The Hermetrius Conspiracy Page 16

  His senior assistant called him over the intercom. “The participants for your one p.m. meeting are all here waiting in the conference room on the 40th floor.”

  “Thank, you Elaine. I’ll be down in a minute.” He waited ten minutes, then went down for the meeting. Being late reminded them of who was the alpha dog, as if they needed reminding.

  Winston strutted into the conference room and stood at the head of the table. Even though he was a short man at 5 feet 4 inches, his well-muscled stature gave him a commanding presence. His $40,000 Desmond Merrion suit didn’t hurt, either.

  “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I’m glad you could all make it to the meeting.”

  Retired District Judge Horatio Walker thought to himself ‘He says that like we had a choice.’ He looked around the conference table at the other six committee leaders - former FBI Director of Operations, James Norton, head of security; Roberta Flores, head of immigration reform; Senator Eugene Hughes, head of congressional restructuring and election control; Patrick Parker, Bill Clinton’s foreign affairs advisor, in charge of restructuring U.S. relationships with the rest of the world; retired Army Chief of Staff General Alexander Russell, leading the military force realignment effort; and former chief of the IRS, Barbara Bennett, head of the flat tax planning committee. Judge Walker’s job was lining up new appointments for the District and Supreme Court vacancies that would soon appear. A formidable team indeed, assembled to bring about the most sweeping change in the U.S. Government since Franklin Roosevelt’s socialist takeover.

  “The agenda for the meeting today will start with a review by each committee chief of the status, progress, and obstacles encountered over the past month. Mr. Norton, give us an update on security.

  “As you know, one of our priority tasks is to eliminate all links to the counterfeit contract embezzlement records. We have dealt with three of the agents involved, and are closing in on the other three.”

  Winston interrupted. “Explain what you mean by ‘closing in’, James. I talked to George Jenkins, head of Blackworth Security this morning, and he told me they had lost contact with all three of the others – Preston, Gutierrez, and Goodman. Now you tell me you are closing in!”

  “A bad choice of words, Mr. Winston. We believe they have teamed up with each other and gone into hiding somewhere in the mid-Atlantic states, but we haven’t been able to determine just where, yet.”

  “James, don’t lie to me! If anyone on this team lies to me, you’re out. I’ll replace you in a heartbeat. Mr. Norton, consider yourself warned.”

  “Yes sir. I’ll get with George at Blackworth as soon as this meeting is over.”

  “Don’t bother. I fired him this morning and arranged to have two of his major Government contracts cancelled. Find another security firm that knows how to solve this problem. I expect to have those three dealt with by the end of the week!”

  “Ms. Flores, please give an update on your plans to put all illegal immigrant workers out of work so they will have to return to their home countries.”

  “Yes sir. The backbone of the plan is to impose a tax penalty of $1,000 per worker per day on any company that hires undocumented aliens. Notice that it’s not a monetary fine. That would require us to take the employer to court to prove the alleged infraction. The liberal lawyers would keep the cases tied up in court for years, allowing the employers to continue what they are doing. But by making it a tax penalty, we can impose it by executive order and immediately confiscate assets of any company that doesn’t comply. The second feature of the plan is to remove all illegals from the welfare rolls. Then we won’t have to ship them out of the country; they will run for the border themselves to get back where they can live for pennies a day. As it is now, Mexico’s second largest import is the cash undocumented workers send home to their families. We need to put a stop to that drain on our economy.”

  Chapter 37

  Lynn came in to Jack’s room up at 8 a.m. “Wake up, sleepy head. It’s about time for breakfast. By the time you shower and shave, it will be on the table.”

  Jack mumbled “Give me another 30 minutes. What does Chef Rick have for us this morning?”

  “I believe it’s eggs Benedict a la mode with a cherry brandy topping and fermented coffee beer.”

  Jack was about to put his head back down on the pillow, but did a double take and looked up at her. “What did you say? . . . I must still be dreaming.”

  “You heard me, Jack. But I made that up to get your attention. Come on, roll out of there.”

  Jack sat up and rubbed his eyes. “O.K., give me 10 minutes.”

  #

  The others were already eating and deep in conversation when Jack came into the kitchen. “Did I miss anything?”

  Tom said “Yeah, the fermented coffee beer is all gone,” and they all broke out laughing. Rick handed him a plate with scrambled eggs, ham, and country biscuits and gravy. Jack’s eyes lit up. “Now that’s what I call a real man’s breakfast.”

  “We were just talking about where we were in our action items.”

  “Where are we? Did I miss anything by getting down here late?”

  “Not really,” Lynn said, “We were trying to figure out how long it will take each of us to get something worthwhile. Tom thinks he can have the information on which security firms might be involved by this evening, but that piece of the puzzle will need a lot more work to find the specific firm.”

  Rick spoke up, “I have already connected with my banking data sources and I’m just waiting for Jack’s magic search software.”

  “Well, about that. It seems that Lynn put a sleeping spell on me last night, so I’ll need another couple of hours this morning to finish it up.”

