Chapter 39
Situation Room
The White House
Washington, D.C.
Kyle had been to the White House a number of times, but always as a member of the First Family.
The Easter Egg Roll, First Family Christmas photos, even once to impress a cute, and very awestruck, political science major he’d had a crush on.
This was the first time he had come in an official capacity as a government employee.
Moose was at his side. He looked uneasy.
He was wearing his only jacket, a threadbare tweed item that would have been rejected if he’d donated it to Goodwill.
Both of them were tired, having gotten only a few hours’ sleep last night in the “quiet room” down the hall from their workspace at DIA headquarters.
They had endured a phalanx of security at the entrance and were now following an intern down the hall.
“You must know your way around here,” Moose said at a stage whisper.
“Certain parts. A lot of it I’ve never seen. Did you put together that PowerPoint?”
“I was too busy programming the next search. But I did get the videos uploaded.”
“Okay…then we wing it.”
“You’re gonna do most of the talking, right?”
Kyle laughed. “MAADN is going to be the star. You and I are just the messengers.”
The reason for the hastily drawn meeting had come out of nowhere.
MAADN had spent the previous night scouring Tangier for any traces of Ronald Hauptman, the mysterious missing passenger from SAM 719.
Then early this morning, at the direction of the White House, the CIA had shared more information.
The man they were looking for was named Gunther Klaus, a Swiss banker who was attempting to reach the West with a trove of information on illicit Russian finances.
With that bit between its digital teeth, Cyber Cell 6 started plowing.
The results came quickly and were nothing less than a revelation. After a brief phone call to Mary Pat, it was decided that an in-person briefing by Kyle and Moose would be the best option.
Their escort descended a set of stairs and led the way to the Situation Room.
There were perhaps ten people in the room, the bulk of the National Security Council.
Kyle had met a few of them at social occasions he’d been dragged to, and the rest he either recognized or knew by reputation.
Mary Pat Foley stood beside his father, who was sitting at the head of the large conference table.
Kyle locked eyes with his dad—no, he corrected, the President in this situation—for a prolonged moment.
The connection was clipped when someone shut the doors behind them.
Kyle hadn’t been nervous about the meeting.
He knew he was among friends and one family member.
But now, in the hush of this famous room, with the weight of what they were about to discuss…
he began to feel the pressure. He was no longer in his binary comfort zone, dealing with ones and zeros.
This was the real world, a far grayer place, where decisions were made that could cost men’s lives.
“Welcome,” said Mary Pat, her eyes on him and Moose. She introduced them by name—their real ones—and their affiliation with the DIA’s Cyber Cell 6. She then got straight to business.
“I understand you have some footage relating to our operation in Tangier?”
Moose set up a laptop and went to work. A large projection screen was in place, and as he made the relevant connections Kyle started talking.
“Early this morning our team at CC6 launched a search on a Swiss national, Gunther Klaus. He is believed to have gone into hiding in Tangier, Morocco. According to the CIA, Klaus was supposed to have boarded SAM Flight 719 two days earlier, which as you all know ended tragically. Given that starting point, we backtracked and were able to place Klaus at the airport. In a still photo I believe you’ve all seen, we placed him on the curb in front of the executive terminal prior to the flight’s scheduled departure.
“Since then, we’ve been able to recover the full video.
” Kyle gave Moose a signal. The clip began to run, and Kyle provided narration.
“You can see Klaus exiting a taxi and approaching the terminal. As he does so, another man appears and clearly gets Klaus’s attention.
Before the second man can close in, a policeman cuts him off.
We’ve reviewed the footage carefully, and we believe this was nothing more than a stroke of luck—the man had left his car unattended on the curb, something the police are trained to watch for.
” Gesturing to the video, Kyle said, “Klaus is clearly spooked. He uses the distraction to disappear into the terminal. We don’t know where he went after that. ”
“Do we know who this man was?” asked his father. “The one who approached him on the curb?”
