Call Waiting

If there’s one thing that gets my head, and heart, racing, it’s when someone misses a meeting. Mother always taught me, if you’re not fifteen minutes early, you’re late.

Generally, for face to face meetings, I’ll arrive at the specified location much earlier than that to check for surveillance and to make sure my escape routes are mapped out. For internet meet-ups or phone calls, other than making sure you’re on a secure line, there’s nothing much more to do than sit and wait for your contact to arrive.

Now that my Bulgarian Operation has, for the most part, been wrapped up, I’m looking for another target on which to focus my skill set. I’ve done a good job of establishing my corporate cover. I’ve gained trust, built relationships and delivered results consistent, exceptional results to all of my corporate business partners. Because of this success, I may have the ability to gather more intelligence in other parts of the bank.

With this perspective, I was awaiting a phone call last night from one of Mother’s people who may have a way to interject me into their operation. We had met in person previously, but with Marcel currently residing on the Left Coast, we struggled through time zone differences to set up a contact time: 21:00 EST.

By 21:09 a myriad of what-ifs were running through my mind. What if he couldn’t get away from his corporate responsibilities? What if he couldn’t find a secure line? What if, unlikely as it may be, he forgot? What if he was tied to a metal chair in the basement of a Tijuana flat, bleeding, hoping the power goes out so the electrodes will stop while his captors repeatedly ask who he was meeting and what it was about?

.-. . ... ..- .-.. - ...

Thirty Minutes Or It's Free

Remember maintenance guy ploy? Well, it works for deliveries as well.

Upon returning home from work, I received a message instructing me to make a delivery to a local contact. My parcels weren’t all too exciting. I had two thumb drives containing dossiers on people of interest. But, I still had to figure out a way to bring the information without attracting the slightest amount of suspicion.

I made a sandwich, wrapped it in waxed paper, like what you’d get in deli, and put one of my Coke Zero’s in a paper bag. I put on some ratty jeans, an old t-shirt and a baseball cap. Got in my truck, opened the windows, which was finally possible as it was finally above sixty degrees today in Delaware, and blasted some ungodly rock-pop music from the first painful radio station I found via the scan button.

To anyone who may have casually watched me deliver the paper bag, I would have looked just like they would have expected a delivery person to. If someone actually stopped me, they would have needed to look inside the sandwich to find my data, as I had covered the thumb drives in plastic wrap, hollowed out a small notch on the inside of the roll and covered the drives back up with the bread, which was then further concealed with the makings of a fine sandwich.

Then, without a sandwich to eat for dinner, I settled on boiling some cappellini with some left over meat sauce.

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Cheque This Out

Sometimes a man has just got to make a living.

In this business, you tend to stumble upon business operations that generate lots of money. A few years ago I was able to acquire a pile of cash, in the electronic sense, that I’ve been sitting on ever since.

Patience is the key. If you finish an operation and immediately go out and buy a boat or something, you’re sure to be under an allotment of fiscal microscopes. You need to be able to substantiate what you purchase. What isn’t watched as closely, however, are your everyday expenses.

Using this train of thought, today I set up an auto payment for all of my utility-esque expenses. Cable, internet, trash, water, and power. These are now paid automatically every month from an offshore account, funneled through an ING savings account, originating from my operational find a few years back.

The beauty of it all is that I’ve offset a few hundred dollars of monthly obligations that weigh against my corporate salary. Is it like winning the lottery? No. But winning the lottery draws attention. Attention gets you killed.

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House Call

A few days ago I got tired of the slow drain in my master bathroom sink. So I took apart the drain and cleared the clog, which was a pretty gross blob of gooey grossness. As I was putting it back together, I cracked the sleeve that connects the sink to the pipe. I went to Lowe’s and purchased a replacement Lavatory Pop-Up. But instead of installing it myself, and breaking the same piece twice, I had Treasa call a maintenance man from one of her properties.

He came over today and fixed it for free. And a lot faster than I would have.

Well, I think it cost me a sandwich, but all in all, not a bad deal.

