\v TITLE="Infinite Exposure - promo" AUTHOR="Roland Hughes" PUBLISHER="Logikal Solutions" EISBN="978-0-9770866-8-9" COPYRIGHT="2009 Roland Hughes" \v\c\l\BInfinite Exposure\B\l Roland Hughes Logikal Solutions \c\sCopyright \a1692008 by Roland Hughes\s \sAll rights reserved\s \sPrinted in Canada\s \sI\tSBN 0-9770866-8-2\s \t\sI\tSBN-13 978-0-9770866-8-9\s \t \sThis book was published for the author by Logikal Solutions. Neither Logikal Solutions nor the author shall be held responsible for any damage, claim, or expense incurred by the user of this book or any company, persons, or individual which perceives any real or imaginary damages from it. \s \sThis is a work of fiction. While this book will reference actual company names and events in building its time line, it is not passing judgment or laying blame. The book is meant to be a warning of what very well may happen if policies, laws, and business directions are not changed quickly.\s \sThese trademarks belong to the following companies:\s 60 Minutes CBS Broadcasting Inc. BBC British Broadcasting Corporation CNN Cable News Network LP Dell Dell Inc eBay eBay Inc. FDIC Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation McDonald's McDonald's Corporation Microsoft Microsoft Corporation Intel Intel Iron Mountain Iron Mountain Incorporated OpenVMS Hewlett Packard Corporation Twinkie Interstate Brands Companies Taser TASER International, Inc. Wal-Mart Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Windows Microsoft Corporation UNI Union Network International \sAll other trademarks inadvertently missing from this list are trademarks of their respective owners. A best effort was made to appropriately capitalize all trademarks which were known at the time of this writing. Neither the publisher nor the author can attest to the accuracy of this information. Use of a term in this book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.\s \p \s For all of those willing to step back and see the whole board, not just listen to what the announcer says and be spellbound.\s \p\cPreface \c\s\t \tThis book is a work of fiction. It uses many historical events, news articles, and company names to build a time line necessary for projection forward. Without using many of these actual names and quotes, it would be difficult to build the sense of realism that gives credibility to the outcome. There is no slander or malice intended. Indeed this book is intended to be a wake-up call for both an industry and a country.\s \s Follow the journey of this book and look for a way out, not for yourself, but for all of us.\s \p\X1\c\l\BSpine of Water Reed\B\l\X1 \c \s\t \tIt's not every morning you wake up with armed men kicking in your door and rushing into your bedroom, but that's certainly how this morning started. All because he really wanted a new computer. Not just a new computer, the best system Dell was shipping. But that want was satisfied over a decade ago. Today, he couldn't even sell that computer on eBay. Today, it was a trip with a bag over his head, wearing handcuffs to an interrogation room.\s \s\t \tHe had quite a while to think that morning. They left him alone for what seemed like hours. The stone room had no windows and must have been well below ground judging from the chill and dampness. \iBest not to think about wells,\i he told himself. The one overhead bulb didn't seem to give off much in the way of warmth or comfort. Of course, the worst part about all of this was what was missing: No big mirror on the wall where people could watch from the other side. He had seen that on television shows. The fact it was missing was more unnerving than anything else. Whatever was going to happen here wasn't supposed to have any witnesses. In truth, he wished the bag was still on his head.\s \s\t \t\iStop it!\i He screamed in his mind. \iBad enough actually being here \i\a151\i don't do their job for them.\i Somewhere outside of the room he could faintly hear a mosque calling worshipers to prayer. \iA good Muslim should be praying now,\i he thought. He had no idea which wall faced Mecca, but he knew a good Muslim would rather pray in the wrong direction than miss prayer. Calmly, without a mat, he prepared himself as best he could, knelt, and began praying.\s \s\t \tSoon into his prayers the door to the room flew open. Obviously these weren't good Muslims he was dealing with. Two different sets of hands grabbed him and slammed him down into the chair. A third man was already seated on the other side of the table. His casual attitude made it seem that he had been sitting there a while. Odd that Nedim had not heard the door open. The other man's breathing was slow and relaxed. He must have been standing outside the door for a while, because it was a full three flights of stairs to this room. Nedim remembered that much. One of them went up and the other two down. The exact order of up and down staircases was escaping him at this moment for some reason, though.\s \s\t \tThe two men who put him into the chair were still behind him. He couldn't see them, had no idea what they were wearing, but knew they hadn't left the room. Being a computer consultant helped him reason that much out. That job just didn't do him much good when it came to avoiding being here in the first place.\s \s\t \tReason, what a fine word. The word most people who don't understand logic use. Nedim had spent four years at university, studying logic and software design, and learning programming languages. He was supposed to be good at what he did, yet here he sat. He had no illusions as to why he was here, but he had to play the fool for a while.\s \s\t \tAcross the table was a really nice gray suit with a narrow pin stripe, white shirt, and colorful tie; obviously a Yankee come home. Probably even drank beer. Nedim knew he was the only good Muslim in the room.\s \s\t \tSitting in front of the man was a yellow file folder. It was stuffed to what looked like its capacity with papers. On top of the folder was a single sheet of paper. Even looking at it upside down he could read the heading of \a147Confession.\a148 There was a lot of typed text and a place for him to sign at the bottom. Life was not looking good.\s \s\t \tNext to the file folder was a half-used white legal pad. Sitting on it was a silver Cross pen. This meant they (whoever \a147they\a148 were at this point) wanted something. Perhaps today wasn't going to be completely horrible after all. When it came right down to it, Nedim was more than willing to let others die or go to prison for him. Actually, he admitted to himself, he kind of liked the idea. Nothing says importance like being able to order others to die. Isn't that why he really got involved with this in the first place? \s \s\t \t\iFocus!\i He shouted in his mind. Then he looked the man across the table in the eye and asked, \a147Why am I here?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We have identified you as an al-Qaeda operative,\a148 replied the man.\s \s\t \t\a147I am a good Muslim, nothing more,\a148 replied Nedim.\s \s \tThe man opened the folder and started removing printouts of Nedim's emails. There were circled items and handwritten notes all over them. Many of them were pictures that looked identical, but some had handwritten notes at the bottom. He remembered many of those images having been used throughout the past couple of years. \s \t \s\t \tNedim sat silent while the man continued to flip through printouts of his emails. He noticed that the man appeared to have a better color printer than he did. That, more than anything else from this morning, irritated him. This pile of julab had a better printer than Nedim, yet Nedim was the only good Muslim in the room.\s \s\t \tIt seemed so simple when this all started. Nedim was on a flight away to university. He was seated next to a man who claimed to be a cleric and certainly could quote any section of the Holy Quran he wished. It turned out the cleric was from a mosque near the university Nedim would be attending. Because Nedim considered himself a good Muslim, he could not turn down an invitation to pray there and attend some lectures around his class schedule.\s \s\t \tNedim continued to sit silent, watching the man flip through the emails. Some, with a significant amount of circled words and handwritten notes, were even turned so he could read the handwriting. Nedim continued to show no expression.\s \s\t \tAfter attending some prayer services at the cleric's mosque, Nedim was asked to sit in on some of the discussions about the lessons of the Quran. Quite a few of Nedim's classmates were in these discussions as well. Most found reasons to bow out eventually, but a handful who considered themselves good Muslims stayed.\s \s\t \tOne of Nedim's classmates, Sami, was not the good Muslim he claimed. His family owned a pizza restaurant. They actually handled pork! Nedim also believed they ate it. A good Muslim should not have a girlfriend and go out on dates with her. Sami did. Sami had sex with his girlfriend and would openly talk about it back at university. Sami was not a good Muslim. Nedim would point this out every chance he could during the discussions with the cleric, yet the cleric would not toss him out of the discussions.\s \s\t \tPublicly, the cleric said it was his duty to bring all to Islam. Privately, Nedim suspected the real reason was that Sami's family had wealth. Nedim was a good Muslim and was attending university by means of a scholarship. He studied hard, but the computer lab was open to students only so many hours per day. He really needed his own computer to meet the academic requirements for his scholarship, but the scholarship would not provide one.\s \s\t \tNedim was snapped back to the situation at hand by a stiff slap to the side of his head. The man had said something and he had missed it. One of the two he could not see snapped at him to answer the question he had not heard. He responded that he had not heard the question because he was praying as all good Muslims should be doing at this time. That answer earned him a strike on the other side of the head.\s \s\t \tThe man asked his question again. \a147Do you know the penalty for being a terrorist?\a148 \s \s\t \t\a147I am a good Muslim, not a terrorist,\a148 responded Nedim. Closed-fisted blow from behind this time, so fast and hard he had no idea which of the two delivered it, mainly because his nose had borne the brunt of the impact with the table and sprung his head back upright. He knew he was upright because blood was running down over his mouth. Vision was not a sense he had at the moment as everything was a whirl of color and light, but it seemed things would come back into focus soon.\s \s\t \tHe tried to wipe the blood from his face and had his hands firmly pulled behind the chair, then tied.\s \s\t \tThe man asked his question again. \a147Do you know the penalty for being a terrorist?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I am a good Muslim, not a terrorist,\a148 responded Nedim. This time the blow was from a club of some kind.\s \s\t \t\a147I did not ask if you were a terrorist. We have the answer to that question lying before us. I asked if you know the penalty for being a terrorist in this country?\a148\s \s\t \tAfter a moment, Nedim responded, \a147Life in prison or death, depending upon how wealthy your family is and how famous you are.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Are you famous or from a wealthy family?\a148 asked the man. \s \s\t \t\a147No,\a148 Nedim was forced to respond.\s \s\t \tBefore him on the table was an email that had grown to haunt him. This was the email that selected the Nairobi embassy for bombing and the date in 1998 when it was to be bombed. He had no problem with the killing of infidels. The problem with this bombing was how the Islamic reporters had covered it. Across the street from the embassy had been a secretarial training school for women, and near it a day care center. Muslim women should not be attending school, nor should their children be in day care. All good Muslims know this. There had been a fatwah justifying it, yet the outrage had happened. It appeared there were no good Muslims left in the land of the prophet. That bombing caused a lot of the money to dry up as well. It was the reason Nedim didn't have a better color printer at home.\s \s\t \t\a147We are prepared to execute you tomorrow,\a148 the man said.\s \s\t \tNedim said nothing, but his mind raced wildly. Others were supposed to die, not him! He did not believe in martyrdom, nor that there were any virgins to be had. Besides, logic told him that unless there were thousands of them, within a month or two of his arrival in paradise they would just be used and complaining wives anyway. Unless he was getting seventy-two beautiful virgins per month for eternity, martyrdom simply wasn't worth it. \s \s\t \tNedim knew the worth of things. He also knew that not all virgins were beautiful. His sister was outright ugly. He suspected that would be the pool from which the virgins were drawn. He also suspected that was the very reason women were required to wear a niqab or burkha. Ugly women could have beautiful eyes.\s \s\t \tThere was one thing about martyrdom Nedim didn't know and it bothered him a great deal. Would he have a fully functional body in paradise? He had seen what was left of martyrs on the news. Logic told him that unless you got a new body in paradise, the quantity of women (virgin or otherwise) didn't matter. Then again, did you even qualify as a martyr if the police (or whatever these men were) simply beheaded you in public and you never claimed any infidel lives?\s \s\t \tThe interrogator and Nedim sat staring at one another, each waiting for the other to blink. To an onlooker, it would have looked like two children having a staring contest at school. The simple truth was that the other men were waiting for Nedim to crack. One of them would have certainly hit him again if they had realized his mind had left the room and become completely tangled up in the virgin problem.\s \s\t \tWhen Nedim's mind finally came back to the room, he noticed the other man had picked up a silver pen and had been doodling on the pad. Nedim didn't take his eyes off the man, but his field of vision revealed there was now a lot of ink on the once clean white pad. None of it stood out as words, so it must have been doodles.\s \s\t \tA little voice in the back of Nedim's mind said he should be asking for a trial. The big voice of logic told him these men had never shown him badges, didn't wear uniforms, and made no claims to any government affiliation. A public trial was not going to be an option. That big voice said his body was going to be found on a street near his mosque with a proclamation pinned on it and his head a few feet away. There was only one way out of this, and that was not to blink. The first point of yielding had to come from the other side of the table, or this was over.\s \s\t \tWithout taking his eyes off him, the other man placed the confession in front of him and laid the Cross pen on top of it. A blow to the back of Nedim's head came with the words \a147sign it.\a148 Thus ended the staring contest, with a cheat.\s \s\t \tHis hands were roughly untied, he right hand brought to the pen while the left was held behind him. \a147Sign it,\a148 said the man calmly from across the table.\s \s\t \t\a147I am a good Muslim, nothing more,\a148 responded Nedim.\s \s\t \tThe man reached in his suit jacket and pulled out a folded newspaper page. He unfolded it and laid it before Nedim. \a147Good Muslims don't kill other Muslims,\a148 was the man's quiet reply. \a147You are not a martyr and you will not be welcomed into paradise. How could you possibly atone for this in the few short hours you have to live?\a148\s \s\t \tNedim quite honestly did not know. The sheet of newspaper before him was the front page from the day after the embassy bombings. It went on in detail about the Muslim women and children who were killed. Even though a fatwah had been issued authorizing the deaths of all who served the infidels, these deaths weren't covered by it. They were in a building across the street. Clerics from all over the world had issued fatwahs authorizing the deaths of all involved in this bombing. \s \s\t \tThat one botched bombing had sentenced everyone in his cell, and perhaps all cells, to death at the hands of other Muslims. Indeed, with the printouts they had in their possession, these men needed no official capacity whatsoever to chop off his head in the middle of a public square. They would never be prosecuted. They would receive medals and money from infidels around the world.\s \s\t \t\a147You did not bring me here for atonement,\a148 Nedim responded.\s \s\t \t\a147True,\a148 the man responded. \a147We would much prefer to execute you in front of the local mosque as soon as morning prayer completes.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Why don't you?\a148 responded Nedim. His mind raced to slap his mouth shut, but it was too late. The words were out.\s \s\t \tThe man sat silently for a moment while one of the brutes behind Nedim began forcing the pen in his hand to sign the confession. Apparently the brute had not been burdened with an overabundance of education, for he was squeezing Nedim's wrist so hard the fingers couldn't grip the pen even if he wanted them to.\s \s\t \t\a147Others would prefer for us to execute all of you,\a148 said the man.\s \s\t \tThe forcing, struggling, indeed, even time, seemed to stop after he spoke those words. Nedim now knew the way out of this. He might still die, but it would not be for weeks or months. He might even avoid prison.\s \s\t \t\a147All of who?\a148 responded Nedim. He did not want to appear to be a drowning man clutching at any reed to stay alive. He didn't even care about the fist that found his skull almost as soon as he asked the question. There was a way out of this, but he had to play the game to the bitter end to be given it.\s \s\t \tThe man tapped the pile of printouts in the folder and said, \a147All of them. Not one of them is to be left alive when we are finished.\a148\s \s\t \tNedim began to shiver. He told himself it was the cold stone of the floor taking its toll on his feet and the chill of the room taking its toll on his bare legs, but he knew it was a lie. The reality of what was about to happen was sinking in. For him to stay alive, these men would have to kill all of those he had worked with, all of those who had known he worked with the others, and every person any of them had trained or spoken with. He seriously doubted the men in this room had that kind of capacity. In reality, they would arrest or kill some portion of the current list, then go off to other things. At that point, he would be dead. Either these men would kill him, or one they had let live would complete the task. It was an odd feeling to be perfectly healthy and know he had less than two years to live, an even odder feeling than knowing he would die in only a couple of hours if he refused. Perhaps it was the waiting \a151 the thought of going to bed every night wondering which side was going to kill him while he slept.\s \s\t \tThis had all been so simple when it started. The cleric had arranged for a computer that was envied by all, even the rich students, to be delivered to him at the university. At first, all he had to do was study hard and graduate. Once out in the working world, all he had to do was to send a few emails back and forth. Some of them simply snapshots. None of them were pornography of any kind. Perhaps that was where it all went wrong. Had they used porn to embed their messages, really good porn, nobody would have noticed there was anything embedded in the messages. They could have even set up a porn Web site and made money to fund the cause while transmitting messages around. Sad that he would never get to suggest that to his cell.\s \s\t \tThe man was still staring at Nedim. He might not have even blinked since the staring contest had started a while ago. Nedim couldn't be certain of much at this point.\s \s\t \t\a147Just how do you propose to find them?\a148 asked Nedim.\s \s\t \t\a147You will lead us to them,\a148 was the man's response.\s \s\t \t\a147I know not where they are or what they look like,\a148 responded Nedim. It was a lie. He knew where some of them were and what some of them looked like, but not enough of them to keep himself alive.\s \s\t \t\a147Still, you will lead us to them,\a148 responded the man. \a147We can have no further conversation about this without a signed confession. You have a choice to make now. Sign the confession and lead us to them, or we execute you in a few minutes when prayer is over.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You will kill me as soon as I sign.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147No. At least not until we are done. Then it will depend upon how well you cooperated and how many of these people,\a148 he paused to tap the printouts, \a147we have killed. The confession is to be placed on file along with your picture and the other evidence. Should you try to run, hide, or stop helping us track down these individuals, the information will be handed over to every news agency in the world along with a statement promising 200,000 euros for your return, dead or alive.\a148\s \s\t \tSomething was odd about that last statement, but Nedim didn't have time to think it through. The man went right on.\s \s\t \t\a147So. Die now, or risk dying later. Make your decision.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147My hand has no feeling,\a148 responded Nedim. They both looked at the hand by the pen. It was white, and the wrist was purple. A motion of some kind from the man caused the brute to release his wrist. A thousand needles rushed out to the ends of his fingers, but he could not bring his other hand around to comfort it. In an act of pure agony, both emotionally and physically, Nedim signed the confession.\s \s\t \tOnce the confession had been signed, the bag, which Nedim had not seen enter the room, was put back on his head. He was forced to stand and his hands were cuffed. He assumed they were going to execute him now, despite what they had said. The feeling in his hand was still reminding him of his betrayal. In truth, he was at peace about dying now. A public execution would make the news quickly and his brothers would be able to flee to safety.\s \s\t \tThe long walk up and down sets of stairs occurred again. Nedim didn't bother to count. In truth, he didn't begin to panic until they shoved him into a vehicle. His knees hit what felt like seats in front of him, so he assumed he was in the back. They didn't need a car to get him to the mosque courtyard for execution! He had heard the call to prayer in the room. It couldn't be more than a few blocks! \a147No!\a148 he shouted. \a147The mosque is close! I heard the call to prayer!\a148\s \s\t \tHe heard the brutes, now on either side of him in the vehicle, begin to laugh and hold him in place. \a147Relax,\a148 said the voice of the man. \a147We are going to take your picture.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Why couldn't you just do that here?\a148 Nedim asked.\s \s\t \t\a147The camera and fingerprinting equipment are at another location,\a148 the man responded.\s \s\t \tWhen the engine started, Nedim could tell from the quiet and the air conditioning that this was a car. The seats felt like leather on his legs, not cheap vinyl or cloth. It must be one of those dark Mercedes he had seen secret police and diplomats riding around in. The smell inside was not the smell of the city he was used to, nor of sweat and fear. It smelled clean and new.\s \s\t \tThey drove for what seemed like quite a while, with many turns, stops, speedy stretches and slow crawls. There was no way to tell how far they had driven, or which direction they had ended up going.\s \s\t \tFinally, the engine was turned off at a stop. Nedim was roughly pulled from the back of the car. He walked into a building, down a flight of stairs, and had his bag taken off inside of another windowless stone room. There was a big white sheet hanging on one wall, some lights shining on it, and a mounted camera facing it. Along another wall was a table with an ink pad and some forms. Beside all of this was a computer with a printer. The computer had a cable running over to the camera.\s \s\t \tThis room came equipped with two new people. Both of them were white, but both looked strikingly different. He judged their age to be in the late twenties to early thirties range. Nedim was taken over in front of the sheet and made to face forward. A series of front and side photos were taken, then he was dragged over to the table.\s \s\t \tWhile Nedim's handcuffs were being removed, he noticed something odd about this place. Silence. There were no noises coming from other parts of the building. No conversations. No mechanical devices. No sounds of people outside. \iThis place must be very isolated,\i he thought.\s \s\t \tThe fingerprinting proceeded while the printer spat out his photograph on a page with all his personal information. The printout finished about the time his last finger impression was being taken. The camera man placed it into a folder he handed to the man in the suit. \a147We own ya now, mate,\a148 he said when he looked at Nedim.\s \s\t \t\iHe's British!\i A voice screamed in Nedim's head, or perhaps he screamed it, he couldn't be certain. The man who had been taking Nedim's fingerprints said, \a147That we do,\a148 in the thickest German accent Nedim had ever heard as he handed the form over to the man in the suit.\s \s\t \t\iHe's German!\i Screamed the same voice Nedim had heard only moments ago. That explains the euros! This was very bad indeed. Not only had he been captured, but he had been captured by people who weren't even on the list to be killed yet. \s \s\t \tA Brit working with clandestine Pakistani operatives was a very bad sign. A German working with all of them was a very bad sign indeed! It was obvious to Nedim the men in this room were not under the control of any one government. Perhaps there was no government controlling them at all.\s \s\t \tNedim had heard stories about freelance operators like this from the days when bin Laden was throwing the Russians out of Afghanistan. They did what they pleased, always seemed to have limitless stores of weapons and funding. Sometimes they would go into a village and kill everyone there, then leave a few dead Russian soldiers and some Russian weapons for the news reporters to find. These types of men didn't fight for a cause, they fought for money and the thrill of the kill.\s \s\t \tWhen Nedim's mind came back to the room he realized all of the men were laughing at him. Even the man in the suit.\s \p\X1\c\l\BSlither of Snake\B\l\X1 \c\s\t \tOnce the men had finished laughing at him, the bag and car routine were repeated. All of this time he had not been offered water or allowed to go to the bathroom. Even in this luxury ride, the bumps were starting to be excruciating. His bladder was nearly beyond its capacity. It would have been much worse had he not gone back to bed after relieving himself just before the security forces came crashing through his front door.\s \s\t \tThis time, when the car finally stopped, and the bag was removed, he realized he was in front of his own home. There were two new men waiting for him outside of the door. He noticed the door was shut and it looked as if it had been replaced. The men were dressed in common clothing. One of them opened the door for him. Everybody went inside.\s \s\t \tPointing to one of the new men, the man in the suit said, \a147This is your cousin Umar from Saudi.\a148 Pointing to the other new man he said, \a147This is your friend Ramesh from university. This is how you will refer to them both in public and private. One of them will be with you at all times. You can see that your computer has been returned to you. We have a complete image of the hard drive. You will explain the code contained in each message you transfer and translate it for these men. They will report back to me. You and I will not meet again unless your life is about to end.\a148\s \s\t \tWith that the suit and the two brutes left. Once inside of the car, the brute behind the wheel uttered, \a147We are just going to let him continue?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We have installed a Trojan horse on his computer. Each mail message he sends will contain this Trojan. When a user opens the mail message it will create a connection to a server we have running. There it will send the IP address of the connecting machine and various other pieces of data from it. We have a database of every IP address from every known university, library and Internet caf\a233. It will be a slow process, but we will get them all.\a148\s \s\t \tThe driver pulled away from the house and started the return to headquarters. From the back seat, the man in the suit continued, \a147What do you know about these men we intend to kill?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147They are terrorists who will bring the wrath of all nations down upon us. If they are allowed to continue, neither we nor our country will survive,\a148 responded the driver.\s \s\t \t\a147Is that all you know?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147It is enough.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147It is enough to want them dead, it is not enough to make it happen. These men are creatures of habit. While they may implement variations of a theme, they will not cease a pattern they perceive to be working.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Do you think Nedim is the only email relay in this network?\a148\s \s\t \tSilence.\s \s\t \t\a147He is one of many. We know this, but until now, had not cracked it. Now we have a crack. Yes, he will lead us to the cells he communicates with and we will take them out after observing them, but that is not the real benefit. The real benefit will be the other relays he leads us to. This is a many-headed beast. Taking down a few cells responsible for one terrible bombing may make great headlines, but it will not kill the beast. To do that, you need one massive move that cuts off many heads at once. This will cause the beast to go into panic and bleed to death. We will pump this well until it runs dry, then we will decide what to do with the head of Nedim.\a148\s \c\s****\s \c\s\t \tBack at his home Nedim finally got to answer his most urgent call, put on some clothes and confront his keepers. One of the men, he could not remember if it was his cousin or his friend, informed him it was time to check his email. He resigned himself to doing just that. The men produced a small recording device and began taking notes in college thesis-type notebooks. At least that would lend credibility to the university friend story, if he could ever remember which was which.\s \s\t \tThere were only five emails waiting for him, yet getting through the first four took over an hour. He went through the explanation on routing. Each group wishing to receive information would send him a baseline photo. Phrases in the text that came with it would tell him who should receive the image. They also told the receivers what information the sender was looking for. Every operative in the field had access to the same editing software which would distribute the response they typed as a seemingly random set of bit errors in the image. The response itself would be short and use phrases the operatives were told to use. \s \s\t \tNo translations were ever written down. Each person gathering intelligence had to memorize this handful of phrases. These were along the same lines as the phrases they had been using in open phone calls and emails in the past \a151 before they figured out intelligence agencies were listening in. Now they hid the information inside of the images. You had to capture the base image before you could even hope to find the message to decode.\s \s\t \tWhen one distributed base images, one would not send them all at once. Over the course of the week Nedim would distribute the image to everyone who should receive it. Some would have messages embedded in them and be sent to decoys. The decoy messages would be scattered in the distribution so that any agency intercepting a \a147new\a148 photo could not be certain it was a base photo unless someone had already been significantly compromised. Decoy messages were sent to some suspected of being compromised as well. In short, a base image used to go out to somewhere between twenty and 400 email addresses.\s \s\t \t\a147Used to?\a148 asked one of the men.\s \s\t \t\a147I came up with a better way. Now when a new image comes in I encrypt a phrase in it, then only send it out to four or five decoys along with the list. The decoys get a different phrase. Even if any of them are intercepted, they still cannot be used for decoding. All of the operatives know the phrase and remove it from the image prior to using it as a base image.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147What is the phrase?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147God is Great.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147And the decoy phrase?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Whatever I feel like typing from the Holy Quran.\a148\s \s\t \tBoth men were shocked to learn the software was a simple piece of Open Source software originally done as a proof for some thesis work, then continued by a community looking to transfer sensitive data cheaply and securely over the Internet. While it had originally focused on transferring financial data, clinical trial research and the like, this group had co-opted it for their own sensitive data.\s \s\t \tTwo of the messages contained images with coded phrases in them. Once he had translated them, Nedim emailed them on to the original sender of the image.\s \s\t \tOne of the men asked Nedim how he knew where to send the responses because they had seen no indication in the message or the brief look they had gotten on his computer.\s \s\t \t\a147Simple. One sender always uses images of birds, another beach scenes, another fish, etc. It has never been difficult to keep track of the destination because of this.\a148\s \s\t \tThe third message was interesting. It contained one phrase and an FTP address. Nedim pasted the FTP address into his browser and began a binary download of the ZIP file. After downloading the file, Nedim sent the original email on to its destination.\s \s\t \tWhen an attempt to unzip the file was made, it prompted for a password. The file name had been the letter \a147T\a148 followed by a series of digits and dashes with a \a147.zip\a148 extension. The phrase had been \a147Great View.\a148\s \s\t \tBoth men wanted to know how Nedim had known the password. \a147It was obvious,\a148 he responded. The digits in the file name were the longitude and latitude for somewhere in Chicago. All of the world heard about the great view from the Sears Sky Deck when \a147The World's Tallest Building\a148 was built.\s \s\t \tAt first, the files contained in this compressed file appeared to be nothing more than tourist snapshots. An odd number of them seemed to be focusing on the lake view, but all views seemed to be represented. When spread out, they would give you a full 360-degree view from the Sky Deck. This was followed by some shots which seemed to come from some air tour out over the lake. Odd vacation to be sure, but nothing incriminating. \s \s\t \tThen they came to the spreadsheets. One contained detailed information about guard numbers and rotations for building security. Another contained information about police patrols and force size.\s \s\t \tFollowing the spreadsheets were PDF files containing the original construction blueprints for the building. These showed the type of steel, and the quantity and placement of it. They showed the location and weight of the counter-balance units. A detailed discussion was also included from some architectural magazine story about how the smaller towers supported the main tower in those great Chicago winds.\s \s\t \tJust to be complete there were also photos of the parking garage entrance, the various levels and even some of the supports running through those levels. One picture even went so far as to have a tape measure held up to the support pillar for size.\s \s\t \tThis was obviously a completed recon effort. All information had been gathered and delivered for those who make strike decisions. It was left up to the leaders to decide whether, how, and when to strike the target. They had Nedim make a copy of the entire directory where he had decompressed the file.\s \s\t \tBoth men were so floored by the scope and magnitude of what was going on they almost forgot to look at the last email. It seemed innocuous enough. It looked like a form letter from a technical support company. It was announcing they had closed his ticket number and instructed him to re-open it if he had any further concerns on this issue. At the end was a fax number if he needed to fax any screen prints or service contract information to the technical support. It was signed \a147John.\a148\s \s\t \tAfter what they had just seen, both men had a hard time believing this was a routine business email. Nedim showed them the email he had sent technical support regarding an issue where his computer was locking up and their response about downloading a new set of drivers. This seemed to satisfy both men. Oddly enough, they both understood that Windows was an unstable operating system.\s \s\t \tWith that complete and the CD in the men's hands, Nedim announced it was time for him to go to work. He actually was a software analyst by trade and he worked for an offshoring company, which meant he worked nights a few days per week so he could participate in conference calls with the U.S. clients. Nedim had no qualms about taking money from infidels before killing them.\s \s\t \tOnce dressed and with lunch packed, the man who was supposed to be his friend from the university announced he would be walking with him to work. The other man would be delivering the information they had gathered to their superiors. During the walk to work, Nedim said, \a147I suppose you are also monitoring my work email?\a148 There was no response from the other man. Of course there wouldn't be.\s \s\t \tThe very first thing Nedim did after sitting down at his desk and logging in was to hand write a note.\s\p\sJohn,\s \s\t \tInfidels at my door. Stay clear.\s \sNed\s \p\s\t \tHe then immediately faxed the note to the number from the technical support email and tossed the note into the shred bin.\s \s\t \tJohn's real name was Kaliel. Nedim had met him at university and talked with him at the mosque. John now worked for a technical support company in India, another offshore operation that required its people to use an American name when dealing with U.S. customers. John had been sent to America on an H1-B Visa for a few years. John worked with the very same team that assembled the information on the Sears Tower. The email was to let Nedim know that John was back home. He was to fax once he had pulled down the file and forwarded it on. One of the other team members, also working in the U.S. on H1-B Visa, had been tasked with assembling the file and posting it in a blind FTP location on the Web. To keep cells isolated, each operative knew only where to put a message, not where it actually ended up.\s \s\t \tJohn had been the first to see the brilliance of Nedim's email relay system. He had also been the one to convince Nedim to embed the messages inside of images for security. The leaders of al-Qaeda had simply smiled and nodded when he informed them of this plan. They were used to hiding in caves, making videos, and communicating by satellite phone. It was only after September 11, 2001, when every phone was monitored, that suddenly his relay system was pressed into service. The leaders learned about the compromised phones when several of the training camps they had been talking with were bombed. Their location could have been discovered only by triangulating the signals.\s \s\t \tNedim knew the relay network John handled was even larger than his own. Today's most important recruits weren't from the impoverished parts of the Muslim world. They were the technology students, training for jobs that would put them in the belly of the beast, able to walk freely, and assemble files like the one Nedim had downloaded today. \s \s\t \tThe infidels were only too happy to bring them over by the planeload paying their employers U.S. thirty dollars per hour. The workers got only ten dollars of that. Some got only ten dollars per day. It was more than most of them had ever made and well below the prevailing U.S. Wage. The new recruits were good Muslims, one and all. They were only too happy to send the bulk of that money home to help the cause. While the big donations still came from within Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, both cash and intelligence were coming via these new recruits. Some of them would even be martyrs eventually.\s \s\t \tBoth John and Nedim had tried to convince the al-Qaeda leaders to start their own offshore companies in India and Pakistan. Keep them looking legitimate to the outside world and they would generate tens of millions of dollars for the cause annually. Each man knew the margins being made by offshore companies. Those companies were able to obtain visas in quantity, usually with the help of their clients. Instead of getting half of some wages, they would get most of all wages even if the employee didn't support the cause.\s \s\t \tSome of the people John had been working with got themselves into projects for the financial districts. These members developed a system of moving large amounts of money around in untraceable manners. The infidels might find a few accounts here and there, but they could not possibly find them all. Al-Qaeda now had accounts in all countries and all currencies. There was nowhere they could not finance an operation. The only problem was getting suicide bombers into America, but thankfully, corporate greed solved that problem. The martyrs had to learn only enough English to work a help desk. Not only were the martyrs being paid to come into the country and kill Americans, they were putting Americans out of jobs from day one. God is Great.\s \s\t \tThe infidel leaders were so stupid. Rallying in the press about terrorists using the drug cartels to import them. Planting stories about terrorists walking across the Mexican border or the Canadian border. Terrorists didn't walk into the belly of the beast, they flew business class. The only connection al-Qaeda had to the drug cartels was now they both used the same methods to launder money. To keep the infidels confused, some of the money still went through the charity organizations they had been using for years, but the large transactions all flowed through the drug cartel's money laundering systems in the financial district. God is Great.\s \c\s****\s \c\s\t \tUmar, the man playing the cousin from Saudi Arabia, returned to headquarters. He set down his notes and quickly loaded the CD into a laptop computer for his superiors to see. They were both impressed and skeptical that such a find could be nabbed on the first day. The laptop was handed over to another team for further analysis while Umar went through his notes to his superiors and the rest of the team. He explained the meanings of phrases as Nedim had explained them. There were many questions, it took hours.\s \s\t \tAfter a short break, they regrouped and Umar began explaining how the baseline images were distributed. He told them about the Open Source software used to embed messages in them and how all baseline images now had \a147God is Great\a148 embedded in them before being distributed. The corrupted decoy messages brought up quite a bit of discussion. When asked how they kept track of which images to use, he informed them that each cell communicator chose a specific family of images, beach scenes, birds, fish, etc. This segregation ensured they never needed to keep a list of what went where.\s \s\t \tSkeptics in the room could take no more. They decided to put these theories to a test. A snooping program had been installed on Nedim's email account for months. They all gathered around a computer while the British photographer downloaded the software and copied two sets of images to the local hard drive. In one directory he put all of the copies of one picture Nedim had sent, in another directory he placed all of that same image Nedim had received. Thirty-eight messages had gone out, but only two had come back.\s \s\t \t\a147First we try this on an image sent to someone who didn't return it,\a148 said the Brit.\s \s\t \tHe entered the commands to remove \a147God is Great\a148 from the image, then the difference between this baseline and one of the received images. Garbage appeared.\s \s\t \t\a147See, he lied to you,\a148 said someone in the back.\s \s\t \t\a147No,\a148 said the Brit. \a147This one was a decoy. Next we try an image sent to an email address that returned it.\a148\s \s\t \tHe went through the steps to create the new baseline image. When the difference was run against the responding message, out popped the message. \s \p \s\t \tWent fishing today.\s \s\t \tCans and bottles counted.\s \s\t \tWorm box ignored.\s \p \s \a147Went fishing where?\a148 asked someone.\s \s\t \t\a147We can ask,\a148 responded Umar.\s \s\t \t\a147No,\a148 said the man in the suit. \a147Simply observe and report. This was a status report. They will send email again. When Nedim responds to them, we will know their location. We will watch them for a while, then round up the entire cell.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147And bring them here?\a148 came the question from somewhere in the room.\s \s\t \t\a147Depending on the country and who makes the arrest, they will go to our new interrogation facility,\a148 responded the German.\s \s\t \t\a147Where is that?\a148 asked one of the brutes.\s \s\t \t\a147That information is on a need-to-know basis and you do not need to know,\a148 snapped the man in the suit. He also made a mental note not to let the muscle part of this operation stand around while evidence was being sorted through. Operations like this needed brutes, but they could be damned inconvenient when thinking was going on. As a general rule, they always tried to absorb more information than their tiny brains could hold. This over-absorption had a tendency to result in leakage. Operations like this could not function when leakage happened.\s \c\p\X1\l\BOld is New\B\l\X1 \c\s\t \tHans was glad the suit nipped the location discussion in the bud. He had no qualms about killing, but would prefer not to kill a team member in front of the team. Those kinds of kills are always best done in secret. Sometimes you could even make it look like the other side did the deed and focus the team by it instead of on it.\s \s\t \tHis real name was Karl, but everyone here called him Hans. They had called him it since the day he was assigned to this team. He doubted anyone other than the man in the suit knew his real name. Every name was an alias here. The man in the suit had introduced himself by a different name to every member of the team when they joined. They all called him \a147the man in the suit\a148 now. If he smoked they would probably just call him \a147the cancer man.\a148\s \s\t \tHans had grown up in Germany. He learned long ago to keep his political views to himself. He had applied himself well in school, majoring in both Mathematics and Computer Science at the right time. Unlike most following that curriculum, he had played sports, drunk beer, and chased as many women as possible.\s \s\t \tCollege campuses are where all parties indoctrinate the youth. It doesn't matter if it is Democrat, Republican or The Reformed Nazi Party. Get them when they are idealistic, yearning to learn; teach them your beliefs and you make them yours for life. Even if they later try to leave, the beliefs are too deeply rooted to be lost completely. It was no different for Hans. He was recruited by the clandestine agencies in his government to work in intelligence. (Funny how it is always the dumbest people who refer to it as intelligence.)\s \s\t \tHe was drawn to some of the ideals of The Reformed Nazi Party. Not the ideals so much as the logic they used. They actually analyzed the failures of Hitler and made changes to the platform in accordance. Oh, they hadn't moved much from the Aryan World Dominance theme, but they had changed the method of achieving it. \s \s\t \tWhen he told them of his recruitment they told him to come to no more meetings. From time to time they would send someone to fill him in. He should not openly discuss the party, nor should his name appear on a registry of membership. They told him they had other members in those same organizations. Once he made it through all of the entrance requirements they would help steer him to the places where he could serve both his country and his party.\s \s\t \tThat had been a long time ago. Hans had worked on everything since then. Surveillance, encryption, decryption, computer penetration, you name it. He had killed many times to save his own life and sometimes simply because he had been ordered to kill. It didn't bother him. He knew that everyone playing this game for any length of time deserved to die, including him.\s \s\t \tEconomic troubles back home had made the party grow some in size and become more open. There were many different versions of it, all claiming to be The Reformed Nazi Party or some such variation of the name. Each group held some political offices. Many factions held the common ground of Aryan Supremacy, others were simply willing to let it slide if they got everything else they wanted. Each had its own laundry list of what Hitler had bungled. Most of those lists only included the military bungles. Only his party had the root of it correct:\s \t\p\sThe first race you choose to kill off cannot be one the rest of the world is indifferent about.\s \t \p\s\t \tCollege professors had analyzed World War II for decades. They focused on the debacles in Russia and the slaughter of the air force trying to bomb England into submission. While those made for good military discussions, they were not the heart of the problem. No, there were exactly two root causes for Hitler's failure.\s 1. \sHe hated his mother\s 2. \sHe was going mad\s \s\t \tHistorians have only recently (in the last thirty years or so anyway) talked about the first dirty little secret. Adolf's mother was a Jew. His sister chose to remain Jewish and wed a Jew. This sent Adolf's unstable mind careening off well past dither. It was then that the crazy paper hanger wrote his book and proclaimed courage even though he cowered out of every fight.\s \s\t \tAryan Supremacy parties were nothing new in Germany, though most phrased it as German Supremacy. Hitler didn't invent the Nazi Party, he simply co-opted the core beliefs from the other parties so each found it easy to support him. Yes, they had members with egos, but none of them insane enough to preach their values to thousands in a public square like an Evangelical preacher in a revival tent. First came the spectacle, then came the following. Many went along simply for the entertainment value.\s \s\t \tThe world thought it was punishing Germany after World War I. The Treaty of Versailles left a broken, bankrupt, and bitter German people. Rebuilding the country was out of the question. Each day was a choice between feeding the children and paying down the debt. Each day was the grinding of a boot heel on the back of the neck. In truth, the world would have done better to divide Germany among the border countries and leave the Germans without a home of their own. It would have sped up reconstruction and left the Germans without a Fatherland to fight for.\s \s\t \tNo, the victors, smug in their own glory and self- righteousness, sought to humiliate a people rather than solve a problem. The world didn't know it, but the Cold War between Russia and the United States after World War II had probably been the best thing for all. A divided and isolated Germany, controlled by two superpowers who seemingly hated each other (at least publicly) kept the people under control and focused on something else. Thus they were kept from becoming a problem again. \s \s\t \tA few years later the Allied powers (mostly the U.S. and mostly due to what Germany had done) decided it was time for the Jews to have a home of their own again. In 1948 Israel became an internationally recognized country. Few things could piss off the Islamic hardliners more. The Nazis killed Jews because Hitler hated his mother. He had to publish that blue-eyed, blond definition to narrow the focus of Aryan Supremacy since most of the Jews were pretty much white. The Islamic extremists kill Jews because they are Jews. Whereas the German soldiers doing the slaughter had to be fed propaganda and a big drink of the Nazi Kool-Aid, Islamic extremists seemed to just be born. Hans had heard tapes of services from every mosque surrounding the headquarters. You couldn't grow up here, be religious, and not hate Jews as soon as you were old enough to speak a sentence. Because the Americans were the biggest supporters of Israel, you had to hate them as well.\s \s\t \tEducation really was the answer, but you couldn't have education in any of these countries without the Quran. Germans didn't hate Americans simply because they were American. There were still some hard feelings over them being the last monkey on the pile forcing them down twice, but that was to be expected. The citizens of either country, able to obtain passports, could and would travel in the other country without strapping on dynamite and detonating themselves in a crowded place. Here, the primary education was that of centuries-old hatred.\s \s\t \tHans could fight these people because he understood them and because doing so was in line with his party's beliefs. His party had dropped the \a147blue-eyed, blond\a148 restriction from the Aryan definition. While those would always hold higher rank, the other whites wouldn't be systematically exterminated. They knew enough about genetics to know that you simply cannot stop recessive traits from surfacing unless you are going to test and abort fetuses, something currently happening in India and possibly China, just to get a son. \s \s\t \tWhat Hans saw in these people was the Nazi Party before World War II. It was led by a madman who hated his past and was trying to eliminate it from history. In this case, bin Laden, trying to hide the fact he had taken money from and fought for the Americans in one war and that his father had funded the first three companies of a man who became president. That same man was now supposed to send people to kill him. \s \s\t \tAdolf would not get undressed for physical examinations and would not allow anyone to give him an injection, yet injections could have cured him of the disease most prominently causing his madness. Bin Laden has a disease which requires a special form of dialysis and other medical treatments. Everyone knew that bad things left in your blood would either kill you or make you go mad. \s \s\t \tNeither had created their base platform, they had simply co-opted the core from other factions' platforms and added their own personal hatred. Hans didn't hate. He simply wanted to be on the winning team which dominated the world. Killing never seemed to bother him. Then again, he had never had to kill a child or pregnant woman. Nobody told him to strap on explosives and obliterate a crowd. They told him whom they wanted dead and by when; the rest was up to him.\s \s\t \tNo, the spirit of glasnost, which caused Germany to be re-united again, had simply opened more doors for him than it had closed. His party had gotten stronger and had more sympathizers in power. Now he worked with Russians, Brits, and Americans spying for them in a quasi-common cause rather than spying on them for each other. This new game was a somewhat safer game, even if more deadly. Now, if he got nabbed by the other side, no fewer than two of those countries would deploy military forces to get him out of trouble. The story would be on CNN within an hour and citizens from civilized countries would be asking why the troops hadn't deployed already. In the old days, if he got nabbed, he would die a slow agonizing death over the course of months, or years, and nobody would ever hear about it. Of course, captives seemed to have a life expectancy of hours if they were American.\s \s\t \tSeptember 11 had been a blunder of biblical proportions for bin Laden. Had he just crashed planes into the Pentagon and other U.S.-only structures, the rest of the world would have had only limited outcry. Taking out the Twin Towers pushed every industrialized country into the fight. Even China, a country which wasn't the best friend of the U.S. and had been playing a cat and mouse game with a downed spy plane only weeks before, called the White House to tell the Americans its airspace was open for anything they needed to fly over. \a147Just be certain it is broadcasting an American IDC when it flies over and we will route traffic out of its way\a148 was the phrase Hans had heard. Whether it was true or not didn't matter. The magnitude of their airspace being open was large enough.\s \s\t \tThere were less visible changes brought about by September 11 as well. Influential members of Hans' party had gotten funding and built an interrogation camp deep in the Bohemian Forest between Altglashutte and Schlattein. A few hills and woods over it built another camp of the older, more famous style. The location was chosen because of its seclusion and because they could fly people in via Nuremberg, then drive them secretly just over 100 miles to the camp. Some of the party elders must have felt nostalgic building a camp not far from another historical camp, Flossenburg. Had there not been scholars and tourists visiting what remained of the other camp, they probably would have simply re-opened that camp. At least they built it over 250 miles from Birkenau. Most of the world knows Birkenau by another name: Auschwitz.\s \s\t \tThe first was the camp the man in the suit was being asked about. When Hans' clandestine organization joined this team, they had offered the use of the camp for interrogations. The other organizations were not told its precise location, only that prisoners could be flown in via Nuremberg and that the camp was close enough to the Czech border they could be across it before inspectors arrived.\s \s\t \tThe Americans could not be asked to join this particular team. The politics in Russia dictated they rekindle the Cold War to enact some changes in their own country. They felt the need to do a military buildup due to the American buildup in this region, just in case the Americans decided to hang onto all of the oil. Hans thought it best the Americans were not involved anyway. They had rules of engagement and a flock of reporters following their every move. Nothing blows a covert operation like film at eleven. \s \s\t \tBesides, not one member of this team (other than Hans) knew about the second camp. That was going to be his party's real contribution to this effort. It was also going to be the chain that bound them all together permanently. Once the second camp was put into motion with prisoners who had completed interrogation, everyone would be locked into this operation. His party would be certain to film and document what went on there. Nothing cements a relationship like the threat of film at eleven.\s \s\t \tSeptember 11 had given the more extreme members of Hans' party what they had always wanted: A license to exterminate. The current world mindset was that if you claimed someone was a terrorist and produced a few emails to support your claim, you could kill them without question. Just like Adolf before him, bin Laden had given the world license and will to kill his people en masse. It was up to Hans, and the few members of his party who knew about the second camp, to keep it quiet until after each participating nuclear power had sent people there to die. Once that happened those countries could not strike back \a151 they could only help cover up. \s \s\t \tHans suspected this cover-up would turn most of the Middle East into one continuous sheet of glass. Some who thought the same had begun debating the thickness of the glass and how smooth the surface would be when polished by the shock waves of multiple nuclear blasts.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tNedim finished his day at work and began the walk home. In a few short minutes his \a147cousin\a148 was walking beside him and saying nothing. There was quite a crowd leaving work that morning, and another smaller crowd coming in. Like most of the offshore technology companies, this one ran a day shift and a night shift. Some workers, like Nedim, had to toggle between the two shifts. Others did technical support only while the Americans slept.\s \s\t \tOnce he arrived home, he found that his new \a147friends\a148 had actually bothered to pick up some food and drink. They ate a meal, saying little, then told Nedim to check his email before he went to bed. \a147I usually go to morning prayer now,\a148 replied Nedim. \a147Do you want us to join you at the mosque?\a148 came their response. In a way he did. He wanted someone who knew him to speak with him after prayer, or the cleric himself. Word would spread quickly that Nedim had new friends. His al-Qaeda contacts would disappear. Then he thought better of it. Yes, his contacts would disappear, but not before one final contact was made. Had he been taken to prison, he would be honored as a near martyr, but with these men living here, he would be branded a traitor and assassinated at the first opportunity.\s \s\t \tHe resigned himself to checking his email. This really was a no-win situation for him. Eventually his cleric would miss him at the private Quran discussions. Someone would stop by, and the truth would come out. Logic told him he had about a week to sort this out before he would die.\s \s\t \tThis email session went a little faster than the last. There were only a handful of emails to pull down, decode, and forward. His \a147friends\a148 asked the same questions they had asked that morning, but mostly just to confirm what they had already written down. The one file he had to pull down for them contained fewer photos, but lots of plans and spreadsheets containing traffic counts. The traffic counts were spread over several weeks and they listed special events going on in the far right columns. Dates and descriptions of future events that could affect traffic flows were listed at the bottom. \s \s\t \tOf course there were several files of blueprints, and one file containing Web links. Special events and traffic flows are always important when you are targeting a bridge. Especially when the bridge had defied attack before. This bridge was the Golden Gate Bridge. All of the files were copied onto a CD produced by his \a147friends.\a148\s \s\t \tThe final message was a new baseline file. Nedim showed them how to decode the text to know who was supposed to receive it. Then came the question they weren't supposed to ask. \a147How do you choose the decoys?\a148 \s \s\t \t\a147Some will be email addresses from a spam list I acquired, others will be addresses he has communicated with before,\a148 he responded. There were only five recipients for this base image, so Nedim chose seven decoys to round it out at a dozen.\s \s\t \t\a147Do the decoys know they are decoys?\a148 asked his cousin. \s \s\t \t\a147Not the ones from the spam list,\a148 replied Nedim. \s \s\t \t\a147But the others?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Every person receiving this is a good Muslim. They know the Holy Quran.\a148\s \s\t \tEach base image came with a passage from the Quran that would seem to apply to it when read by the casual reader. The spam list Nedim had obtained was a list of members from various Islamic and Muslim organizations around the world. Some had ties to al-Qaeda, and some did not. They all had, at one time or another, subscribed to a \a147word of the day\a148 or \a147prayer of the day\a148 sort of service as many of the infidels did. They would assume this was something sent out by the service and ponder it. \s \s\t \tWhat the men hadn't noticed, because they were too busy writing notes, was that Nedim changed a word in the phrase when sending to decoys. Any member receiving the image and finding a word out of place in the passage would simply ignore it. The rest would save the image as a new base image. Any communication they needed to send to this leader would use this new image. Any new instructions coming to them would use this new base image.\s \s\t \tOne thing the men did write down was the file name containing email addresses Nedim used for decoys. When they reported next time they would be able to speed up progress immensely on this investigation.\s \s\t \tFinally, after a very long day, Nedim went to bed. \iOne more sunrise, and another day closer to death,\i he thought.