Authors: Rick Jones
Tel Aviv, Israel
September 24, Early Morning
It was
night.
Yosef Rokach sat before his PC in
the darkness of his apartment, the light of the monitor casting ghoulish
shadows upon his face. During the six hours he sat before the computer, trying
to decode the encryptions on the data stick, Yosef’s studious eyes hardly
looked away from the screen.
On average, it took approximately
two hours to decode a single page of data, leaving three pages remaining, which
would take him into the dawn hours. So far he had been able to bring up photos
of the Soldiers of Islam and their personal histories—low-level material. In
fact, this same material had already been forwarded to multiple intelligence
agencies that day. So why would such data be protected by the LAP?
With rapid fingering on the
keyboard, Yosef undid the visible stitching and continued to open the cyber
gates, producing readable material.
And then the first of the security
lights came on, blinking.
A security screen to the right of
the PC monitor was divided into quarters, showing a different part of the
residence on each segment. The top left portion showed three men scaling the
small gate to his building, which was always kept locked. The second security
lamp lit up. The intruders were now at the front door of the building, one
hunkering by the lock to disengage it.
Yosef typed even faster, realizing
that he wouldn’t have time to decipher the rest of the encryption. He saved the
partially decoded document onto his desktop.
The third security lamp began to
blink, the intruders now in the hallway making their way up the stairs to his
apartment.
Yosef quickly brought up the email
addresses of Washington’s FBI office and the CIA and attached the desktop
document. As the file uploaded, the computer suddenly appeared to work with
glacial slowness. The message, when received by the American constituencies,
would be from a Mossad ISP address in order to protect the identity of the
operative. Mossad would appear as the direct sender.
The fourth and final lamp lit, the
amber bulb blinking in rapid succession. The intruders were now milling at his
doorstep, their voices hushed, talking, deciding.
Just as the document loaded, Yosef
hit the SEND button.
At that moment, the door to his
apartment crashed inward.
After hitting the reset button to
quickly clear the computer screen, Yosef stood to face his aggressors. “What is
this? What do you want?”
Three men stood silhouetted
against the light of the hallway.
“I demand to know—”
“What you demand means nothing to
me,” said the first man. Even silhouetted, the man appeared slight—hardly a
physical threat, but his voice possessed something strong and unyielding.
The small man stepped closer, his
features clearer. His hair was dark and his face was lined with age and wisdom,
the creases also denoting years of pain, anger and persecution. Here stood
Yitzhak Paled, head of the Lohamah Psichlogit.
“How much did you decipher?” he
asked calmly. “And who did you send it to?”
Yosef shook his head. “I don’t
know what you’re talk—”
Paled reached out with a quick
hand and cuffed Yosef in the face. “How much did you decipher?” he repeated.
“And who did you send it to?”
Yosef stood there with his hand to
his face, the thrill of espionage no longer a romantic ideal, as reality set in
like an anchor. His gut was churning.
“If I have to ask you again,
Yosef, which I doubt is your real name, then I’ll break every bone in your body
until I get what I want, starting with your fingers. Is that clear?”
Yosef didn’t respond, his tongue
bound by paralytic terror.
“Case in point,” said Paled,
removing three Polaroids from his shirt pocket and splaying them across the
table in the glow of the computer monitor. Even in the feeble light, Yosef
could see the brutally battered face of his LAP contact, David Gonick. His
features were bloodied, his mouth slightly agape, teeth missing. His eyes had
rolled up into their sockets before he died. “He was caught on tape dropping
the data off on your level,” Paled added. “And you were caught on tape picking
it up.”
Yosef’s eyes traveled back to the
photos.
“If I don’t get what I want,
Yosef, then I’ll be adding three more Polaroids to this set.”
Yosef broke down.
Some spy,
he thought,
crying like a ten-year-old child.
But he held true,
revealing nothing, even until the moment Paled took Yosef’s pictures to add to
his collection.
Spurred on by a single hand
gesture from Paled, the two toadies grabbed Yosef and forcefully ushered him
out of his apartment.
“If you play, Yosef, then you have
to pay.” It was Paled’s final statement to a man who held no hope of seeing
dawn’s early light as he had anticipated.
With a gloved hand Paled shut off
the security monitors and wondered who Yosef’s liaisons were. To find out, he
would take the PC, examine it at Mossad Headquarters, and get the answer that
way.
Once he did find out, he’d
instruct Mossad’s department heads to deny everything on the document to all
United States constituencies, especially the FBI and CIA.
