Don't Order Dog (41 page)

Alex studied both men as he considered his next line of questioning. His interview of Preston and Connolly was still in its first hour, and already it was clear that the careers – if not the lives – of both men were effectively ruined. Once the transcripts of the interview were delivered to Deputy Secretary of State McCarthy, their fates would be sealed.

The first sacrifices for the altar
Alex thought somberly.

Of course, the fate of both men was irrelevant to Alex. Preston and Connolly had knowingly exercised the powers of their offices well beyond their moral and legal limits. In doing so, they had become accountable for the deaths of Agent Martin and the Chinese scientist named Zhu. Whatever conseq
uences they faced – most likely charges from the Department of Justice – would be, in his opinion, fully deserved. The only interest Alex had in these men now was finding out how they’d come by their information.

He turned and faced Jack Preston.

“Help me understand something, Director Preston. You sent Agent Martin to Amsterdam based on the belief that a suspected terrorist was located there. But exactly how did you acquire this information in the first place?”

Jack Preston glared irritably at Alex before responding. “That information was obtained from Agent Coleman.”

Alex stopped and looked at him. “So Agent Coleman – who, as you knew, was working with our agency on this investigation – revealed classified information to you?”

Preston shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Not directly, no.”

“Then how were you informed, Director?” Alex pressed.

Preston stared back at him venomously. “Agent Coleman was under surveillance during the time he was assisting your agency with our… my apologies…
your
investigation,” he replied flatly. “Given the strange circumstances forced upon me by the CIA, I thought it only appropriate to keep tabs on any and all conversations
my
agent was having.”

Alex’s eyes widened in surprise. “So you intentionally eavesdropped on a priority CIA investigation for the purpose of attempting to solve the case yourself? Is that what you’re saying?”

Preston looked at Alex and smiled. “On the contrary. I was simply staying aware of my agent’s activities in case more of my Department’s services were needed. With so much going on, I was afraid your team might leave some loose ends that required attention. As it turned out, I was right.”

“Don’t try to spin this in your favor, Jack,” Alex countered. “The only thing you accomplished in all of this was sending an unprepared agent to his death.”

Preston suddenly slammed his fist on the table in front of him. “Agent Martin’s trip to Amsterdam uncovered what everyone in this room knows to be true,
Alex
– that your team missed their fucking target. So don’t stand there and pretend to be absolved of your own mistakes in this matter.” He looked over and pointed at Richard Connolly seated next to him. “And for the record,
his
actions killed Martin, not mine.”

Connolly’s calm face suddenly contorted in anger. “You spineless son of a bitch!”

Alex ignored the volatile exchange between the two men and continued pacing the floor. Preston’s admission of placing Tom under surveillance had come as a complete shock – both in its arrogant stupidity and its deeper meaning. Was it possible that Tom had actually held true to their agreement? After swiftly destroying his dream of being in the CIA, Alex had been certain his brother-in-law’s first act of survival would be to go crawling back to Preston and offer anything – including knowledge of the investigation – in exchange for his job. And yet that apparently wasn’t the case. He suddenly recalled his heated phone call with Tom just a few days earlier.
He’d tried to tell me the target was still alive, and I ignored him.
He pushed the thought from his mind and raised his hand. “Enough,” he snapped loudly, ending the argument between Preston and Connolly. “We’ll get to the details of Agent Martin’s death soon enough.” Alex walked over to a briefcase lying on the table. He reached in and picked up a thick file, tossing it on the table in front of Preston. “Right now I want to know how you managed to obtain
this
.” 

Preston stared down at the file of investigation notes Tom Coleman had handed to him in his Flagstaff office the previous morning. In his conversation with Rose McCarthy that same afternoon, the Deputy Secretary of State had made it clear that Preston would immediately report to Washington with all materials associated with the investigation leading up to the events in Dongying. He opened the file and quickly thumbed through the contents. “This material was located inside Agent Coleman’s case files in
our Flagstaff office, which makes it the legal property of Department of Homeland Security.”

“The hell it does,” Alex replied angrily. He pulled the open file away from Preston and grabbed the document lying on top. “Did Tom Coleman give you this file?”

Preston crossed his arms. “I believe I’ve already answered your question.”

Alex glanced at the document in his hand. The content on the page was broken into two columns. On the left, the page contained a list of highlighted words and statements from the letters the terrorist had written. On the right, the details of the letter’s corresponding murder were summarized. Alex read the comparisons and immediately grasped what Tom had uncovered.

Messages within the letters…of course!

He slapped the document onto the table in front of Preston and Connolly.
“What else can you tell me about the messages in the letters?” he asked excitedly. Both Preston and Connolly looked at him with a blank expression.

“For god’s sake, it’s right here in the file! Don’t you read your own intel?”

Connolly picked up the document and examined it carefully. “I’ve never seen this document… or anything else in this file for that matter. So I can’t even begin to know what you’re talking about.” He turned and glared at Preston with contempt. “Apparently my colleague chose to keep this information from me.”

Alex leaned his muscular frame over the table and fixed his stare on Preston.
“So what do you know about this?”

Preston shrugged. “Nothing more than what’s written on that page. As you can see, Agent Coleman believes there are messages hidden within the letters. But I don’t believe he has any more information, or any
proof
beyond that. Personally, I wouldn’t give it too much credence.”

Connolly suddenly looked up from the notes and gave Preston an incredulous expression. “Am I correct in understanding that the primary suspect in this investigation has been sending letters to Agent Coleman’s source?”