The plumbing job had absolutely nothing to do with an operational procedure; however it did show me how accepting neighbors are of people in uniforms, carrying a few tools, entering your home. If I ever need to pick something up in the future for Mother, taking the truck, putting on some work clothes and carrying a tool box seems like a pretty simple way to remain under the radar.

An original idea? No. Simple and effective? Yes.

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Neighborhood Watch

Sorry about the lack of updates over the past few days. I haven’t been killed or detained, which you should have figured out by reading the previous sentence.

I made my way home from work today to find three police cars at the front of my neighborhood, lights flashing. There was, what appeared to be, a minor traffic accident. However, this happened on a section of road that was completely straight for a few hundred yards in either direction. The lead car had jumped the curb and struck a small tree next to the sidewalk. The second car had come to a stop only inches behind it. To add another level of complexity, there was a drug dog searching both vehicles. My best guess was that some sort of drug deal had gone bad resulting in the second car forcing the first off of the road.

And I paid a lot of extra money to live in the good part of town.

If someone in the same neighborhood has a less than legal distribution business, it does explain why someone broke into my truck a few days ago. Presumably, they were looking for something, like my GPS, to trade for a score.

Hopefully, this will cause the local police force to increase patrols through this area. Now, you may think that increased police presence would be a hindrance to someone like me. For day to day activities, this is not the case.

A quieter locale reduces the chances of an extraneous factor impeding on any operation I may have planned. Luckily I was able to work from home following my truck break in. But what would have happened if I had to leave abruptly to meet one of Mother’s contacts that morning? Driving a truck with a busted out window would attract police attention in the wrong way. My ability to stay alive depends on skillful planning of operations and their inherent contingencies. It is virtually impossible to strategize a backup plan that fits into my cover story that covers waking up to a pile of glass on my driver’s seat.

Hopefully, there won’t be any other incidents in the future.

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Top Of The List

As you know, because I mentioned it, everything you do within corporate walls is being monitored. They may not necessarily be actively monitored, but there’s a good chance if you do something quirky it’ll ring a few bells in corporate security or wind up on some monthly report. These are good ways to draw attention, and attention is not good.

But, one of the attributes that makes many banks strong also opens up holes in their information defenses. The banking industry has been consolidating recently. Often the newly acquired institutions are more likely to be Velcro’d on to the mother ship then they are to be assimilated. There are many reasons for this, but one of the biggest is the technology cost, in both dollars and human capital, required to reconfigure the entire IT infrastructure each time another chip is added to the stack.

This means that analysts, like yours truly, are forced to navigate through a myriad of differing types of servers and databases to get to the information we need to make business decisions. While this is cumbersome when completing day to day tasks, it makes it easier for someone to run database queries and hide their covert data gathering agendas. One of easiest ways to do this is to have your code reference a macro located on your desktop. When your code finishes, erase the macro and it becomes very, very hard for someone to go back into your query and figure out what it did. They’ll see the macro referenced, but have no idea what its function is. This is akin to reading a novel’s sequel without reading the predecessor. Sure you can generally follow what’s going on, but you’re definitely not getting as much out of the story as you could be.

This morning Mother sent me a partial business name: ‘Pinnacle.’ This company had become involved the Bulgarian extortion scheme. All I knew was that the company’s name started with Pinnacle and it was located in Florida.

Here’s the short version:

Step 1: From database A, pull all records where the first eight characters of the business name were ‘Pinnacle,’ along with some firmographic information. This brought back hundreds of businesses.
Step 2: From database B, pull all business names located in Florida. This brought back thousands upon thousands of businesses.
Step 3: Move the datasets created in Step 1 and 2 into temp space, giving them different names, so they would be automatically deleted when I signed off.
Step 4: Determine which companies are located on both of the datasets. This brought back a handful of companies, six to be exact.
Step 5: Convert this dataset to a comma delimited text file and download it the Recycle Bin on my desktop.
Step 6: Copy the dataset, but rename it when I upload it back to database A.
Step 7: Append a junk dataset, one copied from a coworker’s directory, containing a few thousand records, to the end of it.
Step 8: Download this back to my desktop in the form of a comma delimited text file, renamed to something else of course.
Step 9: From database C, pull all companies that completed a cash advance on their credit cards within the past 12 months.
Step 10: Determine which of these companies matched with the six companies I identified in Step 4. Luckily, there was only one match. Memorize the account number.
Step 11: From database D, pull credit bureau data from the credit card application, but create the search parameters wide enough so that I would capture the one account as well as a lot of other extraneous noise.
Step 12: Move this dataset, in comma delimited text file format, to temp space. Do I even need to say ‘and rename the dataset’ at this point?
Step 13: Import the dataset from temp space into an access database. Sort data by account number, and locate Pinnacle Travel Enterprises by manually scrolling down until the account number is found.
Step 14: Send email on personal BlackBerry to Mother giving, among other things, the name, social security number, home and cell phone numbers, online banking logon ID, and mailing address of the primary card holder.
Step 15: When cleaning up your electronic paper trail, do not just delete your datasets, save over them first with something benign. Then delete them. I'll save my macros for when I really need them.
Step 16: Dial into next conference call and act like nothing happened.

See, pretty easy.

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Cooperstown

Treasa’s pretty great. We’re going here today. I haven’t told her what I do. That’s for both of our safeties. However, after dog sitting, preferring to sit facing the entrance at restaurants and an uncanny ability to remember where she’s left her keys and/or cell phone, she’s made a few innocent jokes about how I’m like a new and improved James Bond.

Did I mention she’s smart too?

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Shoulders, Toes, Head and Knees

I’m working from home today. This doesn’t mean merely monitoring my emails while watching TV in case I’m asked a question. Rather, I’ve been quite busy – analytical follow-ups from a senior leadership roundtable, ongoing segmentation analysis and an ad hoc data pull to profile a highly performing portfolio segment. Unfortunately, all of this work hasn’t left time to identify and locate the Bulgarian corruption influence. While the delay is necessary to keep my corporate cover story, Mother will not be pleased.

I finally took a shower during my lunch break. I have a ‘shower routine.’ Mine’s not as bad as this guy’s, though. First, it’s shampoo, then body wash, and lastly, a facial scrub. Today, for some reason, I body washed first. This obviously isn’t a huge deal, but it proved to me that I’m not thinking clearly. Routines and checklists save lives. If I let the simple things go awry, what else am I susceptible to?

.-. . ... ..- .-.. - ...

In The News

Bomb Blast Kills Physicist in Iran

The target -- seen as a longtime regime insider who had veered toward supporting the opposition -- immediately raised suspicion among colleagues and students that the attack was politically motivated. Prof. Mohammadi's membership in Iran's broadly defined nuclear-science brain trust also raised questions about whether the attack was related to the country's controversial nuclear program. State media identified Mr. Mohammadi as a nuclear physicist. But he was best known for his work in mathematical physics and theoretical, high-energy physics,
according to one colleague, who was also a former student.

Expert: CIA missed glaring red flags on double-agent bomber

So how did a Jordanian doctor play double agent, outsmart his CIA handlers, and end up killing seven Americans and a Jordanian military officer at a remote base in Afghanistan? "This is the biggest deception ever of intelligence agencies, whether CIA or Jordanian intelligence," said Hassan Hanieh, a former Islamic extremist who now studies jihadist movements. "From the beginning, he was deceiving them." Sources familiar with intelligence operations in Jordan say al Qaeda takes at least a year to screen new recruits. The terrorist organization checks out their family backgrounds, gets input from fellow jihadists who know them -- and never trusts anyone who has been arrested, as al-Balawi had been.

These things happen. By definition, you won’t know when a covert operation is going down where you live. We all need to do a better job of memorizing license plates, locating firearms, maintaining cover stories and knowing where canned goods are in grocery stores.