Removing the data stick from the
PC, Paled examined it, turning it over between his fingers as adeptly as a
magician passes a coin from one digit to the next. It was incredible how
something so small could hold enough information to start a war, he considered.
Then, with little effort, he snapped the data stick between his fingers and
placed the broken pieces in his pocket.
#
One of
Shari’s
team members heard the annoying
ping indicating that an email had been received. Taking immediate notice that
it had been sent to the FBI and the CIA, she burned the document onto two CDs.
Per protocol, she then deleted the email to minimize the risk of
misappropriation by hackers, despite the FBI’s state-of-the-art firewalls and
anti-theft software. She marked one CD to be placed into the vault as a backup
file.
The other CD was placed into a
jewel case marked VITAL and hand delivered to Shari’s team leader, who, after
signing the chain of custody log, hand delivered it to Shari per departmental
procedure.
Within moments, Shari was in
possession of the disc that initiated from Tel Aviv.
J. Edgar Hoover Building,
Washington, D.C.
September 24, Early Morning
Laces of
red stitching had formed within the whites of Shari Cohen’s eyes. Not even her
fourth cup of coffee was strong enough to drive away the exhaustion, as she
operated on compulsion and willpower alone. The only thing that kept her
motivated was her direct communication with national and international
intelligence agencies, including the DST from France, the SIS from Britain, the
BND from Germany, the AISI from Italy, the SVR and FSB from Russia and, of
course, Mossad. Not a single moment was wasted.
“So now what?”
Shari turned to Paxton, whose face
sported the beginning of a new beard. “Go home,” she told him. “Get some
sleep.”
“And miss the biggest day of your
career?”
She immediately picked up the
undertone of sarcasm. “Look, this wasn’t my call, okay? So get over it. If you
can’t, then take it up with the attorney general or deputy director.”
Paxton stared her down for a brief
moment before turning away. “I’m just tired,” he said. It was a poor cop out,
but he didn’t care.
Shari glanced at her watch; it was
6:15, a new day.
The conference room staff, in
communication with Mossad throughout the night, remained at full force. The
emailed encryptions given to Shari regarding the Soldiers of Islam were at best
incomplete.
According to the compiled
dossiers, the Soldiers of Islam were only marginally capable of any type of
military sophistication. Although they did spend time training in al-Qaeda
camps, they were primarily groomed for their computer expertise. Their central
purpose was to search for soft spots in the American defense system and then
relay those weaknesses to their superiors for possible exploitation.
Paxton saw the wheels turning.
“Got something?”
Deep lines of deliberation creased
Shari’s forehead. “The Soldiers of Islam,” she said, “or at least what we know
of them, doesn’t make any sense.”
“How so?”
“You read the files, the dossiers.
These guys are computer geeks. They hardly have the military capacity to take
out the president’s Special Security Force.”
“Did it ever occur to you that
maybe Mossad doesn’t have all the answers?”
Shari shook her head. “Mossad is
legendary,” she said, “and thorough. I don’t think these files are incomplete.
I think we have everything there is to know about the Soldiers of Islam.”
“Meaning what?”
She chewed softly on her lower lip
for a moment before answering. “I don’t know; I’m not sure. I just don’t see
these
guys, outnumbered as they were, taking out such a highly trained force. I just
don’t.”
Paxton leaned forward and rubbed
his raw, fatigued eyes. “Well, apparently they did.”
Shari wasn’t totally confident in
this assessment.
Paxton loosened the knot of his
tie and undid the top button of his shirt. “Maybe you should head home for a
bit,” he told her. “I’ll call you if we hear anything.”
“Sure you don’t want to go home?”
“Positive. There’s no point in
both of us falling asleep on the job, right?”
She feigned a smile. “I guess.”
She gathered the files and placed the recently-burned CD into its jewel case.
“Where’re going to need those,” he
said.
Shari shook her head. “I’m going
to the DHS Building to see if they can help me with these encryptions.”
“They’re just dossiers.”
She smiled out of cordiality.
“Maybe. But ask yourself this question: why are there encryptions in these
dossiers?”
Paxton agreed with her in
principle. Encryptions exist solely for highly-sensitive information, and
dossiers are open biographical histories of certain subjects—not exactly
top-secret material.
“Shari, you need to take a break.
I can handle this.”
“I’m sure you can, Billy. But I’m
still in charge.” She gathered the files and the disc before heading toward the
door. “Call me if something comes up.”
