Executive Power Part 30

"I know I've told you countless times to keep me in the loop, but I think all you've done here this morning is confuse me."

"I would have much rather taken a day or even a week to flesh this out, but considering what happened in New York last night, I wanted to make you aware of it as soon as possible."

"But why?" Hayes shook his head.

"This transcript tells me the target of these two is Israel, not the United States."

"Then why did John Doe leave France for the United States?"

Rapp paced slowly behind the couch, not bothering to look at the President or his boss.

"If his goal is Israel then he should be headed in the other direction, or maybe MI6 is reading too far into this or we're taking the wrong meaning from it." Rapp looked down at the President.

"Arabs are famous for being shameless braggarts when it comes to Israel. They puff up their chests and throw around wild brutal ideas, but rarely do they ever follow through on them. What if all we heard on that tape was a business transaction that-" Rapp thought of something Kennedy had said in the meeting.

"What if Prince Omar was involved in an arms deal with Ali and he got burned?"

Hayes looked at Rapp with a skeptical frown and asked, "Do you really think that's what this is about, Mitch?"

"I'm not sure, sir. It's too early to tell I'm just trying to throw out some other possibilities, before we get swept up in this blame Israel storm."

The President didn't feel like hearing any dissension this morning.

Ben Freidman had abused the trust of his country's greatest supporter and until someone gave him hard evidence to the contrary, Freidman would continue to be the focus of the President's ire.

"Mitch, do you trust Ben Freidman?"

Rapp didn't waver for a second.

"Of course not."

Hayes nodded.

"And you think he's capable of something this reckless?"

This time Rapp took a moment to consider the full breadth of the question.

"Absolutely. If it means protecting his country I think he's capable of almost anything."

The President concurred with a firm nod.

"But," Rapp added quickly, "one thing doesn't quite make sense. I think the fact that the a.s.sa.s.sination took place in New York City leaves some doubt."

"Why, because you don't think he'd risk offending us?"

"Yeah."

Hayes scowled.

"I don't think Ben Freidman worries about offending anyone."

"But Prime Minister Goldberg does," answered Valerie Jones.

"His coalition cabinet is ready to fall right over the edge of the cliff. If he gets implicated in this the Knesset will vote him out like that." Jones snapped her fingers in the air.

"Sir," warned Kennedy, "all we're trying to say is let's be very careful about what positions we take until we know more."

After sitting back Hayes thought about Kennedy's cautionary words and sighed. Her advice went against his instincts. He'd lost all patience with Ben Freidman and his lying ways, but he knew Kennedy was right. He looked at her and nodded.

"All right for now we stay quiet about all this, but," looking to Rapp and Turbes he said, "find out who this man is and if he had anything to do with Amba.s.sador Ali's a.s.sa.s.sination."

Rapp nodded, but Turbes was preoccupied with reading an email off his Blackberry. The director of the CTC glanced up from the small screen, a grim expression on his face and announced.

"Three suicide bombs just went off in Israel."

President Hayes placed a hand over his face and said, "Oh, G.o.dThis just keeps getting worse."

FIFTY FIVE.

The old house wasn't in the nicest neighborhood, and it wasn't in the best condition, but it served its purpose. It was right on the bubble where North D.C. bordered Northeast D.C.

Compared to the southeast quadrant of the city, the neighborhood was tame, but trouble could still be found if you didn't pay attention to where you were going at two in the morning. That was the Was.h.i.+ngton take on things, but having spent most of his life living under occupation, David found the neighborhood to be extremely safe.

He'd pa.s.sed himself off to the landlord as a French software designer who owned his own company and was trying to break into the U.S. market. He would only be in D.C. sporadically, as meetings with his lobbying firm and the Department of Commerce dictated, but when he was in town he would need ample s.p.a.ce to continue his work. The rent was reasonable and the landlord didn't balk when David handed over the first two months plus deposit in cash. In the five months since then David had wired the rent to the landlord from a dummy account in Paris that matched his false ident.i.ty of Jean Racine.

David's only request, which he offered to pay for, was to upgrade the electrical service in one of the upstairs rooms and get the house wired for high-speed Internet access. The landlord, who lived a little more than a mile away, objected to neither and stayed true to his promise that he wouldn't bother David as long as David was a quiet and respectful tenant.

