The Ragnarok Conspiracy (5 page)

The door closed behind Kanter, leaving him alone in the room with six other people. He was already fatigued from his last-minute sprint to the airport, flight, and subsequent rush to the late meeting.
They couldn't wait until morning? Who has meetings at midnight?

Now he had to face this table of officials overseeing the antiterrorism activities of the United States. The setup was inquisition-style with a single, lonely seat for him facing an array of questioners around the semicircular polished wooden slab.

Kanter felt his knees buckle as he scanned the faces around the table. Even the phone conversations and summons had not prepared him for this. One next to the other, he saw high-ranking representatives from critical US agencies, many exclusively counterterrorism. He ticked off the offices associated with the faces: the CIA Counterterrorist Center, the Office of National Security, Homeland Security, and his own superiors at the National Joint Terrorism Task Force. He was surprised to see a representative of the National Security Agency—he couldn't imagine why they'd need a communications angle on this story. If he was perplexed to see an NSA representative, he was stunned at the final face present—the deputy secretary of state. That
she
was here raised the stakes to feverish levels.

“Please sit down, Mr. Kanter,” began his FBI superior.

Kanter noticed that he had been standing in front of the chair, nearly at attention. He smiled and sat down. He was too damn old to be acting like a freshman.

The FBI representative continued. “We apologize for calling you
out here on such short notice, but we understand that you would be attending the Task Force meeting this weekend anyway.”

“That's correct.”

“As you are probably aware, Mr. Kanter, you are here to answer some of our questions about your comments to CIA counterterrorism personnel and, if possible, to aid us in solving some frankly disturbing mysteries.”

Kanter suppressed an urge to sigh. “I'll help in any way I can.”

The NSA man cut in. “We have printouts and digital samples of your conversations earlier today. However, as I understand it, the CIA wishes to proceed without an in-depth analysis.”

“Not necessary; there's nothing complicated,” said the director of the CIA Counterterrorist Center, her voice strained. She turned from the NSA officer toward Kanter. “Your special-ops division has come to a startling conclusion, Agent Kanter.”

“No conclusions—nowhere near that level. Purely speculation. Some of our agents had stumbled on what they believed are connections linking a set of crimes, assassination-style murders of a number of pro-Islamic extremists in the US and abroad.”

“Yes, we've seen the transcripts,” cut in the CIA woman. “Why did you feel it necessary to contact CIA agents if these
connections
, as you call them, were purely at the speculative stage?”

Kanter frowned. “That seems the best time to me.”

“Wouldn't you have preferred to have obtained some more firm evidence before making such accusations?”

“Accusations?” asked Kanter.

The FBI man swooped in quickly. “I don't think Mr. Kanter is making any accusations, Susan, only asking questions.”

There was a very uncomfortable silence around the table. Kanter had a bad feeling about where this was headed, and he wished they would just open up the black hole and get it over with. The deputy director of state obliged him.

“Look, everyone, there's no point in tap dancing. Before we go any further, Agent Kanter, these members of your staff—how would you characterize their relationship to this hypothesis?”

Kanter gave her a knowing look. “Extremely committed, perhaps emotionally so. That's why I called this in, frankly. One of my best agents, John Savas, strongly believes in this connection. Many others do not. Frankly, I've been skeptical myself, but Agent Savas has a track record that is anomalously productive. I felt I should follow up on his hunch.”

The deputy director smiled. “You say you've
been
skeptical. Has this changed?”

Kanter looked her in the eye. “The moment you all jerked me up here.”

Several faces at the table appeared irritated, but the woman from the state department laughed. “After all the doublespeak I hear every day, Agent Kanter, your lack of diplomacy is welcomed. John Savas has been well-known to many over the years, and the recent events at Indian Point have refreshed any poor memories. Your division—as unorthodox as it has been—is unmatched in its contributions to counterterrorism efforts. The White House has decided to make you aware of some highly classified information.”

Wonderful.
“I don't suppose I might have the opportunity to decline?”

The FBI man laughed. “Wise man.”

“Legally you can, of course,” continued the deputy secretary of state. “But then we would have to make sure that in your ignorance, you did not make this classified information known—you or your group at the FBI.”

Kanter felt his stomach drop. There was no misinterpreting those words. Either he was in, or he and his “unorthodox” group, including Intel 1, were toast.

“You can be persuasive.”

“I have to be; this is too important,” she said. “Susan, this belongs to you for the next few minutes. Your mess.”

