The Hermetrius Conspiracy

by J. D. German

  For Jack, thinking was the best kind of relaxing. His A.D.D. mind never stopped running full throttle, so he liked to sit in a comfortable chair and turn it loose on a problem or two he was wrestling with. This morning it settled on what Tom had told them. Jack played “what if?” with several scenarios, looking for the ones that seemed most likely given the limited amount of information they had. One idea bubbled to the surface. What if we could find information from the Government records about the two cancelled contracts. Would that lead us to who had them cancelled – the Big Man?

  He jumped up and went upstairs to his computer. He tried several search terms looking for the cancelled contracts, but nothing popped up. Maybe if he narrowed the search terms to include only the past week, and the name Blackworth, that would get him something. Still no hits. How about if he made a list of the Government Agencies most likely to have big security support contract with Blackworth, and did a separate search with one agency at a time.

  Thirty minutes later he had it. The NSA, National Security Agency, had a 4.6 million dollar contract with Blackworth. He didn’t see anything about it being cancelled, but since it just happened, the news may not have hit the internet yet. Jack copied down the contract number and continued his search of other agencies who might hire Blackworth. It only took five minutes this time. It was so obvious he should have tried it first – the Secret Service. They protected the President and other personnel from the Executive Branch, and would need a lot of outside help to set up security on the President’s trips. And Blackworth was one of their biggest providers. Over eighteen million dollars last year alone. As he dug into the details of the contract he hit pay dirt. The Blackworth contract had been cancelled just two days ago! ‘Now I’m getting somewhere,” he thought.

  Jack was about to hack into the Federal Contracts Agency, the administrator of these contracts, when his cell phone rang. It was Rick. “Jack, I think I have a problem. I picked up the computers and as I drove out of underground parking a dark full-sized SUV followed me. I didn’t think much about it until I got onto the highway and saw it behind me – three cars back. I exited, drove around a bit, I got back on the freeway, and there it was again. I just exited again into downtown Reston and stopped at a restaurant. I don’t see them now, but I’m not trained in this stuff like you and Tom are. What should I do?”

  “If they didn’t tail you to the restaurant, they probably put a bug on your car so they can pick you up again when you get back on the highway. But they may have someone watching you anyway. Just keep chatting on the phone like you’re talking to a friend while I think about what to do. . . .”

  “O.K., here’s what we’ll do Rick. I’ll put on a disguise, then take Lynn’s Jeep to a commuter Park and Ride here in Leesburg, where I’ll hot-wire a car from the parking lot. I’ll call you with the make, color, and license number once I’m on my way to Reston. There’s a parking garage in Reston Town Center. When I get there I’ll call again and tell you where I’m parked. You casually leave the restaurant, drive to the parking garage, and make a quick turn into the Reston Parkway entrance. Drive quickly to where I’m parked, get out of your car, toss the computers into my backseat, and climb in after them. You lay down on the floor as I leave by another exit and get onto the freeway. I’ll watch for any cars tailing me and, if we’re clear, I’ll return the car to the Park and Ride here in Leesburg. We’ll get back into the Jeep and come on back here. You can call one of your employees to go pick up your car and drive it back to your home.”

  “That sounds like a plan, Jack. I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  #

  Jack’s plan worked smoothly. No sign of a tail, even after they switched back to the Jeep. He had put on another set of license plates before he left just in case there was a police BOLO alert on the Jeep.

  When they got back to the farm Jack took the computers upstairs and got them set up with the programming they needed. He linked all three of them to the master computer he kept hidden at his cabin, and programmed them to automatically transfer data to it every ten minutes. That would provide an up-to-the-minute backup of everything they were working on here at the hide away in case something went wrong. He took the computers to Rick, Harriet, and Tom and got them started on their searches. Then he went to get Lynn started on the audio search program he created to speed up the voice search.

  Once he was satisfied that everyone else had what they needed, Jack went back to hacking into the Federal Contracts Agency files to get information about the cancelled contract. It took him a couple of hours, but he finally downloaded the complete contract file. The most recent entry was the authorization to terminate the contract, and a note that the request had come from a high-ranking senator – Senator Matthew Roberts of Idaho. Could he be the Boss Man they were searching for? Jack looked up his background and political leanings, and found that he was a conservative republican with strong opinions about how poorly the country was being run by the current liberal administration. His stand on all the major issues was the exact opposite of the President’s positions. He wasn’t currently in the running for the Republican presidential nomination, but there were hints that he might step in later in the race. Maybe he wasn’t the Boss Man at all; maybe he was the candidate hand-picked by the Boss Man to be the next President.

  By suppertime, everyone had made good progress. Lynn had an audio CD with a few dozen U.S. and world leaders with a voice that might fit Tom’s description. She would sit down with Tom after supper and let him listen his way through the recordings to see if he could recognize one of them. Rick was over half finished with his search of transfers out of U.S. financial institutions into Caribbean offshore accounts, and Harriet had over 100 senators and congressmen categorized based on their political positions. Jack told them what he had found out about Senator Roberts and his thoughts on how he might fit into their hypothesis. Things were moving faster than anyone expected.

