“Now that we’ve ruled out bin Laden’s capture, the elimination of the assault team by al-Qaeda is the only theory that makes sense. But there’s a peculiarity. The SEAL deaths occurred at a steady pace for several years following the Abbottabad raid and abruptly stopped a few years ago. Then they picked back up with Nagle and McNeil a month ago. Why?”
Christine answered, “It may have to do with Zawahiri’s death. Al-Qaeda needs a new leader. Perhaps they’ve chosen one, and he’s decided to finish what Zawahiri began. Or maybe there’s a struggle for leadership and one of the contenders is attempting to garner support by terminating the last few assault team members.”
McFarland opened her laptop and pulled up a summary of the potential successors to Zawahiri, which had been prepared for Christine’s briefing at the White House the morning after the attempted assassination of Secretary Verbeck, and displayed it on the conference room monitor on the far wall.
McFarland went quickly through the list, one slide per man.
“Our assessment is that the leading contender for the new leader of al-Qaeda is Saif al-Adel. He would have the resources and connections, plus a strong motive, to complete the elimination of the Abbottabad assault team members.”
Harrison glanced at Khalila, wondering if she had any information to offer. She had just spent an entire day with Osama’s eldest son and had no information worth mentioning? Not even that she had met with him two days ago?
He decided to stay quiet, evaluating how best to proceed with what he knew. As he considered his options, McFarland continued.
“We’re already working the angle that al-Qaeda is responsible for the assault team deaths,” she said. “We’ll keep everyone apprised as we learn more. In the meantime, however, that conclusion doesn’t explain McNeil’s note — 3rd floor desk. Find him. If he wasn’t referring to Osama bin Laden, then who?”
“It looks like we jumped to the incorrect conclusion that McNeil was referring to the reflection in the computer display,” Christine offered. “We should take another look at the video.”
“My thought exactly,” McFarland replied.
She brought the video up on the conference room display and advanced the file until McNeil reached the third floor. Against the back wall of the room was a desk crowded with various items: a computer tower, display, keyboard, several thumb drives, a handheld radio-transceiver in a charger, a cup holding several pens and pencils, three stacks of manila folders, and a few books standing beside each other.
McFarland paused the video, letting everyone study the desk’s contents. Harrison decided to check out the book titles in case they offered a clue, but nothing registered. It was silent in the conference room until McFarland blurted out an observation.
“The radio!”
Harrison focused on the handheld transceiver in its charging stand as McFarland expounded. “That’s a standard-issue CIA radio from the early 2000s. What is a CIA radio doing on bin Laden’s desk?”
“Perhaps it’s a souvenir from a dead agency officer,” Bryant offered. “Bin Laden had a souvenir AK-47 assault rifle in his bedroom, but no bullets were loaded. Maybe the radio is something similar.”
McFarland shook her head. “Look at the charging stand. The green light is on. You don’t keep a souvenir radio charged.”
Christine replied, “Maybe this explains how bin Laden avoided capture those first few years. He didn’t move into the Abbottabad compound until 2006. He evaded capture for five years despite several promising leads, but each fizzled out. Perhaps he was being tipped off.”
“I don’t like it,” Rolow said. “That implies we had a traitor on the inside. Someone feeding information to bin Laden. For what reason?”
“We employ a lot of foreign nationals,” McFarland countered, “especially in that region. This wouldn’t be the first time we assessed their allegiance incorrectly.”
“Where do we go from here?” Bryant asked.
“Let me pull up the operation records,” McFarland replied.
She opened the mission report on her computer and scrolled to an appendix containing a list of items taken from the compound. She read a few of them aloud: five computers, ten hard drives, over one hundred thumb drives and computer disks…” She kept going through the list.
“Bingo!” she said. “Transceiver and charger.” She looked up from her laptop. “It was one of the items taken from the third floor.”
“Why wasn’t the presence of this radio picked up during the analysis of the material harvested from the compound?” Rolow asked.
“The material was collected somewhat haphazardly due to the time crunch, with the assault team having only a few minutes to collect material before Pakistani forces arrived. Anything of interest was shoved into garbage bags, then sorted once the team returned to Afghanistan. I suspect that whoever reviewed the material assumed that a radio from one of the assault team members had accidently been caught up in the compound’s contents. That’d be my guess.”
“So, we have the radio,” Bryant said. “What does that do for us?”
“Every transceiver has a serial number. Find the transceiver, and we’ll know who it was issued to. We can then have a conversation with that person, asking how it ended up on bin Laden’s desk.”
“Where is it now?” Rolow asked.
McFarland perused the report. “Doesn’t say. I’ll have to go through subsequent records. The material from the compound initially came here for analysis, but it’s since been dispersed to various locations. Bin Laden’s AK-47 that Monroe mentioned, for example, is in the agency museum here at Langley. Most of the rest is likely locked in a vault somewhere. I’ll track the radio down as soon as possible.”
She leaned back in her chair, pleased at what she had deduced.
“Great job, Tracey,” Christine said. To Rolow, she asked, “What’s next?” He had scheduled the meeting to discuss several topics.
“Tracey has an update on the SecNav issue. Nothing on Mixell yet, but the review of the UUV data turned up something interesting.” He turned to McFarland.
“It’s not a lot to go on,” she replied, “but we found an Iranian communication referencing a pending receipt of a priority shipment from SI. There are a lot of companies with the initials SI, but given that the UUV and SecNav appear to be linked, and that her brother is Dan Snyder, a reasonable conclusion is that Iran is expecting a shipment from Snyder Industries. However, we’ve searched all ship manifests leaving the U.S. mainland for the last six months, and nothing from SI to Iran has been logged.”
“You think it’s off the books?” Bryant asked.
“That’s what we’re going with for now. It’ll take a while, but we might be able to discover what was shipped, or at least verify a shipment occurred. Once we know more, we can discuss how to proceed.”
“Anything else?” Christine asked.
“I think we’ve covered everything,” Rolow said. “We’ve got three leads to follow: assess whether al-Qaeda leadership is responsible for the assault team deaths, locate the radio on bin Laden’s desk, and figure out what SI shipped to Iran. Harrison and Khalila will resume their original task of tracking Mixell down; perhaps we’ll get some useful information out of him if we can take him alive.
“In the meantime, Jake and Khalila will have a few days off. They did some good work in Kuwait, despite their disregard for clearly established protocols.”
He lent a hard stare toward Khalila, who hadn’t said much during today’s briefing. She’d met with Rolow before this meeting; Harrison had spotted her leaving the DDO’s office, a glowering look on her face.