Hans had just returned to the headquarters from shipping off the CD to Vladimir. Of all the people Hans knew on this operation, Vladimir was the most likely to keep something like that safe in a manner that ensured it would be discovered when the time was right. He was pretty sure Vladimir would be one of the loose ends tied off with them if this all went bad, but his contacts in the Russian mob would ensure the world found out about what the Americans knew and when.
The phone started to ring before Hans sat down. It was the three-man team from the apartment complex.
“Hello.”
“A package just arrived here.”
“Good. I was expecting it. Bring it over when you come to report in.” “It’s a bit large for one guy to carry through the street unnoticed.” “Will it fit in the trunk of a car?”
“It should.”
“Bring a cab most of the way and carry it from there, then.” “Will do.”
“Thanks.”
“Wait!”
“What?”
“I was really calling to tell you another person just showed up in the hub residence. It looks like they sent another trainee to this hub instead of sending him to the original trainer.”
“Looks like the Brit was correct. I will inform the man in the suit and we will schedule a time to nab them.”
“Can you get some dart pistols or sleeping gas?” “Why?”
“We have been thinking. Someone will notice in this apartment complex if we make any noise taking them down. Sleeping gas could be fed in through the holes we already have while their air conditioning is running so they don’t hear the hiss.”
“You don’t think people walking around in gas masks will get noticed?” “That is why we also thought about dart guns. We need to cart them out unconscious, then occupy their apartment for a few days quietly collecting their machines, or running them ourselves.” “Bring the package to me and I will ask the Brit about obtaining some equipment.” They hung up and Hans wrote an email to the man in the suit. He copied Vladimir on it as well.
All,
A second trainee has arrived at the hub. Need to schedule a grab. Team wants to take them quiet with tranquilizers of some kind and continue operating the hub for a little while.
Hans
With the email sent, Hans started reading through his own email to kill time waiting for the package. He had wished it could have been shipped here, but that simply wasn’t an option. Any large package arriving at this location would be a major tip-off to the local authorities something naughty was going on here. You simply didn’t see FedEx and UPS trucks in this area.
Halfway through his email he heard the sound of someone dropping a package outside the door and some cussing. He got up and let in the team member along with the package.
“Did we get an answer back yet?”
“It will probably be a day or two. We still need time to obtain a vehicle and some form of tranquilizer and map out an exit strategy. You forget, the government doesn’t know we are here, nor does it condone our operation.”
“Probably have to have a boat meet us at Mangalore,” replied the team member. “Not just any boat. It has to be able to make it to Pakistan.”
“Exactly.”
“Do you think we could charter a plane, drug them, and fly them back in coffins, at least until we take off?”
“Quite a bit of risk for a few guys who probably cannot tell us more than we already know.”
“True. I doubt we could talk the suit into flying a Huey out to meet the boat once we hit international waters. Harness and cable the guys up into it, keep them drugged, and fly them to the airstrip for a ride to the interrogation camp.”
“They may want to interrogate them in Pakistan for a while before sending them on. There is one piece of information we are looking for that they might be able to tell us.”
“Am I allowed to know what that is?” “How they do the transfer between hubs. This new operator and the one already in training will get some of the email load from either the original trainer or the one currently training them. How do they notify the people in the field that they are to use a new hub?” “We are currently trapping all email messages in both directions, are we not?” “Yes.”
“Simply wait two weeks. We will have the messages trapped. Let our team try cracking them before we snatch and interrogate.”
“That might work.”
“While I’m here, do you happen to have some local currency? We don’t want to pass around foreign currency and there isn’t much of a place to do conversions.”
Hans opened his wallet and gave him all of the local currency he had.
“What will you do for food?”
“I will have more tomorrow. I will probably hand you each an envelope tomorrow so you have operational funds.”
“About time. Rent will be due soon.” With that, the man left and Hans took the package to a windowless room in the building to open it. The cardboard he could easily burn to get rid of, except he might use it under his sleeping bag. Given the way this operation functioned he couldn’t stay in a hotel that far away. The thought was appealing, but there would be too much risk and too much lost time. What if one of the band of roving hoodlums saw the satellite dishes and decided to rob the place? No, somebody had to be here at all times now.
