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Gray World

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By

J. B. Wright

Copyright 20011   All Rights Reserved.

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“In the war between falsehood and truth, falsehood often wins the first battle, but truth wins the last.”     -   Mujibur Ruhman

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“Fear does the work of reason” - Winston Churchill

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HR 3162 RDS

107th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. R. 3162

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

October 24, 2001

An Act

H.R 3162

To deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes.

Short Title

The “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism” (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001

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Prologue

Faint light of an early fall morning draped unevenly across the shoulders of two English foot soldiers as they swaggered purposefully, albeit with noticeable difficulty, along the rutted and muddy cart path that served as the main road leading northwards away from the village of Wight in Northeastern Scotland.  Conscripted decades earlier to the King’s army, the year was now 1632 and the newly christened Deputy Constables of the Lord High Sheriff of Kent, the English lion on their faded red tunics a threadbare witness to past glories, proceeded, as most men do when given even the least amount of power over other men, to exercise that authority without regard for consequence by kicking down the door of William Ross, a less than poor and inappropriately titled farmer.  The sodden Deputy Constables sought the last few coins William possessed as payment for taxes the Lord High Sheriff had declared in arrears on the small acreage that was William’s only possession of true value in this world and sole means of survival

Still numbed from their separate binges of drinking and brawling the night before, their minds incapable of reasoning, the three men bypassed any verbal exchange and quickly engaged in the inevitable physical confrontation.  With grunts and groans and steam shooting from grimy nostrils, their mouths sucked in the dank air as knotted fists fell heavily upon heads still groggy from the previous night’s futile attempts at oblivion.  The two lowly Deputy Constables, not so much seeking the taxes in blind obeisance, but more so for the half of which would be theirs as Protectors of the Law, were thrown off balance, surprised by the farmer’s strength and fearlessness.  And William’s blackened unwashed hands refused to lessen their death grip on the coins as he knew the unjust taxes would leave him penniless, unable to buy food during the coming winter.  Ferociously he unleashed his hatred of everything English upon the men in front of him.

The struggle was not between good and evil nor any great test of truth.  It wasn’t a battle of strategies and tactics or men matching strengths against deserving foes or blows thrust and parried with any purposeful skill.  This was a common brawl between angered men.  William Ross, a fair-sized man not quite six feet tall, thick-chested, muscled from hard work, lean from meager meals, his fair skin and silver-blue eyes a rarity, dark brown hair worn long as was the Scottish tradition, stood his ground believing he had all right on his side refusing to relinquish what was his and knowing if he did, he and his wife would starve, for winter was soon upon them.  Right or wrong would not decide the outcome of this confrontation; strength, agility, determination, rage, fear, greed and brutality were weapons that mattered.  But, a woman’s courage would prove the most powerful weapon this day.

The fight was brief.  The first soldier lunged through the opening large enough for only one person at a time to pass through and where moments before the thick roughhewn door had been hanging on weather worn and cracked leather hinges.  Grabbing a hung-over William by the front of his shirt and pushing him backwards a few steps they both fell the “soldier christened constable” landing on top of William in the middle of the main room.  The home was one large room with old quilts and blankets strung up between the rafters giving the appearance of separate rooms.  A thick table crudely built from narrow logs and two squared legged chairs were off to the left of a smooth rock fireplace built into the sidewall that also served as their cooking stove.  The ramshackle dirt house, whose walls should have fallen years ago, but though bowed, somehow still held up the newly thatched roof William had finished a few weeks earlier, and endless mud patches plugging holes and cracks the rain and wind never ceased creating, had a low ceiling, high enough so only an average sized man could stand up straight with an inch or two to spare, large 8 x 8 wooden beams crisscrossing in square patterns, no windows and a less-than level dirt floor, always swept clean by William’s wife Margaret, a woman of slight build and medium stature, clear black eyes set deep and wide on an oval face that most people in the village considered more than handsome.  Her long, deep auburn hair was worn braided and beaded, drawn around the sides of her head, falling waist high down her back as was the custom of the times, the dark colored home spun sweater that covered her from just below her chin to the knees with sleeves longer than her arms, hung loosely on her slight frame, covering the long grey dress, clean, but displaying the effects of hard labor, and leather moccasins that shod bare feet as she had no boots or socks.  The “main” room was the size of a small horse barn that made maneuvering, even if it had been considered during the fight, impossible.  The second soldier, a rather smallish and wiry man to be an infantry foot soldier, followed quickly behind the first drawing a small dagger from his waistband moving to the side of the two men grappling clumsily at each other on the floor like two bloated bears fighting over a kill.  As he reached for William’s head, the soldier’s face contorted into a pained grimace, his fouled breath exploding into a gurgled scream as blood quickly filled his throat - dead as he fell sideways to the left of William’s shoulder.  The first soldier was a large man over six feet tall weighing more than two hundred pounds with huge forearms laced with spiderweb-like scars, the lasting evidence of many victorious encounters with knives.  He had pinned William’s neck with his left arm while reaching for the dagger tucked in his belt with his free hand.  When the blood from his partner’s mouth spurted into his eyes, he momentarily looked away from William to seek the source.  At the moment the soldier looked away, William shot his right hand into the soldier’s throat forcing him upwards and over to the side enough for William to roll out from underneath him.  But in seeking the source of the blood the deputy constable only saw Margaret with the kitchen axe raised above her head beginning the downward blow that would end the fight.

When the hard-fisted banging on the front door began, Margaret Ross had been standing behind the old checkered pattern quilt hanging from one of the beams towards the rear of the home.  As the soldiers stumbled through the front door opening, instinctively she had moved quickly to the woodbin next to the fireplace, pulling the small axe from behind the wooden box that held chopped firewood used for the cooking fire.  Without hesitation, her eyes locking on the three men in the middle of the room, she took the few steps to the soldier reaching for her husband’s head and plunged the small axe into the upper part of his neck as easily as if she were cutting wood.  She took no notice knowing she had killed him, raising the axe for the next blow.  Her aim was true being honed from years and years of chopping large logs into the smaller sticks needed for cooking fires.  She struck the other soldier who was now turning to look at her splitting the top of his head neatly.  Swiftly she had killed both men rescuing her husband from certain death and herself from at the very least a savage beating, and more probably rape and death.

Yet their deaths had only been postponed and were now a quick certainty if they stayed in Wight.  No words were exchanged as they unhesitatingly gathered what they could carry, only a slight shaking of William’s head as he fingered the so much desired bits of silver in his purse. 

“Well, Maggie, my love, seems we have tossed a fairly large stone into a still pond this time.  Lord, help us that the ripples don’t catch up to us before we find a better place.”  William said, looking gratefully into the eyes of the only woman he had ever loved.  They passed silently through the opening where once the front door to their home had hung, moving quickly with a hurriedness known only by those running for their lives and praying no one would see them disappear.

In 1764, John Foster came face to face with the legacy of his ancestry.  A hundred years earlier, his great grandmother had fled with her husband from her home in Northern Scotland to Ireland changing their names and hoping that the recent past would not find its way across the Irish Sea.  They could not have chosen a more miserable sanctuary.  Shortly after their arrival, her husband died from winter exposure being too weak from a lack of food to fight off a common cold.  He left her with a few pennies, the dregs of the silver coins that had been the catalyst for their misfortune, the clothes on her back, worn through at every joint, and certain death should she be found.  

Death would not claim Margaret Ross so soon.  She had remarried within six months to another penniless farmer named Edmund Foster.  She bore him four children: a son, Eric, who died a few hours after birth; a son, Michael, who died from cholera when he was five; a daughter, Katelyn, and another son, Bruce, who was John Foster’s grandfather.  Edmund Foster descended from the Bruce clan, a direct descendant of Robert the Bruce, the rightful heir to the Scottish throne; Margaret Ross Foster, came through the Anrais clan, later to be known as the Ross, having married her second cousin, William, when she was fourteen.  Edmund fell in love with Margaret instantly, though Margaret’s attraction was more objective: she needed to survive and he provided the means.  Edmund knew all about the English and their laws, also having fled Scotland with a death sentence on his head for poaching deer from the King’s lands.  Ireland was dying a painful and tormented death delivered with proper English cruelty and conviction.  For this reason, and the slimmest of hope for a better life and perhaps to gain a modicum of freedom from the English boot across the neck of all the Irish, Edmund sold his son and daughter into servitude in the American Colonies. 

Now, John Foster, the great grandson of Margaret Ross and Edmund Foster, grandson of Bruce Foster, son of Michael Henry Foster, stood in the town square of Hallsbury, Massachusetts with 13 other men in the late afternoon heat, facing the very same cause of his legacy not fifty paces in front of him. He was about to toss another big rock into a still pond for less than twenty four hours had passed since six British soldiers had ransacked his neighbor’s home, terrorized the children, ripped his wife’s clothes from her chest, stolen personal property, beat and left him senseless all in the cause of protecting King George from colonists suspected of bearing arms against the Crown.  No illegal arms had been found; no evidence of any attempt to incite revolt.  But, the law was on the side of the soldiers as the British magistrate for the district had ordered the search and seizure of property pursuant to right and authority under the law.  The fourteen men in the town square had come to the Magistrate’s office earlier in the day to claim their neighbor’s property, which in their minds had been blatantly stolen, and to file grievances against the soldiers for their unwarranted brutality towards a woman and her children.  Earlier they had been met with disdain and turned away by bayonets.  This time the fourteen men did not come to talk.  They came to fight.

They didn’t fire shots heard round the world nor what happened have any effect outside of Hallsbury for the first few days.  But, John Foster and his neighbors killed five British soldiers and one Magistrate that afternoon, losing two of their own and changing their lives forever.  By nightfall of the next day, a warrant for the arrest of the remaining twelve men had been issued by the British Commander of the District, virtually assuring their imprisonment, quick trial and hanging.  Fleeing southward, John Foster took only what he and his wife could pack onto their plow horse, mostly food, some clothes and bedding, and a Bible.  Again, a home was abandoned and the Ross legacy extended one more generation.

Chapter One

Monotonously peering at the over-sized monitor, her head motionless, upper body slanted slightly backwards, eyes moving rapidly side to side in their sockets as if she were in a deep REM sleep, tracking and checking the green alpha-numeric codes as quickly as they appeared at the beginning of a line marching rhythmically to an unheard cadence towards the right side of the large LCD screen, Alice Gayle had been a fixture in the “golden tomb” for over five years, an eternity in this department, so labeled by its internment four floors beneath street level and its mission: monitoring the ebb and flow of monetary bank transactions throughout the European Union.  The Interpol International Banking Department in Geneva had judiciously been placed far below the main floor after the “electronic meltdown” eight years earlier during the summer of record high temperatures when the air conditioning system had either failed due overloading or had been sabotaged.  The results were the same regardless.  Every computer system above ground level had fried leaving the eavesdropping services virtually deaf and dumb and totally useless.  The computer system administrators of the major banks knew almost instantaneously that their wire transfers were no longer being monitored and within mere minutes that news became a firestorm racing unchecked into all corners of the world as if driven by an unrelenting Santa Ana wind.  Money crisscrossed the continents with impunity.  Although the banks had paper trails it would take thousands of man hours, literally twenty years to manually check each wire transfer for legalities; an impossible task given the present human resources of Interpol and the banking institutions.  Terrorism during the next 2 years increased 300%.  The United States suffered the first successful act of foreign terrorism on its own soil on September 11, 2001.

The Department was now its own sunken island - a fully self-sufficient, self-contained, self- powered facility resembling nothing like its predecessor - a clean room of the highest order built of glass and plastic and wood, fourteen curved cubicles arranged in semi-circles radiating out from a center console.  Nothing inside or outside this room could possibly endanger or disrupt its precious activities. 

Slowly, as if a hidden hand crank were ratcheting her upwards, her index finger clicking her computer mouse with increasing speed, each downward motion of her finger becoming more pronounced and  purposeful, her body stops slightly past upright remaining motionless except for her finger.  The pulsing starts in her neck shooting downward through her arms reaching the tips of her fingers exploding onto her keyboard.  She has been “live” monitoring the daily wire transfers in excess of $10 million Euros during the actual transfer carefully noting the “from” bank and the “to” bank on each line of small white letters dutifully comparing the routing numbers with the accredited banking codes for each end of the transfer. Sometimes the transfers are routed through more than one bank picking up more funds until the transfer reaches its destination.  Methodically her eyes move across each line of her computer screen checking each phase of the transfer as it happens.  Line 377 has no end numbers.   She checks and re-checks her diagnostics program quickly.  Still no end numbers.  Beginning numbers, picked up funds in the middle numbers, then blank.  $11.8 million Euros vanished.  Line 378 begins with the same originating bank code numbers as Line 377 but a different middle routing bank increasing the fund amount and again no end numbers.  $10.3 million Euros vanished.  She can’t stop the diagnostics.  She can’t leave her station.  Line 379 begins with the same originating bank code numbers as Line 378; again a different middle routing bank with increased funds and again no end bank termination codes.  Line 377 is now gone completely; only blank spaces after 377.  Line 378 is gone now too.  Line 379 is gone also.  Line 380 begins.  New originating bank codes, no middle routing bank and this time there are end bank termination code numbers.  $11.4 million Euros left Credit Suisse in Geneva and reached Bank Brussels Lambert successfully and without incident.

Sixty-three seconds have passed since Line 377 began. 

Sitting in the specially fitted ergonomic chair she had spent months and months haranguing her boss about, endlessly explaining that the cost of the chair would be much less than the cost to repair her back, for which,  of course, the department would take a direct hit on an already over-extended budget, she was now bent crisply at the waist, her upper torso as taunt as a piano wire stretched perilously close to emitting that awful twang when finally snapping and whipping around cutting and stinging everything it touched, Alice Gayle’s gaze was transfixed and immovable, her head steady but eyes cutting side to side, up and down, back and forth almost at light speed.  She could find no trace of the wire transfers she knew she had seen.  Without a shadow of a doubt she had seen the numbers appear, then move across the screen as expected, disappearing at the end like ships dropping off the edge of a flat world into nothingness. 

In a sparsely furnished though well-lighted back office of the reconciliation department of a bank outside of
Cairo two men exchange whispers: Is the money here?  Yes. Any traces?  No.  Good.  Send it out as instructed.  Yes.

Chapter Two

Early spring in Northern Utah is a magnificent reminder of promised sunshine, but especially this year after an unusually mild winter had nevertheless deposited the usual measure of snow in the mountains, but had not brought the unbearable cold that accompanies the soul piercing winds when they race out of the funnel-like canyons.  It had been a good winter for the house, at least in terms of not too much cracking from the ice nestled unnoticed in the ever-deepening crevices in the bricks, now emptying with each upward step of the thermometer.  Still, there had been problems with the old transformers that hung slightly sideways on ancient poles clutching desperately as if trying not to fall.  The electric cooperative had promised to replace them last summer, but as with most rural cooperatives, time and promises made were unrelated.  Six times the power had gone out, the last time for over two days, leaving the house without lights and water because the water well operated with two submerged electric pumps.  The backup generator that, luckily Jack thought at the time, had been bought on the Internet for a few hundred dollars only put out a maximum of 500 watts; not even enough to power up the kitchen microwave when the pumps were turned on.  He hadn’t been able to find any deals on a 15,000-watt home emergency generator that would automatically switch on during a power failure, so Jack had ordered one through the Farmer’s Co-Op in Tremonton.  He could have waited until next fall, but by then prices would have reflected the demand of the season, and he is, if nothing else, a bargain shopper.

It is Saturday, Jack’s day to enjoy the peace and solitude of driving into town, a drive he makes alone every Saturday, weather permitting, to rub elbows with other men, share male banter, and rejuvenate his beleaguered testosterone, as most days the Tahoe is packed with overexcited teenage girls catching up on all events since they talked last night.  His daughter Jacey, who just turned fourteen last September, hates to ride the school bus and without fail manages not to wake up in time to catch it.  Jack adores his youngest daughter and admittedly spoils her much to the chagrin of her older sister, Sally, whom he equally adores and spoils, though she does not acknowledge that small detail.  His wife, Piedad, just acts the bemused spectator to this wonderful circus of father and daughters.  So, without fail he drives his two daughters and his next door neighbor’s two daughters the 11 miles to school every day.

But, this Saturday, his eleven mile drive of meditation and peaceful thoughts of fixing the problems of the previous winter has been abandoned, not by choice, but by self-preserving acquiescence to the coaxing of his wife and daughters who for some unexplained reasoning felt this was the perfect opportunity to tag along.  He is euphorically happy with these three women in his life living on 30 acres of magnificent meadow snuggled up against the foothills on the eastern side of the Wasatch mountain range outside of Tremonton, Utah.  He lives the life he always dreamed of, in the place he always wanted to live, with the only woman he ever has and ever will love.