  Chapter 39

  Jim Norton put down the phone and smiled. Mr. Winston was going to love this news. Jim wanted to run upstairs and tell him, but remembered Winston was in England for a conference. It would be late there, probably past his bedtime, so maybe he should wait until morning. He was between the usual rock and a hard place again. ‘If I call him now, he might be really mad that I woke him up. And if I wait until it is morning over there to call, he might be just as mad because I didn’t call as soon as I knew.’ Jim did a mental coin toss and the morning call came up a winner, which was fine with him. The longer he could postpone Winston’s anger the better.

  To help appease the expected anger, Jim started planning how to approach the farmhouse. There were no nearby neighbors, so if there was a gunshot or two, no one would call the police. He had to be really careful that the security team didn’t kill or seriously wound one of them, or he wouldn’t be able to interrogate them. Helicopters were a non-starter because they would hear them coming – without the surprise factor shooting was more likely that and that could get someone hurt. The new security firm had lot’s of people on their payroll but, to keep this secret, there were only a dozen or so that could be trusted. The farm was in the middle of a large cleared area, so there was no way to sneak up on them during the day. It would have to be a nighttime operation, and that meant more chances for the unexpected. Jim decided to sleep on it and talk to Winston in the morning.

  #

  “At breakfast Harriet announced “I’m busting out of prison today! Rick is going to unhook me from my cable cage and carry me downstairs to the couch in front of the picture window. I can finally look out at the world again. I’ll need to get the cast removed sometime in the next couple of weeks, but there’s no hurry. I have some crutches to use until then.” Everyone cheered and gave her a hug. Then they all got back to work and agreed to meet after lunch for a progress review.

  Tom had reviewed Lynn’s voice collection last night but found nothing close to what he was listening for. She had immediately started to work on fi
nding more names and voice clips. She should have a new CD with over a hundred political and corporate power players on it by noon. She prioritized them with the low-pitched rugged voices first. Maybe Tom wouldn’t have to go through them all.

  Harriet had put together a three-dimensional matrix of all the senators and congressmen now serving, along with some likely to be elected for the next term. The matrix ranked them on several characteristics so that the ultra conservatives were grouped near the top right corner and the ultra-liberals near the lower left corner. All the cells were color coded based on their party affiliation; red for Republicans, blue for Democrats, and yellow for Independents. She also shaded the cells of Tea Party Republicans a lighter shade of red that the other Republicans. She would have the finishing touches on it in an hour or so.

  After lunch Harriet connected her laptop display to the 50-inch TV screen and unveiled her matrix. After explaining her system for categorizing the candidates she let them take it all in for a bit. . . . “Alright, tell me what patterns you see here?”

  Rick said “The most immediate thing that jumps out at me is the cluster of light red Tea Party members in the top right corner. I mean, that’s to be expected given their political objectives in congress, but seeing them all together like that really makes them stand out. And they are all recently elected. What if you hide those for a minute?” Harriet removed the Tea Party cells. “There are still several solid red names up in that corner, and most of them were elected over he last six years.”

  Tom asked “What about the grouping of the liberals in the lower left? How does it compare.?”

  “There is a pretty tight grouping of Democrats there, but I noticed that most of them have been around a lot longer that the average ultra-conservative Republican.” Harriet replied. “So if we are looking for a building movement culminating in the upcoming election it has got to be the ultra-conservatives.”

  Jack jumped in at this point. “I’ve done a deep background search on Senator Roberts, and the image he projects now is well to the right of a moderate, but not so far that it would lose many moderate voters. But when I looked at his political leanings earlier in his career, he was as far right as one can be. And his survivalist, red-neck constituents in Idaho loved him. During his first few years in the Senate his votes were all way to the right. But starting five years ago, he started softening his hard right positions. I think that was designed to make him more electable in the upcoming Presidential election. If I’m right about this, and he does get elected, I believe he will revert to his true ideology.”

  Lynn thought for a few minutes while the others talked about Jack’s ideas, then spoke up. “Matthew Roberts isn’t even in the race for the republican nomination, and a couple of states will have their primary elections in early February – three months from now. Remember that, so far, our theory is just that, a hypothetical scenario. As we gather more information, it seems to strengthen our theory, but maybe that’s because we’re too focused on that scenario. We need to be careful to keep an open mind for other scenarios that we can’t see yet. ”

  “Good point, Lynn. The tipping point for our hypothesis will be if Roberts jumps into the race. Also, we need to keep a close watch on the campaigns to see if any of the false embezzlement files are used to knock out other candidates.”

  “There’s one other thing I want to go back and check on for the recently elected conservatives, Jack. I want to look at the campaigning history of these people and see how they defeated their opponents. Was it big money paying for more and better ads that the other guy could afford? Or maybe information on a scandal was leaked to the press. Maybe it was just a flurry of negative ads against the opponent just before the election. I’ll start on that this afternoon, but it will take me a couple of days.”

