Al-Qahtamni Enterprises, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Nasir al-Qahtamni stared at the bank balances on his computer screen.
Ethiopian Coffee—$3,000,000.00.
Khartoum Security Services—$9,768.00.
He was going to miss his date with Rania over this bullshit.
Nasir wished he could wave a magic wand and reverse the bank totals. The coffee company had drawn down exactly five hundred dollars in the last month, while this stupid security company had burned through all their extra cash to pay for new hires.
Nasir cursed under his breath at this Mahdi fellow who was behind all the bombings along the upper Nile. Blasted Egyptians. Always stirring up trouble for the rest of the Arab world. Sometimes they were no better than the damned Iranians.
He sighed as he opened a new tab on his computer screen. Uncle Alyan was very strict about money transfers. He couldn’t just take money from one company and move it to the other. These were shell companies, he had explained. Companies used to obscure the ownership of local assets and funding sources. His uncle had a very strict protocol for moving money into one of their shell companies—
Nasir’s phone buzzed.
Where are you? Rania texted him. She followed up with a pouty-face emoji.
Rania. He had been seeing her now for nearly a month and she was unlike any girl he’d ever known. In a land where arranged marriages were the norm, she might be the best of all possible worlds: an eligible girl that he was legitimately interested in.
More than interested.
Rania had gone to school in France for three years and she was anxious to show her independence in ways that he hadn’t fully explored yet.
His phone buzzed again. A selfie of Rania next to a car with an open driver’s-side door. She was dressed in tight jeans and an open-necked blouse. She made sure to include the curve of her ass in the photo.
If you don’t come get me right now, I’m outta here, the text read.
As he was pondering that last pic, she sent him a new photo with her winking from a high angle. He could almost see the lace of her bra.
Hurry, lover, she texted.
That did it. It was Friday afternoon and the rest of the office was away at a conference in Europe. Uncle Alyan was very strict about who he trusted to make wire transfers, so Nasir couldn’t just fob off the responsibility on one of the secretaries.
He sighed as he turned back to his computer screen. Uncle Alyan’s procedure called for taking the funds from the real-estate holdings in Dubai and routing them through three different banking systems in varying amounts before depositing the funds in one of the shell companies. He would need to wait for the funds to arrive at the new destination before initiating a new routing to the next stop.
It could take hours. He might not even complete the task before the close of business, and then where would the Khartoum Security Services be?
Unless …
He looked at the bank balance of the Ethiopian Coffee Company. Would anyone really notice if he took a small sum—say, fifty thousand dollars—from the coffee-company account and sent it to the security company?
His gaze strayed to his phone. Beautiful Rania, whose mind was filled with all that lustful Western television, was waiting.
Fifty thousand dollars would tide the security company over for the weekend. On Monday, he could do a proper transfer.
Nasir licked his lips. Uncle Alyan wouldn’t be back until next Wednesday. Nasir would have the whole transaction cleared up by then—
His phone buzzed again. A new selfie of Rania behind the steering wheel, throwing a smoldering look at the camera.
The bank transfer took less than ten minutes to clear. Fifty thousand dollars moved from the Ethiopian Coffee Company to Khartoum Security Services. That would be enough to hold them until Monday.
He slapped his laptop shut. Uncle Alyan rewarded initiative, Nasir reasoned. He was always saying young men should work hard and show initiative.
Nasir snatched up his phone and fired off a text to Rania:
I’m on my way, darling.
Tysons Corner, Virginia
Dre set the carton of chicken lo mein next to her computer keyboard and stretched her arms to the ceiling. All she wanted to do was get out of the office and go for a run, or a walk, or maybe just stand on her head for a few minutes. Anything to break the boredom of sitting on her ass all day.
She did the time-difference calculation between DC and Hawaii. If she were still on the Murphy, she’d just be getting to work. Walking the ship like she used to do every morning, saying hello to real people instead of staring at a computer screen all day.…
Dre sighed and loaded another screen of financial transactions. Michael’s financial-trap program idea had been wildly successful at generating endless lists of all the transactions related to the Nile River basin shell companies. The problem was that someone still had to sort through them. Janet, Michael, and Dre had gotten pretty good at plowing through the financial transactions quickly, but it still took about three hours a day of combined effort from all three of them, something that Don frequently needled Michael about in their staff meetings.
And God help you if you skipped a day and got behind the power curve.…
So far, their search had yielded exactly zero connections between any of the shell companies and not even a whiff of anything to do with the Mahdi. Even more worrying, their report to Don Riley about the advanced Israeli encryption on the Mahdi website had disappeared into a black hole of bureaucracy.
Dre focused on the first transaction. The equivalent of five hundred dollars in local currency to a business in Eritrea. She rolled her eyes and clicked for more details. Looked like a payment for office furniture.
