Balance of Power Shifted (40 page)

The General was
not finished with this yet and sent a coded message to the US team to try and infiltrate the Efficio production locations at any cost.  Looking at his watch, he realized he had some time to swing by Ying and Yang as he liked to call them for a morning tryst with the identical twins that worked as models when not fulfilling his wishes...

Back at
the Vatican and in deference to the place in which they were living, Charlene stayed in a dorm room building set aside for female visitors.  Father Emilio Jovinni had agreed to marry them as soon as the proper paperwork was completed and he already had received permission to use one of the lesser-known chapels on the Vatican grounds.  Father talked to one of the female team members working with us to see if she could help Charlene pick out a dress, which was met with an enthusiastic ‘yes’ by her co-worker with much smiling.  Luckily for Charlene, her English was very good.  Father also gave me directions to a jeweler on site where I could pick up wedding bands.  Since I was still keeping a low profile this worked out well.  Charlene was a little nervous since she had not attended church since her mother had passed away 7 years prior.  Her father had passed away when she was an infant from a heart defect.  She confided her fears to Father Jovinni and he allayed her fears and heard her confession.  Mike and Bill had set up a secure communications channel between both of their laptops.  Powerful encryption secured the entire path and anonymizers employed to help mask the origin of their communications.  They were not taking any chances since the tracking incident of their cell phones.  He shot off a message to Mike and Fiona telling them he was getting married in two days.

The wedding was a spiritual event.  Unbeknownst to
all, Father got a violinist to play at our mass.  Every one of the people involved in supporting Efficio showed up to witness the ceremony as did the Archbishop.  Although Charlene walked solo down the aisle to the violin music, she looked radiant in a beautiful traditional wedding gown adorned with small white pearls and full veil.  The vows that we practiced went smoothly although our voices cracked and when I kissed her, it was like the world stood still and we were the only two people in the room.  When we walked out of the Chapel there was a small reception waiting for us compliments of the Archbishop.

A teenage son of one of the office team walked over and handed me my camera back as he said in broken English
, “I hope I did good.”  I smiled and said, “I’m sure you did fine,” and handed him forty dollars for his time.  Fiona had insisted that I buy a camera and film the whole ceremony.  She was insistent that she had it when she awoke that morning her local time.  After the short reception, Bill had taken a chance and booked a local tour guide to see Rome.  He made reservations in a famous restaurant for dinner and booked a honeymoon suite in a fancy hotel to complete the romantic evening.  Charlene actually booked the suite since they insisted on a credit card.  Since all transactions were in cash, he was not overly concerned about being traced, since everyone else on the planet thought he was dead.  Changing into street clothes, they caught a cab to the tour guide’s shop and spent the rest of the day in awe and the night tightly entwined in each other’s arms.

Matt sa
t patiently in his boss’s office as he was dressed down for not making any arrests in the Efficio case.  Matt knew that he could not fault he boss, the news was having a field day with this, as there were now five people dead due to the actions of foreign nationals on US soil.  Thank God, the press had not put two and two together and linked the death at Efficio’s California location and the now proven link to mainland China and industrial espionage.  The only promising lead he had was the identification of one of the attackers from the first California break in thanks to Clavis.  With the information provided by Clavis and a description of the knee injury provided by Mike Carter, they canvassed emergency rooms up to 100 miles away.  The name he had given was fake, but the camera footage obtained allowed the FBI to run facial recognition software against the still shot of the attacker.  Since the attacker was in the military at one time, it came back with his name and records within 5 minutes and bang, it was the same guy Jason Moorehouse.  Jason and Pinnacle Professionals, where Jason supposedly worked, had been under surveillance for weeks now. 

