Counterplay

by Richard Aaron

  “And why don’t you add these four to the list of conspirators? I mean, they were there, directing the proceedings, packing the Semtex into some kind of device. Why are they not part of the list?”

  “Ma’am, we have no idea who they are. We are not even completely certain that the fourth is called Kumar. They may have been directing events; we cannot link those to anyone.”

  “Okay. Now have a close look at those four sketches, and have a close look at my client. In fact, I will put these sketches up by the dock. Now, do you agree that none of these people look even remotely like my client?” “Doesn’t appear so,” said Indy quietly.

  Dana glanced at the large clock hanging on the rear wall of the courtroom. It was approaching 12:30. Turbee had stopped feeding her questions. “Can we adjourn for lunch, m’lord?”

  “When it’s 12:30. You have half an hour left.”

  Dana spent five minutes shuffling through her notes. Eventually McSheffrey got to his feet and tried to force the issue.

  “Well, Judge, it sounds like my learned friend here has reached the end of her cross-examination. We should finish, so that this busy officer can come off the stand and get on with his life.”

  “Aptly spoken,” nodded Judge Mordecai. “It sounds like you’re done, Ms. Wittenberg. So let’s push on and we’ll take the noon adjournment at the usual time. Carry on.”

  Dana’s mind again went completely blank, and she had no idea where to go next. After another thirty seconds of silence she was about to fall on her sword when the rear door of the courtroom opened and there was Lee Penn-Garrett, in his wheelchair, with a little stack of paper in his lap. Penn-Garrett motioned to one of the sheriffs to wheel him down to the counsel table. Judge Mordecai saw him and inwardly groaned. More mischief on the way.

  The ancient lawyer tossed a couple of documents on the prosecutor’s side, and was going to drop the documents on Dana’s side, but at the last minute he saw the overturned water glass, the mass of Kleenex, and the small lake in which Dana’s notes were floating. He simply handed the documents to Dana and parked.

  Dana looked at them, read them over, read them over again, and handed two sets to the clerk, one for the court file and the other for the judge. Judge Mordecai reviewed them, and as he was reading, his skin color changed from pale pink to red.

  “So you appealed me did you, Wittenberg? McSheffrey, did you know about this?”

  “No, and it’s outrageous.”

  “Mr. Penn-Garrett, did you have any involvement with this?”

  “Yes, I was counsel at the Court of Appeal,” came Penn-Garrett’s raspy voice.

  “Making trouble like usual, I see,” snorted the judge. “This is an ex parte motion. Why did you not notify the gentlemen at counsel table that you were bringing this on? This is a bit of a sneak attack, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Judge Mordecai, it is an ex parte motion. We needed it immediately. Before Inspector Singh finished testifying. The learned gentlemen at counsel table had all disappeared. I needed to get to the Court of Appeal while there were still judges around. My learned friends can bring an application before the Court of Appeal and show cause as to why the order should be vacated. They can do this at any time. They can do it now, at this very instance, if they wanted to.”

  “I ought to report you to the Law Society for meddling in a trial that’s none of your business,” rebuked the judge.

  Penn-Garrett had a long history of edginess under fire and had never been intimidated by any judge, or any lawyer. “I have done nothing inappropriate, m’lord. I am simply lending an assist to a junior lawyer who is outgunned four to one. You, on the other hand, with your ridiculous rulings and riding Ms. Wittenberg unmercifully, you ought to be reported to the Judicial Council.”

  As Mordecai was trying to figure out a way to get the sheriffs to slam Penn-Garrett, wheelchair and all, into cells, McSheffrey, the lead prosecutor, stood up. “We’ve been blindsided here. We need at least a half hour adjournment to consider our position with respect to this order.”

  “M’lord, this trial is dragging on,” Dana said. “They can sort it out over the lunch break.”

  “You’re telling me that the trial is dragging on? After you spend at least three-fourths of any questioning looking at the ceiling or at your stupid computers? After your request for dozens of unnecessary breaks you don’t want to give one to the prosecution, especially after you sandbagged them with an ex parte motion? Seriously?”

  “I would like to continue. I want to go back to where we were yesterday, and ask about a meeting between the RCMP, the FBI, and TTIC.”

