The Merchant of Secrets (5 page)

Inside the campus I looked for a friend of mine, Keisha,
nicknamed “Boots,” who works long hours and would have access to the software
that could read the digital code from the portable device in my pocket and scan
the database for identities associated with the numeric code. We had the same
software back at my company’s headquarters but it would have aroused suspicion
because my job didn’t have anything to do with voice identification databases.
Typically, Keisha in her office well past 9:00 p.m. on a Sunday. Her desk was
piled high with folders and discs, photos of her parents, both in military
uniform, pinned to the memo board. She was wearing her earplugs, stretched back
in her chair, arms outstretched and waving from side to side, singing her
heart- out and assuming that nobody was around on a Sunday night to hear her. I
leaned forward to get her attention “Boots!” She didn’t hear me.
“Boots!”
I said a little louder. Again she didn’t hear. I
gave-up and touched her gently on the shoulder. She swirled around violently
grabbing a metal paperweight from the top of her desk, folding her elbow
backward so that it could lung
forward  with
the
metal ammunition firmly gripped in her hand, to smash the head of her attacker.
 Then seeing it was only me, she relaxed and put it back down on her desk
and unplugged the earphones. “Caroline,
whaaat
the
heck are you doing here?”

“Hey Boots. Sorry, but I really need your help.”

“I could’ve killed you, Caroline!”

“Hey, army brat, I can pull a few moves myself.”

“
Haha
,” she laughed.

“Seriously, I need some help,” I said again.

“Sure, anytime,” she said, slowly calming down. “
Whacha
got?”

 “I need you to run a profile for me.”

 We inserted the portable device in the USB port and
waited for the encrypted data to be read and for the system to pull up a
numeric code to identify the person on the recording. She scribbled the number
on a purple pad and carried it with her down the hallway to a locked room which
she unlocked by pressing the secret access code. Located high on the walls were
red lights which were part of an old alarm system designed to give notice that
someone without a security clearance had entered a Top Secret office. There was
no alarm now, only the lights remained. That system had been replaced long ago
by more high tech solution but nobody had bothered to remove the red lights.

When she input the code my suspicions about Roger were
vindicated as the name of Adnan
Qureshi
appeared with
an identifying number. The face as it appeared on the computer screen looked
markedly different from his appearance now in Washington D.C...  On screen
he had a beard, mustache and thick glasses. His hair was longer. And he wore an
ordinary shirt, very different from the expensive attire he wore at the
restaurant and earlier that night.  He looked like someone else completely
and definitely not a wealthy person. Judging from his impeccable appearance at
the restaurant, his wealth came recently.  

“Keisha, what’s the date on these photos?” I asked leaning
over her shoulder.
“That one is about 10 years old, this one about 8 years ago…”she was pointing
to the screen.

“Show me the most recent,” I asked.

“It’s this one, taken about a year ago.”

“He’s still wearing ordinary clothes and a bad haircut,
so that puts the date of his change in financial circumstances to sometime
during the past 12 months. Someone paid him a lot of money in a very short
period of time.” I looked down at Keisha, puzzled, and she looked back at me.
 

“What’s he doing?” she asked.

“I need to figure that out.”

 Below the picture, was a list of his addresses
identifying properties in Spain, Turkey and a current P.O. Box in Abu Dhabi.
Spain fit the story he gave us and Turkey he’d explain was a vacation house.
Abu Dhabi was a well - known sanctuary for people seeking to hide money from
the taxing authorities because the U.A.E.  
didn’t
have a tax treaty with the U.S. requiring them to share information on the identities
of their account holders. Then she ran his name through CORDIS, an FBI
database, but it there wasn’t a hit, probably because he hadn’t been in the
U.S. long enough to get caught. I copied the file on my portable drive then we
logged off the system and left the room, turning the lights out as we left.

As Keisha  walked with me  down the 
long  hallway   toward the door from which I had  just
 entered a few minutes earlier  she appeared nervous about something
but I was too scared to ask what it was. There was something wrong. Spinning
around suddenly and looking at me dead on, she said “Caroline, that database
required a Top Secret clearance and I just assumed you still were cleared at
that level.”

I wasn’t. My prior job required a “Top Secret” clearance
but the current position to which I was assigned required only a “Secret”
clearance so my clearance authorization was downgraded to my current level of
work. Accessing a database for which I didn’t have the appropriate level of
authorization would get Keisha and me reprimanded or fired so it was a delicate
situation.

Seeking to delay answering, so that I could gather my
scattered thoughts and figure out what to say, I turned to the drinking fountain
attached to the wall a few feet away and went to get some water. Wiping my wet
mouth with the back of my hand I said, “Don’t worry, we’re fine, I’m cleared.”
The anxiety level was absolutely crushing. I was frightened that my face might
give my lie away, and was in a hurry to get out of there before that could
happen. She smiled as we continued to walk with me to the exit. 

“Let me know if you need me to write up a report,”
  Keisha
said. Her report would have gotten back to my
office and my boss would have raised Hell for me going to Ft. Meade without
telling him.

“Not quite yet. I’ll call you if something’s happening
with it,” I replied.

We said “goodnight” and I thanked her for willingness to
devote her time to my project, especially so late on a Sunday night.

As I descended the stone steps in the cold night air and
walked quickly to my car I was shaking, but not from the cold. I drove back to
my apartment. That night I knew I would never be able to sleep with everything
that had happened rolling around in my head so I fixed myself a strong drink,
then another, and another, until eventually I fell asleep.

