Act of Treason

28

WASHINGTON, DC

The cyber café was one of those coffee shops that you could find in virtually every hip counterculture neighborhood across America. Each one, a stand-alone sole proprietorship or maybe an LLC with ownership of a half dozen shops at the most. They were all different, yet the same. United in their hatred of Starbucks, these shops were a blind chain with an unintended common theme. They were adorned with rickety, second-hand furniture, old laminate countertops, and a wait staff who tended to be open to body piercings, tattoos, and bad hairdos. The shops provided free Internet connection, service with an attitude, and a refuge from America’s shallow thirst for comfort through the similarity of franchise hell.

This particular place was called Café Wired. A big hand-painted brown and white sign hung above the large glass window that fronted the sidewalk. The name was bracketed on one side by a steaming cup of coffee and the other by a laptop. There were now three of the shops in the city. One in Bethesda, another by American University, and this one a few blocks away from Howard University, not far from Rapp’s condo.
Rapp was a silent investor in the cafés. He and his brother Steven had put up the money, and Marcus Dumond ran the places. Rapp had worked with the cyber genius going on five years now. Dumond had attended MIT with Rapp’s brother. While earning his master’s degree in computer science at MIT, Dumond had managed to get into some pretty big trouble with the feds. To win a bet with some of his fellow geniuses, he hacked into one of New York’s largest banks and then moved over a million dollars into several overseas accounts. He wasn’t caught because he left a trail. He was caught because he and his friends got drunk one night and began bragging about how easy it had been. A fellow student got wind of it and turned him in to the authorities. Dumond was facing serious jail time. That was until Steven Rapp called his brother to see if he could intervene.
The CIA doesn’t like to advertise the fact that they employ some of the world’s best computer hackers. These men and women spend their days and nights trying to sneak undetected into the networks of America’s adversaries. More often than not they are successful, and they are one of the country’s best-kept secrets. Dumond’s skills in this arena were unsurpassed. He split time between the cyber unit and the Counterterrorism Center.
Rapp circled the café twice before entering. He checked all the windows, the cars, and the people on the corner waiting for the bus. It was more out of habit than any real fear of being followed. He opened the door to the coffee shop and walked straight to the back, past the line of customers waiting for their morning fuel. The women’s room was on the left. The men’s on the right. Directly ahead was a door with a security camera and call box mounted to the side. Rapp pressed the button and put his hand on the doorknob. A second later a buzzing noise announced that the door was open.
Rapp went down the narrow stairs to the basement and past two open office doors to a third heavy steel door with rusted rivets ringing the perimeter. This one also had a call box next to it. Before Rapp could push the button he heard the buzzing release of the lock. He leaned into the heavy door, twisted the handle, and entered.
The first thing that Rapp noticed was that the room was a good ten degrees warmer than the rest of the basement. He’d been down here before. Dumond kept an apartment on the second floor, but for security reasons he kept his nerve center locked up in the basement. Rapp was not a detail guy. At least not when it came to computers. To him, they were like cars. Corvette, Ferrari, Mustang GT, Mercedez—when you got to the high end how much did a tenth of a second really matter in a zero to sixty challenge? He knew it mattered to the purists, just like he knew processor speed really mattered to Dumond, but in Rapp’s case—who really cared? One look at a red Ferrari and you’d have to be an idiot to not instinctively know it was fast. No need to look under the hood. Same with Dumond’s setup. All you had to do was look at the four flat-screen monitors that sat atop the half-circle desk, and you knew whatever was under the desk had to be the best that money could buy.
“How are things going?” Rapp asked as he took off his trench coat.
“Fine,” Dumond answered as he took a final drag off a cigarette and stabbed it out in a large glass ashtray. The twenty-nine-year-old African American exhaled a cloud of smoke and said, “The blogosphere is on fire with news that the FBI is going to announce the arrest of the primary suspect in the motorcade attack.”
“Did you leak the name?”
Dumond nodded. “Drudge just ran with it. It’ll be on the wire within the hour.”
“What about the Greek embassy?” Rapp laid his trench coat over the back of a chair.
“I already made the call.”
“You disguised your voice…right?” Rapp approached the desk.
“No,” Dumond said in a sarcastic voice. “I gave them my name and phone number in case they needed to get a hold of me.” He snatched his pack of cigarettes from the desk and fished out a stick.
“You’re a brave man this morning.”
“What the f*ck do you expect from me?” Dumond stuck the cigarette between his lips and started searching for his lighter. The desk was covered with keyboards, mice, disks, memory sticks, card readers, speakers, and other odds and ends. “I’ve been up all night working on this shit, and you won’t even tell me what’s going on.” He found his lighter under a pile of disks in clear jewel cases and lit his cigarette.
“I told you what’s going on. It’s classic disinformation. We’re going to get them leaning in one direction and once they’re committed we’re going to deliver a knockout punch.”