  “Don’t forget to back up all your work on the memory sticks Rick brought back. I have automatic updates going to my hidden master computer back at the cabin, but we need the extra precaution of memory sticks. Rick, how is your search for the source of the transfers to the Caribbean accounts coming.”

  “With Jack’s search program I now have a short list of suspect financial institutions that might have transferred the money for the embezzlement frame-up jobs. All of them transferred money of the right amounts to foreign banks during the right time frame, but without the bank’s name and the account numbers the money went to, I can’t find out for sure which bank was the source of the money. Of course, it’s possible that more than one of these banks were involved, with two or three different sources for the five deposits we know about.”

  “Where can we go from here on that, Rick.”

  “Well, if we get an idea who the Big Man behind all this might be, we could look for a connection between him and the banks on my list. But for now, this line of investigation is a dead end. Of course, if Tom can identify the voice he’s looking for from Lynn’s voice recordings, we might have a suspect.”

  “Tom, any luck on you search for the security firm that may have taken over from Blackworth? If it was Blackworth that grabbed you, and they got fired, then Big Man would have to immediately find someone else to take up the job of finding us.”

  “There are a few well-known firms that could do it, Jack, and some lesser-known operations that operate under everyone’s radar. But without more to go on, they will be tough to identify. Since Boss Man has needed some lethal work done on us, I’ll start with the firms who aren’t afraid to work outside the law.”

  “Well, let’s get back to work, then. Harriet, you did a lot of work on that matrix so why don’t you take a nap on the couch for a while.”

  Chapter 40

  George Winston was shaving when his satellite phone rang. He saw it was from Norton so he put it on speaker phone and answered. “I hope you have some good news for me.”

  “Yes sir, I do. Really good news. The license plate video system picked up Harriet Goodman’s car near Tysons Corner – that’s in Virginia. the . . .”

  “I know where Tysons Corner is, dammit! Get on with it. What’s the bottom line here?”

  “They are staying at a vacant farm house outside of Leesburg.”

  “How do you know that for sure?”

  “The security guys tracked Harriet’s husband, Rick, to a parking garage at the Galleria Mall. While he was shopping, they put a bug under his car and when he left, they followed him. He left the freeway at Reston, ate some lunch, then moved his car to the Towne Center parking garage. They immediately called some of their network people in the area and had all the exits covered in less than five minutes. Apparently Rick sensed he was being followed, and called for someone to pick him up. A car pulled into the garage and Rick got in quickly. The security team got the car license plate and put it into the tracking system – it was a stolen car, by the way – and tracked them back to a Leesburg Park and Ride lot. When . . .”

  “You’re rambling again. Get to the point.”

  “That’s what I was about to tell you. Guess who picked him up? Jack Preston! We didn’t know that until they got to the Park and Ride, when they got out of the stolen car and into Preston’s truck.”

  “You’re sure it was him?”

  “He had on a pretty good facial disguise but they took a photo and had their computers calculate the facial metrics – the things you can’t hide with a disguise – and it was a match for Jack Preston’s face.”

  Norton waited for Winston to say “Good job, Mr. Norton.” but he should have known better. Instead he got the dreaded question, “When did all this happen?”

  “Well, we didn’t get Preston’s identity confirmed until late yesterday, and it was already pretty late in London, so I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “What! You knew and didn’t call me at once? You incompetent idiot! Do something that stupid again and you will be out of a job, Norton. Keep me informed with up-to-the minute reports on this. And wake me up if you have to.”

  “Yes sir, I understand.”

&nb
sp; “Do you have a plan in place to take them someplace for interrogation before they disappear?”

  “I wanted to get your input on that, sir. The security team chief and I put an operation outline together. You should find it in your email inbox. We’re waiting for your approval so we can put it together for tomorrow night. In the meantime we have a surveillance team watching the house and a drone standing by to follow anyone who leaves.”

  “ I’ll get back to you in a couple of hours.”

  #

  It was mid afternoon and Jack was upstairs at his computer checking the security sensors and cameras at his cabin. So far, nothing has triggered any alarms since the Bad Guys searched his cabin after he went on the run. Then Harriet called up from downstairs. “Jack, come down here. You need to see something. And bring your binoculars.”

  Jack went down and sat on the couch with her. “Look, way over there. . . at the edge of the property where the tree line starts. There are a couple of guys walking among the trees.”

  Jack raised his binoculars. “They look like hunters – camo coats and hats, shotguns under their arms. Turkey and quail season has probably started, so they are trying to flush something out.”

  “But this is the third time I have seen them in the last hour. They just keep going back and forth past that same area.”

  “Good eyes, Harriet. This may be something to worry about. Let me go back upstairs and check the other property borders through the bedroom windows.”

  Jack came back in just a few minutes. “There’s another pair of hunters out at the back end of the property, behaving just like these two in front. Someone has us under surveillance. Let me think about this for a bit, then I’ll get the others so we can decide what to do about it.”