It was in these details he saw the devil himself. He saw the true evil, the true power this contingency held over the American people. Woven within the fabric of data he saw lies and conspiracies that the American people could not even begin to fathom and this wasn’t even including the greatest power of them all, the power of god’s watchful eyes. This evening proved to be just the case as Greg stumbled upon vile venom that oozed from the data. He was watching Scott Norwood through the system for he was out of the White House and not in the President’s back pocket. The last time Greg followed Scott he ended up getting the name of his piece of ass and adding another memento to his keepsake box. Tonight Greg thought he would be adding yet another name to Scott’s snatch collection. He was wrong. Scott went to a steak house for a meal and it took Greg until about 10:30 to find the name of his dinner mate. He was having dinner with Captain Jack Reynolds, ex—U.S. Marine. Was he a buddy or colleague, was it business or pleasure; only time and more digging could tell.
Greg quickly starting doing research and traced Reynolds from Philly to Washington aboard the Acela Express that dropped him off at Union Station just after 7:30. He predicted his hotel since he was a gold card member with Hilton and at about 11:30 proved he was correct, as he was staying in room 242. And so it began, Greg followed the rabbit down the hole, through twist and turns, digging down, way down through layers upon layers of data to the inevitable wonderland stored as bits and bytes. Without working up a sweat, Greg found his military pension records, his tax records, and found he made a pretty decent buck doing his so-called consulting work for the Beta Group of D.C. Now what he did as a consultant was still pretty much up in the air but it did have something to do with software, software for the government. He found phone records of a call from Scott earlier in the day, which he assumed correctly, is what spurred his travel plans on Amtrak. He found his medical records, his real estate taxes—he found anything and everything pertaining to Captain Jack Reynolds and it was all at Greg’s finger tips, awaiting a turn at his analytical skills in order to produce a story, a life. Before Greg turned his attention to the mounds of data that he just unearthed, he decided to take his new toy out for another spin.
His new toy was a piece of software that he wrote using the data stored on god’s eyes. It was simple enough to use, just input the tax ID and a date into the prompts and hit play. It had controls much like a video player, fast forward, reverse, pause, and controls for speed. It also had a screen of a map. Greg placed in Reynolds’ tax ID and today’s date and hit reverse. He then watched a video of Reynolds movements, starting in room 242 and moving backwards in time across the map and across the globe at five minute intervals. He initially had his speed setting set on two seconds per hour, meaning it took two seconds to watch an hour of Reynolds movement, at that rate it took just under a minute to watch a full day’s movement. He increased the speed just a tad and sat back and watched. He watched it like a baseball game with very little thrills. Greg didn’t know what he was looking for, if anything at all, so he just watched until it ended and it ended at Reynolds inception date into the system. The location of his inception was the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, just over four years ago. He then hit the play button, this time in fast forward motion. He again watched the dot dancing across the screen. He paused the screen when the dot was over the Atlantic. He did a bit of research and found Reynolds was on flight BA 68 heading to Heathrow. Greg continued and watched the dot as it danced across Europe and back. When the dot ended up back in room 242, the reverse button was hit again and the dancing continued. At a random point in time Greg hit the pause button. He then used some of his very cool function keys he built into the software. He hit F8 and another prompt filled the screen, he entered twenty-five and hit the return key. This opened a new panel in the window and displayed all the names and tax id’s within a radius of twenty-five feet from Reynolds at that given time. This was how he found Reynolds to begin with using Scott as the dot. Greg then continued with the backwards video for a second time, then a third, then a fourth. He couldn’t recall, maybe it was the fifth or sixth time running through the video that Greg’s new found friend scattered his life. For whatever reason Greg saw the dot over a particular place and recognized it instantaneously. Maybe it was imbedded in his brain after all the aerial views on the news or in the numerous power-point presentations Homeland Security had piecemealed together and forced everyone with a level clearance to watch, but there it was, plain as day, the site of the Holiday Massacre and the date was December 23rd—the day of the massacre and Reynolds was smack-dab in the middle of it.
“Son-of-a-fucking-bitch,” Greg said aloud, “Jesus, I can’t fucking believe this. Fuck, fuck, fuck!” shaking his head, “Fucking son-of-a-bitch. This can’t be, it just, it just can’t… goddamnit! Fuck! Another fucking conspiracy, goddamnit. Just what I fucking need.”
Thinking to himself as if he weren’t in enough trouble already and now this. He reached for his phone and without thinking dialed Jorja’s number, then realizing it, he quickly hung up. The last thing he needed was to involve Jorja, actually the last thing he needed was to disobey his boss’ direct order.
Then it started, all the data was beginning to process within his cerebral cortex.
