Ghost (24 page)

“That’s a good point, Fred. God forbid they went after the plane to assassinate the ambassador. Where is he now?”

I tell him.

Mr. Dittmer asks, “Okay, the CIA seems to be convinced this was a bomb. Who are our key suspects?”

“The Iranians. Hezbollah. Syria if the PFLP–GC is behind this,” I reply.

Mr. Dittmer considers this for a minute before saying, “Well, it won’t do any good to send a team to the crash site. The Brits and Scottish authorities will handle it. Our embassy in London will coordinate with them. But we do need to find out if this was an assassination attempt.”

“Yes, sir. We’re working that right now.”

“Fred, you’re going to need to go to Beirut and run this down.”

Our CT chief interjects, “Sir, if Fred goes to Beirut and there’s a Hezbollah leak, they’ll know what we’re doing.”

“Good point. You’ve got a reputation these days, Fred. If you’re seen in Beirut, the word could get out we’re conducting a CT investigation.”

“What about Cyprus, sir?” I ask. “We could set up in a safe house and bring people in through the Beirut air bridge.”

“That should work, but we need to minimize who knows you’re there and what you’re doing.”

We talk logistics for ten more minutes. I’ll go into Cyprus under a false name and passport. With the help of the RSO, I’ll set up in a safe house and bring our agents in one at a time from Beirut. If they don’t have answers, we’ll quietly send them back to get them.

“You won’t be able to tell your family, Fred,” Mr. Dittmer reminds me. “I know, sir.”

I’ll miss Christmas this year. That’s the least of my worries right now, and I have no right to complain. Just ask Ron’s wife about that.

I head downstairs to make a few more phone calls. I pack up my briefcase. I’ve already got an overnight bag with me. I keep it in the office for just this sort of emergency. In thirty minutes, I’m ready to go.

My flight leaves later that night. As we cross the Atlantic, I can’t help but think about the people aboard 103. The most recent reports we received before I left FOGHORN included a chilling tidbit. The cockpit, flight deck, and first-class section of the fuselage landed intact. People on the scene reported the pilot’s hands were still on the control column. Apparently, the nose section tore off from the rest of the fuselage. It spun through space as the rest of the aircraft fell six miles into the Scottish countryside. Two hundred and fifty-nine names are on the manifest the FAA sent us. Two hundred and fifty-nine victims. Were they alive as the plane came apart around them? Some were. Two passengers were found still breathing on the ground by locals and rescue workers. They both died shortly afterward. Others found passengers still strapped to their seats. One woman was found holding her baby.

Yeah, some of them were alive. And while they may have lost consciousness at high altitude, some of them probably came to as the fuselage hit the warmer, more oxygenated air below ten thousand feet. How long did they have to make their peace and say their good-byes? I do the math in my head.

Two minutes. Those poor people fell out of the sky and knew there was no hope, no survival. No exit but death.

The flight drones on. I can’t sleep. I don’t even try. A two-minute free fall. Our people. My friends. Children.

Hours later, I arrive in Nicosia, Cyprus, where the RSO, Bill Gaskell, greets me at the airport. Together, we drive through the city to a safe house. While there, Bill and I work out a plan to keep my arrival quiet. I won’t come anywhere close to the embassy. I won’t be sending anything back to D.C. There will be no paper trail whatsoever. Bill will arrange all the details personally so that our agents in Beirut can be brought out individually and delivered to the safe house with no one the wiser.

Our agents in Beirut are outstanding people. Most are ex–special forces and have long since learned to operate in an environment of supreme chaos and danger. Beirut is still a virtually lawless enclave, and it has long since become a playground for every intelligence agency with a stake in the Middle East. Think of it as a Dark World sandbox. Everyone plays, there are no rules, and there’s no adult supervision. It takes a unique spook to thrive in such a place.

That night, a Blackhawk helicopter lands at our embassy in Beirut. It picks up a lone passenger and darts away quickly, its crew on the lookout for shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles. When the chopper reaches Nicosia, Bill meets it and hustles the agent into a car. He stair-steps through the city, running a surveillance detection route just in case somebody’s watching. In a place like Cyprus, you can bet there are spooks out there, lurking, just waiting for us to get sloppy with our field craft.

The car pulls up to the safe house, and the agent slips inside. The dwelling has been swept for electronic surveillance devices and then swept again just to make sure. It’s clean. White noise machines hiss in every room, in case somebody’s out on the street with a directional microphone.

The posting in Beirut grants these guys some latitude in their dress and appearance. My first visitor sports shoulder-length hair and a big gold hoop earring dangling off one lobe.

