Power and Empire

Once admitted to intelligence training, he’d studied evasive driving, shooting, surveillance, advanced communications, killing — which his lead instructor had called by the ominous “methods for final application of lethality.” It was all great fun for a college boy, but in the end, he’d grown exhausted at the constant government scrutiny. There were certain proclivities in which he liked to indulge, practices that would get him thrown in prison in a place like China. He narrowly avoided being booted when he found and removed cameras and listening devices from his dormitory room. Tradecraft, it seemed, was to be practiced outside the walls of the facility, not in it.

No, Coronet preferred to live in his flat near LAX, where his neighbors thought he was a simple businessman who traveled to China every year to buy greeting cards for his small company — and generally left him to his own devices. There was no way he wanted to live in China full-time. So he threw in with the East and enjoyed the comforts of his new enemy, the West. Life was good and he didn’t give a damn which side he worked for, so long as he could afford good clothes and sleep in his Egyptian cotton sheets at least a few nights each month.

But just because he didn’t care to live full-time in a communist country didn’t mean he hadn’t listened in class. He took tradecraft, OPSEC, and PERSEC seriously. That was all part of what made the job exciting. It was a rare event that he met a contact at the first prearranged location. He preferred a rolling meet, sending the contact hustling from place to place, much like he would if he were collecting a ransom. Sometimes he just wanted to avoid the local gendarmerie, or get a preview of the contact’s state of mind. More often than not, dangerous people ran countersurveillance teams, at least one man or woman to watch their backs. Putting a contact through the trouble of going from spot to spot made these allies easier to identify while allowing Coronet to follow at a safe distance, unseen. It was the opposite of running a surveillance detection route — sending people to designated locations they did not know about until the last minute in order to ferret out any of their friends who might be following and providing cover.

Dazid Ishmael arrived right on time, wearing a black Coca-Cola T-shirt and baggy shorts. Instead of flip-flops like most of the people here, he wore sneakers — a good choice for a ranking member of Abu Sayyaf. Wanted by the Philippine National Police, he had Red Notices filed with Interpol by national law enforcement in both Indonesia and Malaysia. He’d shaved off his trademark beard, and now looked more like a kid than a murderer, Coronet thought, but the dead and dismembered bodies he left in his wake proved his abilities many times over.

Coronet watched as Dazid placed his mobile phone on the table, nudging the device around as he ordered a lemonade. Coronet imagined the phone reading and then registering the tag, instantly downloading the location for the next meet. The man slipped the phone back into the pocket of his shorts and shot a glance over his shoulder while he waited for his cup. Coronet glanced away, not wanting to seem overly interested — though there wasn’t much chance of him being seen at all, across the street and in the dark.

The Near Field Communication tag made for the perfect dead drop. Working on the same principle as a touch key for a hotel room or a subway pass, the inconspicuous NFC tags contained nothing but a simple set of GPS coordinates, with the latitude and longitude transposed. Dazid would know to reverse the numbers before attempting to go to the next location. The time he’d spend transposing the two numbers also worked to Coronet’s advantage, keeping the man on site for a few extra moments. Dazid knew the dangers and took the security measures in stride. The incredible sum of money Coronet’s handler had authorized may have had something to do with his easygoing temperament.

At first, Coronet noticed no one but Dazid. But when the bomber finished up with his mobile phone and headed southeast on Roxas Avenue, a man who looked suspiciously like an off-duty policeman did a double take. He was standing at a food stall with his chubby wife, a small boy of two or three clinging to his leg. The policeman obviously thought he’d seen someone important, but could not be sure in the darkness. His eyes locked intently on Dazid, and he leaned in quickly to whisper something to his wife, peeled his little boy off his leg, and then walked into the darkness to investigate.

It was an extremely foolish thing for him to do.