by Fred G Baker
“What the hell?”
“Now, on the Russians—news is that they’re finishing up whatever they’re doing out there. One of my men went out there fishing.” Pendergast winked. “He saw them diving and also hauling some equipment onto the Varoushka. Not sure what the gear was, but it wasn’t the usual stuff you need for treasure hunting.” Pendergast seemed puzzled.
“What are they doing down there?”
“Down below, I couldn’t tell ya—but I think they’ve been repairing something. Maybe a diving station underwater. They brought up a sort of diving bell. But we couldn’t get close enough to see exactly what it was. Not anything we’ve seen before.”
“What do they have down there?”
“If I knew that, I’d be a happy man.”
“So, that’s it. That’s why I’m here?”
“No. I’m offering my services as a diving consultant to help you figure out what they’ve been doing. Whenever they clear the area.”
“Aren’t we paying you now? For services rendered?”
“Yes, but this would be something new. Deep-water stuff, not just information gathering and driving a boat around.” Pendergast looked quite earnest about it. “It would take special gases and a lot of time underwater, so it would add up. Could be dangerous, too.”
Wilson understood that the mystery was driving both him and Pendergast crazy. Could he get the funding for further investigation? “Get me a cost estimate, and I’ll see where we can go from there. But keep on the other work, OK?”
“Will do. You feeling better now?”
“After that misery, I’m surprised to say I am.” He walked out the door to the truck.
***
Wilson returned to the hotel via Grand Anse Road, which was flooded but did not seem any worse than it had since the previous day. Leslie was busy at the front gate, checking in cars and two vans. Wilson asked what was happening.
“We’re receiving guests from another hotel down the coast—the Eldorado,” Leslie said while writing on a clipboard. “Their seawall gave way in the night and most of their grounds were flooded. They evacuated all their first-floor people over to us, now that we have rooms available.”
“Are there any other free rooms on the island now?” Wilson asked, curious. “I assumed every room was full by now.”
“You’re right, Mr. Wilson. There aren’t any rooms left—everybody full up.”
“So, where did the Venezuelans move to this morning, if there are no other rooms and no one can leave Grenada?”
“That be a good question and a half.”
Wilson parked the truck and waded over to the main building. Then, he climbed the stairs to Martin’s room on the second floor. He had finally stopped to buy a pair of waterproof Wellington boots at the mall. He bought the last ones in his size, settling for the orange tiger-striped ones because that was all that was left—but his feet were dry.
“Wilson, thank God!” Martin greeted him by waving pages of text in his face. “Here is the final draft. If it looks good to you, we can send it off. We’re running out of time.”
Wilson took the pages and began reading their story. “Hey, this reads pretty well.” He sat down and focused on the text. “Tim, have you eaten lunch yet? I’m starved.”
“No. I was going down to eat a sandwich or something. Bring that and you can read while you eat.”
They sat at a table and munched on breaded and pan-fried mahi-mahi fish and chips while Wilson read and made minor edits. When they finished eating, they had a final version ready for Martin’s editor. Martin rushed off to submit the story and Wilson called Madeline.
“Robert, we have a problem. We got the arrest warrants by noon and then drove over to the Best Beach Hotel to make arrests—but the Venezuelans had moved out this morning. Some vans came and picked them up—all their luggage too. We don’t know where they went.”
“Same here. The remaining ones checked out this morning. No one knows where they went to, and there are no spare hotel rooms anywhere.”
“The police are going through the rooms they were in, looking for anything that would indicate where they might be. No luck so far.” She paused, a thoughtful silence. “It’s like they just vaporized.”
“Where are you now?”
“At the Best Beach, but I can leave.”
“Why don’t you meet me at the warehouse in a little while and I’ll wrap up here? We got our story written about the foreign money. I’ll bring you a copy.”
“Good. I’ll tell Lightchurch. He’ll want to read it.”
Wilson hung up and left the restaurant. He walked up to his room and checked whether anyone besides the maid had been there. He had already sanitized it as far as his agency work went, but he wanted to find that damn camera that Cortez had placed there to spy on him.
He began with the likely places where a camera could be hidden. Because a camera needed visual access, it was probably in a light fixture, an air vent, or a piece of furniture. He eliminated the vents and lights quickly by disassembling them with no results. Then, he looked for any location that might seclude a micro lens. Again—no result. Then, he settled on the television set. It was more sophisticated than most setups, but it was plausible.
Most modern televisions were designed so that the speakers could function as microphones and pick up sounds in a room. This was partly because manufacturers had planned for the TVs to be interactive, before the advent of Alexa and similar home-control devices. Given the right software, the TV could become a listening device. Some TVs had small cameras built into them, just as most laptops have a camera that could be switched on remotely. The beauty of using a TV for eavesdropping is that every hotel room had one—usually placed with a view of the room, and thus any activities that occur.
