Chapter Twenty one
~ CAMEL Ratings ~
James logged out of the bank system at five on the dot. He was eager to get to the downstairs bathroom to see if Mark had left a note. He wished Shelly a safe trip over the weekend, but she failed to acknowledge it.
Shelly had the look of deep concern on her face all afternoon; it manifested itself and grew worse as the day went on. James knew it was worry, the kind of worry that only a mother could feel. She was blank, no emotion. Her persona vanished when she learned that Mr. Wright would follow through on his threats and she never returned. He wanted to say something, anything that would reassure her, but didn’t know what to say.
Guilt caused him to pause before opening the office door. He had to say something. He couldn’t leave her like this.
He locked the door, dropped the blinds and grabbed a Kleenex. He placed his hand on her shoulder, “Shelly, my mother used to say ‘cry when you need to, laugh when you can.’ I can’t think of a single thing that would make you laugh right now, but I do have a shoulder you can cry on.”
She quickly stood and hugged him, her salty tears caught in the Kleenex James handed her.
He patted her on the back, saying over and over, “We’re going to be okay, this will be over soon.”
The embrace lasted for only a couple of seconds, but both felt the connection. Both knew the ones they loved the most were also targets, were the innocent ones, none more innocent than a nine-year-old girl.
She pulled away, somewhat embarrassed, but thankful for the release. She kissed James on the cheek. “You’re a good man, James.”
“Thanks, but I mean it. We’re going to be fine,” he responded with his hands on her shoulders, looking squarely into her eyes.
“Okay, I guess I should get going. Have a flight to catch. I will see you Monday?”
“Yes. Yes, you will.”
She wiped the lipstick from his cheek with the tear-soaked Kleenex. “Don’t want anyone to suspect anything.”
“Thanks, are you going to be okay?”
“Yeah, I mean, we haven’t done anything wrong, right? Mr. Wright has no reason to hurt us.”
“We’ve done exactly as he asked us to do. Finish your summary report and I will see you here bright and early Monday, okay? Enjoy your daughter, she’s lucky to have a Mom like you.”
“Okay,” she said, wiping the smeared mascara from her eyes. “I’ll see you Monday.”
He shut the door behind him and began heading toward the data room doors when Frank stopped him. “James, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. I heard about the Mustang. Man I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay, I’ll have it repaired.”
“I know you will. She’s a beauty. Don’t forget the annual Seattle Film Festival is coming up on May twentieth. I told you I was on the board, right? Heading to our first meeting now. Shit, here comes Stone. I’m out of here.” Frank patted James on the back and left in a flash and James tried to follow him, but didn’t make it.
“James, can I have a word with you before you leave?” asked Mr. Stone, motioning with his hand for James to follow him to his office.
“Have a seat.” Mr. Stone closed the office door and paced anxiously behind his desk for several minutes before sliding into his chair.
James’s heart was pounding—this was it, this was the moment he feared would catch up with him when he had become a criminal on Monday. This was when it all came out in the open. He was sure the police were clearing through security at this very moment with his arrest warrant.
Mr. Stone tapped on his desk and began. “James, we have a couple of issues going on that I need to bring to your attention.”
Mr. Stone took a sip of hours old cold coffee. He drank coffee all day long, it ran through his veins. “Of course, the murder of a senior bank analyst, who may or may not have been dealing bank secrets like they were ecstasy pills at a rave, is deeply concerning, but that’s a local issue, a bank issue, one we will certainly address.”
Mr. Stone reached into the top drawer of his desk, pulled out a memo, and tossed it toward James. It slid across the desk and nearly fell into James’s lap. James jumped, almost confessed to everything right then and there. He was sure Mr. Stone could see the guilt on his face. James didn’t even look at the memo. He turned his head and focused on the office art on the wall. It was a nighttime cityscape of the New York Bridge and James wished he could climb to the very top of the bridge and jump off.
