Chapter 24

Paul was busy driving south on SH1 when Sally asked, “Ward, why did Frank and Jim tell Paul and me that it was best for them to not come with us and that you would understand?”

“Sally, the answer to that question is very long and involved. I’m tired, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to put off the answer until we can get together with the others in a very private location.”

“Hello, Frank Toliver, here. Can I help you?”

“Frank, it’s Ward Conrad. My wives and I have been talking with Cathy. She suggested that we meet with you, Jim, your wives, and Kirk.”

“Sure, Ward, that sounds good to me. Would you be available to join us at our home tonight for dinner at 6:30?”

“That sounds okay, Frank, but I’ll have to check to make sure we don’t have any conflicting plans. If you don’t hear from me in the next hour or so, plan on our being there. My kids will enjoy playing with yours while we adults talk about other matters.”

That evening, Ward, his wives, and kids arrived at our house and Kirk was already there. Ward’s kids took off for the playroom to join our kids. Ward’s wives headed for the kitchen to join our wives. Ward joined Frank, Kirk, and me in the study.

Ward said, “I will wait until after dinner so our wives can join us before we address the main reason for this gathering. In the meantime, there is a second item that I want to mention.

“Cathy and the Guidance Council have been monitoring Paul and Sally. They believe that we should make them members of the Inner Council. Before I discuss the matter with them, I want to know what the three of you think of the idea for they will be working with you on the privacy legislation. What do you think, Frank?”

“It seems to me that they would be a good addition. I assume that the Guidance Council has monitored their general beliefs and opinions regarding the overall mission.”

“Yes, Cathy told me that their feelings about governments, celebrities, and the media are a good match for our beliefs. What about you, Jim?”

“Frank and I have been thinking of recruiting them as part of our Action Group, so I agree. It will be nice to be able to discuss the mission in more depth with them than we could do if they were only Action Group members. What about you, Kirk?”

“I agree with the three of you.”

“All right, that makes it unanimous. Sally asked me a question the other day that would be difficult to answer without explaining your part of the mission. I suggest that the four of us get together with them tomorrow at your company, Frank, and see if they would be interested in joining us. Does anyone have a problem with 10:00 AM?”

No one had a problem with the time, and we could hear Barbara calling us to come to the table for dinner. Dinner was a great meal, and dessert was the best; at least, I thought so. After dinner was finished, the kids took off for the playroom, again. When the dishes were done, we adults gathered in the living room. Ward started our meeting.

“The reason that my wives and I want to talk with everyone is that we are becoming overwhelmed by our mission activities and Cathy suggested that now would be a good time for your group to assume full control of the Privacy Legislation task. For reasons that I am not allowed to explain, I need to formally remain the Task Cell Leader. However, one of you will act as my deputy and have full control of the cell’s activities. For you to do that, we will need to provide you with a full briefing on what we have been doing in regard to Task 2 while you established your businesses, and what we will do to support you in the future.

“During the past several years, I have been creating small sleeper groups for Task 2, and the people in these groups form a part of the Task Cell’s Action Group. We began Task 2’s effort in the US. The Council told me it should have been the last country in which we made a major effort. They felt that the First Amendment rights of the American Constitution would make passage of the legislation in the US the most difficult.

“The sleeper groups have been busy in the US for the past five years with only minimal success. Part of their failure to push the legislation further has been a lack of funding, which was intentional for I do not want them to push too hard too soon.

“However, the main reason for their failure has been the media brainwashing the American public into accepting the media’s version of freedom of the press. I have also started sleeper groups in Australia, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, France, and many smaller countries. I have heard of several groups pushing for similar legislation, but I had nothing to do with starting those groups, and one of those groups is in Christchurch. Cathy tells me that this is the time for our group to make a major push in New Zealand. I plan to assist your efforts from the sideline as an active supporter, but not as a direct public participant.

“When the legislation is close to being passed here in New Zealand, I will activate several sleeper groups and transfer them to your control. As the legislation is enacted in other countries, I will activate additional groups, but until I activate a group, you need to remain separate from them. I will be shifting my efforts to Task 1 while I hand off the sleeper groups to you. The plan Sam worked out with Cathy and the Guidance Council will require me to be the leader of the public front for her task. I suppose you could say I will be her lance and she will be using me to jab at the New Zealand Government. As much as I hate it, her plan will require me to become a politician.

