R Patterson - The Shadow Hunter

“I mean, America is destroying itself from within,” Tyson said. “It doesn’t need your help.”

Mustache clucked his tongue. “You Americans are always so arrogant, thinking you got here all by yourself, completely unaware of what’s really going on.”

“Arrogance has nothing to do with it,” Tyson said. “Americans are completely capable of being manipulated and divided.”

Baldie grinned. “We’re quite aware of this. Your rugged individualism can be as much of a liability as an asset. Take you, for example, Mr. Tyson. You’re here all by yourself. You have no friends. You have no life. You won’t even entertain the thought of some company.”

“But I’m alive,” Tyson countered.

“And what kind of life is this, living in the middle of Siberia?” mustached man asked. “There could be a better life for you in exchange for better information.”

Tyson pursed his lips before responding. “I’ll tell you what. Give me a week to think about it, and I’ll try to come up with something better for you. Can you live with that?”

Mustache smoothed his facial hair downward, pondering Tyson’s offer. “That sounds acceptable. But we will return in one week, expectant of much better intel or else there will be consequences, the kind I promise you don’t want. Are we clear?”

Tyson nodded. He watched the men exit the room. When they were all gone, he exhaled.

He’d bought himself another week. It wasn’t much, but he didn’t care. The FSB was going to extract its pound of flesh sooner or later. Tyson preferred that it be later.

And if a week was all he could buy, it was better than nothing.

CIA Headquarters

Langley, Virginia

ROBERT BESSERMAN STUDIED the report in front of him and considered how to proceed. Since he’d taken over the agency two years earlier at the request of President Franklin Norris, Besserman had only initiated pre-emptive strikes. The period of peace had been a welcome one after a tumultuous time between the presidencies of Conrad Michaels and Noah Young. Both of those administrations seemed to invite terrorist attacks. But that had all but disappeared under Norris’s watch, though Besserman wouldn’t have minded getting a little credit.

However, in the preceding six months, something had shifted on the international terrorism scene. The organizations that had lain dormant during the majority of Norris’s tenure seemed to be stumbling out of hibernation, searching for a target to strike and destroy. Never had Besserman remembered receiving so much intel from his strategically placed agents all over the globe. If he didn’t know any better, he would’ve thought it was a global conspiracy. But he was smart enough to know that unifying terrorist groups was akin to herding cats hyped up on catnip into a bathtub. It would never happen. Yet something was happening.

Besserman checked his watch and gasped. The time was getting away from him and he was already five minutes late to a briefing he’d ordered. One of his best analysts, Craig McMurtry, had floated the idea that perhaps a coalition wasn’t being built but that maybe someone had decided to coalesce scores of terrorist groups by supplying them with funding. Besserman wanted to know more. To him, the idea sounded like chaos theory on hard drugs. And the idea of fighting back had given Besserman a couple of sleepless nights.

Besserman hustled into his seat at the head of the table and set his briefcase in front of him. Everyone else was staring at the projector screen, trying to figure out how to adjust the color.

“We’ve got a building full of the brightest minds in the country, yet not a damn one of you knows how to work the projector,” Besserman said.

Several people seated at the table chuckled before looking at Besserman. He wasn’t laughing.

“Let’s go,” Besserman said, gesturing for McMurtry to start. “If this is as serious as you’re making it out to be, we’re losing ground as we speak.”

McMurtry didn’t need to be told twice. He started by giving a background report about the inactivity over the past few years and when the change was initiated. In one month, forty-five agents reported back that the cell where they were imbedded had come upon a windfall of financial help. It wasn’t out of the ordinary for three to five agents to share similar stories in a given timeframe. But even with the economy booming, forty-five was an alarming number.

McMurtry explained that several of the terrorist cells with accounts they were monitoring through unofficial channels were all receiving the money from different banks all over the world. Not one infusion of cash could be tied to the same bank. And neither could a name or organization be put on any of the accounts that originated the transaction. At first glance, McMurtry believed that highly-skilled hackers were likely to be responsible. But a thorough investigation found his theory wanting.

“So what’s your new theory?” Besserman asked.

“I think this might be the work of a shadow organization,” McMurtry said.

Besserman’s eyebrows shot upward. “One that has legacy accounts at all these banks? I find that scenario almost as unlikely as what we’re already dealing with.”

“I agree, but just stay with me here,” McMurtry said. “I think it’s not as far-fetched as you might think.”

Besserman sat up and leaned forward in his chair. “I’m listening.”

“A little over a year and a half ago, there was a data breach at a bank in Zurich,” McMurtry said, flashing a graphic of a newspaper headline on the screen. “Two months after that, another breach at another bank in the Cayman Islands. Then every forty-five to sixty days for the next year, there were breaches, some of them so small that they didn’t even make major news. But someone was targeting banks. What information was stolen? According to digital forensics experts, nothing. Not a name. Not an account number. Not an email address. Not a phone number. Zilch. These hackers went through a lot of trouble, but never retrieved a single shred of information, according to the investigating companies.”

“Then what were they after?” Besserman asked.

“No, that’s the wrong question,” McMurtry said. “What did they really get? That’s what I want to know. Because these hackers weren’t just showing off, taking their skills on the equivalent of an internet joy ride. They found exactly what they were looking for.”

“And how do you know that?” one of the women at the table asked.

“I decided to investigate the company that handles these investigations,” McMurtry continued. “Trans Global Security—or TGS—was started by a Saudi prince, Prince Ahmed Salman, who’d gotten his hand slapped numerous times for hacking into various systems. About five years ago, he proclaimed himself cured and announced that he was putting his skills to good use. He quickly raised the capital to start a global company that hired some of the best digital forensics experts in the world. They opened offices in London, New York, Paris, Sydney, Johannesburg, and Frankfurt. Now, they are viewed as the experts, dwarfing their competition in both talent and capital.”

“And TGS investigated all of these breaches?” Besserman asked.

“TGS and their partners,” McMurtry affirmed. “What I found was that no matter who was called on to investigate the various breaches, ultimately TGS was the one handling the process. Many of the smaller firms didn’t have the bandwidth to launch a massive investigation.”

“But TGS did?” another man asked.

“Exactly,” McMurtry said. “Part of their visionary plan was to form partnerships with other similar businesses, seeing them as mutually beneficial as opposed to a competitor. And in this case, the smaller firms landed what was essentially a finder’s fee, while TGS did all the grunt work.”