  “I made my ruling. You are not going there.”

  “But m’lord, the Court of Appeal has now said that I can.”

  “On an ex parte motion. You are going to apply to those idiots in the Court of Appeal to vacate their order, aren’t you?” Mordecai looked at the prosecutors’ table.

  “Of course we are,” McSheffrey replied. “But we need some time to put the paper together.”

  “You’ve got it,” ordered the judge.

  He turned to Dana, his complexion a dark, unhealthy purple. Dana had never seen Judge Mordecai so angry. “We don’t like ex parte orders, Ms. Wittenberg, especially coming from the Court of Appeal. And for you to complain about ‘dragging on’ is completely ridiculous. You’ve been dragging your feet through endless pauses, gaps, and adjournments. You think you’re allowed to drag and they’re not? This court is adjourned for ninety minutes.” With his gavel in pieces, he picked up a paperweight and slammed it down so hard that its head broke off and flew forward, almost clipping the court clerk’s right ear. He stormed off the bench before the startled clerk could say, “Order in the court.”

  It was Thursday morning. The following Monday was a holiday— Canadian Thanksgiving—and the Tuesday and Wednesday thereafter were impossibly overbooked at the Court of Appeal. The full hearing on the application to allow the questioning on missing documents was put over until the following Thursday. Justice Mordecai had had enough, and adjourned the Leon Lestage trial until after the Court of Appeal hearing on Thursday morning. Just when Dana felt she would disintegrate into dust with the unrelenting stress, she was given seven days off.

  Everyone associated with the trial breathed a sigh of relief. Court and counsel were becoming murderous in their frustration and endless disagreements and a respite was called for.

  33

  Several days later, Turbee was twiddling with a complex formula on one of his computers when a banner scrolled across the top of his screen: INCOMING MESSAGE FROM GOLDBERG COMM-LINK.

  Turbee nudged George, who was sitting to his right, and motioned to Khasha, to his left. “Open it,” said Khasha.

  Turbee furtively looked around to see who else in the TTIC control room might be paying attention. No one was. He clicked on the banner. TURBEE, PLEASE MESSAGE BACK WHEN YOU GET THIS.

  I’M HERE, Turbee responded. WHAT DO YOU NEED?

  WE ARE APPROACHING JAKARTA. JIMMY KNOWS OF THE LOCATION OF AN INDUSTRIAL SHIPPING AREA WEST OF THE CITY. WE NEED TO REFUEL AND THE ONLY WAY WE CAN DO THAT IS TO USE THE KDDEA MERICAN EXPRESS CARD ON BOARD. ARE YOU ABLE TO CHANGE THE ORIGIN OF THE POINT OF SALE? WHAT DO YOU MEAN? Turbee messaged back.

  WITH ALL OF THE SIGINT BEING TRACKED BY THE NSA THE FEDS WILL BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR OUT OF THE WAY CHARGES ON KDDE OR RELATED ACCOUNTS. CAN YOU MAKE IT LOOK LIKE THE POINT OF SALE CAME FROM SOME DIFFERENT AREA? LIKE WHERE?

  SOME AREA IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. SOMEWHERE ALONG THE EASTERN COAST OF AFRICA. CAN YOU MAKE IT LOOK AS THOUGH WE PURCHASED FUEL THERE AS OPPOSED TO WHERE WE PRESENTLY ARE?

  RICHARD, I WILL TRY. STAND BY.

  “Can you do that?” asked Khasha.

  “I don’t know,” Turbee replied, feeling like a serial digital burglar. “This is tougher than simply freezing an account. Anyone can do that. But to change a point of sale, that’s very different.” “How so?” asked George.

  “You cannot do a l
ot of damage by freezing an account. That is a common occurrence with any credit card company. Many offices, many people within the organization can do that. When I froze Dan’s accounts, I simply hacked in, gave myself administrator privileges, and blocked his account. To actually change a point of sale is very uncommon, as it goes to the security of the whole company. Someone who could do that could steal billions of dollars. The security around that is formidable. But we do have access to the TTIC supercomputers, so I might be able to do it. This is going to take a while and I don’t feel good about it. Khash, we are just getting in deeper and deeper.” Turbee relayed that information back to Zak.

