The Importer: A Michael Thomas Thriller, page 5
“One of the primary objectives,” he eyed Michael, “is to avoid makin’ any more goddamned headlines. For a covert organization, you all tend to seek out the spotlight.”
Sergio motioned toward Michael, as well. “That’s mostly true of some parts of the team, John. Not everyone here’s an attention hound.”
Michael sighed and met Hunter’s gaze. “I have an unfortunate tendency to create news, but it’s always been out of my control.”
“Always is, right?”
“Which reminds me,” John added, “we also got new passports and identities. One of us might get by on a Holy See passport, but a gaggle of Vatican City citizens showing up in Eastern Orthodox lands is gonna draw too much attention.” John handed Michael a stack of passports. “Pass these out while I get the other credentials together.”
Michael opened the burgundy passport on top of the stack and passed it to Sergio. “You are now Judas Nazareno, from Ecuador.”
He opened a green passport and gave it to Hunter. “Bryan Huntsman, from Cape Town, South Africa.”
Michael opened the blue passport, and his photo stared back at him. “And I’m Andrew Bethany.” He looked to John. “Don’t we need to know your cover?”
“It’s the same as it always is.” He organized large plastic ID cards with bright yellow cloth lanyards. “I’m the asshole boss who’s always makin’ you do shit you don’t like in places you don’t wanna be.”
“Sure, so what do we call you?”
“Just John.” The supervisor handed a stack of identification documents to each of them, and then he looked at Michael. “We had to get you a new identity anyhow. The cops in Vienna got an Interpol Red Notice tacked onto your Andrés Bethsaida passport. Seems they think you got some answers they need about what happened to a fentanyl trafficker in their fine city. We could’ve had the desk nerds hack in and make the thing go away, but somebody’d notice eventually. It’s a damned sight easier to get you a new identity.”
He motioned to the others. “Just like before, they tell me these passports can’t be digitally matched to any photos that cops or surveillance cameras might pick up. The tech group at DICE runs active alerts on legitimate photos of us in every government database they know about. If some cop or government lackey uploads a photo, they get a covert alert that don’t let the other folks know their photo matched anyone. One of the desk nerds then goes in, digitally alters the photo so it don’t match us anymore, and no one’s the wiser.”
“That seems a little too Mission Impossible,” Hunter objected. “How about we don’t test that out?”
John shrugged. “I can only tell you that I’ve personally seen it in action. The only way anyone’s gonna find us through facial recognition software is if they take a new photo of you and compare it to one they’ve never added to a known database. It ain’t impossible, but the odds are damned near zero.”
Michael inspected the forged identification credentials and confirmed they matched his new passport. The yellow lanyard displayed ПРЕ́СА – ПРЕ́СCА – PRESS – PRESA – NACISKAĆ in bold black letters that repeated for its entire length. “So, we’re part of the press corps now.” He read from a glossy postcard-sized promotional flyer. “‘World Class Travel on a Backwater Budget, a television documentary series by Travel Films Unlimited to promote tourist destinations in Eastern Europe’. Seems legit, I guess.”
John nodded. “The one benefit of this op gettin’ delayed so long is that the desk nerds created pretty airtight backstops to our cover stories. Travel Films Limited has a website, corporate registrations, and tax ID numbers. They even put together short trailers of other film projects we’re supposed to have worked on, so you’d best all get familiar with that intel. If shit goes sideways this far from home, we’d better all have our goddamned stories straight. Odessa is technically in Ukraine, but for us, it may as well be back under Russian control.”
Sergio displayed the website on his phone and scrolled through its Video Projects section. “Looks like we filmed episodes in Rome, Munich, Warsaw. Bucharest. Someplace called Dubrovnik. We get around.”
“Dubrovnik’s on the Dalmatian Coast in Croatia,” John offered. “That’s the kinda stuff you oughta learn before we get kicked outta this thing in Odessa.”
“Won’t the customs officials be suspicious about budget travel journalists flying in on a seven-figure private jet?”
John scoffed. “Try eight figures. This bird goes for about thirty million before we added all the custom upgrades to let us run covert ops anywhere in the world. Speakin’ of,” John stood as he spoke, “let’s do some show-and-tell with the big boy toys we got stashed in the back.”
CHAPTER SIX
May 9th, 10:08 a.m.
Cessna Longitude, N10801. Eastern New Mexico airspace.
John led his three subordinates to the rear of the Cessna’s opulent leather-wrapped cabin. He slid a black acrylic pocket door open and stepped into the lavatory. A wide bench seat was on one side of the plane across from a wash basin with a closed overhead storage bin. He tapped the back wall, which was also black acrylic. “DICE bought this when bad luck befell a billionaire and reduced him to a lowly millionaire. It had two shitters in it, which didn’t make a lotta sense when you had to go through one to get to the other. The back bathroom locks from the outside, so I figure it was really designed as a detention cell.”
“Maybe private flights get out of hand from time to time,” Sergio surmised.
