Perspectives, An Intriguing Tale of an American Born Terrorist (29 page)

Mary recoiled. “How dare you say something like that? Do you think that I can change my faith, like I change my clothes? Don’t ever joke with me about religion, do you understand? Religion is very serious business.”

“I’m sorry, I was trying to be funny. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

“How can your religion or any religion blame you? Mary, you didn’t kill Matthew, someone else did. And there’s nothing you could have done to prevent it. If anyone’s at fault it’s me.”

“That’s not true! I could have been home for him and not been so ambitious. I could have pulled him out of there as soon as I got an inkling that he wasn’t safe. Don’t tell me that there’s nothing I could have done, because there’s a thousand things I could have done.”

“Mary, we don’t have time to argue, you have to pull yourself together. We’ve got a lot to do if we’re going to figure this out. And right now, that’s our only hope to ever feel human again. Can we please get to work?”

Mary nodded and Jonathan dried her eyes with a tissue and gave her a hug, “I love you and I’m sorry for making light of your religion,” he said.

“I love you too.” She wound up and slugged him as hard as she could in the shoulder. “Don’t do it again!”

Jonathan and Mary sat on the bed reading and studying the large stack of documents that Mary had printed. After several hours of reading, Mary said, “This stuff looks really disturbing. Look at this….here’s that July 15th note we saw earlier, but the Director had been sending similar notes to the President since January. Listen to this one, ‘We can use the operation to solidify support from the American people.’ And then on March 3rd, ‘Everything’s progressing as planned, we are targeting July for execution.’ Jonathan, you don’t think that they had anything to do with this, do you?”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Jonathan.

“Is it really? Think about it. It was an election year and it tilted the country to the President’s party. Isn’t that what terror always does? And didn’t the President’s party take control of both the House and Senate last November? And what about that 60 minutes segment…..this is consistent with what they were saying.”

Jonathan’s face began to turn red. “I don’t want to believe that. Let’s keep looking and see what all the data shows us.”

“But what if it’s true? What would we do?”

“Mary, someone’s going to pay for this and right now, I don’t care if it’s the President of the United States or some raghead from Baghdad, someone’s going to pay, do you understand?” Jonathan got up and Mary could sense the rage that was pushing through his pours. “Somebody’s going to pay!”

“Calm down sweetie, you’ll wake Carly,” she said. “You’re probably right, the President wouldn’t be involved in anything like this. Did you check and see if any other operation shut down on July 15th?”

“I couldn’t find anything, but there’s a lot of data and I’m sure I didn’t get through 10% of it.”

“We’ll look later,” added Mary. “Pass me those depositions.” Jonathan grabbed the stack and Mary noticed that his hands were shaking so badly that it took both of them to carry the papers from the bed to her without spilling them all over the floor.

Mary watched in horror. “Honey, you need to relax. Fix yourself a drink, you’re coming apart.”

“I know, it’s just that when I think about the brutality, I can hardly control the rage.”

“Sweetie, fix yourself a drink and fix me one too.”

Mary and Jonathan sat on the couch studying the depositions. After about half an hour she said, “I only see one guy who appears even remotely guilty of anything.”

“It’s all the same stuff isn’t it,” answered Jonathan. “And what’s worse is that I can’t find anything in the interrogation files.”

“Maybe we should shift our focus,” said Mary. “Let’s try to find who sent us all this stuff, and maybe through that person we can piece together what’s going on. Give me a profile of what you think our insider is like.”

Jonathan picked up a yellow legal pad and spoke as he scribbled a description.

“Okay, he would be an extreme computer geek, and when I say extreme, I mean to the nth degree. Of course he would have a terminal college degree, no doubt from a top ten school. He would most definitely have international experience and probably have been part of a number of special projects.”

“Are there many Muslims at the agency?” asked Mary.

“Why do you think he’s a Muslim?”

“Well whoever it is seems sympathetic to your plight. And most Muslims don’t like terrorists, so I could see a Muslim, who knows you’re innocent, maybe trying to help you.”