“Daddy?” The word floats softly forward from the backseat of the Tahoe, drawn out lazily for the sweetness it is intended to convey.  “Yes, Jacey?” Jack lengthens the “yes” into a six second word mimicking his youngest daughter’s more than practiced approach to asking for something she really wants, acknowledging he knows what is coming next.

Even softer than the “Daddy” comes the question, “Can I get a new CD?”  “How much money do you have?” Jack asks coyly, hoping this is an opportunity to teach an all-important monetary lesson.  “Well, I have $32 dollars, but $12 has to go to Syd for the party on Friday since her mom has paid for everything already, and I promised Michelle I would pay her back the $5 dollars she loaned me last week for lunch by getting her some new eye shadow like Kristen has, but I want some too, so that will be $10 which leaves me only $10 and the CD I want costs $14, but I need the $10 for lunch money this week, so can you buy me the CD?”

“You borrowed lunch money?” he asks with that lost in space quizzical look accompanied by the slow side-to-side headshake whenever his daughter informs him of something she shouldn’t be doing. “What happened to the money I gave you that was supposedly for lunch this week?” craning his neck upward and peering into the rear-view mirror hoping the displeasured look on his face somehow ricochets into the back seat.

“I had to buy two books to read for Utah history or else I would have gotten a C on mid-term”, comes the I had no choice but to spend my lunch money on something else reply.

“Ever heard the term “library book?” so easily comes the sarcasm; and, he wonders where she got the smart-ass attitude.

 “Yes, I have heard the term. And, for your information both books were already checked out until next month” said in her best highly offended, indignant voice. “Would you rather I get a C or spend my lunch money?” Jacey asks her father already knowing that she has him swinging in the wind like a kite without its tail.

He exhales slowly, deeply, emptying his lungs of any trace of air that might have enabled him to utter another disastrous word thereby extending the lost debate.  “Ok, you can have the CD, but next time before you spend your lunch money, come ask me to buy the books.  I don’t want you going without lunch again.  Are we clear on this?”

“Yes, we are clear, but I didn’t go without lunch, that’s why I borrowed the $5 from Michelle,” she says in her weren’t-you-paying-attention tone. 

“She is so much like her grandmother it makes my teeth hurt.”  Jack whispers to himself, the thought winding its way through his brain slowly, painfully, again leaving its trail of memories littered with wistfulness and sadness and melancholy.  Smiles do not come to him easily or often when he thinks of his mother.  Through her lineage, Jack’s ancestors received a land grant from the Mexican government in 1823, legitimizing their presence on the banks of Oyster Creek, a tributary of the Brazos River near what is now called Sugar Land, Texas, since they had already settled there 2 years earlier.  They had made the hard migration from Virginia in a wagon train with 37 other families, hoping to find land to call their own, since there was none available in Virginia that wasn’t already owned, spoken for or passed on to heirs.  They were made part of the original 300 families that Moses and Stephen Austin had convinced the Mexican government were vital to the growth of the Texas territory.  These were tough, freedom minded people of Scottish and Celtic origins.  They had endured much harshness at the hands of the Virginia landowners, who boasted of good English Christian ancestry, yet still scoffed and spit at the Scots and Irish workers as though the revolution that had guaranteed freedom and equality for all only applied to the landowners.  They hoped for a better existence in another country just to the west of the United States.  They had no loyalty to a country that promised freedom but delivered more oppression.  The Original Old 300 of Texas they were called; it was their toughness that gave Texas its reputation as a land of hard men and even harder women.

One such Texas woman was Dorralie Ross, Jack’s mother.  Dorralie didn’t let anyone tell her what, when or how to do anything.  She was high school and self-educated, having read every book in her father’s library collection, a history professor turned prison warden when the private college where he had tenure went broke; and, by life on a farm next to one of Texas’ state prisons, whose trustees worked the farm her father owned, one of the perks of being the Top Man in that part of the Texas Penal System.  She talked with and gave orders to any trustee that came close enough to hear her voice, walking alongside convicted murderers, rapists, and thieves, black or white or brown, never once fearing their violent natures, for all trustees, and for that matter, every inmate in Sugar Land Prison, knew her father Benjamin Wade Ross and the suffering he could impose on a man who crossed him.  All knew that being in the deepest, darkest hole in the ground would be a heaven compared to what Ben Ross would do to the man who laid a hand on his daughter or uttered a foul word in her presence.  Nothing bad could ever touch her on the farm.  It was their home, their sanctuary and inviolate space.  No one came onto the farm uninvited without regretting they had done so.

Dorralie married Dean Wright just after being mustered out of the Navy at the end of World War II.  She had served honorably as a Wave, enlisting right out of high school, and breaking her father’s heart.  She was twenty-two, beautiful and head strong, jet-black hair and dark eyes, with a smile to melt a man.  He was a tall, blonde, good-looking, slow talking Chief Petty Officer from Oklahoma who had been a yeoman to two admirals.  Both had been stationed at the Naval Air Station in Norman, Oklahoma soon after the war ended to help with the closure of the base.  He had seen heavy action in the Pacific; she had seen heavy action in New York City.  They had three children, Deanne, Jack, and Wade, and then divorced.  The Texas woman was too much for the quiet Oklahoma man.  Dorralie and the children went home to Sugar Land, back to the safety of the farm.

Jack, the middle child and eldest son, attended Oklahoma University.   A die-hard Sooner fan bleeding Crimson and Cream when cut, after five years working nights at a campus convenience store he had earned a Summa Cum Laude degree in Business Finance with a minor in Political Science, thinking one day he would be a lawyer.  But, succumbing to the sirenistic lure and promised riches of the fledgling computer industry, he began creating business software for International banking corporations becoming an Internet junkie along the way.  He met Piedad Anna, a student in Political Affairs at Rice University, while on a skiing trip to Utah two years before graduating.  Oddly, she had grown up in Alvin, just 30 miles from Sugar Land down Highway 6, the middle child of a middle income Hispanic family trying hard to fit in with middle class Texas, speaking only English at home, but not forgetting how to cook rice and beans the traditional way.  She was brought up with strict Catholic values, fiercely loyal to her family and more stubborn than a Texas mule, or as she now insisted, just very focused and determined.  They fell completely in love within 30 minutes of sighting each other and were married a week after Jack graduated.

As average as they may have appeared, extraordinarily normal described their lives.  Walking down the street, no one would ever notice them.  So un-intrusive were they upon anyone’s senses that what they began no one who knew them could ever have imagined.

“Drop us off at the drugstore, ok?  And remember to meet us at the café around noon.  Don’t make me come looking for you!” Piedad said with that smile that had melted him instantly years ago but always seemed like yesterday, playfully threatening him, then kissing him on the lips as she stared straight into his eyes.  “I love you Jack Wright.  Say hello to Bobby for me.  And don’t forget to ask him about the turkey fertilizer for the garden, assuming you still plan on growing the “mother of all tomato gardens”, and pick up the bulb catalog, ok?”

Not waiting for an answer, out the Tahoe doors the three of them went, Sally waving over her shoulder.  She had been quiet the entire drive into town.  She had just turned sixteen two weeks earlier, failing her first driving test when she tapped the bumper of the car in back while endeavoring to parallel park.  She was exactly like Piedad: failures hit her hard, but never knocked her out.  She would turn inward, steeling herself with a formidable determination, never quitting until she either succeeded or died.  Jack was more than a proud and adoring father as he gazed at the back of her long dark hair walking into the drug store: he was in awe of his oldest daughter.  In his mind, there was nothing Sally could not accomplish.  She was a brilliant student, president of the state champion debate team as a junior, a national essay finalist, played left wing on the soccer team, and could shred the slopes with the best of them.   They discussed and debated politics constantly.  Her beliefs were strong, her integrity stronger and she loved her family above all else. 

It was Sally’s love of politics and debate that was the root cause of the only noticeable sign of uncomfortable ripples in their lives.  During a debate in her Modern Government class, she had enthusiastically defended the actions of an Islamic cleric, living in Vermont and a United States citizen, accused of funneling funds raised for a registered charity to bank accounts in London registered to another Islamic group that was suspected of supporting a suspected terrorist.  After being detained for several months by the Justice Department for questioning, denied legal counsel, having all of his records and possessions removed from his office, his house searched without a warrant, and other legitimate rights ignored, he was released without charges ever being filed, with no explanation given other than “he was detained under provisions of the Patriot Act”.  The cleric filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the United States government.  The lingering echoes of Sally’s zealous defense of the cleric had seeped out of the cracked plaster walls of the Modern Government classroom and into the school’s narrow hallways, tickling the ears and coating the tongues of her less than admiring fellow students.  The black spores of rumors began to sift through the drafty cracks of the old high school halls, catching the winds of fear and landing on the fertile ground of an isolationist and paranoid small Utah town populace.

Chapter Three

“Hey, Roger. How goes your morning?” Jack says opening the semi-ancient front door to the Farmer’s Co-Op and stepping into what serves as the customer service area the old wide plank floor worn bare and curving up at the seams.   The door with its countless coats of what once was white paint, cracked as if it were the Great Salt Lake during the worst drought with glass panes opaquely brown due a dedicated lack of cleaning, has been the portal for more than five generations of farmers, ranchers and ordinary citizens of Northern Utah all woven into a fraternity sharing more than a love of the hard life living in the upper mountain meadows, but kindred spirits of simple life values.   The elderly man at the counter sitting on one of the three old chrome barstools with torn edges of a thick plastic yellow Pennzoil cover slowly lifts his elbows off the countertop and cranes his eyes an inch or two above the top of the newspaper spread open in his hands.  Using the interruption to take a gulp of warm coffee from the conspicuously out of place new Starbucks cup on the old rippled countertop, the man emits evenly spaced words, “the same as every other morning, but you already knew that, right?”  Roger Burdette, Tremonton’s reluctantly elected new mayor, had been coming to the Co-Op every Saturday to read the paper, drink coffee and talk since the day he came home from the Pacific at the end of World War Two.  Today was no exception.  During the week, he only came to the Co-Op in the afternoons to pick up supplies for his 200-acre dairy farm because he didn’t have any time to dawdle with conversation.  But, on weekends his youngest son was home from USU to tend to the farm just as his other four sons had done, so Saturday was his day to rub elbows with his contemporaries, namely Bobby Phillips, the owner of the Co-Op and Jes Parks, Cache Valley County Sheriff.  Sundays, he was in church sitting alongside his wife, which was the only concession he made when they married: he wouldn’t join the church, but he would always go with her and in 45 years of marriage, he had only missed a handful of Sundays when something had been wrong with the cows.  “Cows don’t know it’s Sunday.  They have to be milked everyday come rain or shine”, he liked to remind her, reinforcing his only excuse whenever he needed a break from the forever- proselytizing Mormons.

“New coffee cup, eh?” Jack acknowledges the presence of the cup, nodding his head towards Roger with the all-knowing grin of past events.  “Well?  What else was I supposed to do after the temper tantrum of you know who”?  Turning his head and leading with his chin in the direction of the double door opened to the back room of the Co-Op.  Roger always used his chin to point, the same as everyone else uses their index finger, pushing it upwards and towards whatever object or point in space he wants you to see.   “I had to buy it myself too!” The indignation is only pretended. 

Jack nods his head clicking an “OK” out of the side of this mouth, intentionally bypassing the intended lead-in to a lengthy re-counting about the Starbucks coffee cup quickly ducking into the back room where 50 and 100 pound sacks of the many varieties of feed, seed and fertilizer lie in comfortable and undisturbed stacks touching the thick wooden rafters of the fourteen-foot ceiling.  “Hey Bobert, where are you?” Jack yells, opening up the twisted antique screen door at the rear of the storage room that screeches like an old hen laying her first egg of the morning, calling to his best friend Bobby Phillips by the nickname he had given him the first time they had met. 

Pulling up to the Co-Op, having just dropped the girls off a few blocks away in the four square block area of downtown Tremonton, and effusively promising to meet them in two hours for lunch at the Mountain View Café next door to Margaret’s Gifts and Cards where they had planned to end the all purpose shopping expedition, Jack was surprised that there were only two trucks parked in the wide path of gravel that served as a parking lot, as usually by this time on a Saturday morning the local citizenry were out shopping and the “farmer’s coalition” had gathered around the oak table near the front windows for their weekly analysis of the current state of affairs in the county.  

The Co-Op started out in 1858 as a way station for settlers traveling from Salt Lake City up into the northern part of the territory, keeping the necessary supplies of food, seed, blankets, rifles and ammunition, wagon parts, and bibles.  Within a few years, it had evolved into a bustling outpost where trappers, soldiers, Indians and those passing through could trade goods and information.  By the late 1800’s, the trapping had died out completely and Northern Utah was fast becoming famous for the dark, fertile soil that would grow anything well; cattlemen loved the sweet hay it produced along with the plentiful water supply provided by the spring runoffs.   During that period of time, Bobby’s family had been buying other farms, enlarging their grazing pastures, and consolidating their hold on the farm supply business.  By 1919, when Bobby’s grandfather inherited sole title to everything, the Farmer’s Co-Op was the only source within 50 miles for farm equipment, seed, and feed. The large wooden rectangular building with the barn-pitched roof, high storefront windows, double door entrance, and elevated loading dock for easy loading, was built the next year in the center of Tremonton.

During the week, more than several of the farmers who owned most of the land in and around Tremonton would be lounging against the main counter, deep in conversation or “light philosophical banter” as Bobby termed it, about the news and events of the area.  But, on weekends the non-farmers, those customers looking for help with their gardens or lawns, descended upon the Co-op outnumbering the farmers ten to one.  Jack was surprised not to see Bobby behind the counter.  Regardless of the Co-op’s activity level, you could always count on Bobby to be behind the counter on a Saturday morning, drinking coffee from his Utah State University cup and reading the Salt Lake Tribune, the “Independent Voice of Utah Since 1894”, the self-proclaimed title crying out from atop every page.  Since Bobby is an avowed jack-mormon, as are most of the farmers that frequent the Co-Op, and dislikes the LDS Church sponsored Deseret News for its decidedly Mormon slant of all issues, he keeps a copy of it on hand just so he can keep his eyes on the “holier-than-thous” as he has christened the editors and columnists of the paper.  Whomever was present during the impromptu town meetings, as the Saturday morning sessions had been dubbed owing to the fact that the patrons of the Co-Op controlled the majority of the city council and the mayor’s office, would move to the chairs around the roughhewn oak table in the corner by the storefront windows to rest their legs but never their tongues, leaving Bobby some time to do his work. 

Bobby quit being an active member of the LDS Church fifteen years ago when he found his wife in bed with the Second Counselor in the Bishopric, divorced her and then was disfellowshipped by the Bishop for divorcing her.  He could never understand the Bishop’s rationale: if you can’t forgive her, then you can’t be a good Priesthood holder, so you have to be disfellowshipped until you can forgive her, never mind that she didn’t want forgiveness in the first place, passionately demanding a divorce.  The adultery was only an eventuality of the cancer that had eaten away the marriage. Bobby gave her what she wanted and the Church punished him.  He forgave his wife for the indiscretion, but could never forgive the Church for adding to his humiliation. 

Bobby and Jack had been close friends since meeting at the Co-Op the first week after Jack and Piedad moved to Tremonton, not knowing at the time that they were next door neighbors:  the back end of Bobby’s 800 acre ranch butted up against the north side of Jack’s “ranchette”, Bobby was so fond of calling it, grinning that “welcome Pilgrim” grin of his.  The Farmer’s Co-Op wasn’t exactly a cooperative in the usual rural interpretation, as Bobby’s family had owned it for the past 100 years, so calling it a cooperative made everyone feel like they had a vested interest in the business. It was the only farmer’s supply within 30 miles, perched in the same spot in town, in the same building that had never been remodeled, upgraded, added on to or improved, except for the utilities.  The Farmer’s Co-Op had operated under the same business credo for all those years:  treat everyone like family - most of them are anyway.

“I’m back on the dock trying to unwrap that behemoth you ordered.  Get on back here and help me.  This thing weighs a ton, literally.  You couldn’t have bought a smaller one, could you?”  Bobby’s aggravation was more a put-on than real, since he was the one that had recommended the electricity-generating monster in the first place.  He still didn’t have the strength in his back yet after contracting a bacteria last year on a fishing trip to Mexico that almost killed him, but had only helped along his already deteriorating back muscles.  During the last winter, Jack had gone over every morning after a snow and cleared Bobby’s driveway, which is a complete misnomer, since the snaking road up to Bobby’s house was at least two miles from mailbox to front door.  Jack had become quite an expert with Bobby’s old Chevy 4x4 pick-up with the snow plow on the front, missing most of the fence posts on the first pass but demolishing the mailbox stand.  Every morning and afternoon, Jack would check on the cattle, dropping off the requisite bales of hay and breaking the ice on the water troughs.   The bond between them had become indestructible.

