Infinite Exposure (35 page)

“9-1-1 and 8-8-8.”

“Not very secure.”

“You didn't guess them.”

“I didn't try. What is with the Chinese good fortune number?”

“I was feeling whimsical about the new secured location.”

“Wow! You did get a whale.”

“They are even helping build the facility. One more year of this and everybody's hands will be too dirty to wipe clean.”

Hans tried the combinations and the case unlocked. He lifted the lid and gave a low whistle. “Twinkies.”

“What?”

“It is what some grifters call shrink wrapped bundles of money. Twinkies with green filling is the whole phrase, but they
are usually talking about American dollars.”

“Well, there will be another case of Twinkies coming to you next week.”

“Hold off on that for a while.”

“Why?”

“The current hub operator just got another to train. Waiting for instructions from the higher ups on when to grab them and
how to get them out of the country. We may be tying this one off in a week.”

“Oh.”

“This will make the escape route easier to plan though.”

“How much is here?”

“I don't know.”

“What?”

“I know what the total amount we had was, I have no idea how much is in each container.”

“Oh.”

“Good hunting.”

With the conversation over, Hans started looking around for some envelopes. Large Manila envelopes. Even that wasn't going
to use up an entire Twinkie. He definitely had to burn the plastic before anyone saw it. The container would have to stay
hidden in this room with junk piled on top of it. When he finished stuffing the envelops he remembered to reload his wallet.
There was still a short stack of cash left over from the first Twinkie. He put a Twinkie in the bottom drawer of his desk
and the Brit's.

Hans relaxed for a little while eating an MRE and thinking. Finally he gathered up the meal packaging along with the Twinkie
wrapper, took all of the trash outside to the little burn pile he had set up and watched it all burn.

Some time later when Hans was dozing off, the Brit returned to headquarters. He only needed to report in, then he could bum
a shower from the apartment where the three guys were staying at. The sound of him coming in woke Hans and a reflex had him
drawing a weapon.

“Nice to see you've still got it,” said the Brit. “Why so jumpy?”

“One of us has to be here at all times now.”

The Brit gave him a puzzled look. Hans got up and walked to his desk. He picked up the loose cash he had left lying there
and brought it back to the Brit.

“Get yourself a room for the night along with a good meal and a hot shower. I'll take tonight's watch.”

The Brit cocked an eye at him.

“We received some liquid assets to make the operation go more smoothly. Given the equipment we have here and the way people
have been knocking over empty places, we cannot take the risk. It's not just our equipment anymore.”

“Fine. I made the drop. They won't ask for more, but they may ask us to do a snatch for them?”

“You didn't ...”

“Relax. They have to go through due process if they bag anybody on their soil. If they turn a blind eye to a foreigner and
his plane they have deniability. It all depends on how much they believe what is on the disk. Their ability to believe seems
to be widening given what they are finding with their own surveillance.”

“They volunteer anything?”

“No. Just that attitudes are changing at the top and they expect to be able to authorize wide-scale round ups soon.”

“We just asked for authorization to round up as well.”

“A new trainee?”

“Aye. Showed up today. Sent a request off asking for a when and an exit plan. Haven't heard a response yet.”

“That reminds me. Need to see if you can buy us a vehicle we could hide three people in that could make it to Mangalore. The
team also wants you to get some dart pistols or other fast-acting tranquilizer capability. You've done quite a few ops here,
so I assume you have the contacts for such things.”

The Brit held up the handful of cash and said, “This won't be enough to get all of that.”

“Open your bottom desk drawer”

“That'll work. What is in Mangalore?”

“Nothing yet. We are speculating we will have to bribe some kind of fishing boat to get us out to international waters where
a Huey can rendezvous and hoist the guys up for a flight to Pakistan. The team is hoping to run the current email hub themselves
for a little while before packing up the equipment.”

“And the original trainer?”

“No word there either. With these out of the way we could watch him a lot more closely. Try to snag the courier when the identity
kit is dropped.”

“The courier might be a dead end, but we could try following him to see if he visits the rest of the team after the trainer.
Do you have some of those small tracking badges?”

“Yes, but we only have a couple of readers, what are you planning?”

“We can have more readers here tomorrow if we need them. I'm hoping he gets all three identity kits delivered to him one or
more days before. We can do a black bag operation into his apartment and plant the badges, then track who gets them.”

“You almost need air cover for that.”

“We know where he works. We know he goes no place else except to buy groceries. If he is making the exchange, it will be at
work. We only need people outside waiting for the kits to come walking out.”

“I wonder how well the courier will know the trainer.”

“Somehow, before we got to his machine, the trainer got photos of his team to the identity shop. Perhaps they already had
them on file because they had issued them all kits to come here. Either way, the last courier is going to have a photo to
look at before he makes the drop. If we happen to see someone standing in the parking lot looking at a photo of the trainer
we could nab him, tag the items, and do the drop ourselves, but we won't get that lucky.”

“Well, they are paying more attention to the former trainer now. They know the outcome for the other apartment, but they want
to wait up to a week to nab them.”

“Why?” inquired the Brit.

“They want to have all of the email from the current hub operator over that five day window where they transfer a few addresses
to one of the new hub operators. We know it is a reality now, and they want to see if you and the others can crack it. We
need the messages in possession even if you cannot crack it so we can test what they tell us during interrogation.”

“Sound plan. They want us to take them out quiet so there isn't talk in the apartment complex which makes the trainer nervous.
I'm not big on the idea of them running the second hub for a few days. What happens if the trainer stops by to chat?”

“He hasn't so far.”

