“Let me make sure I have this all down,” Maggie said, reviewing the notes she had typed into her laptop. “Then we can move onto the financial institutions themselves.”
Night had fallen, and construction lamps were set up on stands around the room. Kafka’s bruises faded in the harsh glare.
For Maggie’s part, she was doing her best to contain herself. She was one step closer to turning off one of Jihad Nation’s black money spigots. As it stopped, the bloodbath of innocent people dying would also slow, if not end.
John Rae and Dieter were busy at a second table that Helga had set up, John Rae typing with two fingers on a laptop, interacting with pilots and officers of the US Air Force at Creech Air Force Base outside Las Vegas, Nevada.
Maggie and Kafka had reviewed Abraqa Darknet for several hours.
It was actually quite simple and that was the beauty of it. As Maggie suspected, there was Bitcoin tumbling, which involved breaking the blockchain between donors and recipients, keeping everything private and removing any direct relationship with each other. A Saudi Arabian banker, for example, who wanted to fund Jihad Nation, didn’t know where his donation was going—technically. And it couldn’t be proved legally. Hidden Bitcoin wallets were the norm in this digital shell game. In Abraqa’s case several levels of indirection were used, rather than just the one that most Darknet online retailers of illicit goods made use of. All was accessed with a Tor browser and hidden .onion sites for stealth networking. It was technology anyone with some basic hacking skills and a devious mind could figure out.
Maggie knew an entire online world existed a few clicks away, where one could buy drugs or kiddie porn, even put out contracts for executions for one’s enemies and then select the highest bidder. All protected with tools anyone with a GitHub account could download. There were even the equivalent of review sites for purchases made on the Darknet, keeping vendors honest at the risk of earning criticism from buyers. Buying your dope online was now safer than going down to some forbidding neighborhood where anything could happen.
The only hole in Abraqa, as she saw it, was that only one person—Kafka—ran it with select manual processes. That was because he had designed it that way. Jihad Nation had recruited Kafka for his technical skills. They hired engineers worldwide for many needs—maintaining oil refineries, power grids, everything a modern society needed. And in Abraqa’s case, Kafka seized the opportunity to make himself indispensable, creating a unique niche, because Jihad Nation didn’t know any better at the time and trusted him. He had been radicalized at university and impressed the caliph’s secretary in Mosul, who bestowed tremendous responsibility upon him early. He was well compensated for his efforts—a new SUV, rent paid on a modern apartment in Mosul, a generous allowance for unlimited electronic goodies and a salary of seven hundred euros per month, a healthy wage indeed for that part of the world. A lowly jihadi fighter made a hundred—the average monthly wage of a typical Iraqi, if a job could even be found. Kafka also received unlimited health care for himself and his family. His mother’s heart condition had entitled her to be sent to one of the best hospitals in Dubai, all paid for by Jihadi Nation. If they valued you, they took care of you. Until they stopped trusting you.
All Kafka had to do was manage the servers he had set up, handle electronic banking, update and run websites, upload the odd beheading video to YouTube.
Once in a while a little boy would ring Kafka’s doorbell in Mosul and hand him a note—very low tech—and Kafka would be required to run an errand. This might involve a visit to some remote spot in the desert where Kafka might pay someone, take care of some administrative task, set up a device or server.
One day he was provided with video equipment and told to tape a mass execution of prisoners. He balked but they had no one else. This was part of his deepening commitment.
He remembered standing back with the video camera, catching the bodies falling into the ditch like dominoes. He did this primarily to distance himself from the action but the visual effect was one the caliph’s secretary liked, calling Kafka up specifically to compliment him on his technique. Kafka had an eye others didn’t.
When he hung up, Kafka was sick to his stomach.
What had he become?
Then came the beheading videos. The first one made him vomit uncontrollably into the dirt after the man’s head was slowly hacked off, the sound of the blade against bone and gristle turning his stomach more than the visual, earning laughs from the jihadis and a frown from Hassan al-Hassan, who was overseeing the executions. It was all Kafka could do not to stop filming as the camera shook in his hands.
It was then that he realized he was not one of them. Never would be.
