The Merchant of Secrets (6 page)

The Department of Homeland Security and the
  Treasury
Department had competed against each other
for primary jurisdiction over the biggest cases and for each department’s share
of government’s appropriations in the federal budget. To get onto an
interagency task force required a specific skill necessary for that objective
and the approval by more than a few superiors, none of which I had at that
moment. Knowledge of Adnan
Qureshi
was the only card
I could play so the whole idea spun around in my head about a 100 times before
the IRS building appeared through my car window.   

I climbed the cement stairs to the building, and called
Bailey from the service phone in the lobby. She came down to escort me into the
Top Secret office. When the elevator opened on the 6th floor there was a
discrete door to the right into which Bailey disappeared. Then there was a
large grey metal door straight ahead for everyone else. After pushing the
buzzer, the door opened
automatically  I
walked
into a small chamber and stood motionless  for a body scanner to do its
work. When the person reading the scanner
  from
an invisible location was done scanning me, the door on the opposite end of the
chamber opened up into the offices of the criminal investigations unit of the
IRS.

Bailey was waiting inside, and offered a cup of coffee
which I needed badly. It had been a heck of a night and the morning was worse. As
we walked past a row of grey cubicles Bailey was grinning.

“Was that you by any chance, looking at me in the scan?”
I asked, embarrassed.

“Yup,” she replied. “Time to get rid of the extra
pounds,” she admonished with wink and a grin as she slapped my butt.

She turned into an empty conference room with me trailing
behind her, and closed the door behind us. Then settling- in at the table she
crossed her legs and leaned back in the chair. “So, how’s everything with you
guys?” she asked, stirring her coffee.

“Pretty good,” I replied. “I see you’re doing more desk work
now?” 

“I’m still out in the field, but I try to keep it within
CONUS. Someone else can make the rounds
overseas,
I’m
tired of the travel. ” CONUS is the abbreviation for continental U.S.

Bailey continued, “Earlier this week I was being prepped
by our lawyers to testify in a trial but it looks like the case will be settled
out of court, so I won’t need to testify after all. Some guy who had attended
M.I.T. tried to sell classified satellite information to the Israelis.”  

“How’d you get dragged into it?” I asked.

“Well actually the investigation originated here, with
his bank accounts.  He couldn’t explain his cash flow. It just didn’t add
up, so we notified the F.B.I. who then put him under surveillance, and we were
all surprised to find out he was selling satellite information.”

Raising her cup and taking a sip she asked “Okay, so
what’s up?” She got to the point quickly. I knew I had to make a strong case
now or lose the backing of the IRS.

“I’m investigating someone named Adnan
Qureshi
, but it’s strictly off the record at this point.
I’m following up on some leads but don’t have enough yet. He’s got a number of
alternative addresses in Spain and Turkey and had a current P.O. Box in Abu
Dhabi. The threat may be elevated because he’s staying in Great Falls under the
name of Roger Valdez.”

“Valdez? How’d he get from
Qureshi
to Valdez? Does he even speak Spanish?”

“Yea.”

‘”You met him?” she asked, looking sideways at me.

“Yea, in a restaurant in D.C
..”

Bailey drew a long sip of coffee. “Tell me about it.”

“Nothing,” I answered. “He just came up to my friend and
starting talking, introducing himself as Roger Valdez.”

She stared at me in quasi-belief. “Okay,” she replied.

Bailey, leaning back in her chair, intensified her look
and paused while connecting the dots of information which I had begun pouring
over to her. There was some context, some story, working in her brain but I
didn’t know what it was and sure that she wouldn’t tell me. In a joint Task,
one department takes the lead and usually that privilege lies with the
originating agency. If interested, she’d jump-in sooner rather than later, to
get the IRS on record as the agency with primary jurisdiction over the
investigation.

Bailey asked a series of follow-up questions which I
couldn’t answer. She didn’t know how little I knew. The IRS had enough now to
start a trail and to do initial inquiries to discover if there was enough
information to devote resources to an investigation.

Bailey phoned her “ P.O.C.“, short for “point of
contact”,  at the UAE desk at the State Department, Anna
Oliverez
.

“Hi Anna,
it’s
Bailey at the
IRS. We’re evaluating someone for possible criminal action and were wondering
if you could release some information, if you’ve got it.”

“Hi Bailey, sure, what’s the name?”

“Adnan
Qureshi
. He’s got a P.O.
Box in Abu Dhabi, he’s got a home in Spain, a home in Turkey……..”  Bailey
began repeating what I had told her.

“Just a minute…found him….
he’s
listed as a journalist from Pakistan but we’re skeptical about his
relationships. Maybe the journalist thing is covering for something else….”
Anna’s intonation left it unclear as to whether she was raising a question or
answering one.

“Can you send me something?’ Bailey responded, now
thoroughly hooked.  “Our fax machine number for classified material is
xxx-xxx”. Classified information is sent over closed, private networks, like
the ones exposed by
Wikileaks
.  

We were hoping to have enough information from the State
Department to convince Bailey’s boss to commit to the investigation. To pass
the time while waiting for the fax to arrive from Anna, we went down to the
sandwich shop on ground level of her building and tried to make light
conversation but it was painfully superficial for both of us. We were anxious
to see what the State Department would release. Meanwhile, the men in the shop
smiled and said “hello” to Bailey; she was a sort of celebrity down there,
because of the way she looked. After a few minutes we went back upstairs with
eggs and juice and waited in the conference room until the admin poked her face
in-between the door and the wall and announced the arrival of a large incoming
fax. We stood-up and walked over to the specified machine that
  was
making noise and dumping sheet after sheet from
Olivia, into a tray.

