

### The Banker's Club

### "Defaults"

Book 1

By

### T I WADE

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 TIWADE Books

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Preston Stroud, a good friend of mine from Harnett County, North Carolina for helping me understand the current day's U.S. conspiracies discussed on talk radio and internet websites, and which one day may be very possible.

I couldn't include everything going on in today's financial and banking institutions, but hope that this fictional work is close enough to the country's current feelings and thoughts about our finances and the institutions that control them.

We all have to deal with them. There is no other way, and no way out.

Again, I am not an expert or "Master of any Trades" mentioned in this story, and if I have offended anyone by my lack of knowledge, I apologize, unless you are my bank manager.

Thanks to the perfectionists:

Editor— David Van Dyke, Virginia.

Proofreader— Kayla West, Weatherby, Missouri.

Cover design— Jack Hillman, Hillman Design Group, Sedona, Arizona.

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,

And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.

Matthew 21:12-13

Chapter 1

Act One: Operation Default

On a beautiful clear morning in Manhattan, Stephan Saber, a well-dressed man puffing a large cigar, looked out of his large office windows and watched a silver aircraft fly directly into the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It was exactly 8:46 a.m. The American Airlines aircraft, a 757 or a 767 he thought, penetrated the building thirty or so floors above his place of observation, the 54th story of a building about a mile away on Wall Street.

The sun glistened off the silver aircraft as the hijacker, a man he had never met but had spoken to several times by phone, flew the plane into the North Tower a few stories higher than the plan had suggested. As the vibrations of the mushrooming explosion reverberated inside his sealed building on Wall Street, Stephan knew that more excitement was still to come...if the U.S. Air Force didn't respond too quickly.

He smiled. Not only was the first aircraft on time, his wife was already in the air on another plane, originally bound for Los Angeles on United Flight 175 but also slated to visit Manhattan that morning. The trip from Boston was a gift from Stephan Saber to his wife: a ten-day vacation in Hawaii.

If he had had a video camera with him, Stephan could have taken great footage of the incoming aircraft. He didn't see the exact impact as the aircraft came in from the north, but he was the only person in Manhattan who knew what was about to happen. His vantage point would be nearly perfect for the second attack.

Aboard the second aircraft, Stephan was completely sure his beautiful, well-dressed wife sat next to her lover. Their relationship had developed over a number of years. Stephan had booked her on that particular flight because of the plan to use the airplane as a weapon, and also because her lover lived in Boston. She had been chauffeured to Boston from Manhattan the day before to catch the flight, ensuring this ironic symmetry.

Again, Stephan smiled. It would all be over in a few minutes; the U.S. Air Force could never respond to the first terrorist attack quickly enough to stop the second. Calmly, he lit up a second expensive cigar and watched pandemonium subsume lower Manhattan as the cloud of destruction from the first aircraft expanded out from the North Tower. He had all three major television channels and CNN on the screens in his large, richly equipped office, an office befitting the CEO of one of the biggest securities companies in the world.

He looked at his watch; it read exactly 9:00 a.m. All the television stations, on mute, showed the same smoking tower. However, he wasn't looking north anymore, but south, trying to find the second glinting aircraft in which he hoped his adversary was already dead.

Stephan—and others—had organized this unfathomable destruction not only to divest him of his wife, but to rid him of an opposition executive, cause a smokescreen for a couple of acquisitions of a billion dollars each, start a worldwide domino effect of destruction within his line of work, and stage the perfect murder of a man he hated venomously.

He still loved and admired his wife; she was a tough cookie, but the man was much like him, and Stephan hoped he was already dead. The world was about to change in his favor forever.

At the same time Stephan Saber was enjoying the view, the expensively dressed blonde-haired Mrs. Saber aboard Flight 175 was now alone in First Class. During the initial attack on the flight crew, a dark-haired terrorist had cut the throat of the man next to her, spattering her with his gushing blood. The victim was the CEO of a smaller financial firm familiar to her husband, and his enemy of 20 years.

She was the last person alive in First Class; all others had been forced by the attackers to the rear of the aircraft several minutes earlier. The attackers had left the cockpit door wide open for her sake alone, and she could see the closing Manhattan skyline as another terrorist dove the aircraft in, banking hard to turn northwards. She thought that she could even see her husband's building and office on Wall Street, and suddenly she wondered if this was his doing.

"Impossible!" she said aloud to no one, but she wouldn't put anything past her husband, a man who had often told her that he would rule the world one day.
Chapter 2

Act Two: The First Recession

"The country's financial institutions are not to blame for the financial meltdown hitting the USA," said the same broadcaster Stephan Saber had watched on television several years earlier during the eventful morning of 9/11.

In the same office on Wall Street, Saber smiled as he heard the media garbage meted out to unsuspecting listeners. "Several of the largest institutions based on the East Coast have replied to Federal Reserve accusations regarding the meltdown. They respond that this mortgage fiasco was instead caused by long-term government intervention, new laws instituted by Congress, and a complete lack of government responsibility in running the finances of the most powerful country in the world, not by the country's banking system."

Saber and his international securities firm had composed most of the responses for media distribution since Christmas 2007, hitting the government far below the belt. Much of the propaganda against the federal government originated from his company and the three largest U.S. banks. Their goal was to blind media watchers across the country and, hopefully, the world. The plan, nearly eight years in the making, began with the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Seven years earlier the triple catastrophes of three aircraft crashing into lower Manhattan, the Pentagon, and the supposed flight aimed at Capitol Hill had succeeded brilliantly in their intent. He had watched the second aircraft all the way in, and knew exactly the moment his unfaithful, beautiful wife had perished. He also knew that the reason for the other man's death, the formation of the small terrorist gang responsible, and the deaths of thousands of innocent people was only to draw the world's focus away from three large billion-dollar dealings that had taken place just that month. The plan worked perfectly thanks to the efforts of several men.

It is hard to spend billions of other people's invested money in large ventures without being scrutinized by world governments, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, and others on Wall Street, especially if the purchases were large enough to catch the attention of the government and the media.

For two full weeks after the attacks, the world television audience and media were transfixed by the fall of the twin towers being replayed time and time again. During that time, the three large acquisitions by a secret club of CEOs of the world's largest banks and securities institutions went unnoticed.

The first acquisition was a one-point-one-billion-dollar buyout of most of the old Charleston Naval Base in South Carolina, which the Navy closed in 1996. Originally titled a Navy Yard, it had provided defense for South Carolina since 1901 and became a naval base employing hundreds of thousands of people, producing conventional and nuclear submarines.

Since its closure in 1996, the club Stephan Saber belonged to had leased several production areas of the base through shell companies, and secretly brought them back online to continue to build one type of vessel: custom-designed submarines. These submarines would carry no weapons and would be powered by small nuclear reactors built in the Middle East. The first three of these reactors were already being shipped by cargo vessels directly to the American port city.

Taking advantage of the fourteen days of the Manhattan panic in 2001, the club purchased the base where three of the incoming ships unloaded their secret cargoes and then headed back out to sea with absolutely no surveillance. They were just part of the ever-growing shipping that visited Charleston daily. Who would notice them? All eyes were fixed on more possible terrorist attacks on Manhattan or Washington.

The putative new owner of the shipbuilding operation was a small, unknown Panamanian cruise line. In the purchase agreement, the company said that they wanted to build new cruise ships, which in turn would create new jobs for the workforce of the City of Charleston.

Now, seven years later, as a second diversion was taking place—the entire breakdown of the U.S. subprime mortgage system—the first civilian submarine of its kind was lowered into the waters of the Cooper River; with a crew of six, it headed out into the Atlantic for its maiden voyage.

During the week both towers fell, the club's second acquisition, insignificant in the United States, was the purchase by one of the leading Scottish banks of an island called Ailsa Craig, a 220-acre volcanic cap ten miles off the Scottish coast. But even in Britain, all eyes were tuned to the destruction in Manhattan.

The third acquisition had been made in Manhattan itself only a few days before the attack, and was about to be scrutinized by the SEC. This purchase, 130 Liberty Street, was another building owned by a financial institution, and, as expected, was damaged by the falling Towers. However, the sudden takeover of the building was passed over at the Securities and Exchange Commission due to the pandemonium.

None of the private club members were concerned about whether the building would or would not be damaged in the attack. They all knew what was going to happen on September 11th. All they wanted was for the purchase to be ignored by the authorities for as long as possible.

The purchase went through. The massive transfer went forward during the preceding weeks and months even though the building was heavily damaged in the two attacks, and many even felt sorry for the purchasers.

Now, seven years after the attacks, several floors remained standing, and it would require an additional two years to dismantle the building down to ground level. Anybody watching the demolition might have questioned the hundreds of trucks heading in and out of the building site daily, and why it had taken so long for the building to be demolished. Fortunately, Manhattan was a busy place.

Over the rest of the country, the subprime mortgage debacle was doing what the perpetrators had predicted a decade earlier. Americans, strapped for cash on a good day, were now feeling the pinch of the new recession, a declining housing market, the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and, within months, property foreclosures that increased rapidly in every state in the nation.

In 2008 the average homeowner had a grace period of about 90 days of missing his monthly mortgage payment before the system kicked in. A few months thereafter, police in all 50 states would begin to throw thousands of people out of their foreclosed properties. In 2009 over two million homes were emptied of occupants. That number was closer to three million in 2010.

For the smaller banks this was a major catastrophe, while institutions ready and prepared for this found easy pickings. They used the money invested by the same homeowners for retirement purposes to purchase the foreclosed properties for as little as ten cents on the dollar. The stock market nearly crashed as trillions of dollars were secretly taken out of retirement portfolios, actually causing the price drops, while the investors often did not learn that their investments had become worthless until after the value had fallen. These same people now had to find places to rent, or live in motels or even in their cars. Their years of retirement planning had gone up in smoke.

By the end of 2010, the four largest U.S. financial institutions owned over 200 million acres in the United States, and land in every major country in the world.

The man on the 54th floor smiled at the latest figures showing that his club of CEOs now owned nearly ten percent of the United States of America, and were already the largest landowners in the world. He also knew that those numbers were going to treble within another 12 months, and they hadn't spent a dime of their own money.

The takeover of a large swath of American real estate had been paid by the investors themselves, all through thousands of subsidiary companies. These were the same people who had lost their homes and most of their savings, and it was all completely legal. To the most powerful bankers, the United States of America was a great place to do business.
Chapter 3

The Cube

Chris Uben, AKA "The Cube" in hacker society, was only nine in 2001 when he watched the Twin Towers fall on television. Although he wasn't anywhere near the death and destruction, like many, he had felt sick watching the devastation. Charlotte, North Carolina was a long way from New York.

Chris was old enough to understand what he and his family were watching. Like millions, also transfixed by the most powerful live television anybody could ever witness, he was glued to the television screen for days. He never forgot the live scenes, but his memory slowly buried them.

Three years later his sixth grade Social Studies teacher asked the class to write a short essay on what each of them remembered about 9/11. Chris Uben's mind rushed every television moment back to him, and for the first time he questioned the motives of the perpetrators. For what reason could such a grisly attack happen? Who could be so savage that they wanted to rain death and destruction down on the streets of such a populated city?

It took him three hours to write the first sentence of his essay, and in that period his future formed. He became inquisitive, totally focused on wanting to know why such things happen.

The teacher read his one-page essay a few evenings later and smiled. In this boy, I have certainly lit the spark of curiosity, she thought.

For weeks after writing that short essay—for which he received an "A"—its theme didn't leave his mind.

Chris' father worked as a computer security expert for a bank in Charlotte. He had majored in Computer Science, and had become one of the best through advanced studies at MIT. His mother was also a very analytical person, a math professor at the College of Computing and Informatics at UNC Charlotte. Chris had a little of both parents in his makeup.

"Dad, could you teach me about the software you work on?" Chris, an only child, asked his father one weekend after writing the essay.

His father smiled. What father wouldn't want his son to walk in his own footsteps? "Why the interest in computers all of a sudden, Chris?" the older man asked. "You haven't had much interest in my work up to now."

"Remember over dinner the other night, how you were talking numbers to Mom, and you said that one day computers could foretell the future?"

"A future to do with weather predictions, earthquakes, and tsunamis, son. Telling us the whole future is a bit of a stretch from what we were discussing," his father replied.

"Well, I liked the part where Mom talked about computers finding criminals through fingerprint analysis and through possible DNA matches. You know, computers helping to find the bad guys."

Okay...," replied his father, a little puzzled. "What has that got to do with future predictions?"

Chris thought hard for a few seconds before replying. "You work in the computer department at USA Bank, right?"

His father nodded.

"I was thinking about future predictions on the stock market, or the international money markets; people getting foreknowledge on buying shares, or making money. You know what I mean?"

This time his father smiled. Maybe there was a bright future for his thin, bespectacled son. "That has been happening for a few decades now," responded his father, smiling. "Ever since computers became practical, they were turned toward the stock market and used to make accurate, profitable predictions. My job in the bank's IT department is security. I also head the work on directional statistics, where money might go, normally up or down, and make sure nobody else finds out what our computers are saying to each other – or shall I say, to other programmers. Computer information hacking, son, is the fastest growing illegal market in the world, and with more and more powerful computers, the work I accomplished for the bank last week will be obsolete this week. And guess what? I still can't predict the future next week. Funny you should bring up the subject today. I just spoke to an FBI agent last week about outsiders trying to hack into our bank files. He was very interesting, and he and I will chat again."

"What is hacking, Dad?" Chris asked.

"In a nutshell, it is unauthorized finding out of what other computers are being fed, or saying to each other, or what is saved in their memory. It might be information, new software files, or even protection files, scenario data, and people's social security or bank account numbers. It is any information that can be of financial or informative use to somebody else. We call it 'white-collar theft.'"

For an hour or two, Chris learned how hackers could break into bank records, why they would want to, and how the bank could resist the hackers. He often looked back at this lesson his father was excited to give. It was so simple and easy compared to what would be available in the not distant future. He learned that even the latest IBM computer his father bought for him was, a week or so later, already becoming obsolete.

In 2009, he designed, built and hid his first self-made computer in the foreclosed home next door. The house had been empty since their friends had been thrown out by the same bank his father still worked for.

Steven J. Uben, Chris's father, had tried to help the friendly family of six, but the bank had bluntly refused, tossing them out with no remorse, even though they were catching up on their mortgage; at the time of eviction, they were just a month behind. The same had happened up and down the street, and around the community they lived in. Nearly fifty percent of the homes out of 120 in the high-quality housing development were empty by Christmas 2009.

The Uben family still lived well on two higher-than-average salaries. Still, their home value had plunged during the recession from $600,000 to less than half that.

The year 2011 was important to the Uben family. In that year, USA Bank moved out of Charlotte, North Carolina and into South Carolina, establishing headquarters in a new fifty-floor office tower in downtown Charleston. It was important to Steve Uben, because forty percent of the staff were laid off; not the lower rank and file, but mostly upper department heads. And, as Chris' father explained to his family, without really understanding the reasons, those who knew the internal security operations of the bank and its policies were let go. So suddenly, the less knowledgeable staff moved south and Chris's father was unemployed for the first time in his life.

With the house and most of his street empty and now very overgrown, young Chris still worked with his family's ever-growing system of computers in the housing development. They changed houses every few months. His system was composed of three of the nine parts of one family-built semi-supercomputer he, his mother and father had built themselves as a hobby over the last two years.

They had three large screens for each of the three control systems, thousands of terabytes of memory, tens of thousands of dollars of only the most modern, most powerful chips, motherboards, and memory, and the fastest internet connection that moved when they hid the three separate but connected systems around the housing estate. Chris always remembered what his father had said that night in 2004: "What I worked on last week could be obsolete this week."

To him and his unemployed father, working in and around the area, this statement also worked on behalf of their enemy, the financial institutions.
Chapter 4

Charleston, South Carolina

Millions of Americans like the Ubens were learning how to cope living in new surroundings they were not used to.

The job market hadn't been kind to many careers. From CEOs to the self-employed service industry, from home builders to computer IT specialists, jobs disappeared as fast as a race car at Daytona. The domino effect that several of their own countrymen had anticipated fell in perfect lines. Jobs were lost, mortgages were not paid, the economy ground to a halt and, apart from teachers, police, firefighters, medical personnel, government employees and politicians, many twiddled their thumbs standing in unemployment lines waiting to collect checks. Some waited in even longer lines at the rapidly growing job fairs, learning what their older generation had found out before them: employers did not really worry about the welfare of their workers. Company money stayed in company bank accounts.

In 2008, the stock market trembled on the verge of collapse and the savings of many were used up feeding their families, or just disappeared as their stock portfolios headed south, often down to zero. Unemployment hit double digits and land changed hands by square miles, not acres.

Much like the still-employed, and those who had money to burn, the bankers went about their business, buying up remains of failing financial institutions. Like vultures, they grabbed for any piece of meat that would interest their institution's Board of Directors or investors.

The year 2008 was an important year for Stephan Saber's "Banker's Club" for many reasons. Operation Default, the first phase of their plan, went into effect: the first mortgage takeover. The atrocities of 9/11 were long forgotten. The terrorist organization blamed for the attack was being hounded from one end of the Earth to the other, and one of the club's newest "friends" was appointed to a high-ranking advisory position to the newly elected President of the United States. Unfortunately, not as high a position as their old administration ally. Their former inside man, a very senior member of the outgoing administration, had done his job well and was about to be offered honorable club membership.

The big U.S. banks were making money hand over fist from the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, thanks to their newly retired and about-to-be-accepted club member. The world was going into recession, which made it easier for the club to control the daily transfers of international currency, always skimming their commissions off the top. First, billions would head across the pond and the movement would restructure the money rates. Once the exchange rates changed for the better, the money returned.

In addition, several companies paid the big banks large amounts to move money around the world and keep it outside of the United States, decreasing their federal taxes.

The Naval Yard in Charleston had been rearranged since its purchase in 2001. Security was kept as strict as possible. It was so stringent that even the CIA, FBI or the NSA would have had trouble getting agents in, if they had wanted to. Much of the construction of submarines was performed by robots and controlled by computers, using new emerging 3-D printers of the most expensive types, and a small, extremely well-paid staff of naval architects, designers, metal workers and welders, none of whom would leak what they saw for fear of losing their fat paychecks.

There actually wasn't much in there to leak about. The shipping company that had initially purchased the Naval Yard "declared bankruptcy" a year after the purchase. Now, instead of producing small 250-foot cruise ships for the wealthy market, a new boat building company out of Ireland was building special types of submarines.

The first several submarines were designed for oceanographic use. The club's contact in the U.S. administration had acquired a no-bid government contract for the company to build new submarines. In total nine oceanographic submarines were to be built at prices far above real cost. At the same time, seven larger, longer, 125-foot atomic-powered submarines were being secretly manufactured in a separate building. Only the company's most highly paid team knew about the secret internal dry dock.

Much like the smaller extremely deep-diving oceanographic subs, these sleeker, silent runners of the deep would be able to travel 2,500 feet below the surface, slightly deeper than the crush depth of many of the world's best, most modern naval submarines. Also, thanks to technology stolen or acquired from other naval submarine builders, they were as silent as their military counterparts.

These submarines didn't have weapons. Instead, any spare internal space, apart from the forward luxury living quarters, was filled with supplies, or machinery that would help keep the silent runners even more silent.

The rear half of the submarine was dedicated to engines and a small, minivan-sized nuclear reactor; the forward half held quarters for the crew and lavish accommodations for VIPs. The crew consisted of the captain, mate, sonar specialist and assistant, cook and two to four service personnel.

The bow of the submarine had three levels. The lowest level held the dozens of battery banks, the middle the luxury living accommodations, and the upper level comprised the control room, sonar, kitchens, supply areas and sleeping arrangements for the crew and up to another dozen personnel if necessary.

The conning tower was only half as tall as on a naval submarine. It had the usual exit hatches, viewing bay, periscope, communications and radio antennae, but these submarines were built to run underwater continuously and deep, for months on end if need be, and had no need to surface while traveling. They carried enough food and supplies for at least a year under water.

At more than two billion dollars each they were not cheap, mostly purchased with taxpayer money, and seven were planned.

By 2011 the first three had completed sea trials in the Atlantic, and another three were weeks away from completing their sea trials when the next Banker's Club meeting was scheduled.

At the new USA Bank headquarters in downtown Charlotte, life was good. Stephan Saber's best friend, Chuck Martin, was CEO of USA Bank. They had gone to school together at Yale. Both came from Long Island families, and both had been groomed by their parents for the financial industry. They didn't talk often over the phone, but did meet regularly for drinks using their corporate jets to meet somewhere safe. Today, though, they made an exception.

Chuck's phone rang; it was his private assistant telling him Mr. Saber from Joseph Silverstein's was on the line.

"Stephan, good to hear your voice. How is lower Manhattan these days?"

"A pleasant day, Chuck. The year 2011 seems to be interesting so far. You never know what is going to happen tomorrow," replied Stephan Saber from his 54th floor office. Both men knew that their lines were as secure as possible. More secure than the average line, but they would bet their annual salaries that somebody, especially Feds, were listening in 24/7. "I wanted to see how you were doing with launching VISA's new IPO. Are you still going ahead with it?"

For several minutes the two men chatted informally without revealing any classified information. USA Bank was selling off part of its ownership of VISA. The two men needed to meet with the rest of their club to make sure that the sale was completely legal and that the control of all the major credit cards worldwide stayed within the club members' control. They needed to chat, to make it look like they were talking freely to each other and to the other major institutions. At the same time, private information was hand delivered by their own courier system.

With the growth of the internet and changes in government policy which allowed agencies to monitor private conversations, most people in high places knew that their phones, email lines, even social sites could be tapped heavily by the government. So, they had arranged a completely different system of communications.

Communique, a private company in New York, handled all private messages between the club members and other high-ranking banking officials. Owned by USA Bank, Communique had at its disposal two corporate jets, several armor- plated SUVs and cars, and a dozen motorcycles. They also owned hundreds of the newest laptops hitting the market annually. These portable computers could hold a coded message, could send the message as an email over the airwaves, or actually deliver a message by courier.

The computers were never plugged into any landline or wireless connection and therefore could not be hacked since they were never connected to the world feed. If a computer ever needed to make a connection and send an email, the sending computer was then destroyed.

As the two men chatted over the phone about golf, shares, and government reactions, a courier arrived at the new bank offices in Charleston, South Carolina and hand delivered a small portable computer to Chuck Martin. Once his office was cleared, he switched it on and indirectly told Stephan Saber over the phone that he had received it.

He decoded the message on the portable and related in the phone conversation that all was in order on his side, and that he agreed to work more closely with Joseph Silverstein's in New York. The message on the laptop had been an offer to purchase ten percent of VISA for more than a billion dollars.

"I think we can work out some deals with these as credit-card-backed securities," Chuck responded, giving Stephan his answer verbally over the phone. "With the movement of our credit-card-backed securities, I want more success and control than those guys like Countrywide, for example, who set up this whole mortgage-backed securities fiasco."

