WASHINGTON DC: The Sadir Affair (The Puppets of Washington Book 1) (26 page)

In the interim, Marcel had called Thomas Peterson and had asked that he be ready to take the stand later that morning. “It is about time we get these IM communications into evidence, as Samuel suggested,” Billycan had said.

“The Prosecution calls Thomas Peterson to the stand,” the US Attorney said as soon as Lieberman had left the courtroom.

His suit and tie looked awkward on him. The young man was not used to wear such restrictive attire and it showed. After being sworn in, he stepped up to the witness chair and sat down, a look of fear mixed with curiosity masking the line of his youthful face.

“Thank you for coming in on such short notice, Agent Peterson,” Billycan said as he approached the witness. “But we needed to clear a few matters regarding your involvement in the surveillance of the exchange of correspondence between Mr. Sadir and other people in this case.” Thomas nodded, putting his folded hands between his legs shyly. “You have been employed by the CIA for how long now?”

“About five years, sir.”

“You were quite young when you joined the agency then, weren’t you?”

“Right out of MIT, sir.”

“When were you assigned to oversee the exchange of correspondence between the people involved in this case?”

“I don’t rightly know when, sir. I was assigned to quite a few surveillance, transmissions, interceptions, interpretation at once and it’s difficult to say...”

“I see. Would you then say it was about two years ago that your involvement began. Is that a fair estimate?”

“Yeah, I’d say it would be around that time.”

“And you have a supervisor, don’t you?”

“Yeah, Camy, I mean Agent Cameron Sheffield is my supervisor.”

“Is Agent Sheffield the only person giving you your assignments?”

“Mostly yes, sir.”

“There were other people who assigned such surveillance to you then?”

“Yeah…, but see we’ve got a lot of agents working on all sorts of projects all over the place and I get asked to interpret coded or encrypted messages a lot. Camy only looks after the big operations.”

“And in this instance, did Mr. Sadir, at any time, ask you to do anything in particular?”

“A couple times, yes, he did.”

“And what did he ask you to do, do you recall?”

“Well…, I think the first time was when the guys were trying to get a handle on Agent Slimane.”

“You mean, Ishmael Assor?”

“I only knew him as Agent Slimane. We’re not told of the agents’ aliases—for security.”

“Okay…, but are you aware now that Agent Slimane’s real name was Ishmael Assor?”

“Sure, the Deputy told us and then I read about him in the papers.”

“Are you telling this court that you never came across any sort of communications mentioning the name of this agent before Mr. Van Dams told you who he was?” The witness shifted in the seat uneasily.

“Objection, Your Honour, asked and answered,” Simmons blurted from his chair.

“Overruled!” Silverman snapped. He wanted to get the truth out of the agent. “Go on, Mr. Billycan.”

The US Attorney bowed and returned his attention to the witness. “Agent Peterson, are we to believe that you didn’t know Agent Slimane’s real name, when you are the one person who can access information of this kind at the tip of your fingers any time you choose? And please remember, you’re under oath.”

Thomas raised his head, a pleading look on his face. “Well, I wasn’t supposed to know…, but I got curious when the guys were following Agent Slimane’s movements in Paris—before he was brought back to the States.”

“So, you knew his name then, did you find out anything else about the man while you looked up his name?”

Thomas nodded. Meanwhile, Judge Silverman had his eyes on the witness. “Yes. I found out that he was from Israel and that he had been trained by Mossad.”

Billycan didn’t want to stare but he did. Regaining his composure quickly, he turned to the jury. “Are you telling this court that you knew who Agent Assor was and that you were aware of his background with Mossad?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay then, and what did you do with this information, if anything?”

“I gave it to Agent Sadir here.”

“And do you know what Mr. Sadir did with this information?”

“No, sir—not for a fact, no.”

“I see. Let me ask you this then; why did you give this information to Mr. Sadir and not to Agent Sheffield, your supervisor?”

“It’s because Agent Sadir was the one following Agent Slimane’s movements in the first place, and then I didn’t actually know what else to do.”

“Could it be that you would have been facing sanctions if you had revealed your findings to your supervisor?”

“Yeah, I’d say so.”

“Why was that?”

“Well…, I’m not supposed to pull any intel on the agents I’ve got under surveillance.”

“Okay…, we’ll get back to this a little later.” The witness nodded gratefully. “Let’s move on to something else you discovered.” Thomas nodded again while Billycan took a few steps to his table and grabbed a folder. “I have here a couple of “Instant Messaging” communications that have been exchanged between Mr. Sadir and Agent Lypsick.” He turned to Silverman. “Your Honour, at this time, if I may be permitted to introduce Agent Lypsick to the court…”

“By all means, Mr. Billycan, go ahead.”

Then to the jury, “Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, up to this point the name, Jack Lypsick, has not been mentioned during these proceedings. In order to remedy this lack of identification and provide you with appropriate background information, I will now tell you that Agent Lypsick is a CIA agent of long standing. He has overseen the activity of many important operations overseas on behalf of the agency and has a blameless record.” Billycan turned abruptly to Thomas. “Do you know Agent Lypsick, Mr. Peterson?”

“Only by name. He’s never been in the office—not in my section anyway.”

“Okay, and what does his name tell you?”

“Well, he’s way up there—close to the Deputy—as far as I can tell.”

“When you say ‘way up there’, do you mean he’s high up in the pecking order?”

“I don’t really know, sir. I just assume he’s close to the top…, but he’s always in the field and we don’t see him around the departments.”

