The Merchant of Secrets (13 page)

He took a bite of a croissant then continued.  

“The question still is to determine how stolen
information was taken to Beijing and to gather an abundance of solid evidence
so that a federal prosecutor will have a chance of winning a conviction in the
courtroom. You’ve got to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they were
in  possession
of classified material, and if possible
prove that they sold it”. If the I.R.S. can locate illegal wire transfers into
or out of the U.S. we can get them on that too.”

“Then why would someone in Shanghai wire money to
Qureshi
on the very same day that Joe arrives in China with
the gym bag full of documents if the bag didn’t contain classified documents
being purchased by the Chinese?

 “That’s what I want you to figure out,”
Mulally
said. He wanted us to pick it up again from there.

Before he left, I wanted to impress him with my new
knowledge on North Korea. “Did you know that the U.S. controls the missiles in
North Korea?”

 “No, I didn’t know that,”
Mulally
replied with a cryptic smile. Then he and Keisha were smiling in unison and I
had the feeling they were thinking the same thing.

“Is this some sort of secret society that you two belong
to?” I asked.

“No but it’s interesting to hear what Defense is doing to
keep Pyongyang in check,”
 
Mulally
responded as a smile broadened across his face.   

“And you never worried about North Korea launching
missiles?” I asked, testing him.

Mulally’s
grin widened further,
“Not much.” He was mentally circulating classified information in his brain.
Quietly he leaned toward the center of the table and whispered to all of us,
“Their nuclear program has a few flaws.”

I looked up and implored him with my eyes to go further.

“Their uranium was diluted.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that it was acquired from old Russian missiles
from the cold war era, and mixed with another chemical ingredient that hinders its
ability to react properly ….. ”

“But I don’t….” I was cut-off mid- sentence.

‘Enough,”
Mulally
interjected, insisting on immediately ending any further discourse on the
subject.
Leaning back again in his chair and resuming a normal volume in
his voice, he said “I’ve got to watch my weight, but the croissants are pretty
good!”

Boots and I remained contemplatively silent while Bailey
couldn’t have cared less. She was pure business and didn’t like being drawn
into matters that weren’t in her area of responsibility. I couldn’t resist a
follow-up question to
Mulally
,
“Was the corrupted uranium sold that way? Or did we arrange for it to be
corrupted after they bought it and it was already in the North Korean arms
factories?”

“Enough Caroline!
I’ve told you
more than I should have already,”
Mullaly
scolded in
a sharp, clipped tone while Boots glanced down at her lap.

So much had been written in the press about sanctions
against North Korea, and how they don’t work. We provide food aid to feed the
North Korean people in exchange for North Korean’s  agreement to control
their aggressive behavior but invariably they have not held up their part of
the deal, making our president look foolishly duped by Kim Jong-Il, and now his
son.  But secretly we’ve maintained the upper hand in their defense
arsenal by limiting or controlling their strike capabilities.  Since 1998
they repeatedly launched rockets that fail. They crash to the ground. Now that
Keisha pointed it out why their rockets always fail it all seemed so obvious.

Keisha carefully added a comment. “I wouldn’t rule out
Japan’s cooperation with the effort to put a cap on their nuclear program. They
don’t want North Korean rockets to land on their islands.”

“How do the Chinese respond?” I asked, because China is
the primary trading partner with North Korea.

 “The Chinese don’t like North Korea trying to
create upheaval. They view North Korea as a child that won’t behave.”

“So North Korea cannot wage an intercontinental war?” I
asked, getting to the bottom line.

“Any attempt to launch rockets will be put in check,”
Keisha asserted.

I turned to
Mulally
and asked, “So North Korean provocations don’t constitute a legitimate,
actionable threat to our national security?”

Mulally
replied, “No.”

After a momentary pause he said “Caroline, come and take
a ride with me.” We both arose from our chairs and left Keisha and Bailey
sitting in their chairs at the restaurant.

He invited me to ride with him in his car, a large black
sedan with tinted windows driven by a company driver with an
armed
 security
guard sitting in the passenger seat. I sat in the back
seat with
Mulally
who always
smelled as though he had just gotten out of the shower. During the ride he
complimented me on putting such an important project into motion, and on
keeping the pressure on Dave Jones despite considerable challenges.  Then
he got to the point, which was to politely remind me that my area of
responsibility was the Hades Drone project and my normal duties covering internet
security as assigned, but insisted that there be no further questions about
North Korea. The message couldn’t have been
more straight
forward; in a world at war the custody of critical information was shared with
only a few, and I was not included.

He then explained that the office had become something of
a battle ground between those who knew how to run the organization and those
who thought they were entitled to run it because of their military service. The
military employees didn’t grasp that a civilian operation cannot run like the
army. Then he thanked me for dealing so well with Todd’s menacing behavior.

Mullaly’s
irreverence toward
the military’s leadership did nothing in the slightest to masquerade his
frustration with Todd and his hatred of David Jones’ corrupting influence.

He turned and smiled, “Are we okay now?”

“Yes, of course,” I replied, although his admonishments
on North Korea never kept me from being curious.

“Good. Let’s catch dinner sometime,” he said as he lifted
himself out of the vehicle after instructing the driver to return me to the IRS
office. The security guard followed him out of the car.

