Operation Shakespeare by John Shiffman

Author:John Shiffman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2016-07-17T16:00:00+00:00

Although Darius had not known Malandra and Hall before they began investigating Alex Dave together, he shared their view that the best way to catch an arms dealer was to set up a foreign-based undercover storefront. If properly created, the foreign storefront could be used to snare different kinds of criminals from different countries. The same business could be used again and again, recycled over and over for years, as part of any number of cases. Thus, months before he had even met Malandra, Darius had begun scouting for a prospective East European base for his undercover storefront.

In some nations, personal relationships are essential; local cops will help American cops once they get to know them. In other countries, charms and diplomacy mean little; local cops will help only if their bureaucracies and laws permit it. Darius targeted a nation where personal relationships are paramount and, because he knew Russian, a place where the language is common. (The precise location remains confidential.)

In any police agency, there’s always a go-to guy, a worker bee undercover detective. Darius found his counterpart in this East European country, a mid-level detective in a national police force, and stalked him. The man carried the reputation as one of his nation’s top detectives and, like Darius, appeared curious about other cultures. Leveraging his role as regional HSI attaché, Darius found ways to show up wherever he knew the detective would be. The third time Darius bumped into the man, he proposed setting up the joint undercover storefront. It was not a tough sell. “He was about what I was about—putting bad guys in cages,” Darius recalled. The local police were astonishingly good at street-level undercover work, better, Darius thought, than the Americans, especially in terms of intrigue. They created deep, deep background and cover stories—the so-called legend an agent develops for his undercover persona. In this East European country, where organized crime was rampant, undercover cops built legends that stretched back to their teenage years. The two men bonded, in part, because they realized they could learn a great deal from one another. They sketched out their plan in a pub, agreeing to open a small local brokerage, one that specialized in American military and electronic equipment. Together, they set up an office in a busy downtown building, complete with backdated paperwork, website, and all the accouterments of an undercover site. The two agents also contacted their respective prosecutors and diplomats to hammer out the formal legal paperwork, including required permissions, frameworks, and rules to use any evidence gathered overseas in an American courtroom. Darius gave the storefront the nondescript code name UCSV.

In its first few months, the storefront garnered a few nibbles, and Darius traced some stolen American Humvees from Saudi Arabia to a German broker near Frankfurt, enough evidence, the HSI agent believed, to warrant undercover visits to Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. “These Humvees were walking out the door at a time when there was a shortage of transport vehicles with ballistic glass,” Darius recalled.

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