He wondered if Hassan al-Hassan was thinking the very same of him as he watched Kafka wipe his forehead with a handkerchief.
But he edited the tape down, added the necessary captions to make the video worthy of a man’s life. The caliph’s secretary was pleased with his efforts.
“What I don’t understand,” Maggie said. “Is how so many hostages seem to be almost willing to be executed in those videos. They go to their deaths like sheep, simply let it happen.”
“There’s a method to the madness,” Kafka said. “Most of the time they aren’t executed. Often, it’s all staged. Yes, they’re held prisoner but told the video is just an act for the cameras. And frequently it is. So they play along, read the scripts they’re given. But every so often . . .”
A shiver went down Maggie’s spine. “It’s the real thing.”
“Yes.” Kafka took a gulp of tea. “It makes prisoners easier to deal with if they think it’s all a fake. Until, one day, it isn’t.”
“Maggie,” John Rae said from across the room where he and Dieter had been working with Creech at a table in the glow of a lamp. “I think we’ve found your town.”
Maggie got up and stood behind John Rae and Dieter at a laptop. On a USAF console a black landscape was highlighted with lights and thermal images of a small town by a river.
“There,” John Rae said, pointing. “It’s nine PM there, same as here, but the FLIR camera is picking it up.” FLIR was Forward Looking Infrared Radiometer—night vision.
“That’s Al Kuwayr,” Maggie said, looking at the blocks of the town scroll by. A shimmering silver band came into view in the upper right corner of the screen. “And there’s the river Zab.”
“There’s Highway 80.” Dieter pointed at a silver asphalt strip left of the town.
“US Forces call it the Highway of Death,” John Rae said. “IEDs galore.”
“Can you turn up the volume?” Maggie said.
Dieter turned up the sound. A steady stream of military chatter crackled from Las Vegas Creech over the computer speaker.
“Coordinates confirm Al Kuwayr,” one of the Creech techs said.
“Let’s take a closer look, guys,” John Rae said to the techs.
Not long afterwards they were looking down at a man carrying a bundle over his shoulder, walking down a dirt road in a sparsely housed section of town. His white silhouette stood out against the shining gray of the ground. Off to one side a vehicle moved down a street, floating like a ghost.
“Nothing out of the ordinary,” John Rae said.
Maggie said, “Some of the women who got out said they thought the encampment was east of the town, south of the river.”
Kafka got up from his chair, came over. “She’s correct.”
“Can you scope the terrain south of the river, guys, east of that town?” John Rae asked the Creech team.
The drone’s camera nosed along the river, the water running almost white-gray, heading south.
They spent a fair amount of time searching a blackened area.
“What’s that?” Maggie said. Shadowy squared shapes were etched out of darkness.
“Some sort of structure,” John Rae said. “Structures.” A rectangular wall the size of a sports field bordered everything.
“The compound has a wall around it,” John Rae said.
“It does,” Kafka said.
Maggie asked the techs, “Do you guys have Snoopy enabled?”
“Sure do, ma’am.”
“Can you give that main building the once-over?”
“They might pick us up,” the tech said. “If they’ve got their ears on.”
“I think it’s worth a quick scan anyway,” she said, getting a nod of approval from John Rae.
A minute later one of the techs spoke. “Snoopy just picked up a cell phone in that main building, searching for Wi-Fi. Some dumb bunny left his phone on after lights out.”
Then a tiny strip of light appeared in an area of blackness. “And that?” she said, glancing at John Rae.
“Some blip?” he said. “Residual heat?”
“There it is again.” Maggie pointed at a slip of light, which was now fading. “What the hell is that?”
One of the Creech techs said, “Could be a door or window letting light through.”
“They’re keeping the windows blacked out,” Maggie said.
“Can you take her down some more, guys?” John Rae said.
A few minutes later, they were low over the compound.
“A pickup truck,” one of the Creech techs said. “Parked against that compound wall, covered up with netting and camouflage. One or two more in that open garage structure there. You can just see the tailgate on one, sticking out.”
Maggie strained her eyes.
“Take it down some more,” John Rae said.
“Is that roof starting to glimmer?” Maggie said. “On the main building. Or do I need glasses?”