Kanter turned his attention to the Counterterrorist Center director. She had the look of someone who had recently learned of a relative's death.

“While it is well-known that the CIA, along with numerous US agencies, undertook extraordinary antiterrorist measures in the years following 9/11, it was only recently appreciated that some of these efforts took on the form of targeted elimination teams.”

“Assassins,” corrected Kanter. Here it came.

“Yes. I'm not here to examine the ethics or policy wisdom of such actions, but they have been a part of covert operations for decades. They have been vetted by several agencies, congressional oversight, and therefore have been answerable to the American public.”

“Until Cheney,” whispered Kanter.

“Yes, I can see that you know where this is going. During his tenure as vice president, Dick Cheney instructed the CIA to form an elite core of assassins, specifically designed to go after high-level targets in al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups threatening US interests. He took the unusual step of concealing this plan not only from Congress but also from nearly every other agency and governmental branch. These men and women were highly trained for years, awaiting orders that never came.”

“Never?” asked Kanter.

“The records have been made public, Agent Kanter. Not a single kill was ordered. The program was terminated.” She paused and removed her glasses. “Or so we believed.”

She sighed and continued. “This connection you make between the killings of Islamic radicals has come to the attention of the CIA and other agencies as well. We are particularly concerned, because the methods used are right out of the training program of these assassination teams.”

“Certainly other assassins could employ similar methods?” asked Kanter.

“Yes, of course. However, there is more, beyond the killings you know about. While the growing success in Pakistan and Afghanistan against terrorist training camps has been ascribed to many things—including tactics changes, troop buildup, and most recently, improved design of Predator Drone robotic combat units—these factors are not
sufficient. We now know from Army Intelligence work that there have been substantial, at times crippling, attacks on terrorist camps in these regions that are not due to any known military or covert activity. We are talking about major professional strikes against groups that have eluded our capture for years and that yet, in a matter of barely a year, have been erased from the area.”

“I don't understand,” said Kanter. “If not us…”

“Then
who
?” said the state department woman. “Haven't you guessed?”

Kanter shook his head in disbelief. “I'm sorry, but you're trying to tell me that you have a group of essentially
rogue
CIA hit squads that are not only bringing down Islamic radicals around the world but are also out-gunning our best marines in the mountains of Asia? That they are doing this using former US training and resources, under our noses?”

The woman from the state department spoke. “Currently, we have no proof of this, but all analysis from the CIA and other agencies places this scenario as the most probable.”

“Any
other
scenarios?” Kanter asked.

“Several, including foreign involvement and, of course, the null hypothesis that these are indeed
not
related. However, the potential political and geopolitical ramifications of our working hypothesis are so dire; we must focus on this possibility.”

“Don't you know where these people are? Haven't you kept track of them?”

The CIA woman raised her voice. “Of course we know where they are! But many had gone in and out of the program over the years, and there has not been any clear need for constant surveillance of these trainees. Until now. You can rest assured that we are ascertaining the whereabouts of as many of these personnel as we can.”

Kanter shook his head. “We'll help however we can, but let me be frank here—this is above our heads.”

“That is exactly what I hoped to hear from you, Agent Kanter,” stated the deputy secretary of state. “I want you to make it clear to your
people that this is a matter best left to other agencies. We do
not
want an obscure branch of the FBI stirring this up accidentally so that the public stumbles on this disaster. We will therefore assign liaisons from the CIA to coordinate any investigative work you perform in this area. We debated asking you to drop it altogether but concluded that the success rate of your group warranted your continued efforts.”

“Along those lines, we have a request,” the NSA man spoke up. He pulled out a memory stick and tossed it across the table to Kanter. “That drive stores a series of audio files recorded by US Marines in Afghanistan several weeks ago. They were tracking a terrorist training cell, not having too much luck, as it was. One night, their communications team picked up an encoded series of transmissions. Definitely not hostiles—they were using modifications of US military codes.”

He let this sink in. To hammer the point home, the CIA woman spoke. “This only further convinced us that we had rogue US forces involved.”

“The modifications were clever, but we have enough computer firepower to break down just about any code. We did that, with enormous confidence statistically, and generated the audio file I've given you. Drop it in your favorite MP3 player.”

“I don't understand,” said Kanter. “How can we help?”

