“How did she know?”
“It’s a computer,” Honi said flatly. “And your visitor card is RFID.” She noticed Jake glancing around the elevator. He stopped when he spotted the small camera near the ceiling. She smiled, remembering her first time riding down into the bowels of the NSA. Everything seemed so secretive and strange back then. Most people didn’t even realize there were sub-basements in the building. Now she ran her own section in a place hardly anyone knew existed. Just then the elevator stopped and the doors opened.
They entered a hundred-foot by hundred-foot room filled with small cubicles and a grid of aisles. The carpeting was gray mixed with several shades of blue. The cubical walls were plain gray fabric with black metal edges. Each workspace had a desk with a large monitor centrally located and a keyboard along with a custom-molded mouse. A file cabinet formed the far end of the space with just enough room for a chair to slide back before it hit the other wall.
“Over here,” she said, as she led him through the left side of the maze. She stopped at the opening to a cubical.
“Hey, Brett.”
The man looked up. He was mid-thirties with short dark hair, a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee. “Hey, what’s up?”
“I need a full phone network plot on this number. For now limit the plot to 20 deep, and I also need a phone network subplot that includes these keywords.” She handed him a piece of paper. He looked over the list.
“Where did you get the keywords, from a Disney movie?”
“Just run ‘em, Brett. Is Tracy in?”
“Try the coffee nook. Her brain doesn’t click in until her fourth cup.”
“Thanks, Brett.”
Tracy Corbett was sitting in the break room finishing off her coffee and a muffin.
“I need to follow some money,” Honi said.
Tracy stood. “My favorite part of the job.” They followed Tracy to her cubical. Tracy logged in. “Point of origin and time?”
“Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 15:47 yesterday, give or take a minute.”
Tracy tapped her computer keys. “I have five transfers initiated during that two-minute slot. Any idea where the destination might be?”
“Try the Vatican Bank.”
“You can track money that goes through the Vatican Bank?” Jake asked incredulously.
“Since the Reagan Administration. We’re using the twenty-first evolution of the original Promise software.”
“Okay, here we go,” Tracy said. “Three hundred and three million from FRBNY to VB, three hundred and one point five mill went to the Libyan Central bank in Tripoli, three hundred mill to the National Bank of Italy, fifty mill to a shell corp, which is a front for CSL corporation, fifty mill to the National Bank of Libya in Benghazi and on to another shell corp we know is eventually connected to a terrorist organization, fifty mill to a bank in Maryland and on to another shell…”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Jake said. “You’ve got a maze of banks and shell corporations that’s neck deep. How do you actually know where the money ends up? I mean, this would take me weeks, if not months to track down, and I’d have to guess at a lot of it. How can you do that in just a few seconds?”
Honi and Tracy started laughing.
“Come on, what’s so funny?”
Honi leaned against the side of the opening to Tracy’s cubical, trying to contain her laughter. “This is why you needed the Gargoyle clearance. The NSA wrote all of the banking software for the last thirty years and sold it through vetted companies. Every penny that moves through a bank anywhere in the world, we get a copy of the transaction.”
“Even numbered accounts in Swiss banks?”
“Even those. But our basic problem of not enough people to look at the data remains. There’s just too much information to get a real picture of what’s happening.”
“I thought at least some banks wrote their own software,” he said.
“They do. We just make sure they use a programmer we own.”
“And what made you suspect the Vatican Bank? Why would the Church be involved in something like this?”
“The Vatican is more than the Church, it’s also a sovereign country, and the bank is part of the political side. We’ve used them before for our own covert projects.”
Jake paused, his mouth open. “You said fifty million to a bank in Maryland and then on to a shell corporation?”
“Yes,” Tracy said. “From there it filtered down to twenty-three machining companies and a shipping company, all specializing in automotive replacement parts.”
“One shipping company?”
Tracy checked. “Broadway Shipping and Expediting Service.”
Jake pulled his cell phone out to call Briggs. No service. “How can there be no service in here?”
“Encrypted phones only,” Honi said. “You’ll have to use mine.” She handed him her phone. He punched in the number.
“This is Hunter. I need a customs check on Broadway Shipping and Expediting,” Jake told Briggs. “Where are they located?” he asked Tracy.
“Norfolk, Virginia.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “Out of Norfolk.” He listened. “Destination? … Thanks.”
“Well?”
He handed her phone back. “The key words you picked out? I think I know what two of them mean.”
“Which two?”
“Cars and Benji. Each month, Broadway Shipping sends out five shipping containers on one freighter — Carsini Shipping Lines.”
“Cars,” Honi replied.
“And the CSL shell corporation in our system,” Tracy added.
“Among the destinations for the freighter is Benghazi, Libya.”
“Benji.”
“What is a country like Libya doing with fifty million in replacement automotive parts every month?” Jake asked.
“Obviously, there can’t be that many cars in need of repair in Libya.”
“Not even close.”
“So if the machining companies aren’t making automotive parts, what are they actually making?” Honi asked.
“That’s what we need to find out next.”
Honi chucked a duffel bag in the back seat of the car that Jake had checked out of the FBI impound lot. The plan was to visit each of the machining companies and try to get a good look at what they were producing without tipping them off to the investigation.
“What’s in the bag?” Jake asked.
“I just like to be prepared.”
He eyed the bag suspiciously. “You aren’t going to tell me, are you?”
“You don’t trust me? Go ahead and search the bag.”
Yeah, he thought. I fell for the martial arts bait. I’m not stepping into this one. “Just curious.”
They arrived at the first machining company on their list. Jake parked a half block from the address and pulled, from the sun visor above him, the folder containing a set of blueprints.
“You’ve got the ear bud in?”
“Yeah. Between you on one side and the earbud on the other, you’re in stereo. It’s like an echo.”
“Panic word is ‘picture’. If it sounds like I’m in any kind of trouble, call for backup.”
“Got it.”
Before Jake could get out of the car, a large man came out of the front door of the machine shop. He was bald with a mustache and a full reddish beard. He wore motorcycle colors, leather pants and heavy black boots, tattoos visible on his arms. The man paused momentarily as he looked at Jake and Honi. He swung his leg over the red Harley, started the engine, and rode off.
Jake got out and entered the machine shop. In the office, an older man with gray hair stood up from behind his small desk.
“Can I help you?”
“I hope so. I need twenty of these parts machined up.” Jake handed the blueprints to the man, who quickly looked them over.