The Alexandria Connection (17 page)

O’Connor and his men had barely recovered from the shock waves of the drone attack when four Hellfire missiles struck the Taliban positions in front of them. O’Connor shook his head to clear the ringing in his ears.

‘They’re pulling out!’ Kennedy fired a burst at the fleeing Taliban from his M14.

O’Connor doubled over to Kennedy’s position. ‘How bad’s Rayburn?’

‘Pretty bad . . . the medic’s with him behind the next tree.’

‘Ventura – get a Black Hawk in here, fast. And let Night Thruster and Burglar know the Taliban have pulled out, but I want them to hang around.’

Less than thirty minutes later, the C-130 gunship laid down a curtain of sustained 30-millimetre cannon fire, just in case the Taliban had any ideas of claiming another aircraft, and the Black Hawk medevac chopper came in low and hard, weaving from side to side. Under the Geneva Convention, the ‘dustoff’ choppers, as they’d been known since Vietnam, could not be armed, so the medics were often in for a wild ride as the pilots took evasive action against the possibility of taking fire from the ground. The landing zone was tight, but these were some of the best helo pilots in the world, and Captain Ella Nicholson put it down in a cloud of dust, the rotors almost brushing the tree foliage.

The crew doubled over with a litter, and moments later, they had Rayburn on board, frantically fitting him with a drip as the helo lifted off, banking sharply under full power.

‘We’ll have to search every one of those houses down there, and the villagers aren’t going to be pleased to see us, so stay spread out,’ said O’Connor, leading the team down the ridgeline.

They propped on the outskirts of the village, while O’Connor made contact with one of the village elders.

‘Put a sentry up behind that high rock, Chief,’ ordered O’Connor. ‘Two men to search each house, while the rest of us cover them . . . one house at a time.’

‘Got it. Ventura – up behind the rock. Cover the ridge we’ve just left, and the one to the south.’

Stone hut by stone hut they searched, doing their best to be as unintrusive as they could. The old men watched resentfully, the women and children fearfully; but after two hours, there was nothing.

‘Apart from a complete absence of young men, fuck-all,’ Kennedy observed at the end of two hours of fruitless searching. The sun had reached its zenith, and the team, O’Connor knew, were close to exhaustion. The mental tiredness associated with close-quarter fighting was often not well understood, especially by the politicians in Washington. O’Connor contemplated his next move. If the Taliban were waiting for them at the next village, another firefight like the one they’d just been through might be asking a bit much, even from these battle-hardened warriors, but the intel operator interrupted his thoughts.

‘This is just in from JSOC,’ Chico said. ‘They’ve analysed some satellite photos, and there’s an area of recently disturbed soil, not far from Ventura’s sentry position.’

O’Connor scanned the photographs Chico had downloaded from the Joint Special Operations Centre. The disturbed soil was clearly visible. The thermal imaging, or infrared cameras on board the satellite had picked up the different signatures. O’Connor knew well that if earth was recently turned, the looser soil would radiate heat differently from the surrounding undisturbed soil.

‘This operation must have some clout,’ Kennedy observed. ‘It’s not every day they make a satellite available to us mere mortals.’

O’Connor grinned. Gaining support from the Hercules C-130 gunship and the drone still circling above them was hard enough, but with competing requests for surveillance over the spiralling number of trouble spots in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Somalia and Yemen, satellite tasking was at a premium. O’Connor was in no doubt who had ordered the pass. The huge KeyHole spy satellites were the size of an American yellow school bus, and their orbit was measured in kilometres rather than feet – as high as 36 000 kilometres above the earth’s surface and travelling at five kilometres a second. McNamara would have been rebuffed all along the way, and O’Connor could vividly imagine the conversations. McNamara didn’t take no for an answer when his men were up against it in the field, and the final call to the White House would have cleared the obstacles – instantly.

‘You’ve noticed. That request would have gone all the way to the top, Chief. Let’s see what they’re hiding here.’

Chico was, like the rest of the team, multiskilled and as handy with a shovel as he was with a laptop, and within minutes he and O’Connor struck something hard underneath the loose soil.

The khaki-green metal container, stamped ‘reusable do not destroy’, was just under two metres long, and together they levered it out of the pit.

Kennedy let out a low whistle. ‘Holy shit . . . a Scorpion SAM. How the fuck did these towel-heads get hold of one of those?’

‘They’ve got more than one, I suspect,’ O’Connor muttered. ‘I think it was a Scorpion that got the F-16.’ O’Connor searched the box, which revealed nothing other than the accessories and instructions. He was about to close the lid when he spotted the corner of a piece of paper sticking out from behind the foam padding in the case.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘we’ve got what we came for. Chief – put the elders under the spotlight again, but I doubt they’ll tell us anything. Ventura – keep the gunship and drone on station in case we need them, and whistle up a couple of Black Hawks. We’re out of here.’

