“I’ve listened to you describe the progress with psych transmitters all this week. Can Stacy have one of them, to allow her to project her Immune ability to those around her when I leave for Washington? She can stay with her aunt, and drive my car to school. The police released my car, and I had it repaired. If she sensed Stiles nearby, she could protect anyone around her without the need to be within a hundred feet of them. As I need to be now.”
“She knows you can do that?”
“She’s the only other person we know who can do what I do, and was targeted by Stiles. I damn well told her how to project Immunity on friends and family to protect herself from someone Stiles can control. Her boyfriend Carl was briefly under his control, and he tried to wreck my car as she drove away.
“With Mike as the only Compeller here, we can’t test if he gains directionality ability to another Compeller when she projects Immunity to him. However, she makes anyone within a hundred feet around her immune from Mike, just like I can. I think she also imparts directionality to to him.
“Dan, I don't think I can talk the National Security Council into letting her have a transmitter. These are top secret.”
“Sir, it’s not much of a State secret if other countries are building them. You wanted her to work for the BII and offered her summer internships while in college. Swear her in now, and start her first internship. She’s old enough to join the damn army and be sworn in to defend her country. She may not even ask for pay, but don’t count on that. She’s as shrewd as her mother, who extorted school tuition for Stacy out of you.”
Brogan sounded amused. “I don't suppose you’d tip her off to ask me for money, would you?”
Pretending to consider the matter, Grayson said, “Well, I guess it isn’t nepotism if I’m not her supervisor. I’m giving her aunt money for her room and board now since she can’t stay alone. I might accidentally drop a hint.”
“Sure, accidentally.” Brogan chuckled. “It’s a good thing the BII just got a large new budget increase. We’re funding nationwide genetic screening to find more of us naturals, and we have several new genetic laboratories working on isolating the two versions of the genes, to learn how to insert them into people that don’t have them. We’re also looking at what triggers them to become active for those of us born with them as recessive.
“It nearly always happens during puberty, with hormones flowing, combined with some stressful event that may produce adrenaline. There must be a way to activate the recessive genes on command. Inserting the Immune version genes into people well past puberty would be pointless if we can’t activate them.”
“Sir, she’s at school now, but I’ll text her that you’ll call her after four if that’s OK with you. Please let me know as soon as you can if there will be a transmitter available for her if she gets sworn in. That’s also presupposing she agrees to do this. I think she will. What happened to her mother is bothering her a great deal. I’ve shown Stacy how to confer immunity on the people around her if she sensed an effort to mind control them. There’s more than a little guilt on my part that I didn’t explain it to her when I returned from Seoul.”
“Dan, I’ve kicked myself for the same thing. The Seoul trip was secret, but you sharing that aspect of your joint abilities would not have required you to tell her how you discovered it was possible.”
“For her, my trip was a pointless bit of secrecy anyway. She figured out I was in Korea by simply watching the international news coverage from Seoul, and the speculation there on how it was ended so suddenly, with Agent-X found dead, headless, and without his transmitter. Her being aware of Compeller ability and what she and I can do as Immunes, it seemed logical you would send me to find him when we rushed off to Washington so quickly, on the same day as the stadium riot.”
“She’s a smart girl. If we can learn how to activate your single Compeller gene and both of hers, she’ll become a Controller with great Immune ability. I wonder what that would be like? I guess I’m willing to pay to find out.”
****
Within a week of arriving in Chicago, Stiles had interviewed five potentially qualified candidates that his Outfit crime connections had identified for him. With his ability, he forced out honest attitudes concerning altruism versus greed and ambition, and any willingness to work outside the boundaries of normal ethics. He wanted technical expertise, of course, but a willingness to skirt, or even violate the law, could make his control of the expert doing the electronics design easier to handle.
He found a young man who appeared to have the technical qualifications and education, and a need for money. He had been terminated by his former company, prosecuted and convicted of corporate espionage and theft. He had taken a design for an implantable device from his employer, which could report to the patient, and to a remote monitor site when an epileptic seizure was imminent or was in progress. He was the system designer but felt he had not received adequate compensation for his groundbreaking work. He offered the design, which was his company’s intellectual property, for sale to a competing company in another state. A more ethical company engineer reported the offer to his superiors, and the FBI helped arrange a sting operation.
At twenty-nine, the man was only a year older than Stiles and had spent eighteen months in jail, leaving him in financial ruin. With no employment opportunities in his chosen career field after his conviction, he owed his legal team money, and he had outstanding student loans. He was eager for professional level work, liked the pay he was offered and had very few qualms about skirting moral issues.
Arthur Stanton was the guy Stiles selected to build his Population Controller, as he secretly called the device. He thought it would be amusing if people thought PC meant Politically Correct. That would be when he described his technology project as helping “special people” to interact more fully with everyone around them. His definition of “special people” bore no resemblance to who they thought he referred.
