Chapter 38

 

 

-Chicago-

 

 

Hank has called everyone together in the conference room to discuss where they are in the pursuit of their suspects. Hank is making sure that everyone is on the same page by providing a summary of events to date . “This is where we are in our investigation. With all of the empirical evidence we’ve uncovered, we’re convinced we’ve identified key participants in the attacks on the American people. We also are convinced that these individuals sensed that someone was on their tail and that’s why they hightailed it out of town and went into hiding.

 

“Wherever they are they need money and Allison is working on how they’re getting it. I’ll get back to you in a minute, Allison, and you can fill us all in on what you’ve been able to ascertain so far. We also believe that the recent murders of the two U. S. legislators are the work of the same people that are behind all of the other garbage being dumped on us. We don’t have any hard evidence to support this assumption, just very strong feelings in out guts, the kind you should never ignore. When murder reared its ugly head, Vincent Torizzio was brought in to play a more active role in our investigation to find the assassin which when accomplished we hope will lead to our finding the brains behind all of this mayhem. He’s doing his thing as we speak.

 

“We also have good reason to believe that this group of troublemakers has a mole somewhere in Washington D. C., maybe in the White House, feeding them all kinds of intelligence. We passed our fears on to the President and he called me back earlier this morning saying he has a good candidate for suspicion, his very own press secretary, Sam Ferguson. They have reason to believe he’s communicating with his counterparts via email in some secret fashion.

 

“Ashok, the President requested I send you to the White House to see if you can figure out how he’s doing it. He’ll keep the press secretary away from the office on some project or other while you check things out. If you confirm the President suspicions and figure out how he’s contacting his cohorts, we won’t nail him. We’ll use him to feed false information to his pals and use the false info to lay a trap. Joel, will you fly Ashok to Washington ASAP?”

 

“We can leave when this meeting is over.”

 

“Fine. Okay, Allison, the floor is yours.”

 

Well, to begin with you’ve got to remember that the businesses of all of these men are very large and sophisticated and they conduct thousands of transactions every day. It would be a monumental task, to track every one of them and, frankly, not the best use of our time. So, instead I began by looking for abnormalities in the daily, weekly and monthly banking transactions, deposits, withdrawals, wire transfers both incoming and outgoing, letters of credit, loan drawdowns, etc. I looked at the transactions that took place the month before these people dropped out of sight and every day thereafter up to today. At first nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Then I noticed some unusual bank transactions generated by various corporate entities belonging to Basil Halkias. They started out under one corporate name with an account at Banco Di Roma in Rome and went to an account under another name at Banco Di Napoli in Naples and then on to an account under another name at Credito Italiano in Genoa and finally to another account again under another name at Unicredito Italiano in Bergamo. What attracted my attention was the size of these transactions. They were unusually small, on average a few thousand Eursos each and there were quite a few of them. Unicredito Italiano is a huge bank with customers and operations in 22 countries, so a customer could go into a branch anywhere and with proper ID conduct their business.”

 

Hank said, “So this doesn’t really lead us anywhere does it?”

 

“On the surface, no, but the revelation that Halkias has recently initiated an abnormal number of small transactions in Italian banks has struck an imaginative chord in my noggin. The size of these transactions could be associated with the costs of setting up housekeeping somewhere. The amounts are typical for utilities, furnishings, renovations, etc. The new base of operations for our desperados could be somewhere in Northern Italy.

 

“Now for my coup de grace. This morning a whopper of a wire transfer, $100,000,000 U. S. Dollars, originating at Unicredito Italiano in Bergamo, went through the same rigmarole as the small payments I just described, but wound up at the First National Bank in Johannesburg, South Africa in the account of some precious metals dealer, Amalgamated Metals. If I remember correctly, one of the people we’re hunting, David Zadikoff, is a dealer in precious metals.

 

“Therefore, folks, I think we’re safe to assume that our prey has fled to somewhere in Northern Italy. That’s still a lot of ground to cover, but it’s better than the whole world.”

 

For a moment there was quiet as everybody mentally digested what Allison had given them. Joel was the one who broke the silence with, “Great job, Allison. This definitely gives us a leg up in our hunt for these animals. Hank, we’ll have to get this information out to the various intelligence agencies working with us on this and, Barb, pass this on to your people as well.”

 

Hank looked lost in thought for a second, but he snapped out of it and said, “Maybe the tide is finally leaving our beaches and giving us some room to maneuver. I’ve got one last good tidbit of news for all of you. Ashok, why don’t you tell them?”

 

“I’ve finally managed to come up with a way to deal with the latest virus our enemy has foisted upon us. Bill Caruthers’ people and I were able to isolate the data the virus uses to identify the circuitry it is designed to invade and destroy. The normal firewalls are like Swiss cheese to this virus so I came up with a way to make the holes in the Swiss cheese bigger and more appealing to the virus and created circuitry using the identifiers it will key in on to direct it to a sub-program which it will immediately begin to attack, but as quickly as it destroys the meaningless data it will be recreated starting a perpetual cycle that will continue until the computer system is shut down thus rendering the virus harmless. We can use the same distribution methods we used for the first countermeasures.”

 

Smiles broke out all around the room. Kirk Dodson pointed at Hank and said, “Maybe this time around we can corner them, box them in, and give you your chance to kick some ass.”

 

Hank’s smile grew even wider as he said, “Oh how I’m looking forward to that.”

 

Shortly after, the meeting adjourned and Joel and Ashok headed for the airport. Ashok was a little nervous as he wasn’t too fond of planes, especially small planes, especially after what Joel, Barbara, Collette and Tania had recently gone through in the recent storm. After they arrived at the airport, Joel got the weather report, filed a flight plan, did his outside walk around and was now finishing up with his pre-flight check list.

 

“ Everything’s cool, Ashok. Clear skies and gentle winds all the way to Washington. There’s nothing to be worried about.”

 

“If you say so, but the girls told me that’s what you told them before you took off for home the last time you flew back East and look what happened.”

 

“Okay, the weather can be fickle sometimes, but that’s the exception not the rule. We’ll be fine.”

 

“Just get me to Washington in one piece. That’ll make it easier for me to screw up enough courage for the flight back.”

 

Joel smiled and Ashok returned the smile, but his was much more sickly. “Flying is definitely for the birds.”

 

A few minutes later they were taxiing out to the runway where they would wait for final take off clearance. When they were cleared for takeoff, Joel revved the engines and started down the runway. The Cessna T182T Skylane soared up off the runway and into the wild blue yonder without any effort at all while Ashok was sure his stomach was still on the ground.

 

However, after an hour or so he began to show signs of enjoying the experience. He started asking questions about landmarks he was seeing on the ground and about the instruments in the cockpit. By the time they landed in Washington, he was quite settled down and actually enjoyed the landing process. “Now, that wasn’t so bad was it?”

 

“No, but I don’t think I’ll ever be a flying enthusiast. Like that song says, ‘these feet were made for walking’. That’s me. I even get nervous on trains, buses and in cars. My fear has nothing to do with the devices. It has everything to do with the nuts driving them, present company excluded of course.”

 

They both had a good laugh and headed for the White House.