Threatcon Delta (16 page)

C
hief Librarian Trey Dunlap was pouting.

He loved his job for three reasons. The first was that he could help people. Not “outside” people, the ordinary citizens whose lives and security depended on what they did here, but “inside” people—his coworkers, the men and women who could actually pat his back and boost his career and inflate his ego. It was something a nerd needed in order to define his uniqueness as an asset instead of a liability.

The venue was the second reason he loved his job. He sat in a small, private, out-of-the-way room, with low overhead lighting illuminating a team of six people cramped in small cubicles, four men and two women who were uninterruptedly lit by the glow of their computer monitors. It was like ruling over a hell of information. But he
was
the lord. Though it was not permitted to make political statements through stickers, buttons, or even coffee mugs, he had a Libertarian Party symbol—the Statue of Liberty on a blue field—with the name boldly written in Klingon.

The Devil was supposed to be devious, after all.

Finally, the thirty-six-year-old loved his job because it gave him access to information that few people knew or could know. He had read, for example, the scanned, redacted, original draft of the Declaration of Independence handwritten by Thomas Jefferson, with marginal notations and cross-outs by John Adams and James Franklin. He had read a file called “Rollover” which was compiled in 1939—a list of secret information about journalists to be used against them if they ever reported on the fact that President Franklin Roosevelt couldn’t walk. Then there were the files on Roswell, New Mexico. It wasn’t a weather balloon or a flying saucer that crashed there. It was an airborne listening device monitoring Soviet nuclear tests.

The requests that came to him were varied and were made available based on a three-part number. First, there was the level of security clearance: one was highest, five was the lowest. Second, there was the division number: one was the Oval Office, two was the State Department, ten was the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Federal Reserve, and other specialized divisions. Finally, there was urgency factor: five was this week, one was yesterday.

This request was 101. The ‘zero’ indicated it was from your own team.

This one was for Ryan Kealey, okayed by Jonathan Harper, and it was about Nazis. Which was why Dunlap was pouting. The information that Ryan Kealey needed was not information to which he had direct access. That meant Dunlap had to go to someone and ask a favor. It meant that now
he
was a number, and not necessarily a high one. He hated that, and he hated how it made him act and feel when he had to ask.

No, beg,
he thought ruefully.

Most of the records of the Nazi regime had been given to various Holocaust museums around the world. But many of the more sensitive debriefings were still on file with military intelligence, mostly those that dealt with aborted weapons programs. Dunlap had seen some of those. The U.S. government did not want to give potential enemies access to the most devious minds of the Third Reich, men and women who had come up with notions like acoustic cones that would deliver jolts to fault zones, typewriter ribbons that would release airborne bacteria when struck, and chemically treated roads to compromise rubber integrity and cause blowouts.

With a sigh, Dunlap sent an urgent e-mail to his counterpart Wendy Norris at the Directorate of Intelligence, the wardens of sensitive military information stored by and for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The records dated back to 1903, when the Joint Army and Navy Board was first established. An official request for information had to be in writing. Archived, the e-mail would constitute that. Then he videophoned her.

“Is this for a TV special?” the young, pretty woman asked suspiciously.

“Not this time,” Dunlap replied. A movie and TV buff, he was also the go-to guy for U.S. military and espionage history by any number of documentary filmmakers. If the Communications Division approved the script, the government provided those services for free on a low-priority basis. Dunlap bumped the priority up because it got him invites to parties and premieres.

“There’s not a lot on Hitler’s Occult Relics Program,” Wendy said. “The menu doesn’t say anything about individual discoveries, only about the history and organization of the program.”

“What about debriefings?” Dunlap asked, checking his own videocast to make sure he looked his best. He was sweating despite the robust air-conditioning, and his thick features stared back at him moodily. He mollified his expression slightly, absently pushed hair onto his forehead to give him that virile man-at-work look. One day he might even ask her on a date.

“The overview says the data is mostly operational details from maps and logs, primarily geographical areas the five SS units covered,” the woman said.

“They were all Schutzstsaffel?” Dunlap remarked.

“Apparently,” she said. “I’ll read the July 1945 summary. ‘The captured enemy does not say much, which is not surprising since they were Hitler’s most elite and trusted soldiers. Neither Hitler nor Himmler would have wanted to put such power in the hands of those who might use it against them.’ This is interesting,” she remarked. “The interviewer goes on to say, ‘The interviewee wasn’t boastful but seemed almost sad. I got the impression they finally did find such objects but never got to use them in the service of the cause.’ ”

“Wow. I wonder if they found the Holy Grail or Excalibur or any of those things,” Dunlap said.