“Whoa, no kidding!”  Jack’s eyes were dancing merrily around the very, very large wooden crate that only allowed the top of Bobby’s head to be visible.  The candy store had come to the kids. The crate was sitting on the edge of a loading dock that was a 50 feet long and 30 foot wide slab of 2 x 12 boards built on old telephone poles cut in 8 ft lengths, buried 4 feet down and positioned 3 ft apart.  The dock ran across the back of the Co-Op, with the screen door opening onto the middle of the dock.  The generator was a little off to the south side of the door. 

“Did you know this sucker was this big?” he asked Bobby with the already-doubting-the-veracity-of-the-answer tone in his voice.  “Nope.”  The answer came as Bobby shook his head and smirked, cutting his eyes over to his friend and waiting for the retort that always came a split second later.  But, when their eyes met all that came out of their mouths were snorts, chortles, half-laughs, and then a belly busting uproar.  They were both laughing so hard, the tears squeezed out of eyes shut from disbelief at what they had bought, since Bobby took equal credit for finding the electrical savior as Jack did for buying it.

“Well, grab that other pry-bar over there and let’s take a look at this puppy”, came the order from the former Viet Nam era Marine Lieutenant, whose son is also a Marine, First Sergeant Robbie Phillips, stationed in Twenty-Nine Palms, after serving two tours in Iraq. Bobby’s father, the first Phillips to be a Marine, PFC Robert Phillips had served in the Pacific during WW II.  Old habits don’t die a long, hard, painful death; they migrate silently from generation to generation.

The Phillips family had come to Utah with the second wave of Mormon pioneers in 1848, settling first in the Salt Lake Valley then sent north a few years later by Brigham Young with eighteen other families to colonize the Cache Valley of the Wasatch Mountains, in hopes of not only spreading the doctrine among the Ute and Coshute Indian tribes, but in helping forge trade treaties and alliances.  Bobby swears that occupying the land was more important to Brigham Young than converting any Indian tribe, but he doesn’t complain: his grandfather inherited all the land originally settled by the Phillips, 25,000 acres.  Though he only farms 400 acres mostly for hay, Bobby leases the remainder to a dozen other farmers and a few ranchers for grazing.  Bobby Phillips is a wealthy man who wields considerable influence.

The generator had been shipped on the same type of heavy duty wooden pallet used to ship jet engines – wood reinforced with steel channel grids – ½ inch plywood made up the sidewalls and top cover, then all wrapped in steel bands.  As each pry-bar did its job of excavating stubborn nails and rivets from the crate, the sides falling away, hitting the concrete loading dock with loud slaps, Jack saw that the weeks of researching the electrical needs of his house to survive a blackout during the winter with minimal usage of the water pumps, kitchen appliances, lights and central heating furnace, but to power up his business servers, the girls’ computers and Piedad’s laptop, had certainly born excellent results.  Opening this crate was so much more fun and infinitely safer than sneaking around the house before Christmas, looking in every known hiding place for the presents he knew would be there, carefully peeling off the tape from the slick wrapping paper, knowing Piedad would check them for signs of a premature opening.   Opening this Christmas present to himself was legal and even though the Season was nine months away the excitement exceeded any potential yuletide expectations. 

“Planning on being your own power company?" came the question from the direction of the screen door.  A small, almost imperceptible, tight-lipped smile creased Jack’s mouth, his eyes narrowing a bit recognizing the voice.  It wasn’t a question posed in a friendly inquisitive nature from a passerby, who naturally would be curious seeing the size of the generator, but more the tone used in a cross-examination.  Aaron Bents, personal injury lawyer, former city council member, current Republican Party county chairman, former low level assistant federal prosecutor in Salt Lake City, and former Bishop tilted his head out of the doorway waiting for a reply or an acknowledgement of his presence, whichever would grant him passage onto the loading dock, knowing full well his presence was not welcomed. 

“What do you want Aaron?  Bobby calmly spoke, the distain in his voice cradling the words   Aaron and Bobby had crossed broadswords during the last election for city council.  Aaron had campaigned on a platform of rejuvenation for the city, with the aging Farmer’s Co-Op building dominating the proposed redevelopment landscape.  The idealistic campaign platform was only a wispy smoke screen for the real bulls-eye Aaron had zeroed in on: toppling the influence The Farmer’s Co-Op had on political opinion in the town and surrounding areas.  Eliminate the Co-Op; eliminate the influence of the farmers, sweep into the political vacuum capturing the power he craved, but could never quite grasp. 

Responding quickly to the threat, Bobby had covered every visible inch of the Co-Op’s outside wall space with banners, posters and flyers for Aaron’s opponent, vocally and fiscally supporting the Democratic candidate whose politics Bobby could have cared less about, as long as it didn’t include downtown development.  Aaron Bents was defeated. Again he became a “former” something. Now, Aaron was circulating a petition around town calling for a City Redevelopment Committee to be created; his sights still set on demolishing the Co-Op.

“I don’t want anything.  Saw it when I was driving by and I’m just curious as to what you are going to do with that thing”, arrogantly extending his index finger in the generator’s general direction, assuming it was intended for the Co-Op.  Bobby’s demeanor depicted an old southern saying: “Don’t let butter melt in your mouth.”  He had no intention of satisfying Aaron’s curiosity by correcting his assumption, coolly enjoying his minor frustration. 

“Well, gee Aaron, I really haven’t decided yet, but when I do, you’ll be the first person I tell”, nodding his head crisply in an affirmation of his neighborly intentions. With eyes laughing derisively at the foolishness of the question, now came “the smirk”.  The famously infuriating smirk that gave small glimpses into Bobby’s cynical thinking processes; complex, with small town simplicity of reason, and the inability to tolerate fools, especially those of Aaron’s stature.  Aaron was too easy a target for Bobby.  His whole body was covered in emoticon buttons written in large kindergarten style letters.  “Push Me and Win a Prize” they all seemed to scream and Bobby had become a master at pushing Aaron’s buttons; and, as he said so often, Aaron’s responses were so consistently silly that it just wasn’t a challenge anymore.  But, at least he could entertain someone else, namely me, who might be standing within hearing distance whenever Aaron jutted out his emotionally fragile psyche, putting it right in the path of one of Bobby’s verbal haymakers.

“Go to hell Phillips!”  Much too quickly the uninspired reply came, hissed between pressed lips and hurled along by smoldering eyes.  Aaron Bents was not a man to keep poking through the bars with a sharp stick, especially while he was still venting hot vapors from his election-day loss.  He was fairly powerful politically, albeit not in Tremonton, had adequate financial resources and tended carefully to the alliances crafted with other land developers in Utah.  If I had told Bobby once, I had told him a thousand times to stop provoking Aaron; let the bear roar in its cave where it does no harm to anyone.

My mistake was lowering my head to conceal the smile.  I just couldn’t help laughing at the exchange.  Aaron spun his head around quickly, his insult antennae picking up on the suppressed chuckle.  “When I take him down, you’re going with him”. The smoldering eyes were now fixed on me. 

I had purposefully stayed out of Bobby’s personal political crusade against Aaron, but not Aaron’s misguided movement to rejuvenate the downtown area, due to the fact that Bobby was certainly capable of fighting his own battles and would not be pleased if I intruded on his fun.  He felt he was more than a match intellectually for the lawyer turned politico turned developer.  I had always suspected Bobby was a bit envious that I had been fortunate to attend college when he had gone into the Marine Corps trying to escape the inevitability of his future at the Co-Op from a few sideways references to the “sheepskin” on my wall, though any admission to that theory couldn’t be extracted even with the worst torture, so any attempt to help him would be construed as me trying to protect him, which was not a good idea no matter the circumstances.

I had supported the opposition candidate, both financially and vocally because of her vision for the community, and because I believed she was not in the race for personal gain.  I hadn’t been nearly as vocal as Bobby, preferring to remain one of many supporters, but had not shied away from expressing my opinion when asked or from attending city council meetings or speaking out against any outside developers seeking to gain control of the downtown area.  Aaron and I had subtly locked horns during two city council meetings where both times I had been successful at blocking a restructuring of the zoning codes for downtown, which would have given the green light to Aaron and his developer alliances.  For me, it wasn’t a personal crusade against Aaron or his cronies, just a difference of opinion on how Tremonton should grow.   All of that changed for me hearing Aaron’s unveiled threat. 

“You better be sure what kind of man you are threatening and what he can do to you”, I said easily and measured, moving slowing and purposefully around the fallen side of the large crate towards him, the beast that was my anger beginning to awaken. 

There were only two people in the world that knew my temper:  my wife and my best friend.  I had only been in one fist fight my whole life, not that I am a coward, but only one situation had presented itself since I never look for trouble and would prefer to walk away from any looming physical confrontation.  The fight in the only local bar that had a dance floor had lasted only a few seconds with the other man down on the ground bleeding profusely from his nose and mouth.  He had threatened to wait for me in the parking lot promising to kick my ass among other anatomical parts, solely for the fact I had accidentally poke him in the groin while playing pool at an adjoining table.  I apologized sincerely, but his friends laughing injured his male ego more than his testicles.  Coming right up to my face, which was a mistake, I knew there was no avoiding a confrontation regardless of my apologies.  I hit him in the face with both fists at least half a dozen times before he could blink twice, putting him down quickly, efficiently and ferociously.   I didn’t remember hitting him or standing over him, trembling from the adrenaline speeding through my veins after he fell, only that I wanted to kill what was threatening me.  My fear always turns into anger – a killing anger.  The more I am afraid, the colder I become, the more dangerous my temper.  Aaron had frightened me.  By threatening me, he threatened my family, my way of life and my future.  Any confrontations we had had in the past were based only upon differing viewpoints or philosophies for economic development of our city.  But, now Aaron had now made it clear he wanted to be an enemy – my personal enemy.  

“Oh, I’m not threatening you Jack, just letting you know what is going to happen to you, as any good friend would”. The words were soft and slimy and slid past lips that smiled too easily, leaving a trail like warm breath in icy air, only this was a polluted, poisonous cloud emitted from a ruinous walking smokestack.  Aaron moved further back into the screen door opening, his eyes still locked on mine.  I had never considered him a dangerous man physically, but then again I had never had any reason before to see him in that light.  But now, it became evident just how physically imposing he was:  not an exceptionally large man, slightly more than 6 feet, but very muscular, no stomach paunch or “love handles”, and, recalling how he walked up to the podium at the last city council meeting, he was truly graceful in a well-toned, athletic sense like an accomplished slalom skier gliding effortlessly and swiftly down the mountain.  Our philosophical “battles”, which had never resulted in any “heated” exchanges nor for that matter voices ever raised in anger, had been conducted in public settings where the presence of other persons perhaps had caused him to effectively cloak his true feelings, but I had just been provided a glimpse into his malevolence through those marina blue eyes, and that sliver of information sent a searing shard through my body scaring me straight to my core.  My unhurried steps continued in his direction, with my body language conveying a continuing upsurge of anger.

“Get out Aaron.  Don’t come here again.  Understand?”  Bobby deftly stepped in front of me, speaking in a low even tone knowing full well that a fuse had been lit and for once he was not at the end of that fuse when it came to Aaron Bents.  “The next time I come here will be to tear this piece of trash down.  You can count on it.”  Letting the screen door close slowly as if it would break into pieces otherwise, Aaron retreated a step into the dusty haze of the storeroom his body silhouetted in the rusting screen.  He stood there for a moment wanting, I thought later reflecting on the event, to utter a final grand statement, but just turned calmly as if nothing had happened leaving the way he came, silently and unnoticed.

“I’ll bring out the generator this afternoon.” Bobby said, snapping me out of my anger.  “Make sure we can get it into its new home.”  He smiled.  I smiled too and Aaron was forgotten.

Chapter Four

Margaret’s Gifts is exactly as you would imagine it to be.  A small town store with shelves full of everything and anything that might entice a customer:  a combination card shop and drug store, without the pharmaceuticals, filled to overflowing with a menagerie of knick-knacks, make-up, costume jewelry, hats, wallets and purses, scarves, ceramics, and one-of-a-kind items – a cross between a flea market and Wal-Mart.  Every small town in America has a Margaret’s Gifts.  The girls always seemed to end their shopping expeditions at Margaret’s because they could put the finishing touches to any other item they had bought elsewhere; and, more importantly, because it was the gossip central of Tremonton.  As much as I detested listening to people prattle on about other people, Piedad felt it was important to know what people were saying, especially if your name was mentioned in the conversations.  I had contested that reasoning as being more than a waste of time and energy until now. 

“Are you aware that some kids in school have labeled Sally a terrorist sympathizer, just because she took the defense side in her debate last week?” Piedad asked, voiced lowered but not quite whispering, as she leaned over the tabletop, both hands placed palms down, her head craned a little to the right with an “I can’t believe it” look on her face, knowing full well I had no idea what anyone in town said about anyone. We had just sat down at a corner booth in the Mountain View Café, where the majority of the locals gather for eggs over easy and pancakes served anytime, both of us anxious to recount our morning’s separate adventures, my brain, of course, turning somersaults from the Aaron Bents encounter, adrenaline still thinning my blood.  I wanted to order lunch before the telling started, so I focused on a menu I could recite in my sleep, and not the question, wondering out loud where the girls were, and was informed that they had gone off to the movies with the Parks girls, Pam, the same age as Sally, and Shirley, a year older than Jacey, Sally no doubt hoping to run into Pam’s older brother Jes, Jr., so just the two of us were having lunch together.

“Did you hear what I said?” Piedad asked suspiciously.  “Of course I heard you.  Who told you that little tidbit of news?” I replied, half-heartedly feigning interest.  When you could care less what some teenager was saying regardless of the topic and your wife knows every inflection of your voice and every intonation of every word you have every used, feigning interest is a dangerous path to trod, especially when your question has a distinct sarcastic tint.  “I don’t appreciate the tone of your voice.  This is serious, Jack.  You of all people know how damaging a negative label can be, especially when that label comes from one’s peers, or have you forgotten since it didn’t happen to you?  At the very least pretend to be little interested and try to understand how devastating this might be to Sally.”

The reprimand was like a knife driven between my shoulder blades, then twisted; I winced noticeably.  “Yeah, you’re right.  Sorry about that.   Just what’s being said and who’s saying it?”  If someone was starting rumors about my daughter, and as much as I attributed it to teenage jealousies, it was a slanderous attack nevertheless, so it shouldn’t matter the age group of the attacker – after all, five year olds were carrying Kalashnikovs in the Middle East.  During Piedad’s last year at Rice, she had applied, along with a six other students, for a fellowship grant to help defray the cost of graduate school.  She was the only female Hispanic qualified to apply for the fellowship grant, an honor in itself, so when she won the grant over the other six, five white students and one black student, disappointed tongues began to wag slinging racial slurs and spitting out labels.  A few unsavory words or racial labels weren’t enough to deter Piedad from accepting the grant or cause her to run away in tears from two of the white losing students who saw her one day on campus, muttering obscenities as they walked by.  But the experience had left its all too lasting mark on her; the thrill of winning the grant had been diminished.   Blending into middle class white society may have been her parent’s goal, but being accepted as an equal was her goal.  She learned the hard way that the dream was wrong; her reality was that she would be better than their equal.

“We ran into Ellen Parks at J.C Penny's.  She took me aside to tell me Pam had overheard Jared Erstine telling some other students Sally is a Muslim sympathizer and that her father does business with Islamic factions.  Islamic factions!  What a crock of shit! This isn’t good.”  She sat back in the booth, the worried look on her face warning me to take her seriously on this one, but hearing the word “shit” pass her lips was the clincher.  Profanity never came out of my wife’s mouth unless she was certifiably pissed off; so I wasn’t going to dismiss the gossip.  “Well, you can bet if it is true, and I’m not saying it isn’t, so don’t give me that look, it probably came straight from JoAnn and Jared is only parroting what he heard his mother saying.   Want me to talk to Paul and find out exactly what is happening?" I made the offer in hopes she wouldn’t take me up on it, since talking to Paul Erstine was like putting your head in a meat grinder and turning the handle yourself.    

The Parks lived a few miles down the highway from us.  Jes and Ellen Parks were good people; friendly people, nice people and their kids, Pam, Jes Jr., Ryan and Shirley were over at our house all the time.  Jes was the Elders Quorum President for one of the many LDS wards, and he extended the perfunctory invitation to go with them to church when we first moved in.  We declined graciously stating our religious preferences, Piedad was raised a Catholic and I believed in God, but didn’t want to pursue any faith.  Jes had never broached the topic again, pursuing his faith with full conviction and duty, yet never endeavoring to force his beliefs on us or treating us like pariahs for not being one of the “faithful”.  He was a “good” Mormon, never drinking coffee, tea or alcohol, and the thought of smoking a cigarette had probably never crossed his mind.  I saw Jes at the Co-Op almost every Saturday and enjoyed his company.  He and Bobby had grown up together, gone on Mormon missons at the same time, been in each other’s temple weddings, and attended church together until Bobby was disfellowshipped, which explained why Jes always referred to Bobby as Elder Phillips.  Jes and Ellen Parks were our dear friends.  