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tBack at headquarters Nedim's \a147cousin\a148 was enthusiastically briefing the rest of the team on what they had learned. He turned over the file CD containing the information on the Golden Gate Bridge and informed them of the file name Nedim used to pull some of his decoy names from.\s \s\t \tIn all honesty, he thought this would speed up the investigation. Then he heard the man in the suit say, \a147This is exactly what I was hoping to avoid. Not only do they hide among the population, now they implicate every Muslim devout enough to have a daily prayer emailed to them.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147They are determined to turn this into a war against all Muslims,\a148 said Hans. They believe that once this gets spun into a war against all Muslims, all Muslims will rally to their cause rather than die at the hands of the infidels.\s \s\t \t\a147But we know he bought this list,\a148 responded Nedim's \a147cousin.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We also don't know who on that list joined simply to hide in the forest,\a148 replied the man in the suit. \a147The list itself is of no use to us. We will have to look at each image to find out what it contains and build our tree from there.\a148\s \s\t \tAlong one wall of the office was now a large marker board. They used a wet erase board rather than the more common dry erase board so information couldn't accidentally be erased. In the center of it was Nedim. Above him was the beginning of an inverted hierarchy chart and below him the more common image of a regular hierarchy chart. Only a couple of other names had been filled in. These were the names of people arrested whose computer email traced back to Nedim. Each of their email accounts had the forwarding option set and was now forwarding email to people on the team. Nobody wanted al-Qaeda to find out an operative had been compromised by a full-mailbox bounce. \s \s\t \tWhen it came to the members of the team based locally, only Hans and the man in the suit knew where the other people listed on that board were. They were the first occupants of the first camp built by Hans' party members. Nothing of interest had been learned by their interrogation thus far, but it was early. Hans knew the interrogators held out hope of squeezing more from them by the simple fact nobody in Hans' party had told him the second camp had been put into use.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tKent Braxton was sitting in his big leather desk chair gazing out his fourteenth floor office window. Kent was only twenty-five, held a Harvard MBA, and came from old money. To everyone who worked for him, this meant Kent was nothing more than a nice suit smiling and schmoozing away money that could be better spent on real employees. Kent knew what they thought of him and didn't care. He was getting a golden parachute from this firm even if they fired him on his first day. Of course he wasn't going to get fired because his people get paid to leave.\s \s\t \tStored on a file in his BlackBerry was a cheat sheet he had been using since enrolling in business school. That cheat sheet contained all of the knee-jerk things an MBA was supposed to say whenever the topic turned to cutting costs. All new MBA hires were always asked to cut costs, so he needed all of the schmoozing phrases at his fingertips. In particular, he needed the phrases relevant to IT. Like all MBAs, Kent had taken the one-day course on how to construct a contact manager using Microsoft Access, and now held a certificate in IT project management. Every MBA had to do at least one IT project before being given a vice president title, and Kent was planning on sailing through his. The less time he spent with these money-grubbing geeks the better. They weren't MBAs, so why should they get paid so much?\s \s\t \tFirst Global Bank, Inc. came into being as a result of the Asian financial crisis. A good many investment firms and banks had gotten too greedy playing options and derivatives nobody could understand. Corporate carcasses quickly littered the landscape once the bubble burst. A few firms hadn't dipped quite so heavily into the never-ending ocean of greed surrounding the financial community. It's not that they did well, just that they had more cash on hand when a competitor's stock prices plunged below five dollars per share, and then well below a dollar per share. They were able to snatch up assets at fire-sale prices when the companies went under, and those close to avoiding going under were victims of hostile takeover tactics. Kent's brother had gotten him this job, but he had to impress the gray hairs with his ability to cut IT costs.\s \s\t \tThe simple truth is that Kent could barely find the power switch on his company-issued notebook. He couldn't understand why there were any other computer platforms or software packages because his only exposure to computers had been surfing the Web and sending email. He had no idea how the VPN (Virtual Private Network) worked when he connected in from home, nor did he understand why the company needed it. In short, most three-year-olds knew more about IT than Kent. On the bright side, not having a clue about what was and wasn't needed allowed him to cut everything without any emotion.\s \s\t \tNine different corporations had been consumed in one way or another during the creation of First Global Bank. Every one of them had a completely different computer system handling all of their transactions. The only bright spot of the entire ordeal was that the automatic teller machines all went through third-party service firms which had actually created communications standards. No matter what ATM you were at in the world, you could check your balance and withdraw cash.\s \s\t \tKent's predecessor had actually known something about IT. Kent's predecessor wasn't an MBA, so the new board had to replace him. This necessity became especially apparent to them when IT costs tripled during the first year of all the mergers. Not one single member of the board knew anything about IT, they just wanted it to work and be free. Such is the lot in life of those who understand IT. Someone who doesn't understand a thing you do will be the first one to fire you to cover their ass.\s \s\t \tThere was a good reason IT costs had tripled during that first year. The board wanted to be able to see all information from all units. Every unit had a different computer system with a different set of applications located at different places throughout the world. In short, the lemmings walked off a cliff with their eyes firmly fixed on the other side of the gorge.\s \s\t \tOne thing the board of directors had failed to consider was that every data center is required to have one backup center. When you handle the clearing for stock exchanges, and just about every other financial transaction, you aren't allowed to tell the customer \a147please try again later\a148 as you can some Internet user. You cannot get large amounts of FDIC coverage without either a fully hardened data center or multiple data centers split across different power grids in different regions of the country. The short description, in terms of the common man, is \a147you have to be able to completely lose one data center and still handle all of your daily transactions, or you have to build a data center which can survive a nuclear strike.\a148 Given the last option is pretty expensive, most financial firms opted for multiple data centers.\s \s\t \tWhen you greedily consume nine other financial institutions, you end up with nine other sets of data centers, some of which are on the same physical block with each other. Your first order of business, not only to eventually \a147cut costs,\a148 but simply to maintain sanity, is to start consolidating data centers. Sounds simple when you say it out loud, but it requires a lot of outside contractors and a lot of rented/newly purchased equipment \a151 assuming you don't have to build a shiny new location with enough room to hold everything from all of the other locations. It was this set of realities which caused a tripling of the IT budget under Kent's predecessor.\s \s\t \tIn a year's time, Kent's predecessor went from ten sets of data centers to four sets. He had cut the number of data center staff needed by a third. He had even put together the plans for consolidating the last three sets into the primary set of data centers. Given everything else his predecessor had successfully completed, Kent assumed the plan was a good one. There was no indication if the plan was actually complete, though, and given Kent's IT skill level, he had no way to know. \s \s\t \tThe cost savings which would be realized this year from his predecessor's work allowed Kent to bring in Big Four Consulting to put together a beautiful looking PowerPoint presentation on how they recommended completing the consolidation and still have a lower budget than his predecessor. Kent assumed they would just verify his predecessor's plan and he would have to find price whores to do the work. \s \s\t \tAssumptions can kill you. Someone should have told Kent that.\s \c\p\X1\l\BA Cold Calculation of Winter\B\l\X1 \c\s\t \tNedim's alarm went off around lunchtime. The rest of the week he was allowed to work a late afternoon shift that ran into the evening. He had just enough time to clean up and head for afternoon prayer. He didn't even mind when his \a147friend from university\a148 tagged along. At least the man stayed behind him and didn't pray right beside him. After prayers he went with the cleric and a group of others for his private discussions on the Quran. He could sense the obvious displeasure coming from the back of the mosque and didn't care. When you have already decided you are dead, you no longer care who will be the one to kill you.\s \s\t \tPromptly at 3:00 he excused himself to go to work. Ramesh (the name given his \a147friend from university\a148) was waiting for him outside of the mosque. When they were out of earshot of others, he began berating him.\s \s\t \t\a147Do you want I should kill you now?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147It does not matter. If you do it now it will save me the trouble of waiting for it to come.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Your only chance at life is to cooperate with us fully.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I have,\a148 Nedim lied.\s \s\t \t\a147And you call disappearing with a cleric for hours cooperating?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147If you wish to join the discussion, say something to the cleric that impresses him and he may invite you. I cannot invite you directly without giving up all of your background and I have no idea what that is. I participate in those discussions at least three days per week.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147If I start missing them I know two things for certain. The first is that the email I'm relaying will stop. The second is that very soon after I will be dead. You might say I know three things. The third is that if I manage to survive doing this until I'm no longer useful, you or one of your team will kill me. Do you really think threatening my life is any way to motivate me?\a148\s \s\t \tFor a brief, but not too brief, moment, Ramesh thought about offing him right there on the street in front of everyone. The only thing that stopped him was thinking about how he would explain it to the man in the suit. On short notice he could not come up with a story that was convincing in his own mind. The cleric visit by itself wouldn't cover it. Ramesh also knew there was no way he would be the one sitting in Holy Quran discussions with a cleric.\s \s\t \tNedim stopped at home, packed a lunch, then walked to work. This time Umar accompanied him, but they did not speak. When he arrived at work there was a fax for him waiting at his desk.\s \p \sI have escalated your issue to the highest authority.\s \sGod is Great.\s \p\s\t \tJohn had understood his message and informed others above him. If there were any cross communications between cells, those Nedim worked with would know in a matter of days. In a week or so, the bulk of his email would stop. Only those under deep cover who do not communicate until necessary would send him anything. Perhaps before then he would have outlived his usefulness. Nedim threw the fax in the shred bin. A Funny thing about working for an offshore consulting company: everything you needed to destroy evidence was right here in the office.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tJohn knew he should not have sent the fax to Nedim, but they had been intertwined in this for some time. He needed to pass along the information to the leaders he knew about so they could arrange for his relocation. Nedim was a good Muslim, but not a great Muslim. If he was squeezed, he would give up John. As long as John had an Internet connection he could obscure the IP address and continue to function without being located. He just had to move before he was located now since Nedim knew where he worked and the infidels probably had a couple of his work emails. Those fax numbers went to physical addresses. He had to be a long way from here by tomorrow. \s \s\t \tA new passport and identity were being delivered to him within the hour. He would move to another tech center and hide among the population. This time he would be living in Bangalore. Technical support centers were so desperate there he didn't have to fill out an application. Simply speak clear enough English during the interview and answer two out of five technical questions correctly. If you were willing to start off with a pathetic salary, you walked out of the interview and started your shift. Most people hated working at the call centers, but not John. It provided him with income and didn't cloud his mind when he left. His real occupation was communications relay center for al-Qaeda.\s \s\t \tHis computer at home had to be left on to retrieve all email to an encrypted folder. He received more than 500 emails per day. He never bothered to decode them, he simply didn't have the time. There were now fourteen cells for whom he handled communications. Most ISPs in this country would bounce your email after you received 200 messages. John couldn't risk that. Many of the soldiers in the field used libraries and colleges to send email to him. He couldn't risk a bounced email landing in an administrator's folder. It might actually be looked at and figured out.\s \s\t \tJohn kept up on all of the latest technology trends. He read the industry trade magazines during every free moment. He didn't read as much to satisfy a thirst for knowledge as to find out anything new that was mentioned about surveillance and viruses. He ran every kind of virus scanner imaginable. The last thing he wanted was some Trojan horse piggybacking on an email message that would give him up to the authorities. \s \s\t \tThis might be India, but he would not have a trial here. At best he would get a brief pass in front of news cameras with officials denouncing him as a terrorist, then he would be executed. The \a147best\a148 situation didn't happen much anymore. John knew several of his co-workers were members of local cells. They had no idea he was the communication method. One day some of them simply quit showing up to work; by late afternoon replacements sat at their desks. His bosses said nothing about it. Had they left for other jobs there would have been much hollering by one of his bosses and shouts about suing a competitor. The silence was more telling than a confession.\s \s\t \tInfidels have a saying: \a147Cleanliness is next to Godliness.\a148 He had heard some of them say this while helping them with computer problems. For John, this wasn't a saying, but a mantra for survival. He had a scheduled job which deleted all of his sent items twice per day. It also emptied his email wastebasket once that was done. Finally it kicked off some privacy software which would perform a DOD-secure erase of all empty space on his hard drive. He had to thank the U.S. Department of Defense for publishing a standard of erasing data so securely it could never be recovered. John knew all too well that just because a file was deleted didn't mean it was gone. He had helped many customers recover deleted files.\s \s\t \tWhile waiting for his new identity to arrive he was cleaning his home as if it hadn't been cleaned before. Wearing gloves and a hair net, he was scrubbing and wiping every surface. He even pulled the hair traps out of the drains to remove any and all evidence of his presence. He took special care to scrub the underside of the toilet lid and seat. He had read about police checking there for fingerprints.\s \s\t \tFinally his new identity arrived. An old friend of his had brought it. They both knew they would probably never meet again. John picked up his two suitcases, computer briefcase and bag of trash from cleaning, then left. His friend took the key to the place as they said good bye. The bag of trash did not leave his possession until he was three streets over. He bought a ticket, and waited for a bus. While he waited, he read through his new identity. It came complete with references from a consulting company in the very city he had worked and some walking-around money. \iSo, they did what we said and never told us,\i he thought.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tNedim returned home from work exhausted. It was the wee hours of the morning and all he wanted to do was sleep. Of course, his \a147friends\a148 were waiting for him and wanted him to check his email before turning in. \a147Why don't you do it?\a148 he asked them. \a147I've shown you how.\a148. \s \s\t \t\a147We cannot risk a mistake at this point,\a148 his cousin replied.\s \s\t \tSighing, he sat down in the chair and logged into his email. Seven messages were waiting with two coming from the same user. His friends noted this and wrote the user down. As Nedim went through the forwarding process they noticed that one of the forwarded messages went to this same address. They had him translate all three messages. One message referred to a plan to blow up a tunnel under a river. Another message made reference to blowing up multiple trains at the same time. The response going back was a request for more information about what was required. No hint about a location was in the messages.\s \s\t \tNedim was now allowed to eat, pray, and go to bed. Ramesh gathered up his notes to file a report with headquarters in a few hours. Umar settled down on a sleeping bag. In a few hours, Nedim would need to be awake again and Umar would need to be his shadow. Ramesh informed Umar of the lectures with the cleric Nedim was attending and told him he would be required to infiltrate the circle to hear what they were discussing. Umar was not pleased.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tKent was sitting in a conference room with his Big Four Consulting firm team. It was the largest conference room the bank had in this building, and was almost too small. His assistant, Margret, was the only other bank employee in the room. All of the rest came with the consulting firm. Because Kent knew nothing about IT, he had little ability to defend himself from the team surge that happened three days into the project. Other than the team leader, they were all fresh college graduates, who the team leader claimed were all required. All Kent knew was that he was paying $120 per hour for each of them, and there were only seven slides in the PowerPoint presentation, but they all billed him for forty hours per week. A quick math calculation informed Kent that about half of the consulting budget he had available had gone out the door last week.\s \s\t \tAll of the girls working on the project wore short skirts with stockings and heels. They all wore some kind of top that looked very business and professional when you looked at them standing, but when sitting down they could turn/twist/bend to show all they had to offer. There was a lot of turning and twisting keeping the conversation going during the entire seven slides of the presentation. They managed to consume exactly forty minutes before opening it up for questions.\s \s\t \tKent had asked them to review his predecessor's plan and see if the final round of data center consolidation was well mapped out. He expected a yes or no answer. If no, he expected to get a few extra pages added to the plan to round it out. What he got was neither of those.\s \s\t \tBig Four's entire presentation had been a bunch of quotes from the Langston Group about the cost savings of offshoring all IT operations. There had been spreadsheets computed with some of Kent's own numbers showing the dramatic year-over-year cost savings once all of the data centers had been moved to India. The grand finale of this presentation included a spreadsheet showing how the entire cost of the move would be recovered by the sale of the existing data center locations and all of the equipment inside of them.\s \s\t \tKent sat shell-shocked for a while. He didn't know anything about IT, but he knew how to read spreadsheets, and the spreadsheet they presented showed him an IT operating budget which was less than one third of his current budget. It wasn't until the team leader offered to give this same presentation to the board with Kent and let him take credit for it that the gleam appeared in his eye. He had just bought the white elephant, and everyone in the room could see it.\s \s\t \tEven the tiniest bit of research would have told Kent this wasn't a consultant's analysis, but a sales pitch. Kent's assistant sat there shell-shocked after they all walked out of the room. She thought they should all have been summarily fired halfway through the presentation. The fact they were allowed to complete the entire presentation, and bill for it, left her feeling numb. \s \s\t \tMargret actually had a degree in IT. The only reason she was allowed to keep her job when Kent came in was that she had also minored in business. Since he had started at the bank, Kent had been after her to go back to school and complete her MBA so she could move up in the company. He had no clue that she didn't want to climb any higher. Had the market been a little better for consultants, she would have already been an independent consultant. A lot of companies were consolidating data centers now, and the experience she had from the prior consolidation was a license to print money when the next big project came up.\s \s\t \tWhat Kent didn't know: the board was too lazy to investigate. Big Four Consulting had an offshore division and Kent was being told to have it as the bank's new data centers. A great big data center had been built and a lot of communication hardware had been installed and was just waiting for a client to install computers. Another company the Big Four owned half of was the Indian version of the Iron Mountain backup storage company. It was all a neat little package.\s \s\t \tAnyone with a degree in IT and having more than a handful of years in the field knew that Langston Group was more a marketing company than an independent analyst. They were paid to promote a new trend every year or so. Each new trend had some big marketing war chest behind it and just happened to be the very thing the Big Four Consulting companies were experts in now. \s \s\t \toffshoring was currently promoted as a Utopia for slashing labor costs. Management viewed all workers as Grade 8 bolts. If you didn't have an MBA, you were a Grade 8 bolt. You could be replaced by a Grade 8 bolt from a cheaper supplier with absolutely no negative effect on business. Thousands of workers with actual skill had been replaced by recent grads working offshore for less than welfare payments amount to in this country. Hundreds of companies were now engaged in creative accounting, hiding failed projects on their books so they could still tell investors just how much money offshoring was saving them. Hell, the bank had refused to extend lines of credit to three just last week. Yet, here they were, about to do the same thing themselves.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tVladimir sat in his office just outside of Nuremberg. He had been born in Russia and done his fair share of black bag operations in the past. That lifestyle had him riding around in a wheelchair now. There was a bullet lodged in his spine from when an operation went bad. He had always been good with computers and now that skill was the only thing supporting him. \s \s\t \tHe didn't really remember how he got involved with this operation. It all seemed to start with a friend from the Russian mafia providing an introduction to an Arab gentleman. They wanted the same kind of Trojan horse virus he had written for the Russians to collect much of the same information. He originally assumed it was yet another identity theft ring. What was once a necessity of the spy game was now big business. He was somewhat surprised when they told him he didn't need to make the virus install itself or look for credit card information. They were more interested in gathering information on the machine itself: CPU serial number, Network card ID, the full IP routing where possible. A mental warning alarm should have gone off when he heard this, but it didn't.\s \s\t \tHe told them the best method of getting what they wanted was a small simple ping script attached to an email that would ping a fixed IP address hard-coded into the script, which then communicated with a server. The server and virus could send several messages back and forth containing the email address, message header, machine hardware information and other data. He would be able to write both sides of the software and as long as the script didn't try to open the address book of the email software it should remain undetected. He could also put code into it which would allow it to determine whether it was being read from within a Web page rather than an email program on a local machine. He could then have the browser return much of the information.\s \s\t \tThe Arab asked how many versions of the Trojan horse Vladimir could deliver. He was certain that eventually some virus checker would catch onto the signature and the tool would be useless. Vladimir felt he could come up with five versions with different signatures and tactics so most virus scanners wouldn't block them for months. He said the real danger was in using a hard-coded IP address instead of a Web address looked up online. It is easy to get caught that way, but a hard-coded address that avoided DNS (Dynamic Name Service) lookup would stall off virus scanners longer. The Arab informed him they had no fear of getting caught. The IP address would be forwarded from inside of a secure facility.\s \s\t \tIn truth, that last statement should have been Vladimir's second warning. He was definitely off his game. It wasn't that Vladimir minded the killing game or killing itself. If this had been a simple seek and destroy and he had still been hale and whole, he would have gladly signed up to kill al-Qaeda members. Russians had died in the Twin Towers as well. A good many of his former coworkers actually had gone off to engage in that sort of game shortly after September 11.\s \s\t \tWhat bothered Vladimir about this operation was learning what he shouldn't have learned. Vladimir was the only non-Nazi Party member to know about the second camp. At least he believed he was, with the exception of the Arab he had met. Vladimir had absolutely no problem killing these people. He had spent many of his younger days putting two behind the ear of many different types of people. His objection was to the incinerator and the \a147showers\a148 and a building site that could end up on the news. His office wasn't far from the place where trials had been held, and photographs of things like that had sent some rather infamous people to their deaths. \s \s\t \tLife in a wheelchair was still life after all, and the Russian mafia had been paying quite well for his services. He kept his old contacts active there in case he needed to make a speedy trip with a new identity. During his idle time, Vladimir pondered why he had taken this job. It always came down to the same two reasons:\s 1. \sThe pay was more regular and just as good as his other work.\s 2. \sHe really believed these people deserved to die.\s \s\t \tVladimir made himself a promise, though. The day people started going to the second camp in buses and trains instead of the back of a car, he was out of here. He told nobody of his promise, but he had his mafia contacts move his money to accounts in many different countries. There was simply no telling how far he would have to run when this was over. One thing he had not puzzled out was why there were so many refrigeration units built at the site. With all of the refrigeration units and loading docks out front, the place looked like a food distribution center.\s \s\t \tHis computer playing a WAV file and popping up a message pulled him out of his thoughts and back into the room he called his office. Much as some people have their email client playing a \a147You've got mail!\a148 jingle when email came in, he had his ping server set up to play the Monty Python \a147Message for you sir\a148 sound byte whenever it got a confirmed hit. He quickly clicked on the message box button to display the information and the IP address trace. Two hits had been received from the same address in Lutton, England.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tThe man in the suit had just finished reading his email when Umar came in to make his report. Hans and the Brit were there as well. Umar gave them a complete report and the translations for the messages concerning tunnel and trains. He was complimented on his team's work and told to get some sleep for tomorrow. After he left, the man in the suit set Hans to hacking into the registration database for the email account providers and gave the IP addresses he had just received in his email to the Brit to run against the database. Within an hour, they had both completed their tasks. One of the IP addresses came from an Internet caf\a233 in Lutton, England, the other came from a library in the same city. One of the email addresses was actually tied to a Lutton address.\s \s\t \tThe Brit wanted to immediately turn it over to a British special investigations unit, but the man in the suit stopped him. \a147What do we have to give them?\a148 he asked. \s \s\t \t\a147An address and a plot,\a148 responded the Brit. \s \s\t \t\a147Neither of which can be used to make an arrest,\a148 was the counter argument. \a147We don't even have a name or know whether the address is real. It could simply be a vacant lot. The only thing we can do is attempt to confirm the address, then have our own people put them under surveillance. Until they build a bomb or give us more explicit details, there is nothing that could be used as the basis for an arrest.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We should be able to nab them for questioning ourselves,\a148 said the Brit.\s \s\t \tHans replied, \a147We will, once they have been under surveillance for a while and we can identify just \iwhom\i to nab. We need to identify the person at the keyboard sending the email. This group is eager. They were sent back a request for more information. Something will let slip in the email by the time we have identified who is sending the email.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Give me all of the addresses. I will send them to our people in England and they will begin hanging out at the caf\a233 and library. If the address is actually real for the email address, we will have someone watching there as well. It shouldn't take too long to get logging software installed on every machine in each place. In less than two weeks we should be able to identify exactly who is sending the messages. If they are this eager to move, they should be having regular meetings with the rest of their cell. It won't take long to nab the entire group. We just have to be certain we are getting the entire group,\a148 said the man in the suit.\s \c\p\X1\l\BGreed\B\l\X1 \c\s\t \tNikolaus sat in his office going over the construction specifications. He had been a member of the Reformed Nazi Party for many years and worked with the many different factions who all claimed to be \ithe\i Reformed Nazi Party. His current job was a vice president position for a biotech company whose name he couldn't even remember. He didn't need to remember it. The name was printed everywhere. Corporations were just chess pieces to him. He had both built and crushed dozens of them.\s \s\t \tMost of this corporation's upper management were loyal party members. They let him do whatever he wanted because he was higher in the party than they were. To do what he did for the party, Nikolaus could never be a celebrity or public figure. His lot was to work in the shadows, making sure all of the details were taken care of. He also made sure that his signature was never on any documents relating to his current project. Signoff came from those higher in the company when he told them to sign.\s \s\t \tThe current project was the type that would make one famous if discovered \a151 the kind of famous that gets you executed after a lengthy public trial. Nikolaus was very much aware of the risks involved. He had split the building of the thing across several different contracting companies run by loyal party members whose employees were mostly loyal party members. In truth there were only a couple of thousand loyal party members spread across the entire country. The rest were party members when the sun was shining. Still, he was impressed what only a thousand people could accomplish when they worked in secret and remained focused.\s \s\t \tA secured facility for both research and manufacturing was how the project was presented to the board of directors to get initial funding. It had been the decision of the party that this facility should be built by a corporation with stockholders rather than just the party or a privately held company. When you spread the blame around from the beginning you reduced your chance of going to prison or being executed. This blame had already spread to the bulk of the financial institutions on America's Wall Street.\s \s\t \tThe corporation had manufacturing and research facilities scattered around the globe. They were big suppliers of various medical products and a few patented drugs. In Wall Street's eyes, the biotech star was once again rising. \s \s\t \tIt wasn't a well kept secret that several black-ops contracts were being worked on by the corporation. With all of the concern about terrorists using biological or chemical agents to attack large populations, business had been booming for the lines making antidotes. Even if an attack never happened, every government had to stockpile enough for all of their citizens. Some of the products would keep only three years in storage unless the storage was kept at or below -60C. \s \s\t \tThe cost of keeping millions of doses stored at such a temperature was very prohibitive for most countries. Now the company was offering \a147storage provider\a148 contracts. Countries either too poor or unwilling to spend the money up front could pay the company an annual fee in the millions of dollars range. The company promised to have on hand in storage the number of doses needed by the largest population participating in the contract. The company would airlift the doses to the country in need within four hours of being notified about the attack.\s \s\t \tBecause wind can carry a biological or chemical agent a long way, there were five separate \a147storage provider\a148 contracts, also referred to as plans. Countries chose which contract they wanted to participate in. The fees for the plans were determined by the largest population participating in the plan. Each country was instructed to join a plan that didn't have neighboring countries in it. The plans would protect only as many people as they had doses. Other plans might offer to sell some of their doses, but if they didn't, you would have to wait for production to get scaled up cranking out the product you needed. In short, everyone was banking on al-Qaeda never getting strong enough to launch a biological agent high enough into the atmosphere to cover more than one continent.\s \s\t \tHad the citizens of any country participating in the plans heard of this, they might have thought it ghoulish, but insurance companies play the statistics game every day. Human lives are meaningless numbers on a spreadsheet to them. They were banking on two things. The first was that al-Qaeda couldn't pull it off. The second was if they did pull it off, everyone would be dead anyway, so no fear of being sued. Everyone that is, except the leaders who chose to join the plan instead of providing in-country storage. They built their own little freezer and hooked it to their data center UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply). The taxpayers paid for that little project as well \a151 they just were never told about it.\s \s\t \tThe beauty in all of this was it allowed Nikolaus to be in charge of building a new secured facility with acres of both refrigerated and frozen storage. Because the facility would be storing a commodity which was beyond any price once an attack happened, it had to be highly secured. If you are going to build a highly secured facility, you should also put some research labs, sleeping quarters, etc. in the compound so you can do all of your government-funded or secret projects there. The dorm-like settings allowed for the building of communal showers. Last, but not least, the only way to keep your secret projects truly secret is to have a large incinerator on site as well.\s \s\t \tEverybody on the board of directors knew this would be a location for some clandestine operations. Every one of them understood that they didn't have clearance from the various governments involved to know what projects were going on there. They swallowed this pill because the cash influx from the \a147storage provider\a148 contracts alone gave them the largest stock option bonuses they had ever had. Once the facility was fully operational, the following year's option would be even bigger.\s \s\t \tNikolaus made certain some of the labs were of \a147pilot plant\a148 size. It was easy justifying the creation of them since the company had routinely set up pilot plants for new drug or chemical lines working out the production kinks before adding the line to an existing factory. The board of directors didn't know it yet, but this company was poised to become one of the largest suppliers in the world of stem-cell and whole-blood products. The profit generated by producing new stem-cell lines would be staggering.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tMargret sat in the board room watching Big Four Consulting run through their PowerPoint presentation. Her boss, Kent, had signed onto this idea several weeks ago and helped prepare the final spreadsheet using numbers provided by the consulting firm. The room was packed with consultants not old enough to shave but dressed in their finest anyway. The exact same people made the exact same comments they had made in the presentation to Kent; of course Kent's assistant was the only one who noticed. Twisting, bending, smiling and empathizing all happened right on cue. Good-looking young guys were placed strategically around and across from the female board member, while the short skirts virtually smothered the dirty old men.\s \s\t \tIt wasn't that she minded the \a147sex for sale\a148 marketing tactic used by Big Four Consulting. Lord knows they all did it. Had she not been on the short list of people who would be left twisting in the breeze when this project went south, she might have even considered helping herself to a few servings from some of the dishes being offered. What really pissed her off was knowing that the tweaked libidos in the room were going to sign off on the project in hopes of getting some, only to have put the entire corporation face down on the table to be rectally violated when the invoices from the project started. Margret could already see how this train wreck was going to play out.\s 1. \sContract would be signed, then someone would buy drinks and dinner.\s 2. \sMother ship would dock the very next day, spilling out an unbelievable number of well-dressed kids not old enough to shave, costing the company $120per hour each.\s 3. \sPaper consumption would increase fiftyfold at the company as hand carts full of great-looking documentation having absolutely nothing to do with the project were generated, all of it required by the \a147process\a148 used by the consulting firm.\s 4. \sEntire budget then would be consumed, requiring a small \a147extension\a148 budget.\s 5. \sOnce the extension budget was granted, Big Four Consulting would step out of the picture and make company employees do the actual project, putting in ninety hours per week on salary.\s 6. \sMost employees involved in the project would quit and the department heads would be tagged for the failed project.\s \s\t \tSome people said Margret was sarcastic. Those who knew anything about IT knew she was a realist. This was the standard M.O. for large consulting firms. They weren't there to solve your problem, just schmooze you long enough to consume all of your budget. Very few board members were ever willing to say they had been taken for tens of millions of dollars, so they very rarely got sued. When they did get sued, it was usually by a company in dire enough financial straits that they could simply apply for continuances until the plaintiff took bankruptcy. It was an outright racket, but the MBAs would never admit it.\s \s\t \tThe project leader finished her positive and energetic chat about the last PowerPoint slide she had up. She smiled to the board and asked if they had any questions. \iOh, she is good,\i thought Margret. \iSuch a classic burn and bucket bunko scam. Just wait for it \a133\i\s \s\t \t\a147What will this project cost?\a148 came the question from one of the board members.\s \s\t \t\iThe lemmings are about to go over the cliff,\i Margret thought.\s \s\t \tA quick click of the mouse brought up the final slide in the presentation, which was Kent's spreadsheet, prepared using the Big Four's equipment valuations. There, in black and white, the board saw how half of the project would be paid for by sale of the existing equipment and software licenses once the move was completed. The rest of the project would be paid for by the lack of software and hardware maintenance contracts over the next three years. Given that maintenance contracts tend to go up every year, the project would probably be paid back sooner, but they had to use the numbers currently on file.\s \s\t \tMargret sat in silence. If the board was dumb enough to overlook the obvious, she was not going to pipe up about it. She was only Kent's assistant. True, she would be the first fired when this train turned from locomotive into a pile of twisted smoldering steel, but she would be fired today if she pointed out just how stupid both her boss and the board of directors were. What was missing from that spreadsheet was just how much the service contract would be for the three years they were using the software license savings to pay off the project. Margret was fairly certain it was going to be way more than the savings, but the girl had chutzpah for putting up a spreadsheet and leaving that off.\s \s\t \tThe board made some appreciative sounds and a few members even nodded at each other. Of course they said they would have to discuss the project among themselves before making a decision, but everyone in the room knew the white elephant had been sold again. Business cards were handed out with promises they could call the cell phone any time with questions on the project. The team leader even offered to make reservations at a very posh restaurant where they could get a private room this evening to go over any details in a more relaxed surrounding.\s \s\t \t\iOh, this girl can work it!\i thought Margret. \iI wonder if there will even be fourteen-year-old girls in the room to catch on video with the dirty old men?\i \iNah. They won't resort to that this time. Some of the fresh faces in this room might be on their knees later, but they all know the elephant has been sold, so they will just be doing that out of habit.\i\s \s\t \tMargret added an item to the To-Do list in her PDA: Update R\a233sum\a233.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tKent walked back to his office using his strutting man-in-charge walk. He had power-gripped each of the board member's hands at the end of the meeting and assured them he had every confidence of this project's success. He had an entire folder of links to articles from the weekly trade press expounding offshoring as the answer to world hunger and the Utopia of cost cutting. Of course, Kent had to have his assistant Margret find those links and create that folder, but the board didn't need those details.\s \s\t \tYes sir, Kent was already picking out his corner office in Mahogany Row. He was going to go from director to president, skipping all of those cumbersome VP roles in between. Kent was going to achieve this feat because Kent had a plan!\s \s\t \tOriginal ideas didn't happen much to Kent, at least not good ones. In truth, this wasn't an original idea, and it wasn't his, but he was going to claim it. Kent was going to be stuck in this IT role for approximately two years because the bank frowned upon people changing jobs more often than that. He could be \a147offered\a148 a job through HR as part of a promotion, but he couldn't apply for one directly before then. You didn't get \a147offered\a148 the kind of job Kent wanted unless you ended your tour on an up-swing, and he had an up-swing planned.\s \s\t \tBig Four Consulting assured him that they could migrate a data center every other month as long as there was a maintenance window in that month. They wouldn't risk moving a data center during the end of a quarter when many additional jobs would need to be run. Moving all four sets of data centers to the new offshore set would take under eighteen months. While the plan would address a massive cost issue, it still wouldn't address the monumental effort of integrating the various applications so management could have its \a147world view\a148 of First Global Bank.\s \s\t \tKent's big plan was to completely eliminate the on-shore programming staff. He had called a college friend at General Motors who told him how they had massively reduced their pension liability and direct cash outlay for programming by outsourcing all development to a consulting company that was using programmers in India and paying them ten dollars per day. Of course the consulting company was charging ten dollars per hour for those programmers and pocketing the difference, but that detail didn't come up. Another detail that didn't come up was the fact every project of any real size the offshore workers did was a complete failure that had to be hidden in the books. No portion of it could be fixed or salvaged. No matter what country you went to for IT workers, skilled software developers didn't come cheap. This was an arrangement based on cheap, so they didn't get skill.\s \s\t \tAll Kent had to do to justify getting rid of everyone here, and thus cement his rise straight to a presidency desk, was to eliminate all of the on-shore staff. To do that, he needed a project the board would leap at, thus the \a147world view\a148 project became the goose laying the golden eggs in Kent's eyes. He could enlist Big Four Consulting, which had just gotten the offshoring contract, to put together a spreadsheet with staff hour estimates that were amazingly high for an integration project. Then he would have them put together what the project would cost using their offshore development staff versus the cost of on-shore labor at their standard contracting rates. His staff would of course have to train their own replacements before being shown the door. \s \s\t \tKent wouldn't even have to finish the project. He would get the credit for it, and his replacement would have to deliver it. His replacement would have to work at least a year before he could come up with some other cost-cutting measure, and it would all pale compared to the costs Kent had cut. His walk around the company had a very special \a147I'm the man!\a148 strut today.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tKathryn, project manager for Big Four Consulting, was ecstatic when she heard the news they had won the contract. All of the schmoozing had paid off big time. She quickly notified the services manager and got the contract drawn up to overnight to Kent for him to sign. Each invoice presented to the bank had to be below a certain dollar amount so Kent could approve it, but they could invoice as often as needed.\s \s\t \tUnlike most projects, they were actually going to do this one instead of just generate paper. They had already contracted with a communications company to provide all of the communications cut-over effort for about a quarter of what was in the contract. A huge data center had been built in Bangalore. While a large amount of networking and communications equipment had been installed, not a lot of computers were there. The contract with First Global Bank would get the ball rolling. All of the mainframe and midrange computers used by that company had excess capacity. A deal would be struck to purchase the largest models available from those computer vendors and get them installed. That done, the firm could sign another deal with another client that used the same equipment and bill them out twice. This was going to be a massively profitable venture!\s \s\t \tWith the overnight sent out and her phone calls made, Kathryn was dreamily calculating what her commission would be from this project. Judging from the email sent out with commission rates for project managers, she would be pulling in an extra $50K per quarter once this project got moving. Not bad at all.\s \c\p\X1\l\BFirst You Build the Wheel\B\l\X1 \c\s\t \tJohn arrived in Bangalore and went to one of the addresses provided him to rent a place to live. He took an apartment in a complex built by one of the American companies there. It was very expensive, but came with air conditioning and an Internet connection. Getting a reliable Internet connection in India was more of an obstacle than someone from a first-world country could imagine. All you had to do was look at the mud trails that passed for streets to see hundreds of cables wrapped around a single telephone pole which had two or three other poles propping it up from either side. Power, phone, high-speed Internet, all wrapped in a big bundle at the top of the pole. It looked like one of those massive rubber band collections you see pictures of on the Internet.\s \s\t \tOnce his computer was set up he immediately set out masking the IP address and then retrieving his email. There were lots of pending messages. He had been gone almost long enough for his mailbox to overflow. He started the deleting and purging jobs and began forwarding the messages to their intended recipients. It took him the better part of the afternoon to get through the existing email.\s \s\t \tWith the email handled, he went out for a walk past the technology companies to see which had postings out front. He saw a very large building that had been built recently and saw the name of the company. It looked like a massive data center. He went in and found they were looking to hire operations staff, technical support, and just about every other kind of computer job. He dutifully filled out an application giving them his new name and address. His new identity kit came with references and some job history, so he filled that in and handed back the application. The man behind the desk asked him to take a seat and said someone would speak with him in a moment.\s \s\t \tJohn could hear some phone calls being made and some discussions being held. About five minutes later another man came out to greet him and bring him back to an office. He asked a short series of technical questions and John was able to answer all but the mainframe questions. When he was asked why he moved to Bangalore, John responded that he wanted to broaden his IT skills and couldn't do that where he had been. \s \s\t \tThe man seemed to accept this response in light of the fact he wasn't going to have to pay a buyout fee to obtain John. Competition for low-paid workers was fierce in India. Not fierce enough that any company was actually raising wages, but fierce with lawyers and lawsuits. The standard practice now was that you had to pay a year's wages to a company when you stole one of their employees. You see, the upper class in India keeps everything to themselves. They couldn't care less whether the lower classes lived or died as long as they made money at it. \s \s\t \tThe man interviewing him would also be his boss. He told John he was joining the company at a very opportune time. His company had just won a contract to offshore four sets of data centers into this building and another building just like it in a different location. The additional generators and UPS equipment were being installed even as they spoke. Another building was being built on this campus to hold programmers. \s \s\t \tIt would be a few weeks before the new machines arrived and were installed. The company had managed to obtain some books and training documentation on the mainframe and midrange systems that were arriving shortly. Their U.S. partner was flying over a small team to handle the installation and configuration. John's job would initially be computer operator and network monitor. His first assignment would be to read through all of the documentation they had obtained and get fluent on the systems.\s \s\t \tJohn asked the man if he had some links to sites with the documentation so he could continue reading on his own. The man took his email address and emailed him the links to the online training. They then finished the paperwork to get John on the payroll. John didn't negotiate salary with the man and the man was all too happy to avoid an argument about the low pay. They had been seeing a lot of push-back about the pathetic wages they were offering. The main reason they hadn't already staffed up for this (or any) contract was that few would take their pathetic wages and the owners were too cheap to raise the salary. John would be making twelve dollars per day. Some days would be eight hours and some would be fourteen, but he would always make twelve dollars per day.\s \s\t \tSeveral busy, yet uneventful, weeks passed for John. He established a bank account under his new identity so he could cash his paycheck. Every day he went into work and spent most of it reading manuals. A flurry of people went in and out of the data center installing computers and giving John some instructions on how to start and stop them. The team from Big Four Consulting landed with the first set of backup media to install on the machines. John had even more documentation to read with respect to the starting, stopping and troubleshooting of the bank applications. He spent quite a bit of time on the phone in training conference calls.\s \s\t \tJohn's boss managed to hire several other people who knew less than John about computers. He was supposed to train them as best he could. John was promoted to lead operator simply because someone had to be lead operator and he had been there the longest. It was odd to be at a place only a few weeks and receive a promotion. Of course the promotion came only with a title, not any money or extra benefits. It did come with one intangible benefit for someone with John's sideline: He was allowed to read up more on the banking systems and he received administrator passwords on the systems. In his reading John learned that once the data center migrations were complete, roughly one-third of the world's money supply would pass through the systems he controlled every day.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tMargret sat looking at the pile of paper on her desk, the triple booked meetings on her schedule and then back to the email from Kent which had been copied to Kathryn.\s \p\sMargret,\s \sI will be traveling to our other locations over the course of the next four weeks having meetings with the IT teams in place there. I'm assigning you the data center migration project. You will be the liaison between Big Four Consulting and the business.\s \sKent\s \p\s\t \t\a147The son of a bitch should be castrated with a rusty spoon,\a148 Margret said aloud. He had done nothing on the project or work-related for the past three months. His entire day consisted of hobnobbing with higher-ups to get a lunch appointment set up each day, then spending the afternoon coordinating foursomes for Saturday golf. He wouldn't even attend a meeting unless someone above him was going to be there.\s \s\t \tMargret pulled up Kent's calendar and looked at the last three weeks. \iWhat an MBA,\i she thought. He had studiously filled his calendar with bullshit entries leaving only fifteen minutes open here and there. Margret was all too familiar with this tactic. To seem important you had to \a147look\a148 busy and make it difficult for people to have meetings with you. This made the higher-ups think you were slaving away for the company.\s \s\t \tWhat Kent was really doing was spending the day surfing the Web. Margret knew this because she had run the IP usage report for Kent's machine. Now that the little bastard had figured out how to get on to the Internet and run a mouse, he did absolutely nothing. He even surfed the Web from home using the company's VPN! The higher-ups never saw the IP usage report. They would only request reports about the amount of time people spent logged in and active, not reports about what they were actively doing. This man had turned doing nothing into an art form. Now, he dropped the project which was going to get him his promotion onto her back along with everything else of his she was doing.\s \s\t \tTraveling around the world to visit each existing data center and programming staff was probably an easy sell for him. Most likely he pitched it as \a147doing the legwork to ensure a smooth migration.\a148 What he was really doing was taking a company-paid four-week vacation. He would meet with each data center manager and each development manager to discuss their needs, then they would all be compelled to take him out for entertainment. He would be traveling to four different countries and taking in the sights while there.\s \s\t \tEvery one of those IT teams reported to Margret, not Kent. She could have easily prepared the report on whom they could eliminate after each migration. Every one of those banks had its own IT culture. It was incredibly difficult to impose the processes and controls used by the original bank. You could try the pitch that if their IT processes had been better they wouldn't have been eaten, but that argument was hollow. Had upper management not been so damned greedy and gone so far out on a limb with options and their derivatives, the banks wouldn't have gone under; everybody knew it.\s \s\t \tOn the right side of Margret's desk was a pile of paper with programming requests from all of the different branches. On the left side was a pile of paper, mostly from the board, screaming about getting a single view of the company for ease of planning and financial reporting. Margret knew this entire data center migration thing was a lark. It had been a lark when Kent's predecessor started it, but the only experience the guy had was in data center consolidation and the board was looking for a quick win at cutting costs.\s \s\t \tHad Kent's predecessor even bothered to read her integration plan, they would have been down to one set of data centers now. All they had to do was train each of the branch locations on how to use the existing system, then migrate the data into the existing systems. There was only a handful of additional fields in use by the banks that had been conquered. Had they started and used quality consultants, they would be done. All of the extra data centers would have been permanently eliminated, along with the programming staff from the conquered banks. Cost savings would be in the millions and the board would have been able to get a single picture of how the bank was doing. Now the programmers at each location were busily making changes that weren't supported by the central bank systems just to try to hang onto their jobs. Almost no documentation existed for these changes. Migration was going to be a real PITA (Pain In The Ass).\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tThree weeks had gone by since they had first found out about the cell in Lutton. The Brit had been grinding his teeth for three weeks as well. He was beginning to wonder if the Pakistani government hadn't allowed them in just to rub their noses in it. As long as Pakistan was \a147cooperating\a148 with this operation, the world powers wouldn't invade, at least on the grounds they were aiding and abetting terrorists. The nuclear program they had going on was going to be a different story altogether. The Brit had been quietly gathering what information he could on that and feeding it back to his contacts in the UK.\s \s\t \tWhat had him in an irate mood today was the sheer fruitlessness of it all. More and more information had come in. The man in the suit kept saying that the people on the ground could only identify the message senders. Three weeks of tailing them had turned up no meetings or other members. There was now beginning to be open speculation that this entire message series was a ruse to see if anyone had caught on to how al-Qaeda was communicating now.\s \s\t \tThe Brit had spent far too much time in covert operations to believe al-Qaeda that smart. They had intercepted messages about the quantity and type of explosives being assembled. There had even been a long list of prospective targets. It seemed that they were planning to blow up multiple trains in the tunnels under London in such a way that when the last bomb went off, one of the trains would be directly under the river. The plan appeared to be to blow up the trains where the tunnels connected so there would be little to no chance of damming the ensuing flood.\s \s\t \tA good many messages had gone back and forth about the size and type of explosive needed under the river. Some files had been transferred with specifications for the tunnel itself, but there had not been one single meeting of a cell. In fact, the two people being followed didn't seem to go anywhere but to the Internet locations and to the store. Some were willing to drop the tail, but the Brit kept bringing up the one piece of information which made it all credible. They had been seen buying multiple disposable cell phones. Given the quantity of explosives they needed, it could only be a matter of time before the explosives purchase and/or storage would surface.\s \s\t \tThe Brit was taking this one personally. Everybody knew it. He never spoke of home, family or lovers, but even if you had none of those back home, seeing an attack coming on your own soil was bound to bring forward some feelings of patriotism. The man in the suit kept an eye on him and monitored his communications while this was going on. Even MI6 didn't know about this operation and it was his job to keep it that way. \s \s\t \tAll it would take would be for the Brit to leak the information they currently had. Even if he told them nothing of the operation, everyone would know there was some clandestine OP going on. Then they would want to take credit for it, which meant they would have to get more information on it to claim being part of it. Not a good situation, but the risk was to be expected. He had to control it. Politicians would eventually say the operation was occurring with the full support of the Pakistani government and that would lead to large terrorist attacks here, in the man in the suit's own country. Not to be allowed. Only a handful in Pakistani intelligence knew anything about this operation. Too many in the government were backing al-Qaeda to let any officials know about it. They would all be executed the same afternoon officials found out.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tKathryn had spent her morning cracking the whip and denying overtime wages for the subcontractor actually migrating the communications equipment. She planned to spend the afternoon talking with the first group of twenty-somethings who had just gotten back from Bangalore. They flew the first set of backup tapes over to the new data center and restored them onto the machines. Once there, the systems managers from the data center being phased out was to spend time tweaking startup and shutdown procedures.\s \s\t \tA temporary high-bandwidth connection had been created so there could be one last data migration during the evening of the cut-over. A handful of staff from the bank's data center had been given operations accounts on the new system in case there were any problems. A few consultants had been contracted by Big Four Consulting to actually partition the machines allowing only enough of the machine to be visible to this client as they would need. They also created the accounts for the bank's employees restricting their access. The meeting in the afternoon was to try to find out if there had been any problems in getting the software loaded to both data centers.