“On the trail of an assassin,” Mac replied.
“Should we be telling the chief?” Rock asked.
“With what we got? No way. He wouldn’t, he couldn’t touch this with a ten-foot poll, nor should he.” Riles shook his head. “No. We have to protect the department. We keep this to ourselves until we find something concrete. If we do, then we can think about going to the chief.”
“And, if we don’t,” Rock added, “Nobody’s the wiser.”
“So, what’s next?” Lich asked.
“We stay covert,” Mac replied calmly. “We don’t tell anyone what we know or think.”
“And?” Sally asked.
“The chief has given us all a few days off,” Mac replied. “And I have some ideas of what I’d like to do with the time.”
Chapter Thirty-One
“As long as I always get a third.”
Viper tucked McRyan and Kennedy into bed at McRyan’s place at 11:15 p.m. The report from Kraft that Lyman Hisle had met with McRyan, followed by the rest of the little detail going downstairs, had him concerned. He became downright worried as he listened with his earpiece to the detective and assistant district attorney discussing PTA prior to moving onto nocturnal activities. Things were not yet over. McRyan and company had to be watched.
The crew dropped Viper back off at his home. He went in the front door, checking the mail on the way in. Mostly bills, one from the gas company, another for the telephone, and one of those annoying credit card offers, all addressed to Webb Alt, Viper’s name.
He went to the kitchen and dropped his keys in a little wicker basket on the counter. Having watched McRyan and friends hit the bar had left him thirsty for a beer, and he needed to relax and wind down. The fridge was his salvation, providing a bottle of Heineken. He fished an opener out of a drawer, popped the top and went to his den. Grabbing the remote, he clicked on the news and threw himself into his easy chair. Kicking off his shoes, he took a sip of his beer and thought about Cross.
It had been such a sweet little deal. It had made Alt, Ted Lindsay, Bouchard, James Stephens, and select others inside and out of PTA a nice little pile. And until very recently, nobody knew. They needed to keep it that way. McRyan was a concern and becoming a bigger one by the minute. He was connecting some of the dots. They had to keep him from connecting them all.
Ted Lindsay was Alt’s and PTA’s boss. Ten years before, PTA was a large manufacturing company that was, among other things, a supplier of small arms, weaponry, ammunition, explosives, and communications equipment to the United States Department of Defense. It was a profitable company, with 8,000 employees and operations in Minnesota, California, and West Virginia. It did extensive work for the Defense Department, but little or no work with the CIA or NSA. Ted Lindsay changed that.
In the ten years that Ted Lindsay had been president and CEO, PTA went from being one of many companies to being the company when it came to contracts with the Defense Department, as well as the CIA and NSA. Lindsay was even starting to make headway with the Department of Homeland Security. The company had grown to more than 62,000 employees with manufacturing operations in sixteen states. It had gone from being a nice little company in St. Paul to being mentioned in the same breath as Microsoft, GE, and Boeing. It was a name people knew. That was due in large part to the vision and work of Ted Lindsay.
Lindsay did two things that made PTA grow. First, at the time of his arrival, the company had started developing satellite technology for commercial use, in particular for satellite television. Lindsay understood its potential application to intelligence gathering. He was fully aware of the CIA’s movement towards the reliance, if not flat out dependence, on satellites for intelligence gathering. He leveraged his contacts and obtained a large chunk of the CIA’s business for PTA. Not long after, he was able to work his way into the NSA as well. PTA became intertwined in the overall defense of the country. It had led to a three-fold increase in their governmental work.
Second, he took the company’s expertise in software, communications and satellite technology into retail. The company was the first company to offer walkie-talkie ability with cell phones. Some of the first personal digital assistants (PDAs) came from PTA. PTA offered one of the first combination cell phone/walkie-talkie/PDAs. One could buy their products at Best Buy, Circuit City, and Sears. It was a name brand.
