by J. D. German
Chapter 11 – Undercover Assignment
Two days later Lynn was working on her report for the Great Eastern embezzlement case when Donna called. “Have you got time to meet with Mr. Cramer in the conference room in an hour?”
Lynn agreed, and spent most of the next hour wondering whether Cramer was going to pat her on the back or reprimand her for the illegal tactics she used to nail the embezzler. Or it could be a new assignment. If that was it she hoped it would be something that would get her out of the office – maybe taking surveillance photos of a husband and his mistress walking into a hotel, or a city official taking a payoff from a mob boss. I’ve been watching too much TV she thought.
When the time for the meeting came she stopped by the restroom to freshen her makeup and run a comb through her hair, then headed for the conference room. When she got off the elevator and looked through the glass wall of the conference room, she had a moment of fear. There were several others in the room with Dave. Had she been caught hacking into the Davidson’s Dubai account? Were these people from the FBI, here to question her . . . or arrest her! She took a breath, let it out slowly, and entered the lion’s den.
“Here she is” Dave announced. Everyone in the room, four men and two women, turned to look at her. She blushed and moved to take a seat but Dave came over and took her hand.
“Come on up front, Lynn, and meet the management staff of Great Eastern Financial Holdings. Lynn is the brain behind our success at catching your embezzler. Not only that, she identified the dates and amounts of each theft and found the number of the off-shore bank account where Mr. Davidson sent the money. Based on her work, Davidson has been indicted in Federal court for international embezzlement and failure to pay income taxes. Once the evidence against him was revealed, he confessed to everything, which will allow your lawyers to transfer the funds back to your corporation.”
After a round of applause, Avery McCoy, the CEO of Great Eastern, spoke up. “How much are you paying her, David? Whatever it is I’ll double it if she will come and work for us.”
Dave looked at Lynn for an answer. The offer was attractive, although she didn’t need the money, so Lynn gave the answer Dave was hoping for.
“Solving this case was a team effort, Mr. McCoy. I simply provided the key to unlock his secret account. If I went to work for Great Eastern you would only get a small piece of the package that brought Davidson down.”
McCoy replied, “Well said Ms. Preston.” Then he turned to Dave.
“It looks like the only way we can stay connected to your team is to keep you on permanent contract to us, if that’s acceptable to you.”
“It certainly is acceptable, Avery. I’ll have my people get together with your people and draw up a contract.”
“Let’s get going on that right away, then. I want your accounting investigators to provide full time monitoring of our funds movement.”
They set a time for the for the negotiations, shook hands, and said their goodbyes. As Lynn started to leave Dave signaled for her to stay. “Come into my office. Let’s talk about your next assignment.”
Lynn sat in front of his desk and Dave sat on the edge, as usual. Dave saw the desk as a barrier to communications, so he rarely sat behind the desk when he spoke with someone.
“I have a job that could be dangerous, Lynn. It’s an undercover job with a defense contractor, U. S. Munitions. I would prefer to send one of my seasoned male agents, but the position available doesn’t fit with any of their capabilities. Whether I send you in is a decision that you need to be part of.”
“I’m up for it, Dave. Tell me about it.”
“Okay. The factory is located in Wilmington, Delaware. It manufactures assorted munitions for the Army, but everything that shows up on the shipping manifest doesn’t make it to the Army ammunitions depots. Some of the inventory is being diverted to another destination. The Army wants us to find out who’s involved at the munitions factory and where it’s being diverted to. Once we get that for them, they’ll take over and trace it to the end recipient, which is probably ISIS terrorists. At that point they’ll roll up the entire supply chain with arrests.”
“Holy sh . . . Are you serious! I would love to be part of this operation. What will I do?”
“There’s a job opening in their inventory tracking department. It’s mostly computer work, but it will put you in a position to keep your eyes and ears on the operation and look for the illegal shipments. The one thing that makes me hesitate in giving you this assignment is the possibility that you will be found out – that the bad guys will figure out that you’re after them. Given the money involved in these illegal shipments, they could have you killed if they figure out what you’re doing.”
“You know me Dave. You’ve seen me in action against Winston’s men. I’m good at playing a role and good with a gun.”
“Whoa. Who said anything about guns. If it were that dangerous I wouldn’t be sending you.”
“Your men carry guns on some of their operations. I just wanted to remind you that I can handle myself.”
“Consider me reminded. I’ll have someone keeping an eye on you in case you need help. He will be up here in a couple of minutes to brief you on the operation.”
“Who is it?”
“A friend of yours from the Forseti team – Tom Gutierrez.”
Lynn’s eyes lit up. “That’s great. I would trust Tom with my life any day. He saved my butt a couple of times back then.”
“While we’re waiting for him Margaret told me to remind you about dinner at our place tonight. Once you go undercover your only contact with us will be through Tom. Tom and Jackson will join us tonight.”
“I heard my name. What were you telling her about me?” Tom said as he entered the room.
Lynn jumped up and wrapped her arms around him. “It’s great to see you, Tom. Dave just told me you’ll be backing me up on this new case.”
