The Merchant of Secrets (17 page)

 Mike updated us on PFG’s finances. PFG had borrowed
a sum of money greater than the entire book value of the company to build the
prototype of their new unmanned aircraft with state of the art sensors and
updated software.  They had bet the fortunes of the company on the
prototype’s success. But  when the President told the Secretary of Defense
to cut the budget  by $400 billion,  PFG’s proposal was
 rejected by the Department of Defense, which  put PFG in a tough
cash flow position because it still had to make a  significant payout to
subcontractors including  a company in California that helped design the
tactical telecommunications  software  for  the downloading of
images from PFG Drones flying in the sky to the U.S. military  on the
ground.  While no money was coming in from the sale of the drones, the
company was still legally obligated to pay their vendors and subcontractors.

Now it appeared that the subcontractors in California
would sue PFG to collect their money.  PFG was squeezed from every
direction; they had to pay out the subcontractors and employees while the
anticipated revenues from sales to the Pentagon never materialized.

There had been a plan to make PFG public company once
they got the federal contracts, and investment bankers had been contacted in
anticipation of lucrative Pentagon contracts which would align PFG’s finances
to some matrix of anticipated profitability and put them in a position to
launch an attractive initial public offering. To the executives of PFG, their
world revolved around the money it received from the Department of Defense. The
US government would have been PFG’s biggest customer.

CHAPTER
 
20

It was
late,
Mike was tired and
wanted to go to bed.  Deep wrinkles lined his face that bore the sun
parched texture of a man in his late forties.  He asked me to write-up a
report and to fax it to the Attorney General’s office so that a search warrant
could be issued for Dave Jones’ residences and the PFG corporate offices, then
he slipped away up the stairs. Hugo and Jose had fallen fast asleep on the
sofas in the library.

My report explained that Jones had turned to
Qureshi
out of desperation following an unsuccessful
attempt to sell the PFG drones to the U.S. and to the
U.K.. 
Jones had contacted
Qureshi
to find a buyer whereupon
Qureshi
put together a deal with the government in
Beijing and personally transferred stolen material between Jones and the
mechanic so that Dave Jones wouldn’t be directly tied to the person delivering
the stolen information to China.
Qureshi
, having a
banking background,   designed the roadmap for the transfer of funds
because he had some level of expertise in wiring funds in- and- out of obscure
banks without detection.
Qureshi
 arranged
for   “Joe”  to take the
information  stolen by Dave Jones  using the passcode software,
 to Shanghai , in  exchange for Shanghai  to wire  funds to
Kabul Bank, which was then re-wired to a bank in Abu Dhabi from where an
Iranian man collected the money and took it to another bank where Dave Jones
had an account.  
Qureshi
was the middleman and
dealmaker who put it all together for a slice of that payout which was
collected for him by his brother in Kabul.  Despite the Iranian man’s role
picking up the money at one bank in Abu Dhabi and physically walking it to
another bank in the same city to destroy the money trail, our colleagues were
able to make the connection.

Jones couldn’t sell his own company’s product, so he sold
the designs of his competitors and kept the passcodes to himself because he
intended to keep using them over and over again, as long as there was a willing
customer to buy stolen information in exchange for the money he needed to keep
PFG afloat. I summarized it all by describing Jones as a dangerous criminal
whose actions had the potential to damage our capabilities and cripple our
national defense.

 After finishing the report I knocked on Mike’s
bedroom door which he answered all bleary-eyed and dressed in his pajamas with
a navy robe sashed at the waist.  I didn’t want to wake him up but I
needed him to sign-off on the report before faxing it to the Justice
Department, with a copy to Bailey and to Keisha. By 4:00 a.m., it had been an
excruciating and nerve-racking twenty-four hours. I poured myself a glass of
wine from an opened bottle and starting thinking again about Sara. When
Qureshi
came to Washington to work with Jones he accidently
met Justin who unknowingly led him to Sara. My poor unwitting friend was used
as a pawn to justify
Qureshi’s
stay in Virginia while
he managed the financial operations for Jones.