The agent and I talk for about an hour. He has not picked up any information that Hezbollah was planning to hit Andrew McCarthy. His informants know nothing about Pan Am 103.

Disappointed, I send him on his way. The next night, another Blackhawk sneaks into Nicosia. Another agent arrives at my door, care of Bill’s taxi service. He’s also got long hair and an earring. I’m beginning to detect a pattern here.

During this interview, I discover two important things. First, it is totally conceivable that the U.S. Embassy in Beirut has been penetrated by Hezbollah agents. The staff includes a large number of local nationals, and they represent every group within Lebanon. There are Druze, Maronite Christians, and Shiite Muslims all working together to help run the embassy. Chances are, there are at least a few agents in place among the employees. It has happened before.

The other tidbit is more troubling. The embassy uses a private travel agency in the city to make all arrangements for its personnel. Using a local company in a place like Beirut is a huge security risk.

I spend Christmas Day in the safe house, waiting for another agent to arrive. Since this is a clandestine operation, I can’t even call my family. For all my dad and wife know, I’ve dropped off the face of the earth.

Each night, we repeat the interview routine, but I don’t learn anything new. We cannot prove Hezbollah penetrated the embassy’s travel arrangements, but we can’t rule it out. There are too many holes that good operatives could exploit.

Ten days later, I’ve learned all that I can. Bill books me on a flight home.

Before I leave, we head out across the Green Line and drive through Turkish Cyprus until we reach an ancient Greek port called Kyrenia. We find a place overlooking the harbor. Moored boats bob on the water, and couples walk hand in hand along the quay that leads to an amazingly intact Greek castle. Built hundreds of years before Christ, it has withstood the ages. I marvel at it. Its massive turrets and thick stone walls served as a sentinel to the past two thousand years of human history. No doubt, those ramparts will stand watch over the passing of our own era someday. It is a humbling thought and reminds me that all this is just a transient moment in human evolution.

Bill picks this time to give me an update on the 103 investigation. There was a bomb on board. It looks like it was placed inside a suitcase that the baggage handlers stowed in the 747’s forward cargo bay. With Pan Am’s help, a suspicious bag—a tan hard-shell Samsonite—has been traced to a flight originating in Malta. It was put onto a Malta Air flight that landed at Frankfurt. The ground crew at Frankfurt routed it to Pan Am 103A, a 727 that took it to Heathrow. It was checked through to JFK. It made it through the entire system without getting screened, even though it was an unattended bag. It did not belong to any passenger on any of the three flights.

Somebody studied our security gaps and then exploited them. And that somebody wasn’t Hezbollah, Syria, or the PFLP–GC.

It was the Libyans. Some highly classified intelligence just came in that condemns Qaddafi once again. The nature of the intelligence is so sensitive that it can’t be released to the public. For now, the fingers will continue to point at Iran and Syria. Meanwhile, the investigators will keep sifting through the wreckage of Pan Am 103, looking for hard evidence that we can use to condemn Libya in a public venue.

It won’t be an easy task. When the 747 came apart, pieces fell across eighty-one miles of Scottish countryside. The investigators are combing through some 845 square miles, trying to find every sliver that fell from the sky that night. To do so, the Brits and Scottish police have launched the largest criminal investigation in their history. It is a process that will take months, if not years.

That night, after we return to Nicosia, I pull out my moleskin journal and make another notation. Chances are not good that we will ever catch the intelligence agents or terrorists who planted the bomb in the baggage stream in Malta. The Dark World tends to shield these anonymous operatives from justice. They move through the cracks in society, cause their mayhem, and vanish as silently as they came. Still, I have to believe that some day we’ll get lucky.

I leave Cyprus and spend New Year’s Eve in the business-class section of a Pan Am 747. The entire flight home, I ponder the ambiguity of my report. I can’t rule out an assassination attempt on the ambassador. Could the Libyans, or Hezbollah, or anyone else have targeted the plane because our agents were aboard? It is maddening to have loose ends that cannot be tied up. The neat little Hollywood endings seen in James Bond films just don’t exist out here in the darkness.

I return to Virginia Avenue to give my report orally to Mr. Dittmer. As I stand in his office and finish up with my inconclusive conclusions, I can tell he doesn’t like it any more than I do.

When I reach my cubicle, I find a layer of cable traffic and other reports waiting to be read. As I leaf through them, I see with dawning horror one question has been answered. The rescue crews in Lockerbie found several passengers among the wreckage whose dead hands still clutched crucifixes. One couple was still strapped in their seats, hand in hand.

These people knew their fate.