“You and your sports analogies.” Dumond frowned at Rapp and then went to work on one of the keyboards.
“Man, you are one crabby cuss this morning.”
“Whereas you are just a breath of fresh air.”
Rapp smiled. He truly liked Dumond. “Thank you for working on this. I owe you.”
“You’re damn right you do. I’ve been up all night and I have to be at work in an hour and a half.”
“All right,” Rapp put his hands up in surrender. “I owe you big-time. The next time you get arrested, I’ll bail you out.” The comment was a reference to the fact that if it weren’t for Rapp, Dumond would be sitting in a federal prison.
“How long are you going to hold that over my head?”
“I’m not. Now give me the full update.”
“I posted twenty-six blogs last night, under ten separate pseudonyms. I started out responding to other bloggers who were reporting that the assassin was caught. You could tell by most of them that the leaks were coming out of the White House. Traffic was pretty hot on the subject. At five this morning I started putting it out there that there were major problems with the case against this guy…signs of torture, no real evidence, the fact that he was grabbed without alerting the Greek authorities.”
“Who did you say your sources were?”
“All anonymous. State Department, Justice, FBI, CIA. I spread it around.”
“Did you float my name?” Rapp asked.
“Not yet. I thought you wanted me to hold off on that.”
“I did. When we finish up with this next thing, go ahead and leak it.”
Dumond studied him for a second. “I have no idea what you are up to.”
“You’ll see soon enough. When was the last time you spoke with Hacket and Wicker?”
“About thirty minutes ago.”
“And?”
“They dumped the bodies at Gazich’s house and left the gun there. They’re outside the bank right now waiting for you to call.”
They had found a safety deposit box key along with a file of financial documents at Gazich’s office. One of the banks listed in the file was the Hellenic Bank of Cyprus. Dumond penetrated the bank’s network and found out that they had a safety deposit box registered under the name of Alexander Deckas. While he was inside the network he also collected some additional information.
Dumond handed Rapp a file. “The president of the bank is Manos Kapodistras. He has a little more than three hundred thousand dollars in cash deposits at the bank. In addition to that it looks like his ownership is about fifteen percent.”
“Foreign deposits?”
“A lot of Saudi money.”
“Anyone we know?”
“About a fifth of the royal family.”
Rapp glanced at the file and then asked, “Anything unusual?”
“Doesn’t appear to be, but these bankers can be pretty sneaky with their money.”
“Your advice?”
Dumond took a drag and said, “Play it straight up. Tell him in his line of work his reputation is everything. We can either do this in a very private manner or a very public one.”
Rapp nodded and then closed the file. “All right…let’s call him.”
Dumond waved him behind the desk. “The screen on the left is a mirror image of the banker’s. That is exactly what he’s looking at right now.”
“Do you know if he opened your e-mail?”
“Yes.”
“Has he replied to it?”
“No.”
“Did he check the name Deckas against the bank records?”
“No.”
“Okay. Connect me to his direct line.”
Dumond went to work on his keyboard and donned a headset. Using a sophisticated telecommunications program he bounced the call around so it would be untraceable. When it started to ring he picked up the handset and gave it to Rapp. After the third ring a man answered in Greek.
“Yeea sas.”
“Mr. Kapodistras, I need your assistance in a very important matter.”
There was a long pause and then the banker asked, “Who am I speaking with, and how did you get this number?”
“Neither is important at the moment. What is important is that I am in a position to help you avoid a potentially embarrassing situation.”
“Are you an American?”
“Yes. Did you get the e-mail I sent you about a press conference the FBI is going to hold today?”
“I did.”
“Did the name Alexander Deckas mean anything to you?”
“No.” There was hesitation in the voice. “Should it?”
“That depends how involved you are with your clients.”
Dumond pointed to the monitor that was mirroring Kapodistras’s screen. The banker was searching his database looking for a match. After a few seconds the client profile for Deckas popped up on the screen.
“It is the stated policy of our bank to not discuss our clients under any circumstances.”
“Mr. Kapodistras, I see that you were a vice president at the bank back in two thousand and one. Do you remember what it was like in your business when it was discovered that Osama bin Laden had been using Cyprus banks to hide his al-Qaeda funds?”
Rapp had seen the official report. Greek regulators and U.S. federal agents had descended on the Mediterranean island, and the banking business had been thrown on its ear. Decades of the Cyprus banking industry marketing itself as the Switzerland of the Mediterranean was destroyed overnight by the actions of a militant few. People banked on Cyprus because it gave them the same thing the Swiss did: absolute privacy with exceptional service. And they did it in many cases for half the fee. The reduced fees were nice, but the privacy was paramount. Clients fled in droves. Clients who had nothing to do with terrorism, but nonetheless did not want any government knowing how much money they had, or worse, how they had obtained it.
