“I was talking to the widow—Amy is her name—and while we were chatting the son pulled Brett aside, saying he needed to see him. Turns out, the Ghost was giving him some tutoring in Arabic studies or Palestinian history or some shit for his high school class. He let the Ghost use his cell phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot.”
“You have got to be shitting me. Did he leave it overnight? Give it to him for good? Why would he do that?”
“No, no, nothing like that. It was only while he was getting tutored. Only maybe two hours total a week. The Ghost tricked him. Made him think it was just to get around the Taskforce firewall of approved sites. The kid swears he didn’t see anything suspicious and that the Ghost only showed him historical sites. Most of them he had to translate from Arabic.”
“So the sites were in Arabic?”
“No. He just told the kid that. I uploaded his phone data to Creed. He did a scrub and the sites were in Farsi. They’re old IRGC websites from years ago. The Ghost was talking to Iran.”
Holy shit.
“Did Creed get anything from the sites? Could he see what was being said?”
“No. He’s pretty sure there was some backdoor password thing needed to get past the front page, but the IP addresses and ISPs are all inside Iran. The Ghost was sending messages right in front of the kid and he didn’t even know it. And the Wi-Fi bypassed any surveillance the Taskforce had on his computer.”
“Okay, okay, listen, don’t tell the kid what you found. I don’t want him thinking he was responsible for his dad’s death. Tell him the Ghost’s computer stuff was just what he said it was. Benign history stuff.”
“Already ahead of you. Already done.”
“Good. Can we get the Ghost’s computer?”
“I’m working it. There are a couple of layers of bureaucracy I have to get through to access the detention site, but nothing too bad. I should be cleared soon.”
I said, “Okay. Good work. Maybe it’ll show us something more than the kid’s phone.”
Knuckles said, “Wait, there’s more.”
“What?”
“Creed ran the sites by the intel analysts and they’ve seen something like it before, in Germany. They think it’s run by a unit of the Quds Force. An assassination cell known as Unit 840. They’re the direct-action assholes who eliminate targets for the regime.”
Which, given the Ghost’s past history, made absolute sense. It would be the one contact he knew to use, even if it was old. That was a scary thought, but we were making progress.
“So we think the Ghost reached out to his old masters for help?”
“Yeah, but that’s not the best part. The German website Unit 840 used has been linked to assassinations of Iranian dissidents in England and allover the continent. In each case, the Iranians hired criminals from Eastern Europe who could slip past the intel net in the host country. They succeeded because the intel knew about the threats, but were looking at the wrong actors to execute.”
“Okay, I get that. So what? What’s that got to do with the Ghost?”
“Unit 840 tried to assassinate an IRGC defector in Maryland awhile back, and they hired the Hells Angels from Canada to do it.”
Bikers.
I said, “Canadian Hells Angels? Is that a thing? I thought everyone in Canada was nice.”
He laughed and said, “Not these dudes. They were paid three hundred and fifty K to cross the border and eliminate this guy. The plot failed because Belgian and Dutch security services cracked the website, but I thought the link was pretty intriguing. That wasn’t the only time, either. A Hells Angel was hired in Germany to do another hit in Europe. They have chapters everywhere.”
My mind was making connections at the speed of light. I said, “In Utah? They have a chapter in Utah?”
“Well, no. I already checked that. But the lead we have is a biker gang.”
I deflated a little bit. “Yeah, as far as that goes. But that’s like saying a pit bull mauled a kid in Oregon and when someone else gets mauled in Texas, the cops suspect you because you have a golden doodle. We have a lead on some bikers, but that doesn’t mean all bikers are working for Iran.”
“I know, I know, it’s just a thought. Pretty good one, if you ask me.”
I heard the door open behind me and Jennifer stuck her head out, saying, “Pike, you need to see this.”
“I got to go. Keep at it. Get that computer to Creed.”