After two years and even before the company’s aggressive move into retail markets had taken off, Lindsay had been looking for a big increase in pay. Given what he’d done with the company in his two short years, he felt entitled. He was disappointed with what the company offered. A decent raise and an increase in stock options helped but was nowhere near what he’d expected. He wanted to, expected to move into the big leagues of executive compensation. However, the board of directors had been disturbed by stories about high executive pay at prominent corporations. They did not want criticism in that regard coming their way, especially given how much of the business was based on government contracts. Taxpayers would not be happy to learn that their tax dollars paid a president and CEO ten million dollars, plus stock options and it wasn’t enough. Lindsay would have to take what the board was offering.
Lindsay started to look around. Through intermediaries, he learned of potential openings and interest in his abilities. He arranged for that interest to leak to the media. He expected the board would then sweeten his compensation, not wanting to lose the one person who had raised profits and stock prices to new heights. The board, knowing a media leak and power play when it saw one, played hardball and put together their own list of potential replacements and leaked that to the media. Lindsay seriously considered walking.
Then Cross came along.
Lindsay had worked his way up through the CIA over twenty-five years, with his last ten years spent as the deputy director of Operations (DDO). That made him Alt’s boss. Alt worked as an intelligence officer. Supposedly, after the Church hearings in the 1970s, the CIA was out of the assassination business. That wasn’t entirely the case. Alt, and a number of others now with PTA had worked wet operations for years for the CIA. That was how Alt met Bouchard-some joint activities with the French. Lindsay had ordered assassinations and other operations, with Alt integrally involved in many of them. When Lindsay went to PTA, he wanted to significantly upgrade the security at the company. He brought in Alt for that very purpose and made him a vice president. Another person Lindsay brought to the company was CIA numbers genius, James Stephens, naming him chief financial officer.
After two years, when Lindsay was just about ready to walk away from PTA, Stephens and Alt came to him with Cross.
The increase in governmental contracts in Lindsay’s first couple of years necessitated that the company go into an expansion, acquisition and hiring mode. Their facilities were tapped out for space and efforts were made to create as much room as possible to fulfill the contracts. New facilities would be built, but that took time. In the meantime, the company had to ramp up its operations immediately, and they were short of space.
James Stephens had been tasked with evaluating each facility, its equipment, capacity, viability and needs. Stephens found that at many company facilities there was an abundance of surplus military hardware and equipment, leftovers from previously fulfilled government contracts. It had simply been stored and nobody knew or had ever decided what to do with it. It was largely unrecorded on the company books. Stephens mentioned the surplus to Alt, who in turn started to formulate an idea.
PTA had one facility that was underused. It was an old explosives manufacturing facility outside the small rural town of Cross, West Virginia. Cross was the official address, but given the inherent danger of an explosives manufacturing facility, it was located well outside of the town, completely isolated. It was a facility that had fallen into disrepair, and it was about to be shut down. However, the one thing Cross had, that other PTA locations didn’t, was space, and in particular, two empty warehouses. So the decision was made
to ship all surplus equipment and materials to Cross. Once there, the company would decide what to do with it all. This is where Stephens and Alt came in with their idea.
Alt, Bouchard, and a few others knew select people with serious money who would jump at the chance to acquire the surplus material. Why? Because these were groups that the Unites States government did not want to have U.S. military weaponry and equipment. Some were arms dealers. Others were labeled terrorist groups. Still others were in the drug trade, particularly in Columbia. And still others were simply viewed as unfriendly to the U.S. government. They couldn’t come to the states and purchase this equipment. However, if the powers that be at PTA were willing to do a little under-the-table dealing, these people would overpay to get their hands on the arms, explosives, and communications gear collecting dust in a remote Cross, West Virginia, warehouse
Alt and Stephens projected what the take might be. Lindsay said go ahead, “As long as I always get a third,” and none of the records included his name.
Alt and Bouchard arranged for the sale and transport of the surplus equipment. They always mixed it up, careful not to get into a pattern for shipment. Sometimes ships were used. A little money to the right stevedore and shipline assured that the goods reached their destination. Other times, the PTA jet had been used, as it had been traveling the globe for legitimate business. A few extra crates in the cargo hold wouldn’t raise suspicion. On other occasions small boats had been used, either out of Chesapeake Bay or down on the Gulf Coast.
