The discussion moved on to the recent firebombing of a
Brooklyn mosque. Special Agent Kosmalski summarized that although the NYPD had
not finished interviewing potential witnesses, the investigators were not
optimistic. “There are no eyewitnesses stepping forward, no license plate numbers,
no tire tread patterns, no associated microwave repeater traffic,” Kosmalski
glumly informed his colleagues.
One of two CIA officers in the conference room, Samuel
McBurney was absently scribbling on or flipping through pages of the Activity
Summary that Kosmalski regularly provided the team. “Well that’s certainly a
pattern,” he muttered almost under his breath.
McBurney looked up after a moment to find everyone staring
at him. “What I meant was, hasn’t it struck anybody as unusual that, what is
it, seven? Seven incidents of terrorist attacks all claimed by this one outfit have
yielded barely a smidgen of evidence. Isn’t that a pattern? I’d call it a
pattern.”
Kosmalski cast an insolent gaze around the table. “We’re
dealing with criminals, Sam. Terrorist investigations take time. These
criminals generally prefer not to leave the evidence we need to indict them.”
“Criminals,” McBurney reflected as he leaned back in his
chair.
“What would you call Free Palestine?”
“Well, Mossad maintains they’ve never even heard of them. They
call themselves ‘activists,’ we say they’re criminals...”
“And the punch line is...?”
“I thought terrorists seek to politicize their acts by
telling us first and foremost who they are, and then that they plan to continue
unless this and that and so-forth happens. Granted, some terrorists do intend
to simply terrorize people, anonymously disrupting economies, altering
behavior, et cetera.
Our
criminal groups all seem to share a notorious
skill for covering their tracks—yet they always call in to take credit. Isn’t
that strange?”
“We suspect that the Holocaust Memorial job was assisted by
someone inside, whose capture would threaten the broader cell. I’m still not
sure what you’re driving at.”
Reminded again that he hadn’t the patience for work
involving teams, McBurney glanced down at the computer printout. The inch-thick
Activity Summary—a list of investigations compiled by the Department of
Homeland Security—included an executive summary which served as the task
force’s principal working document. An appendix of raw data made up the bulk of
the document, information that consisted of hundreds of single line-item
entries citing investigations throughout each of the FBI’s fifty-five field
jurisdictions within the United States. For reasons he did not fully
understand, McBurney found it fascinating to sit in these briefings and flip
through the pages. A variety of Homeland analysts employed sophisticated social
network software to harvest data and link, say, a bank transaction in Tucson to
a handgun purchase in Wichita. A cryptic description of each entry was assigned
an eight-character alphanumeric designator and grouped by jurisdiction. They
were further subcategorized by type, such as ‘White Collar,’ ‘Narcotics,’
‘Terrorist,’ ‘BATF,’ ‘IRS,’ ‘Homicide,’ ‘Espionage,’ and so on.
McBurney asked Kosmalski why some of the entries showed up
in multiple categories.
“In those instances there may be multiple charges
involved,” Kosmalski replied. “Or maybe the investigation hasn’t been narrowed
yet.”
McBurney glanced over several entries that had caught his
eye.
Kosmalski asked in a disinterested tone: “Find something?”
“Maybe.”
They all watched as McBurney flipped from one dog-eared
page to the next. He circled several entries with a ballpoint pen. “I don’t
suppose any of this is already in DESIST?” he asked, referring to the
comparable foreign database maintained by the CIA.
“Just hand ‘em over. I’ll have somebody pull down the
information before the next...”
McBurney ripped five pages free of the binder and slid them
across the table.
Kosmalski took a moment to scan the circled items, his
face turning a deeper shade with each one. “Someone will get back to you.”
THE NEXT AFTERNOON,
McBurney answered his telephone.
“Kosmalski here. You can ignore my email. I sent over that
information on the files you requested. I don’t suppose the secure package
courier showed up with it.”
“Nope,” McBurney said, glancing at his in-basket. He
thought Kosmalski sounded more uptight than usual. “Everything okay, Pete?”
