The Devil's Ransom, page 10
And now Shakor couldn’t get in touch with Bashir at all. Out of the four different calls throughout the night, only one resulted in contact early in the morning, but it wasn’t Bashir. It was a lowly team member, who’d told him Bashir had gone out for supplies and would call as soon as he came back, but Bashir had not.
After that one contact, nobody was picking up, leaving him without an answer as to why the team member had Bashir’s phone. He’d thought about that question after he’d disconnected, and it made him uneasy.
It might mean nothing. In fact, the lack of contact was probably a good sign, as Shakor knew the cell service dropped to nothing outside of Dushanbe, so the team was probably on the road right now. At any rate, he had little time to dwell on it, as he had his own mission to complete.
He turned to the other man inside their little Airbnb and said, “Any word from the airport?”
“Nothing. A few private aircraft taking off and that same shuttle helicopter coming and going, but nobody’s touched our plane.”
It had taken them two days to get their passports in order from the Haqqani network in Uzbekistan, and in that time, using the tail number of the aircraft, they’d determined that the plane was owned by a rich Russian and had flown to Zurich.
That was the worst possible case, leaving Shakor with fantasies of the treasure disappearing into a Swiss vault owned by some bloated Russian oligarch. It was the same thing they’d thought had happened the first time the Taliban had taken over, way back in 1989, which had proven false, but now they knew Ahmad had taken the treasure, and that he’d taken this plane to Zurich. And so, without anything else, he’d flown his team to Zurich and placed surveillance on the aircraft, waiting on someone to show up so they could interdict him. Or surveil him. Or something.
So far, it had not provided any fruit.
Just as he was wondering about becoming more aggressive in his tactics, but unsure of what that would be, his phone rang. He looked at the number, and saw it was Haqqani. Shakor dreaded answering it, but he did anyway.
“Hello, sir.”
“I received no status report yesterday. Where do we stand?”
“I had nothing to report yesterday, but I do today. We have Jahn.”
“You have Jahn? Seriously? Why wasn’t I told?”
“It just happened. We caught him in Tajikistan.”
“When will he be here? Back in Kabul?”
“Soon. Bashir is driving now. I’m sorry I didn’t call, but I’ve been busy in Zurich trying to catch that other traitor and find the treasure.”
“You mean Ahmad Khan? You don’t have him? You’ve been in Zurich for over a day and a half.”
Taken aback, Shakor said, “I know that, sir, but the only lead we have is the aircraft. We’re on it twenty-four seven, and so far nobody’s gone to it. When they do, we’ll get them and find out where he went. Best case, it will be Ahmad himself.”
He heard a breath, then some cursing. When Haqqani came back on the phone he said, “Do you not watch the news? Ahmad is in Zurich. He’s turned himself in to the United States consulate there. He’s under the protection of the Americans now. How could you miss that?”
Shakor said nothing, the words bouncing through his head like a cue ball smashing around a billiard table. He put his hand over the phone and snapped his fingers, saying, “Google Ahmad Khan in Zurich.”
The team member at the computer said, “What?”
“Do it!”
He returned to the phone and said, “Sir, we knew that, and we have people on the consulate, but we can’t snatch him there. We’re working on it.”
Haqqani said, “I don’t like excuses. Get me that treasure. And bring me Jahn.”
The phone disconnected and Shakor turned to the team member sitting in front of the computer. Looking chagrined, knowing the answer he gave would reflect on him as much as Shakor, the man said, “Ahmad turned himself in to the consulate. They’re working his visa to get him to the States. He’s all over the news as a great story for the US evacuation, because that’s going so poorly. They’re trumpeting his escape. He’s going to be on a press conference today at four.”
Shakor looked at his watch and said, “That’s in two hours. Get the team here. Now.”
“All of them? You want to pull off the airport completely?”
He paced for a minute, unsure, then said, “Leave one person watching the plane. Everyone else comes here.”
Forty-five minutes later he had a four-man team surrounding a computer, a Google map displaying the location of the United States consulate. All of them were dressed in European clothing, with short hair and no beards. All of them spoke English, with two fluent in German and two in French. They could blend into any European country, and Shakor would use that now.
He said, “Ahmad Khan made it into the U.S. consulate. He’s being presented today at a press conference where the United States will blather about protecting the allies they pretend to hold dear. The mission is simple: We wait for it to be over, and then follow him to wherever he’s being kept. When we find that, we take him. Understand?”
The men in the room nodded, waiting on their specific assignments. Using Google Street View, Shakor pulled up detailed pictures of the consulate, showing a nondescript five-story office complex with a parking garage underneath, the building itself about four blocks east of Lake Zurich.
He said, “The consulate is on the third floor, and we obviously aren’t going to be invited to watch the press conference, but sooner or later, they’ll have to leave the building. When that happens, the mission is to simply find out where they take him.”
He then dictated positions, saying, “I’ll be the control. Each position will have two people, as I have no idea how long it will take for him to leave the building. He could stay there for hours getting debriefed, but sooner or later, he’s going to leave. Use the Vespa scooters and relieve each other as necessary. Sooner or later, they’ll leave the parking garage and go to wherever they’ve paid to put him up.”