“What you need to do is decide who will be your cell leader. My vote would be for either Frank or Jim, but Cathy is in favor of Barbara. She thinks Frank and Jim will be too busy managing their company, and that Barbara has the fire, drive, intelligence, and motivation to take the task on and see it through to completion. I can’t argue with Cathy for I agree with her assessment, although my ego is still in favor of Frank or Jim. We will leave that decision up to the members of your cell for most of you are capable of filling that slot.

“As I said, when you have succeeded in creating the legislation in New Zealand, I will start activating your task’s sleeper groups and point them toward you and your Action Group. Other than activating the groups, I am going to take a back seat and only step in if you need me. The most important part to remember is that publicly Task 1 and Task 2 must be kept separate.

“There is one other matter that you need to know about Task 1, for it will also be useful for Task 2. Last year I had my wives set up three shell companies and three investment companies. These companies are purchasing a number of companies that I expect to use for a variety of purposes in accomplishing Task 1, and the Director of each shell company is a member of Sam’s Task Cell. One of the shell companies purchased a small newspaper in Christchurch. I had the shell company’s Director change the paper’s name to ‘Behind the Scenes’ and I made a second member of Sam’s cell the Managing Editor. The Director and Editor have overall responsibility for running the paper, but Sam points them in the direction she wants them to go. The newspaper is basically one of those political scandal sheets. You may be familiar with it for Sam had one of its reporters pressuring us for details about the antigravity device.

“I am not sure why anyone would try to trace the ownership of the paper back to its true owner. However, if anyone were to try to do that, they would find that it is a very convoluted path that appears to end in three investment companies. Each of those companies is owned by one of my wives. They use my last name publicly, but they have never changed their legal names to Conrad, so they registered the companies using their legal names. It would therefore end up as a very confusing mess. As far as tracing ownership back to me is concerned, my name does not appear on any of the ownership documents and my wives use their investment companies as their mailing addresses.

“One of the things I would like to discuss tonight is stepping up the newspaper’s activity on the political front. In the very near future, your cell is going to need a large number of angry, fearful politicians who will support your legislation. I think we should have the Managing Editor pick a number of Ministers and let the newspaper begin investigations into their personal and public activities with the emphasis placed on their personal lives.

“Once the newspaper begins publishing some very embarrassing stories about the personal lives and political activities of these politicians, the concern that the stories will generate in the other politicians will aid you. I will be busy whipping up public outrage and focusing it on the political party in charge of the government. Part of my activities will be starting my own political party, so the public will have an option to vote for someone other than the disgraced political figures. Does anyone have any questions?”

Kirk asked, “Ward, I’m curious about your shell companies. Why would it be so hard to trace ownership of the newspaper?”

“That is a little complex, Kirk. As a very simple description, each of the shell companies has controlling interest in or owns companies that deal with a variety of industries. I would have to check to see exactly what each owns. Now the relationship between the shell companies and the investment companies is as follows. Shell companies B and C each own thirty percent of shell company A’s stock. Shell companies A and C each own thirty percent of shell company B’s stock. Shell companies A and B each own thirty percent of shell company C’s stock. The remaining forty percent of each company’s stock is owned by one of my wives’ investment companies. Now to make things even more complicated, each of the investment companies owns stock in some of the companies that are partially owned by another shell company. Did you follow that, Kirk?”

“Yes, but I’m confused. I understand the chains of ownership, at least who owns what portion of each company. What I’m having difficulty with is tracing the ownership of each shell company’s stock to a person, since there seems to be only three people that own stock. In fact, I’m not sure if that type of interlocking structure is legal.”

“I’m not into the legalities of the overall structure, Kirk, but I do know each of the shell companies and investment companies were legally structured as individual companies. My wives later privately sold each other the majority of their stock in their shell company to the other’s investment company. So now, each investment company owns stock in the other two shell companies. Their investment companies are now holding and managing the stock in the other two shell companies. As far as I know, the sales were legal transactions. I get confused also so I would have to have Paul and Sally explain the details of the stock sale and stock ownership to you. When Paul explained it to me, he said the key to understanding the structure is to remember who owns the investment companies. However, I do know that between my three wives, they own one hundred percent of the three Investment and shell companies’ stock with each of them owning forty percent of what was originally their shell company’s stock and thirty percent of the other two shell company’s stock.”