Inside of the box was a big yellow hard plastic shipping case. It had every kind of language label on it indicating it was medical supplies packed in dry ice and not to be opened in an uncontrolled environment. He cut away the front side of the carton and pulled the container out. Two tumbler locks built into the case held it closed.
Hans picked up the satellite phone and called Nikolaus at his office.
“This is Nikolaus.”
“Hans here. Your package arrived, but I need the pair of three digit combinations to open it.”
“Hold, please.” There was a shuffling of papers, then Nikolaus said, “Do you have a pen?”
“Yes.”
“9-1-1 and 8-8-8.”
“Not very secure.”
“You didn’t guess them.”
“I didn’t try. What is with the Chinese good fortune number?” “I was feeling whimsical about the new secured location.” “Wow! You did get a whale.”
“They are even helping build the facility. One more year of this and everybody’s hands will be too dirty to wipe clean.”
Hans tried the combinations and the case unlocked. He lifted the lid and gave a low whistle. “Twinkies.”
“What?”
“It is what some grifters call shrink-wrapped bundles of money. Twinkies with green filling is the whole phrase, but they are usually talking about American dollars.”
“Well, there will be another case of Twinkies coming to you next week.” “Hold off on that for a while.”
“Why?”
“The current hub operator just got another to train. Waiting for instructions from the higher-ups on when to grab them and how to get them out of the country. We may be tying this one off in a week.”
“Oh.”
“This will make the escape route easier to plan, though.” “How much is here?”
“I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I know what the total amount we had was. I have no idea how much is in each container.”
“Oh.”
“Good hunting.”
With the conversation over, Hans started looking around for some envelopes. Large Manila envelopes. Even that wasn’t going to use up an entire Twinkie. He definitely had to burn the plastic before anyone saw it. The container would have to stay hidden in this room with junk piled on top of it. When he finished stuffing the envelopes he remembered to reload his wallet. There was still a short stack of cash left over from the first Twinkie. He put a Twinkie in the bottom drawer of his desk and the Brit’s.
Hans relaxed for a little while eating an MRE and thinking. Finally he gathered up the meal packaging along with the Twinkie wrapper, took all of the trash outside to the little burn pile he had set up and watched it all burn.
Some time later when Hans was dozing off, the Brit returned to headquarters. He only needed to report in, then he could bum a shower from the apartment where the three guys were staying. The sound of him coming in woke Hans and a reflex had him drawing a weapon.
“Nice to see you’ve still got it,” said the Brit. “Why so jumpy?” “One of us has to be here at all times now.” The Brit gave him a puzzled look. Hans got up and walked to his desk. He picked up the loose cash he had left lying there and brought it back to the Brit.
“Get yourself a room for the night along with a good meal and a hot shower. I’ll take tonight’s watch.”
The Brit cocked an eye at him.
“We received some liquid assets to make the operation go more smoothly. Given the equipment we have here and the way people have been knocking over empty places, we cannot take the risk. It’s not just our equipment anymore.”
“Fine. I made the drop. They won’t ask for more, but they may ask us to do a snatch for them.”
“You didn’t …”
“Relax. They have to go through due process if they bag anybody on their soil. If they turn a blind eye to a foreigner and his plane they have deniability. It all depends on how much they believe what is on the disk. Their ability to believe seems to be widening given what they are finding with their own surveillance.”
“They volunteer anything?”
“No. Just that attitudes are changing at the top and they expect to be able to authorize wide-scale roundups soon.”
“We just asked for authorization to round up as well.” “A new trainee?”
“Aye. Showed up today. Sent a request off asking for a when and an exit plan. Haven’t heard a response yet.”
“That reminds me. Need to see if you can buy us a vehicle we could hide three people in that could make it to Mangalore. The team also wants you to get some dart pistols or other fast-acting tranquilizer capability. You’ve done quite a few ops here, so I assume you have the contacts for such things.”
The Brit held up the handful of cash and said, “This won’t be enough to get all of that.”
“Open your bottom desk drawer.”
