The Merchant of Secrets (7 page)

A visibly agitated Todd twirled a pen between his fingers
trying to think of something fast before the prey could escape, but he was
coming up empty.
After a couple of moments of strained
silence
Flumm
then took control.
“Well I guess
this is all a misunderstanding, have a good evening Todd,”
Flumm
 said
, and turned
to me and said “let’s go back to my office,” as he  dashed down the
hallway with me trailing behind him. Todd held his steely glare until we were
out of sight.

Flumm
and I silently road the elevator back to our floor.
 Even in a secure building and among coworkers with security clearances,
nobody talked in the open. His office was small and stark; an empty
white-walled room except for a modular desk, swivel chair, a bookshelf and two
chairs for visitors. There was no hint of the individual who spent the greater
part of his life in that
room,
it was the perfect
bureaucrat’s assigned space.

His phone was ringing as we arrived but he wasn’t paying
attention to it. Joint task force work had the added importance to
Flumm
of elevating his status within the organization, and
created the possibility of a promotion for which he had been systematically
denied over the course of his career. For years he had watched younger more
inexperienced staff rise through the ranks to positions above him and it hung
heavy in his mind. He hadn’t done anything particularly memorable and this
might be his last chance before retirement.

“So what’s this all about? What project is this? ” he
asked excitedly as the sad melancholy of middle age temporarily disappeared
from his
face .
He smiled and leaned forward on the
desk, balancing the weight of his upper body on his elbows.  His skin was
the color of lunchmeat and his teeth were stained yellow. He dressed in white
shirts every day and almost without exception, he wore his favorite brown and
grey tie.  Years before, he had grown weary of the morning routine of
dressing for work and no longer made an effort with respect to his appearance,
what was left of his grey hair was matted down in a comb-over, in an
unsuccessful attempt to conceal a bald top. It was so greasy that nobody in her
right mind would want to touch it. I felt sorry for his barber. And yet, he had
an endearing quality about him.

“It’s with Treasury, tracing money flows from a foreign
national currently living in Northern Virginia,” I replied.
Flumm
had been hoping for something more grandiose and was clearly deflated by my
mundane delivery.

“The State Department informed us that he had been
working as a journalist in Pakistan,” I said, “but also suggested  that
the journalism thing is covering for some other type of activity, mainly
brokering safe passage through the mountainous routes from Pakistan to
Afghanistan now in under the  control by the
Haqqani
.”

Flumm
asked more questions,
none that I could answer, and so he stopped asking. “Okay, just keep me
informed on what you’re doing,” he said, dismissing me.

‘Thanks,” I said and left to go home to my apartment.

CHAPTER
 
10

Two weeks had passed with no word from Bailey on the
progress of our investigation so it was time to give her a call. “Hey Bailey,
it’s Caroline.
Any new developments in the
Qureshi
investigation?”

“No,” she replied without a trace of enthusiasm in her
voice. “We had a team scheduled for a trip to the U.A.E. but our Director cancelled
it because of budget cuts.”

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“No I’m not Caroline” she said defensively, “You really
didn’t provide me with enough information to get task order funding.”

“Bailey without funding, we can’t get what we need. The
funding is how we take the next step!” I anxiously replied, but she was
unresponsive. Without even a small budget the investigation was officially
stuck in neutral.

“Okay Bailey, thanks for the update,” I said in resignation,
and hung up. Suddenly my elevated sense of purpose
came
tumbling down and my hopes for putting
Qureshi
through the rigors of Unites States’ criminal justice system had collapsed.

I called Sara.

“Hi Caroline,” she replied, “great to hear from you. I’m
busy at the moment but can you stop by for a cup of coffee Saturday morning? We
need to catch- up.”

“Sure,” I said. “Is 11:00 okay?”

“Perfect. See you then,” she replied, and hung up.

Back at work, my team at the office was busy responding
to
  spear
phishing attacks;  emails sent by
hackers  to an employee of their  target company  using
 another employee’s name in the email header to create the illusion of a
legitimate email so the targeted employee would  open it .  A
division of a major U.S. software company that  had been hired to provide
network security to  large defense companies;  the companies
that  build combat aircraft, bombs and tanks,  was itself 
hacked  in spear phishing attack. The employees opened trustworthy-
appearing emails with attachments containing a virus which by-passed the
company firewalls and permitted the hackers to access top secret defense
industry files. Then they took over the computers without the employees knowing
it, and used them to invade others companies. They turned the computers
belonging to a group of employees of the first target company  into robots
and used them to invade other networks by creating “botnets”, short for 
“robot networks.” We were working almost around the clock to close the security
gaps and track the viruses back to their originating source but the sheer
number of attacks was far greater than our resources to fight them.

 When Saturday came I drove to Sarah’s without
expectation of anything other than catching up with a friend. She poured the
coffee while we sat at the kitchen table and talked.  I told her about my
new relationship with Colin and about my fears of getting caught  but
 was thinking about quitting my job anyway, so I didn’t want to give up on
a really good guy. I told her about the bar, the kiss in the parking lot, and
the night that lasted until dawn.

“You’re glowing,” she said. “I think you’re really
falling for Colin. Isn’t he
gonna
move back to
England?” she asked, out of concern that I might be setting myself up for a
heartache.

“He’s here for another year,” I assured her.

She offered to give me a tour of the upstairs to see what
the decorator had done to the master bedroom and bath.  I followed her up
the staircase past the chandelier hanging in the foyer, and an enormous
gilt-framed mirror on the wall. The master suite was surprisingly feminine in
shades of pale blue and green.

