Assassins edge, p.21
Assassin's Edge, page 21
“So the navigation system was hacked?” the secretary of state asked.
“In rough terms, yes. Other systems might have been compromised as well to bring about the collision. If this is all true, it would imply a highly sophisticated attack. Not a lot of countries have that kind of technical know-how—basically, the ones we’ve already mentioned.”
The room fell silent, thoughts spinning in countless directions.
“It seems increasingly clear,” the president finally summed up, “that we are under attack, and by means that are not unsophisticated. Still, the question remains—who is responsible?”
The JCS chairman said, “I say we take route one. Right now, we’re tracking the two ships that were likely involved. We could seize one or both, go over their equipment, interrogate the officers and crew.”
“Under what authority?” Cleveland asked.
Chief of Staff Markowitz, a lawyer by education, said, “Our proof is thin, but it will firm up in time. I think we could come up with some kind of legal justification.”
“I don’t see waiting as an option,” said Sorensen. “We’ve lost a lot of lives in what appear to be two complex, well-planned strikes. There’s no telling what’s next. A close look at these ships would almost certainly tell us who’s running them.”
The DNI said, “The one that came from Crimea, Atlas—she did something very peculiar yesterday. As we were tracking her, she made a quick port call in Eritrea. We watched her drop off most of her crew near a small village on an island.”
“Is she still there?” Sorensen asked.
“No. As soon the crewmen debarked, she headed straight back out to sea. Right now, she’s under way in the Indian Ocean. We kept constant eyes on her with Reapers all day yesterday, but now that she’s getting farther out to sea, we elected to hand off the shadow to a destroyer that was in the area—Bainbridge.”
“Is that not a risk?” Markowitz asked. “We know what this ship might be capable of.”
“We briefed Bainbridge’s skipper on the threat,” said the general. “Forewarned of the possibility of meaconing, there are simple countermeasures that minimize the risk. Also, ever since this stop in Eritrea, our surveillance has noted no activity on deck. We suspect Atlas is running on a skeleton crew.”
“Which makes it even more suspicious,” Markowitz added.
Sorensen said, “Going after both ships might not be an option. If Sibir is, in fact, on her way to North Korea, she’ll reach those territorial waters in less than an hour. We should concentrate on Atlas. And for what it’s worth, in my view we’re past the point of getting bogged down by legalities. We need to go on offense.”
President Cleveland looked across the table. There were no signs of dissent. “All right,” she said, “we move on Atlas. Draw up the plan and we’ll reconvene in two hours. If it looks good, I’ll issue the order.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
The meeting broke, and as everyone began filing out Sorensen noticed the DNI huddled in a private conversation with President Cleveland. Whatever he was saying brought a grimace. After he was done, the president caught her eye. “Anna … would you stay for a moment.”
“Sure,” Sorensen said. As if she had a choice.
The president led the way to a small conference room down the hall, and once they were inside, she ominously closed the door. “I’ve just received some grim news. Mossad got a tip yesterday regarding Ayla Bloch’s location. They were told she was being held in a particular apartment in Almaty. They set up surveillance, decided it was accurate, and sent in a tactical team last night.”
“A hostage op in a foreign city? That’s risky.”
“As it turned, more than they imagined. The raid turned into a disaster. After the team got inside, a massive bomb went off. Half the building collapsed.”
“Dear God,” Sorensen said, something lurching inside. “Ayla?”
The president shook her head. “She’s among the dead. Over fifty, at last count, mostly civilians. The entire Mossad team appears to have been lost, but they’re still digging out survivors.”
Sorensen pressed her eyes shut, trying to wrap her mind around it. “Poor Anton.”
“Yes … I know you spent a lot of time with him in recent days.”
Sorensen tried to compute what it meant. “The Israelis were targeted.”
“Clearly. More alarmingly, the ‘source’ of this intelligence was the same one who provided the warnings regarding our own recent catastrophes. There can’t be any more doubt—this is all related. Someone has been launching strikes against us, and now, apparently, they’ve gone after Mossad. Who picks battles like that?”
There was a long silence as Sorensen considered it. The only answer that came to mind was fleeting and vague. “The fact that we don’t know … that might be our best clue.”
Cleveland looked at her questioningly, not on the same wavelength. The path of the president’s thinking was revealed by her next question. “Where is Corsair now?”
Sorensen was taken aback by the shift, but then realized she shouldn’t be. Last year, soon after her election, President Cleveland had signed a document authorizing Sorensen to employ “outside assets” in certain delicate situations. It was called National Security Presidential Memoranda 14, an obscure and highly classified directive that gave Sorensen license to employ Slaton, or other irregular operators like him, on missions on America’s behalf. She had used it right away: under the code name Corsair, Slaton had single-handedly spirited a Russian interpreter out of Syria, and then intervened in the rise of a dangerous new dictator in the Middle East. Afterward, Cleveland had wanted to thank Slaton personally. He’d declined respectfully and returned to his family in Idaho. If the president had felt snubbed at the time, Sorensen never sensed it. On the contrary, she seemed more impressed than ever by the priorities of her newest and most lethal operator. Not to mention, his results.