“We grabbed the best image and ran it through enhancement algorithms followed by facial recognition. We were able to achieve a high-confidence match. His name is Joachim Bartos. He’s former Czech Republic Special Forces, and for the last five years Bartos has hired himself out as a mercenary in Africa and the Middle East. The NSA was able to isolate his phone and run a partial call history.
At the time of the photo, he’d been in Tangier for at least two days, presumably to search for Klaus.
Using what we learned about him, along with what the CIA has on file, we performed a deeper dive and uncovered some new footage.
” Kyle signaled for Moose to run the second clip, and a grainy CCTV feed filled the screen.
Three men, one of whom was almost certainly Bartos, could be seen rushing through a foyer and up a flight of stairs.
“This took place roughly five hours ago. The footage was acquired from a security camera in the lobby of Klaus’s apartment building.
Minutes after these men ran upstairs, we can see Klaus escaping.
” The time stamp advanced, and Klaus could be seen rushing down the stairs and out into the street.
“We’re not sure how he got away, but Klaus is clearly aware that he’s been hunted. ”
Another finger swipe from Moose, and the final video ran. “This next scene takes place roughly twenty minutes later. The footage was obtained from various cameras at a large outdoor market nearby.”
From various vantage points, the three men who had rushed up the stairs of Klaus’s building appeared to be searching for him in the market. There were also momentary sightings of a nervous Klaus, who was clearly trying to evade them.
Kyle said, “Analysis of various signal intercepts suggests these individuals were tracking Klaus using Quark. It’s an app designed by an Israeli company. The Israelis are leading edge when it comes to hacking and tracking phones, and they’re not shy about selling their apps on the open market.”
The screen went blank, and President Ryan asked, “Do we know if they caught up with Klaus?”
“We can’t say for certain. The evidence you’ve just seen was acquired in the last few hours.
The NSA has some exceptional signal tracking abilities, and we think it’s possible that Klaus ditched his phone.
If that’s the case, it would be much harder for these mercenaries, if that’s what they are, to find him.
Conversely, it would also make it harder for us to reestablish contact with Klaus.
We’ve focused all available assets on Tangier.
Since we don’t have much of a human network there, we’re mainly talking about cyber and SIGINT.
I would recommend reaching out to the French and Spanish—they have a better ground game in North Africa than we do. ”
“Let’s do it,” said Ryan, his eyes on CIA director Stephens.
“I’ll take care of it,” he replied.
The President then said, “We need to put ourselves in Klaus’s place. If he really has ditched his phone, does he have an alternate method of contacting his handler?”
“I talked to his case officer,” said Stephens. “They had backups for previous meetings, but Klaus was set for extraction and there was no contingency for an abort. He’s heard nothing from Klaus since the flight departed without him.”
Mary Pat said, “Is it possible Klaus would buy a burner phone to contact his case officer?”
Stephens said, “If he’d chosen that route, I think we would have heard from him by now.”
“I agree,” Ryan seconded. “Maybe he’s spooked about phone contact of any kind. I think we should focus on what other methods he might use to contact us.”
“We don’t have a consulate in Tangier,” said the secretary of state.
Stephens added, “He’s not a trained intelligence officer. Sounds to me like he’s running scared.”
Kyle said, “My team came to the same conclusions. We believe our best bet for finding him is to scour the city electronically from every possible angle. Cameras, signals, banking information. NICHE is designed for exactly that—sorting through raw metadata.”
A brief silence ran, and no one objected.
“All right,” Ryan said. “Mary Pat, let’s give Cyber Cell 6 the lead. Direct all supporting agencies to sweep up everything they can.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
Ten minutes were spent on interagency coordination, and after that the room began to clear.
Kyle and Moose were among the last out. As Kyle headed to the door, he couldn’t avoid locking eyes with the President.
His father gave him a wry smile and a subtle thumbs-up.
The two didn’t always see eye to eye, but today they’d found common ground.
It felt good, although Kyle knew he would have done nothing different if it had been someone else at the head of the table.