‘The piece of paper . . . need to know?’ Kennedy asked, as they made their way back to the village.

‘For the moment. I’ll make sure you and the rest of the team are in the loop before it becomes public. And when it does, the shit will hit the fan . . . big time.’

High among the cedar trees on the mountains across the river, Jamal put down his binoculars. ‘The Infidel has found one of the missiles, but we still have the others, and he will pay for today,’ he added bitterly.

‘
Insha’Allah
,’ Yousef agreed. ‘I will return, but for now I have another mission. If it’s successful it will go some way toward atoning for today. We’re going to hit the Infidel where it hurts him most.’

‘Y
ou can go straight in. Ms Murray from the NSA’s already there,’ said Chanelle.

O’Connor flashed his usual smile at McNamara’s PA, and he strode into the inner office.

‘Welcome back . . . this is Barbara Murray from the NSA.’

‘I’ve heard quite a lot about you, Mr O’Connor. Do you mind if I call you Curtis?’

‘Not at all,’ said O’Connor, taking one of his boss’s battered leather couches. The striking redhead from the NSA was very easy on the eye, he thought.

‘He’s been called a lot of other names, most of them uncomplimentary,’ said McNamara.

‘Usually by enemies of the state, some of whom I left behind in Afghanistan. Thank you for that little mission, sir . . . most enjoyable.’ The only time O’Connor ever called McNamara ‘sir’ was in front of junior CIA employees or people outside the agency. It was a game, and both men played it well.

‘My pleasure, O’Connor,’ said McNamara, a smile dancing at the corners of his mouth. O’Connor didn’t know it, but McNamara had already received an after action-report from the commanding general in Afghanistan, with a recommendation that, for the second time, O’Connor receive the agency’s highest award for valour, the Distinguished Intelligence Cross. It would be awarded very quietly, although his colleagues in the agency would know. None would be surprised.

Barbara Murray looked from one man to the other. Clearly there was a strong camaraderie between the two, and their light-hearted banter was a pleasant change from the humourless corridors of power at the NSA. Since the tapping of the phones of leaders around the world had become public, the NSA was an agency under siege. And the rumours had been correct – O’Connor was not only ruggedly good looking, but there was an air of confidence about him. Clearly his own man. Taken? she wondered.

‘So . . . what’ve we got? Barbara’s cleared into the compartment,’ McNamara added.

‘The Taliban and possibly al Qaeda have acquired at least one, and perhaps several more Scorpion missiles,’ O’Connor began, and he briefly brought McNamara and Murray up to date with the actions in the Korengal Valley. ‘Given that technology is as closely guarded as any in this country, the question is how, but whoever is supplying these missiles may have made their first mistake,’ O’Connor said, producing the piece of paper he’d found in Laniyal.

‘I found this inside one of the missile cases . . . it’s a packing note, with the EVRAN logo.’

‘And the significance of that? EVRAN manufactures these missiles,’ McNamara said, taking the packing note.

‘Ordinarily, there might be no significance, but that packing note hasn’t come from EVRAN’s missile plant in California. It’s in Spanish and it’s a packing note for Ipé timber from EVRAN Timbers in Brazil.’ Ipé, or Brazilian walnut, was some of the hardest wood on the planet, and as a result, there was a huge demand for it to construct outdoor decks. ‘I suspect it fell into the missile case when they opened it, and they didn’t sanitise the case before they buried it.’

‘It’s not a smoking gun . . . but you think there’s a link between the missiles and EVRAN timbers?’ Murray asked.

‘Don’t know yet,’ admitted O’Connor, ‘and I can’t decipher the employee’s signature, but when we do, I’m willing to bet we’ll find him at one of EVRAN’s timber mills on the banks of the Amazon.’

Murray looked pensive. ‘There are a couple of possibilities here, the most basic of which is someone inside EVRAN is doing this for the money.’

‘And there would be a lot of it. We’re talking missiles, plural,’ said O’Connor.

‘I agree, and ever since 9/11, al Qaeda and the Taliban – in fact every terrorist organisation on the planet – has found it hard to launder money, but we’re picking up intelligence that they still have their backers, especially out of Saudi Arabia . . . backers who are prepared to take risks.’

McNamara nodded. ‘I’d agree with that assessment. Treasury, State, Justice, Defense – we’ve all managed to tighten the screws on the terrorists’ money trails, but they’re still managing to get around our systems.’