“Too much of a stretch,” answered Jonathan.

“But answer my question; are there many Muslims who work at the agency?”

“Yes, you’d be surprised at how many. It’s a Presidential mandate, kind of overcompensation for the way they are treated in the rest of America. It’s the political way of giving the appearance that we are not all bigots and an attempt to erase the assumption that we see all Muslims as terrorists.”

“But the Muslims see right through it?”

“Of course they do, because it’s all bullshit.”

“How many do you know?”

“We had 3 in my group, but they’re all dead. But really I think you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

“Okay, try a generic search. Start with the people on your project.”

Jonathan pulled up a list.

Mary scanned the computer screen, “It looks like there are about 5 of the 75 people on this list that fit your geek and educational requirements and have been overseas and have worked in Arab countries. Do you know Joe Dixson? Seems perfect: BS from Carnegie Mellon in Computer Engineering, MS from RPI, 2 years in the field at Naples and then a year in India, and then 5 years in Syria.”

“Yeah, I know Joe, he was with me on the project and is dead. I think we’re wasting our time with all the
Blue Heron
folks because they’re all gone. Remember, the whole floor was destroyed and I was the only survivor.” Jonathan began to show signs of frustration, “Mary we don’t have much time, can we look elsewhere?”

“But did you ever check to see if anyone from your team was out of the office that day, maybe on business or sick or on vacation? Certainly with that many folks, not everyone is going to be there.”

“Are you suggesting that there was more than one survivor?”

“What do you think the agency is going to do, broadcast who lived and who died. First of all, no one was supposed to know that there was a project at all and weren’t the agents supposed to keep it quiet, even from their families. So if they weren’t there, they would simply go to work someplace else the next day and no one would know the difference.”

“Impossible, everyone knows now what was going on in that building and if anyone was absent, they would have been interviewing them on the TV media as quickly as possible.

“I disagree. Don’t you think the agency would put fear in their lives and their family’s lives and warn them that the terrorists are still out there and may come after any survivors? You were different because you were inside and were hurt and were put on display when you were in the hospital for all that time. Play along with me and let’s see if anyone was absent from work that day.”

“Why do you think it’s someone who was in my operation?”

“I’m just guessing, but doesn’t it seem strange that the person knew your every move. There’s an old saying
that you keep your friends close and your enemies closer
. So either way they should be near to you. It just seems that you were being shadowed and what better way to shadow someone than to be part of their group.”

“That’s impossible. We hand picked all of our people.”

“I wouldn’t say anything is impossible at this point,” answered Mary. “Anyway humor me; it will be easy enough to use the agency computer to match the
Blue Heron
employees with the agency death list.”

Jonathan conceded.

It only took him a few minutes to have all 75
Blue Heron
employees identified and copied into another file. He found the July 15th Killed in Action list and copied it into the same file. And she was right; there were 3 people who were not at the building that day.

“You’re a genius,” said Jonathan amazed at the simplicity of her deduction.

She scanned the 3 personnel files.

“I’m not through,” said Mary. “See if any one of these 3 had any kind of falling out with the agency. You know some kind of reason to flip to the other side.”

Jonathan just stared at her in amazement.

“Who are they?” she asked.

“Stephanie Kwoka, Ted French and Alex Moore.” Jonathan stopped. “Alex Moore? We didn’t have anyone by that name working on our team.”

Mary was only half listening and was still looking at the screen, “Nothing there, they all seem squeaky clean.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Jonathan.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I was just seeing if any of them had anything in their personnel files. Okay let’s go over them one at a time. How well did you know Stephanie Kwoka?”

“Pretty good, she was a good agent, very quiet, young, short blonde hair, moderately attractive, early thirties with 2 small kids. She was a soccer star in college, played goalie for the University of Maryland. You met her at the Christmas party.”

“Kind of gangly with brown glasses?” asked Mary.

“I guess you didn’t think her moderately attractive? Yeah, that was her.”