I needed  to get to my old office to log into our
system to get my information on banks in Abu Dhabi  but it was
 problematic because Todd was still on my trail, and  the project
 had continued  while Todd was left in the dark.
Mulally
had never fully trusted Todd and his friendship with Dave Jones
was
deeply disturbing even if Jones hadn’t been convicted of
anything. Todd wasn’t deemed to be trustworthy by
Mulally
even before he came after me.  
Mullaly
later put it, “Todd’s got limited moral
perception.”

 Unable to go back to my old office, I opted to
drive to an alternate
location  to
use our system
there and log-in to the network. Bailey and Keisha came with me. We drove along
a wooded swath of Virginia territory along I-95, joking and laughing as we
drove along.  Nobody would have guessed that we were on a secret mission.

CHAPTER 17

The CIA had announced that it would cease its drone
operations based in southern Pakistan at Baluchistan after a CIA contractor
accidentally shot innocent civilians in Lahore in January of 2011. At the time
PFG had just completed testing on a more efficient form of automated unmanned
space vehicle that could eliminate a target with no direct human involvement.
 Its competitor’s models required that information be sent back to a human
pilot on the ground who would first verify the identity of the target, then
take action.  The software that runs Predators and Reapers was ancient by
technology standards, dating back to around 2005 and  by 2011 it needed
replacing. PFG’s advanced drones by contrast would fly over a pre-designated
kill-zone, maybe a town or a tent city located in the desert while advanced
sensors attached underneath the body of the aircraft would pick up digital
signals from the ground, enter the signals into voice and face recognition
software, then after confirmation that the target had been identified the drone
would automatically carry out a precision assassination. Its functionality and
accuracy would surpass the existing inventory of Predator and Reaper drones
currently in use by the CIA. Jones and his colleagues at PFG assumed they had
the perfect killing machine so this news about what was happening at
Baluchistan couldn’t have made them very happy. The more need for electronic
covert action, the more likely the Defense Department would sign off on a prime
contract to award PFG hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for their
product.  

 The CIA continued to use drones launched from
regional bases to target the Taliban in the stronghold of Waziristan, and to
launch deadly missiles attacks in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Somalia,
but the US had come under intense international pressure for taking action on
bad intelligence, killing innocent civilians, misfiring, blowing- up unintended
buildings. Along with the decrease in the Pentagon’s budget, the complaints
coming from the State Department about the CIA hitting the wrong targets and
upsetting diplomatic relations with the country in which the targets were
located, temporarily led to a halt in drone use in some regions. Meanwhile the
Pakistani Parliament was demanding an end to the C.I.A.’s use of drones in
their country.

All of this added up to bad news for PFG’s and their
timeline for getting a contractual commitment out of the Pentagon. The
relatively sparse new contracts were still being awarded to companies with
favored status within the Pentagon; the major defense contractors that had
strong ties to the government.  As Jones potential for obtaining revenues
was drying up, the answer to how he obtained his money was becoming
increasingly murky.  

My initial guess  was to assume  that PFG was
providing assistance to a  Top Secret covert operation based in Iran
discretely paid by the C.I.A. through some third party intermediary which kept
its coffers full enough to keep the company afloat. It would have been logical
explanation, as Iranian Shiites had been stirring up trouble in Iraq, according
to the internal reports, and had killed dozens of American troops stationed in
and around Baghdad.

 I bounced the idea off of
Mulally
but
Mulally
denied
that there was any top secret mission in Iran that would have involved PFG. He
was also dismissive of the notion that Iran had killed Americans in
Baghdad. 

Keisha then called the Pentagon. Someone in her command
told her that General S also denied that the Army had any Top Secret operations
in Iran that used PFG material.

With no money pouring into PFG, PFG must be financially
on the ropes, but it didn’t give that impression from the outside.
Just the opposite.
Jones had extravagant homes in Virginia
and in Florida.
Qureshi
had homes in Turkey and
Spain, and by all appearances, he was flush with cash. There was a lot of money
floating around that seemed to come from nowhere.  

CHAPTER 18

I had seen very little of Colin since Chicago. In the
meantime Bailey had invited me to stay in the spare bedroom of her house since
I still could not go back to my apartment, nor could I rent a new one for fear
that Todd would find out and follow me there as well. I sent Colin a note
saying that I wanted to see him and asked if he would meet me at the Air and
Space Museum in Washington next day. I drove the rental car into D.C., ever
wary of Todd, and pulled the car up onto the street parking in front of the
museum. I bought a ticket to the movie and walked inside.  Colin was
waiting for me in a seat. I snuck into the row behind to surprise him.  

“Hey,” I whispered from behind.

Without responding, he suddenly pushed an envelope
through the gap between his seat and the one next to him. I took the envelope
and quietly slid it into my purse. He rose from his seat and left without ever
looking back at me. Outside of the theatre I opened the envelope to find an
airplane ticket to London leaving later that day.

Zipping through traffic on the way back to the house to
quickly grab jeans, a silk top,  and my favorite blue cashmere sweater I
narrowly escaped a speeding ticket, because there was someone else going faster
than I was and that person got stopped instead of me. I changed my clothes in
record time and shoved a few more things into an overnight bag including a
black silk sheath dress to wear out to dinner in London. I ran out the door on
my way to the airport.

When I arrived at Dulles in anticipation of a romantic
getaway Colin wasn’t around, but luckily neither was Todd. When the flight was
announced I spun my head around to look for him but he still wasn’t there so I
curiously handed my ticket to the agent at the gate and walked down the jet way
and boarded the plane. Then I spotted Colin in a seat next to the window
waiting for me with an eager smile.