The Merchant of Secrets (20 page)

When we finished our meal and had left through the
restaurant door, Keisha was quickly approaching with an exuberant smile on her
face. “We got him!!!!” Keisha shouted from the down the street with her arms
raised in victory, oblivious to all who might hear. “The mechanic had 4G’s of
aircraft designs, in a zip file emailed from David Jones!”

“Oh my God,” Mike exhaled in relief, running his hand
over his head.  It was an extraordinary feeling of jubilation for all of
us.

“Boots you’re the best!!!” I shouted, stepping forward to
offer a congratulatory hug.

CHAPTER 22

We went back to Ft. Meade, and Keisha shared the file,
replete with multiple depictions of U.S. weapons systems including the
essential ingredients for combating signal interference from the ground. The
designs were of equipment that was still in its testing phase and thankfully
  not
used in combat yet. The information was
downloaded by a cleaning person working overnight at the aircraft company, from
a company computer belonging to an employee on vacation. Then it was
electronically faxed to an email address registered to Dave Jones. The link was
picked up, copied and sent from Florida over a guest network to Joe in Beijing.
 

The Chinese government would be taking some of that
information to sell it on the black market to a third world country, but the
rest they would copy for their own production. The airplane manufacturer would
have to destroy the now-compromised designs and scrap the project. It cost the
manufacturer and their insurance company millions upon millions of dollars.
And millions more of taxpayer dollars to start all over again on a
new design.

The interruption in command and control at the base
months earlier had been initiated by someone accessing the system with a
passcode generated by the
Irongate
algorithm from the
disk. The Department of Defense wanted badly to convict Jones and
Qureshi
.

The day after the arrests I returned to the office where
I had once worked to collect my personal belongings and to surrender my badge.
As I passed Todd in the hallway, he looked grim and tried to avoid me. A couple
of days ago I heard that Todd was taking early retirement. 

Bailey and a team at the I.R.S. successfully finished
tracking all of the money flows through an intricate series of transactions
including some dummy wires made to throw investigators, mostly forensic
accountants, off of the trail.

After the arrests, PFG’s board of directors struggled to
contain the damage surrounding the arrest of its chairman. They issued a public
statement that Jones had a “sweeping ambition” that “blinded” him to the
“illegal aspects of doing business,” and that Jones acted without the knowledge
of anyone else on the Board.  They went on to say that Jones made a
radical attempt to keep PFG afloat after the PFG proposal was dropped in the
bidding process for a federal contract. After that, the initial public offering
never came to fruition.  Auditors issued an adverse opinion on PFG’s
financial statements after they found that PFG’s balance sheet was
significantly overstated, because Jones had instructed the C.F.O to book
revenues from the anticipated contract with the Pentagon even though the
contracts had not yet been signed. That killed any hope of taking the company
public. PFG might have found some additional customers in the Middle East, Asia
or Africa if they hadn’t been stopped by our investigation. PFG didn’t entirely
collapse; it remains in business as a small company that provides record-
keeping software to hospitals.

As for our company, they promised some reforms in the
security department but the true meaning of reforms will depend on how they
handle the task of protecting the good while pursuing the bad. Todd had
reversed those roles.

Keisha has since moved into the Pentagon. Bailey got a
huge promotion. So did
Flumm
, at last.

Sara went on a couple of dates with the sailor who called
her “sweetheart.” Mike sent Colin back to the U.K. to be with his wife. 
Mike himself is in line for an ambassadorship if the President wins
re-election, but only after the trial.

The federal
prosecutor ,
named
Riley, called us into  his office for a trial strategy meeting.

He started with the good news: the judge assigned to the
case was a female. She was not inclined toward mercy in dealing with David
Jones; she was well aware that Dave Jones did all of the horrible things that
one person can do another when he was in Afghanistan, and hinted that if the
prosecutor’s case was proven beyond a reasonable doubt she’d make a deliberate
effort to paint a bleak portrait of what becomes of an illegal arms dealer. The
judge wanted to send a clear message from the bench, to discourage others from
engaging in the same type of activity. In short, she’d administer the maximum
punishment to Jones, even though we all were aware that  a new bumper crop
of illegal arms dealers would rise up to take Jones’ place, probably even
within days of the arrests, no matter what the sentence.  When the meeting
with the prosecutor was
finished  we
 walked
 to the courthouse for a pre-trial hearing on the venue for the trial.

Mike,
Flumm
, Bailey, Keisha,
Hugo, Jose, and I sat in the wooden benches in the courtroom to hear the
prosecutor and the defense attorneys argue opposing sides of the issue before
the judge. David Jones was sitting at the defense table in a short sleeved
jumpsuit with hands clasped together and resting his arms on the defense table.
His ankles were shackled but hidden under the table, but his wrists were not
handcuffed.  He looked about ten years older than he did when I last saw
him, almost unrecognizable as the same person. His game face had fallen. 
Jones’ defense counsel wanted the case  tried in Florida, where the
sentencing might be lighter, and the jury probably would have few, if any,
military members on it.  To bolster their argument they
claimed
 that
any site visits from the jury would be to Dave Jones’ house
in Florida, where the property was searched and the information was sent from a
local network.  Logistically then, it would make more sense to have a
trial in Florida where  jury would have easy access to the site, instead
of bringing a Virginia jury all the way down to Florida for a site visit. 
That would be costly, and time-consuming. The trial, they insisted, had to take
place down there.

