Sitting in the dreary seminar room, that final dream, the inner motivation that drove everything Ruben Sandoval did, seemed so very far away.
Ruben wasn’t even supposed to be here. Officially, he wasn’t here. The President had not yet formally announced his nomination to be the next U.S. Ambassador to Egypt. And then he’d need a Senate confirmation hearing and a full Senate vote before he could go to Cairo. He could be weeks, if not months, away.
But Egypt was important. The State Department was especially anxious to have that post filled quickly, so someone in the Secretary of State’s office had arranged for Ruben Sandoval, the presumptive nominee, to spend an inconspicuous—and, technically, unofficial—week at the Schultz Center to get an early start on ambassadorial training and to begin Arabic-language lessons. He had also been fast-tracked for his security clearance. Filling out all those pages of disclosure forms had been painful. This all seemed so unnecessary, a distraction from what he was hoping to achieve. Rather than sitting in this pointless seminar, he should be ensuring that his plan was in motion. He needed to get out of this room.
“For Top Secret information we use a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, which we usually call a SCIF, pronounced ‘skiff.’ Inside a SCIF, communications are protected from external listening devices and swept regularly . . .”
Ruben snapped out of his daydreaming and interrupted the speaker. “Excuse me. You’re saying that discussions and phone calls in a SCIF are entirely private? They can’t be bugged or decoded?”
“Yes, sir. That’s where any information that has been classified as TS/SCI can be handled and discussed.”
“And phone calls from a SCIF are undetectable?”
“Yes, sir. All communication in and out of a SCIF is encrypted and untraceable. It’s fully secure.”
“Where are these SCIFs?” Ruben asked.
“Everywhere. In the State Department. Inside our embassies. Anywhere that a cleared USG official needs to handle Top Secret information.”
“Is there a SCIF here?”
“Yes, sir. We have a SCIF on campus. Would you like to see it?”
26.
CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
THURSDAY, 2:15 P.M.
Sunday had never heard of Ruben Sandoval, but there was plenty of information on him.
The immigration and naturalization database listed Ruben Sandoval as arriving in the United States from Cuba in 1962 at the age of six. He had arrived unaccompanied and in the custody of the Catholic Church of western New York. In the church records shared with the government, his father was recorded as Fulgencio Sandoval, age thirty-eight, and his mother as Yanitse Sandoval, age twenty-nine, along with one sibling, Ernesto, three years old. But Ruben is the only one in the family who appeared to have ever entered the country.
From tax records at the Internal Revenue Service, Sunday learned that Ruben Sandoval had moved around to different addresses in South Florida for years with little income. He had started a string of failed ventures until the Sunshine Yoga Studio & Juice Bar, Inc., made a small profit. The real money flowed once the business expanded. Then, three years ago, he sold out. Sandoval’s income shifted from the yoga and juice business to a portfolio of investments, an erratic mix of real estate in Nevada and Arizona, a chain of check-cashing outlets in Texas, and a hotel complex in Naples, Florida. Sandoval’s most recent financial statements showed that he had abruptly disposed of a significant minority shareholding in a defense contractor Kinetic Xelaron Systems in Tampa and paid tax on $78 million in capital gains.
Sunday sat back. What he could do with $78 million! He would buy his parents a big house, maybe in the Hollywood Hills or out in the desert near Palm Springs. Ay, would the cousins come from Nigeria in droves! Everyone expecting their share of the payout. And the goats! And lambs! He’d probably have to buy a ranch to keep all the livestock for feasts! Ay! Sunday laughed to himself at the thought and returned to his research.