\s \s\t \tIt was odd to have time to kill before lunch. Kathryn had always been in the mode of flashing her body and smiling to clients over lunch trying to find one dumb enough to actually use this firm. Today she had no lunch plans. Kent was out of town for weeks and Margret didn't appear to stare at her legs or look down her top. Besides, Margret couldn't sign any contracts or take them to the board. Kathryn had always been in the mode of working three to five clients at a time trying to close a deal. All of that changed when she landed this contract. \s \s\t \tGetting the data centers operational was considered vital to the cash flow of the company. Every moose with ears was buying, partnering, or otherwise whoring out Indian programmers to U.S. and foreign clients. Only about one in a hundred brought into their offshore business was actually worth hiring, the rest were help-desk script-reading people passing themselves off as programmers. Margins were so low that nobody was making squat off the commission from getting that type of work. The only way you could boost the rates was if you already owned the client lock, stock, and two smoking barrels. The only way to ensure you owned a client that completely was to get them into your data centers.\s \s\t \tMargins were very high for this contract. The data center in India was roughly a football field in size and cost less than the cramped little data center First Global Bank had on a quarter floor of a high rise near where the Twin Towers had been. Running numbers for the board had been easy. Padding the hell out of them had been even easier. Because this contract was going to bring in so much money over the next five years, Kathryn had been removed from all other accounts. She didn't mind the reduction in work, but had gotten very used to expensing her lunch in posh restaurants.\s \s\t \tToday she was eating half a sandwich and some soup from the cafeteria downstairs and checking email over lunch. There were the usual pleas for help from the younger and newer account managers who inherited her other projects. She sent off a few sympathetic messages and informed them they already had all of her documentation for those accounts. Had any of them thought to buy her lunch today she would have given them her insights on the fetishes and weaknesses of each person in charge at their client site so they could close the deals. No lunch equals no unwritten information. You could never write information like that down, not even in your PDA. It could turn up during an investigation.\s \s\t \tFinally she got to the message Kent had copied her on. At first she wondered what she had done to piss Kent off. He knew damned good and well that Margret didn't like Big Four Consulting. After his previous email with respect to the follow-on project she thought they had a good rapport. True, she hadn't been there much the past couple of weeks. Communication was mostly via email and phone calls, but she did leave a bunch of young skirts and heels around to keep his libido going. Apparently they weren't flashing enough. It was back to slit skirts and see-through blouses once Kent returned.\s \s\t \tMaybe things wouldn't be quite as bad as they seemed. She could bring some young hunky guys over to meet with Margret and offer to leave them there for additional information. Perhaps she could even take everyone to a late lunch tomorrow and pump a few glasses of wine into the girl to loosen her up. \iOnly one way to find out,\i she thought as she picked up the phone.\s \s\t \t\a147Hello Margret, this is Kathryn. I just got done reading Kent's email and it sounds like we are going to be working together.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147It would appear so.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I have some assistants working with me on this to help coordinate all of the details. Perhaps we should all get together for lunch and make certain everyone knows what everyone else is doing?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147A restaurant is probably not the best place for such a meeting,\a148 responded Margret.\s \s\t \t\a147I was thinking you could come over to our offices and I would have lunch catered. There is a great little Italian place which delivers here and we will probably need access to overhead projectors, white boards, etc.\a148 responded Kathryn. \a147How does tomorrow at 11:30 sound? If we allow for two hours that should be more than enough time to cover everything.\a148\s \s\t \t\iTwo hours to tell me what your subcontractor is doing? You really do know how to work it!\i thought Margret. She looked at her calendar and it was open, so she agreed. \iIf nothing else, at least I'll get a lunch.\i Kent had been bellying up to the free lunch trough since he got here. The only free lunches Margret got were catered in conference rooms during working meetings. Kent usually stopped by long enough to get some food. God forbid he actually participate in the details of his project. Margret wondered whether she was going to be shown the same tits and legs Kent had been drooling over, or if there was going to be something provided for the straight side of her life.\s \s\t \tKathryn finished out her day meeting the team that had gone to Bangalore. They were all positive about the experience, mainly because they had stayed on the campus and few had ventured out into the squalor of the surrounding streets. They did report some of the contractors treated them like idiots and beverage fetchers while they were working, but that everything had been installed, and reports from the U.S. systems managers made it look like everything was a go. They had even tested both a full month-end and quarter-end job cycle, so all jobs would run. The remote printers and email had been blocked to capture the output and avoid a nasty media story.\s \s\t \tJudging from the sheepish grins she saw and some of the meeting comments, at least a few of the guys had ventured over to the red-light district. Kathryn made a mental note to get them terminated before they got diagnosed with full-blown AIDS or passed it on to some of their female coworkers here. Nothing would kill the \a147sex for sale\a148 marketing tactic like an outbreak of AIDS at the firm. She had seen the reports about how over 80 percent of the brothel girls had full-blown AIDS and were still working. Anyone who did the math could see that shipping IT jobs over to India would effectively halve the population inside of a decade. \s \s\t \tIT workers were paid more in a day than other workers made in a week. The culture there was such that you didn't need a big house or any car to have prestige, so the male workers spent much of their money in the red-light district. This was the main reason they had partnered rather than buying outright. Inside of seven years the bulk of the IT workforce would begin dying off from AIDS. Already there had been some quickly hushed reports from companies that had been there the longest. Few still had any senior people. To hide the truth, everybody blamed it on talent poaching. The talent poaching scam worked pretty well given the 200 percent plus turnover rate most companies had. Still, it was only a matter of time before the truth started coming out.\s \s\t \tOne day ended and another began. Kathryn had a morning meeting with some of the upper management types at her firm and actually had the gumption to mention that they should begin partnering with an offshore firm or two in South Korea and in Russia. China was already being priced out of the market with Wal-Mart and other companies setting up factory towns. The influx of cash had Chinese companies and the various Chinese mobs snatching up IT workers as fast as they could be found. There were still places in Russia and Poland where college education was almost as high as the poverty and land was cheap.\s \s\t \tThe first reaction from some of the management had been they didn't have the Indian operation turning a profit yet. Other companies had tried going the Russian route and failed. Kathryn responded that offshoring wasn't being marketed then, so it was unfair to judge by that history. Back then you had a major uphill battle to sell offshoring. Now all you had to do was be cheap.\s \s\t \tPerhaps it was the fact she had overslept. Perhaps it was the fact she was now going to be making more money than some in this room. Maybe it was simply because she had to deal with the coffee from the cafeteria this morning instead of her usual nine-dollar quart of heaven, due to oversleeping. Kathryn pulled out the documentation showing the epidemic rate of AIDS at the brothels. Then she went into the story that most of the single male IT workers spent their extra cash in the red-light district. Finally, she dropped the bomb that she suspected several of the male twenty-somethings they had sent over to India had visited the brothels near their campus.\s \s\t \tPeople were getting irate with her while she went into her oration. The men assumed this was a severe case of PMS and began doodling on their legal pads, trying to make it look as if they were taking notes. You could have heard a pin drop after she dropped the last bomb, though. Every man in there knew those horny jocks they had hired were swimming in whatever pool they could find. They all knew that the \a147sex for sale\a148 marketing tactic would be decimated if it ever got out that one or more of their barely-old-enough-to-shave crowd went public with AIDS, not to mention the cost of their insurance plan.\s \s\t \tKathryn sat there drinking her nasty coffee from downstairs and let that bomb burn its way through their brains. Finally one of the married guys with absolutely no skills piped up that this was an event horizon they had to consider. Another volunteered that he had two clients with locations already in Russia, so could probably pump them for some information about IT skills in the area near them. One more said they had a manufacturing client in South Korea already and he would make some inquiries there as well. Finally it was determined that they would quietly investigate building operations in all three of the countries Kathryn had mentioned. Even if they didn't lose their entire IT staff every few years in India, the resulting talent drain would push salaries up to the point it was cheaper to do the work in the U.S.\s \s\t \tThe morning meeting ran long, but ended in time for her to check email and round up the troops for their lunch presentation. She wasn't sure why, but she decided to use the guys who had been to India in this meeting. It made sense given that they had just gotten back from there, but she doubted Margret was dumb enough to get turned on once she found out that horny bunch had been to a country with legal brothels and little in the way of health care or prevention.\s \s\t \tMargret arrived right on time. Lunch was just being set out in the conference room and they all stuffed themselves while chit-chatting about quasi-work-related things. The guys had strategically placed themselves around Margret as they had been trained to do and the girls fawned over getting lunch allowing glimpses and brushes. Kathryn still wasn't sure which way Margret's door swung, or if she even had a door. It was difficult to tell.\s \s\t \tOne thing which she made mental note of was Margret's prodding to find out who had ventured outside of the campus in Bangalore. Those who admitted to having gone out at all she suddenly had little interest in. \iThe woman wasn't stupid,\i thought Kathryn. Lunch allowed for the team to provide glowing reports about how the backups had been installed and how well Margret's people worked with them during the process. No real details, but few were needed. Margret had already talked with the systems managers who had done the testing. This was just a little time for mutual appreciation and bonding.\s \s\t \tWith lunch over, the team began showing off the PowerPoint presentation they had put together with a timeline for the migration of the first two data centers. It was going to happen on the following weekend. They kept pointing out the massive bandwidth connection which was set up just to do the final data migration. Margret's own people had written the software that would do the extract of final data changes, then copy it across the network and load it onto the new system. The same software could be run in reverse if a back-out was needed. All in the room assured her it would not be necessary, but that it didn't hurt to have a Plan B.\s \s\t \tIt was obvious to Margret she was being coddled to keep this golden cow putting out golden milk. She was outright pissed that the only guys provided her had been to an AIDS-infested area and she was certain none of them were smart enough to avoid catching it. Her summation of the girls in the room told her three of the five were too stupid to care. In short, this team would soon be moving on in one way or another.\s \s\t \tSince Kathryn had chosen to treat her this way, like a napkin at McDonald's instead of the full table setting at a nice place, she decided to drop a bomb on them and ruin their week. \a147This migration to offshore is all well and good, but you seem to have overlooked a serious recovery issue,\a148 she said. All of the younglings leapt to inform her that the data centers were designed to split load and fail-over just like the existing centers. They also professed to having witnessed the fail-over testing themselves.\s \s\t \tKathryn finally chimed in saying she assured her they had tried to think of everything, but wanted to hear her concern so it could be addressed. \s \s\t \t\a147Well,\a148 started Margret, \a147Every night we do incremental backups and every morning, the prior night's backups are sent to Iron Mountain for storage. The media return in such a manner that we have two full weeks of incremental backups. We also perform weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual backups. Each of those backups goes off to Iron Mountain as soon as it is completed. There is a set of rules in place so we have at least the last three sets of each off-site in secure storage. I don't see anywhere in this plan where we have included the round trip shipping cost of backup media, nor the turnaround time it would take to have the media flown to India and do a full restoration in the event of a disaster.\a148\s \s\t \tThe only sound in the room was that of the ventilation system when Margret finished speaking. Margret looked Kathryn directly in the eye and waited for a response. She knew there wasn't one, but wanted to see the tap dance. After waiting for a minute while Kathryn began looking through some documentation saying she was sure they had it covered and others sputtering assurances, Margret dropped her other bomb.\s \s\t \t\a147In order to qualify for FDIC insurance, we cannot have a recovery period which is longer than twelve hours. The flight from the closest coast to India is over fourteen hours, and that doesn't include restoration or testing time.\a148\s \s\t \t\iNothing like hitting someone with the two-by-four of a federal regulation right between the eyes after you've eaten their food,\i thought Margret.\s \s\t \tKathryn made a mental note to never offer Margret tainted nookie again when trying to coddle her. This girl didn't play slow pitch or croquet, she was fast-pitch hardball all the way. The \a147barely old enough to shave\a148 crowd was no help to her now. Time to cry uncle.\s \s\t \t\a147I'm sure we addressed this issue at a high level, but now that the project is moving forward, perhaps we need to get into more detail and ensure there will be no problems going forward,\a148 said Kathryn with a slight emphasis on \a147going forward.\a148 If you are free this evening I would like to schedule a meeting with yourself and our Data Storage & Recovery Team.\s \s\t \tMargret was pretty certain that \a147team\a148 was going to be formed about five minutes after this meeting got over, but she responded saying that she would have to check her calendar once back in the office. They would not be able to get into too much detail without Margret bringing in her existing systems managers because they would have to sign off on any BRP (business recovery plan) put into place.\s \s\t \tThere was a special spring to Margret's step when she left Big Four Consulting that day. She knew very well that she had no plans tonight other than staying late to get caught up on some paperwork. Had Kathryn bothered to do any of her own research when putting the plan together, she would have been able to shoot Margret out of the saddle. Yes, there was a rule claiming you couldn't have outages and a catastrophic event had to be recovered from inside of twelve hours, but as long as your secondary data center could handle the full business load you had quite a bit of time to get your primary data center restored. Margret simply wanted the same four-star treatment upper management got.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tNedim had not heard from John since he had sent the fax. In an odd way they had been best friends. The past three weeks had been mentally grueling for Nedim. His cousin and his friend were still living with him. Umar, who was using the cover of being his cousin from Saudi Arabia, had even joined his mosque and gotten invited into the private discussions on the Holy Quran with Nedim's cleric. The only time he was actually \a147free\a148 of them was when he went to work. He dared not attempt to contact John again, but he really needed to know John had gotten away. Nedim was certain he would not live long enough to see John again.\s \s\t \tA heightened interest in the email exchanges from a pair of addresses had Nedim worried. He could tell from the content of the messages that something was going to happen soon. He had even tried to not translate all of the messages. Soon, the men stopped asking him for translations. They just had him printing out the results. While they still had some things copied off to CD, most of the messages were simply translated and printed. He had been printing enough that his printer was starting to have issues.\s \s\t \t\iThat's it!\i\s \s\t \tHe still had the support contract with the company where John worked. Both of his \a147roommates\a148 had even complained about his printer acting up recently. John was in charge of his account. He could log a ticket with them and see who responded. If the response didn't come from John, he would at least know he had gotten away.\s \s\t \tNedim returned home after work and began his ritual of processing email. When it came time to print, his printer started acting up right on cue. Both roommates complained. Nedim opened up the file containing his support contract information and went to the Web site. After keying in his customer ID and password he was allowed to enter a new trouble ticket. He ran the applet which gathered all of the information about his system configuration and driver versions and attached the file to the trouble ticket. He informed his roommates that if the problem was in the driver or other software he had, he would have a fix before tomorrow. \s \s\t \tRamesh made a note to have the team purchase another printer. Once a cheap ink-jet printer started having problems, it tended to go straight to Hell. This printer was a Brother printer; the absolute bottom of the industry. Ramesh was surprised it had lasted the past three weeks, let alone however long Nedim had been using it. One thing was certain in Ramesh's mind: \iProducts with the Brother name plate were condoms - Use once and dispose of properly.\i\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tKent sat in a very fine restaurant in Paris. The IT workers in this location were giving him the royal treatment trying to hang onto their jobs. Given that some of the board members liked to vacation in France, Kent had put this data center as the last one on the list before the central two. The bank was still going to have to keep some kind of offices here so board members could take \a147business trips\a148 to France. These trips always coincided with the start of their vacations, but thankfully neither the shareholders nor the IRS had called them on it.\s \s\t \tPrior to lunch, Kent had asked each of the department heads to come up with a migration plan for this division of the bank to use the existing bank system rather than the one their bank currently used. The deadline for them to get it to him was Friday. They had complained that all of the work currently being done in the existing system wouldn't allow them time to prepare such a migration plan. Kent told them to stop all work on the system and to begin mapping the data for load into First Global Bank's existing system.\s \s\t \tWhat Kent didn't know was they had already done this work a year ago at Margret's request. They had a list of business rules that must be added to First Global Bank's system before it could be used, but the bulk of the data mapping was already in place. They would have to spend less than a day updating it. In effect, Kent had given them the rest of the week off when he put in writing no further work was to occur on the system they supported. Most spent the rest of the day updating their r\a233sum\a233s and talking with family on the phone. Nobody there was stupid enough to believe they still had a job.\s \s\t \tKent's real reason for going on this trip was to get everyone putting together a plan to migrate their systems into the primary system used by the original bank. He was visiting the data centers in reverse migration order so if the migration project came in late, he would be able to pitch the \a147world view\a148 project to the board as the natural completion. Kent hadn't bothered to read any of the documentation Margret had emailed him prior to contracting with Big Four Consulting to do the data center migrations. If he had, the data center migration project wouldn't be happening at all.\s \s\t \tNow he sat in a very fine restaurant drinking very fine wine and eating very fine food. Only the heads of this bank division were at the table, and they were sparing no expense. They all knew Kent presented projects to the board. Everyone at the table was wondering just how long they were going to have a job. They were only too happy to agree when he said they had to schedule a training session on how to use the main system for First Global Bank. He told them to contact Margret and obtain a pair of trainers from her. All of their employees needed to be trained by the end of next month. Kent had no idea if the system could be cut over in that time frame, but he intended to make them fear for their livelihoods. There were several other sites Kent wanted to see in France before moving on to the next location and he didn't expect to pay a dime to see them.\s \s\t \tTactically, it would have made more sense to have had this location migrated first. It had the highest cost of operation in the company. Because of the lax work attitude in France, they had twice the operations and programming staff of any division. Payroll and other worker-related taxes paid here by the bank were astronomical. If they really could simply cut over, Kent would be able to eliminate all but one IT person here and sell off all of the computer equipment along with the building the data center was in. Real estate prices had risen in this area and they could ask a premium for a fully equipped data center. \s \s\t \tKent assigned the task of getting the data center up for sale to the VP in charge of business real estate mortgages. The head of IT simply looked at his plate as if it were his last meal. Kent saw this out of the corner of his eye and got an erection from the power rush. He then changed the conversation to what sounded like small talk, dropping in hints of what he wanted to see before leaving. Every VP at the table, except the VP of IT, volunteered to take him as their guest. \iAhhh \a133 It's good to be King!\i Kent thought.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tNikolaus was sitting at his desk going over reports on freezer construction and existing freezer utilization when his phone rang. The voice on the other end told him the interrogators were finished with the two occupants of the first camp. As instructed, the person calling Nikolaus informed the interrogators they could just go home and everything would be handled. Nikolaus told the caller to transfer the prisoners.\s \s\t \tAs soon as he hung up the phone, Nikolaus picked up a disposable cell phone and called a special number. When they answered and exchanged pass phrases, Nikolaus told them to assemble the teams; there was a transfer in progress.\s \p\X1\c\l\BThen You Find a Hill\B\l\X1 \c\s\t \tKathryn sat in the main conference room for this location of Big Four Consulting. This time, she wasn't the one pitching, but the one being sold. Well, sold wasn't exactly it. A vendor was launching a new project and had just opened up the marketing war chest. Big Four Consulting was being paid to sell this product, so a more accurate statement would be Kathryn was being instructed on what she was to sell.\s \s\t \tPytho Corporation had just expanded its ERP product into a complete banking product. They weren't happy with having the world's most unreliable, yet best-selling database. They wanted more. Every Big Four Consulting account manager in the room was being given a box of CDs containing PowerPoint slides and marketing PDF files on how to sell this product. The heads of sales were handing out their cards and shaking hands. They paid very special attention to the three people on the other side of the room as those three people came from the Langston Group.\s \s\t \tKathryn had to laugh at the phrase \a147industry analyst.\a148 These people analyzed nothing. They were all given a folder with a printed document and a CD with a Word file of the same document. The document was a marketing article carefully written to sound like an analyst report. Margret knew that the English majors working at Big Four Consulting had spent about a week writing that article, but when it appeared in the Langston Group's private newsletter it was going to have only these three listed in the byline.\s \s\t \tThe industry had turned a blind eye to the incestuous relationship that spawned its leaders these days. Now that management had taken over the IT world, the leaders were pretty much a result of inbreeding just like other areas of management. It really was a self-sustaining machine.\s \s\t \t\a147Industry analyst\a148 groups would provide their insight only to IT leaders whose companies not only subscribed to their service, but promised to follow their advice. In return, IT leaders found themselves featured in industry trade rags any time they implemented something the analysts claimed was cutting edge. This allowed the IT leaders to be covertly marketed to other companies who wanted to obtain great IT leaders. \s \s\t \tOf course, the leaders at major IT vendors all subscribed to the service. This allowed them to write articles for the analysts that would be featured in the newsletter and magazine. These vendors also paid big consulting firms to train a few of their account people as experts for marketing purposes and a few more as technical experts. For a fee, and a cut of the sale, the big consulting firms would then pitch the product as the be-all and end-all to their clients' needs. This had been going on so long in the industry it was now considered an accepted practice. \s \s\t \tThe weekly trade press was at the mercy of the \a147industry analysts.\a148 Whenever advertising revenue fell off they would run an article or three questioning the credibility of the firms, but never actually do anything close to investigative journalism. They relied too heavily on the money the \a147industry analysts\a148 spent promoting service subscribers in their magazines. Of course, they couldn't grumble too loudly or report too accurately. If that happened, the \a147industry analysts\a148 would contact all of their subscribers and the entire stream of advertising revenue would cease to flow. Weekly trade rags went out of business when they went up against the \a147industry analysts.\a148\s \s\t \tKathryn had to hand it to the Langston Group. They had turned fraud into an art. Most of the analysts drove really nice rides that were leased for them by the IT vendors, so there was never a money trail showing on the books. They could open up their books and show clear lines of demarcation between marketing and analyst efforts. The analysts themselves took their perks in leased cars, information junkets, and outright paid vacations, all on the sly. How they could stand there and claim \a147Holier Than Thou\a148 to the \a147sex for sale\a148 marketing tactic of big consulting companies Kathryn would never understand. \iMaybe they were really born without a soul,\i she thought.\s \s\t \tOnce the presentation was over, Kathryn and the Langston Group analysts were offered lunch. The restaurant was four-star so Kathryn accepted. She had no illusion as to why she was being given the full treatment. She held the account of First Global Bank. This vendor needed to land that account and get the bank to announce a glowing report on the software. The \a147industry analysts\a148 had a better lunch engagement, so they had to bow out.\s \s\t \tAt the restaurant there was the usual small talk about the product and how game-changing it was. When the vendor was buying, their product was always game-changing. Kathryn decided to twist the knife just a little, stating that the presentation didn't seem to cover much on the international flavor of the product. She was quickly assured that Pytho had spared no expense in making the product multi-lingual. From what Kathryn saw in the presentation this product was about as multi-lingual as Microsoft's operating system was multi-platform. You could use this product in any country you wanted as long as you spoke English. You could run Microsoft's operating system on any computer you wanted, so long as it was a x86 clone and not a real computer.\s \s\t \tSince they didn't understand the gist of Kathryn's dig, she expanded on it by saying, \a147I was thinking more along the lines of international mortgage and banking laws. If I'm going to pitch this product to my client it must be certified to conform to all of the mortgage and banking laws in all of the countries where they do business. To start with, that would be Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, and Germany. I assume you've already had a team of auditors verify it conforms to the banking laws for passbook savings and mortgages in the United States.\a148\s \s\t \tThere was a lot of smiles and silence at the table as Kathryn took another drink of wine. Pytho Software hadn't bothered with testing for any countries other than Canada and the United States. At the time of development they were figuring on gradually handling the other countries. Then again, the Asian financial crisis hadn't happened until the middle of development and it was too late to change course. Now the one client they wanted had operations in many countries. Kathryn had them by the nads and everybody at the table knew it.\s \s\t \tAn awkward silence continued for quite a few minutes as Kathryn continued eating her meal. \iAlways drop a bomb like that after food is served,\i Kathryn thought. \iIt gives you something to do while they squirm. Damn, I'm good at this!\i\s \s\t \tJust prior to the check arriving, the leader of the pack stated, \a147We would like to retain your services for a globalization project.\a148\s \s\t \tKathryn responded, \a147I will have to talk it over with my boss. I'm supposed to remain completely dedicated to the First Global Bank account until we complete our work there. What you really need me to do for you is to assemble the team that will provide you the banking rules for each country you target and provide testers to ensure those rules are met. If you complete such a project inside of a year, I can present your product to my client. Such an effort will not be cheap and my client would be expecting an amazing deal if they are going to be the first company to use this product out of the gate. You would in no way recoup your development costs on the first sale, it would probably take ten sales just to recover this new effort before you could start recovering your prior investment.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Understood,\a148 replied the leader. \s \s\t \tKathryn couldn't remember any of their names and hadn't bothered to write on their cards so she had to make one last gesture before owning this account. \a147If you have the authority to sign or present such a deal to your board, please give me another one of your cards so I may pass it onto my boss. He will then contact you when we have a number and a plan for you.\a148 Without any hesitation Kathryn was handed a card. \s \s\t \t\a147Well, this lunch has been quite productive I think,\a148 said Kathryn. \a147I had planned to spend my lunch hour at the Mercedes dealer down the street from the office pricing out a new car, but I think my time was better spent here.\a148 Yes, it was an evil knife to twist, but Kathryn decided she should have the same perks as the industry analysts. A look from the leader to one of the others at the table brought the response Kathryn had intended to get.\s \s\t \t\a147If you don't have plans after work I would be happy to go there with you. Our company has a leasing arrangement with Mercedes Corporate so I'm sure we can get a very special deal for you.\a148\s \s\t \tKathryn could already smell the new leather of her convertible Mercedes.\s \s\t \tBack at the office Kathryn quickly informed her boss about the details of the lunch, sans the new Mercedes detail. He called in a few account reps who had clients doing auditing work in the countries in question. A task list of phone calls to make and numbers to obtain was passed out. True to her word, Kathryn handed over the business card. When the others had left the room Kathryn's boss said: \a147Another whale like this and you will be in line for senior partner.\a148 Kathryn smiled and went back to her desk, waiting for the phone to ring. The man buying her a new car was supposed to call at 4:30.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tA panel van arrived at the second camp late in the afternoon. Both the special security team and the lab technician team had arrived earlier. Special security escorted the van to a special pilot plant building at the back of the campus. There were no windows in this building and it had special sound-absorbing insulation inside.\s \s\t \tThe two occupants in the back had recently been released from the interrogation camp and now were to be disposed of. The foreign interrogators believed the subjects were going to be sent to an isolated prison where no records would be kept. What they thought didn't really matter. In a few hours, there would be no evidence these men ever existed.\s \s\t \tNikolaus was somewhat saddened that both were men. He had hoped to get the place fully operational, but they needed female subjects for that to happen. There would be little profit in the disposal of these two, but he would see how the team functioned. As a trial run, two was an adequate number. The security team would remain outside of the building making sure nobody entered until the products were created and the bodies taken to the incinerator; he was not worried about them. He was worried about the lab technicians. They had the dirty work and might not be up for it.\s \s\t \tIn the 1960s researchers first discovered that bone marrow contains at least two kinds of stem cells. One population, called hematopoietic stem cells, form all types of blood cells in the body. Years later they also discovered bone marrow stromal cells, which generate bone, cartilage, fat, and fibrous connective tissue. While the press was all blushing with news about stem-cell research, most were focusing on embryonic stem cells. There was a thriving black market for the other stem cells, and complete bone marrow itself. Some diseases could be cured only with a bone marrow transplant. \s \s\t \tThe blood type and DNA of these two had been documented when they were received at the interrogation camp. There had been plenty of time to find very wealthy people who needed both, and could use what these two had to offer. Tonight two of them would have donor material air lifted to their hospitals. All of the bone marrow would be removed from these two men, once the saline pump had replaced all of their blood with saline solution. Their blood was to be harvested and sold on the blood market as well. At some point the men would expire. Once everything had been harvested, they would be incinerated. It was a shame no wealthy customers could use the other internal organs. Black market hearts were worth twice their weight in gold. Liver and kidneys sold well normally, but the blood tests had to match.\s \s\t \tNikolaus needed to see how the lab techs handled this. If any of them wavered, the special security unit would have to put them down and incinerate their bodies. The team was too new to be asked to harvest one of their own. Many of the techs were loyal party members who had been groomed for exactly this task since birth. They were taught the party philosophy before they even went to school. Once they were in high school and interested in medicine, they were all made an offer. College would be a free ride, but you had to pass and work for the party. Technically, they didn't have to graduate. They had to know their way around a body, but they didn't need any skill at saving lives.\s \s\t \tTwo separate options were available to women prisoners if their ovaries were still working. They would be allowed to live in the special, highly secured dorm, fertilized every other month and have an abortion on the following month, until they stopped producing eggs. This option was available only to the ones who cooperated. Those who didn't cooperate would simply have their ovaries harvested while blood and bone marrow were being harvested. The lab techs would fertilize as many eggs as they could from the ovaries, then harvest the stem cells. Nikolaus left it up to the technicians as to how the fertilization was to occur. Parentage didn't matter in this endeavor.\s \s\t \tOne thing was still nagging at Nikolaus. These two men had been found as a result of the post-September 11 investigations. Their email had led to Nedim. Reporters had been sniffing around in various countries trying to get leads on investigations or clandestine efforts to hunt down al-Qaeda. They had lost the scent of these two long ago. All records of their having been followed, arrested, or questioned had been purged completely \a151 so completely it was no longer even on off-site backup media. What was bothering Nikolaus was an email from Hans telling him reporters were sniffing around in Pakistan and seemed to believe some clandestine operation had a mole handling email for al-Qaeda. Nikolaus had left the handling of it up to Hans and the man in the suit; they could kill the reporters or let it play out. If they killed the reporters, it needed to look like al-Qaeda did it.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tHeidi donned her nursing fatigues and set about to start the saline exchange. The pump they were using was the same pump funeral homes used to embalm bodies. During her nurse's training she actually had to work in the morgue for a while. The only thing different about this was the body strapped to the table was still alive. Oddly, it was that training which made her most suited for this job.\s \s\t \tShe looked over and saw Nikolaus looking through the room's observation window. A smile showed from behind her surgical mask. He recognized her and smiled back. Nikolaus and her father had been friends forever. They were both loyal party members and she had been raised to be a loyal party member. Her nurse's training had been paid for by the party. As part of her payback and continued training, she had worked as a nurse in various military medical units and served as a med tech for some clandestine ones. She had seen first-hand the carnage caused by explosives, and had no problem with what they were doing.\s \s\t \tHeidi knew the history of al-Qaeda on her soil. Germans had been hunting them long before the Americans started killing them wholesale. The Americans really didn't get into it until after 9/11. Yes, they had done some monitoring, and even launched a botched attempt to kill bin Laden prior to 9/11, but they got involved too late. Had the Americans shared their information with the people in her party, bin Laden wouldn't still be walking around. Her party had some of the best trained assassins in the world.\s \s\t \tFrom the history Heidi knew, al-Qaeda had begun operating in her country some time in 1992. They had a cell in Hamburg that had defied being rooted out by normal criminal means, and had turned out to be the source for most of the 9/11 hijackers, or had at least selected and educated them. In 1994 al-Qaeda had killed two German intelligence agents because they were trying to dismantle the operations al-Qaeda had in Germany. After that event, the Reformed Nazi Party started getting a lot more influential members.\s \s\t \tIn 1995 German intelligence identified a suspected leader of a Hamburg cell and found the Twaik Group was a front company for Saudi intelligence. Several members of Saudi intelligence were suspected of being in the pocket of al-Qaeda and funneling millions through this front into the hands of al-Qaeda. The Hamburg cell leader was accused of not only financing 9/11, but helping to select the hijackers.\s \s\t \tIn 1996 the Germans began going after the Hamburg cell in earnest after receiving a tip from Turkey. They began monitoring the mosque where the 9/11 hijackers attended and the radical Moroccan imam Nedim Fazazi preached.\s \s\t \tIn 1998 the Germans arrested Mamdouh Mahmud Salim (a.k.a. Abu Hajer) in connection with the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Africa. He was later called \a147head of bin Laden's computer operations and weapons procurement.\a148 Shortly thereafter, the CIA and German police foiled an airplane bomb plot in which al-Qaeda had penetrated airport security in Amsterdam and planned to smuggle bombs into the cargo holds of American passenger planes.\s \s\t \tAfter 9/11, the world found out about the Hamburg cell. Heidi's party got a lot more funding and a lot fewer inquiries from government officials about their activities. Everyone knew what had to be done, and they were willing to keep their distance in case the world didn't quite understand.\s \s\t \tHeidi had no illusions about what was going to happen here. They were going to kill these two men, and harvest salable components for market. As more subjects came through here, the cash influx would allow them to launch larger initiatives. Covert operations funding had been good enough to get them this far, but you needed serious funding to carry out work of the magnitude which had to happen.\s \s\t \tThis train of thought was interrupted by Lisa touching her arm. \a147They're still alive,\a148 Lisa whispered. \s \s\t \t\a147Not for long,\a148 responded Heidi. \s \s\t \t\a147I wasn't told about this,\a148 Lisa whispered nervously. \a147I'm a surgical nurse, not a murderer.\a148\s \s\t \tLisa, this girl, was a real piece of work. Heidi had told Nikolaus not to bring her into this operation. When people heard Heidi's name they instantly conjured up an image of a blue-eyed, blond sex toy. Heidi's hair was somewhat blond and her eyes a shade of blue, but she was a long way from a sex toy. Lisa was the complete image of a sex toy. She was doing a senior party member and claimed to be a loyal party member herself, but she really just wanted to sleep her way to a better station in life. If she kept up talking like this she would be tossed into the incinerator tonight.\s \s\t \t\a147Just continue your work and keep your mouth shut,\a148 responded Heidi. \a147With power comes the responsibility of doing what has to be done.\a148\s \s\t \tLisa nervously went over to begin prepping her tray. While Nikolaus could not hear the exchange he had noticed it and Lisa's reaction. One look in Heidi's eyes told him what he needed to know. The first washout was in the room.\s \s\t \tThere were times when Heidi wished she looked like Lisa, but only times. She had her share of lovers in life. Better to call them sex partners, for they were never really in love, nor was she. They exchanged laughs and orgasms when circumstances allowed, but rarely kept in touch. One notable exception had been during an operation involving some Americans. She had heard one of the Americans refer to her as a \a147closing time gal.\a148 Another had joked the other could always \a147go ugly early and get a good night's sleep.\a148 Beauty was not her forte. She could look good, but never be beautiful, and she had come to terms with that.\s \s\t \tStill, one of the Americans had chosen to take the advice. They kept in touch for quite a few years after that. He was kind and funny. She laughed a lot with him and was all too willing to sleep with him. Sex with him had really caused Heidi to call into question that whole \a147Aryan Supremacy\a148 thing. He was dark-skinned, not black. More of a Hispanic or American Indian descent that had been intermingled with whites for many generations. In bed, he was a ride on the multi-orgasm express. Had the party ordered her to have as many babies as she could with him she would have done it with gusto!\s \s\t \tLife gives and life takes away. One day the letters to Heidi simply stopped. She had written a time or two after that, but received no reply. Oddly enough, it was the guy who had called her a \a147closing time gal\a148 who wrote her back some months later to say her lover had been killed in a firefight. He was very sorry to be the one to tell her because his squad buddy seemed very happy with her. He gave her some contact information and told her the squad would always look out for her. If she was ever in trouble, they would come and get her because the squad takes care of its own. The last line had been the one which ripped her heart out. She had been with her lover only three weeks, but on the second night they all treated her like a lady. Now, when they had no further obligation to her, they made the largest commitment anyone in clandestine service can make. They claimed her as one of their own.\s \s\t \tHeidi noticed the blood was about to overflow its container. She quickly switched containers and checked the patient for life signs. No pulse. She turned on the pump and signaled the surgeons to start work. In a few minutes she would be draining the second patient.\s \s\t \tAll color drained from Lisa's face as the surgeons began removing the major bones like a lumber jack felling a tree. She dropped whatever she had in her hand and tried to run out of the building. The last Heidi saw of her was a pair of special security guys grabbing her, gagging her, and taking her out. Heidi knew that was the last she would ever see of Lisa. She wondered how Nikolaus was going to explain it to the party member Lisa had been sleeping with.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tJohn had been quite busy over the past few months. Despite the determination of India's upper classes to keep wages down, he had gotten a raise and was now training new hires at his data center. The second building to house programmers had been completed, or at least completed enough that they were starting to bring on development staff. His boss had left most of the interviewing and new hire selection up to him.\s \s\t \tHe had sent multiple messages out to the cells he communicated with for them to send IT professionals to him. He could almost ensure the people would get in as long as their paperwork was in order and they wouldn't quibble about the low wages. It had been a hard sell. The leaders were unwilling to compromise such a crucial communications backbone. John had promised to train another, but said he needed the people now. They were extremely reluctant until he told them his plan. The following week he hired seven al-Qaeda members. Some of them had just returned from working under H1-B Visa status in the U.S. financial district. They were not allowed to know he also was a member. One week later John had a new temporary roommate he began training on how to process email.\s \s\t \tNot long after this, John began hearing rumors that some of the workers were trying to unionize. He had heard of unions springing up in other areas of the country and that a few locations around this one had even become union shops. This scared John to no end. If upper management heard the rumors, security would be tightened dramatically and his plan could never be carried out. He sent several communications back to the cell leaders for them to relay to their members working for him. They had to crush the union at all costs if this plan was to succeed. There were now only three data centers left to migrate. Within eight months more than one-third of the world's wealth would be controlled by the systems in his care. Two of the programmers working in the data center had already written software to generate electronic transfers as part of a migration fix for the client. These programmers had come from the financial district in New York, so they knew how to perform wire transfers. With some slight modifications they were certain it could be used to transfer all of the funds from all of the systems if they had access to all of the systems. They simply couldn't risk a union fight now.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tRamesh returned to headquarters with the smudgy printouts from Nedim's. He told the man in the suit that they needed to put a new printer at Nedim's if they wanted better results. The man pointed and said, \a147Take that one.\a148 After finishing his report to the team, Ramesh dutifully boxed up the printer along with some extra ink cartridges and a driver CD.\s \s\t \tOnce back at Nedim's, he installed the printer, taking his old one out to the trash down the street. He got the drivers installed and tested out the printing function. \a147Much better!\a148 he told himself.\s \s\t \tShortly after the installation process, Nedim returned home with his other shadow. They both wondered what Ramesh was up to until they saw the new printer. \a147Where did you get that?\a148 Umar queried. \s \s\t \t\a147Don't ask,\a148 replied Ramesh. All considered that enough conversation on the topic.\s \s\t \tNedim sat down to process email for his shadows. He knew that eventually he would be killed, but at least he now had a better printer. They laughed when Nedim opened the response from his technical support service saying they believed he had a hardware problem. Things progressed in a rather boring manner until Nedim came across one email with special phrases he had not told the others about. He took a deep breath and said, \a147I guess it is good you brought that printer today.\a148 His shadows looked at him confused. \a147This is a courier pickup to happen two days from now.\a148\s \s\t \tOutrage gripped both men and raised voices came out with all kinds of accusations and statements about Nedim's physical relationship with his mother. Finally, when they simmered down, he looked at them and said: \a147There hasn't been a courier pickup in over two years. I didn't tell you about it because I thought we were done with that. They stopped happening once everyone embraced the anonymity of email and hidden FTP sites. The instructions tell me to print out all of the information in the file you took yesterday. I am also supposed to add Google aerial maps of the location along with MapQuest driving maps. I am to put it all in a binder, then give it to the person who asks for it on the way to work.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We will have to add a tail to him,\a148 both shadows said in unison.\s \s\t \t\a147One thing is certain, you won't be able to follow me closely for a couple of days,\a148 responded Nedim. \a147This may be a simple way for them to kill me. They could have learned about you by now and decided to use this as a ruse so a killer can get close.\a148\s \s\t \tNeither shadow had considered that possibility. The team would need to call in some resources and spread them around the path Nedim took to work. They would also need to obtain a small courier shoulder bag. It would be the easiest thing to hide a transmitter in. They couldn't risk a voice bug, but a passive location tag that could be tracked by either satellite or hand scanners would allow them to follow the path the documents took, at least until they ditched the bag.\s \s\t \tNedim began printing out the documents from yesterday's file and visiting the map sites to obtain the correct images to print. He knew from experience he needed to print at least four copies of the maps so others could draw on them while making plans. They wouldn't have a copy machine in the mountains. He also started moving the images and files into a directory so he could burn a CD to go along with the documents. They might have a laptop with a solar charger up there in the mountains.\s \s\t \tRamesh raced back to headquarters. A report of this magnitude could not wait. They would need enough team members to cover the nearly two mile walk to where Ramesh worked. They would also need a cheap courier bag from one of the local vendors, then get the locater tag sewn into it., andprobably put two or four tags in the bag near some corners so if one failed or was found they could still keep tracking the bag.\s \s\t \tThe team was somewhat shocked to hear there would be a courier pickup. All members at headquarters expressed outrage this had not been discovered earlier. Ramesh told them Nedim said a courier hadn't been used in over two years since everyone had gone online. He included Nedim's worry that they may have been found out and this was nothing more than an assassination attempt. There was quite a bit of silence in the room when that bomb was dropped. \s \s\t \tA lot of pain and effort had gone into working Nedim. While there were still some doubters on the team, he had been a treasure trove of information about al-Qaeda's ongoing activities. The flow of email and the ping server had allowed them to put tracking teams on twenty-seven different cells in just a few short weeks. With the notable exception of the Lutton cell, all of the highly active cells were about to be taken down. Some would be arrested and interrogated, others were to simply be killed. A ten-member cell had a senior bomb maker coming to its location to train newbies in how to make bombs. It seemed like a waste to arrest that cell when you needed only a small blast to set off a bigger blast. One small grenade launched through a window once they started blending the components would take care of everybody in the house without leveling the block.\s \s\t \tFinally, someone in the room voiced the one question others were thinking: \a147How could they have found us?\a148 \s \s\t \t\a147They didn't find us,\a148 responded Hans. \a147They found what they believe is a weak link.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Do we have a leak?\a148 asked the man in the suit.\s \s\t \t\a147No,\a148 responded Hans. \a147We have reporters.\a148\s \s\t \tEverybody turned to look at Hans once he dropped that bomb.\s \s\t \tSomehow the BBC had gotten a lead that Pakistani intelligence had turned an al-Qaeda operative and was now exploiting him. They had been working every connection they had trying to get further information.\s \s\t \t\a147Don't look at me,\a148 said the Brit.\s \s\t \t\a147Relax, it wasn't you,\a148 Hans continued. They got this lead in America, which leads me to believe someone in an American intelligence agency was feeling unloved. They pointed them at Pakistani intelligence and gave them a vague story because that is all they had. We are clean \a151 for now \a151 but we need to make sure all of the arrest paperwork is filed and doesn't have any of our names on it. They are just about a week away from forcing this story to break.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I thought we only had to worry about CNN,\a148 the Brit asked.\s \s\t \t\a147CNN hasn't hired a journalist in twenty years,\a148 the man in the suit retorted. \a147They take what we give them and only ask for enough to fill the space between commercials. We should have paid more attention to what the BBC was doing here.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Doesn't matter now,\a148 said Hans. \a147We can follow the courier and once the cell raids happen we will have more computers to search. Another communications center will turn up. We knew this well would be pumped dry at some point. It has been a long time since we found a courier, though.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Agreed,\a148 responded the man in the suit. \a147I will take care of the paperwork filing. You three take care of obtaining a document bag. You two take care of bringing in mechanics for a tail. Odds are this will be a multi-drop transfer. We probably won't be able to get much, if anything, from the first leg of the journey. Once the journey is complete, or we lose the trail, we can round up the various mules for interrogation.\a148\s \s\t \tHans knew exactly what that last statement meant. \iWe\i were going to round them up so they could go to the camp. He had received word from the party that the second camp had been activated, but to make it fully operational they needed a few women. A courier-nabbing operation was bound to put at least one woman in the second camp. Most of the couriers wouldn't spend more than a day or two at the first camp. Al-Qaeda couriers worked on the \a147next hop\a148 principle. They knew only the person they got the information from and the person who got it next. Usually, they didn't even know a name, just a location and a description of something the person would be wearing. You found out where the information was going only if you caught the last courier in the chain.\s \s\t \tIslamic extremists were outright stupid in Hans' mind. It didn't matter how much college education they had or how many infidels they killed, they would always remain stupid. This stupidity stood out predominantly in their treatment and views of women. The extremists treated women as little more than cum receptacles. They were supposed to remain illiterate, quiet, and out of sight. They were a necessary evil for producing sons, and nothing more. Woe to the woman whose first child was a girl.\s \s\t \tThese very same people had no problem whatsoever with letting pregnant women strap bombs to themselves and blow up buses. Besides becoming martyrs, women were habitually used as links in a courier chain. Because women were not allowed to go out alone, they tended to have their daughters or other women with them when they were carrying messages. This was probably one of the reasons women were to remain illiterate, so they couldn't read the messages they carried.\s \s\t \tHans tried to picture someone telling one of the German women he knew to be subservient. That was just asking to die a slow and painful death, assuming you weren't lucky enough to piss her off so much she killed you instantly.\s \s\t \tNo, al-Qaeda was little more than the scum that grew under the rim of a public toilet and it was long past time to scrub the toilet.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tMargret sat around work after 6:00 PM. She had received an email telling her the Data Storage & Recovery team wanted to meet at 7:30. Since it was a four-star place, Margret decided to tolerate the inconvenience. She had finished the last of the work she wanted to do around 5:30 and was now debating whether to go home and change. Margret had eaten at that restaurant once before. Her normal business attire was probably not going to go unnoticed. True, she had on a suit, and a good suit, but it was a suit. This place traditionally wanted women in evening dresses. She did have several she hadn't yet worn. There was time to go home and change prior to the meeting. She knew her companion for the evening would be changing now. With that, she logged off and left for home.\s \s\t \tYes, Big Four Consulting was going to be buying two meals tonight, and the second meal was going to be a real bitch-slap, literally. Margret had called Carol and told her to read up on FDIC regulations, then to meet her at the restaurant at 7:00 PM so they could talk at the bar for a while. Carol might have been the only female lawyer the bank currently had \a151 well, had before consuming all of the other banks. Margret didn't know any of the other lawyers at the other divisions around the world. Carol had been given the gist of what Margret had dropped on Big Four Consulting and Carol chuckled at hearing it. She had never eaten at the restaurant, but heard it was incredible. She said she might have a surprise for Margret when they met.\s \s\t \tAs Margret changed, she wondered what kind of surprise Carol was talking about. She and Carol hadn't really socialized. They chatted from time to time, but never stopped for drinks after work. Carol had been a key player when it came to contracts for the IT department and she was typically well versed in whatever federal regulation they might be about to bump into. \a147Bump,\a148 laughed Margret. \iWe don't \a147bump\a148 into regulations, we simply choose to ignore them and avoid creating a document trail saying we broke the law.\i In any event, Margret was dressing to the nines and willing to let whatever happened happen tonight.\s \s\t \tMargret arrived at the restaurant roughly the same time Carol got there. She assumed this because Carol was still poking around the bar looking for her when she walked in. No doubt about it, Carol looked hot. It had been a long time since Margret had sampled anything looking that good. They saw each other and Carol came over to Margret.\s \s\t \t\a147You look great!\a148 Carol exclaimed.\s \s\t \t\a147Figured it was time to bring out the big guns on this one,\a148 responded Margret.\s \s\t \t\a147They are definitely some serious artillery,\a148 Carol said without thinking.\s \s\t \tMargret laughed. \a147I'm glad you like them. Let's find a table around here so you can fill me in on what you have found.\a148\s \s\t \tThey quickly found a table out of earshot of the other patrons and ordered a round of drinks. Once the waitress had left, Margret looked at Carol and said: \a147So, tell me what you found.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Your interpretation on the FDIC requirements was pretty accurate when they are taken strictly. Many feel they are more of a guideline, but I have a few contacts who love putting the hurt on big consulting firms.\a148\s \s\t \tThe waitress returned with their drinks and Margret opened a tab with her credit card. Once the waitress had left, Carol opened her leather folder and pulled out a fax from an inspector for the FDIC. It came complete with their letterhead. In a nutshell it stated that while they had been somewhat understanding in the interpretation of this requirement when large scale disasters such as floods and multi-state power outages had struck, they (the FDIC) had no intention of looking the other way when a recovery plan required fourteen hours of flight time during good weather just to get the backup media.\s \s\t \t\a147Well, well, well,\a148 said Margret. \a147Won't this be a major knife in the back if they try to play it down.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Yes it should,\a148 responded Carol, \a147But it isn't the best part. According to regulations, everyone with access to the data center or an account that can complete transactions must be fingerprinted and have a notarized Securities and Exchange Commission pledge on file with their signature.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I wasn't aware of that requirement,\a148 Margret said.\s \s\t \t\a147Most people aren't. It was lightly enforced prior to 9/11, but now they are stepping up the drive to get all paperwork in order. Do you want to hear the best part?\a148\s \s\t \tMargret simply smiled and looked Carol directly in the eye. Carol reached into her leather folder and pulled out another document with the heading \a147Proposed Rule Change 86113B.\a148 It was definitely written in lawyerese, but the gist of it was they were going to make it a requirement for banks receiving FDIC insurance coverage to use only U.S. citizens in their data centers.\s \s\t \t\a147When is this taking effect?\a148 queried Margret.\s \s\t \t\a147Still has to be commented and voted on by the regulatory board. It could be a full-fledged regulation within a year, though. A lot of international banks are lobbying against it, but the FDIC is waving around some documents from the NSA and Congress is talking about expanding the Patriot Act if the FDIC doesn't enact this regulation. Within twelve months it will be either a regulation or a law. A regulation will just cost you a fine and your insurance, a law will send people to jail.