"Sure, I understand," replied Stephan Saber in New York. What Chuck Martin on the other end was talking about, he was sure eavesdroppers wouldn't understand; it was pure gibberish. But he had gotten his answer; his offer had been accepted. Now Chuck Martin wanted to repay the offer by selling some control of his own institution-owned credit card company. Both men knew this, and a coded message on the same laptop was sent back with the courier, who headed straight for his waiting aircraft at the Charleston Executive Airport terminal.

Chuck Martin said his goodbyes to his friend. The return message was for 30 percent control of Discover card for the same amount of money, and stated that they urgently needed to meet with the rest of the club.
Chapter 5

The Banker's Club

Less than a month after their last phone call, Chuck Martin grabbed a drink with the same man, his old Yale buddy, at the bar in the Hotel Exclusive in Vaduz, Lichtenstein. The Banker's Club had taken over the entire hotel for their three-day meeting. Over the next couple of hours, the other club members would arrive one by one.

The annual World Bankers' Conference was convening at the same time in Zurich; dozens of CEOs and executives were about to arrive in Switzerland from all over the world. Each of The Banker's Club executives was to leave his corporate jet at Zurich International Airport and travel individually and by different means of transportation to the Lichtenstein hotel.

Chuck Martin and Stephan Saber came in a few days early, and they immediately crossed the border into Lichtenstein for their own private club meeting.

Both men had flown to the hotel grounds by helicopter, an hour apart. The others would come the same way or by road, as it was less than seventy miles from Zurich. The only interested party who could not make it to the meeting was their current inside member in the U.S. government, and that worked out perfectly.

The recently retired U.S. government politician and former inside man, on the verge of admittance to the most elite club in the world, a powerhouse in the world of politics and business, walked into the bar as the second round of drinks arrived.

He had worked in the last administration in Washington, had made the club members hundreds of millions of dollars each from government military contracts, such as new submarines, and military support contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was about to be accepted into The Banker's Club and thanked by them for a job well done.

"Richard, wonderful to see you," greeted Stephan Saber as the man who had given him vast opportunities in Iraq entered the small, expensively appointed bar. Richard Chambers was the only person at the club meeting who wasn't, strictly speaking, in the financial arena.

"Rich, great to see you and right on time. What can I get you to drink?" asked Chuck Martin.

"Kentucky Bourbon on the rocks," replied Richard Chambers, a man who scowled often and rarely smiled. A person who had dealt with many governments all of his life, he was not a happy guy. As one of the three highest-ranking government officials in the last administration, he had been a real asset to the banking community.

The barman, a club employee, expertly poured the man his drink.

"How did you travel in?" Stephan Saber asked clinking glasses with the new arrival.

"As you guys organized it," replied Chambers. "That new Audi SUV is a great ride. I must remember to see if it's reached the States yet." They chatted about money and the new administration as good friends did, before the newcomer said that his stomach didn't feel so good.

Within minutes he felt a little ill, and asked his smiling associates to be excused. He put it down to old age, being tired after the long trip, and the barman suggested that he help the man to his room.

Instead of going to his room, he was helped back out to the SUV.

"We have to drive you to your bungalow, sir," the barman said. Chambers acknowledged the information. He had never been here before, and was not surprised when his chauffeur and a security guard ran out to meet them to help the barman walk him back to the vehicle.

By the time the Audi drove out through the gates of the hotel, the barman was back behind the bar, the old man in the back was dead, and the two men in front drove to a cabin in the mountains where a large drum of sulfuric acid was ready to destroy his remains.

By the time the Audi left the hotel grounds, a third helicopter had landed, deposited one club member and his luggage, and took off to return to Zurich.

"Good afternoon, Stephan, Chuck," the newcomer said to the two men smiling at him. "Have we welcomed our newest member yet?"

"As of about twenty minutes ago, Bruce," replied the two Americans, smiling.

Bruce McDonald, CEO of the largest bank in Great Britain, had held that position for a decade and was as powerful as the two Americans. The Scottish department of his bank had purchased the island off the coast of Scotland for the club in 2001.

He didn't have to tell the barman what he wanted to drink; a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne was already being opened, and it was well over 30 years old.

Baron Marcus Von Kippenhof arrived next, twenty minutes later. He walked in, leaving his armored Maybach with his chauffeur in the driveway. It had been a long drive from Stuttgart and he was in need of a drink. He was the only continental European member of the banking group of six members.

Actually there were seven members in The Banker's Club. Six would be meeting, and the seventh member, the chairman of the club, would not attend. He never did, and none of the other six had ever met him face to face. They only knew him as "The Banker," and this was his very private club.

Each of the members had been invited into the club, and everything that went on between the members and the chairman went through Communique and the portable computer information system.

The Banker's Club had been formed in the early 1980s, and there had been over a dozen members since the initial members had passed on. When one of them died, usually from natural causes, he was replaced by someone new. All had been men, and all had been powerful financial CEOs.

There had been dozens of potential members who had heard and wanted membership, important people, who had lobbied to join the club one way or another. Like Richard Chambers, they were never heard from or seen again by the rest of the world.

It is instructive what an acid bath can do to the human body. Making a corpse disappear completely takes two baths, as The Banker had been taught by his peers and friends. Most people who used this system to make someone disappear, such as Mexican drug dealers, used lye, sodium, potassium hydroxide, or pure sulfuric acid. Lye in a pressure cooking system, heated to 300 degrees, will turn the human body into a motor-oil-like substance in several hours. The downside of this method was that the lye usually left minute tooth and bone fragments. What The Banker had been taught was that if the "motor oil" was then poured into pure sulfuric acid, within 24 hours there would be absolutely no evidence of the body, including any microscopic residue. He didn't bother with lye much anymore. The strongest sulfuric acid was cleaner and did a far better job.

The used sulfuric acid and other contents were sealed in drums labeled "Hazardous" and sent to waste storage facilities across Europe or the USA. The drums were never opened. Nobody, including The Banker, actually knew what the final result was, but nobody wanted to open one of the sealed drums and see.

The Banker believed that the early victims who had been fed into these acid storage drums were still in European government hazardous storage facilities somewhere, and had been for decades. Poor Richard Chambers was about to arrive at the closest European hazardous waste site. Twelve gallons of sulfuric acid and 32 gallons of dissolving remains would soon be on its way to a German government Nuclear Hazardous Waste Site within the week. Baron Von Kippenhof's connections would make sure of that.

Nobody in the club knew who The Banker was, nor did they know the method used to ensure potential members who did not make the cut disappeared. All that the club members knew was that the remains of these people never resurfaced. A Middle Eastern Shah, a Catholic Church leader, a famous pop singer, three beautiful movie actresses, and a British former Prime Minister had all mysteriously disappeared a decade or more earlier, and lengthy, massive manhunts failed to provide any information. That didn't include several more Members of Parliament from Brussels and London, a couple of members of Congress, a Senator from Maryland, and nearly three dozen high-ranking generals from several different armies.

"Baron Marcus, great to see you," said Stephan as the tall thin man dressed in a quality suit walked alone into the bar, removing his hat and coat.

"Mein Herr, Guten Tag," the smiling, good-looking man of about 60 replied. A well-dressed doorman, also a club employee, took his hat and cane.

The barman knew exactly what the German wanted. He knew this man well. The barman was Bavarian.

The doorman returned to the room and, in a soft voice, told the four men that Mr. Will Frederickson, President of Western Fort Bank in California, was twenty minutes out in a helicopter taxi, and the sixth man, Mr. John Davenport, President of AmericaCorp, New York, was thirty minutes behind him.

Dinner that evening was composed of food that even a king would have happily enjoyed. One thing all six men knew well was quality living. Among them they earned billions of dollars a year and ran financial institutions with assets of close to a trillion. They all owned houses or properties around the world, as well as the odd secret retreat the others didn't know about.

All six men flew everywhere in their corporate jets, never paying a dime for transportation. Why pay for a private jet if the company, or its shareholders, customers or investors paid for everything? Not one of the six men had his own private jet. It was a waste of personal income. The transportation and stay at the hotel in Lichtenstein was paid for by The Banker; their rooms, the best in Zurich for the World Conference, were paid by their institutions.

The Banker owned the hotel in Lichtenstein and the country around it, on paper anyway.

Even though the men all had credit cards, and between them owned the majority shares in all the world's credit card companies, their cards were the least used of all customers.

Each man liked his position, his power, and certainly wasn't going to change the status quo. There was only one man who knew everything about them; he also knew everything about 95 percent of the world's politicians, terrorist organizations, and security companies, and he was by far the richest man in the world. At an earlier meeting one club member asked whether The Banker was worth more than Bill Gates. The reply was that twelve or fifteen Bill Gates' wouldn't even get close. The Banker was insulted and the member didn't last long. Stephan Saber noted that he was not around to tell his story.

There were the top ten known richest men in the world, and then the top ten richest men in the world who didn't want it made public. Among the latter were people like President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, leader of one the smallest and poorest countries in the world. It was poor because he had stolen the entire country's wealth and deposited it in his private Swiss bank accounts. He was only number nine on the unknown list.

At number seven was the pharmaceutical company investor and part owner, James Tavert, who owned the majority shares in all the big drug companies worldwide.

Number six to number three were also dictators of nations. For years these men had siphoned off oil revenues and their country's exports. Between them they had personal assets of over $1.5 trillion.

In second place was Paul Messiner, major backer, investor, and large shareholder of the big four oil companies, and the reason that the entire world drove petroleum powered automobiles up to 2005. A score of inventors, several scholars of alternative methods of energy, and dozens of university students who had come across new methods of energy for transportation had not survived to a decent age. Messiner was also very big in nuclear energy and detested electric cars.

The Banker, in control of all the world's financial institutions, was number one, and had been for decades. He actually controlled everybody else's money. Whether The Banker had a boss or not was anyone's guess.

The room was vacated fifteen minutes before 8:00 p.m. and, once cleared of personnel and checked for listening devices, The Banker greeted them. His familiar voice came over the bar's internal speaker system as he welcomed them to his country of Lichtenstein.
Chapter 6

Mr. and Mrs. Byte

Steve Uben, Chris' father, was one of the best in computer security, in large part thanks to timing—he was educated at a time when computers were becoming powerful—and forward thinking by his parents in the 80s, and also thanks to his wife. Jenny Uben was as clever as he was, but had gone the teaching route after leaving MIT. They had fallen in love in Boston, and had married shortly after Steve completed his education. When his scholarship ran out, it was time to earn money for the first time in his life.

Steve had good friends, and while Jenny completed her last year of study, he went south to Charlotte, North Carolina, where a friend of his, director of computer security for a large bank, wanted his brains.

His friend Joe Marks had worked with him on computer research for his first two years at MIT before the older man left for paid employment. It took him only two months to be employed in Charlotte, and was given the position of Director of Bank Computer Security by his new employer, one of the biggest banks in the world. Joe wanted his friend to join him immediately, but Steve had completed his studies and gotten married first.

Steve Uben moved down to Charlotte a year earlier than Jenny. His heart was heavy as he would have to live a year without her. The night before leaving, the car packed and ready to go, Jenny told him that she was pregnant.

The couple had been together since the second day after their first meeting at MIT. Like a pair of swans, they were meant to be together, and once united in body and soul, nobody would ever be able to pull them apart.

Their first year of marriage was hell for both of them. It was so bad that Jenny left school three months before completing her final year to take a lower paid teaching job to be with her man. Chris Albert Uben was born a week after her arrival in Charlotte; there would be no going back to finish her postgraduate degree. Instead, she got a job at the local university, UNC at Charlotte, which was grateful to get such a young, pretty and clever person straight out of MIT for their computer faculty. UNC Chapel Hill wanted her more and tried to recruit her to join their faculty further north for a higher salary, but there was no way to separate her from her well-paid, well-entrenched husband who was working at a Charlotte bank.

During their first years of marriage they enjoyed their daily jobs and also their hobby: computer hardware construction and software file dissection. It was pure entertainment to penetrate newly developing mainframes, firewalls, security programs, and anything other companies installed in their security nets. However, the bank Steve worked for and the university system that employed Jenny were off limits.

By the time Chris was eleven, Steve and Jenny had hacked into the company about to start production of The Roadrunner, at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Roadrunner was meant to be the world's fastest computer and as the designs grew, they analyzed and copied certain parts to make themselves a miniature supercomputer, only 10,000 times smaller. At a cost of $100,000 and their electricity bill going up over 800 dollars a month, they struggled to make their own version pay. They had upgraded the electricity input to their house as much as possible without raising suspicions but, like Roadrunner, their version was just too expensive to run. Then, in 2009, they "purchased," via hacked information, a second house in their emptying housing development. It was a foreclosure and once they changed the information within the bank's files, they upgraded the electricity with a more modern high input system. On the power company's books, this user of electricity suddenly turned into a restaurant, which justified the higher usage.

This new idea enabled them to string a few houses together. When they "rented" five more foreclosed houses for pennies on the dollar in fictitious names, their growing $6,000 monthly electricity usage didn't look bad as it was spread between seven bills.

All this was exciting to the pair and also to Chris. In 2010 he "moved" into one of the empty houses two streets away to take a third of the computer and set up his own supercomputer. To his surprise he found that the house was already wired and the electric bill went to a couple he knew well: his parents. This was the start of understanding who his parents were: surprise adversaries in his own new and private world of computer hacking.

By that time computer technology had come far, and he built a brand new computer for twenty thousand dollars. He built this extremely powerful computer by himself; it was about one-tenth the speed and power of the old one his parents sometimes used, and it used far less electricity. His parent's old behemoth still took up six whole server cabinets, and was still a dozen times faster than what he could put together.

Chris's parents built new, more modern models in other houses around the city of Charlotte and outlying areas. Their hobby was paying off, they were skimming off bank transactions giving them ample funds to pay for all their purchases, but they were beginning to get noticed, and it was time to move.

Up to the times of their employment terminations, Steve and Jenny had kept to their house rule to never hack into a file in either of the companies where they worked, at least for financial reimbursement.

Once they were both unemployed in 2011, and with Joe Marks, Steve's only friend at USA Bank, deceased for over a year, the barriers came down. Poor Joe Marks had mysteriously disappeared one day, and was never heard from again by his family.

What really fascinated Steve when he finally went in to USA Bank's computer memory banks was that all files relating to his college friend had been cleared. It was as if Joe Marks had never existed. On paper, the bank had paid nothing to Joe's family, but Steve knew that his wife had received a large payout from USA Bank. Any such settlement had disappeared from all bank records, as if Joe Marks and also another insurance payout never existed.

The Marks family didn't want for cash; they received mid six-digit payouts. But Steve had been asked to leave and received nothing other than a severance package, and that made him unhappy.

After looking for Joe's history and finding that the employee had "never worked" for the bank, he checked his own history with the bank computers and was just as shocked when he realized that his own history had changed. It appeared that once any moneys owed to him had been paid, he and all payments were completely wiped clean by the bank.

Within months, Steve had never existed; even his six months' severance package was not on the bank records. He then looked through the records of other people who had been terminated by accessing the new computers operating in their new location of Charleston. The information told him that there was a lot of erasing going on, and that if he valued his life, he might want to stop hacking into USA Bank.

Steve Uben left his former employer alone for a year, moved to a new house, and paid off the old and new mortgages through bank proceeds hacked from another large bank. He made sure that he and Jenny had no more business with USA Bank.

Jenny had done the same on her newly-built computer located a street away from Steve's. She found her files on the university records, and began to understand why she lost her job. Her unexpected termination had been engineered by two members of the university's Board of Trustees, two men who disliked her, and disliked her methods of teaching, and who had wanted her out of the university for some time.

Jenny dug around and found carefully hidden files connecting one of the men to several assaults against women on campus over a ten-year period, crimes that had been reported by the students but had been silenced and buried by the administration.

The other man lived a comfortable life and she found out where he had siphoned funds out of private student loans from the university. The interest rates had been a quarter to half a percent higher than expected on hundreds of internal loans between the system and its students since 1997. With an extra million dollars in cash he lived very well.

Both men suddenly found themselves under investigation. Charlotte police received anonymous tips with enough documentation to easily make a case for each of them. Both men were forced to resign their positions a few weeks after the information was leaked.

It took young Chris Uben a couple of years to catch up to his parents' quality of computer knowledge. His high school report cards showed that he was a dreamer and in most subjects he wouldn't amount to anything. This was one of the main reasons nobody paid much attention to him, especially when the police or FBI happened to be in the area looking for a local computer hacker. His teachers didn't think he had the brains to be anything of the sort, especially in computer science, where he made sure he failed miserably. So miserably that he barely managed to receive his high school diploma, but already had five million dollars stashed away in several retirement fund institutions.

So did his parents. It wasn't until the Hackers' Convention, just before Christmas 2011, that he discovered the identities of a couple renowned in the world computer hacking hall of fame. The infamous Mr. & Mrs. Byte were his very own parents!

Up to 2010 hacking was a petty nuisance to government organizations. Once hackers grew more numerous, got better organized, and began hacking into more secure government facilities, mostly from China and Russia, a very real problem raised its ugly head.

After 2010, the government's computer security departments grew as fast as the hacker's computers became more powerful. The internet and its snake-like connections and higher speeds spread into every corner of the world. Soon contacts were established between computer users in the United States, Europe and, most important of all, the new ex-Soviet countries and Asia. Chinese hacking seemed to be controlled by the Chinese government, but many found ways to bypass the systems. Slowly, the number of hackers in the world interested in helping each other grew faster than the government's anti-hacking departments.

By the time the 2011 Hackers' Convention opened in Las Vegas, it was easy to send cryptic information to hundreds of servers around the world, using "Onion Routing," false DNS leads and IP scrambling, masking the origination of where the information had come from.

A share purchase transacted in Manhattan, a block away from Wall Street, could be recorded as coming from an anonymous trust fund in the Hamptons. The purchase might move around the world several times, when it was actually owned by a hacker in Los Angeles, or Singapore. Bogus trades strained growing government systems; they could not dedicate the manpower required to follow leads that often ended up in an offshore banking country which didn't allow investigators in.

Investigations into monetary transactions that were hacked took second place as hacking of government establishments increased. This development angered the banks to an extent, but several didn't want the government looking too closely, as they were doing the same thing but on a far greater scale. Older and more experienced hackers such as Pepsi Cola, Vodka, and Mr. and Mrs. Byte, were mentors to the new kids on the block. In November 2012 Chop Styx, The Cube, and The Ram were a few of the known hackers wanted by the FBI and the NSA out of hundreds worldwide.

By the time Chris turned nineteen everyone in the Uben family was unemployed. They came and went without sharing too much information with each other. If his mother told him that she was going to spend a week in Bermuda, Chris knew that his father would be close by her side, wherever she was. Their old house in Charlotte was still empty, as were many others around it. The Uben family was mobile and Charlotte would soon be forgotten. There were no large banks in Charlotte anymore.

Jenny told her son a week before the start of the Hackers' Convention that she was going to New York. Steve told Chris a day later that he was heading off to Japan; he had a deal going over there. Chris smiled and told his departing mother that he was going to Canada for a job interview. They all smiled at each other and soon their new house was empty of movement.

So were the several other houses in Charlotte that had sophisticated electronics in their basements or attics. Some were already empty of computer equipment, and the only telltale sign that anything was different was the heavy duty electrical socket for the stove in the kitchen with an extension to somewhere else in the house.

Chris's latest computer was a state-of-the-art supercharged laptop that had bells and whistles only computer design companies and other hackers knew about. It was also nearly as powerful as the remains of his parents' first self-built computer, which was still housed in a basement somewhere; it was being used as a transmission server to direct internet traffic around the globe.

The Cube looked like a normal young man when he crossed into Canada under the name of Mathew Chisolm and passed through the airport customs area in Montreal. From there he caught a flight to Vancouver and returned to the United States by road with a newly purchased set of documents.

His friend and contact in Beijing was an expert at forging documents; for $100,000 he could get a complete set of U.S. or Canadian documents. Chris already had three sets. Based on credit card records, U.S. Border Control still showed that a Mathew Chisolm was staying in Montreal at a small inn outside the center of the city and that he had made a purchase at a gas station across the road. The occupied room was dark.

Chris Uben, as Chris Uben, never went anywhere; his social security number, identity and history were lost to North Carolina's electronic records.

Chris entered the USA as Matt Palmer, a Canadian citizen who was traveling to San Diego to visit friends. A day after he entered the country, a San Diego motel's check-in computer showed a Matt Palmer checking into a small motel on Mission Beach.

Chris then went to Las Vegas by air and checked in as Joseph Daniels, his driver's license from Salt Lake City, Utah. Joseph Daniels was a Utah representative for Gateway/Acer Computers and he received that name badge at the convention.

He also picked up another new set of papers at a post office in Henderson after Joseph Daniels rented a car to drive there and retrieve them. It was an Amazon media-mail parcel, sent from Seattle, Washington, which had actually originated in Shanghai and had been shipped via South Korea. When it arrived in Seattle, a member of the forger's large network received the envelope, ripped off the outer package and mailed the same envelope with new markings from the same U.S. post office that did much of Amazon's mailing in the area.

The parcel held a hardcover book. Carefully inserted into the front and back covers was Chris's next set of international documents. Now he could pass as Steven Macalister, a British citizen from Edinburgh, Scotland, with a British passport embedded with the latest chip, a driver's license, a birth certificate, a UK National Insurance number, and an old and tattered folded-up electric bill for 39 pounds and 35 pence dated a month earlier in his name at an unknown address Chris had never been to.

He smiled, thinking that he should brush up on accents, and wondered which bank should pay for his next set of new papers. Maybe Hong Kong or Singapore. It would double the $250,000 cost for the British passport and papers. It was a fun game.

Chris Uben wasn't only travelling on different papers, he altered his physical appearance. His brown hair was now blonde, his blue eyes green with contact lenses, his glasses were missing, and his new suit, appropriate for a young computer representative, had been filled out to make him look broader than he really was. Even his shoes were built up to add two inches to his height. Only his parents might have recognized him at close quarters...and they did.

Chris had been there for two days when he met them. Until then he had made no contacts. The world didn't know him except for his nickname, The Cube, and fewer than three people in the world could identify The Cube in a crowd.

He noticed the less experienced hackers. Most of the dozen or so internationally renowned hackers in the room were as stealthy as Chris. There were dozens of underground cops and FBI agents posing as hackers at the convention, and they often caught smaller fish at these meetings; one never knew who was a government spy.

Some of the financial institutions also had geeky-looking personnel at the convention trying to ferret out the miscreants who had hacked into their accounts. Chris reckoned that out of the several hundred people visiting the convention that day at least ten percent were not attending for reasons specified on their application forms.

Gateway Computers, and most of the large computer manufacturers, had booths at the convention to show off their latest machines. But many of the ten foot by ten foot booths belonged to small companies selling legal hardware or software most of the hackers had little interest in. These companies only sold to the straight geeks, the unknowledgeable. So it was important to stop and inquire at all the booths to camouflage his internationally acclaimed hacker status.

When walking past one of these booths, a pretty girl a few years older than he walked by him. It looked like she had just purchased a small router and was looking at it excitedly, too excitedly he thought. He looked at her, and suddenly he went cold as her piercing blue eyes seemed to penetrate his searching brain for a split second before looking back down, smiling at her prized, just-purchased piece of junk. He knew that he had been scrutinized by somebody who had seen him looking at her. He scolded himself internally and reminded himself to look more naïve in the future so as not to be caught. He also memorized her face; he wanted to find her again, but kept walking in the same direction, without turning around.