Now he needed to lease a facility, hire the technicians and personnel Stanton said he would need. Stanton outlined the supplies and equipment he required to improve and modify the prototype device Stiles had acquired. It was to be a small operation, but not free of expense.
Stiles needed to acquire more cash since the six million dollars he had wouldn’t cover everything. Besides, he’d told the bosses of the Outfit he’d help them pull off a major no-risk heist if they helped him, with them retaining seventy-five percent of the proceeds, all in difficult to trace cash.
Between interviews of his five candidates over the previous three days for his project lead, Stiles visited the Federal Reserve Bank in Chicago, fleshing out his idea to get more cash. He used Mind Control to cut the time to meet with each person the previous contact suggested, and who then forgot the meeting had occurred. Now stiles had the delivery schedules, and routes for four armored trucks for an approaching single target date and he had access to get the codes used on that day to open their doors. He had the details of the multileveled heavy security traveling with every armored truck so that he could divert them when required.
He had visited several nearby warehouses to discover where he could obtain four forklifts and operators for them. He knew what capacity of commercial moving trucks he needed to carry away the booty and which types had low beds for fastest loading, and were the most accessible to the forklifts.
The cool thing about it all was that the innocent people executing the mechanics of the heist wouldn’t know any details of the robbery, who had orchestrated the event, nor who the final recipients of the stolen property were. Nor would their future financial records ever show they had shared in the robbery because they would not.
Investigators would only find fingerprints of the security personnel on the armored trucks, warehouse employees on forklifts, and innocent moving company truck drivers of the four getaway trucks.
Stiles would instruct the crews that transferred and initially handled the cash to forget the events, but they wouldn’t even se
e the people that came along later. This way BII Compellers couldn’t make them reveal what they never saw or knew.
The beauty of the plan was that all the key parts would come together at a central location on a tight schedule, and it would all happen within the range of Stiles mental Control, at the rear of the bank, by an underground loading dock. Even in disguise, he expected to be observed by security cameras, but it wasn’t as if he wouldn’t be the prime suspect in any case. Only a Controller of his ability could make it happen. All he needed to do was to have the getaway moving trucks, with forklifts and drivers inside them, prepositioned near the Federal Reserve Bank, then wait for each of the armored trucks to show up in the coordinated security sequence, following their tight schedule. The security supervisors at the bank would continuously report that everything was going per schedule, telling the escorts of each of the four armored trucks that all was well.
Once loaded with pallets of bundled and plastic wrapped cash in sizable cubes, the four semi trucks would move in convoy to an abandoned warehouse, where the same people would unload. They would then depart, with embedded commands to return to their normal jobs, and instructed to forget where they had gone and what they had done.
The Outfit would furnish eight vans, driven by eight hired local street gang members, waiting near the old warehouse. When Stiles called them, they would drive up to perform another shift of the cash, placing the loaded pallets into their smaller vehicles, by using hand operated pallet movers they would bring with them.
When finished, they would all take a break, where they would be “paid off” by Stiles, as they “ate bananas,” or waited in a freeze mode for him to shoot them. They were the expendable links between the Controlled and innocent crews, and the trusted drivers the organized crime bosses would furnish to accept delivery.
The Outfit’s drivers would show up, never seeing what they were to deliver, or any of the previous people involved. They would split into two convoys and travel to two different Lake Michigan ports, where the eight vanloads of money would start a casual journey out of the United States. Destined for offshore or South American banks experienced in money laundering for a healthy fee.
Today, Stiles was about to describe what he was proposing to several of the Outfit’s middle-ranking crime bosses, and tell them about the seventy-five percent share of the final profit they would receive. They had said their representatives that met him wouldn’t share their names with him today, although they knew his name. The previous intermediary used wasn’t someone they wanted to have involved in the operation Stiles had outlined to get them interested.
He wouldn’t tell them how he would acquire this large volume of cash, only from where. However, they were criminals, not idiots. They would grasp what he could do soon enough. He believed the existence of Mind Controllers was about to be publically revealed. It was a poorly suppressed subject of speculation by the South Korean news outlets already.
When he arrived at the large brownstone building on the fringe of a business district, two tough-looking front door guards greeted him by name and politely asked if they could pat him down. He smiled and agreed, and pointed to his left armpit where he had his gun. They took possession of that and explained they would return it when he left. He grinned as he wondered if they’d pat his head to check for his far more dangerous weapon.
They led him down a short hall to a spacious sitting room, announced him, and closed the double doors after he stepped through. There were three men seated in a cluster of four overstuffed chairs positioned close for intimate conversation, at the center of a large terracotta colored rug, which appeared to be of a Turkish design with an elaborate pattern.
None of them made a move to stand or introduce themselves, and the older looking paunchy man motioned to the empty chair. “Please join us Mr, Stiles. We’d like to hear more about your proposal.”
He strode confidently over and sat down, perfectly content to bypass any pretense of sociability, and promptly leaned forward to describe the windfall he was offering them. He wanted to convince them to accept and launder the sizable quantity of money he’d give them because it seemed to be the easiest way to obtain what he wanted in the shortest time.