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Well, no need for either Kent or Kathryn to know about this little tidbit,\a148 Margret chimed. \a147His signature and those of the board are the ones on the contract.\a148\s \s\t \tCarol got an evil grin on her face and said, \a147Now \ithat\i is a power play!\a148\s \s\t \tThey clinked glasses, finished the drinks, and ordered another round.\s \s\t \t\a147Well, you have handed me quite a surprise tonight, Carol.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Oh, that wasn't the surprise I was talking about on the phone,\a148 responded Carol.\s \s\t \t\a147Oh?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Hubby is watching the kids tonight. I told him we were going to try to drink the consulting budget dry tonight and crash either at your place or a hotel, whichever was close enough to reach by crawling.\a148 \s \s\t \tMargret laughed, \a147That's a plan, not a surprise.\a148\s \s\t \tCarol looked Margret intently in the eyes and said, \a147He doesn't know. He probably never will know. But, I think I read you right, and I think you are OK with the rest of the plan.\a148\s \s\t \tThe waitress showed up with their new drinks. Once she had left, Margret looked Carol in the eyes, raised her glass and said, \a147That definitely sounds like a plan.\a148 They clinked their glasses, drank, and made idle chat while waiting for the consulting firm to arrive.\s \s\t \tAbout half an hour later they were all seated at their table. Kathryn had walked in with a spring in her step and her hair out of place from driving her new Mercedes with the top down. Her spring died quickly when she saw Margret and her companion. Kathryn was still in her business suit, which wasn't showing a lot of leg and the top of which wasn't see through. She knew right then not one of the guys she had brought would be able to tell what color the other ladies' eyes were at the end of the evening.\s \s\t \tKathryn tried to be pleasant and upbeat. Once the meals were ordered, her companions went right into the story about how they had partnered with an offshore version of Iron Mountain providing secure archiving services for documents and backup media. They even tossed out the second lowest fee for the service and wrote it into the contract before Kathryn could begin to cut them off. These guys were thinking with their penises. They didn't even try to put up a fight, which was how they were going to get the higher fee.\s \s\t \tMargret informed the consulting firm that Kent would have to sign the contract since it would require renegotiating with Iron Mountain and transferring all existing backup media pertaining to the migrated data centers. Carol chimed in that the closing of the deal and the transferring of media would have to occur quickly since the FDIC was in the process of cracking down on this very issue. When Kathryn inquired how Carol knew this, she pulled out the fax on the FDIC letterhead and let Kathryn read it. The second communication regarding the proposed regulation change was left in the folder.\s \s\t \tThe wind was really out of Kathryn's sails at this point. She meekly agreed that she would have to make an appointment with Kent next week, when he returns from his work abroad, to get the deal closed. Margret volunteered she would get everything ready for the shipment, but wait to actually give the go-ahead on shipping until the contract was signed. She also told Margret she needed to be at her meeting with Kent to ensure he fully grasped the situation.\s \s\t \tOne of the men asked what the ladies' plans were for the rest of the evening. Margret responded, \a147We planned on spending another hour or two at the bar before going home. It isn't often Carol gets to spend a night out like this away from her mom duties.\a148 Several of the guys offered to ply them with drinks after the meal ended and Kathryn resigned herself to another defeat at the hands of Margret. She still couldn't tell which way that woman's door swung, and the business suit didn't have any man in the place checking her out. They were all checking out Carol and Margret.\s \s\t \tWhen the meal was over, Margret excused herself to the restroom before returning the bar. There she used her cell phone to reserve a jacuzzi suite at the hotel down the street. Promptly at 10:30, the ladies called a cab and went to the hotel, leaving the guys both drunk and horny. Once they were in their room, Carol took a quick tour of it and spotted the jacuzzi. \a147Now this was definitely a plan!\a148 she exclaimed. \s \s\t \t\a147Yes, it was,\a148 replied Margret filling the tub. \a147We have to do this more often. So tell me, how long have you known about me?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Oh, I suspected for quite a while. I assumed you didn't make any advances because you didn't want it to be known, and given the situation with my marriage I couldn't be open either. Tonight I had the opportunity, so I took the chance,\a148 Carol said while undressing and hanging up her outfit.\s \s\t \t\a147What if you had been wrong?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I'm not often wrong when it comes to knowing if a woman enjoys another woman, but if I had been, I was certain you wouldn't say anything. My cover story was already in place, and it has been years since I enjoyed another woman. Had I been completely off-base, I would have had to try my luck in the bar, because I couldn't really go home early. I already promised hubby he could go drinking with the guys and watch the game tomorrow while I took care of the kids all day.\a148\s \s\t \tWith the tub filled, and them both disrobed, their evening began.\s \c\p\X1\l\BSomeone Points\B\l\X1 \c\s\t \tTime seemed to fly while Kent was gone, given all of the work he had dumped on Margret when he left. Naturally he didn't take anything off her plate when he got back. He had been back from his trip for a few weeks now. Margret and Kathryn had informed him about the issue with backup media and recovery time. For a small additional contract Kathryn's company had partnered with another Indian company that provided much the same service as Iron Mountain. They had agreed to keep the annual fee below that of Iron Mountain and Margret had arranged for all of the backup media from the migrated sites to be shipped to the new location once Kent had signed the contract.\s \s\t \tThis was one of those things which absolutely baffled Kent. Then again, nearly everything to do with technology baffled Kent; hence, he was made Director of IT. He had no concept of backing up or recovery. He did have a concept of the FDIC regulation Margret presented to him and knew violation of any requirement would cost him his career if anyone found out and the bank lost its insurance. Kent quickly signed the contract and Margret got the shipments going.\s \s\t \tNow alone with Kathryn, Kent brought up his new project. He had already received the spreadsheets with the estimated effort for data conversion, and Margret had already worked up estimated hours for adding the additional banking rules to the central system. Even using both consultants and employees it was going to take a long time just to get the French banking rules in place, let alone the other countries'. Kent didn't have a budget for consultants and didn't want word of this to get out. He needed a method of getting this done right around the time his two year stint was over in IT, and he needed to get rid of most of the programmers once it was completed.\s \s\t \tKathryn smiled to herself. \a147I may have a solution for you, Kent. There is a new comprehensive banking software product coming out from Pytho Corporation. They currently have U.S. and Canada banking rules audited and certified. They are also working on every other country you do business in. I can get you some product literature in a couple of days. Nobody knows about this product yet as they aren't finished with the globalization effort, but it should be completed in another four to six months.\a148\s \s\t \tKent sat there dumbfounded. Finally he asked, \a147What does it cost? Will it run on our existing machines? How many of the existing machines can be eliminated?\a148 At this point he realized he was talking like a little boy trying to get a girl to show hers to him for the first time and he shut up.\s \s\t \tKathryn responded that they hadn't settled on pricing yet, though Kent would be able to eliminate all but two of the existing machines at the off-site locations once the data center migration had completed. She informed him that he would need to train and keep only two developers to handle any additional reporting needs of the bank as the vendor had a support staff for the product. If any deal was put together, the bank would need to make some kind of public statement saying they were moving to the software. This could be as simple as Kent giving an interview in one of the weekly trade magazines and answering a few questions during a phone call from a Langston Group analyst.\s \s\t \t\a147A rough estimate would be four months for them to complete certification and one month for each system migration. You could install and begin conversion using the U.S. and Canadian systems this month if you wanted. As new countries are added you would receive software upgrades and each country's migration could occur piecemeal. At the end of another six months or so, you could have every location running this software, lose at least twelve machines at the off-site locations, and skip having to migrate the last three data centers. Once completed, you could eliminate all of your IT staff except the two developers you should keep and one or two operator people to walk reports around if management refuses to pick up their own. It should dramatically slash your costs.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147So, you are saying I will go from a staff of over sixty to a staff of four inside of a year?\a148 asked Kent.\s \s\t \t\a147Inside of six months if all proceeds according to plan,\a148 replied Kathryn. \a147According to the numbers we had for the data center offshoring project, you were spending $16 million per year on IT expenses and personnel salaries. Once this is complete I will wager that your annual IT expense falls below $4 million. Do they give promotions for saving $12 million per year?\a148\s \s\t \tKent simply smiled. Once again he had bought the white elephant.\s \s\t \tMargret soon returned to the room and the rest of the meeting was spent going over the progress of the data center migration and its numbers. So far, every machine they had abandoned had been sold, though not for as much as they had hoped at the start of the project. Still, one data center had been sold for much more than they planned, three more had offers at or near list, and they had to pay a pair of lease termination fees or find a company to sublet two others. The New York data center was now in the middle of a three-way bidding war and was going to close later this week for four times the original asking price if the machines were left in place. The rest had not been put on the market yet. All in all, things were progressing smoothly. Even Margret was somewhat surprised.\s \s\t \tKent chose that moment to inform Margret of the new system from Pytho and the plan to move all of the locations onto it. Margret was a bit defensive at first and pointed out she had filed such a consolidation plan with Kent's predecessor. She could tell by the look in Kent's eye that the white elephant had just been sold. She even assumed that Kathryn had told Kent he would be able to get rid of Margret once the new system migration was completed.\s \s\t \tKathryn tried to mollify the situation by stating Pytho had hundreds of developers working on this and several leading auditing firms providing the certification. The time frame for them to deliver all of the countries was measured in months, not years, a it would have been using internal staff and consultants. Margret was very aware \a147time frame\a148 was the operative phrase for Kent. His two-year tour would be up around the time this project completed and he was looking for a major promotion.\s \s\t \tThe meeting ended with Kathryn agreeing to put together the sale numbers and a timeline for rollout. There wouldn't be a data center migration this month anyway due to the end of quarter happening. It would be a good time to have a presentation to the board since they would have just jumped through all of the hoops to validate numbers from various banking systems.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tLenny had been called many things throughout his life. He was never the most popular kid in school, nor the best looking. He wasn't a jock or a chess player. Lenny knew only two things: How to run a business and how to shred a business. He had been called a corporate raider, a shareholder's advocate, and everything in between. \s \s\t \tHe had worked as an accountant for a large auditing firm before they got into legal trouble and lost their license. He got out in time to save his own license and avoid paying any fines. \s \s\t \tLenny hadn't been paid a lot working as an auditor or a senior auditor, but he did know how to read balance sheets and smell ripe fruit. He played a lot of penny stocks while working as an auditor because those were not on the verboten list of things to do. A few thousand dollars bought you millions of shares in those companies. Lenny was good at finding those with a chance of turning around. He managed to turn $10,000 into $10 million more than once. \s \s\t \tAfter leaving the audit firm Lenny could invest in stocks trading on the big exchanges. He used all of his audit contacts to get inside information and quarterly reports days before they went public. He formed an investment group so things were done through company accounts and paid himself a healthy salary. What really shocked him was when a couple of other wealthy individuals offered to invest in his company. Overnight he went from managing $50 million in assets to managing more than $500 million.\s \s\t \tThis wasn't a large operation and it didn't advertise. He had a very nice office in a very nice office building away from the hustle of the city. There were five programmers, three analysts and a receptionist. Legal services were provided by a law firm kept on retainer. Lenny's data center wasn't a bunch of worthless PC's. He ran everything on a fault-tolerant OpenVMS cluster. He even had a hot site on another power grid out in another suburb. As tiny as Lenny's operation was, he spent well over $1 million per year on IT and data services because that is what made the money.\s \s\t \tOn this particular day Lenny had received a data file from one of his informants. It was the quarterly report for First Global Bank in XML format. The report wouldn't come out for several days, but Lenny wanted to see what was going on. He loaded the data into one of the formatting programs and let it crunch the numbers. Something stunk with this report. First Global was going to beat analyst estimates by nearly a dollar per share, unless the analysts quickly upped their estimates. The analysts generally didn't miss sales or business increases, so this must have occurred from someone refusing to eat for three months. \s \s\t \tAt any rate, this stock was going to hop big time, so Lenny keyed in the trading parameters of maximum price, total number of shares to be purchased, and chose an account list to spread the purchases across. Lenny always tried to purchase more than 5 percent of a company, but until he was ready to go public, he spread the purchase across many trading accounts so the SEC couldn't figure it out. Lenny had trading accounts spread across a hundred paper companies. Every one of his employees had set up a P.O. Box address for at least a dozen of these companies. Banking stocks had been trashed lately, and the entire stock market was looking for some good news from the financial sector. This was going to be good for a three to seven dollar bump in share price and Lenny wanted to take advantage of it. He keyed in the target sell price for each of the accounts doing the purchases and then chose the submit option.\s \s\t \tMost people thought Lenny's programmers spent their entire day thinking of new ways to analyze financial data. In truth they spent about three days per year doing that. The rest of the time they spent creating inventive ways to distribute purchases so Lenny wouldn't have to go public until after he owned 40 percent of a company instead of the 5 percent the SEC made you report.\s \s\t \tWith the purchases submitted and waiting to happen, Lenny called in his three analysts and told them to start digging on this and find out where First Global slashed a dollar per share from its operations over a year ago. It shouldn't be a big task for them because there was a program on the system to kick those things out. He wanted them to find out the details, not just the place where the numbers differed. Lenny doubted the bank managed to trim a penny per share in a hundred locations, so there should be a dead fish lying on the bank for them to find. \s \s\t \tBy this afternoon Lenny should have the company's credit maxed out purchasing 100 million shares of First Global Bank. Once the target was achieved he was going to have several trading floor workers put out the story that First Global Bank was going to beat analyst estimates and beat them big. The rumor sniffers would hear the rumor and see the trading volume. They would assume it all to be insider trading and jump on the band wagon. Stock would be up two dollars per share an hour later. If Lenny didn't have the rotting fish in his hands by then, he might have to get out rather than run a bigger play.\s \s\t \tYou see, Lenny knew how to run a company and Lenny knew how to shred a company. You could make a profit running a company, but you always made a killing shredding a company. This company was looking like a perfect setup. Yes, he would make around seven dollars per share during the run-up with his little bit of insider knowledge, but that was nothing compared to the sixty dollars or so per share he could make by selling short after the run-up then shredding the company. All it took to start the shred was a few well-placed rumors based on facts. Before Lenny could make more than the initial bump, he had to hold the rotting fish in his hand.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tVladimir had a lot of time to read and surf the Web with his current job. He needed to work only when the hits came into the \a147ping server\a148 and not all of those had to be responded to quickly. Any IP address he had previously identified and stored in the database would simply generate an automatic email out to the team stating the time the hit had come in and what hit number this was.\s \s\t \tWhen Vladimir played the killing game, information was his friend. He analyzed everything when it came to an operation. More often than not he got it all right, too. The problem with being in the field and being right was that those making the decisions tended to filter your reports via a paper shredder because those reports exposed them as idiots too many times. This was how Vladimir had ended up in this wheelchair. Those who should have listened didn't, and his team was sent into a meat grinder. When the grinder was done, two of his team were dead and he had a bullet lodged in his spine. The debacle made the news and some government officials had to investigate. When they got a copy of Vladimir's report there were some people no longer working in the agency and there was a comfortable retirement for Vladimir. Nobody spoke about what had happened to those no longer working for the agency.\s \s\t \tOf course most major media were completely controlled by the interests of the MBAs running the media corporation. They would never run a news story lambasting a corporation they held stock in. They would also never allow a story to be run that said their money maker was either bad or about to hit a brick wall. \s \s\t \tVladimir knew where to look online to get the real news. He had written his own spider programs to crawl the blog sites looking for keywords and pulling down the content for him to read. Blog sites that happened to get something really right had a tendency to disappear in a matter of hours. One MBA called another MBA and the account got deleted. In this way the Internet was not an avenue of free expression, but was quickly becoming a heavily moderated form of Corporate Correct Speak. Politically correct didn't matter, as long as you never dissed or pointed out the crimes of a company one of the other MBAs held stock in.\s \s\t \tSince Vladimir learned what part of this project was really about, he had been using his talents to identify the next terrorist hotbed. Nobody cared about the desert training camps and everybody knew about the current hot spots. He was looking for the next event horizon \a151 the one that would be the basis of a 9/11 or larger-sized attack. For the last three days Vladimir had been reading stories which were scaring him. The Indian IT workers were trying to unionize.\s \s\t \tThere were quite a few articles in the Indian news and on various blog sites stating Union Network International was trying to organize the call center and back-office workers in India. They had already made some progress in Bangalore, but were having an uphill struggle. \s \s\t \tUNI had failed to organize the programmers back in 2000, but they just might succeed with the call center and back-office workers. Currently, these people made around U.S. $2,400 per year, well below the poverty level in any industrialized country, but way more than the $500 per year many other workers made in the country. \s \s\t \tWhat was going to help UNI was the stress level. Three in ten changed jobs at least once per year and one in seven left the field entirely during that same time frame. Burn out and poor treatment were commonplace. Most of the major offshore companies already had operations or were starting them in places like Korea where the work could be done for even less. Indian workers were getting ten dollars per day and the companies were billing them out at ten to twenty dollars per hour. That kind of margin allowed you to exploit any poor person in any country you wanted.\s \s\t \tVladimir did what he always did. He wrote a report and emailed it to the man in the suit. He was pretty certain the report would just be ignored as the report was ignored for the operation that had cost him his ability to walk. If the IT workers unionized and the offshore companies moved the jobs, this would be the largest pool of disenfranchised educated people in the world. Many of them were Muslims already; Al-Qaeda would have a field day bringing in recruits. After a moment's thought, he also sent a copy of his report to his friend in the Russian mafia.\s \s\t \tHe did some quick number crunching to gauge the impact of this event. According to some reports, most of the IT workers held on to over half of their money. There wasn't much in the way of quality home builders in the areas where the data centers were, so they couldn't go into debt on McMansions. They also didn't have much in the way of roads, let alone interstates to drive on, so most didn't buy cars, or they bought those $3,000 cracker boxes made by Indian and Chinese car makers for sale in that market. Some employment reports stated there were as many as 300,000 IT workers in India working for offshore companies. That was a lot of untraceable cash. If they banded together, they would be able to purchase a nuke or a biological weapon. Vladimir doubted if such a sale could be stopped again.\s \s\t \tOnce, a few years ago, one of the Russian crime families dealing in arms tried to sell some uranium to representatives from al-Qaeda. \a147Tried\a148 was the operative word. Vladimir's friends found out about it and took care of the problem. You could sell all of the grenades and automatic weapons you wanted to them back then, but if you tried to sell something uncontrollable, you were dealt with. A few phone calls were made to some other crime families and two days prior to the delivery, that crime family ceased to exist. When the police tried arresting some of the mechanics, the information was given to Russian intelligence along with the location of what the family had been trying to sell. Everyone was released. It was OK to be a bad man in Russia \a151 it was not OK to be \ithat\i kind of bad man.\s \s\t \tWhat bothered Vladimir the most was not being able to see how the attack would occur. Educated people with money tended not to strap bombs to their chest and blow up buses. He didn't think it would be enough for this group to simply design and fund an attack. Then again, given the class system, the upper class might choose to design and fund those attacks and order the lower classes to their deaths. The problem with that idea was that the lower classes were the ones working in IT, while the upper classes made a profit off them.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tThe day came when Nedim was to make the drop to the courier. His shadows had followed him from quite a distance. The rest were in place up and down the street. All of the documents and a CD were in the courier pouch they had given him. Thankfully, they had thought to buy something made locally which was used and cheap looking. It was exactly the kind of bag locals carried things in. A new leather bag from one of the big-name manufacturers would have been a major tip-off something was up.\s \s\t \tHalfway to his office a woman he worked with walked up beside him and asked him if he had a bag for her. Nedim was shocked that this woman would be speaking with him. She was obviously not a good Muslim, speaking to a man who was not her relation and not asking him permission to do something. Still, Nedim played along. \a147God is great. He may have provided a bag for you.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147God's word lights the way and is only for me to carry,\a148 the woman responded. With that, Nedim took the bag off his shoulder, and without stopping handed it to her. She put the bag over her shoulder and disappeared into the crowd without breaking stride.\s \s\t \tThankfully, many IT workers had cell phones now. As bad as cell phone service was in Pakistan, it was still more reliable than land lines. The devices receiving the tracking information looked and functioned just like cell phones. When the woman was sufficiently gone, Umar came up alongside Nedim and asked, \a147Did you know her?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147She works at my company.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Do you have a name?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147No, but I can get it. Her cube is four rows down from mine and we all have name tags.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Good. See that you get it and email it to this address first thing this morning.\a148 He handed Nedim a slip of paper with an email address on it. \a147Probably an alias, but we should be able to find out where she is living from your employer.\a148\s \s\t \tNedim stopped and looked at Umar. \a147How?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We have access to all employment records filed with the government. Don't worry, your employer won't even know we were looking.\a148\s \s\t \tWith that, Nedim continued toward work in silence. Something bad was about to happen, he could just feel it. These people had never tried to comfort him in the past.\s \s\t \tSome time later he arrived at work. On the way to his desk he took a different route which took him past the woman's cube. He quickly wrote her name down on the back of the slip of paper he had been given. Once at his desk he logged in and sent the requested email. \iThis is simply not going to be a good day,\i he thought.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tHans came into the man in the suit's office and turned on the BBC. He did not ask permission nor speak to the man in the suit. When the man in the suit saw him heading for the satellite television set, he opted not to protest. There was a news report stating that Pakistani intelligence had arrested an IT worker who was a suspected link in the al-Qaeda communications network. They didn't have a name yet, but they had enough generic information to finger Nedim to anyone who knew him. The report did not yet say they had turned him and were using him to infiltrate al-Qaeda operations, but that information couldn't be more than a few hours away. Hans simply looked at the man in the suit and walked out. Both of them knew what they had to do now.\s \s\t \tThe man in the suit made a phone call to his contact in Pakistan's intelligence. He arranged for a strongly worded protest to be released to the press. He needed to buy time for the couriers to be nabbed. He made certain the press release stated that the person arrested had remained in custody pending a full investigation.\s \s\t \tHans had his own communication to make. He had to tell the team in the field to nab each courier as soon as they made the drop. They were to immediately be flown to the interrogation camp as this operation had just been burned. They were now in a race to find the destination before others found out about the operation. The \iothers \ihe was worried about were the al-Qaeda leaders who were about to receive this pouch. If they got wind and ran to ground, this operation's biggest nab would vanish. Nobody knew who was supposed to receive the pouch, not even Nedim. It had to be an old-timer who didn't like technology and he had to be somewhere in the mountains, but finding him would be impossible unless they could follow the bag.\s \s\t \tThere was one final duty for Hans before he could return for more instructions and a debriefing. From his bag he took a disposable cell phone and a slip of paper. He went upstairs to an empty room and made an international phone call.\s \s\t \tNikolaus had not been expecting that particular cell phone to ring when it went off. There was only one person who had the number, and this wouldn't be good.\s \s\t \t\a147Hello.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147It's me. Our asset is being outed by the BBC. Perhaps you've seen the news? He is in the process of making a courier drop and given the situation we are nabbing each courier once they make the drop. I know the first one is a woman. Until the field report's in we won't know how many we are sending your way, but they are all coming your way. This operation is burned. We have to tie it off and get out until we manage to locate another asset.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Understood. We have less than twenty-four hours to get everything in order. You will call again to let us know when the plane is leaving?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Yes.\a148\s \s\t \tNikolaus hung up and used his own disposable cell phone to make a call. He relayed to the man on the other end the story Hans had just told him. Unless something happened during the nabbing, there would be at least one woman with this bunch. \s \s\t \tCouriers never knew much. Sometimes they didn't even know they were working for al-Qaeda. It sounds weird when you say it out loud, but it is true. A lot of the couriers are simply that by trade. They carry drugs, contraband and information from one place to another each day. It's dangerous, but it's a living.\s \s\t \tIt was agreed that most of the couriers would undergo interrogation for a week or less. So far the interrogators had all been professional, and they could tell when they were pumping a dry well. Nikolaus told him to notify the team.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tJeremy had never been a smart individual. If it hadn't been for friends helping him and doing his homework, he would have never gotten through college. He had a long list of friends from college who were now successful and his only real asset was his contact list. Combined with his expense account it turned up very valuable information. His boss, Lenny, was a cheap bastard when it came to things like paychecks and bonuses, but he never batted an eye when you turned in a $300 receipt for drinks and dinner if on the back you listed a stock symbol you were researching. He knew information was more valuable than money and that you had to spend money to get information.\s \s\t \tIt had been quite a morning at \a147Group Lenny.\a148 That wasn't the official company name, of course, but it was how he and his friends referred to it. In truth, Jeremy had to look at his business card to remember the company name. Lenny had the reputation, not his company. The reputation Lenny had earned was that he accepted investments only from people with tens of millions to toss around and he generally averaged returns in the 100 to 400 percent range. As a result, Lenny didn't advertise and didn't let anyone in the media know anything about his company. They weren't even listed on the company roster for the office building. People with tens of millions to invest were smart enough to keep their mouths shut. The last thing Lenny needed was a bunch of reporters or SEC investigators running around trying to figure out how he achieved those returns.\s \s\t \tThere was no real magic. Quite simply, Lenny, and everyone working for him, broke the law. They used every contact they had to obtain information two to three days early. Nobody at this group would use information obtained only one day in advance. Trading one day before big news about some company tended to be investigated by the SEC. If you had a three day window, you could spread out your trades and leak the news via channels once you had your position in the market. This type of thing was done all of the time. Nobody ever seemed to question how financial reporters broadcast a company's news days before it was officially filed with the SEC. As long as you had a few reporters you could feed third-hand you could get away with it.\s \s\t \tOn this particular day Lenny had assigned his staff the task of finding out how First Global Bank was beating analyst estimates by so much. Jeremy assumed the news was already being leaked since the automated trading should have acquired their position by now. The number-crunching algorithms on the computer system flagged an unusual drop in IT expenses and some increased income from asset sales. There had been no news of First Global Bank selling any major assets, so this set Jeremy to searching the various online databases and making some phone calls.\s \s\t \tSix phone calls into it he found someone who knew First Global Bank had sold their New York data center for a boatload of cash. Jeremy made some other small talk with the contact, then agreed to meet them for supper at a four-star restaurant they both liked.\s \s\t \tA data center sale was not outside the realm of sanity, but it didn't account for the staggering difference in earnings. First Global Bank had eaten a good number of bank chains in the past couple of years, so it made sense to consolidate data centers. Loss of the New York center struck Jeremy as odd since First Global had a brokerage division, which would mandate keeping your trading engine as close to the New York trading floor systems as possible. Milliseconds meant millions when filling market orders.\s \s\t \tThe Web searches now centered on commercial real-estate sites and related news sites. It turned out that First Global Bank had a lot of their data centers up for sale or had given up the leases on them. Could they possibly have completed merging all of the other bank chains onto their original system? Didn't seem likely. There were a lot of countries involved and First Global had been only in North America and Canada prior to the acquisition spree.\s \s\t \tWhen the hour approached 4:00 PM, Jeremy struck pay dirt. One of the skirts he used to do in college was now working at Big Four Consulting. After offering to meet her for supper the following evening at a four-star restaurant she really wanted to try and the possibility of a roll in the hay, she volunteered that Big Four Consulting had won a contract to offshore all of First Global Bank's data centers. By the end of the project, the ten original sets of data centers would be down to one set located in the cheap labor market of India. Admittedly, First Global Bank had already consolidated down to four sets of data centers before Big Four Consulting got involved, but the project was quite large anyway. Jeremy thanked her and asked what time he should make the reservation tomorrow.\s \s\t \tExactly at 4:00 PM, Lenny called the analysts into their meeting. Lenny went around the room asking each analyst what he or she had learned. The other two simply regurgitated what the computer analysis had told them. Jeremy informed him he had to fly out tomorrow to repay the contact who had given him the information Lenny needed. First Global Bank was moving all of their data centers offshore. In about another year, they would have no computer systems in any country other than India. The nine sets of data centers they had were being sold or having their leases terminated. All of the hardware inside of them were being sold as well. They had outsourced all of their data center work to a partner of Big Four Consulting in India.\s \s\t \tThe other two analysts had graduated with 4.0 GPAs from good business schools. Jeremy had barely graduated from a state college. Yet here he was, once again bringing home the bacon.\s \s\t \t\a147You can verify this?\a148 Lenny asked.\s \s\t \t\a147The New York data center just sold for a killer profit,\a148 Jeremy responded as he handed Lenny the printout from the commercial real-estate Web site. \a147Two more are up for sale,\a148 as he handed over two more screen prints. \a147It appears some were leased and now have leases listed as available.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147At first I thought they had simply completed a consolidation project getting all of the other banking chains onto their original system, but it didn't fit given all of the countries involved. Then when I found the person who knew the details, it all made sense. They never attempted a consolidation project. They simply got rid of all the machines and outsourced to the land of cheap labor and low rent. I doubt anyone's banking records could ever be subpoenaed now given that the data centers are in another country.\a148\s \s\t \tLenny sat back and thought for a moment. \a147This is very interesting indeed. Does anybody else have this information yet?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I don't think their shareholders even have it,\a148 responded Jeremy. \a147Normally you don't send out letters to shareholders when you are simply moving computer systems around.\a148\s \s\t \tLenny pondered awhile longer. \a147The board had to know. A project of this size would have had to get their approval and funding. I imagine their next step will be to use all Indian IT labor to do the consolidation project. Only one problem with this situation. Not one person depositing money in these banks knows the banks no longer control the access to the data systems.\a148\s \s\t \tThe three analysts looked at each other, then at Lenny. Finally Jeremy asked, \a147Does any depositor know if their bank controls access to the system it uses?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147It is both assumed and required,\a148 responded Lenny. \a147Your research said they were selling off all of their computers, but said nothing about buying new computers. This means the offshore data center is providing a turnkey service. The banks don't own the computers they are now using, which means people who have not been vetted by the FBI, SEC, FDIC or whatever government agencies in this country perform the background checks. Each country has its own rules, but there are some common rules across most of the countries we do banking with. No convicted felons and nobody on a terrorist watch list can ever be employed at a bank or financial institution. When the data center isn't in this country and the bank doesn't own it, who is to say what type of people are hired and now have accounts with complete access to the system?\a148\s \s\t \tAt that moment, the reality of what Lenny was saying sank in for all three analysts. After the money was made over the next couple of weeks with the share price run-up, Lenny was going to start a very slow process of shorting the stock. Once he had achieved the kind of short position he wanted, this very story was going to leak. It would be timed to leak right about the time the offshoring project was past the point of no return.\s \s\t \tJeremy was told to book a convenient flight out tomorrow. No need to come into the office if he didn't want to. He needed to find out which divisions of the bank already had 100 percent of their data center operations migrated offshore. \a147Focus on the U.S. branches for now,\a148 Lenny told him. \a147You also need to book a date with her for the day/evening after they complete migrating the last data center. I'm sure you can find a jacuzzi hotel suite in a nice restaurant to thank her properly.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Do you really think we can do a shred with just this?\a148 Jeremy asked.\s \s\t \t\a147How little you watch the news, Jeremy. In 2002 a former UBS Systems Admin planted malicious code that took down about 2,000 servers in their network. His arrest and trial have been appearing in the news over the past couple of weeks, but most articles are focusing on weeding out bad employees. Imagine a story surfacing about a global bank who didn't bother to screen that type of employee at all? Once the federal agencies get wind of it there will be congressional hearings. We will not only shred the bank, but we will shred Big Four Consulting as well. Whether they know it or not, they've been a willing accomplice in a crime.\a148\s \p\X1\c\l\BA Little Nudge\B\l\X1 \c\s\t \tStacie was looking forward to tonight. She hadn't hooked up with Jeremy in a couple of years. Oh, she knew nothing would come of it, but she remembered he was pretty good in bed. Since he had a hotel room, she wouldn't have to deal with her two roommates tonight either. She loved her roommates. They had great fun hanging out together. Having roommates meant they could have a really awesome apartment and spend a ton of money on clothes. When you are twenty-something, dressing to the nines and partying all weekend is a priority in life.\s \s\t \tBig Four Consulting didn't pay her much. Then again, she had a degree in mass communications, not IT. That, coupled with her looks and minor in English got her the job with Big Four. They always wanted the young people working for them to dress for success. Thankfully, two of their clients were major retailers which extended a \a147partner\a148 discount to the employees of Big Four Consulting. Every Saturday Stacie got up at the crack of noon and took shopping whichever roommate was home. All three of the girls had run out of closet space and were buying wardrobes to store additional clothes in.\s \s\t \tStill, the roommate thing had a major drawback. When you decided to score, you had to inconvenience others. Stacie wasn't dating. Older people described it as \a147playing the field.\a148 She found it when she needed it, and sometimes she would find it in the same place more than once, but her career came first. Big Four promised her she would travel and told her to get a passport. She had already flown to several states in the U.S. and had recently returned from Bangalore, India.\s \s\t \tUnlike most of the girls Stacie worked with, she wasn't a complete fool. She knew full well which guys had left the compound to visit the red-light district just a few streets over. There was no way she was going to hook up with any of them. Jeremy had always been a safe hook-up. He didn't want anything long term and had only asked her to attend one wedding with him. They had both known the groom getting married so it wasn't a big deal, just lots of drinking, dancing, and fun. Stacie let Jeremy know when she accepted that he now owed her a wedding and he was cool with that. When you are twenty-something, you really hate going stag to a wedding. When you're in your forties you can play the divorcee field at a wedding, but twenty-somethings always seemed to be paired off.\s \s\t \tAll of the girls had heard about the four-star restaurant that had opened up a couple months ago. It was the new \a147hot\a148 place to be seen. Stacie was going to be the first of her roomies to eat there. They would have to wait until she got home tomorrow to find out what it was like.\s \s\t \tThe nice part about having a friend with benefits is you don't have to come home in the same clothes you left in. Nothing tells the world you were picked up like leaving a hotel in the morning wearing an evening dress. A \a147date\a148 would require she meet them at the restaurant or have him pick her up here. She wouldn't be able to pack an overnight bag and bring it along. You meet a friend at their hotel room and leave your bag there. \iSo\i much more convenient. \s \s\t \tStacie left her apartment promptly at 6:00 PM. She had the doorman turn on the cab light and was quickly picked up. Fifteen minutes later she arrived at Jeremy's hotel. He had called earlier in the afternoon to let her know he had checked in and gave her his room number. She told him he had better be wearing a damned nice suit when she arrived because there was a strict dress code at the restaurant.\s \s\t \tAs far as anyone at work knew, Stacie was simply hooking up with a flame from college this weekend. She didn't tell them where Jeremy worked, mainly because she could never remember the name of the company. She simply told them he worked for some small accounting firm. Saying he worked at an investment firm would have gotten her a meeting with HR and a chat about disclosing insider information. She knew damned good and well Jeremy was coming here to thank her for that. He was going to owe her a weekend at Salish Lodge when she fed him the other little bit of information she had.\s \s\t \tToday had been a hectic day. Stacie had to participate in the presentation to First Global Bank's board of directors selling Pytho's new banking software to them. It started off as a tough sell. Pytho hadn't thought to bring anything in the way of eye candy to the meeting, so the Big Four Consulting girls were laying it all out to the board. Stacie hadn't participated in the sales pitch that sold the offshoring contract, but some of the girls in the room had. Only the women they had shown the most interest in were asked to display themselves again. Stacie was asked since she had been to India and had established the best relationship with the on-shore team. The rest appeared to be models who didn't have a runway gig this week. They knew nothing about the software being pitched or the client. They did know how to dress, though.\s \s\t \tIn contrast, Kathryn had made Stacie take home the entire CD kit from Pytho. She had to work with a team of girls creating a PowerPoint presentation, then show it to Kathryn. Once Stacie had finished giving her five-minute summary of how the data center consolidation was going, Kathryn had her segue into the presentation and even remain walking around answering questions during it. When the questions came up about how far along the globalization project had gotten, the Pytho reps had to take over. Kathryn made sure she dropped the names of the audit firms handling certification of each country's banking laws. The board was quite shocked to learn their own auditing firm was certifying the system met French banking regulations.\s \s\t \tWhen the meeting concluded there wasn't a dirty old man in the room who hadn't seen every breast and leg on display at least twice. All of the girls had worn tight skirts, but not so tight they looked like they were trying to stop a gun shot wound from bleeding. All of them had some part in the presentation where they were supposed to walk around keeping the board's attention. Stacie thought it was a lot like stripping, but you didn't have to break a sweat or get dressed when you were done.\s \s\t \tThe board ended the meeting taking copies of the plan and cost spreadsheet. They said they were going to have a meeting with their auditors to see how close the French regulations really were to being implemented. The Pytho sales reps were all smiles and handshakes until the board left, then they showed outright rejection on their faces.\s \s\t \t\a147They didn't buy it,\a148 one of them said.\s \s\t \t\a147They never buy on the first pitch,\a148 responded Kathryn. \a147Unless you've taken steps to ensure their auditors give them a glowing report about the progress made on French banking regulations, this sale is dead.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Our 'World View of the Bank' pitch really hit home, though,\a148 Stacie remarked.\s \s\t \t\a147Yes it did,\a148 Kathryn said. \a147It was the only reason we were allowed to make this presentation. They just had everyone jumping through hoops to prepare quarterly financial reports and the cost of doing that is fresh in their minds. We even scored big with the cost savings from staff reductions, but \iany\i package is going to do both of those things for them. This sale hinges on the French regulations.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147How so?\a148 Stacie asked.\s \s\t \t\a147Our biggest IT headcount and operating cost is in France,\a148 responded Kent. \a147Even if you never got the other countries operational, the entire project could be paid for by eliminating those people along with our U.S. and Canadian IT staff.\a148 Kent had stayed in the post-pitch debriefing because this project was his baby. He was the corporate sponsor and project champion. It was his job to sell it to the board because his name was on it.\s \s\t \tStacie knew that if this deal went through, she was going to be spending some grueling overtime training at Pytho software. She was also going to have to spend some time brushing up on her French. She had taken only one semester in college and couldn't speak or read it very well now.\s \s\t \tThat was four hours ago. The thoughts of her awaiting treadmill left her mind as she stepped into the elevator with her overnight bag and went to Jeremy's room. Tonight was an elegant meal with fine wine and some long overdue physical pleasure.\s \s\t \tWhen Jeremy opened the door she was floored. \iThat man can wear a suit!\i she thought. She made him spin around to check him out and even commented that he had bothered to shine his shoes. Stacie wasn't an expert in men's clothing, but that suit would retail for around $1,200 in this neck of the woods. Jeremy made some very appreciative comments about the way she looked, kissed her passionately, then took her bag to the bedroom.\s \s\t \t\a147Must not have been a killer kiss,\a148 Jeremy said with a smile when he returned.\s \s\t \t\a147You did good!\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Not good enough for you to follow me to the bedroom,\a148 he grinned.\s \s\t \t\a147If I did that I wouldn't get dinner!\a148 she exclaimed. \a147Let's catch a cab before we don't make it out of here!\a148\s \s\t \tWith that they proceeded to the restaurant and ordered dinner. It was everything Stacie had heard it was. The food was fabulous and the menu didn't have any prices. Stacie had no idea what the champagne and wine cost, but it had to amount to a down payment on a car. Finally, the opener came:\s \s\t \t\a147So, how are things going at work?\a148 \s \s\t \tStacie flashed a mischievous smile. \a147Well, I'm going to be putting in some grueling hours soon becoming a trainer on a new software product Pytho has coming out.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147What product is that?\a148 Jeremy asked.\s \s\t \t\a147Before I answer that question, you have to promise me a weekend at Salish Lodge any weekend I ask,\a148 responded Stacie.\s \s\t \tJeremy had heard about the place and knew it had an amazing reputation. He also knew if Stacie was putting it on the table, there was something big coming out of her mouth next. He was pretty certain Lenny would allow him to expense the weekend, and even if Lenny didn't, he was certain to have a fantastic time with Stacie. He looked her in the eyes and said, \a147Done.\a148\s \s\t \tStacie positively beamed! She had wanted a weekend there ever since one of her girlfriends had told her about it. Her roomies would be \iso\i jealous when she told them.\s \s\t \tConversation had to pause while the server came by to inquire how things were going. Stacie wondered how the server's feet felt walking around in heels all night, then she thought that skirt and stockings demanded heels. Anything less would ruin the atmosphere of the place. It struck her as kind of odd how women who weren't bisexual could easily appreciate the phenomenal body of another woman. She guessed you simply didn't get jealous when you looked hot yourself. Briefly she thought it would be a pity when she had kids one day and it all went to hell. Then she snapped her attention back to the table.\s \s\t \tJeremy had that stupid grin on his face again. It was the kind of grin he got when he had some smartass comment to make which would be the perfect zinger for the moment and would ensure he didn't get sex that night. What Stacie appreciated about Jeremy is that he had the good sense to save them until after they had sex so they could both laugh about them when they were more relaxed.\s \s\t \tShe smiled back at him, then took his hand and said, \a147I need a necklace and matching earrings to wear when we go to Salish. Diamonds would be nice, but as long as they are real stones and set off my eyes, I'm fine with it.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I didn't even make the comment,\a148 Jeremy sputtered.\s \s\t \t\a147But you were thinking it,\a148 she chimed back evilly. \a147Besides, after I tell you what I have for you, I think you'll agree you should be able to afford them.\a148\s \s\t \tThat widened Jeremy's eyes and made him sit up.\s \s\t \t\a147It was a long day parading my body around the board room,\a148 she said, toying with his hand. \a147Once the auditors for First Global Bank give a glowing report on how Pytho software's new banking product meets all of the U.S., Canadian, and French banking regulations, they are probably going to buy it. Every location they have will be migrated onto the new software. Every country will move as Pytho completes certification for said country. In much less than a year, they will be rid of all their IT staff, save a token few, and have all of their business run by software in an offshore data center.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I had to wear a sheer blouse and my finest stockings. The skirt and heels really showed off my form. If it wasn't for their own auditors being involved, we would have closed the sale today. The board really admired my legs. Just imagine how many of those rich old men want to be where you will be tonight.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147True,\a148 Jeremy responded. \a147Not to break the mood, but you wouldn't happen to have some marketing literature on this product would you?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Greedy bastard!\a148 she teased. \a147Here I am talking about sex, letting you know I'm ready to go and you are still talking about making money.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Well,\a148 Jeremy sputtered. \s \s\t \tStacie laughed, \a147Remind me to take it out of my overnight bag when we get back to the hotel.\a148\s \s\t \tWhen they stood up to leave, Stacie nuzzled his ear as he put his arm around her. \a147So, am I getting diamonds?\a148\s \s\t \tLaughing, Jeremy said, \a147Yes, the best I can find at my local Helzberg.\a148\s \s\t \tNow it was Stacie's turn to have her eyes go wide and head snap up.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tMargret was somewhat surprised to come out of the demonstration and find there was a meeting request from Carol waiting for her. They rarely had any meetings unless some big contract was going down. If the girl was going to become clingy in the office, Margret would have to nip it in the bud. Still, she accepted the meeting and half an hour later Carol arrived in her office closing the door behind her.\s \s\t \tBefore Margret could get control of the situation Carol said, \a147I did some more research and we need to get some letters on file with notary stamps and dates on them. The letter or letters need to inform Kent of the pending regulation change requiring all data center employees to be U.S. citizens for U.S. banks and have passed all of the new background checks prior to being hired.\a148\s \s\t \tMargret was not expecting this. She thought they were going to keep it a secret. Carol read the confusion in her eyes.\s \s\t \t\a147The regulation change has just been opened for public comment and will be put to a vote some time next quarter. There is no keeping it quiet now. Given how far along the offshoring of the data centers has gotten, there is most likely no way to pull it back without incurring massive financial loss.\a148\s \s\t \tMargret nodded.\s \s\t \t\a147Then, I need to forward you the email announcing the public comment period. You need to forward it to Kent, then schedule a meeting for the three of us and Judy, the girl who does notary for us. Just a fifteen-minute meeting to tell him this is open for comment and may be something he bumps into. Bring a printout of the email to the meeting. When the meeting is over, we will have Judy put a notary stamp on it and hand-write the meeting time, date, etc., on it, then sign it. Copies will be put in your hands, my hands, and the legal department's document archival service. When this landslide tumbles down the mountain it will be Kent who hangs.\a148\s \s\t \t\iOne thing about Carol,\i Margret thought, \ithat lawyer side of her is vicious!\i \a147OK. I'll schedule the meeting later today as soon as I get your email,\a148 responded Margret.\s \s\t \tCarol noticed the look on Margret's face. She looked at her and asked \a147What?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147When you put in such a generic meeting subject I figured this was you getting clingy and I was wondering how I could shut it down before anything got out. I wasn't expecting this.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147No worries on that front. My hubby would divorce me in a second. I have to keep this more hidden than you. That doesn't mean I'm not going to help you cover your ass, though. If this becomes a regulation, the bank is going to have to re-hire some of the operators they are about to fire and get them to live in India. There will be a limited window for compliance and then the hammer will fall.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We'll have to pay a fine,\a148 Margret said.\s \s\t \t\a147You need to read the email I will forward you. Loss of insurance is the first penalty, fines second and third is a recommendation of criminal prosecution under the Patriot Act. They are playing hardball with this one. Only the content of the regulation is up for comment, not the penalties.\a148\s \s\t \tMargret's eyes widened at that. \a147Send me the email now.\a148\s \s\t \tIn less than three minutes Margret had received the email, forwarded it to Kent and scheduled a meeting with him. He really shouldn't have left a fifteen-minute opening just prior to 4:00 PM. All of the ladies met in Kent's office and told him he could bump into this regulation with his current project once the regulation is voted in. When Kent asked how likely it was, Carol responded nobody knew which way the vote would go since none of the voting members communicated openly about their intent. The bank was supposed to have someone communicating with the FDIC on this, but Carol had no idea who. Carol said her only duty in the matter was to inform both Kent and Margret via both email and a meeting on the matter. What Kent did with the information was up to him.\s \s\t \tJust like that, the meeting ended. The three women went back to Margret's office, they wrote down the meeting time, attendees, etc., signed the document and then Judy put the notary seal on it. They thanked Judy for her time and she left.\s \s\t \t\a147Do you think the bastard has any idea he is about to walk over an open manhole?\a148 asked Margret.\s \s\t \t\a147Probably not,\a148 Carol responded. \a147I simply wanted to get this done within forty-eight hours of receiving the information so my ass would be in the clear.\a148\s \s\t \tCarol leaned closer to Margret and whispered, \a147Then I had to protect your sweet ass.\a148 With a smirk she walked away to find a functioning copy machine. A few minutes later she returned with a few copies for Margret and herself.\s \s\t \t\a147Another day almost over,\a148 Margret piped up when she returned.\s \s\t \t\a147I can't believe it,\a148 responded Carol. \a147I thought I was going to have to work late tonight because of the presentation going on earlier today.\a148\s \s\t \tTheir eyes met and broadcast desire to each other. \a147My place,\a148 mouthed Margret. \a147Half hour,\a148 mouthed Carol. Margret quickly wrote down her address on a yellow sticky and included her cell phone number. Nothing was said when the sticky exchanged hands. It even looked business like when Carol stuck it on the front of the pages in her hands. Nobody questioned it or suspected anything. She returned to her desk, completed filing the copies and put the original in a document mailer for the archive service. With the yellow sticky tucked into her suit coat pocket she logged out and told everyone she was going home.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tHans sat in the man with the suit's office watching the news with him. True to form, once the first story came out, the rest of the talking heads all sent people over to report on it. Pakistani intelligence had apparently started feeding their contacts at CNN now. The arrest report they had planted in the files found its way into their hands. They had Nedim's name now. It was a slow news week, so he was now a celebrity. Too high profile to kill off now. Hopefully al-Qaeda would take care of the task. In a few days, Pakistani intelligence would announce Nedim had been released due to lack of evidence.\s \s\t \tTrue, there would still be a tap on the phone line Nedim used for his computer. They also had a mailbox copy utility installed on his known email accounts and they had their own little remote system monitor software installed on his machine. But the daily reports from his roommates would stop. Both of them had been told not to talk with Nedim again.\s \s\t \tBriefly, Hans wondered what would happen when Nedim's shadow quit showing up at the mosque for the Holy Quran discussions. Even if the news hadn't spilled his information all over the world, that would tell al-Qaeda they had a mole.\s \s\t \tIn a couple of hours a plane would touch down. Both Hans and the man in the suit would supervise the loading of prisoners onto the plane. There would be no paperwork, simply a count. Four men and two women. As Hans had feared, the courier train eventually ditched the bag and they lost the trail in the mountains. Quite a few military units had been sent out to the area where the trail was lost to see if they could find a cave with al-Qaeda members in it, but Hans had little hope they would hear back. Given all of the publicity around this guy, there would simply be an air strike against the cave if it was found. This story was about to be completely tied off.\s \s\t \tBoth women appeared to be relatively young to Hans. Nikolaus should be able to get the rest of the camp up and running. Personally he had no opinion on stem-cell research. As long as it made enough money to let the party bribe officials who weren't completely on board, he was for it. Once enough funding was in place, the larger-scale roundups would begin. There was still a cell operating around Hamburg and a few other cells officials knew about in Germany. The police hadn't managed to get enough evidence for a conviction, but the party didn't need that much evidence.\s \s\t \tFinally, Hans asked a question that had been nagging at him. \a147Are we going to close up this shop?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147At least for a while, it seems,\a148 replied the man in the suit. \a147I will keep track of where the team gets dispersed. Who knows when we will turn up another communications hub to monitor? We hope one of the cells we are currently rounding up will have used more than one communications hub, but that is just a hope for now.