- Jul 1, 2018
- 2,230
Madrid, Community of Madrid
TOP SECRET - CLASSIFIED
The morning briefing in the National Intelligence Center's Madrid headquarters was swift and tightly scripted. Maps dotted with red pins stretched across the wall, each marking the presence of a person of interest. Today’s emphasis was on coordination in five cities, seven teams, and an expanding web of caution and coded behavior.
In Barcelona, Agent Ríos adjusted the miniature transceiver in his collar as he took his seat at the corner of the El Raval kebab shop. His cover, a freelance blogger journalist documenting immigrant food culture. His target was Dilan Serhat Koçer, Koçer had been seen twice in the past week exchanging memory cards disguised as loyalty coupons. The way he lingered near the espresso machine always with his back to the entrance, always scanning the window told Ríos this man had field experience.
Meanwhile, in Madrid, a separate team had taken up discreet positions around Lavapiés. The neighborhood, vibrant and crowded, made ideal camouflage. Agent Solana, seated on the terrace of a bakery under partial renovation, kept eyes on Şerzan Botan Özdemir. Her partner, Agent Navarro, had traced him to late-night meetings where cash envelopes and photocopied maps changed hands. The documents were crude but annotated with what appeared to be route codes which were possibly safe house indicators. Özdemir was a mover, the type who never stayed anywhere longer than necessary. Solana admired his discipline, but it made tracking him far more tedious.
In Valencia, Agent Duarte watched the ebb and flow of open-air market vendors. He was shadowing Nûda Şoreş Kalkan, “Nûda Botan,” a woman who rarely spoke in public and never touched a phone in view. On the third day of observation, Duarte noted a peculiar exchange—Kalkan received a bakery-wrapped parcel from an elderly woman, nodded, and walked away without a word. Inside, later analysis would confirm, was a microSD card sealed within wax paper. Duarte didn’t know what was on it yet, but the fact it was worth passing through human courier chains raised red flags.
Further north, outside Zaragoza, the air was colder. A van disguised as a maintenance vehicle sat parked near a closed kebab stand. Inside, Agents Martín and Peña watched a feed from a long-range camera pointed toward the storefront. Bawer Goran Keskin, was there, his movements fast and discreet. They watched him pass a passport and what looked like travel itineraries to a man with Belgian plates. Within minutes, Keskin vanished on foot, changing his coat and cap mid-block. “This one,” Peña muttered, “trains like a courier.”
Finally, in Bilbao, Agent Calvo reviewed footage from a bakery long suspected of being more than a bakery. Cemal Firat Cilo, rarely spoke to anyone directly. Instead, younger men came and went with canvas bread sacks, always zipped tight. Calvo’s informant who was a nervous dishwasher with gambling debts confirmed that some loaves weighed far more than bread should.
Each team operated independently but fed into the same system which was dubbed Operation Bruma. The name meant fog and it fit. The network they were watching didn’t move with force or flash; it moved in whispers, glances, nods. It moved through shops, markets, cafes, and alleys. It was cultural camouflage at its most refined.
What bothered the agents most wasn’t what they saw, t was what they couldn’t see yet.
Jay
