60
NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER, TYSON’S CORNER, VIRGINIA, TUESDAY AFTERNOON
Chief Canning sat at the head of a long oval table so highly polished that he could admire his bald pate in the reflection. Streamlined. He liked streamlined. Efficient and fast.
“Sit,” he told the assembled team of four. The Arabist, Pauline Southward, bidden by him from her office at Fort Meade, walked in, made it five. She was sporting a battle-red suit and a beige silk shirt. She looked martial, and delicious. Canning’s assistants, Del Russo and Peters, both jumped up to bring in another chair for her. Moira Zucker, a new recruit to the Sheikh Ali team, eyed Southward through her red-framed glasses. Her look was half quizzical, half hostile.
“OK,” said Canning, stifling a smile of amusement. Southward with her prim prettiness, her fit body and razor mind was converting his cynics, some of them anyway, he thought, noting Zucker’s reaction.
“Let’s start with the intercept known as Project Oscar; the threat to rain down the vengeance of Allah on the State of California. Do we have anything?” Canning asked.
The roomful of officers shook their heads. The room hummed with murmured nos.
“Nothing. No further intercepts picked up,” said Southward. “Not relevant to this anyway.”
Zucker leaned forward, spoke in a gravelly voice, the legacy of throat polyps that she wouldn’t have dreamt of removing. She could have earned a decent living wielding a late-night phone line.
“Before Nine-eleven there was stock market activity. A big short was taken out on the Dow. If there were to be an attack, a major attack somewhere in California, the Dow would plunge again,” she declared. “Since you pulled me onto the team last week, I’ve been searching for any suspicious-looking big shorts on the Dow. Anything out of pattern. Hell of a lot of stuff to wade through. Nothing leaps out so far.” Zucker was a treasury specialist, financially sophisticated. Increasingly finance was an essential tool used to track terrorists, to follow their networks. Follow the money. It told its own tale, very often labyrinthine, and it was Zucker who picked her way through the maze.
“Someone’s always shorting the Dow,” replied Chris Furlong, at fifty-three the oldest officer present. Furlong wore his world weariness like a badge.
“A big short, coming out of the Middle East,” countered Southward. “That would narrow it down.”
“Big short is good, Mideast is irrelevant,” declared Zucker. “Trades can come outta anywhere.”
Southward shrugged, like the barb was nothing to her.
Canning spoke. “I’ll talk to SEC. See if they got anything. Ms. Southward, you talk to your colleagues at NSA. Get them to input into the software the word short and Dow, see if anything comes up.”
Before Southward could reply, Del Russo interjected.
“Might try short and NASDAQ as well,” he said. “Worth trying a number of indices.”
“Good point,” noted Canning.
Zucker twisted her face and gave Del Russo a “duh” look, like he were stating the blindingly obvious. He stared through her till she looked away, then turned to Canning.
“Thank you, sir.”
So Del Russo did have a brain, thought Southward, not just a lantern jaw.
* * *
After the meeting wound down, Canning rang the head of the SEC, asked her about any big shorts on the Dow.
“Sounds like a long shot,” she replied, “no pun intended.” “But I’ll ring all the district commissioners. See if they have anything.”
* * *
Ten minutes later, the head of the New York Office of the SEC rang.
“Chief Canning, Troy Bergers here. You want to know about any big shorts?”
Canning popped a Tums. His dyspepsia was playing up again. Counterterrorism wasn’t the most restful of postings. For thirty years, since he entered West Point as a skinny teenager, he’d never done restful and his digestion bore witness. Now he was a desk warrior, but his purview was still life and death, albeit at one remove.
“I do,” he replied chewily.
“Listen up. Two of my people have been looking at an insider trading ring. In connection with that, they dug up the fact that a series of shorts have been put on.”
“On the Dow?”
“No. Much more specific. On the three big California property casualty insurance companies. And it’s not actually shorts, it’s more specific still. Put options. Six-month duration.”
Canning felt a roaring in his ears. On his hoax/fire spectrum this one had gone to ignite. He managed to keep his voice impassive. “Is that so? Who’s behind these puts?”