The horror of Lockerbie is complete. And it is at times like these that an active imagination is not a blessing for a special agent of the DSS. The nightmares come. Long after midnight for weeks, I cannot help but replay what those final moments must have been like for those people who did nothing wrong but choose the wrong plane to fly home on for the holidays. Night after night, week after week, my imagination becomes a plague. I cannot escape it. I can only try harder, work harder. See more. Do more. It is our job to prevent these catastrophes. My countrymen depend on us to keep them safe. How can I say we didn’t let them down?

And what of justice? Even if we do manage to catch the culprits, is that enough? A prison term or death sentence for them seems trivial compared to the horrors they inflicted on innocent men, women, and children. Will justice be enough to comfort Ron Lariviere’s child in the years ahead as he grows up without a father?

No. Nothing can rewind the clock and abort this catastrophe. Best case, justice will be but a paltry sop to those whose lives have been devastated by this single senseless act.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pursue it. After all, once the last pieces of Pan Am 103 are collected from the Scottish countryside, what else can we do?

twenty-nine

STREET DANCE

Bethesda Bagels
February 1993

For those connected to Pan Am 103, the nightmare will never really end. The investigation continues, but for me, a deluge of cases come and go since those ten days in Cyprus. The years have started to blur together now that I’m the old man of the CT office. Just as Gleason was once the institutional memory, I have earned that title now, thanks to my seven years on the job.

I’m sitting in a bagel shop in our little D.C. suburb on a cold midafternoon. I came inside for coffee and a cinnamon and raisin bagel. Right now, I’ve draped my Barbour Beaufort jacket over the back of the small café-style chair I’ve selected by the window. It has a great view of the street outside.

And I’m studying the street today. People watching is a popular pastime around D.C. Folks will sip coffee and watch the world go by, enjoying the sights. For me, people watching is part of our daily game of survival. We’ve got to be good at it—my agents and I. Otherwise, we will not survive in the field.

I check my watch. Today’s operation started about twenty minutes ago. We’ll see who gets burned. I take a long drink from my coffee cup and peer out the window. So far, I don’t make out anyone. They’re getting better, that’s for sure.

I need to be on my toes, but I feel weary. The burden we’ve carried all these years hasn’t changed, it has just evolved. If anything, the world is even more dangerous now, even with the fall of the Berlin Wall. We have new threats emerging from strange corners of the world, leftover consequences from the end of the Cold War. I’m not sure we’re prepared to deal with them. Our eyes are elsewhere, as usual.

But at least there have been some moves toward justice. When West and East Germany reunited, we gained access to the Stasi’s secret files. The East German police had their hands in all sorts of bloody ops, one of which proved to be the La Belle Discotheque bombing in 1986.

I shake my head. That seems so long ago. I was so fresh-faced and naïve. The world was a big blank slate to me. Now I know its colors and contours. I know just how dangerous it can be. And I’ll never forget the victims. It is hard for agents not to get jaded after all we’ve seen.

The East German files revealed some interesting details. A Palestinian named Yasser Shraydi working for Libyan intel masterminded the disco operation. He worked out of Libya’s East Berlin People’s Bureau and organized a team that included Musbah Eter, another Libyan intel type, and a Lebanese-born East German named Ali Channaa. Channaa was a Stasi operative who worked closely with Qaddafi’s spooks. His wife was the one who actually planted the bomb.

All of them are currently at large, but at least we know who needs to be hunted down and apprehended. That’s a big step forward. Such information is usually frustratingly rare.

Across the street, there’s a man in a jogging suit loitering at a bus stop. He’s wearing a ball cap and sunglasses. He looks cold and underdressed. He’s been there since I came into the shop.

I’ll have to keep my eye on him.

Do the people around me have any idea of the ruthless depths of the world they live in? Do they have any clue what lurks around them? I certainly didn’t eight years ago. Perhaps that ignorance is a good thing. Living life in perpetual fear is not a life at all. In truth, there are moments where I miss that blissful ignorance. Knowledge and a top secret clearance do not equal happiness. I’ve found that out the hard way.

I have a copy of today’s
Washington Times
with me. I open up the front page and pretend to read. My eyes are focused over the top of the paper and on Mr. Jogging Suit at the bus stop.

The end of the Cold War helped solve the La Belle case. Justice has not been served yet, but we have a long memory. If they slip up, we’ll catch them. Same with the Pan Am 103 bombers. Two big breaks in 1989 led President George H. W. Bush to publicly point the finger at Libya the following year. In ’91, we were actually able to indict two Libyan agents for the crime. We can’t get at them. They’re somewhere inside Libya, protected by Qaddafi’s regime. At least we were able to impose sanctions on the country. Libya does not deserve to be a part of the international community. Not after all the violence and chaos it has caused.