  Turbee slowly, reluctantly nodded and set to work. As he often did when working on such an exercise, he fell into the project to the exclusion of everything else.

  Several hours later, Turbee messaged Richard again: GO AHEAD AND GAS UP. AMERICAN EXPRESS WILL THINK THE POINT OF SALE IS A SMALL VENDOR AT DAR ES SALAAM IN TANZANIA.

  It was late in the afternoon when a gaunt, haggard Turbee resurfaced in the control room. His two friends George and Khasha pulled him over to one of the side conference rooms.

  “Turbee,” began Khasha. “There’s something else going on. Over the past week you’ve been looking worse and worse. I know you’re not sleeping. What’s happening?”

  Slowly and piecemeal, the tale of what George and Turbee had done to Dan Alexander began to take shape. Once Khasha had it sorted out, she turned to George in anger.

  “Why would you do that, George? Worse yet, why would you drag Turbee into something like that? This is not an April Fools’ thing. This is criminal. You know what Dan is like. He will exact his revenge one way or the other. How are we possibly going to get you out of that mess? And Turbee, you know better than that. You have never done a criminal thing in your life, other than hacking.”

  Turbee hung his head and opened a can of root beer. “Khasha, we were over the line with that Dan thing. Yes, he deserved to be put down a notch, but we stuck him in Guantanamo for several days. He’s going to get even. Now, to try and protect Richard and Zak, I broke into the Amex system using TTIC technology. That’s got to be a federal crime. And the whole intelligence community is looking for Richard and Zak and Kumar and we know exactly where they are and we are going to help them gas up. Khasha, I am absolutely sick about this. I just want to run. Dan will be looking for stuff. He’ll say we’re criminals and we are. How did we get so far over the line? How do we keep going further over the line every day?”

  “Maybe it was a little over the top,” said George defensively. “But look at the big picture. Dan was on Turbee’s case because of those alleged conspiracy websites. Dan arrested Liam in front of everybody. The admiral himself was arrested and Yousseff is the president’s best buddy. There is something evil going on. We need to flush it out. Richard and Zak were following orders when they broke Kumar out of Inzar Ghar. They became rogue after the fact. People, powerful people, do not want Kumar to get his message out. We’re in the same boat. We know what really happened, and for whatever reason, Dan and virtually everyone above him is covering it up. If we don’t do what’s right here, the truth will be permanently submerged and Richard and Zak will, somewhere along the way, probably be murdered. As far as Dan Alexander goes, I suppose he is a bit pissed,” said George, “and maybe we went a bit too far, but he’s learned his lesson. He won’t come after us.”

  “We shouldn’t have done it,” said Turbee, fear permeating his voice. “George, we’re going to go to jail. I couldn’t live there. I would die. I was in jail here in DC, remember? I was almost killed there. My ribs still haven’t healed and I still can’t sleep at night. I can’t do this anymore, you guys.” His voice rose in pitch every few words.

  “He can never prove it was us,” George said. “We covered our tracks way too well.”

  “Actually, not quite, George,” Khasha said. “My friends at the NSA could figure it out. Sure, you and Turbee are very clever, but the NSA and many of the other intelligence agencies are full of clever people. In fact, the FBI cybercrimes unit is crawling with geniuses and crack coders.”

  “It’s not even that,” said Turbee. “Dan doesn’t even need a reason. He’s got stacks and stacks of inherited money. He’s not above bribery. And he hangs out with POTUS. One simple presidential order would probably do it. George, we’re going to jail, and we deserve it. I’m going to turn myself in right now. Tell them everything. Maybe they will stick me in an easier prison.”

  “C’mon, Turbee. You were there when we talked to him down in Gitmo. He won’t dare cross us again. He knows if he does, he’ll end up in some prison camp in Uzbekistan. Permanently.”

  “You know what he’s like,” Turbee said. “We humiliated him when all his cards bounced at the airport. We got him publically arrested. He will never forget that. If it takes him ten years, he’ll get even with us. And now we’ve made things worse by breaking into Amex and dummying up a credit card bill, and breaching orders. The whole military is looking for Kumar and we know exactly where he is. We are in so deep, George. We can’t keep doing this.”

