Three floors below the office of the deputy director, Intelligence, in a roughly square room with no windows and lighting that never dimmed, the first connections Mike Healy had desired were being made without him even knowing it. And those connections came in the form of ones and zeros.
DIOMEDES, the Science & Technology Directorate’s computer link to the world’s financial institutions, had been sorting through trillions of bits of binary code (ones and zeros), searching for links between accounts controlled by Coseros and those belonging to known criminal types, namely drug cartels or their fronts. The process was much like following a multigenerational family tree that branched out in all directions. Once a link to a certain account in bank X located in country Y was found, then an attempt was made to identify the owner of those funds. With the strict financial-security laws of some countries, this was not always a direct task. Other links had to be determined that might point to the ownership, and more links to verify those. It was a tedious, time-consuming exercise in electronic investigation, pseudo illegal, and quite suited to the twin Cray computers dedicated to Project DIOMEDES.
“Got a cross-link,” a technician announced, the data freezing on her screen. Her supervisor came over to see.
“Where?”
“Here,” she said, pointing to the display. “Coseros transferred seven hundred grand into this account in the Bern Central Bank. It’s another CFS account.” They were finding more and more offshore accounts belonging to the Cuban Freedom Society, though there was nothing patently illegal about that. Nothing that could be proved, that is. Yet. “Then look who transferred into the same account. Victor Feodr.”
“Feodr?” the supervisor said aloud. The name rang a bell, but not loudly. He had heard it before in his time with DIOMEDES, some years back, but exactly when he couldn’t… Him? “The Bulgarian?”
“The same one who the KGB used as a money funnel,” the technician reported.
“Who’s paying his bills now?”
She pointed lower on the screen. “An account controlled by the Russian Foreign Ministry. Usually used for diplomatic travel expenses.”
The supervisor scratched his head. “Any back transfers from those funds to Coseros?”
“Nope, but look at these.” She scrolled the information slowly. Account after account flowed upward from the bottom of the screen, all of them listed as “depositors” to the CFS account in Bern. “These accounts are all controlled by different agencies in over forty governments. Look. This one is controlled by a front for Israeli Intelligence.”
“Mossad?”
“Never get them to admit that. This one by the PRC. This one by an Iraqi with liaison duties to the UN. The list goes on, and on.”
“I still don’t get this. Nothing back-transferred to Coseros?”
The technician willed her supervisor to see the real discovery, but he didn’t put the obvious together. “We have been looking at the wrong bad guy. Coseros isn’t in the shit up to his elbows. The CFS is. He hasn’t been funding them. The whole fucking world has. For what reason I don’t know, but these are not just donations. Not from these folks.”
The supervisor looked down at the young lady who’d just proved that the best damn computers were worth diddly-squat without a human brain to look at what was spit out and cull the diamond from the coal. “Damn good work. I know some people who are going to be very happy with what you’ve found.”
There would also be some who would not.
“Sir, one can’t just pick up a phone and dial Russian Air Defense Headquarters,” Bud explained. “Whoever cut Marshal Kurchatov off knew that.”
“But why, Bud?”
“We can’t be certain.” The NSA was standing. He had too much energy built up to sit. “But it cannot be good.”
“You would think they’d want someone watching our missiles at a time like this,” the President said. “I guess this means I wasn’t too convincing.”
“You were at a disadvantage.”
“And just how did Konovalenko know about Kneecap, and about Granger on board?”
Bud knew the question was not directed at him. It was simply asked in wonder. But he felt compelled to offer some sort of explanation, or a supposition of such. “Mr. President, when things happen as fast as they have been on this, things get said. Things are overheard. The press digs things up, just like the Post and ABC have today. Leaks happen, and all it would take is some ‘agricultural officer’ from the Russian embassy to be in the right place at an opportune time.”
“So I get waylaid by the Russians, and everything I tell them then sounds like an after-the-fact rebuttal to their concerns.” The President turned his chair left and right as he thought. “This is beginning to scare me, Bud. I thought when we figured that Castro’s target would be Moscow, we could breathe a little, but now I’m not so sure. If the Russians don’t believe us about this…”
“Sir, President Konovalenko would not do anything rash,” Bud said with confidence. “He is not a reactionary. But he is cautious. He did not walk into the modernization program without questions, and he did not proceed without answers that he found satisfactory. He is not who we have to be concerned about.”
The President scowled as he thought of the men his NSA was referring to. “Those people never see the writing on the wall, do they? They just keep looking to the past for some kind of salvation from the hardships of undoing the damage done over three-fourths of a century. I’ll tell you, Bud. I have more respect for Konovalenko each and every damn day he keeps pushing ahead, despite the polls and the threats from the hard-liners.”
“He may need you to cheerlead very soon, sir.”
The President wasn’t sure that would be the right thing to do. Or the timely thing. “No, Bud. We did that for him once before, but he didn’t have his defense minister over here incommunicado then. This is more serious, meaning we have to step further in if he needs and wants it.” He caught sight of the tan desk phone. “Maybe we can do something to reverse the situation.”
Bud saw the beginnings of a satisfied smile as the President picked up the phone.
“And this may be the way to do it,” the President said, twisting the receiver in his hand. “Bud, get the translator in here.”
Sean found Joe giving his equipment a final check in the privacy of an empty office off the hangar the Pave Hawk had been rolled into. For the work that lay ahead, and for any work involving the kind of shit that Anderson dealt with, for that matter, the major had expected to see the type of highly sophisticated, hideously expensive equipment that the physicist had used during the previous pairing of their talents. What he saw was quite the opposite.
“You ready for another run with us, Anderson?” Sean asked. It was an idle question, breaking the inherent seriousness of the moment. And a moment was about all they had for such luxuries. Delta and their special passenger would be departing very shortly.
Joe rolled his two pieces of electronic equipment into padded cloths and placed them carefully in the rigid black case, filling half its volume. The tools that would take the remainder of the space lay in a neat row before him. “I’d rather be fishin’.”
“Yeah, we all would,” Sean said honestly. His eyes studied the odd mix of hardware lying in front of the kneeling Anderson. “Pretty low tech.”
Joe looked up. “I don’t need lasers to do what I’ve gotta do.”
“I guess not, but a hammer? A handpick?”