“Yeah, well, we turned it into a walk-in safe instead.” John retrieved a key fob from his pocket and held it at the center of the wall where it connected with the ceiling.
thuck
A panel the same dimensions as the lavatory door jutted out from the wall. John pushed against the left side, and it swung out into the lavatory. Interior lights clicked on and illuminated the space. Four sniper rifles, four AK-style carbines with folding stocks, and assorted handguns were secured against the back wall.
John stepped inside the room, and Michael and the others crowded in for a closer look. Deep metal drawers ran floor-to-ceiling on both side walls, and each drawer was labeled and secured with a spring-tension latch.
Their boss unlatched and pulled out one of the drawers. A foam insert filled its interior space with more than a dozen thin cutouts. John retrieved cell phones from three of the cutouts and handed them to his agents. “Brought y’all some presents. These KryptAll phones are fully encrypted against all possible surveillance. No one can crack into ’em, and no one can listen in on your phone calls or read your emails and texts. It’s locked down so goddamned tight that DICE claims you can call the NSA switchboard without worrying about having your data grabbed.
“Stow ’em for now. We’ll get y’all set up before we land and dump the phones you’ve been carrying around somewhere in the Atlantic.”
“You worried that someone’s listening to us?” Michael asked.
“Better safe than sorry. I’d rather know they’re not.” John slid the drawer closed and secured its latch. He pointed to the drawer labels. “Everything I thought we might need on this op’s somewhere in here. Unlike a lot of our recent assignments, we don’t have a safehouse and a local fixer to move gear and weapons around for us. Scattered among these drawers, there’s covert video cameras that broadcast on Wi-Fi or cellular networks, parabolic long-distance mics, binoculars, and thermal monoculars. Everybody gets one of each of those. After the way things went in London, I also added a cell phone jammer and a cellular motion alarm that’s about the size of a GoPro. I’ll take responsibility for those.”
John tapped another label. “There’s also encrypted earbuds that will connect with the new phones. We’ll use a walkie-talkie app on the phone for comms. That lets us blend in with the public, and you just push the side button on the phone to transmit. Double-tap it to leave the channel open, then click a third time to close your mic. Also brought ten GPS trackers for personnel and four magnetic slap-and-dash vehicle trackers.”
John thumbed toward the wall behind him. “I brought bolt guns and an AK rifle for everybody, just in case things get Western. If we gotta ditch ’em, they won’t look out of place over there like American weaponry would. Each rifle’s got a weapon light and holographic red dot sights.”
Their leader scanned the tech and illegal weapons. “At the end of the day, all this shit’s just toys. Take a good look around the aircraft, boys; if we ain’t careful, at least one of us is comin’ home in a bag.”
“Roger that,” Sergio nodded.
John steeled himself and pointed toward the main cabin. “The couch cushion lifts up, and there’s more storage under there. Right now, I got six hard sided, locking Pelican cases with camera and lighting equipment to make our cover seem legit. There’s foam cutouts below that stuff for all the guns in five of ’em. We’ll keep the sixth one clean so we got one to volunteer for inspection. The others won’t survive a detailed investigation, but they might get us past a casual inquiry.”
“Man, Strauss would love this stuff.” Michael nodded at John. “How’s she doing?”
“Recoverin’, most importantly.” The corner of his mouth turned up for a brief instant. “Without tellin’ y’all too much, it’s kinda funny, actually. We got her into a religious order for Catholic sisters that’s comfortable with frequent and urgent calls to serve across the globe. Whenever we need her, we can break her out with a letter from a global humanitarian organization. In the meantime, she’s spendin’ most of her time learnin’ to forget all the sailor words.
“She’ll be a damned fine addition once she’s operational again, ’cause one of her specialties is combat medical care; that also justifies why she gets called away to help all kinds of do-gooders respond to natural disasters without havin’ anyone else in her Order tag along to help.”
“Back to op-sec. The Orthodox Church exerts far more influence and control over Ukraine and Russia than we do, so my field assets are damned thin. I got one customs agent who can get us breezed through their processes without leaving a trail for some unknown op-for to follow later. I had to get us all in together on a single flight to make sure he’s the only one who sees us and the plane. All the asshole Russian oligarchs fly their jets in and out of this airport all the time. The jet won’t inspire curiosity until someone sees military-aged men walkin’ away from it who obviously ain’t Russian.”
Sergio exhaled. “So, if he gets cold feet or calls in sick, we’re screwed.”
“Maybe so, but then he is, too. I don’t take kindly to suspicious failures.” John cocked his head and looked at Michael. “Do I, Andrew?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
May 9th, 10:23 a.m.
Palatial estate, Culiacan, Mexico.
Rogelio Salvador burst through the double doors of the oversized den his workers had converted into an IT hub. The dozen men positioned at terminals along the left wall startled, but their supervisor, Marco Perez, only brought his cold gaze up to the doorway. He sat at a single desk on the back wall that allowed him to watch the door and his employees.
“Tell me you have made real progress,” Rogelio demanded.
“Good morning, jefe.” Perez stood and strolled around the desk to meet his superior. “We have not yet located Andrés Bethsaida, but we have devised a way to ensure that we do. Let me show you.”