EDIT According to this story, CIA not behind death of Iranian scientist: U.S. official. Publicly or directly, of course.

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"I wouldn't say I've been *missing* it, Bob."

Insert a “case of the Mundays” joke here. No. I don’t really want to. I’m too clever for that. But if one more person asks me to put a cover sheet on a…too late.

Mondays can be good if you use them effectively. Most, or at least a sizable portion of the office staff, likes to chit chat around about what they did over the weekend. Ask a probing question here and there, and you can pick up some valuable information.

“It was cold at the stadium yesterday, much more so than for previous games.” Translation: I have NFL season tickets, so feel free to break into my home half the weekends during the fall.

“I took my new rottweiler puppy to obedience classes. Boy does he need them!” Translation: Do not break into this house to acquire supplies.

So today I learned that a co-worker of mine is going overseas for three weeks to visit his parents. Three things immediately struck me: (A) Perhaps I should ask a few specific questions to see if the contents of your apartment could benefit me, (B) Dude…it’s only the second week of the year and that’s a whole lot of personal time to burn through, and (C) When you’re out, who’s going to get all of your work done? Oh, you've got to be kidding me.

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Are We There Yet?

Today ended up being fairly uneventful. It did start with a bit of a scare though. When I arrived at work, I noticed a Verizon maintenance van backed into the corner spot in the corner of the parking lot, providing a full view of the area. Two men were inside. The driver was talking on his cell phone. When I see a van, I immediately think surveillance. Name brand company vehicles aren’t typically used, but you don’t stay alive by dismissing possible threats.

Pretending to fend off the cold morning, I hastened my pace and headed towards the office entrance. I always carry a pen. Usually it’s for jotting down information, but this morning I was ready to impale a retina or four if the situation dictated it. Once inside, I knew I was out of the van’s sightline so I relaxed a little. I swiped my badge on the card reader, and as I entered the revolving door, a buzzer went off and the door reversed its turn, pushing me back into the lobby.

Apparently the “Oh shit” I mumbled under by breath was audible to the brunette behind me. She laughed and said that this happens all the time. Another swipe of my badge, and I entered the office without a problem.

I was able to confirm from multiple people that security door gives everyone problems from time to time. I wasn’t able to determine anything about the maintenance van though. It’ll be something to keep an eye on.

The rest of the day dragged on unbearably. I knew it was bad when I laughed to myself thinking that I was “bored as a two-by-four.” At least tomorrow’s Friday.

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Quit Buggin' Me

Compartmentalization: (A) the process by which individuals involved in a plan only know about, and complete, a distinct part of the whole. This means that, if a person was captured and interrogated under duress, only their part of the operation would be compromised. If a chain is as strong as its weakest link, by doing it this way, that weakest link is not only replaceable, but expendable, should they mess up. (B) part of Mother’s plan that scheduled me to meet Duncan DuCaine at the corporate cafeteria.

Typically, I wouldn’t want to know the name of the person I’m working with. And I definitely wouldn’t volunteer mine. However, since we’re co-workers, if we were to run into each other at a later date, a certain amount of familiarity is to be expected. Considering the hundred or so people that may remember us talking, mutual denial is not a possibility.

I don’t know if Duncan works for Mother. He could be working parallel, or he could just be pissed off at his current boss and looking to earn a few extra bucks. Either way, he was able to smuggle in a few bugs that I’ll need to gather intell.

We make small talk on the way back to my office. He’s discussing the advantages of mechanical switch keyboards vs. what I’m working with. Mildly interesting, yet irrelevant to the task at hand. As Duncan pulls the metal case containing the bugs out of his pocket and opens it for me to inspect, we hear a third voice. Not good.

Every office has one, I would imagine. The guy asking you to go grab a cup of coffee with him four times a day. The guy asking you how your weekend was at 12:18 PM on Wednesday. The guy who needs to ask you what time a meeting is even though both of you just received the same email half an hour ago. He’s harmless – pretty much the nicest guy in the world. But damn it! Why do you pick now to see what I’m doing for lunch today?