All of a sudden
, Matt realized he had zoned out while thinking about the case, and was brought back to reality by his boss’s voice saying “and you will be in front of the cameras giving the press an update in one hour and make sure they come away with the fact that this is not a terrorist plot.”  Kicking himself mentally for not paying full attention, he stood and said “understood” and was about leave the office when he boss said, “and one other thing.”  Taking a deep breath Matt turned around to see what else he did wrong and was surprised to see him smiling.  “We got kudos all the way up the chain for your work on getting into China’s most secret operations with that software Clavis developed.  The brass wants one of our computer whiz kids to see what other applications we can use it for including fighting domestic crime.  They have funded hiring Clavis as a consultant since they own the code.  For now the CIA, NSA, DHA and we are still sifting through the treasure trove of information that is still coming in.”  He ended the conversation saying “To be honest, it is worse than we ever thought.”

Heading back to his desk, Agent Morgan checked ba
ck with his “Efficio Team” that had been assigned to work this issue to see if anything had changed.  Other than securing a search warrant for Pinnacle Professionals headquarters in Chantilly, Virginia there had been no other changes to report.  The warrant process had bogged down due to fear that there might be some information in Pinnacle’s possession that was on a need to know basis.  Pinnacle, it appears was a large government contractor providing security services overseas as well as to domestic corporations.  Their employees have been in all the hot spots on Uncle Sam’s behalf and the rumors were they were ‘well connected’ on the DC level.  Running through the facts of the case, he felt comfortable giving the press conference, although he never liked doing them period.  There was always some asshole reporter trying to make a name for them that asked ridiculous questions and many selectively used words out of context to sensationalize their story.  If this case were going better, his boss would be doing the dog and pony show and basking in the success.

“
Ladies and gentlemen, the latest events at Fish Island are part of an organized attempt to suppress the rollout of Efficio Corporation’s Electricus capabilities.  As you have heard or seen, Electricus could replace traditional energy sources that have been entrenched into our lifestyles and economy.  This is creating angst among certain parties around the globe that would see a major reduction of need for their traditional products.  This is not a terrorist plot against the United States.  I repeat this is not a terrorist plot.  It is essentially industrial espionage taken to a very dangerous level and from what we have learned there may be more than one organization involved but working independently for their own goals.  We are working on some credible leads in the investigation. As you all know, I cannot talk in detail about this at this time but the FBI is fully committed to catching the perpetrators.  Thank you and now if there are any questions.” He could already see in the eyes of the reporters that this was a hot issue for them.

The questions were as expected and some were indicating conspiracy theories that involved our own
government, which I squashed as best I could.  In just the last few weeks, the subject of ‘Electricus’ was the number one search item on Google and there were numerous stories of shareholders bailing out of traditional energy driven stocks in favor of companies that made electric products.  On a whole, the stock market remained at stable numbers, as money did not flee the market and just shifted to other promising companies.  In fact the direction that Efficio takes in rolling our Electricus is of such national importance that Congress was going to hold a special session next week so that Mike Carter can lay out the company’s vision.  Leaving the makeshift podium, Matt returned to his desk to see if they were able to secure a search warrant for Pinnacle Professionals.  On a whim, he made a mental note to see if Pinnacle had helicopter pilots on staff.  Mike and Fiona had reported that the copter pilot was Caucasian and the copter itself was new and modern and did not have any registration markings of any kind.

The good news was that the judge had the cajones to give us
an unrestricted search warrant for Pinnacle.  Matt’s eyes wandered down to the judge’s signature and gave a quick snort noticing it was Judge Wendy Sloan, who had signed the search warrant.  This was a fortuitous situation since Judge Sloan was only a year on the bench and had yet to get political and have special interests behind the scenes.  Wasting no time, Agent Morgan put a team of specialists together and using resources from their DC office setup the operation.  Matt and a couple of his agents took a chopper down to Northern Virginia and was serving the papers to Pinnacle’s lead counsel by 9:30 AM in the morning since Pinnacle’s CEO was out of the country in Iraq.  Nicholas Baldwing, the lawyer, complete with a polished dome and bulging bug eyes, gave every bullshit excuse imaginable not to comply.  When threatened with arrest for obstruction, he shut up and spent the next hour on his cell phone.  At one point, he was heard using the name of a very powerful senator.  Within an hour and a half, we had copies of personnel records, 6-months of emails from senior executives, two years of financial records and confiscated 22 hard drives from various PC’s.  There was no sign of our injured goon Jason Moorehouse and nobody interviewed admitted knowing who he was.  Quickly packing up everything, we headed back to the DC office to let our forensic crowd work their magic on the data.