His concentration was sidelined when he saw an older couple, about 70, looking at a brand new laptop at the Dell stand. Chris, AKA Joseph Daniels, sidled up to listen to what they were saying. He was surprised at their age. Older people of their generation, the same age as his deceased grandparents, were not interested in the latest computers as much as younger generations, and he automatically categorized them as harmless. The old lady was slightly hunched over, and the white-haired man leaned on a cane. The couple said nothing, but the man glanced his way, smiled for a split second, and then returned his attention to the computer salesman's loud description of the most powerful laptop at the convention. None of the experienced hackers would bring anything of their own equipment into the convention hall. That was asking for trouble.

The couple didn't say a word; they just listened to the sales pitch, nodded their thanks and moved on. Chris got a shock an hour or so later. He was looking for the pretty girl that couldn't be found when he felt somebody knock gently into him from behind. He didn't turn around.

"I think we saw you first young man," said a lady's voice behind him. He recognized that voice immediately. It was his mother's, and he turned to see the old couple standing and smiling behind him. He looked at them, working hard to hide the shock of being caught.

"Hello. Mr. and Mrs. X, I presume?"

"No, Mary and Joe," replied his father standing and smiling next to his mother as always. This time Chris was shocked.

"Not Mr. and Mrs. Byte?" he questioned.

"Could be the same. Mr. Cube, I assume?" smiled his mother.

"Now greet us as if we are introducing ourselves to you," added his father, holding out his right hand as a weak old man would do.

"How come you guys changed that transfer of mine from Bank of The States to USA Bank last week?" Chris asked, now smiling but still shocked inside, shaking the older man's weakly offered hand. He had not known that two of the most famous hackers in the world were his own parents.

"Too neat an amount. Fifty-five cents is too round a number, Mr. Daniels. It should have been $89,997.57, not $89,997.55. So I changed the amount and secured it for you," smiled his father. "You should know by now that sevens at the end of an amount are rarely picked up. Now head off before we tell the two agents looking at us over there that Mr. Cube – oh, sorry, The Cube – is in the house."

They shook hands, smiled at each other, went their separate ways, and the eyes watching them lost interest. Chris, still shocked but hiding it as best he could, carefully headed back toward the Gateway booth he was supposed to be part of. He didn't get too close, but stayed a couple of booths away listening to a young man about his age tell him about his new app. It was something he had not heard much of, but knew that these tiny new programs, meant for communications devices, were already important in the world of hacking, especially the GPS apps.

He was suddenly shocked to see the same girl he was searching for enter the rear of the booth behind the young man, holding a bag of McDonald's food. She had already noticed Chris but kept her eyes away from him as she began distributing the food into two piles.

"In the next couple of years this new type of app for games will be everywhere," said the young man to Chris. Chris looked down at the man's hands showing him information on the app he was working on, but his attention was also on the girl's movements. Chris agreed with him, thanked him, didn't look back and headed off in a direction that would lead him to the next row of booths behind the girl.

He waited, listening to sales pitch after sales pitch. Most of what he heard he already knew or wasn't interested in. However, he stayed to listen to one salesman and purchased a brand new device which could permanently transmit iPhones' GPS whereabouts. He didn't carry an expensive cell phone for that exact reason.

It wasn't cheap, but he discussed the system's software with the salesman. It sounded legit, and he paid $499 cash for the small chip the size of a pinhead, and learned how to place it in any phone.

Two hours later, toward the end of the day, the girl emerged from the rear of the booth. She went directly toward the closest door and out of the convention hall. He followed her, allowing several people to stay between them, hoping not to be seen.

He wasn't surprised when she grabbed a cab outside one of the main doors and rode away from the convention building. He wasn't staying in the hotel above the convention hall either.

Chris was not noticeable in size or build. He easily merged into the crowd as he left the cab he was following her in.

She got out at Circus Circus hotel and casino, and entered one of the exterior building apartments. He followed her, climbing the stairs next to the elevator, and watched her walk down the hallway to a room halfway down on the fourth floor. The light was dim, and she looked both ways before unlocking the door and going into the room. He walked past room 417 a few seconds after she disappeared. The lock was a card lock, an easy way for a hacker to get in. He quickly found a room cleaner on the floor below and within seconds had her card. He had spotted it on the steel handhold of her pushcart, and had helped himself to two clean towels seconds before she showed him the way to 329.

He had a bit of time before the cleaner would use the card on the next door, so he walked over to room 417.

"Room Service. I have fresh towels," he said loudly after knocking on the door.

"I'm in the shower; put the towels down on the bed," came the girl's voice from deep within the room.

He carefully entered and saw the bathroom door closed, and the girl's small backpack on the first bed. He also noticed that only one bed had been used, and there was only one suitcase. She was alone in this room; John Smith, whoever he was, wasn't staying here, which caught him off guard.

He quickly went for the backpack. The iPhone he was looking for was lying right next to it, and within ten seconds he had the phone in his hand and, as the salesman had shown him, correctly placed the small device in the tiny reset hole at the bottom of the phone. He turned the phone on and off twice as instructed, left it as he had found it, did not touch the backpack in case his tampering was noticed, placed the towels next to the phone and left the room. The door to the bathroom was still closed and he could hear running water.

Chris hoped he could track this girl by hacking into the GPS system. She wouldn't find it until she tried to reset her phone. This girl, he thought, could be one of the more interesting hackers at the convention. She looked and acted the type.
Chapter 7

The Younger Uben and "The Ram"

Once he had hacked into her iPhone with AT&T, the app and chip relayed her GPS coordinates. The very next day her phone showed her leaving Las Vegas. She must have been traveling by air as her iPhone was turned off for two hours and turned back on in Salt Lake City. There it stayed on for thirty minutes before it was again turned off, and then it came back on in San Diego.

Chris changed from Joseph Daniels back into Matt Palmer and boarded a Southwest flight for San Diego. He smiled as the aircraft left the tarmac. This girl was someone he really wanted to meet. She was older than he, perhaps early twenties, but that didn't deter him from wanting to meet her. Chris Uben was still nineteen, about to turn twenty, and not old enough to drink in the U.S. Joseph Daniels/Matt Palmer, though, was twenty-five, and nobody questioned the young man getting on and off the aircraft.

The phone showed the girl to be in Mission Beach, less than a mile from the motel Matt Palmer had been staying at for a couple of days. He called the motel to complain about the smell of smoke in the room and was given a new room. Then he found a cruising taxi, and told the driver to head toward Mission Center Road, where the app had been directing him for an hour.

Unfortunately, the end site was a large Gordon Biersch Bar or Tap Room in Mission Beach, and he was too young to risk someone wanting to check his I.D. He paid off the cab, thanking the man. There were a couple more taxis around the large bar, so he felt safe knowing that he could tail her if she left in a vehicle.

Ninety minutes later she came out and, to his surprise, unlocked the door of a shiny yellow Ferrari parked directly outside the main door. It was close to midnight as the sports car shot out of the parking lot. Chris just managed to get into the closest taxi as the car drove away.

"Follow that car," Chris/Matt Palmer instructed the driver. The man nodded. Smiling, he regarded the youthful-looking man in the rear view mirror, then saw the Ben Franklin he was being offered and his attitude got serious. He accepted his orders.

The girl didn't drive far or fast, but the taxi arrived just as a garage door closed behind the Ferrari as it was driven into the single garage of a two-story beach house a mile or so north of his motel. The house looked old and in need of a fresh coat of paint. The gleaming yellow Ferrari was far prettier and more presentable than the house it had been driven to.

Chris thanked the driver and allowed him to keep the tip after explaining that it was his ex-girlfriend and he was tailing her to see if she had a new boyfriend.

The taxi driver had no doubt that driving a car like that would allow her to have her pick of any of the men on her street, or in all of San Diego for that matter. He thanked the young man, wished him good luck, and reversed away from the scene. The taxi driver would remember that scene vividly when the FBI asked him about it a year later.

Katie Gardener was a quiet, thin, geek of a girl with thick black glasses. Even at 14, in 2002, she loved two things: fast cars and computers. Her third love was the video game Grand Theft Auto II. Vice City arrived into her world in 2002/3 when she received her Sony PlayStation II as a Christmas present; it changed her life for the worse from then on.

Katie dreamed about being "Mercedes Cortez," a familiar person to anyone who had ever played the game and, except for the sex and porn scenes, which she found repugnant, she imagined herself to be one tough lady. Her PlayStation was used as much as her year-old computer, which she named Tommy.

Katie's ideas about life and other aspects she was too young to understand came from playing this game of violence for hours on end, while her parents in Queens, New York were working. Both parents had two jobs to pay the bills, and when she got home from school, they often found her playing the game instead of doing homework.

The first indication that she might not be learning what her parents intended occurred at the age of fifteen during an afternoon weekend BBQ in their back garden. She stubbed her bare toe on the garden sprinkler and the most profane, most horrible four letter words imaginable spewed from her mouth. Her father's reaction was swift and painful. In an instant he stopped grilling and bent her over his knee in the lounge and whipped her with his belt. She couldn't sit down for days. The neighbors on each side of the house never got over the shock of hearing such filth come from this timid girl's mouth; it was the worst any of them had ever heard, and theirs wasn't a great neighborhood.

It took weeks for Katie to get her father to talk to her, which made her play her game even more. At about the same time, a girlfriend of hers on a new social site told her that she had managed to bypass the firewall of computer security at the local superstore around the corner, and ordered a pair of fancy shoes and charged them to someone else.

Within weeks Katie had three pairs of new shoes, the same shoes the gangsters on her Grand Theft Auto program used, paid for by three elderly women who had accounts with the store. Naturally the three women noticed these odd shoe purchases, but the store could not locate where the charges had been applied to the accounts. Katie got away with the first white-collar heist of her life, at fifteen.

Her second job, a few months later, was hacking into the servers holding the latest versions of Grand Theft Auto; she received the next expansion kit for free. At sixteen, Katie Gardener was becoming a computer whiz, but one would never have expected it looking at her school grades.

Young Katie Gardener learned her new trades from scratch, or as most kids did, from her friends. It wasn't that every person in her school was into Grand Theft Auto or hacking computers, but several were. Some were good, and some knew just tidbits of information. Katie realized this and picked everyone's brain for information. When she put it all together, she became the best hacker in the area.

She accomplished her first major hack when she changed the trash collection outside her house from an afternoon to a morning pickup. She did not like the sickening smell of the household trash, fermenting in the hot summer sun, and wanted it removed before she got home from school.

Next, she managed to hack into the electric bill from her father's supply company, found a few discounts the employees at the company were given as an added bonus for their employment, and added them to her father's account.

Her third, most important success came after several months of hard work. Hacking into her school's electronic database, she changed her grades from Cs and Ds to mostly Bs and one A for history. She also found criticisms of her fellow students and teachers. Reports of bad deeds were plentiful, and she enhanced those for kids she didn't like and several for a teacher who had put his hand gently on her butt a couple of times when she passed him. Within a few months, and with no notice, the teacher was not seen at school anymore.

At seventeen Katie managed to score a powerful new laptop by hacking into a neighboring city's offices and ordering the computer for a fictitious department head of local traffic. With this new department on record, she gave herself the title of personal assistant to the director of the department with a salary of $18,000 a year. She became Ms. Mercedes Cortez, and got a box number where her mail, her check, ID cards, and everything else could be sent.

She was quite surprised at what came through that mailbox. Mail began arriving asking for hundreds of items, but one was to confirm a social security number for a Mercedes Cortez. She hacked into local births and deaths, found a number for a Marcy Cortez, recently deceased in a bus accident. She changed the information on poor Marcy's records, and forwarded a photograph of a beautiful model together with IDs for her Social security number and, for months, the biweekly pay checks arrived.

The original Marcy Cortez would have been astonished to see her life unfold. She received a diploma of Political Science from a local college at twenty, extended her education to a Masters in Psychology from Princeton at twenty-five, and then, at twenty-seven, she received a PhD in Political Science from Hofstra University.

At the same time Mercedes Cortez, this beautiful young single city employee, was in demand. She received letters of encouragement from other department heads in Queens, the representative of Congress for her district and a letter from the head of the Democratic Party for the area. City leaders began to want Mercedes Cortez to work for them.

Unfortunately, the local traffic department was disbanded by an official when she began to receive offers through her mailbox that she couldn't meet. Mercedes Cortez was promoted to a new role and department: Director of the Department for City Security.

The new position included a generous pay raise, and got some of the headhunters off her back for several months. Nobody knew where this secretive department was located in the city buildings, or if it was at City Hall at all.

Letters began to arrive that demanded her presence at meetings, and to vote on city policies. Katie let the demands ride until she again enacted another pay raise, and the relocation of her office into the City of New York itself.

This game was more fun and exciting than the one she had purchased a couple of years earlier; it took up all of her time. She ordered department letterhead, water, and coffee and creamer for the department's break room. Many deliveries were returned because no one could find the department. Gradually other department heads in her improved "hunting grounds" began to question where this secretive department actually was, and what information of theirs was being examined.

Internal crime in the city offices decreased by 90 percent the first few months after the department was announced, and the mayor commended the new department and its director, Ms. Cortez. He estimated they were saving the city well over $100,000 a month. The City of New York needed more people like Ms. Mercedes Cortez.

Ms. Gardener/Cortez was busy. It was all she could do to run the department, keep up with correspondence, and repair her failing grades. Katie reached her eighteenth birthday with good grades and $200,000 in her Manhattan bank account.

She also had a small, unused two-bedroom apartment on 109th Street which she found in a trust of a person who had died several years earlier. This apartment had been somehow overlooked in the settlement of the estate as the deceased had owned several large properties.

Purchased by the deceased's husband as a love nest for extramarital affairs, it had been recorded on the last or forgotten page of the wife's lengthy will. The page suddenly disappeared entirely in 1985 and, in the official property records, ownership was transferred to Mercedes Cortez.

A good address for Department Head Mercedes Cortez, government officials often walked past inquiring whether the lady was home. The doorman always said that he had never met Ms. Cortez as she always used the rear entrance to the underground parking, but he had met the lady's young niece every now and again when she came to visit her aunt.

During Katie's 18th year, her demand at the city offices was high, and she knew she had to move soon. Even the newly elected mayor wanted time with her.

It was most unfortunate for the City of New York when Ms. Cortez was offered a position in Washington, DC, running the city's new Traffic and Security Department. A letter from the new U.S. President himself arrived at the city offices requesting her immediate change of employment to federal level, and relocation to a new address a few blocks from the White House.

Within two years of starting her government career, Mercedes Cortez was in high demand. Her small apartment on West 109th Street sold for over a million dollars.

Nobody had ever personally met Mercedes Cortez, and the beautiful young woman died in the crash of a commercial jet a year after she moved to Washington. Her name appeared on the manifest. Her checks stopped coming and her department was closed.

In 2009 Katie Gardener gave herself a new online identity and, with the help of a forger in China, got her first set of quality fake IDs in the name of Melissa Ram.

She "worked hard" throughout her high school career to obtain good final grades. Her parents were excited when she graduated and were extremely proud to watch her accept her diploma, dressed in cap and gown.

At a small graduation party, she showed her parents a letter from a magazine congratulating her on winning a prize. Of course, she had hacked into the magazine to win it.

They were ecstatic to find out that their daughter had won an all-expense paid 14-day cruise for two from Seattle to Alaska, but she was reluctant to accept the prize. Katie didn't want to go because she had other ideas. Her parents were extremely grateful when Katie offered the vacation to them. After all, the trip was for two, and she acknowledged that it was partial payment for her previous bad behavior. They responded emotionally, tears streaming down her mother's cheeks. She hadn't had a holiday for a decade or more.

After seeing them off at JFK for their flight to the West Coast, she hurried to another terminal with her new passport identifying her as Melissa Ram. She took off on the vacation of her dreams: to Italy to see if the Italians all acted like Mafioso, just as they had in the first game she played. She still fantasized that she was Mercedes Cortez.

Much water had gone under the bridge when she noticed somebody she knew at the 2011 Hackers' Convention two years later.

Katie Gardener, today AKA Francesca Pener, was becoming famous in the hacking world. She wasn't much into men. She thought herself more as a friend to them. Her only romance had been with an Italian girl she met on her trip. They had found each other so interesting that the girl had followed her back to New York where they had set up house in Brooklyn for six months. They enjoyed each other's company, but Katie's Italian friend, Francesca, missed Italy and her family. While she was staying with Katie, she was offered a position at a small magazine publication in her hometown. With wet eyes, both girls said their goodbyes and promised they would keep in touch.

By then, Katie had a copy of Francesca's European passport, knew what Italian identity numbers looked like, and even had photos of herself in her new paperwork.

Three months later, her new passport and papers arrived from China. The Italian family name and numbers were not the same as Francesca's, so neither she nor her family would ever be connected to the papers.

Before the Hackers' Convention, Katie had already done well for herself. Her hacking specialty was property acquisition from the dead.

Katie discovered that among the hundreds of people who died every day, many were single elderly ladies who owned the properties they lived in. Many had outlived their husbands and some owned more than one property. Katie easily accessed local government records of births and deaths, and from them she could follow trails into electronic records of land ownership. First she identified single old ladies who had owned three or more properties; then she looked up records of younger family members and searched for recorded wills in the electronic files of small law firms that did not believe their computerized records were at risk.

It took hundreds of hours of work before she found her perfect heist, her best client in 2011. Heather Morrison, a nice old lady, had died a few weeks earlier on Long Island. Heather Morrison had outlived her husband by a decade, and her will identified two properties outright. One was the luxury house she lived in on Eva Drive in Long Beach, just off Lido Boulevard with tennis courts she and her husband played on when they were younger. The second house was right next door and there was no mortgage attached to either.

Looking more deeply through Long Beach property records, she found a third, slightly smaller house in the same Heather Morrison's name. It was not included in her last Will and Testament, in the early stages of being probated by a small firm of Long Beach attorneys. They had received no responses to queries of property debts to the local banks and lending institutions for moneys owed by one Heather Morrison. The lady was worth well over two million dollars with 75 percent of her wealth in property assets. What troubled Katie was that she couldn't figure out why there was a $200,000 mortgage on this third hidden property.

Hoping that it was the same Heather Morrison, she "moved" the active mortgage to the property next door to where the deceased had lived, knowing that the bank would soon respond to the legal letter. Heather's heirs would not be happy that the second larger house, valued at over $900,000 three years before, wasn't free and clear.

Within two days of work, Katie added the necessary property addresses and changes at the bank to show that the third, secret little house was now free and clear, and that it had been owned by Ms. Mercedes Cortez for nearly a decade.

But that wasn't enough. A few days later, she drove out to Long Beach and surveyed her new acquisition. It was a nice three-bedroom house on a quiet street, and was well looked after. She knocked on the door and a much older lady answered.

"Yes, dear? Can I help you?" The grey-haired old lady smiled at the small thin girl who had pressed the doorbell.

"I have come to inquire about this house, ma'am," Katie answered, looking very young, but she had a clipboard in her hand and an official City ID tag that said that she worked for the Long Beach Housing Department. "How long have you lived here?"

"For a long time, young lady, and I hope until the day my husband and I don't need it anymore. My husband is bedridden and I look after him," the smiling and kindly-looking lady answered.

"So, you own this house. You must be Ms. Mercedes Cortez, the owner on the title deed," the young teenager wearing thick black glasses said, ticking off something on her clipboard.

"Oh, no," replied the lady. "We rent, and have rented since we moved in here in 1981. We pay our rent and somebody collects it in the mailbox the first evening of every month. Funny, though, no one took the last check. We still have it if you want it. We have wanted to find out who the owner is, as we have enough put away to purchase the house. My husband has tried to contact the owner for years, but gave up when his condition got worse. Our rent hasn't gone up much, and my husband wanted to purchase the house for me, knowing that I would be around for longer than he. Mercedes Cortez? Isn't that the lady who was in charge of that property security department in New York? She's quite famous you know. No wonder she never wanted to introduce herself to us. It must be the same person."

"That I don't know, ma'am, and if I did, I couldn't tell you. I'm just an employee; but I could inquire for you through our City of Long Beach property office," Katie replied, checking a few more boxes on her clipboard and looking around for the exact address. The lady told her the address.

"Well, if you get hold of her, young lady, please tell Ms. Cortez that we have the cash to purchase the house, and we have wanted to for many years," the grey-haired lady replied.

"May I ask what the current value of the property is, and how much you are willing to pay?" Katie replied ready to write down the information.

"We have valued the house every year since we moved here," replied the lady. "It was worth more before 2008. In 2007 it was valued at $495,000. This year, I believe the number was $435,000. Prices around here are more stable than in other areas. If you can contact the owner, my husband and I are prepared to pay $495,000 for the property. Cash."

Katie, still looking official, thanked the woman and left. She began to understand that Heather Morrison must have used this secret house for income, and the mortgage interest was perhaps a way to reduce her income taxes. Whether or not it was a legal deal, she now had more respect for the late Ms. Morrison.

Within six weeks, Mercedes Cortez opened a local bank account in the same bank the renters used, set up a new title deed in the new owner's name, and had the proceeds transferred to her new account.

There was this beautiful brand new yellow Ferrari she wanted badly in a dealership in Lower Manhattan, a 458 Spider, and her dream car. It was the same car Mercedes Cortez had driven in one of the Grand Theft Auto expansion packs and now she had a new bank account to draft a check for the $346,000 price tag.

The old grey-haired lady wouldn't have recognized the sophisticated woman who entered the car dealership as the same slip of a girl. This wealthy looking daughter, or young wife of a wealthy man, wore a sleek black dress and stunning jewelry. The sharp salesman wasn't surprised at all she wrote the check out in the name of Mercedes Cortez. He had often wondered if it was the same Mercedes Cortez, he explained to the FBI only a year or so later.

Mercedes Cortez's account was closed and disappeared a few weeks later. Her other accounts around Manhattan also vanished. Francesca Pener was listed as the new owner of the Ferrari. She also purchased a rundown beach house in Mission Beach, San Diego, paid for by check from a newly opened California bank account.

Chris Uben was desperate to know if the beach house had a person called Melissa Ram staying in it, who drove a Ferrari. The girl had known all along that she was being followed by a taxi. The taxi driver wasn't skilled at being undetected at midnight, in low traffic. She poured a glass of wine and waited for her visitor. She expected it was the same guy she had seen earlier. She was right.
Chapter 8

Scotland 2001-11

The small picturesque dome-shaped hill ten miles off shore from the small fishing village of Girvan had changed since its purchase in 2001.

After the acquisition, the population in the fishing village of Girvan was shocked to see their favorite granite island off their shore become busy with shipping. So much so that they often tried to boat out there to see what was going on.

Every time they reached about the five mile mark, halfway, a small unfriendly military-looking patrol boat would force them back. "A new naval base for coastal protection" was all they were told when they asked the stern-looking sailors what was going on.