Dawn would be breaking soon, so I found a spare guest
room to try to catch a couple hours of 

sleep
.

CHAPTER 21

By early the next morning, a search warrant had been
issued and the FBI along with a team of armed IRS agents simultaneously
executed a search warrant upon Jones at his townhouse in Alexandria, Virginia
and at his villa in Manalapan, Florida.  We decided to catch a flight to
Florida to help in the search, just the four of us,
Mulally
,
Hugo, Jose and me. We had substantial knowledge of the material to be recovered
and were the most appropriate people
to  aid
in
the  search, we thought. It occurred to me that Sara would be of help, too
as she was the only one who had been inside David Jones’ residence in Florida.
I called and asked her to come along with us.

Mike arranged for us to ride on the private corporate
jet. It would have been scrubbed for any hidden devices before we boarded and
allowed us to speak freely. As Mike and I sat side-by-side on the plane we
started to discuss events in the Middle East. I wondered why PFG had not tried
to cut a deal to sell the intelligence gathering drones to any of our Arab
allies, especially in the Sunni countries like Jordan and Lebanon who have a
stake in trying to contain the Shiite regimes in Iran and Syria. We didn’t have
any trade embargoes on those countries, they’re our allies. Maybe he could have
gotten permission from the Department of Defense to sell to them. But Mike
explained to me that the anti-aircraft systems in Syria were so advanced that
they would’ve easily detected PFG’s drones and would have shot them down. Our
Arab allies weren’t
very  interested
in buying
drones to spy in Syria.

Changing the subject I asked Mike if he knew when Colin
would be coming back to work.  Mike turned and asked, “Why?”

“We just get along well, obviously, that’s why we’re dating.”

“Dating? You’re dating Colin?” he asked, appearing
surprised
and  upset
.

“Yes, off and on, didn’t you know? I thought our friendship had generated buzz
around the office. I know it’s against the policy, and one of us will have to
find another job…”

Mike seemed angry.

The plane touched down in Palm Beach where F.B.I. agents were
waiting for us with a couple of S.U.V.s., and three patrol cars from the
sheriff’s office. Driving in a procession down
I
-95
the vehicles exited at the Lantana exit. Turning left onto a two lane road that
runs from Palm Beach to Boca Raton we drove slowly, behind a crazy bicyclist
darting in between cars in the road. The beach was swarming with joggers and
sunbathers enjoying the 80 degree weather. Sailboats were cruising along the
shoreline.  

The sheriff’s car led the way to a ten- foot privacy wall
divided by large iron gates on a stone driveway
  located
along a residential road. There was a button to the left of the gates which the
sheriff pushed to confirm that the electricity had been shut-off by the power
company as per his instructions before we arrived. Sara remained in the back
seat of a sedan, eyes wide in wonderment; this was the first time she had seen
me on the job.

The house had previously belonged to an investment banker
from New York until he passed away and it was put up for sale, remaining vacant
for months  until  Jones purchased it in 2008, about the same
time  the stock market was crashing and millions of people were put out of
work.

One of our SUV‘s was driven within inches of the wall for
the purpose of using the roof of the car as a ladder upon which to hoist
ourselves over and into the property. “Let’s do it!” the lead agent cheered us
on. I slipped out of my high heels, and clutched them in my left hand as I
climbed over the wall and landed barefoot in a damp, squishy, dirt bed behind a
row of bushes. One by one, the others did the same. There was momentary
hesitation while the agents scanned the scene of the grand Mediterranean style,
stucco building a few feet ahead, with an
orange  terra
-cotta
roof and an elaborately carved front door so thick that the sheriff decided
to  pry open a window with a crowbar instead.  The agents fanned out
over the property hunched over, guns at the ready, and eyes wide behind their
sunglasses, alert for any sign of the unexpected.  The breeze from the
ocean was blowing hair into my eyes.  