Jared Erstine and his parents are a different story – they are notorious complainers – mal-contents is the word most people use to describe them.  Paul Erstine is a general contractor with a small construction business, who harbors plans to be a big contractor, those plans coming into focus by his full-throated support of Aaron Bents during the last election, but had never been able to secure the elusive large contracts.  He had hoped his enthusiastic endorsement of Aaron would lead to the inner circle of big time Utah developers, but Aaron’s defeat only added to his bitterness. 

Paul’s parents had moved to Tremonton from Boise, Idaho right before his junior year in high school, effectively severing all of his friendships he had made since elementary school.  He wasn’t an overly friendly or outgoing boy, being fairly introverted, not athletic, not a great student, so he never really made any new friends or established any new social connections in Tremonton.  He came from a pioneer family, devout Mormons, so he attended Brigham Young University after graduating high school, where he met and married his wife, JoAnn.  She was the daughter of a General Authority of the Church, and felt she had found her own General Authority in Paul, but his reticent nature didn’t exactly put him in the religious limelight so to speak, and for that reason he was never put in any substantial position of leadership, devastating JoAnn.  I supposed for that reason, she felt the need to be the “power” in her home, since she was certainly the recognized religious zealot of the community.  No one, except Jared, had ever measured up to JoAnn’s standards of morality or behavior, which some people whispered not even the prophet could attain.  She was even more dislikeable than Paul.  Jared had grabbed hold with both hands the torch carried so high aloft by his mother, criticizing and judging all who came in contact with him.  He became the defacto “Sheriff of Righteousness” of Tremonton High School, creating a circle of moral deputies and isolating himself from the “wickedness” of the other students. 

Paul Erstine never patronized the Co-Op, preferring to do business in Logan where most of his business contracts were, or out of deference to Aaron I supposed, since I had never seen him there and Bobby had never mentioned Paul buying anything from him.   Before the move to Tremonton, we had done some minor due diligence regarding contractors to build the new house.  Paul had a good reputation as a quality builder so we asked him to send us a proposal.  He submitted a satisfactory bid, not too high and very detailed which showed he had put some time into the bid, but we didn’t feel comfortable with his abrupt demeanor, so we chose another builder.  Only a few dozen sentences had passed between us since that time which might help to explain Jared’s animosity towards Sally, as the prejudices and dislikes of parents most always filter down to their children. 

“No.  It is bad enough that they are so skewed sideways, but you talking to Paul would only bend them out of shape even more.  Admit it!  You aren’t the most diplomatically inclined person; all he has to do is open his mouth and that vein in your neck starts to throb.  I know I overreact sometimes, and this really pisses me off, but you talking to Paul is like throwing gasoline on a dying match. “  Piedad ’s face was taking on the same rosy glow high on her cheeks whenever she was exerting herself physically, wanting to shield her daughter from any hurt or harm, but all the present alternatives to silencing Jared were not feasible.  Her maternal instinct was shouting “danger, danger”, and creating a crescendo of protectiveness in her I hadn’t seen in a very long time.  We had learned long ago not to discount each other’s intuitions, and though Jared’s vitriolic remarks weren’t triggering any alarm bells in my head, Piedad’s instincts were screaming louder than warning sirens reverberating through the streets of a Texas town about to meet a tornado head-on.

“Well, you know Jared likes to run his mouth whenever he is preaching to his “congregation”, and, besides, he is probably just taking a few parting shots because Sally beat him so badly in the debate elections.  I bet JoAnn turned purple when she found out Sally won!”   My chuckling moment of glee remembering Sally’s first, and successful, political campaign was very brief. 

“Come on, Jack, you know how hard it has been for Sally socially, especially with boys.  It’s not Jared’s wounded pride that worries me or JoAnn’s facial coloration, but the fact that the kids she interacts with, and more importantly, wants to be accepted by, might start treating her differently because of this nut.   Getting her past her shyness wasn’t exactly the easiest thing we have gone through with her, remember?  I would like to just pick that kid up and shake some sense into him.”   Piedad’s pragmatism never seemed to wane regardless of the circumstances.  If we hadn’t been there every step of the way Sally never would have challenged Jared for debate team president.  Winning that election had done wonders for her self-confidence in social environments, as our personality genes had apparently not bonded onto Sally’s DNA chains. 

Our waitress had casually been cruising in the vicinity, waiting for a break in our exchanges so she could dart in and take our order, which surprised me as most times she would just walk up at her leisure, pour two cups of coffee, take our order, chit chat a few moments, then leave, only returning to set down plates and the bill.  Jean Watkins began working at the café a few months before we moved to Tremonton, waiting tables for minimum wage and the less than generous tips trying to supplement the meager income from her husband’s dairy farm.  Jim and Jean had purchased a rundown dairy operation a few years after running off to Wyoming to get married, hoping to escape the identical life they now led.  She had been fifteen, bucking the discipline of home and high school; he was nineteen, working long hours at a dairy farm across the valley, wanting to be his own boss, and desperately in love with Jean.  They had needed the money, so Jean left the house and the endless work of the dairy farm, spending six hours every morning Monday through Saturday, 6 AM to noon, serving coffee and breakfast and spreading her version of cheerfulness.  She and Piedad had hit it off the first time we ventured through the front door; a telepathic message passing along the path between their eyes confirming somehow the knowledge that they would like each other. The twenty years that had passed since their flight to Wyoming had resulted in four children, two in college, two still in high school, and the farm, now title free and clear from the bank.  Their lives were uncomplicated and undemanding.

Perhaps our hunched over postures and hushed voices conveyed this was a semi-serious conversation.  But, then again, The Mountain View Café had never been a sanctuary for secrets, so her politeness, though welcomed, was odd.  The café was a wide open rectangle space with large store front windows on three sides that began at booth height almost touching the ten foot ceiling where the sprayed on clumped texturing had aged to a shade of slightly burnt butter, retaining all of the cigarette smoke of a half dozen past decades that had wafted up before more enlightened and health conscious persons had moved into town urging and cajoling at the threat of lawsuits, to enforce the recently enacted state laws banning smoking in public facilities.  The double wide entrance was located right in the middle of the front wall where the requisite plywood cashier’s counter stood only a few feet away, directing traffic either right or left instantly.  Faded forest green cloth blinds hung at various lengths on every window, draw strings tied together so both ends would rise at equal speed.  About twenty small square tables, the number varied depending upon the amount of patrons, with a high-backed armchair on each side, were tightly packed in the middle of the dining room.  The tables were resting on an indoor/outdoor carpet of burnt orange with a brown and white zigzag pattern that was wearing thin in the much used and narrow walkway spaces between them.  The requisite booths that sat four people uncomfortably on cracked and stiffened red vinyl seats were end to end down along the front wall facing the parking lot and street, more booths down each side, three tilting wagon wheel chandeliers lined up down the ceiling, replica trail lanterns hanging down over the booth tables, with the kitchen hidden behind a wall-like partition that didn’t quite reach the ceiling, a double swinging door with no porthole windows allowing traffic in and out at their peril.  It was a noisy place even when empty.

“Hey Piedad.  Hey Jack.”  The usual greeting came with the usual coffee with the usual smile and the “happy to see you” bounce.  Jean was as complex as a straight board.  “Good morning, hon,” was Piedad’s patented salutation offered to persons she truly liked, an added pat on the hand for those considered friends, and a hug and kiss on the cheek for those she was emotionally close with, and Jean qualified as someone Piedad truly liked. 

“What’s new today?  Anything exciting going on?” Piedad asked nonchalantly, peering over her coffee cup as she blew little waves to cool it, knowing full well Jean would gush like Old Faithful any tidy tidbits of information without the aid of prompts, but expecting the usual answer:  nothing new going on in Tremonton.

“I guess so! This morning around 10, I’m at the cash register when two guys in suits come in.  This one guy asks me if I can give him directions to Jack Wright’s house.  I said, ‘Sure, everybody knows where Jack and Piedad live.  Why do you want to know?’  He looked over at the guy with him, and then said it was confidential government business.  Real serious like, you know?  Definitely not from around here all dressed up in suits on a Saturday, know what I mean?”  Always the curious, Jean was miffed she didn’t get an answer from “the suits”.

Now, there were two odd happenings this morning.  The last time anyone asked for directions to our house was four years ago when the R.C. Willey Furniture delivery men had called from Ogden the day before the new furniture was scheduled to be delivered, then got lost when they had taken the road leading up to Bobby’s house, had to double back, then called us again.  Looking at each other, we couldn’t remember anyone else in the past ten years asking for directions to the house, much less inquiring of someone in town.  It was odd, but I dismissed it with a joke.

“Aw, Jean!  You promised me you wouldn’t send the missionaries out our way again!” comes the faked frustration.  Jack just cracks himself up most days.  Jean was a devout Methodist attending church more regularly than Jim milking the cows, so the retort was barely acknowledged, her face taking on a serious look both Piedad and Jack had never seen, at least talking about a different topic other than her problems.

Shaking her head slowly with a disapproving look, Jean admonished me, “I don’t think you want to joke about this.  These two guys looked like nothing but trouble, I could tell right away.   Not a smile, nothing.  So, I told him, if it was government business, then maybe he should go ask someone at the mayor’s office and told him how to get there.  Stared me right in the eyes for a couple of seconds then said they would do that and out the door they went.  Really gave me the creeps, you know?  Too bad no one’s there today, huh?  What can I get you?”  

The earlier animation of our conversation quickly dissipated into menu mumblings.  As Jean turned to leave our eyes met, both of us absently searching the other’s face for any indication of thought patterns, but we already knew all the twists and turns.

“Damn.  And it was such a nice day.”  Came the punctuation mark to the unsaid conclusions.  Our instincts were always true.  Always.  The men in suits were FBI agents; you never forget crossing paths with a skunk.  

During our last two years in Dallas, several Hispanic lobbyist groups, fighting against racial profiling by the Texas Legislature brought on by a redistricting battle, had been the targets of a Federal Justice Department investigation, courtesy of the US House Majority Leader conveniently from Texas and allegedly the force behind the redistricting effort.  Piedad had been on the periphery as a consultant to the lobbyist group spearheading the fight, but ended up being collateral damage when the Republican powers in Congress attempted to smear the reputations of several of the lobbyists through “leaked” information of investigations regarding illegal campaign contributions.  Piedad provided too much legal expertise and had become a royal pain in the ass, so her name had been included in the leaks.  The FBI sent an agent to her office to “ascertain her involvement”.   Her response: “Show me a subpoena to a Grand Jury and I’ll answer your questions there.  If you don’t have that, then good-bye.  My assistant will show you the way out.”  It was obvious the FBI already had her on file or else they would not have shown up at her office door, but I was probably just a small footnote then.   The two unsmiling “suits” showing up asking for me, evidently indicated the footnote, for an unknown reason we now wanted to uncover, was becoming the main theme.  Lunch had become an unwelcome intrusion on the day.

Eating our food slowly, we both mused audibly of why FBI agents would want to visit us.  It had been almost 12 years since our first introduction, so why would they want to make contact with us here and why now?  A few years after we moved to Utah, I had relived those moments several times when we felt we couldn’t even barbecue in the back yard without an unseen entity documenting whether the steaks were rare or medium rare, what beer we drank or who were our guests. But, we hadn’t been bothered since, so I assumed the FBI had simply notated our move to Utah, wrote a big “Do Not Disturb” on the outside of the file jacket, and hissed a collective “Thank You”.   The infliction of political pain Piedad had heaped upon the Texas Republicans, and osmotically the Republican Administration in Washington through the local and national media had been immense and relentless. 

“The movie doesn’t let out for another hour; want to go see if the squirrels left us any nuts?” Piedad asked me with that twinkle in her eyes leaving no doubt that after all this time she had not lost any of her desire to lock horns with these guys again.  It wasn’t that she was unforgiving; you just had to apologize before any forgiveness came your way.  Though the FBI had held a news conference announcing the end of the investigation, there had never been any formal acknowledgement of any wrongdoing, nor any statement of apology, which she knew would never be a public admission, but perhaps someone with a conscience would have passed it along to her privately.  The wound would never close until that happened, so she was still ready to punish them for her pain. 

“Let’s think about this for a minute, ok?  If they really are from the FBI, and we don’t positively know that, but if they are, then what are they going to do?  Ask us a few questions, about what God only knows, but just ask some questions.  Probably about someone we knew a long time ago.  They ask, they leave.  Over and done with, right?  So, let’s wait for the girls.”  My reassuring smile and shrugging shoulders didn’t work.

“Oh, really?  Just a few questions, eh? Nothing much to it?  Tell me, all-knowing one, in your immense knowledge of FBI methodology, does the FBI send out agents to a somewhat remote rural community on a Saturday morning to just ask a few routine questions about someone we may or may not have known a long time ago?  Think maybe a phone call during the week would have satisfied their curiosity?  Hmmm?” 

I had set myself up perfectly for the sarcasm.  If the two suits were FBI agents, nothing would deter Piedad from going after them and I would be along for the ride, no matter where it led.  The icy smile chilling me from across the table said it was time to get in, sit down, buckle up and hang on.  Neither one of us liked surprises; being prepared was a mantra we shared with the Boy Scouts.   “You get what you deserve” had been an on-going debate theme for us.  People who know what is coming and do nothing, then whine and complain about the consequences, should things go badly for them, get exactly what they deserve was my rationale.  “Not everyone gets what they deserve or deserves what they get, good or bad,” Piedad would counter.  However, we both agreed to be as prepared as possible for any contingency, whether under our control or not.  In the past, our preparedness had centered on the calamities of weather, which explains the generator purchase, and family emergencies.  We had stored food, fuel and water to last for at least two years, maybe more depending upon the implementation of a rationing program Piedad had devised.  Though we weren’t Mormons, the admonition to the Church’s members to have a two-year supply of food and water had not gone unheeded.  Common sense delivered from any pulpit should never be ignored and Mormons are a common sense people, so knowing that possibly two FBI agents would be waiting for us and not knowing the reason why caused us to go into a preparedness mode without any debate.

We finished lunch in a pretended unhurriedness the loudness of the hustle and bustle in the café never once penetrating the silent booth.  Our movements were measured and deliberate trying to mask the agitation of worried thoughts eyes meeting constantly laying bare our intentions.  We were like two protagonists who after whipping themselves into a fever pitch strained to break any constraints preventing their encounter. 

“My appetite is gone.”  Piedad announced looking up from her plate.  “Mine, too.” I mumbled echoing her condition.  I usually left cash on the table including the tip, but this time Piedad scooped up the check as she slid from the booth reaching in the front pockets of her jacket for the small billfold-like purse she carried whenever she was shopping since all she really needed was her checkbook and credit cards, never cash. 

Plopping her Visa on the counter, she turned to me and said, “Time trail.”  Now, I can be as paranoid as the next man about to converse, or possibly converse, with FBI agents, but Piedad was beyond suspicious at this point. 

So now it all begins I muttered to no one. 

Chapter Five

The Ford Crown Victoria is the flagship vehicle for most law enforcement agencies throughout the United States due to its size, reliability, horsepower and handling capabilities.  The FBI especially likes the Crown Victoria in dark blue, the exact color of the car parked in front of our house.  The gravel driveway, shaped somewhat like a crooked eyebolt and wide enough for only one car at a time, heads up a small ravine a thousand yards to a circular parking area at the front of the house.  People coming to visit turn off Highway 103 passing under the roughhewn log frame, reminiscent of ranch entrances where all you see for miles and miles is this “portal” standing tall above the prairie leading it seems to nowhere, usually with a catchy title like Lazy J or Rockin’ R or Double D at the top, only ours had the name “Casa Esperanza” burnt into the top logs.  I had installed a cattle guard a few years ago right after I found a dozen or so of our neighbor’s cows leisurely walking up the drive after they had made a break for it through a downed part of the fence along the highway.   The cattle guard came with a steel rod gate but we never bothered to close it since that entailed too much effort.  Somehow the energy used getting out of the car to open the gate, then driving through, then closing it behind you, never seemed to justify any need, real or imagined, for keeping the gate closed.  We didn’t have any cattle, the cattle guard did its job well, and we knew everyone that came to the house, so closing the gate was wasted effort.  And, buying an electric closure seemed extravagant and pretentious.  Seeing the dark blue Crown Victoria with two men seated inside sent a swift twinge of regret through me for adopting such a routine of convenience.  

