The Polaris Protocol (27 page)

B
ooth heard the door to the shoddy hotel open and felt the fear return. The crazy man was back. He jerked his hands out of reflex, feeling a sharp stab of pain from the metal of the handcuffs digging into his raw skin.

The door to the bathroom swung open, and his captor was there, holding a box in his hands. The sight caused Booth’s imagination to go into overdrive. What did it contain? What horrific device was he going to use?

How on earth did I end up here?

Booth said, “Please, please. I’ve done everything you want.”

“No. Not everything.”

He opened the box, and Booth shut his eyes, feeling dizzy.

“Look at me.”

Booth did, and saw the man was holding a new laptop computer.

“I need help with this. I don’t have the skill you do.”

Booth sagged on the floor. “Yes. Of course. Whatever you want.”

The killer bent down and unlocked his wrists. He turned and left the bathroom without a word. Booth stood up, hesitated a moment, then followed, finding the man plugging in the laptop on the nicked table in front of the television.

“I have opened a bank account that can be accessed by the Internet. I need you to configure it for the transfer of my money.”

“I . . . I can’t do anything here, without Wi-Fi.”

The killer placed a small device next to the computer, saying, “I bought this. It’s supposed to give Internet over the cell network.”

Booth recognized the device as a MiFi hotspot. He stood, unsure if he was allowed to move.

The killer said, “Can you not do it?”

“No, no. That’s easy. I can do it.”

When he remained still, the killer fixed his hypnotic glare on Booth and said, “Then do it. Now.”

Booth scuttled to the chair in front of the table and went to work. His captor said not a word, watching. Within fifteen minutes, the computer was configured and online.

Booth said, “I need the bank information.”

He was passed a sheet of paper, and he went back to work. A few minutes later, he had the bank account online but now had to ask for specific information from the killer. Information he did not want to know. Things that would make him worthy of extermination. He sat with his hands trembling on the keyboard.

“What are you waiting for?”

“Sir, I need your account information. Your password and account number. And the name you used to open the account.”

The killer said nothing for a moment, then passed Booth another sheet of paper and a United States passport. Booth was stunned.

American. This lunatic is from America.

Booth felt the eyes on his neck as he typed, his hands trembling so hard he was continually having to backspace and correct. He reached a screen for synchronization of a token and was confused.

He said, “This account has two-factor authentication. Did they give you anything? Any other device?”

“Yes. They gave me this.” He handed across a digital gadget that looked like a small pager, with a screen in the center. “They were going to explain it to me, but I said you would do it.”

Booth recognized it as an RSA SecurID key fob. He took it and opened up a new window. He authenticated the fob on the RSA website, then said, “I need a PIN. Four digits.”

“Why? What is that thing?”

“It’s just a second authenticator. You type in the password you gave me to get to your account, which will allow you to see any activity that’s been done and other mundane things, but if you want to transfer money, you need a second authentication. This key fob provides it. You type in your PIN and it spits out a number. You type that number into the computer, and it allows the money to be transferred.”

He gave Booth a number and said, “What happens if I don’t have that device?”

Booth, working the new PIN, said, “All you can do is check your account. Get a balance, see what’s happened with credit cards, that sort of thing. If you want to materially affect the account, you need the key fob.”

Booth finished and tentatively turned around. “It’s set. Remember, you still need me to transfer the protocol at the meeting.”

The killer smiled, his yellow teeth conveying little warmth. “Don’t worry, I have no plans to kill you today. Our meeting is tomorrow morning. Perhaps after that.”

“S
o the Ghost actually made contact with Hezbollah and returned to you? I have to say, I had my doubts. So did the Oversight Council.”

The streaming video feed from my laptop was breaking up some, our hotel Wi-Fi becoming overloaded with the encryption required for my company VPN. Kurt looked a little bit like the old Max Headroom guy, his face in one location before jerking to another. Luckily, the audio, while distorted, was coming through fine.

“Yeah, he came back, but make no mistake, he doesn’t buy the ‘nuclear secrets’ thing. He knows what this is about now, which I figured would happen.”