With the clarity of hindsight, the digital dragnet that had seemed like such a phenomenal idea in the meeting with Mattias was actually a giant time suck in real life. Most of the transactions were like this one: penny-ante dollar amounts to local businesses or vendors.
Occasionally one of the shell companies received a large incoming financial transaction, hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, which the officers tried to track back to the source. Almost always, the source turned out to be a numbered account in a different country and the trail went cold from there. The few times when they got through the first layer of financial routing, they were stopped at the second level. And to further complicate things, the money amounts were completely appropriate for the companies involved—every transaction appeared to be normal business expenses. No anomalies.
Whoever was behind these shell companies knew how to move money around the world. While that spoke of a financial savviness, it did not mean what they were doing was criminal. For that, they needed to see the data.
Dre clicked through three more lines on the screen before she allowed herself another bite of her lunch. Still chewing, she opened the next item, a transfer between the Ethiopian Coffee Company based in Addis Ababa and Khartoum Security Services based in Sudan.
She pursed her lips. Fifty thousand dollars across international borders … this had potential. She clicked on the financial routing details and nearly dropped the carton in her lap. She studied the screen, blinked, then reread the whole transaction carefully to ensure she was not missing anything.
Dre set down the chicken lo mein. “Guys.”
No reaction from either Michael or Janet.
Dre continued, more emphatic this time, “Guys, I think I have something.”
Janet and Michael swiveled their heads in her direction, their faces illuminated only by the glow of their monitors. Red-rimmed eyes showed a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
Dre snapped her fingers. “Get your asses over here. I said I’ve got something and I mean it.”
With matching sighs, Michael and Janet trooped over to Dre’s workstation. They’d all been through this drill before. After dozens of false alerts, the sense of excitement about possibly cracking the case had gone stale.
Dre walked through the cross-border transaction and showed them the routing information. Michael’s eyes widened. “Who authorized the transaction?”
Dre switched screens to look up the transaction routing. Her voice went up a notch with excitement. “It was authorized by Al-Qahtamni Enterprises in Saudi Arabia.”
The lethargy of her friends evaporated as they leaned over her shoulder, alternately moving her mouse and punching buttons before she shooed them away.
“I found this, dammit,” Dre said. “Now let me do my job.”
But Michael was too excited. He rushed back to his computer and hammered at his keyboard.
“Al-Qahtamni Enterprises is a holding company based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.” He cranked the computer screen in their direction to show them the picture of a well-dressed Middle Eastern man with carefully parted dark hair and an engaging smile. “Meet Alyan Sultan al-Qahtamni, founder and CEO. It says he’s focused primarily in green energy and developing countries.”
Michael leaned back and folded his arms. “With the amount of investment opportunity in the Nile River basin, Saudi money is not a surprise. The question is why would he go to so much trouble to hide all of his other transactions yet not this one?”
“We need to show this to Don right away,” Janet said. “This is the first real lead we’ve gotten with this project.” She pointed at Michael’s monitor with the picture of the Al-Qahtamni CEO. “Then we’ll do a deep dive on that guy.”
Dre started to put the screen grabs into an email, then stopped. “Why don’t you tell Don what we found, Michael?”
Minutes later, they were in Don’s office, where he was just ending a phone call. “Perfect timing,” he said. “Your report on the Mahdi website cryptography has ruffled some feathers in high places. We’ve been invited to a personal briefing.”
“NSA?” Janet asked.
Don frowned. “Uh … Not exactly. The Israelis. They want to talk to us in person—all of us. Go home and pack. We have a flight out of Dulles tonight.”
“They want all three of us to go?” Janet asked. “Isn’t that overkill?”
Don shook his head. “They were very specific about the request. They want to see all three of you and they want to know exactly how you figured this out. I told them, but I’m not sure they believe me. I’m leaving a note with my lawyer in case I don’t come back.” He gave them a weak smile. “I’m kidding, of course.”
Dre shot a glance at Janet. No one laughed at the joke.
Don made a shooing motion with his hands. “Go! I’ll see you in a few hours at Dulles.”
“But wait,” Dre said. “We found something from Michael’s financial-trap program.”
Don’s head snapped up. “Tell me.”
Dre and Janet let Michael walk Don through the suspicious financial transaction. Their boss let out a low whistle when he saw the connection to the holding company in Riyadh.
“Looks like somebody finally made a mistake,” he said. “And we get the benefit of it. Good work. All of you, I mean it.” He held Michael’s gaze for a second longer than was necessary.
“Well, do you still want all three of us to go?” Janet asked. “Don’t you want someone to stay here and run this lead down?”
Don shook his head. “Pass this off to someone else in the group. Our orders are explicit. I am to bring all three of you to Israel with me. No exceptions.”