“Are you looking for something in particular?”

“I was told to try and find out about the Staff of Moses and anyone who might still be alive who had a hand in this program.”

“There’s nothing about the Staff,” she answered, running a search, “and there are only three prisoners mentioned.”

“Status?”

“One committed suicide in 1946, one died in 1998, and the other was still alive as of 2005—the last time the file was updated.”

“Name?”

“Nope. For security purposes, in case of Soviet moles, they were listed as Subjects Alpha, Beta, and Delta.”

“How do they know Delta is still alive?”

“He made a computer transfer from a long-standing Swiss bank account to another in Germany,” she said. “There was obviously a tickler on his account number and this transaction was registered. The transfer was recorded in the minutes of the United Nations War Crime Commission.”

Dunlap
ugh
ed
.
The UNWCC was a seventeen-nation body that had investigated Nazi atrocities from 1946 to 1949, and still updated their files as news—typically filed by Israeli law enforcement agencies—became available. Unfortunately, their findings were sealed and accessible only in the face of a clear and present danger. While Israel maintained that the existence of extremists represented just such a peril and demanded the files be opened, the United Nations would not participate in what they described as a process of “harassment and persecution of octogenarians or their families who may have knowledge of criminals, but who may not themselves have committed illegal acts.” The United Nations was historically anti-Israeli. However, Dunlap wondered if they might not be willing to provide the name of this individual if Egypt requested it.

Dunlap noted the name of the bank and transaction number, though he felt a little like the impoverished young fairy-tale lad who had been sent to sell the precious family cow for money and returned with a handful of beans.

He thanked Wendy, asked what she planned to do that night, and utterly failed to follow up when she said, “watching TV with my dog.” Deflated and perspiring even more, he sent the banking information to Deputy Director Harper along with an evaluation of the available DOI—depth of information—which he rated one out of a possible twenty. There was nothing about the specific artifact, very little about the program itself, and only one clear option for potentially acquiring additional information. That was about as unhelpful as things got.

As he composed the e-mail, Dunlap didn’t have an opinion about the Staff or the Nazi operation, though he did have a thought about faith.

It didn’t happen.

Exhaling displeasure loudly through his little domain, Dunlap forwarded the bank information to Ned Hull at the Computer Access Division. He had a feeling that would be Jonathan’s next stop.

O
n his way to a General Assembly meeting, Egyptian ambassador to the United Nations Osman al-Obour went to the fourteenth-floor office of the United Nations War Crimes Commission. The current director of the committee was Asef Shiyab of Jordan. Shiyab had only been in America for three months and the men did not know each other very well.

That didn’t matter.

Al-Obour was directly descended from a merchant who had negotiated trade routes for the Eighteenth Dynasty four thousand years ago. His brother Arab, Shiyab, once remarked that his own ancestors had worked that route selling timber and probably knew al-Obour’s forebears. Whether or not Shiyab was being even remotely truthful, the men had bonded over the idea. Kinship, like religion, did not always need archaeological records to make it a de facto reality.

As it was in the days of horse-trading, personal contact was the most effective tool of any diplomat. Honored by the visit, Shiyab stopped what he was doing and checked the files.

“The holder of the bank account is Herr Lukas Durst, who lists his residence as Berlin,” al-Obour was told. “However, that is simply a mail drop at the post office on Schillstrasse
.
”

Indicating for al-Obour to wait, Shiyab phoned the German ambassador seeking help in tracking the owner. Ambassador Hirsch regretted that issues of privacy made that prohibitive, though Shiyab had expected nothing more. At a cocktail reception honoring a new children’s initiative in Africa, Shiyab learned that the German ambassador was descended from aristocrats who had warred on Shiyab’s own forebears in 1918 as advisers to the Ottoman Empire. A new world it might be, but old battles were constantly being refought.

Shiyab had simply wanted to show his brother Arab that he had made every effort.

One day, Ambassador al-Obour knew, he might be asked to return such a favor.

“It does not seem like much of a lead, but it is something,” the Jordanian apologized.

“It is more than I entered with,” al-Obour said graciously. “I will pass this information along.”

En route to the General Assembly, al-Obour texted the information to the Egyptian minister of defense in Cairo. He promptly sent the information to the CIA in Washington, D.C., attention Deputy Director Jonathan Harper, who had made the request.

Both al-Obour and the minister imagined they were doing the American a favor, and Harper was annoyed to hear from the minister how flattered they were that the powerful American organization had made an OD request of them.

He let it pass.

One day, he knew, he would get to tell them the truth.

I
t was what Kealey called “orderly disorder.”

