Brad Taylor - Enemy of Mine

“Our” goals? Or your goals?

“I understand. If I can get the funding and infrastructure to travel somewhere else, I agree. It will require much more in the way of intelligence, though, because I won’t be able to do my own work.”

“They will provide the funding. We can provide whatever infrastructure you need. We have assets all over the world. We’re also able to penetrate the Palestinian Authority. You will know what they know.”

“Where do I meet this other group?”

“The meeting is in four days, in the Ain al-Hilweh camp.” Ja’far smiled. “You won’t have to come back here.” He read out an address, then said, “What shall we call you, should we need to communicate?”

The Ghost thought for a moment, then said, “ Ash’abah .”

He saw the change in the men’s demeanor and twisted the knife a little more. “It’s what everyone calls me back home.”

For the thirtieth time, Jennifer said, “I can’t believe this. Are you sure there’s a message?”

“Yeah, I am. Can you quit asking that? We’ll know soon enough. If you can get me to an open area.”

I had my GPS out, but it wasn’t picking up a satellite signal due to the enclosure of the buildings left and right. We were in the Old Town of Damascus, doing a little “sightseeing,” after the fiasco of getting through immigration the previous night.

The trip itself was falling apart, and Jennifer wasn’t pleased. We’d run into trouble as soon as we’d landed. The official from the Ministry of Culture who’d expedited our visas was now persona non grata inside the government of Syria. No telling why, but with Syria in such a mess I was sure he was now getting the rubber-hose treatment. And he’d painted a bull’s-eye on Jennifer and me, since the government thought we were connected with him.

Our contact at the State Department had been no help. He wasn’t expecting us to travel for another three to five months, and with the U.S. Embassy shuttered in Syria due to the troubles, we had no one local to help. Jennifer had fumed, really pissed that her scientific expedition was slipping away. I tried to calm her down, then simply left her alone to grump in her room. When I got to mine, I’d found our mission had changed.

This morning we’d gone for breakfast, where I’d finally gotten the courage to tell Jennifer we had to collect a message from the Taskforce. I couldn’t talk about it in the hotel, because after our experiences at immigration and customs, I was sure that place was wired for sound, so I’d just gone to sleep after logging out of my Yahoo account.

The e-mail, ostensibly from the university, complete with a university address, simply inquired about our flight. That would have been fine, except it also asked for a status of camera equipment we didn’t have with us. The word “camera” was a prearranged code letting me know we had a message from the Taskforce. I didn’t want to know how they’d hacked a legitimate university e-mail address.

Probably twenty laws broken just by opening the message…

At breakfast, Jennifer’s face had fallen the minute I had mentioned it, which actually hurt a little, but she knew the priority and knew the physical requirements for collecting the message. I left it up to her to find the area.

The Taskforce had multiple ways to transmit covert messages, depending on the security of the host country. The easiest method was a simple VPN back to our “company,” but some countries-such as Syria-controlled their Internet and prevented VPNs from working. The next easiest way was an encrypted e-mail, but once again, foreign intelligence services usually owned their Internet, and while they couldn’t read the e-mail, they knew it had been sent. Best case, they knew you were doing something secret and would amp up the scrutiny to find out what that was. For a real businessman, that was no issue, since they were doing what they said they’d be doing. For the Taskforce, it could mean mission failure.

We’d tried carrying our own satellite equipment for a cut-out. Strictly commercial, off-the-shelf stuff like M3 or Thrane to blend in, which would allow us to have an Internet connection that bypassed the host country. That had worked until a team, traveling as cellular technicians, had had the equipment confiscated at customs. They’d been told that the country in question “had robust Internet,” and thus the communications gear wasn’t needed. Between the lines they heard, “We don’t want you talking where we can’t listen.”

The Taskforce realized they needed a no-fail way to get messages out while operating within denied areas, such as Syria. Some fifty-pound head in the communications section had come up with the solution.

The first Global Positioning Satellite was launched by the U.S. military in 1978. Since then, a broadening constellation of satellites has been continually launching signals to earth in an ever-increasing refinement of geo-location capability. Now, the little GPS receiver you bought at Walmart would triangulate your position to the meter. All over the globe.

The genius idea was embedding the message traffic into the GPS signal. A customs official would confiscate just about any other piece of communications gear before a GPS, especially if it worked as advertised when checked.

Ordinary GPS wouldn’t even realize the signal was there, but our special GPS would receive it, decode it, and display it. Since the U.S. government owned the entire technology, it was nothing to get the necessary tech stuff done to make it happen. The only downside was the weakness of every GPS signal, which had a hard time working in dense areas. Embed some data within it, and you really needed to have a wide-open area and some time for the GPS to lock on to the satellite and receive the more complicated signal.

We were currently in the al-Hamidiyah Souk, which was about as good for getting a GPS signal as being in a coal mine. Crowded on all sides by vendors selling goods ranging from kids’ toys to perfume, it had an old tin roof that blocked everything, including sunlight. I was beginning to think Jennifer was purposely making this hard.

“Are you sure you know where you’re going? Isn’t there a park or soccer field around that doesn’t require us to go this deep into the city?”

“Keep your pants on. The Umayyad Mosque is right at the end of the souk.”

“Mosque? Seriously?”

She stopped and turned around. “You really didn’t do any studying, did you? This has all been some joke. You knew we weren’t going to get up north.”

Her expression wasn’t angry. It was resigned, like she’d just realized that all her exertions and studying had been nothing but a pale jest at her expense. It hurt again.

“Jennifer…I had no idea. I really wanted to do this trip. I know I’ve made fun of the research, but that’s because I thought we would do the trip. If I’d known this was going to happen, I wouldn’t have been acting like a jackass.”

After a moment of silence, she said, “Whatever this message is, it’s not going to be good. I can feel it. You’re going to make me do something bad.”

Jennifer had already been forced to do things in the name of the United States that the average citizen would consider horrific, and she’d understood the why, but she wanted me to say it wasn’t so this time. Wanted me to make good on my promise of letting her do something purely for the joy of scientific discovery instead of the bloody self-defense of the United States.

I didn’t know what the incoming message would say, but I knew I couldn’t promise Jennifer anything. Like a coward I changed the subject.

“How’s a mosque going to help us? We can’t even get in.”