The next problem was making the computer work. The names and identities of many Cartel figures were fully known to the U.S. government, of course. Their voices had been recorded, and the programmers had started there. Using voiceprints of the known voices, they established an algorithm to recognize those voices, whichever cellular frequency they used. Next, those who called them had their voices electronically identified. Soon the computer was automatically keying and recording over thirty known voices, and the number of known voice-targets was expanding on a daily basis. Source-power considerations made voice identification difficult on occasion, and some calls were inevitably missed, but the chief technician estimated that they were catching over 60 percent, and that as their identification database grew larger, that their performance would grow to 85 percent.
Those voices that did not have names attached were assigned numbers. Voice 23 had just called Voice 17. Twenty-three was a security guard. He had been identified because he had called 17, who was also known to be a security guard for Subject ECHO, as Escobedo was known to the comint team. “He’s coming over to see him,” was all the recorded signal told them. Exactly who “he” was they didn’t know. It was a voice they had either not yet heard or, more likely, not yet identified. The intelligence specialists were patient. This case had gone a lot quicker than normal. For all their sophistication, the targets never dreamed that someone could tap in on them in this way and as a consequence had taken no precautions against it. Within a month the comint team would have enough experience with the targets to develop all sorts of usable tactical intelligence. It was just a matter of time. The technicians wondered when actual operations would begin. After all, setting up the sigint side was always the precursor to putting assets in the field.
“What is it?” Escobedo asked as Cortez entered the room.
“The American FBI Director will be flying to Bogotá tomorrow. He leaves Washington sometime after noon. It is to be a covert visit. I would expect him to be using an official aircraft. The Americans have a squadron of such aircraft at Andrews Air Force Base. There will be a flight plan filed, probably covered as something else. Anything from four tomorrow afternoon to eight in the evening could be the flight. I expect it to be a twin-engine executive jet, the G-Three, although another type is possible. He will be meeting with the Attorney General, undoubtedly to discuss something of great importance. I will fly to Washington immediately to find out what I can. There is a flight to Mexico City in three hours. I’ll be on it.”
“Your source is a good one,” Escobedo observed, impressed for once.
Cortez smiled. “Sí, jefe. Even if you are unable to determine what is being discussed here, I hope to find out over the weekend. I make no promises, but I will do my best.”
“A woman,” Escobedo observed. “Young and beautiful, I am sure.”
“As you say. I must be off.”
“Enjoy your weekend, Colonel. I will enjoy mine.”
Cortez had been gone only an hour when a telex came in, informing him that last night’s courier flight had failed to arrive at its destination in southwestern Georgia. The amusement that invariably accompanies receipt of top-secret information changed at once to anger. El jefe thought to call Cortez on his mobile phone, but remembered that his hireling refused to discuss substantive matters over what he called a “nonsecure” line. Escobedo shook his head. This colonel of the DGI – he was an old woman! El jefe’s phone twittered its own signal.
“Bingo,” a man said in a van, two thousand miles away, vox IDENT, his computer screen announced: SUBJECT BRAVO
INIT CALL TO SUBJECT ECHO FRQ 848.970MHZ CALL INIT 2349Z INTERCEPT IDENT 345.
“We may have our first big one here, Tony.”
The senior technician, who’d been christened Antonio forty-seven years earlier, put on his headphones. The conversation was being taken down on high-speed tape – it was actually a three-quarter-inch videotape because of the nature of the system used to intercept the signal. Four separate machines recorded the signal. They were Sony commercial recorders, only slightly modified by the NSA technical staff.
“Ha! Señor Bravo is pissed!” Tony observed as he caught part of the conversation. “Tell Meade that we finally caught a frozen rope down the left-field line.” A “frozen rope” was the current NSA nickname for a very important signal intercept. It was baseball season, and the Baltimore Orioles were coming back.
“How’s the signal?”
“Clear as a church bell. Christ, why don’t I ever buy TRW stock?” Antonio paused, struggling not to laugh. “God, is he pissed!”
The call ended a minute later. Tony switched his headphone input to one of the tape machines and crab-walked his swivel chair to a teleprinter, where he started typing.
