ROGUESTATE, page 22
Ellen hefted it. “Why did they search him?”
Cecil shrugged. “He matched the profile for Chicago that day.” The cursor lanced across the screen and opened a text folder shortcut he had dropped on his desktop screen. “I ran an Interpol search on Parvez.”
Ellen nodded. “He’s been out of the country for a long time.”
Cecil’s blue eyes blazed. “Yes, and he suddenly pops up in the middle of London. He’s traveling on a valid American passport, and Chicago port of entry confirmed that the passport was an original and not a forgery.”
“How’d he get to London?”
Cecil shook his head. “That’s where it starts getting strange.”
Ellen sipped her coffee and the bitter brew settled unsteadily on her stomach.
“Interpol has links to all NATO and most of the former eastern block countries. It is a trivial thing to search their passport control systems—at least the computerized systems.” Cecil licked his lips as he popped up the email he received from Interpol. “Parvez Hyder appeared in Greece using a legitimate Iraqi passport.” Cecil paused before adding, “That makes him prime terrorist material in my book.”
Ellen flipped open the Chicago file and ran her finger down the list of items. “There’s no Iraqi passport here.”
“I know,” whispered Cecil. “I ran a query on the Iraqi passport number and it came back proper—full rights and privileges.”
Ellen’s finger paused above the two Bank of Scotland Visa cards. “What about the credit cards he was carrying?”
“He hasn’t used them,” replied Cecil. “But you’ve put your finger on another intriguing aspect of Mister Hyder.
“I asked Mary Kirsten whether it would be possible to obtain the account record for these cards.” He left unsaid the fact that the information was obtained without the rigors of a court mandate or any due process in Scotland or the United States. Both knew the Bureau’sPhreaks were busily penetrating any number of secure financial and government institutions at the request of various users. The digital age had effectively buried privacy under the gavel called national security.
Mary’s email response raised more questions and warning bells. “That can’t be right.”
Cecil smirked. “According to the Bank of Scotland the cards each have a one-hundred-thousand-dollar limit and they are billed to the Iranian Embassy in London. Hyder passed through London on his way to Chicago, and there is this.” He clicked the signature card jpeg file. It was matched to the signature on Parvez’s American passport. The card’s date corresponded to the date when Parvez had been in London.
“Iraqi passport and Iranian bank account,” murmured Ellen. “Iraq and Iran—I thought they hated each other.”
Cecil watched Ellen’s face and said evenly, “They hate us much more than each other. He’s a Muslim and his mother was involved with the Chechen resistance. But he didn’t come home to murder his mother and grandfather. Someone else did that deed, and we had better find out who.”
Ellen nodded as she pondered the information scrolling across Cecil’s screen. “But a hundred-thousand-dollar limit suggests…”
“Something major,” finished Cecil as he started typing again on a new search engine window. “I’m going to make a couple of assumptions regarding the man we are looking for. Parvez entered the country on October 9 and the murders occurred on October 21. I’d say we are looking for a man between twenty-five and fifty-five. That should eliminate a great many people coming through Chicago’s port of entry. In addition, he should be operating on a foreign passport and we will probably discover the passport is a forgery. I propose we concentrate on European countries, since this is the most likely profile a Russian would use. Finally, the person we are looking for has not left the country—at least using that passport.”
“But there must be thousands of hits…”
Cecil shook his head. “Five hundred fifty-two to be exact.” He sensed blood beyond the GUI screen and trite mouse clicks. Heknew he had a Russian agent slithering through his country, and Cecil intended to add one more notch to his belt before Feldman figured out a way to quietly remove him from the scene. He intended to savor his last chase before retirement stifled him with boredom.
Modern technology reduced tasks that would have taken days or weeks into mindless CPU cycles and data links. The Customs Service captured the passport control numbers for each foreign national entering the country. Cecil simply reduced the universe of possible suspects to a manageable number. He expected a two to three percent hit rate. Based on the profile Cecil had developed and the reciprocal arrangements between Europe and the America, Cecil anticipated a list of twenty or so anomalous passports. The computers returned an even dozen.
