Chapter 15

Al awoke slowly without opening his eyes. He stretched, luxuriating in the warm sunlight that was bathing his body. As he slowly opened his eyes, he could see Bonnie, leaning on one elbow. She had evidently been watching him sleep. "It's about time you woke up, sleepy head," she smiled.

"What time is it," he asked sleepily.

"It's almost 5:30," she informed him. "Remember, everyone is going to come over at 8:00 PM."

Now Al was smiling. "Gee, that gives us a good two and half hours to enjoy ourselves." He grabbed her and pulled her to him. She pretended to fight, but was giggling like a child.

They spent about an hour and a half right where they were, but hunger finally overcame them and they reluctantly got up and prepared a light meal. By the time the rest of the group arrived, they were bathed and respectably clothed.

Linda was the first to arrive. Her two bodyguards took up a position outside, and refused to, come in, even after Al had invited them.

Linda seemed to be in a good mood, even with all that had happened. When questioned, she informed them that her father was doing well, and in a better mood than she had seen him in since he retired. "It's almost like this brush with death made him feel more alive. Even Mom is acting differently. She's much more playful with Dad, and I'd swear she's even acting sexy."

Al and Bonnie were laughing by this time. "You know, sometimes it takes almost losing something before you realize how important it is to you. Your mother and father are lucky. They learned a lesson without the cost being too great to pay," Al said.

When Lt. Slavens arrived, Linda had to repeat the story to him. They all got a good laugh about Linda's parent's antics, but then as if on cue, they became serious. Al set up a conference with Hak on one of his computers. They had invited Hak to attend in person, but he had flatly refused.

When they were all seated comfortably, Al brought out the copies of the documents Hak had sent them. They started going through them one by one. The first thing they could see appearing over and over again was references to the date of August 6th, 2045.

"Several of these sheets seem to be projections based on the 2045 date," Linda informed them. "This one, for example, is a projection of holdings in the banking industry."

"Yeah, I was noticing that this one seems to be the same kind of projection in the transportation area," Bonnie agreed. "If these are projections of what will be owned or controlled by this conglomerate in that year, the figures are truly staggering."

"Is there anything in here that shows what they own or control today?" Al asked.

"As a matter of fact there is," Linda said as she riffled through a stack of paper. "These papers here show figures for the current date."

Al looked thoughtful. "How these figures compare with what you put together when you were going through and trying to figure out the overlapping companies?"

"The figures we have on the sheets do not show specific companies owned. They are at best a summary," Linda replied.

For the first time, Hak spoke up. "I may be able to help out a little with that. But I have a much bigger list of the companies owned or controlled by this Gonnosuke outfit. I'll send it across right now. "

Linda began grabbing the pages as they came off the printer. She started making notes in the margins alongside each entry. Bonnie was looking over her shoulder. All at once, Bonnie grabbed for one of the sheets, almost tearing it out of Linda's hand. She looked at it from moment becoming obviously more excited with each passing second. "I've seen these five digit code numbers before," she said excitedly. "Al, where is that list of senators and congressman Hak sent us?"

Al began to look around. "Here it is," he said, handing it to her.

Bonnie to looked at it, then nearly screamed. "I knew it!" She handed the list back to Al and pointed at the list of names and the five digit numbers that followed them. "You can see that each name is followed by a five digit number." She handed him the other sheet that they had just received. "The first column on this page is a list of the same five digit numbers. The second column is a list of six digit numbers. These are probably dates. If you look at them they have like 031433, which would be March 14, 2033. The third column is obviously dollar amounts."

Bonnie sat down with a thump in a chair that was fortunately behind her. "Hey guys, please don't think I'm crazy. I did a lot of stories about the Congress when I was first starting out. This last column is a list of House and Senate bills. You can see each entry starts with an HB or an SB. I think the congressmen on the first list are being paid off to vote a particular way on each of these bills. We even have the dates they were paid and how much."

