Eureka! Maybe
Chapter 14
The sightings were piling up and between us we’d received over 40 reports so far. That was the good news: the only good news. The bad news was none of them had panned out and we were terribly frustrated with our lack of progress.
We both were reviewing the intelligence reports provided by our respective organizations: she three floors up and me at the U.S. embassy. We’d then share and compare sanitized notes about anything and everything which might even tangentially relate to our search for Vlad. The amount of useless information we had to sift through was mindboggling.
A week later, we finally got some good news about where Vlad might be hiding, emphasis on might. It wasn’t anything solid, but maybe it’d have some legs as a possible tip to his whereabouts. God, I was beginning to think we’d been cursed from the start in trying to run the guy to ground. It seemed the dark forces of juju, hoodoo, karma and just plain bad luck were working against us.
Jersey had forwarded me a redacted cable from a highly reliable source friendly to the U.S. government. That overly bureaucratic phraseology meant it likely came from the Israelis, specifically the Mossad. The Israelis had a lock on Middle East intelligence and political intrigues because the country’s very survival depended on it.
The cable stated the unnamed source had intercepted internet communications of possible interest. The code used in the messaging was based on a simple word substitution algorithm that was easy to crack. The IP address was cited as 2602:306:3ac3:f70:1c2f:79c7:55a. We’d send it to all the collectors and request it be monitored around the clock. The gist of the message was summarized and went something like this:
Greetings, Allah Akbar! We accept your proposal to smite the infidels who occupy our lands. We are readying ourselves for battle and the glorious event you described. We have identified mujahedeen volunteers to carry out the mission, knowing they will likely die in doing so. It is of no matter to them. I will let you know of our progress and await your instructions to proceed with the plan.
The IP addressees’ computers were traced to Victoria, Seychelles and Sana’a, Yemen. The Mossad analysts were incredible magicians who’d just offered us our first break. The information jived with what Pet had earlier picked up from her service. So, either Sana’a or Victoria was where Vlad might be hiding out and directing his terrorism campaign. I mentally voted for Victoria since it was much more hospitable and I needed a vacation from Moscow’s inhospitable weather.
We both agreed it was a good lead, but more corroboration was needed to either go to Hell or Heaven. Yemen was involved in a bloody, protracted civil war with Al-Qaida backing the rebels and Saudi Arabia supporting the legitimate government: legitimate as far as those things go in that part of the world. On the other hand, the Seychelles were among the most beautiful islands on the planet. I wasn’t a tough choice if I had anything to say about it. But I probably didn’t. Too many taskmasters on both sides had to give us a big thumbs-up for that to happen, but I crossed my fingers anyway.
I told Pet I had an idea to ramp things up to see if we could locate Vlad in either location. I’d cable the DSS Regional Security Officer in both countries and press them to use their sources with the host governments to put out an APB, in cop-speak, to try and locate our quarry. Both offices had received Jersey’s cable and mailings of Vlad’s photo and brief CV. I was asking them to redouble their efforts in the search. However, that was easier said than done to stick with the old saw. In the case of Yemen, the country was at war and large swathes of the country weren’t under government control and off-limits except to the suicidal or terminally stupid among us.
The Seychelles was another matter altogether, I suspected. The people were so laid back and the pace of life so languorous that the gendarmes probably hadn’t made much of an effort to find him. It was sort of like the manana mentality without the Spanish tilde. Regardless, no matter how deep he’d hidden from the authorities, he had to sometimes venture out of his bolt hole and make an appearance. That’s when we hoped to whack him!