“That’s Peter, if you don’t mind.”
“If you say so. What the hell difference does it make?”
Silence. “Not much,
Sammy
.” Kosmalski cleared his
throat. “You might try to show a little more enthusiasm for the Task Force. In
light of the fact that all of our necks are on the line.”
The file descriptions that had caught McBurney’s eye the
previous day all indicated having either suspects of ethnic Chinese origin, an
overseas Asian connection, or both, such as ‘Customs seizure of computer
components - outbound Shanghai,’ or ‘Suspected H1-B processing violations -
China.’ Kosmalski’s downbeat tone meant good news—something in the files he
asked for must have nothing to do with terrorism.
“I guess I’ve been a little distracted lately. I may be
heading overseas again soon but you’re absolutely right. I promise to try
harder. So, what did you find out?”
Kosmalski explained that four of the eight cases McBurney
had circled were already closed. These involved incidents of domestic narcotics
trafficking and unlikely to be of any interest. Among the other four, Kosmalski
described one kickback involving an overseas weapons contract, one suspected
money laundering, and two cases of fraudulent passport violations. “We’ve seen
quite an increase of those.”
“What about the money laundering? That seemed sort of
interesting.”
Kosmalski agreed. “That goes back to a suspicious activity
report filed by a Customs official in Cleveland. The inbound passenger was
returning from the British Virgin Islands via Vancouver, and claimed to be
traveling for personal reasons but had only remained at each destination for a
matter of hours. A few days ago, an agent of ours was pursuing what he thought
was an unrelated incident. He made a routine TECS inquiry and discovered the
SAR.”
As most every law enforcement and intelligence officer in
the country knew, ‘TECS’ stood for the Treasury Enforcement Communication
System that allowed various agencies within the United States to share
monetary-specific information. McBurney recalled that Tortola was a preferred
offshore money haven for officers in the People’s Liberation Army.
“And?”
“The long and short of it is an Ohio State Police homicide
investigation, victim white male late-twenties, appears to be a narcotics trafficking
clash. But we now learn that a principal in the murder investigation recently
made the quick trip to Tortola.”
“A quick trip sounds pretty amateurish, like somebody
hiding money from a spouse.”
“I think the principal is unmarried, but yeah, it’s this
sort of thing that triggers a suspicious activity report. Apparently you figured
out she’s also a Chinese immigrant.”
McBurney looked up as an Administrations secretary walked
into his office clutching the mail pouch from Kosmalski. “Your files just walked
in.” He reached out and waved his fingers impatiently. The woman dropped the
pouch on his desk, turned without a word and marched off.
“I don’t think they’ve drawn a complete list of suspects
yet,” Kosmalski said. “I do know that she—a Chinese computer engineer—is
currently under surveillance. Do you happen to recall hearing about that test
plane that crashed a few months ago in the California desert?”
Cradling the phone under his chin, McBurney tore open the
mail pouch seal. “Should I?” He slid the contents onto his desk.
“Probably not. The investigating agent noted that these
engineers are working on that particular aircraft program, which is a
disturbing angle to this.”
“Why is that?”
“You don’t find it disturbing that people designing
airplanes are narco-traffickers?”
“Oh. I see your point.”
“Anyway, you’ll find it’s so far pretty much a
narcotics-related murder investigation.”
“Do they know the cause of the crash?”
“The file doesn’t say. I presume they must know something
by now. Sam, it’s probably a dry hole from your point-of-view. I sent you the
file because I get so tired of watching you poor bastards flail around all the
time.”
McBurney found the folder containing the money-laundering
file. “I’ll take all the help I can get. In fact—”
“I know, I know, the Ahmadi and Senator Milner surveillance
records. I keep telling you it’s out of my hands.”
That’s progress, McBurney thought. At least now Kosmalski seemed
ready to admit, albeit implicitly, that the FBI actually had conducted
surveillance of Ahmadi’s attempt to extort the classified satellite information
from Senator Milner. “Whose hands have it?”
“If the politics change, you’ll be the first to know.”