“This is a bit embarrassing. The audio file contains a series of sharp command-like phrases spoken by a male voice. The problem is that we can't make heads or tails out of what is being said. We have a formidable army of linguists at our disposal, Agent Kanter. We have translators covering hundreds of known tongues. We've gotten nowhere. A brick wall. It's definitely not a common Arabic, Semitic, European, or Asian language. Whatever is being said over those coded transmissions is in a language no one speaks on this earth. It might as well be from Mars.”

“This doesn't make sense,” said Kanter.

“Not one damn bit,” said the NSA man. “You have a reputation for solving puzzles, Agent Kanter. You're not linguists, but frankly, the linguists have failed. I believe there's a puzzle here, something we aren't seeing. Not a code, not a trick, something else. Have your go at it.”

The meeting ended sharply on that note. Kanter was thanked, charged with maintaining confidentiality, and dismissed. He stumbled out of the building into the bright and warm moonlight of June, dizzy and exhausted from the last hour. More than anything, Larry Kanter was very troubled about all that he had heard. Rogue agents on the loose, assassinations, commando raids on terrorist centers, alien languages, and a political ball of radioactive waste. This was a mountain of a mess.

He was going to kill Savas.

Disturbed, Savas watched as the uproar of chatter erupted from the members of Intel 1. Only Angel Lightfoote sat apart from the heated discussion, staring out the window, seemingly oblivious to the turmoil.

Larry Kanter threw up his arms in surrender and thundered over the rest. “That's
all
I have!”

Savas glanced around at the group, at the frustration evident in their faces. He couldn't blame them. Larry was holding back key information, and everyone knew it. Kanter hadn't said a word about the CIA death squads except to stonewall that all the information was classified.
Classified!
Of course it was classified. What were they, preschoolers? They had obtained classified information before. That Kanter was implying it was anything except an obstacle spoke volumes. After everything they had all been through, it felt a little like betrayal.

“Larry,” said Frank Miller after some moments, “this smells of cover-up. What is the threat level in this hunt?”

Kanter sighed. “The threat level is very high, and we're hunting for the very dangerous perpetrators of these crimes. We've made connections that are potentially very real, and we need to start from there and work our way out. We have a definite lead. There are these audio recordings, which the NSA believes are communications among our bad guys. The language is not known to any translators in the agency. They're likely farming this out to several places. One of those is Intel 1.”

Rideout just shook his head. “This is a weird one, Larry. I mean, what the
hell
?”

“Look, J. P., this is real. It's also complicated, more than I can, am
allowed
to, explain. But it's real. We need to put to the side everything else except this case, which we have been asked to solve—however absurd the pieces handed to us appear to be.”

A harsh vibration sounded on the table. Savas reached over and grabbed his cell phone as it slowly rotated on the smooth surface. He glanced at the display, and his eyes widened. He held up a hand and took the call. Kanter and the others waited.

“Rasheed? This better be an emergency.” Savas was silent for a moment, then he exclaimed into the phone, “
What?
Tonight? That was
not
part of the deal, Rasheed! You break that deal, and three felony counts will suddenly reappear and net you half a lifetime in jail!” A voice yelled over the speaker, and Savas responded firmly. “You bet your ass I can! And it
will
be your ass. What? You don't
care
? Rasheed, this is crazy!”

Savas swiveled his chair and bent over the phone. “Where are you?” The voice could be heard barking out strained words. “We'll meet there. In an hour—I'll be there! If you value your freedom, you'll give me that hour and talk.”

Savas closed the phone and cursed.

“Mother-in-law?” asked Rideout.

“The Sheikh. I don't believe this. He's rabbiting. Spooked to high heaven. I've got to stop him. He's crucial to several operations.”

Kanter studied Savas for a moment. “What's gotten into him?”

“Seen a ghost,” said Lightfoote, staring seriously at the group.

Savas ignored her. “I don't know. Even the threat of jail wasn't touching him. I've got to get up to East Harlem before he changes his mind and decides to skip our little chat.”

Kanter nodded. “Go, John.”

Savas stood up quickly and headed to the door. On his way out, he passed Lightfoote, who continued to stare intensely at everyone around the table, her long red hair offset by the growing darkness outside. Rain began to pellet the window behind her, and deep rumblings of thunder could be felt through the walls.

She muttered. “Seen his own ghost.”

Her words sat uncomfortably in Savas's mind as he walked out the door.

