The Puppetmasters (19 page)

The call was from a conference room within the Pentagon where a joint meeting of various agents of the NSA, FBI, Secret Service, and Defense Department were present.

The caller identified himself and those present. “Agent Lawrence, you just ran Kendall Radcliffe’s name through the system. Do you have information on the missing people or Radcliffe specifically?”

Agent Lawrence thought fast. It was too late to invent lies at this point. She would surely get caught up in the inaccuracies that were bound to result. No, she reckoned. She couldn’t keep the Mossad phone call from this group. Knowledge was power, and she hated imparting her information before she could work it up.

“Agent Lawrence, are you there?” an irritated voice sounded.

“Yes, Sir. I—uh—received a call a few minutes ago from Israeli intelligence inquiring about Radcliffe’s background.”

“I see. Was this agent a Mossad Agent?”

Damn,
she thought. She was not going to be able to push anything into the grey area. It was going to be all the facts up front … now.

“Yes. It was Benjamin Zimmerman.”

At the news, there was a murmur of voices in the background. This was no low level agent. Director Zimmerman was well known within the upper echelons of the international intelligence community as a son-of-a-bitch in the Mossad. In fact, if one needed to contact the Mossad to seek assistance or cooperation,
it was only after first securing the approval of the director. He was a hard man to get close to. He trusted no one outside the Mossad and only rarely shared bits of information—never the entire piece. How interesting that the tables were turned and it was he that now requested information.

“Why you, Agent Lawrence? Do you know him well?”

“We have worked on some of the same investigations … obviously from different angles … over the past several years.”

There was discussion around the table about anyone else having a professional relationship with the Mossad or Zimmerman. A few heads at the table had worked with Zimmerman on one or more occasions as he rose through the Mossad leadership ranks. But it was decided they needed to minimize the interest of the U.S. intelligence community for the time being, while very little info was fed to Zimmerman. In fact, he would be getting basically public info.

“Agent Lawrence?”

“Yes?”

“What else did he reveal in his conversation?”

“He said they were working on a large scale investigation involving heroin manufacture and distribution.”

“Where?”

“His exact words were somewhere in the Middle East … possibly Turkey or Egypt with transshipments via the Mediterranean Sea.”

The meeting of intelligence experts confabbed and a faceless voice finally summed it up. “We know that Kendall Radcliffe went missing on a chartered flight that also involved the two top executives at Orion Premier Net Services, Paul Fields and Glenn Carson. What do the disappearances have to do with a major, possibly Middle East, drug investigation and Israel? And even as important, what is Radcliffe’s role? She received $10,000 recently via wire transfer from an Israeli offshore corporate banking account, most likely the Mossad. How could the wire transfer trail be so transparent? Why was it so sloppy? Did they want us to find it? Possibly. But why?”

Again, many theories were put forth. It was finally decided that Agent Lawrence needed to be brought into the inner circle of the investigation. She would begin by calling Mossad Director Zimmerman. She would reveal that Radcliffe worked for a high-tech company in the Pacific Northwest as the director of operations. That she had no criminal history, and she appeared to be an ordinary American citizen. If the Mossad director pressed for more info or expressed irritation that she was holding back, she could reveal the company, its business, and the city in which it was headquartered.

The committee rang off, after receiving Agent Lawrence’s assurance that she
would send a scrambled coded email
“For Your Eyes Only”
providing the details of the conversation.

As the meeting attendees from the various U.S. intelligence agencies filed out of the secure conference room venue at the Pentagon, three agents from the NSA stayed behind. Two of the members had not offered any comment during the meeting of the larger group. They sat amongst the others and observed, with technical administrative functions only. As agreed upon prior to the meeting, two of the smaller group (Alex and Ping) were secretly recording an audio of the meeting. The other individual, Frank Reynolds, had arrived early and installed several hidden video cameras that were feeding everything to a private computer not associated with the massive U.S. intelligence network.

They now sat at one end of the large conference room. None of them were taking notes.

“What is
Prophecy
telling us, Alex?”

“There is nothing unusual happening anywhere, except at the Orion offices … which is to be expected. Even there, they don’t have a clue what’s happened to their people.”

“
Prophecy
has been a godsend for us,” Frank stated. “But I can’t help wonder if it isn’t somehow related to the Orion people’s disappearances.”

Alex nodded. “Do you think it’s time we reveal
Prophecy’s
existence?”

Both Ping and Frank vehemently countered at the same time, “No way!”

Frank, the leader of the group, was the elder of the three and a former fraternity brother and good friend of Paul Fields. He was emphatic: “We can never reveal Orion’s secret technical tool to our fellow agents or even to anyone … ever! You both know that. This would not only be on our shoulders … in the form of treason and spying, but it would turn the domestic and international intelligence communities on their collective ears. No one would trust anyone. The mere existence of such a technical phenomenon would cause other countries to seek the like, just knowing that it was possible. The bottom line is that a lot of people would go to jail, starting with us. More would lose their jobs, and a very large U.S. company—a major asset—would go out of business, just like that.”

Ping was the quiet one of the trio. His job was to make sure the data feeds coming from Orion were clean, and to modify the code to establish new feeds outward. He nodded and said, “It could also turn country against country and companies against companies.”

Alex, the youngest of the three, was frustrated, and threw up his hands. “I can’t believe there isn’t a way to use
Prophecy
to locate the Orion people. Do we know who at Orion wrote the code for
Prophecy?
If so, we could enlist their help!”