“That’ll work. What is in Mangalore?” “Nothing yet. We are speculating we will have to bribe some kind of fishing boat to get us out to international waters where a Huey can rendezvous and hoist the guys up for a flight to Pakistan. The team is hoping to run the current email hub themselves for a little while before packing up the equipment.” “And the original trainer?”
“No word there, either. With these out of the way we could watch him a lot more closely. Try to snag the courier when the identity kit is dropped.”
“The courier might be a dead end, but we could try following him to see if he visits the rest of the team after the trainer. Do you have some of those small tracking badges?”
“Yes, but we only have a couple of readers. What are you planning?” “We can have more readers here tomorrow if we need them. I’m hoping he gets all three identity kits delivered to him one or more days before. We can do a black bag operation into his apartment and plant the badges, then track who gets them.” “You almost need air cover for that.” “We know where he works. We know he goes no place else except to buy groceries. If he is making the exchange, it will be at work. We only need people outside waiting for the kits to come walking out.” “I wonder how well the courier will know the trainer.” “Somehow, before we got to his machine, the trainer got photos of his team to the identity shop. Perhaps they already had them on file because they had issued them all kits to come here. Either way, the last courier is going to have a photo to look at before he makes the drop. If we happen to see someone standing in the parking lot looking at a photo of the trainer we could nab him, tag the items, and do the drop ourselves, but we won’t get that lucky.” “Well, they are paying more attention to the former trainer now. They know the outcome for the other apartment, but they want to wait up to a week to nab them.” “Why?” inquired the Brit.
“They want to have all of the email from the current hub operator over that five day window where they transfer a few addresses to one of the new hub operators. We know it is a reality now, and they want to see if you and the others can crack it. We need the messages in possession even if you cannot crack it so we can test what they tell us during interrogation.”
“Sound plan. They want us to take them out quiet so there isn’t talk in the apartment complex which makes the trainer nervous. I’m not big on the idea of them running the second hub for a few days. What happens if the trainer stops by to chat?”
“He hasn’t so far.”
“He might want to say goodbye the night or day before his OP goes down. If we don’t have his entire team identified by then, we will end up with him in custody and another Lutton on our hands.”
The Brit was still a bit sensitive about Lutton, but his analysis was correct. “True, it is a risk, but one we will have to take. If we can identify the message required to migrate an operative to a new hub, we could set up our own hub and possibly track things back to bin Laden himself.”
“Somehow I don’t think that guy will type his own email. We seem to always find and kill those just under him, but never him.”
“Either way, we will be feeding your American contact more intel when we have the message. Perhaps we will get to do some wholesale roundups on their soil.”
“Sounds possible.”
Heidi dragged herself, her dirty clothes, and a two-liter bottle of wine up the steps to her apartment. Technically, it was a condo because she owned it. The man who headed up the condo association was a good and loyal party member. He never hassled Heidi about association dues being late. He would simply drop a handwritten note in her mail slot whenever she was really late with payments. As Heidi shoved her door open past all of the mail on the floor, she realized that she must be late again. There were two handwritten notes.
Setting everything down, she rummaged through her writing desk for an envelope. On it she scrawled a note for him to take care of her dues as she would be gone a lot. Whenever she left him an envelope like this he would keep an eye on her place as well. The head of the association was in his late seventies and enjoying a semi-retirement. It made him feel useful to run the condo association and keep an eye on people’s places when they were gone. She pulled a wad of cash out of her purse and stuffed about half of it in the envelope before sealing it. Then she dragged herself down two flights of stairs to stuff it through his mail slot.
He was probably home, but Heidi didn’t feel like talking tonight. Tonight she was taking a hot bath and drinking that entire bottle of wine. The constant pace of execution at the camp was taking its toll on Heidi. Nikolaus had stopped in and offered her two days off when he took one look at her face. He actually told the entire first team to take two days off when they finished the batch of patients they were currently working on. He then called his contact at the interrogation center and told them to slow down the shipments.
Heidi didn’t bother getting a ladylike wine glass while her tub was running. She grabbed the biggest water glass she had, put some ice cubes in it and filled it to the rim with white wine. She had seen too much red over the last stretch of days. She knew she should go through her mail, but right now she just wanted to soak.