Mr. Stone continued, “There’s another issue, a political one, that memo—go ahead, take a look.”
James reluctantly picked up the memo and read the words without processing them.
After a few moments, Mr. Stone summarized the memo, “Shocking, isn’t it? To put it bluntly, the FDIC is pissing and scenting on our turf and, of course, our big dog, our director, is none too happy about it.”
Mr. Stone was up again, angrily walking the ten foot square office, the type of anger managers try to internalize. “Apparently, the FDIC is relying on CAMEL ratings. Attempting to use them to muscle in, for some reason they think ratings from an outside ratings agency is more accurate than we, the OTS. We both know that just isn’t so. Plus, the FDIC isn’t even a thrift regulator.”
He sat back down and looked James in the eyes. “I want you to come in tomorrow and do a comparison of our numbers to the rating agency numbers. Start with the problem child, the poorly performing mortgages out of Long Beach. Create a trend and do the same for the CAMEL ratings. The two should match trend wise. If not, then there is a problem. Then move on to the bank’s core mortgages, you get my drift.”
James edged back when Mr. Stone leaned in closer and hissed, “Word is, a big bank, a Wall Street bank, is positioning itself for a takeover bid of some sort. Can you imagine that? The whole financial world is going to shit and there’s a big bank using the political turmoil to take advantage, using its connections to weasel in.”
James didn’t want to do the project for two reasons. First, it was a lot of work and, second, he was sure Mr. Wright was dealing with this same bank. He would be accused of not playing nicely. “Sir, I can’t come in tomorrow, I will be out of town.”
“You can’t cancel?” Mr. Stone asked in disbelief.
James lied, it was becoming a habit. “No, sir, plans were made months ago.”
“Sunday at the latest then. I want that report on my desk by Monday, James, and I will not take no for an answer.”
James still tried to twist free. “How would I get the ratings data? I mean, it’s not readily accessible.”
“I’ll get the email from Frank. He has all the details.”
One final twist from James, he was sure this would break him free. “Frank is gone for the weekend. You and I both saw him leave.”
“I have access to the mail server and will get the email from there. So Sunday it is, then. How’s the project with Miss Spenser going?”
James couldn’t think of any more excuses. Damn, he thought, you and Mr. Wright should be a team. You two have an answer for everything.
“James, I said how is the project going?”
“Okay, I guess. She seems to be getting the numbers she needs.”
Mr. Stone collected the memo from James and put it back in the top drawer, “Good, good, glad to hear it. One more thing, James, are you sure you don’t know a Mr. Wright? You jumped a little in the conference room when the name was mentioned.”
“No, sir, I’ve never heard of the name, you?”
“No, doesn’t ring a bell.” Mr. Stone stood and opened the door. “Have a good trip. I expect that report by Monday.”
James exited the office without saying a word and made his way to the lockers. He listened to the message from Bridget. He was up for a nice hike, but wasn’t looking forward to what he knew she was really up to, the coming tempest of car safety. He could hear Sibelius’ The Tempest playing in the deep regions of his mind. It would be the perfect setting for when the conversation started.
As he stepped off the elevator, he made a mental note of the guys hanging around the lobby and walked past the bathroom toward the back exit.
Before exiting the lobby, he quickly turned and saw one guy had stood and was following him. The associate froze and nervously moved back to his seat when James headed back into the lobby, back towards the bathroom.
James almost knocked Mark over as he was entering the bathroom. Mark didn’t say anything, didn’t even acknowledge him, he just pushed past and kept walking. Maybe it wasn’t Mark. The guy had a mustache, but he was almost certain it was.
He quickly opened the toilet paper dispenser with the key, pulled the magnetic plate off, and read the note.
Found where team is located. Have plan in place to get you the necessary leverage. We will have what they have. Check email this afternoon as soon as possible. Open the one having to do with 69 Mustang. Will have Tahoe towed to mess with them a little and take pictures when they see they are busted. Will call when I have everything in place. Mexican standoff, buddy. You’re almost out.