“These are the results of a search I conducted last night and this morning,” he continued. He handed Ellen a folder complete with passport number, name, and country of issue. “There are a dozen rogue visitors based on my profile still inside the country who arrived in Chicago.”
Ellen took the proffered folder and flipped it open.
“That doesn’t explain Hyder,” she murmured.
“No, it doesn’t,” agreed Cecil.
Ellen pressed her lips together, and then decided. “I’m going to issue a national alert to detain Hyder for questioning in connection with the murders of his mother and grandfather.”
Cecil nodded quietly.
“I can bury Hyder’s name inside this list,” she continued.
“It might be best to suggest he might be armed.”
Ellen nodded slowly. “Say we catch your Russian—what then?”
“We break him,” replied Cecil.
“This isn’t the Cold War.”
“It ain’t peace either.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Pittsburgh, PA,Pittsburgh Gazette,November 3, 2000 –Youth-e-vote conducted a nationwide online election for students from K to 12thgrade. With more than 1.2 million votes cast, George W. Bush garnered 58.9 percent of the national vote and 56 percent of the Pennsylvania vote. Historically, the kids have been very accurate in every election they have participated in. Experts suggest the kid vote is a very accurate reflection of their parents’—the real voters—intentions.
CIA Safe house, Virginia
Friday, November 3, 2000
10:00 A.M. EST
Jonas Benjamin sat in the safe house’s enclosed control room located on the second floor. His attention was focused on the three closed-circuit television monitors connected to wide-angle cameras mounted throughout the basement.
Isaac Timmerman paced back and forth across the center closed-circuit television. His pulse, respiration, blood pressure, and a dozen physical characteristics Jonas could only guess at were carefully measured on the monitors rack-mounted above the television screens. Isaac was dressed in an orange jump suit similar to those used by county jails; however, his jumpsuit was devoid of any identifying marks.
The room was entirely white. The walls were padded and the normal hard edges found between wall and floor or inside corners had been sculpted to a smooth curve. Isaac could have been inside an eggshell for all he knew. The fluorescent lights were housed in panels flush to the ceiling and the only door leading into the room had no internal handle. The room was climatically controlled and it could become anything from the hard-packed desert found in Death Valley to the deadly iciness north of the Arctic Circle.
Isaac began his journey to the white eggshell room when a black hood dropped over his head and his hands were cinched tightly inside plastic restraints. The last thing he remembered from the farm were rough, professional hands grabbing him and a hypodermic needle plunging into his bicep. Evidently, very serious people protected Damon Layne’s Virginia retreat.
The CIA was not a law enforcement agency, and conducting intelligence operations inside the United States was strictly prohibited. The Congressional committees responsible for oversight knew nothing of the Virginia safe house, and they had only a vague concept of the action teams.
Isaac Timmerman was another step on the road towards Damon Layne. Jonas had set up a query inside the Agency’s massive computer system for any new information on Damon Layne. Isaac’s interrogation quickly centered on his reason for penetrating the farm—to murder Damon Layne under contract for Adrian Bridger. The American pharmaceutical industry produced wonder drugs craved by the entire world, and a number of darker concoctions designed to make anyone spill their guts. Isaac had been subjected to multiple series of psychosomatic drugs.
Jonas stared at the black killer-for-hire who prowled his seamless cell. The information on Damon Layne was missing. He was nothing more than a name attached to a mysterious past that existed beyond the digital universe on hard copy in a locked vault. It did not matter, Jonas had already read Layne’s Q file and evidently so had Isaac Timmerman.
Isaac’s knowledge sent tremors vibrating throughout the CIA’s counterintelligence establishment. The interrogation transcript was fed to the internal search engines and an exact match between Jonas’ query regarding Damon Layne and Isaac’s assignment to kill Layne brought Jonas into the secret sanctum of domestic operations.
