“What is strange,” I said quietly, “is that transactions such as these are done on the dark net. What made him be so careless?”
“Maybe he thought that an innocent Excel file wouldn’t pique anyone’s interest.”
“And you are sure this Excel file belongs to him?”
“It is possible that someone else is using his computer and the owner of the computer is totally unaware. There were a few sheets. Wait, I’m uploading them.”
“Did you put his photos in the cloud as well?”
“I didn’t have time. A picture is a bigger file. It takes time to upload.”
Jonathan fiddled around on the computer, and uploaded a file from somewhere. A neat file, with lots of details. It was outlined significant information on the firearms, and many others as well. I recognized guns, hand grenades, mortars and of course, the cherry on the top -- the special sniper rifles. Those weapons could ultimately supply more than one combat unit. Someone was planning a war.
“I didn’t have time to check all the spreadsheets.” Jonathan said and clicked into the second sheet. It was locked.
“If it is locked with another password, then most likely the owner of the computer doesn’t know what’s in this file. By the way, the third sheet is also locked. The fifth is empty.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because a password is sort of a signature. A personality type. There are those whose passwords are easy to remember like 1234. Those are the easiest to break into. Then there are those types that their password is random on the keyboard. It is quite easy to identify them as well. Others use a specific date and the most interesting are those who use a completely random and complicated password.”
“So if we have one sheet locked with one type of password and another locked with a different type of password…”
“Yes, then most likely we are talking about two different people who own these sheets.”
“Do you think you will be able to crack the more complicated codes?”
“Give me some time. I’ll try and run some programs.”
While the numbers ran across the screen, I wanted to tell Jonathan that if it didn’t work out, I could transfer the file to the specialists in the Mossad. Even though I already considered myself apart from the organization, I still had direct access to the right people. It took ten hair-raising minutes and the file was hacked.
The second sheet, a list of four digit numbers, reminded me vaguely of something I had already seen before. “I think it states hours.” I mused to Jonathan, “Notice that there isn’t a number above twenty three and two other digits and also that there are two zeroes and two numbers. It looks like hours of something.” There was another line of codes of letters and digits. “Something looks familiar…” I mumbled, and carried on examining it.
“Why are you breaking your neck on this? Let’s leave it to Google to show us what it is.”
“Okay… Plug that one in,” I said and pointed at a combination that looked worrying.
And Google really showed us. It was a chartered flight run by EL AL, the Israeli flag carrier.
“I smell trouble…” I mumbled, going over the next combination. That too was an EL AL charter flight, this one to a different location. Was there going to be a massive attack on EL AL chartered flights?
We continued with the third combination. This one was another airline in yet another airport. This was a comforting discovery, but not enough to warm the chill that heralded danger.
The fourth combination showed a fourth airline, this one Canadian. The fifth was a Polish airline. In all we checked thirty-two combinations, out of which five were EL AL chartered flights. There seemed to be no common factors. There were different airlines, flying at different times, to random destinations and scattered airports. What was the common denominator?
“Do you want to check the next sheet?” Jonathan’s voice came to my ears as if from another world.
“Yes, let’s check it.”
There too, many warning lights flickered on. There was a list of cars and motorcycles. All of them could have been part of a private collection of someone, but when one added the FedEx vans and one truck, the level of concern rose.
The last sheet was the one that erased any doubt of danger. As opposed to the others, this wasn’t a list of equipment of some sort, but a list of addresses. The first address was of the Israeli representative in Washington, then in Miami, Los Angeles, New York and in six other cities around the United States. Included in the list were the private addresses of the representatives and consuls, likewise of Israeli companies in the States.
I sent Jonathan to his room to sleep and called my boss, David Gideoni in Israel, to report my findings.
Murat Lenika,
Wednesday, November 11, 2015, 8:00 a.m.
“You are here in the United States because I promised your father I would look after you!” The more he yelled, the redder his face became. “I am supposed to watch over you so that you don’t deal in crime, to make sure that you are not deported back to Europe, and to keep you alive.” I thought he would die of a heart attack before my very eyes. It would be ironic that he should die now because of me and I would inherit from him because of that fact.
“You can’t just decide you are dealing with firearms!” He stopped shouting, but only because he started coughing. “This won’t happen on my watch and not under the noses of the Red Mafia.” I was starting to get annoyed by the scene, but he carried