CHAPTER 8

The
morning  after
the
alarm clock on my Blackberry rang, I pressed the button on the coffee machine
and slipped into the shower, then quickly got dressed in the only clean clothes
I had left in the closet. I looked out the window to savor a minute or two of
sunlight before heading to the office where I wouldn’t see the sun for the
remainder of the day. There were dozens of email messages on the company-issued
laptop about a rash of new cyber-attacks on our embassies that had taken place
overnight.  

As I slid into the front seat of
the car and started the engine satisfied with the new information we had found
on Mr.
Qureshi
but the Top Secret authorization issue
nagged at my conscience. It felt awful to lie to my good friend even if it had
been an unintentional error, and I wondered if anyone else would find out about
it.   

At a
stoplight
 on
route 123 in McLean I pulled down the window flap and looked in
the mirror to put on some mascara and to double-checked my make-up in the rear
view mirror. Other cars rolled-up to the traffic light, including a silver Ford
sedan with tinted windows like a surveillance vehicle. I picked up my phone and
called Colin.

Colin was part of a special unit
within the agency that was built and staffed solely to gather information on
the Iranian nuclear program. The unit scoured data gathered from RQ-Sentinel drones
launched from U.S. bases across the border in Afghanistan to fly over Iran.
Millions of photos of buildings, people and vehicles taken from deep inside
Iranian territory were examined in search of valuable intelligence relating to
the underground nuclear facilities.  Attempts to permanently disrupt the
Iranian nuclear program located near the city of Qom at the
Fordow
urnanium
enrichment plant and at another plant near
Nantz
,  had
not succeeded and
the Israelis were waiting in the wings eager to step-in in response to a
perceived failure of the U.S. intelligence organizations to effectively abort
the program. But Israeli intervention posed substantial diplomatic risks to
American relations with our Arab friends who would come to Iran’s aid if Israel
struck Iran. The pressure beyond the threat of a nuclear Iran was the threat of
inflaming the Arab community if Israeli struck on Iran. The double jeopardy
forced the intelligence community into a fast-forward crisis mode to stop the
Iranians from developing its first nuclear bomb, expected sometime in 2013.

“Hey Colin good morning, I’m on my way in to the office
but wondered, has anyone been looking for me?” I asked while keeping my eye on
the car with the tinted windows.

“Oh Caroline!
Good morning to you
too,” Colin replied in an English accent. “Todd was here looking for you.”

‘Did he say what it’s about?”

“No, but I was told to let him know when you arrive.”

“I’ll be in later this afternoon, I have a meeting first”
I replied, as a delay tactic to give me time to think.  

“Okay but hurry-in, this office gets pretty lonely
without you,” Colin replied.

Todd is the manager of Special Security for the company.
The blue- print of his face is firmly imprinted on my mind and could have
caused endless nightmares if I had allowed myself to wonder what services he
provides for the company. He was a phantom-like figure who could strike fear in
people just by walking down their hallway; reviled by everyone including our
Deputy Director, Michael
Mulally
. I had entered a Top
Secret database without proper authorization and Todd had gotten wind of it and
was after me, but that did little to clarify who was in the surveillance car
with the tinted windows.  

The traffic light changed to green. I pushed my foot on
the accelerator, thrusting the car forward, and barreled unselfconsciously
through the cars in front of me,
zig-zagging
, lane-to
lane on the way to the capital beltway which surrounds Washington D.C. and the
nearby suburbs in Maryland and Virginia. The other car sped-up behind me,
keeping pace with all my moves.  Changing tactic, I slammed on the brakes,
and aimed my vehicle over the grass covered island separating northbound and
southbound traffic, and into the stream of cars heading southbound in the direction
of Langley.

My heart was pounding heavily in my chest. Struggling to
get air and dissolving into a state of panic, I became light- headed and was on
the verge of passing out while the sounds of traffic all around were loudly
telling me to pull off the road. By yanking the steering wheel to the right I
forced the car to make a hard right turn onto a side street, and then I slammed
the brake pedal to the floor and shifted gear to “park”.  I turned on the
CD player, jammed in a CD and closed my eyes to drift off to the sound of
Bach’s second violin concerto to relax. My hands had cramped- up from lack of
oxygen as if rigor mortis had set–in.  After a few minutes I was able to
regain control. My hands un-cramped and my racing heart rate retreated. When
oxygen again flowed freely to my lungs I switched gears, turned the car around,
and headed away from the office.

Fending off an assault from the manager of “Special
Security” was not to be taken lightly and options had to be weighed, the most
obvious of which was to hire a criminal defense attorney to make Todd back-off,
but at about six hundred dollars per hour, that was way out of reach for what
someone on my salary could afford.  The next option was to move the
project out of his jurisdiction, out of his area of responsibility, where he
wouldn’t have the legal authority to pursue me.

Bailey worked at the Internal Revenue Service Criminal
Division. We had met each other at a joint training session in Florida 
where agents from different services are brought together to fuse the talents
of different departments, avoiding the gaps in information sharing that some
say led to the 9-11 attacks. She might consider joining
 
a
nascent investigation into Adnan
Qureshi
based on the flow of money and his physical presence here in the U.S..
 Our
  company
operated under the rules and
regulations of the Department of Homeland Security, Bailey’s operated under the
Treasury Department; a completely different world and most importantly, out of
Todd’s reach.  

Bailey was about 40 years old, five foot six, and 125
pounds with gorgeous long brown hair and large brown eyes. She exuded an
attractiveness that comes from the combination of feminine beauty and physical
strength and was in complete control of her seductive power over men. She had a
child-size waist and roundness in just the right places, and could have
launched a career as a super model in her twenties, but ended up doing this
instead. Working-out gave her the body and the confidence to wear tight fitting
clothes, and across her hips she strapped-on a black leather belt with a gun in
the holster.