One of the men asked, “What about security? We can’t attack them without causing a reaction.”
Shakor said, “He’s not going to spend the night in the consulate, and the U.S. will feel no threat here in Switzerland. I’m sure there will be security when he leaves, but that’s going to just be show. When he gets to the bed-down site, he’ll be left alone. That’s where we’ll take him. Questions?”
Ghulam, one of the more violent members of the crew, said, “When he leaves, why not just take him off the street? Before he gets to the safehouse? Put a bullet in his head?”
Shakor actually had to take a minute to process what the man said. When he did, he fought to control his voice. “This isn’t a kill mission. We’re here to find the treasure. Anyone who thinks that killing Ahmad is the mission is sorely wrong. He is a link to the treasure. That’s all. Do not kill him.”
The men nodded and, as he’d done on multiple operations with the Badr 313 Battalion, Shakor said one final time, “Any more questions? If there are, ask them now.”
Unlike the usual Taliban attack forces, the Badr Battalion had learned from their very enemy, the United States Special Forces, and they’d become better because of it. They had studied. Had learned that each member of the team had something to offer. And after twenty years of war, they were now the equal of the men they were against, if only because their enemy held them in disdain.
Nobody around the computer said anything else. Shakor said, “Okay, remember, this isn’t about Ahmad. It’s about the treasure. We need him alive. When we find the treasure, then, and only then, can we kill him.”
Chapter 19
Dylan Hobbes pulled into the checkpoint for the West Wing and showed his driver’s license. The man took it, scrolling through a list on a computer, and Hobbes used the opportunity to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Having always had hyperhidrosis, he was used to the moisture under his arms and his hands, but it increased exponentially when he was stressed.
Which he was now.
The 911 call the night before had worked out as best as he could hope, with the police and EMT response deciding it was an accident—a tragic fall down the stairs. The coroner would have the final say, and one man appeared to question the wound on the forehead, saying it was much too deep and precise to be from a random fall, but Hobbes had been told at the scene that it looked pretty cut-and-dried. No foul play.
It was still nerve-racking, and because of it, he couldn’t turn off his body’s reaction, the beads rolling down him like he was the character in the sweating scene from the comedy movie Airplane!
It wasn’t just the killing making him sweat, though. It was what he was about to do. He couldn’t allow the Serbians to continue the attack he’d planned. The risk was too great that he’d be found out as the source of the code for the attack, and in so doing be branded as a traitor, when that was the absolute opposite of what he was. He was a patriot. The problem was he couldn’t simply turn them off. He wasn’t in control of their operations—the Russian, Andrei, was.
While he had given them the code with the promise that they use it on a specific target of his choosing, he couldn’t stop them from doing whatever else they wanted before that time. He’d had no fear of discovery when he believed they’d simply attack some European airline, but they’d hit something else entirely—and he was sure they had no idea of the trouble they’d caused.
Why did they choose this place to attack? Why?
He’d scrabbled for a solution all night long like a rat gnawing on a piece of gristle, tossing and turning, his bedsheets damp with the sweat rolling off his body. One answer was to simply “admit” failure, telling the secret people at the White House that he couldn’t crack the code and had given up. But that would invite questions. Who gives up after two days? These sorts of things took much longer than that, but there was no way he could let anyone else from his team look at the code. They’d recognize it just as Kirk had, and he most certainly couldn’t start killing everyone in his company, and so he’d have to engineer another reason he couldn’t continue.
But that brought up a second problem. If he quit, the United States government wouldn’t. They’d find someone else, and that company would be outside of his control. Eventually they might make the same connection Kirk had, exposing him to the same problem. The Vault 7 leaks from WikiLeaks taught him that. The world was a much smaller place than it used to be. The only way to be clean was to keep the problem set to himself.
After a sleepless night, he’d decided on a different course of action. One that would be executed by the very people those idiots had attacked. He’d been hired for a specific purpose: geolocation of the hackers. He wasn’t hired to defeat the ransomware code, but to locate the people doing the extortion. That’s what the president had said. He wanted to punish them, and that might be the best way to solve the problem. Let this Project Prometheus loose, killing the Serbians before they could expose their connection with him. It would mean the end of his primary mission in the short term, but he couldn’t see any way around that.
The problem with that plan was the Russian, Andrei. In no way could he lead the US team to him, because he was the one person who knew Hobbes personally.
Well, that, and the fact that attempting to attack the Russian was asking for his own demise. The man was much more powerful than Hobbes—more powerful than anyone Hobbes even knew—and he had no illusions of what would happen if what he was planning reached Andrei.
He’d be found dead from some poisoning if he was lucky. Found in pieces if he wasn’t. That final thought caused his sweat to spring anew.
The guard waved him through, and Hobbes parked his car in the lot adjacent to the entrance to the West Wing, the lot fairly empty due to the late hour. He turned up the air-conditioning in a futile attempt to dry the moisture, sitting for five minutes with the air flowing over his face, putting his hands up to the vents like he was a professional bowler about to roll for a strike. Eventually he turned off the engine and sat for a minute, gathering his courage.