The population got used to the new activity. At least, they remarked to each other, the new base would be where the old fort was, hopefully on ground level, and their beloved rocky outcrop wouldn't change too much.

The ships came and went. First it was building and mining equipment. The base grew only a few stories high and still blended in with the island. There was a natural harbor on the seaward side of the island, out of sight of land, and this was where much of the work took place.

Earthmoving equipment was shipped in with dozens of trucks. Slowly a cave was carved into the hard rock and once the opening was sufficient for larger equipment, heavier rock digging machines headed in and then began working sideways, and then downwards.

The cavern grew, and so did the machinery that opened it. Quarry equipment was brought in, and soon tons of rock each hour was conveyed out of the depths and into a waiting dredger ship, that often stayed a week or more. Other ships arrived, their holds filled with rebar, thick steel panels, and bags of concrete.

If one of the locals had managed to get onto the island, he would have found that the men digging out the rock, and mixing and layering the concrete, were Middle Eastern, and so were all the workers. The workforce didn't know where they were, except that it was cold and rainy, far chillier than back home. All had been blindfolded on the long voyage in, and didn't know to within thousands of miles where they were.

The rebar, tons of steel and cement came from an undisclosed port, and the outgoing rubble was slowly allowed to disperse from exit holes, opened far out to sea, in the bottom of the dredger. The small 240-foot-long dredger, carrying about 12,000 tons, had been especially built for the purpose of carrying dredging rubble a few decades earlier in Germany. It arrived and departed on schedule weekly, and was hardly noticed by the rest of the world.

If the Girvanites or the UK military surveillance systems had been watching the cargo ships, they would have realized that they returned to the island every three weeks or so. Nobody seemed interested. The empty ships headed south down to Gibraltar, and thence into the Mediterranean. There was more work to be done; another two secret bases had to be built by 2013.

At the same time, the latest microwave towers and communications dishes began to be installed on top of the hill. Ten miles from shore was a little too far to notice these installations, and they were well hidden, erected slightly down the slope of the pinnacle, also on the seaward side.

By Christmas 2007 the ships coming and going disappeared, and were replaced by one slightly larger ship that came in from Central or South America once every two months unloading stores and equipment.

By this time the building crews were mostly gone. 700 blindfolded, drugged and sleeping men awakened far out to sea two days later somewhere of the coast of Portugal, and halfway to their next port of call. There was more work to be done; more bases had to be built.

A crew of 280 men remained to finish off the cavern, building interiors on the new thick steel floors, elevators, and installing the air and sanitary installations. Once all the larger machinery was inside, the builders began closing the side of the hill and it reverted to its original greenish and brown colors.

Apart from the increase of size of the port, the lone ship when it was in port, and the patrol craft always moored there, the outside of Ailsa Craig looked like nothing much had changed on the island, and nobody could see the billion dollars of changes someone had made internally.

During the next year, load after load of equipment arrived and was unloaded during the dark hours only.

Inside, the dozen levels of floors began to take shape. At the third level, less than a hundred feet deep were the beginning of the upper 12 floors, and a large cavern that was at and below sea level. There was one of the six express elevators to three lower levels at 1,000 feet, and the power room at 1,500 feet underground. These would be completed last, and by 2011.

The ship took a few hours to arrive from the dark horizon at night and dock at the small but organized harbor on the seaward side. To the inquisitive radar screens and satellites from shore and above, the comings and goings blended in with other ships passing through the area. Since there was a routine, this was the most likely reason nobody really noticed. It was a private island now and the new owners had the rights to build whatever they wanted to.

The ship cargos now turned into office equipment and computers, hundreds of them per load. Walls for cubicles, walls of glass, carpeting by the tens of thousands of square feet, tables, chairs, beds and sleeping accommodations began filling up the twelve levels. The air conditioning was working, massive fans and motors sending air around the floors. Toilets and bathrooms piped to gigantic undersea holding tanks and recycling systems were completed in 2011, the same time USA Bank headquarters and Chuck Martin moved from Charlotte to Charleston.

The new underground base was nearing readiness. The twelve upper levels looked identical to the empty floors of a large windowless Manhattan building, except that on each level, there were also living accommodations. These consisted of apartments, exercise gyms, recreation rooms and a movie theater, a cafeteria, massive freezers and store rooms, air and waste recycling systems, and large kitchens to feed the denizens of 100 work cubicles, ten larger offices, and the 20 maintenance, cleaning and cooking personnel per floor.

The resort had two nuclear reactors, of the same type as on the submarines built in Charleston. The separated and sealed power plants were already in the deepest compartment below ground, both cooled with desalinated sea water. Each of the minivan-size reactors provided enough power for the whole infrastructure. Their use was rotated with one always ready as backup.

Now the loading was completed for the underground units and building began above ground. At the beginning, metal roofs had been placed over the unloading areas on the quay to stop any spying from overhead. The unloading could not be seen from shore, space or from the sea. Now these thick metal roofs became permanent roofs for aboveground buildings.

The buildings were not more than two stories high, comprising several large or small studio apartments for bank staff in one square and over a hundred small apartments for security and the needed work force around a second square. In this second square were one-bedroom bungalows, a small heated swimming pool, and a cafeteria. In the other square a movie house, several shops, and a large gym was built on the seaward side.

A large enclosing steel wall three stories high was built around the aboveground area to stop people looking in or out, and outside the wall, high ground had been built up from the underground rubble to hide the small town, which was cordoned off with barbed wire to deter anyone from getting a view of the land or sea outside the base.

Inside the hill was enough food, supplies, and equipment to seal the underground chambers from outside, and like the submarines, the entire base could survive for at least twelve months without resupply.

The last of the Middle Eastern build crew, engineers, and architects followed their counterparts. The other two bases needed their expertise.

Once the last of the builders had left, a new team arrived, just after Christmas in 2011. Underwater submarine doors and an internal submarine base was completed by the Charleston submarine building crew, this time on the landward side of Ailsa Craig, as there was no more room on the seaward side with the port.

Because the submarines would arrive underwater, and only surface once inside the base, they wouldn't be seen by anyone, unless an aircraft was flying low on a perfect day, and most of the time the water around the island was wild, murky and had low visibility.

By mid-year 2012, the base was complete and ready. There were berthing quays inside for three submarines, and there was accommodation, work areas, and enough of everything for 1,500 office employees. At a cost of $29 billion, it was one of the most expensive head offices in the world.
Chapter 9

The Meeting, and Mutual Respect

Chris Uben knew that he was a wanted man. He was thinking how to get down the lit street undetected when his mind slipped back to warning him about not being seen.

Nobody could prove much about what he had done in the last few years, but the noose was closing in. The Feds knew "The Cube" was involved in several bank hacks. He was now constantly on the road, changed his social security number and name several times a year, and had a lot of dollars in cash stashed away in the mattress of the 50-foot luxury RV he used as a mobile computer lab, home, and connection to the world through other people's wireless internet hot points.

He was one of the best in the game, followed closely by his parents, who now moved around as he did. The Cube had a following of dozens of fans who waited for a possible appearance at any of the annual Hackers' Conventions, or get-togethers countrywide. They never saw or realized when he was actually in the building.

While he waited and looked for the best way to get to the house unseen, his mind wandered. The house, the one where he had grown up in Charlotte was gone, sold when his mother had suddenly lost her job at UNC Charlotte, only weeks after her husband was let go.

Steve Uben had consoled his distraught wife, and so had Chris, that she had done nothing wrong, though she had her future teaching record blemished. They had to put their house on the market. It sold for less than they paid for it due to their housing community still being 40 percent empty, and the homes around them were beginning to deteriorate and were often overgrown. Several of the places in their neighborhood had been rented, but the renters were not the types to keep the high-cost homes in the condition they should.

The Uben family didn't care about the loss. They had already made more out of the same banking institution that had foreclosed on their vibrant and happy community, and the parents and only son went their separate ways for the time being. Up to 2011, the Uben family had done a very professional job of lying low and increasing their retirement savings.

Way back in 2008, at age sixteen, Chris had managed to hack into his first ATM program through one of the smaller local bank's security firewalls, and with a self-made credit card, using an ATM far away in Asheville North Carolina. He collected $2,000 in twenty-dollar bills just before dawn on a quiet main street, enough to purchase a high-end computer. He had taken the train across the large state to collect the money.

The bank, a North Carolina firm smaller than the one his father worked at, wrote the theft off. The second loss at the same bank, this time in Greensboro a year later, from 5 ATMs, for the amount of $10,000, garnered the same response. Only when a larger, more dangerous hack less than a month later succeeded at stealing overnight money transfers between their internal accounts and was immediately noticed did they call in the Feds. This time over $190,000 was missing. By then, Chris had a couple of other scams going with small banks up and down the East Coast.

Chris' favorite scam was started once his father was unemployed earlier in 2011. It was a perfect scam, and the first scam he and his father worked on together. The profit was less than one cent per transaction, no more. With billions of electronic transfers happening, all at the same time, around midnight on the East Coast, and between hundreds of financial institutions, one cent was removed from nearly twenty million transactions each night from AmericaCorp, one of the largest New York banks. It was then deposited into a holding pattern between smaller banks for 24 hours, and the next midnight, divided and electronically deposited in larger amounts in a bogus company's account in several New Jersey banks.

Millions of bank transfer computers from Maine to Florida didn't miss the one cent changes in the transactions. Nor did their customers, as they all believed it was just a round down, and what was a one cent mistake anyway?

These corporate collection accounts, whose name and logo looked identical to one of the biggest natural gas companies on the East Coast, actually belonged to a shell company in Panama, and the rural bank managers were happy to have such large, famous company accounts, until they were suddenly closed a few months later. The managers couldn't understand why the important company representatives hadn't been introduced to them personally.

With tens of thousands of dollars hitting the banks daily, the money was again moved, first into "Centralized Corporation Accounts" in New Jersey, and then through more northwestern banks, before the funds disappeared offshore, mostly into Panama, Switzerland and Great Britain, where the money continued to move until it found its way back to a quiet investment account back in Manhattan. All this was done with Chris and Steve's dozen computers.

By the time the profitable hack was picked up in AmericaCorp, the rewards were hidden and quietly sleeping; 117 days of penny dealings had been diverted, one cent at a time, and one quiet, sleepy account in Manhattan held 2.4 million dollars of a Ms. Annie Jones of Long Island's Trust Fund. The scam had been found, the hunting dogs of the banks were on the trail, and it was time for the Ubens to move out of Charlotte. Two slightly used half-million-dollar motor homes were purchased by Chris and his parents.

The Chicago Bulls would have been surprised to know that two of the RVs they had just sold off for departing players ended up in Charlotte a few weeks later, totally customized with computer equipment. Then one headed south, the other west. They would have been even more surprised if they had seen the coach's ownership papers return onto their books a few weeks after the sale.

Fortunately the accountant didn't notice for quite a few years, until the FBI came knocking, and Chris Uben was a real fan of the Bulls.

Now that The Cube was inching his way over fences and gardens to get to the beach house several houses down, he was glad he had left the RV in Florida. It would have been a bit large to drive down the silent street.

Chris easily slunk through the shadows. He wasn't in a hurry and certainly didn't want somebody seeing him acting like a criminal. Halfway down the street, the shadows disappeared under a bright street lamp and he gave up. He jumped over the short picket fence and in full view walked the rest of the way to the dark beach house.

Once he passed through the small gate entrance he quickly moved onto the dark small porch. He wasn't the best lock picker, but he could easily handle a standard front door.

This one he found was not the normal door lock; it was far more sophisticated. In the dark and bent down, he tried hard to get his pick into the key slot.

"Try the door. It's unlocked," came a girl's voice from behind the door, and his face went bright red, strength draining from his body.

He gingerly stood up and tried the front door; it opened and he walked into the beach house.

She just sat there holding a glass of red wine in her hand. The girl hadn't changed since she had left the bar, and looked defiant and scared at the same time.

"A nice way to introduce yourself, picking the lock of an innocent girl at midnight. Could I at least know who I'm talking to, or going to get robbed by?"

"Joseph Palmer, no.... sorry, I mean Matt Palmer," stammered Chris still shocked at his predicament.

"Well, Mr. Matt or Joseph Palmer, you look a little frazzled at my beauty and grace. May I suggest a glass of wine before you either rob me, take me away, or whatever you have come to do?" Her eyes glanced down at the half-full bottle on the coffee table in front of her, and she waited for his response.

With his mouth still trying to get conversation out, he walked over slowly, picked up the single clean glass by the bottle and filled it with an inch or so of wine.

"Old enough to drink, Mr. Palmer? I am," the girl retorted, not taking her eyes off him for a second. Her New York accent was obvious, and Chris hoped that he was in front of somebody he had wanted to meet, since he had heard of her fame through the online hacker organizations.

He didn't know much about many of the hackers. Nor did the hacker sites, but most of the sites wanted hackers to join, give their hacker handles, and any information they wished to divulge. Everybody who searched the sites, including the FBI, knew that the names were handles, and the photos, if there were any, mostly fake. Only the stupid ones, the tiniest bottom feeders, wanted free publicity and gave more information and real photos of themselves. It didn't take the stupid ones long to get a visit from the FBI.

The Cube had a photo of George R.R. Martin, the author with his full beard, up on the three main sites as his photo. The Cube purported to reside in Chicago, said that he was born in Shanghai, China, and was 76 years old. That was it.

Mr. and Mrs. Byte were portrayed as the two stars from the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They lived in Portugal, and were from some unheard-of town in the Ukraine.

The Ram was portrayed as a younger Morgan Freeman, who lived in Perth, Australia, a male who had been born in Los Angeles.

Apart from this information, all that was recorded were suggestions that they might have been involved in this or that robbery – of course, only once the FBI had made the hacks and the thefts public.

Slowly Chris found his voice.

"Matt Palmer. I saw you at the Hackers' Convention and wanted to introduce myself to you."

"Interesting, Mr. Palmer," smiled the girl as he sat down in a single chair opposite her. The house was richly furnished on the inside. Even though it looked rather run down outside, inside the house was refined and expensive. "Your name badge said "Joseph Daniels" at the convention, Mr. Palmer. You work at Gateway Computers. You don't look like a Matt Palmer, or old enough to drink."

"Correct on all points, Ms...?"

"I don't think my name is any concern of yours, but you can call me Francesca. I'm Italian," was the response.

"Yeah, Italian like I'm from southern Alabama with your New York accent," returned Chris.

"It shows that you don't know much about New York, Mr. Palmer. New York is full of Italians. I don't have to speak Italian to be Italian."

Chris kept quiet while he sipped the wine. He was no expert. He hardly drank, except to keep up appearances, and he had never drunk more than one drink at a time in his whole 20 years.

"Also Mr. Palmer, the way you hold your wine glass gives away your inexperience," the girl in front of him added while smiling at him. She was still in command of the situation. He needed to change that.

"Same as your inexperience in closing your bank account in the City of Long Beach a few months ago. You know, the one in the name that didn't state Pener as account holder, nor BMW or Audi as a first name."

This made the girl's face go white, so very slightly. Her face gently drained of color, and she looked at him sternly, or was the shock being masked? Her expression also questioned him how he had this sort of information.

Chris Uben knew he had hit pay dirt. He had been just guessing, and he had enjoyed following "The Ram" around electronically, waiting for "him" to leave a faint trail that could only be picked up by somebody watching the New York bank records and knowing what to look for. This was how the hackers learned their trade; from other hacker's mistakes.

He had followed the Bytes around too, not knowing that they were his parents until the convention. This week was certainly full of surprises, and now The Ram was not male. He smiled at her, and waited for a response. He knew her brain was working on one, fast.

"A slipup on your transfer ending in 55 cents from Bank of The States to USA Bank very recently, Mr. Cube, I presume. Hell, I had braces and pigtails when I was your age. How old are you? Nineteen, Twenty?" she retorted angrily. She hadn't realized that her private dealings were known to outsiders, especially experienced outsiders. She would have to be tighter on her movements in future, and the Feds were never that far behind. Each hacker knew that the only way to get followers off their tails was a new identity, or makeover, and never using the old identity again. Mercedes Cortez had been her favorite, like a big sister to her, and her mistake in being found out by this nosebleed of a hacker. One who was maybe as good, or even better, than she was. "Do you know that I'm going to have to kill you now? I'm not scared in terminating other hackers finding me," she said, thinking like Mercedes Cortez, her composure back and hoping that her seriousness would give her some room from this kid.

"Oh sure," he responded, swallowing but knowing that she was bluffing. Or at least he hoped she was. "I can't think of all those hundreds of hackers who have disappeared recently. Or is it thousands?" he asked finishing off the wine in the glass. The alcohol was going to his head and he had an idea. He picked up the wine bottle, nearly filled the girl's glass and left a tiny bit for himself. She didn't seem to notice the difference.

"I took out The Max a few months ago. God of Computers, an older guy, disappeared a few weeks ago, and Mr. and Mrs. Byte I got rid of just before the convention. Guess what, Cube, you won't be found anymore either," she replied, her face smiling sweetly.

Knowing now she was bluffing his heart rate slowed down slightly, but he still kept up his bluff. This was the game, a very enjoyable game to this community: the game of bullshit, smoke screens and opaque windows.

"Ms. Ram, if I can call you that, why would you want to kill me? Gee, I'm nearly 20, still a virgin, and still know more about this business than you do. You can learn from me, and this is only the tenth or so glass of wine I ever had. I hate the stuff. Give me a beer any day." He looked at her honestly and took a sip of the nectar he actually enjoyed.

"Mr. Cube, you don't even shave yet, and I don't believe that you know more than I. How could you?" Chris noticed that she had again relaxed. Her eyes were bright and sparkling. She was enjoying the foreplay. The Ram had looked prettier at the convention. Now she was dressed simply, for a drink at the bar, and not the businesswoman he had noticed in Las Vegas.

"How did I follow you here?" he asked. She looked at him and said nothing. If he wanted to open that can of worms, well, he could spill the beans. "Your boyfriend's friend's stand at the convention?"

"Where is the GPS device?" she asked simply.

"Inside the phone you trashed earlier this evening at the bar. The reason I'm sure you went there," he replied simply.

"Get this right, kid," she replied angrily. "That dick was a guy I used as cover. I should have looked at his friend's invention a little closer, but I was more interested in the hackers and Feds hanging around. Damn snotbleeds like you. Second, I don't even know the guy's real name, except that he is a low-class hacker, not like me. I think he calls himself Mastermind. Where did it fit into the iPhone?"

"In the bottom of the reset hole. The iPhone female pin is longer than normal; it fits perfectly in there and it only took a second."

"You were the Room Service delivering towels in Vegas?" she asked, the whole plan coming together. He nodded, the game up. She smiled. "Maybe you are more useful to me alive than dead. It seems you have a good head on that geeky body of yours."

"And I'm still a virgin. Interested, Grandma?" he smiled at her, the wine now totally gone to his head. "You are not that ungeeky looking yourself Miss Ram, and how come you always talk like a gangster? Does everybody in New York act like the Mob?"

"Maybe I should change my mind about putting a bullet through your skull, punk!" she said in her best gangster accent, and he broke out laughing at her antics. She also cracked up for several moments. Both ended up laughing so hard, that, enjoying the joke. He finished his wine, looked around, saw what he was looking for, grabbed for a pen and a napkin, wrote down a few words, blew her a kiss, smiled and then quietly disappeared through the door he had come in.
Chapter 10

Mr. Saber and Mr. Martin

Stephan Saber grew up in the Hamptons. The Saber family lived on Cove Avenue East in Sag Harbor, and the Martin family moved into the large house directly behind them on Cove Avenue West. For the first time in his seven years he had a friend his age to play with.

This wasn't completely coincidental, as both boys' fathers worked in the banking industry and were on top of two of the largest banks in New York.

During the early 1960s, Sag Harbor was a small village of fine homes and money. Half of New York bank CEOs had homes within 20 miles of the Saber House, and all the men stayed in Manhattan during the week in their fancy apartments and visited family on weekends.

There weren't that many kids his age around the local Sag Harbor Elementary School, where the young Saber was in his second year. The school had 89 students, and at the middle-high school down the road, there were about the same number.

Most of the kids arrived at school in family vehicles driven by their mothers, and a few with chauffeurs. Neither the Sabers nor the Martins had a chauffeur at the time, and their mothers plus a girl a year older who lived two streets away usually carpooled to school.

Stephan Saber grew up in a rich, spoiled family, where he usually got his way. Because there was hardly a father figure present, only during weekends in the summer, the kids grew up doing what they wanted and with little discipline. It was said that money, bribes, and threats kept most of the kids in school, and it was a school where bullying reached a new level. At Sag Harbor Elementary, bullying was to do with power, and who had the most powerful father.

The pecking order of who had the power was quickly formulated each new school year, especially among the older kids. The poorer families in the area had to put up with the rich and famous kids. The elementary school was just a learning curve to the antics that went on at the middle-high school. This meant that Pierson Middle-High School was the next level in crowd control. It was also the best available training ground to one day join the tough financial industry in downtown Manhattan.

The recruits coming out of Pierson were as tough as Army boot camp, nasty as a kid could be, and ready for the long haul up the silver spoon ladder of success.

Stephan Saber's father Andrew was not yet the most powerful person in the village. He was about fifth from the top, and Chuck Martin's father about seventh.

Young Stephan had to be careful during his first school years, even if he had a wingman by his side: Chuck Martin. But both kids weren't scrappers, like the poorer kids. They did not enjoy getting their hands dirty and their first lesson was all about getting their way without literally beating up the kid. If that was necessary, they paid a bunch of the cheaper kids to beat up their adversary, and they kept their names clean.

The elementary school was child's play compared to when Saber and Martin reached the higher education level of middle school. Here the powerful vultures swooped in on the new prey, wanting to feast on the weaker ones. Stephan's father was now number three in Manhattan, and Stephan still had Chuck Martin as a wingman, each protecting the other.

It was necessary, with the help of the newspapers, to assess the strength of the older boys who they both remembered as seniors during their elementary school years. Some had survived the games and hazing that went on with the newbies. Some had fallen by the wayside, their fathers missing a promotion here and there.

The antics and hazing was only done by the boys. The girls were mostly ignored or spied upon in the first year. They were nothings, just uninteresting toys to the growing boys, until the boys realized that the girls' developing bodies were a complement to their increasing hormonal changes. Then they became interesting toys.

Several of the girls had powerful fathers or big brothers, and were left alone. The ones with the weaker fathers were not so lucky, and as they aged through the system, manhandling, sexual harassment, rapes and pregnancies increased. Several got pregnant before reaching tenth grade, and were unceremoniously ejected from school, but the culprit boys stayed, their families having money and power enough to keep them there.

Stephan Saber enjoyed this power he had over the female sex. Only a few of the girls were influential enough to be left alone. The others resorted to sexual indecencies for personal protection from other less powerful boys wanting their bodies as playthings. Chuck Martin often partook in the exciting catches, either holding down or excitedly watching as the crying girls were molested by his friend.

Chuck Martin had other interests, like shooting neighborhood cats with his powerful BB gun, and often younger school kids felt the pain of his BBs if they ever got close to Cove Avenue West. In this sense the prowling kids were often not as smart as the neighborhood dogs that had already learned to stay well away from the Martin household.