The ravine the driveway follows twists slightly, first east then back west, passing between two foothills until opening onto a small meadow that looks back eastward towards Tremonton and the Wasatch Mountains, but is completely hidden from the highway.  The South Texas style ranch house, a four bedroom, three bath, two story white river stone and red brick with a ten-foot wide wood plank porch around the entire house was set facing south at the top of the circle the gravel drive fed into.  When the decision was made to move to Utah during a ski trip to Park City, we had also decided to build a home in the mountains we would live in for the rest of our lives.  In Texas, we had found ourselves buying houses that weren’t quite everything we wanted, and then beginning the inevitable remodeling projects that would last until we finally decided we needed something different.  We had resolved to build this house exactly as we wanted:  large bedrooms with dual walk-in closets; a shower large enough for both of us with dual shower heads and controls; a restaurant style kitchen with plenty of windows, a large island and a wall-long hutch; a great room with a stone fireplace and French doors and windows on each side reaching to the ceiling.  We had spent countless hours late at night designing our “last home”.  When we were sure it was perfect for us, we turned our crude drawings, at least by draftsman standards, over to a competent architect in Salt Lake City familiar with Utah code and the nuances of home construction in the mountains. 

We had built our dream home during our first year in Utah and it was all we had hoped:  it was indeed perfect for us. The top half semi-circle of the drive that touches the flagstone walkway leading to the front door had been constructed of interlocking paving brick laced underneath with the same heavy duty electric rubber cord used on roofs to help melt the snow, but used here to accomplish the same feat at ground level.  Branching off to the west side of the house, the gravel drive passes under a portico and leads to the detached three-car garage set about 25 feet diagonally from the back edge of the house and further back directly behind the garage another 50 feet or so is the old Amish style barn with the high pitch roof that stands upwards of 30 feet, built, we guessed, somewhere around 1925 since no one in town could either remember or agree upon the exact year.  All of the buildings face south affording the best sunlight during the winter months which helps melt the snow, but only during the winter were the cars in the garage since we liked to park on the side of the house under the portico and enter via the kitchen. 

The FBI agents had dutifully followed standard procedures entering the driveway circle from the right and positioning the driver away from the house’s front door, thereby providing the driver a barrier against any assault from within the house.  This position would also offer the agents a clear view of anyone coming up the driveway and be ready just in case a chase might be in order.  We hadn’t spoken much during the drive home - a word here, a jagged sentence there, an uneasy laugh.  When we reached the top of the hill and saw the dark blue Crown Victoria, the silence ended, but our somber demeanors turned even more still.   I parked under the side portico as is my habit, both of us exiting in unison and walking around the front corner of the house towards the FBI agents.  It struck me odd that Winston, our springer spaniel/labrador mix or Springador Spaniel as I had tabbed him, wasn’t barking and jumping at the side window exhorting us to hurry up and open the door.  He was always excited to see us come home.

When I stopped the Tahoe, Piedad had reached over placing her hand gently on my forearm, never taking her eyes off mine, and said, “Careful, Tiger.  Smooth and easy, remember?”  I started laughing, evaporating the tension instantly.  Piedad is the most gentle of women: loving, nurturing, compassionate and kind hearted.  But, she is also a mother whose maternal instincts run true to form:  mess with her family and she becomes that tiger, so her admonishment struck me as funny.   

“Good afternoon, gentlemen “ I said with a friendly lilt that lingered because of my unexpected laughter a few moments earlier.  “How can we help you?”  Too many years of working with demanding bank executives had left me with that all encompassing open question.  Find out what they want first, then tell them what they are going to get.  This might be another opportunity for someone to learn to live with disappointment. 

“I am special agent Kuscinski and this is special agent Cordell.”  The agent who had exited the driver’s side replied, appearing as if he had just been attending a photo shoot for a fashion magazine.  His dark suit had to be Italian since the cut was molded precisely to his very athletic frame, the brilliant white shirt collar wasn’t your typical FBI starched button down, a blue dotted silk tie most often worn by the CEO of a Fortune 500 firm, highly polished shoes that certainly weren’t wingtips.  But what struck me the oddest was that his partner was simply a younger duplicate version:  thick sandy brown hair parted evenly on the right side, clear grey blue eyes showing no signs of crows feet or laugh lines, not quite a ruddish complexion but he certainly hadn’t been spending much time indoors.  Both men were a little more than six feet tall, very trim – probably no more than 10% body fat, and muscular – you could tell by the size of their necks.  I was sure they had logged many hours lifting weights and patronizing some health club.  The sight of these two agents walking towards us instantly dispelled all of the images left over from our first encounter with the FBI it seemed so many years ago now.   Flashing the standard black leather badge holders from 15 feet away my genuine grin begun with the laughter in the Tahoe widened a bit more as the picture came to mind of these two father and son agents walking into the Mountain View Café where coveralls and Wranglers, cowboy and work boots, plain long sleeve wrinkled denim shirts and baseball caps with the logo of one of the many farm implement machines stitched onto the front are the fashion statements made by the locals.   They couldn’t have been more conspicuous than two Mormon missionaries in Harlem.

“May I see your credentials again, please?” Piedad asked, smiling her best welcome smile and extending her right hand to the agent who had spoken first.   We stopped about five feet away from the agents, standing side by side, Piedad on my right, our arms touching lightly.  The agents were not quite side-by-side, the younger agent standing a few feet behind and to the right of the agent in charge, facing me directly, Agent Kuscinski facing Piedad.  Standard procedure dictated the spacing, so Piedad’s request required the agent to reach forward in order to hand her his credentials, but he quickly resumed the spacing.

“Certainly.” Special agent Kuscinski replied, handing over his credentials.  “Are you Jack and Piedad Wright?” he asked as friendly as he could manage.

I looked at him and smiled, but didn’t answer.  Piedad raised her head, smiled and handed me the credentials.  I glanced down quickly then raised my head and answered easily, handing his badge back “Yes, but then you already know that, don’t you?  Now, how can we help you gentlemen?”

“We want to ask you a few questions.  May we come in?” the younger agent asked in the standard FBI “answer or else tone” as he gestured towards the front door by craning his head in that direction, giving away the target of their visit.  Never once did his eyes leave mine.

“No.  You can ask your questions here.  What’s this about and should we contact our lawyer?”  Piedad asked tilting her chin upwards a bit and raising her left eyebrow, a move that always reminded me of Spock on Star Trek.   Her tone was devoid of hostility or rancor, the words exact and the gaze steady, but it was clearly evident she would offer no hospitality.  We had always been very cooperative with law enforcement, understanding their need to be controlling and authoritative, respecting the rigors of the job, but also knowing where the line lay between enforcing the law and using force without cause.

“It might be easier to discuss this if we went inside” agent Kuscinski said trying very hard to give the impression he almost lamented the fact he had to be there, but nevertheless motioning in the direction of the front door.  Their need to be inside the house became more pressing, as a good cop knows that anything in plain sight can be considered fair game when it comes to collecting evidence.  Once invited inside the house, the agents would be free to confiscate whatever came into their view or minds as suspicious or fell under their interpretation of “probable cause”.

“As my wife said, any questions you have for us can be asked and answered out here, or, if you prefer, we can contact our lawyer and set up a meeting at his office.  You decide.  And, just so we understand each other, we have no illusions or naiveties regarding how the FBI questions people – been there, done that – and we didn’t like the experience.  So, unless you have a warrant to be on our property, please ask your questions here or leave now.” I said, my friendly tone still ringing clear.  Having just stated our awareness of FBI interrogation tactics, it would have been very foolish to ignore how the FBI reacts when it doesn’t get what it wants, when it wants it.  

The smile lines in Agent Kuscinski’s face didn’t move but almost imperceptibly his eyes reacted to the edict, casually looking towards the mountains.  “Sure, we can do this out here, it’s a beautiful day.  Look, we didn’t come here intending to antagonize you, we just need to sort out a few facts regarding some allegations about your affiliations with certain banks; some clarification is all.”  He got right to the reason for the visit.  Put the subject at ease, make him feel he can trust you, guide him carefully down the path you want – textbook interrogation techniques.  I thought I could quote chapter and verse the approach was so transparent.

“What do you mean “allegations”? And more importantly where did these supposed allegations come from?”  I asked.  Like most all Americans, I am well versed in the innocent until proven guilty premise of our legal system, but I am more experienced in the actualities of real life.  More than once, I have read in the newspapers or listened to television renderings of someone being accused of a crime or misdeed, usually a child molester or rapist or a white collar crime suspect, instantly coalescing my thoughts into judgments and meting out punishments, so any allegation of my committing a crime that could motivate two FBI agents to drive over two hours would not be dismissed just by answering a few questions.

“We received a report that you wrote a computer program for certain European banks that has the ability to hide the trail and mask the identity of banks receiving transferred funds.  These banks hold funds for Islamic charities and sympathizers that we suspect are tied to extremist organizations on our international terrorist list.  We know that you have done work for these banks in the past and they are possibly your clients now.  Is this true?”  The manner in which Special Agent Kuscinski delivered the allegation was measured and even - neither an accusation nor a condemnation.  The simple question would not elicit a simple response.

“Report?  Are you kidding me?  Are you actually telling me you have a report that states I have written a program like you just described or is my name just one of several dozen listed in your report and you’re shaking the tree to see what falls out?  And by the way, where did this so-called report come from? Is it an internal report or did it come from some other source?  If it is, who authored it?”  My barrage of questions threw Agent Kuscinski off balance, but only for a second.  Where in the hell did something like this come from?  My professional life had always been extremely discreet, as bankers are not easily disposed to sharing data or in this case, programmers.  My work has always been for a very select group of higher echelon banks:  the banker’s banks that remain far in the background.

Agent Kuscinski didn’t budge.  He just kept looking at me waiting for an answer.  I wasn’t going to get into a grade school staring contest, so I said, “No.  I haven’t written any such program nor would I ever do so and I certainly don’t divulge my client list to anyone, but that seems irrelevant, as you evidently already know who they are.  Now, you answer my questions.” Just as measured and even were my words matching Kuscinski’s matter of fact tone.  His eyes never left my face, reading, evaluating, and probing for any twitch or gulp or movement that might give a hint of a lie.  But I didn’t deny the fact that I knew how to write such a program assuming, a big mistake I discovered later on, that the FBI knew such a program could never be written without the security codes of the banks and I had never known any bank to compromise its computer security, especially to a programmer, even one who had written complex database codes for them.  It was virtually impossible to cover up the tracks of any electronic banking transaction because each bank needed to have an electronic address to send or receive any funds and without an electronic address the bank was non-existent in the banking world.   These electronic addresses and security codes aren’t the simple routing numbers used on checking or savings accounts with 16 digit passwords, but multi-line 256 bit encryption code.  Super computers would take a hundred years to crack these codes.    But, if a person had the security codes of a dozen or so banks, writing such a program might be possible.  And, more importantly, it would only be a matter of time and expertise.

“We can’t answer those questions, but if you let us examine your computers, maybe we can put this all to rest provided I can verify you haven’t written such a program.”  Though Agent Cordell had been silent until now, he had studiously been watching Piedad during the exchange between Agent Kuscinski and myself.  His comment started Piedad visibly chuckling under her breath, a small smirk creasing her lips.  Looking Agent Cordell squarely in the eyes, she said, “And if he had written such a program, do you really think he would be stupid enough to leave traces for anyone to find?  And besides, would you really know what to look for anyway?” the questioning sarcasm in her voice issued a challenge Agent Cordell couldn’t resist accepting.

With a short huff he said, “I am part of the FBI’s banking assessment and criminal investigation unit assigned to international banking.  I flew in from Washington last night just for this, so, yes, I think I know exactly what to look for.” 

“Yeah.  Right.” Piedad said her eyes still locked on the flustering agent.  Agent Cordell’s arrogance had blown his cover.  Agent Kuscinski sighed lightly, fluttering his eyelids as he looked down at the gravel.  They had flipped over their hole cards.  Any hopes of convincing us to allow them into the house crumbled with Agent Cordell’s words.

It was an ominous revelation; and it scared the hell out of me.  The routine of my life brings me peace.  I know who, what, when, and where in all facets and that knowledge makes me feel secure.  The only surprises I like are on my birthday and at Christmas, and even those are questionable.  That the FBI would send an agent from Washington to a remote Utah town evidenced the seriousness of the allegation – a threat to the very heart of tracking terrorists in the United States.  Follow the money had been the mantra of the FBI since Watergate; electronic trails are the DNA of banking.  Eliminate the trail of electronic funds transfers between terrorist sympathizers, organizers, supporters, and the triggermen, they all become ghosts, apparitions we think we have seen but can’t be certain they exist.   But I wasn’t a ghost.  The FBI could reach out and touch me.  From their point of view, I presumed, if I had written such a program, creating the ghosts, then I could provide the magical glasses in order to see the ghosts.  And, if not, then they would bury me a thousand feet down in the ground.  This knowledge exploded instantly in my head as I stood there.  The danger to our lives presented by the two men standing calmly in front of us was not an apparition; it was real and it could bring total destruction to all we were, all we had attained and all we hoped for in the future.  I could feel the jagged edges of each stone pressing through the thick soles of my shoes, seemingly imprinting their barbs on my feet as I felt Atlas had just heaved his burden onto my shoulders.

But was the allegation true? Could it be even remotely plausible?  Yet, now the federal authorities, since I had to include Homeland Security, the Justice Department and any other corresponding agency scared silly by this belief, were on a trail scented by the blood of innocents killed by terrorists.  The echoing in my head came from the baffling questions:  where did the allegation originate?  How long had the FBI known about the program?  Why were they knocking at my door?  Unanswered questions always made me crazy, but now was not the time to indulge in theoretical futilities.  Fight or flight? 

“Unless you have another question, I think it is time you leave.”  My tone was cold now.  Agent Cordell started to step forward, but his partner acted like a mother shielding her child in the front seat of the car: extending his arm across the chest to restrain him.  Agent Kuscinski was still smiling.  Slowly he lowered his arm, “Mr. Wright, from all appearances you are a smart man, so you know what’s at stake here.  I am asking for your cooperation.  I hope you know what can happen if we don’t get it.”

Nodding my head in agreement to his statement as well as the obvious state of the situation, I removed my lucky golf cap I always wore on Saturdays.  Running my hand over my hair, my brain was processing at lightning speed all the responses, searching for the one that would keep us safe.  “Yes, I think I have a pretty good idea of what’s at stake.  I also think I know what will happen.  But I can’t give you what I don’t have.  But this I do know for sure:  if I let you take my computers, I become a pariah in the industry.  No bank in the world will ever trust me again.  I have answered your questions truthfully – whoever wrote the program you are searching for, it wasn’t me.”  Looking directly at Agent Cordell, I said, “But, you don’t believe that, do you?  I saw it in your eyes the moment you stepped out of your car.  I was the mark.  All you had to do was get in the house, confiscate my computers for “probable cause”, then tear into it and find whatever you could and twist that into some semblance of evidence that might lend some credence for this ludicrous allegation, that probably neither one of you knows where it came from since it was just handed to you with the command: Sic ‘em.”

I had just chosen to fight; flight never really having been an option.  Without looking at her face, I knew Piedad approved of my response.  I could feel her press a bit closer, her warmth helping me stand a bit taller, knowing her trust of me had been justified one more time.  I couldn’t have been happier at that moment.  My love for my wife and the knowledge of hers for me swelled inside to the point of tears.  We were always our happiest when we were doing something together.  And even though this time the choice had not been our own, we were together facing an impending storm headed in our direction with no chance of avoidance.

“I am truly sorry for what will happen next”, came Agent Kuscinski’s acknowledgment, “you seem like straight people.”  He was serious.  Years of experience fed his instincts right now, but it didn’t matter what he thought about my guilt or innocence:  he would do his job.

It appeared as if Agent Cordell’s face had begun to glow from his unabashed delight at the prospect of engaging the “enemy”.  He had probably been riding a desk in Washington for a long time, hoping to get the chance to show how good he could be in the field.  Jealousy and envy will propel even the most timid man towards circumstances he can neither fathom nor control.  “We can get a search warrant right now if we need to, but I’ll ask you one last time if we can inspect your computers?”  Cordell said, flashing his cell phone as if it were a light saber.  I guess the smirk on my face boiled over the teapot.  “Ok, have it your way.” came the clenched reply and with that he began dialing.

Agent Cordell turned an about face, walking the few steps to the Crown Victoria, stopping at the front grille looking as if he had rested his knees on the bumper his back still turned towards the three of us: me watching him, Piedad watching Kuscinski, Kuscinski watching me.  If the situation hadn’t been so tense, it would have been a hilarious mimicking of a spaghetti western.  The call took less than a minute.  Turning to face us, but not moving in our direction, Agent Cordell addressed his partner painfully, the words like tiny shards of glass being pulled from his skin, “We need to go back to Salt Lake to get the warrant.”  

Agent Kuscinski remained still a second or two digesting the news, then nodded his head first towards Agent Cordell, then towards us. “Thanks for your time.  We will see you at a later date.  You can count on it.”  The lips showed a faint smile, the eyes flashed resolve.  The agents entered the Crown Victoria the same way they had exited, in precise fashion.  Both sets of eyes were fixed on us as we moved to the side of the drive allowing the FBI to leave.  At that moment, I could not have decided which agent to fear most.