“I sent him to Tel Aviv,” Sorensen said. “With Mossad being so involved, it seemed like the logical move.”
“I agree,” the president said. Then more speculatively, “It also puts him closer to where he might be needed.”
Sorensen didn’t respond, letting the president lead.
“Anna, our thinking has been too small in scope. I feel like we’ve been reacting to individual disasters, not viewing the sum of events strategically.”
“Maybe so.”
“Get in touch with David. I want his opinion of things on that end. And after that…” Her voice trailed off.
Sorensen looked at the president questioningly.
“Tell him to be ready.”
* * *
The most effective way to kill bad news, Director Nurin knew, was to replace it with something worse. Thankfully, the disaster in Almaty had so far been tamped down without his intervention. Outside Kazakhstan, the explosion and collapse of an apartment building was overshadowed by two greater crises: the loss of a U.S. Air Force spy aircraft off the northern coast of Russia, and the sinking of Ross in the Black Sea. U.S. relations with Russia were in free fall, and official statements from both sides were low on detail and high on rhetoric. Altogether, it was enough to stretch the bandwidth of the most steadfast spymaster.
Nurin forced himself to focus on Almaty. It helped that the blast was so far being treated as an accident—the latest news reports hinted at a gas explosion in the ancient apartment building. Mossad was doing its best to propagate that theory, Unit 8200 echoing convenient facts and speculation online. That would buy time, but the Kazakh State Security Service weren’t idiots. They would find residues from explosive material and discover that a large number of the bodies in the rubble were not residents of the complex, but rather visitors from abroad who’d arrived in the last few days. Nurin’s people, both at headquarters and the Almaty station, were doing their best to clean up the mess, yet there would be no escaping some degree of involvement. The Kazakh government would lead the accusatory charge: a gas explosion implied incompetence, which could be laid at their feet, whereas a conspiracy involving foreign spies pointed the finger elsewhere. And for once, it was actually true.
In a month, possibly two, the Israeli ambassador would deliver a statement: something about a terrorist cell and a murky intelligence operation gone wrong. Perhaps even an admission that Israelis, too, had been victimized.
For now, however, Nurin had time. Time to get to the bottom of whatever was going on. More than ever, he was convinced that Lazarus had an agenda. He thought back to the video outside the embassy in Nur-Sultan, the man with a hitch in his gait feeding the gulls. More than ever, he was sure this was their traitor. Two days ago, Nurin had watched that scene play out with detached fascination, thinking it laughably amateurish.
Only now did he realize who the fool was.
THIRTY-NINE
Bainbridge’s captain, Commander Richard Coughlin, read the order twice before handing it to the officer of the deck. From near the helm, his gaze reached into the dark night—the moon was obscured by a heavy overcast.
“They want us to board ASAP,” the OOD said. “And take the crew into custody for interrogation.”
“After what happened to Ross, I’m not surprised.” They knew Atlas had been near Ross when she’d gone down, and they themselves had been warned that the ship they were following might be carrying electronic gear that could interfere with navigation. They’d seen no irregularities so far, but the crew were cross-checking position data carefully.
“Is the VBSS team still on alert?”
“They are, Captain.”
Bainbridge had been chosen to shadow Atlas for a very specific reason: She was the only destroyer in the vicinity with a VBSS team on board. It stood for visit, board, search, and seizure, a unit with special training for just such operations: weapons handling, room-clearing techniques, close-quarters combat, rappelling. Everything necessary to board vessels, with or without permission, and conduct searches at sea.
Coughlin lifted a set of optics from the chart table. “Bearing and range to target?”
“Bearing one-six-zero, range twelve thousand yards.”
He trained his low-light optics on the misty marine horizon but saw nothing. That afternoon he’d caught glimpses of Atlas, but once the sun had gone down, she’d disappeared. They were quite sure she was running without lights. Her speed was only four knots, which had to be near steerageway—the minimum speed required to still respond to the helm. Everything Coughlin knew about their quarry shouted for caution.
“All right,” he said, lowering the optics and addressing the OOD. “Tell the VBSS team to prepare for boarding.”
* * *
Slaton worked nonstop in his makeshift office at Mossad headquarters. By eight o’clock that night, the files on the table resembled a Jenga game. By ten he needed a bigger table. There had been six briefings over the course of the day, one of them an update on the bombing in Almaty. He had also talked to Sorensen, getting the latest on the American end. Twice he asked for food to be brought in, and later a cot. The farthest he’d been from the room was the bathroom down the hall. Altogether, it was just what he needed—a private space in which to work and think, where he could tune out all extraneous noise. Yet if Slaton’s commitment bordered on the devout, what he had in mind was something no man of the cloth would ever countenance.
He closed a file, got up, and stretched. He made his way to the coffeemaker—Mizrachi had set it up on the floor in one corner—and poured the dregs of the evening batch. Slaton sat on the edge of the table and thought back reflectively to that morning. After leaving Bloch’s villa, he had stopped briefly at a roadside overlook, watched the shadows of the valley recede. His relationship with Anton Bloch was long and tortured, and more than once the ex-director had sent him into no-win situations. For all that trouble, however, Slaton never doubted Bloch’s commitment to Israel. He was tenacious, unrelenting when it came to defending the country. Now his only child was dead as a consequence of that duty. To Slaton, the enduring image in his mind was a stark one: a broken and nearly catatonic man left staring into the hills.