Throughout middle school three kids rode together to school. Two of the three families now had chauffeurs who did all the daily driving, with a darkened window between the passengers and the driver. This was where the third passenger became pregnant during her first year of high school, the ride to school lasting 25 minutes. The poor girl had been molested since the two boys were in seventh grade, the sexual harassments getting worse and worse until her pregnancy two years later. She was well on her way to being a basket case by this time, and ended her own life shortly afterwards. Her body was found in the waters just off the street where she lived.

Her parents were distraught. She had said nothing to them, and they were shocked when the autopsy showed the girl had drowned, had committed suicide, was sexually active with multiple bruising, and was three months pregnant.

A police investigation was opened and closed within a week. This led her parents to seek a new investigation, but they were disappointed when the village police chief, who had quietly become wealthier, declined to open a new case file. They were told that a suicide was a suicide, and just because the girl was pregnant had nothing to do with changing the ruling to anything else.

Her parents had no other option but to look at the two boys with whom their daughter had driven to school with. As soon as they opened a civil case, within a month the girl's father was released from his senior-level job with the city government in Brooklyn, her mother lost her teaching job at a local college in the same area, and their house was foreclosed on by Chuck Martin's father's bank, exactly 91 days after they hadn't paid their mortgage.

They couldn't pay their mortgage, as their bank account had for some reason been lost, then found, then become frozen, and the same had happened to their savings account at a small local bank, when Stephan's father's larger bank bought it out a few weeks after the problems began. There was no other money in the household to pay the bills, and Chuck Martin's BB gun peppered their packed car and moving van as the vehicles left the neighborhood for the last time, the village police refusing to believe that the several dents and scratches on the trunk of their car were from recently fired BBs.

Stephan Saber wasn't much different from the other boys around him. This way of life, as his father explained to him on several occasions, was like the life of animals in the jungle. One either survived, or did not, and he was often asked by his father what side he wanted to be on. His mother had no voice in the family; the household staff of three saw to that, as they were paid well by Stephan's father to keep it that way.

Not really interested in a growing son, she spent much of her time reading fashion magazines or shopping in the city. She never believed that her child could really do the things the other parents talked about when they met on the beaches during the summer months.

Mr. Saber and Mr. Martin were welcomed into university, where they would spend the next few years. Now adults, and in the early 70s, the free love and flower power era was still hanging on. They enjoyed themselves immensely, preying on a new set of peers, the average American adolescent. These students were not scared to fight back and did so with relish. The two young men realized that life outside Sag Harbor was not so privileged for them. Stephan learned it when he ordered one of the older students, one of the college's football team, to carry his books, and found himself coming to on the ground ten minutes later.

For the first time in his life, Stephan Saber became angry and wanted revenge. He couldn't understand that this so-called best football player in the school had the stupidity to hit him. "Who did this guy think he was?" he asked Chuck Martin that night, cursing over a bottle of whiskey.

For three months now, the two men from Sag Harbor had found these students around them to be insolent, bad mannered, and hopelessly insubordinate. It was time to send a message out to these ingrates.

The football player, who came from the Bronx, was the most famous person in the college, and could certainly look after himself, but not when he was set upon by half dozen of his own neighborhood peers who did not respect him. His beaten up and blood-soaked body was found in the college gym early one Monday morning, and there had only been two students who had seen the actual decapitation of the football player. His head was never found.

The local police went through the college and found out that the dead football player had hit another student, and Saber and Chuck Martin were taken in for questioning. The young men lied through their teeth, both stating that he was with his roommate all that weekend and there was nothing more the police could do but go after the killers. They were never found; the death was quickly forgotten, and surprisingly, a new wing of the Math department, "The Andrew Saber Building," was begun only a month or so after the incident.

The two men had learned that the grass on this side of the fence was not the same shade of green as in Sag Harbor. Despite getting away with murder, for the next four years they caused enough trouble to finally be asked to leave the college and head somewhere else. The Andrew Saber Building was renamed The Dale Carnegie Building, after the college was served with a civil suit by a large bank. Thankfully for the head of the college, other investors helped pay off the remains of the debts of the building, and by then the troublemakers were gone.

A few years later Mr. Saber and Mr. Martin began their careers in the banks their fathers ran, and quickly climbed up the pecking order, running large investment departments at rather young ages.

They had survived, and beaten the system they had both grown into. They were both new, mean manipulative machines in the banking industry, and a definite plus for their Manhattan institutions.
Chapter 11

On the Road

The Cube was excited as he drove down the I-95 from Jacksonville, Florida in the direction of Orlando. It had been nearly a year since he had left San Diego, and the girl continued to occupy his mind. He had never felt like this before and he hated the control her being had over him. The Cube was going to make a mistake, a tiny one, and he knew it.

"Matt Palmer" returned to Canada and then re-entered the U.S. with Mathew Chisolm's passport. He purchased a flight down to Charleston, South Carolina in Mr. Chisolm's name from Newark, via Dallas, and reached his RV in its camping spot where it had resided for the last year.

He had told campground security that he often flew out on business and they were not surprised to see the paid-up-in-advance luxury coach all locked up and its curtains drawn. As usual with motor homes of this size, his RV pulled a small, new Suzuki SUV behind it, and he hooked its wheels up to the coach and the next morning headed to Hilton Head, where he knew a campground that had a powerful wireless internet feed to its residents. He needed to catch up on work.

Meeting his parents at the convention a year earlier had surprised him. These days, apart from encrypted messages, he didn't know where they were living in their own RV. Only on meetings overseas, mostly in Lisbon, Portugal or Madrid, Spain, did they get together to freely chat and enjoy family reunions.

While taking it easy in Hilton Head, Chris caught up on his work, found money, enticed it out of accounts and spent most of his time moving his own money to new accounts and closing old ones. The thousands of Ben Franklins that kept his thick, hard mattress stiff gave him enough security to never use an automated money dispenser. They were the worst, having cameras all around.

He did his best never to be in front of too many cameras at truck stops, and when he had to fuel up, or shop for groceries, he used Mathew Chisolm's identity and credit cards. He also had to look the part, as Mathew Chisolm, who had been underground in a cemetery for a decade now, purported to be 41 on his paperwork, and the man filling up, or buying groceries, had to look like a man the age of Mr. Chisholm.

Now, he headed south. The napkin had been a message to the girl to meet him in Orlando at Disneyworld on an exact date and time, in a year and just after the 2012 Hackers' Convention neither he nor his parents hadn't attended. He would find her, not the other way around, the note had explained.

He did not stay in one of the RV sites close to Disneyworld, but in a campsite twenty miles out of Orlando, a large place he had never used before. On the way he had picked up a girl who was older than he was by a year or two, a long time school friend of his, one of the few people in the world who knew Chris slightly better than the FBI did. She was a senior at Florida State, a medium quality hacker, and for a couple thousand bucks did anything Chris asked of her.

She had driven east from Tallahassee into Daytona Beach and left her car close to the racetrack. Acting as a couple and with Chris looking older than his upcoming 21st birthday, he drove into Orlando along I-4 and found the campsite.

The next morning, his friend headed out with a handful of cash in the Suzuki and did Chris' shopping at the nearest Costco, filling his mobile home with long-term provisions for several months. Since she had the Costco card, she could be his shopper while he was in Florida.

Beer, middling quality bottles of red wine, whiskey, and an SUV full of food, it was easy to spend a thousand dollars in Costco, and since the girl weighed close to thirty pounds above her doctor's suggested weight, the mountain of purchases looked normal.

Chris had been surprised that his best friend from high school had looked so good. He had remarked that she had shed at least twenty-five pounds since he had seen her last and received a thank you kiss on the cheek for his good eyesight.

The next day, she drove with him in a taxi to Disneyworld, bought themselves tickets for the day, and said her goodbyes once they had visited one of the food courts.

Chris had made sure that she was well paid for her dedication to him, double what she had spent at Costco and her expenses, and she rented a car to return to Daytona. During the 48 hours she had been around, he had been on fewer than three security cameras, but his friend, many dozens.

Now it was time to look around and, dressed as a little old lady, much like his mother had done at the convention, he slowly, as older people do, walked around looking for the girl he really wanted. He had suggested that they meet in a certain area by the main roller coaster, and often sat on the benches, usually close to mothers with children to hide that he was alone, and kept his eyes searching.

The arranged time came and went. He expected that. Who would turn up on time, if they didn't want to be easily seen? Chris wondered if the girl was as into dressing up as he and his parents were. He got his answer when he easily recognized her sitting a few benches away and also sitting close to others.

Chris watched as her eyes hit his bench. There was a family next to him, and Chris sat next to one of the children who was looking at a map of Disneyworld on a Kindle. The girl's brother played on the ground, doing his best to get himself as dirty as possible, and the parents seemed lost, looking at a paper map, trying to decide where to go next. He took his eyes off the girl watching the bench and looked down at the dirty little boy and stroked his hair. The parents noticed the elderly lady touching their child and smiled. She was, after all, just an old woman.

He looked up and saw that her eyes were still searching and he smiled. Katie got up and headed to another bench further down the path that had her back to him. Chris stood, left the family, and with a remaining roll from the food court fed the scattered pigeons hanging around. With a short cane holding him up, making him bend forward, and wearing a large sunhat, he closed in on the girl. She glanced his way once, but her eyes didn't look at the old lady for longer than usual. The girl was still a hundred yards away.

She again got up and moved in his direction, toward the roller coaster, and Chris changed course and aimed for a bench on the other side of the path, hoping that she might sit on it. It held another old lady like him, and he slowly walked over, feeding the pigeons as he approached the bench.

Chris arrived at the place about fifty feet before the girl did. He acknowledged the other old woman, sat down next to her, and in gibberish, kept talking to the birds, several of them waiting for scraps. The other old lady looked at him with distaste.

"There are rules about feeding the birds, you know," she snapped to Chris in an uncivil manner. He replied in gibberish, mumbling and hoping that the lady would think that he didn't speak English, and with the word "foreigners" thrown in his direction, she angrily got up and left the bench. She didn't want anything to do with others breaking the law.

The young girl saw the altercation between the two old crones and decided that sitting next to the remaining woman was her next vantage point.

"That is illegal, feeding the birds," she said, sitting down and warning the miscreant.

"So is drinking wine with pretty girls at age 20," Chris replied, and immediately he felt the girl stiffen. "Go to the main gate. I will be there in 30 minutes or so. It takes an old lady longer to get around, you know."

"Hopefully you have reached legal drinking age by now," replied the girl, looking around but directly not at him.

"Tomorrow, dear friend, tomorrow," the old lady replied turning and glancing at the young girl. "I see you don't dress as well as others, and I hope you brought a passport or two with you."

"Sometimes, Mrs. Bird Feeder, looking oneself is as good a disguise as the ridiculous one you are wearing," she replied, smiling at him, enjoying the joke. Nodding good day, she got up and strolled toward the roller coaster.

Fifteen hours later after leaving Disneyworld, they found themselves in the rear of a British Airways 747 out of Atlanta, economy class on a half-empty flight to London. It was fantastic how easily last-minute tickets could be purchased online. Especially with any credit card, as long as the information and travel documents panned out.

They didn't sleep much for the ten-hour flight into London's Heathrow. The rear of the aircraft was empty, apart for a few crewmembers sitting here and there. Chris had moved to the middle seats and laid out flat on the seats with his head on the aisle side, a foot away from the girl's. She had done the same in the shorter row on the window side, her head also on the aisle where they could talk without being overheard.

Five seats from the rear of the aircraft, they had the whole one side of the aircraft to themselves for ten rows. It was midnight, and the flight was over Iceland before the passengers had settled down to sleep.

"So Cube, since I must be totally crazy to be heading off to Europe with a kid I don't even know, we might as well be introduced," said the wide-awake girl. It was still early on the West Coast.

"You first," said Chris, smiling up at the ceiling. "Unless you want me to know you as Mercedes Cortez, or Melissa Ram, or Francesca Pener, or whatever your New York Italian name is. Maybe I should just call you Ram for short?"

"Better than just Cube. At least Ram means something," replied the girl as they watched a British cabin attendant approach.

"You two need an extra pillow or a blanket?" she asked. Neither said they did. The internal temperature was warm.

"Could we get two bourbons on the rocks?" asked the girl. "Or make it two cognacs, since we are out of U.S. airspace, we are in Britain I assume, and my friend here is now of legal age to drink?" The attendant returned a minute or so later with their two drinks, happy to be doing something. Once she had returned to her seat and her book, the two horizontal friends continued.

"Okay, Cube. I'll tell you my last name if you tell me yours?"

"Then I'll have to kill you, like you threatened me in San Diego," Chris replied smiling. "Or we will have to be partners or something from now on."

"Damn!" the girl replied. "I knew that I had forgotten something."

"What?" asked Chris.

"To kill you in San Diego. Damn! If I had trashed you then, I would be at home now, relaxing and making my next move. Now I have to put up with some snot-nosed kid who can't even have a drink in U.S. airspace."

"I can in about twelve minutes time. It's nearly midnight on the East Coast, and I'll be 21," Chris replied.

"Still a snot-nose on the West Coast. I could have partied, gone home and already been in bed before you would be old enough," retorted the girl.

"Uben," said Chris abruptly.

"Gardener," came the reply.

"Christopher, but shortened to Chris," he added.

"O...kay, I see where the Cube comes from, C. Uben. That actually sounds truthful, and real. You cease to amaze me. I could be a plant from the Feds? Put your hands on your head right now," she joked.

"I don't think so, Katie," Chris replied again smiling.

He had been right, following Katie Gardener for the last half decade. A young girl from Queens, New York who had purchased the first three expansion packs of the same game he had at one time played, and had also hacked into the game's system. He had followed the dull trail to its new owner, Mercedes Cortez, and somehow and unbeknownst to him at the time, had found that he was on the tail of a pretty good hacker.

That was six years ago, and he had tracked the life of a Ms. Mercedes Cortez, the same name as the beautiful girl in the game, from Queens to New York, thence to Washington, and had found the death of the famous lady quite an interesting end to the tale of hacking. Now he was inches away from the shocked hacker herself. Somebody who would make him a good friend.

"How....how do you know my first name?" Katie asked nearly spilling what was left of her drink over her lap.

"I know your name, the address of the house you grew up in playing Mercedes Cortez, and even the flight number you died on," smiled Chris. "Not many girls played Grand Theft Auto and every expansion pack as keenly as this Katie Gardener did, and not every girl ended up as Mercedes Cortez. Both lived in the same town, and I hope your parents enjoyed their Alaska vacation. I watched you hack it for them."

"Damn, you bastard!" said Katie angry and very shocked that this kid knew so much about her. Chris knew what she was thinking.

"If you go back into those files one day, you will find that I rearranged them with different names and ongoing directions so that the Feds couldn't follow the same trail I did. My parents did the same for me when I made mistakes."

"Your parents are in our business?" she replied, again shocked.

"Sure. They covered up certain things I did. Hey! Remember the 55 cents? You'll meet them at the Savoy in London tonight, since it is past midnight. Remember I'm 21 today and we are having a family celebration, and you are the only one invited. Katie, you will like them. Real homey people, but with a taste for adventure."

"Please don't tell me? Mr. and Mrs. Byte?"

"Whoever they are, they can introduce themselves to you. That's not my right, or job, so patience is a virtue, Ms. Katie Gardener, and you are only three years, eight months and three days older than I."

For the next hour they relaxed in each other's company, told each other their actual life stories, and the cabin attendant found them asleep when she checked an hour later. To her they seemed a happy young couple. Maybe brother and sister, or two university kids heading over the pond. She didn't know that she was looking at two of the most skilled hackers in the United States of America. Just two geeky looking kids who looked totally harmless, taking advantage of the drinking age in London where she lived, which was 18.
Chapter 12

2012 - Submarines

"The recession is dissolving," the media kept telling the public. The housing market began to return, interest rates were rock bottom, the car industry began selling cars again, and the unemployed were forgotten by the system. Who wanted to hear about the needy and out-of-luck? There were only several million of them.

The banks were adamant. No way were they going to lend money to anybody who didn't have absolutely perfect credit. Over time, and with money getting tight, neither the banks nor the government wanted to help out small business. Big business, as always, was looked after. First the banks were shored up. The ones who had caused the recession were given the most aid. Then the large companies who had thousands upon thousands of workers were looked after and cash rolled out to them as if a money tree had been built in Washington.

Only the midsize and small business received nothing of any bailouts, and the government hounded them to produce additional new jobs without considering their needs.

As it was easier to keep a smaller company surviving, a company with less than 500 employees, than the larger management-heavy companies, the U.S. economy returned over time to where small percentages of growth could be seen in many areas.

The big four banks and Joseph Silverstein's, the world's largest investment house, pressured the Reserve Bank to drop interest rates to nearly zero, as The Banker had planned. At these rates, everybody wanted credit, whether it was a fixed rate or not. They promised in return that they would ease loan restrictions.

The stock market was lifted up by the banks as a reward to the Reserve Bank to falsely show that the economy was moving forward, and that life in the USA was returning to normal for the employed 70 percent of the country.

Many of the down-and-outers had lost everything. Their jobs, wages, savings and investments were taken away as the banks throttled the country into a four-year economic recession, planned a decade earlier. Life was not rosy for a percentage of the world, but in the system of capitalism, the strong ate the weak, the rich got richer and the poor lost everything.

Investors in Wall Street had lost or moved massive amounts of money. The large banks, knowing what was about to happen in 2007, especially Stephan Saber at Joseph Silverstein's, helped themselves to their clients' funds by emptying accounts hours ahead of the plummeting prices, and the market was speeded in its crash due this movement of trillions of dollars.

Mr. and Mrs. Jones around the country watched as their 401k plans decreased in value. Their Roth IRAs were downsized to tiny or zero, and there was little chance that without more financial input by the family, that person would ever retire. The government immediately began looking at the increasing retirement age. The work force was only a tool for government wealth, and who cared if the population worked "until Death do its part," as the powerful joked.

Even the mature and wealthy lost fortunes to the debacle. Through derivatives, credit default swaps, and bundles of subprime mortgage-backed securities, only those with insider information avoided loss: turning investments, both theirs and not theirs, into cash, gold, and property before their customers knew what was happening.

Between 2008 and 2011, three trillion dollars of investments changed hands, the richer got richer, the poor lost everything, and millions lost their jobs, their property, and often both.

Stephan Saber had enjoyed this ride. It was the best financial streak he had been on. Far better than a roller coaster. Through information given to him by The Banker, and the other CEOs in the banking industry, money was moved out of the investment accounts of the masses, and into Switzerland and other offshore accounts, laundered and returned as import investments.

Chuck Martin had done even better. As head of USA Bank, he had moved far more money than the securities firms, foreclosing on any unpaid property, then used the security to purchase and bundle more foreclosed homes for cents on the dollar.

The Banker himself controlled much of what was going on. It seemed that he had a team of financial analysts to back up his ideas, along with high-ranking members of several governments who had to hide their money, they were so rich. Unfortunately for them, when their value to The Banker came to a close, many of them disappeared, never to be seen again, accounts offshore where their money was stashed away suddenly disappeared, and who could they complain to, apart from the bank manager, that suddenly $5 billion had disappeared and the account nonexistent? There was certainly an honor among thieves.

As millions of Americans and others in Europe and in the western world wondered what had happened to their life savings, the two young hackers were flying over to London, and simultaneously a plan of action was being discussed in an office in Charleston South Carolina to hit hackers hard.

The island off the coast of Scotland already had its first financial workforce, as soon as the submarine pens were complete. A group of 100 managers and top bank officials, mostly security and group leaders, were getting comfortable in the new underground housing.

The firm "Communique" and a second firm "FactorX" also set up camp. Communique was completing their latest satellite communications, now that The Banker's private communications satellite had been taken into space as cargo on one of the 2012 NASA launches.

The satellite, weighing in at 148 pounds, ten feet long and three feet square, was rectangular with very large solar butterfly wings, a state-of-the-art rocket system, and a not-as-yet-available receiving and sending communications system.

It had taken three months for it to reach its geo-stationary orbit 22,000 miles directly above Manhattan.

Now the bankers had their own private, virtually non-hackable communications system. It was interesting what people could afford in a recession. The whole arrangement, made in China, and with the launch tab, had cost the same as two submarines: 4 billion dollars.

The communications satellite had taken three years to build, entered the country in Florida without government knowledge, and travelled in a shipping container by truck the short distance to Cape Canaveral for its launch. On the container sides were large stickers showing that it had been manufactured by two famous space manufacturing companies in California and Washington State who knew nothing about the manufacture, although it had been copied from their secret blueprints. The fewer who knew anything the better, and in today's world, money buys everything.

Chuck Martin and Stephan Saber were on the phone as they did most days, talking banking business and giving tidbits to anybody listening. The annual Bankers' Convention was coming up and they had planned for it to be in Davos again, as The Banker had wanted for the last three years. The Banker had made sure that the VIPs attending the world summit were taken care of by the town of Davos, and everything anyone could wish for had been imported into Switzerland for the five-day conference.

Dance groups, shows and entertainment of all nationalities had been ordered for the enjoyment of many. The best wines, cognacs, whiskeys and champagnes arrived. Chefs from as far as Paris, Shanghai and Las Vegas arrived to do what they did best: feed people; and gifts and parcels of every luxury planet Earth could produce were made ready for each of the several hundred bankers attending. All done in the name of "Banking."

"I assume you will be heading over to Zurich a few days early?" asked Stephan of Chuck.

"Sure, I have a few mergers and bank defaults I need to get clear with the Federal Reserve, Mac and Mae, and the IMF while I'm there. I hear the Reserve Bank might not want to increase interest rates, and I want to get my two cents worth in with the chairman. Friends say that he will be replaced soon if he doesn't listen."

"Yes, a good time to hit the Federal Reserve about raising interest rates on all Treasury Bills," Charles replied. "We as lending institutions cannot continue in the mortgage industry with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae now nationalized, and it's time Washington made this country a real democratic society and let us, the banking institutions, decide what people need to pay to loan money, not the other way around."

"I'm sure a few kind words to the chairman will light a fire under his butt. Or he will join the growing ranks of unemployed," Chuck cackled. He enjoyed the idea that the powers-that-be were listening in.

"I think that a total restructure at the Federal Reserve will make them see the light. Maybe I should take that up with our friends on Capitol Hill," replied Saber, also enjoying the charade.

"I also heard through the grapevine that a few other heads are going to roll, especially in the security departments. A little bird told me that the head of either the CIA or FBI is going bye-bye toward the latter part of the year. Something to do with the latest Bradley Manning report and the U.S. soldier's release of secret files to WikiLeaks. The President or Vice-President is blaming one of them for the biggest breach of classified data in the nation's history: helping Al Qaeda's recruiting efforts. I was told that the militant group used Manning's releases to claim that the United States does not value human life." Both men laughed at the joke between them. "How are your mortgage restrictions coming along?" Chuck continued.