We’d set up a secure meeting site for the Ghost in Zona Rosa, wanting a clandestine encounter, but after I’d quizzed him via Yahoo! Messenger, I’d learned that the Hezbollah crew hadn’t asked where he was staying. I’d decided the James Bond stuff was more risky than simply going to his hotel room two floors above mine—both because of Hezbollah and because of him. I had no doubt he would attempt to escape, and the longer I let him wander around, the more ideas he would come up with. Better for him to sit in his hotel room.

Kurt, thinking just like me, said, “If he knows it’s a GPS threat now, aren’t you worried he’ll want to get the hack himself instead of helping us out? The only leash you have on him is those GPS cuffs.”

“No. I was actually counting on that to help us. The hack doesn’t turn off the signal. It sends a false one. He’ll be afraid that if the thing is initiated, his cuffs will think they’re now in South America and explode. He knows he only has three minutes to rectify that or start spending his life walking on pegs. He’ll want it shut down as soon as possible. No way will he allow some Hezbollah assholes to run around with it.”

“The council is not nearly as convinced as you. They’re regretting the decision to let him loose.”

“Tell them the meeting is tomorrow. Both Hezbollah and the man with the hack will be there. If they hadn’t let the Ghost travel, we would be sitting here with our thumbs up our asses, wondering if we were going to lose our precision weapons in some future war.”

I saw Kurt grimace and said, “What?”

“That meeting is critical. We don’t have the time to chase these guys. We’re no longer talking about a
potential
strike.”

He filled me in on Operation Gimlet, and I felt the pressure increase. I wasn’t sure tomorrow’s meeting would be the final one because I had no idea what Hezbollah and the man with the hack were thinking. It could simply be an introduction to get everyone comfortable, with a follow-on meeting for exchanging the goods. We still didn’t know how the hack was initiated, and the meeting location they had chosen wasn’t exactly conducive to major computer operations. It looked like all of that was moot, though. I wasn’t going to get the chance to develop the situation. Tomorrow’s meeting would be the last, no matter what they intended. And it would be up to me to engineer that.

He finished, and I said, “Okay, sir. I got it. Now you can go tell the council that the Ghost decision wasn’t the best one. It was the only one. No way would I have been able to interdict in such a short time span without it. One thing, though: Given what you’ve said and my force structure down here, I’m going to need lethal authority. With only one shot tomorrow, I can’t capture everyone
and
get the hack. I’m not sure what this meeting is about. If they show with the hack, that’s my focus. Anyone who gets in my way, I’m killing.”

Kurt said, “It gets worse, I’m afraid.”

He told me about Anonymous and the exposure of Grolier Recovery Services, which would lead to the exposure of the Taskforce itself. A YouTube video was set to lay open our organization in two days, and apparently this same American traitor had information that would allow us to stop the release, making my operation infinitely harder.

What an asshole.

Not only was the traitor selling the capability to cripple the United States, but he was also about to expose its most classified organization. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on him.

It was too bad I couldn’t use them to kill him outright.

T
he Ghost decided to walk to the meeting in order to get a better feel for the terrain. He might need to escape on foot, and he wanted to know how many routes were available. He’d thought Mr. Pink would tell him no, but it turned out he preferred the Ghost on foot as opposed to in a cab. Easier to catch, especially with the tracking devices.

Paralleling the main thoroughfare of Paseo de la Reforma, he entered a long park, with various monuments and paths threading next to the highway. He considered taking one, just to see where it would go, but decided against it. He knew the meeting location was adjacent to the highway, so there was no way to get lost if he kept it in sight. The path, while it might give him some ideas, could also get him confused and cause him to miss his contact window, something he couldn’t afford to let happen.

He passed by a monument on his right and did a double take. It was a statue of Heydar Aliyev, the leader of Azerbaijan, a prominently Shiite country in the Caucasus. The plaque, in both English and Spanish, heralded his triumphs.

The Ghost continued on, shaking his head. Why on earth was there a monument to a president from a country that had absolutely nothing in common with Mexico? He put the thought out of his mind and returned to the mission. Or more precisely,
his
mission.