As he disappeared into the hall, he was already shaping search logic in his head.
At the end, only Mary Pat and the President remained.
Ryan turned circumspect and slowly began shaking his head. “Those bad vibes just keep getting worse,” he said.
“Agreed,” she said. “The downing of SAM 719 was an intentional act.”
“But I can’t see it as a one-off strike. This isn’t the Islamic State lashing out or some fringe terrorist group. That aircraft was brought down for one reason—someone wanted desperately to take out Gunther Klaus.”
“And now we have this video Kyle unearthed. There was a team on the ground going after him as well.”
“Led by a Czech mercenary,” Ryan added suggestively. “Sounds like just the kind of thug Malenkov would hire.”
“There are Russian fingerprints all over this, I agree. But I’m still not seeing the risk-reward balance.
A year ago, when Malenkov headed up SSD, instigating a crash like this would have been a bridge too far.
You can’t murder a cabinet member and a plane-load of others and not expect repercussions.
Does that equation change simply because Malenkov has gone private? ”
“Never forget, we’re talking about Russia. The Kremlin is all about smoke and mirrors.”
“That they are.”
“We could go direct to the source,” Ryan spitballed.
“Yermilov?”
He nodded.
She gave it some thought. “In principle, I’m not against a call. But I think it would be better to wait until we have more evidence.”
“Never point a gun at someone unless it’s loaded?”
“Something like that.”
“Maybe we’ll get hard evidence from the team that’s going to tear this spoofing device apart.”
“The Wright-Patt engineers are en route. Oh, and as I said, we’ve been trying to track down Malenkov. The NSA uncovered an airline ticket. He was booked to fly from Moscow to Porto a couple of days ago. He ended up being a no-show.”
“Which means we only know where he isn’t,” Ryan lamented.
“Basically. But we’ll find him.”
“Any way you look at this, Klaus seems like our best hope.”
“He is. And he’s most likely still in Tangier.”
“In that event, to be proactive…let’s assume CC6 locates him. We’d need to bring him in immediately. My inclination is to have every option available.” He let that hang in the air suggestively.
“Boots on the ground? Possibly a kinetic option?”
“That would be a last resort, but given what we’ve seen so far…I think it has to be on the table. Do we have any CIA assets near Tangier?”
“I spoke to the station chief in Rabat yesterday. He’s got two paramilitaries in the entire country. Both are in the field, eight hundred miles south on the Mauritanian border.”
“Not much help. And Malenkov has got at least one goon squad already in the neighborhood. We saw three of them in the video, but now that Klaus is on the run, I’ll bet more are en route.”
“There’s never a shortage of hired guns. I think you’re right, the race is on. We have to find Klaus fast. Once we do, we have to get him out of the country under the nose of a hostile adversary.”
Ryan said, “And that, my expert in all things clandestine, is your department.”
Mary Pat grinned. “I’ll bet Yermilov says that on a daily basis.”
“But in his case, instead of preventing chaos, he’s manufacturing it.”
“It would take time to get DEVGRU or Delta briefed in and transported to site. I’d say Task Force 99 is the obvious choice. They’re not far away and they’ve already got a grip on the basic situation.”
“How fast can you make that happen?” Ryan inquired.
“I took a quick peek right before the meeting. Our best option is a C-17 on the ramp at Incirlik. It was heading to Iraq, but I can have those orders amended.”
Ryan regarded her knowingly. “Sometimes I think you’re telepathic. Other times…I think you just know how to play me.”
“Maybe a little of both. We’ve been working together a long time.”
“That we have.”
“I’ll notify the appropriate command and have the C-17 crew start prepping.”
Ryan hesitated. “Won’t that look a little conspicuous? One of our C-17s landing in Tangier to unload a team of operators?”
“Already taken care of. The plan is to stop in Sigonella and switch to a less conspicuous airplane. I also asked State to smooth their entry into the country.”
He shot her a withering look.
Mary Pat smiled and headed for the door.