“Some kind of activity,” one of the techs said. “Cooking. Electronics. Or body heat.”
“Let’s take a look at that one truck,” John Rae said. “The one by the wall.”
They did. Its hood glowed ever-so-faintly.
“It’s been driven in the last few hours,” one of the techs said. “Still warm.”
“There!” another tech said. He zeroed the camera on a small figure, white with heat, walking from the covered garage across the dirt courtyard to the largest building. The telltale point of a rifle barely showed. “He’s packing.”
A belt of light in front of the main building flashed, then went dark again.
“He just went inside that building. That was the door opening and closing.”
“Doing a patrol,” John Rae said. “Maybe a perimeter check.”
“Maybe he’s a farmer, guys,” Dieter said. “They can be armed, too.”
“With his windows blacked out?” John Rae said. “Multiple vehicles stashed? Camouflage?”
“If it was a farm,” one of the Creech techs said, “the place would be lit up. They don’t want to get hit by drones so they let it all hang out.”
“I think we found your compound, Maggie,” John Rae said.
A jolt of exhilaration lifted Maggie’s spirits. “Sunrise at 6:51,” she said. “We’ll be able to see more then.” She turned to Kafka. “In the meantime, you can show me who funds Abraqa.”
“So the money is funneled primarily through Wahhabi mosques,” Maggie said. “Most of it from anonymous donations.”
They had covered the technical aspects of Abraqa. Now it was time for the parties involved. Maggie knew the mosques in question were used worldwide to fund terrorist activities.
Kafka sipped tea from a paper cup. The construction lights cast a shadow over his face.
“And who are these anonymous donors?” Maggie asked.
“The great majority are Saudis,” Kafka said. “Donations are channeled through about twenty charities and foundations. These institutions in turn give money to the Wahhabi mosques who distribute cash to local fighters and resources.”
“Using hawala?” she said.
“Often.” Hawala was an ancient Arab form of money brokering, handled primarily through word of mouth. No paperwork. If one needed to send a thousand dollars from New York to one’s brother-in-law in Pakistan, a local broker would contact an agent there. The brother-in-law would be given a password with which he would go to his local contact, who might be a simple merchant in a market, and be given the cash. Everything happened informally. The brokers earned a small fee for their efforts but the primary reason for hawala was to provide a network free from scrutiny. People dealt solely in cash. Hawala stretched worldwide and was time-honored.
“I’ll need the names of those charities and foundations.”
Kafka gave Maggie a squint. “When my parents are freed.”
Maggie returned a stare. “We’ve located the camp. But we’re not going to be able to get boots on the ground unless I can offer the higher-ups some proof that Abraqa works as advertised.”
Kafka eyed her with wariness.
“If anybody’s going to free your parents,” she said, “it’s us. You’re going to have to trust me—just like I have to trust you.”
Kafka looked at the wall behind her, as if coming to some decision. “Islami Bank of Saudi Arabia, Sina Trust, Sangram Foundation, Coral Trust, International Aid to Children, Center for Peace, University of Bahrain . . .” He looked at her. “There are nineteen in all, to keep the money diversified.”
“I’ll need them all, account numbers, contact information of the key people, and most importantly, names of the donors.”
Kafka returned an impassive look. “All in good time.”
“That time is now,” Maggie said. “Now.”
Kafka sighed. “I need to get to Google Docs.”
So all of this information was kept in the cloud. Hidden in plain sight. Along with recipes for guacamole and kids’ homework. And hundreds of millions of other documents. Maggie turned her laptop around so that Kafka could access it.
Kafka gave Maggie one last hesitant look before he made an entry, downloaded a spreadsheet. He turned the computer back around. By now John Rae was standing behind Maggie, arms folded over his chest, watching.
Maggie perused the spreadsheet. “Some of these donors are allies to the United States,” she said. One or two had close ties to Washington. One she thought she recognized as a contributor to the Worthington Group—the lobbyists her father had mentioned—the same group that supported Senator Brahms. Maggie shook her head in disgust.
“Even I recognize one or two of those names,” John Rae said.
Kafka gave a cynical smile. “There are allies and then there are allies.”
