Payback

111

Robert Gallo ran another of the “Dredge” searches across the database of NSA electronic intercepts, this time using the tool to cross-reference those intercepts against financial data from banks that had had any association with Stephan Babin during the time he was working as an arms dealer. While Gallo considered it relatively easy to break into the computers that contained the data without being detected, the sheer size of their data files was overwhelming. The project had started five days before, and it had taken over one hundred hours to clandestinely “squeeze” all of the transaction information from the targeted computers.

Unlike targeted attacks such as those on General Túcume’s family holdings, this was a brute-force “tell me all” data dump, made possible only by the massive power of the NSA’s computers. The information retrieved was so vast that Gallo and the others working on it literally didn’t know what they had. And so after a few “simple” and straightforward searches to see if there were any links with Babin’s known accounts, Gallo had turned to Dredge, hoping it would turn something, anything, up.

That was the value of Dredge: you didn’t know what the search engine would find before it went to work.

The tool’s nickname referred to the program’s ability to dredge up important facts from a vast pile of information without being told what it was looking for. It worked by finding patterns in the data similar to things that had been found in other searches. If, for example, five keyword searches had picked out bank accounts connected with a keyword, Dredge would look at the data discovered, decide what else was unique about it, and then hunt down similar patterns in the database. Maybe the accounts always had deposits made on Mondays; Dredge would find others that fit the same pattern. It could also find missing items in patterns — say the accounts had withdrawals every day but Thursday; it would find accounts that had only Thursday withdrawals, looking to fill in the missing gap.

The reason the search engine was valuable was that the operator didn’t have to know what to ask for. You couldn’t search the Web with Google unless you knew what you were looking for. Dredge was all about guessing. The more complex the data it started with, the “richer” the results were.

“Richer,” in Gallo’s experience, was a synonym for “bizarre.” But even the bizarre had failed to turn up Babin.

The computer compiled a list of 145,375 accounts in the six banks Babin had used while in business that had been accessed in both Russia and South America in the year Babin disappeared. That sounded to Gallo as if it was a lot of accounts, and apparently the computer thought so, too, because it delivered twenty-eight pages of possible patterns analyzing those accounts.

“So what’s unique about these accounts?” he asked himself and then the computer. Dredge brought up page after page of differences, finding patterns in odd balances and withdrawals, listed owners, even tax rates.

On the third page, at the very bottom, it red-flagged a category he’d never thought of — accounts that had had no activity except for interest accruals and deposits for three years until the past seven days.

There were fifty-three accounts, none of which were connected to Babin in any way.

Except for the one that was set up in Austria just over the border from the Czech Republic on a day Babin was known to be in Prague.

It had sat dormant until this past Saturday in Lima, when it received a wire transfer from a bank that, until now, had no connection with Babin at all.

Rubens was just about to go and get some lunch when Johnny Bib ran into his office, waving his arms. He was hopping up and down, more excited than usual.

“Container ships!” he sputtered. “Containers!”

Rubens folded his arms, waiting for Johnny to explain. Experience showed that asking any questions when he was in this condition tended to delay his pronouncement.

“Moscow Fabric Importers — that’s the name in Russian. Sholk was the code name, wasn’t it? Silk?”

“You found his account?”

“Ha!”

Johnny Bib explained that the Desk Three computer people — Gallo mostly — had found three accounts until now not known to be Babin’s. One of the three was with a South American bank, El Prio, a relatively small institution based in Argentina. The account had made a wire transfer to an account in Austria that hadn’t been used for more than three years on the Saturday afternoon that Túcume had been denounced.

More critically, it had been accessed several times over the last few days.

Rubens started to get lost in some of the details of the bank accounts and the network of transfers.

“The bottom line, Johnny,” he said.

“There was a cash withdrawal in Lima on Saturday from an HSBC bank account set up in Singapore while Babin was there five years ago. A few hours later, that account was used to transfer money to another bank account, which had made a payment to a container shipping company in Peru the week before. That payment was the third in a series, and coincided with the sailing of a ship to Mexico. Last week — the day before the warhead was found. It docked yesterday. We’re working on tracking all of the cargo containers.”

Rubens picked up the phone to talk to the Art Room. “Give me the location, Johnny.”