Both Duncan and I ignore the metal case and its contents. As I stand up to detract attention from my desk, Duncan tells him he should go try today’s deli special. I take the case and slip it into my pocket. Poker faces, smiles, laughs, and disaster averted.

I don’t know Duncan, but he was able to bring surveillance equipment into a corporate office and remain calm in the face of a threat. He could be Mother’s. He might not be. Either way, he’s probably someone I want on my side.

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Can You Hear Me Now?

Everything you do for a corporation is monitored. Every email you send, every internet page you open, and while there may not be an audio recording, every phone call you make. In this regard, corporate life is very similar to remaining undercover – you have to assume that everything you do is being watched. Therefore, communicating with people outside the company without leaving a trace can be difficult.

This being said, it took me under a day to find a way around this.

At least in the banking industry, just about everyone has a BlackBerry. They’re great tools for scheduling, email management and accessibility. They have become ubiquitous. You will find people sending emails while talking to you, sitting in meetings and while using the restroom. And everyone is using the same model phone.

So, I went and got myself a BlackBerry. Even from two feet away, you can’t tell if I’m using my personal phone or a company issued one. Now I can contact the people I need, without being monitored, and it looks like I’m conducting routine business.

While this is advantageous for me, I have to assume that my targets are doing this as well.


.-. . ... ..- .-.. - ...

Nine to Five

As of today, I’m a covert banking operative. I’ve been inserted into the corporate office of a large bank. My job is to follow the money and identify key players. Mother has reason to believe that associates of the Bulgarian diplomat I identified about a week ago are involved in some not-so-legal dealings.

My full case background should be coming within the next few days, but here are the highlights:

- Bulgaria ‘s 2009 Corruption Index Score is 71st out of 180.
- Bulgaria’s perception of corruption value is lower than where it was a few years ago.
- A BBC news story discussing the EU’s concern can be found here.

“Tackling corruption and organized crime was supposed to be a pre-condition for Bulgaria's membership of the EU. But just over a year after it joined, three streams of EU funding have been suspended because of apparent fraud, and the EU's investigating agency has 45 cases of alleged Bulgarian malpractice on its books” (C. Miller, BBC News, 18Mar08).

When the police crack down on an illegal activity the perpetrators will need to work harder to maintain that source of income. If the EU is forcing Bulgarian law enforcement to investigate corruption in Bulgaria, the money making crimes will have to shift somewhere else. It’s like playing Whac-A-Mole…which, given the links to corruption and the mafia, is quite a nice play on words if I do say so myself.

Where do you live?


.-. . ... ..- .-.. - ...

Good First Impressions

I am expecting a visitor today. I’ve arranged for a real estate broker to stop by and drop off some information regarding properties in the area. The only thing better than a good safe house is a good safe house you were able to acquire at below market value prices.

I haven’t shaved since before I drove north to see Mother. My scruff is beginning to itch. While I know it’s going to hurt, it’s time to shave.

I’ve decided to keep a moustache. Not because it think it’ll look good, but because small changes to your appearance can have drastic effects to someone else’s memory. The real estate broker hasn’t won my business yet. Should I decide not to use their services, I’d rather have their single memory of me as far from accurate as possible.

.-. . ... ..- .-.. - ...

NJ Turnpike: "What exit are you from?"

The truck is packed and loaded. Based on intelligence, I still have time to pick up a coffee from the corner deli before I head back down the Jersey Turnpike. Traffic on the Sunday following Christmas is bad. After Exit 8 the lanes converge from five to three resulting in a parking lot where a highway once stood. This isn’t good.

I need a visual on an unknown foreign diplomat and I can’t see past the eighteen wheeler three vehicles ahead. When the GPS says you’re almost a five miles behind your target but forward progress is impossible, you start to go a little crazy. At this point, I think I’m singing better than the guy on my Ipod.

When traffic breaks, it’s time to focus on some mental math. It’s about 90 miles from here to the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Assuming no rest stops, at an average estimated speed of 70 mph the diplomat will reach the bridge in about an hour twenty minutes. After the bridge, the roads diverge and there are too many exits to monitor alone.