Now David sat in the converted office on the second floor of the Victorian home and concentrated on the array of visual equipment before him. Mounted on the wall were eight Sorry twenty-one-inch flatscreen monitors costing over a thousand dollars each. Two workstations were set up on the long folding table that served as a desk. The station on the left was for checking e-mail, managing his funds, which were spread out at various financial inst.i.tutions around the world, and keeping an eye on a certain online news service that provided almost instantaneous access to what was going on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The other workstation was dedicated to controlling the other seven monitors as they fed him live feeds from traffic cameras around the city.

That part of the plan had been achieved with less effort than he had antic.i.p.ated. Simple bribery had bought him access to the Was.h.i.+ngton D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles' traffic camera network. At any given moment he was just a few key strokes away from accessing any one of the more than one hundred cameras located throughout the District. The pa.s.sword to enter the system had cost him only $2,000.

The DMV was a. true menagerie of immigrants, most of whom had come from Third World countries where government salaries were often augmented by bribes and payoffs. The young Palestinian who he approached leapt at the chance to make a little extra money and never once asked why the stranger from his homeland wanted access to such information.

The man could have thrown out a decent guess, but he would have a.s.sumed wrong. David had his eyes set on a very ripe target. One that would enrage the United States and unite the Arab world. The pressure for peace in the Middle East and a free and autonomous Palestinian state was about to reach an apogee. David just needed one simple meeting to take place and he would spring the trap.

FIFTY SIX.

Rapp followed Turbes down the sterile hallway of the New Headquarters Building of the George Bush Center for Intelligence.

The CTC had been recently relocated from its relatively small s.p.a.ce on the sixth floor of the Original Headquarters Building to the bottom two floors of the south wing of the new structure.

This ma.s.sive increase in s.p.a.ce, staff and budget was a reflection of just how seriously Was.h.i.+ngton was now taking the threat of terrorism.

To Rapp's mind this was a mixed blessing. The new funding was great for buying high-tech equipment and training new people, but it also brought with it more oversight, more accounting, more red tape and in general more people getting in each other's way. Rapp was an advocate of small specialized teams that could react quickly and plan operations with as little interference as possible. Instinctively he recoiled against large organizations and for that reason more than probably any other he always felt a little uncomfortable entering the new CTC.

Turbes stopped at a door and slid his ID through the magnetic card reader, while Rapp loosened the knot of his tie and undid the top b.u.t.ton of his dress s.h.i.+rt. They had barely entered the CTC and a.n.a.lysts were already lining up to have a word with Turbes. Somewhere near the back of the line Rapp spotted Marcus Dumond and Olivia Bourne. Dumond was the CTC's resident computer genius, and Bourne was the senior regional a.n.a.lyst for the Gulf States. Officially, she had nothing to do with Saudi Arabia. Unofficially, she kept as close a watch on the Saudi royal family as politics would allow.

When Rapp had been brought in from the field and named special a.s.sistant to the DCI on counterterrorism, Kennedy had sat him down and given him an overview on the CTC. At the top of the list of the center's most valuable people, Kennedy had placed Olivia Bourne. The thirty-nine-year-old West Virginian had an undergraduate degree from Brown and a graduate degree from Princeton. She had literally no field experience, but was a walking encyclopedia when it came to tracking the Islamic Radical Fundamentalists, or IRF's, who they hunted.

Kennedy hadn't bothered to brief Rapp on Marcus Dumond since it was Rapp who had recruited him. Rapp had met Dumond while he was a graduate student at MIT with Rapp's brother. At the time of his recruitment Dumond had been a twenty-seven-year-old computer genius and almost convicted felon. The young cyber genius had run into some trouble with the Feds while he was earning his master's degree in computer science at MIT. He was alleged to have hacked into one of New York's largest banks and then transferred funds into several overseas accounts. The part that interested the CIA was that Dumond wasn't caught because he left a trail, he was caught because he got drunk one night and bragged about the looting to the wrong person.

When the Feds came and broke down his apartment door, Dumond was living with Steven Rapp. Rapp heard about the incident from his brother and alerted Kennedy, who was then the director of the CTC, that the hacker was worth a look. Langley doesn't like to admit the fact that they employ some of the world's best computer pirates, but these young cyber geeks are encouraged to hack into any and every computer system they can. Most of these hacking raids are directed at foreign companies, banks, governments and military computer systems. But just getting into a system isn't enough. The challenge is to hack in, get the information and get out without leaving a trace that the system was ever compromised. Dumond was a natural at it, and his talents were put to good use in the CTC.