So here it was in all its ignominy, Scott and Reynolds in deep shit, up to their fucking eyeballs and then some. Did they really conspire to draw a bloodbath in the middle of an American mall, killing the innocent, killing the young, killing the old, killing over sixty Americans, just before Christmas, just so the President could look good with quick and decisive actions? If what he theorized was true, this was even bigger than the United flight 93 conspiracy. Bigger than the second shooter in the grassy knoll. Bigger, much bigger. This was a plot to kill Americans by Americans, by Scott and Reynolds, by the President of the United States, by Jonathan Whitaker, by Satan. This was pure evil. The venom so vile, so dark, Greg’s stomach was beginning to turn in knots and he felt like he was about to vomit. He started to tremble and even though he didn’t smoke he wanted a cigarette, he wanted a drink, something to calm his nerves. He made his way to the kitchen and opened the fridge and grabbed a Victory Hop Devil, the only beer he liked. He popped the cap and drank it down it one long gulp, just like his college freshman days. Within seconds his stomach rejected its contents and just like his college freshman days he spewed it back into the kitchen sink. He wiped his mouth and clasped on the floor, leaning against the cabinets, where he remained for the next forty-five minutes in utter shock.
Greg eventually propped himself back up and again opened the fridge, this time removing his old standby, the Dew. He opened it and took a swig, swooshing the neon green liquid between his teeth and gums to remove the nastiness of the stale beer puke from his mouth. He then wisely chose to spit his first sip rather than swallow. The same with his second. The third sip went straight down and to his surprise, didn’t return, though his stomach was still in knots. He then made his way back to the computer to face reality, to face the evil.
Again Greg wanted so much to pick up the phone and tell Jorja of his findings but now it was up to him to save his own ass because if they ever found out he knew, his ass would definitely need saving. He turned his attention to the past and tried to scrounge up any data, any other coincidences, anything in order to back his claim. He just couldn’t believe that Reynolds just so happened to be in the right place at the right time and take out two of the assailants. He envisioned Reynolds was there as a security blanket making sure the plan went down as it should and maybe it did and maybe it didn’t. Maybe nobody was supposed to get hurt or killed and the assailants acted under their own accord. Maybe it went down without a hitch. Maybe just wasn’t good enough and whatever the truth, Greg wanted answers and maybe with his trusty little tool he could find them.
He spent the next few days deeply entrenched in the system, both at work and at home. It was easy to do while in the office since nobody except Jorja really k
new what he did in the office but supposedly he was one of the best in the business. His firewalls proved just that. If the mainstream hackers knew Greg’s mind was preoccupied they would have tried to dance around his security systems to find, if any, their vulnerabilities but as luck would have it his firewalls went unchallenged and his playtime with God’s eyes expanded almost exponentially. From the moment he logged in until he called it a day he was pounding away trying desperately to find something, anything but to no avail. Now awhile ago when he first started toying with the system he had found the name Ehsan Nejem and assumed he was the mastermind of the mall massacre since some form of black-ops extinguished his ass in the hills of Pakistan less than a month after the mall shootings. Only a few key individuals, the President’s inner circle, and Greg’s prying eyes ever saw the red stamped memo and the rest of America was none the wiser. He did find it quite odd that these people who knew of Ehsan didn’t expose him to the rest of the world and decided to keep a known terrorist and his deadly deed at bay. It was a conspiracy in the making. Greg’s thinking at the time, was that maybe this Ehsan Nejem guy used to be on the books of the American spy network and turned out to be a bad apple. That would be a good enough reason to send him to his awaiting vestal virgins without bullhorning the fact that Islam extremists were once again responsible for American bloodshed. Fitting this piece into Greg’s new found conspiracy puzzle he now assumed Ehsan was just a scapegoat for the black-ops and the rest of the red stamped memo in-crowd. Greg feared the true conspiracy was to bestow even more disquietude into the hearts of Americans by accusing the very people who live within its borders. America was becoming lackadaisical and numb to the “T” word since it has been used at least once during each and every episode of the evening news since nine eleven. America was also growing sick of the loss of sovereignty the Constitution upheld. A few wackos who took innocent lives for their twisted cause gave the government an excuse to take away the liberties America was built upon. More people die in a year from walking across the street than all the combined terrorist acts on American soil, yet the streets are not made any safer; instead wiretapping is legalized, database records are open to the government, and the private lives of the American citizens becomes more difficult to protect… all in the name of terror. But America is awakening from its deep slumber and removing the wool from their eyes. They have seen their freedom being slowly stripped away but America is starting to learn. America is starting to understand. America is starting to fight back, fighting back for their lost freedoms taken away by the Bush Administration, the senate, the house, their government. Greg’s new theory was that this government was trying to disrupt their new found renaissance in freedom by turning America on itself. Hire some rogue agents to band a group of derelicts and racist pigs together, brainwash them, and let them loose on the masses with guns and ammo. Make America cringe in fear again. Make it wilt as it tries to protect its citizens from its very own backyard. If American can’t protect itself from its own people… enter the Whitaker Administration with swift and decisive action. Pull the wool over their eyes again, protect them from the terror, protect them from themselves, and take away even more civil liberties by hiding behind the legal mumbo jumbo peppered throughout the bills of the senate floor and America would be none the wiser. This was a conspiracy in the making for sure; adding yet another layer of deceit, a conspiracy neatly wrapped in another conspiracy. No one would ever believe it.