“He might want to say goodbye the night or day before his OP goes down. If we don't have his entire team identified by then,
we will end up with him in custody and another Lutton on our hands.”

The Brit was still a bit sensitive about Lutton, but his analysis was correct. “True, it is a risk, but one we will have to
take. If we can identify the message required to migrate an operative to a new hub, we could set up our own hub and possibly
track things back to bin Laden himself.”

“Somehow I don't think that guy will type his own email. We seem to always find and kill those just under him, but never him.”

“Either way, we will be feeding your American contact more intel when we have the message. Perhaps we will get to do some
wholesale roundups on their soil.”

“Sounds possible.”

***

Heidi dragged herself, her dirty clothes, and a two-liter bottle of wine up the steps to her apartment. Technically, it was
a condo because she owned it. The man who headed up the condo association was a good and loyal party member. He never hassled
Heidi about association dues being late. He would simply drop a handwritten note in her mail slot whenever she was really
late with payments. As Heidi shoved her door open past all of the mail on the floor, she realized that she must be late again.
There were two handwritten notes.

Setting everything down, she rummaged through her writing desk for an envelope. On it she scrawled a note for him to take
care of her dues as she would be gone a lot. Whenever she left him an envelope like this he would keep an eye on her place
as well. The head of the association was in his late 70s and enjoying a semi-retirement. It made him feel useful to run the
condo association and keep an eye on people's places when they were gone. She pulled a wad of cash out of her purse and stuffed
about half of it in the envelope before sealing it. Then she drug herself down two flights of stairs to stuff it through his
mail slot.

He was probably home, but Heidi didn't feel like talking tonight. Tonight she was taking a hot bath and drinking that entire
bottle of wine. The constant pace of execution at the camp was taking its toll on Heidi. Nikolaus had stopped in and offered
her two days off when he took one look at her face. He actually told the entire first team to take two days off when they
finished the batch of patients they were currently working on. He then called his contact at the interrogation center and
told them to slow down the shipments.

Heidi didn't bother getting a lady-like wine glass while her tub was running. She grabbed the biggest water glass she had,
put some ice cubes in it and filled it to the rim with white wine. She had seen too much red over the last stretch of days.
She knew she should go through her mail, but right now she just wanted to soak.

An hour later, her tub grew cold and her glass was empty. She drained the tub, toweled off and put on a robe. With her wine
glass refilled, she piled her mail on the table, then started a load of laundry. Returning to the table she drug over her
kitchen garbage can and began chucking the junk mail. No matter what country you lived in or what name you had, it seemed
junk mail always found you.

Each bill she came across she wrote a check out to pay and put a stamp on the return envelope.
It seems like you were always gone the week most of your bills arrive,
she thought. She had no idea how much money was in her checking account. Whatever company was paying her this time was direct
depositing her pay check into the checking account. She made a mental note to look at the statement next time one came so
she had a general idea.

Finally she got down to a handwritten envelope with no return address. It was postmarked from some place in America. She opened
the letter and began to read.

Hello,

It was good to hear from you. The team is now back on leave, so we are starting to hear things. Doesn't sound bad yet, but
we do have a general idea what you are involved in. We will be there to get you when you need us. Call this number when you
need us and leave a message.

At the bottom of the letter was an international phone number. Heidi clipped it and put it into a special pouch in her purse.
She didn't know when, but she knew she was going to need that number. They were simply processing too many patients at the
secured location to keep it quiet much longer. Nikolaus had told her he sent cash under the table to the Chinese to add a
second shift at the construction site along with an on-site concrete mixer, but concrete still took time to cure. It was still
going to be at least another four months before the site could be staffed and begin receiving prisoners.

Heidi stretched out on her bed feeling much more relaxed now that she had the last glass of wine from the bottle poured and
the rest of it consumed. When she woke up she would get to see what science experiments were growing in her refrigerator.
Being gone for nearly seven days took its toll in the grocery department.

***

Jeremy's little menagerie touched down in Kyyiv (Jeremy, Jennifer, and a programmer to install software.) The first thing
he did was open up the disposable international cell phone he bought and call the number Jennifer had given him. The man who
answered was already at the airport and waiting for the group at customs with two others. Jeremy went with the others to the
baggage claim area to pick up their luggage.

Boris had asked for and received digital photographs of each person coming along with their names and other information. Each
was on a separate sheet of paper and divided between the other two men who were immigration lawyers. Nobody expected them
to be needed, but Dimitri wasn't going to take any chances. The men were being paid well to stand there with briefcases.

The others breezed through customs, but Jeremy had a more detailed questioning. He was coming in on a two-year work visa so
they were required to put on a good show. His luggage was inspected and he was patted down and wanded.

Finally they got to the questioning.

“Why are you coming to Ukraine for a job?”

“My job came here, not the other way around.”

“What is it you plan on doing while you are here?”

Jeremy pulled out one of his new business cards and his old business cards and handed it to them. “My boss wants me to open
another investment division in the Ukraine. I'm to get it operational by hiring local people and training them well. Once
they are trained I can go home. We assume it will take about two years for someone to learn the business because I'm the fastest
learner he ever had and it took me 18 months.”

“What kind of investments do you do?”

“Stock market mostly. We may start investing in the Russian stock markets, but for now we are focusing on the American stock
markets and opening them up to more investors from Russia.”

“People in Russia do not have the kind of money you rich Americans have.”

“They would if they invested correctly. We put $500 million into this branch. We are here to ride it out. My boss started
this company with nothing more than $10,000, now we manage around a billion in assets. We know how to do investing correctly.”

“You have proof of this investment.”