out his welcome aboard. Orcharo already had his money, so the Captain’s motivation for continuing to hide Yim was decreasing daily.
These men are nothing more than coastal-running bandits who will do anything for money. Why wouldn’t they head for the open sea in the middle of the night and feed me to the sharks? Yim thought. I’ve got to fend for myself.
At dawn the next day Yim ventured out on deck to take his coffee and smoke one of his few remaining American cigarettes. There was no activity on the docks. He felt confident in heading for the Dock Master’s office in the slim hope that perhaps Mario had tried to make contact with him through the Dock Master or one of his underlings. It was a risk he had to take.
“Good morning,” Yim said to the weathered and gruff looking man who was sorting through a pile of papers and smoking as he sat behind an ancient steel desk. The only ventilation was from a noisy electric fan whose blades were rusting away in the salt air of the marina. “I’m looking for the Dock Master.”
“How may I help you senor? Are you looking for a berth for your boat?”
“Are you the Dock Master?”
The large man got up from his chair and eyed Yim warily before answering. “I am in charge of this dock, if that is what you are asking. Are you from a Japanese fishing boat?”
“No, I am a passenger on the Colon berthed here. I am trying to make connections with my Cuban friend, a person named Mario. He and I are going to do some fishing in these waters as soon as we can make contact. I was wondering if he has been here and asked for me. I am Mr. Yim,” as he held out his hand to introduce himself.
The Honduran man ignored the offer of a handshake and continued to look at him suspiciously. “There is no Mario here, senor. I cannot help you. When you get back to the Colon, please tell Captain Orcharo I want to see him. We are friends, but he can’t stay tied up to my dock forever without paying. I am a businessman.”
“Can you tell me how I may buy some American cigarettes and some decent vodka?” ventured Yim.
“Just go to town my friend. For a few American dollars you can get what you want.”
Yim was silent for a moment and looked up at the ceiling. “I cannot do that. My Spanish is not good,” he lied. “If you will get these items for me and deliver them to the Colon, I will pay you double for what you purchased.”
“Perhaps later today,” was the Dock Master’s response. “I am very busy as you can see,” dismissing Yim by returning to his desk.
As soon as the Korean left his office he looked at the manifest of the Colon and saw no one listed as Yim. That slippery Orcharo is carrying a person on his ship that has no papers and is taking up space on my dock, thought the Dock Master. This could be trouble for me...trouble I don’t need.
*
After days of no intel from the two Argus drones working the Puerto Cortes area and the coastal area south of Belize City, a flood of information started coming in to the CIA in Langley coincidental with Yim venturing out to meet with the Dock Master. Photo imagery from the Argus clearly showed Yim walking along the dock as well as on the deck of the Colon. In addition, Mario had entered Belize City on a flight from Cancun and the Mexican immigration people had notified their version of the American FBI, the Policia Federal Ministerial(PFM) of Mario’s exit from Mexico and probable destination of Belize City. The Mexican PFM immediately notified their FBI counterparts in Washington of the movement of this person on the American FBI watch-list. With Belize as dependent as it was on American tourists the authorities there were very happy to cooperate with American law enforcement and his arrival was confirmed to the American FBI within moments of his clearing customs in Belize City. Mario immediately used his Visa card to rent a car at the Belize City airport and this information was immediately picked up by NSA’s XKeyscore system and channeled to the FBI’s open query for any information on Miguel Montial (a.k.a., Mario.)
Yim had been identified and found to be on the Colon, and Mario seemed headed to the sleepy Belize coastal town of Dangriga. The guess was Mario would charter a boat to rescue Yim. The dragnet was closing. This information was texted to Chance Lyon on his encrypted satellite telephone.
Lyon found John Olyphant lounging by the pool of the Princess Hotel.
“Let’s kick the tires and start the fires, Blackie. I think we have a good idea where the bad guys are. I called the pilot of our chopper and told him we’d be there in less than an hour.”
*
Lyon and Olyphant boarded the chartered Bell JetRanger at the Belize City airport and gave the FBI pilot a thumbs-up signal as the powerful turbine engine increased power and lifted them up and forward toward the Honduran port of Puerto Cortes. A flight plan had been filed with Honduran port authorities who were expecting just another routine flight of refinery engineers. In a little less than two hours, the JetRanger landed at the Texaco oil refinery at Puerto Cortes, Honduras.
*
The U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, Margarita Sandoval, had requested a meeting with the Honduran Foreign Minister and the President of the Republic of Honduras upon notification from the State Department that the United States had traced Yim to a ship docked in the port city of Puerto Cortes. The encrypted cable to Ambassador Sandoval went into great detail about the background of Yim and his complicity in the recent terrorist attack in the Caribbean. In the action portion of the cable, Ambassador Sandoval was asked to get the Honduran President’s blessing for representatives of U.S. Federal law enforcement to come to Honduras to arrest the Korean, who was technically on Honduran soil, albeit on a foreign-flagged vessel docked at a Honduran port.