After catching up on reports for the day
, and still at the local DC office, Agent Morgan headed over to a Hyatt just off Sully Road.  After dropping his bag in his room his cell phone rang.  He listened intently for 2 minutes and finally asked the person on the other end of the call to have a full crime scene workup done.  Hanging up the phone, he sat in a typical hotel room fabric high backed chair to think about the latest news. 

It look
ed like Mr. Moorehouse would not be brought in for questioning as he had been located a couple hundred yards into a California nature reserve about 50 miles from San Diego.  He appeared to have died from lead poisoning due to a bullet hole in the back of his head.  The California field agent had also informed him, that the crime scene was not pristine since part of Jason’s face and stomach cavity was gone, gnawed away by animals.  You have to love it thought Matt.  This case was beginning to have more twists to it than the President’s economic policies.

Mike and Julius were halfway to DC already. 
The Amtrak Acela train from New York’s Penn station to Washington DC’s Union station was a little over two and half-hours long.  During the trip so far, Julius had coached Mike on how to speak to the committee members as well as the chairperson running the hearing.  Julius was explaining the different types of hearings and what they were used for and then added. “Mike, this hearing is a closed hearing and I’m not sure why.  My advice is to answer questions to the best of your knowledge, however do not speculate or offer information unless specifically asked to do so.  It may be an hour or so into the meeting before we find out what they are after.  I suspect they will ask a number of background questions first and then start to slip in questions pertaining to what information they are really after.”  “What if I don’t know the answer or don’t want to give out sensitive information?” Mike questioned.  “At that time, just ask the chairperson for a moment to confer with me before answering,” Julius instructed.

During the rest of the trip
, Julius and Mike reviewed statistical information that they had compiled related to the estimated cost to own an Electricus car and Power Pad for the average home.  This included a breakdown of disposable income.  The latest price of a barrel of crude oil was down $15 in the last month alone from a high of a $115 just six months ago to the current price of $68 dollars per barrel.  Joe public loved it, but Wall Street was having trouble making investment sense out of the new trends.  Percentage wise the price of a gallon of regular gas was not down as far as oil but was down to an average of $3.45 per gallon from an average of $4.25. 

The last thing discussed just minutes from pulling into Union Station was a report from Clavis regarding political and economic news coming out of Venezuela and Russia.  Chavez
politics was still alive and in power in Venezuela, even after Chavez was gone, however they had no strategy regarding the world’s future migration to Electricus other than to stop spending money on public needs and build a larger slush fund for the political elite as revenue numbers deteriorate.  The Russian news was more chilling.  There were unconfirmed reports that Russia was trying to put diplomatic pressure on the US to stop the rollout of Electricus or face a more aggressive Russia as it attempts to shore up interests around the globe.

Mike had
decided to take a train to be incognito and very carefully made his own reservations.  Mike had been very concerned about this trip since two days prior a violent rainstorm with winds exceeding 80 miles per hour had knocked out power for over 2 million homes in the DC area.  The irony was not lost on Mike, knowing Electricus would have made it a non-event.  Their trip ended up being uneventful, and they took a random cab to the meeting.  After checking in with security, an aide escorted us to a smallish chamber dedicated for hearings.  We were a half hour early, so the chamber was virtually empty, but it quickly began to fill up.  Almost everyone that came in introduced him or herself in a very amiable manner, but that was just subterfuge as their real feelings were apparent just a little while later.