During the remainder of the meeting, we discussed whom we wanted to crucify. Each of us suggested one or two Ministers that we felt were doing a poor job. Strangely enough, no one suggested the Prime Minister. I guess we all felt that he was doing a good job. The way I saw it was that if we did a good number on the Ministers that made up his cabinet, it would politically embarrass him to the point that either he would have to step down or he would fail to be re-elected. In a way, we hated doing that to the man.

The next day, Ward met in Frank’s office with Frank, Paul, Sally, Kirk, and me. After explaining his mission and Paul and Sally linking with Cathy, he asked if they would be interested in supporting his mission as part of our cell. Paul and Sally agreed to join our cell. Cathy told Ward, who later told Frank and me, that they were very excited to be part of something that would improve the state of the world. In fact, their eagerness was so extreme that Cathy had to caution them about the speed with which they wanted the task to proceed. Cathy impressed on them that we would make far quicker progress if we go slowly and make no mistakes. Mistakes could result in major setbacks. Cathy assured Ward that they had gotten the message and they would precede at the speed the cell leader set. The only thing left for us to do before continuing the task was to elect our cell leader.

Frank and I hosted a meeting for all of our cell members that night after dinner. We discussed Cathy’s opinion of whom we should elect as our cell leader, and we agreed with her opinion. Not only did Frank and I have a lot of work to do at our companies, but one of the key reasons we were going to put forth to the public was the way a member of the media had approached Frank and Barbara’s daughter Melisa. As Melisa’s mother, it would be understandable for a very angry Barbara to be heading the movement, and you can believe me that the anger was not feigned.

“The media, specifically one of those newspapers that printed stories about three headed aliens landing on Earth, had also publicized the relationship Frank and I had with our wives. That had been a sexualized account that was handled with the maximum attention to the details of our sexual activities in order to sensationalize our relationship so the paper could boost its ratings and sales. Their interview had been a short conversation that Helen and Sandy had with what they thought was a fellow shopper at the grocery store, and sex was not mentioned. The majority of the story came from the fertile mind of a vile female reporter.

Frank headed our meeting. He started with a review of the meeting we had with Ward for the benefit of Paul and Sally. He then continued with, “Jim and I have discussed the matter and agree with Cathy that we will be too busy to do a good job as the cell leader. I would like to nominate Barbara as our cell leader. Do I have a second?”

I immediately stood and said, “I second the motion.”

Frank said, “Barbara, you have been nominated for the position of cell leader. Is there any reason why you cannot serve, and if not, are you willing to do so?”

Barbara said, “Like the two of you I will be busy at work, but I must admit my workload is far less than yours. Yes, I will take on the task of cell leader if there are no objections.”

Frank turned back to the group, and said, “Do we have any further nominations for cell leader?”

After looking around for a few moments, he said, “I see no further nominations. All those in favor of Barbara becoming our cell leader raise your hand.”

We all looked around at each other and it was obvious that everyone but Barbara had their hand raised.

Frank said, “Well it’s obvious that Barbara is our new cell leader. Since you are now our leader, Barbara, I turn this meeting over to you.”

Barbara stood and after a few moments of looking around so she could gather her thoughts, she said, “Thank you, Frank, and I want to thank everyone for your vote of confidence in me. I would like to say that this was a surprise, but after hearing Ward’s explanation of Cathy’s recommendation the other night, I knew it was coming. I have also given some thought as to how we should proceed.”

Ward stood and said, “Congratulations, Barbara. I am certain that you will be able to run this group and get the job done. My wives are waiting for me at home, so I think I will leave and let you do your thing. I will talk with you later.”

After Ward’s departure, Barbara continued, “Up until now, we have been primarily developing our plan of how to proceed. At this point, I want to start assigning actions to each of us, and documenting who is doing what by using an Action Item List. We can use the list to track and status each action we are working on to include a projected completion date.

“I’m in agreement with Ward about using his newspaper. Letting the Managing Editor select their political targets is a good idea, but what I would like is for the newspaper to go one step further.

“There appears to me to be a link between some politicians and one or more media outlets. I think Ward’s paper should research the relationships between the politicians that make up the House of Parliament and the media. What I am hoping they will find are several politicians that have very close ties with particular media outlets. Hopefully, we will find the media outlet publishes critical articles about politicians other than their politician. The newspaper can then focus on the politician to learn of his weaknesses and foibles, both public and personal. As part of the series of articles Behind the Scenes will publish, there should be the question of why newspaper X supports this politician and condemns others. A few innuendos about the newspaper owning the politician might be in order along with a question of what he does for them that causes that media outlet to shield him.