Chapter Six

Sitting zombie-like on the high backed wrought iron barstools we had spent countless hours searching for in furniture catalogues and on the Internet, our elbows placed on top on the breakfast bar looking into the kitchen, acting as wobbly props for our heads whose thoughts were careening around and through every synapse that hadn’t yet been burned apart.   Thoughts that were bouncing wildly off empty brain walls setting off blinding lights and shrill alarms as if our minds were miniature pinball machines that wouldn’t tilt ending the pulsating noises we couldn’t squelch.  We were spinning and reeling from what we had just experienced, first one then the other shaking our heads in disbelief hoping to achieve some sense of emotional equilibrium.  After watching the rear of the Crown Victoria make the turn down the driveway and disappear around the hill everything seemed to be out of focus.  We had quietly walked hand in hand around to the Tahoe, separating only to remove the packages the girls had accumulated during their shopping that morning, then entering the kitchen and depositing our cargo into a heap just inside the door.  All I could say was “Wow.”  Piedad seemed to be grasping for reality, “What just happened?” 

All my life I had focused on the future: working hard today to be prepared for any eventuality tomorrow, trying not to be taken by surprise.  I often thought people who lived only for today were fools, gambling away bright futures for a few measly crumbs of pleasure in the present.  But here and now, all I wanted to do was live for the next moment: savoring the sight of Piedad, our home, our children’s voices, the smell of the mountains, the freshness of the air, the openness of the meadow.  I couldn’t think about what would happen next.  I didn’t want to think about what would happen next.  I just wanted to laugh and feel good again.

The telephone rang causing me to jump straight up like a cat getting its tail caught under a rocking chair.  I swear I could have grabbed hold of the ceiling with my fingernails and just hung up there for a while.  It was Bobby.  “Things ok?” he asked.  If he had been in the room, I would have kissed him.  He knew we weren’t, but wasn’t going to pry over the telephone.  He was a constant: always to the point without missing a beat.  “No.  I can’t talk about it right now.  I need to collect my thoughts a bit, but I’ll call you later this afternoon or why don’t you just come by on your way home if you want. We can talk then.” 

“I heard the FBI was paying you a visit; Jean told me.  I’ll be there around 5.”  He hung up without hearing my “Ok, sounds good.”  

“Bobby will be here around 5.” I paused a half second listening for a response but I wasn’t sure Piedad had even heard me she was so lost in thought, so I asked, “What would you like for dinner?”  For some reason the need to return to normalcy right now took root or perhaps I couldn’t believe that what had transpired minutes ago actually happened.  Either way, I was searching for a way to somehow ignore the span of those ten minutes when I had turned our lives into a declared war on the FBI.  At least until the adrenaline rush had calmed enough allowing me to analyze the events and possible repercussions.

“Huh?” her head tilting a bit, eyebrows squeezed together with the query.  “What do you want for dinner?” I played copycat: tilted my head, squeezed my eyebrows into a unibrow and grinned.  I knew the mention of anything dealing with food would somehow pierce through the fog her thoughts were swirling in.  One of our most cherished activities is cooking.

“I can’t believe it!  You are a mess!  An absolute mess!” she whispered lovingly, tears forming on the edges of those gorgeous dark eyes.  “What would I do without you?”  To call the other a “mess” was just another way of saying I love you madly, since being a “mess” in this context meant being adorable, cute, witty, funny, a hopeless “sin verquenza”: it meant everything good and decent and wonderful about us. “Starve?” I joked blinking my eyes innocently. We fell into each other, our heads resting on tired shoulders that would now need to be strong, need to be resilient, and always, always need to be there for the other. 

Running her hand down the side of my face, she said, “Your skin is really dry.  I have some moisturizer that will help.”  The quip hits my mind as the cheesy grin slides across my lips.  “Thanks, but I need some of that new man moisturizer.  You know, the one made just for a man’s skin because of how hard we work outdoors.  Besides, your moisturizer probably has a bunch of estrogen in it.  If I use it I may start to walk funny.”  Piedad was always checking my face for skin cancer using her loving touch as a pretext for an exam.

The burst of laughter is instant.  “Where inside your head do these things come from?” Piedad asks, her tensions easing, gaining momentum towards calm.  Sliding easily from the stool, I took my time moving around the edge of the large island into the kitchen, stopping to kiss Piedad on the cheek.   Opening the refrigerator door, I asked her, “Could I interest you in an adult beverage?” our code word for a glass of wine.  Not glancing in her direction or waiting for a response, I said “Don’t even look at the clock”, removing the bottle of her favorite Chardonnay knowing she would be craning her head to see the microwave clock, protesting half-heartedly since for some unknown, unexplainable moral reasoning, Piedad wouldn’t drink until after 4 o’clock in the afternoon.  We had probed this quirk of her nature many times, never once arriving at a suitable root cause.  Piedad preferred her wine chilled:  any wine – white, red, pink, purple.  The horror on my face the first time she put ice cubes in a glass of pricey Bordeaux elicited only a shoulder shrug.  No excuses, no explanations, no rationalizations: Piedad is content with the peculiarity of her wine consumption habits.

“Sure, why not?  Today seems perfect for a re-examining of our moral turpitudes.  I mean, we just told a couple of FBI agents to get the hell off our property and don’t come back, now, y’hear?” using her best Beverly Hillbillies imitation.   “What is their damn problem?  Can’t they just politely ask for your help instead of using intimidation?  A report?  Are you kidding me?  And, why do they feel the need to put the fear of God in someone?  It’s not as if you wouldn’t do everything possible to help them track down this nutzoid program they claim exists. Do what we tell you to do or else!  Geesh, those assholes!”  Whenever Piedad lapsed into either the old Texas twang or even the mildest of profanity, you could bet the farm her emotional thermometer was off the charts.  There was no mark on the Richter scale to measure her anger this time. 

“I don’t think they were joking about the program or the report, but I want to replay the conversation a few times in my head before we get into it again, ok?  Let’s just enjoy a few minutes of calm before the girls get home.  Whatever the truth is, at this point we don’t know anything other than what we just heard.  Right?  I can’t imagine them coming back today or tomorrow so we have some time to figure out a plan of action.  Agreed?”

Her eyes had softened a bit, but her breathing was still heavy with emotion.  “Agreed.”

Chapter Seven

“What an ass!  That guy is guilty as hell.  He knows exactly what we’re talking about.” Even before the tail end of the dark blue Crown Victoria disappeared beyond the circular drive, Agent Cordell knew the right course of action. “Put in a call for the warrant so it’s ready when we get there and add a wiretap while you’re at it.  If this guy thinks he’s going anywhere, he’s an idiot.”

Agent Kuscinski’s lips pressed together as Cordell kept spewing.  They had been partners for only three hours – an agonizing three hours for the senior agent.  The last eight agents Kuscinski had been assigned to train were good men, good agents and ended up being good friends.  But, Cordell was something else - a giant pain in the ass Kuscinski just couldn’t get a handle on how to train.  Agents enter Quantico fresh-faced, eager to serve but exit breathing a grateful sigh of relief for just having survived; Cordell left angry.  He wanted revenge.  The physical and mental tortures new recruits experience during the weeding out processes had only heightened his inherent meanness; coupled with that intense need to inflict pain was an arrogance of the supposed power of being “right”.  Agent Cordell loved brandishing his FBI credentials: he considered them a weapon – a righteous sword of justice.   Continuing down the driveway to the highway, Agent Kuscinski quickly mulled through the usual placating replies he had used in the past to temper a partner’s “zeal”, coming to the sad conclusion none would work today.

“It doesn’t matter at this point what he does or doesn’t know.  We’re going to get a warrant and be back so just cool your heels.  He’s not going anywhere and we will follow protocol without deviation.  You hear me?  Without deviation!” the tone was unmistakable:  ‘do it my way or else’.  “You go off on your own on this one, screw up the investigation and your ass will be so far gone no one …”, Kuscinski hissed out the last few words as an inaudible murmur.

“Yeah, yeah, I get the message.  But, this guy’s gonna pay big time for screwing around with me.  And that little bitch …” Agent Cordell eyes glistened as his voice tailed off, his head moving up and down slowly in small ratcheting increments. 

The Crown Vic’s front end surged upward from the acceleration as Kuscinski’s right foot pressed down hard – the instant reaction to Cordell’s venom.  “You stupid bastard.”  Kuscinski said smoothly.  “You need to go do something else if you plan on making this a pissing contest because some woman out-flanked you.  Get a grip on what needs to be done, not massaging your ego!”  Kuscinski’s tone stiffened with each word.

“What? Are you threatening to take me off this just because I want to nail this guy hard?” Cordell’s rising blood lust had just acquired a new, much closer target, his question revealing the deep resentment towards Kuscinski that had been pounding against his weakening dam of self-control.  Each carefully uttered word carried malice: tone and emphasis placed purposefully so there would be no mistaking their meaning. 

“Yes.”  Kuscinski didn’t turn towards Cordell but he knew the one word answer had further shortened an already burning fuse.  Cordell’s demeanor was unimportant right now and it would take much more than a few angrily spat words to rattle Kuscinski.  He didn’t know what was on Wright’s computers but he knew he better find out.   The Crown Vic surged forward again.

Retreating quickly from his partner’s diatribe Kuscinski’s thoughts glided down a well-worn path, his uncanny ability to tune out all distractions, vocal or visual, taking control.  Every instinct he had cultivated over so many years was screaming at him; funny he mused that “Danger Will Robinson” was all that came to the forefront; only his wife would have been able to perceive the slight upward tilt of his chin, the “tell” that something humorous had overtaken his serious thoughts.   The directive given him that morning had been simple:  drive up to Tremonton, talk to this Jack Wright about what he knows regarding the wire transfer masking program and report back.  Yet the conversation had eerily gone off-track quickly and Kuscinski was having trouble sorting it out.  How could this guy be so smooth and still be a computer geek?  Every IT geek in the agency stuck out like red lipstick on a pig, but this guy could blend into any WASP neighborhood without a ripple. 

Chapter Eight

Aaron Bents stepped stiffly back into the door’s opening, body ramrod straight as if a two by four ran the length of his spine, eyes locked on his two adversaries, their physiques distorted by the sunlight straining through the rusted metal screen whose fraying ends pulled loose at odd points in the frame sticking out like long brown curly needles.  Letting the old door close silently, he coolly blended into the semi-darkness of the storeroom the calculated display of anger again bringing that thin insipid smile that was so irritating to most people who knew him.  Bingo!  Phillips is so easy he thought priding himself on his performance mentally checking off step number one.  The election day embarrassment that had left him drifting in a numbing sea of depression had quickly congealed into purposeful anger then hardened into the plan just put in motion.   He had been preparing for this day with fervor akin to a passionate televangelist exhorting the faithful, a sordid glee propelling him from one point to another as he methodically mapped out the destruction of his antagonists.  Taking down the farmer’s coop would mean much more than a transfer of power in the region – it would be a magnificent financial coup elevating him from his second tier status among his developer peers.

Bobby Phillips was the philosophical linchpin that kept the tight-knit but loosely organized farmers and ranchers voting together on every issue, political or otherwise, in Northern Utah.  His influence was widespread, his reputation unsullied and his integrity unquestioned.  But his greatest attribute was also his greatest weakness.  Aaron had determined some months ago there were no cracks in the farmer’s alliance into which he might slide in even the smallest of wedges, but if he could create one or even the appearance of a rift or the perception of discord or disagreement, then a small opening might present itself.   Creating this mirage was his first move and the timing must be perfect or the alliance would steel itself and his chance would be gone.  Bobby’s fierce loyalty to his friends, in particular his best friend, would cause him to rush to their aid, especially if Aaron were involved, no matter how minute the involvement.  It was this specific trait of Bobby’s character that Aaron was counting on to come to the forefront. 

Aaron backed up two more steps, stopped to see if anyone came to follow him, then turned and walked the way he had come winding his way through the wide aisles of grain and feed sacks dragging his hand along the sides as if to memorize their forms.  He harshly pushed open the double swinging doors that led to the customer service area, slinging them aside so hard they hit the walls and bounced back almost hitting him the face his reflexes preventing the bloody nose.  When Aaron had entered the co-op, the only visual evidence Roger was even aware of anyone else in the room was a slight raising of eyebrows, then the swiveling on his chair as Aaron passed so he faced the double door entrance to the warehouse, ignoring his presence, but knowing full well where Aaron was headed, not knowing his intentions, but knowing he would be coming back soon and didn’t want to miss Aaron’s exit.  

Roger’s laugh was immediate unmistakably elicited by Aaron’s failed gunslinger move through the double doors.  No words were exchanged nor any needed to convey the complete dismissal Roger afforded Aaron – the derisive chuckle sent the message: you don’t even rate my disdain.  Roger had never given a second thought to Aaron Bents on any level – not politically, not socially and certainly not personally.  Roger was too ensconced, too entrenched, too much a permanent fixture in Tremonton to ever be bothered by the likes of an Aaron Bents and the “what a fool” laugh only confirmed the feelings.  Aaron’s microchip brain was working overtime processing the laugh, the raised eyebrows and every other past encounter with Roger Burdette.  He knew he had just been presented another opportunity but couldn’t quite figure out how to take advantage of the moment, so he just stood in the middle of the customer service foyer looking just as foolish as Roger thought him to be which would also prove invaluable though now it wasn’t apparent.

“Man, that would have hurt.” Aaron said feigning sincerity with a half-sheepish grin.  Instantly it had become clear.  Burdette didn’t care about Aaron so why give him a reason?  If he didn’t suspect Aaron had the brains or balls to take on the Co-op again why change his opinion?  The first opening for a wedge was almost imperceptible, but it was there nonetheless.  Though the Co-op had always strategically voted together there had been some fierce disagreements over tactics occasionally resulting in the disagreeing parties giving the each other the cold shoulder or a blank stare when meeting on the street and a few times harsh words and hurt feelings ending friendships.  But, the logics of valley economics always carried more weight than bruised egos so the Co-op had stood firm together.  Aaron just needed to change the perception of how the co-op benefited the pocketbooks of only one or two of the more progressive minded members to slide a wedge into that tiny imperceptible crevice.

“No doubt about it” came the flaccid reply.  “What exactly had you hurrying for the door?” Roger asked anticipating the usual sour-note filled ranting, which if he was to admit it, always made him chuckle inside at Aaron’s permanent perception of being done wrong by anyone associated with the Co-op.

Aaron couldn’t believe his hears!  The simple question, though possibly or more likely, definitely, asked in derision, hoping the answer would generate some amusement, was like a searchlight illuminating the crevice making it seem cavernous.

Shaking his head with an easy laugh, Aaron said, “I couldn’t see the door in the dark so I almost ran into it, reached out my hand to keep myself from hitting it, it flew open and almost hit me anyway.  Too funny, huh?”  Aaron’s quick smile and self-deprecating tone caught Roger completely off-guard massaging his gruff exterior into a relaxed and almost friendly demeanor seemingly inviting Aaron into a good-natured conversation. 

“You know, I’ve done the same thing a thousand times.  I keep telling Phillips to put some more lights in that damn warehouse before I crack my skull wide open some day.  That’s why I usually stay right here.” Roger said with a short quick downward thrust of his chin emphasizing his correctness to remain seated on his favorite stool.

Aaron‘s smile couldn’t have been wider: freshly polished perfect teeth gleaming.  “Well, you can say that to him, but I better keep my mouth shut since he might just knock me into tomorrow” he said with a slight side to side shake of his head emitting a throaty chuckle whose tone conveyed complete camaraderie and “best of friends” feelings, the chuckle instantly transforming into a full laugh; not a loud, fill-the-room, boisterous type of laugh that would cause a person to snap to wide-eyed attention, but genuine and sincere mirth Aaron had practiced far too many times to startle any recipient he was trying to seduce.

“Ya know, everyone thinks I hate Phillips because of what’s gone on between us, constantly jawing at each other over the re-zoning issues and elections and whatever else we could find to disagree about, but I consider him a great citizen of Tremonton and respect him a lot.  Just because we don’t see eye to eye too often doesn’t mean I don’t value his opinion or views on what should be done.”  Aaron had purposefully slipped into Roger’s laconic jargon effortlessly endeavoring to chip away at the seemingly impenetrable barrier that years and years of being on opposite sides of the political fence had erected between them.  But, unlike a mountain climber hammering a piton into an imperceptible crevice wedging it so tightly it becomes irremovable, Aaron tapped delicately on his emotional wedge not wanting to risk the crevice breaking apart or his piton failing to find its mark.  Tap, tap, tap.  Easy does it, he told himself. 

Roger didn’t consider himself a fool by any stretch of the imagination as too many years of watching Aaron perform in public had sufficiently calloused his senses to be surprised by anything Aaron could say or do.  Yet, earnestly probing Aaron’s face revealed nothing – not even the tiniest smirk or twinkle in the eyes that Aaron was at the very least playing with him or more likely conning him as Roger’s first thoughts suspected.  If Aaron wanted to engage in a friendly game of patty-cake, I can play along Roger mused to himself: this wolf couldn’t disguise himself with just a sheepish grin – I know him too well.  But, Aaron was convinced Roger was the exact spot on which to concentrate his barrage so he pressed on with his cheerful banter, alternately smiling, laughing, furrowing his brows with pretended thought each time Roger offered an inane opinion on some absurd farmer’s antics or habits and with each new exchange, the invisible piton was tapped further into the tiny, cragged opening of Roger Burdette’s supposedly, unassailable rock wall defense against Aaron Bents.

