The officer worked in a corner of a listening station that was part of a U.S. military complex hidden in the forests of the Rhine region, less than an hour’s drive south of Frankfurt. It was an ultrasecret tentacle of the National Security Agency’s foreign intelligence surveillance operations that few people knew existed.
Code name: HUSH.
The system had grown from ECHELON, a Cold War communications network operated by Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, to eavesdrop on the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. Since then it had emerged to monitor activities of pariah countries, insurgency, organized crime and terrorist plots.
HUSH went beyond monitoring satellite telecommunications traffic. It also used an advanced network of secret listening stations around the world that were strategically placed near major switching bases for fiber-optic communications.
In this sector, the path of much of Europe’s internet communications traveled through a critical exchange point near Frankfurt International Airport. Here, through its Darmstadt station, HUSH had been running a long- standing operation of tracking, capturing, decrypting and analyzing the phone and web traffic of scores of terror groups.
In most cases the targets used untraceable disposable phones, or encrypted satellite phones, or coded internet communication. HUSH’s experts drew upon information harvested from captured suspects and equipment. They also relied on the work of intelligence officers in the field whose sources and informants provided key but ever-changing numbers, codes, positions and data.
Intelligence operators and traffic analysts had to contend with some seventy languages and dialects. Linguists where often challenged understanding everything they’d heard. So much could be lost if one didn’t understand the cultural contexts. All intelligence operators, despite listening in on targets for months, feared they could miss something. They used technology and human resources to sort through millions of intercepted calls, decode keywords for further analysis.
The intelligence officer continued concentrating and replayed the fragment of captured communications several more times.
These calls were very recent and had pinballed from Istanbul to Athens, from Grozny to Makhachkala, Dagestan, from Amsterdam to Mykrekistan, from Munich to Queens, New York.
The languages on this file had been a mix of Azeri, Chechen, Dargwa, Greek, Kumyk, Lezgian, Mykrekistani, Tabasaran, Turkish and Russian.
The officer checked his notes.
The targets had been European cells supporting a dangerous group of insurgents in the Caucasuses. CIA informants had indicated the insurgents had boasted of an attack planned for the UN meeting in New York City and that when the target’s plans moved closer to activation, the targets would encrypt their conversations to sound like they were talking about a specific football match-the game between the U.S. and Iranian national soccer teams to be played today in New York City.
The officer signaled to a supervisor.
“Sir, take a look at the notes, and listen,” the officer said. “I think we have something.”
The supervisor listened on his headset.
He listened twice, consulted the notes and drew upon all the alerts he’d been privy to from the past forty- eight hours.
“Okay, get this to Langley and Iron Shield in New York.”
57
Jeff’s breathing quickened. Keeping a safe distance back, he followed the man from the restaurant, watching him turn a corner.
Two blocks later the man vanished into an alley and Jeff rushed to the entry. The narrow passage darkened between two buildings. Jeff saw the man’s silhouette at the opposite end and tried calling Cordelli.
This time the detective answered.
“Cordelli?”
Jeff kept his voice low. “It’s me, Griffin. I found them!”
He stayed on the phone, never removing his eyes from his subject, and started down the alley keeping a distance.
“What’s going on? Where are you, Jeff?”
“The Bronx in- Wait.”
The man suddenly vanished at an angle to cut across the next street.
“You’re breaking up,” Cordelli said. “Where in the Bronx? Give me an address!”
At the end of the alley Jeff scanned the street, his heart rising to his throat. No trace of the guy.
“Jeff! Can you hear me? Give me a location. Brewer and I are in the Bronx following a lead. Where are you?”
“I’m in a warehouse in Purgatory Point a few blocks from Vakhiyta’s Kitchen!”
“Say again, I didn’t get all of that! Repeat your location!”
At that instant Jeff’s focus went across the street and straight through an empty office building. Behind it he glimpsed the man making his way over a large vacant lot toward a larger building.
Reflex kicked in.
Jeff shot across the street, triggering a horn blast as he just missed being hit by a car. He lost his balance and his cell phone, which fell to the pavement. He was not hurt but the phone looked broken. The impact had knocked the battery free. Jeff collected the two pieces in time to see the man pass through a gate to a huge old building in the distance.
Jeff shoved the two pieces into his pocket and jogged along the edge of the vacant lot, using the line of small trees and brush for cover as he neared the building, an imposing four-story stone structure.
The immediate area was desolate, the dirt and gravel surrounding it a graveyard of abandoned hulks of rusting machinery. The property was protected with a ten-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. The gate the man had entered through was padlocked.
Jeff moved fast along the perimeter, coming to an isolated section with a stand of trees and overgrowth. Judging from the empty beer cans, the smashed liquor bottles and fire pit, this was a drinking party spot. Someone had positioned wooden shipping pallets ladder-style against the fence. Jeff climbed it, moving with care over the razor wire, then lowered himself inside the property.
He moved quickly along the length of the aging building, searching for an entry point. Doors he came upon were locked. Windows were sealed. He traveled an entire length, moved on to the next, then the next, before he’d reached a corner where a section of wall had crumbled. It had been patched with sheets of plywood that had grayed, rotted and frayed.
Jeff pulled back on the plywood, and wedged himself through the jagged gap to the inside.
Inhaling air that was a rank mix of a chicken coop and neglected machinery, he took immediate inventory of his surroundings.
The floor was covered with metal shards, broken glass and wood with exposed nails. Near him were pallets of lathes, crates and motors stacked haphazardly and reeking of hydraulic fluid, oil and bird shit.
He heard the hum of voices and the static-squawk of emergency scanners in the near-distance. But saw