‘They’re wary though,’ said Murray. ‘We’ve seen warnings on extremist websites, and you probably have too – warnings from al Qaeda leaders like Mustafa Abu al Yazid that the West’s intelligence agencies can identify al Qaeda members through banks, credit cards and money transfer services. They’re now resorting to methods that are harder to trace. International trade is particularly vulnerable to manipulation because of its sheer size and the complexity of the payment system. And al Qaeda is also using the mosque network and Islamic charities.’

‘But even if they did have the sort of money needed to buy these missiles,’ McNamara argued, ‘you can’t just roll up and load them on to a truck . . . you would need some pretty sophisticated fraud systems to take care of the documentation, and cover from fairly high up in the food chain.’

‘The high-level cover is the other possibility: someone has infiltrated EVRAN with a view to working their way up the ladder to get hi-tech equipment to the terrorists,’ Murray suggested.

‘A very long-range strategy . . . it might take years to get someone in the right place,’ McNamara demurred.

‘Perhaps it goes right to the top . . . to Crowley himself?’ said Murray.

‘You have anything to back that?’ McNamara demanded, taken aback.

Murray shook her head, but she didn’t take a backward step. ‘Just working on gut feeling and a principle of trusting no one.’

O’Connor smiled to himself. Murray may not have been around when Nixon was lying about his knowledge of the Watergate break-in, or when Reagan was twisting the truth over the Iran Contra scandal, but like McNamara, she’d seen enough to know that many politicians and those with ‘rolled gold’ credentials were not what they seemed.

‘We’ve been monitoring General Khan twenty-four seven. He’s kept in contact with the Taliban, which for a Pakistani from the ISI is not unusual. The ISI’s a law unto itself, and Khan’s obviously still a key player, but what is unusual are intermittent contacts we’ve intercepted between Khan and another iPhone that is rarely used. So far, we’ve only been able to trace it to a shell company. Curiously, we also picked up a short text to the same mystery iPhone from the owner of Galleria d’Arte Rubinstein, which is located in the Cannaregio region of northern Venice: one Zachary Rubinstein. He’s suspected of dealing in stolen artifacts and the FBI have a file on him, but they’ve never had enough evidence to get the Italian authorities to search his premises. Here’s a printout,’ she said, handing copies to McNamara and O’Connor. ‘The texts are short, and don’t give much away, but Khan and Rubinstein obviously know who owns the mystery iPhone.’

O’Connor noted the first one. ‘No word on Euclid, yet.’ Aleta was clearly not the only one to have an interest in the Euclid Papyrus. Rubinstein and whoever owned the mystery phone were on to it as well.

‘What’s this “Cargo arrived, plans in place, choke point first, will confirm in A at P meeting at Kashta”?’ McNamara asked.

‘We’re not sure,’ said Murray, ‘but we’ve also been monitoring the websites Khan and his PA log on to, and two weeks ago, travel arrangements were made for Khan to travel, first class, to Alexandria, which I think is the A in that text. What the P is we’re still none the wiser; Khan spent two nights in Alexandria.’

‘Staying in a hotel?’ McNamara asked.

‘No . . . we checked and all the hotels all turned up blank. Kashta refers to the Kashta Palace in Alexandria, which is shrouded in secrecy. The only thing we’ve managed to find out about it is that it appears to be heavily guarded at roughly the same time each year for a group of people.’

‘Group?’

‘We sent one of our embassy staff from Cairo to try to find out, but the only people on the property were two security guards, both of whom were very nervous and refused to answer any questions,’ said Murray.

‘Well, if that’s where Khan was two weeks ago, it sounds as if he had company,’ McNamara mused, ignoring the fact that the NSA had started to encroach on the CIA’s turf. Turf battles wasted an enormous amount of time and energy, and McNamara wasn’t one to look for credit. It was more important to get the job done.

‘If I’m right – although I accept that may be a big if – and Crowley, or someone close to the top of EVRAN has somehow given the okay for these missiles to be exported, particularly to dubious contacts like Khan, perhaps it’s time we organised an audit of EVRAN’s books?’ Murray suggested.

‘We’d take a
lot
of heat,’ said McNamara. ‘That son of a bitch Crowley’s so far up the administration’s ass you’d be hard pressed to see the soles of his shoes, so we’d need a lot more than a “maybe” before the White House would okay that one. Big donor, this bastard . . . to both sides.’

‘We’ve noticed. I didn’t include it in the printouts, but based on these missiles being manufactured by EVRAN, I broadened the taps. We’ve not yet been able to break EVRAN’s main encryption, but we have got into the phone of Crowley’s personal assistant, Rachel Bannister, and I discovered Bannister is setting up a meeting between Crowley and Carter Davis.’