And while PTA was making millions selling electronic and surveillance equipment to the CIA, Alt, Bouchard, and others made sure the electronic and surveillance equipment didn’t trip up the Cross operation.
With the CIA having moved mostly to electronic and satellite surveillance, the agency didn’t have the troops on the ground that they used to. Alt and company took advantage of that weakness. The equipment was always transported in small quantities. Contact was made with the groups through intermediaries. There was no paper or electronic communication ever. Only face-to-face meetings and only cash was exchanged for the equipment. There were no records, except for those kept by Stephens, who moved the money around to prevent its detection, setting up overseas accounts for all involved, under assumed names.
While the original surplus had been older military equipment, as time went on, more current and advanced arms, weaponry, and communications equipment found its way to Cross. While the previous surplus had been accidental, more intentional surplus was created and sent to Cross, where Alt would arrange for its sale. While this made Lindsay, Alt, and Bouchard a little uncomfortable, the money made it worth the risk. And Lindsay, always one to cover all the bases, had a few contacts at CIA who liked a little side cash, especially when placed in an account somewhere overseas. They would let Lindsay know if the sales were detected. They never had been. For five years, it had been a sweet little operation.
Then, in August of 2001, Lindsay’s CIA contacts informed him that some of their arms dealer contacts had found new buyers, including Middle East terrorist organizations Hamas, Hezbollah, and, worst of all, Al Qaeda. These buyers were more dangerous. Lindsay, Alt, and Bouchard decided the risk was getting too great, but it was too late.
The planes went into the towers.
The War on Terror had started.
Lindsay and Alt worried that as the War on Terror progressed, and more intelligence attention was paid to terrorist groups-where their money came from, where they got their weapons-Cross could come to light. If the Cross operation was discovered, charges of espionage and treason wouldn’t be far behind.
They shut it down. The Cross facility was shut down all together. The remaining surplus was destroyed. Dummy records were created. Alt and Bouchard hunted down their contacts who had dealt the arms, weapons, and communications equipment to the problem groups and eliminated them. Stephens was ordered to destroy all records. Everyone was ordered not to spend money, but rather to leave it overseas and spread it out as much as possible.
Stephens, having kept all the records and never having had any real operations experience at the CIA, was nervous. Alt wanted to take him out. Lindsay put him off and took a trip with Stephens and his wife, Yolanda, down to the Caymans. On a fishing boat, in the middle of the ocean, Lindsay discussed Stephens’s concerns and determined that he had put them to rest. Stephens was on board, although he always made Alt nervous. After all, he’d kept the paper trail. While his accidental death this past March had been tragic, Stephens was the one person who could have reconstructed that paper trail. They didn’t have that to worry about that anymore. Everyone else involved was a hardened intelligence officer who knew to keep his mouth shut.
Cross was in the past. Dead, buried and gone. Alt quietly watched his millions in Swiss and Cayman bank accounts grow and grow. In five years, he would retire to the Cayman’s, buy a house on a beach, an eighty-foot yacht, play lots of golf and live the good life. Nobody would be the wiser.
Then six weeks ago, Cross rudely came back to life.
Jamie Jones walked into Lindsay’s office with a banker’s box, labeled CROSS. Where the heck did this come from? Jones wouldn’t say. The box contained detailed information regarding Cross. Lindsay’s name was nowhere to be found in the papers, per his original instructions. Jones assumed it had all gone on without his knowledge. While Lindsay’s name was absent, Stephens’, Alt’s and Bouchard’s names, among others, were all over the documents. But the kicker was when Jones’ said that what she was giving Lindsay was a copy. She kept an original, and she wanted to know what Lindsay would do.
Lindsay filibustered, saying he’d look into it. He looked into Jones instead. Alt and Bouchard started tracking Jones’s every move. Her office and home were bugged. E-mail, phone, and cell phone were monitored. She was put under twenty-four/seven surveillance. They needed to find the original Cross documents. They believed she had the originals, since her copier use records revealed 437 unaccounted for copies, the exact number of documents in the box.