“We don’t know that yet. We’ve got as far as a series of nominee companies. We’d dearly like to find out who is behind the nominees, but we don’t have the evidence of criminal activity we need to justify a court order.”
“Maybe we can help with that,” mused Canning, thinking, more than one way to play that one. “Can I have one of my people call you?” he asked. “Moira Zucker. She might help bust through the nominee walls.”
“Sure. Tell her to ask for Special Agent Ange Wilkie.”
“Will do. You know any more about these puts?” asked Canning. He got the sense that Bergers was holding out on him.
Bergers pondered. All this earthquake or ARk Storm stuff sounded like Wilkie and Rodgers’ overactive imaginations. They’d sound like a laughing stock. He knew better than to share that.
“No, that’s all I know at this moment in time.”
“If you find out anything else, let me know. Or, put it another way, if you could find out more, we’d appreciate it.”
“See what I can do.”
* * *
Canning called Del Russo, Peters, Furlong, and Zucker into his office as soon as he hung up. Luckily for her, Pauline Southward hadn’t yet left the building. Canning’s PA, Brad Cooper, known as Coop, located her as she was about to get in her car, told her to get back upstairs. She hurried in, took a seat.
“SEC came up trumps,” declared Canning. “We have the equivalent of three sets of interesting shorts which have recently been put on.”
“So someone, several someone’s, have shorted the Dow,” said Southward, feeling the quick burn of adrenaline.
“That’s what I asked, but no. Better than that, or perhaps I should be saying, worse than that. They’ve bought put options on California property casualty insurance companies. On all three of the big ones.”
Zucker yelped.
“Shit!” exclaimed Southward.
Canning gave a grim smile. “I think shit covers it.”
“Who bought the puts?” asked Zucker.
“They don’t know. Nominees. I gave word to Troy Bergers that you’d call. He says to ask for Special Agent Ange Wilkie.”
Zucker scribbled on a note pad. “Will do.”
“So they’re going to go for buildings. They’re going to bomb the biggest, most expensive real estate they can target,” rasped Del Russo, fury roughening his voice.
“Looks that way,” agreed Canning grimly. “So we need to identify the possible targets. Then, without in any way alerting them to anything specific, get the word out that they need to beef up security.”
He turned back to Zucker. “The put options were six months, by the way.”
“So time frame is anywhere between now and Spring,” mused Zucker.
“Correct. We need to speed this up. Peters, what’s the progress with the private airfields in California?”
“Chief, we’re going to have to narrow it down. We have eighteen primary airports in California, there are five notable private-use airports, and there are over one hundred and twenty miscellaneous airports. We cannot have every last one of them surveilled.”
Canning thought for a while. “Let’s go with a hunch that they won’t hijack commercial planes, do a rerun of Nine-eleven. More likely to use a private jet, several private jets. Ali Al Baharna is a fuckin’ billionaire! He can throw money at this. They’ll either crash them into buildings or use them to drop bomb loads.”
“How would they get hold of bombs?” asked Southward.
“Manufacture them?” suggested Peters.
“Let’s assume they’ve got that covered,” said Canning, “Chris, take a scroll through any large purchases on the bomb maker’s shopping list: ammonium nitrate fertilizer for non-farms, hydrogen peroxide for non-hairdressers, and while you’re at it, check out any known C-4 or Semtex trades in any of the badlands.” He gave a grim smile, “or in any of the goodlands, for that matter. Check if our guys are missing any.”
Furlong nodded.
“Let’s further hypothesize,” continued Canning, “that the Jihadis will use large private jets if they’re using the jets as missiles, medium-size if they have heavy bomb loads. So let’s look at all those airports with sufficiently long landing strips for large private jets to take off from. Then let’s look at all the large private jets that sit around those airports, see who they’re registered to.”
“What about some estate somewhere that has its own runway?” suggested Furlong, finally getting into it. “If they’re going to be loading bombs they might want some privacy.”
“There might be official runways on estates, and there might be an under-the-radar private runway, as it were,” said Canning. “Good call, Chris. Get an aerial survey from NASA.”
Canning got to his feet. “People, this is top priority. I am going to have to take this to the president right now. Let’s get these fuckers before they pull a West Coast Nine-eleven.”