\a148\s \s\t \tThanks to this operation they had twenty-seven different cells under surveillance. Five of the cells had already been rounded up by various agencies. Few members went to the interrogation camp. Once the courier mules had been processed through there, the remaining twenty-two cells were going to be rounded up one at a time and squeezed for information. They would most likely provide little in the way of useful information, but their cell phones and computers just might turn up a new communications hub. It was a gamble. They couldn't round up many of the cells at once because there weren't enough interrogators at the first camp to handle twenty people or more.\s \s\t \tBoth men knew the Brit would be utterly pissed they weren't rounding up the Lutton cell first. Obviously they were up to something big. The team on the ground didn't appear to be worth a rat's ass at surveillance. The cell had to have held some meetings by now. Still, they identified only the few people sending email and no other members. A roundup now would simply cause the cell to go deeper undercover. Nobody could risk that. The cell had to remain on monitor status until either more of the members could be located or the explosives turned up.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tJohn was at his wit's end. Despite all of his efforts and messages, UNI (Union Network International) was making progress gathering members. It would not be long now before there was a vote about the union in his own shop.\s \s\t \tThere were only three data centers left to re-locate here! Didn't they understand there would be more money in their hands from the electronic transfer than a union could ever give them? No, they couldn't. Only John and three others knew about the plan here. A few cell leaders who John handled the email for knew, but that was it. Even John's new roommate didn't know. \s \s\t \tJohn's new roommate was a fast learner. He picked up the basics of how the email operation worked in just a couple of days. When John got home now, the vast majority of messages had already been dealt with. He left links and printouts for his roommate to read on how to hide your IP address online, viruses, virus scanners, and a rash of other things that allowed you to remain a ghost online. \s \s\t \tThey were going to have to bring in another machine so the roommate could set it up and get his own communications hub running. The leaders were more than willing to purchase another notebook. In fact, they said they were going to purchase two. The second one would be for yet another roommate John was to train. At first John was upset about this, but then he realized he would have at least another quarter (probably three) before the data center migrations were complete and his plan could take effect.\s \s\t \t\a147If only we didn't have this union problem!\a148 he said aloud, slamming his fist down on his desk at work.\s \s\t \t\a147I know what you mean,\a148 responded John's boss.\s \s\t \tThe sound brought John back to his current reality in less than a heartbeat. It was unlike him to drift off and let things slip like that. Perhaps this operation was a bit too much for him. He was used to being a ghost who handled communications, not a covert operative.\s \s\t \t\a147What is being done about it?\a148 asked John.\s \s\t \t\a147Next to nothing can be done at this point,\a148 responded his boss. \a147They are recruiting people from locations other than here. We have installed security cameras, hired extra security, and watched. Other than the occasional pamphlet found on someone's desk, there is no organizing activity going on here. Once they have more than 70 percent of our people signed up, they will bring in lawyers and force us to allow a vote.\a148\s \s\t \tJohn barely heard anything after \a147more security.\a148 This was exactly what he wanted to stop from happening. He didn't want to kill his own people just to carry out this attack. He made a mental note to get access to the security tapes and assign one of his team members to pull all of them on the way out the door. He wasn't certain how they were going to handle the guard in the security room yet. Perhaps he was already working for al-Qaeda and could simply be added to the team.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tNo matter what culture you come from, what language you speak or what religion you follow, there are some universal truths. At this particular moment Vladimir experienced one of those truths. He jumped so hard when the phone rang he knocked over three empty soda cans and a glass of iced tea. Cursing, he answered the phone.\s \s\t \t\a147I'm not used to hearing that as a customary greeting,\a148 said the man in the suit.\s \s\t \t\a147Sorry. The phone gave me a start and I spilled a glass of iced tea. What can I do for you?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We need you to modify your Trojan horse to pull in every sent email from every email client it lands on. Need them to all be sent to the ping server for analysis.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147It will be difficult since many access email via a browser in a library rather than an email client. What is your objective?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Have you seen the news lately?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Yes.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Our primary asset has been exposed to the world. We need to snag a new communications center while they are still in chaos.\a148\s \s\t \tThe Trojan horse had been written very small and simple so it could work across a wide range of computers and operating systems. When it detected that the user had opened the email via a Web browser, it obtained as much information as it could about the machine and passed it onto the ping server. Depending on which Webmail back end was being used, the Trojan could also attach itself to any messages sent during that session. Each time an instance was created and attached to an outgoing message, it was given a unique ID number based upon the ID number of the parent creating the new instance. The ID number came back in the packet of information to the ping server. \s \s\t \tIt was via these IDs and the IP addresses that Vladimir was able to map the groups. Eventually they managed to obtain location information for each of the IP addresses (those who weren't really good at ghosting anyway) and he plotted them on an interactive map. Clicking on one of the dots would bring up the date(s) of ping and email messages that had been part of the ping. They didn't always have the email message, but they had most of them. Sometimes they got the message from only one side, and sometimes they got it from both. \s \s\t \tYou could click a button on the Web page and ask the page to show you date- and time-ordered message routing. This was a really cool feature. Of course, when they didn't have location information it had to simply pick a location at random and plunk a different colored dot down, but it allowed you to track the communications flow.\s \s\t \tOnly a few people on the team knew about this page on their internal Web site. Even fewer were authorized to look at it. As always, Vladimir analyzed every piece of information he could find in every way he could think of. Information had always been his friend.\s \s\t \tWhen Vladimir first started putting this database and visualization tool together, he was doing it out of a simple desire to know. Since he was supposed to be storing copies of the data he collected on this \a147team\a148 server, he created a Web page on it to communicate with the man in the suit. It was far easier to send him an email and tell him to click here, double click there, and watch the screen, than it was to try to explain his analysis.\s \s\t \tLately there had been a significant increase in ghosted IP addresses in the middle of message paths. Quite a few of these paths came from IP addresses that formerly communicated via Nedim. Being in a wheelchair gave Vladimir a lot of time to analyze this data. It looked like someone was training new communications hubs. One link in the chain defied all attempts to punch a hole through to it. \s \s\t \tThe other ghosted IP addresses weren't ghosted so well. Vladimir managed to send them a special virus with the information he obtained from the ping server. He used a standard spam email offering Viagra without a prescription, but with a subject line that was sure to make them open the email. Once the virus was there, it started sending Vladimir email with information about the activity of the machine. He was able to fully penetrate two notebook computers this way. He even knew the model, brand, and serial number of the notebook thanks to their running a totally insecure OS known as Windows.\s \s\t \tIf you send an email out correctly on the Internet, it will contain the full path in the message header. Most end users never see this information because their email client or Web page interface has the display of it turned off by default. Each hop an email message makes along the way will add information to the message header with respect to the IP address, name of the server and name of the organization hosting the email server. The emails coming to Vladimir from this special virus contained a full path back. He paid close attention when the first path he uncovered changed and he discovered a new machine using the old path.\s \s\t \tThat single piece of information told Vladimir he knew where the next email hubs would be. As long as they didn't get wise to his virus he would be able to identify their location. When the DNS and gateway addresses came back the same for the second machine, Vladimir was positive al-Qaeda was training new communications hubs. Perhaps they had suspected what was going on with Nedim or maybe they had just decided to spread the traffic out. The reason behind it didn't matter. What mattered was they were training beginners when it came to ghosting. Vladimir would bet half his life savings the person doing the training was the same person whose machine had been completely impenetrable.\s \s\t \t\a147Would you settle for three communications centers and no modifications to the existing Trojan?\a148 Vladimir asked the man in the suit.\s \s\t \tThere was a pause in the conversation, then came the response, \a147You have not filed any reports about these.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You never read my reports or look at the Web page I set up on your internal server. If you did, you would already know the general location of each,\a148 Vladimir responded.\s \s\t \tThe man in the suit did not respond immediately. He had read some of Vladimir's reports and thought the man to be crazy. The Web page had been interesting, but he hadn't visited it much since he had originally been shown how to use it.\s \s\t \t\a147So, where will we be setting up operations next?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147India.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Something a little more specific would be nice,\a148 the man in the suit wise-assed back to him.\s \s\t \t\a147Do you want the senior communications person or the two he has recently trained? I would recommend you latch onto the first one he trained rather than taking out the trainer, but it is your call. The second one hasn't completed training yet.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147How do you know this?\s \s\t \t\a147He is still operating from the location of the trainer. If he completes training as fast as the other he will be setting up his own communications center inside of two weeks.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Will you know where they set up operations?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I already own the machine.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Why do you suggest we leave the trainer alone?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Odds are small that is the last communications hub they have. If the new trainee stays there long enough, I should be able to get the real IP address of his machine and his primary email account. Once I have that, I can own his machine as well. We got this one by pure accident. If you take it down now, they probably won't make the same mistake of doing a mad scramble to another hub. It will be a lot harder to crack this chestnut if they start going point to point. Trapping and turning each person this one trains will let you play the network out. If this one is starting to do training, they are probably trying to get out of the task themselves or al-Qaeda is trying to set up a grid. We won't know until we have more of the communications hubs.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Grid?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147It's a geek term. Neither Windows nor any flavor of Unix actually clusters. The marketing people and some big vendors all throw around the word cluster when they are describing capabilities, but they are committing fraud when they do such. You cannot actually cluster unless your operating system provides for a common user authorization file and a distributed lock manager to support a distributed transaction manager. The best you can get with either OS or their derivatives is a grid. Autonomous machines network together and agree to let other machines in the network use some of their resources.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147What good would that be?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147An email grid can be set up to use encrypted email addresses. All you need to do is to put up N email servers on the Internet and either have them assigned fixed IP addresses you send out with your teams, or actually register them in the global DNS. When email comes in for one of the special email accounts, determined by pattern in the name, it runs a decryption utility on the corresponding encrypted address and routes it there. The encrypted address lists can be changed on a per message or manual basis.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You are making no sense.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Think of it this way. I register a domain called MyServer.com. I also register the email servers MyPop3Server.com and MySMTPServer.com. When you send email to an account on this server or through this server, it checks the destination email address for a naming pattern. That name corresponds to an entry number in a list which has today's real destination address. The email address is automatically changed. All the sender knows is they sent to xxx1234@MyServer.com. Email could come in from any email system on the Internet. When it gets to the email servers on MyServer.com, they will translate the destination and route the message appropriately, removing all header information and without creating a log.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147What advantage does that have over what they are doing now?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You can set up a domain for under one hundred dollars. If you have the correct kind of Internet provider, you can set up your domain behind a dynamically assigned IP address. You will get a new IP address each time your cable modem or satellite box resets. The DNS registry will update within a matter of minutes to reflect the new IP address. All you have to have is the domain registration. There is no hand routing of messages. One person living anywhere in the world could have the Admin account to log into your server and change the email address routing. If they strip out all header and trailer information before sending it on, they will strip out any chance anyone has of tracking the thing. There will be nobody to turn because you will never be able to trace back and find out who is logging in, especially if the domain is set up for dynamic rather than static IP. They could boot different machines at different times of the day.\a148\s \s\t \tThe conversation had gone well beyond the technical capabilities of the man in the suit. He did understand the gist of it, though. If al-Qaeda had thought to set up their own domains the email servers could change location hourly and they would be all but impossible to track down.\s \s\t \t\a147How easy is this to do?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I've done it three times for various clients already.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We certainly don't want to give them any incentive to make spying on them more difficult. Email me all of the location information you have. We will attempt to squeeze the first one who has been trained, then set up operations on each one to follow. We will put some surveillance on the trainer to ensure they aren't going to try disappearing. It may be something as simple as the trainer having too much work or they are trying to spread the communications out so we can't nab as many at once. It may also be that the trainer is now a living martyr and we have to stop an explosion.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You will have it within the hour. You should coordinate the information I give you with the map on the Web page. All of the detail is there. I will simply tell you what to click and what to read.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Fine.\a148\s \s\t \tThe man in the suit had always thought this Russian was crazy. He had come highly recommended, and his being wheelchair bound forced him to spend a lot of time online doing analysis since he could no longer be in the field, but some of the reports he filed were just off the wall. True, Pakistanis had hated Indians for a long time and vice versa. Few understood the basis of the hatred anymore, they simply hated. \s \s\t \tA nuclear arms race had occurred in the two countries because of this hatred. With all of the revenue coming into that country via the offshore IT labor market, they were going to soon get the upper hand in such a race. It didn't help having them so deeply ingrained into the U.S. business interests. When push came to shove, America would nuke Pakistan out of existence because corporate America would lose fewer programmers here. That had to change. \s \s\t \tThe report fingering India as the next hotbed for al-Qaeda had been shredded for a reason. If that found its way into the hands of Pakistani intelligence, the military would use it as the justification for a preemptive strike. No war between these two countries was going to stop with conventional weapons. Indeed, the first strike would almost certainly be nuclear and focus on the IT centers of the country. That would almost definitely bring the Americans in on the side of India. \s \s\t \tPakistan had been and might still be in a position to nuke the bulk of the Indian population out of existence, thus overrunning the country with military afterwards. It was in no way capable of taking India if any other significant military came to their aid. Even if the Americans didn't have the stomach for another war just yet, The Chinese weren't going to sit by while radioactive fallout from the nuclear weapons drifted into their country. By many reports, China possessed the largest standing army in the world; it didn't have to be the most advanced. They could put so many boots on the ground that the soldiers could walk in with nothing but sticks and stones and still overpower another country. China wasn't the kind of country to let the slaughter of its people stop it from achieving an objective.\s \s\t \tThis al-Qaeda shit was going to cause most of the civilized world to exterminate Muslims. The man in the suit knew it. That is why he didn't mind killing his own countrymen in the horrible manner Hans' party had devised for them. \s \s\t \tIf only most of his country didn't have such rampant hatred of America over its support of Israel. That one fact was enough to get them money, recruits and support from many in the government.\s \s\t \tA long time ago, the man in the suit had read an essay from another man he thought to be crazy. That essay said all countries must band together and exterminate any country which was run by religion. He had been much younger at the time he read it. He had studied much about the different religions in college along with his other classes. It seemed that every religion wanted to have a country of its own. Later, when he got deeper into history classes, he found the real truth. \s \s\t \tEvery religion which gains any kind of power feels compelled to \a147spread the word\a148 by any means it can. World history documents \a147The Great Crusade\a148 to free the Holy land, the slaughter of the Incas and the Spanish Inquisition among many other crimes against humanity committed in the name of the Catholic Church. \s \s\t \tNow, the Muslim religion was quickly out-breeding the Catholic and would soon overtake it as the dominant religion on the planet. It was a long way from overtaking all of the combined Christian factions, but it was about to overtake the oldest and the root of most other forms of Christianity. Did that also mean the Muslim religion had to repeat the atrocities of the Catholic religion? \s \s\t \tAt least when the Catholics were getting it out of their system, the only weapons of the time were swords, arrows, catapults, and all of their variations. Wiping out an entire city was a labor-intensive effort. Now all it took was someone with a glass container smaller than an aspirin bottle. Break it on the steps to a subway and let the virus spread. Choose a virus with a three-day incubation period and choose a subway handling airport traffic, and you could infect nearly a third of the world before anyone caught on.\s \c\p\X1\l\BWatch it Roll\B\l\X1 \c \s\t \tThe Brit was sitting at headquarters and steaming. He had begged the man in the suit to give the order to nab the Lutton cell members they knew about. He heard the same tired argument. \a147We haven't identified any additional members. If we snag the ones we know about know, the rest will simply go into deeper cover. They might even stop communicating.\a148\s \s\t \tWell, the cell hadn't sent an email in over a week. Whatever was going to happen was already too far along to need any further communication unless the cell ran out of money. The Brit didn't know which was pissing him off more, the silence or the apathy.\s \s\t \tHe had done covert work long enough to know that when a team went silent, they were moving in on the kill. The Lutton cell was either too tiny to carry this operation out or the most patient cell he had ever seen. Sales of fertilizer were monitored at all of the retail locations in and around Lutton. Nobody was buying more than two bags at a time and it didn't seem as though there were any repeat customers, according to the surveillance team. There were only three possibilities as the Brit saw it:\s 1.\sThis was a very large cell and each member was buying one additional bag of fertilizer to cover the cell's tracks.\s 2. \sThe cell hadn't figured out how to obtain the bomb components needed.\s 3. \sProfessional explosives were being shipped in from Syria or some other location.\s \s\t \tThe last possibility had the Brit really worried. Libya had managed to smuggle in tons of C4 explosive to the IRA under the rule of Muammar al-Gaddafi. That one shipment showed the world what a car bomb could do. It ushered in a new age of terrorism. Most people seemed to forget it was the IRA that made the bombing attacks famous. Once the car bombings started, terrorists weren't satisfied with a simple plane hijacking anymore. They were all looking for bigger and bigger spectacles. \s \s\t \tMuammar was a real problem. The French didn't realize it. When the U.S. wanted to fly an air strike over France to get to Libya they made the Americans promise not to kill Muammar. Silly French. That one single demand brought out the dark side of America. They kept to the letter of their promise and didn't kill Muammar. Instead, they killed his family.\s \s\t \tOne thing the Brit had learned during his years of covert operations was that terrorists didn't have any rules of engagement. If you were going to fight them, you couldn't have any rules yourself. Rules of engagement and due process were causing this war to become a meat grinder for civilians. The Americans caught a lot of flack from the international community about killing off Muammar's family, but they achieved their objective. Muammar quit being such a major backer of terrorists. Oh, he still funded them, but he was a lot more careful about it after that. Weapons shipments were smaller and dramatically less frequent. He knew the next time war planes flew over, they wouldn't have made a promise to keep him alive.\s \s\t \tWars fought without rules tended to put a lot of civilians through the meat grinder. The English knew this all too well. World War II was a war fought with few rules. The Geneva Convention was more of a guideline than a rule book. Both sides had taken to bombing whole towns and cities. Granted, the Germans started it, but the carnage reigned pretty freely from both sides once it got going. \s \s\t \tNothing symbolized the desperation of it all more than the evening of November 14, 1940. That was the evening Coventry was bombed. Much of the town was in ruin and the bodies were stacked like cords of wood. What made this particular bombing stick in everyone's mind wasn't just the still photos and newsreel footage, but the story behind it. The English had managed to acquire an Enigma code machine and the corresponding codebooks for it. Two days before the bombing, Churchill had the translated message in his hands. Rather than let the Germans know the most top secret code (Ultra) they had was broken, they let Coventry be bombed. The Brit often wondered how Winston Churchill managed to sleep once he'd seen the devastation he'd allowed to happen. The look in his eyes when he visited the scene some days later seemed deeply haunted, even in the still photos. Almost as though he wasn't really alive anymore.\s \s\t \tSome say the Allied bombing of Dresden many months later was payback for Coventry. The city had a population of around 650,000 before all of the refugees started pouring into it. The firestorm from the bombings burned so hot it was able to burn concrete. Since nobody had any method of counting or tracking the refugees, the body count will forever be disputed. Some put the count as low as 40,000 while others put it over 300,000. A fire as hot as that vaporizes an entire human body, including the bones. There really is no way to get an accurate count.\s \s\t \tWhat the Brit feared most is that it was happening all over again. He feared there was some reason the Lutton cell was being allowed to continue other than the reasons he had been given. He feared the higher-ups were willing to sacrifice English citizens again to achieve some other objective.\s \s\t \tOne thing the Brit knew was that the Americans weren't going to win this war, at least not the new Americans. The old Americans would have already solved this problem. The old Americans didn't seem to exist anymore. Today's Americans were overweight mall dwellers interested only in watching sports on television, drinking beer, and otherwise living the \a147good life.\a148 They had little in the way of commitment or ethics.\s \s\t \tThe old Americans had the mettle to leave 51,000 of their own on the field at Gettysburg. This was back when the entire population of the entire country was far less than the current population of New York City. The old Americans had the mettle to leave roughly 209,000 Allied forces lying on the field during the battle of Normandy and keep going. Hell, they lost around 10,000 on D-Day alone. The old Americans had the mettle to obliterate Hiroshima and Nagasaki because they had learned the Japanese emperor had organized nearly every citizen with whatever hand tool or weapon they could find to hurl themselves at the oncoming American military. (It wasn't much of an Allied military at that point.) They had the mettle to realize sacrificing the populations of those two cities would be a big enough shock to end the war and save millions of lives. Today's America could barely scrape up 50,000 people without felony convictions willing to join the military under any circumstances. It was little wonder to the Brit that the WWII generation was referred to as \a147America's Greatest Generation.\a148\s \s\t \tNo, the Americans had too many lawyers and too many fat cats lining their own pockets to win this war. The Brit knew that all it took was a coward or a stupid individual to lose a war. On the first day of Gettysburg, General Ewell was ordered to take the ridges south of the city \a147if practicable.\a148 He didn't bother to take the hill which overlooked both the town and Cemetery Hill. There were only a handful of Union troops who had stumbled up the hill as part of their mass confusion and retreat. Some accounts have him outnumbering the forces occupying that hill by fifty to one. As a result, the Confederates lost not only the battle, but the war. Yes, there were other battles, but the Confederate Army was broken at Gettysburg. One coward in the wrong place at the wrong time could set in motion events which changed worlds. \s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tThe man in the suit and Hans were at headquarters finishing packing up most of the equipment. When they finally chose where to set up a new headquarters, the equipment would be shipped to it. For now all that remained was their two machines, the Internet link and the satellite TV service. The building had only had one phone line and it never seemed to work. Everybody on the team used either a cell phone or a satellite phone, sometimes both.\s \s\t \tHans had sent the rest of the team on to other assignments. The first group went to find the apartment where the training was happening. Their orders were simply to obtain some place where they could continually monitor the comings and goings of the place. Until a headquarters was established for the purpose of taking down the trainer, they were not to pursue or tail. All they needed to do for now was keep a record of the people who went in and out.\s \s\t \tA destination was needed for the second team. Vladimir had informed them the original trainee had gone silent again. It was the estimation of all that this operative had gone somewhere to show someone what he had learned, then was given a place to go and set up shop. They had all agreed to wait up to two weeks before allocating that part of the team to another assignment. Until then, that part of the team was given time to go home and take vacation.\s \s\t \tIt had been three weeks since the reporters had outed Nedim to the world. During this time the email flow to Nedim's machine all but vaporized. Both men had little doubt al-Qaeda members watching cable or satellite news had seen the story. Some other means to communicate a new email address to the field operatives must have been used, because the message didn't come through Nedim's machine.\s \s\t \t\iAt least Vladimir had been paying attention and looking for the next opportunity,\i thought Hans. He was aware that the man in the suit and Vladimir didn't get along, or more accurately that the man in the suit didn't like Vladimir and it mattered not to Vladimir. He simply continued doing what he always did. Hans had actually read many of Vladimir's reports. When it came to analysis, the guy not only looked at the whole board, he looked at the two boards sitting at the tables beside him, too.\s \s\t \tHans had been the one who had found the IT people for this team. The Brit had been rated very good for what he did, but Vladimir was almost impossible to find. The various Russian mafia organizations he wrote identity theft systems for hid him like the lost city of Atlantis. When Hans finally exploited a covert contact who gave up the name of Vladimir's handler, the man in the suit took over. He could tell the man in the suit doubted Vladimir's reputation from the start. \s \s\t \tIn Hans' mind, nobody could doubt the wisdom of hacking one's way into the machines of those training to become communications hubs for al-Qaeda. That Vladimir had already set up the next leg of this operation before anyone knew they needed it spoke volumes to Hans. He had not known what to think about Vladimir's fingering of India as the next hotbed for al-Qaeda operations. One's first thought was \ithere is too much American money flying around in that country for anyone to strike back,\i but Hans hadn't thought forward to the inevitable pullout. The thing which had stopped al-Qaeda from being highly successful in that country would now become the thing which opened all doors for them. As soon as the American money stopped flying around there would be a backlash.\s \s\t \tHans had sent this information on to Nikolaus. He sent along his thoughts on the subject, then asked Nikolaus to put the party's \a147think tank\a148 people onto determining how the backlash and rise of al-Qaeda in India would occur. Hans emphasized that this was too big of a groundswell to ignore.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tJeremy had logged into the company email system when he got back on Sunday to schedule a meeting with Lenny and the other two analysts. Because he knew better than to include any details, he simply put \a147Analysis Review\a148 as the subject for the meeting. He did not put any other information in the request.\s \s\t \tNormally Jeremy would have included only Lenny and simply would have walked into Lenny's office first thing Monday morning. The other two analysts knew that Lenny had offered up the expense account to get this information and that Jeremy was the one to bring it in. Jeremy had taken quite a few digs from the business school twins about his generic state school degree. They weren't necessarily bad guys; they simply thought they were better than Jeremy. He wanted them to know the kind of weekend he had on the company dime and that he alone pulled in this information. Their prestigious schools had accounted for nothing on this one.\s \s\t \tPromptly at 9:30 AM, Jeremy walked into the conference room. Lenny was already there and the other two were getting coffee from the kitchenette. When they walked in he told them to close the door. While Lenny trusted the receptionist, he didn't trust luck enough to believe nobody would walk in the front door.\s \s\t \tLenny looked at Jeremy and said, \a147You have something more than additional information on the data center moves, don't you?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I had to promise a future weekend at Salish Lodge and some jewelry to get it,\a148 Jeremy responded.\s \s\t \tLenny nodded.\s \s\t \t\a147Pytho Corporation is working on a be-all-and-end-all banking software package. The client they are targeting is First Global Bank. Already it handles the U.S. and Canadian banking regulations. They have brought in a rash of auditors from multiple auditing firms to both spec and test the banking regulations of each target country. French regulations are in QA now and the other countries First Global Bank does business with won't be far behind. Here is the product information.\a148 Jeremy placed the CDs on the table then continued. \a147It looks like the big chunk of their sales pitch will be 'turn the knob' functionality. If the bank wants to get into another line of business, they can simply 'turn the knobs' of the software package and it will be ready to go.\a148\s \s\t \tLenny hung his head, shaking it from side to side. \a147P.T. Barnum was right. There is a sucker born every minute.\a148\s \s\t \tJeremy continued, \a147What the sale is hanging on, is the bank's own auditors giving the blessing that French banking regulations have all been met. Once that happens, it doesn't matter if they even deliver the other countries.\a148\s \s\t \tThe other two analysts looked at Jeremy as though he had just grown a third eye. One of them said, \a147Isn't the entire pitch based on getting a global view of the bank on one screen?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147That was the initial pitch and one the MBA is having orgasms over, but it isn't the important issue. First Global Bank has twice the IT workers and more than three times the cost operating in France due to the taxes and lax work ethic in the country. Simply eliminating all of the French IT workers will pay for the entire project the first year.\a148\s \s\t \tLenny piped up, \a147You can bet Pytho Corporation is wining and dining the auditors doing the certification right now. They will be hurling twenty-something sex toys into hotel rooms with them and leasing cars in scores just to get the auditors to say they passed. First Global just had to go through the manually intensive process of consolidating financial information from all divisions to put out their quarterly reports. Even if the auditors come back saying they think Pytho is a month away from completing France, the sale will go through.\a148\s \s\t \tFinally, one of the prestigious school boys piped up. \a147What good is this information to us? Do you think Pytho stock will jump enough to make it worth our while?\a148\s \s\t \tLenny looked at Jeremy and could see he understood. \a147Tell them what you have figured out and I will fill in the pieces. You are becoming a natural at this.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147It means that the final data center moves won't happen. The bank will begin converting the locations serviced by the current data center locations onto this software once it is installed in the offshore data center. One to six months after each business entity is running on this new software, all but one or two IT workers will be let go and the on-shore data centers will be sold along with the machines in them. Within the year, they should have migrated all business units to this new software, discarding all other machines and all other IT workers. Have either of you checked on the FDIC insurance requirements for data center workers?\a148\s \s\t \tBoth looked at each other then responded, \a147No.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Full background checks from government agencies are required for anyone with control or significant access to electronic systems handling funds insured by the FDIC. Just how much background checking do you think has happened for the offshore workers since the bank doesn't own the data center?\a148\s \s\t \tLenny was sitting there nodding. \a147You have a big part of it, but you missed the best part.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You mean the part about this being a DOT-zero software release, so the odds of it actually working are remote?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147That's a piece of it.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147What's the other part?\a148 asked Jeremy.\s \s\t \t\a147Turn the knob,\a148 responded Lenny.\s \s\t \tEveryone looked at him and finally he went on. \a147The biggest marketing fraud to be committed by software vendors to date is claiming 'turn the knob' software configuration capabilities. This product will be a spin-off or a module of their existing product which already does complete order, inventory, warehousing, credit, manufacturing, and whatever else.\a148\s \s\t \tLenny continued, \a147Assume for a minute that each knob has only ten positions. How many knobs do you need before the permutation of possible configurations exceeds any testing capabilities? It isn't long before you have to have an automated regression testing product which runs for one month solid, throwing no errors, just to get a change out the door. The simple truth behind 'turn the knob' marketing is the software you are running is predominantly untested. Oh, there will be a small subset of tests run, but it will be left to the users in the field to find the problems. There are human interventions and workarounds when problems crop up in order processing or inventory management. No great losses occur and few crimes are committed. With banking software, severe problems could happen for years without anybody being able to track them down. Just look how long those traders losing billions on options and derivatives were able to hide their losses.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147What Jeremy has given us is the timeline for our shred. Yes, we can now play Pytho stock because the product won't be announced until after it has been installed and the French IT staff eliminated or at least greatly reduced. It will allow us to do a slow accumulation prior to the run-up. Their quarterly numbers weren't as good as expected so the stock is currently declining. Nobody will look twice at our accumulation thinking we are simply buying in a dip. They didn't offer any meat with their guidance, so others aren't buying. Once they have moved all U.S. and Canadian operations off to this new software platform, we can begin our shred of First Global Bank and Big Four Consulting, but we would be wise to wait until after Pytho has made their announcement and we have cashed in there as well. We can then do a triple shred.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You did well, Jeremy. If you think you can get even more information out of this lady, feel free to get the jewelry at Tiffany's instead of Helzberg. We may very well clear a billion dollars next quarter.\a148\s \s\t \tThe two prestigious business school boys simply sat there with mouths open. They had just been spanked big time and both of them knew they would never find a play like the one Jeremy had just found. They also knew the only reason Lenny would limit his play to a billion dollars was fear of an SEC investigation. \s \s\t \tLenny had advised each of them, and even the secretary, to set up bank accounts in countries that didn't have extradition treaties with the U.S. He advised them to have most, if not all, of their annual bonuses sent to these accounts in case there was ever a problem. He had allowed each of them to invest some of their paycheck in the funds Lenny was running. There were a handful of funds outside of the company where Group Lenny provided buy, sell, and sell-short recommendations. Each of them had put some money into those funds as well. The analysts running them had learned to take Lenny's advice. Many years, it was only Lenny's trades which made money for the fund. Until this moment they hadn't understood just how risky their jobs were.\s \s\t \tFinally, one of the business school boys came back to the room mentally. He tried to speak, then realized he needed to close his mouth first. After that he asked, \a147Which of the outside funds are we going to allow to play along with this?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I have not yet decided,\a148 Lenny responded. \a147This will be a high-risk play. Too much movement too soon will demand an SEC investigation. Most of the funds we advise have greedy dumbasses running them. Given the returns I've gotten for them before, they will jump in with both feet rather than be patient. There are perhaps two which could participate early in such a play, but it is too early to let them know.\a148\s \s\t \tLenny hit a few keys on his notebook computer, then said, \a147First Global is up twelve dollars per share over its price before the announcement.\a148 He pointed at the other two analysts and said, \a147You two need to verify we've liquidated our position. Report back to me as soon as we no longer hold any position in the company. I will start the next step when I feel it will go unnoticed.\a148\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tHeidi was prepping one of the secured living quarters when Nikolaus walked in.\s \s\t \t\a147How are you doing?\a148 he asked.\s \s\t \t\a147I'm well,\a148 she responded. \a147Looks like we will be up and running soon. Now I suppose we will find out who else on the team doesn't have what it takes to be here.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Regrettably, yes,\a148 responded Nikolaus. \a147They will be rounding up six more cells this week. Some of the suspected Hamburg cell members are being picked up as we speak. We've already located a couple of organ recipients for the ones currently undergoing interrogation.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I wish we could approach everyone who needs the organs,\a148 replied Heidi. \a147I do hate seeing them go to waste.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147It's a bit too risky to do that now. The black market databases are the best method at this time. When the number of patients coming through here increases, we will have our own people set up Web sites to auction the organs off. For now, we cannot cut the others out. Everyone knows it is not a permanent relationship. It is only a matter of time before each site gets shut down or blocked from nearly every country.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Do you know how many more rooms I need to prepare? I have the rest of the day off, so I could get them all done today rather than trying to do it all in a rush when they arrive.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We currently have only the two women in custody. I won't have any other information until tomorrow about the cells being rounded up today. Some may end up in the hands of local authorities. Until you kick in the door you cannot be sure who is there.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Well, I guess I can go home and relax in a tub then. Perhaps get some carry-out dinner as well,\a148 responded Heidi. \a147I have the two rooms done now, and we are both assuming the women will opt to live.\a148\s \s\t \tNikolaus nodded.\s \s\t \tHeidi left the compound and drove home. For reasons she could not explain she pulled out a letter-writing pad and took it to the tub with her. She decided to write a letter.\s \p\sHello,\s \sIt has been quite some time since we spoke. I must confess I was quite moved when you claimed me as one of your own. I did not feel your squad owed me anything, but your offer was quite touching nonetheless.\s \sCurrently involved in an OP which I cannot describe. Some time in the future I may need extraction. No danger now. Simply keep listening. When you hear about something ugly happening here, it will be time to come and get me.\s \sHeidi\s \sThe closing time gal\s \p \s The last line brought a sad smile to her face. She had some very fond memories of hanging out with that squad and missed her lover from it. In part she added it because they could all laugh about it now. In part she wrote it in case the squad leader was no longer above ground and the rest of the squad needed to remember who she was.\s \s\t \tOnce finished with her bath, she addressed an envelope and sent it to one of the addresses she had been provided. With postage on the letter, she went out the door with the letter in her coat pocket. She knew she most likely had surveillance on her. The level of clearance she had pretty much demanded it. There was a shopping mall not far from her apartment. The food court there had a postal drop near the bathrooms and cash stations. She should be able to easily drop the envelope on her way to the cash station without anyone getting suspicious. Had she been intent on hiding it, she would have sat at her table paying bills before she left. Anyone observing her wouldn't think twice about a bundle of envelopes.\s \s\t \tShe didn't exactly know why she did it. She had always been a firm believer in the party line. All of these people were part of a terrorist network and really did deserve to die. Still, given the history her country had and the way some thought in the party, it wouldn't be long before they were using any excuse to round up any Muslim and run them through. \s \s\t \tNikolaus had been a friend of the family for a very long time. He had seen to it that this operation could house no more than one hundred women. It took approximately four hours to complete harvesting from each person, less time if all they were harvesting was the blood. Still, someone would notice if the incinerators started running twenty-four hours per day seven days per week. It was always good to have a plan of escape in case things went horribly wrong.\s \s\t \tRevenue from the organ, marrow, blood, and soon stem cells flowed through accounts which provided money to the board members, company, and shareholder dividends. The party owned a lot of shares and thus would launder its money via dividends and shares of stock. The party, through one of its investment companies, owned a large chunk of debt which was convertible to dividend-paying shares. Of course, the share price had to go up dramatically to make the conversion worth while. It was going up significantly this quarter thanks to the secured location and its antidote storage. The board didn't know about the sale of body components. Once the stem cells started selling it was going to be difficult to hide from them. Their hands had to be good and dirty before they were allowed to know about those. Thankfully it was Nikolaus's job to ensure the board's hands were bloody.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tKent received a letter signed by the board members. They had received feedback from the bank's auditors. It was the opinion of the auditors that Pytho Corporation would meet French certification requirements within the month. Kent was instructed to obtain a new bid which was at least 20 percent less than the current price. The first banking system to be converted would be the French. Pytho Corporation was to commit in writing to obtaining certification for all other countries First Global Bank did business in no later than eight months from the date of contract signing. The letter went on about the order of rollout to the other countries, but oddly didn't mention either Canada or the U.S. Kent noticed that Margret had been copied on the letter as well.\s \s\t \tIt didn't surprise Kent that the board wanted input on this issue. They liked to feel they were in control. Perhaps they actually would be once this software was rolled out. There were many accountants who could be let go once each business unit came online with the new software. He had thought about making France the first country on the timeline, but that would have meant delaying it just as the board was doing. He wanted this project to hide the fact they didn't get the data center migration done. The board had seen to it that both projects would drag on past the two years Kent was supposed to be in IT, so he wouldn't be able to get all of the credit and a two-level promotion.\s \s\t \tWell, he needed to see just how much influence he had with Big Four Consulting now. He picked up the phone to call Kathryn.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tMargret laughed out loud when she read the letter from the board. They had nipped Kent's nads. There was no way he could do a cut & run now. By stalling off this contract until after certification of French banking rules, they had delayed the purchase a month. This delayed the installation enough that conversion wouldn't be able to complete until the end of the next quarter. True, it would be good for testing, but it meant Kent was actually going to have to complete the data center migrations. \iI hope he hasn't already spent the kickback he was to get from cutting that contract deliverable short,\i she chuckled to herself.\s \s\t \tCarol happened to be walking by on her way somewhere when Margret called to her. \a147Carol, glad I saw you. You have to read this,\a148 she said with a smile in her eye and a song in her voice.\s \s\t \tSomewhat perplexed, Carol walked in and accepted the letter from Margret. She expected some email joke, not what she read. After Margret relayed her take on it, Carol responded quietly, \a147You missed the best part. The board didn't say anything about migrating the U.S. or Canadian operations to the new system. They deliberately avoided mentioning it by stating the countries. They know the new regulation will take effect before this is complete, and they've offered up Kent to the legal system. Do you see the notation at the bottom?\a148 she asked, pointing to it for Margret.\s \s\t \tMargret looked and nodded.\s \s\t \t\a147This was filed as official correspondence from the board. A copy of it is in the archival system for investigators to find. When Kent migrates the U.S. operations to this software, he has gone beyond the board's instructions. If the regulators try to come down on the bank, they intend to hand Kent to them.\a148\s \s\t \tMargret's eyes got a little wider.\s \s\t \t\a147Oh, you have a notarized letter in the same archival system, you're good,\a148 responded Carol. \a147I wonder if it is deliberate or if they are just playing the odds,\a148 Carol mused.\s \s\t \t\a147What do you mean?\a148 Margret asked.\s \s\t \t\a147Well, if it is deliberate, there should be some official communication somewhere, probably to the asset group or the realty group, telling them to keep two of the U.S. data centers that have room for expansion and a comparatively low overhead cost in terms of taxes and electricity rates. The board will then be able to say they were under the impression all U.S. banking operations were going to occur in these two data centers while all other operations were going to occur in the Indian locations.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You know what, you should prepare a report for them with respect to the expandability of the remaining U.S. data center locations, the cost of electricity at each location, and the space currently available. If you bother sending it to Kent, simply put it in the folder of routine stuff he never looks at. Send it to the board and copy me on it. You can put in the subject that it is per the potential new regulation. Also include the number of people at each location who have the required background checks and clearance.\a148\s \s\t \tCarol saw the confused look on Margret's face and said, \a147I'm telling you this as a lawyer, not a friend.\a148\s \c\p\X1\l\BThe Lemmings March\B\l\X1 \c \s\t \tKent had left a voice mail for Kathryn to call him. Some time later she returned his call. He informed her of the board's demands.\s \s\t \t\a147That'll be a tough sell to Pytho,\a148 replied Kathryn.\s \s\t \t\a147It also means you have to continue with the data center migrations for now,\a148 replied Kent. \a147The end date for the project is three months from now and we won't have France up and running by then.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Can't we migrate the U.S. and Canada now?\a148 queried Kathryn.\s \s\t \t\a147The board was very explicit, Kathryn. France is to be done first, followed by the list of countries I gave you. Because they are going by countries and not company divisions we will need many trainers who speak the native language of each country.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147How many do you think you will need?\a148 asked Kathryn.\s \s\t \t\a147If you are planning on doing a flash cut, two for every location where people will use the system. If you are planning a rollout as resources allow, then two for each location you cut over. I don't know how well it will work having banking being done on two separate systems. We will probably need to bring people in from each location to a central training center and train them the week before the cutover, then have some traveling people at the major sites and leave the rest to call some toll-free support center.\a148\s \s\t \tThe profit margin was quickly fading from this contract. Both Pytho and Big Four had planned on reaping the revenues for support from the American and Canadian portions of the banking business up front. That was going to fund the rest of the operation. This latest demand from the board was going to ensure the bank had its payback long before the vendor received any revenue. The support contract pricing was based on the number of locations using the software. By focusing on the foreign countries first, the board was ensuring it wouldn't increase to a sizable level for at least a year. In the meantime, they were going to get rid of all their high-cost IT people in order of most expensive to least.\s \s\t \t\a147I'll talk it over with Pytho and contact you back. Can you email me the exact list of countries so I have the correct order when talking with them?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Sure. Sending now.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Thanks.\a148\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tStacie sent Jeremy an email to let him know she had begun training.\s \p\sJeremy,\s \sWe will have to postpone our trip to Salish Lodge for at least a month. I'm headed off to get trained on some Pytho software product, then off with their team to France to train client site staff. There are about six of us going from here to Pytho. \s \sIt should be a fun trip, but not nearly as much fun as our trip will be.\s \sLove,\s \sStacie\s \s\t \tNormally Stacie wouldn't use the \a147L\a148 word in an email, but she had elected to send this email from work and needed to cover her tracks. Nobody here needed to know it wasn't a relationship based on love, but rather one based on incredible sex between good friends and the favors they could do for each other. At least she sent it to his personal email account so it shouldn't set off any alarms.\s \s\t \tIn truth, she had just found out this morning from Kathryn that the deal was closing. Pytho had agreed to some changes wanted by the Board of Directors at the bank and a new contract was being prepared for their signature along with a new timeline for rollout. The board had demanded France be the first country converted followed by a list of other countries they did business in. Everyone was assuming the U.S. and Canada would be the last on the list, but the timeline wasn't going to include those for now.\s \s\t \tTomorrow, Stacie had to report to Pytho Corporation's training facility along with the others from here. They were getting a phi-slamma-jamma training course on how to train bank tellers in the basic functions needed to do their jobs. She was selected because she had taken a semester of French in college. Pytho was supposedly giving about twenty of their own people in France this same crash course. The bank had agreed to send the senior tellers from each location to a one-day training seminar put on at a Pytho location. They were limiting the trip to two tellers per location and the offer was supposed to be made only to the senior tellers.\s \s\t \tStacie hadn't used French in years. She and some of the other girls were hiding in a conference room with a tourist brush-up tape. Stacie planned on digging out her French book when she got home. It was one of the few books she had saved from college because she wanted to travel there someday. This wasn't exactly the kind of travel she had in mind, though. Here Pytho would be teaching them only in English. From here they would all go to the same training seminar the bank tellers were attending. They were to be paired off with a native French-speaking Pytho employee and sent to a bank location on the day of the rollout.\s \s\t \tWhat amazed Stacie was the grand assumption going on. By virtue of acquisition, Stacie found herself with an account at First Global Bank. She never changed banks. Her bank was one of those eaten by First Global. From what she had been reading in the days before, Pytho software \a147ass-u-me-d\a148 there was a PC running some form of that worthless Windows operating system at each teller window. Stacie had actually ventured into her branch more than once and knew for a fact there was some great big monster terminal there with a funky-looking keyboard that had all different colored keys on it. There was a big IBM logo on it, and while it had normal typewriter-like keys in the middle of it, there were at least three other keypad-type sections built into it. In truth, it looked as though you could hold that keyboard up in front of you to stop bullets.\s \s\t \tFinally Stacie had to bow out of the French language brush-up. She went in search of Kathryn and found her coming out of a conference room.\s \s\t \t\a147Hello, Stacie, I thought you were brushing up on your French for your upcoming trip,\a148 Kathryn said as she approached.\s \s\t \t\a147I need to talk to you,\a148 responded Stacie in a serious tone.\s \s\t \tKathryn had never really pegged Stacie as being a girl with brains. While she had been smart enough to pass French in college, Kathryn attributed the taking of the class to a young girl's fantasy of world travel. \a147I have about ten minutes between meetings.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147That should do,\a148 responded Stacie as they walked toward Kathryn's office.\s \s\t \tAfter arriving at Kathryn's office they entered and Stacie closed the door behind her. The closing of the door set Kathryn on edge after the dicey deal with Pytho software that might yet have her giving back her Mercedes convertible. She wondered what was up.\s \s\t \t\a147I spent a good part of this weekend reading through the Pytho promotional and specification documentation you gave me. Every piece of this literature makes the assumption a teller already has a PC running some flavor of that unreliable Windows operating system. I stopped at my bank this Saturday. Like many other people, my bank was eaten by First Global when it went on an acquisition spree. There are no PCs at the teller windows. They have some big hulking thing and a massive keyboard you could use to stop armed robberies. Granted, this isn't France, but has anybody actually walked into one of the French locations and seen what is currently at the teller window?\a148\s \s\t \tKathryn sat there mortified. This skirt and heels was more than a sex toy to be handed over to old men buying Viagra in bulk. Most of her mortification seemed to be centered around the thought that she should have put the top down on her way in this morning because after this bomb detonated she wouldn't have it to drive any longer. Finally she stammered, \a147I'm sure Kent took that into account during the presentation and determined all was well,\a148 trying to cover the obvious problem.\s \s\t \t\a147With all due respect, Kathryn, Kent couldn't smell a stink and determine someone farted.\a148\s \s\t \tSomething sounded so completely out of place seeing such a sweet and innocent looking face utter the word \a147farted.\a148 It was like someone with a very posh British accent suddenly dropping the F-bomb in the middle of a conversation. First there was Shock & Awe, then there was hilarity. Kathryn burst out laughing. The absurdity of the sound coupled with the correctness of the analysis allowed for no other response. Finally, when she stopped laughing she said, \a147I'll get it put into the contract right now,\a148 as she picked up the phone.\s \s\t \tStacie turned to leave.\s \s\t \t\a147Stacie.\a148\s \s\t \tShe turned back around. \a147Yes?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Good catch. Really good catch.\a148\s \s\t \tA warm and honest smile lit up Stacie's face as she said, \a147Thanks!\a148 then left Kathryn's office.\s \s\t \t\iThat girl just saved my ass,\i thought Kathryn as she called the team writing up the new contract to make sure First Global Bank was responsible for ensuring PCs running some flavor of Windows were at each teller station.\s \s\t \tStacie didn't know much about technology. She had a girlfriend in college whose brother was an ubergeek. When he was cleaned up he wasn't bad looking, if you could get past the fact he was nearly six feet tall and only about 120 pounds. He had been the one who got Stacie through her one required computer class and had always fixed her notebook so she could do her other assignments.\s \s\t \tHer mind slipped back to that one evening at college when Ubergeek returned home from something called a \a147Black Hat\a148 conference. He was exhausted and he reeked from being locked in a room all weekend without showering. Under his eyes were those big black rings you get when you've been up too long and taken too many NoDoz tablets. It was a look college kids understood well during midterms and finals.\s \s\t \tUbergeek dropped his bags, set down his laptop, opened a beer and plopped on the couch. After some severe prodding from the girls, he went to take a shower, then came back.\s \s\t \t\a147So, you had a good time playing Cowboys and Indians?\a148 Stacie had asked only a little sarcastically. He smiled and continued with a second beer. Seeing him drink beer was an oddity in itself. Stacie had only ever seen him consuming Mountain Dew or iced tea their entire time in college together.\s \s\t \t\a147The Black Hat conference is a gathering of the best and brightest hackers in the world,\a148 he responded. \a147Each year we gather pretty much every system known to man and attempt to exploit security vulnerabilities in them. Some attendees are professionals from software companies, some are professionals from organized crime, a few work for the government, and the rest are simply hobby hackers. People from the NSA tend to slip in just to see who is there.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Oh, yes, Mr. Bond!\a148 Stacie retorted, simply dripping with sarcasm.\s \s\t \tUbergeek got up and went over to his backpack. Stacie began sputtering something which sounded like an apology and Uber's sister simply had a perplexed look on her face. Ubergeek returned handing Stacie a business card and said, \a147He wants me to apply for a job when I graduate.