Jonas pressed the intercom and said, “Mister Timmerman, I would like you to tell me about Adrian Bridger.” Isaac had identified Bridger as the person who had hired him to kill Layne.It was a lethal revelation.
Isaac stopped pacing and twisted around looking for a source of the speakers and cameras. The lights never dimmed inside his room, and meals appeared at odd intervals inside a compartment. They fed him sandwiches and juice boxes, but nothing that required utensils. He suspected he had been drugged, but this was the first time the wall spoke.
Jonas watched Isaac’s pulse rate spike on the monitors. Fear could be a useful tool. “I know Adrian Bridger hired you to murder Damon Layne,” continued Jonas.
Isaac charged the padded wall. The sculpted curvature of the floor meeting the wall prevented Isaac from developing any speed or traction. He bounced off the wall and spun back to the source of Jonas’ voice and growled.
Jonas looked at the file folder on Adrian Bridger. It had a photograph, summaries of his last year’s IRS 1040 form, three residential addresses, and a New York business address. Adrian reported a hefty income derived from his partnership in a Manhattan law firm, and a number of international trips.
He glanced at the monitor, following Isaac’s progression across the room. “We can make this hard or easy, Mister Timmerman.”
Isaac turned to a different wall and snarled menacingly. He spun like an animal caught in a trap. He tumbled across the room, attempting to grapple the wall and discover a weapon.
“You definitely won’t enjoy the hard way,” warned Jonas.
Isaac paused and cocked his head. “What do you want to know?”
Jonas settled back into his chair. “That’s much better,” soothed Jonas.
Isaac found the voice coming from the wall behind him and his eyes hurt. The white room hurt his eyes, and his head pounded.
“Tell me about Adrian Bridger,” commanded Jonas.
“I’ll need protection. If I tell you about him, he’ll kill me,” bargained Isaac.
Jonas closed his eyes and ignored the obvious problems of ever allowing Isaac his freedom. Isaac’s life was measured in hours at best before a security team took him on a one-way trip over the Atlantic Ocean beyond the continental shelf.
“We can work something out,” suggested Jonas.
Isaac began talking about Bridger. It was a disjointed and tortured explanation, but Isaac began filling in the gaps, and Bridger’s character behind the sterile facts began to emerge. Two hours later, Jonas slipped out the backdoor to a waiting car and one of Louis Edwards’ bodyguards.
* * * *
New York City
Adrian Bridger left his corner office on the fortieth floor. His law firm specialized in union litigation, insurance fraud, medical malpractice, and product liability. There were over one hundred lawyers litigating away on the four floors leased by the firm. Bridger had successfully liberated a king’s ransom during the tobacco lawsuits, and a tidy one hundred million dollars was stashed in a Cayman Island bank account. The tobacco money and the successful settlements made Bridger one of the new super lawyers who owed their incredible fortunes to a President who steadfastly stonewalled all attempts at tort reform.
He walked down the richly appointed teak corridor past his secretary to a solid steel door adorned with fake wood grain. Bridger produced a key secreted in his vest pocket. He slid the key into the lock and opened the door to a private stairwell leading down to the thirty-ninth floor.
Bridger waited for the door to close noiselessly behind him before making his way down the steps. The bottom of the stairwell was an imposing white and tan steel door with a ten-digit cipher lock. He tapped in the code and waited for the three, inch-wide bolts to slide clear. The door popped open.
He stepped into a compact apartment festooned with DVD players, a wide screen television, a Sony PlayStation 2, and a Direct-TV satellite receiver. The dirty dishes were removed every morning by a cleaning staff that handled the linen and janitorial duties under the watchful eyes of Bridger’s security team. Whenever the cleaning or security staff arrived, the two men occupying the apartment vanished into a second set of locked doors. These doors could only be accessed using a thumbprint and retinal scan verification system.