James balled up the note and flushed it, replaced the magnetic cover, closed and locked the dispenser and sat on the toilet.
Why would he call me? He questioned. He knows that they will hear the conversation and they will track him down. Why would he send me an email? The bathroom door opened and James flushed again and left the stall. He washed his hands while ignoring the ghost.
The associate was in the last stall when James announced, “Heading home, will be walking, in case you want to know.”
* * * *
James entered the condo and went directly to the laptop. He saw the mapped out navigation plan created by Bridget. Underneath were pages and pages of Volvo information. He didn’t like the S40 model at all. There had to be something sportier in the Volvo lineup.
He checked his email and saw the '69 Mustang e-mail, it was from sysadmin@aeneid.com. He opened the email and there she was—a beauty, a 375 horsepower Boss 429 V-8, pure black. He almost salivated. Now that is sporty, he thought. That’s what a man was meant to drive.
The polymorphic code activated immediately and installed an encrypted version of itself on James’s laptop. The decryption module was next and then the payload fired up. Moments later, it had mapped itself to Cricket’s computers in the Condo below and quickly travelled along the network mapping and found the dedicated storage server leased to ESP Sphere, Inc.
The engine mutated once again on the storage server and started compacting any video recording, voice recording, financial and e-mail mime files. Its self-contained modulation procedure kicked in and transferred the files to the nearby dedicated server that belonged to Aeneid. The entire process took less than twenty minutes and the code went into hibernation, deleted the procedure and waited for new files.
* * * *
Mark was back at the hotel. He was glad James didn’t say anything when they crossed paths in the lobby’s bathroom. He opened the e-mail from wooden_horse and followed the directions exactly.
After a full ten minutes of server hopping, he was gazing at a folder that contained hundreds of zipped files. He didn’t expect to see anything this soon, but wooden_horse was good. He picked one, unzipped it and found it was huge, over 300 Megabytes. He clicked on the voice files and could hear radio traffic between Mr. Wright and his team in his media player.
Next he selected a video file and watched as James walked around his condo. Then he selected an excel file and saw hundreds of rows of numbers, financial data from the bank. The cells to the far right contained what appeared to be file modification data. He could see ESP, then PNW War Room, and then a server name of some sort. Below that he saw his own laptop’s name. It scared the hell out of him and he closed the file and deleted it.
He jumped when his cell phone rang. It was his secretary. She was upset and screaming the moment he answered.
“Mark, something is wrong with our account!”
She didn’t even give him a chance to respond.
“I checked it this morning and everything was fine. I just checked it again and someone has stolen twenty thousand dollars. What do I do? Should I call the police? Did you hear? Twenty. Two oh thousand, Mark!”
“Calm down, it was me,” Mark said when he could get a word in.
“What? You spent twenty thousand dollars in an afternoon?”
“Yes, it’s okay. It was me.”
“Oh, I don’t have an invoice for it. What are you trying to do, give me a heart attack?”
“Sorry, Linda, didn’t have time. It’s for a job that I’m doing. It will be replaced by Monday.”
“Whewh...”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. Have a glass of wine and enjoy your weekend. Trust me, it’s money well spent.”
“I will, see you Monday then. Bye.”
“Bye.”
He did a search and found an Office Depot near his hotel. He grabbed his keys and headed out the door.
He parked, grabbed his laptop, entered the store, walked directly to the Tech Services desk, and told the pimple-faced teenager that he wanted his laptop name changed.
“Yeah, okay. You can leave it and we’ll get to it in a while.” The young man spoke slower than anyone really should, it was agonizing.
“I want it done now, right now.”
“Yeah, there are a couple people ahead of you, so you know, you’re going to have to wait until I can get to it.”
“How much is it?”
“There’s a minimum charge.”
Mark was frustrated. “A minimum charge doesn’t answer my question. I asked how much is it? Your answer should include a dollar amount. So, how much is it?”