The Prosecutor, counter-argued that the theft of
information had occurred at an aircraft manufacturing company in Virginia, and
that most of the witnesses-meaning us-were in Virginia. In arguing to keep the
case in Virginia, Riley knew that a jury in northern Virginia would be packed
with either military people or their families and friends. Almost everyone in
that area was in some way connected to the federal government or to the
military. They’d be more inclined to fine the accused, “guilty.”  Riley
argued that site visits are exceedingly rare these days, because of the
advancement in other sorts of evidence such as DNA, network logs, and hidden
cameras, and a visit to Florida
wouldn’t  be
 necessary. So the case should remain in Virginia, where the Complaint was
initially filed.

The Court agreed with the Prosecutor,
and
 ordered
that the case be tried in Virginia. Then as if to hint at
the ruling to come, the judge looked Jones straight in the eye and issued a
scathing dismissal of everything Jones had achieved as a soldier in
Afghanistan. In a flash of legalistic eloquence the judge crushed the singular,
darkened spirit of
  what
she called “the good
soldier gone bad.”

We took a break, went to lunch across the street from the
courthouse before congregating again at the prosecutor’s office. Once we were
inside he warned, with an eye glaring in my direction,
 
that
Jones’ defense attorneys were going to take special aim at me, to
tear my credibility to shreds. I knew exactly what he meant, and so did Mike.
He’d bring in that psychologist in the bright red tie, to testify that I was
nuts.

“Caroline,” the prosecutor said, “we’ll have to get you
in to see one of our psychologists to testify that there’s nothing wrong with
you. When they go on the attack,
we’ll  be
ready
for  rebuttal  with our own witness, maybe two or three. Okay?”

“There’s not a damn thing wrong with Caroline, Riley,”
Mike insisted.

“I know that,” the prosecutor replied, “but we need a
jury to hear from a rebuttal witness. And better yet, two or three rebuttal
witnesses.”

Mike pursed his lips, and looked inquisitively in my
direction, checking my reaction.

“I don’t want to hinder the case, is my testimony
necessary for a conviction?”

“No, Caroline,” the prosecutor replied, “I think we’re
going to be able to put on a good case, either way.”

“Do you think you’ll win?” I asked.

“Yea,” he nodded, “I think the evidence rises to the
level we need it to. It’ll erase any reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury.
 We’ve got the smart phone, the network, the overseas bank accounts, all
linked together, and linked to Jones.

“Okay,” I said in resignation, “that’s it then. I won’t
testify.”

“Oh Caroline, that’s crap,” Hugo blurted-out, looking at
me. Then he turned to the prosecutor,  “Riley, Caroline started this whole
investigation, she led the whole thing and put the team together, she knows
more about David Jones than anybody,” he pleaded, hoping that the Prosecutor
would let me testify.

“Thanks Hugo,” I said. “But I don’t want to be there if
it endangers the case.”

“Caroline,” Riley
responded ,
“I
guess you have some friends in this bunch,” then for the first time he let
himself smile.

“Riley,” I replied, “they’re the best team I could have
ever hoped-for.”

Everyone smiled in silence for a moment.

“Okay Caroline,” Riley said gently, “since you’re not
going to be part of the trial, you can go now.”

Relieved of my duties and dismissed from the meeting, I
leaned over and picked up my purse from the floor beside my chair and walked
out of the room leaving the rest of the team behind to carry-on.

The next day, after the prosecutor had dismissed me and I
was no longer in the case, Mike and I were
strolling
 along
the Potomac River talking about the trial and me moving-in
with him. The wind started to pick-up and the skies darkened under a heavy
canopy of clouds, until finally they let loose a gust of wind and rain upon our
heads.  As we ran to the shelter of a boathouse, we were drenched by the
deluge, and Mike reached out his hand so that I wouldn’t fall down
when  my
high heels got stuck in the dirt that had
quickly turned to mud.  I was overcome with an impulse to kiss him for
helping me.

Inside the boathouse he looked intently at me. “So have
you given any more thought about us?” Mike asked, swallowing hard.

“Actually I’ve thought about us a lot,” I replied, with
some hesitation, not wanting to express myself badly or to be misunderstood.
“You know Mike, this is a pretty intense occupation, I mean every day facing
the challenges of terrorist attacks…..
there’s
hardly
a second that anyone in this job can relax.”

It seemed so obvious, especially when talking to a
veteran like him who had worked so hard over so many years that it sounded
silly when it came from my mouth.   Mike was still searching for
meaning in my facial expression.

“You’re not letting Colin coax you back into his arms,
with some story that he’s going to leave his wife!”

“Oh, no Mike.
Colin’s long
gone,
I haven’t spoken with him in months.”

Mike relaxed and resumed his examination of my demeanor
for clues as to the message about to be conveyed.  

“I need some time for myself for a change, just some time
to relax, visit my grandparents, go to the beach, read a good book. I need to
figure out what I want to do with my life…
”.
 Then he understood and stopped staring at me. He pursed his lips like he
regretted bringing up the subject because it was returned with an answer he
didn’t want to hear.

I felt old beyond my years, and exhausted, and couldn’t
go on another day. The pressure inside had been building for months and I
needed a very long vacation to release it.
Probably a permanent
one.
It was someone else’s turn to join the ranks; someone younger and
fresher with an eagerness to fight.

“Sounds boring
doesn’t
it?”

“No, it sounds smart,” he replied sadly, in vague
affirmation as he lowered his head to look at his shoes. His attention seemed
to be drifting somewhere else.  “I might, I might just do the same. Maybe
a trip somewhere, maybe Italy….” he lightly shrugged his shoulders and his eyes
roamed aimlessly outside the window across the Potomac River, as if he were searching
for his future somewhere in the distance. When turned his head again I saw my
own anguish mirrored in his eyes.