Chapter 3 - The Intercept
The CID agent arrived at 10:35.
Her name was Special Agent Anne Cho. She was forty-one years old. She had been a CID special agent for eighteen years. She had investigated more leaks in the Army than she could count. She had come to the auditorium expecting a briefing and had walked into a sealed room with a major, two lieutenants, a staff judge advocate, an evidence technician, and a linguist who had been publicly accused of espionage three hours earlier.
She had listened to the original recording.
She had listened to the CID-provided recording.
She had compared them.
Then she had sat down on the edge of the stage beside Knox and said, "Major, I am going to tell you something, and I am going to tell it to you straight."
"Go ahead."
"The recording that CID provided to this command is not the original recording. It is an edited version. The edits are subtle. They are not obvious to a non-forensic examiner. They are obvious to me because I have been a special agent for eighteen years and I have spent half of those years listening to recordings that someone has tried to alter. The edits in the CID-provided recording were made by someone who knew what they were doing. They were made by someone who had access to the original recording and who knew how to cut out a translator's voice and splice in a different voice and how to preserve the metadata so that it would pass authentication by three analysts who were not forensic examiners."
"Who had access to the original recording?"
"Sir, the original recording was collected in March of 2019 by a signals intelligence team in Kunar Province. It was forwarded to the Army's intelligence center at Fort Belvoir for translation and analysis. The translation was completed by a team of four linguists. One of those linguists was a contract translator named Rafael Vega. Mr. Vega was the on-duty Dari and Pashto translator for the intercept. His voice is on the recording because he was translating the conversation live as it was being collected."
Knox's face had gone very still.
"Rafael Vega," he said.
"Rafael Vega. Mr. Vega died in 2028. He retired from contract service in 2021 after thirty-one years of government work. He is survived by one daughter, Staff Sergeant Elena Vega, who is standing in this room."
Knox was quiet.
"Special Agent Cho," he said, "are you telling me that the man whose voice is on that recording — the translator — is the father of the soldier I just accused of espionage?"
"I am telling you that."
"And the second voice on the recording — the American voice that corrects the target to Deh Bala — who is that?"
"Sir, I do not know whose voice that is yet. But I can tell you that the voice is not on the original intercept. The voice was spliced onto the recording. The splice occurred somewhere between the collection of the intercept and the alteration of the file that was provided to CID. And the splice was made at a facility that had access to the original recording. That facility is Fort Belvoir. And the analyst who had direct access to the original recording — the officer who supervised the translation team and who signed the routing slip that sent the recording forward — was a lieutenant colonel named Marcus Webb."
Knox was quiet.
"Major Knox," Cho said, "do you know Lieutenant Colonel Marcus Webb?"
"I know him."
"How do you know him?"
"He was my roommate at West Point. He was my best friend. He was the best man at my wedding. I have known him for thirty years."
The auditorium was silent.
"Major Knox," Cho said, "I am going to ask you a question, and I am going to ask you to answer it honestly. In the last three weeks, since the CID report was completed, have you spoken with Lieutenant Colonel Marcus Webb about this case?"
Knox's jaw tightened.
"Yes," he said.
"How many times?"
"Three times."
"What did you speak about?"
"Special Agent Cho, I spoke to him about the case. I spoke to him about the leak. I spoke to him about the investigation. I spoke to him about the staff sergeant he had named in his report. I spoke to him because he was my friend and because I trusted him and because I wanted to know whether the staff sergeant was going to be charged."
"And what did he tell you?"
"He told me that the staff sergeant was going to be charged. He told me that the evidence was overwhelming. He told me that the voiceprint matched. He told me that the recording had been authenticated by three analysts. He told me that the staff sergeant was a liability and that she needed to be removed from the command before she did any more damage."
"Did he tell you that the staff sergeant was Staff Sergeant Vega?"
"He did not tell me her name. He told me that she was a linguist. He told me that she was a Dari and Pashto interpreter. He told me that she had been assigned to this installation for the last fourteen months as an instructor. He did not tell me her name. I put her name on the screen because she was the only linguist at this installation who matched that description."
Knox paused.
"And because I did not like her," he said. "And because I wanted the trainees to see the face of the soldier who had betrayed them. And because I had already decided that she was guilty before I even knew her name."
The auditorium was silent.
"Major Knox," Cho said, "I am going to tell you something. And I am going to tell it to you straight. I have been investigating Marcus Webb for eight months. I have not told you that. I have not told anyone at this installation that. I am telling you now because what happened in this auditorium this morning has forced my hand. The FBI has been investigating Marcus Webb for eight months. He is suspected of passing intelligence to a network in Dubai. He is suspected of receiving approximately two point four million dollars over six years. He is suspected of being the source of the false intelligence that sent the Taliban to Deh Bala in March of 2019."
"Then why has he not been arrested?"
"Because we do not have a recording of his voice. Because we do not have a witness. Because we do not have a document that ties him directly to the payment. We have a pattern. We have a suspected handler. We have a bank account in the Cayman Islands that we can prove is his. We have a trip to Dubai in 2019 that we can prove he took. We have surveillance photographs of him meeting with a man we believe is Karim Saleh. We have all of that. But we do not have a single piece of evidence that puts his voice on an American transmission and connects it to the false intelligence."
Cho looked at Elena.
"Until this morning."
Elena's heart was pounding.
"Ma'am," she said, "are you telling me that the voice on the altered recording — the voice that says 'Correction received, target is Deh Bala' — is the voice of Marcus Webb?"
"I am telling you that I believe it is. I am telling you that I am going to take that recording to a forensic voice analyst at the FBI lab in Quantico tonight. And I am telling you that if the analyst confirms the match, we are going to have the evidence we have needed for eight months. We are going to be able to arrest Marcus Webb. We are going to be able to charge him with espionage. And we are going to be able to close the file on the eleven people who died in Deh Bala."
The auditorium was silent.
"Special Agent Cho," Elena said, "what do you need from me?"
"I need you to sit down with me tonight and tell me everything you know about your father's work. I need you to tell me about the intercept. I need you to tell me about his last years. I need you to tell me about his health. I need you to tell me about his retirement. And I need you to tell me — because I am going to ask you and I am not going to be gentle — whether you believe your father would have kept a copy of the original recording. Because if he would have — if he was the kind of man who would have kept a copy — then there may be a recording somewhere that we do not have yet. And that recording might be the one thing that can put Marcus Webb in prison for the rest of his life."
Elena closed her eyes.
"Ma'am," she said, "my father was the kind of man who kept a copy of everything."
May you like
Cho nodded.
"Then we have work to do," she said.