“It’s like forty for me to even look at it.”
Mark pulled out his wallet and showed the young man a hundred dollar bill.
“I’ll have to break that for you at the register up front. It’s been kind of slow back here.”
“No shit, I wonder why. Look the hundred is yours, if you do it right now.”
“Oh, okay. You want the name changed?”
“Yes, please, now.”
The young man opened the laptop and for a kid whose words flowed like molasses, he could type like crazy.
“What do you want the name to be?”
“ESP Sphere.”
“Okay, done. Anything else I can help—”
Mark left the bill, grabbed the laptop and headed toward the Laser printer area. He selected a printer that printed 25 pages per minute and threw it on the cart. He found a toner cartridge that claimed to print 6,000 pages and threw it on the cart along with three reams of paper. He picked up a package of blank CDs and finally selected a banker’s box and went through checkout.
Back in his hotel room, he hooked up the equipment and started printing random excel files and emails and burning random videos onto one CD and random voice recordings after that, alternating back and forth.
He answered Tina’s call and told her if everything went well, he’d be coming home tomorrow. She wished him luck and told him she missed him.
An hour later, he had nearly a thousand printed pages and had burned media files onto all the blank CDs. He placed the items into the banker’s box, put on the lid, and labeled the box ‘SMILE!!!’
He took a break and ate dinner before enacting part two of his plan.
He loaded his Glock, checked his digital camera, placed a couple of Lorcet pills into his coat pocket, and called Tina.
“I’m going to crash early. I have to be up at four in the morning. Just wanted to say goodnight.”
They talked for about an hour and he fell asleep after setting his wake-up call and alarm clock, it was almost 10:30 PM.
* * * *
James didn’t stay the entire night at The Lounge as he normally did - mainly because he really didn’t care for the band. The band was too pop-ish and what he really wanted was some time to think. He kissed Bridget ‘bye’ and caught a cab back to the condominium.
He turned on the stereo, selected a mix that included Sean Hayes’ soulful music, some of Deftones’ slower paced songs, and cranked the volume until the music filled the room. He grabbed a Georgetown Brewing Co. brew, picked up the printed material Bridget purposely left out in the open, and made his way to the balcony. He sat and watched the cars travelling east on Olive Way.
He thumbed through the packet, but didn’t consume any of the information. His thoughts kept going back to the note Mark had left. Why would he call me? And the email wasn’t from Mark. It was from someone at aeneid.com. Wasn’t Aeneid from Virgil, the story about the Trojan who went to Italy? The last part of the note really didn’t make any sense, ‘a Mexican standoff’. Was he really almost out? Could Mark do this so quickly?
The beer was crisp, clean, and smooth, contrasting nicely to the lyrics radiating from the stereo. He sat for quite a while, doing nothing but watching the traffic, listening to the music, and wondering what Mark was up to. Deftones’ lead singer, Chino Moreno, was belting “I watched a change in you. It's like you never had wings...” and James could relate, wondering if the change in him was now his new normal.
He stood, placed the packet of Volvo information near the laptop and wrote Bridget a quick note.
Bridget, you win, but we have to find something a bit sportier and I’m still repairing the Mustang, I love that car. Love ya, James
He turned on the tube, vegged out, and fell asleep on the couch.
Bridget woke him with a kiss on the mouth.
“Hey, baby.”
“Hey, back at ya. What did you do tonight? I see you saw my packet of material.”
“Yep, did you see my note?”
“Yes. I’m still awake and will search, but the S40 was the nicest one I found. I’ll looked at the others, but if they don’t have stellar safety ratings, well, you know.”
“I know. What time is it?”
“Almost two.”
“Okay, while you’re busy keeping us safe, I’m going to crash, no pun intended. What time are we leaving in the morning?”
“The trip only takes about forty minutes, so I say we make it a slow wake up morning.”
“Sounds good, baby. Okay, goodnight.” He kissed her and made his way to the bedroom.