Bridger was not planning to rely solely on the delinquent attitudes of corrupt union stewards and drug lords whose loyalty was for sale to the highest bidder. The theft of a presidential election in the digital age relied on assets beyond the paltry mechanics of punch card voting booths and mishandled ballot boxes. The election turned on perception as much as raw vote counts. Bridger intended to control both. Armed guards protected the high security apartment around the clock. The five hundred thousand dollars in computer equipment was an investment in the future; a future where Bridger’s candidate won the election and the manipulation of billions—not millions—became possible.
The second door opened into a Spartan white computer room. The air conditioner whistled through blowers installed beneath the raised floor, and two refrigerator-size HP N-class servers hummed quietly beside an EMC disk tower. A pair of twenty-inch monitors flickered on raised desks as two pimply faced, tepid white men tapped haphazardly on the keyboards and manipulated remote systems using an X-Windows session.
The disk lights on the EMC disk array twinkled as gigabytes sped across the network and bounced from New York to servers in Philadelphia, Tallahassee, and Detroit. Bridger could afford to pay his two computer geeks handsomely. Once they completed this job, he had promised them white sand beaches, copious amounts of booze, and plenty of willing women. Success in this venture would lead to other venues elsewhere in the world. After all, in a world of budding democracies, there were still those who would strive to hold power no matter what the cost.
Lawrence Halliwell glanced up from his screen and said, “Hey, Mister Bridger.”
Bridger did not tolerate such familiarity from anyone else, but Lawrence had a hard time focusing on much else without his morning cocaine snort. The security team doled out the illicit white powder every morning. Lawrence’s addictions did not concern Bridger overly much. He had been in the drug trade for close to twenty years.
Kenny Caan clicked through a series of screens before downing half a can of soda. His eyes played across Bridger’s thousand-dollar suit as it moved against the backdrop of the South Park poster tacked on the wall behind him. Kenny was an extraordinary talent with the cultural firepower of a seven-year-old. When he was not doodling expensive computer systems, he was tuned into the Cartoon channel.
“How’s VNS doing?” asked Bridger. VNS was the Voter News Service, which was a conglomerate assembled by CBS, CNN, ABC, NBC and FOX to provide statistical projections down to a precinct level for the upcoming presidential election. The networks foisted the myth that their projected election results were derived by independent analysis, but everything broadcast across the nation came from the same flawed database. It was the Achilles heel of the entire election reporting cycle, and Bridger intended to exploit it.
Lawrence gazed dreamily at the Pamela Lee Anderson poster next to the South Park one before answering, “We just finished tweaking Ohio this morning.”
“A republican needs to take Ohio in order to win the Presidency. We’ve adjusted the norm tables in the VNS Ohio model to require the democrat to be losing by at least twenty points before VNS will project a winner. Conversely, we fiddled the Pennsylvania numbers to require a very slight lead before issuing the call to the democrat,” explained Kenny.
“The effect of these changes is to make it seem like a democratic landslide is in the works. The critical east coast states will demonstrate a trend, and the networks—not wishing to be scooped by a competitor—will start making calls. Based on the simulations we’ve run, it should become a feeding frenzy,” noted Lawrence excitedly.
“There should be a ripple effect in the marginal Western states of New Mexico, Nevada, Washington and Oregon. Those states should be real votes. That combined with a depressed republican turnout, because they think they are losing the election, should make it happen,” concluded Kenny.
“Can we turn it fast enough to call the election before Texas closes its polls?” asked Bridger.
Kenny shrugged. “Everyoneknows how California is going to fall and Alaska and Hawaii haven’t altered their voting patterns except for the Reagan/Mondale election, and that was an anomaly. It should look pretty good around here by nine or nine-thirty next Tuesday.”
“What about Florida?” pressed Bridger. He continued to have nagging doubts. The internal numbers coming out of Texas suggested the Lone Star state would be getting a new governor. Florida remained a problem.