So I want give myself a 15 mile safety net. I can only let the diplomat get 75 miles before I catch up. So I have to go 80 miles in the same amount of time it takes the diplomat to go 75 miles at 70 mph. If I go 74.67 mph, I should reach the diplomat in about 63 minutes.

63 minutes driving about 10 mph over the speed limit on the Sunday after Christmas with out of state plates in a state that has quite the hefty deficit. Nice. At this point, I’m thinking that coffee wasn’t worth the risk of meeting a sworn representative of the New Jersey State Troopers.

Visual contact achieved.

Diplomatic plates, after the prefix “D”, have a two digit code that signifies what nation the diplomat represents. This provides some anonymity. My target’s plate starts with “DQM.” Bulgaria. I snap a few pictures of the license plates and a profile shot of the driver as discretely as possible.

Before I can begin to figure how Bulgaria fits into everything, the non-descript dark colored American made SUV seven vehicles back is now only four. ‘As possible’ must not have been good enough. It is occupied by two thirty something white males.

I use an RV in the adjacent lane to create a block in traffic and proceed the last nine miles to the bridge. Keeping with my cover, I used EZ Pass to pay my exit toll. The SUV picks a cash lane. I take the exit for Rt. 13 N into Wilmington. The tarp covered luggage in the bed allows me to enter parts of town where a clean SUV driven by two white guys would attract some attention.

Satisfied the combination of the space created at the toll and the city detour sufficiently evaded my tail, I head home and contact Mother to let her know I made it back safely.

.-. . ... ..- .-.. - ...

Home to Mother

The holiday season, whether it be Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, Saturnalia etc, can be a difficult time keep your cover. While most look forward to the opportunity, or succumb to the obligation, to spend time with family. Those in my line of work tend to rarely have that option.

Many don’t have family. Some do not want to bring their loved ones in too close to their business. Others, like many of you, can think of much more enjoyable uses of their time—like ensuring your closet’s are in chromatic order.

I use this time to go see Mother in New York. This provides a good cover. When you tell people you don’t want or can’t see your family for the holidays, many tend to ask the follow-up question: “why?” The answer you provide will be memorable. In this business you don’t want to be remembered unless it’s by design. So, I’m off to see Mother for a few days.

Mother is not exactly what may have first come to your mind. Sure, there will be cookies and a hot meal (I requested steak), but it’s hardly that simple. Mother is not a person. Mother is control and command.

Military Operations Training on Humans for Essential Results.

This acronym comes in handy when communication is monitored.

“Yes Mother, I’m picking up ‘groceries’ as we speak.”

“Mother, ‘chores’ are complete. I’ll call it a day.”

“Mother, I could really use some money.”

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Happy Hunting

Through conversations with my next door neighbor, Doug Bronton, I come to learn he’s an avid hunter. This is beneficial for two reasons.

First, I know he has firearms in his residence. If I can’t get to my cache, I now have another option. Also, if I need to find a long term solution to a problem, so to speak, I can point the heat in his direction by using Doug’s gun to complete the mission. Depending on how our relationship goes, I’ll remain open to doing what I need to do while he has an alibi. The police will question him about his involvement in the incident because his gun was involved. Eventually his story will check out and, eh, no harm no foul. This diversion will give me enough time to create distance between the investigation and myself.

Or, Mr. Bronton is a potential fall guy.

Secondly, Doug game me some venison tenderloin two days ago. It’s been marinating in Italian dressing ever since. Here goes:

Cut venison thinly across the grain.
Julienne a medium yellow onion and sauté in butter and a splash of olive oil.
Add Kosher salt and freshly cracked pepper to onions.
Cook 3-4 minutes until they start to soften.
Season venison as desired.
Lay venison across top of onions.
Turn venison over without moving onions, so venison remains on top of skillet.
When finished, spoon onions and a piece of venison onto garlic bread.

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