True to Kealey’s prediction, Task Force 777 had sent over a grainy, night-vision video of the Staff of Moses turning into a serpent. To him, the miracle was inconclusive. Shrunk in size, posted on the Web—he had every confidence it would somehow make its way there—the effect might be more persuasive.

Kealey left Phair studying it on a laptop when he received a call from Hamish Dean of the CIA Linguistics Lab.

“The text does seem to say ‘mail drop for Lukas Durst in Berlin,’ ” Dean informed him.

“That’s it?”

“In its entirety,” said the caller.

Kealey had forwarded the e-mail in question, that was in coded Egyptian, to Dean nearly a half hour before. It wasn’t simply a matter of translating the words but ascertaining the exact meaning and context. For example,
mail drop,
translated to Egyptian and then to English, could have been a
mail box
to begin with in its native German, which would have been an entirely different thing.

Kealey thanked him and hung up.

As he was talking with Dean, Kealey had received an e-mail from Ned Hull letting him know the names of all the current businesses that were likely to use this bank over another. It was possible that this Lukas Durst worked for, or had a relative who worked for, one of those establishments.

The connection that caught Kealey’s attention was the Venezuelan embassy, which was right next door to the bank. South America had always displayed a welcome mat for former Nazis and their money.

Kealey punched in Ned Hull’s speed dial number. It occurred to him there was another way to approach this matter. If so, Hull would find a way in. The MIT graduate had been arrested for hacking CIA records to find out what they knew about him. The fact that they “knew something” had been floated as a lure to see if he could get in. When he did, they offered him a job. Now he was the head of the Computer Access Division.

“Ned, what kind of access do you have to current census data, specifically Venezuelans living in Berlin?” Kealey asked.

“Not so
bund
erful,” the technician joked after checking the index of previously hacked files to which he still had passwords. “That information is recorded and kept by the immigration bureaus and released as simple number amounts, not as specific individuals. Why?”

“Many expatriates need to keep ties with their homeland,” Kealey said. “We saw that with Iraq under Hussein, Iran under the Ayatollah, and certainly many Nazis who fled Germany. If the guy we’re looking for lives in Venezuela, he may be related to someone who works for the foreign service whom he trusts to go to a bank and withdraw the money he needs to live.”

“I’ve got a way to do that,” Hull said. “If the family member is Venezuelan, he probably has credit cards from a bank there. Those numbers are all nationally distinctive. I’ll just check to see who’s spending what in Berlin.”

“Brilliant,” Kealey said.

“Who’s the ultimate guy we’re looking for?”

“Lukas Durst. Age, in his eighties.”

“Hang on,” Hull said. “He doesn’t show up in tax records of either country.”

“No surprise,” Kealey said. If Hull could hack these files, so could the Israelis. Former Nazis had a clear interest in staying off those records. South American tax officials were renowned for looking the other way if there was a generous donation to their personal economy.

“But I’ve got a lot of unlocked bank records so we can watch money laundering,” Hull said.

Kealey waited while Hull went to work. It was a brief eye of the storm. He took the moment to catch his breath.

“I have seven names charging expensive dinners and clothes in Berlin,” Hull said. “Give me a second to compare them to the Venezuelan tax records.”

“I thought you said there wouldn’t be any—”

“For the Nazi,” Hull jumped in.

“Right. Not his family.”

“Got him,” said Hull. “One Cesar Montilla. Let me just search him and—here it is. Just building the yellow file.”

A yellow file was a program that distilled data into chronological order. It was the computer equivalent of a highlighted textbook with all the nonessential data eliminated.

“Okay,” Hull said. “Montilla is Durst’s son-in-law. Durst had a wife, Dita, married 1961, a daughter Nina two years later. Nina doesn’t appear after 1981 and the mother has no mention after 1994.”

“Daughter turned eighteen and the mother died,” Kealey speculated.

“Right you are. Public death records show that Dita Durst died in the Hospital de Clinicas on August 8, 1994.”

“Which is located where?”

“Caracas, Venezuela,” Hull replied.

“Can you get those files?” Kealey asked, typing.

“Checking, but I doubt it,” he said. “Nope. Many of them still aren’t computerized down there.”

“What about a marriage record for Nina Durst in Venezuela?”

“Newspaper account,” he said, reading down the yellow file. “She wed the son of the comandante general of the Guardia Nacional in May 1986. That’s our Cesar Montilla and he’s a courier in the diplomatic corps.”

“You have an address for him in Venezuela?”