And then she was gone, moving
rapidly toward the elevators at the end of the hall.
Paxton immediately got on his cell
phone, punched in a speed-dial number, and waited for a response. When the line
was picked up on the other end, Paxton spoke in a tone that was flat and
emotionless. “We may have a problem,” he said.
“And what would that be?”
“Cohen is starting to think that
something’s wrong. She took the files and the encrypted CD from Mossad. She
plans to take the disc to DHS for them to break it down.”
“There’s nothing in those files
worth worrying about,” the voice said. “And I don’t think there’s anything on
the CD to lead her in any specific direction, either. But destroy the backup
disc, just in case. If she discovers anything from the CD in her possession
that we need to worry about, we’ll deal with her then. Let’s just play this
out.”
“Understood.”
“Is she still there?”
“She just left.”
“Then get moving.”
Just as Deputy Director George
Pappandopolous made his way to the monitoring room, where a guard sat watching
a bank of security screens, Shari Cohen was getting into her Lexus. The screens
depicted every hallway and door leading in and out of the JEH Building,
including every entrance in and out of the garage. After dismissing the guard
for a ten-minute break, Pappandopolous searched the monitors observing the
garage area until he spied Shari’s car. As she pulled away, Pappandopolous
dialed a single digit on his cell phone, waited, then spoke as if his call was
expected. “Cohen’s leaving the building.”
“Yeah. So?” Judas sounded
apathetic.
“So I want you to keep an eye on
her,” he returned sharply. “She’ll be driving a white Lexus through the
northwest gate. Do
. . .
not
. . . lose her.”
“Why? What’s up?”
“Paxton thinks that Cohen suspects
something, which may prompt her to dig into places where she doesn’t belong.”
There was silence on the other
end.
“If she does,” added
Pappandopolous, “you know what to do. But for now just keep an eye on her.
Paxton thinks she’s heading for DHS.”
“What for?”
“More information,” he said.
“Paxton mentioned that she’s in possession of an encrypted CD sent by a CIA leak in Mossad. The DHS has the capability to decode those messages, and she has unrestricted
access to their decoding terminal.”
Pappandopolous could hear an
audible sigh from Judas’ end. “This is already turning into a cluster.”
“That’s because we planned for
Paxton to take the helm, not Cohen.”
After listening for a moment
longer, Pappandopolous grunted his approval of something Judas had said and
hung up.
#
Shari
laid the
files and the burned CD on the
passenger seat of her car. After leaving the garage she checked her appearance
in the rearview mirror and noticed the half moons forming beneath her eyes.
Behind her a blue sedan followed
but stayed a fair distance behind.
#
Getting
into the
vault without detection would not
be an easy task. There were cameras with facial recognition software, and
individualized access codes were required to record employees’ times of entry.
Since there was no way to bypass the system, Paxton could only acquire the
backup disc by following protocol and hoping not to raise suspicion.
After typing in his PIN, the door opened and Paxton entered the vault, a massive chamber bearing thousands of CDs.
From the tiled ceiling, fluorescent lights bathed the room. From every corner
of the vault, cameras spied on him, their software deciphering the landmarks of
his face.
There was no doubt in his mind
that the security tapes would be examined if it was established that the backup
file was missing. But with any luck, it would take weeks before the missing
disc would be discovered. By then, he would be gone, living in Rio de Janeiro
with his ill-gotten commission of seven million dollars.
Earlier he had checked the chain
of custody log, noted the number associated with the burned disc, created a
bogus label, and attached it to a blank disc. Now, the difficulty would be
locating the proper disc in a library of CDs numbering in the tens of thousands.
Inspecting the bogus label, he looked for a shelf that contained CDs bearing
the proper range of numbers. After a moment, he found what he was looking for.
He traced his finger along the CDs until he found the backup disc. He held it
next to the bogus one. They were an exact match. Then, placing the bogus disc
into the slot, he slid the original into the pocket of his sports jacket.
Refusing to look into the cameras,
Paxton exited the vault. He could feel his heart racing, the sweat of his brow
beading. He was sure that somebody would inquire what he had hidden in his
pocket. But nobody did. After all, he did have clearance to enter the vault. It
was simply his own paranoia attacking his nerves.
After removing the disc from his
jacket, he looked about the cubicles and aisles. Sensing that no one was suspect,
he fed the backup disc to the shredder, the whirring of its grinders much
louder than he would have liked.