"We have had the okay from certain members in Congress to allow the needy to obtain new mortgages again. We are dropping our minimums from 725 FICO to 600, and hopefully we can get them down to below 550 FICO by year-end. It also looks like we can reduce down payments from 20 to 10 percent, and I want to see them back at two to five percent by year-end. We must get the American public back into owning property again, and a friend over at AmericaCorp, you know who I mean, has even started working on sub-primes again. Thank God."

"Are you bundling the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae mortgages for the government again?" Chuck asked.

"Yep! Just started. The government wants the risk taken away, and those will be bundled for resale within 90 days. We are starting slow. Far slower than the Reserve Bank wants us to take the risk off their shoulders, and any acceleration will be used as leverage at The Banker's convention. The Feds are scared that with the privatization, they will be left holding the baby if we double-dip into another recession, and are desperate. I think that with the increase of new houses, the mortgage industry will be back to its 2006 strength by 2014.

Both men laughed, said their pleasantries, and goodbyes. They would see each other within the week.

Several weeks before Chris had planned to meet Katie in Disneyworld, the usual men arrived in Lichtenstein, at the same hotel, one at a time.

Stephan walked into the nearly empty bar and saw his friend Chuck, and John Davenport, already partaking of their favorite beverages.

"Chuck, John, good to see you. How were your flights?" Saber said as the usual barman began making his drink. The year before, a second barman had been there for the latter part of the evening, and that for some reason had worried Stephan Saber. There was something about the man, and he trusted this one far more. This barman had given Richard Chalmers his drink.

"A bit bumpy over South America, and again up through central Africa," said Chuck Martin. "I had meetings in Sao Paulo, and Argentina, and Johannesburg, South Africa to shore up investments. Actually, the worst was going into Harare, Zimbabwe, Stephan. We hit bad turbulence and then had a security problem at the airport. Our incoming had been compromised by Robert's Opposition Party, and they had a riot of what seemed over a hundred unhappy people shouting and waving banners in the Harare airport terminal."

"Surely that wasn't dangerous for you?" John Davenport asked.

"No, we weren't going to go through the passenger terminal. We were over on the opposite side of the airport at his Air Force terminal, and we had to sit inside the aircraft surrounded by ground support for an extra hour or two while they got rid of them, literally. They shot the whole lot after locking down the airport. Quite exciting to watch."

"What is this world coming to?" laughed Stephan, grabbing for his drink. "Robert's men just mowed them down or what?"

"I couldn't see much, but it seems that his North Korean security division went in from the aircraft tarmac side and from then on just dragged out people onto the tarmac, away from viewing eyes, shot them and threw them into waiting military transport trucks. We counted more than a hundred, and it was really an inconvenience having to sit inside the aircraft. Robert did have good news though," and both men listened. "Well, he told me that his country has elections again next year in mid-2013, and the votes are already printed and counted. He guarantees us a 61% majority, slightly less than the 69% he received the last elections, so our mining assets and government loans in the country should be safe for another five years."

"Old Robert sure knows how to control people," laughed Stephan. "I think it's time to begin a slow disinvestment of our Southern African assets. How was Dr. Zuma and South Africa? It is certainly getting tricky controlling the diamond prices now that De Beers is no longer in control."

"I met with him, and he sounded positive, having a better hands-on grip on the economy," continued Martin. John Davenport was a quiet man. He had always learned that two ears were more important than one mouth. "Of course I sent all this through to The Banker, along with certain details I cannot give out. The South African economy is doing well; bad for the people, but better for the high government officials on our payroll, and for us. The controlling ANC Party will also be having elections soon, and he has security in place, which will give him a landslide victory one more time. Unfortunately, it looks like we have bottomed out in our dealings with Angola and Namibia but still have our fingers in deep in copper in Zambia and coffee in Kenya. Dr. Zuma's cronies have terminated a few of the opposition members in both those countries, and we are looking at more loans in business investment, especially in Kenya."

"How was your flight, Stephan?" Davenport asked, tired of listening to Martin. He didn't like the USA Bank CEO.

"A slow drag with the Federal Reserve as usual," Saber replied. "That twit the chairman won't budge on increasing interest rates. Maybe we should get Robert's North Korean hit squads onto him," Chuck laughed taking a sip. They were still alone and had a few minutes before another of their group would enter the bar, as they had just heard a helicopter land. "A couple of us explained to the chairman that it would give us better profits even if he raised the interest rates a couple of percent. He seemed worried that the homeowners couldn't afford such a hike, especially the new borrowers, and could slip us back into a recession. It's time he left this Earth, or at least his position. The Banker is trying to figure out what to do with him, and who he has on the Reserve Board to replace him with. The Banker still has the majority of the Board in his wallet, so it shouldn't be too difficult to get him replaced again."

"I just hate it when these do-gooders get in the way," added Chuck as another member of the club entered the bar. It was Bruce MacDonald, and he took over the conversation, as he loved the sound of his own voice and authority. Davenport didn't like him either.

"Welcome, gentlemen," said The Banker two hours later and once all six men had arrived. The barman had already disappeared and the bar was on lockdown for the two-hour meeting. As usual, The Banker was not actually present, and spoke via teleconference over the bar's new and now totally secure satellite link. He could see them, but they could not see him.

"We now have the best possible security in existence to communicate with each other, and it is time to begin our next phase of our twenty-year plan. Two of you have reported to me on your travels to our southern friends in South America and Africa. Even though we have seen lower profits there than last year, I believe that a steady return will be derived from these areas over the next decade. I suggest that if you do have investments and loans in this area of the southern hemisphere, that you reduce them by at least twenty percent, starting in the second five-year period. Will Frederickson on behalf of Western Fort Bank headed into Australasia and their want-to-take-more-risk reports are better than expected. We still need to increase mortgage risk from the USA and European operations into Australia and New Zealand. Their economies are not as tight as in Europe, and Sydney can take another three percent of our USA risk. We have a new colleague in Sydney, and his bank is prepared to invest in U.S. mortgage-backed securities and swaps, but because I don't trust this man – he has high friends in high Australian political places – we need to dump big on his banking system until it overloads and topples over. I want that done by the end of 2014 for our 2015 plan of action.

"Another of you gentlemen, the Baron, went to our friends in Moscow, a decreasing number of friends in Moscow, I might add. Two of our colleagues there have been recently jailed by the government, and this occurrence might cost me several billion in Russian revenue this year alone. As the Russian President returned himself to power, we have lost ground in their government financial programs, and it is time he was given some help. Because he and the U.S. President don't get along, I will begin working on helping him in Moscow. I believe I will have a U.S. special team in place to hand him a Christmas present by end of next year, maybe a U.S. security department or something, and the American government will take any reprisals if there are any. It will be time to change the U.S. President by then anyway, and I love killing two birds with one stone.

"A fourth member, Stephan Saber, had recent discussions with the chairman of the Reserve Bank. I hate it when the chairman isn't one of us, and we will have handled that issue as well by 2014. I hate wasting time and energy with such small-thinking people."

The Banker rested for a few seconds and nobody moved. No one in the group had ever seen or met the man. Nobody actually knew who he was. The Banker could have easily been the leader of North Korea, a member of the British Royal family, Iranian, even Prime Minister of Canada for that matter, but they all knew one thing for sure. It wasn't his real voice speaking, or even his accent, as he had an electronic masking system, which meant that he could even be the President of the United States of America.

"We will get on with our work, and my orders will reach each of you tomorrow. I will leave you with the results of my discussions with you first. We need to build housing debt across the United States to maximum by the end of 2014, to the heights we saw in 2007. As you all know, we work in seven-year cycles, and we want every American to be indebted to the max with adjustable low-interest mortgages and our credit cards by Christmas 2013. For you, Mr. MacDonald and Baron, I want the Libor rates bettered daily to increase our profits on dollar transfers by another one percent. Don't let me down, or your heads will roll. For the rest of you, I will work the U.S. government and the easing of debt from my end, and you will all work on the Reserve Bank chairman in Zurich next week. If he doesn't budge, I will have to terminate a few of his dearest family members. I want all U.S. mortgage interest rates to be back at seven percent by mid-2014. For a year now, we have offered every credit card holder and house buyer adjustable rates so low that it will be impossible for them to resist, and we are getting them as deep into debt as we can achieve. Congratulations." Everybody in the bar nodded. "I want European interest rates at minimum six percent, and better at eight point five percent next year. Do you understand, you British and European bankers?" The two men in the room nodded.

"Don't worry about the British Prime Minister. I have a juicy bit of information from his last visit to Portugal, and from a young lady who got through his security and visited him. He has no choice now but to comply with my government delegate's wishes. Same in France with their new guy, although sex scandals don't work in France as well as London. I learned that with one of the older French Prime Ministers. Germany and the woman are still a thorn in my side. She keeps herself clean, but I think her dealings with Greece and now Spain could make her some new enemies, and I can hopefully get a bit of dirt on her.

"Now for our new banking headquarters. The new base for Centralized American Banking Operations south of the Rio Grande will be our CABO Base, and will be ready for occupancy within 12 months. Davenport, Frederickson, CABO base is your secret bunker once the crap hits the fan. Our new base for American Banking Operations in the Atlantic is ready and movement into this fortress will begin once you return from Zurich. Saber, Martin, I want all of your delegations in there by year's end. Six floors, 900 employees per bank. Your head offices will remain in the United States, but you must have full control from ABO Base by February 2013. Our third base, the Middle East/European MEBO Base, will be complete by mid-2014, ready for Phase Three of our plan. MacDonald, Von Kippenhof, hopefully you are getting ready to move. The submarines are ready to move the 7,200 banking personal needed for our Phase Three over the next 6 months.

"I see some of you are needing refills, so I will end. There is a group of young dancers from Africa who will entertain you tonight. Everything you wish for is at the hotel, and tonight you have a grand spread of all my favorite foods. As usual, I will miss being with you men, but enjoy yourselves and your rewards, and we will get back to work in the morning."

The introductory welcome ended, the doors were unlocked and immediately the barman Saber didn't like entered to refresh the drinks. Hans Burger was happy to be only on the dinner shift. He hated to see the debauchery and pain suffered as people were hurt and even died once the after-dinner cabaret got underway, as he had the year earlier. He knew this group of men to be the worst people he had ever known by far, and hated each one of them without any of them knowing.

Several weeks later, just before midnight New Year's Eve 2012, Stephan left the party he was attending. It was just up the street where he had grown up in the Hamptons. Neither he nor Chuck had children he knew of. With his wife's death in 2001 he hadn't remarried, but had used the odd woman here and there that thought he was a meal ticket.

Chuck Martin had married three times since college. The first two wives hadn't lasted a year with him before they had disappeared, one in a train crash in England, and the other in a small aircraft crash somewhere in Texas. He hadn't bothered to go to either funeral. The third wife was technically still with him, although she had been dead in a freezer ten feet underground beneath the house he had grown up in in Sag Harbor. He had told her family that all he could tell them was his wife's sudden desire to do good for mankind several months earlier; she had bade him farewell and had headed off to Haiti over a year after the earthquake, and he had never heard a word from her since.

The FBI, once he had called them three months later, followed her trail from Haiti to California, where they believed she had shacked up with a new man. Then her trail had disappeared and she had, unbeknownst to anyone, ended up cut up in little pieces in the freezer a few miles from where he had his new summer house, and on Cove Avenue West, which now had new renting tenants as occupiers.

Stephan, with a fresh glass of champagne in his hand, untied himself away from the hot hands of a young and recently famous twenty-year-old New York television actress and said goodbye to his hosts. He apologized for the early departure. He was moving his office, and he needed to be in attendance by midnight in Charleston to make sure all was done by January first. Every one of his few friends knew that he took his CEO position, with its billions, very seriously.

Chuck Martin did the same at the New Year's Eve party the mayor of New York gave. It was totally boring. He had to keep his hands off the guests, and he didn't like it when he couldn't do what he wanted at parties. He also had a helicopter arrive on the grounds of the mayor's house, and both men took off minutes apart and headed to catch their jets at JFK.

"You in the air, Chuck?" Stephan asked over his private satellite phone that went through their new system and nobody else's, a totally secure line.

"Yes, en route to Charleston. ETA two hours two minutes." Chuck Martin was leaning over his chief pilot's chair and getting his information directly from the flight system on the dash. His Gulfstream, a five-year-old 500 model, was set up for absolutely comfortable travel, and had taken him around the world dozens of times. Its long range tanks could fly nonstop halfway across the world, and it didn't cost him a dime, just his investors.

Many of them wouldn't be happy at the $37 million bill it cost the company to pander to his travel wishes. It was a tax write-off anyway and few had complained since two Board members had done so two years earlier. The securities company had three jets, and two were used to fly the directors to meetings and back. Nobody else had access to Chuck's aircraft and his two pilots. He paid them a million a year each, because they had many secrets they could destroy him with.

Unfortunately, the two complaining Board members died in a crash a month after bringing his expense bill to the meeting's attention. Their aircraft, in bad weather, flew into the side of the Rockies on its way to deliver them back to Las Angeles and San Francisco, and the rest of the Board got the message. It was a good time to get place of The Banker's nominations onto his Board; two people who would back his controlling of the company in times of need. Nobody said no to The Banker or Chuck Martin and lived to tell about it.

Stephan and Chuck conversed for a few minutes. It was certainly less stressful to know that nobody was listening in to their conversation. Or were they? The Banker wouldn't think twice before eavesdropping on his own billion-dollar-plus satellite.

Three hours later, an hour after New Year's Eve in Charleston, both men met up at the docks. It took several layers of the latest security equipment to get into the inner sanctuary of the submarine pens, and there they met the other two club members who were also heading across the pond to visit the new base. There were four submarines in the seven pens, and a new one they hadn't seen. The others must be out on trials, or on missions. They all knew the seven club member submarines were complete. They expected to see The Banker's own transportation, but it was not there. He was the only member who had armaments aboard his vessel, and none of them knew if his submarine's defenses were nuclear-based or not.

"I've never seen that tin can before," said Stephan to the civilian base commander, the man who ran everything at the Charleston ex-Naval Yard. Commander Ed Johnson should know about the base, as he, with the former rank of admiral, had run the base for the U.S. Navy for a decade before it was closed.

"Our latest fleet member," he returned, smiling at the four men now together for the first time since the last meeting in Lichtenstein. "She is ten feet longer than your ships, two feet wider on her beam and we nicknamed her "The Cattle Truck." He laughed. "She can carry 400 passengers with a crew of ten. She has extra air and waste recycling systems, and like all of your private vessels, has the best silent-running systems known to the U.S. Navy."

"Why 'The Cattle Truck'?" asked Stephan Saber.

"It will be a little tight down there. The passengers will be on 30-inch wide beds and only a couple of dozen of them can eat or move around at one time for the six-day trip across the Atlantic. You gentlemen certainly wouldn't want to be on board with a full cargo. That little room for so many bodies will certainly not be up to the standards you guys are used to." The five men laughed. They wouldn't be caught dead on that submarine.

"Okay gentlemen," Commander Johnson continued. "Mr. Saber, Mr. Martin, each of you has 200 of your best employees aboard our new sub. Loading is already complete, the occupants are fast asleep, and the subs begin moving out at 02:00. Just to remind you, you also have twelve of your management employees aboard each of your own subs and twelve members on one of the other two subs who are travelling in our convoy en route to our unfinished MEBO Base. Mr. Saunders and Mr. Williamson are to head off into the Mediterranean once they have dropped off your teams. The convoy of underwater craft will leave on the hour every two hours for the next ten hours and fan out across the Atlantic. Your pilots will always keep a hundred miles between subs until the Irish coast. Then they will pilot the craft directly to ABO base. The Cattle Truck will go in second; the passengers will be drugged two hours before arrival and each one will be carried off to their new apartment by the team already there. This is to make sure that they don't see the inside of our submarine pens. The same will happen to your passengers, and you can expect them to wake about six hours out to sea. Other than that, you four have been aboard your craft, without passengers yet, and the travel time from Charleston to ABO is six days and seven hours. Ten hours of travel time has been added for your pilots to spread out and try and stay out of the way of any military subs on both sides. Through our contacts, we know where our U.S. subs are, but we don't know the whereabouts of any NATO subs or others in and around the Irish Sea."

Their own quarters aboard their new rides were as luxurious as in their Gulfstreams, although three times larger. The ceilings were low, but life aboard for the powerful men would be comfortable, and a rest from their daily routines, as there was to be no outside communication during the six-day voyage. Instead, they had maps and plans of the six floors their workforce was allocated, and the new staff had to be assigned to their new offices, or cubicles.

After a six-hour nap, both men got to work. Chuck Martin's submarine was just leaving the secure pens underwater at a depth of fifty feet, and Stephan Saber's was leaving Charleston Harbor twenty miles ahead as his pilot turned the submarine in a North Easterly direction. At 200 feet, the submarine, although in extremely murky waters, was still in danger of being sighted by coastal electronic surveillance systems. As no submarines had legally entered or exited Charleston Harbor for over a decade now, these coastal defense systems had not been modernized, and the submarines slipped out of the harbor one by one and headed out over the hundred-mile shelf before they reached the Gulf Stream, and then could work their way into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

Stephan's butler brought him a cup of freshly brewed mocha java as he sat up on the large King bed and surveyed his large bedroom, and mused on what it was like to have 200 feet of water above his head. The steel coffin around him was virtually silent. He had felt a very slight vibration in his bare feet before he had got into bed, and the captain had told him that for the first ten hours, at ten knots, the submarine was in silent running mode, on extremely low power, and easily slicing through the water with hardly any possibility that it would be noticed by anything apart from fish.

Once they reached cruise depth, another 2,000 feet lower, only then could the captain increase to the vessel's 25-knot cruising speed. Their course was to take them first northwest, close to Bermuda. Then, much like all commercial aircraft heading from the States to Europe, they would turn east, pass a thousand miles east of Nova Scotia and then head east-northeast aiming for the northern tip of Ireland.

The submarines would keep to the deep channels until they reached the shallower waters around Ireland. Here they would rise back to a 400 feet depth, cross a shelf and then sink back down into the Northern Channel, a narrow corridor of deep water, until they needed to creep the last fifty miles at a depth of 300 feet into the submarine pens on Ailsa Craig, their new headquarters.

For Stephan Saber, this was immaterial. With all the comforts of luxury life, he didn't care about the route. It was a nice break to work on placing his staff in the offices and cubicles, and he spent most of the first day on his management. Only when the submarine's bow dipped down slightly, as the interior noise of the engines behind him rose a decibel or two and the air around him began to feel a few degrees colder, did he look up from his planning.

Aboard the submarines were his best men and several women in their fields of security, investment, residential mortgage operations, and financial planning. Many of these men and women were married with families. They had received a nice stipend on top of their comfortable pay brackets to spend the first twelve months away from their families. Their deal was to set up operations from the new headquarters and get it ready for a new wave of employees, though they did not know where it was. None of them knew that they only had a year of employment left. The second wave of employees would all be single, were being trained at the head office in Charleston, and did not know that they only had a year left on U.S. terra firma. Once they headed out to their new bases, they weren't expected to ever return.

The same system was in effect for the rest. These comprised cleaners, chefs, females of pleasure, and all the other jobs that would keep the staff at their work stations. In a year's time the largest disappearance of American citizens ever was to take place, and fewer than a dozen men knew about it.

Steve Uben would have been aboard if he was still employed at USA Bank, but that opportunity was long gone. He was actually in London, unaware of what was going on at his old place of work, and was enjoying the festive season with his wife, son and son's new girlfriend, whom he had found most entertaining.
Chapter 13

The Hackers Unite

The early morning flight from Atlanta landed on time on an icy, but cleared runway at Heathrow. The temperature outside was thirty degrees colder than when Chris and Katie had embarked in Georgia.

Both had managed four hours sleep aboard, but were bleary eyed and felt like robots as they followed the line of disembarking passengers.

"If I ever fly with you again, Mr. Uben, I want first class. Coach seats on long flights are not up to my expectations," Katie said as they headed up the walkway to the terminal. They were the last two to exit.

"Too much scrutiny," Chris replied. "I've never flown first class in my life. I don't look old or rich enough."

"Well, Justin Bieber flies first class, and he's younger than you are. Maybe you should get copies of his passport, or some other musician's passport, leave a few days of that crap you call a beard, and fly famous," she replied, getting to the top of the walkway and following the others to passport control.

"I think we look a little nerdy to be famous musicians," replied Chris, still half asleep.

They passed through into England both with the same passports they had exited the U.S. on: Matt Palmer and Francesca Pener. They went through different queues and arrived out the other side at the same time.

"What did your guy ask you?" Chris asked as they headed toward baggage control and customs.

"The usual: why was I coming over? I said that I was visiting friends for Christmas and New Year."

"Me too," replied Chris.

An hour later and through customs, Chris headed to an electrical store in the terminal and purchased a prepaid cell phone. Once he had it working, he dialed a number and his mother answered.

"Glad to hear you made it," his mother began. "Head for the Underground. We would have sent a car to pick you up from Heathrow, but we had a frost last night and the roads are icy. Go to Victoria Station and aim for the taxi rank on the west side. We will be just in front of the taxi area in an extended black Mercedes 500I. It has a small pink triangle on the front, driver's side windshield, and we will drive you home. Your father didn't want to drive, so we have a driver. Your father has struggled with the driving over here, and after several close calls, he gave up. See you in two hours. I assume there are still two for pickup?"

Chris confirmed that he hadn't been stood up in Orlando, and they headed for the London Underground. It was still his birthday and even though it was a pain to get into London, they weren't travelling heavy, with just a carry-on and a small backpack each, and they reached Victoria thirty minutes ahead of schedule.

The black Mercedes drew up to the curb twenty minutes later and they entered the rear as the driver packed their luggage into the trunk.

Hugs and kisses were given to Chris, and the rear of the Mercedes was large enough, with two well-padded seats, one facing front and one facing the rear. Chris introduced his new friend to his parents as Francesca Pener, not Katie Gardener. Katie did not recognize the two older people. She did not know that she had actually bumped into them at the 2011 Hackers' Convention only a year earlier. They remembered her, though, but said nothing as the driver headed out of Victoria Station on the wrong side of the road. Steve Uben pressed a button and rolled up the window between driver and passengers. Once the window was up, they still spoke about nothing apart for questions about the trip over.

Two hours later they drove to a small country house 40 miles south of London. The house stood alone on about an acre of ground, and was at least half a mile from the nearest neighbors. The gate was open and the car stopped in front of the front door. Chris was quite impressed. It was a decent-sized two-story house with a small two-car separated garage and what looked like a tiny apartment above.

The driver unpacked their luggage and was given a tip by Steve. He always liked driving Americans, as they tipped so well. He doffed his cap and then he drove out. Only once the car had disappeared did the Uben family revert to acting normally.

"Are we secure?" Chris asked his father.

"As safe as we can make it," came the reply. "There is a second bedroom in the main house and a third bedroom above the garage. Come on in and let's get acquainted." They headed into the unlocked house and began removing coats and hats.

"Mom, Dad, please meet Katie Gardener, AKA Mercedes Cortez, AKA Francesca Pener, AKA The Ram. She and I know all about each other, but she does not yet know who you are," said Chris as he helped Katie off with her coat.