The first break came in the spring of ’89. A sliver of the bomb’s timing device was discovered and sent to the FBI lab for analysis. It turned out to be an MST-13 device, built by MEBO, a Swiss company with lots of dealings with Libya. We only knew this because the FBI had an identical timer already cataloged in the database, thanks to the dedication of Special Agent Jim Casey, DSS.

In 1986, Casey was assigned to the CT office and was on assignment in Togo, a West African nation where Libyan intel was operating against the regime. After a run-in with some Libyans, Casey recovered a complete MST-13. This was a very sophisticated timer, complete with its own printed circuit board. Jim saw it and thought it looked out of place with the other run-of-the-mill Dark World gear the ESO types were carrying. He palmed it, brought it back to Washington, and sent it to the FBI for analysis.

His thoroughness paid off. The sliver of the MST-13 recovered from Lockerbie became one of the major publicly announced pieces of evidence used to condemn Libya for the downing of Pan Am 103. When investigators checked with MEBO, the company stated that they had sold twenty of these special timing devices to Qaddafi in 1985. The only other customer for that model turned out to be the East German Stasi.

The newspaper at my side, I stand up and walk back over to the bagel shop’s counter to get a refill on my coffee. When I turn back to my table, I get a good long look at the street. A metro bus rolls up to the stop that Mr. Jogging Suit is hanging around. When it leaves, he’s still there.

How many buses use that stop? I don’t know. Not many. We’ll see what he does next. Not far away from him, I see a transient moseying along the sidewalk. He’s wearing an old green coat and one of those knitted hats with a ball on top. He reminds me of Bob, the U.S. Marshal, who used such a disguise when I met him in ’87 atop that partially constructed building. I make a mental note to watch him closely.

No doubt about it, these guys are getting better. I decide to remain here for a few more minutes before taking to the streets. I’ll give them a real run for their money then.

The timing device probably would not have been enough to condemn Libya for Lockerbie without also exposing our most classified sources. Fortunately, the forensics teams discovered the bomb had been placed in the Samsonite suitcase. Like the bomb found in Frankfurt during Operation Autumn Leaves, the one reconstructed from the crash site had been built into a Toshiba boom box. One pound of Czech-made Semtex plastique was all it took to take down a massive 747. But the explosive residue the blast left behind gave us the most critical clue. It allowed the forensic investigators to piece together the contents of the suitcase. They found fragments of clothing—a tweed jacket, some pajamas, an umbrella, and a shirt—that had been next to the bomb inside the suitcase when it detonated. They traced those items to Malta, and a check with the stores there uncovered a shopkeeper who vividly remembered selling those items to a Libyan. When shown mug shots, he fingered Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, a known Libyan agent.

Okay, enough of the reminiscing. It’s time to get out there and play with these guys. I polish off the last of my bagel and drain my second cup of coffee. As I do, I watch the transient wander close to Mr. Jogging Suit. They make eye contact, and I see them chatting.

Big mistake. I make them both. When on a surveillance detail, it is all too common for operatives to wander over and speak to each other after a while. Watching somebody can get boring. It’s only human nature to want company. But in this game, in the street dance between target and surveillance team, that can be a fatal mistake.

I toss the newspaper in the trash as I leave the bagel shop. Out on the sidewalk, I snatch a glance at the bus stop. The bum and Mr. Jogging Suit are staring at me. So now I will have a tail. I walk up the street and turn right, glancing back as I do. They’re already following me.

Ahead I see a white male, longish hair, beard, and sunglasses, sitting at a window-side table in a “hot shop,” a cafeteria-style restaurant. He’s eyeballing me over a copy of
The Wall Street Journal.
As I walk past him, I see his gaze following me. I reach the end of the block, and as I turn left this time, I see Hot Shop Man on the sidewalk, looking nervous as he heads my way. Not good. That’s three.

There should be one more.

I stair-step up a few more blocks, checking my six at every turn. I see the bum twice. Both times he’s watching from a doorway. Mr. Jogging Suit appears as well. Hot Shop Man stays on the opposite side of the street from him, but I catch the two of them trying to communicate as they go.

Bad move. I’ll remember that.

The SDR I’ve run proves that I have a tail. Now I have to shake it. A funnel is a good way to set them back. A few blocks up, there’s a footbridge over an expressway. That’ll be perfect. I make for it.