  Lynn said “The tasks Harriet and I are doing will definitely take awhile. She will need to go through all the Congressional election results for the past six years or so, and then follow up on the voting records of the new people in Congress. I found a list of the top 100 most powerful businessmen and politicians in the U.S., but finding voice videos on all of them will take awhile.”

  “I may be able to help you out there,” Rick said. “As part of my real estate financial dealings, I have access to the archives of Fox News and CNN. I can get you connected to them to get video clips of anyone who is anybody. Once you have a list of names, it should go quickly.”

  Rick had another idea to speed up Harriet’s search. “The two extremes in Congress are, of course, liberals and conservatives. If we assume, and that’s always dangerous, that the Boss Man wants to take the country further toward one of these extremes or the other, Harriet can rank the suspects – Congressmen – on a sliding scale based on their political leanings. If she see’s one or the other side of the list growing too fast, that might be a clue.”

  “Anything else?” Jack asked. “Good, we have a full day ahead of us so let’s get busy. Rick, while I finish up the search software why don’t you show Lynn how to connect to the news network video archives. Let’s pause for a quick lunch later and then get together before supper to see where we are.”

  #

  At five o’clock Jack got everyone together in Harriet’s room for a progress discussion. “Harriet, why don’t you lead off.”

  “I found a web site from the Brookings Institute that has statistics and information on elections going back decades. From that I created a list of all elected congressmen and senators for the past six years. I’m going to examine their campaign positions and voting records and rank each on an arbitrary scale of one through ten. One is highly conservative and ten is highly liberal. I’ll put all this on an computer spreadsheet so I can rank them in order based on their conservative-liberal score, the year they were elected, or any other factor I choose. Hopefully some kind of useful pattern will emerge.”

  “How far along are you on that work?”

  “It’s not going as fast as I hoped it would, Jack. I have the spreadsheet finished and have started entering candidate data, but i
t will take another day to complete.”

  Lynn added a thought. “If getting the Boss Man’s presidential candidate elected is based on discrediting other candidates, maybe they used a similar approach to eliminate candidates competing with their choices for congress. Is there a way you could look to see if scandals were used to knock some of the competition out of the running so their candidate would win?”

  “That’s a great idea, Lynn. As soon as I get this initial data entered and organized, I can look at the individual elections to see how they overcame their opposition.”

  Tom spoke up next. “I have a list of security firms who would take on surveillance jobs of this nature. They would need enough skilled personnel and equipment assets to try to keep track of Jack and come after me. But if the security firm is behind the killings and the attempts on Harriet’s life, there’s a very limited list of security people who will do that kind of work - and that list includes some clandestine Government agencies. Of course, it’s possible that the security people were only responsible for keeping track of us, and the Big Man hires out the killings to someone else.”

  “The thought that a Government agency might be behind this whole conspiracy is frightening. That would mean the Boss Man might be someone already in power in the Government who is trying to mold it for his purposes. If we have to fight the Federal Government on this, I afraid we are far outclassed.”

  “Good point, Jack, but trying to hold a conspiracy within the government a secret for very long is nearly impossible. If too many people know about it, one of them will decide it’s their duty to be a whistle blower.

  Getting back to my search, I did find something that caught my attention. One of the leading firms that could be doing the surveillance, Blackworth, had two major Government contracts cancelled for no apparent reason. These multi-million dollar contracts were almost half of their business, so they must have really pissed somebody off. I’ll keep exploring that.”

  Jack turned to Lynn next. “How is your hunt for a gravelly voice coming?”

  “Slow. Slow and boring. I have listened to the first dozen men on my 100 most powerful people list, and haven’t found one yet. I have to search for them one at a time in the news archives, wait for the video to load, and listen to their voice. It might go faster if Tom sat with me, but he has his own work to do.”

  Jack thought for a minute. . . “I have an idea that might help you, Lynn. I think I can automate the process with some more custom software that find the people on your list, extract only the audio part of the video, which can be downloaded in a few seconds, then string them all together into one long series of audio clips for Tom to listen to. As soon as he hears them speak a few words, he can jump ahead to the next clip if it’s not the voice he remembers. I think I can write the software in a couple of hours after supper, then you can start with it first thing in the morning.”

  “Another great idea from my computer genius. We might have a suspect picked out by supper tomorrow.”

  Jack looked at Rick, indicating it was his turn.

  “Your search software is working well, Jack, but with the huge number of bank transactions to sift through, it’s still a slow process. My low-cost laptop takes forever. So far I haven’t found anything that looks interesting.”

  “You need a high end laptop like Lynn’s, Rick. Harriet and Tom could use one, too. It would be great if I wasn’t a wanted man. I could hop in my truck and find a good computer store to pick out just what you need.”

  Rick spoke up: “I’m the only one here that the Bad Guys aren’t looking for, Jack. If you can tell me what to get, I can run out tomorrow and buy them.”

  “O.K. First thing in the morning I’ll call around and find a store with what we need. I’ll have them set it aside for you to pick up.”