Water pounded the New York streets as Savas slammed the door of the cab and sprinted into the park. Mothers with strollers dashed madly searching for shelter, and large puddles began to form on street corners with failing drainage. Savas dodged several strollers and seemingly unperturbed jogging fanatics as he aimed for the center of the park. He spotted the pedestrian bridge as he rose over a small hill and danced down the steps along its side, finding himself in a circular garden, complete with vacated benches and a central flower bed morphed into a pond by the rain. To the side, a short tunnel ran under the bridge. He headed for it and the dark shape waiting inside.

The Sheikh had looked better. He normally sported a strange combination of tailored clothes that clashed with the reversed baseball cap and multiple earring studs. Today the hat and clothes were soaked, the heavy gold necklace and wrist chains spotted with water yet still bright, even in the dim light against his dark Arabic skin. The white shirt he wore was nearly transparent, soaked through, and Savas could see the blurred shape of a tattoo on his right forearm. What worried Savas the most was the disarray in his face. The Sheikh was always a cool customer, arrogant in his confidence, his ability to play all sides to his advantage. Today, he looked like a frightened punk.

“You'll have me in my grave, G-man.”

“You've been watching too many Capone films, Rasheed.” Savas shook the water from his face. “You're too important to be disappearing on me. I need to know what's going on.”

“You need to know. You always need to know,” said the Sheikh. “What's
going on
is that the network's gone rabid, man. There's a purge on.”

“It's not us, Rasheed. You're tagged as mine. No one will touch you as long as you're working with us.”

The Sheikh laughed. “
Damn
, man, no one's scared of
you
. You Feds are always three steps behind.”

“Caught you, didn't I?”

The Sheikh smiled. “You got lucky. But I mean
going down
. That ain't jail, man. They're
dead
. Bodies just piling up, and no one's fingered, everybody's denying. Likely true, too—everybody's getting hit. If you in the business, you get marked, a price is on your head. No one wants to talk about it. Like the fucking boogeyman.”

Savas felt his heart rate increase. More killings? Purgings in the terrorist underground? This was potentially even bigger than he thought. He
needed
the Sheikh to stay where he was! “Rasheed, you don't have to run. We've got protection teams. We can watch your back, undercover. If it gets too hot, we can take you into protective custody.”

The Sheikh just shook his head. “This ain't the usual. Boys aren't scared for nothing. Someone's coming after us, G-man, and they ain't interested in business. They interested in dead men. Networks are wrecked. There ain't no credit, no trail, nothing we can see.”

He looked around anxiously, water dripping from his cap. The rain continued its downpour, periodic flashes following rolls of thunder echoing against the concrete and stone walls of the tunnel. A small river began to flow through the tunnel under the bridge, soaking through their shoes.

The Sheikh grinned diabolically. “Doing your job for you.”

“This is important,
damn it
!” Savas had to convince him to work from within. “We
know
this is happening. We've got to figure out who is behind this!”

“That ain't no interest to me. I done well in this business, and no one's wise to me. But money ain't no good if you're six feet under.”

Savas used the only tool he had left: fear. “Do you really think you can hide from them, Rasheed?” The Sheikh's widening eyes betrayed his concern. Savas continued. “Whoever is behind this, they've taken out imams in England and diplomats in New York. They're all over the globe, invisible,
professional
. Like you said, they don't seem to be familiar with the word ‘mercy,' or to have an interest in money or negotiation. You're a
player
, Rasheed. For both sides, we know too well, but a player who makes the network hum.
You're
one of those important
links. It's not a question of whether you have a price on your head—it's how much, and when they will cash in.”

“Fuck you, man!” he shouted, and started to back away.

“You run, and you'll be completely on your own, unprotected and no closer to knowing who is after you. If we can figure this out, we can come down hard on these people, and that will go a lot farther toward saving your ass than trying to hide in a hole. They'll dig you out, Rasheed. Then they'll pull the trigger.”

The Sheikh looked like he was near panic; the truth of Savas's words burrowed inside him. He would either break in alarm from the fear or see that the FBI was throwing him a lifeline—a tenuous one, perhaps, but without it, he was helpless in the water as the sharks circled.

The man inched back toward Savas. He grasped the line.

“What do you want? I don't have much time. They're on to me. Too many small things; can't explain it. But I know.”

Instinct.
Savas exhaled softly. “You're to keep your eyes open. We'll assign a team of undercover agents to shadow you. If what you say is true, you'll be the trap.”

“I'll be the fucking
bait
, man.”

Savas leveled his gaze at the man. Honesty was essential. “Yes, Rasheed. You will be.”