Funnels are tough to deal with if you’re trying to surreptitiously follow somebody. Things like bridges or escalators or raised causeways force the surveillance team to break cover and move through a narrow stretch of terrain where they are easily detected. About the only thing the surveillance team can do is wait to cross the funnel until after the target is out of its line of sight. It should give me enough time to disappear into the city grid.

I cross the footbridge. The three men tailing me pause on the other side. They mill around and look out of place. They’ve totally lost both their cover for status and their cover for action. These are critical skills for operatives. I’ve exposed their weakness here.

A cover for status is nothing more than a reason for an operative to be in a particular place at a particular time. Mr. Jogging Suit was supposedly waiting for a bus. The bum was wandering around aimlessly like bums do. Hot Shop Man was enjoying the morning paper. Those worked. What didn’t work is that they lingered around too long. The bus came and went, but Mr. Jogging Suit stayed in place. The bum loitered too near Mr. Jogging Suit. They talked. That looked out of place. Not many people talk to transients. Hot Shop Man blew his cover for status by staring too long at me, following me with his eyes as I went by, then leaving the restaurant too soon.

Cover for action requires more thought and preparation. If an operative is going to move from one place to another, he has to have a clear reason to do so. Perhaps he can cloak his movements by window shopping, or acting like he’s looking for something. He could have a bike stashed nearby and once the target’s on the move, use it to stay in the vicinity and appear to be nothing more than a cyclist out for a ride.

The best operatives don’t stand out. They don’t do anything that would draw attention to their actions. They are subtle, and since most people are poor observers, that makes them as good as invisible.

But I’m a trained observer, and I’ve drawn these three out. They’ve broken two cardinal rules, and now they’re in a tough spot.

I cross the bridge and head deeper into the city. I stair-step at the next block. A cab passes as I cross the next street. I quickly glance at its plates and memorize the number. Two more stair-steps. I’ve lost my tail. A minute later, I see the same cab parked on the side of the road a block ahead. There’s nobody in the backseat. The cabbie’s got shaggy hair, a dark complexion, and a bushy mustache. I walk right by his cab.

Two blocks later, he drives past me again. Okay. I’ve made him. Number four was in a vehicle. The cab was his cover for status and cover for action, but he’s overdone it.

Ten minutes later, I’m standing in front of the bagel shop again. I slide my earpiece into place and key my radio. “Team. This is Merlin. Exercise complete.”

One by one, my agents congregate back at Virginia Avenue. I explain how I made each one of them. They look sheepish over how easily I burned their cover. “Look,” I tell them, “this is going to take time. We’ll get it right.” I lead the debriefing, and we study our errors and figure out ways to correct them.

Practicing surveillance and tailing techniques right here in town has already given us a wealth of knowledge. Communicating with the rest of your surveillance team, especially on the move, becomes a problem. You don’t want to talk with your fellow agent. Too often that blows both your covers. Using a radio or having an earpiece visible is also a rookie mistake. Brief eye contact. A simple hand gesture—subtle, always subtle, of course—these are the ways to speak to each other during this sort of street dance. Clothes make a huge difference. White shirts or pants tend to stand out in the crowd. An agent wearing one or both will usually get made if the target is any kind of observer. Subdued colors that blend into the crowd are the best.

Eyelines are critical components to any successful street dance. Most people keep their heads down as they go about their daily business. Their situational awareness is practically nil. We can exploit that by getting out of typical sight lines and placing agents on balconies, rooftops, around corners, and in other urban nooks and crannies. To avoid typical eyelines takes a light touch and a lot of practice. You’ve got to be willing to think unconventionally. We’re only now starting to really practice this.

A moving target represents a new set of challenges for a surveillance team. How best do you follow your target in that sort of situation? What if he starts on foot but transfers to a car? Clearly, our agents on the street need backup in vehicles. That’s a lesson we learned earlier when we first started this training regimen. But where should they be placed, and what happens if the target takes a city bus or goes into the subway system? These are all tactical problems we’re working to solve.

Today’s exercise was part of a larger plan I’ve been working on for several years now. The Edward Louis Gallo case, the two Libyan hits in ’86 on our diplomats, and the near assassination of President Bush in Kuwait not long ago have all convinced me we need to approach protective security in a new manner. Today’s street dance was another test of my new tactics. We’ll keep working on it. And when the time is right, I’ll take it to Mr. Dittmer and ask that we give it a try. If we do this right, this new concept may just give us the chance to finally get one step ahead of the likes of Imad Mugniyah and Hasan Izz-Al-Din. They’re still out there, somewhere, planning their next op. I want to be ready for them this time.