They Disappeared

65

Langley, Virginia

“Greetings from God’s slave to the United Nations…”

Several miles south of downtown Washington, D.C., in a section of CIA headquarters that overlooked the Potomac River, Lilly Fong, one of the agency’s leading experts in behavioral biometrics, worked fast, analyzing the statement.

Who is this guy?

The sound wizards down the hall had already enhanced the recording’s quality. Lilly played it repeatedly, noting the speaker’s style, voice pitch and other aspects before she processed the recording using several advanced speech recognition programs.

She then ran the sample through a CIA database of recordings and voiceprints of known terrorists and suspects until she found a match for the voice.

Bulat Tatayev.

“Good job,” Lilly’s deputy director said.

The CIA immediately set out to track and hunt Tatayev.

The deputy began digesting the agency’s file on Tatayev, his nerves straining as he read. Bulat Tatayev was a warlord based in Mykrekistan, an ex-soldier, an engineer expert in explosives who became a leader of Mykrekistan’s violent struggle against Russia for independence. After his parents, wife, daughter and son were killed in the bloodshed arising from years of unrest, he became one of the world’s most dangerous men.

Bulat Tatayev or his followers were tied to or claimed responsibility for killing more than three hundred people.

The deputy director flipped through the summary:

one hundred and twenty-one people died in an attack on a resort hotel on the Black Sea after a four-day siege; forty-six people were killed in the Christmas bombing of a shopping center in Saint Petersburg; twenty-two people died in an attack of a restaurant in Mykrekistan’s capital; thirty-one people were killed in the seizure and gassing of a Moscow theater; forty people died in an attack of a subway station in Moscow; twenty-nine people died in the bombing of a Moscow airport; eighteen killed in an attack of a Russian consulate in Turkey; sixty-two people killed on an attack of a train to Moscow from Grozny.

The deputy scanned the section outlining how the insurgents regarded the president of Mykrekistan as a puppet traitor and the Russian president as a war criminal. Tatayev was known to have financial backing from wealthy corporate interests in the Caucasuses and the support of a global network of highly skilled militant cells.

Tatayev’s dark eyes burned from a photo, his hatred intensified by his full unkempt beard.

Tatayev had vowed to take his cause to a world stage by sending a “martyr brigade” to carry out a “historic” attack at an international event.

The deputy pressed a speed dial number on his encrypted phone for security chiefs in New York.

“Alert the detail for the Russian delegation. We have a credible and active threat. The suspect is Bulat Tatayev, leader of a Mykrekistani terror faction. We’re sending his photo and file now. The delegation is the target. Evacuate them now!”