The Bin Laden Plot

Christine replied, “Maybe this explains how bin Laden avoided capture those first few years. He didn’t move into the Abbottabad compound until 2006. He evaded capture for five years despite several promising leads, but each fizzled out. Perhaps he was being tipped off.”

“I don’t like it,” Rolow said. “That implies we had a traitor on the inside. Someone feeding information to bin Laden. For what reason?”

“We employ a lot of foreign nationals,” McFarland countered, “especially in that region. This wouldn’t be the first time we assessed their allegiance incorrectly.”

“Where do we go from here?” Bryant asked.

“Let me pull up the operation records,” McFarland replied.

She opened the mission report on her computer and scrolled to an appendix containing a list of items taken from the compound. She read a few of them aloud: five computers, ten hard drives, over one hundred thumb drives and computer disks…” She kept going through the list.

“Bingo!” she said. “Transceiver and charger.” She looked up from her laptop. “It was one of the items taken from the third floor.”

“Why wasn’t the presence of this radio picked up during the analysis of the material harvested from the compound?” Rolow asked.

“The material was collected somewhat haphazardly due to the time crunch, with the assault team having only a few minutes to collect material before Pakistani forces arrived. Anything of interest was shoved into garbage bags, then sorted once the team returned to Afghanistan. I suspect that whoever reviewed the material assumed that a radio from one of the assault team members had accidently been caught up in the compound’s contents. That’d be my guess.”

“So, we have the radio,” Bryant said. “What does that do for us?”

“Every transceiver has a serial number. Find the transceiver, and we’ll know who it was issued to. We can then have a conversation with that person, asking how it ended up on bin Laden’s desk.”

“Where is it now?” Rolow asked.

McFarland perused the report. “Doesn’t say. I’ll have to go through subsequent records. The material from the compound initially came here for analysis, but it’s since been dispersed to various locations. Bin Laden’s AK-47 that Monroe mentioned, for example, is in the agency museum here at Langley. Most of the rest is likely locked in a vault somewhere. I’ll track the radio down as soon as possible.”

She leaned back in her chair, pleased at what she had deduced.

“Great job, Tracey,” Christine said. To Rolow, she asked, “What’s next?” He had scheduled the meeting to discuss several topics.

“Tracey has an update on the SecNav issue. Nothing on Mixell yet, but the review of the UUV data turned up something interesting.” He turned to McFarland.

“It’s not a lot to go on,” she replied, “but we found an Iranian communication referencing a pending receipt of a priority shipment from SI. There are a lot of companies with the initials SI, but given that the UUV and SecNav appear to be linked, and that her brother is Dan Snyder, a reasonable conclusion is that Iran is expecting a shipment from Snyder Industries. However, we’ve searched all ship manifests leaving the U.S. mainland for the last six months, and nothing from SI to Iran has been logged.”

“You think it’s off the books?” Bryant asked.

“That’s what we’re going with for now. It’ll take a while, but we might be able to discover what was shipped, or at least verify a shipment occurred. Once we know more, we can discuss how to proceed.”

“Anything else?” Christine asked.

“I think we’ve covered everything,” Rolow said. “We’ve got three leads to follow: assess whether al-Qaeda leadership is responsible for the assault team deaths, locate the radio on bin Laden’s desk, and figure out what SI shipped to Iran. Harrison and Khalila will resume their original task of tracking Mixell down; perhaps we’ll get some useful information out of him if we can take him alive.

“In the meantime, Jake and Khalila will have a few days off. They did some good work in Kuwait, despite their disregard for clearly established protocols.”

He lent a hard stare toward Khalila, who hadn’t said much during today’s briefing. She’d met with Rolow before this meeting; Harrison had spotted her leaving the DDO’s office, a glowering look on her face.

As far as a few days off went, the timing was excellent. Maddy had a gymnastics competition this weekend in Maryland, one of a half dozen national meets her team participated in each year, and she and Angie were flying in early to see the sights in D.C. He’d be able to spend a few days with them.

“Thanks for the room at the Intercontinental,” Harrison said to Rolow. Upon accepting the agency’s job offer a second time, the DDO had arranged a room for him at the upscale hotel in southwest D.C., where the agency kept a block of rooms reserved for its use, until Harrison rented a place somewhere.