\a148\s \s\t \tThere was absolutely no denying it now. There in Stacie's hand was a business card from an NSA special agent. She handed the card to Uber's sister and watched another set of eyes go wide.\s \s\t \t\a147So what do you do at this conference, then?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We play a security game called capture the flag. Each team managing each system is given a flag file. In that file is a special identification number that only the game moderators know. The file name is pretty much known to all players and posted on an overhead display. Where it is and how you get to it is up to each team.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147So,\a148 interrupted Stacie, \a147you sit around trying to hack into each other's machines and get the number from this file?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We actually try to get the entire file,\a148 responded Uber.\s \s\t \t\a147How many flags did your team capture?\a148 asked Uber's sister.\s \s\t \t\a147Forty-six.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147How many did it take to win?\a148 both girls asked together.\s \s\t \t\a147High score was seventy-two. We placed third.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147No wonder you are being recruited,\a148 said Stacie.\s \s\t \t\a147They make the offer to a lot of people at the conference. It is the one place they can both keep surveillance on the criminals they are after and recruit potential criminals into the agency.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Potential criminals?\a148 queried Stacie.\s \s\t \t\a147While a good many people get paid a lot of dollars by software vendors to do what we do, if you weren't hired to do it, what we do isn't legal.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Oh.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Anything else interesting happen there? You guys all go out for lap dances or something?\a148 asked Uber's sister.\s \s\t \tUber chuckled \a147Few people left the room. The most sleep anyone on the team got was four hours. They did ban one system from ever coming back, though.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147That bad, huh? Something from Microsoft? I know you are always talking about how much Microsoft products suck.\a148 \s \s\t \t\a147No, that good, and no, it isn't a Microsoft product. Nearly 200 hackers sat there mainlining caffeine and poking at it relentlessly. It never gave up the flag, and not for the first time.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147How is that possible?\a148 asked the sister. \a147You guys know every nook and cranny there is to exploit.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147It is the most secure operating system on the planet. The NSA and DOD use it extensively as do a lot of companies.\a148 He looked both girls in the eye as best he could given his condition and said, \a147If you are serious about running a business and keeping it secured, you put it on OpenVMS because it never gives up the flag. It is designed so that if there are N machines operating in a cluster, one of the machines can be taken out via nuclear strike, and the cluster will continue without losing a single transaction. I was the most familiar with it and that is why the NSA guy asked for my r\a233sum\a233 on the spot. He is calling on Thursday to discuss bringing me in before I graduate.\a148\s \s\t \tOnce again the girls had that deer-in-headlights look on their faces. The dude was only a sophomore in college. Stacie doubted he'd ever been laid by anyone his sister hadn't begged to do the deed, yet he basically had a career-type job already lined up. When Thursday came, Uber had accepted the job. He transferred to a college close to where they wanted him to work. Stacie and his sister became roommates.\s \s\t \tIt had been five years since that day and Stacie still remembered what he had said. Yes, every place she looked seemed to use Windows, but Stacie knew it was a joke. Windows still held the world record in surrendering the flag at the annual Black Hat conference. Uber was nice enough to send her an email with the results every year. Stacie still tried to keep in touch with Uber's sister, but now they lived so far apart it was difficult. She was glad she had never been asked to do Uber. He wasn't a bad guy, just not a guy on Stacie's radar. If the request had been presented, she would have been obligated. Thankfully that request shouldn't come now. She had attended Uber's wedding last year and heard they were expecting a child now. \iI Guess some guys really will marry the first girl who sleeps with them twice,\i she thought.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tIt had taken Margret two days to get the information from her people at the remaining data centers. They were a little perplexed when she asked about their expansion capabilities and per kilowatt cost of electricity.\s \s\t \t\a147I thought we were all being offshored?\a148 asked one data center manager.\s \s\t \t\a147I don't believe it will ever be all of the data centers, just most of those we inherited which have a really high operational cost.\a148 responded Margret. \a147The board is interested in how much we can expand two of our existing on-shore data centers.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147So the smallest one loses?\a148 asked the same manager.\s \s\t \t\a147More than likely they will move to one of the other two.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Oh.\a148\s \s\t \tMargret really wanted to tell them more, but she didn't dare. There was a remote possibility Kent would find out about all of this or they would ask him a probing question if he should happen to speak to them. She was sure what she had told this data center manager would spread like wildfire as soon as she hung up the phone.\s \s\t \tGetting the clearance information from HR had been another tooth-pulling contest. Finally, she had Carol deal with HR while she simply asked the data center managers for information yet again. Oddly, this request for information seemed to invigorate them. Margret could tell they honestly believed there was a regulation somewhere that was going to protect all of their jobs. \iBest to let them believe it for now,\i she thought. \iIn a couple of months it could actually be true.\i\s \s\t \tAt any rate, she put the report and spreadsheet together, emailed a copy to Carol and to each member of the board of directors individually. Once that was done she put a copy of the report in the network directory containing all of the report requests.\s \s\t \tJust as she finished doing this Kent dropped by with a new copy of the contract and the rollout schedule. Kent hadn't bothered to read through anything, he simply looked at the timeline document and was upset that the United States and Canadian locations hadn't been included. \a147I can't present this to the board,\a148 Kent said in an exasperated tone. \a147She'll just have to do this over.\a148\s \s\t \tMargret took a look at the document and the contract while Kent went rambling on about something. Finally she looked up and said, \a147The board only asked for the international locations when they came back with their letter. My honest opinion is that the board isn't ready to risk the U.S. or Canadian operations on a new system until it has been in the field for over a year.\a148\s \s\t \tKent stopped his pacing and stared at her.\s \s\t \t\a147Think about it, Kent. The U.S. and Canadian operations allowed us to eat nine other banks because it generated enough cash for us to risk taking over some poorly run corporations. They aren't going to risk the golden goose when all they are really trying to do right now is save money.\a148\s \s\t \tKent still had that \a147I was born stupid and been losing ground ever since\a148 look on his face.\s \s\t \t\a147Take a look at the list of countries they authorized to be converted to this system and look at the order of the conversions. It is an inverted list of our highest to lowest cost IT operations. Simply gutting those operations makes it worth taking the risk on this system. Hell, once the French IT workers are all gone, the entire cost of this project will almost be paid for. When they get the second country online we are turning a profit from this move. After all of the other countries have been converted and are running smooth, they will allow the U.S. and Canadian operations to use the same software, but not until then. That will be a separate project.\a148\s \s\t \tMargret was very determined to not let it slip about the Canadian and U.S. data centers having to remain on-shore and be staffed with U.S. citizens to keep FDIC insurance. Carol was no fool. If Carol thought the board was setting Kent up for a fall, Margret was going to be on her hands and knees behind his legs telling them to push. Briefly, Margret wondered if Kent's job came with stock options. She tuned back into the room just in time to hear Kent say, \a147So you think I should present this to the board as-is?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Yes. It is what they asked for. If they come back and say it needs to include the other operations you can show them the request they sent out and say we complied with their request, but will be happy to work up yet another quote if their wishes have changed.\a148\s \s\t \tKent picked up the other folder he had brought in, presumably it contained the copies for the board, and walked out.\s \s\t \t\iCould the little bastard be catching on?\i Margret thought to herself. One thing was certain. None of the big boys had taken Kent out to lunch since he got back from hobnobbing around the globe. Margret had assumed they were simply punishing him for turning in too big an expense report, but perhaps they had people in the legal department telling them to keep their distance for when this went bad. It certainly wouldn't be the first time this bank had chosen a sacrificial lamb for a federal investigation.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tJeremy had been idly surfing the Web for a few hours at work. The surfing was thinly disguised as doing research. He was bored and he was tired. Spending the weekend with Stacie had pretty much worn him out. He didn't really feel it until the second day back when his muscles started to stiffen up. \iI really need to start working out,\i he thought.\s \s\t \tFinally, he decided to check his personal email. Technically they weren't supposed to do that due to the risk of virus. Lenny had made them all start using Ubuntu on their desktops since there were no known viruses for it and the OS was rock solid. Indeed, the only time Jeremy ever rebooted the machine was when an update got installed and popped up a message saying he needed to reboot for it to take effect.\s \s\t \tOnce he went to the Web page to look at his personal email he saw the message from Stacie. \iAt least she didn't send me the email at work,\i he thought. When he read the email he was damned glad she hadn't sent it to his work email. He quickly printed out the message and walked into Lenny's office. When Lenny looked up he didn't say a word. Jeremy simply handed him the sheet of paper.\s \s\t \tAfter reading it Lenny said, \a147Well, you definitely need to go shopping for this girl's jewelry and make yourself available once she gets back.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I take it we will begin a slow accumulation of Pytho Corporation shares now?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You are learning, boy. You certainly have far more potential than those other two I hired. Yes, we will start, and this evening I will make a few phone calls from a disposable cell phone to the accounts we advise and tell them to do the same.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Let me guess: you will tell them Pytho will be announcing a big new software package and a major client in about a month?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I may leave off the client part,\a148 responded Lenny with a smile.\s \s\t \t\a147So, we will wait for First Global Bank shares to drop a little next week and begin accumulating again there as well?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You do just about have this figured out, don't you?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I have a good teacher,\a148 Jeremy smiled back.\s \s\t \tLenny chuckled. \a147We have about a month before the bounce happens. By that time we could own somewhere between 12 percent and 20 percent of both companies. Slightly heavier on Pytho Corporation, of course. Their stock is down now and will get the biggest bounce from the news.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Can we keep 12 percent hidden that long?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Hopefully. If we do it slowly we should be OK.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I take it you will start buying them right now, before making the calls?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You really can fill in for me when I'm on vacation, can't you?\a148\s \s\t \tBoth men simply smiled and Jeremy left the room. Once again, he had brought home the bacon. The other two analysts hardly spoke to him since he had shown them up in front of Lenny. No need to call a meeting for this one. The email could have given away his contact. Jeremy was pretty certain Lenny would place that sheet of paper in the shredder as soon as he left. In fact, he could hear the shredder running now.\s \s\t \tJennifer, the receptionist, saw the smirk on Jeremy's face as he was walking by. She caught his eye and mouthed the word \a147What.\a148 Jeremy walked over to her and whispered, \a147When the bonus checks come out this year you are going to want to cook me dinner and give me a massage.\a148\s \s\t \tSoftly Jennifer responded, \a147It'll take more than a big check for that. You will have to get my husband an all-expense paid tee time for a foursome at that golf club he wants to try out and settle for it being breakfast while he is golfing.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Interesting,\a148 Jeremy said with a smile as he walked away. She was in her late forties. Kids were teenagers looking at college a couple years down the road. Honestly, Jeremy thought she was simply the dutiful wife and mother working here because they hadn't saved enough for college. He had no idea that she would be open to fooling around once in a while. \iThe things you learn when you tease!\i he thought.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tJohn was not having a good day. Today was the day most of the workers at his company had voted to unionize. He had fought this tooth and nail and still it had happened. They hadn't needed to avoid unionizing altogether, simply to hold off for another six months or a year. John needed the data center migrations to all be completed so he could carry out his plan.\s \s\t \tHis company hadn't hired too many new people lately. In part it was due to fear they would have to pay people more once the union came in. The other reason was nobody would take the shit wages they were offering, probably because they thought the union would be taking over and they wanted to start out at better wages. \s \s\t \tThey had been shorthanded the last month. John was working fourteen-hour days himself and forcing his employees to work even longer. It wasn't like it was back-breaking work \a151 mostly just staying awake and monitoring the job schedulers. Sometimes they had to mount media for backups to run, then remove the media and label it for shipping. Backups could take hours. The systems were never off-line. There was a disk-to-disk backup which happened in a matter of minutes. It was the backing up of the backup to removable media that took forever. Removable media was needed so it could be taken to off-site storage.\s \s\t \tHis team had bungled only a few of the media cycle rules. It was much easier when they were shipping things to Iron Mountain, but now that the off-site backup storage was here in India, it was a debacle. The company they were using (and he assumed they owned part of) had incompetent help. Basically, John believed they were the people he had turned away. To understand the true level of that insult, you had to know just how low the requirements were to get in here.\s \s\t \tIf the people working at the remote site managed to get the correct backup media returned to John's people, it often took forever to get to it or it arrived damaged. The backup site was about a two-hour drive away. Correction, the backup site was about two hours away if anything like American highways or interstates had actually linked the two places. The chuck-hole-lined mud ruts and the lack of suspension in the transport truck played hell with the backup media. Some of the cases arrived completely ruined. It looked like they had simply been tied to the back of the truck and dragged all the way.\s \s\t \tJohn had complained to his boss several times about this problem with the backup storage. His boss tried to look into it, but was always told \a147they're working on it.\a148\s \s\t \tThe problem reared its ugly head publicly when one of the locations needed to restore a document from a backup. Nearly three hours after the request, the backup media it should have been on arrived and was unusable. They had to go back and get the prior day's backup. This time John's boss took the car of one of the upper management types and brought the media in it. The car didn't look so good when he got back with it, but the media worked and they were able to satisfy the request before it was morning in America. The only benefit from the entire ordeal was that someone above John's boss was now looking into getting better transportation for the off-site storage company. He probably wouldn't have been so interested if his car hadn't developed a very large oil puddle under it after John's boss got back. John estimated the puddle was about five quarts in size. One of those chuck holes must have ripped loose the oil pan.\s \s\t \tJohn went to a window and could hear the chanters out in the street through the glass, all chanting for better wages, better treatment, and a strike. \iJust lovely,\i he thought. \iA strike will have them locking this place down like a fortress.\i\s \s\t \tWhen his work day finally ended, John went home to see how his new trainee was doing. This trainee hadn't picked it all up as fast as the first one, but had learned enough to be out on his own soon. Someone had given him some money and he had taken a job with a different company here in Bangalore. He had enough money that he could rent his own place in this complex and would be moving out tomorrow.\s \s\t \tThey chatted awhile. John answered a few questions, then checked his own email. It really was his own email he checked this time. Over one-third of the cells he normally handled email for were now being handled by his first trainee. This new trainee had a much more capable machine and had taken over half of John's remaining cells. John asked his current trainee when the new trainee would arrive. He was stunned to hear that this trainee would be training two others soon. They would be given the remaining cells John handled and sent to other locations.\s \s\t \t\iSo, I'm being phased out,\i thought John. He guessed it didn't matter. He would be too high-profile now that there were surveillance cameras all over the data center. He was going to have to hide once his plan went into play.\s \s\t \tIt was in the middle of this train of thought when John opened up an email from a cell he used to handle. It was actually for him. Once he deciphered the message he found out they wanted information about the off-site storage company. John didn't understand why, but made a note to pull down the files from work. The bulk of the information was on the company intranet. The place wasn't of much value as a target. It employed at most thirty people and was only of need if someone had to restore a system or a file.\s \s\t \tJohn was too tired to make sense of it now. He logged out and went to bed.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tThe Brit was livid! He wanted to kill his entire team. He wanted to kill everyone they reported to, then he wanted to go out and kill everyone he even remotely thought was a terrorist. He had the training to do it and by God it was time he put that training to use!\s \s\t \tWhat had set the Brit off was the cable news. The bombings had finally happened in Lutton. Three subway trains and a bus, all within half an hour of each other. It appeared that the person on the bus had gotten stuck in traffic, so he took out the bus because he missed his train.\s \s\t \tThis had been what the Brit feared. People would sit on their arses and the attack would be carried out. At least the main objective of the attack had failed. From the pattern displayed on the news, it looked as though the terrorists had planned on blowing up each train as it got to the point where one tunnel joined another tunnel. This would have taken out or at least blocked the floodgates.\s \s\t \tWhy were the floodgates important? The Brit had it figured out long before the journalists. The last bomb, which went off on the bus, was significantly larger than the others. This terrorist's train would have been in the tunnel under the river when the bomb detonated. They were planning on flooding the entire subway system, killing everyone on the other trains down there. Hundreds, if not thousands, would have been stranded with no affordable method of getting home.\s \s\t \tIt was the kind of attack which showed a lot of planning. While the people blowing themselves up might have been illiterate inbred bastards from some poverty-stricken region of the world, the plan had come from someone with training. Nobody on the Brit's team had seen this coming, not even the Brit. Most were assuming they were going to try and blow up a pair of trains passing each other in opposite directions to maximize casualties. Nobody had thought this far out.\s \s\t \t\a147We should have thought this far out,\a148 the Brit said. They had already tried to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge more than once. Thankfully, the people they sent to do it were so useless they ended up getting busted in a routine traffic stop before they had even assembled all of the explosives for the job.\s \s\t \tThe Brit was lost in his raging thoughts when the phone rang. It was the man in the suit calling him.\s \s\t \t\a147I assume you've seen the news.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You bloody well know I have!\a148 screamed the Brit.\s \s\t \t\a147There is a team showing up at your hotel inside fifteen minutes. Meet them downstairs. British authorities want to handle the remnants of the Lutton cell, but we are cleared to round up four other cells. They aren't being arrested; they are being taken to our interrogation center.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Oh! \iNow\i we can round them up!\a148 screamed the Brit.\s \s\t \t\a147Nobody saw this one coming, not even you!\a148 said the man in the suit. \a147If you had put this before me we would have rounded up what we had. It wouldn't have stopped the attack since we only knew of a few and still hadn't seen any explosives. I'll wager that when the news starts giving us the identities of the bombers none of those names will be on our suspect list, either.\a148\s \s\t \tThat truth took some of the wind out of the Brit's sails. He hadn't seen this coming and they had only three names of cell members. This act took one more person than they had identified and there was probably a support network in place for this team.\s \s\t \t\a147What do we do with the ones we nab?\a148 asked the Brit.\s \s\t \t\a147The driver knows of a building on a runway which was used for bombers during WWII. It's mostly shut down now, but we have people arriving there to set up a holding pen and wait for the rest of the planes.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Planes?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147If you get everybody on the list you will have over sixty prisoners. That's really more than we are prepared for at the interrogation center, but we have to nab these before British authorities start wanting to nab more of their own.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147What are my orders for tomorrow?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You and the rest of the team will remain with the prisoners until they have all been loaded, so pack some rations and overnight supplies. I don't yet have another assignment for you, but should shortly.\a148\s \s\t \tWith that the conversation ended. The Brit went about getting his hardware and putting some MREs along with bottled water into his backpack. One thing was for certain, leading the life he led, the first thing he did when he landed anywhere was to obtain a case of MREs. Militaries around the world stopped calling the food they supplied \a147rations.\a148 Now the prepackaged food troops were ordered to carry was called an MRE, Meal Ready to Eat. They weren't really ready. You had to have a little heater kit that got hot when you put water on it to warm them up, but it was better than a can of beans, which was what rations used to be.\s \s\t \tMost people hated being forced to eat MREs. Some of them were good, but most made high-school cafeteria food seem like fine dining and airline food a mouth-watering experience. If you wanted to survive in the field, though, you had to have a tolerance for them. Some of them had some nasty preservatives. They didn't seem to ship that twenty-year bread anymore. Even the surplus catalogs didn't have it these days. That stuff tasted great, and really would last in its package twenty years on a shelf. But it had so much MSG and other preservatives in it that if you ate the entire \a147loaf\a148 in one sitting you got a severe case of the \a147quick step.\a148 Nothing makes a hike pure misery faster than a case of diarrhea. In a jungle or a desert, you would be dead before the end of a two-day march unless you happened to find lots of drinkable water along the way. Gathering water along the way was always a risk.\s \s\t \tAmong the many sacrifices a professional in this business made was they committed to eating at least one MRE per day even when they weren't on duty. It wasn't that you liked them, you simply wanted to live when you were on duty.\s \s\t \tThe Brit had been given time off while waiting for his next assignment. He had come home to England and taken a room at a hotel he liked. There really wasn't much \a147home\a148 left here for him. He had a sister, but he didn't really communicate with her much. They got along well, and he loved her like a sister, but given what he did for a living, he kept his distance. She was married with two kids and he didn't want to put any of the family he had left at risk.\s \s\t \tMost people would take one look at this hotel and wonder why the Brit liked it. Achieving a two-star rating was simply a dream for it. The Brit didn't mind so much. It was a blue-collar area. There were some good pubs within walking distance and the owner liked him. The owner actually let him put a great big gun safe in a storage room. Thanks to home-owner marketing, the gun safe simply looked like a great big safe. The only thing that made it a gun safe was the inside of it having notches to stand guns upright on one side, hooks to hang hand guns in the back, and some shelves to put ordinary things on. This one even had a smaller safe in the bottom so you could keep really valuable stuff.\s \s\t \tThe Brit grabbed his large duffel bag and headed for the gun safe. He met the owner on his way there.\s \s\t \t\a147You've seen the news?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Aye, mate.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147They are sending you out to do something about this?\a148 the owner queried, seeing the bag and backpack.\s \s\t \t\a147Not this one so much as stopping the next three,\a148 the Brit responded. \a147Too many regulars involved in this one for us to wander in.\a148\s \s\t \tWith that the owner nodded and unlocked the storage room. Normally you wouldn't lock a storage room with little of value in it, but the owner knew the gun safe was in there, and given some of his clients, he'd lock up the little bars of soap if he could. The owner didn't stick around to see what was in the safe. He understood this man's occupation enough to want to know even less than he did know.\s \s\t \tIt was always kind of odd when the Brit stayed here. It was like the whole town knew the mercenaries were back. Fights didn't happen in the bars very often. The really low-end scum didn't try to rent a room at his place. The drug dealers hid themselves \a151 well, most of them did. The others were just found dead in an alley shortly after doing a deal in the open. The people out on these streets seemed to know the second one of these guys' planes had touched down. Anyone who lived here long enough would notice the quiet. It was like the quiet when wildlife flees before an earthquake.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tVladimir had his Web surfing interrupted by a special WAV file playing on his ping server. One of the control programs he had loaded on the email user's machines was designed to gather a fresh information packet about the machine and send it to him every time the machine booted. The machine serial number indicated the long-silent first trainee had found his new home.\s \s\t \tAnother program was busy sending copies of each email message he received to a special folder on the ping server. \iThis guy wastes no time,\i thought Vladimir. A routine check of the IP address showed that an email hub was once again in Pakistan. \iWell,\i thought Vladimir, \iat least they won't have to move too far.\i He prepared an email for the man in the suit and Hans containing the new location information and a link to the folder containing the inbound email. He was pretty certain they would put the Brit to work on the email messages once his holiday was over.\s \s\t \tThe day was shaping up to be both quiet and productive. Soon there would be some new ping hits from the outbound emails being opened. Things were going to be back to normal, it looked like.\s \s\t \tFate simply doesn't like normal. No sooner had Vladimir thought this than he got another packet from a reboot. The machine ID matched the second trainee, but the IP address looked different. A quick search of the previous packets proved Vladimir's suspicion. Still in Bangalore, but no longer with the trainer. Vladimir sent out a tiny ping request to the trainer's machine just to be sure it was still up and running. He had noticed a distinct drop-off in the quantity of email messages being handled by the trainer. Now it was starting to make sense.\s \s\t \tThe second email from Vladimir was much more excited. He included the new location information and the following:\s \p\sAll,\s \sSecond trainee has moved to new location in Bangalore. Not far from trainer, might even be in same housing complex.\s \sVolume of email being handled by trainer almost non-existent now. Something big is getting ready to happen and the trainer will be one part of the operation.\s \sVlad\s \p\s\t \tAs always, Vladimir was pretty certain his reports would be filed in the shredder by the man in the suit. Hans appeared to actually read them and respond once in a while, but Vladimir knew he changed little when it came to the major decisions. They did, however, take his advice about how to proceed with these email hubs; that was most unusual. Right now he was wondering if that was such good advice. Strategically it made sense if you wanted to expose as much of the network as possible, but that was before the trainer had gone nearly silent. Unless the team found out he had some terminal disease with only months to live, this was a scary thing. Al-Qaeda didn't normally compromise assets this well placed.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tHeidi was nearly dead on her feet. As expected, the couriers hadn't spent very long at the interrogation camp. In less than a week they had all come to the second camp. They definitely needed a better method of harvesting because the small team they had wasn't going to be able to handle the sixty-plus patients that had just landed this morning at the interrogation camp if they all came here at once.\s \s\t \tShe had a choice in front of her now. Drag her tired ass over to the dorm facility to take vitals, etc. of the two women there now so she could sleep longer when she got home, or drag herself back here after only three hours of sleep. It wasn't that difficult of a decision when you phrased it that way. She could have gotten four hours of sleep had she dared sleep in one of the dorm rooms not being used by patients. Two of the surgeons were on their way to do just that now.\s \s\t \tTwo of the courier women had opted to serve as brood sows for embryonic cell creation. It really struck Heidi as odd that two women who had been working for al-Qaeda would opt to do such a thing. Nikolaus explained to her that these were simply couriers. They weren't part of a cause, just someone who collected a fee for carrying a dangerous package. They served terrorists and drug dealers equally. One of the women was really a girl. She was not quite sixteen yet. Besides being a courier she had been selling sex to old men. She had been tested for every kind of social disease when they found that out. She had also been two months pregnant when they nabbed her. Some time tomorrow she would have an abortion.\s \s\t \tPerhaps it was because they were cooperating, or perhaps Nikolaus was getting soft in his old age. The women were allowed to choose the method of insemination they received. They were presented with three options:\s 1. \sExtraction of egg, fertilization outside of the womb, and replacement.\s 2. \sArtificial insemination once it was verified they were ovulating. This would have to be done multiple times during ovulation.\s 3. \sNatural. Also would have to be done multiple times during ovulation.\s \s\t \tHeidi couldn't believe both women asked if they would be able to choose the men and when they were told they could only select from those at the camp they each chose natural. The women were allowed to roam around much of the dorm. They could go out only on the second story balcony. The dorm was well guarded, and even if it hadn't been there was no way they could get through the camp's perimeter. It was stronger than a maximum security prison.\s \s\t \tEach one had a television and radio. The television had a satellite feed with some movie channels. There were also quite a few books in the library area, but most were technical reference books. Of course the library wasn't much use to these women. They didn't speak much English and the girl couldn't read at all.\s \s\t \tThere were bedding, sheets, towels, etc. all provided for them. Each room had a little fridge which was kept stocked with beverages and some snacks. Meals were brought over three times per day. They had been provided some additional clothing and toiletries as well.\s \s\t \tPerhaps Heidi was getting soft in her old age, but she asked Nikolaus to locate an audio course in Punjabi which taught English. Both spoke some broken English because it was the lingua franca of Pakistani elite and spoken by most government officials. Heidi thought things would go smoother if they were able to communicate with the staff.\s \s\t \tThe women did not have telephone or Internet access. They did have central air and the ability to control the temperature in their own dorm rooms. From time to time they would wander down to the recreation room, which had some tables, a pool table, ping pong, cards and various board games. The recreation room had been designed for when scientists had to remain on-site over the course of weeks while running experiments. Nobody had used it who wasn't part of the team. Quite simply there weren't many experiments going on here which couldn't be done in a standard work day. Besides, only the guards really knew about this room. They kept a coffee maker here. Rumor had it one or more of the guards was servicing the woman already. Boys never seem to waste much time when they find out nookie is present and willing.\s \s\t \tIt would be quite a few years before the reality of their predicament was forced upon these women. Even though they had cooperated, nobody could risk them talking. No matter how many friends they made here, at the end of their usefulness, they would be harvested.\s \p\X1\c\l\BThe Ties That Bind\B\l\X1 \c \s\t \tThe Brit received his recall notice. He was going back to Pakistan to work with what was left of the team there. He didn't want to go. He had even asked if he could work from here and just email the results or place them in a different directory on the server. This was England, and England was finally stirring.\s \s\t \tHis request was denied of course, so he put off going as long as he could. British officials were given the information uncovered at the interrogation camps, but they weren't being told much about the source. Quite frankly they didn't care. They had rounded up more suspects than they currently had the capacity to deal with. This meant a blind eye was being turned to who the Brit's team was rounding up. They didn't even want any records kept.\s \s\t \tAmazingly, all of this was happening under the noses of every international journalist sent to cover the bombings. They followed the police around like good little lap dogs and the police gave them enough footage for the evening news. Those roundups were three to five people at a time. The Brit's team was rounding up groups of ten and twenty at a time. They were pulling them in faster than the interrogation camp could get them processed into cells. Indeed, they were being told to slow down because the camp was running out of places to put them. They didn't want to send them on until they were certain they had extracted all information. Besides, it took time to locate wealthy people in need of the organs which matched those they had. Of course the Brit's team wasn't told this part.\s \s\t \tThe real backlog wasn't the prisoner processing \a151 they were still considered prisoners at this point \a151 it was the tech guys and gals trying to keep track of which machine had come from where when they began dissecting the confiscated computers and cell phones. More than once they had uncovered a critical piece of information identifying other members and not been able to determine whose machine or phone it had come from.\s \s\t \tPart of the Brit didn't care about the analysis, but his training told him to care. The best method of finding more to round up was to do the legwork. His primary frustration was the camp being sized so small. There were literally hundreds more they should be nabbing, but no room at the inn.\s \s\t \tIt was with some regret that the Brit packed his things and got ready to board a commercial flight to Pakistan. He stored the tools of his trade in the gun safe at the hotel and handed the owner a grand to keep it secure. In truth the owner would have done it for free, but this gave him the money to upgrade another room. The low-rent hotel crowd tended to destroy everything and he was sure they would be back once the Brit was gone.\s \s\t \tHe had heard from his team doing roundups that they were occurring in a lot of countries. It seemed more countries than England had come to the conclusion \a147due process\a148 was something afforded only to the few you could handle in that manner. The rest were simply abducted and never heard from again. Some might call it evil, but it was a necessary evil. \s \s\t \tAmerica, Germany, and Russia were among the other countries where cell members were being rounded up. The same process was being used to hide it. The press was alerted to a \a147due process\a148 roundup where they got some great news footage, but the more serious roundups happened while the media were busy looking somewhere else.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tLenny called Jeremy into his office to show him the position reports. He called the other two analysts in out of courtesy, but really only wanted to speak with Jeremy. The other two analysts weren't bright enough to realize they knew enough they couldn't be fired. They also weren't bright enough to open their own trading accounts and follow any of Lenny's plays. Jeremy was. Lenny didn't have to ask: he was certain the boy had a small trading account where he was tossing around a few thousand dollars. He didn't begrudge him making some on the side from the information making this company money. Well, he did at first, but this stream of information was coming through Jeremy, and Lenny considered any debt the kid owed him paid in full. He was quickly learning how to take over the business after Lenny died. Lenny would never retire of course. At least not as long as someone didn't declare him mentally unstable and threaten to lock him away somewhere.\s \s\t \tThe position reports showed they owned over 9 percent of Pytho Corporation's documented outstanding shares. Lenny wanted more, but the mutual funds he advised had gotten too greedy. Trying to erase some losses their own incompetence had cost their funds, they jumped in with both feet when Lenny told them Pytho had a new software product coming to market inside of a month with one major client already signed.\s \s\t \tAt least the fools had stopped asking how Lenny knew what Lenny knew. Most of them were smart enough to not ask who the client was this time as well. The problem before them now was keeping enough of a lid on this to avoid investigation and having their credit called in. Once again, Lenny had maxed out the credit limits for all of his paper shells and was now going to need cash to keep the operation going until Pytho made its announcement.\s \s\t \tMost of the funds the other two analysts handled were indexed funds. The trades for those funds were almost completely automated. The only reason there was an analyst in charge of the fund was that the regulations required it. True, they could choose to override some of the system's recommended purchases and positions, but neither of these guys had the brainpower for that kind of heavy lifting.\s \s\t \tWhat they needed to do now was to liquidate some positions so they had the cash to handle day-to-day operations and acquire a slightly larger position in First Global Bank. Pytho had already been priced out of purchasing range. Lenny was busy laying all of this on the table for them when Jeremy piped up.\s \s\t \t\a147Here's a wild thought. Why don't we sell off our Pytho position to below 3 percent of the company then use the money to buy First Global Bank?\a148\s \s\t \tEveryone looked at him.\s \s\t \t\a147You just said Pytho was above the price we were willing to pay and still climbing thanks to the mutual fund buffoons. Let it climb for another day at its current pace and it should be cresting above our lowest targeted sell price. If I'm reading this report correctly, that is an eight dollars per share profit over what we paid on the first day. Dump those shares and see if it still keeps climbing. If it is still above an eight dollar profit for the next day's purchases tomorrow, dump those shares. In the mean time, we will take a position in First Global Bank. Nobody knows about it. Its share price has settled back down after the boost from quarterly numbers. Rumors are already all over the place about Pytho's new software product. It is only a matter of time before people find out it is banking software.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You don't think we should trim some of the shares we hold in other companies?\a148 asked Lenny.\s \s\t \t\a147Oh, our other funds have some real dogs in them that have been losing money since the day we bought them. They should have been sold long ago, but selling them won't give us the kind of play we are looking for. We can still go ahead and dump the losers we are holding, just set the parameters on the trading engine and let it trim the dead weight. That won't give us the kind of cash we are looking for and it won't stop us from paying short-term interest which we are doing right now.\a148\s \s\t \tLenny sat back in his chair and put his hands together in front of his mouth. He was obviously thinking this over. In truth, he was starting to think he was getting old. In his younger days he wouldn't have remained focused on the first play and would have already implemented Jeremy's suggestion. Perhaps he really was getting that old man disorder where they fixate on something which has little or nothing to do with the current situation. He had seen other old men get it and watched people start to marginalize them. Sadly it usually happened to an old man in charge of something so there were terrible business outcomes.\s \s\t \tTurning one of the reports to himself he looked at the purchases for the first day. No doubt about it, the highest price they paid on the first day was a full eight dollars per share below the current trading price. Every account would have its note paid off and cash left over to do Jeremy's play using just those shares. Jeremy's play was the smart one. \s \s\t \tYes, it was possible Pytho would go up another eight dollars per share on the growing volume of rumors, but when First Global announced they were going to be able to trim nearly all of their IT staff and a boatload of internal accountants because of this software package, they were really going to pop. Lenny's own rough estimate was they would save nearly $10 million per year. That kind of cash tended to fall straight through to the bottom line. \s \s\t \tHe could easily release his analysis to the mutual funds they consulted once a position had been acquired. The mutual fund managers would start inquiries at First Global Bank as to whether or not they were going to purchase this software. A new rumor mill would start stating that First Global could save $10 million per year by using this software. A mad rush to First Global would occur simply on the speculation they were the first customer \a151 speculation which would prove to not be unfounded given the fact Lenny already knew it to be the case. In less than a week they would be up over twenty dollars per share. \s \s\t \tHaving a new software product is nice, but until you can report sales, you can't get too big a boost in your share price. Most would assume the sale to First Global Bank paid the bulk of the development costs and the support contract would allow the product to continue for a few years. There were other banks in trouble who would be willing to purchase the software if they could get even half of the savings First Global got.\s \s\t \t\a147We will do what you say, Jeremy,\a148 Lenny finally said. \a147It's a good play. I will handle the sales parameters for this. Why don't you set up the trading parameters to weed the dogs out of our portfolio this afternoon? We can all meet tomorrow and discuss how much First Global to purchase.\a148 \s \s\t \t\a147I need all three of you to go digging through the banking corporations. There are a lot of them in trouble. We are looking for some that simply aren't doing well but aren't too far into the FDIC watch list.\a148\s \s\t \tThe business school boys looked at him as if he had just started speaking in a foreign language. Jeremy smiled. \a147Why not make a play of our own?\a148 laughed Jeremy. \s \s\t \t\a147Exactly!\a148 said Lenny. \a147Only we want a bank with its data center in the U.S. and plans to keep it there. One with at least twenty developers on their IT staff. If they happen to have some branches in other countries that is fine. We want someone that can save enough money getting rid of their IT staff they'll beg to get this software due to their financial position. The shred we do later on Pytho won't ruin them. They didn't choose the data center. A bank with its data centers in the U.S. will allow it to step aside pointing a finger. Yes, their share price will drop some, but not horribly once the truth comes out about who offshored the data centers. First Global will lose its insurance, be under investigation, and a prime target for hostile take over. Who better to take them over than a bank already running their software? Simply transfer the data and the communication links on Sunday and start as a new company on Monday.\a148\s \s\t \tThe business school boys sat there shaking their heads. The Ivy League didn't teach anyone to think like this. With the plan all laid out before them it was obvious it could work. Given the way these other two guys' minds worked, the introduction could probably be made without anyone knowing \a147Group Lenny\a148 was involved. Finally one of them piped up.\s \s\t \t\a147You know we have a timeline problem here, don't you?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147How so?\a148 both Lenny and Jeremy said in unison.\s \s\t \t\a147It will take months to get a new bank talked into closing the deal. First Global has already started the rollout in France if I'm understanding the situation correctly. We've got about six months to get a new bank on the software so they are comfortable with it when you drop the hammer on First Global.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We won't drop the hammer on First Global until they actually offshore the U.S. data centers,\a148 responded Jeremy. \a147The clock doesn't start until that happens. None of the other countries' operations are explicitly governed by the FDIC; most have their own insurance bodies. It is possible one of those bodies will choose to drop the hammer on First Global before we do, but it will only be for operations in a single country. They could sell that business unit to get out from under the problem. You do bring up a point, though \a133\a148 Jeremy drifted off.\s \s\t \t\a147What point is that?\a148 Lenny asked.\s \s\t \t\a147We need them to find a U.S.-based bank for your play, then we need to find out what other insurance bodies are insuring the operations in other countries for First Global. One of them could have or be about to have a similar regulation about data centers staying in-country for security purposes. We need to find one other banking customer in each of those countries over the next couple of weeks. If this play works in the U.S. why not another country as well? We could have one of our paper shells issue them a loan for the software if they need it.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Do you think we will have enough cash to play the whole board?\a148 asked Lenny.\s \s\t \t\a147We will know some time tomorrow morning after dumping the shares we want to be rid of this afternoon. Besides, we have to cover all of the bases. If some foreign agency nails First Global before we are ready to shred them, we still want to make money from it.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Good point,\a148 Lenny responded after some thought. \a147It might be better if one of the foreign governments starts the shred anyway. The reporters will sniff around and find out there is an American regulation stating nearly the same thing. From there it will snowball.\a148\s \s\t \tThe Ivy League boys had really only thought about the situation as far as the other U.S. bank not being far enough along to even accept the data from First Global when the opportunity came along. They were absolutely floored by the scenario which had just been spun out before them without any prep work. \s \s\t \tFirms this size typically had a profit pool of $5 million to $10 million when it came time for profit sharing. Lenny's usually had $20 million to $30 million. Nobody was paid squat for salary here. The bulk of the money in the profit-sharing plan usually went to Lenny, but they had both gotten bonus checks for around $300,000 last year. This year, if the plan played out, the firm would have about $500 million in the pool. They had already achieved a 400 percent return this year for their handful of investors.\s \s\t \tIt was the other Ivy League boy's turn to pipe up now. \a147This is all well and good, but we need to control our traceable participation in this.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Getting squeamish?\a148 Lenny asked.\s \s\t \t\a147A few weeks ago you were here spouting we might have a billion-dollar year this year. I've got news for you: even with the dogs in our portfolios our last little play with First Global Bank had us bringing in nearly $800 million. One play! Not counting all of the other smaller plays we have done this year. The play we are talking about now, just the one where we buy Pytho stock and sell after the post-announcement run-up is going to pull in some $700 million to $800 million in itself. We still have the second play on First Global buying up before they announce the cost savings of this new software.\a148\s \s\t \tLenny nodded.\s \s\t \t\a147I assume you are going to try and get your typical 20 to 40 percent position if you can do it with cash.\a148\s \s\t \tAgain Lenny nodded.\s \s\t \t\a147You are estimating a fifteen to twenty dollars per share run-up in the price?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Correct.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Well sir, we will be pulling in over $2 billion on that play. Coupled with the other plays, we will probably get some SEC inquiries about how we managed to do nearly $5 billion in business with only $600 million in assets.\a148\s \s\t \tThe room got quiet for a while. Everybody wanted the money. Technically, what they were doing was illegal, but it wasn't as if they robbed banks or sold drugs. They simply got information before other people got it. Martha Stewart managed to go to jail when the SEC was inquiring about just that topic. Nobody in this room wanted to go to jail.\s \s\t \tFinally Lenny said, \a147In the morning we will see what our cash position is. Perhaps we will take only a legal percentage in First Global this time. Then again, maybe it is finally time to use that offshore investing company we set up. Issue it a loan and let it make all the rest of the purchases. We set it up for the day we actually got a big play like this.\a148\s \s\t \tJeremy sat there after the others left.\s \s\t \t\a147You have something more on your mind?\a148 Lenny inquired.\s \s\t \t\a147Does your cousin in Russia have an online trading account?\a148 Jeremy asked.\s \s\t \tLenny sat there and slowly got a wide smile. \a147The taxes would be less and I'm sure he would do it for a small fee. He is not in Russia anymore, though. Last time I heard from him he was in Germany. I can send him an email tonight and ask him to give me a call.\a148\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tKent was rather shocked when he got the signed contract back from the board of directors. The odd thing was it came with a formal letter telling him to proceed with this plan per the details of the contract. He took it all to Margret's office to ask her about it.\s \s\t \t\a147What is so unusual?\a148 asked Margret. \a147Oh, I forget, you haven't been here that long. Any time the board actually has to sign off on a capitalized project they include a letter stating they authorize only what is explicitly stated in the contract. The legal department tells them it protects them against cost overruns. It doesn't really, but they think it does. Yes, we have legal grounds to not pay the bills for an overrun, but what usually happens is the vendor stops working until they get paid, the lawyers get involved, then the project dies.\a148\s \s\t \tMargret could tell Kent still didn't believe her.\s \s\t \t\a147Ever been to our branch in Des Moines, Iowa?\a148\s \s\t \tKent shook his head.\s \s\t \tMargret picked up the phone and called Carol. \a147Can you please pull out the pictures of our branch in Des Moines, Iowa, for Kent? He's sitting in my office and this is a story which really needs pictures.\a148\s \s\t \tA few minutes later Carol came in. \a147Here is the file. Dare I ask what this is about or do I not want to know?\a148\s \s\t \tMargret laughed and handed Carol the letter. Once Carol had finished reading it she looked up and said, \a147So?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Kent doesn't believe the board always sends these with a project sign-off. It helps if you explain why that is with pictures,\a148 Margret responded.\s \s\t \t\a147You don't need Crayons!\a148 Kent said in a combination of disgust and embarrassment.\s \s\t \t\a147Here, look at the pictures of our branch in Des Moines,\a148 said Margret, handing Kent the folder.\s \s\t \tThere were several shots of a construction site and a partially erected building. Not enough was completed to tell for certain it was supposed to be a bank.\s \s\t \t\a147What does this tell me?\a148 Kent asked.\s \s\t \t\a147That's as far as the project ever got. The board didn't include one of these letters when they signed off on its construction. The builder bid the project with a concrete mix which wasn't up to code. When the building inspectors called him on it he tried to bill us for double his bid price. The lawyers got involved. Court case lasted nearly a year. We ended up not building a branch in Des Moines because of it. I have no idea what happened to the lot or that partially constructed disaster,\a148 Margret said.\s \s\t \t\a147They did finally sell it,\a148 Carol volunteered. \a147After the city of Des Moines fined them for an eyesore and public safety hazard.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147So Kent, this letter now comes with each and every project the board signs off on,\a148 continued Margret, \a147or should I say the new board signs off on. None of those board members are still around, are they?\a148 she asked, looking toward Carol.\s \s\t \t\a147Nope. There was a meeting of the shareholders after that debacle and we got all new blood,\a148 said Carol. \a147It was the first and only $5 million loss this bank ever put on its books.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Surely they've issued notes larger than that which went bad,\a148 Kent said.\s \s\t \t\a147Totally different. We hold a mortgage less than a week. They get bundled up and sliced up into financial instruments. Wall Street and investment firms hold them, we don't. All we have to ensure is that they meet the initial requirements when we issue the mortgage. If you are talking about business lines of credit, the shareholders don't tend to hold the board accountable if some publicly traded company has a line of credit with us and goes under. We've usually terminated them long before that happens, and if we haven't there has always been some kind of criminal investigation. The shareholders hold the board accountable for projects they authorize, not standard banking ebbs and flows.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147But they didn't do this for the data center project,\a148 Kent retorted.\s \s\t \t\a147They didn't sign that contract, you did. They told you to go ahead since the cost of the project was going to be paid for in large part by the sale of the unused assets,\a148 said Margret. \a147All funding for that project came out of the IT budget. They simply agreed to let us have the proceeds from asset sales to fund the project to completion.\a148\s \s\t \tKent hadn't thought of that. He did sign the offshoring contract. The initial dollar amount was within his authorization limit and he had told Kathryn to keep each invoice below that dollar amount so he could approve it rather than having to go to the board. Sometimes they got two invoices per month and other times they went two months without getting an invoice. Kent had merely received a phone call from a board member telling him to go ahead. There hadn't even been an email message. Then again, where the data centers were and what it cost to run them was under his realm of responsibility. The board simply needed to know how much he was cutting costs, not the details of the plan.\s \s\t \tThis conversation seemed to alleviate Kent's fears. He went back to his office and left the women to continue laughing at him. At least they had the decency to close the door. He was a manager, and sometimes your employees laughed at you. He did feel better now that he had heard it from a lawyer. Now all Kent had to do was send this contract off to Kathryn and figure out a way to put in the annual report to shareholders that he saved the company $12 million per year. If they fired the entire board of directors over a $5 million debacle they should more than support his elevation for saving such a princely sum of money.\s \s\t \tAfter Kent left, the girls closed the door and began to laugh. \a147Do you think someone is finally catching on?\a148 ask Carol.\s \s\t \t\a147I don't think he is that bright,\a148 responded Margret. \a147At first I was completely against him getting that position, but now I think the board brought in a Grade-A patsy.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Oh well, someone has to take the fall, might as well be him,\a148 Carol laughed.\s \s\t \t\a147How true!\a148 responded Margret. \a147At least I can profit from it.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147How so?\a148 asked Carol.\s \s\t \t\a147I probably shouldn't say anything; you are a lawyer after all,\a148 Margret responded.\s \s\t \tCarol got a serious look on her face, sat down, and said, \a147Tell me about it off the record.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I gave a friend some money to open an online trading account for me. It isn't in my name and nothing ties to me directly. I told them to buy as much Pytho stock as they could before the announcement. The stock for this company I buy as part of the employee purchase plan. Once Pytho goes public with the product I expect their stock to jump quite a bit. Ours will bounce once Kent gives his interview saying how much we are saving. Once they have both peaked I plan on liquidating all shares of both.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Definitely not something you want the SEC finding out about, but as long as you don't get greedy and you didn't write a check for them to trace you will probably get away with it. Pytho didn't make anyone here sign a nondisclosure agreement, so it isn't like it was insider information. They handed out product literature,\a148 responded Carol.\s \s\t \t\a147Well, that only makes you a little,\a148 responded Margret. \a147Once I've dumped all of the shares, I plan on using all of the money to short the hell out of this company's stock. When the news hits about the data center issue we are going to tank and I want to be paid for it. As far as being greedy, I should be able to retire if we go below twenty dollars per share.\a148\s \s\t \tCarol's eyes went wide with that statement.\s \s\t \t\a147I never got married or had kids. Never bought a fancy car and rarely bought a new car. I paid my house off years ago. It's not a palace, but it is more than enough for me. I've been putting money into that trading account for over ten years. My friend is pretty good at picking and I've had my own information to work on from time to time. It's not dot-com-type money, but it is more than enough for me to retire anywhere I want. This last round will cement that fact.\a148\s \s\t \tCarol knew what the bank paid and about how long Margret had been here. She must have had a friend that was amazingly incredible at picking stocks. \a147I don't want to know how much,\a148 she said finally. \a147I like what we have now and I don't want it to change.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Speaking of that,\a148 Margret continued, \a147What are your plans for the next few weeks?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Summer vacation before the kids go back to school. I think we are taking them to Disney since they are both about the age to really appreciate it.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147And I'm sure you will be swamped when you get back.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I've already told hubby I will end up having to work late the first three nights back just to catch up,\a148 she replied with an evil grin. \a147I wanted to have some options after playing supermom and adoring wife for two weeks.\a148\s \s\t \tBoth women laughed.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tHans had been sent to locate and identify the new email hub in Pakistan. Naturally, the new center was far away from the existing headquarters. He used the cover story of being a reporter and even had a couple of the other team members act as his camera crew. There was little in the way of what they could use for a headquarters in this area and there was no way to set up an operation undetected. The new email hub was operating near the Khyber Pass close to the lawless Northern Area. While they could set up headquarters easily near Islamabad, the capital city, they would be nearly 200 km away from where the communications center was. This was not a good situation.