“Ya know that piece over on the other side of the Smith’s back valley that’s for sale?” Roger’s question wasn’t exactly the friendly question the huckster tone suggested, but was intended more as a cattle-prod lead-in to something else.  The narrowing of Aaron’s eyes was the reaction Roger had hoped for.  The Smith’s dairy farm occupied 640 acres beginning at the east end of the Tremonton city boundary stretching 4 miles alongside Highway 16 - the main highway leading into town from Salt Lake City – running back up and over the first set of foothills that paralleled the highway.  The Smith’s front door was situated on what was now considered the back side of the foothills, but when the Smith family first settled Tremonton in 1855, the trail from Salt Lake ran right in front of their farm.  After World War I, Highway 16 was created utilizing a less sloping route bypassing the Smith farm entirely and the “back valley” misnomer came into play.  Two years ago Aaron had been the leading proponent to change the zoning codes to allow commercial property development on both sides of Highway 16 and ban any dairy farms or other farm related enterprises espousing a doctrine that the Smith’s dairy farm was not only hindering commercial development, thereby robbing the non-farming residents of much needed tax revenue, but, essentially destroying Tremonton’s ability to attract outside businesses.  

“Yes.  What about it?” Aaron’s questioning response came right on the heels of Roger’s last word and was stiffer than he intended.  He could play the buddy-buddy game only so long, the pretended friendly goodness building up so much inside of him just like heated methane in a silo that combustion was inevitable either from the pressure or the minute spark of Roger’s out of the blue question.  Aaron had to blow.  It was his nature; and Roger knew that.

Roger’s drawled laconic reply spoke volumes.  “Well, I heard they have a buyer.”  Aaron’s jaw muscles tightened ever so slowly like a wet towel being twisted to wring out the last droplets of water until Roger thought he could hear bones breaking under the stress.  But, maybe that was just his mind teasing him.  It wasn’t exactly common knowledge among all the citizens in Tremonton that Aaron’s overly enthusiastic zoning change campaign on their economic behalf had been the thinnest of paper mache masks hiding the object of his ardor: developing the Smith’s back valley.  But, the Co-op’s denizens hadn’t been fooled as easily as Aaron had hoped for due to those informal town meetings held every morning just behind the big glass front window when any action or word of gossip that had passed in the county the previous day was discussed. Nothing got by Bobby and his “Co-op Cohorts”.

Chapter Nine

Rocking back on the hind legs of the crudely built four-legged wooden stool, the round scooped out center worn smooth to the touch, the young boy was rescued from tipping over backwards by nestling his shoulders into the further most corner of the café’s brick walls.  Moving forward, he balanced himself as if on a high wire, then back against the corner, then again forward onto the high wire - an easy motion reminiscent of a lazy summer afternoon spent relaxing in a rocking chair on the porch, its languid movements somehow staying in perfect unison with the ticking of a grandfather clock inside the doorway of the house.  On each forward movement, the boy could see clearly the screen of his Sony laptop as the glare from the bright sun flooding into the café and bouncing off the muted white walls eased enough allowing him to decipher the words and images, the easy movements of the stool belying the frenetic sight in front of him.  Dozens of young boys, none older than 16, were yelling, laughing, threatening, bargaining, cajoling from various perches around the café, arms and mouths in a constant blurring motion, a cacophony of noise bordering on auditory mayhem, all of them attached invisibly to a computer sharing their common purpose:  scam the masses. 

The boy’s name was Khalil and he was everything here: undisputed ruler, enforcer, caretaker, provider, judge and executioner.  He was 14.   The café that was his kingdom was no more than four brick walls, a semi-ancient red tile roof, two large 4 x 8 foot openings on each side of a double doorway in the front with two more openings along an adjacent wall that had seemed to wander along a crooked path until meeting the southwest-facing back wall which was purposefully constructed shorter than the other three.  The four openings originally had been cased in a thick green glass reminiscent of old Coke bottles their luminescent hues cast on everything and everyone in the café, but bullets and machetes had left only the metal frames.  Stout wooden shutters built from discarded lumber had closed them at night after the glass was gone, but now those were no longer needed either:  the café was a 24/7 factory of deceit and thievery. 

Though the café outwardly resembled the other buildings in town, Khalil’s domain was different.  The ceiling was high, open to the top showing cross-member rafters supporting oversized roof trusses, stronger than other town buildings: they were in place to support the weight of satellite dishes – so many that the tile roof practically vanished with just slivers of dark burnt orange peeking out in half-moon curves. 

The café kingdom’s chaos was a superbly orchestrated and closely monitored operation, Khalil only being the in-house manager of the local franchised “phish” farm with several similar locations all chosen purposefully based upon the willingness of the authorities to ignore but more so on accepting the going rate for ignorance, as each franchise had had to establish the bribery rate when beginning operations. 

“Allah be praised! Allah be praised” Khalil screamed, quickly jerking forward from his resting place in the corner’s crevice so that his face was mere inches from the computer screen his voice somehow penetrating the cafe’s cacophony becoming a slow-acting catalyst that muted the incessant bedlam into an peculiar quiet, the computer fans the only noticeable sounds in the phish farm.   Khalil could already feel the weight of the silver coins in his hands; promised payment to the one who found the whereabouts of a person his master so determinedly sought.  During one of the many phishing scenarios played out on the internet by Khalil’s troops, an email address bearing the surname for one of the eight “great enemies of Islam” had quietly appeared from among millions of debit card holders in a database stolen from the largest mercantile store chain in Brazil - Khalil was also one of the premier “hackers” in Africa garnering a trusted and well-earned reputation among other socio-politicos for his superb “blue nowhere” talents, but more so for his unbridled hatred of the West.  Rocking on his stool, Khalil was no less fanatical in his chosen method of destruction than the suicide bomber walking into a crowd.

Ripping out the pencil stub stuck under the side brim of his official NBA licensed Miami Heat cap, Khalil hurriedly scribbles the information onto a Post-It note, forever mindful that it must be completely legible for his master while silently giving thanks to Allah for teaching him how to read and write English but not acknowledging in his prayer the unselfish toil of the young British girl who had been his teacher.   To give any credit to an infidel in the ways of Allah would be an insult to the Prophet Mohammed.

Khalil stuffs the yellow paper in the front pocket of his cargo shorts and jumps through the window opening his legs seemingly running at full speed before his feet touch the scorched dirt of the main street.  He only goes a few hundred yards, before darting between two of the vendor carts that occupy almost every square foot of space along the street whose presence crowds the entrances to the shops and stores, but also effectively obscures from view a passage leading to the back alley where a different world lives and breathes.  This world is clean:  clear water, indoor plumbing, soft beds and air-conditioning.    Khail crisply knocks on the wide white door.

“Please tell my master I have found what he desired me to seek.”  Holding the yellow Post-it note in his outstretched hands, his head slightly bowed, the words are spoken softly to the small woman peering around the edge of the door opened only a few inches. Her entire body is enshrouded; only her eyes are visible to the outside world, but Khalil knows she is his master’s mother.  She closes the door without a sound.  Khalil remains motionless as he knows it will be his master who next opens the wide white door.

As the paper is taken from Khalil’s hand, he hears his master.   “Lift your eyes, my son.”  Quickly scanning the scribble, his master murmurs softly, “You have done well.  Allah be praised in all things”.  The man in the exquisite white bubu robes is beautiful.  Tall, bronze skin smooth and face unblemished, light hazel eyes and dark hair cropped close, no shadow of a beard, the lines and folds of the cloth displaying hints of a well-toned and muscled physique.   The voice conveys calm.

“Come.”  The man moves back out of the doorway a step, motions to Khalil “Come inside and take some tea.”  The same serene voice devoid of emotion betrayed no heightened sign of pleasure or satisfaction with Khalil’s success.  “Thank you master” Khalil accepts the offer, his head not having moved from its original position of respect.

Bahadur Ismayil is his real name; in a previous life he was known as Benjamin Alexander.  His parents called him “usayr” or precious one, as he was their only child, the product of a tangled union of religious contradictions and cultural contrasts:  a Christian mother whose family had been driven out of Baku during the Russian takeover only to end up in a less tolerant village on the Iranian border rife with Shia Muslim sentiment and hostile to all things Christian; and, a Muslim father steeped in the weightiness of Islamic ritual and duty submitting to Allah and his newfound ardor.  To save the unborn child she now carried, their flight from Azerbaijan had been decreed at the moment of conception as Sharia law dictated death for them both.  Four months of deprivation and fear and relying on the generosity of strangers, begging when no sympathetic ear would listen, taking what they needed when opportunity presented, their destination was Northern California only because two Stanford University students on summer exchange in Istanbul had shared for a week their hotel room and food and images of a place of peace that were so easily imprinted on minds eager for freedom and safety.   Grateful and praising deities for the respite, yet needing to continue on, stealing the money had been an easy rationalized decision; buying the passage with no passports or visas had proven more inventive.   Corruption is no respecter of nationalities so bribing the local personnel director of the cruise liner bound for Miami was only a matter of size and denying the matrimonial bond.  Living separately for the 28 day duration enhanced the journey’s pain to almost intolerable levels sowing the seed of hatred whose branches in the next generation would enfold and embrace indiscriminately. 

Describe their lives in the US

New Chapter:  Warrants and Peace

Agent Kuscinski’s head just wasn’t screwed on tight enough today.   Everything was seeping out at the edges: nothing was making sense anymore.  The drive back to Salt Lake City had been filled with Cordell plugged into his Blackberry, reading off email after email from Washington detailing the escalating number of wire transfers that were “ghosting”.  All between 10 and 12 million dollars.

New Chapter

(after the FBI has been turned away forcefully at the main gate after returning with search and seizure warrants)

The John Deere all wheel drive, double dual axle tractor was Bobby’s birthday gift to himself, although his grand day has passed several months earlier without fanfare as the only noticeable sign of celebration was a small dinner party Piedad had crafted together ignoring Bobby’s “under the breath” threats of a singular boycott.   Large, heavy and powerful, the farm monster now sat sideways at the main gate - a silent, green and yellow gargoyle of sorts.

New Chapter:

Thinking long and hard, Jack’s only logical, though insane, conclusion was maddening:  the black money program had been compromised and altered.  Nothing else made any sense.  The crown jewel of the program had been the breach backup feature.  If at any point there were a breach of the program, a “ghosting” program would automatically be triggered transferring all data instantly to a secure “offshore” site, then erasing the electronic “tracks” of that transfer preventing anyone from knowing the location of the offshore recipient server.  There was no other program like it; there couldn’t be another program.  It was a unique program in two aspects:  no one outside the bank’s CIO knew about it except Pieter and himself; and no one programmer was capable of replicating it – he had made sure of that by destroying all the “stitching” codes.  Interleaving dozens of programming languages at this level is a talent reserved for four, maybe five programmers in the world.  The contributing programmers didn’t know each other though one maybe had an inkling of another or perhaps two at the most, but not the entire ensemble as they came from different programming languages and protocols not to mention different countries and cultures.  I had been so meticulous in the choices.  After installing and testing the program, Pieter had taken over the teaching portion of the project working directly with the bank’s CIO.  But, even Pieter didn’t know the exact ghost back up workings, only how to set up the offshore pipeline and breach trigger parameters.  As expert as he was Pieter could never have recognized the intricate stitch coding as the ghosting program.   But, someone had breached the program without triggering the ghosting and deciphered the coding.  It was the only plausible explanation: throw out the impossible and all that remains is the possible or in this case, the probable.  Nothing else made any sense.  There is a programmer out there who can stitch a quilt as good as I can. 

“Hey! What’s going on up there?” comes the call from the bottom of the stairs.  No answer comes from above.   The need to know that has plagued him all his life causing both pain and satisfaction is impossible to control as Jack sends an email to the one programmer he trusts: Andrew Kingston.  During the primary construction phases of the black money program, he knew all of the programmers would go against contract ethics and try to slip a back door past him, more of a complex and sophisticated “hide and seek” game of coding than figuratively telling him to screw off.   When asked directly, each one had emphatically answered in the negative, energetically denying any attempt of subterfuge; of course, no programmer ever admitted to calculated programming treason.  All except Andrew.  “Try to find it, Jackie Boy!” he laughed.  “And when you don’t, you may send me a case of Chateau Lafitte, and if you do find it, I will bare my ass on the top of Corcovado and scream to everyone near and far, you are the master of us all.”  Jack trusted Andrew to tell him the truth regardless of any consequences for in Andrew’s justifiably arrogant mind his supreme coding skills placed him above any reprisals or recriminations for his devious behavior. 

In only a few minutes, a delay probably caused by multiple firewalls, Andrew, who with 99.99% of all programmers on this level of demand, is connected 24/7 and whose paranoia regarding hackers is justifiable since the best coders are also the best hackers themselves, replies.  Jack learns that rumors of the program’s existence began two weeks earlier in Brussels but only confirmed 18 hours ago when the wire traces of several transfers of millions of Euros between Brussels and the end bank completely vanished after the transfer terminated thereby leaving a dead end to the money trail.  Interpol instantly alerted the issuing bank, which in turn alerted its satellite offices, and the rolling stone bounced down the mountain opening along its path tiny seams in Interpol’s riveted armor of secrecy.  Six banks had been experiencing the exact same scenario over the past two weeks, although on a much smaller scale involving Euro transfers less than 500,000, some transfers in dollars but all in amounts less than $100,000, but not one had reported the incidents, blaming glitches in the system due to adverse weather conditions plaguing the region.  A perfect time to test a program, Jack thought since no bank ever wanted to expose their inner turmoil, inviting banking regulators to scour their systems.  Yes, it was the perfect transfer scenario and would not to attract the attention of Interpol. 

Jack’s private work phone, a number less than five people had as it was routed through the internet satellite connection with full encryption, no eavesdropping allowed was his paranoid mantra, began vibrating in Jack’s jeans left back pocket, eliciting a faint curse from its owner who for some inexplicable reason, always jumped even though he knew the phone was set to vibrate only.  Never failed.  Jack always jumped and cursed at it as if the phone possessed some mean spirit intent on scaring the b-jesus out of him. 

“It’s yours isn’t it?’ He knew the voice, but had never heard the tone. 

“I don’t know.  Maybe.” Jack’s voice is muted.

“This one was your last, right?” More of a statement than a question from Andrew.

“I think so. Yes.”

“I always had the feeling during the coding for you that last time it was for something totally different than anything you had ever conceived before.  You know, you were so mesmerized by it, so secretive, so reclusive, never giving me a straight answer to even the most innocent question.  You were an absolute jerk!  At the time, I thought it would consume you and leave no residue.  I am not so sure I was wrong.  Did you know Pieter is dead?”

No surprise in his voice, Jack answers.  “I didn’t know.  When?”

“Two months ago outside Geneva.  An accident.  He was driving up to his lodge.  A drunk truck driver plowed into the side of his Audi crushing him like a tomato.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“Would you be?  You know that road.  It hasn’t seen a large truck in 20 years.  So, one happens to show up at the same time as Pieter.  No, I don’t believe it for a moment.  And, now, this program or whatever it is surfaces?”

“Oh, boy. This isn’t good.” Jack wheezes.

“Will you give me the list of the other programmers?”

“Why?”

“I don’t believe in coincidence.  If Pieter was murdered for this program….well, let’s just say, my friend, there may be other accidents.  I prefer to keep breathing if you don’t mind.  Will you tell me who else worked this for you and let’s not forget, worked it for Pieter too.”

“Got a pen?”

Laughing, “Always.”

“Pablo Marcello.”

“That arrogant asshole?  If I had known he was coding, I would have told you to cram it up your ass!”

“You want the list or don’t you?”  Jack calmly asks.

“Yeah. “

“Mehmood Kaziri.  Jim Diluk. Elias Brogs.  Nashiema Aderfi. Jonathan Wong. That’s the list”

“I’ll get back to you.  For both our sakes, don’t go looking.  It won’t help and I need the space to work in.  Your word on that please.”

“Yes. My word I won’t go looking.”

The line went dead.

Chapter  Eight

Working out of a “wired to the max” Manhattan studio apartment/office, writing, editing, testing and debugging programs almost 24/7 and Piedad working six blocks away for the largest tax law firm on the east coast,  life was grand. Piedad was expecting their first child in November, the pregnancy shocking and surprising them both causing major upheavals in well-laid plans forged after bare knuckle career goal discussions and agreed upon timetables.  Piedad’s pregnancy news was greeted instantly with laughing and tears, the realization of becoming parents tempering the excitement quickly.   With four short months left until Sally would arrive, the transformation had begun in earnest: finding a larger place to live, cutting back on Piedad’s schedule that meant substantially less income for a sustained period as they both were adamant about Piedad being a stay at home mom at least until Sally would start elementary, a good five or six year minimum without the second income. 