"The Mercedes Cortez from New York?" Chris' mother asked, quite surprised that the famous Mercedes Cortez, now deceased, looked so young. She shook hands with Katie, but said nothing.

"Since you know more than anybody else about our son, I suppose we might as well come clean. Steve and Jenny Uben, AKA many names, but often called the Bytes in the world of Mercedes Cortez, and others," said Steve formally introducing himself and his wife.

"I thought so, ever since Chris told me that I was to be introduced to his parents," smiled Katie relaxing, now knowing that she was among associates and the game of make-believe could be relaxed a little. "I liked your USA Bank caper last year, Mr. Uben. The one about moving the ownership and mortgage papers of your Charlotte residence to Bank of the States."

"And the trouble that came out of that," he replied smiling. Nobody in the hacker business was mistake proof. "I recall that property management and land acquisitions are your expertise, Ms. Ram?"

"Please, call me Katie or Francesca, since I am now in a real den of thieves," she smiled.

"I wouldn't call it that, and call me Jenny," admonished Jenny Uben. "That sounds degrading. I would prefer it to be called a den of Financial Default Planners, or Property Default Specialists. Since we are in England, I wonder what Robin Hood would have called our group?"

"Going back to the problems I had to take care of with our old house. What did you notice, Katie?" Steve asked while Jenny headed off to make a brunch.

"That the Feds were in there checking on the changes within a month," she replied. "They seemed to get pretty close to your new mortgage, before it was paid in full and slipped away off the books."

"Well seen," replied Steve. "Jenny has a brunch to warm up, so let's head into the lounge and chat." They did so, leaving the luggage at the door.

"Yes, I learned much from that most recent mistake of mine. I used to be head of security for USA Bank up to a few years ago, and what I slipped up on must have been the younger, fresher computer kids bettering my old system. The bank now based in Charleston has gone through an eighty percent change of staff since I left."

"I also noticed that," added Chris. "I never got a legal reply to any of my normal emails to them from the same person."

"I sent two property purchases through their New York mortgage department last year," added Katie, "and their foreclosure team immediately saw the changes and vetted both deals thoroughly. I had to hack into the new notes their guys added to the paperwork to stay ahead of their tracing. One thing I learned is that bank has two teams of paper inspectors from last year. One looks for reasons to foreclose, and the other checks the property paper trails from the start. I was lucky to stay ahead of both teams. I made it due to the usual crap of one team not knowing what the other did, and I changed the direction of the mortgages, paid them off from Bank Manhattan, and sent them over to my new San Diego bank with new title papers."

"That's why I try to stay away from property," Chris added. "You can't change an address and make the property disappear, like you can with securities."

"Well said, Katie," Chris' father continued, impressed at what this geeky little girl knew. "I had to drop the property, short sell it and lost over three hundred grand on a house that we had lived in since we had been in North Carolina. USA Bank is now a pool of sharks when it comes to foreclosure property. I noticed that they have recently started foreclosure paperwork on any property with one late payment, and I honestly think they have a tracking system to begin the foreclosure paperwork on properties that are 29 days late. Totally illegal and a complete disregard of the mortgage laws the new administration made when they came to power, nationalizing Freddie and Fannie. I learned this from our neighbors being evicted and I went through their changed paperwork years ago before the new law came into being."

"Come and get it!" shouted Jenny from the dining room.

Hungry and fatigued, both youngsters ate well and silently, the spinach quiche doing its job. They looked tired and Chris took the second bedroom in the house, as Katie was happier to be alone in the separate apartment above the garages. It was small and quaint, a studio with a little open-plan kitchen and bathroom.

Steve had suggested that they get some sleep as it was birthday night and they needed to save their energy to enjoy Chris' twenty-first birthday.

Both youngsters had managed to catch up on sleep before they woke to dress for dinner. Steve Uben, on the suggestion of the driver, had picked a pub just outside the town of Burgess Hill. Directly on the London to Brighton railway line, Burgess Hill was fifteen miles south of their abode and the driver arrived promptly to deliver them to the quiet and relaxing English pub. It was a weeknight, and as it was the festive season, the restaurant part of the pub was fully booked and busy.

Most of the locals dining noticed that they had a table of Americans in their midst, but as the British normally did, they left the table to enjoy themselves. They did join in when the Americans sang happy birthday to one of the guests seated and it seemed a jolly British evening.

Chris thought he heard the noise of a car in the early morning long before dawn, and only realized a couple of hours later that Katie was gone. After checking the upstairs apartment, he found a note stating that she had headed off to Italy to visit friends and that she would meet him back in the USA at some time. She wasn't ready for spending so much time with people she didn't know that well.

Chris was quite surprised and a bit sad that she didn't want to spend time with him. At least she had stayed for his birthday. Katie had become a friend, and he certainly didn't have many of those. Only one other, really: the girl who had helped him in Florida.

His parents seemed to understand better than he did, and the driver said the next day when he arrived to drive them up to London, that she had slipped him a note and a hundred dollar bill to pick her up to take her the short distance to catch an early train in to London. He explained that she was packed and looked like she was heading back to Heathrow.
Chapter 14

Ailsa Craig, Scotland – January 2013

One by one the submarines rose from the ocean depths. Even though he had been less than a week aboard, Stephan Saber had had enough of submarines. He did not enjoy feeling like a sardine in a can, and he didn't have all the room he normally had to move around. Also, the financial world was buzzing every second out there above the surface of the sea, and he did not like being separated from it.

In the Cattle Truck submarine 100 miles behind his, the passengers were again all drugged on their tiny bunks. The smell was bad, it was warm, and none of the passengers had enjoyed the stuffiness of their surroundings for the four days they had been awake. One person had died so far, falling off his top bunk and hitting his head on the steel floor. He had been the new head of security, an important person who had Steve Uben's old job, and would have to be again replaced.

When these staff members had signed up for this trip, nobody had told them that they would travel in a submarine, and nobody had told them that they were leaving the United States. The extra $10,000 bonus in their Christmas pay package and signing a letter of secrecy with their employer had excited the people aboard. Mostly in their early twenties, and experts with computers, this opportunity, compared to the thousands of people around them who were still unemployed, seemed a godsend, so they kept their mouths shut and enjoyed the festive season.

Few had time to spend the bonus, which had arrived a week later than expected, unexpectedly four days after Christmas, three days before travel, and as they were 2,000 feet underwater, they didn't notice when their personal bank accounts were reduced by the amounts handed out, or the amounts left in the accounts. They were not going to need the money where they were going, so why allow them to keep it?

Each member of the staff had signed his or her life away for a minimum of one year. Some had signed a two-year contract at some undisclosed new place of work, but hadn't been told that they would be isolated from the world, family, and friends around them. 95 percent were single, and the few married members had told their unhappy families that they were on a big launch of a new computer system, and not to expect them back for 12 months. These few had not had stop payments made on their bonuses, and their families were happy to have the extra cash instead of their breadwinners.

"Two hours until we reach the trench, where we can dive deep again," said Saber's submarine commander. "Seven hours in the trench, three hours above the shelf, and then we should be in sight of our destination, Mr. Saber." Stephan grumbled; the stock exchange was open for business for another whole day before he could study what changes had taken place.

Slowly and as stealthily as possible the submarine neared the granite outcrop ten miles offshore from the Scottish coast. With all the maneuvering and heading out on different routes, Stephan had made sure that his submarine would arrive first. He didn't care how long it took the others. He didn't care if his buddy Chuck was in the last submarine to arrive, as long as he was out before anybody else. He was, after all, the most senior person in the new headquarters and that came with added benefits. He would also be one of the few non-security bank personnel living above ground. Stephan Saber certainly wasn't going to be down in the damn earth 24/7.

The last three hours risked the most detection by any British or NATO submarines in the area. At only 300 feet, they cruised as close as they could to the flat bottom of the extremely cold and murky shelf of the Irish Sea. At this depth, they did not have the option of maneuvering away from anything that might notice the telltale trail of a submarine.

Finally, the first submarine approached the 50-foot-high underground doors that would open sideways to allow the submarines through. The commander carefully navigated his vessel through the forty-foot wide opening, at a depth of 60 feet. At less than two knots the silent vessel slipped into the large underwater cavern, the doors closed behind her, and she began to rise to the surface 20 feet above her conning tower.

Once she was on the surface, the pilot exited the vessel and slipped her into the nearest dock where a dozen security personnel held stretchers. The internal cavern wasn't high. Only three feet separated the top of her several antennae and the cement roof. The cavern was well lit and very cold when Stephan Saber, wrapped in a warm winter coat, was helped out of the tower first, and without looking back headed into the elevator, its doors closing behind him.

The crew had four hours to carry the drugged staff off the submarine before the next was due, and the chore was done in one. All of them plus their luggage of three suitcases each were lifted vertically up the short tube in the conning tower by a winch that was tied in a sling underneath their arms and manhandled off the ship to a waiting stretcher. With a luggage cart much like one found in hotels, it took three men to carry each of the sleeping personnel to his or her allotted apartment, where each was expected to awaken in about six hours. Nine of these management personnel would be allowed to have one evening a week up above ground. The others in the Cattle Truck would not see daylight for a long time; some never.

This was Stephan Saber's first visit to the new headquarters. He did not yet know why it was in such a cold and desolate part of the world. Only The Banker knew that, but he assumed that once here, he would be told why he had to leave Charleston, the United States, all the luxuries, and his several girlfriends for this horrible and cold place.

He was escorted up to the surface by two security men who said nothing, and he didn't say a word to them.

The elevator looked as if he was in New York. The ride was short, less than a few seconds before it opened up and he was directed to follow a short corridor that ended with what looked like two steel doors. He had noticed that the security detail had pressed the level with only an asterisk, which he assumed was the surface, and that he had been on the third underground level. He was quite surprised that there were another sixteen levels below the one where he had gotten on.

One of the security guards slid a card through a reader and the two steel doors opened outwards. They were over ten feet high and at least a foot thick.

A cold wind hit his face hard and he was glad to be wrapped up.

"Does the sun ever shine here?" he asked the guards.

"About once a week, for a few hours, sir," replied one of the guards in a New York accent.

Stephan Saber walked out into the fresh air and it was cold, overcast, and had a bitterly cold wind blowing shards of ice at him.

"Please follow me, sir. Your aboveground accommodations are this way," said the same guard, and he led the banker down a cement path to a group of what looked like ski apartments. There was snow on the sloping roofs, and he noticed that the path had been cleared and salted as it was nearly a foot deep on the sides. There were three detached two-story bungalows on one side of two squares they walked into, and he was shown into the center unit. Inside it was warm, and two good-looking girls, one white, one black, helped him off with his outerwear and the security guard told him that his luggage, all twenty cases, would be delivered as soon as it was off the submarine.

"You girls American?" he asked bluntly, checking them out. They both had black and white housemaid dresses on, were short and both looked very sexy.

"Both from New York, Mr. Saber, and we do everything inside your unit," the black girl replied smiling.

"I hope so," he mumbled. "Show me around."

Downstairs was a huge bedroom, connected to as nice a bathroom as he had at the Hamptons. There was a balcony, but the blinds were partly drawn. Upstairs was a large lounge and separate office with fireplace, fully furnished with everything he would need to work. To one side was a small bathroom connected from the office, and off the lounge a full kitchen where his meals would be prepared. It wasn't bad, was well furnished, and he thought he could handle living in such prison-like surroundings.

"What is in the other square I saw as we entered this one?" he asked the security guard still waiting for him at the apartment entrance.

"We, the land security, the base commander, the harbor personnel and the marine security, live there. One hundred land and sea security personnel and twenty-five harbor personnel, also military trained, to protect you, Mr. Saber," the guard answered.

Many of the others aboard his submarine were not as fortunate as he was. Three of the sleeping men, his most senior, and heads of his internal U.S. securities division, International Securities, and his international banking division would live above ground for short periods. They had slightly better accommodations aboard ship than the other nine had, and were carried out first to their much smaller units on the opposite side of the square. They would not know where they were either. Only Stephan Saber, the base commander and the marine security detachment knew their exact location. The rest of the security detail and other staff working on the island knew that they were on an island, for they could see a mainland, but very little else. None of the men on the island had a smart phone, or unfiltered internet links. They were totally in the dark as to where in the world they were.

To Stephan looking out from his lounge window on the second floor, the town or whatever it was looked like a fort with a wall surrounding the entire place. Two sides of the snow-covered square had accommodation units, and there were shops on a third side, and what looked like a gym, bar and movie theater on the fourth side.

The other nine passengers, vice-presidents of their departments, would stay underground, with only one allowable visit-day above ground per week. They were carried off to the best apartments underground. The aboveground team had underground accommodations in case of emergency, and Stephan, returning through the only corridor to the surface, was asked if he wanted to view his underground unit.

This unit of his was only half the size, had no windows or balconies, and he hoped he never had to live down here. The still-sleeping assistant department heads were found on their beds in lesser units. These suites looked smaller than his accommodation aboard the submarine, but he was impressed how the lighting, and light-colored paints, had been used to make the units seem bigger than they were. He had stayed in hotel suites this small at college, and hadn't enjoyed the tightness of space.

The single units the normal staff had were nothing more than a decent-sized hotel room with a bathroom. Again, any windows were missing and he didn't want to see more. The canteen was large on the floor he was on, the most upper floor where the staff lived. The base commander, Colonel Jack Montagu, was a former marine dressed in military camouflage, and was now in charge of touring him around. He said that they were over 100 feet below the surface of the sea, the same depth as the bottom of the submarine cavern, and at level four, on the other side of the rock wall that held the half-dozen elevators.

The other elevators were all large and open, and could hold 40 people easily. This was their top floor. Stephan had descended to the fourth floor in the lone elevator that had taken him to the surface. This elevator was the only way to get out of the underground system, and was under constant surveillance. Stephan had been surprised that the difference in level between the third and fourth floors was the same time as it had taken him to the surface.

An announcement came over an intercom system as he was inspecting the work stations and management corner offices.

"All personnel, hear this. Submarine One is unloaded of personnel, personal effects and cargo, and is exiting the base. We have several pallets of frozen food to be forklifted to the lower levels. Please let me know when Mr. Saber is out of the way and we will commence pallet transportation to level 4. Submarine Two is 87 minutes out, and we need all available security personnel to report to the submarine cavern once the frozen food has been moved into the freezers. We are going to have to work fast to get the personnel off this second vessel. We have two dead, and need to take the bodies off last. Submarine Two has another 20 pallets of frozen and fresh food, and I want the forklifts up there and ready. We only have four hours to unload Sub Two before Submarine Three enters. Submarine One has now exited, and the cavern doors are closed. Out."

Stephan knew that his submarine was returning to Charleston empty. So would the other two, one to fill up with the next load, and the others would not return until the new headquarters was completely operational.

It took an hour, but he wanted to walk through every one of the floors, filled with cubicles and offices.

The lower six floors was Chuck's new headquarters for USA Bank. Each was identical. There were accommodations and work stations for a maximum of nearly 2,000 personnel. Half for him, and half for Chuck. At any time walking through the floors, everything new and never used, he could have been walking through a new office tower high rise in lower Manhattan. The only thing different was the lack of windows. Instead, there were paintings of the New York skyline.

Now it was time to check out the last three floors, which were far below the 12 bank levels. He was surprised that it took the elevator a full minute between floor fifteen and floor sixteen.

"An extra 1,000 feet of rock to this lower level, Mr. Saber," said the commander. "On the right side of this level is a security desk with cells, and living quarters for 100 people on one side. In case of an emergency, this area can be cut off from the surface, and yes, Mr. Saber, there are two corridors with rails leading upwards for escape to the unoccupied area of the island." He pointed to the area that had a security desk and two personnel with a dozen monitors right next to the elevator. "This is where we can cut off any insurgents from above if needed. To the left is our main armory. We can fight a small war with what is in there. All the most modern and latest equipment from good old USA." Again there was a desk, two armed security personal, this time behind what looked like armored glass, and they did not look friendly.

The next, level seventeen, contained massive freezers and food storage caverns. To Stephan Saber, it looked like he had just walked into a Costco. He had been in one once, a secret meeting with a girl. Actually it looked bigger than just one Costco, maybe three Costco stores in one. On hundreds of shelves he saw food and other necessities for an army.

"In case we have to cut ourselves off, there are enough frozen provisions and dry food for a year for all personnel. Salt seawater is fed into a water desalinator and our waste is pumped up into the large holding tanks for sea distribution next to the submarine pens. Normally our dredger ship will arrive once a week, offload our waste and drop it out in international waters, but if this base is ever under siege, we can hide out here for a year and exit our personnel through the tunnels when possible. Fewer than two dozen of our crew here knows about these two levels. The lowest level, the one below us, is the reactor power level. It's set up to power the entire base from below, so we can never be cut off."

"Why so much security and escape protection, Colonel?" the banker asked.

"I don't know, sir, but this is what the plans wanted and this is what the builders did. Maybe we could survive a nuclear explosion here, or something to that effect. This whole setup must have cost many billions."

Stephan had done enough sightseeing for one day. He was happy to be living above ground, and he was sure Chuck would be given the same tour when he arrived later. The colonel told him on the way up that only Saber, Martin, and he, apart from the security personnel, were ever allowed out of the compound gates, and Stephan told him that he would take the tour the next day. He was hungry, and besides, he wanted to get to know those pretty girls in their fancy chambermaid uniforms.

Chuck's submarine was about to enter the cavern early the next morning when Stephan Saber was up on the side of the frozen hill with the colonel, looking down with binoculars trying to see the submarine under the water. The waters around the 220-acre island were gray and murky, and he couldn't see a damn thing below its surface. He could see the compound below him though, through the swirling fog.

They stood about 500 feet above the compound and nearby were two microwave towers with dishes facing in all directions as well as dozens of satellite dishes of all sizes facing skywards. Even higher on the upper side of the hill were hundreds of radio antennae. This base had more communications systems than the Pentagon.

It was cold and wet as they walked down the side of the hill and toward what looked like a small stony beach, half a mile away and on the northern tip of the island. Stephan Saber was quite surprised at what he saw when he and the colonel arrived at the northernmost point: nothing.

"Why waste my time walking over here?" Saber demanded.

"I thought you might say that, sir," the colonel replied smiling. He had a small electronic device in his hand that looked like a television remote, and he pressed one button.

"I was told to show you this area by you know who. This is our escape route. Remember yesterday I told you about corridors leading from the lowest floors up to the surface?"

Saber nodded.

"Well, below this beach is a second submarine exit system. There is no cavern, but much like the walkways into the aircraft at the airport, there is a walkway that attaches itself to a side emergency door in each of the eight submarines. This walkway is seventy feet underwater and we can load personnel aboard without anybody on the surface knowing. By pressing this one button, I have begun the operation of the rail system up from the lower depths. I will open a connecting door to both of the corridors and if you have ever seen a snow-ski lift, this is what will bring everybody up at 1,000 people an hour. Let us go in."

The colonel pressed a second button and suddenly part of a low cliff about eight feet high opened. From nowhere, Saber could see lift chairs passing the door two at a time. A second door opened in the same cliff and the colonel said both exits were to get the people out in case of an emergency, if the submarine option was compromised.

The former Marine showed him how to get on the lift and they were both swept up and sitting in steel chairs as they turned left into the island's hill and the doors were closed behind them. The corridor was well lit. Stephan felt as if he was in a chamber of horrors as the chairs suddenly descended into the island's depths at speed.

About a minute later, a door appeared on their right and the chairs slowed to a crawl as they reached a flat surface. They stood up and exited right. He could see the chairs heading in the opposite directions and heading upwards in a second tunnel twenty feet to their left.

"We are now on the walkway to the submarines' level. The only other level, Mr. Saber, is the bottom, one thousand seven hundred feet from here at an angle of thirty degrees." They walked into a staging area, which again had a small area with supplies. "We can't get everyone on one submarine, but this whole area can be sealed off with explosives from the lower levels. The Cattle Truck can squeeze six hundred personnel in at one time for a short three-hour trip to the Irish coast. We have a secret spot over there where the submarine can be unloaded against an internal wharf. Each round trip will take eight hours, and three days in total to evacuate everyone in emergency, hence a few weeks of food and water are stored down here. Once this headquarters is fully manned, the Cattle Truck will be stationed in this submarine pen here permanently."

"I don't think anybody has left anything out in this base," Saber said.

"Yes, expertly done, and the designer, a naval man I was told, didn't live to see the end result. He fell down one of the elevator shafts a couple of years ago. A bad accident."

Stephan Saber smiled at that remark. This poor colonel didn't know how The Banker did business.

They headed down toward the lowest levels on the ski lift, and the door was opened by the two security personnel. The entrance had a "Gentlemen" sign on the door, camouflaged as a restroom, and was just behind the one security desk.

They headed up the elevator, the tour complete, and greeted a tired and haggled-looking Chuck Martin as he exited on the third level. Stephan Saber could see that his lifetime buddy had fared no better than he on the voyage over. He told his one and only real friend that he was in for a surprise, and walked with Chuck and his security guard to the apartment next to him. He wanted to see how good-looking Chuck's help were, knowing that they wouldn't survive for very long. His friend seemed to wear out his servants pretty quickly.
Chapter 15

London, New Year's Eve – 2013

New Year's Eve was fun in London, the Cube family taking in all the sights of the city. 2013 was going to be a profitable year, Steve toasted his family, in the same pub they had eaten Christmas dinner in. Chris missed his new friend and hoped she would return soon. By midnight he had given up hope that she would walk through the pub's front door.

The next day, all with muzzy heads, they sat in the country house and discussed business for the coming year.

Chris's father Steve had done a survey on USA Bank over the last ninety days and had found two things: that the correspondence inside the bank departments had gone exceedingly quiet, as if something was afoot, and he had found a new source of income. He wasn't going to tell his wife or son. That wasn't the way he did business. Also, if they were found out by the powers to be, at least they couldn't rat on each other.

Chris' mother Jenny had done the same, working a new hack into a department at Joseph Silverstein's. She detested the CEO, Stephan Saber, and she mentioned to her family that she too had noticed a lack of communications and emails within that securities brokerage for the last couple of months.

Chris agreed with both his parents. He intensely disliked Chuck Martin, his father's old boss at USA Bank, and worked methodically to find new avenues of taking a penny here and there. A couple of times the Charleston Press had printed that a few people wanted to sue the CEO of USA Bank for certain misdeeds against employees and sub-contractors. The bank was swift and any gossiping was quickly dealt with and smothered. One ex-employee wanted to charge the CEO of the bank herself for sexual misconduct two months before Christmas, and she went missing two days later, never to be found. Her family, neighbors and hundreds of local police searched far and wide, but never found any clues to the mother of two's whereabouts.

This had angered Chris, and especially when Martin said that he had never met the woman while she had worked in the bank, even though she was on the floor below his and was personal assistant to one of his top department heads. The Cube had found several emails between the CEO and the missing woman and sent it anonymously to the police, who picked up the CEO on the evidence.

Chuck Martin was bailed out less than 2 hours later and scolded whoever was trying to frame him, and stated that the bank's security department would search out and find the culprit. From then on it had been a constant tag between Chris leaking more and more information against the CEO, and Chuck Martin nearly saying on television that he was going to personally lynch the framer when he was found.