“This is pretty feminine for a guy,” I said. 

‘No,” she replied “he sleeps in the bedroom across the
hall, he works late at night and doesn’t want to keep me awake so he sleeps
over there.” She pointed to the other bedroom painted in brown. My adrenaline
shifted gears and I sensed that the investigation just got new life. The room
was immaculate except for a small collection of pictures of Sara on the
dresser. The closet had 4 suits 4 pairs of shoes, and a modest collection of
shirts and ties. The bathroom was empty except for some shaving cream and a
razor. No hair products, skin creams or other things that a man so interested
in his own appearance would have had spread out over the counter top and in the
shower.

“Sara, it looks like he barely lives here,” I said.

“Oh I’ve tried to get him to buy some new clothes but he
just prefers to wear the same clothes over and over again.” I looked at her,
she looked back at me, and we both knew that we had stumbled upon something.

“What kind of business is he conducting late at night?” I
asked as I was hurrying down the stairs to my car.

“I don’t know, I can’t understand what he’s saying, he’s
not speaking in English.”

“Is he using your landline, or his own phone? Where’s his
computer by the way?”

“He uses his own phone,” she replied “and doesn’t use a
laptop here, just his smartphone with a key pad.”

“Do you have any of his papers?
Bank
statements?
Correspondence?
Anything
like that?
“

“No, he keeps everything in a locked briefcase that he
takes with him,” she replied. 

“Where is he now?”

“At the club.
He went there to
meet someone, and then he’s going to get the oil changed on the car.”  

At my request she wrote down his email address and the
license plate number from the car on a piece of paper. Sara was getting very
worried but she knew she could rely on
me,
the bonds
of childhood last forever.   

 I drove to the club in Washington D.C. and pulled
my vehicle behind a bush to stay out of view from the widows. I set my phone at
the camera setting to be ready when
Qureshi
came into
view. A homeless man approached my vehicle and I lowered the window to give him
a $50 bill.  It made him happy and he left. It didn’t take long for
Qureshi
to emerge from the back entrance of the club.
 He slid his gym bag in the back seat of his luxury car before stepping in
and closing the door.  He pulled out of the parking lot nearly running
over the same homeless man who now cautiously approached his car.  It was
difficult to decipher where he was going
;  Sara
had said that he was going to a garage to get the oil changed but instead of
taking the American Legion bridge in the direction of her house he took the Key
bridge to Arlington, Virginia, turning onto George Washington Parkway in the
direction of  McLean, and finally coming to a stop at a car dealership.

I pulled in to a coffee shop conveniently located across
the street from the dealership and went inside to get a cup of coffee. Oil
changes take a while so I figured there was plenty of time.  I returned to
my car and started shifting around in the driver’s seat to get comfortable for
the wait, when suddenly,
Qureshi’s
car  slipped
discretely out of the rear entrance of the dealership. The next step of the
investigation was certainly in that building so I picked up the phone and
called Sara.

“How often does he get his oil changed?”

Sara replied “I don’t know, but he takes very good care
of his car”.

“What do you mean?”

‘Well, he goes to get it fixed a lot,” she said.

“How often?”
I asked.

“About every two weeks.”

That was it.
Qureshi’s
connection to whatever he was doing, worked at the dealership.

The next Saturday
Qureshi
emerged from the club just as he had done the week before, but with a different
gym bag. It didn’t make sense for a guy with only 4 suits and a handful of
shirts to have a complete selection of gym bags. He continued on schedule,
driving back over the bridge and to the same car dealership. Like the time
before, he remained a couple of minutes and discretely drove away from the back
entrance. It was time for me to get an oil change.

I pulled into the service area and asked the attendant
behind the desk for service. ‘I need to get my oil changed, do you have time?”

‘Okay, the
attendant said, but leave
your keys because we’re backed-up and won’t be able to get to your car for
about an hour.”

Backed up?
An hour?
As if I
didn’t already know that
Qureshi’s
“oil change” was a
sham he just confirmed it. Nobody seemed to be actually working except one man,
small in stature, working diligently to rotate tires on a car on the rack. When
my oil change was finally finished, a tall man in a mechanics’ shirt approached
with the keys.

‘Thanks Joe” I said, looking at the nametag on his blue
uniform. There was a controlled smile. Something told me his real name wasn’t
“Joe”.

“Have a nice day’ he said, in a thick, Southeast Asian
accent.

Quickly I asked “Where are you from?” Although not
expecting him to tell the truth, I was trying to extend the exchange between us
long enough so that I could pinpoint his country of origin by his accent but
the question clearly displeased him. He stared down at me with intensity, in a
cue for me to leave.  

CHAPTER 11

Sara provided the Club membership roster to
find  people
who might have information on
Qureshi’s
activities. I struck upon the name of our very
own Deputy Director, Mr.
Mulally
, which wasn’t too
much of a surprise; it was a popular gym at an exclusive club where members
make private deals in secrecy guarded by uniformed bouncers at the door. 
 

The next
day
,Mulally
was at the company cafeteria. He denied knowing anyone by the name of Roger, at
the club to which he belonged. “No,” he replied firmly, and walked away.  

The next day I returned to the coffee shop across from
the dealership. The person who had been diligently working in the service area
at the
dealership  the
week before seemed like a
good person to connect with. He stood out from the group, and was therefore a
potential source of information about it.