Both Bourne and Dumond were gesturing to get Rapp's attention.

Bourne held up a piece of paper and pointed eagerly to the face on the printout. Rapp bypa.s.sed the line and went straight for Bourne.

Grabbing her by the elbow, he pulled her away from the crowd.

Keeping his voice hushed, he asked, "What's up?"

Bourne smiled.

"We've got a bead on Prince Charming."

Rapp's first reaction was to turn and see what Turbes was doing. It looked like two CTC employees were wildly explaining a problem to the head boss in hopes that he would referee their dispute. Rapp looked to Dumond and Bourne and said, "Follow me."

The three of them walked down the side aisle of the large open room that held a sea of cubicles. The maze of plastic and fabric dividers was affectionately known as the Bull Pen to those who worked counterterrorism.

When they reached Rapp's office he unlocked the door with a key and then entered. Glancing at Dumond he said, "Close the door." Once it was shut Rapp turned to Bourne who spoke both Arabic and Farsi fluently and asked, "What did you find?"

Bourne handed over the printout.

"Our boy flew from Nice to Paris to JFK on Sunday."

Rapp looked at the grainy black-and-white image.

"Where'd we get this?"

"Custom's surveillance camera at JFK. We scanned the Brits' photos into the facial imaging recognition system and let the computers go to work. We started with our in-house database on known or suspected terrorists and came up blank, so before checking with our allies I decided to run a search with Customs on the hunch that if this guy had anything to do with the Palestinian Amba.s.sador he would have had to enter the country on Sunday or Monday at the latest."

Rapp nodded and looked at the grainy photo.

"Are we sure this is him?"

"Ninety-eight point six three percent sure," replied the hyper a.n.a.lytical Dumond.

Holding the photo up, Rapp asked, "Does he have a name?"

"Charles Utrillo," Bourne replied.

Rapp turned his attention to Dumond, knowing his little hacker would have already done a full background check.

"I suppose that's not his real name."

"Nope." Dumond shook his head.

"I checked several French government databases and came up with nothing."

Dumond handed over a printout.

"Here's the information on the credit card he used to pay for the plane ticket. We're running a search on rental cars and hotels within a hundred-mile radius of New York City. If he used the card again we'll know sometime in the next thirty minutes."

"Are you tracing the card on the other end?" asked Rapp.

"Yeah. It was set up for automatic payments from a bank in Paris.

The account has a little less than eight grand in it."

Unfortunately, Rapp thought he knew the answer to his next question, but he asked it anyway.

"And how did that money get into the account?"

"Four separate cash deposits."

Rapp cringed. This guy was covering his tracks like a real pro.

Speaking from experience Rapp said, "The name's a dead end. Wherever he is now, he's using a different ident.i.ty."

"Even so," asked Bourne, "do you want us to flag his pa.s.sport and alert the FBI?"

"Flag his pa.s.sport," answered Rapp, even though he doubted it would do any good, "but hold off on the FBI for a bit. Let me talk to Irene first and see what she wants to do." Rapp paused and put himself in the shoes of the a.s.sa.s.sin for a moment. He tried to guess what the man's next move would be. His options were to either stay in New York and wait until things settled down or leave immediately. If it was Rapp he would have left immediately. Canada would have been his first choice, and then head back to Europe, or if he had time, head west.

"Start checking security cameras at the three major airports from eight last night until this morning. Concentrate on outgoing international flights especially anything bound for Canada."

"We're in the process of doing it right now," answered Bourne.

"Do you want me to check with the DGSE or Mossad and see if we can get a match on the photo?"

Normally Rapp wouldn't think twice about checking with either the French or Mossad, but given the current situation he hesitated.

"Not yet. I need to run this by Irene first." He checked his watch and then asked, "Anything else?"

"Yeah," said Bourne.

"Ask her if we can bring the Feds and local law enforcement in on this."

Rapp nodded. Remembering something, he asked Dumond, "How are you coming with the Prince's finances? Ten million bucks is a lot of money. There has to be a sign of it moving from one account to another."