“I’m counting on it.” McBurney crossed his legs, sat back
in his chair and began flipping through the file. “Thanks, Peter.”
“See you at the next briefing.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
McBurney discovered that the file contained little more
than a preliminary compilation by the investigating agent. There were three
photographs; the first showed a slender woman exiting the lobby of a bank,
shadowing her face from the bright sun with her hand; the same woman, her Asian
face clearly visible as she stepped from behind a palm tree in front of the
bank and into the street toward whoever had taken the photograph; a portrait
presumably taken for a passport or driver’s license—very attractive, McBurney
observed. He flipped through to the back of the file. Details of the
Chinese-American woman’s background and the amount of money involved were not
even mentioned. Too early in the game, McBurney supposed.
He closed the folder and tapped it on his knee, wondering
who he could find to look into it. Most of his staff were already loaded up
with juggling other responsibilities. He stared, thinking, at the investigating
agent’s name and division address on the front of the folder. McBurney picked
up the phone.
“Peter, Sam again. Do you mind if I drop your investigating
agent here a line?”
* * *
MCBURNEY ARRANGED
his
layover enroute to a budget review in Los Angeles in order to meet with Kosmalski’s
agent in the FBI Cleveland office. His flight out of Dulles arrived in
Cleveland nearly two hours behind schedule. Nonetheless, appearing at the
airport to greet him was Special Agent Edward Hildebrandt, a thirty year old black
man with a square jaw and iron-firm handshake.
“Mr. Kosmalski let me know you were coming,” Hildebrandt
said, his accent sounding maybe Alabama or Louisiana. “Welcome to Cleveland.”
The FBI’s Cleveland Division was housed in a sleek new
building located not far from the airport west of town. McBurney followed
Hildebrandt through bustling office areas and people of various ages rushing
about with security badges clipped at their waists, all of whom were as well
dressed as Hildebrandt. They entered a large but hushed area crammed with
modular offices. Once seated inside Hildebrandt’s cubicle, McBurney glanced at
several pictures of the FBI agent with his wife and young child, a boy who wore
an infectious smile. Two diplomas hung on the partition behind the desk, one
from the University of Kentucky and the other from the FBI Academy in Quantico,
Virginia.
The two men appraised one another across a small round
table.
“We’re not accustomed to CIA showing up out here asking
questions about murder investigations,” Hildebrandt advised his guest with a
smile. “What exactly is it you’d like to know?”
“I’m sure Agent Kosmalski reminded you how limited my CIA
purview is.”
“Yes, sir, he certainly did.”
“And that our mandate overrides all that nonsense?”
“He might have mentioned something.”
McBurney nodded. “So far as domestic investigations are
concerned, the Agency is always interested where there exists the possibility
of espionage on behalf of a foreign state. That includes industrial espionage. In
this case, money laundering allegedly conducted by a Chinese national I find
particularly interesting.”
“The connection you just made is speculative.”
“Think so? In your report you indicate obtaining a subpoena
for the woman’s credit card and telephone records. From this I assume you found
she had...I believe her name was...” McBurney bent over to remove the file
folder from his briefcase.
“Her name is Emily Chang.”
“Right. Chang purchased an American Airlines ticket to
Tortola, and then on to Vancouver. Why don’t we start with what first led you
to subpoena the woman’s personals?”
Hildebrandt scratched the side of his forehead. “We haven’t
learned anything from her credit card records because we haven’t received them
yet. Are you familiar with the Thanatech test aircraft that crashed a few
months back?”
McBurney earlier had skimmed Hildebrandt’s discussion of
the test aircraft that crashed in Mojave, California. “Not really.”
“You may not have heard much out in D.C., but it made big
news around here. Killed several folks with family in town, including the Thanatech
CEO’s daughter.”
“What do they think caused the crash?”
“They claim to know, although I don’t think it’s yet been
made public. The crash occurred about the time the division was embroiled in
another case, an Internet child molestation...” Hildebrandt shook his head. “But
they’ve had NTSB sitting in on the crash investigation from the get-go. I
assume they all know what they’re doing.”