He unplugged the TV and searched for any signs of tampering, finding only minor scratching on the back panel. He decided this was the likely surveillance device. He unhooked it from the wall and placed the TV in the closet with a blanket over the screen. The problem with this analysis was that the recorded video might have been transmitted over the cable wire and not broadcast by a transmitter. Oh, shit!
That meant that the night he spent with Vargas might not have been scuttled by the jamming device he had employed. They had not spoken about anything incriminating when they were in the room that night, but their conversation and other antics may have been recorded anyway. Troubling.
The obvious place for a recording device was in the central communication room, where the cable feed originated. The Venezuelans would have had access to it when they set up for their conference. Wilson would follow up on that later. Maybe he could find the copies of any videos made of him and Vargas. Maybe Gordon could help him with that. But Cortez probably already had the recordings. What would he do with them?
***
He said goodbye to Martin and then headed to the warehouse during a break in the storm. Madeline had already arrived and was working on her computer.
“Lightchurch will be here shortly,” she said. She looked tired—her features were drawn and she didn’t have her usual level of energy. “He was talking to the PM again this afternoon and said he’d have some good info for us when he gets here.”
“OK I’ll give you both a sitrep then.”
“So, Robert—this woman really got to you.” Madeline stood up and walked to his side. She put a hand on his shoulder and gazed into his face before he turned away. “You care too much. It’s unprofessional,” she said stiffly. When she saw his reaction, she softened. “I’m sorry. I guess she got to you.”
“She’s just a nice woman, that’s all. Let’s not talk about it.” He stepped away.
Just then, Lightchurch arrived with two bodyguards. His face was set—as if he were already making a decision that was distasteful.
“I just came from a meeting with the PM and the chief of the Royal Grenada Police Force. Before the meeting, the PM assured me that the chief was completely trustworthy and t
hat we can share any information with him. He has a security clearance that is high enough for our work.” He paced back and forth as he spoke. “I told them both about what you found at the Wong site and about the hidden men at the sports facility. They were shocked on both counts. They want to know more about these people, the Venezuelans, and what they’re up to.”
“That’s good news, sir,” Madeline commented. “Do they want a detailed briefing?”
“I gave them all the news they could handle for now. The PM is still driven by the election, and the chief is preoccupied with providing security at all the polling stations. He said he cannot spare us more men until the polls close at six p.m.”
“That’s another four hours,” Wilson said. “A lot can happen in that time.”
“In the meantime, he wants us to take the chief and his men from the Best Beach Hotel up to the Wong site and have us show him where you saw all this hardware. The PM said he wanted the information verified by the chief before he could proceed.”
“That’s great news, sir. When?”
“He’ll call.”
Wilson’s cell phone pinged that an email had arrived, so he stepped aside. He read it first on the phone, and then rushed to the laptop and read it again, printing out copies for the others. It concerned the voting machines.
The model 156-B Votadigit series was widely used in several countries, but there were some concerns about the storage capability of the machines. They stored the images of the ballots, but there were several instances where some ballots were lost due to insufficient memory in the devices. The model 156-B was an upgrade that linked the machine directly to the company’s digital cloud for storage in a secure and encrypted form. No images were stored on-site, so the computers required less memory, making the machines less expensive to produce. Even the processing of results was largely handled off-site. The only problem occurred in some remote polling stations that were not attached to high-speed Internet for direct communication. Special arrangements were made for those situations.
Further reading was interesting. Votadigit had been acquired by Datawarific Solutions of Canada three years ago, and Digimatrose Communications of Singapore then purchased that company last year. Digimatrose was now one of the many companies owned by World Electrosystems LTD—a subsidiary of Zangchung Industries.
He distributed the copies and let the others read it for themselves.
“Does this mean what I think it means?” Lightchurch asked. “That the company can manipulate the voting results?”
“I’m afraid so, Darius,” Wilson said. “It means that all data is stored off-site on the company server somewhere—and so are the backup images. There would be no way of verifying the results if the hard-copy ballots themselves were lost.”
“So, Votadigit could control—no, invent—the election results and no one would know the difference without the paper ballots? It’s madness.”
“And there’s more.” Wilson passed each of them a copy of the article on campaign funding. They read in silence for several minutes.
“My God!” said Lightchurch. He waved the document in the air as he spoke. “The Chinese are trying to buy the election and fabricate its results at the same time. This is outrageous!”
“But why would they do this?” Madeline asked. “Do they want to take over our country?”
Lightchurch responded, “China would like nothing better than to have a foothold in the Caribbean Sea—an anchor from which they could pedal their influence. They are doing this several places in the world already. Usually, they work by giving economic aid to third-world countries, where a little extra money and special public works projects can make a government friendly to them. Djibouti is one such country. They helped them with projects and now have a military base there, and can project influence throughout the region.”
“And it’s not just about commercial ties either. They’ll project military strength and influence over shipping routes, too,” Wilson added. “But let me ask you, Darius—how did the Cubans take over the government of Grenada in 1983?”
“Aha. You’ve hit it right on the head, Robert.”