  “Good. I’ll put it on my credit card.” Jack thought about that. “Rick, it’s possible they have added your name to the their BOLO list, so I’ll give you some cash. I brought a lot of it with me so I wouldn’t have to leave a trail of bank withdrawals.”

  Chapter 38

  “Elaine, get Norton on the phone for me.”

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Winston. What can I do for you?”

  “You can tell me what you are doing about catching these people for me!”

  “Yes sir. Yesterday I hired another security firm to take over from Blackworth. These guys operate under everybody’s radar and aren’t afraid to break the law to get the job done. They already have people putting some high tech surveillance gear on the major highways around D.C that will read license plates passing by and compare them to the list of known plate numbers used by our subjects, and by their friends and families. We know Preston and his woman have changed their plates twice, but those are on the search list also.

  The new security firm has also installed wireless video cameras on many of the Interstate underpasses that use pattern recognition to match the type of cars the subjects have been driving and, if it gets a look into the front seat, it can do face recognition on the driver. If they drive anywhere within a 250-mile radius of D.C., this surveillance system will transmit a notification. Then the security firm will dispatch ground vehicles and helicopters to get a closer look, and if there’s even a hint it might be one of them, they’ll be followed.”

  “That’s going to take a lot of staff, James. How many have they assigned to our case?”

  “Over two hundred people, sir. They have a large network of part-time staff on retainer all over the area who can be on the road within minutes of being alerted. They each have a custom GPS systems that will guide them to vehicles we identify, and secure communications equipment to connect with headquarters.”

  “It sounds like they know what they are doing. What’s the name of this firm and what are they going to cost me?”

  “To ensure that you have deniability in this, sir, it’s best if you don’t know who they are. As far as cost, I gave them an operating budget of $250,000, with more available if they need it.”

  “They had better be worth it, Norton. Remember, when you locate where they are staying, don’t take any action until you contact me. We want them alive so we can find out how much they know and who else they might have told.”

  #

  Jack put the finishing touches on the software to speed up Lyn’s search for Mr. Gravel Voice and looked at the clock. It was close to midnight so he closed his computer and went down to the kitchen for a glass of wine before he turned in. Lynn had beat him to it; she was sitting on the couch, legs tucked up under her, with a glass of red wine in her hand. She was looking through the picture window at a full moon rising over the rolling Virginia farmland. He saw she had already poured a glass for him so he took it over to the couch and sat beside her.

  She broke her gaze from the moon and turned to him. “I thought you would be down soon. How is the software coming?”

  “It’s all set up. It will only take a few minutes to show you how operate it, and then you can get to work.”

  Lynn started to slide over to Jack’s end of the couch when she paused. “I’ve been trying to keep my distance since the other night when Helen’s memories surfaced. Are you still struggling with being depressed over it?”

  “I’m not quite back to normal on that, but I have missed holding you in my arms. Come on over here and snuggle up.”

  They sat quietly, spoon fashion on the couch with Jack’s arms around her, for several minutes. Lynn had been thinking about telling him all afternoon, but was having trouble getting the courage to do it. Was it too soon? Would it affect the warm relationship they shared now? She decided to go ahead.

  “Jack, . . . I think I have fallen in love with you.”

  Jack paused for what seemed like forever. She held her breath waiting to see what he would say. “That describes my own feelings pretty well, Lynn. I think I am falling in love with you. I still have some feelings that I’m betraying Helen when you’re in my arms, but keeping the sexual part of the rela
tionship on hold for now helps with that. If we just let our love grow at its own pace, it will be a better relationship in the end.”

  “Thanks for sharing that, Jack. As much as my body is telling me to get on with it, I think you’re right about keeping it slow for now. But whenever you think it’s time, let me know.”

  #

  Over breakfast Tom was eager to tell everyone the results of his work from last night. I called a couple of contacts I know at Blackworth Security and got some exciting information. The level of confidence in what they told me isn’t high – it’s basically water cooler gossip. But the word is that Blackworth’s Government contracts were cancelled because of their poor performance on a private security job for a very important person. The guy apparently had enough pull in the Government to have them cancel the contracts just because he asked them to.”

  “How is that relevant to our work?” Rick asked.

  “Well, it’s a long shot, but the case they screwed up could have been the search for us. They have had us all in their sights but we kept slipping away. Maybe when I escaped from the interrogation it was the last straw.”

  Lynn added “If you’re right about that, Tom, the VIP could be our Mr. Big Man. Maybe even Mr. Gravely Voice.”

  “I think we’re on to something with this. Let’s continue with our investigations and see if they converge on the same conclusion. In the meantime, I’ll find a store with the computers we need and send Rick on his way.”

  Thirty minutes later Rick left, headed for the Galleria Mall at Tyson’s Corners. The round trip would take almost two hours, but it was the closest place Jack could find with the computers he wanted. There wasn’t much sense in continuing their work on slow computers, so Jack declared a break until after lunch, except for Tom who was still working his phone contacts. They all did what they each found the most relaxing – a couple of them slept, and Lynn busied herself with housework.