Hull looked it up in the directory and gave him the number of a house in the Altamira district. “Hold on, though. He’s got a second house registered. Let me look that up. . . . Uh, okay, Cesar Montilla has a second house in Alto Hatillo.”

“You sound bemused.”

“Alto Hatillo is one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Caracas. Chock full of millionaires and probably a few billionaires, too. Our little courier has a house there—well, technically it’s just outside the neighborhood but it would still be money—but he doesn’t live there.”

“Are you sure it’s the same Cesar Montilla?”

“Same phone number listed, must be a cell.”

“So who’s living there if it’s not him? Is he split from his wife?”

“Let’s see what the utilities bills say.” Kealey heard Ned singing under his breath. It sounded like “Electric Avenue” but way off-key. The singing stopped. “Elec-tridad de Caracas, the local power company, says a Carla Montilla is paying the bills. Cross-referencing . . . says she is the daughter of Cesar and Nina and she’s a physical trainer. Which means she’s not paying anything
but
the electric bills on a house in that neighborhood.”

“Married?”

“No,” Hull said. “Hah!”

“What?”

“Reading her electric bill,” Hull said. “It’s a fat one. Unless she’s running the dishwasher 24/7, it’s too much for one person. She could have roommates or a boyfriend, I guess.”

“Or her grandfather bought the house, put it under his son-in-law’s name, and he’s living there with his granddaughter,” Kealey said. “That could be the one we want. One more question. What have the Israelis got on Lukas Durst?”

“I already looked that up and the answer is not much,” Hull said. “Born 1923, joined the SS age eighteen, activities unknown, whereabouts unknown. Do you know how high in the ranks he climbed?”

“No, but I’m guessing he wouldn’t have been at the top or someone would have heard of him by now.”

“Then he probably couldn’t afford this house, either. Even if he hoarded his SS salary, even if he didn’t spend much of it getting to Venezuela and making the necessary bribes, even if he lucked out and bought the land decades ago, not guessing that it would become so exclusive. And even considering this house is just outside the Alto Hatillo instead of in the middle of it, SS underlings just didn’t make that kind of money.”

“Maybe he’s being paid off by someone? If he has useful information—or maybe he had something priceless when he arrived that turned out to have a substantial price after all, and a willing buyer.”

“Or he’s being paid off by Ricardo Ramirez.”

Kealey gripped the phone. “What?”

“The mobster. Our locations analysis for this neighborhood has red flags all over it. It’s believed Ramirez has a house in the Alto Hatillo and it’s known that some of his closest cronies do. A man living just outside the neighborhood beyond his obvious means could be a valued employee or source.”

“I don’t know if you just made my day or ruined it,” Kealey said.

“I aim to please,” Ned said. “One thing’s for sure, there’s going to be hefty protection all around that area. You might want to go in with a white flag, if going in is what you’re thinking about.”

Kealey thanked him, got the number of the house in Alto Hatillo, and hung up. He told Phair what he had learned.

“Is it possible he took an occult relic or two with him to Venezuela and sold them there?” Phair mused.

“Perhaps including the Staff of Moses?” said Kealey.

“I’m betting Durst’s superiors wouldn’t have invested time or energy seeking this particular staff,” Phair said, indicating the video from Egypt. “It’s really nothing.”

“You’re going to find that we live in an era of video nothings,” Kealey told him. “Someone on YouTube crying about something stupid or arguing with an ex can make them a star.”

“YouTube,” Phair echoed sadly. “And we’re fighting to make the Iraqis more like us?”

“Something like that,” Kealey replied. He drummed his desk thoughtfully, then moved his fingers to the keyboard. “I’m asking my superior if we have any maneuverability with or around Ramirez,” he said, tapping out an e-mail. Again, Phair noticed a twist on the word
superior
. “But with or without him . . .” Kealey murmured, still tapping. “Let’s go.”

Phair rose. He was excited. “To Caracas?”

“To dinner,” Kealey replied.

Phair deflated.

“Ricardo Ramirez has a reach as deep as it is wide,” Kealey said. “If we don’t have some kind of protection or connection and we go after one of his favorites, we won’t even get a cup of coffee with him. We’re officially in hurry-up-and-wait mode.” By the tone of his voice, Phair could tell that he had mentally finished that sentence with
again.
“In the meantime, I’m hungry. Let’s grab a hamburger.”

Phair shook his head. “It’s strange to say this, but Iraq feels well-ordered compared to what I’ve experienced the last few hours.”

“Simple survival is always simpler.”

“It isn’t just that,” Phair said. “All the technology, the data—I feel like I’ve just gone through the looking glass.”

“You have,” Kealey said as he headed toward the door. “But only a very, very little way.”