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“You could,” Covington agreed. “But you didn’t get that information from us. We can give you Hoxha’s name because he is no longer with the company. He’s dead.”
Finley leaned forward. “Dead, how?”
“Hard to say.” Nutsbe raked a hand through his hair. “I have had my finger on that pulse since the company pulled us in two years ago. About six weeks ago, at the beginning of August, Hoxha didn’t show up for work. Hoxha had access to the company’s highly confidential and possibly highly lucrative data. They were very concerned with the how and why of his and his wife's sudden disappearance. The company started looking for him.”
“You all went looking?” Finley asked.
“We don’t operate such cases out of state,” Covington said. “Our client did, however, inform us that their local PI discovered the bodies of husband and wife at their beachfront property. In the heat of the summer without the air conditioning on, the bodies had advanced to a point where evidence was scarce. The coroner listed it as a murder-suicide.”
“The police are investigating it further?” Kennedy asked.
“I couldn’t tell you.” Nutsbe frowned. “And that’s not why you’re here. You’re here to know why Russia and Albania have my name in their mouths.”
Chapter Five
Nutsbe
Here we go. “I had my AI system find and flag all calls from Hoxha’s line related to Albania. And in that way, I discovered that Hoxha was in communications with FBI’s Leonard McMahan.”
Finley pressed his hands onto his knees with a startled look on his face. “Wait. FBI Counterintelligence Chief McMahan?”
“That was my reaction,” Nutsbe said. “When I heard McMahan’s name, he was only involved in phone calls and never emails. When I heard the context of their conversations, I hoped I was mistaken, that I wasn’t investigating an FBI head honcho. So, I checked McMahan’s voice with our AI’s library of known voice samples. It was a match. Too close of a match-percentage to think that nefarious AI software was manipulating the voice. It was him.”
Finley turned to Kennedy. “Does that make sense? I mean, as counterintelligence chief, he wouldn’t be running a case or even making any ground-level case decisions.” He swiveled back to Nutsbe. “Do you know why Hoxha was talking to McMahan?”
“Yeah, I do. First, Hoxha introduced McMahan to an Albanian official. McMahan was trying to get help with getting a business deal to go through, mostly around oil. Oil is not one of the main focuses of our client’s business. So this jumped out at me.” He shot a glance toward Covington, who sat stoically while he listened.
“McMahan was doing this as part of an FBI operation, and you stumbled on it, putting the two together?” Finley asked.
Nutsbe shook his head.
“The oil business, did it sound like it had to do with an FBI investigation, or was it personal business?” Kennedy asked as he crossed his arms over his chest, his lips slightly curled with disdain.
“All I can say is that things evolved.” Nutsbe squared his shoulders. “In my mind, it sounded like a private deal at this point. However, it could have been a well-designed, ongoing FBI operation. The FBI connection only made sense in that if this were an ongoing FBI operation, they had to get McMahan involved because they were interfacing government officials. It couldn’t be John Q. Special Agent from New Jersey on the phone line. They needed someone of high stature in there doing what they were doing.” Nutsbe bladed a hand toward Kennedy. “And I know that’s the kind of work you do—develop relationships and steer people with power toward benefiting the U.S. —but, no insult intended this guy was pretty high up there.”
“None taken. Keep going.”
“During these calls, Hoxha acted like an interpreter. Seeing nothing new in the interactions, I was about to close out and hand the information over to Command to decide what needed to go in the report to our client, but things changed.” Nutsbe looked toward Covington who gave him a nod to proceed.
“Note here that when Russia attacked Ukraine, Hoxha and McMahan seemed to change sides, becoming pro-Russia. They started working with a shipping guy—his Americanized name is Victor Popyrin. Not an oligarch—but oligarch-adjacent, who is very friendly with the Kremlin. Popyrin runs ships to New York, among other ports, or did. It seemed that Hoxha and McMahan really ramped up their work of favors to benefit various Eastern European businesses—the businesses that Popyrin and others used to thwart the world sanctions placed on Russia as a punishment when they invaded. As an aside, Hoxha and his wife disappeared just a couple of months after Popyrin was abducted on his yacht off the coast of the Seychelles. That attempt was thwarted.” Nutsbe didn’t add that Iniquus had inadvertently saved the man.
“Again, I need to know if McMahan was doing this as an FBI operation,” Finley said.
“I heard—” Nutsbe cleared his throat. “What I heard on the last set of phone call exchanges before Hoxha died—this would have been the end of July—was that Hoxha and the execs were going on another retreat to Montenegro. Panther Force is the close protection on that company retreat. It’s scheduled for end of September. But add in there that I learned McMahan was asking for side cash.”
“Cash,” Kennedy said. He’d stopped blinking.
“They talked about two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars. And it seemed that Hoxha had a way to smuggle that money back to the United States from his trip to Montenegro and would personally hand it to McMahan. Hoxha said there was plenty more where that came from for the right information.”
“Information,” Kennedy whispered under his breath, then turned to Finley. “McMahan worked in New York City. Much of his focus was on finding and shutting down foreign intelligence that wanted to operate near the United Nations. He’d have all the recent information in his mind. He’d know what everyone was working on and the details of the how and why. He’d decide what operations took precedence and where to place our assets. He could steer eyes toward or away from anything—shipping, for example.”
“Can you imagine the amount of damage McMahan could do to U.S. security?” Finley asked. “The practices and names of the people in the field that could be exposed?” He turned back to Nutsbe. “This is mind-boggling in its capacity to harm.”
“Yah think?” Nutsbe pressed his hands against his knees.
“I have to commend you, Nutsbe,” Kennedy said. “A man could keep that to himself and be able to sleep better at night.”
“Only if sleeping better meant not fearing for my life. That was every day when I deployed to the sandbox. I’m used to it.” He skated a hand out. “I don’t like it. Don’t want to live that way. But I know how to deal with that part. The part where I would choose to ignore my oath and fail to defend my country? That’s what would keep me up at night. So here we are.”
