Chapter 6: Doing the Job

Twelve Years Ago

Beltsville, Maryland

Sam picked up the folder. “Plan or do?”

“Plan. Treat this as a real assignment. No decision has been made yet as to the eventual disposition of the assignment,” replied Jenkins.

Sam opened the folder. The first thing he saw was a photo of a Caucasian male, short brown hair, no beard, no mustache, no visible tattoos or piercings. The next page included a written description. James Rockwell Halliday, 44 years old, 5’10”, 185 pounds, married sixteen years, three children, one son, two daughters. Currently employed at Newport News Shipbuilding, in Newport News, Virginia, in the procurement division.

Sam read through the folder twice while Jenkins watched silently. “So, what makes this guy worth killing?” asked Jake. “What brought him to your attention?”

“For the last year or so information on the Ford-class aircraft carrier production line has been showing up in Russian intelligence estimates. Recently we’re seeing it in Chinese intel as well. Somebody at the FBI got curious and we managed to plant some false data in the latest pricing info. The fun part was that they planted different bad data into the info that five different potential bad guys got to see. The bad data that this guy had access to began showing up in the intel we were intercepting.”

“This guy’s in procurement. What’s the big deal? It’s not like these are the nuclear secrets. He’s a pencil pusher.”

“Accurate procurement information is critical to both production and repair work. If you know when the parts for a planned repair are due to arrive, then you know when the carrier is going to have to be in port to get the new parts. Some parts have very limited supply chains, sometimes only a single supplier, so knowing when parts are arriving can let you predict fleet availabilities for months, or even years.”

Sam nodded in understanding. “Okay, so why get rid of him? Why not grab him and flip him? Begin shoveling more false info to Russia and China.”

Jenkins shrugged. “Not entirely sure. I know the idea was brought up, but nobody’s real happy with that. My understanding is that there’s a limit to how much phony info you can funnel out, and the Russians and Chinese would figure it out within just a few months. Then they’d be the ones to start a counterintelligence operation on us.”

“Russia and China. This guy’s double-dipping. How much does being a traitor pay these days?”

“He’s even started talking to an Iranian proxy. It doesn’t matter how much they pay, anyway. He’s got a gambling problem.”

Sam nodded again. “So, why off him? Do we have enough to arrest him? I’m sure the FBI would love to fry him.”

Jenkins shook his head. “The only way this goes to trial is if the Agency divulges methods and techniques in open court. They aren’t interested. Nobody is. Even though the info was discovered by monitoring foreign intelligence sources, it will look like the CIA is surveilling American citizens. That’s a nonstarter, for sure.”

“So, we can’t use him for counterintel and we can’t arrest and try him. And I assume that if we simply get Newport News to fire him then the bad guys will know we figured it out.”

“Bingo. Now, you get to figure it out. Considering your last remark, we don’t want the bad guys to realize we’re doing it. Whatever happens has to look like an accident, or at least look deniable.”

“I’m going to need a lot more information than is in here,” replied Sam, waving the slim folder.

“Start making a list of what you want to know, and then we can figure out how to find it.” Jenkins stood up and headed towards the door. “Do what you can, and I’ll be back tomorrow morning. I can show you how to find out things that most people can’t.” He left Sam to the problem.

Sam grabbed a pad and a pen and began to make a list. Medical information - maybe Halliday had an allergy or a fatal condition that could be exploited? Workplace information - maybe there was a potential workplace accident that would be convenient? Home information - where did he live? The safe suburbs or the middle of a dangerous ghetto? That probably wouldn’t help, but maybe there was the potential for a car accident on the way to work. First things first, though. Sam turned to the computer and got into Facebook. Time to find out more about James Rockwell Halliday.

An hour later Sam glanced down at his notes. The target was an incredibly average family man, though there seemed to be several comments about not having enough money to take care of the family. These were usually in the context of statements like, ‘Going to have to put in some overtime to get to Disney this year.’ He noted that Halliday was left-handed, though he wasn’t at all sure how important that was. Still, one of the things he learned at Camp Peary was that even the oddest details could prove important. In the photos of him drinking, he seemed to be favoring vodka-based drinks, and not rum or whiskey. Neither he nor the Missus were shown drinking wine. No allergies mentioned, but medical information was not available. No Instagram page, but the wife had one, mostly filled with shots of the kids and sometimes with photos of her husband. No husband-wife intimate shots in the last few years - was that when he began blowing the money that he could have spent on parents-only vacations?

In the morning Jenkins sat down with him and showed him several additional websites that might be useful. “These are the systems the CIA and NSA use to target possible intelligence threats.” He opened a terminal window and linked into a mainframe at Fort Meade. “This one is run by the NSA and is called PRISM. PRISM reads emails and texts from all over the world and then uses a bunch of computers to try and figure out if they mean anything.”

“Not following you, not completely, anyway,” admitted Sam.

“Okay, big overview. Because the United States is where the Internet was invented and developed, the vast, vast majority of Internet traffic travels through the United States, even if just in passing. Over ninety percent of the world’s communications go through the U.S., and PRISM can tap it all.”

“So, if somebody in Japan is sending an email to somebody in Korea, it goes through the U.S.? That makes no sense,” commented Sam.

“The path is determined by various algorithms in the phone systems and Internet companies. It takes the path of least cost, not least distance. Since the largest and lowest cost systems are here, they usually come through here. Anyway, PRISM is reading it all. It first started with just government stuff, but then it got the phone companies to give them access, and then started tapping into the big tech companies, Microsoft and Apple and such. The NSA’s got huge server farms now that do nothing but store data and compare it to other data. There’s a similar program called ECHELON that listens to phone calls.”

“How’s it work?”

Jenkins shrugged. “I’m no computer genius. I can say that it isn’t like in the movies or TV. Nobody is storing every email or phone call. Nobody has enough computers to be able to do a fraction of that. Most of the time, they are simply storing what’s called metadata, for instance that phone number such-and-so called a different phone number for so many minutes at a specific time. Then, if somebody figures out that Terrorist One has a certain phone number, they can trace through the records and find all the people he called, and then trace all the people they called, and so forth. Maybe they find another person, maybe Terrorist Two, start tracing who he’s talking to. Maybe they can build a web of people, find a few more bad guys, find if they’re talking to banks or places they can get money, whatever.”