Tom hugged her back, then sat down beside her. “I think you will like this operation, Lynn. You have the perfect skill set for going undercover at U. S. Munitions without suspicion.”
“Okay, tell me about it.”
“Dave gave you some background on what we’re looking for. We need to find out who is diverting shipments of RP7 rocket propelled grenades and how they are getting them out of the plant undetected. The Army put a tail some of the loaded trucks to see if they stop to unload part of the shipment on route to the depot, but they haven’t uncovered anything so far. Their current theory is that the full shipments never leave the plant – that somehow they’re smuggling product directly out of the factory. The position you will fill as inventory tracking analyst will give you the authority and a reason to show up at the shipping docks at anytime. While you’re there checking shipping procedures and documentation you can look around and see if you can find anything suspicious going on. But you can’t spend too much time down or it might tip them off that you’re a company spy.”
“Whoopee! I always told Jack that I loved the spy stuff and now I get to be one. When do I go in?”
“We’ve already created a new identity for you and rented a cheap apartment near the plant. You will have a car with registration to match your identity. The company created paperwork to show that you just transferred from their Pittsburgh facility. You and I will fly out there this afternoon so you can get familiar with the job and be able to talk about the layout if anyone asks you. Tomorrow I’ll drill you on your background as your fake identity, Cynthia Carson – where you grew up, went to school, that sort of thing. You will start the new job on Monday. Here’s the information so you can start studying it. We . . . we uh . . . made you a widow. Your husband died of a heart attack six months ago and you’re still grieving, so that will give you a reason to avoid talking about your family life.”
“I won’t be doing any acting to play that part.” Lynn sniffled and dabbed tears from her eyes. “Just your comments about a fictitious husband’s death set me off.”
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“I’m sorry, Lynn. I didn’t mean to upset you, but that cover story will be easy for you to remember.”
“It’s my problem, Tom, not yours. I’m slowly leaving it behind me.”
“Okay. We’ve got a two o’clock flight to Pittsburgh to catch. We’ll be coming back later this afternoon so you don’t have to pack anything.”
They were all sitting around the dinner table at Margaret and Dave’s home, finishing up their dessert and coffee. Jackson kept them entertained with stories about his father and him during his growing up years, and Lynn talked about her crush on Jack while they were students at Coal Creek Junior High School in a West Virginia coal mining town – “in the middle of Hatfield and McCoy country” as Lynn liked to put it. When they moved to the living room with after dinner coffee Lynn turned to Tom.
“How is your life going, Tom. I remember your wife divorced you after one of your daughters was kidnapped by Winston’s Russian thugs. Have you moved on from that?”
“I was pretty depressed after that and tried to drink my pain away, but with God’s help I left that behind. Mary tried to get sole custody of the girls but the lawyers Dave got me connected with put a stop to that. I get them one weekend a month, which is the highlight of my life – and theirs. Mary is incapable of loving them, but I try to make up for that whenever they’re with me.”
“Have you remarried, Tom?”
“No, I don’t want to complicate my relationship with the girls. Once they’re away from Mary and in college I may start dating again.”
“Don’t you get lonely living by yourself?”
“Not at all. After all those years under Mary’s control and anger, it’s refreshing to be free.”
“I’m happy for you, Tom.”
After a short silence Jackson brought up a new subject. “Dave, Lynn has talked to me about what she sees as her inadequacy in writing new hacking code. She got the breakthrough on the Great Eastern job because I stepped in and provided what she needed. I think your firm would benefit from improving her capabilities in software development.”
“You have a good point, Jackson. How can we remedy that?”
“There’s a school in New York City called The Recurse Center – it used to be called the Hacker School until they chose a more politically correct name – that offers a six-week course in computer code development for hacking. It’s sort of a hacker’s boot camp. The tuition is $12,000, and the dormitory housing is another $2,000, but with the what she already knows, she will come out of it with skills beyond what most hackers can offer. I think you should send her there after the undercover assignment is over, Dave.”
Lynn gave Dave a questioning look. “Please say yes, Dave. I want to get as good at this as Jack was.”
“I like the idea, Lynn. I’ll have the accounting department set it up for the next time the course begins. But tell me about your visit to U.S. Munitions in Pittsburgh?”
Lynn answered excitedly, “It was great. I’ll be able to step right into the job at the Wilmington plant. Tom equipped me with a special cell phone that will stream live audio and video back to the Cramer Security communications center whenever I key in a three number code. That way you will be able to record what I see and hear my conversations with others. It has a very stylish belt holster so I can clip the phone on the front of my belt or my purse so it will provide a good video image and sound.”
“Good. It sounds like you’re all set.”
“Tom helped me move my clothes into an ancient apartment complex near the plant. The refrigerator and freezer are well stocked and there’s an old laptop on the desk with souped up software so I can do my internet research at the apartment.”
“What about transportation?”
“Tom fixed me up with a twelve year old Mazda Miata convertible. It looks old but the engine is in great shape . . . in case I have to outrun the cops or something” Lynn added with a laugh. “I’ll drive it to the apartment tonight and begin my life as Cynthia Carson, free spirited widow, inventory analyst, and corporate spy extraordinaire. I’ll start work first thing Monday morning.”