‘Jesus Christ . . . What for,’ chuckled McNamara. ‘That bonehead would make Idi Amin look like Mensa material.’

‘How about a late entry in the Republican race for the next election?’ said Murray.

‘What! Why?’ McNamara asked, genuinely incredulous.

‘A text between Crowley and Bannister points in that direction.’

‘I’ve worked for many presidents,’ said McNamara, ‘but you’d have to go back to Warren Harding to find someone dumber than Carter Davis.’

Murray smiled, a conspiratorial look on her face.

It suited her, that smile, O’Connor thought.

‘I’ve seen a study on presidential IQs,’ she said, ‘and I think Harding
was
rated the dumbest . . . appointed his mates from “the Ohio gang” to the top jobs, and the embezzlement and bribery in the Harding Administration put the modern scandals like Watergate in the shade.’

‘Not to mention the parties at the White House,’ said O’Connor, grinning at the delicious irony of a president who got stuck into the grog during Prohibition.

McNamara shook his head. ‘1920 was the first time women got the vote in this country, and the Republican powerbrokers tapped Harding on the shoulder because they thought his good looks would appeal to women voters. Good thing he isn’t running now in a world of videos and iPhones . . . treating your wife as a waitress and having multiple affairs doesn’t do a lot for your re-election chances if your key demographic is women. Which, assuming your analysis is on target, makes me wonder why Crowley would be backing Davis, and by how much? There’s not a lot of votes in the “thick as two short planks” demographic.’

‘No – but they obviously think they can present Davis as a candidate with broad appeal. There’s been a proliferation of Political Action Committees recently, and those PACs are being set up at the state rather than the federal level; we’ve traced all of them back to the headquarters of EVRAN.’

‘For more than one candidate?’

Murray shook her head. ‘This is pretty tightly held in the NSA, but we don’t think so . . . we think they’re being set up for Davis.’

‘I thought that was illegal – not that laws have ever bothered Crowley,’ McNamara mused, a thoughtful look on his face.

‘It is, but only at the federal level. As you’re no doubt aware, labour unions and corporations have long been prevented from influencing presidential campaigns, or at least that was the intention of Congress when they enacted the various laws, and the prohibition on corporations goes back to the Tilman Act in 1907. Since then, it’s become far more complex, but after campaign donations for the 1972 Nixon campaign were laundered through Mexican banks which don’t allow the US to subpoena their records, the 1974 Federal Election Campaign Act was brought in to strengthen the prohibition on corporations and unions, and it limits individual donations to $5000.’

‘So in theory, Crowley can’t donate more than that to Davis,’ said O’Connor, ‘but if he’s setting PACs up at the state level, that would allow him to donate to any number of them, and where the state laws are weak, there’ll be no limit at all. What about the Super PACs?’

‘Super PACs are not allowed to make donations to individual candidates, but they can accept and make unlimited donations to a cause. In the 2012 campaign you had Super PACS like Winning our Future, which was generally pro-Newt Gingrich, and Restore our Future, which spent around US $40 million supporting Mitt Romney. It costs an enormous amount of money to run for the White House . . . I think the campaign in 2012 was north of US $700 million, but that’s petty cash to Crowley, and we think he’s already getting around the law with a large number of ordinary state-based PACs and with several Super PACs.’

‘The question is
why
?’ O’Connor wondered. ‘Campaign war chests might be petty cash to Crowley, but assholes like him don’t spend that sort of money without a good reason, and particularly not on a dipshit like Carter Davis. Have you got anything on the likely Democratic candidate – ex-Secretary of Energy Hailey Campbell, for example?’

Murray smiled. ‘There’s already a groundswell of support for her and one Super PAC is up and running. It hasn’t been announced yet, but Professor Megan Becker, the president’s science advisor, is resigning to advise Campbell on her campaign. And she’s not the only one. You can expect Chuck Buchanan, President McGovern’s current chief of staff, to run it . . . and that’s with the president’s blessing. McGovern wants another Democrat to succeed him, and Buchanan’s as tough as nails, although his appointment may raise more problems than it solves and Hailey’s none too pleased.’

O’Connor raised his eyebrows. He’d clashed more than once with the tall eagle-eyed political staffer from Springfield, Illinois. ‘Trouble in paradise?’

Murray nodded, aware that the disclosure of this information was way outside the NSA’s brief, but she trusted these two to protect their sources. ‘You could say that. Campbell doesn’t want a bar of Buchanan, but she’s being leaned on from a high level . . . Adlai K. Washburn, the Chair of the Democratic National Committee no less.’