“It was a difficult time to be in my business, but in difficult times comes great opportunity.”
Kapodistras sounded like a man who might be willing to deal. “Well, I have an opportunity for you today.”
“What kind of opportunity?”
“An opportunity to spare your bank.”
“From?”
“Scrutiny that you do not need. An army of regulators from Athens, and an even bigger army of U.S. federal agents going through your bank file by file…line by line. Media parked out in front of your bank for a week driving your customers away. It won’t be pretty.”
There was an extremely long pause before Kapodistras replied. “Whom do you work for?”
“The American government.”
“And why are you paying me this courtesy?”
“I am an impatient man and I believe the two of us can get what we both want without turning this into a public spectacle.”
“You are interested in this Alexander Deckas?”
“Yes.”
“May I ask why?”
“Yes. Do you remember the attack on President–elect Alexander’s motorcade this past November?”
“The one that killed his wife?”
“Yes.”
“What about it?”
“Your client was the man who detonated the bomb.”
There was no uncomfortable laugh. No denial. Just silence for at least ten seconds and then, “What proof do you have?”
“More than you could imagine, including a confession, but for the sake of brevity I’m going to cut to the heart of the matter. In two and a half hours the FBI is going to announce that they have arrested Mr. Deckas. The evidence against him is overwhelming. A team of FBI agents is en route to your island right now. They should be landing in a few hours. I am offering you two choices. The easy way, or the hard way.”
“I’m listening.”
Rapp placed his hand over the mouthpiece and whispered to Dumond, “Tell Wicker and Hacket to go to his office.” Rapp removed his hand and spoke into the phone. “On Saturday night my people took Mr. Deckas into custody and transported him back to America. We went through his office and home in Limassol and are in possession of his banking records as well as a key for a safety deposit box in your bank.”
“And you would like to see what is in that box.”
“That’s correct.”
“And if I say no?”
Rapp sighed. “If you say no, I will turn everything over to the FBI. They will probably show up at your home tonight with the Greek authorities and drag you down to the bank and force you to open the box. The FBI being the thorough, distrustful gents that they are will want to go through all of your records to make sure none of your other clients are connected with Deckas. The Greek authorities will allow this because they will want to look like good allies…and after all, the man killed the future president’s wife. People will start to talk, and you will become known as the bank of choice for terrorists and assassins. Your legitimate customers will leave out of fear of association and your unsavory customers will do the same for the exact same reason. By the end of the week I would imagine your deposits will be cut in half and your fifteen percent stake in the bank will be worth considerably less. Who knows…you might even be forced out.”
“Whom do you work for? The CIA?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny that, Mr. Kapodistras.”
“How can I trust you?”
Rapp detected the tension in the man’s voice. He was being faced with a very tough but ultimately easy decision. “As far as I can tell, sir, you have brought none of this on yourself. Your job is to protect your bank, your depositors, and your investors. The best way to do that is to give me what is in that box. If my instincts are correct, the sooner you distance yourself from the contents of that box the better off you and your bank will be.”
“What will prevent you from turning any evidence over to the FBI?”
“I’m not looking to put anyone in jail.”
After a long pause the banker said, “I need some time to think about this.”
“I’ll give you one minute.”
The banker laughed thinking Rapp was joking.
“I’m serious. Two of my men are probably talking to your secretary as we speak. They expect you to come out of your office and take them down to the safety deposit room. If you do not, they will call me and I will turn everything I have over to the FBI. I will also tell them that we have spoken and that you were extremely unhelpful. In addition to that there are some other very nasty things I could employ, but we don’t want to get into that over the phone. I’ll send someone to talk to you about it in person.”
“But there are procedures: signature cards, passwords, the key.”
“We have the key, and one of my men can forge the client’s signature. All you have to do is provide the password.”
“I will need to inventory the contents of the box.”
“Go right ahead. In fact…I’m sure there’s some cash in there. Keep half of it for your troubles. The rest of it, though, my men are taking with them. Do we have a deal?”
“Yes,” the banker said without any hesitation. “We have a deal.”
“Good. Now go straight out to your reception area and greet my men. Act like you have met them before. The big one you may call Kevin and the shorter one Charlie. Take them straight downstairs and do whatever they ask of you. If all goes well, they will be out of your way in ten minutes or less. Any questions?”
“No.”
“Good. Thank you for being so cooperative.” Rapp placed the handset back in the cradle and said to Dumond, “Continue to monitor all of his calls and e-mails. If he doesn’t do exactly as we asked, crash his entire system and tell Wicker and Hacket to get out of there.”
Rapp walked over and grabbed his jacket.
“Where are you going?” Dumond asked.
“I need to run down a lead.”
“What do you want me to tell them at Langley if they start asking about you?”
“You never saw me.”
“You got it.”
“And find out who the Russian is.”
“I’m working on it.”