FLASH
TOP SECRET ***** CAPER
2358Z
SIGINT REPORT
INTERCEPT 345 INIT 2349Z FRQ 836.970 MHZ
INIT: SUBJECT BRAVO
RECIP: SUBJECT ECHO
B: WE’VE LOST ANOTHER DELIVERY. [AGITATION]
E: WHAT HAPPENED?
B: THE CURSED THING DIDN’T APPEAR. WHAT DO YOU THINK? [AGITATION].
E: THEY’RE DOING SOMETHING DIFFERENT, I TOLD YOU THAT. WE’RE TRYING TO FIND OUT WHAT IT is.
B: SO WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO KNOW?
E: WE’RE WORKING ON THAT. OUR MAN is TRAVELING TO WASHINGTON TO FIND OUT. THERE ARE SOME OTHER THINGS HAPPENING ALSO.
B: WHAT? [AGITATION]
E: I PROPOSE WE MEET TOMORROW TO DISCUSS IT.
B: THE REGULAR MEETING IS TUESDAY.
E: THIS IS IMPORTANT, EVERYONE MUST HEAR IT, PABLO.
B: CAN’T YOU TELL ME ANYTHING?
E: THEY ARE CHANGING THE RULES, THE NORTH AMERICANS. EXACTLY HOW THEY ARE CHANGING THEM WE DO NOT YET KNOW.
B: WELL, WHAT ARE WE PAYING THAT CUBAN RENEGADE FOR? [AGITATION]
E: HE IS DOING VERY WELL. PERHAPS HE WILL LEARN MORE ON HIS TRIP TO WASHINGTON. BUT WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED TO THIS POINT WILL BE THE SUBJECT OF OUR MEETING.
B: VERY WELL. I WILL SET UP THE MEETING.
E: THANK YOU, PABLO.
END CALL. DISCONNECT SIGNAL. END INTERCEPT.
“What’s this ‘agitation’ business?”
“I can’t put ‘pissed’ in an official TWX,” Antonio pointed out. “This one’s hot. We have some operational intel here.” He pressed the transmit key on his terminal. The signal was addressed to a code-word destination – CAPER – which was all anyone who worked in the van knew.
Bob Ritter had just left for home, and was only a mile up on the George Washington Parkway when his secure earphone made its distinctive and, to him, irritating noise.
“Yeah?”
“CAPER traffic,” the voice said.
“Right,” the Deputy Director (Operations) said with a suppressed sigh. To his driver: “Take me back.”
“Yes, sir.”
Getting back, even for a top CIA executive, meant finding a place to reverse course, and then fight the late D.C. rush-hour traffic which, in its majesty, allows rich, poor, and important to crawl at an equal twenty miles per hour. The gate guard waved the car through, and he was in his seventh-floor office five minutes after that. Judge Moore was already gone. There were only four watch officers cleared for this operation. That was the minimum number required merely to wait for and evaluate signal traffic on the operation. The current watch officer had just come on duty. He handed over the signal.
“We have something hot,” the officer said.
“You’re not kidding. It’s Cortez,” Ritter observed after scanning the message form.
“Good bet, sir.”
“Coming here… but we don’t know what he looks like. If only the Bureau had gotten a picture of the bastard when he was in Puerto Rico. You know the description we have of him.” Ritter looked up.
“Black and brown. Medium height, medium build, sometimes wears a mustache. No distinguishing marks or characteristics,” the officer recited from memory. It wasn’t hard to memorize nothing, and nothing was exactly what they had on Félix Cortez.
“Who’s your contact at the Bureau?”
“Tom Burke, middle-level guy in the Intelligence Division. Pretty good man. He handled part of the Henderson case.”
“Okay, get this to him. Maybe the Bureau can figure a way to bag the bastard. Anything else?”
“No, sir.”
Ritter nodded and resumed his trip home. The watch officer returned to his own office on the fifth floor and made his call. He was in luck this night; Burke was still at his office. They couldn’t discuss the matter over the phone, of course. The CIA watch officer, Paul Hooker, drove over to the FBI Building at 10th and Pennsylvania.
Though CIA and FBI are sometimes rivals in the intelligence business, and always rivals for federal budget funds, at the operational level their employees get along well enough; the barbs they trade are good-natured ones.
“There’s a new tourist coming into D.C. in the next few days,” Hooker announced once the door was closed.
“Like who?” Burke inquired, gesturing to his coffee machine.