Frank Reynolds shook his head. “Nope. That was the deal I made with Paul
Fields at the very beginning. In exchange for getting access to and being able to use
Prophecy
for U.S. investigations, we were not to know anything about its development … or developer. He has to be one smart bastard, though! I would love to meet him … or her.”

Ping, the brilliant mind of the group, was curious. “Does the
Prophecy
developer know about us having knowledge of and using
Prophecy
?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“What was its original purpose?”

“You’re asking that now?”

“Well, it might help us to understand its technical capacity.”

Frank was wired. “Oh, how I wish I had asked Paul Fields more questions way back when. I was just so excited that I had a tool that could quickly get intelligence answers. I reasoned that it would not hurt anyone … just the bad guys. I was too busy climbing the proverbial ladder, looking for any way I could to further my NSA career.”

Alex laughed. “Well, it worked! You’re only a level below a cabinet position, and you have the ear of the State Department. You are well thought of, and people trust your judgment.”

Ping snickered at the irony that Frank’s judgment or intuition was in reality due mostly to
Prophecy.

Agent Reynolds looked at his team. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Ping, you make sure the feeds are open and establish any new ones … like to Israel … so we can monitor their waves. Then help Alex analyze the data for any reference to Middle East drug investigations or the Orion people. Call me on your burned phones if you find anything.”

The men left the room after removing their various planted devices.

Agent Reynolds sat in his office and contemplated the events of the day. He knew that he didn’t need to issue warnings to his two young NSA agents. They were both loyal and beholden to him for their jobs. He had basically rescued them from obscurity or at the very least, from the back room of some institution or corporation that promised to be the most boring job in the world. He had brought Alex on board when
Prophecy
was first up and running. He realized he needed someone to analyze the info coming in. He had made Alex believe that
Prophecy
was a secret tool he had been commissioned to develop for the nation’s intelligence community. After a few years, Alex had figured out that no one else used it. He had also learned that Frank and Paul Fields were best buddies. It didn’t take much intelligence to put two and two together.

Ping, on the other hand, was rescued from his own self-destructive tendencies. He had first come to Frank’s attention as a possible
intern shortly after Frank was introduced to
Prophecy.
Ping was a brilliant math and science student at Stanford University. He had a dark side, though. He had been adopted at birth and could not reconcile that his mother had given him up. He partied hard and managed to rack up a couple of misdemeanor charges involving alcohol—Minor in Possession and a DUI—before Agent Reynolds learned of him and plucked him from his destructive pathway. Frank gave him a purpose and offered him a new life doing what he liked best: intelligence work that involved high-tech tools.
Prophecy
was more than Ping could ever have hoped for. He was excited to come to work each day, and couldn’t wait to learn more about the individuals and companies under investigation. It helped him forget about his personal issues. For the time being, he was content to have relocated from Stanford, California, to the Virginia suburbs.

Reynolds wondered what Paul and Orion used
Prophecy
for. Since Orion seemed to always come out ahead of its competition, he surmised that
Prophecy
was being used to check out the competition’s latest technical advancements. He and Paul never discussed
Prophecy.
It was a done deal that worked well, and nothing more needed to be said. The computer and network to which the data was streamed was not housed in any of the nation’s intelligence offices. It was situated in a large fortified commercial warehouse along Chesapeake Bay. The exterior of the building was one of marked disrepair, including tons of rust and dented exterior walls. Any attempts at determining ownership met with overlapping holding companies and trusts.

With the help of Ping, it had been easy to set up the companies and purchase the building by diverting money during a deliberate power surge in the midst of a multi-agency transfer of funds. In the ensuing internal investigation, chaos reigned, and the political party in power buried the story about the missing funds to save face. Needless to say, since then Agent Reynolds was a believer in big government.

He was quite concerned about his frat buddy and good friend, Paul Fields. Where was he? How could he just drop off the radar? Why didn’t any of the cell phones ping from a tower close by? Worse, what if the disappearances related to
Prophecy?
The horror of that info getting out was too much to contemplate. On the other hand, if no one else knew about Frank’s involvement, and the Orion people turned up dead, then the secret would be buried with them. Frank might lose his technical ace if the data link unexpectedly closed up, that is, if
Prophecy
stopped working. It wouldn’t be the worst thing that happened. But it might affect his career going forward. He still had another ten years before retiring.

Agent Reynolds was weary from his scattered thoughts replaying different scenarios. He knew he was overthinking the situation. It was going to have to play out on its own. He could only hope that
Prophecy
revealed more details. But the failing of
Prophecy
was that he didn’t know where to direct the data
streaming … to or from. He was anxious to get more answers but even more fearful of what might be revealed.

CIA Agent Candace Lawrence hung up the phone and sat back. She thought it very odd that her phone call had gone to voice mail. She expected Mossad Director Ben Zimmerman to be literally waiting next to the phone for her call. But he didn’t pick up. She had an uneasy feeling that she had been played.
But why? For what purpose? Well, two can play this game,
she thought. She set about working on a plan to further engage Ben Zimmerman. In the meantime, she duly notified the multi-agency investigative team of the upshot of her attempted phone call. Candace desperately wanted to be part of the investigation, and she was determined to get ahead of the others, even if it meant a little underhanded dealings and withholding of essential details.