“Yes.”

“And that source is a… a bartender in Flagstaff?”

“Correct.”

“How long have you had this information?”

“Less than twenty-four hours, Richard,” Preston replied dismissively. “Hardly enough time to fully absorb everything.

Alex looked over at Connolly. He could immediately tell something was wrong. “Why do you ask?”

Connolly spun the page towards Alex and pointed to a list of statements that were repeated in the letter. “Do you notice how this man uses the term
‘don’t order dog’
in almost all of the letters?

“Yes,” Alex replied curiously, wondering what the frail-looking Intelligence Director was getting at. “He ends every letter with that statement.”

Connolly shook his head. “No, he ends
almost
every letter with that statement.” He slid his nicotine-stained index finger down the column to the last entry on the page. “In his last letter, he says ‘
go ahead, order dog
.”

Alex ran a quick hand through his hair. His patience was coming to an end.
“Yeah, so… does that
mean
something to you?”

Connolly considered the question for a moment before finally nodding. “I’m afraid it does.” He sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes as if suddenly exhausted. When he looked up at Alex, his expression was grave. “But what I’m going to tell you is not to be repeated…
and for purposes of National security, I don’t want this recorded.”

Alex looked at his
agent sitting in the corner. “Stop recording and give us a few minutes.” 

Connolly waited until the agent was gone before leaning forward and speaking in a low voice. “I’m sure you’re aware that I spent over twenty years with the National Security Agency before taking my position with the Department of Homeland Security. But I doubt you have the faintest clue what I did for the majority of my early life in that agency. You would probably assume I was a code breaker. After all, that’s what everyone believes you do when you’re in the NSA, correct?”

Alex grinned slightly at Connolly’s sarcastic remark.

“Well, let me tell you… with enough patience and determination, nearly
anyone
can break codes. There’s no magic to cryptology. It’s all just protocols and formulas. Once you understand that, defeating codes simply becomes a matter of resources. But for the NSA – the agency designed to be the cornerstone of US intelligence gathering – that ability in itself isn’t enough. Not by any stretch of the imagination. You can’t just spend your time scribbling down conversations of interest and deciphering their meaning.” Connolly paused to release a deep, wheezing cough. “No…you’ve got to be more proactive than that.”

“So…” Alex said, prodding him along.

“So you take the next step, of course,” Connolly replied with a smug grin. “You start focusing less on breaking your adversary’s codes, and more on
making their codes for them
.”

Both Alex and Jack Preston looked at Connolly quizzically.

“I don’t think I follow you,” Alex replied.

“Of course you do,” Connolly responded. “Your own CIA has deep-cover operatives in the field who exist to provide your team with intelligence on the groups or governments they’re entrenched in. And I have no doubt those operatives
seed
just as much information as they
harvest
– correct?

“Perhaps, but–”

“The thinking of the NSA was no different,” Connolly continued. “We began creating cryptographic protocols – basically encrypted language formats – that were then fed to our operatives in the field. The operatives would then introduce these formats to their various contacts and, with any luck, they’d begin using them.” 

“So…
did
they use them?” Preston asked.

“Let’s just say that our success rate was quite high.”

Alex nodded his head. “This is all very interesting, Director, but what does this have to do with our letter-writing terrorist?”

“I’m getting to that,” Connolly replied as he raised his hand. “You see, back in the early days, it was my responsibility to oversee one of the teams tasked with creating these cryptographic protocols. As you can probably imagine, managing a large group of geniuses developing new encryption methods had its share of challenges
… especially when you consider this was the agency’s most covert project. It may sound ridiculous, but communication was our single biggest obstacle. There was so much sensitive information, so many goddamn procedures to deal with. Christ, you could barely assemble a handful of people without violating some mandate or risk corrupting a new protocol. But then, out of the blue one day, a young mathematician on my team came to me with a rather brilliant solution. He’d developed a completely new cryptographic protocol for the project – a new
language
that could be used for all internal communication amongst the teams. The protocol itself was quite simple, made up largely of acronyms and analogous associations that could easily be remembered and modified by the team members themselves. But perhaps the most ingenious aspect of it was that it didn’t appear to be a form of encryption at all. It looked and read like any normal message.”

Connolly suddenly paused and looked up at Alex as if snapping out of a trance. He smiled and laid his hand on the folder in front of him. “That was a long damn time ago – more than I care to count – but I can tell you with absolute certainty that the creation of that single protocol made the NSA program a success. I can also tell you with the same amount of certainty that these letters are written in that protocol.”  

Alex stood quietly for a moment, assessing the sincerity on Connolly’s face before speaking. “How can you be sure?”

“I used that protocol every day for years, Agent Murstead. Few people could have known it better. Trust me, I’m sure.”

“Okay then, what does it mean?” Alex asked as he flipped the page of notes around and pointed at the last entry. Connolly looked at it and shrugged.

“Well again, the protocol was designed to be adaptable. Without thoroughly analyzing all of the letters, I’d only be able to guess.”

“But you
do
have a guess, don’t you?” Alex asked.

“Yes, I have a guess.”

“Then tell me.”

Connolly glanced down at the page of notes. “The same man who invented this protocol once delivered a message to my office regarding his suspicion of an operative assigned to a post in East Germany during the cold war. I don’t recall the exact words of the entire message
, but I clearly remember the last sentence. It simply read ‘
If you have any interest in a pet, I’d definitely recommend a dog
.’ I agreed with his assessment, and within twenty-four hours that East German operative was dead.”