It was more than we expected, about 10 solid pages of
intel
on this one individual. We
spread out the papers on the conference table and began pouring over our
bounty. The report said that he had been the middle man involved in extracting
a fee from the truck drivers to ensure safe passage for NATO convoys carrying
supplies through the warring tribal regions of Pakistan. Selling security
through the hazardous routes earned him a place in the State Department
database. We  spent all afternoon trying to analyze  
Qureshi
; what known groups he might be connected-to, where
his allegiance lies, where he was getting his money, where he was spending his
money, how to map his money flows, and charting his travel. There’s training on
how to create a profile on criminals and we all follow the same procedures,
modifying them only slightly to the circumstances.

Bailey was the expert at tracing flows of money, but the
psychological bent was not her strength. She dealt with fraud, embezzlement and
that type of crime but sorting out
Qureshi’s
motives
was a different issue. She thought he was motivated only by greed but I disagreed.
There was simply too much else going on with U.S. relations with Pakistan to
justify such a limited conclusion. The drone program in Pakistan had hit an
all- time high in 2010, measured in lethal strikes. By 2011, even before the
capture of Bin Laden, the Pakistani Parliament was reviewing its relationship
with the U.S. precisely over the issue of drone warfare in their country, which
they believed violated their sovereignty and ignored their territorial
boundaries. It could not be ruled out that
Qureshi
might be a player in some strategic initiative on behalf of Pakistan. Their
desperation for Iranian oil would in and of itself be a reason to acquire U.S.
intelligence, to sell to the Iranians in exchange for energy.

By 4:00 Bailey and I were done for the day. Bailey was
ready to dive-in to the investigation to seize assets in the
U.S..
 I left the documents from the State Department with her, keeping only a
few cryptic notes on a pad of paper and the portable drive on which the
information was downloaded the night before. The documents were safer in her
office. 

Occasionally I stopped thinking of
Qureshi
to wonder if Todd was searching my office at that very moment, confiscating my laptop
to take a mirror image of it before laying it back on top of my desk so that I
wouldn’t know that it had been taken. But other than those thoughts of Todd I
was happy beyond belief to be moments away from the protection of a Joint Task
to which Todd would have no access. It was the legal equivalent of working on
Mars. He couldn’t touch me.

CHAPTER 9

Back at the office when I returned to give my boss, Mr.
Flumm
, the information gathered at the Defense Intelligence
Agency the night before, Todd was waiting and wasted no time in pulling me into
the security office. Unfortunately the alcohol from the night before was still
in my system.

The security department was on the first floor of the
building,
Todd’s office was in the corner with a large metal
lock installed on the door with a number pad to open it. Inside, his window
overlooked the entrance of our building so that he could spy on everyone coming
and leaving work. The building across the courtyard blocked the sunlight into
the room, making his office feel like a dungeon.  Once inside his domain
Todd closed the heavy door behind him, trapping me inside.  Assuming his
natural state as a predator, he did little to conceal his ruthless intent and
came at me at full force. “Well I guess you know why you’re here?”

He was ready to devour me. Legally though,  it would
make it so much easier for him if he could elicit my admission of guilt before
pouncing, but I wasn’t going to be that easy.

“No, I don’t,” I replied.

Then he leaned back in his chair, assuming an
authoritative position, tapping his fingers lightly on his desk and trying his
best to make me nervous. Unfortunately for him, he was unable to see the phone
gripped in my right hand with my boss’s number indicated on the screen. I
looked downward for a split second which was enough to trigger his recognition
that I was holding something. As I touched the number on the screen Todd
jumped-up from his seat and leaned over the desk to get a good look at what I
was doing. Then seeing the phone, lunged forward to snatch it from me but he
was  blocked
by the large metal desk between us and
couldn’t reach far enough to get it.

“Mr.
Flumm
, I’m in Todd’s
office, can you come down?” The words were out of my mouth before Todd could
react. He slowly leaned back in his chair and sent a steely glare in my
direction.
Flumm
knocked on the door. Todd
reluctantly opened it, letting the light from the hall illuminate the office.

“What are you doing with my employee, Todd?” 
Flumm
, asked, bursting forward with hands on his hips.

“Well I have some information from Ft.
Meade
 that
 your employee was  out there last night, met up
with a friend of hers Keisha, and logged into two  Top Secret databases,”
he retorted, trying to apply the pressure to
Flumm
.
He examined
Flumm’s
face to detect a reaction but was
unrewarded when
Flumm’s
austere poker face was all he
got in return.
Flumm
didn’t have a clue what he was
talking about.

“I was at Ft. M last night, but I was doing work on a
joint task with Treasury” I said, driving a knife straight into Todd’s plan of
attack.

Then upon hearing the words “joint” and “task” the joy
started to drain from Todd’s face. He was an animal in a hunt for prey, and now
seeing the prey move in another direction, sensed he might lose it in the
chase.  Todd knew if it were true, he would have to obtain special
releases to be able to investigate my activities while I was working on a
Treasury Department project and that was highly unlikely.  The IRS
wouldn’t allow Todd to snoop around their offices. Turning to
Flumm
, he practically shouted, “Did you know about this?”
taking his anger out on my boss now too.

Flumm
had been around the
company for three decades and was completely unfazed when Todd came on strong.
“It must be a project that developed in the last couple of days when I was out
of town,”
Flumm
replied, shrugging off Todd’s
accusations.