\s \s\t \tWhen Hans got back to his hotel room in the capital city, he phoned the man in the suit to inform him of the situation. There would be no way to put people in undercover this time. Even if they could turn the operative, they could not monitor him as they had with Nedim. Given the tribal warlord factions in the Northern Areas, it would be suicide to send anyone in.\s \s\t \tThe new communications person was located in a remote village. He had a generator, solar power unit, and a satellite Internet connection. Al-Qaeda had definitely seen to it he couldn't be turned without them knowing about it. They still had no idea just how much the authorities knew, but given the cell roundups, Hans figured it wouldn't be long before the coding system would change. True, the operatives already in the field would have to be notified of code changes via some riskier means such as a phone call or personal contact, but in a short while, all of the good intelligence they had gathered from Nedim would be useless.\s \s\t \t\a147Were it up to me,\a148 Hans finally said, \a147I would tell the Brit to stay where he is and give all of our information to Vladimir. He has the time and the skill to do the analysis. It is not as though we are going to be working this one closely. Perhaps we can get to the new Indian communications center.\a148\s \s\t \tThe man in the suit didn't like Vladimir. He was always being shown up by Vladimir. He was loath to give the guy any more information about this operation than he had to. Still, Hans' assessment was correct. Vladimir had both the skill and the time. Obviously he had the time given all of the other things he had done without direction. He couldn't even be punished for those things now because those things gave them their only solid leads.\s \s\t \tSomeday one of the very same agencies Vladimir was now working with was going to be sent to arrest him for his work in the Russian mafia identity-theft rings. The man had to know that, but didn't seem to care. Perhaps he assumed his ties to clandestine organizations would always keep him working as he was currently. There was some truth in that. If you were good and had a reputation, there was always a government who could give you a new identity and put you to work in a back room somewhere. With the man's skills he would be most difficult to find unless you were trying to hire him.\s \s\t \tOne thing the world didn't need right now was an outright war with one or more factions of the Russian mafia. Every government needed them to ensure al-Qaeda never got any of the stockpiled Russian nuclear or chemical weapons. They had already taken it upon themselves to handle one such situation and every government involved in this operation knew it. Piss them off now, and al-Qaeda would be able to purchase the entire Cold War stockpile for next to nothing.\s \s\t \t\a147We need to put some kind of long distance surveillance on him somehow,\a148 the man in the suit finally said. \a147I can let the Brit work remotely from here for a while since he is already on his way, but we need to find an excuse.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147An excuse?\a148 Hans asked.\s \s\t \t\a147We need someone high enough up in al-Qaeda visiting this location to warrant an air strike taking him and his hub out. Something which can be on the news and my government can use to state publicly they are helping in the war on terrorism. Any one of the major cell coordinators or attack planners will do. We cannot just strike him now as that would tip our hand and the others will go to ground on us.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Agreed,\a148 said Hans. \a147Since anyone monitoring from a hillside will need to look native \a133\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I will make the calls and get the people,\a148 replied the man in the suit.\s \s\t \t\a147There is another option available to us since you are ready to burn this lead. The tribes run a lot of drugs through that pass. He is close enough to the Afghanistan border that we could send the GPS coordinates to the Americans if we had a contact we could trust. Even someone in the Afghan military could send some troops across the border to clean this up. They just need a good excuse.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147That is a risky play. There has already been a lot of saber rattling about prior incursions. If a drug caravan stops there for the night, we would be better off having the Russian mafia come in, take the drugs, and kill everyone in their usual fashion.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Long way for them to fly choppers, especially across a war zone.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147True, but it would remove all suspicion. Everyone can recognize the work of the Russian mafia. They specialize in brutal theatrical killings. The warlord who lost his drugs would be looking for them. At any rate, we need to get someone watching him. Stay at the hotel a few more days. I will send someone to contact you.\a148\s \s\t \tThe man in the suit hated to admit it, but Hans was correct. Given all of the radar and air patrols over Afghanistan today, there was no way the Russian mafia would be able to fly a squad of choppers across undetected. If they flew low, some al-Qaeda soldier would probably shoot them down. If they encountered fighter jets they wouldn't be lucky enough to encounter pilots who understood what was going on.\s \s\t \tHe also knew that his government was paying little more than lip service to the hunting down of al-Qaeda within its borders. This operation was almost completely shut down thanks to the news reports about Nedim. There were only a few in the intelligence service who knew anything about this operation. One of them would no longer communicate with anyone involved. So far there was no evidence that he had turned, just that he knew he had been compromised and was keeping his distance.\s \s\t \tMany of the clerics in this country were supportive of al-Qaeda trying to kill infidels and, in particular, Americans. Quite a few distanced themselves from the methods after 9/11. A plane hitting the Pentagon would not have brought nearly every nation into Afghanistan. If a nation didn't have boots on the ground they had money or equipment there. Even countries that didn't like America were standing in line to get in on the action. China bought an unprecedented amount of U.S. Treasury notes shortly after 9/11 so the Americans would be able to fully fund any response they deemed necessary.\s \s\t \tIndeed, the man in the suit wondered why China hadn't simply poured troops through that narrow little slit of a border they shared with Afghanistan. He assumed it was due to the Chinese culture having this deep sense of honor when dealing with officials and matters of state. They had lost citizens in that attack and were looking to dish out some retribution. The Afghan people may never realize this, but they should be thankful for that sense of honor. When the Americans said they wanted to build a coalition and lead the attack, the Chinese stepped aside and let them. The Russians had even offered to mix it up in Afghanistan once again. Had the Chinese poured in from their border and the Russians from theirs, the current population of Afghanistan would be about one third of what it is today.\s \s\t \tThen again, Pakistan would have lost a lot of people as well. It was no secret that a lot of al-Qaeda members had slipped across the Pakistani border during the war. Because they had a coalition and were bound by United Nations treaties, coalition forces didn't invade Pakistan to get them. True, there had been some border incursions, but it was doubtful his government would have known about them had they not watched CNN. Sad to admit, but true. \s \s\t \tThe Afghan border had never been monitored in more than a few places. The lawlessness of the Northern Areas made that impossible. Those warlords owed their lives to the Americans as well, though they didn't know it. China wouldn't have thought twice about crushing that region on their way in. They would have occupied Pakistan all the way up to the Khyber Pass, and given the size of their military, Pakistan would have had to submit to the occupation.\s \s\t \tYes, his government had possessed nuclear weapons for quite some time, but that wouldn't have helped. China had more of them and Russia more still. As soon as Pakistan lobbed one at either army everything between the Indian and Russian borders would cease to exist. If anything were left, India would be certain to come in and finish off the job.\s \s\t \tThe man in the suit wanted all al-Qaeda members executed. He made a mental note to have Nedim killed as soon as this operation got to a more normal pace. He had no special love for the Americans or any other country targeted by them. No matter how you did the analysis, al-Qaeda was going to be the reason his country got exterminated. How he wished more members of his government could see that!\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tNikolaus had been out of the office for three days this week. He was arranging for the quiet marketing and distribution of new embryonic stem-cell lines. Thankfully the party had some scientific members who understood these things. Nikolaus was simply there to discuss the business side of the arrangement. The first lines were less than a month away. Team members at the secured location had already done the extraction and were culturing the cells. They had taken over one of the small pilot labs that had been equipped for just such an operation.\s \s\t \tIn the back of his mind, Nikolaus was already thinking of a plan to build a second secured location in a country without a ban on the creation of such cell lines. Getting these cells into the American markets was a bit tricky. You could approach only private institutions that weren't receiving any government money. Thankfully, there were some and they had deep pockets. They were banned from creating any new lines, but could purchase any lines in existence, even if they were new. Selling to locations that received government funding was a much tougher needle to thread and Nikolaus wanted no part of it for now.\s \s\t \tThere were several countries where this corporation had operations that didn't have bans on creating new stem-cell lines. He was kind of shocked that some enterprising companies hadn't started doing just what he was doing, but there was always that religion issue to deal with and most of them had some leaders who were religious or highly religious influential stockholders.\s \s\t \tGetting a second site constructed on a smaller scale should be an easy sell for the board. True, the party controlled many of them, but he still needed to come up with a story they could sell to the media and shareholders. Now that the first site was turning a profit from the storage contracts, it would be easy to pitch the need for a second location to spread out the risk. \s \s\t \tAfter the Lutton bombing everyone was a bit on edge about an al-Qaeda attack. The recent public roundups of al-Qaeda cell members in Germany had many people on a heightened state of alert. The Lutton bombing was larger and more coordinated than anyone had expected. Several bombs of the size used in that attack, detonated at the correct locations, could damage, if not take out, the freezer storage. They wouldn't need to make it into the compound, but if they did, replacing all of those doses would be a major financial loss.\s \s\t \tWhen Nikolaus got back to his desk, he asked one of the lawyers working for the corporation who was a loyal party member to identify countries that did not have extradition treaties with either Germany or the United States. Once he had that list he would compare it to the list of locations the company already had operations. From there he should be able to easily identify a site and a plan.\s \s\t \tThe second selling point for this entire plan would be the reduced air time to some of the subscribing locations. Any country which didn't have extradition treaties would not be in Europe. It would make sense for Nikolaus to set up a residence near this site as well. Nothing too extravagant, just large enough for himself and several party elders in case they had to hide out for a while. There would need to be a secured room containing lots of cash in different currencies, passports and other identity-making equipment \a151 your standard safe house fare for war criminals and other high-profile political refugees. They should also stock some of those language-learning tapes. Anyone running from this operation was going to need to hide for a very long time.\s \s\t \tWith that thought done Nikolaus turned his attention to the reports from operations. The team must be staying at the camp these days. Black market organ sales had brought in a cool $20 million. The nice thing about having a company this size was it was easy to hide revenue sources below $100 million. Having some black ops contracts for government work made it even easier. Nobody questioned unnamed revenue sources when they closed the books on a quarter. The only problem was handling the cash.\s \s\t \tWall Street seemed to already be pleased with the results. Even some of the \a147ethical conscience\a148 funds had been investing in the company because some of the board members appeared so religious to them. Nikolaus had to laugh at that. If they only knew! Then again, all of the really hideous crimes against humanity had been done in the name of one religion or another, so why shouldn't they be investing in this?\s \s\t \tBriefly, Nikolaus wondered how short the careers would be of those Wall Street analysts who were going on business talk shows pushing their strong buy rating of his company once the truth came out. Eventually it would come out. How soon Nikolaus did not know. When the body count started approaching tens of thousands he was sure something would start to leak. It would take years for the team he had in place to reach that kind of count, but Nikolaus was a forward thinker. \s \s\t \tThey were already assembling a second team. Heidi had been helping him in selecting members from the loyal party roster. There were hundreds to choose from and only the surgeons needed real skills. Heidi said she could teach any dock worker to use the machine she was using for blood extraction as long as they weren't squeamish. It may seem ghoulish, but they tended to conduct the interviews in a room where people were either donating blood or a table with pouches of blood being sorted for shipment. Some candidates didn't make it five minutes.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tVladimir was quite shocked when he opened up the Web page for his personal email account and found a message from his cousin Lenny. It wasn't his birthday or a major holiday and those were usually the only two times he heard from the man. It wasn't like Vladimir made it easy to keep in touch. He set up this email address for family members and checked it a few times per month. The life he had led made cutting most family ties a requirement. You never knew when someone would try to use your family to get to you. As a result this was a nondescript email address paid for via a false identity he never used during an operation.\s \p\sVlad,\s \sLong time no chat. Call me on this cell phone number when you are free to talk. Have a favor to ask of you. Need to hear from you before Friday.\s \sLenny\s \p\s\t \tAt the bottom of the email was a cell phone number Nikolaus didn't recognize. He assumed something bad had happened. Vladimir knew a little about his cousin's operation. He had even done some analysis for him many years ago. Lenny probably needed a place to hide from the law or someone to launder some money for him. Still he was family and one of the few Vladimir had any contact with.\s \s\t \tHe reached over and opened up a brand new disposable cell phone. Vladimir bought these a box at a time, always the same model so he had lots of interchangeable chargers and batteries. He put a fresh battery in the phone and made the call. It would be the wee hours of the morning in the United States, but Lenny hadn't specified a time.\s \s\t \tAfter the third ring Vladimir heard a very sleepy \a147Hello.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Hello, Lenny, been quite a while.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Vlad?\a148\s \s\t \tVladimir could tell the cobwebs were starting to clear.\s \s\t \t\a147Let me go downstairs and get some caffeine. Call me back if I lose you.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147What is the nature of the favor you need?\a148 Vladimir could hear the sound of doors closing and feet padding down some steps.\s \s\t \t\a147I was wondering if you still had an electronic trading account?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I have several and access to others. Why do you ask?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147There is a series of stock plays we are doing which is simply going to be too big for us to do here and hide. I need to transfer some cash to one or more of your accounts and tell you what to do. Need the trading accounts to be completely offshore and personal so the SEC can't really inquire on them if they try.\a148\s \s\t \tVladimir heard the distinct sound of a soda can being opened and someone swallowing.\s \s\t \t\a147How much are you looking to transfer?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I won't have an exact number until later this morning. Need to do lots of small transfers to avoid suspicion. I'd like to put about half a billion in play if I can.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147There is no way to do that through a personal account. Even through a dozen personal accounts. This would have to go through one of my contacts back home that has an investment firm like yours. I could only handle about $5 million spread across four accounts.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147What kind of margin would your contact be looking to make?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147This wouldn't be the kind of contact you could sue if they tried to hang onto the money.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I pretty much figured that, given the life you lead or at least used to lead. I was hoping you were set up to handle it yourself. Played correctly, we could be looking at a return of over twenty dollars per share in less than six weeks.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147How certain is this, Lenny?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Certain enough I can't risk making the play here. I've made too much this year to remain below radar much longer. I have one offshore company I set up to do plays like this, but there is a possibility it could be tied back to me. I will have to keep the play there rather small. Two to three million shares, tops.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Do you still have a passport?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Yes, why?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Will you have this phone with you a few hours from now?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Yes, but why are you asking about a passport?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I will run this past my contact. If he is up for it he will want to meet you face to face and hash out the terms. When you get to the office in the morning, call your travel agent and have them arrange a business trip to Nuremberg, Germany. Have them book you a suite at the Maritim Hotel in Nuremberg.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Why am I booking the travel before you know they are interested?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You will have to get a one to three-day business trip visa so best to slam it through a travel agent. They will need the morning to push it through to get you on a flight out tomorrow. Above all, don't lie at customs. Tell them you are here on business to talk with another investment firm. Be sure to have your business cards with you and that your company pays for the flight.\s \s\t \t\a147They will probably want more of a cut than you are willing to pay unless you have more than this play for them to run with. If I still know you this is one of a series of plays you have orchestrated, but they have become too successful so now you need to spread the income around to avoid going to prison, correct?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Nice to hear from you again, too, Vlad,\a148 Lenny laughed into the phone.\s \s\t \tVladimir laughed as well. \a147Bring some company letterhead with you so you can print up some kind of letter of intent for exchange of business analysis information. Nothing binding, just something which can be signed and placed on file in case there is some issue later with the authorities.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147This won't be a German firm, will it?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Goodness no! That would be too risky \a133 well, too risky on such short notice. Bah! Couldn't risk going through the German legal system. Don't worry, the company will be Russian. The courts there are too busy prosecuting murderers and drug dealers to bother with people who made money in the American stock market.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147See you soon, then.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Looks like.\a148\s \s\t \tA few short hours later, Lenny arrived at the office and sent an email to the travel agency his company used. He retrieved his passport from his personal office safe and put it in his briefcase. While he had the thing open he went out to the receptionist desk and got some company letterhead and put it in a big manila envelope to protect it.\s \s\t \tWith that out of the way he began checking the cash position of the company. There was over $500 million cash on hand in the general fund after last night's clearing. The various other accounts had lots of cash as well.\s \s\t \tJeremy arrived while Lenny was still going through the cash positions.\s \s\t \t\a147You're in early,\a148 he said as he walked into Lenny's office.\s \s\t \t\a147Glad you are here!\a148 said Lenny. \a147I'm going to be flying to Germany later today to meet my cousin and someone who can help us.\a148\s \s\t \tLenny opened one of his desk drawers and pulled out some legal forms, then handed them to Jeremy. \a147We need to go to the bank and get these forms taken care of as soon as possible. The manager usually gets in around 8:30. Call over there and make an appointment for us.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147What is this about?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I will be in Germany closing the deal, so I will need to authorize you to sign for the wire transfer. We will have to get these forms signed and notarized there this morning, and they will have to get a user ID, password, and authorization code for you. Our bank won't let this kind of transfer go out without an authorized signature.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I already have an account to do transfers. I do them all of the time.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147That account has a $100K limit. We will be sending $500 million out to be put into play. I'm assuming our new business partner will need the transfer to complete before I leave. If you haven't guessed, yes, I heard from my cousin and the play is too big for any of his accounts. He has contacts at a firm much like this one in Russia. To make it all legal-like we will issue a letter of intent to invest in their company and let them put money to work for us.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We aren't going to handle the play through our offshore company?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147A small portion of it, yes. The other accounts will all make small plays as well. I hate to admit it, but that Ivy League boy was correct.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Which one?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147There's a difference?\a148\s \s\t \tBoth men laughed.\s \s\t \t\a147When he said this play was too big to avoid scrutiny, he was correct. A Russian investment firm making a big play is outside of the reach of the SEC. We will get a much smaller return, how much smaller I do not know yet, but we will avoid prison and trial. I'm still worried about the offshore company we set up. The lawyer who did it was a putz. I honestly believe he got a job there because he was someone's brother-in-law.\a148\s \s\t \tJeremy laughed.\s \s\t \t\a147I'm serious!\a148 Lenny said, still bustling around gathering things up.\s \s\t \t\a147Perhaps your cousin knows a reliable Russian lawyer who can set us up a corporation in a country without a U.S. extradition treaty.\a148\s \s\t \tThat stopped Lenny in his tracks. \a147I hadn't thought about that. You know, this new investment firm might be able to do it for us as part of the deal. It will give them a clean place to park our money.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I just hope they have better lawyers than we had doing it,\a148 said Jeremy.\s \s\t \t\a147Isn't that the truth! I still cannot believe I let him do it.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Well, I had best go call the bank.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Yes, yes, off with you now.\a148\s \p\X1\c\l\BCritical Momentum\B\l\X1 \c \s\t \tThe team in India had located both the trainer and the recent trainee. They lived in the same housing complex built by some American company or its offshore wing. They found a building which was suitable to use for headquarters, but not for interrogation purposes. Some members were looking around for an abandoned shed out in the country. The problem was housing in the city was so abysmal that people who didn't have money were going out into the countryside and pretty much stealing the materials of any building that didn't have someone there defending it.\s \s\t \tEven though the team was told to observe from a distance, they tailed both men to find out where they worked. It turned out that the trainer worked at a newly built data center which seemed to be hiring a lot of people at very low wages. That was about to change, though, because the workers had voted to unionize.\s \s\t \tThe person running the new email hub worked at a call center a little farther away. How either of them was paying rent here given what their companies paid for wages should have been indication enough they were working a side job. You cannot make $200 per month and pay $300 per month in rent.\s \s\t \tSince the man in the suit was still back at the old Pakistani headquarters, they decided to take matters into their own hands. Two members had fake backgrounds generated for them. One applied for a job at the call center and the other applied at the data center. The person at the data center was told the company was not going to be hiring until they had hammered out a deal with the union. Could be a day, might be a month, might not happen at all. \s \s\t \tThe rest of the team was beginning to worry about the member who was to apply at the call center. He had been gone fourteen hours without reporting in. Finally he showed up at headquarters and said he was headed back to his apartment for sleep. He had been hired and had started that day. He was working on the same floor as the suspect and only a few aisles away from him. The team had dipped into the operational fund to set several members up with their own apartments in the same complex as the two suspects. \s \s\t \tThree members shared an apartment, the position of which allowed them to observe the entry to both suspects' apartments. One of the apartments they had gotten for a member just happened to be directly above the apartment where the new email hub was running. They obtained some tools and equipment to install both video and audio surveillance in the apartment below. Because this person was also now a coworker of that man, they had to hide the wiring and recording equipment. This meant they actually had to put the carpet back down and the cable under it once they had drilled through the floor and tapped into the overhead lights of both the living room and the second bedroom where the computer was.\s \s\t \tWhile the team was checking out the video equipment, they noticed the man actually had a land line phone in his apartment. This was quite unheard of in India. They cobbled together an extension cord, an AC regulator, and a gator clip; then accessed the main phone panel for the building. Only four phones had actually been hooked up. They didn't want to risk a tap being discovered at the site, so they went to work with the AC regulator while one team member stayed inside on a cell phone watching the surveillance equipment. On their third try, they found the phone line.\s \s\t \tMost phone systems had been based on the American standard of TIP and RING. A land line phone actually uses only two wires. The TIP is always positive and the RING is rather odd. When the ringer on the phone is idle, this line has -48 volts DC. To make the phone ring 90 volts of 20hz AC current is superimposed on the line. To find out which phone line went to this apartment, they simply put the correct current on the ring line for a second and waited for a report on the cell phone. When the person observing the surveillance equipment heard the phone ring, he reported it.\s \s\t \tAs the men returned to the apartment one of them asked the man who built the ring generator, \a147Why are the lines called TIP and RING?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147They are names which stuck around long past their usefulness.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You sure you're not an MBA, because you gave me a response, not an answer and that is exactly what they do.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Have you ever seen old black and white photos or newsreel footage, on the History Channel or any other place, of women wearing these big headsets sitting at a funky table with a lot of cables sticking up, and a big board to plug them into in front of them? The old telephone operator footage?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Yes, so?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Each one of those retractable cables had a special pointed connector on it, much like the connectors you see for AC adapters to power 12-volt or lower DC equipment, only much larger. Inside of the cable was two wires. One wire went to the tip of the connector and another wire was connected to one of the rings on the larger part of the connector. You've noticed how some of those pointed adapters have those ridges going around them, haven't you?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Yes, but I thought it was just to keep them in place.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147In part it is, but it also makes for a different connection point. That is why they have different colorings. At any rate, most telephones still use two wires and most people still call those wires TIP and RING.\a148\s \s\t \tWith all of the prep work done, the team set in for a long, boring surveillance routine. At least now they were doing it from an apartment where they could keep food in the fridge and easily use the bathroom. They had heard what a team was going to have to do to observe the new email hub in Pakistan. None of them wanted any part of that duty. Oh, it wasn't just the lying in the sun under desert temperatures, the bug bites, scorpions, and having to shit in your own den to keep from making any more footprints \a151 it was the region itself. There was no telling when a drug caravan would come along and kill you simply because you were there.\s \s\t \tAt last they wrote up a summary of their work and all current information they had on the two suspects. The summary was attached to an email which was sent to both Hans and the man in the suit.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tStacie returned home to her roomies after nearly a month in France. To some it might sound really nice to say it out loud, but Stacie didn't want a trip like that again, with three grueling weeks moving from location to location, staying in a different hotel each night and packing each morning. It didn't help that she had the vocabulary of a second grader in French and most of the tellers they were training wanted nothing to do with the PC that had showed up at their window the day before.\s \s\t \tThere was one bright spot, though. Because First Global had to obtain a standardized computer and get it installed at each teller window in each location, they had agreed to shut locations down as the rollout progressed. Each location would be down for about half a day while the new computers were installed and the first bit of training happened. The rest of the day was spent walking around answering questions as best she could. Thankfully she had been assigned a Pytho training person who spoke French natively.\s \s\t \tOn her next-to-last day in France, Stacie emailed Jeremy.\s \p\sJeremy,\s \s\t \tIt has been a long grueling road trip. We work until the bank closes every night, then drive to the next town with a bank location or as close as we can get where there is still a hotel. Wake up at 5:00 AM local time and arrive at the bank to begin a training session at 6:30 AM.\s \s\t \tThis weekend we ARE going to Salish. Make the reservation and be sure to book a two-hour session in the Spa for me on Saturday. Massage, mud treatment, the works!\s \sMiss you\s \sStacie\s \p \s Part of her was worried about putting the little affectionate closes on these email messages, but the other part of her knew that if they turned up in an audit it would be better for both of them to be dismissed as young lovers using the company email rather than what they were really doing. \iThen again,\i Stacie thought, \iif he makes anywhere near the money I think he is going to make from this information, he should be setting me up as at least a 'Kept Woman' if he doesn't have the mettle to make an honest woman out of me.\i That last thought really shocked Stacie. She hadn't thought about getting married since she was a little girl. Stacie wanted it all. The good life, the expensive clothes, the international travel, and the career. She was in no way looking forward to totaling out her body by having someone's kid. \iIt must have been something I ate which made me think that.\i\s \s\t \tWhen Stacie's roomies got home from their jobs, they couldn't wait to badger her for all of the details. Of course Stacie had to fill them in on the grueling pace first and they dutifully listened, considering it the toll that must be paid to travel this road. Then Stacie pulled out the road map of France she had bought. On it she had marked every town and put a number by it. In a document on her notebook she had a trip diary that she planned on sharing with Kathryn. It listed the date and each location as well as the hotel they had stayed at the night before. \s \s\t \tOn those rare occasions when they were in a city large enough to have more than one branch, the girls actually were taken out for supper by the branch manager. One branch manager decided that these ladies had eaten in too many restaurants and actually took them to his home for a meal prepared by his wife and mother-in-law.\s \s\t \tLittle was done in the way of sightseeing except on Sundays. Many branches were open on Saturday so this was a six day work week. There were only four locations in Paris and Stacie wasn't senior enough to pull rank for those. She had gotten to see some smaller museums and tour some wineries. Her roomies took the opportunity to thank her for the bottles of wine she had sent. They had all been torn between trying it and waiting for her to return so they could share. When she was finished one of her roomies said, \a147Wow. Sounds like you didn't have a good time.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147It was a working trip, not a vacation,\a148 responded Stacie. \a147Besides, I'm taking Friday off to fly out for the weekend. Won't be coming back until Monday.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Where are you taking off to now?\a148 her roomies asked.\s \s\t \t\a147Salish Lodge for a weekend of pampering and incredible sex. I've got two hours in the spa on Saturday afternoon for massage, mud bath, the works.\a148\s \s\t \tTotal jealousy filled the room. It was the honor of those achieving a new plane of womanhood to feel an elevated level of satisfaction and achievement from such a swell of jealousy, much like a surfer riding a wave. It was the duty of all girls who claimed to have achieved some level of womanhood to provide said jealousy in the air when another of their rank scored such an achievement.\s \s\t \tStacie looked right into their eyes with a smile, laughed lightly and asked, \a147What?\a148 Their eyes screamed back the phrase \a147I haven't had good sex in over a month, you bitch!\a148 but outwardly one of them asked the question they both wanted to know: \a147Same guy as the restaurant?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147If you must know, yes.\a148 Of course they must know! Asking is part of the unwritten law of womanhood!\s \s\t \t\a147You must have him totally whipped!\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Guess we'll see,\a148 smirked Stacie and the rest of the girls laughed. \a147If you are still working him over at Christmas you should have him bring friends and take us all out on New Year's,\a148 suggested one of her roomies. \s \s\t \t\a147Hear! Hear! I second that!\a148 chanted the other roomie. \a147You've dipped into the wealthy and eligible pool, time to share the pool pass.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Ladies, this is only the second weekend away with the guy. It's not like I own him yet!\a148 laughed Stacie.\s \s\t \t\a147It's your second FANTABULOUS weekend with the guy!\a148 one of her roomies exclaimed. \a147New Year's is only four months away, so tell him this weekend. You know how long it takes guys to get organized for something like this.\a148\s \s\t \tStacie got a wicked gleam in her eye as she became silent and looked at them. They sensed something was up and got quiet, too. Finally Stacie broke the silence by saying, \a147So ladies. Are you both telling me that you agree here and now to sleep with whomever we bring for your dates from his pool of friends?\a148\s \s\t \tGlances went back and forth. Cheeks blushed. Heads nodded. \a147Is that a yes or a no?\a148 asked Stacie to stretch out the tease. \s \s\t \t\a147Yes,\a148 they both said in unison. \a147Does that mean you're going to do it?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Get me some digital pictures of yourselves and I will email them to him tonight. Then you ladies need to think about what hotel you want to have sex in on New Year's. I believe he still has quite a few good-looking single friends.\a148\s \s\t \tBoth girls hugged her and scampered off to copy some pictures of themselves for Stacie. Neither of them had ever managed to be dating a great guy who had both the resources and the desire to take them to one of those all-inclusive, grand hotel New Year's Eve parties. Stacie knew this would be special for them. She also knew that both girls had done a few one-night stands in their day, so this wasn't going to be that difficult for them. She didn't bother to tell them that she knew some of Jeremy's friends from college. This should be an easy setup. Jeremy wasn't about to turn down guaranteed great sex with her on New Year's, and his pool of still-single male friends weren't the type to get tied down so they would be able to commit to a sure thing. Four months lead time would give them time to put away some cash for the evening, perhaps even get themselves better suits.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tHans had just finished hooking up the satellite Internet connection and satellite phone system in the new headquarters. He booted the main server, then, when it was done, booted his laptop to check email. It had taken him all of six hours to get this far. He still had to set up the wet-erase board in the room they would use as a war room and set up what would serve as an office for the man in the suit. When it came to the assignment of office space in a new temporary headquarters, rank was irrelevant. If you expected others to set things up for you, then you got what they gave you. Hans' office was a full six square feet bigger than the one for the man in the suit.\s \s\t \tThere were only three other office-type rooms and one other large area meant for some kind of cubical furniture. Most of the team would make do with some office folding tables, secretary chairs, and locking file cabinets. They were only here for briefings and coffee. This wasn't supposed to be as involved an operation as the one they ran in Pakistan.\s \s\t \tPlowing headlong though his email, Hans got to the one sent by the team already on-site. He let out a long low whistle when he read what they had done. The man in the suit was actually going to show emotion over this. They had gone way beyond their orders. Hans was one of the few allowed to go beyond orders. Still, what they had done had been correct. Had Hans been here to pass it by, he would have authorized it. One thing was certain, this team was mostly professionals. Because none of them knew about Vladimir, Hans forwarded the email onto him just to see what came of it. Then he sent the team an email telling them where the new headquarters was. He also scheduled a meeting for the following day while their suspects were both at work.\s \s\t \tHans sat back and wondered what the odds were for one of the team to get recruited by al-Qaeda. They certainly knew where two of their communications people were working. Did these people also do recruiting? Nobody really knew. Until now it had always been assumed that the clerics and a select few recruited, but that assumption didn't seem to hold water when it was compared to the stories coming back from the interrogation camp. Most of the interrogated had been recruited locally by someone they knew and specifically for an objective. \s \s\t \tThe cells didn't seem to be like unions, which simply wanted body counts paying dues. They seemed to have a couple of leaders, then swell their numbers for a particular strike. Once the strike occurred they would scatter and regroup somewhere else \a151 those who had not been chosen for martyrdom. Hans still had to laugh at that phrase: \a147chosen for martyrdom.\a148 What it really meant was the fat cats told you to die and like an idiot you did it. Hans had been on his fair share of suicide missions. At least with a suicide mission there was some probability, however small, of coming back alive. If there wasn't, Hans wouldn't be sitting here today.\s \s\t \tHe wrote all of these thoughts down in an email which he sent to Vladimir and the man in the suit. He felt Vladimir should be brought into the decision-making level. The man could really think things through, and without him their operation would have been over. Might as well completely piss off the man in the suit today by letting him know Vladimir's opinion was to be included.\s \s\t \t\a147If the man in the suit actually managed to get in country in time for tomorrow's meeting, it should be entertaining and educational for all,\a148 laughed Hans. \a147He has little choice but to come now. We are way off his game plan and running with the ball.\a148\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tThe Brit was rather angry when he got back to what was left of the old headquarters. He barely had a place to sit or a machine to work with. He thought he would be sent to a new temporary headquarters somewhere close to the communications center. When the man in the suit told him the reason they hadn't set up a new headquarters in this country, he was rightly corked. He threw stuff, he cussed, he hollered, and most of all he wanted to go back home to continue with the roundups. \a147Working on a remote server is working on a remote server,\a148 he argued.\s \s\t \tWhen it came to the man in the suit, there were a lot of rumors and very little fact. Some said he had organized death squads for some militant regime, others said he was a war criminal who really came from Afghanistan and was simply doing this job to keep security forces off his back. All of the rumors had one thing in common: They described the man in the suit as the kind of guy who would put little sore-ass ducks in salt water for no other reason than he could. Today, the Brit was learning the truth behind that statement.\s \s\t \t\a147I have decided we will work as best as we can from here until we can deal with this communications center.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Deal with it? We can't even get close to it.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Some special-forces, long-range recon personnel have been dispatched. They will observe from one of the mountain peaks about a mile or so away and look for a high-profile target.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147A target? Just whack the site.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147There would be no believable cover story, and al-Qaeda would know we are onto their trainer. We have to sit and observe, waiting for an opportunity to have the Pakistani military blast it off the map. They will put out a story about the high-profile target being there and that will be the reason the hut was blown up. Everything else was just collateral damage.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Just how many targets like that visited our last communications center in the time we had control of it?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147None. This one is different, though. Being located in Khyber Pass, it will be where field commanders go into and out of Afghanistan when their communications equipment is down. There is a very high probability we will identify someone on the international most wanted list.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147In the mean time, I'm stuck here working remotely with most of the office equipment gone. You can't even get a bloody cup of coffee here!\a148\s \s\t \tThe man in the suit was not having a good day. He knew Hans was correct and the Brit should have been sent on. The simple truth was that the man in the suit was old-school Pakistani. He hated India and was looking for any excuse not to go. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of money then stuck it in the Brit's hand. \a147Go buy another coffee pot and coffee. Don't forget cream and sugar. See if we still have any cups before you leave.\a148\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tLenny touched down in the early morning hours. At least, his body clock said it was early morning. It looked like noon outside. He managed to get through customs with his briefcase and one piece of luggage. He was lucky enough to see a big display board with the hotels listed in separate squares. Each one had a three-digit number to dial on the special phone for the shuttle service. \iThank God the person spoke English!\i Lenny thought as he heard them pick up. He said his name and the airline he had just arrived on. They told him to watch for the shuttle bus. It should be there inside of fifteen minutes.\s \s\t \tWithin the hour Lenny was checked into his room and was calling Vladimir via his disposable phone. Vladimir told him the meeting was in five hours. He should eat something and get to sleep. Keep the phone by the bed with the ringer on loud. Vladimir would call him one hour before the meeting. The meeting was to occur in his hotel suite. Vladimir would contact room service and arrange for meals to be delivered to the room. This would be a meeting where you ate and drank. Lenny agreed to everything, then went in search of some fast food. The hotel restaurant was still serving a breakfast buffet. Lenny really had a taste for a burger and fries, but after starving on the flight the \a147all you can eat\a148 part was starting to sound good.\s \s\t \tLenny was later pulled out of a coma-like sleep by a bizarre noise. He fumbled around in the fog of his brain and searched with his bleary eyes around a room he did not recognize for the source of it, but then it stopped. \iWhere the hell am I?\i he thought, rubbing his face and eyes trying to wake up. Then that noise came back. He saw it was coming from a cell phone on the night stand so he grabbed it and answered \a147Hello.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You must have really been out of it,\a148 said the voice on the line.\s \s\t \t\a147Still am,\a148 responded Lenny.\s \s\t \t\a147You have just under an hour to get ready for the meeting,\a148 said the voice.\s \s\t \t\a147Meeting?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Go take a shower. I will be there in half an hour.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147OK. Vlad?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Good. Your synapses are beginning to fire again. Glad I'm not there, as I think it would be a frightening sight.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147At least I know where I am now. I'll get a soda out of the vending machine to wake up, then take a shower.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Just be done with the shower before I get there. I haven't seen you since we were kids and don't want you answering the door in a towel like you were expecting some prostitute.\a148\s \s\t \tLenny laughed and hung up.\s \s\t \tVladimir's comment struck home, at least partially. Lenny found some pants to put on before wandering the hall looking for a soda machine. He also managed to find his room key before walking out of the room. \iThat would just be perfect,\i he thought. \iI know about three words of German and none of them would help me get the hotel staff to unlock my door.\i\s \s\t \tLenny finished his shower and got dressed. He was sitting at the table in the other room his suite came with going through the documents he had brought with him. The hotel had a business center downstairs so they would be able to write up some official-looking letter and print it out on the company letterhead he had brought with him. Then there was a knock at the door.\s \s\t \tThey had not seen each other since they were about nine or ten, but Lenny had not expected the sight of Vlad in a wheelchair.\s \s\t \t\a147Greetings, Lenny.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Hello, Vlad. Please forgive me, but you said nothing about being in a wheelchair over the years.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Wasn't much point. I am what I am and do what I do. I just get shot at less now. The food should be here inside of fifteen minutes. I checked downstairs before coming up in the elevator.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147When do you expect the others?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Knowing them, following the scent of food and Vodka up the elevator to this room.\a148\s \s\t \tLenny laughed. \a147At least we will have something in common.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147So, you have been doing many of these plays?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Never one this big. Well, that's not true. Never one where I had this much cash to throw at it. I've had a lot of plays which returned far more, but never had half a billion to throw into them. Probably a good thing or I would be in jail and unable to visit you, cousin.\a148\s \s\t \tNow it was Vladimir's turn to laugh. \a147In Russia I can help keep you out of prison. You should consider moving there.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I couldn't have run my company remotely before now.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147And now you can?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I have one guy working for me who is a natural at this. He isn't far from being able to fill my shoes. In truth, he came up with the information which allowed for this play and designed much of the play. As long as he could reach me by phone from time to time I could reside anywhere.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Then why don't you move?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147My wife would divorce me in a heartbeat if I mentioned taking her away from her favorite American shopping malls for more than a month. Then I couldn't afford to live in a cave.\a148\s \s\t \tBoth men laughed.\s \s\t \t\a147Thankfully, my occupation kept me from engaging in the most dangerous of habits.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You don't realize how dangerous it is until you are already married and starting to really make money. Then it is just too late to get out.\a148\s \s\t \tAnother knock on the door interrupted the conversation. The joke became a reality at that point. Standing behind the room service cart were four men. One of them was obviously a hotel worker and Lenny assumed the others were the ones he was to meet. \a147Gentlemen! Come in.\a148 He stood aside and gestured them all through.\s \s\t \tLenny shook hands then removed his briefcase from the table as the hotel worker began setting up the table for the meal. Once the table was set and the hotel worker tipped with a twenty-dollar bill, Vladimir began the introductions.\s \s\t \t\a147Gentlemen, this is my cousin Lenny from America. He is bringing some almost legitimate work to you.\a148\s \s\t \tThe other men chuckled at such an introduction.\s \s\t \t\a147Lenny, this is Dimitri and his two assistants. I must apologize for not knowing their names.\a148\s \s\t \tLenny shook Dimitri's hand and Dimitri took over. \a147On my left is Boris and my right is Gleb.\a148 Once again the hand shaking continued.\s \s\t \t\a147Let's all sit and eat,\a148 said Lenny. \a147I don't know what Vladimir ordered for us, but I'm sure I paid for it, so eat heartily.\a148\s \s\t \tMore laughter filled the room. Things were relaxing between the men. During the meal Dimitri asked, \a147So tell me, Lenny, what is it your company actually does?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Well, given that you are friends of Vladimir, I will tell you the truth. On the surface we are simply industry analysts. While we do invest some money for others, we are not a licensed investing firm. At least we don't have the kind of license and regulation which would be required to open regular mutual funds. In truth, what we do is find information at least three days in advance, then act on it. We will not use information if it doesn't have at least a three-day lead time.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147And in your country this is not considered legal?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Not even close. Nearly everybody does it, but when you get caught you tend to end up paying huge fines, or going to prison. You may have seen the news reports about Martha Stewart?\a148\s \s\t \tThe men nodded.\s \s\t \t\a147It is highly profitable, though,\a148 chimed in Boris. \a147A three-day lead gives one time to spread trades across many accounts to avoid detection.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Exactly why we need the information at least three days in advance. In the matter of the current play I came to talk with you about we have had the information months in advance. We have already done several plays and more than doubled our assets. There are several big plays yet to be had with this information, but we cannot put all of the cash into it via our normal channels without getting caught. It is simply too much money. Like trying to hide an ocean liner in a bathtub.\a148\s \s\t \tAll of the men chuckled at that one.\s \s\t \tGleb finally entered the conversation saying, \a147We tend to be very good at taking people's money.\a148\s \s\t \tNow everybody laughed heartily.\s \s\t \t\a147What is the nature of this \iplay\i as you call it?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We have known for many months that First Global Bank was in the process of offshoring all of their data centers. While the cost savings has helped their stock some, they are going to run afoul of banking regulations when they offshore the last two data centers. That time is approaching. At that point they will lose their FDIC insurance and most likely be taken over by the government to be liquidated or forced to bring operations back into the U.S. That play is a ways down the road, though.\a148\s \s\t \tThe other men at the table weren't that interested until the final sentence. Now they were all paying attention.\s \s\t \t\a147You might have noticed some stock movement for Pytho Corporation lately.\a148\s \s\t \tDimitri nodded.\s \s\t \t\a147We were a big part of that movement. We found out sometime last quarter that Pytho was about to roll out a new software product for a niche market. We made our buy while they were low, then sent out the leak about the new software product. I assume you have also heard that leak?\a148\s \s\t \tDimitri nodded again.\s \s\t \t\a147Do you know what the niche is?\a148\s \s\t \tDimitri shook his head.\s \s\t \t\a147Banking.\a148\s \s\t \tThe other two gentlemen sat more forward now and began to pay closer attention.\s \s\t \t\a147The first client they have signed is First Global. They have just completed or are about to complete the rollout of this software to all French banking operations. As Pytho delivers other countries it will be rolled out to them. We don't have hard estimates yet, but they should complete rollout to everywhere inside of six months. At some point soon Pytho will announce the new software product and some time shortly after that First Global will announce how much money they intend to save using it.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Just how much money will they be saving?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Using a third-party product allows them to terminate all IT staff in every country except for a token few kept around for whatever reason. It also lets them get rid of all the other computer systems. My own estimate is that they will reduce operational costs by at least $10 million per year. France alone will save them nearly $2 million per year.\a148\s \s\t \tThere was silence and some glances. It was obvious to the men that Lenny was laying it all on the line. They could refuse to invest the money for him and use this knowledge for their own profit if they wanted.\s \s\t \t\a147What would you have of us?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I need to set up some kind of investment arrangement with you, get some money in your hands as quickly as possible, then have you start buying an awful lot of First Global. I will tell you when to dump it. I will also tell you when to start selling short.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You have no interest in making more money from Pytho Corporation?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I've already made over eight dollars per share from it in seventy-two hours. Yes, it will go up some more after the announcement, but not enough to warrant my attention at this time. First Global is currently trending down thanks to other financials and is now below where it was before I did the first play. That is where the money is to be made. Once they announce the use of Pytho software, the rest of the industry will find out about $10 million per year in cost savings. Coupled with the dramatic drop in data center costs, plus the profitable sale of a few data centers their stock will be up another twenty dollars per share after they announce this quarter's numbers. I'll be getting out once it crosses the eighteen-dollar bump threshold.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147And you wish to start shorting as soon as you are out?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I'll contact you and tell you when to start shorting, if I decide to make that play. We will be shorting Pytho Corporation and Big Four Consulting, but some other country may force me to walk away from the First Global shorting.\a148\s \s\t \tEven Vladimir was paying attention now.\s \s\t \t\a147We haven't finished our research yet with respect to the insurance requirements and restrictions put forth by other countries. In the U.S. there is a restriction that all workers with significant access to a bank's computer system must go through government background and security checks. When the data center is in a different country and not owned by the bank, it is quite hard to enforce the background checks and/or do them well. There may be another country on the list with the same restriction. First Global is converting the foreign countries first because they have the highest cost of operation and least positive impact on the bottom line. I know for a fact the announcement will come soon and that the French migration isn't going to cause this problem. I will get to make the first play. The others will happen if no other country gets in the way, and if that happens the others just won't be as big of a play.\a148\s \s\t \tThere was silence in the room now. Dimitri was looking directly at Lenny contemplating. Finally Dimitri spoke. \a147You don't mind us and our clients riding along on this big play?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147They can ride along, but they cannot ride along big unless you can spread the trades across hundreds if not thousands of trading accounts held by individuals. Too much money being put into this will alert suspicion before it is time. Once you notify me that all of my money has been invested I will put out the rumor that First Global is the first client of Pytho's software. After that they can ride with as much as they want. The rumor will spread like wildfire.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You have no objection to some of our clients taking a small gain with Pytho on its way up after the announcement?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147That information is out there. Do with it what you will. I can only handle so many angles of this at once.\a148\s \s\t \tAgain Dimitri nodded. \a147And you are looking to put half a million in play?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Half a billion\a148 responded Lenny. \a147That is why I need someone who can spread the trades around. If all of that hits from one place on one day it will attract too much attention. When it comes time to do the shorting there will probably be three quarters of a billion sitting in the account that will allow for a lot of shorting credit.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We have quite a few customers we advise privately. Being able to bleed them the Pytho story and being able to tell them when to get out would make them very happy. If they can make eight dollars per share in a week, they are more than happy. We have some old people we do investing for. They don't have a lot of tolerance for risk since this is all they have. That kind of turnaround will go a long way toward making their lives easier. Call me soft, but when I find a small score like that I run it for them. Most need more than a 6 percent return to survive.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Then they should be very happy. When I tell you to start shorting First Global you should take half of their profit from that trade and use it to back some short sells, it will net them a much larger return and be almost the same risk level.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Assuming we get to make that play.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Yes, of course.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Until then, you have the short hop of Pytho, then the major bump of First Global. Even if some country does out First Global before we can play it, we should still get to play Big Four Consulting in full.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You did not inform us as to the play with them.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147They own a big piece of the company providing the offshore data center services. They are also the ones who sold the idea to the board at First Global. They are the ones assisting with the rollout of Pytho software at First Global. The only play for them is a shred, and it doesn't matter who blows the whistle on First Global to make it happen. Of course, it will be better if they wait until the U.S. data centers have all been migrated. The shred will have a lot more effect when it comes with congressional hearings and criminal indictments.\a148\s \s\t \tVladimir had believed himself the only one in the family with this gift until that moment. Lenny obviously had the same ability, just far less desire when it came to dodging bullets.