Trojan Horse (36 page)

Karim was another matter. Twice a prisoner had managed to escape, first the man, then the woman. In the process his Geneva operation had been disrupted and now his second operative killed. How was he going to explain it?

His hands were numb now. He might lose them if he just lay here. Then he had it. He should have thought of the solution sooner. He twisted, then twisted again, and began making his way slowly across the floor like some exotic insect. It was exhausting. He’d rest, then do it again, each time moving an inch or two toward the far wall. He’d reach it eventually. Then he’d point his feet toward the wall and start kicking. Eventually someone would come. At least he hoped someone would hear him and come.

Just then the door flew open and in rushed two Asian men, the first brandishing a pistol. They took in Karim’s body and Ahmed in a single professional glance, then checked both the tiny kitchen and wardrobe for anyone else.

Wu closed the door while Li checked the man lying in blood. In Mandarin he said, “Dead. An hour I think.”

Wu moved to Ahmed. “Your friend?” he asked in English.

Ahmed nodded.

Wu recalled the photo he’d seen in the file. “You are Ahmed Hossein al-Rashid.” He said it as a statement of fact.

Ahmed hesitated, then nodded.

“We are friends. I’m going to remove your gag and untie you. We are friends.” He told Li to see to it while he took a seat at the table in one of the wooden chairs. Once Ahmed was free Li all but carried him over and planted him in the other chair.

“Get him water,” Wu ordered. “How do you feel?”

“I am fine.”

“You’ve had a rough go of it, it’s obvious. What happened to your friend?”

“Who are you two? Why does he have my computer?”

Wu smiled. “My name is George, his is Hanson,” he lied. “We’re here to retrieve those two laptops you got from the American couple. You should have received a message to keep them safe.”

China. That was no surprise. Ahmed had long suspected what he was passing along could only be coming from China. “I only had one, the woman’s, but it’s gone.”

Li came over with a glass of water and placed it in front of Ahmed. Wu told Li to help him as he couldn’t use his hands yet. Li lifted it to Ahmed’s lips and he gulped the water down eagerly. “More.” Li returned to the kitchen.

“What happened here?” Wu asked again.

Ahmed thought quickly. They knew about the computers. That message had come directly from Hamid.

“The woman killed Karim. I arrived almost immediately afterward, too late to save him. Then the man came and”—his cheeks burned with shame at the recollection—“they took me prisoner and left me here. They have both computers,” he said hopefully. “They’ve not been gone long.”

“What are their names?” Wu asked as he pulled out his iPhone. Ahmed told him and a moment later Wu had a photograph taken of Jeff and Daryl at a computer conference in Las Vegas the previous year. She was stunning. “They are CIA?”

It occurred to Ahmed that these ruthless men might very well kill the couple for him. “I think so. They are highly skilled agents, computer experts as well. I would take no chances with them.”

Li set the glass down. Ahmed reached forward with his two hands now burning as the blood rushed back into them. By being very careful he was able to lift the glass to his lips and drink.

“Where can we find them?” Wu asked.

“A woman named Saliha Kaya is traveling to Ankara, Turkey, with an important message for my government. These CIA spies intend to stop her. They are probably at the airport right now.”

“I need details of this Kaya woman.”

“My phone,” Ahmed said with a slight smile. “Everything is there. Even a photograph.” He looked at Li. “May I have my computer, please?”

PRAGUE 6, CZECH REPUBLIC

PRAGUE-RUZYNE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

12:06 P.M. CET

T
he morning flight from Prague to Ankara had left promptly at 11:45
A.M.
Jeff and Daryl had missed catching Saliha by minutes.

“Now what?” Daryl asked, slumping in a chair. She glanced at her bandaged hand and made a face. It hurt like hell.

“We find the next flight, book tickets, then replace our phones.”

Daryl looked at her stained pants with disgust. “I need to buy clothes and it wouldn’t hurt me a bit to wash up. I look like a bag lady.”

Forty-five minutes later they were booked on Lufthansa flight 1691 with a change of planes in Munich, then direct from there to Ankara. As for their needs, Prague-Ruzyne International Airport was one of the most modern and convenient in Europe. At an Apple Store, Daryl picked up a replacement iPhone. Not far away Jeff acquired an HTC Galaxy with the Windows OS he preferred.

While she went shopping for clothes, Jeff waited outside the store and configured his phone to access the high-security e-mail server he and Daryl used. In less than ten minutes he’d retrieved his e-mail, contacts, and calendar. The first message he sent was to Frank Renkin, giving him his new cell-phone number. Once Daryl was finished shopping she’d do the same, then was going to call Bridget directly with word she was safe and thanks for her help.

When Jeff decided he’d waited long enough he punched Frank’s contact to dial his number. They didn’t have a lot of time. Their flight was boarding in fifteen minutes.

Frank answered. “Yes?”

“Frank, it’s Jeff. Daryl’s safe, she’s with me right now.”

“Jeff! Thank God! Are you two all right?”

“We’re fine except for some bruises.” Jeff told Frank what happened. “We’re at the Prague airport right now. We’ve booked a flight to Ankara. We have the mule’s address there and hope to catch her.” He gave Frank all the information they had on Saliha. “How dependable do you think the information about the Tusk patch is?”

“Wait a minute. Let’s back up here. You say Daryl
killed
one of the kidnappers and left his body in a Prague apartment?”

“She didn’t have any choice, Frank. It was either him or her.”

“And you haven’t called the police?”

“There hasn’t been time and we lost our cell phones. We only just got replacements. We’ve been trying to stop Saliha.”