He was startled when someone knocked on his window. He turned and saw National Security Advisor Alexander Palmer outside his door. He opened it, saying, “You scared me.”
Palmer smiled and said, “I saw you pull in, but when you didn’t exit the car, I figured I’d check on you to make sure you knew where to go.”
Hobbes exited the vehicle and Palmer said, “You okay?”
“I’m fine. Just a little nervous about this meeting, I guess.”
Palmer saw the moisture on his brow and said, “You had a COVID test, right?”
Hobbes smiled and said, “Yes, it’s not the dreaded Rona, I promise. I’m vaxxed and boosted, and you guys made me test before the first meeting two days ago. I’m good. Just nervous.”
Palmer nodded and handed him a visitor’s badge, saying, “Put that on and follow me.”
They entered the West Wing, skirting by the security desk and the staff secretary, walking directly to the Oval Office, Palmer saying, “You said on the phone that you had some information, is that right?”
“Yes. I think so. I have a location.”
Palmer opened the door to the Oval Office, saying, “Good, good. Go on in.”
Hobbes entered, seeing the president and five other people waiting expectantly. He recognized the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, and the secretary of state but was unsure about the others.
President Hannister said, “You have some news?”
“Yes, sir. We haven’t been able to crack the encryption, but they left enough fingerprints to tell us who they are. It’s not conclusive, of course, but it’s pretty damn close.”
“Who?”
“It’s a ransomware group called Dark Star, and its leader is a Serbian named Branko Markovic.”
Amanda Croft, the secretary of state, said, “Serbian? Not Russian?”
Hobbes said, “The actual men working the keyboards are Serbian, but we honestly don’t know who’s behind them. Maybe Russians, maybe nobody. We’ve encountered Dark Star multiple times in the past, and they leave certain clues behind in every attack. We’ve published their digital traces in technical magazines, so there is a bit of caution in this assessment. Someone could be trying to throw authorities off the trail by duplicating them, or it could be a splinter group that left Dark Star and went off on their own. Happens all the time.”
The director of the CIA, Kerry Bostwick, said, “So, this isn’t definitive?”
“It’s as definitive as I can make it. There are no absolutes in this world, like DNA in criminal cases. My forensics are not as clear-cut, but in my professional opinion, this is Dark Star.”
President Hannister said, “Okay, assuming this is Dark Star, how does this help us? We need a location. Hopefully someplace we can reach. Where is their base of operations?”
Hobbes said, “Honestly, they operate all over the continent, depending on the target, but we’ve managed to find an association with the attack.”
He opened his briefcase and withdrew a tablet, saying, “This one came from Croatia, specifically Zagreb.”
He laid the tablet on the table, and everyone gathered around, staring at the map displayed. A bright blue marble highlighted a location inside a four-story building in the upper town of Zagreb, Croatia.
CIA director Bostwick, said, “How can you be this precise? What in the code led to this? I mean, I could see saying it came from Croatia, or even Zagreb, but you’re saying it came from this building?”
Hobbes felt the sweat start to build under his arms and on his forehead. He hoped nobody noticed. He certainly couldn’t tell them that he had no ability to geolocate the hacking crew to this fidelity, something the D/CIA seemed to suspect. The location was the last known address for the leader of the crew, but he couldn’t very well tell them a specific apartment.
He said, “They used an ISP that was tied to a café on the fourth floor. The A’è bar. I don’t know if it’s accurate, but it’s all we have.”
“Wait, wait. Are you saying they used an open Wi-Fi network from a bar to conduct the attack? That makes no sense. Anyone on that net could see what they were doing, starting with the ISP provider.”
Feeling the sweat start to roll down his face, Hobbes said, “I can’t explain it. I can only report what I find. Maybe they’re stupid, or maybe they’re in an apartment next door using a VPN while piggybacking off the bar. I can’t tell you specifically. Maybe the bar has something to hide, I don’t know. This is what I found.”
In truth, Hobbes had simply used the nearest Wi-Fi node to the apartment he could find.
President Hannister said, “Are you sure of this location?”
“Yes, sir. I’m sure. I can’t say they’re still at that location, but the attack came from there. I’d look for an apartment in that building associated with Branko Markovic. Why they touched the open Wi-Fi network, I can’t say, but it’s there, and it’s real.”
Hobbes wondered if he’d overplayed his hand. If, by his mentioning looking for an apartment, they’d see through his ruse.
Hannister looked at a man on the couch, one who hadn’t said a word. Lithe, with a full mustache going gray, he projected an air of quiet competence. Hobbes recognized him as George Wolffe, the man who’d provided him the computer boxes for analysis. Hobbes had assumed from the first meeting that he was simply a bureaucrat, but President Hannister’s next words belied that notion.
The president said, “What do you have available in that area?”
Wolffe considered for a moment, then said, “Nothing right now. Johnny’s in Africa, but he’s tied up on something else. Pike’s the closest, but as we were discussing before Dylan arrived, he’s committed with that other thing.”
President Hannister nodded, saying, “That should be done tonight, right?”
Wolffe looked at his watch and said, “If not already. It’s three in the morning his time. I’m just waiting on a SITREP.”