“I can answer that,” Madeline said. “In 1983, Bernard Coard, a member of the New Jewel Movement, overthrew the existing Marxist government of Maurice Bishop, a man who became ruler in an earlier coup in 1979. He was not elected, but some Grenadians respected him for his intentions. He made the mistake of inviting the Cuban government to help him by supplying labor and money for public works—the airport, roads, and other things. He let a lot of Cubans into the country for work, similar to what the Venezuelans are doing in their country now regarding Cubans, for instance. But he did not know the Cubans were plotting with Coard on the overthrow. Once the Cubans were all in country and in position, it was a simple coup d’état in which they killed Bishop and several ministers.”
“The new government was very unstable, with infighting running rampant among the communist factions,” Lightchurch added. “There were riots in the street and chaos reigned. There were about one-thousand Americans in the country at the time, many here on the island attending the medical school, much as they are today. This all occurred shortly after the Iranians took American hostages—and there was concern that Coard would take them hostage. President Reagan feared a repeat of the Iran hostage situation, so he led an international coalition that restored democracy and rescued the Americans. That action restored the government in 1983.”
“So, the instability and threat to Americans foretold their downfall. It was a hard coup that collapsed,” Wilson said. “I see something similar happening here—only this might be a sort of soft coup.”
“Why do you say that?” asked Lightchurch.
“Suppose you could rig an election, and install into power a group or political party that is sympathetic to your goals?” Wilson said. “Once the election is over, your supporters have a democratic basis of legitimacy. If that government is stable and it continues essential services—and it maintains diplomatic relations with other countries—there’s no threat to anyone. Except to those who you replaced. Things would go on as usual, at least for a while.”
“And maybe you wouldn’t threaten the Americans, so as not to invite a reaction,” Madeline said. “So, that would be the soft coup—little violence, and—if there is—it is only directed at a few specific people.”
“It’s still a coup,” said Lightchurch.
“But it’s more like a change of CEO in a company,” Wilson said. “The board votes one guy out and puts a new one in place. The company business goes on.”
“But the shareholders select the board members,” Madeline commented. “It’s not the same.”
“OK, OK. Maybe the boardroom is a bad example,” Wilson said. “And in this case, why do they need weapons and men if they’re doing this through subterfuge in the election?”
“In case they don’t get the desired result in the election,” Madeline said. “They then do a hard coup.” She raised her eyebrows and turned to Lightchurch. “We must interfere with these voting machines somehow, and make the election commission count the ballots the old-fashioned way.”
“We have to stop the machines,” Wilson said. “We need to cut them off from the Internet and the company server.”
Lightchurch was becoming agitated. He paced back and forth. “I can’t believe this is happening—and the Chinese are behind it.”
“And the Venezuelans, too, with a little Cuban support,” Wilson said.
“So, the damn Cubans get their hands on Grenada one way or another after thirty-five years.” He shouted, “Those bastards! It’s a lot to take in.”
“Hey, they haven’t got it yet. Let’s come up with a plan.” Wilson sat up, pulled a tablet to him, and wrote down some notes. “First, Darius, you must inform the PM that there is vote tampering going on as we speak. We have time to intercept the counting process because they do that at the end of the day. Maybe he can do something that will ensure that th
e paper ballots get more protection than usual.”
“Second,” Madeline said, “we can cut the Internet cable at several of the biggest voting stations, so that they can’t upload data to the cloud. That’s the only sure way to stop them. Then, they must do a manual count of the ballots—or at least use the old counting machines.”
“Jesus, Madeline,” said Lightchurch. He stood back and gazed at her in amazement. “You’re a real agent of chaos.”
“Sir, this requires immediate and direct action. We can’t fuck around.” She was firm in her response, and resolve showed in her face. She didn’t say fuck very often. It got their attention.
“We can’t do it ourselves. We have other things we must do,” Wilson said. “Maybe we can have the PM make the decision, and then have the police incapacitate the machines—or at least change the process by keeping it off the Internet.”
“I’ll call the PM right now. This is an emergency.” Lightchurch stepped away and got on the phone.
“Robert, we still have too many moving parts to this coup that I don’t understand.” Madeline’s face was a puzzle of emotion.
“Like where did the Venezuelans go?” he said.
Madeline’s phone beeped, and she picked up a call. “Yes, sir. He’s on another call, but I’m sure that will be all right. We’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.” She hung up.
“The police chief wants us—you and me—to meet him at the Wong Construction site. He’ll bring three men and make a special request that he search the site. If the site manager refuses, he’ll get a search warrant and return.”
“He needs direction so that they look in the right places?” Wilson asked.
“Right.”
Lightchurch ended his call and looked discouraged. “I’m using up my good graces with His Honor. He said he’ll consider it, but wants to know what we find out at the Wong site first. If there really are weapons there, it will move everything up a notch, and he may declare a national emergency. But he said he needs proof, not theories.” He began swearing under his breath.