  “If Dan comes for us, Turbee, I’ll take the fall for it,” George replied. “After all, it was my idea to stick him in Guantanamo for a few days. And it was Richard and Zak who asked you to disguise that fuel bill. Those two will take the heat for that.”

  “Yes, but I did it. I got into all of those databases and wiped out Dan’s credit cards. I got him on the no-fly list. Now I changed a point of sale transaction for 10,000 gallons of fuel. Dan won’t rest until we each get ten years in jail. And he can do it. He’s incredibly well connected and he’s got a billion dollars stacked away. We should not have done it, George.”

  Turbee was inconsolable. Khasha tried to comfort him, but he was working his way into a full-blown panic attack. He began rifling through his pockets, looking for appropriate meds.

  Khasha glared at George. “You know that was illegal. You can’t put someone on a no-fly list just because you don’t like him. That’s a criminal act, George, and you dragged Turbee into it. I don’t know how you can fix it.”

  George looked at the floor as Khasha put her arm around Turbee. For a few minutes no one spoke. A small TV in the corner of the conference room was on and featured a news alert from the Leon Lestage trial in Vancouver, Canada. The trial had gained more than a passing interest with the TTIC regulars.

  The three of them were silent for a minute.

  “Turb, Turb, Turb,” clucked George. “This will pass. The government can’t sit on this fraud forever. Too many people know about it. Have you seen the traffic to some of those websites we created? The truth will come out, and when it does, things will be fine. The president is dirty. The whole Yousseff thing is dirty. We are onto something and we are going to stay on it. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Where to?” asked Turbee.

  George looked intently at the television. “Vancouver. Vancouver, British Columbia.”

  34

  As the Allegro Star approached the British Columbia coastline, a change in tactics was called for. The closer they came to North America’s west coast, the greater the surveillance, the more frequent the Coast Guard patrols, and the greater the density of drones and satellites. Yousseff, when he had Kumar design the Allegro Star, took this into account. At 1,400 miles west of Vancouver, a different mode of travel was needed.

  “Have you found any yet, Jimmy?” asked Kumar from the Allegro Star’s central living area.

  “Yes, boss, I have. There’s a container ship about three hours ahead en route to Vancouver Harbor. It’s the MOL Honor. A Japanese supercontainer ship, Triple-E class. She’s going at a real healthy clip. Twenty-seven knots, more or less.”

  “A Triple-E? That makes it 400 meters long,” Kumar said.

  “Yeah. More than four football fields long. And a beam of close to sixty meters.”

  “Will we have enough oxygen?” Kumar asked.

  “When we intercept, w
e will be 1,300 miles from harbor. At twentyseven knots, barely, but we should be okay. I checked online and she has a specific dock time at Centerm. We’re good.”

  Richard looked up from the video game he and Zak were playing. Jimmy performed some quick calculations on his phone. “That’s six acres of hull, more or less,” he said, shaking his head. “Absolutely awesome. This will work well.”

  “Have you plotted an intercept yet?” asked Kumar.

  “Yeah. I just plugged it into the nav program. If we go at max speed, we will rendezvous with her in about two hours.”

  “Okay, Jimmy. Get it done.”

  “Richard, pay attention,” snapped Zak, looking up from his controller. “We’re being swamped by Nazi zombies here.”

  Richard and Zak were playing the WWII version of Call of Duty. Zak was winning, as he did in most any contest that the two were involved in. They had known each other since their early teens. Both had parents who were on Uncle Sam’s payroll at the Islamabad embassy. When Richard’s parents died in an accident on the Islamabad/Peshawar highway, Zak’s parents took Richard in, and when, shortly after, they left Pakistan and returned to their California home, Richard tagged along. They both did four years in the nation’s premier military academies. Richard went to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, and Zak went to the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Both had sterling careers: Zak flying mostly Hornets, and Richard mostly Tomcats. Then came disaster. Richard, suffering from chronic back pain due to an accident in basic training, gradually became addicted to opioids. While Zak was discharged honorably, Richard was not. He was unceremoniously bounced out of the Navy when he splashed a Tomcat off the deck of the Big John. It was discovered that he was high on oxycontin at the time.