“Let me think about this a minute.” There was a long pause, then Frank resumed. “Look, this Ahmed is an Iranian agent for certain. We’ve had him on the radar for over a year. At this point though you know more about him than we do. What I’m about to tell you couldn’t be any more secret so careful where you tell Daryl. The rollout for Tusk started on April 1, April Fool’s Day. So far no sign of penetration. Frankly, I’ve suspected your abduction was related but from what you tell me that doesn’t appear to be the case. We’ve found an ingenious way to jump the Iranian air gap. Your zero day Android vulns proved invaluable.” Frank told him how it was planned to work. “With this UNOG mess there isn’t any report. Right now our hopes are on Tusk but it will take time. I don’t know if we have enough. The countermeasure is, of course, Chinese. We have no idea if it will work but their earlier versions I’m told have blunted the first two versions of our stuff. It’s going to work at least somewhat, perhaps as good as your man bragged. I’m concerned about the delay in our current rollout. I’ll meet with the lady running our show out there and my guess is she’ll put some wheels in motion but you two are hot on the trail. I can’t tell you what to do but if you think you can find this woman and get that code back without any danger to yourselves then you’ll be doing us a great service. If there’s risk, let those trained for this sort of thing handle it.”

Frank assured Jeff he’d get all the information he could that might be of help and would text it as it became available. “Don’t let anything happen to you two, all right? You don’t have to save the world. There’s always another way.”

Just then Daryl walked out of the boutique with a mischievous smile. “Say hi to Frank.” Jeff held up the phone. Daryl snatched it up and began talking. Jeff glanced at his watch, caught her eye, then held up ten fingers. “Got to go, Frank,” she said. “I need to wash up and change clothes. See you guys soon.”

She handed the phone back to Jeff. “Where’s the ladies’ room?”

Once she’d vanished behind the door Jeff considered calling Ulrich Spyri in Prague. The man had been very professional with him. He’d worked as hard as he could and in the end had taken the right approach. He’d not succeeded because Jeff had run out on him and he felt very badly about that.

But better to wait, Jeff decided. Better to get out of Europe first—just in case.

LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

CIA HEADQUARTERS

CYBERTERRORISM–COMPUTER FORENSICS DEPARTMENT

12:19 P.M. EST

A
gnes Edinfield walked down the hallway, smiling to several subordinates as she did, then entered her reception area. Her assistant glanced up, nodded in acknowledgment, then returned to his computer. In her office Edinfield set aside her notepad and papers, then entered her private restroom.

In the war on terror, as it was still known within the Company, there was one positive: funding had improved. There’d been a time when she’d had to scramble for every piece of her budget or to grab a position or two. Today it was more a question of positioning herself to get a bigger slice of the pie.

Frank Renkin had come by her office earlier that morning and delivered stunning news. First, a UNOG official had been murdered on the street outside his home in downtown Geneva. She’d seen an alert on it earlier but had not matched it to his earlier briefing. The ongoing manhunt had been turned up dramatically. Interpol was requesting CIA assistance—which meant data, not manpower as they were very sensitive about that sort of thing. But there was a lot they were prepared to tolerate if the outcome was to their liking. You simply could not let officials be gunned down at will, especially in Switzerland. A man believed to be an Iranian national was the assailant and had been killed at the scene. Jeff Aiken had been brought to the site and identified him as one of the abductors.

There was, regrettably, no word on Dr. Haugen and Edinfield had decided that she could only assume Haugen was a loss. She didn’t like the thought of that but over the years she’d seen it often enough to know the likely outcome. Those abducted were typically killed quickly unless there was a reason to hold them. She hoped there was one in this case but she couldn’t see it. No, that lovely woman was almost certainly dead. Well, that’s what came of association with risk takers like Aiken.

The second bit of news from Renkin had also been shocking. After identifying one of his abductors, Aiken had fled Geneva. Now why would he do that, especially when the Geneva police so obviously needed his assistance?

Which led Edinfield to rethink the unfolding events. How much of the story Aiken had told in Geneva could be accepted at face value now that he’d disappeared and was no longer cooperating with local authorities? It wasn’t as if he was a professional agent being debriefed. They had no idea why he had gone or where. They’d needed him to examine photographs of suspects. Instead, he’d sneaked passed his police guard and vanished.

If this story Aiken had told was true there was no reason for him not to cooperate. The Swiss police were internationally known for their efficiency. Even Aiken should have understood that after the murder of a UNOG official the manhunt for Dr. Haugen and her abductors would take priority.

No, she concluded he’d left for his own reasons and those could not be good. He’d been holding something back, something he didn’t want the Swiss police to know. His flight suggested guilty knowledge, perhaps even guilty actions on his part. Either that or he was acting as a lone wolf. Neither was a good sign. She wondered how many people were going to get killed before his luck ran out.

Two weeks earlier, Edinfield had received her first classified briefing informing her of the existence of Stuxnet3. It was being unleashed on Iran to stall once again its nuclear weapons program. At first, Stuxnet had existed in the Company only as an idle rumor. The concept was that their Cyber Warfare Center had, along with the Israelis, designed a transformative digital weapon.

She’d long wondered why they’d waited so long. Cyberweapons were used by America’s enemies every day. The Chinese had certainly shown no hesitation in employing their considerable capability in attacking U.S. national security databases. She’d been told that once the United States crossed that threshold there was no turning back and no telling how much damage would be inflicted. The world was simply too dependent on computers to risk it.

But all that had changed with Stuxnet.

Given their expertise, she suspected that Aiken and Dr. Haugen had done work on Stuxnet3. Part of her had wondered if that wasn’t the real reason they’d been abducted. And maybe, she now thought, giving Aiken the benefit of the doubt, that was what he’d held back. American involvement in Stuxnet was a closely guarded secret, one he’d not have been able to share with local police. At least she wanted to believe that of him even if he tended to be a wild card in the field, a place where he had no business being.