Apparently Jones recognized Lindsay’s response for what it was and had ideas of her own. She met for coffee with Claire Daniels at Starbucks on Grand Avenue, a few blocks from Daniels’s place. From a van in the parking lot, Alt and Bouchard conducted audio surveillance of the meeting and listened as Jones spilled the beans to Daniels, claiming she had documented proof. That set off the alarm bells. Daniels, in addition to Jones, was monitored and followed. Claire Daniels had proven that she was one reporter you didn’t want digging around.
Alt and Bouchard quickly realized two things. They had to get the original documents and take care of Jones and Daniels. Making matters worse, Jones and Daniels were childhood friends from a small town in Ohio. When taking them out, the key would be to do it so that nobody made the connection between the two. Making it all the harder was the fact they had to act fast, something that made Bouchard and Alt nervous. They had spent their careers doing this sort of thing-tailing their targets for months, knowing their every move and striking at the perfect moment and leaving without a trace. Setting up one killing in a few days was one thing. Setting up two? How to pull that off without anyone making the connection was the million-dollar question.
Then the solution presented itself.
Tailing Daniels revealed her relationship with Senator Johnson. The serial killer was making headlines daily. Daniels was killed by Alt, and they fingered the senator. On the same night, Bouchard made Jones’s death look like the work of the serial killer. Their contact with the investigation had provided all the details to make it look like one of the serial-killer murders. With a special detail investigating the serial killer, the same people would not be investigating the Daniels murder. Nobody would make the personal connection between Jones and Daniels. That eliminated the problem of linking Daniels and Jones. They could now spend their time looking for the original Cross documents.
But they couldn’t find the documents. It was the last thing out there that cou
ld hang them.
Then McRyan came along and made the connection between Daniels and Jones. They hadn’t foreseen Knapp keeping his clippings and that Jones wouldn’t be included. That was enough to make someone look, and McRyan started, meeting with Lyman Hisle and talking about PTA with Kennedy. He and his little group of friends were on the hunt. They just didn’t know for what.
Alt took a sip of his beer. They had to find the Cross documents before McRyan and company did. Their advantage was that they knew what they were looking for, and McRyan didn’t. How long would that last?
Alt finished his beer. He pushed himself up out of his chair, walked back to the kitchen and grabbed another Heineken. He popped the top off and took a long drink, snorted lightly and shook his head. McRyan. Before he went to bed, Alt would go to his office, check on his money and move some of it. Twenty-four hours ago, he thought he was done. Now, more than ever, he realized he might have to run.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Cut him loose a little early, I guess.”
Mac put the key into the deadbolt and pushed in the front door to Claire Daniels’ place. It felt like an eternity since he’d been here last, although it had only been five weeks. The condo was cold and musty, a product of vacancy. He noticed a thin coating of dust on the once shiny coffee table. Claire would have disapproved. All the furniture and other furnishings remained in place, white sheets draped over most of them. There was a for sale sign out front, and the realtor told Mac a sale was imminent.
Lich, Rock, and Riley followed him in, all clapping their hands or making some other movement to shake off the cold outside air. “So, what are we looking for Sherlock?” Rock asked.
“Don’t know exactly,” Mac replied. “Let’s go through the place, see what we find.”
They didn’t really know what they were looking for, although Mac had outlined his thoughts at breakfast. Going at PTA at the moment didn’t make sense, even if the chief would have allowed it. They didn’t know what they were looking for, and PTA most likely would have eliminated any trace of anything that was within their control. What wasn’t in their control was whatever Jones and Daniels might have been talking about. They might have left something behind. Mac figured they had to find that, and then they would have something to go after PTA with. Problem was, they had no idea what Jones and Daniels shared. Mac and the others agreed that it was likely Jones found something she wasn’t supposed to and told Daniels about it. It might have been something financial, since Jones was the CFO, but they really didn’t know. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, but not having any idea what the needle looked like. But they were all at the window, ready to place their bets.
The St. Paul Conspiracy Page 26