The trip itself was falling apart, and Jennifer wasn’t pleased. We’d run into trouble as soon as we’d landed. The official from the Ministry of Culture who’d expedited our visas was now persona non grata inside the government of Syria. No telling why, but with Syria in such a mess I was sure he was now getting the rubber-hose treatment. And he’d painted a bull’s-eye on Jennifer and me, since the government thought we were connected with him.
Our contact at the State Department had been no help. He wasn’t expecting us to travel for another three to five months, and with the U.S. Embassy shuttered in Syria due to the troubles, we had no one local to help. Jennifer had fumed, really pissed that her scientific expedition was slipping away. I tried to calm her down, then simply left her alone to grump in her room. When I got to mine, I’d found our mission had changed.
This morning we’d gone for breakfast, where I’d finally gotten the courage to tell Jennifer we had to collect a message from the Taskforce. I couldn’t talk about it in the hotel, because after our experiences at immigration and customs, I was sure that place was wired for sound, so I’d just gone to sleep after logging out of my Yahoo account.
The e-mail, ostensibly from the university, complete with a university address, simply inquired about our flight. That would have been fine, except it also asked for a status of camera equipment we didn’t have with us. The word “camera” was a prearranged code letting me know we had a message from the Taskforce. I didn’t want to know how they’d hacked a legitimate university e-mail address.
At breakfast, Jennifer’s face had fallen the minute I had mentioned it, which actually hurt a little, but she knew the priority and knew the physical requirements for collecting the message. I left it up to her to find the area.
The Taskforce had multiple ways to transmit covert messages, depending on the security of the host country. The easiest method was a simple VPN back to our “company,” but some countries-such as Syria-controlled their Internet and prevented VPNs from working. The next easiest way was an encrypted e-mail, but once again, foreign intelligence services usually owned their Internet, and while they couldn’t read the e-mail, they knew it had been sent. Best case, they knew you were doing something secret and would amp up the scrutiny to find out what that was. For a real businessman, that was no issue, since they were doing what they said they’d be doing. For the Taskforce, it could mean mission failure.
We’d tried carrying our own satellite equipment for a cut-out. Strictly commercial, off-the-shelf stuff like M3 or Thrane to blend in, which would allow us to have an Internet connection that bypassed the host country. That had worked until a team, traveling as cellular technicians, had had the equipment confiscated at customs. They’d been told that the country in question “had robust Internet,” and thus the communications gear wasn’t needed. Between the lines they heard, “We don’t want you talking where we can’t listen.”
The Taskforce realized they needed a no-fail way to get messages out while operating within denied areas, such as Syria. Some fifty-pound head in the communications section had come up with the solution.
The first Global Positioning Satellite was launched by the U.S. military in 1978. Since then, a broadening constellation of satellites has been continually launching signals to earth in an ever-increasing refinement of geo- location capability. Now, the little GPS receiver you bought at Walmart would triangulate your position to the meter. All over the globe.
The genius idea was embedding the message traffic into the GPS signal. A customs official would confiscate just about any other piece of communications gear before a GPS, especially if it worked as advertised when checked.
Ordinary GPS wouldn’t even realize the signal was there, but our special GPS would receive it, decode it, and display it. Since the U.S. government owned the entire technology, it was nothing to get the necessary tech stuff done to make it happen. The only downside was the weakness of every GPS signal, which had a hard time working in dense areas. Embed some data within it, and you really needed to have a wide-open area and some time for the GPS to lock on to the satellite and receive the more complicated signal.
We were currently in the al-Hamidiyah Souk, which was about as good for getting a GPS signal as being in a coal mine. Crowded on all sides by vendors selling goods ranging from kids’ toys to perfume, it had an old tin roof that blocked everything, including sunlight. I was beginning to think Jennifer was purposely making this hard.
“Are you sure you know where you’re going? Isn’t there a park or soccer field around that doesn’t require us to go this deep into the city?”
“Keep your pants on. The Umayyad Mosque is right at the end of the souk.”
“Mosque? Seriously?”
She stopped and turned around. “You really didn’t do any studying, did you? This has all been some joke. You knew we weren’t going to get up north.”
Her expression wasn’t angry. It was resigned, like she’d just realized that all her exertions and studying had been nothing but a pale jest at her expense. It hurt again.
“Jennifer…I had no idea. I really wanted to do this trip. I know I’ve made fun of the research, but that’s because I thought we
After a moment of silence, she said, “Whatever this message is, it’s not going to be good. I can feel it. You’re going to make me do something bad.”
Jennifer had already been forced to do things in the name of the United States that the average citizen would consider horrific, and she’d understood the why, but she wanted me to say it wasn’t so this time. Wanted me to make good on my promise of letting her do something purely for the joy of scientific discovery instead of the bloody self-defense of the United States.
I didn’t know what the incoming message would say, but I knew I couldn’t promise Jennifer anything. Like a coward I changed the subject.
“How’s a mosque going to help us? We can’t even get in.”
She started walking again. “The Umayyad Mosque is one of the holiest shrines of Islam. It’s a huge tourist attraction. Yeah, we can’t get into the inner workings, but we can get to the courtyard, which is enormous. Big enough to get the signal we need with a plausible reason for being there.”
She looked back at me. “Unlike a simple soccer field.”
The comment was meant to convey she understood the mission and was thinking about how to do it given our operational cover.
We reached the end of the souk and circled around to the tourist gate entrance of the mosque. After buying our tickets, we went through a doorway labeled “putting on special clothes room.” We were given hooded cloaks to wear, me because short-sleeved shirts were frowned upon and Jennifer because, well, she was a woman.
“What’s up with this place?”
“It’s the first great mosque.”
“Great is right. It looks like a crib from MTV with all the marble and gold.”
She was scowling at my verbal history slight when I saw a mausoleum off to the right, a small, white building with a red roof.
She said, “Saladin’s last resting place.”
“Saladin?
I saw a little grin seep out because I was enjoying the same thing she did. Old dead people and pottery shards.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get to the courtyard and get this God-almighty-important message.”
“Hey, let’s look around a little bit. Work the cover some. We’re tourists.”
She smiled for real. “If it’s got something to do with bloodshed, you get interested. Okay, you want me to tell you about Saladin?”
Jennifer was famous in the Taskforce for her history lessons. Not in a bad way, as if she was always spouting off, but in a good way, because she knew more about the history of the world than any knuckle-dragger in the command. In this case, I didn’t need the lesson. Saladin was a Kurd who’d smoked the European crusaders, giving them fits with his military skills. A leader of the first order. I knew all about him, but had no idea he’d been entombed in Syria.
“I’m good on this one. I’ll just go take a peek. Why don’t you take the GPS into the courtyard? I’ll catch up.”
