Chapter 29

Io

Activity Log 16490.07

At 0952, Zeus was on his way, and so were we. We headed west along the side road that was the fastest way back to Bear Island Road. Once on that road, we headed north and then followed it east, as it turned toward the traffic control point. We passed over the bridge over the swamp-water canal. There was a dam on one side and a spillway under the road. The drainage pipe that was to be Zeus' point of access to the upper canal was not visible, but was on the architect's drawing, which was on file in the county offices.

Good luck, Zeus.

He would probably not need luck to get this far. I calculated his probability of success as 99.3% to reach the dam. The overall chance that he would reach the pickup point was 84.8%. Still good. The probability that he would do so without being hurt in some way was somewhat less: 68.1%. I decided not to try and further specify the probabilities. I did not like the trend.

Good luck, Zeus, indeed.

We rolled to the traffic control point, and Arti flashed her false ID to a new guard. It was 1008 hours.

"No traffic in or out. We just got a flash alert. Something's happening. Nothing through on Bear Island Road," she said to the surprised guard.

She was a good actress. I almost believed it. We roared off down the highway toward Lake Buena Vista.

I sent the prepared message to the Secretary of Homeland Security's email account, via the back door in the White House's system, at 1009 hours. Out of a sense of caution, I would refrain from monitoring the latter for several weeks; they would doubtless be alert for any unwarranted attempted visits. It didn't matter, of course, since the activity in the White House system had originated in an internet café in Osaka, Japan, that was closed at this hour. Perhaps it was my sense of pride that would be displaced if my illegal entry were to be detected at any level.

I would continue to monitor Homeland Security's emails, of course.

When we entered the parking lot of a Post Office that was closed for the day, we pulled around to the side of the building and Artemis jumped out and replaced the bogus DEA license plates with the those registered to Alexander Hobart, Zeus' current identity.

On reentering the vehicle, Artemis rustled around in her food bag. She retrieved a hardboiled egg, two stalks of celery, and a bottle of water that purportedly came from Fiji. Out of curiosity, I sent a low priority request to my task server to investigate the Fiji water, and to see if it really came from that South Seas nation.

We were heading back to the campground, our home base, to pass the several hours before we would be picking up Zeus.

Arti said, "Io, you said you had something that was not relevant to the immediate terrorist project, and were holding an update until after H hour."

"Yes, Arti, there were two things," I said, "First, 5225 had sent out encrypted messages to their teams. I am still working on breaking that code. As you may remember, the public/private key methodology is impossible to break in a short period of time - even with my resources. I am working on that.

"Second, I wanted to see if you or Zeus wanted to do anything in addition to the steps I had already taken. I have identified the financier of the terrorist project."

Apparently, I happened to say this just at the moment when Artemis had a mouthful of hardboiled egg.

"Dhass famtatic ... wai"

It would seem that talking with a mouthful of hardboiled egg is a difficult task. She swallowed hurriedly and cleared her mouth with a drink of water.

"That's fantastic, Io! Details, I want details! And what have you already done?"

"I tracked him via a routine check of emails coming out of the Middle East. There are ... well, let's just say there are a lot of emails coming out of that area, and I had a mainframe in India sorting through them all. It normally handles customer service inquiries for a Hong Kong company, but that company recently went out of business – a very auspicious find for me.

"He sent some plain text messages to two individuals on the House and Senate oversight committee staffs. Those committees oversee the activity of the Homeland Security department. I thought that was unusual.

"I began to backtrack his other messages, and found that he was the purchaser of many, many puts on the stock of the Disney Corporation – through several accounts recently created with several hundred millions of dollars in each. He also has sold a great deal of Disney stock short – in fact he is vulnerable to a margin call if the stock rises more than five percent above the current level. He would be forced to sell at a loss.