Bonnie had their full attention. Only Linda seemed to be ignoring her, and was still making notes in the margins of the other sheets they had received. "This is the biggest story I have ever seen, let alone written," she enthused. "This is going to set Congress on its ear."

"Don't you think you're going off a little half-cocked on this?" Slavens asked. "Even in this day and age, when the news media can run roughshod over just about anyone it wants, there is still such a thing as libel."

"I know all about libel," Bonnie said in an exasperated tone. "There is an awful lot of this I can prove. When everyone got tired of all the corruption in government, and forced their legislators to pass the anti-corruption bills of 2015, they made it a lot easier to get information about public officials. There were a lot of new treaties signed that year as well. Even the Swiss government forced its banking establishment to give out information on accounts held by United States elected officials. If I can cross reference to any of these dollar amounts into deposits made by even one of these officials, I have enough to back me up in printing a story."

Bonnie turned to Al. "Could I use one of your computers?" she asked. "I'd like to get started digging into these payments."

Al nodded his agreement, and pointed to one of the computers that was not being used. "I just hope you know what you're getting into," he said.

Everything got quiet for a few minutes. Al and Lt. Slavens moved away from the two women and carried on a muttered conversation. Linda and Bonnie were so busy with what they were doing they didn't even notice the men were gone. It was a least a half-hour later when Linda raised her head and looked around. She gave out a big sigh, got up from her seat, and walked over to where the two men were now drinking coffee.

"Well," Linda said, "I don't know if the percentages are correct, but these people own or control a very large number of companies. It looks like they're into banking, transportation, agriculture, food preparation and storage, the computer industry, and manufacturing in general. They also control a large amount of the oil reserves in this country."

Al shook his head. "There's nothing illegal about that is there?" he asked.

"Not a thing," Linda answered. "The scary thing is, what are they going to do with all this power and control they have? Also, why is the date in 2045 so important? Is this really the hundredth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima?"

Again they heard Hak's voice coming from the large speaker array surrounding Al's computer systems. "Oh, man, where the hell's my brain? There's one more file I found. This one was a real doozy. It was doubled encrypted. You had to run it through one decryption program, then take the results and ran them through another one. I'll send it on over. I think it explains a lot though. It talks about a hundred-year plan."

They waited while the printer spit out several more sheets of paper.

As the pages came off the printer, Linda became more and more excited. When she had finished scanning the last one, she turned to Al. "You know, it never really says here in so many words exactly what they are going to do. But it's clear this hundred-year plan is geared toward revenge for what happened at Hiroshima. The tone of this document is entirely contemptuous of all that is American."

"Absolutely," Al said. He patted Bonnie, who was still digging into the congressional payoffs, on the shoulder and said, "You really should take a look at this, sweetheart. This is probably the best example of hate propaganda since they brought the skinheads and KKKers under control."

Bonnie reluctantly left her computer terminal and started reading the document. When she was about halfway through, she looked up and said, "You know, it's really a shame I can't print any of this. The laws concerning the defamation of anyone born in another country have really gotten tight all the last few years. Maybe I should look into that. These characters may be the ones who got all that legislation passed."

"I wouldn't be a bit surprised", Al told her. "This seems to be a lot bigger than we ever imagined. What I'm wondering now is where do we go from here. "

"I've been thinking about the same thing", Lt. Slavens told them. "As a police lieutenant I have very little clout when it comes to political issues. I'm sure that Al, being a games programmer, has as little as I do. Does anyone have any suggestions as to who we should report this to and how we should go about it?"

"I think I may an idea about who to talk to", Bonnie informed them. "Before we get into that though, I think we need to carefully go over what we've learned. We need to decide what we can prove, and what we only suspect."

"OK," Al said. "Let's recap what we have so far. First, we have a list of Congressman, House and Senate bills, and the dollar amounts. Bonnie is going to check to see if she can find any correlation between a dollar amounts and deposits in the congressman's accounts. If she can find any correlation, this is one thing we can prove." Al reached for his coffee cup and finding it was empty asked if anyone else would like a cup.