“When do these donations become anonymous?” Maggie asked.
“These foundations use the Darknet accounts I set up for them,” Kafka said. “There are two levels of folders. One public. One private. Donations are made on the public tier. All above board.”
“And you transfer funds through the Darknet to the private folder, using the foundation’s private key. The connection to the donor disappears.”
“The multiple Bitcoin wallets I mentioned enforce that.”
“I still need more,” she said.
Kafka shook his head. “No passwords until I see my mother and father, safe and sound.”
“I’m not asking for passwords yet,” she said. “I need you to kick off one transaction, one money transfer, so we can see everything from point A to point B.”
“No,” he said. “No.”
“Look,” Maggie said. “You’ve given us an overview but I need to see this at work.”
Kafka sighed. “And then you’ll be satisfied?”
“I’ll tell you when I see it.”
Kafka rubbed his face. Then he reached over, pulled the laptop toward him. He opened a Tor browser, anonymous, blinked in thought for a moment and typed an address into the address bar.
He was presented with a directory structure. The parent directory was named Abraqa Foundation.
Maggie got up, stood next to him.
“I drill down.” He made an entry.
He was presented with nineteen subdirectories. Each one corresponded to one of the nineteen financial entities he had described.
“That one,” Maggie said, pointing to one at random. “‘Helping others—Friends of Islam’.”
“Fine.” Kafka navigated down to that folder, which contained lists of deposits and transfers.
“The third one,” she said.
He selected the file and was presented with a transfer of 1000 Bitcoin, a deposit from a prominent Saudi Arabian oilman.
“About four hundred thousand dollars,” Maggie said. “A charitable contribution.”
“Exactly.” Then he went back to the parent directory of the institution, selected Transfers, entered Create new, filled one out, hit enter.
He was then taken to another portal where two-stage authentication required him to enter a password. “Turn your heads,” he said to Maggie and John Rae.
John Rae gave her a quizzical look. She returned with a short nod, as if to say, It’s fine.
They turned their heads while Kafka made an entry. Maggie counted ten keystrokes.
“It’s done.”
They turned back.
“Unless I receive specific instructions, I simply go through the various mosques periodically in a round-robin fashion. As a rule I divide the donations twice a month by twenty and transfer a roughly equal amount to each mosque. They take it from there.”
“Why not automate the process?”
“Tempting,” Kafka said, “but then I lose control.” He gave a sly smile. “It would mean embedding passwords in a program or on a server somewhere.”
Kafka wouldn’t want that. Jihad Nation would be able to replace him more easily. “Makes sense.” As much as any of this made sense. “Let’s see it at work.”
“I usually start with the entity that has been waiting the longest.” He sorted the transfers by date, oldest first. He then created a transfer to a mosque in Mosul, for fifty Bitcoin. He hit enter and it went through, displaying a status of Pending.
Then he logged off.
“And that,” he said, “is that.”
“How does the mosque retrieve their money?”
“They have banks. There are many. It’s technically not against the law in Iraq to process money in this way. The contact at the bank converts the money from Bitcoin.”
“What Bitcoin exchange do you use?”
“BitOasis.” The Middle East’s multi-signature leading exchange.
“How do you receive your instructions if a specific payment is required?”
“A clandestine mail server.”
“I need to know about that too.”
“And you shall—as soon as I am hugging my mother.”
Everything hung on rescuing his parents. The buzz of the lamps seemed to amplify that reality. “How much money do you process?”
Kafka frowned in thought. “Last year—two million, seven hundred and fifty thousand Bitcoin.”
“Just over a billion dollars.”
“Give or take a few million.”
All that money directed at hatred and killing. Trafficking young women. Children. Investing in misery. Maggie looked at John Rae. “Well? Got enough to convince our people?”
“Are you kidding?” John Rae said. “When top brass hears about this, they’re going to be salivating.”
“I need a few minutes alone with Kafka,” she said.
John Rae narrowed his gaze, as if to say, Are you sure?
She confirmed with a slight nod.
John Rae spoke to Dieter. “Come on, old man.”
They left the empty old office, leaving Maggie and Kafka on their own, amidst the buzzing of the lamps.