\s \s\t \tPrior to coming here Vladimir had received several emails from Hans. He knew for a fact Big Four Consulting was basically running the operation in India for data center migrations. He had not heard who the client was other than it was a large bank from the U.S. that handled close to one-third of the world's finances thanks to all of its recent acquisitions. There was no way he could tell them how he got that information. He had taken it out of a message he found in the \a147sent items\a148 box of the trainer's email system.\s \s\t \t\a147It is good you don't need to make the shredding play on First Global to be happy with your return,\a148 Vladimir finally offered. \a147They may tumble hard for other reasons.\a148\s \s\t \tNow everyone was paying attention to Vladimir.\s \s\t \t\a147One of the data centers to which they have been relocating is being canvassed by al-Qaeda. We don't know what, when, how or even if, but we do know the where.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147And you are unable to tell us who the \iwe\i is?\a148 asked Dimitri.\s \s\t \t\a147Naturally. I have not figured out what they intend to gain by any attack on the data center. The bank has twin data centers and fault-tolerant data storage. If one location goes down, the other will simply handle all of the transactions. Worst case, some of the tellers will need to log in again. Bombing just one location won't do any more than kill a handful of people. A bus bombing kills more and affects more.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147At any rate, it will not affect the other shorting opportunity. Big Four Consulting has had a significant revenue increase since the migration project began. I expect they will have a larger revenue increase when they announce their new quarterly numbers due to participating in the sale of this software and its rollout. That will push their stock up. Once First Global gets nailed for violating federal regulations by migrating the data centers it will be a short matter of time before Big Four is fingered as the one doing the sale. Their stock will free-fall while they are under investigation. That's an easy twenty dollars-per-share play, but I start getting out around fifteen dollars unless they free-fall so fast they are well past a fifteen dollars per share loss before I can get the orders in to cover shorts.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147So, you are asking us to facilitate some trades for you based upon your instructions. We are free to ride along on those instructions as long as we don't get too greedy, causing all of us to be put under investigation. At some point in the near future you will want most of your money back. Correct?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Actually, if you are up for it I have one more task for you.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Go on.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Quite some time ago I had a law firm set up an offshore company in a country which doesn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S. I don't trust what they did, so haven't done much with it. I would like you to set up an offshore trading company for me in a country which has no extradition treaties with the U.S. Most of the money should be put into that company rather than sent back to me.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Russia does not have extradition treaties with United States. Setting up a company will take a month or so. We will have our people do it. Do you mind if it is in the same office building as one of our locations? We have offices in Moscow and the Ukraine capital, Kyyiv. If you want to keep costs down Kyyiv will be your location.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147No, that would be fine. I would want an actual office with air conditioning, Internet, the usual business tools. Would need a couple actual offices in the office space itself. I may send someone there to train some staff so it doesn't look like just a shell.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We might be able to share some staff. We have two part-time secretarial people there and one wants to go full time now that she is married and thinking of having a family. It would be good if the other was working part-time for you so we could call her in when the other goes on maternity leave.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147That might work out. I haven't approached any of my staff about running another location yet, so might have a hard sell in front of me. Depends on what trappings could be had. The one I have in mind is rather young. He would want a nice place, clubs to hang out in, fancy car, the usual trappings of wealthy youth.\a148\s \s\t \tDimitri thought for a while then said, \a147I like that you are up front about this. I do my investing much as you do. Getting information ahead of everyone else allows one to make a killing as long as one doesn't get too greedy. We have recently had a few bouts with greed in my company so have been using the offshore company to handle a lot of our transactions. It has been a long time since I had inside information this far in advance. We can even structure this deal legally.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Please continue.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Write up a letter of intent to enter a business relationship. For a 10 percent establishment fee we will establish an offshore company meeting your requirements. You will invest your half a billion in that company. In that letter also state that we are contracting your firm to provide investment analysis services to us on a per-transaction basis not to exceed 10 percent of profit. Once that letter is filed and posted on the Internet in a PR-type place, it will allow just cause for funds to flow freely between our two companies.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147That does sound rather clean. Do you have that all down, Vlad?\a148\s \s\t \tVladimir had started taking notes as soon as Dimitri stated the content for the letter. \a147Yes. I can go down to the business center with your letterhead and have four copies up for signature in under half an hour.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Do you want to be included in this deal, Vladimir?\a148 asked Dimitri.\s \s\t \t\a147No. Lenny is my cousin. You do have one of my trading accounts in your possession. Simply invest according to the play Lenny has laid out. At some point I may have a new identity when I hit Lenny up for a job at his new offshore company. Make sure the office building has wheelchair accessibility.\a148\s \s\t \tEveryone laughed.\s \s\t \t\a147Not a problem, Vlad!\a148 said Lenny. \a147I honestly hadn't thought about retiring until today. If I had you running the offshore place and the guy I'm grooming back home running that company, I could even afford the divorce my wife would serve me with if I decided to move to Russia.\a148\s \s\t \tNow everyone really laughed.\s \s\t \t\a147Only if we set it up so her lawyer cannot get to it,\a148 put in Dimitri.\s \s\t \tAll the men roared at that one.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tIt was the wee hours of the morning when the disposable cell phone Lenny had given him rang. Jeremy fumbled around groggily for it. Lenny had instructed him to keep the phone by his bed along with a pad and a pen.\s \s\t \t\a147Hello.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Hello, Jeremy. You need to get into the office as quickly as possible.\a148\s \s\t \tJeremy looked at the clock. \a147We don't open for another five hours,\a148 he replied.\s \s\t \t\a147There is a pair of faxes on the fax machine which are for your eyes only. The first is our signed letter of intent with Dimitri's company to enter a business relationship. I'm bringing the originals with me in my briefcase. The second is the instructions for where to send the wire transfer. You can enter the wire transfer information long before the bank opens. It will happen once they can call to verify. We need them to get on this as soon as they open.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147OK. Is there anything I need to write down?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147No, I put it all in the second fax. I didn't know if I would be able to fax to the United States from here. There is something you need to think about though.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147What is that?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147How would you feel about spending a couple of years in Kyyiv?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Doing what?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Running our new location, at least until we can bring someone in and get them up to your level.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I'll have to think about it.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Fine. Just remember that Russian women are beautiful, willing, and few people here make much money. A man with a car, even a Ford Taurus, could get lucky nearly every night.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147It's not a matter of luck,\a148 laughed Jeremy. A little more awake now, he said, \a147Apparently you forgot about the weekend you are funding for me. I fly out this afternoon.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I haven't forgotten. Already got your receipt for the jewelry. I was impressed with your restraint. You only hit me for $5K.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Wasn't like I was buying a wedding ring, just enough to flatten all her girlfriends when they see it.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You do know how to play the game, son. Cruise on into the office and deal with the faxes. Be sure to put your real cell phone number in for the confirm phone number. Put my cell phone in as the second confirm in case they cannot get you. Leave your cell phone number with the receptionist so she can try contacting you if the bank fails. Take the rest of the day off, you've earned it.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I planned on it,\a148 laughed Jeremy.\s \s\t \tAfter hanging up Jeremy wondered what it would be like in Kyyiv. He put on some jeans and drove to the office. He retrieved both faxes and logged into the bank's secure system and keyed in the information for the wire transfer listing both his cell phone and Lenny's as numbers to call for voice confirm. He then left a note for the receptionist stating the bank might call if they couldn't reach either himself or Lenny on their cell phones. At the bottom he put his cell phone number.\s \s\t \tWith his work duties done, he grabbed a soda and started doing a few Web searches. Just to keep Lenny honest his first search was \a147Ukraine women.\a148 Just as in this country more porn sites popped up than a person could visit in a lifetime. One thing he noticed is that most of the Ukraine women posing for porn didn't have a bunch of discarded credit cards pumped into their breasts as American women did. They pretty much seemed to be natural beauties. He had run into some Russian women at college, so he knew something about them.\s \s\t \tHis next search was \a147Ukraine Income\a148 which turned up a report from the CIA. Using 1995 U.S. dollars as the constant, in 2001 the per capita Gross Domestic Product was $4,200. The World Bank put household consumption at $558 and 29 percent of the people had incomes below the poverty line. \a147If you wanted to retire as a dirty old man this would be a place to do it,\a148 he laughed.\s \s\t \tWhy he was still interested he had no idea. Perhaps it was just the analyst lifestyle. His next search was \a147Kyyiv historical weather.\a148 That turned up a page stating the climate was much like that of the Midwest U.S.: cold in winter, hot in summer. Average winter temperature was around 19 degrees F and average summer temperature was around 67 degrees F. \iNot out of range,\i he thought.\s \s\t \t\iMight as well round out the search,\i he thought. He did one more search for \a147Kyyiv real estate housing.\a148 This brought up quite a bit of information, but only one site was close to what he had expected to find for real estate. It had other information, such as that in Kyyiv they drive on the right side of the road. Always good to know something like that. A new high-end apartment complex was being built. For around U.S. $320K you could buy a \a147three room plus kitchen\a148 apartment. It wasn't until he looked at the floor plan that he realized they count each room in Kyyiv. It wasn't a three bedroom unit as he had thought. \a147What a scam!\a148 he said out loud. Of course when he changed the search to \a147Kiev Real Estate\a148 that brought up sites more like what he had expected. You could purchase a one bedroom condo (apartment) for around $30K U.S. and the higher end ones seemed to top out around $250K. Then again, he had come across a few apartments that were charging $14,000 per month in rent. He wondered how many fresh women they came with? An ex-wife wouldn't cost you that.\s \s\t \t\iHow long does it take a couple to pay off a $30K note at $500 per year?\i Jeremy pondered. Lenny had been correct. There were high-end condos at reasonable prices and a \isevere\i poverty level. No wonder so many European women seemed to be on those mail-order bride Web sites. It was simple desperation. There must be quite a few of the mafia types living in Kyyiv or other highly crooked individuals. There could be little other justification for $3.4 million condos being within a mile of $30K condos.\s \s\t \tStill, Lenny was correct. A young guy could go there for a couple years, be a drunken womanizing pig, and live on $20,000. If your retirement account had barely a million dollars in it, you could buy a nice condo and live better than most of your neighbors for the rest of your life. Hell, if you had only half a million, you could eke it out buying that condo that was under $40K. How the hell did they even eat spending an average of $558 per year? That wouldn't buy most people in the U.S. five week's groceries, not counting the fast food stops, etc.\s \s\t \tJeremy logged out and locked up the office. He couldn't believe he was even entertaining the idea. Oh well, he had a weekend of incredible sex and food far too good to be described. There was nothing quite like relaxing after a great meal and fantastic sex in a jacuzzi which happened to be near the fireplace in your room. Nothing quite like that at all. Add to that the fact his date could give a blind man whiplash and he would be walking her around the place to show her off.\s \s\t \tSpeaking of showing off, Jeremy made a mental note to put both the jewelry and receipt in his carry-on bag. Only a fool would let a $5K diamond necklace with matching earrings go through baggage claim now that they hand-inspected luggage. Jeremy had heard so many horror stories he was planning to pack two incredible suits to wear. He figured if he packed two, they might only take one. Yes, he had heard some tales of people losing expensive suits. They wouldn't bother to pilfer a Wal-Mart suit, but a $1,200 imported Italian stood less than a fifty-fifty chance of making it through the flight unless it had an equally good looking $1,000-plus suit in the garment bag with it.\s \p\X1\c\l\BWhat Hill?\B\l\X1 \c \s\t \tIf the man in the suit thought the Brit was well and truly corked off with his last tirade, it was nothing compared to this one. He had spent three pointless weeks here doing what Vladimir could have and probably was. \iGood thing the Brit doesn't know about Vladimir,\i thought the man in the suit, otherwise he would kill me and toss my body out in a street somewhere with a note allegedly from al-Qaeda on it.\s \s\t \tWhat had the Brit on a tear today was the local news. The Pakistani government was up in arms about a U.S. incursion onto sovereign soil. In truth it had been Afghan troops with Brits and a few other nations, but around here, everything was blamed on the Americans.\s \s\t \tThe incursion itself was small and wouldn't have happened had the Pakistani government sent troops to occupy the Khyber Pass. That request came almost weekly and had been coming for a year. It came from every government involved in the operation and lately even from governments not involved. Support for al-Qaeda went too high in the government for that to happen, though. As a result, this incursion happened.\s \s\t \tA force of Afghan troops along with several other countries had pursued a band of al-Qaeda troops into the pass. Everyone assumed they were al-Qaeda troops because they didn't stop to answer questions, simply started shooting. As a result, air support had been called in. When the fighters got to the pass their instruments picked up the transmissions from the hut the email hub was using. The rest was pretty much predetermined after that. Rather than strafe the troops in the pass, the fighters locked onto the hut and there now was a fifteen-foot-wide crater where it used to be. After that they went back and helped mop up the force desperately trying to get away. \s \s\t \tSome of the al-Qaeda force had even been taken prisoner according to the news reports. Now the government was raising hell over both an incursion and an abduction on their soil. The man in the suit had done hundreds of abductions on their soil, but thankfully he had never had a reporter embedded in his unit. Yes, once again \a147film at eleven\a148 had buggered up what would have otherwise been a nice clean operation.\s \s\t \tThere was only one other person in the room. That other man was pure muscle, no brain. He could do what you told him if you didn't use too many syllables or talk too long. \iBy the time that man realized the Brit was trying to kill me I would be dead and he would be fetching a tarp and the car,\i thought the man in the suit. \iNo, for this one I need to keep my distance and let him burn out, \ithe man in the suit decided.\s \s\t \tThere was no doubt the email hub was off-line. Vladimir had sent a note saying the site had stopped transmitting to his server about an hour ago. Shortly after that the news report came. For a brief hour there had been the hope the hub was moving to a more accessible location. That hope was pretty much gone now. They didn't even know who the person was. Pakistani intelligence had sent a squad up to investigate the damage and potentially return the bodies, but even if they found a body this team could not be certain their guy had died.\s \s\t \tIt was at this point the man in the suit's train of thought was interrupted. Not by a knife or other attempt on his life, but by the silence. He realized the Brit had wound down and was staring at him. Apparently there had been some question he was supposed to answer.\s \s\t \t\a147You will need to excuse me, I was trying to determine how we would tell if our hub operator had been killed. We don't know his name or have any real information on him. What was your question?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Can I go back to nabbing these guys now?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147No. I need you to go to India and help Hans. They have the trainer and the new email hub under surveillance now and are short-staffed. Two of their team have taken jobs working at the same companies the men work at, which leaves them little time for email analysis. We need to know what they are up to there. It sounds like it will be the next big strike.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Are we going to just watch that one happen, too?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Our hands aren't tied there. The Indian government doesn't know what we are doing or even that we are there.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147So, if anything goes wrong we are on our own.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147To some extent, yes. We have taken over a farm about twenty miles outside of town and have some troops there with a pair of helicopters. It is unknown how long they can remain undetected.\a148\s \s\t \tThe Brit was a bit calmer now. He had heard that British Secret Service had been the ones demanding more intelligence before making arrests. They didn't know, at least openly, that this team wasn't bothering with arrests. Had they known they might have authorized it, but it was still dicey. After the bombings they were a lot more willing to look the other way when it came to abductions and planes making unscheduled flights to Germany.\s \s\t \tIn his current state of mind, the Brit mused out loud, \a147We could take them both now and really blind al-Qaeda.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147The powers that be think al-Qaeda will write this one off as collateral damage. We hope they will send a new trainee to the trainer. If that happens, then taking these two down has merit. If that doesn't happen, then they are correct. We should know in about two weeks.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Correct about what?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147That the email network is comprised of dozens, if not hundreds, of individuals. They believe we have uncovered only a small portion of the network and found it by luck.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Two weeks isn't so long to wait. What makes them think the network managed to get so large, or am I not authorized to know that?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Do you know how many new email hubs have been discovered when going through the machines of those you grabbed?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147No.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147None. Weeks with the best technicians going through them and none have been found. Even those working in Germany were using Nedim or the trainer as their hub.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147That would make one believe there aren't more hubs.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Nedim is the only hub that was handling American operations and those of the African continent. We have not found email from any cells in France, Spain, China, or Russia. Do you think al-Qaeda isn't operating in those countries?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We know they are.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Hence, the decision from above. We would only blind them in a few countries for a while. Roundups have been occurring in those countries so blinding them would be of questionable good as far as stopping operations. It is possible that few cells in the other countries are using the Internet email communications method. We know the 9/11 hijackers were. So, we need to find the other hubs.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147There has been little, if any, cross talk between hubs. At least there was some after Nedim was outed in the press. Perhaps another outing would force another scramble?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147In two weeks' time I will approach the powers that be. In three weeks' time we should have our final answer. There is still the possibility we will stumble into the new hub via the cell phones used by those you rounded up. It is the hard way, but we managed to find and turn Nedim. Turning the next one will be more difficult, but not as difficult as finding them.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147The Americans could give that hub to us.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147How so?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147They have been scanning the images in every international email message since 9/11. They could at least give us the messages complete with headers so we could begin tracking.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147How do you know this?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I have killed for many different countries. People whose lives depended on me keep in touch from time to time. They tell me things that may keep me alive or are simply as a warning telling me to stay frosty because a call may soon be coming.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Do you think they would contact you with respect to taking someone out?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147They have before. Never an al-Qaeda member, but drug dealers by the score. Just what do you think I was doing when you found me?\a148\s \s\t \tThe man in the suit had forgotten that. He had met the Brit in Pakistan after being instructed on where to find him. The Brit had been sent into the lawless Northern Areas in Afghanistan to take out a drug lord who was shipping too much poppy product to drug buyers in the States. They could have easily sent him to that hut with a team he chose and he would have made it look as if one of the warlords had offed the guy. Had Hans known of the Brit's background he surely would have suggested it. This operation was starting to have too many rings of complexity. Something bad was going to happen. The man in the suit could feel it. Just wasn't like him to overlook a solution that obvious.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tHeidi was back at her place for the first time in five days. The second camp was operating beyond its capacity. She had trained six different people how to operate the machine and extract the blood. She had helped interview over one hundred people as team members. Almost all of them washed out during the first half hour. Still, they had managed to bring in two more surgeons for organ harvesting. Getting the stem cell professionals was proving a bit more difficult. Too many Germans remembered the story of Dr. Mengele and they did not wish to have history remember them in such a way. They had even started searching on the Web to bring people in from foreign countries. It looked as though one Russian doctor was going to be a good fit, but it was still too early to tell.\s \s\t \tThankfully there were laundry facilities at the second camp. Heidi had managed to carry far fewer clothes with her than she would have liked. When she left five days ago she thought it was just going to be a forty-eight-hour stint. Then the other trucks arrived.\s \s\t \tIt seemed the interrogators were giving up early on people. Perhaps they were just as overwhelmed. Nikolaus had told her the interrogation camp was beyond its capacity. Roundups were occurring in every country, it seemed, and nobody was asking too many questions about where the people went; they were only asking what information had been gained. She knew they had set up a Web site to post much of the information and issued accounts to people in the intelligence service for each participating country. Everyone was keeping quiet about how the information was obtained. Sometimes an email would go out from the interrogation camp when the technicians found an email address, phone number, or IP address in a specific country which was used repeatedly.\s \s\t \tHeidi had heard they had identified thousands of cell members and hundreds of new cells around the world. The one thing she heard was that they hadn't identified any new communications centers. That part was troubling Nikolaus a bit. She knew something of the team which was pursuing such things. A lot of hand-wringing and head-scratching was going on as to whether they should take down the ones they knew about, or let them continue, choosing to track those using them. The tracking strategy hadn't worked so well for the people of Lutton. That reality was causing the urgency of cell roundups and thus causing Heidi to put in ninety-hour weeks.\s \s\t \tOne thing was certain in Heidi's mind. She was glad she had sent the letter telling her contacts to keep their ears open. By her count over 1,000 patients had passed through the second camp and more were coming every day. Quite simply they couldn't keep pushing this volume through without causing a leak. It was too soon in the operation for other countries to be sufficiently implicated in the operation. If they could just make it a year, all would be well.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tNikolaus sat at his desk doing what he mostly did at his desk, wading through paper. He now had a team of people marketing the available organs and the cash flow was alarming. Nearly every organ had its own black market and there seemed to be plenty of buyers. The party had set up its own Web site in some location Nikolaus knew nothing about. One of the sites they had been using was about to be shut down, so they transferred all of their business to the new site and went into hiding. Eventually that site would pop up, hosted in another country. Hopefully it would pop up prior to the party site being compromised so they could transfer business to it before arrests came.\s \s\t \tSome of the Russian mafia groups had even come poking around looking to obtain some of the business. Given the help they had been in the past and with the current operations in the field, Nikolaus authorized the marketing of some organs through them as well. It turned out Russian mafia leaders were good customers. All of that vodka and other drug use trashed their livers like car windshields splattered bugs in the summer time. They had the cash and the surgeons.\s \s\t \tCash was becoming a problem for Nikolaus. There was simply too much of it. This corporation wasn't set up for retail sales and didn't own any banks. The few banks the party owned or at least controlled couldn't launder the kind of cash coming in. Nikolaus needed this money to look as if it had come from legitimate corporations. He had asked the people who had dealt with the current Russian mafia families on the organs to help with laundering the cash. They were of little help. They simply didn't launder any money. Their response had been \a147buy and sell diamonds.\a148\s \s\t \tWhile it was true that you could purchase diamonds for cash, then sell them to jewelers and receive a check, there simply wasn't enough of them and this company wasn't in that business. At least the stem-cell sales were all to institutions which cut checks. The Russian mafia clients who had purchased organs had also opted to pay with a check when asked. In desperation Nikolaus had sent an email to Hans asking for help. Hans had sent him back an email address for someone named Vladimir who was doing work for the team and had quite a few Russia mafia contacts of his own.\s \s\t \tNikolaus had already been the Russian mafia route, but was desperate enough to email Vladimir. He received an email response asking him to call a specific cell phone number at a specific time on the following day. He was advised to also use a disposable cell phone when he made the call. Nikolaus made the call the next day.\s \s\t \t\a147Hello.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Hello, are you Nikolaus?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Yes.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Who introduced us?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We've never met, but we were put in contact with each other by a person named Hans.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Good. I'm sitting here with some friends that run some investment and loan operations. We won't use their names for now. How much cash are you looking to run through such an operation?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Right now there is roughly $180 million in various currencies. We need this money to come back to us in the form of a check to our special pharmaceuticals unit or one of our other business units. We can make up some bogus inventory items and conduct the transactions in that manner, but we need the money to come in the form of checks.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147How much are you willing to pay for this service?\a148 asked another voice on the phone.\s \s\t \t\a147Depends on the level of service. Will you be picking up the cash and sending us an order for the items that will never be shipped?\a148\s \s\t \tThere was some talking in the room which Nikolaus couldn't quite make out, then the response, \a147That would depend on where the pickup would occur.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We have a secured facility not far from Nuremberg if you have your own planes to fly the cargo out. We can even pack some legitimate medical supplies in the containers to throw off the casual inspector if that makes life easier. \a147\s \s\t \tAgain there was some more talking in the room.\s \s\t \t\a147Are you able to ship legitimate medical supplies to stores and pharmacies in Russia?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We are a manufacturer of quite a few things, but not a distributor. Traditionally we set up credit accounts with wholesalers and distributors then sell and ship to them.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147That could work. Are you able to set up item numbers which are available only to certain distributors?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Yes, we do that all of the time, especially for privately developed drugs or drugs of national importance. Why do you ask?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Can you set up some form of Web page which would let a customer look at your current inventory products that a customer is authorized to purchase?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We already have that system.\a148\s \s\t \tAgain more talking in the room. This was beginning to infuriate Nikolaus. He wasn't used to being treated like a beggar.\s \s\t \t\a147Is the email address Vladimir has for you secure?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147No email is secure.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Some can be, but most aren't, this is true. Is there a fax number used only by you?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Yes,\a148 he responded and gave them the number.\s \s\t \t\a147We need you to set up a list of item numbers and descriptions. We also need you to add a distributor to your system which is the only distributor authorized to look at those items. This distributor should be able to look at any of your general items as well. Vladimir will fax you all of the information and the descriptions for the items. You will fax back the list of item numbers and the description in your system.\a148 \s \s\t \t\a147There will be one item number for each type of currency we can handle. You will tell us how much you have to launder by manually entering one unit for each denomination. One dollar, one ruble, one peso, etc. The price in your system will be .75 of the currency's value. You will pack the currency into medical shipping containers with these item numbers printed on the outside. You will inform by fax the method of entering an order on this system. We will check it at least once per week. We will also be ordering some legitimate supplies for sale to pharmacies in Russia. This will keep everything looking legitimate. You can send product literature and pricing information to the address we give you for the distributor. It is a small drug distributor in Russia that we own part of and has never done business with you. If there are any sales territory issues to work out you need to handle them.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I can take care of that,\a148 Nikolaus said.\s \s\t \t\a147Do you agree to the transaction?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You want 25 percent to make it all look legitimate. You also want to become a distributor for our products. I don't have a problem with that. I do have a significant word of caution for you. Once you are added to the system, you will be called on by the marketing department here. There is nothing I can do about that and they have no knowledge of this business. I can try to get you put under someone I can trust, but I've never really dealt much with that side of the business.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147As I said, it is a legitimate distribution company. We will ensure they always speak with someone who knows what is going on and what is at risk.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Good. I can have things set up in about two days once I get the paperwork from Vladimir.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147This should be a profitable arrangement for both of us. In fact, I know the person who will be handling your line on our end quite well. Your marketing types will only call on him a few times because he will badger them incessantly to make knock-off versions of drugs with expiring patents. That is a business your firm doesn't openly get into.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Traditionally we don't. We do own another company that does, however. I can see what it takes to get your distributor access to those products as well.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147That would be most beneficial. This distributor has three locations in formerly communist countries. The people there don't have much to spend. Products from China and Africa have been of questionable quality leading to problems.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I've heard. That is why we quietly bought into the business. I thought there were Russian mafia families in the business, though.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147They make only high-end drugs \a151 Viagra and some others \a151 things they can make for a few cents per tablet and sell for over six dollars per tablet on the Internet. This distributor is looking for low-cost antibiotics, cold and flu formulas, pain killers, diabetic testers, etc. Very low-end low margin stuff the Russian families won't touch, at least not yet. If they could get you to supply them these things there will be many full tractor trailers coming to us each week. It will be much easier to hide the other packages in such shipments.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Agreed. The best place to hide a tree is in the forest.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I look forward to doing business with you, Nikolaus. By the way, my name is Dimitri. The others in the room are my assistants, but you don't need their names.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I must confess I like the way you think things through. I have a much better feeling about this than I did when I made the call.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147While I came up with some of it, Vladimir came up with most critical piece of it. I had forgotten about the distributor we owned a large part of. Once that was put before me it was easy to see how to make money from this arrangement.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Vladimir does come highly recommended.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147One thing which would make life easier for all of us: If you could find a way to get your customers to pay you in either euros or American dollars it would be better. We have methods of burning through that. The other currencies we are going to take a loss on.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Understood. We have been trying to enforce that.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147While I've got you on the phone, you wouldn't have a method of selling diamonds, would you?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147How many and of what quality?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Unknown. Three small metal tubes full. Don't ask. We had no choice. It was a bait and switch at the last minute.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147That is the problem of dealing with African warlords,\a148 laughed Dimitri. \a147Send them along in one of the packages. I will have some friends look at them and make an offer. We will come up with some method of paying you for them if they sell. Sometimes you get lucky and get a great stone. Usually you get Wal-Mart jewelry quality.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147So I've heard.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147After this has been set up and we have had transactions running for a few months I would like for us to meet and share a meal. That actually might be a good time to exchange cash for the diamonds so you could send it through for laundry or simply use it yourself.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Normally I don't meet people who haven't been vetted, but I have a good feeling about doing business with you. We will let Vladimir set it up when the time is right. I am a bit surprised you didn't ask where the money is coming from.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147As long as you aren't selling weapons to al-Qaeda, I don't care. I know a bit about your operation. No, Vladimir wasn't the source. In truth, I was part of the chain of people who brought Vladimir to you.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Well, I certainly can't thank you enough for that!\a148 responded Nikolaus.\s \s\t \tThat last little nugget of information rocked Nikolaus to the core. He hoped his voice hadn't waivered during the response. He had believed this operation to be more covert than a nuclear weapons program. This guy knew about it and Nikolaus had no idea who he was. Then again, this guy had brought them Vladimir. Until this day, he had not understood why Hans wanted Vladimir on the team so badly. There were rumors upon rumors about this guy. Some said he didn't exist, yet Hans had managed to obtain him. Had it not been for Vladimir, the entire communications center surveillance project would be toast.\s \s\t \t\a147Thank you for your assistance in this matter, Vladimir,\a148 Nikolaus offered.\s \s\t \t\a147Think nothing of it. I like helping out my team. Hans is on my team and he trusts you with his life. By extension, I am trusting you with my life.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Hans is a good soldier. You can trust him to always come through if there is any way possible.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I have noticed that about him. You will have your fax in less than two hours. I need to return to my office and write it all up.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Good. As soon as I get it I will start things going on this end. I will get people started on bundling up the various currencies and putting them into shipping containers. Once we have item numbers we can print up the bar codes and enter the inventory.\a148\s \s\t \tNikolaus was left there at his desk pondering how the problem had moved on him. At first he had a problem of trying to get the cash into checks so he could record it in the corporate books. Now he had a slightly bigger problem. The board of directors were a rather loose-lipped bunch and the accountants were outside of Nikolaus' direct control. If he created item numbers under this corporation, they would want any item booking more than $10 million in sales for a quarter to be a line item on the quarterly report. It had basically taken a visit from government officials to get the black ops items all put under a non-descriptive heading. \s \s\t \tWith the low cost of these bogus items, they could easily hide in the generic drug division though. That division was a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporation. As such it appeared as a single line item on the quarterly and annual report. Adding $50 million per quarter to its sales would spread around a little cheer to the people in that division. They had to sell millions of units to equal the profit from hundreds of units this company sold. Some of the lowest-margin products in the business came off those lines and you would find them in nearly every country under many different labels. \s \s\t \tIt was surprising that the Russian mafia hadn't gotten into that business. Then he remembered Dimitri's comment, \a147yet.\a148 Nikolaus's current corporation hadn't started out there, either. Once you start making buckets of money, every government on the planet wants you to do charity work. The generic lines was this corporation's answer to \a147charity work.\a148 Low-margin basic medical supplies for all. \s \s\t \tSomewhere in China there was actually a factory owned by that subsidiary which made every kind of gauze imaginable. Nikolaus had no idea where the cotton balls came from or the generic Q-Tips. There was a factory somewhere in Germany which made aspirin, cold formula and the other over-the-counter generic drugs consumers bought by the truckload. It would be interesting to see just how much of their product actually moved through this distributorship. Nikolaus made a mental note to have himself copied on the monthly, quarterly and annual sales reports for this customer.\s \s\t \tNikolaus pondered a little longer while leafing through the pages on his desk. He came to the page which listed countries Germany didn't have active or good extradition treaties with. One name leaped out at Nikolaus: China. Nikolaus sent an email to a loyal party member in the generic drug division asking him for more information on the factory in China and asking him for a meeting tomorrow to discuss some additions to that business.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tJeremy had touched down at SETAC about an hour before Stacie's flight arrived. They had both agreed he should get to the airport first so he could pick up the rental car and be waiting for her at arrivals. The drive to the lodge was only forty-five minutes, but seemed to take forever. Thankfully Jeremy had gotten some sleep on the plane.\s \s\t \tAs they drove to the lodge he chatted with Stacie about the events of the morning. When he got to the part about Lenny wanting him to spend a year or two in Kyyiv Stacie started to realize just how big this thing they were involved in was. For some reason the half-billion-dollar transfer didn't phase her, but the Kyyiv option made it seem that they were all putting together escape plans.\s \s\t \t\a147You are going to go, aren't you?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I hadn't seriously considered it, but I did do some research on it. I guess it would depend on how well Lenny set me up over there and how much he paid me to run the place.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147It sounds like you are all worried this play may be too big and someone might go to jail.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Normally if you admit to insider trading you simply pay a fine and lose your trading license. Since we aren't a licensed trader, just running individual accounts for others, I don't think the latter applies. Oddly enough, you can be a financial advisor without much oversight or training.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Well, I think you should go sooner rather than later.\a148\s \s\t \tJeremy was rather shocked to hear Stacie say such a thing. He glanced at her and could tell she was dead serious.\s \s\t \t\a147How come?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You said yourself what you are doing will play out in a few months. By that time someone will have gotten wise to it and you will need to be out of reach of the law for a while.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I'm not so certain that will happen. Just how many people went to prison for shorting Enron when they had insider information? How many did you even hear about getting investigated?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Lots of people went to prison over Enron!\a148 she exclaimed.\s \s\t \t\a147Yes, they did. The company officials and the people helping them artificially inflate the stock price along with those helping them get creative with accounting. Nobody got investigated who shorted the company at its peak or when it was on the way down.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Martha Stewart went to prison for using insider information.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Martha went to prison for obstruction of justice. Anyone else would have said they asked their broker to call them when the sell-off started and sold accordingly. They would have paid a fine and the broker would have gone to prison for violating the terms of their license. She denied the arrangement and the broker testified the arrangement existed. There was also a tape of the phone call. It was a dumb play.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Oh.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147By the time Martha went to trial the stock was trading for more than when she dumped it. Had she been as dense as a rock rather than pridefully stupid she would have made money and not gone to prison.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147That's a rather cold way of looking at it.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147It's reality. Insider information is only good when you are smart enough to actually read the play. Yes, the company was going to take a hit, but it wasn't the only product in the pipeline, just the most hyped one. A dump, a short, and a cover done quickly could have made some money, but she didn't have the information soon enough. You can't use insider information unless it is at least three days in advance. News the day of gets you in trouble.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You really are a natural at this, aren't you? Don't you worry about going to prison?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Not really. I'm smart enough to know you cut a deal up front and admit your guilt. Then you pay a large fine and have to stay out of the trading business for a while. You cannot even have your own trading account during your probation.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Couldn't the fine be all of your money they can find?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147There are prescribed limits, and even if it were, a lot of our money isn't here. Even less of it will be here once the Kyyiv office opens up.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Oh. And they can't pull you back from Kyyiv?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147No extradition treaty, and insider trading isn't currently a crime over there. They handle extradition on a case-by-case basis and the crime has to be a crime in Russia before they will even hear the case.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Wow.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Lenny is good.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You are getting there from the sound of it,\a148 she chuckled. \a147Anyway, I think you should go. Get a place big enough for two.\a148\s \s\t \tThat freaked Jeremy for a moment and caused him to swerve on the road just a little.\s \s\t \t\a147Careful, big fella, I want to get there in one piece.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Why two?\a148 he asked once the car was under control.\s \s\t \t\a147If they start digging I will probably turn up. I haven't signed any confidentiality agreements, nor have I told you anything particularly incriminating, but I would rather have a lawyer handling that part. I said two because if they start looking into this I expect you to call me and let me come live with you, at least until it is all settled. You are going to make enough from this you should be able to support me for a while.\a148\s \s\t \tThe girl had a point. Jeremy's bonus this year would probably be well over a million. There was absolutely no reason he couldn't support her for a year or two since she was directly responsible for the income. It would cut into his trying to sample the local talent but her talent was incredible.\s \s\t \tFinally the lodge appeared. They parked, checked in, and had the luggage carted to the room. Jeremy was dumbfounded by the amount of luggage Stacie had brought for a weekend. It was even more odd considering they would be naked much of the weekend in the hotel room. He had learned early on you don't bring these things up before sex, though, as their mention tended to shut off the sex.\s \s\t \tOnce they had made it to the room and tipped the bellhop, Jeremy informed Stacie he needed to take a shower after sleeping on the plane. She told him not to get dressed after he got clean.\s \s\t \tJeremy walked out of the bathroom still drying his hair and was greeted by the most incredible stocking and garter set he had ever seen on one phenomenally hot lady.\s \s\t \t\a147Aren't you going to say something?\a148 asked Stacie with the most knowing seductive smile on her face she had ever had. \a147You never did answer about letting me come and live with you in Kyyiv.\a148 Stacie knew all too well that Jeremy couldn't answer right now; there wasn't enough blood left in his brain to formulate a response. That piece of information was easily obtained by taking a look at the dipstick. She was enjoying this!\s \s\t \tA pounding in Jeremy's ears was how he first came to realize he hadn't taken a breath since coming out of the bathroom. Once respiration had returned to him he recovered quickly. \a147I guess that depends on how well you respond to this,\a148 Jeremy said as he reached into his carry-on bag.\s \s\t \tNow it was Stacie's turn to not be able to breathe. She had just been teasing, but if that was a ring instead of the jewelry she had asked for there was no way she could say no this weekend. There was a momentary breath of relief when she saw two Helzberg boxes come out of the bag. One was obviously a necklace and the other had to be the earrings. It was a good thing she had gotten that breath in, because when he opened the box for the necklace she lost all her air.\s \s\t \tSeveral hours later they were lying in bed very exhausted and incredibly satisfied. Stacie sensed Jeremy was about to doze off again. She herself had just woken up from a brief journey in that abyss known as sleep. \a147We should probably try out the dual shower and then go find something to eat.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We could just put on those robes hanging in there and order room service,\a148 muttered a groggy Jeremy.\s \s\t \t\a147Oh, no. I brought a killer dress and it will show off that jewelry grandly!\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Are you going to wear that garter set under it?\a148 teased Jeremy as he started to come around.\s \s\t \t\a147I brought several different ones. Thought I might need all of them,\a148 she giggled.\s \s\t \t\a147While I've got you like this, I need to talk to you about New Year's Eve.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147What about it? That is four months away.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147You received the email with the pictures of my roommates, didn't you?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Yes. I hadn't really known what you were up to with that.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I wasn't trying to set up a foursome, Jeremy.\a151.just cool your jets. They invoked the girl code on me, so we need to talk about New Year's Eve.\a148\s \s\t \tJeremy had been around long enough to know that \a147invoking the girl code\a148 tended to bring about less than happy times for a guy.\s \s\t \t\a147You still have some good-looking single friends from college who are at least as successful as you, don't you?\a148\s \s\t \tNow Jeremy understood where this was going. \a147You want us to go out as a group on New Year's Eve?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Sort of. My roommates want dates for an all-inclusive New Year's Eve party at some posh hotel. They haven't chosen the hotel yet.\a148\s \s\t \tThis was starting to sound like a guy was going to have to guilt a friend into going out with his sister. Stacie could see the look forming on his face and continued, \a147They've both promised to put out. For two of your friends this is going to be a sure thing. They simply have to wear a nice suit, make the reservations, and show up.\a148\s \s\t \t\iWow!\i thought Jeremy. \iShe left me no wiggle room whatsoever.\i \s \s\t \tFinally, he decided to risk the rest of the weekend with the one question he could use to get out of this. \a147Are they both on the pill?\a148\s \s\t \tStacie sat up with a shocked look on her face, gasped, punched Jeremy in the ribs and exclaimed \a147How can you ask that?\a148\s \s\t \tRecovering, Jeremy sat up, looked her in the eye and said, \a147It is going to be the first question I'm asked.\a148\s \s\t \tStacie knew it was true. She just hadn't thought she would have to give up the information. In truth, she had forgotten to make them promise that part as well, and now she was going to be forced to make a commitment for them. \a147They are, but that doesn't mean they won't want \a133\a148\s \s\t \tJeremy interrupted her by holding up his hand. \a147That's all I wanted to know.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147But,\a148 Stacie tried to protest.\s \s\t \t\a147Don't.\a148\s \s\t \tThere it was. She had violated the girl code by taking the choice away from them. Both dates would be infuriated if they had to use a condom now.\s \c\s***\s \c\s\t \tKathryn was sitting in her office fuming. Migration of the final data center had not gone smoothly. They'd had no significant problems migrating the other data centers, but this last one was under the impression they were being expanded, not migrated. As a result, everyone working there refused to assist in even the slightest way. The job to migrate final data changes never ran. Some buffoon on the team thought because the disk farms were integrated that all of the data should be there anyway and there was no need to migrate anything. Boy, were they wrong!\s \s\t \tOn Sunday morning when the system restart test happened and the last data center wasn't booted, nothing worked. Each system in that group had a security ID file which had to be exchanged during system startup to allow the disk farm to be shared. Nobody had mentioned that little tidbit, so when they tried to start two data centers in India instead of one in India and one in the U.S. only half of the bank locations could log on.\s \s\t \tWhy didn't the fail-over work? Nobody bothered to turn off the communications equipment in the U.S. location. In theory they would have all failed over to the Indian location, but a sequence of events stopped that from happening. The first problem was the communications equipment was still running. It would have noticed the system wasn't running if someone had turned it off. They never turned off the other system, they simply stopped the application. None of the IT staff working at the U.S. data center had reported for work on Sunday. Nobody had bothered to contact Kathryn so she could start ringing Kent and Margret's cell phones. This was a debacle and someone was going to be calling Kathryn on the carpet for it.\s \s\t \tTo add insult to injury, Kathryn had come in late this morning. She didn't arrive at the office until 9:30 AM. She didn't find out about the problem from her own team, either. She found out when Kent called her cell phone. Someone was holding his feet to the fire and he was offering up Kathryn. So much for all of those short skirts and heels she had left to keep Kent's mind elsewhere.\s \s\t \tKathryn was on her cell phone to Margret as she was heading out to her car. She grabbed a couple of the young studs who were supposedly intelligent enough to be on this project to bring with her. They were supposed to have been at the data center this weekend along with one other to supervise the migration and the subcontractor. The third young stud who was on the short list to be out the door had called in sick this morning. He would probably get his termination notice by courier later today.\s \s\t \tAdding more insult to injury was the fact Kathryn had the worst case of cramps she had ever had in her life. She had been up half the night with them. That was the reason she was late this morning. She told the studs to drive their own transportation over to First Global. She didn't tell them they wouldn't have jobs by the end of the meeting as she needed them cooperating now.\s \s\t \t\a147What happened this weekend, Margret?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I don't know. You were supposedly handling this migration. I was just around to advise.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Why didn't any of your people report to work on Sunday?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147They all resigned on Saturday when the migration started. They assumed they wouldn't have jobs once the migration was complete since everybody else had been let go within two weeks of their data center being migrated.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Don't they realize they won't be able to use your company as a reference when they go looking for other jobs?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We never provide references, only confirm dates of employment. We don't even confirm salary information, just job title. No way to legally deny providing that information.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I'll be there in twenty minutes. What has been done to rectify the situation so far?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I had someone go in and power down the machines at the data center. Most of the branch locations are now up and running, but we are running on a single data center. This has to be resolved in under twenty-four hours now. The primary outage was less than the twelve-hour window, but we have less than twenty-four hours left to get another data center up and running.\a148\s \s\t \tThere was that rule again. The one Margret had swatted Kathryn between the eyes with nearly a year ago.\s \s\t \t\a147Is the high bandwidth connection still up?\a148 Margret asked.\s \s\t \t\a147I have no idea at this point. I have two of the team who were supposed to supervise this coming with me. If this isn't resolved shortly they aren't going to have jobs.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Let me guess: these are the guys you had over in India before?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147Yes,\a148 responded Kathryn and hung up.\s \s\t \tMargret wasn't slow. Kathryn had to give her that. She had caught onto the fact their careers would end long before their lives after getting a hint about their exploits in the red-light district.\s \s\t \tA while later they were all seated in the conference room at First Global headquarters trying to figure out how to undo this mess.\s \s\t \t\a147If we bring up the communications equipment and the machines we will be right back in the same boat,\a148 said Margret.\s \s\t \t\a147Are we sure we only need one file copied over?\a148 Kent asked. Everyone in the room was shocked he grasped that much of the situation.\s \s\t \t\a147We won't know until we try,\a148 responded Margret. \a147Since we cannot bring up the external communications equipment, we can only bring up the machine, FTP the file to a notebook, then communicate out via wi-fi or dial-up. Do you have an email address of someone they can send it to at the site in India which needs it?\a148 Margret asked looking at Kathryn.\s \s\t \t\a147Yes, those two both have email addresses we can send to and cell phone numbers they can call to ensure the file got there. Is there anyone at the data center they can work with now?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147One of the IT workers from this office is over there now.\a148 Margret scratched out a phone number for them to call and told them to use the phone here in the conference room. She then turned to her laptop and followed through the links on the company intranet to find the system startup documentation for the data centers. Once she found it she looked at Kathryn. \a147Tell one of the skirts you left here who has an account on the system to bring her notebook in here and work with these two.\a148\s \s\t \tKathryn didn't even notice the slight. She got up and walked out to get one of the skirts. Kent did notice it, though, and said, \a147Margret, there is no reason to insult people. They are trying to help us.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147They are the ones who got us into this situation, Kent. This should have all been fixed on Sunday. We are now less than six hours from the FDIC showing up at our doorstep asking for a full accounting of the situation. Are you going to be the one waiting for them at the doorstep?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147It's not so bad. We have a system startup problem.\a148\s \s\t \t\a147We have a twenty-four-hour recovery period per the FDIC regulations. After that, we are no longer insured. I'm certainly not going to be in the room when the board of directors gets that little bit of news.\a148\s \s\t \tInvoking the board of directors, Margret now had Kent's complete attention. \a147What do you need me to do?\a148\s \s\t \t\a147I need you to talk to Carol and let her know we have a situation. Then I need you to ask her if she wants to be in here while it happens or if she wants plausible deniability.\a148\s \s\t \tKent's eyes went wide, but he got up and left. Kathryn returned with one of the skirts who sat with the guys. Margret looked at her and said, \a147Send me an email so I can reply with the link