The First Commandment

CHAPTER 100

Though Kevin McCauliff was emboldened by the email Harvath had sent him, he still had qualms about carrying out the hack in the light of day. He decided to do it that night when there was lighter traffic on their servers, as well as fewer personnel around who might stumble on to what he was doing and begin asking questions.

The Troll had done the hardest work of all, narrowing in on who had set up the operation in Brazil. He’d even gone so far as to provide a list of banks and a date range as well as an approximate amount of money that McCauliff should be looking for.

It wasn’t easy by any stretch, but the NGA operative eventually found it. The payments had been broken up and wired through a series of intermediary banks in Malta, the Caymans, and the Isle of Man, but they all had one thing in common. Each payment could be traced back to a single account number at Wegelin & Company, the oldest private bank in Switzerland.

That was as far as McCauliff got. Wherever Wegelin & Company kept its records, they weren’t on any of their servers, at least not any that could be accessed from outside. McCauliff tried every trick he knew to no avail. Whoever these people were Harvath was hunting, they were extremely careful about covering their tracks. Extremely careful, but not perfect. It was nearly impossible to move large sums of money without leaving some sort of trail.

The only problem for Harvath at this point was that the trail dead-ended at Wegelin & Company, the archetype for Swiss banking discretion. If he wanted answers, he was going to have to go to Wegelin & Company directly.

Harvath thanked McCauliff for the information and logged off their call. Removing the ear bud from his ear, he turned to the Troll and shared with him the news that the funds had been traced back to a bank outside Zurich called Wegelin & Company.

The minute the name was out of his mouth, a pall fell across the Troll’s face and he held up his index finger.

His stubby fingers rattled across his laptop. When he found what he was looking for, he recited a string of numbers. They were a perfect match for the account McCauliff had just identified.

“How did you know that?” asked Harvath.

The Troll ran his hand through his short, dark hair and replied, “I’m the one who set up the account.”

“You?”

“Yes, me. But it gets worse. Plain and simple, Abu Nidal was nothing more than a terrorist. Despite his father’s success as a businessman, he didn’t know anything about banking or protecting his assets.”

“So you handled his money?” asked Harvath.

“No. Not for his organization. He had people for that. Nidal asked me to do something different. He wanted this to be off the books, as it were. He didn’t want it tied to the FRC. If anything ever happened to him, he wanted to make sure this layer of protection was in place.”

“Protection for whom?”

The Troll looked at Harvath and said, “His daughter, Adara. It was set up to be her private, personal account.”

Over four thousand miles away, an analyst at the National Security Agency had just tagged and compressed the audio file he was working on.

Picking up his phone, he dialed a cell phone number. It was the second time in twenty-four hours he’d called the anonymous man on the other end.

When the voice of his contact came on, the analyst said, “You wanted to know if Scot Harvath made any further attempts to speak with Kevin McCauliff, the analyst at the NGA?”

“Go ahead,” replied the voice.

“He just hung up with him less than three minutes ago.”

“Did you get a fix on Harvath’s location?”

“No,” said the NSA man, “but based on his conversation, I think I may know where he’s headed.”