An hour later, her tub grew cold and her glass was empty. She drained the tub, toweled off and put on a robe. With her wine glass refilled, she piled her mail on the table, then started a load of laundry. Returning to the table she dragged over her kitchen garbage can and began chucking the junk mail. No matter what country you lived in or what name you had, it seemed junk mail always found you.
Each bill she came across she wrote a check out to pay and put a stamp on the return envelope. It seems like you were always gone the week most of your bills arrive, she thought. She had no idea how much money was in her checking account. Whatever company was paying her this time was direct-depositing her paycheck into the checking account. She made a mental note to look at the statement next time one came so she would have a general idea.
Finally she got down to a handwritten envelope with no return address. It was postmarked from some place in America. She opened the letter and began to read.
Hello,
It was good to hear from you. The team is now back on leave, so we are starting to hear things. Doesn’t sound bad yet, but we do have a general idea what you are involved in. We will be there to get you when you need us. Call this number when you need us and leave a message.
At the bottom of the letter was an international phone number. Heidi clipped it and put it into a special pouch in her purse. She didn’t know when, but she knew she was going to need that number. They were simply processing too many patients at the secured location to keep it quiet much longer. Nikolaus had told her he sent cash under the table to the Chinese to add a second shift at the construction site along with an on-site concrete mixer, but concrete still took time to cure. It was still going to be at least another four months before the site could be staffed and begin receiving prisoners.
Heidi stretched out on her bed feeling much more relaxed now that she had the last glass of wine from the bottle poured and the rest of it consumed. When she woke up she would get to see what science experiments were growing in her refrigerator. Being gone for nearly seven days took its toll in the grocery department.
Jeremy’s little entourage touched down in Kyyiv (Jeremy, Jennifer, and a programmer to install software.) The first thing he did was open up the disposable international cell phone he bought and call the number Jennifer had given him. The man who answered was already at the airport and waiting for the group at customs with two others. Jeremy went with the others to the baggage claim area to pick up their luggage.
Boris had asked for and received digital photographs of each person coming along with their names and other information. Each was on a separate sheet of paper and divided between the other two men, who were immigration lawyers. Nobody expected them to be needed, but Dimitri wasn’t going to take any chances. The men were being paid well to stand there with briefcases.
The others breezed through customs, but Jeremy had a more detailed questioning. He was coming in on a two-year work visa so they were required to put on a good show. His luggage was inspected and he was patted down and wanded.
Finally they got to the questioning.
“Why are you coming to Ukraine for a job?” “My job came here, not the other way around.” “What is it you plan on doing while you are here?” Jeremy pulled out one of his new business cards and his old business cards and handed it to them. “My boss wants me to open another investment division in the Ukraine. I’m to get it operational by hiring local people and training them well. Once they are trained I can go home. We assume it will take about two years for someone to learn the business because I’m the fastest learner he ever had and it took me eighteen months.” “What kind of investments do you do?” “Stock market mostly. We may start investing in the Russian stock markets, but for now we are focusing on the American stock markets and opening them up to more investors from Russia.” “People in Russia do not have the kind of money you rich Americans have.” “They would if they invested correctly. We put $500 million into this branch. We are here to ride it out. My boss started this company with nothing more than $10,000, now we manage around a billion in assets. We know how to do investing correctly.” “You have proof of this investment.” It was at this point Dimitri stepped forward and opened his briefcase. At first the customs officials made a reach for their weapons thinking this was going somewhere else. “I am Dimitri. I work for the company which helped establish their new office.” He pulled out the paperwork from the bank showing the establishment of a company account under the name of Jeremy’s new branch and the wire transfer of $500 million. He also pulled out an office lease document showing the company had leased the office for five years.
“Where will you be staying while you are here?” the customs officials asked Jeremy.
Dimitri pulled out the apartment lease document showing a two-year lease on a two-bedroom furnished apartment leased to the same company.
The customs official doing the inquiry pulled out a clipboard and put a form on it. He looked at Dimitri and asked, “May we keep these?”
“Yes, of course. They are copies.” “Good.”