He started with a question, “Gentlemen, do you know what happens to old money?”
They looked surprised, but one of the men, middle-aged, asked, “You don’t mean the money inherited by members of longtime wealthy families, do you?”
“No. I mean worn out money that banks collect and take out of circulation. Torn or stained bills or those simply worn and faded from years of use. They trade those bills in for new currency from the Treasury.”
The paunchy older Don said, “They destroy it. Shredded I think. All the banks gather it together to get replacement bills from the federal government. They do some of that here in Chicago, at the Federal Reserve Bank. They used to sell bags of shredded money to tourists.”
The third man, the youngest of the three by far, guessed where this might be leading and told Stiles brashly, “I don't know if the new replacement bills come from the Fed Bank in Chicago or not, but those new bills will have recorded and sequential serial numbers. Even if you can use magic to get hold of the millions in new bills, moving that much hot cash into circulation, even outside the US, is a bitch to do in large quantities. The cops and feds track down the sources when the new money appears on the street, and they eventually recover most of the cash when they catch the low-level pricks and offer them deals to turn in their bosses, and they move up the food chain that way.
“The feds always follow the chain of people that handled the easily identified bills to the original thieves, who they already suspect was involved in the first place. There are a limited number of crews that can pull off a job like that. Large heist’s need support and planning, and approval from the people like us that must agree to let them try, and we want our cut. It’s been tried several times, in the US and other countries, and the thieves got caught. It’s complex and risky to steal the new cash, and it’s hard to sell it to the money laundering banks that must make back their investment. There are so many people involved in that sort of robbery and distribution that they always catch someone, and they make a deal and talk. It’s a piss poor risk.”
Stiles nodded. “That’s probably so. But that isn’t what I’m proposing. I don't need, or want your help in acquiring the cash I’m going to steal. I don't even need your approval, but hiding the source of my money could slow the progress of a project I want to fund. That’s where you come into play.
“What would be able to do with tons of cash if I presented you with that in an isolated warehouse? It will consist of a hundred forty-three million dollars in untraceable old money recently removed from circulation. It will inside eight large vans and ready for transport. This used cash will come from four armored trucks filled with US currency, stacked, plastic wrapped and placed on wooden pallets, different denominations on their separate pallets. It will have random serial numbers, printed over a period of many years. Just like what people spend and receive in change at a corner grocery store.
“Admittedly, unlike the corner grocery example, much of the cash will be in the form of faded fifties and hundreds. There will be other denominations as well, and every one of them is going to be a worn or damaged bill, having unrecorded serial numbers which makes them untraceable in bulk. Next week, a shipment of old bills will consist of a larger percentage than usual of large denominations old bills. Can you also handle the more common denominations? Such as ones, fives, tens and twenties? I doubt what is typically done to put stolen cash into circulation would be needed, because these are old and dirty bills, and as I said, there is no list of their serial numbers.”
“Where will you get that much old currency?”
“I know about a schedule of multiple deliveries, occurring all in one morning, of four armored trucks, each loaded with old bills and arriving at the Federal Reserve Bank here in Chicago for a mass shredding
. They do this multiple times a year under tight security, although seldom do they have a delivery of this many trucks, with so much of the currency in larger denominations. My Washington source was asked to tell me when they learned a schedule like this occurred at any Federal Reserve Bank in the country. I wasn’t able to take advantage of two previous chances.
“That is the source of the old money I intend to steal and will deliver to an empty warehouse on the outskirts of the city, in an old industrial complex on the north side. After my delivery trucks and crews have departed, without them ever seeing anyone at the warehouse, you will send in a collection team with eight large vans you will furnish. I will direct those men to load the pallets into the vans using hand steered battery powered pallet movers that will ride in the back of the vans they drove there. Those crews, one man per van, will be people you hire, which I suggest you find among local gangs, and not use your people. Your more trusted people will come after the reloading, to drive the vans away, and neither they or the eight reloaders will ever see one another. There will be no direct connection between your drivers and those that handled the money before they arrived.
“From there, you can send the cash out of the country, or hide it away in this country. I don't care, since that part of the task is your problem to solve. Our deal is complete at that point, and I want you to pay me twenty-five percent of what you earn. I generously assume you will have certain expenses, such as the laundering fees, which you may choose to avoid.”
The older man objected. “Hold on, you want us to trust eight street gang members to simply show up with our vans and load up stacks of your stolen cash on pallets, and then they’ll just leave?”
“Who said they’ll leave? That was why I suggested you hire members of a street gang instead of low ranking men connected to your organization. I assumed you might not want that many of your lower ranking soldiers to turn up missing. I told you there would be a disconnect between those that handled the money first and those that received the cash. The eight van loaders will be the point of disconnect from your trusted drivers. The truck that delivers your drivers will be left behind for my use, to transport the eight reloaders away from that warehouse.”
Controller: Controller Trilogy, Book 1 Page 31