It took an hour of deep research into Susan Fitzpatrick online to find she stayed at Hampton Inns regularly when she traveled. Dalca called the Hampton closest to where the soccer tournament was scheduled to take place, said his name was Scott Hagen, assuming the family would stay at the same hotel. In his best American accent he inquired about adding Monday to his Friday-to-Sunday stay.
The clerk corrected him immediately; he was booked Friday and Saturday night only, and she asked him if he’d like the rate for Sunday and Monday.
Dalca smiled, told the helpful hotel agent that he needed to speak with his wife first, and then he hung up.
Dalca reached out to the Russian Reddit user, and over the course of a few e-mails told him he could give him the name of the hotel the commander of the James Greer was staying at on a specific day, along with pictures of the man, his wife, his sister, and his brother-in-law.
Dalca added that, if something should happen to Hagen, it would serve the bastard right.
The Russian was intrigued, clearly, but claimed to have little money. Dalca told him he’d give him the information for free. The truth was, in this rare instance, Dalca wasn’t looking for money. He was looking to see his system in action. He was looking to show that he could use the OPM hack, bringing up classified applications that could be more than twenty years old, to create real-time targeting data in the here and now.
Dalca sent the Reddit user the complete package, then created a Google Alerts search for the name Scott Hagen, which would e-mail him every time the man’s name came up in new stories.
And then he promptly forgot about it, because he had other work to do.
Six weeks later Dalca saw a story online about a maniac shooting up a Mexican restaurant in New Jersey. The article came into his inbox because Naval Commander Scott Hagen had been one of the wounded.
Vadim Rechkov, clearly the Reddit user, had been killed in a shoot-out that also took the lives of three other people. Dalca didn’t care about the dead or wounded.
By now he had his pay site on the dark web, and he’d already used it to secretly sell specific intelligence to the governments of Indonesia, North Korea, and Iran.
And he also had a new fish on the line. He’d been contacted through the e-mail address of a terror group he’d reached out to in Lebanon, and notified that his messages to them had been monitored by a group with interest in what he could offer.
While Dalca was initially frustrated that his plan to reach out directly to different actors in the market for U.S. targeting information seemed to have backfired due to the poor security of one of his marks, he wasn’t concerned himself. He’d used unbreakable security to reach out to the Lebanese group, as evidenced by the fact this shadowy entity coming to him had to do it through the means he’d established, instead of contacting him directly.
No, they didn’t know who he was, he could back away and never make contact with them, but their offer was enticing. They clearly wanted to do business, and they were talking about purchasing vast amounts of targeting info regarding U.S. military and intelligence personnel.
Dalca soon began dealing directly with the group via encrypted e-mail and text messages. And within weeks he was in business with the group he now knew as “the ISIS guys.” He’d given them that title because they were interested in targeting information on Americans involved in Syria and Iraq. Who else could they possibly be? With the wide-ranging targeting requests he began getting from them, the “good faith” payments they sent to prove the seriousness of their interest, he’d all but forgotten about dealing with other actors out there. He had ignored further requests for intelligence from North Koreans and Iranians in the past few weeks; he could tell they weren’t ready to come through with big money and large quantities of targeting packages.
But “the ISIS guys” had deep pockets and, it was clear to Dalca, they had big plans to kill a lot of American soldiers and spies.
He’d cultivate this relationship, he’d milk these guys for every penny they had, and in return he’d give them a gold mine of targets. Dalca wanted the money, and he also wanted to watch a lot of Americans die on the news.
22
Bartosz “Midas” Jankowski and Adara Sherman met for the first time at five a.m. in the underground parking garage of the Hendley Associates building, on the corner of North Fairfax Street and Princess Street, in Alexandria, Virginia.
John Clark introduced the two new operational trainees to each other, and when Chavez, Caruso, and Ryan Junior pulled into their respective parking spaces and climbed out, all dressed for a morning run, he introduced Midas to the other members of the team.
Five minutes later, all of them, Clark included, were running along the Mount Vernon Trail, a jogging and bike path that followed the western bank of the Potomac River. They kept an easy pace and did five leisurely miles together, chatting away for the duration, although John Clark grew silent for the last mile, partially because running five miles at his age was some work, but mostly because he wanted to listen in to the others and get some early impressions about how they all jelled.
It was clear to Clark that the conversation was a little stilted, but he knew this had nothing to do with how well Adara and Midas would fit in with the crew. No, early the previous morning the three Campus operatives had returned from Jakarta, and they were all still sickened by the fallout of their mission there.
Jack was the worst of the three. He was quiet today, save for speaking when spoken to, and Clark knew at any other time he would have been the most hospitable and welcoming person in the building on a new employee’s first day.
Clark knew he’d have to watch Jack carefully, do what he could to help him process his guilt, and make sure the death of the CIA officer in Minsk didn’t hamper Jack’s ability to continue to do his job.
Back at the office at sunup, Midas pulled his gear bag out of the back of his pickup and followed the others inside, where he was shown to a locker room to shower and change for the day.
Jack, Dom, and Ding showered as well, then went to breakfast at a nearby coffee shop before heading into work. Adara showered in the women’s locker room of the gym, then went straight up to the third-floor conference room, where she knew coffee, fruit, and cereal would be waiting.
When she got there, Midas had already finished his first cup of coffee and was pouring himself a second.
Adara said, “Uh-oh. Hope the fact it took me longer to get ready than you doesn’t make me look too high-maintenance.”
Midas stirred in some milk and laughed. “Not at all. My ex-wife would have taken exactly five hundred percent the time it took you to get ready for the day after a five-mile run. I’m a drip-dry kinda guy myself, so I don’t fault you running a brush through your hair before coming up.”
Adara got her breakfast and then Clark came in the room, himself showered and ready for the day. “Midas, I’ve got to explain something about this morning.”
“It’s okay, Mr. C. I’ve been places where nobody liked me before. The guys will warm up to me when I prove myself.”
“It’s not you. Twenty-four hours ago they returned from an operation. Doubt you’ll ever have need-to-know on the specifics, but let’s just say that while the guys did everything exactly right, the fallout from their mission had some very, very negative second-order effects. No fault of anyone at The Campus, but the operators are going to be a little quiet for a couple of days. Jack, especially.”