“Do you have a phone number for the file.” “The new office phone is on the business card. I haven’t picked up a regular cell phone for this country yet. I was pretty certain mine wouldn’t work here so just have a prepaid I bought at the airport now.” “The office phone will do.” He put all of the paperwork together with the clipboard and turned to one of the others speaking in Russian. The other seemed quite perturbed. Dimitri volunteered in English: “One of those two can fill the form out for you if you wish. They are immigration lawyers we paid to be here.” That brightened both men’s day. Being able to order an immigration lawyer to do a mundane task was a treat most of their ilk didn’t get.
“You should have said something earlier,” said the customs official. He stamped Jeremy’s passport then looked at Dimitri. “Which one do you want to fill this out?”
“Your choice,” Dimitri responded.
The man wavered his finger between the two men as if he were playing a game of eenie meenie and finally pointed to one and motioned him forward. The man next to him smiled, but said nothing. You don’t laugh until you are out of earshot when someone just drew the short straw. Neither man had filled one of these forms out in years. They had office staff to draw the short straw, just not today.
The customs official waived Jeremy and Dimitri on. When Jeremy got away from the customs desk with his luggage he noticed that the others had already left and asked Dimitri about it.
“Gleb has already taken them to their hotels. We will take you to your apartment. In about three hours we will come by and pick you up for supper. Your team will be picked up as well. Dress casual. Blue jeans are fine if you brought them as long as they aren’t all ripped up. We are taking you to a family restaurant so you can get a taste of good Ukrainian food.” Jeremy looked at Dimitri and Dimitri said, “Don’t worry, wine and vodka will flow.”
Both men laughed. “Tomorrow morning around 9:00 AM local time we will send a car to pick up you and … Jennifer, is it?”
Jeremy nodded to confirm the name.
“The others have been instructed which way to walk. It is only a couple of blocks. If it is raining, of course they can hail a cab, but your IT person has chosen to walk each day.”
When they arrived at the apartment building, Jeremy was prepared for the worst. He was coming down from a two-story townhome with three bedrooms and a full basement to a two-bedroom apartment. The rooms were quite small, but overall the layout wasn’t bad. The kitchen had only cabinets between it and the living/dining area. As with a lot of American apartments, there were no dividing walls between those areas. You were supposed to divide them with furniture. It seemed adequate for his needs, and came with washer and dryer along with dishes and utensils. He could get some more blankets and things once he found a store.
Jeremy put away what clothes he had in his bags. There were two large boxes in the living room so most of his stuff had made it over. He didn’t know where the third box was, but it might still be at the office.
The apartment had provided a welcome folder but it was all in Russian. Jeremy had seen a McDonald’s on the way to the apartment. He suspected most of his meals would be coming from there until he learned to speak the language better. He opened one of the boxes and rummaged for his power adapter. There was a little writing desk which had what appeared to be a cable modem on it.
With everything hooked up, he tried getting to the Web page of his personal email. This was going to be a very boring stay if all he could do was play games on his notebook while at home. He needed to be able to get to the Internet from home. There was much anticipation as he hit return after entering in the Web address. There was much joy when he got to the site and could log in.
Not wanting to lose track of time, he logged out and started putting away the clothes from the opened box. He would have to deal with the second box after supper. Did they even call it supper over here? He thought. Once that was complete he flattened out the box and set it by the door. It was now time to get cleaned up for supper.
With his shave and shower out of the way, Jeremy went back to checking his personal email. His eyes were immediately drawn to an email from his buddy he had given first dibs to.
Hey dude,
You’re right. Unbelievable email coming from anyone else. Since I know both you and Stacie, count me in for New Year’s. I’ll take the brunette. I attached a picture of me just in case she doesn’t want this to be a completely blind situation. Feel free to pass along my cell phone number as well.
Jeremy laughed and forwarded the email to Stacie. For a subject line, he put “One Down.” Since there still wasn’t a knock at the door, he opened the email from his second pal to receive a New Year’s Eve offer.
You gave first dibs to him! You rat bastard!! He can have anyone he wants as long as it isn’t the redhead. I’ve always wanted to add a red head to my résumé. I know, I’m a pig, but at least I’m not cheap.
Pass along my email and cell phone. I’ll send them a picture of myself when they drop me a note.
See you New Year’s Eve.