“I see, but you’ve collected Instant Messaging and other form of communications between him and Mr. Sadir, have you not?”

“Yes, sir, I did. The Deputy asked me a while ago to monitor their communications, yes.”

“When would have that assignment come down, do you recall?”

“About the time Agent Slimane returned to the States.”

“Alright then.” Billycan opened the folder and pulled out a sheet of paper out of it, which he handed to the witness. “Would you mind reading the highlighted part of this communication for us, Agent Peterson?”

Thomas took the sheet and recognition of what he read at a glance made him shiver. He read:

Lypsick:              He’s back. So what do you want to do with him?

Sadir:              He’s gone his way, so there’s only one thing we can do.

Lypsick:              Yes. Let me arrange it. Just make sure he goes to Flint as we discussed.

Sadir:              Who’s going to do it?

Lypsick:              None of your business. We’ve got him and the Kartz woman for conspiracy. That’s all you need to know.

Sadir:              Do you want my help?

Lypsick:              Organizing a little accident wouldn’t be a bad idea, just to ensure we’ve got him out by the end of the week.

Sadir:              No problem. I’ll get someone up there right now. But what about Ms. Kartz?

Lypsick:              Don’t worry about her. We’ll take care of her.

Thomas handed the sheet back to Billycan with shaking hands.

As Billycan replaced the sheet into the folder, he turned to Simmons. The latter didn’t look up. He obviously knew the chips were down. Billycan had just demonstrated that Sadir and Lypsick knew each other and that Sadir had organized the accident in Flint to
“ensure they had him
(presumably Ishmael Assor)
out by the end of the week.”

Billycan turned back to the witness. “Thank you, Mr. Peterson. Now could you tell the court if this message was ‘encrypted’ when you intercepted it?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

Billycan raised an eyebrow. “Why would you think that is?”

“Well, when two agents talk like that on line, they’d feel okay. We don’t survey each other usually.”

“So, it was exceptional that you had to intercept these communications between agents?”

“Yeah…, I had not done it before.”

“Did you send the message to the Deputy Director immediately after you recorded it?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Why was that, Agent Peterson? Were you afraid of something?”

“Yeah...” Thomas hesitated. “See…, I could have shown it right away, but like I said, I didn’t know where Agent Lypsick fitted in the scheme of things. He might have been acting on the Deputy’s orders or Agent Sadir might have received his orders from him, too. So, I decided to keep that I.M. for myself until I knew who was doing what for whom.”

“Okay, Agent Peterson, and what was the Deputy’s reaction when you showed him the I.M. communication?”

“Well…, he went ballistic. He told me and Agent Sheffield to get out of his office and not to come back until we had all of the communications transcribed on paper. He was not happy…, I can tell you.”

“So, Agent Sheffield was with you when you showed this I.M. recording to Mr. Van Dams?”

“Yes, he’d been called in with me, yeah.”

“Did Agent Sheffield know about this communication prior to your meeting with the Deputy Director?”

“No, he didn’t. I hadn’t shown these IMs to anyone yet.”

“So, I gather there was more than one communication you kept under wraps, is that right?”

“There was only one other that I hadn’t shown yet.”

Billycan took another sheet out of the folder. “Is this the second I.M. communication? Do you recognize it?” He gave the sheet to Thomas.

The witness looked down at it and began reading it aloud, without being asked.

Lypsick:              I’ll get you the details later, but our business in Flint is done.

Sadir:              But we’ve got to take care of Ms. Kartz. She’s still on the loose.

Lypsick:              Not so fast. Our man will be in Vancouver by the end of the week. He’ll take care of that business then.

Sadir:              What about the Prince?

Lypsick:              Don’t go there yet, Sadir. Let the dust settle for a bit. We’ll have ample opportunities later to get him. He’ll trip himself somehow, I’m sure.

Thomas lowered the sheet to his lap and hung his head.

“Thank you for that, Agent Peterson.” Billycan stretched a hand to get the sheet of paper back from him. Thomas handed it to the US Attorney, not raising his head.

Once Billycan introduced the two I.M. records in evidence, he went to sit down. Something was nagging at him; it had been at the back of his mind since he had received the two I.M. communications from the Deputy Director.
No wonder Van Dams had kept these under wraps.
Why didn’t Van Dams arrest Lypsick as soon as he had taken possession of these I.Ms communications between Sadir and Lypsick? If not arrest him, he should have at least questioned his involvement. Or was it another one of these CIA cover-ups? It would have been clear at the time that Lypsick was the organizing party behind Assor’s murder and Ms Kartz’s attempted murder. Billycan would have to talk to Van Dams, and the sooner the better.
What’s more the warning makes sense now.

Simmons got up and walked over to Thomas. The agent hadn’t looked in the direction of the defence table up to that point. He had avoided looking at Sadir.

“Agent Peterson,” Simmons began, “You were well acquainted with Mr. Sadir for several years, weren’t you?”

“Yes, sir. He was working on the same floor and we had coffee together in the morning sometimes, yes.”

“Did you have opportunities to discuss Mr. Sadir’s work with him during these little morning meetings?”

“I wouldn’t say we
discussed
anything, we just talked about things... That’s all.”

“And when you ‘talked about things,’ did you happen to mention to Mr. Sadir that you knew about the communications he had with Agent Lypsick?”

“No, I didn’t. We didn’t talk about that. I’m not supposed to talk about anything like that with anybody.”

“I see. So, you kept the two Instant Messaging communications, now in evidence, to yourself. Were you afraid to show them to Mr. Sadir, perhaps?”