He had demanded that he meet Farooq before the actual sale so he could deliver the Ghost’s new passport. In no way was any money exchanging hands if he didn’t have that. Farooq had agreed. In demanding to get it before the meeting, he hoped to ensure the passport was actually created, as he knew what Hezbollah intended once the sale was complete.

Once he had that, he would ask the American for a test of the system to ensure it functioned. If it did, he would give half of the money in his account for purchase. Al-Qaeda had provided Gamal two million dollars, and from what Farooq had said, the sale was for one million, which would leave him a nice tidy sum to escape with.

Insh’Allah,
he would leave with the device, following Hezbollah—ostensibly believing he was going to share in the treasure. A lamb being led to the butcher. Like Mr. Pink, Hezbollah was under a false assumption. They thought they were going to kill him. Mr. Pink thought he was going to wait on a signal from the Ghost to trigger an interdiction. None realized what was really going to happen.

As soon as they stopped at whatever kill zone Hezbollah had picked, he would initiate the device, knocking out the GPS in the ankle cuffs. Then he would slaughter the Hezbollah members. Afterward, he would flee with his new passport and money, finding someone to cut off the cuffs and leaving the cursed Mr. Pink and Mr. Black to pick up the pieces.

He would never be found again. He had
earned
the nickname the Ghost, and he would put that to good use.

He passed a throng of street vendors selling food and T-shirts in a parking lot and saw his destination: the National Anthropology Museum.

He walked up the stairs, past a fountain, and looked for Farooq. He was nowhere to be seen. He checked his watch and saw the meeting time was less than five minutes away. He grew concerned about a trap, snaking his hand into his pants and rubbing the initiation device Pink had given him. Basically a small pager tied into the cell network and slaved to Pink’s phone, it had two buttons: one benign for signaling the meeting was over and he had the device, and one for initiating the assault. Mr. Pink had said the second one was also a panic button. If anything went wrong, all he had to do was press it and forces would intervene.

The irony wasn’t lost on the Ghost that he was relying on Pink to rescue him if something went bad, but he had no intention of reciprocating if everything went as planned.

He saw a man sprinting up the stairs and recognized Farooq, a laptop bag swinging behind his back.

He reached the top out of breath and said, “I’m sorry. We got caught in a massive traffic jam. We’re late. We need to get inside.”

Should have walked, you idiot.

The Ghost said, “No. First my passport. I won’t transfer the money without it.”

Farooq fished in his pocket and pulled out a key. “It’s in a locker downstairs. I was supposed to get it before you came, but I ran out of time.”

The Ghost felt the trap.
They didn’t make the passport because they intend to kill me.

“Without the passport there is no deal. I can’t get home on the one I have.”

Farooq turned and pointed down a set of stairs leading to an underground parking area. “It’s in a locker down there. Please. I didn’t place it there. I only had it made and delivered. It is done, I promise. You can retrieve it afterward.”

He was sweating and looking like he was on the verge of panic. Looking truthful. The Ghost considered.
They would know I would go straight to the lockers, and they couldn’t kill me here, in broad daylight in front of tourists. If it’s not there, I’ll simply have to find another way out. After I kill them.

He took the key and they entered the museum. They purchased tickets and moved through the line of people. The Ghost noticed a strong police presence, but nobody searched either of their bags. They entered into a large open area with a giant fountain raining water from the ceiling, kids splashing about. Farooq consulted a map and said, “Come on. He’s out back, in the Mayan temple section.”

They moved through an exhibition hall, ignoring the displays and exiting on the south side of the building, into an outdoor area lined with paths and displaced temples. Farooq, seemingly knowing the terrain, went behind the stonework, almost running on the granite path. They turned a corner and the Ghost saw two men sitting at a picnic table, looking expectantly at them. He casually slid his hand into his pants and pressed the first button, letting Mr. Pink know the meeting was on.

Farooq took the lead, introducing a Caucasian as Arthur Booth and a Latino as Pelón. Booth said nothing, sitting meekly on his bench, a laptop in front of him. Pelón nodded, locking eyes with the Ghost. In that stare the Ghost saw his essence reflected back at him.

The man was a killer, just as he was.