Jeremy forwarded this email to Stacie as well. In it he took time to write a few words.
Looks like we are all set for New Year’s Eve if I can get a flight home. Landed here a while ago. Car is coming by to pick me up for supper. Apartment is small but rather nice. Get to see the office tomorrow.
He did regret writing so few words and figured he would pay a price for it later on, but he didn’t know how long he had. He heard a knock at the door and logged out. Upon answering, Jeremy learned his driver was here.
The meal was way too much food. Everybody focused on having a good time. There was no pressure to make a sale or close a deal. Jeremy had talked with the IT person who seemed quite pleased with the office layout.
It was a small three-story office building and most of the second floor was theirs. Since the company wanted to put in a computer room, they had taken over the lease of a company directly below them and the raised floor was already getting installed. Electricians were showing up tomorrow to route in the power. An order had been placed for a new computer and disk array just like the one they had in the remote office.
The networking equipment was installed, but they did not have a T1 connection out, only a cable modem, which was shared. Dimitri had made arrangements for the telco company to install a T1 for them, but it was going to take several weeks even with bribes being paid. A docking station had been installed on Jeremy’s desk for his notebook and all of the other desks had locally assembled computers up and running on the company network. Things were going far smoother than Jeremy had expected.
Stacie was nervously pacing back and forth in her apartment. She was dressed and ready to go to work, but was waiting for an overnight delivery. She had called into the office to let them know she was running late, but didn’t say why. In truth she didn’t need to call in as she wasn’t scheduled for any meetings before 10:00 AM. She certainly hoped to be in by then!
Finally there was a knock at the door and Stacie nearly jumped out of her skin. She didn’t know why she felt so nervous about this. Her hand shook as she signed the electronic delivery machine. With the delivery man gone, she quickly opened the package and began fumbling through the documents. There wasn’t any time to read it all. Thankfully they had included two copies of everything. She was to sign and return one. She found the four places she needed to sign and verified her Social Security number.
Something about this felt so illegal to her, but people opened stock trading accounts all of the time. She had looked through the employee handbook online and nothing in there said she had to report to Big Four Consulting any trading account she opened or stock trades she made. Besides, Jeremy was right. She should profit from this little venture. It might be the only chance she had to score really big in the stock market, even if it was using Jeremy’s money.
Included in the package was a deposit slip so she could add more money to her account. Being a lowly paid single girl, Stacie had only about $3,000 sitting in her checking account she didn’t need. She wrote out a check for $3,000 making it payable to the clearing firm and included that with the bundle to go back. The UPS store was a block away. She circled the overnight address they had provided for return shipping, gathered everything up to go back and walked out the door. She made a mental note to email Jeremy tonight about the extra money she had placed in the account.
This all seemed so naughty, but technically, her part was all legal as far as she could tell. At any rate, if things went bad, she was going to need the money.
Kathryn was sitting in her office with the sales rep for Pytho Corporation. She had wanted Stacie to be there to take credit, but the girl had called in saying she was running late.
“Thank you for coming, George.”
“No problem. Always happy to show up when there is a hot lead to be had. How is the car?”
“When the weather is nice enough to have the top down, it is wonderful. When it is raining, it is pretty noisy.”
“That’s why convertibles don’t sell so well. Everyone loves them on the perfect days and can’t stand them the rest,” he laughed.
Nice and subtle way of telling me you’ve already paid for this lead, thought Kathryn.
“I’ll cut to the chase. One of our consultants who helped out with the training took it upon herself to do some legwork for you and came up with Granite National Bank.” She handed George the printouts and he scanned through them.
“Looks like they need it but couldn’t afford it,” George responded.
“Financing can always be arranged, George. First you have to let them know they need it. We had an account rep for them at one point. I took it upon myself to get you the IT director’s name and phone number.” She handed George another sheet of paper.
“You need a U.S. Bank to begin recouping your investment,” she continued. “Do you know that Kent’s interview is coming out tomorrow?”
George’s eyes popped open.
“That’s right. Call them today, George, and let them read about it tomorrow. If the IT director shuts you down, we have contacts on their board of directors. We could still make a presentation, but it would be better if this came through channels.”
***********************
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