Interlude 04

Fairfield was reviewing all the reports he had received regarding Senator Anderson’s wayward stepson and the investigation into the case he had launched. The more he read about the boy, the more concerned he became over the prospect of allowing him to continue. Fairfield hated to admit it, but he had grossly underestimated the support network that boy seemed to have behind him.

First, it was that old guy who owned the security company Paul worked for. He seemed to be more experienced than Fairfield gave him credit for after seeing the lineup of personnel he hired. Then, there was that teenager they used for their IT, who Fairfield had first deemed a paranoid computer geek who had seen too many spy movies, but, despite Fairfield’s confidence after the incident with the phone surveillance, did not bite no matter how many honeypots they placed for the kid to find. Finally, there was that incident with the surveillance team almost blowing their cover.

Fairfield remembered vividly how he had to push down his anger after his last meeting with Dallas. Not even half an hour after Dallas left his office, he got the call from the surveillance team keeping tabs on Paul. Apparently, just as they received orders to pull back in an attempt to salvage the situation Dallas had caused with the botched-up break-in, they reported that they probably had been photographed as they tried to pull away in their car. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough already, one of the team members then discovered that yet another one of Paul’s colleagues somehow managed to lift their wallet. Of course, that wallet only contained papers for the false identity they used, but the fact that they managed to pull that off in the first place was less than encouraging.

And then there was Paul himself. He found the mistake Dallas made with the photos, which forced Fairfield to take drastic measures and ensure Carver could not be called in for questioning. Then he found out that Carver was an amateur actor and made contact with his theater group. Of course, that wasn’t alarming in itself. Even if those people told Paul anything, there was no way to prove that Carver had been hired by the organization since there was no paperwork involved and all payments were made in cash. But Fairfield’s experienced mind just couldn’t stop wondering what else young Paul might uncover.

Just at that moment, Fairfield’s phone rang yet again with a call from the surveillance team. Raising an eyebrow, he reached out and picked up the call.

“Sir, this is Team Delta. We just lost the lawyer’s phone.”

Fairfield’s raised eyebrow lowered itself to instead be knitted in a scowl.

“What do you mean, ‘lost’?”

“At first, all we heard was the ... music you warned us about. But, after about an hour, it stopped, we heard some rustling, and then all signals ceased. We suspect they wiped the phone and got rid of our bug.”

Fairfield wasn’t exactly surprised about this development. After Dallas’s team had been caught red-handed while trying to compromise young Paul’s computer and planting a bug under his desk, it would make sense for them to take some precautions. The surveillance trojan they used on phones was a state-of-the-art product that required even experienced security researchers to painstakingly monitor the device’s network traffic to discover it. Since the phone had been in that noise-box, that obviously didn’t happen. No, it was more likely a bout of paranoia caused by the break-in.

“Double check to make sure we still have access to the lawyer’s car’s positioning system and the bugs in his office. Concentrate on him for now and wait for an opportunity to reinfect his phone ... and his laptop. If they wiped the phone, they also wiped the lawyer’s computer.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Fairfield ended the call and took measures to calm himself. This job just got more and more tiresome. And expensive! While his initial quote to the senator did allow for some potential clean-up work, the amount of funds they now spent on additional surveillance and personnel went far beyond what he had anticipated. That boy was supposed to be just an abandoned, beaten-down kid!

He cursed the senator’s dealings and his own negligence alike. But, ultimately, it was his protégé’s fault. If Dallas hadn’t made that mistake by neglecting to properly supervise the creation of photographic evidence, Paul wouldn’t have found anything to even start an investigation. Fairfield wouldn’t have been forced to remove Carver, and the DA’s office wouldn’t have shown special interest in the case. Which was now even stronger as Dallas’s goddamn attempt at compromising young Paul failed so spectacularly, making the DA’s office more inclined to consider his conspiracy theories as possible facts.

Fairfield could only shake his head as he pondered on how to salvage this situation. Maybe he should have dealt with Paul directly. Just as that thought struck him, his phone lit up with a message from the surveillance team he just spoke with. Dreading what they would have to report now, he opened it and felt his anger rise.

The message consisted of two images. One was a picture of the lawyer leaving the offices of Carter Security, accompanied by a man Fairfield vaguely recognized as a member of the DA’s office, carrying an armful of documents. The second image was a close-up of what the lawyer was carrying.

It was the form for opening a bank account at the bank in Gibraltar, with the senator’s ex-wife’s signature on it.

“How in the hell did he...” Fairfield sighed to himself before continuing in a sarcastic tone. “Of course he got those documents. Why would anything in this operation go well for once.”

He shook his head. This looked bad. Once more, he contemplated the implications of Paul finding these documents that he had deemed safe with the uncooperative Gibraltarian bank, especially after he just received word of the bug in the lawyer’s phone being lost. His conclusion was simple, however: This needed to end.

Knowing the real circumstances under which young Paul left the senator’s house all those years ago, Fairfield also knew just how motivated the boy must have been to find compromising material on his former stepfather. Under different circumstances, the safest course of action would be to dispose of Paul like they did with Carver. But, given the unwelcome interest law enforcement already had in this case, this would not be an option. However ... maybe they could scare him off?

Until now, the boy had avoided direct confrontations that Fairfield would have expected from an angry young man who started working in security. But instead of waiting for the infiltration team and arresting them, he and his colleagues chose to install hidden cameras and merely document the team’s activities, to then hand everything over to the police. Given Paul’s resources provided by the security firm, and his eagerness to hurt his stepfather, Fairfield was sure Paul would have tried to apprehend the men personally if he had thought himself capable of doing so. This, in turn, meant that, if Paul were to find himself confronted with an imminent physical threat, he would back up as well.