Father Auciello nodded as he continued to stare at the photos of Amal Purakayastha. “Then we must assume that the encounter between these two, and with the transaction coming so close to the conclusion of this meeting, could be for the purchase of the Goliath Chamber. Two men with two separate agendas, one for profit and the other for a cause, can also be uniquely tied. The man with the hesitant walk could be Jaziri. And the man whose photos I look upon on the monitor is that of Amal Purakayastha, that I’m sure of. What we need to discover in limited time is where these men are and what exactly is in motion. And we need to know the major-targeted areas.”
“So far,” said Wilhelm Kaiser of Germany’s BND, “we’ve yet to locate either man in Paris, either through our operatives or through CCTV facial recognition. Most likely, both left the area before we received and deciphered the intel.”
“Agreed,” said Father Auciello. “We now have to upload the image of the remade Purakayastha into our facial recognition registry and use it to locate him globally, if possible. As for Jaziri, since we have nothing in our facial records that matches him, perhaps we can use the nature of his hesitant walk and gait as a means to locate him, like a fingerprint.”
“Still,” said Wilhelm Kaiser, “such limps are not entirely unique.”
“No,” said Father Auciello, “but it’s something. Whether the person of interest is not the man we seek, at least we’ve done our due diligence. But if the man with the limp happens to be Ahmed Jaziri, then that puts us one step closer to his client and the Goliath Chamber.”
Over the next half hour, the communication between the agencies continued. Plans were developed and decided upon as a mutual and coordinated effort to find and counterbalance the threat. But in order to do that, they had to locate Purakayastha and Jaziri, which would not be easy since both men were seasoned individuals in the game of espionage and terrorism.
“We know Purakayastha quite well,” Father Auciello added. “In fact, our team of Vatican Knights had a recent run in with him on Sinai. The Bangladeshi, as he’s called, escaped the net of our team that was led by Kimball Hayden—not an easy task, believe me. We’ll form a vigilant stream of joined communication to keep all agencies informed of our findings, while keeping in mind that it’s paramount to locate these two individuals.”
“Agreed,” said Leibowitz of the Mossad.
When communication between the agencies concluded, Vatican Intelligence went to work under the command of Father Auciello, who knew that finding the Bangladeshi or Ahmed Jaziri would not be easy. Both men had eluded global authorities for a number of years. To find them within days would prove to be impossible. Nevertheless, the word ‘impossible’ did not mean that something could not be done; it simply measured the degree of difficulty.
As a collective of one, the Jesuits went on a cyber hunt for Ahmed Jaziri and the Bangladeshi.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Bangladeshi was a seasoned professional who took nothing for granted. On the day that the five-hundred-million dollars in U.S. currency was transferred into an account that had been created with false information, only for the amount to be converted into cryptocurrency and quickly disappeared into an untraceable virtual wallet, the Bangladeshi reunited with his two operatives, one from Paris and the other from Munich.
By definition, these two were urban mercenaries who performed their objectives without question. Each had been given a suitcase from the Goliath Chamber. The Man from Paris would go to Tel Aviv, the Man from Munich to Washington, D.C., and the Bangladeshi would go to Vatican City.
Handing off the suitcases, the man from Munich, after receiving the suitcase that had the emblematic marking of the oval shape with two curved outcroppings that depicted horns, asked if they were toting bricks, a light comment that was meant to be in jest. But the Bangladeshi pinned him with a hard stare that encouraged a sheepish apology from the German.
For the next two hours, the Bangladeshi went into the nomenclature of the suitcases. He outlined in detail specific pieces while avoiding others, such as the spheres. He showed them how to powerup the units and set the timers. And he had both men perform these tasks repeatedly on a dummy suitcase until their actions became so routine that they could perform their duties either by habit or in their sleep. First, they learned the functions of the operating system to bring the unit online. And lastly, to set the timer.
Since minimal amounts of earnest agreements had already been wired into their offshore accounts from the Bangladeshi’s online ‘hot-wallet,’ the promise of lifetime amounts would be added upon (a), that the units make it to their major-targeted areas; and (b), the units detonate in a timed and coordinated strike from (a). For example, in the United States, the device would go off at twelve noon, whereas in Vatican City where the time would be six p.m. and in Tel Aviv seven p.m., with the explosions taking place at the same exact moment, even though the time zones are different. Once the devices ignited, only then would they see added bonuses. Since mistakes or errors were not options, then everything had to be precise, which was something the Bangladeshi made sure of by covering every possible angle and, should things go awry, the remedies to situational problems that would get them back on track. He left no stone unturned.
Now, with his team on the move, each man knew their contacts and those would move them unseen into the marked territories. Border patrol and certain passport sentries had been notified and paid well to turn a blind eye, with some receiving six-figure sums. Tel Aviv, however, would prove far more difficult to enter, but certainly not impossible. As diligent as