Three years earlier they left Texas, Piedad graduating at the top of her law class offered and accepting a job in New York with Bain Partners, a top tax litigation firm, Jack striking out on his own as a freelance programmer.  At their first dinner party at one of the partner’s of Piedad’s firm, as drinks were being served beforehand and Piedad was schmoozing with her colleagues, Jack’s meandering led him towards a small group of men engaged in an animated discussion the topic determined on closer eavesdropping: Jack’s great addiction - golf.   Inserting himself without regard for an invitation, he unabashedly proffered his opinion pro and con on each tenet dredged up by whatever member of the group, his unfettered passion and enthusiasm and knowledge of the game making him one of “their own” by the time dinner was announced.  At dinner, the inevitable “what do you do?” question was posed by one of the “golf” group members and Jack was no less passionate detailing his work and vision.  His fledging freelance venture took wing the next afternoon with a inquiry from the managing partner of a small investment bank who was part of a foursome that included two members of the Golf Gang, as Piedad jokingly referred to them.  Now, Jack was scheduling clients six months in advance and Piedad was scouring the classifieds for a new home.

Jack took the call late Saturday afternoon, flying out of JFK Sunday morning headed to Zurich.  Monday morning, he took on the mantle of Senior Vice President and Chief Programming Officer for Zurich Bank Partners, LTD., titles that had been chosen after the 12 hour Sunday “what if” session with Pieter Dies, when as COO of Credit Suisse, Peter had contracted Jack a year earlier to detect the cause of untraceable fluctuating balances in an auditing program at the New York branch.  Within two hours, Jack had found a “skimming” program planted by a low level bank auditor and quickly eradicated it, applying sophisticated safeguards to prevent a repeat, garnering a multitude of thanks, a very nice paycheck and an unforeseen opening into the European banking markets.  Pieter’s resignation from Credit Suisse was the equivalent of a self-beheading:  an action impossible to comprehend in its possibility or plausibility. It was a position Pieter had coveted his entire life sacrificing two marriages, relationships with his three children, discarding childhood friends and trampling countless colleagues in his quest.  Yet, it wasn’t just that singular program discovery that convinced Pieter the banking software world was ripe for a harvest – fields sown decades ago by incompetent and naïve and greedy programmers – but, problem upon problem with computer downtime and program crashes, compatibility and coherence issues between banks, and accountability to no one of Swiss bankers.  Epiphanies expose a man’s soul to his true intentions.  Pieter’s freshly discovered enlightened state would find fulfillment in a new journey.  Placing the call to Jack to meet him in Geneva to discuss his plan for Zurich Partners was almost a year to the day Pieter had decided on his purpose .  It would only be the two of them, but that would be more than needed.

 ZBP began a metronomic climb cresting on top of the banking world within six years their sphere of influence gaining mass exponentially with each new program Jack wrote and each new client Pieter secured.   A bit player at the start feeding off the consulting scraps of much larger and more connected firms whose competence was challenged continually by the rise in stature and reputation of Jack’s programming “rap sheet”: growing to bulging proportions boasting program projects by almost every international banking need: database, cataloging, indexing, foraging, contract management, predictive, disruptive, risk management, currency trading, investment, reserve management, funds transfer management - programs that now are the standard in the G-8 banking world - contract amounts bordering on seven figures per.   

Bank’s needed Jack’s programming magic to make them safe and efficient and Pieter’s operational and implementation wizardry for seamless transactions, but more importantly, the demand for their skill sets was becoming extraordinary.  Pieter had hoped together with Jack, they would control the majority of the banking consulting work in Europe.  Now he knew they could.  Understanding the powerful business synergy generated by Pieter and Jack was simple compared to explaining the chemistry between the two men.   Absolute contrasts in appearance, demeanor, style, character, vision and especially purpose; eerily mirror images in focus, determination, forbearance, ambition and self-awareness.  A fusion of men – a fission of brilliance whose impending dominance and control of European banking software brought accolades and notoriety and attention from those who both seek the light and those who crave shadowed anonymity.  

Pieter’s unimagined, at least to all others, resignation from Credit Suisse had brought the anticipated reprisal of banishment from clubs, groups, and other organizations tightly controlled by or favorably titled in the bank’s direction for perceived disloyalty, outsider whispered rumors of fiscal impropriety or personal immoralities though egregious sexual affairs were not always accompanied by resignations from such powerful positions. Pieter’s decades highest level tenure had prepared him exquisitely for the consequences of his shocking and, to his superiors, sudden departure.  Pieter’s epiphany had occurred the day Jack had determined the exact amount squirreled away by such a lower intelligence nobody:  if he could do it would you sacrifice all that you had spent a life time accumulating to have the chance to obtain a thousand fold of that amount at the end of ten years? 

Though they shared a singleness of vision for ZBP’s success, the impetus for that purpose was not.  

Jack’s most secure program coding had been breached; the “how” was self-evident with news of Pieter’s death; the “why” was self-illuminating as each day passed.  But, by whom, would only be answered through pain and blood.  The “la obscur revenante”  had been written for a consortium of the largest European and Asian banks: never before created 1024 bit encryption with multiple passkeys more sophisticated than a Rubic’s cube color squares alignment complexity, completely impenetrable by even the most dazzling of super computer efforts, this program controls the money and identity of the vast majority of the world’s wealthiest individuals, corporations, and nations; but, more notably, the dictators, murderers, despots, drug cartels, death merchants, arms merchants, swindlers, scammers, industrialists, militarists, corrupt politicians and any other craven money monger seeking a safe haven for their “black money”.  

The designated government agencies fighting terrorism generally know in a global sense where the densest concentration of terrorist groups reside and though they may not exactly know each terrorist by name they usually know who the leaders are, the size of the groups, etc. Knowing where they will strike next is the most complex problem and every agency funnels huge amounts of resources into piecing together that ever changing puzzle. Every government knows it; every terrorist knows it.  And each government striving to fight terrorism is also fighting a gray world of money transfers and laundering within a banking world on the terrorist periphery. 

Though in the past, Interpol, the FBI and CIA, MI6 and Scotland Yard and other government agencies wanting to know the identity of black money depositors had never been able to breach the sanctity of the Swiss banking system and could only track the transfers between banks, legitimate or not; now, with the “ghosting program” in full implementation, it would be impossible to track any funds where the program had been utilized especially the unaccounted for black money that funded 99% of the world’s terrorist groups. 

Eight freelance programmers, each one geographically separate with no alliances or shared projects in the past, but probably able to recognize the programming fingerprints of another, had contributed various pieces and segments never once knowing the full spectrum or vision parameters of the program, Jack being the master quilter “stitching” the coded parts together; at that time only two people were aware of what was being created and why: Jack and Pieter Des, managing partner of the firm; only Jack knew the full context of the program’s capabilities and controls as this was standard protocol: limitation of project parameters to a few individuals reducing the risk of sabotage or worse, theft: programming codes can be more valuable than gold in the banking industry where the ability to gain a split second advantage over your competitors in a transaction meant millions, sometimes billions in profits. 

Just as an artist signs his masterpiece, most upper echelon programmers install a “back door”, that secret entrance to the program’s soul: a password signature known only to them that can never be located, changed or deleted by anyone other than the creator.  Jack’s back door was undetectable since it didn’t exist in the usual manner.  For anyone to access, operate and control the program, an initiatory 16 apha numeric password was used just as a home computer’s password.  This granted the user access to the “cube” level, each side of the password cube having nine “boxes” requiring 12 letters or numbers thereby creating a 12 digit password in each box. Every entry into the nine boxes on each side of the cube passwords were based on 256 bit rolling code technology, the same concept universally used in every automobile keyless entry system in the world:  each time the key fob is used, the matching codes in the key and the car’s sensor are changed instantly always matching each other: over 1 billion combinations in a car’s system – over 1 trillion combinations in “la obscure revenante”.   The program’s “key fob” was a platinum encased lead cylinder resembling an oversized Macanudo cigar – definitely more guarded, and unequivocally more valuable than the Crown Jewels of Great Britain – that was inserted into a small opening on the front of the mainframe.  It’s power source: two tritium pellets with a half-life of 250,000 years – basically, a miniaturized nuclear reactor.  Press the “key fob”, the encrypted entries in each box on each side of the cube are matched and the program lays bare its soul - but, not its brain.  The source code was only accessible when the six sides of cube were aligned like a Rubic’s cube creating a unique formation.   Jack’s backdoor is an exquisitely simple one: a four digit number sequence followed by a four letter sequence followed by the plus sign input on the main operator level triggers a bypass program hidden behind the first coding sequences just as a non-descript, commonplace landscape painted over another conceals a priceless masterpiece. 

Once the program was installed, working perfectly on the banking network’s main frame, all passwords and coding transferred to the bank’s CIO, he walked away from his finest and most complex creation shredding all related documentation he possessed endeavoring intently on forgetting the monsters he was helping protect.

His destination: peace of mind in the mountains.   He became invisible to the banking world though his programming fingerprints remained behind.

New Chapter

Jack looked at the list again this time concentrating on who could have stolen the program and how.  Not one of those persons could be at the center of this.  They were great in their respective areas, but didn’t have the ability to bring it all together.  Never had; never would.  And as much as Pieter knew about banking protocols, he was not a programmer per se, but certainly knew his way around the program controls and had all the key codes and passwords.  One of the more infuriating aspects of banking consultants is that they build in an “indispensable need” into every project and Zurich Banking Partners always made sure the firm would be the only choice to maintain and service any program they installed.  Like cars today are so complex it takes a squadron of mechanics to fix one, so it is with complex computer programs.  Usually only the original programmers are capable of its administration and maintenance.  So, the bank’s CIO was ruled out since he wouldn’t know how to bypass the security measures in order to copy the program.  Only Pieter and himself were the candidates.  And Jack knew he wasn’t the one.  Come on, think!  Pieter must have disabled the breach triggers and made a copy of the coding.  Then reset the breach triggers.  Or even more sinister:  he reset the “safe haven” destination then triggered the breach.  No, that wouldn’t work; the bank would have known instantly as the entire database system would have crashed.  But, Pieter was the only one who had constant access and could have done something he shouldn’t have:  made a copy of the program.  And someone knew he had.  Now, he is dead and I just made the top of the hit list, Jack mused as a wry grin creased his mouth.

“Are you ok?” Piedad’s question startled Jack back to his surroundings in the loft that had been converted into an office and war room.  It was a spacious room with angled ceilings reminding him of an A-frame lodge his grandfather had owned on Lake Texoma in North Texas. Facing east, the large rectangular window with a semi-circle on top allowed the morning sun to warm Jack’s prized African violets that sat happily a few feet off the floor on the wide window ledge.  For some reason he could never quite pin down, the little purple and pink blossoms made him content maybe because they were so fragile and delicate only blooming in the most desirable conditions or when least expected.  At least for him, it was unexpected.  The south roof furnished the necessary clear line of sight for the four satellite disks that kept him connected and wired into his computer world.  Directly below the window was the new generator almost fully encased in its new house except for the door; surrounded in superbly molded sound proofing, not even the slightest hum could be heard at peak power levels.  All the equipment had been hidden from view for purely aesthetic and decorative reasons.  Piedad had insisted.  It paid to have talented friends in the design and construction trades. 

“Wow.” 

“Ok, spill it.  Why the ghostly look? Still not thinking about the FBI, are you?”

“No, something much worse.”  She was at full attention.  She knew her husband never joked about really, really serious matters.  Now, she felt frightened.

“You remember my last project with Pieter?”

“Yes.”

“I never talked much about it, in fact, I don’t think I ever told you what it was other than I said I was glad it was finished.” 

“Right, you never went into detail, only said if you had known beforehand who it was for you would never have taken it on regardless of the huge payout, but Pieter had almost begged you.”

“Well, here’s the root cause of the FBI’s ardor.”   Jack tells Piedad about the black money program, Pieter’s death, his conversation with Andrew and his ideas on what is happening and possibly why.

“Oh my God Jack.   Much worse may not come close to describing this crap.  When will you hear back from Andrew?  Do you know where he is going to look?  How does he even know where to look?  And geez, just what is he looking for? ”

“Slow down, babe.” Jack said, his wry smile at her rapid fire questioning only temporarily masking his worry.   Jack receives the warning in an email. It is stripped of any headers and unsigned but Jack knows the writing style, hears the voice:  “Four of us are dead, more to die I think. They have found me so I am leaving; maybe they will not find you, I pray they do not; protect yourself and family; peace my friend; may God be with you; I will see you in the golden tomb.”   Andrew has answered, signing off to hide in the  nothingness of cyperspace, yet telling Jack through whom he would make contact – Alice Gayle.    

………..explained the urgent manner of the FBI as one synapse in the transfer had shown that something had entered the transfer and collapsed the end coding then working backwards deleted all details.  The investigation had yielded no clues except there had been an entry point by something or someone.  The FBI concluded it was both: someone using a rogue program that had penetrated the electronic route of the money.   Since the electronic route was 256 bit encrypted, the only means to penetrate had to be by someone who knew the codes and how to break them quickly.  So, the program would need to have an algorithm greater in encryption than 256, and there were only eight known programmers in the international banking world capable of writing such a program and who have access to the codes of the world’s 11 major clearing house banks.  Jack is one of them.

The main reason Jack needs a generator is to keep his mainframe computer running 24/7.  This along with his satellite connection is what keeps him wired in.  He has direct access to 16 geo-synchronous satellites which allow him to connect to anyplace in the world, the Internet being a very small piece of that access.  He is an island that has no need of wires.  Which is another reason the FBI wants his computer so badly – they have no way to penetrate the island as the satellites do not belong to the US government or any other US controlled entity whether corporate or private.  They can’t track him, they can’t stop him – only a lack of electricity will stop him.

Jack has two problems: find the rogue programmer and keep his island from being penetrated.  He learns that Mehmood had died several years earlier and his daughter and son, both expert programmers had continued doing the programming under his name. 

The email address that Khalil finds is Andrew’s in Brazil – finds his computer’s IP address and hacks into his email program.

Programming colleagues: some names are real, some are aliases but no one knows which is real or not

Jack Wright– Utah; American

Pablo Marcello– Geneva; Italian

Mehmood Kaziri– Riyadh; Pakistani

Andrew Kingston– Sao Paolo; German

Jim Diluk – Singapore; Singhalese

Elias Brogs– Brussels; Dutch

Nashiema Aderfi– New York; Moroccan

Jonathan Wong – Hong Kong; Chinese

More plot line:  Jack, Piedad, Sally and Jacey organize and arm themselves for protection

Jack makes contact with the “program killers” letting them know he is close to finding and implementing the “cure”, knows they plan to kill him and his family regardless, so Jack will stop them no matter what they do – but the government agencies will know he is in communication with the program killers and this will convince them even more he is at the center of the conspiracy.  This will make it imperative Piedad keeps the feds at bay until Jack can lure them out into the open.  He needs an accomplice who can continually provide him with uplinks into the central server so he can track the program for updates but whom? 

Alice, as you already know, works for Interpol in the banking section overseeing and monitoring large wire transfers in Europe – she is also an expert programmer and hacker who, some years earlier, was in love with Andrew Kingston one of the black money programmers, who also worked for Interpol and a first-tier expert hacker.  But, one of his hacking adventures went very wrong, the authorities were tracking the hacker down and the consequences would be jail time – Alice was the one who alerted Andrew of what was coming his way and with her help, Andrew fled the country to Brazil where there is no extradition.  Both hearts were broken.  Andrew was labeled not only a criminal but a coward.  No one knew of their love affair or else Alice would have been banished from Interpol.  But, the connection had never been severed completely as they exchanged coded text messages a few times a year when Alice takes vacation time hoping at some point all will be made right or the statutes of limitation run out – of course, this is unbeknownst to anyone or else Alice’s job would again be in jeopardy.  It is through Alice that Andrew and Jack track the ghost program killers since the program is really a virus that uses rolling code technology similar to a one-time cipher: use it once then throw it away or in this case, reset the encryption codes so it can’t be tracked.  From her time with Andrew, Alice became a supreme hacker also, though her superiors don’t know that, so she can hack into whichever bank is infected with the ghost program virus and pinpoint the location of the computer used to install the virus for a wire transfer.  She can do this because all European banks, especially the Swiss banks who have the black money, are wired into and monitored by the “Golden Tomb”. This, of course, puts her in danger not only from her superiors, but also the ghost program killers.  So, Andrew on the outside of the Interpol net, Alice on the inside of the Interpol net, and Jack who is the only one who can devise the antidote for the virus program which will also track down the ghost program killers and terrorists. 

When those in power deny your freedoms, the only path to freedom is power.