FIFTY SIX.
Rapp followed Turbes
down the sterile hallway of the New Headquarters Building of the
George Bush Center for Intelligence.
The CTC had been
recently relocated from its relatively small space on the sixth
floor of the Original Headquarters Building to the bottom two
floors of the south wing of the new structure.
This massive increase
in space, staff and budget was a reflection of just how seriously
Washington was now taking the threat of terrorism.
To Rapp's mind this
was a mixed blessing. The new funding was great for buying
high-tech equipment and training new people, but it also brought
with it more oversight, more accounting, more red tape and in
general more people getting in each other's way. Rapp was an
advocate of small specialized teams that could react quickly and
plan operations with as little interference as possible.
Instinctively he recoiled against large organizations and for that
reason more than probably any other he always felt a little
uncomfortable entering the new CTC.
Turbes stopped at a
door and slid his ID through the magnetic card reader, while Rapp
loosened the knot of his tie and undid the top button of his dress
shirt. They had barely entered the CTC and analysts were already
lining up to have a word with Turbes. Somewhere near the back of
the line Rapp spotted Marcus Dumond and Olivia Bourne. Dumond was
the CTC's resident computer genius, and Bourne was the senior
regional analyst for the Gulf States. Officially, she had nothing
to do with Saudi Arabia. Unofficially, she kept as close a watch on
the Saudi royal family as politics would allow.
When Rapp had been
brought in from the field and named special assistant to the DCI on
counterterrorism, Kennedy had sat him down and given him an
overview on the CTC. At the top of the list of the center's most
valuable people, Kennedy had placed Olivia Bourne. The
thirty-nine-year-old West Virginian had an undergraduate degree
from Brown and a graduate degree from Princeton. She had literally
no field experience, but was a walking encyclopedia when it came to
tracking the Islamic Radical Fundamentalists, or IRF's, who they
hunted.
Kennedy hadn't
bothered to brief Rapp on Marcus Dumond since it was Rapp who had
recruited him. Rapp had met Dumond while he was a graduate student
at MIT with Rapp's brother. At the time of his recruitment Dumond
had been a twenty-seven-year-old computer genius and almost
convicted felon. The young cyber genius had run into some trouble
with the Feds while he was earning his master's degree in computer
science at MIT. He was alleged to have hacked into one of New
York's largest banks and then transferred funds into several
overseas accounts. The part that interested the CIA was that Dumond
wasn't caught because he left a trail, he was caught because he got
drunk one night and bragged about the looting to the wrong
person.
When the Feds came
and broke down his apartment door, Dumond was living with Steven
Rapp. Rapp heard about the incident from his brother and alerted
Kennedy, who was then the director of the CTC, that the hacker was
worth a look. Langley doesn't like to admit the fact that they
employ some of the world's best computer pirates, but these young
cyber geeks are encouraged to hack into any and every computer
system they can. Most of these hacking raids are directed at
foreign companies, banks, governments and military computer
systems. But just getting into a system isn't enough. The challenge
is to hack in, get the information and get out without leaving a
trace that the system was ever compromised. Dumond was a natural at
it, and his talents were put to good use in the CTC.
Both Bourne and
Dumond were gesturing to get Rapp's attention.
Bourne held up a
piece of paper and pointed eagerly to the face on the printout.
Rapp bypassed the line and went straight for Bourne.
Grabbing her by the
elbow, he pulled her away from the crowd.
Keeping his voice
hushed, he asked, "What's up?"
Bourne smiled.
"We've got a bead on
Prince Charming."
Rapp's first reaction
was to turn and see what Turbes was doing. It looked like two CTC
employees were wildly explaining a problem to the head boss in
hopes that he would referee their dispute. Rapp looked to Dumond
and Bourne and said, "Follow me."
The three of them
walked down the side aisle of the large open room that held a sea
of cubicles. The maze of plastic and fabric dividers was
affectionately known as the Bull Pen to those who worked
counterterrorism.
When they reached
Rapp's office he unlocked the door with a key and then entered.
Glancing at Dumond he said, "Close the door." Once it was shut Rapp
turned to Bourne who spoke both Arabic and Farsi fluently and
asked, "What did you find?"
Bourne handed over
the printout.
"Our boy flew from
Nice to Paris to JFK on Sunday."
Rapp looked at the
grainy black-and-white image.
"Where'd we get
this?"
"Custom's
surveillance camera at JFK. We scanned the Brits' photos into the
facial imaging recognition system and let the computers go to work.
We started with our in-house database on known or suspected
terrorists and came up blank, so before checking with our allies I
decided to run a search with Customs on the hunch that if this guy
had anything to do with the Palestinian Ambassador he would have
had to enter the country on Sunday or Monday at the latest."
Rapp nodded and
looked at the grainy photo.
"Are we sure this is
him?"
"Ninety-eight point
six three percent sure," replied the hyper analytical Dumond.
Holding the photo up,
Rapp asked, "Does he have a name?"
"Charles Utrillo,"
Bourne replied.
Rapp turned his
attention to Dumond, knowing his little hacker would have already
done a full background check.
"I suppose that's not
his real name."
"Nope." Dumond shook
his head.
"I checked several
French government databases and came up with nothing."
Dumond handed over a
printout.
"Here's the
information on the credit card he used to pay for the plane ticket.
We're running a search on rental cars and hotels within a
hundred-mile radius of New York City. If he used the card again
we'll know sometime in the next thirty minutes."
"Are you tracing the
card on the other end?" asked Rapp.
"Yeah. It was set up
for automatic payments from a bank in Paris.
The account has a
little less than eight grand in it."
Unfortunately, Rapp
thought he knew the answer to his next question, but he asked it
anyway.
"And how did that
money get into the account?"
"Four separate cash
deposits."
Rapp cringed. This
guy was covering his tracks like a real pro.
Speaking from
experience Rapp said, "The name's a dead end. Wherever he is now,
he's using a different identity."
"Even so," asked
Bourne, "do you want us to flag his passport and alert the
FBI?"
"Flag his passport,"
answered Rapp, even though he doubted it would do any good, "but
hold off on the FBI for a bit. Let me talk to Irene first and see
what she wants to do." Rapp paused and put himself in the shoes of
the assassin for a moment. He tried to guess what the man's next
move would be. His options were to either stay in New York and wait
until things settled down or leave immediately. If it was Rapp he
would have left immediately. Canada would have been his first
choice, and then head back to Europe, or if he had time, head
west.
"Start checking
security cameras at the three major airports from eight last night
until this morning. Concentrate on outgoing international flightsÂ…
especially anything bound for Canada."
"We're in the process
of doing it right now," answered Bourne.
"Do you want me to
check with the DGSE or Mossad and see if we can get a match on the
photo?"
Normally Rapp
wouldn't think twice about checking with either the French or
Mossad, but given the current situation he hesitated.
"Not yet. I need to
run this by Irene first." He checked his watch and then asked,
"Anything else?"
"Yeah," said
Bourne.
"Ask her if we can
bring the Feds and local law enforcement in on this."
Rapp nodded.
Remembering something, he asked Dumond, "How are you coming with
the Prince's finances? Ten million bucks is a lot of money. There
has to be a sign of it moving from one account to another."
Dumond shook his head
in frustration.
"Ten million bucks is
nothing to a guy like this. It'll take me the rest of the day just
to try and identify all of the various accounts he uses and even
then I could miss a few that I'm sure he keeps hidden."
"I don't care what it
takes, get it done. Pull all the people you need for the busy work,
and I'll get Irene to authorize it. I want to know who this guy is
and unless Olivia gets lucky, the best way to catch him is to
follow the money trail."