“Don’t use a bunch of made-up words to make yourself look smart,” Rogelio growled. “It’s not wise to insult the head of the Santa Lena narcotrafficking cartel. I’ve killed much better men for much less.”
Perez nodded and led Rogelio to a workstation at the back corner of the room. A nervous tech removed five flash drives from an accessory connector and placed them in a half-filled cardboard box to his right. He retrieved five new drives from a second half-empty box on his left, inserted them in the connector’s slots, and commanded his computer to Copy to each of them.
“My techs and I have written a computer virus to help us identify and locate Bethsaida. The virus targets specific aspects of facial recognition software and manipulates its stored images and new comparisons to our advantage. Once uploaded onto a computer connected to a law enforcement database, our virus will overlay the software’s comparison function and examine every photograph the computer is tasked to examine. The computer will do what it’s told by the user, but our virus will look for photos of Bethsaida. If it finds a high probability match, it will notify us and send all the information associated with the matched photograph.”
“How is this possible? How will you even get access to the right computers?”
“This type of operation has worked dozens of times over more than twenty years, and it continues to work because people are predictable. More than a decade ago, covert operatives put a program called Stuxnet on flash drives much like these and left a few drives discarded in the employee parking lot of the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility in Iran. Workers at the facility predictably picked them up, assumed they belonged to a coworker, and several inserted the drives into their work computers. They were loaded with benign information unrelated to any specific person or anything going on at the facility, but the Stuxnet program automatically downloaded onto the new computer and began searching for specific electronic control programs for the site’s centrifuge operations. It quickly took effect and altered the mechanical commands to the plant’s centrifuges. The program caused such significant failures that physical equipment was damaged and destroyed, and the resulting inefficiencies throughout the centrifuge facility set Iran’s nuclear capabilities back years, maybe even a decade.
“That’s just one example of using predictable human behavior to get into computer networks and systems out of reach of our hackers and technicians here.” Perez grinned. “If any major government agency has a photograph of your priest, we will soon know everything they know about him.”
“What happens if this is found?” Rogelio asked. “Can it be traced back to us?”
“No. The communications are directed through a series of virtual private networks that prevent anyone from tracking the information to us. Also, once this is in place, we can ultimately use this vulnerability to look for information on anyone you wish. All we need is a photograph of the person you want found, extorted, kidnapped, or killed, and the program will find them for you.”
Rogelio smiled for the first time today. “I am impressed, Mario, and that is not easy to do.”
The tech working on the computer next to them noticeably relaxed, but he didn’t attempt to participate in their conversation.
“At the moment,” Perez said, “we already have the virus uploaded into the American DEA’s suspect database. A senior network analyst there fell for one of our honeypots last year, and he’s still too scared of having his indiscretions discovered. My teams are targeting personnel with access to databases in the world’s major airports, shipping centers, and seaports, preferring state and federal databases to those of the local police and port authorities. It will take time, but we will soon know where he travels as soon as he is processed through customs. In places like London, we’ll only need him to walk in front of a traffic camera.”
“I doubt Bethsaida will soon return to London or Vienna. The Red Notice attached to his passport will ensure that authorities will arrest him as soon as he’s identified, and he’s probably aware of that. I suspect someone with his reach already has a new identity. Focus on the rest of Europe, especially Rome and Vatican City, and also on the American federal agencies.” Rogelio sneered. “If he doesn’t work for the pope, he wants people to think he does, and that seems distinctly American to me.”
“I will see to it.” Perez motioned to the slowly filling box on the right. “We will soon have enough copies to infiltrate every major law enforcement database in the world. Anywhere that we can’t identify a complicit agent with the right access, we can have a few dropped in the parking lot. We need only one curious employee, and the program will do the rest. The history of human behavior has repeatedly demonstrated that our success is inevitable.”
The computer hacker smiled at Rogelio. “Just as you asked, I will give you the head of Andrés Bethsaida.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
May 9th, 4:32 p.m. local.
Carpathian Mineral Bath House, Odessa, Ukraine.
Mishe barged through the front doors of the Carpathian Mineral Bath House and strode past the front desk. Neither employee standing behind the counter objected or made eye contact. Humidity clung to his dark wool suit, and the smell of mineral water opened his sinuses. Mishe had ordered the spa’s construction and design to mimic those in Trouskavets, a renowned natural spa area in the Carpathian Mountains nine hundred kilometers northwest, near Ukraine’s borders with Poland and Slovakia. The historic spa facilities and natural mineral waters there treated all manners of physical illness and ailment, but Mishe ordered the site manager here to treat the municipal tap water with whatever mineral compounds could be purchased cheaply online. Customers didn’t come to the Carpathian Bath House for its mineral waters.
Mishe walked through a hallway that led him past the locker room, showers, and restroom and on to a half-Olympic swimming pool. Steam rose from the water’s surface, and heat escaped through open skylights more than five meters overhead. His heels clicked on the damp tile walkway around the pool, and muffled conversation carried across the still water.
