Stephanie Doyle: Calculated Risk

It’s time for you to come home, Sabrina. You’ve been gone too long. They’re going to need your help. If you’re reading this, it’s because I’m dead now. You know what to do, G.G.

“You want me to hack his password and figure out a way to decrypt the data so you can find your missing bad guys.”

“That’s part of it,” Krueger said somewhat stiltedly.

Her eyebrows arched. “That’s a pretty big part if you ask me.”

“There is another element you bring to the table. There is another party in this war who, so far, we have failed to tag. A player who we believe would be as interested in Arnold’s data as we are.”

It didn’t take much brainpower to figure out who that was, and she had more than her fair share. She had been out of the game a long time, but there were only a few players who could avoid the great and mighty reach of the CIA. One was obvious, the other not so much. She was guessing it was the dark horse.

“Kahsan,” Sabrina breathed. “You still haven’t caught him.”

“No,” Krueger answered flatly. “We know he was responsible for the hotel in Milan. We know he took down the plane over Turkey. We know these things, yet we can never get close enough to take him out. Forget tagging him, we’ve never gotten a decent read on his movements to know what food source to go after. He’s got to be taken out. There are thousands of terrorist groups, small insignificant bands of fanatics who believe in something so strongly they are willing to kill and die for it. Terrorist attacks, by any group, are a headline story. Kahsan gives these minor groups an opportunity to play on the world stage. And he doesn’t give a damn about the cause. For him it’s only about the money.”

“So what’s your plan?”

The senior agent breathed in slowly, then exhaled, giving his words gravity. “We want you to contact him. We want you to tell him about Arnold’s project. We want you to tell him that, for a price, you can give him access to the location of known terrorists that are currently operating within the United States.”

Sabrina listened intently, trying to see the endgame as Krueger did. She knew Kahsan was a mercenary without followers. The terrorists operating inside the country were killers waiting for a planner. As a group they were little more than a loaded gun until someone came along and pulled the trigger. As long as Americans ended up dead, it really didn’t matter who that person was. Putting the two of them together would be a volatile combination.

If Kahsan could claim that he controlled a terrorist cell inside the U.S. then every anti-American group in the world would be offering him money to mobilize them. It would no doubt be his biggest payday to date. His greatest infamy.

“You’re serious?” Sabrina tried to wrap her mind around the dangers of actually letting Kahsan inside the country. Then she thought about the flip side of the argument and what stopping him might do for the war on terror. Then she thought about something more basic. “Why me?”

“Your résumé is perfect.”

“Really? No typos?”

Krueger stared her into silence. “Arnold told us that there was a key to breaking his encryption code and he promised us that upon his death we would be given that key. What he sent to us in an e-mail was your name. His idea of doing us a favor I suppose.”

And me, Sabrina thought. He thought he was doing her a favor, too.

“We considered your history. The CIA’s Youth Adoption Program recruited you when you were sixteen. You trained for years to be a field operative, but you were fired when you failed to perform up to standard. Your father works for the NSA, but the two of you are estranged. For the past ten years you’ve wandered about the country using your unique skills to make big scores at various casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. That is, until the owners caught on to you and barred you from their establishments. Now you sell secrets to tabloid magazines to make ends meet. You have no particular political allegiance. No husband, no boyfriend. No family at all. And if your bank account information is accurate, not a whole lot of money. You do, however, have a connection to Arnold Salinski that is easily traceable.”

Sabrina smiled weakly once she realized the intent of his little bibliography. “You’re right. It’s a pretty good résumé for a traitor.”

“Exactly. We want you to convince Kahsan you’re willing to sell him access to Arnold’s data.”

“What’s going to make him think-”

“He’ll have access to the same information about you that we have. And he’ll learn through channels that the CIA is planning to pick you up and take you to Arnold’s computer. That will be confirmed by you. You’ll explain that you’ve been contacted by us. You’ll tell him that once you know the location of the server, you’ll pass it on to him. You’ll let him know that he needs to meet you at the location with five million dollars in bonds on hand and that once you have it, you’ll hack through Arnold’s password and decrypt the data he needs. He doesn’t have to know how unlikely either task is.”

“What about the agents he’ll assume are with me?”

“He’ll know that’s his problem to deal with.”

“But you’ll have a whole team of people on the ground ready to take him out when he comes,” Sabrina added.

“No,” Krueger countered. “Not a team.”

She tried to imagine a legitimate reason for that, but when she failed, she asked, “Uh… Why not?”

“For one, if he thought this was a trap, he wouldn’t get anywhere near it. We know he has sources inside the Company. It’s just one of the ways he’s managed to elude us for so long. A job this big, this important, would get out to everyone despite its classification. We want him to tap those sources and come up blank.”

“And the other reason?”

“What we’re talking about is a huge risk,” Krueger stated slowly, clearly willing her to understand. “What we’re talking about is not something that if the president knew about it, he would or could agree to.”

“Shit,” Sabrina hissed. “This is the part where you tell me you have to cover your ass.”

“Not my ass. The president’s ass. The American people don’t want another attack in this country. They certainly would not appreciate the idea of their government agencies willingly allowing key terrorists to move freely about inside our borders.”

“You think?” she drawled.

“This is a highly offensive maneuver, but one I think is necessary. There are only three people who are aware of the plan I laid out. The director of the CIA, you and myself. It must remain this way. As far as everyone else in the agency is concerned your only mission is to decrypt the data. An agent will pick you up to take you to the server’s location. You will convince that agent that it was your idea to lure Kahsan into the open. Regardless of what happens from that point forward, your mission stays the same. If it looks like we’re pulling the plug, you must convince that agent to continue to work with you. Or you operate on your own. The agent is expendable, do you understand? Kahsan is the primary target. He’s the only thing that matters.”

Sabrina processed that. “What if I make contact with Kahsan and he has me kidnapped before your agent comes?”

“You don’t know where the computer is. Kidnapping you makes no sense. He has to have you and the computer together for this to work. Once there, either you or the agent will take him out on sight.”

“And if I fail, and somehow Kahsan gets the data and meets up with the other bad guys and boom!, the White House ends up as toast, then what?”

“Then the CIA will disavow all knowledge of any plan to bring him into the country and you’ll be known as the worst traitor in American history since Benedict Arnold.”