John Case - Ghost Dancer aka Dance of Death

Spagnola blinked a couple of times. Finally, he said, “I see.” And he did. It was brilliant. Simoni was using eBay as if it were a dead-drop. It was al-Qaeda 2.0.

“So the agent,” he said, “the guy Simoni was talking to, he didn’t have to do bupkes.”

Humvee shook her head. “EBay was just a bulletin board. All the agent needed to do was to plug ‘Akmed’s Books’ into the Search bar, and wait for the page to pop up. If he had Stegorama on his computer, and remembered the password, extracting the message was a cinch. Of course, if it was encrypted, he’d have to decode it. And, unfortunately, that seems to be the case with the messages they’ve found. They’re all enciphered.”

“So we don’t know what they say.”

“Not yet.”

“How long before they crack it?”

Humvee shrugged. “It’s al-Qaeda, so they put us at the front of the queue, but who knows? Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week, maybe-”

“What about tracking the people who went to the website?”

“EBay?!”

“Not all of eBay. Just the pages with Simoni’s pictures.”

Humvee stared at him as if he had pencils in his nostrils.

“You go to a website,” Spagnola insisted, “you leave footprints. I know that much.”

Humvee patronized him with a smile. “You mean, cookies?”

“Yeah. Cookies.”

Humvee shook her head. “The website might leave a cookie on your computer, but your computer wouldn’t leave a cookie on the website.” She paused to let this sink in. “If we had a suspect, we could look at his computer to see if he’d gone to a particular site… maybe. But I don’t think eBay’s servers keep track of everyone who accesses it.”

“How do you know?” Spagnola asked.

“I don’t. But even if they did, they wouldn’t keep track of everyone who visits every auction, especially if they don’t bid. And why would Simoni’s people bid? They probably have their own Korans already.”

“But you’ll check,” Spagnola insisted.

Humvee shrugged. “Sure,” she said. “I’ll check.”

Spagnola crumpled the can of Coke Light and tossed it into his wastebasket. He was just beginning to realize that Humvee had screwed him. This was a high-profile operation and she hadn’t bothered to tell him anything until they hit a dead end, and sent the computer to NSA. Of course, there would be a copy of her brief on the desk of the chief of station, and the old man would know that this was all Humvee’s work and initiative, not Spagnola’s. Anger rose in his chest. He could feel his face burning.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“You mean-”

“The steganography! The fact that Simoni was using eBay.” His hands flew up. “Everything.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, without a hint of regret. “It just didn’t seem like your kind of thing.”

“My kind of thing?”

He chewed her out for two minutes. Who did she think she was? He was her boss! He couldn’t believe she’d taken it on herself to contact NSA! What was she thinking?

She flushed, but she couldn’t hide a look of triumph.

Now he’d have to stay in town, Spagnola thought, waiting for the decrypts. Visions of his escape to the slopes with his wife and daughter faded.

“So,” he said, “we’re on hold.”

“More or less.”

“I was hoping to get away for the weekend.”

A soft tsk fell from her lips. “Well,” she said, “it’s only Wednesday. And let’s face it, NSA has its own fish to fry. I’d be very surprised if we hear anything at all before next week.”

Spagnola looked hopeful. “Really?”

“Probably the end of next week.”

“Okay,” Spagnola decided, feeling better about it all. “Just make sure you keep me in the loop, okay?”

“Absolutely.”

The NSA decrypts were hand-delivered to Madison Logan’s office on Friday afternoon, about an hour after lunch. Her first instinct was to take them directly to Spagnola’s, but then she remembered what he’d said about getting away for the weekend. So she put the packet, unopened, in her personal safe, and grabbed her coat. On her way out, she asked the third-floor receptionist to let Mr. Spagnola know that she’d left for a dental appointment – a root canal – and would probably not be back until Monday.

In fact, she went shopping in the Uhland Passage, where there was an upscale boutique that specialized in couture for “plus-size” women. At four o’clock, she called the office to see if there were any messages.

“Mr. Spagnola was asking for you,” the receptionist told her, “but then he left. He said it wasn’t urgent.”

Hurrying back to the office, she went to her safe and retrieved the package of decrypts. A quick glance told her they were dynamite. Picking up the phone, she dialed Spagnola’s office. After the fifth ring, she left a message. “This is Madison,” she said. “The decrypts we were talking about just came in. I think they’re important. If you’ll get back to me, I’ll bring them right over. Otherwise… I’m not quite sure what to do.”

Her ass covered, she took the elevator to the chief of station’s office, knocked, and entered.

“What do you have?” he asked, looking up from his desk.

“Lots,” she told him, laying the envelope in front of him. “But the best part is a list.”

“What kind of list?”

“A list of accounts in half a dozen offshore banks, and deposits made to those accounts by Herr Simoni.”

“You mean the mook with the Korans? The eBay guy our friends blew away?”

She smiled brightly, and nodded.

The COS opened the packet, and looked at the top page.

“That’s sort of an executive summary,” Madison Logan told him. “Eyes Only. Just the good parts.”

The COS grunted, his brow furrowed.

Deposit $8,400

Account #98765A4

Bank Hapoalim

Tel Aviv

10-05-04

Deposit CH72,900

Account #87612342

CBC Bank & Trust, Ltd.

Cayman Islands

9-02-04

Deposit 2,342

Account #3498703

HSBC Bank

Jebil Ali Free Zone

9-22-04

Deposit $25,000

Account #3698321W

Cadogan Bank

St. Helier, Jersey

12-20-04

Deposit £31,825

Account #0000432189

Singel Bank Privat

Geneva

1-27-05

There had been a lot of second-guessing after the fuckup at Simoni’s apartment. The yahoos from the BfV had managed to kill a man whose capture would have been invaluable.

But that was then, the COS thought, and this was now. The list in his hands was gold. He looked up with a satisfied smile. “This is excellent work, Madison. Really, excellent! What does Spagnola think?”

A hapless look came over her. “I’m afraid he hasn’t seen it yet, sir.”

“What?”

“No. He, uhhh, well, I think he left early. A ski trip or something.”

The sooner Wilson got out of town, the safer he’d be. It had taken only a day for the wire transfer to clear between Hong Kong and St. Helier. He would have paid almost any amount for transportation to Kampala. But this was Bunia. A failure to bargain would seem suspicious. So he negotiated for five minutes with the man offering a ride in his beat-up Renault.

They got to Entebbe in the evening, too late to fly anywhere Wilson wanted to go. There was, however, a Kenya Airlines flight at five thirty in the morning, connecting to Zurich via Nairobi and Amsterdam.

At the driver’s suggestion, he spent the night at the Speke Hotel, an old-world relic with comfortable beds, good security, and a wireless Internet connection. The driver spent the night in the courtyard of the hotel, sleeping in the backseat of his car.