Did absolute commitment always lead to misery? he wondered. Slaton had been able to recenter his own life, yet he’d witnessed more than his share of devastation over the years. Operators lost. Grieving widows and families. Friends and brothers-in-arms sacrificed for the cause. A vague corollary tugged in the recesses of Slaton’s mind but misted away without resolving.
He turned toward the big whiteboard on the wall. It was filled with scrawled notes, and in the center was a large circle; bullet points all around were connected by vector arrows and lines. As visual aids went, it resembled a detective’s map of a complex murder case. Which, in essence, it was. The center circle, unfortunately, remained maddeningly blank.
He returned to the laptop; Nurin had provided a copy of the video from the embassy in Nur-Sultan. Ignoring the clip’s absurd nature—a clownish attempt to deliver a memory stick—Slaton studied the video once more. He concentrated exclusively on the man ambling past the embassy entrance. He had kept his head turned away from the only camera—surely no accident. This was Lazarus. A man who somehow had forewarning of impending attacks on American interests, and who routinely disseminated that knowledge at the last moment, when it could no longer be useful. It had all worked perfectly: he’d gained Mossad’s confidence, then conducted his own devastating strike.
It spoke to two certainties. The man had insider information—he knew who was attacking the Americans. Yet he also carried a grudge against Israel. Whether he was a party to the strikes, or simply had knowledge of them, remained unclear. Yet the second revelation seemed more telling. And far more likely to provide clues as to his identity.
Slaton hit the play arrow again and again. He studied the man’s shape, his clothing, the way he carried himself. He knew he was on camera because he kept his face hidden. Did it therefore follow that the limp was contrived? A preplanned bit of deception, practiced in front of a hotel room mirror? Slaton thought not. It was too obvious, too overtly performed. If anything, the man seemed to be minimizing the hitch in his gait. Slaton also noticed an abnormality in his right hand, the way he held the bag of bread crumbs.
He decided to put in a request to Nurin to have the images studied by specialists. Orthopedic surgeons, physical therapists—Mossad had no shortage of such professionals on call. If the type of injury could be narrowed, it might serve to go back through their records. Check for targets of operations who’d been injured but not killed, or who were documented as having preexisting handicaps. Even bystanders, perhaps, collateral damage of some long-forgotten Mossad mission. It seemed a long shot, yet manpower wasn’t an issue. Nor was motivation. Not after what had happened in Almaty.
Right now, the entire agency was laser-focused. Mossad was a relatively small organization, and on the operational side there were few who didn’t know someone who’d perished in the blast. For Slaton, it was particularly intimate. He’d watched Ayla Bloch grow up. Seen her follow in her father’s footsteps, only to pay the ultimate price. And now—he’d seen the effect it had on him.
There was a fine line between justice and revenge.
In that moment, Slaton was looking straight down at it.
* * *
For nearly a day Langley’s researchers plumbed the enigma that was EDG Industries. The agency had vast experience unraveling the world’s corporate safe havens, yet EDG proved more puzzling than most. Its web of ownership ran through at least six countries and four law firms. Not a single principal officer could be identified through the veiled network of subsidiaries. With those barriers holding fast, a secondary investigative team took the more proven route: they followed the money.
The break actually came from the NSA, and it seemed minor at first: a photocopy of a check sent from EDG Industries to a P.O. Box in Manhattan. The U.S. Postal Service had some years ago instituted a program to photo-scan all mail during sorting, the intent being to make the images available to addressees. What on its face seemed a technological convenience for consumers—a preview of what was coming to your mailbox that day—had proved a bonanza for the NSA.
The agency obtained limited approval to access the files and, using its vast data-crunching resources, was able to highlight a letter bearing EDG’s name out of billions of images. They quickly determined that the letter, apparently a check, had been sent from Albania, with the return address listed as a postal box. The receiving party in Manhattan turned out to be a law firm, but that proved a dead end for two reasons: lawyers tended to know their rights when it came to divulging information about clients, and more damningly for the NSA, the firm of Mayer, Steen, and Gondol kept excellent cyber firewalls.
The return address on the Albanian end, however, was another story. The postal box was easily tracked to Tirana. Better yet, NSA had conveniently, over a year ago, accessed cameras in the postal building in question in the course of another operation. Using the postmark date on the letter, they searched the camera’s history going back four days. Virtually every face entering the building was captured, and NSA fed 512 profiles into its computational machine. This was viewed as a long shot, since the agency’s databases, extensive as they were, contained few ethnic Albanians.
Yet before that search could even run, a second break was realized: another camera in the building sat overwatch on the postal box in question. Shifting among the scenes, they noted a heavily built man depositing a letter, almost certainly the one in question, into the general mail drop one day before the postmark. The man then walked to the postal box, checked it, and walked out empty-handed.
