Executive Power

Chapter Fifty-Five
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 flights... 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."