“She was out sick on the 15th. Do you think she would be capable of bringing explosives into your building or have reason to leak information to terrorists?”

“No, I can’t see her doing any of that. That’s going to be the tough part. We’re not going to see anyone as capable of doing anything like this, are we?”

“I don’t know, probably not. But we need to keep trying. Do you think that Stephanie is smart enough to get into your user id and erase the audit trail?”

“I’d say no. Stephanie was real good at picking key phrases to help us screen chatter. Not the most technical programmer, but a very good team player with an uncanny ability to recognize questionable communication.”

“Do you think she’s the one that sent you the computer and the programs?”

“It’s real hard to say. Steph and I weren’t really that close and she was pretty introverted. My initial reaction would be that she wouldn’t do anything that would risk her position with the agency. She’s pretty much just an 8-5 type employee who wants to make her pension.”

“Well, she was conveniently absent when the place blew up. And now she’s been assigned to the new team, so I’m guessing that she’s settled into a similar role. Hey, can you use the
Blue Heron
program to go into her email to see who she’s talking with and if there’s anything going outside the agency.”

Jonathan typed several commands into the laptop and then scanned the last week of Stephanie’s outgoing emails. “Nothing going out from the agency’s computer. I’m going to find her personal account on the public servers, do you mind? There she is on AOL. And there’s a bunch of family communication, those horrible chain emails……what is it with people that they just keep passing this junk around. She looks pretty clean. I say that she’s legitimate, so she’s definitely not the bad guy. Let’s try the next one,” Jonathan continued. He flipped to the next screen.

“Okay this guy’s name is Ted French.”

“Yes, Ted, he’s in a little different league from Stephanie.”

Mary stared at the picture. “Jonathan I know this guy, he graduated with me at MIT in 1994.”

“You never said anything about Ted,” answered Jonathan. “I knew you and Bob were there together, but nothing about Ted.”

“I didn’t know he worked with you,” said Mary. “I haven’t even thought of him since school. And we were never really friends. You need to remember that people who go to MIT for a PhD in computer engineering aren’t usually the most outgoing people you’ll meet. They take a few courses, but most of their time is in research with their advisors and pounding on computer keyboards. Most of my time was spent in the bio-chemistry laboratory, so we weren’t exactly on the same wave length. When I graduated, it was real freaky, because even though the graduating class only had 35 people, there were at least 15 that I had never seen before. The only reason I know Ted is that I ran into him a lot in the library and he was kind of a lonely guy. He talked to me about his thesis and a couple of projects that he probably shouldn’t have. You know he seemed like he was in desperate need of a friend. But Mr. French was one lucky man on July 15th: he was on vacation. How well did you know him?”

“Pretty well. We had a small office, so we saw each other almost every day.”

“What do you remember about Ted?”

“Like you said, he’s my age, an MIT grad, nice family, 3 kids, drives a 330i, I believe he’s been with the agency about 10 years or so, so he must have come right after his PhD. He did have some Middle East tours of duty.”

“Capable of doing this?”

“Certainly smart enough.”

“Well let me tell you something you probably didn’t know about Mr. Ted French and something he certainly wouldn’t put on his resume,” said Mary. “He did his thesis on weapons programming, you know the smart bombs, the kind that wait to go off and spew all different kinds of death. And if I’m not mistaken, he was on that team that scared the MIT faculty half to death, when they claimed that if given enough money they could create a nuclear bomb without weapon grade plutonium. And you know as well as me, it takes a whole lot to scare those brainiacs. The funny thing was, the University took them up on their claim and gave them $250,000 to go out and make a nuclear bomb. I always wondered if the money might have come from the agency. Anyway, Ted, Bob and three other geeks disappeared for a month and came back with a crude nuclear device that was about the size of a coffee table and had the capability of blowing up the city of Manhattan.”

"Bob was in on that?”

“You didn’t know?”

“He never said a word. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why would I? I didn’t even know you were in the CIA, remember?”