We squeezed through the pried-open window and spilled
onto the tile floor of the loggia. The agents quickly swarmed the house. The
loggia floor was covered with a cotton rug, and straight ahead, rattan chairs
with blue and cream colored cushions, surrounding a brown wicker cocktail table
which was protected under a layer of glass. French doors opened to allow
breezes to come in off the water filling the house with the smell of the sea.
The walls of the oversized European style kitchen were covered with imported
tiles.

The interior had a subtropical style, an island look,
except for the Turkish rug in the great room. The dining area and the seating
area were delineated by a six foot silk screen. In the corner, placed atop a
wooden game table, dice and a deck of cards were waiting for Jones. His desk
was carved oak, and stood at the corner of the room.  On the ceiling was a
Spanish style painting.  I could just imagine Sara sitting on the sofa,
smiling and innocently chatting away in this lovely house while
Qureshi
contrived to put the moves on her.

Jones certainly had seemed like the embodiment of success
down in Florida, with a grand residence.

For hours the agents searched the house without success and
not quite sure what they were expected to find. Dispirited, they were about to
abandon the effort when an IRS agent who happened to have a house on the
Chesapeake Bay and was an avid weekend sailor decided to roam down to the pier
across the street  from the residence in the inter-coastal waterway. He
called me on my phone back at the house.

“Do you happen to know if Jones owned one of these
boats?” He asked.

“Sara! Do you know if David Jones owns any of these
boats?” I shouted to her as she sat in the car.

She got out of the car and pointed at a large white boat,
“Yea, I think it’s that one.”

“Are you sure?” shouted back the agent.

“I think
so,
does it have the
name “Commander” on the back of it?”

The agent leaned over and saw the name painted on the
back of the boat. “Sure does sweetheart, thanks for your help!” he shouted
back, smiling at her.

That sent Sara’s spirits soaring. She felt like she was
part of our team now, and a nice-looking sailor had called her “sweetheart.”

Climbing into the boat he saw that the door to the galley
had a lock on it,
but  being
a sailor who
sometimes had locked himself out of his own boat, albeit a modest one, he knew
how to defeat the lock using a crowbar. He forced the door open and rummaged
through the cabin. Picking - up an orange lifejacket tucked under the seat in
the boat, he noticed it was far too heavy to be just a lifejacket. He pulled a
pocket knife from his pants, and tore into the orange synthetic fabric where
inside the jacket he found thick stacks of one hundred dollar bills and 5
smartphones. He picked up another lifejacket, tore that one open too, and found
a large envelope that contained personal information on the major defense
companies’ CEO’s and their families. There were banks statements and
brokerage statements, photos, addresses
and downloads of
credit card statements. All sealed in plastic kitchen storage bags and hidden
in the lifejackets. The sailor from the I.R.S. had scored a major victory.

I was bent over looking into the bushes for evidence when
I heard the agent yell out from the boat, holding bright orange lifejackets
high into the air, signaling to his fellow agents back at the house that the
search had been a success.

“I think we have our evidence!”
Triumphantly
announced the agent.
We dropped what we were doing and rushed toward him
to see what he’d found.  The anticipated information on the cell phones
would have the power to seal their fate. The I.R.S. would take custody of the
money.
Mulally
took custody of the envelope and the
cellphones. The documents in the envelope would have to be numbered, labeled
and logged-in as evidence.  

Based on Jones possession of
personal
 banking
information of senior defense company executives and their
families, the agents had enough evidence to apprehend Jones and the other two
suspects. Within minutes, back in Virginia, the FBI swarmed into PFG’s
headquarters and cornered Jones in his office, tossed him against his desk and
slapped handcuffs on his wrists.  Ever defiant, he put up resistance until
he was convinced he was physically over powered. Then he told the agents that
Mulally
was a “high-minded
hypocritical asshole” and promised to get even with him.