. . .
Chapter 40
Greg thought about his dilemma, he was one hundred percent sure that the holiday massacre was some scheme concocted by the Oval Office but he found nothing pertaining to that fact, even with all the technologies he had at his beck and call. He decided to look in the future for clues of the past. He knew Reynolds had dinner with Scott, he knew Reynolds was at the scene on that bloody day in December, and that’s all he knew. So he decided to put some tags or traces on emails to and from Reynolds. Scott’s emails went through the servers at the NSA which had protocols he could circumvent given the time and proper credentials but he would need Jorja’s assistance. Since Reynolds worked in the private sector his email was more or so public domain now that the Patriot Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and a slew of other acts littered with lawyer speak made it legal
Greg easily rerouted all of Reynolds’ email to a government router and he was then able to access each one he sent or received. This was very low tech by Greg’s standards and anyone could trace the path of the email but close to one hundred percent of the people had no idea how to view or even read the header information contained in each email. If Reynolds ever bothered to look he could simply open the email, navigate to the tools menu, click options, and then view the header information. He would then see the path that each email traveled. If he looked closely enough, he would spot a router’s/IP address that was common to all his emails besides his proper email server’s address at The Beta Group. And like almost one hundred percent of the people, he never viewed the header information. As a result, this email popped up on Greg’s screen on Thursday evening.
From: J. Reynolds
Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2008 8:58 PM
To: Scott Norwood
Subject: Rules for software purchasing
Proprietary software is expensive. Leasing is usually an inexpensive solution. And tax deductible. Never go with the first solution. In certain circumstances it is cheaper to build your own. Search for the best solution don’t take a consultant’s word. Avoid unnecessary requirements. Gather only what is needed for the initial phase of the project. Open source should be avoided at all cost within the government—it’s free for a reason.
Reynolds didn’t send many emails, if he did it was from another account Greg hadn’t found just yet. This one was odd. Why would he be sending Scott what seemed to be spam or very out-dated rules for engaging in a software request from vendors? It’s not like Scott was in charge of purchasing software for the Oval Office. Maybe he was in charge of enhancing the interface to God’s eyes, something along the lines of what Greg had already accomplished but why all the talk about cost? Cost would be the last thing this regime would worry about, especially if it pertained to the system. No, there was something very strange about this email and Greg couldn’t quite place his finger on it. He reread it again and again. The more he read the stranger it had become. The sentence structure just didn’t seem right. He was sure there was something else, he was sure there was more to the message. He tried to read between the lines, was software a metaphor, was cost a metaphor, was the consultant’s word actually Reynolds’ word, Scott’s word, or the President’s word, was it a word of warning? Why start a sentence with an “and,” why use the word “avoid” twice, why use the words “tax deductible” and “government,” why? He wasn’t sure why. He regrouped the words of the message, cataloging them as nouns, verbs, and adjectives and played around trying to make new sentences, like an anagram of sorts. Nothing made sense. Greg wasn’t a cryptologist by any stretch of the means and his sudoku skills weren’t going to help in this situation, nor his computer hacking skills for that matter, but he tried nonetheless. He spent hours on the email, then he took a break when he realized he was getting nowhere and decided to call it a night. Besides a fresh brain is a better brain. The next morning he printed the email out, folded it, stuck in his front pants pocket, and took it to work. When he had some downtime and by downtime it was meant when nobody was looking over his shoulder, he again played with the email and again got nowhere. He stayed well past office hours and continued working the email and again got nowhere. Closing in on ten o’clock and still getting nowhere, Greg decided to do what he did best, he used his math skills. He wrote each sentence on a separate line and placed an equal sign next to it.
Proprietary software is expensive =
Leasing is usually an inexpensive solution =
And tax deductible =
Never go with the first solution =
In certain circumstances it is cheaper to build your own =
Search for the best solution don’t take a consultant’s word =
Take the Fourth Page 25