The only reason that Martin wasn't in the news more was that Edward Snowden had moved, from Russia to supposedly a country in Central America, somebody had told the Press. Actually he was at the home of The Banker, had even met with the person, whom he didn't know was "The Banker," and would be long disappeared once the man got all possible information out of him.

Steve Uben told his son in November to leave Martin alone and then in December most of the internal communications between the CEO and his divisions slowed to a near crawl of unimportant information. By this time, Chris was very entrenched in USA Bank's programs and he was skimming around $10,000 a day off late payments and late clearance accounts he had proof the bank was foisting illegally upon its customers. Thousands of checks from customers close to their deadlines were being delayed by a day or two, just long enough to trigger overdraft fees that the bank could then charge.

Some of the private account holders complained and many received their overdraft penalties back. Many did not, especially companies and corporations whose accountants weren't checking on their dozens of bank accounts daily. USA Bank was clearing nearly a million a day on fraudulent overdraft fees on its East Coast accounts alone.

Chris in turn skimmed a fraction off the top, and somebody at the bank was noticing this and had a team of twenty geeks following Chris. They were certainly not as good as he was, and he changed his attack daily from upper East Coast to lower Midwest and then upper Midwest, and so on. There were dozens of areas that he could hit, and the hackers inside the bank could never keep up as there were at least a dozen other hackers hitting the biggest bank in the United States of America daily, from all over the world.

Slowly the government was pressured through the lobbyists to help the banks fight white-collar crime, and began working with the banks on legitimate theft. The banks certainly didn't want their misdeeds to be noticed.

The government had its own problems, especially with Snowden and his whereabouts. Washington also had hackers trying to get into their own secret systems, thousands upon thousands of them, and only a small percentage were from inside the country. Now secret government files they did not want the American public to know about were being leaked from internal sources. A double whammy, and the government was really angry with Edward Snowden for starting this. They wanted blood.

Government high-level secrecy was protected with far more ultramodern and powerful programs than the average American indie-hacker could get through. The Cubes had not had much luck with or interest in government installations, other than the departments who might want to get to know them.

Social Security, births and deaths, marriages, and property transactions were mostly far too uninteresting for the external hackers, mostly Chinese, Russian, Iranian and even Israeli. This was home territory, and the government itself wasn't really interested in private citizens' information getting out. The U.S. government was only interested in keeping its secrets hidden and its tail covered by keeping the back door closed and locked.

It took the banking institutions a lot of negotiating to get the anti-hacking systems of the U.S. Government to aid them by allowing information to change hands if there was a breach of national security, especially if the Feds had a chance to make large amounts of income from bank accounts by freezing or confiscating funds from illegal institutions. This was where the Sabers and Martins got immunity for deeds, and got insider help on potential threats to do with each side losing money. For once the banks and the Feds worked hand in hand to solve crime against themselves and each other.

For the small-time indie hackers like Mr. and Mrs. Byte, The Cube, The Ram and several others, 2013 was going to be a tougher year than 2012, but as Steve Uben said, it was tough for everybody who worked, legal or not, and it had been a tougher year every year for the last decade. White-collar thieves now needed extremely high IQs and great skills to survive in the field of hacking, and the opposition was grouping up and fighting back.

These were the discussions by the Cube family in their safe retreat on the Surrey-Sussex border, England.

"Chris, I think that there is going to be new troubles for the U.S. this year," Steve said once dinner was done and the dishes cleaned.

They were sitting in the lounge all together with an after dinner drink. It was the third of January, and they were all leaving in the next 72 hours. Chris had given up on Katie returning and was already thinking about visiting San Diego with his RV. It was time to spend a bit of time on the West Coast, and enjoy the sites beautiful California had.

The other two stayed silent waiting for Steve to continue. "All I can suggest is that we don't piss off any government departments, except the ones we know well, and only go in to obtain important information. We know that all the U.S. major banks are stealing money from their customers. Bank fees and mortgage transactions are the two most blatant. The third is in closing out estates, where I have found several ways they are holding money from accounts of the deceased, and making sure the full, the correct amounts doesn't reach the heirs. This is where I'm working this year, and you two will have to find your own sources of income."

"Estate money getting skimmed?" Chris asked.

"Yes, there seems to be several companies in cahoots here. I'm not saying what or who, but will say that certain legal firms, insurance companies, and of course the large banks are working together trading information for backhanders. It is certainly becoming a dirty world out there, and I'm hoping that God still favors me and thinks me decent enough to be thought of as...you know...heaven material. That place must be pretty empty right now." Both his wife and son smiled.

"Dad, I don't think God allows in thieves, or thieving hackers." Chris replied.

"Well," his father replied smiling. "His choice of who he allows in is getting smaller and smaller as time goes by." His mother nodded her approval of that one.

"Maybe it's a little empty and too desolate for us?' she added. "Well, I'm heading into a different area. I'm not telling you where, except it is not the Feds, or local government, or the banks for that matter. Of course, nothing can keep me away from bank accounts, as accounts are where the money is. At least I can say that I have never hacked a dime that hasn't been previously stolen from somebody else, and I will never directly steal from a living person."

"I can say the same about individual people," said Chris. "Corporations will never miss one cent a day out of an account, and everything I have moved in a new direction was most probably not supposed to be there in the first place. You two already know my area: overdrafts and illegitimate bank dealings with people's bank accounts, and that is where I'm going to work this year, except that I might move around the world a little more."

"Yes, son, just be careful," replied Steve. "I don't think it wise to be in one type of money movement for too long. I believe that could be Katie's downfall. The banks have gone so quiet recently. The prime mortgage debacle between 2008 and 10 made them more money than anytime previously, and I think there might be an attempt in progress to do it all over again, hence me not wanting to get into property dealings. I do not own one piece of real property in the United States. Actually I, Steven J. Uben, hereby solemnly swear that I don't own anything in my name anymore, and maybe it's time to wipe Steve Uben off the world map."

"A good idea, Dad," Chris laughed. "Let's wipe all our birth certificates away. We never existed, like you and your history at USA Bank, and nobody could ever catch us because we don't actually exist!"

The other two looked at Chris. He did actually have a good point.

"We would not even need to belong to a country," his mother added.

"Like the old European gypsies," Steve suggested. "Not a bad idea, son, but it could cause a hiccup in the world system somewhere, people with no identities running amok."

"Could be a new craze," Chris added. "'Nobodies' running around by the thousands would certainly screw up the government spying on its own people systems."

"Yes, and that brings me to our last area of family planning," Steve continued, changing the subject. "From 2013, today and when we leave here, we must have a system of survival. We each need to be totally independent of each other if anyone gets caught. We need to stash new identities away in several large and small countries. Have chunks of cash in foreign currencies to live on for long periods and be able to disappear better than the U.S. Witness Protection program. Let's each tell what we have in security for retirement so far, and from today, we need to spread what we already have and what we are about to receive far and wide. Also I think it's a good idea if each of us knows a way how to contact the others, to warn one another, or leave a clue to meeting up. London, Paris, actually all the world's capitals have far too many cameras searching for faces. We need to work in small towns and rural villages, where there is everything we need to survive with, and where we can walk around unnoticed."

The other two kept quiet and thought out methods to suggest, and what they actually owned. This hadn't been done in the Uben family before, and could be interesting, and need they be 100 percent truthful to their own family?

"I'll start first," said Steve. "I know that this room is safe. I checked it when we arrived, and after your friend left, Chris. You know me. I love gadgets and your mother and I have purchased the best stuff the FBI and the CIA use to debug rooms. Actually Interpol had the best equipment on their internal student spy sites, and we just looked for the same gear on the European black market. John Christopher Smithers, AKA me, has actually owned this house we are sitting in for seven years now, and this is my tenth stay here, so we have had time to collect gear to keep our lives private. I might have to move now that Katie Gardener has been here, and will ponder that in the next couple of days. It has appreciated in value from 400,000 British Pounds to 550,000 over the time I've owned it free and clear, and has been a nice little investment. Maybe it is time to move, which is one of the drawbacks of our profession. I believe that it will go fast. Okay, family. Me, Stephan J. Uben, the person that does not have an identity, owns four houses in four corners of the world, but I will not tell you where. The house in a country in South America is my favorite and worth over $2.5 million. I have around $7 million in cash, $4 million in property, the RV we purchased in Chicago, and seven international IDs. Steve Uben hardly exists, and your mother knows my houses, and I know hers, but we don't know yours, Chris. Keep it that way."

"Mom, your turn," Chris said.

"Three apartments outside the U.S., one house inside the U.S., and I could find about $3 million in cash. Half the RV we will sell this year, and a vacation resort worth several million somewhere." Both males looked at her in shock.

"You own a vacation resort?" asked her husband, looking at her. This was something he didn't know.

"It is not in the U.S., but in the southern hemisphere, and I could retire on the profits it makes," Jenny Uben added.

"Let us all give up hacking and live happily ever after?" Chris suggested.

"Not in a million years," Jenny answered back. "What would life be like without the cloak and dagger stuff of hacking? That is my favorite part!" she smiled at her two men. "And oh! I forgot to include my IDs. I have five identities, three of which are new and unused, all international. My identity in the U.S. is expired, but I have seen traces of the FBI searching for my information very recently, so I'm not going back."

Both parents said nothing, but looked at Chris. Chris thought for a moment. "I have my RV which I'm going to export and maybe change its identity and drive around Europe or something."

"Too dangerous. Too much exposure. Not a good idea, son," said Steve.

"I was thinking that, Dad, but that RV is so handy. Let me go on. I have nearly $2 million in cash in the RV, nearly a million in several accounts around the world, but I do not own any real property, apart for my beautiful little apartment outside the USA. I'm pretty short at the moment, as this small apartment cost me three years of work and nearly everything I've made in my life. It is in a very expensive part of the world. The apartment came with a nice 86-foot long-range motor trawler that can take me around the world. Maybe I should turn that into my travel vehicle and get rid of the bus. The apartment and boat are in one of my unused IDs and I have seven more, three completely new from Chop Stix. Dad, Chris Uben doesn't exist anymore, and that's my lot."

"So, it must be by an ocean, and you forgot to mention the value," Steve said.

"Do you really want to know what my retirement investment cost me?" replied Chris sheepishly. Nobody responded, except to stare at him. "It took another year of working with AmericaCorp and Bank of The States together, our penny-pinching program, Dad."

"I thought we stopped the penny-pinching program, both of us?" Steve replied.

"Sorry Dad, I knew you wouldn't look back when you stopped it, and I just extended the system we worked together, from just downtown Manhattan to the whole of New Jersey, Philadelphia and Connecticut, and the rest of New York State." Still his parents said nothing and he knew that he had to tell them his biggest secret. "Well, Mom bought a whole resort. What did that cost you, Mom? $10 million?"

"It's a small resort, son. It cost me $6.5 million and I'm still building it up year by year," she replied.

"Do I have to, Mom, Dad?" Chris whined. "Okay, I purchased the apartment a month ago for $27 million and that includes the boat." His father's face went white.

"When they get you son, you are going away for a long time," was all he could say.

"I think that is true for all of us, Dad," Chris replied, his mother nodding and looking at her son proudly.

Over the next couple of hours or so, and until they were too tired to continue, they worked out a system to keep in contact, and a potential retirement plan of action. All three knew that the odds would stack against them the longer they played around with the lions and tigers, and they made a pact that this would be the last year they would tempt fate. From then on it was Margaritas or Mojitos anywhere they couldn't be found, certainly not in the United States. Why play in the lion's cage? One thing all three knew: that the U.S. Justice System would go to the ends of the earth to find somebody they wanted, and the furthest corner was little safer than in the country they could ransack at will.
Chapter 16

Trouble Looms

2013 started off quietly for most occupants of the world. The recession, as the media had long said, was over and the U.S. stock market showed record growth. Other areas of the world were still in a recession. Parts of Europe struggled, Russia had its old leader back and he was boasting his prowess with the rest of the world.

The Libor changed hands. Many large companies united or merged. The large international banks were quiet and everybody waited for the interest rates in the United States to rise. They didn't rise more than one percent for the first half of the year, much to the displeasure of The Banker.

Steve Uben's country house in England sold quickly within a month of the family leaving. The first person to notice the change of occupancy was Katie Gardener, who had spent several weeks with her old friend in Italy. Katie had finally realized that she wanted somebody else more than Francesca, and returned to south England to find a nice mature couple in the house, who had just moved in a week earlier. She smiled at the quick property charge. Old Mr. Byte was sure a fast worker, and she knew where to find her new beau.

With new papers, this time a British citizen with a permanent residence in the U.S., Katie, AKA "Margaret Jones," headed out of Britain and into New York's JFK. The address she gave immigration when she arrived was a downtown hotel, and within three hours she was on an aircraft to Seattle as Francesca Pener.

For the first time in her life, she made the smallest mistake. One Francesca Pener had left the country and had not yet returned. A small office in the middle of the Homeland Security building noticed this and wondered how many Francesca Peners there were in the USA. On Facebook the agent found none, but two on LinkedIn, one of them on Twitter. He realized that there weren't many, but the coincidence was a little too much to ignore as JFK was on both alerts. Maybe the information was wrong, but the agent put out a system wide inquiry just in case.

Katie, also thinking that her "Francesca" identity had been too often used, decided to leave it for a while. She needed a new U.S. identity, and got into contact with her man in China.

The beach house and Ferrari inside the garage were untouched and just as she had left them. Katie had been away for ten weeks, ample time to think that The Cube himself might come snooping soon.

Chris had been interesting, easy to get along with and not demanding. He wasn't a hulk, and certainly not Brad Pitt, but for the first time in her life, she had an interest in a man. Katie knew she wasn't Angelina Jolie either. Her hair, normally a dusty blonde, changed color often, her boobs were tiny, and she had small hips. Her eyes were her best part, big and innocent looking, and she certainly didn't resemble the powerful Mercedes Cortez.

She felt a little worried. She knew that something wasn't right, so she spent a few days figuring what to do next.

The meeting with other hackers as good as she, for the first time in her life, gave her a pantry of food for thought. Each of the Ubens worked in different directions, their tiny mistakes noticeable to the others, and maybe other people watching as well. She had worked tightly and carefully, and had realized that they all made mistakes, and with this bad economy, and the rapidly growing anti-hacker units, government and private, it was maybe only a matter of time here in the States before somebody noticed something and got on her trail. She considered the three Ubens to be more visual compared to her, and this was her one reason to sell the beach house and car, and to set up a new base outside the United States on her last visit, once she had left the house in southern England. After a few days of thought, she decided that the house would have to go.

Katie decided to move but stay in the area. There were several new pretty houses in La Jolla, a rich suburb to the north of San Diego. Here she could stash the Ferrari. She loved her car, and it was worth more than it was to get rid of it. She knew that her yellow dream could one day be her demise.

Property in San Diego was on the rebound, and after checking her moves a dozen times, she sold her beach house a few weeks later and moved north, her new international corporation paying in full for her new two-bedroom house in a six-month-old community. The price difference wasn't much and she had the first moving company take her possessions to Bellevue, Washington, store them in a public storage unit for a week, then a second company moved it all to a unit in Kansas.

Finally, a month after the ink was dry on the sale, her furniture arrived at her new, small, single-story USA headquarters. She had kept an eye out for Chris but never saw him.

Chris was watching as the moving truck left the road behind the beach house. His person of interest was on the move, and the last thing he wanted was to get noticed by anybody also watching. As Matt Palmer, and now a resident of San Diego in a house full of San Diego college students, he drove a small, beat-up silver Toyota pickup, had grown a beard and looked much like any other student in the area. His hair had grown to his shoulders and he looked the same as many Californians had looked since the 60s. His housemates never noticed that he never went to class, as they often didn't much either, and were hung over, or sleeping the late nights away. He had an electric bill for his share of the house and Matt Palmer got a new San Diego address driver's license and became part of the city.

What his housemates also didn't know was that a Joseph Daniels had moved into San Diego, looked identical to Matt Palmer, got his own California driver's license, went to a local technical college and drove a small Nissan Versa. So had a Mark Patterson and a Joel Martin, the same name as Chris' hated enemy.

Each had a different beat-up student vehicle and this was why the wary Katie never saw Chris.

He stalked her daily. He was in Mark Patterson's old white Nissan Frontier with its three surfboards in the back when he watched as the yellow Ferrari reversed out of the beach house's garage one morning, an hour after he had staked out the road, and headed toward the freeway. He also checked for any others following the gleaming and noisy Ferrari, and was happy to see he was the only one, about a half a mile back. The car was easy to spot turning left and right in front of him.

Hitting the freeway, it drove up to Dana Point and, before it exited the highway, drove through the seaside town and then headed back on the same highway and re-exited at La Jolla.

Chris kept his distance, still watching out for any cruising or stationary vehicles that had occupants and watched as the Ferrari headed into a new garage, this time a double in a small house with its picket fence on the cliffs in front of it. Katie does like her sea views, he thought to himself.

She only stayed in the house for a few minutes before heading back toward the freeway. He passed the rear of the house as he followed her, but couldn't see anything of interest. At a legal speed the Ferrari headed north into Los Angeles, where it lost him two hours later.

Chris had work to do. His father, still in Britain, had noticed something amiss with one of the houses they had used as a computer basement in their old development, and Chris headed in the direction of Charlotte to find out. USA Bank had been very quiet for some time, but a red security flag had appeared on a transaction taking place in the development. Steve had noticed this on his daily search through new records of his old hunting grounds. He had a feeling that something wasn't quite right.

The family now communicated through cheap prepaid cell phones or snail mail. Snail mail was safer than electronic email, as long as the address it was going to wasn't on anybody's radar.

Steve couldn't see much inside the workings of the bank anymore, but had noticed this one problem.

Chris drove past the house twice and on the second day, found the house with a moving van outside, and an unmarked police car. The local sheriff's department had some interest in the house. The other houses, including their old house, which had uncut grass, again looked empty, and had no cars outside. He reported the information back to his father, and they both expected that the changes they had made to the house had been seen by a housing inspector or realtor.

There wasn't much anybody could do. Somebody was getting closer to them, and Steve believed he knew who it was.

Chuck Martin had spent the first month getting his work force settled. As with Stephan Saber, his new headquarters had his most important and well-paid personnel. It was not easy explaining to many of his grumbling staff that they were underground, and would be for their entire duration. A large section of the top floor of the six floors he occupied was his security department, making sure that the strict communication rules were implemented. Every email or business communication in and out was cleared by a staff of 12 working 24/7.

The second and then third groups arrived by submarine during January, and his six-floor section was full by the end of March. In April, Martin supervised 60 security personnel checking every outgoing message.

He had the island's security crew replace one of his house-girls who had mysteriously taken ill and died, and then the second one when she was found hiding in the security barracks. The commander warned Martin about his treatment of the staff, and the CEO minimized his games once he was only allowed one replacement, on the orders of The Banker, through Stephan Saber.

His boredom led him to spending his off hours searching for the person he knew as a tiny thorn in his side.

In May, Martin found his first clue in Charlotte. A realtor had said to the bank's mortgage department that an array of high capacity electrical outlets was found in a housing development that mostly belonged to the bank. Four houses had been inspected as rentals, and the bank inspector had found suspicious electrical outlets, common to increase the power to run large amounts of computer equipment.

Martin had a search done throughout the bank's records and found nothing until he searched through the clean folders of property. The houses had once held staff that had worked for the bank, and the information had been sanitized. Here he found three names. Two of the men were old employees: one had died through natural causes and a second was last located two years earlier in a mental intuition in Tampa Florida, once the bank had forced them and their families out of the housing development. The third name, Steven J. Uben, head of security for a time before the bank had moved to Charleston, piqued his interest, and he was surprised to see that it was extremely difficult to get any new information on the man or his family. His wife had resigned from the local university a year later, and they had one child, a Christopher Uben.

Over nights of scrutiny, Martin couldn't find much on the family, except that they had resided at an address in the housing development, and then suddenly they didn't.

For Chuck Martin, this interest and search took up much of his time, most probably saving the life of his third female servant for a few months. He began to become totally enthralled with the trail he had found, and employed every ounce of what his security could do, hacking into government files, local city files, and every byte of information he wanted.

He could not find one string of hacking information that led to this Steven J. Uben, or his son, but he did find an electricity bill to one of the other houses, to a Margaret Forman, who had never lived in the house, ever, and it was dated 2009, and for over a thousand dollars. He knew that there were very few reasons a private house could use so much electricity and he sent the inspector a note ordering him to check out that house that was also unoccupied.

Chuck Martin knew that he was on the right track when the inspector found nothing in the house, but he did find two more electrical cables running underground and out of the house, far more than a usual house needed. No house needed that amount of electricity.

Now he had a name, Uben, but he couldn't find a trail of any of the family once they had left the house. The sale had been a bad one and he smiled at the price Steven Uben had received for it once he was unemployed. Less than half its worth.

Opening up what the bank had on the man, he found a good and loyal employee that had done a good job as head of security for his bank. Chuck Martin didn't care about how good anybody did for the bank. He didn't really care about the bank itself. The only thing Chuck Martin was interested in was himself, and keeping his nose clean with The Banker, a person who he had never met but seemed even more ruthless than he was. Anybody who crossed The Banker was toast, as far as Chuck Martin was concerned, and Chuck Martin wasn't a brave man.

He became frustrated, and put half a dozen of his best men onto searching for every scrap of theft, missing money, or transactions that had gone amiss and cost the bank.

By midyear he had two whole walls of his large underground office on his top floor brim full of hacks in accounts, thievery, and missing money, often only a cent at a time, but he had a trail and knew that even though the total amount was chump change, less than $25 million; the game of cat and mouse in this lousy living establishment was getting exciting.

The search began to consume him, especially when his third servant fled his unit, her body full of bruises and cigarette burns. From then on he was only given a cleaner once a week and food was delivered three times a day to his apartment. He began to spend most of his time underground, searching for an Uben, any Uben. He didn't care.

Stephan Saber had the opposite attitude. He didn't care for his office on the top floor of the underground floors. He worked in his apartment. The screams of pain coming from Chuck's unit next to his had died down, and he enjoyed the peace and quiet. He was happy that his friend's third servant had left, as the noises had spooked his two girls, who struggled to give him his pleasures every day. He didn't hurt them physically, just doled out some mental abuse, and they seemed to get over the torments he inflicted on them.

Stephan's firm was doing well. The markets were all up and the profits were rolling in. He had an interim bank vice-president in New York to tend to business and he had more free time than he had ever had in his business career. He and the base's security chief had designed a short six-hole pitch-and-putt golf course on the grass in each of the middle of both squares, and he called them the Front Three and Back Three. He and the base commander were good buddies now and played both courses, weather permitting. Several others of the security personnel played golf and a small area of the bar became the clubhouse. Stephan could often be found there.

By midyear both men were going crazy, and The Banker allowed them a month's freedom and return to the States. A few of the underground team were also literally going crazy, three were in the cells far below ground and one had committed suicide. Notwithstanding good and bad interactions among the staff, all wanted fresh air, but they were going nowhere.

Submarines arrived to take the crazies, the dead body and the two CEOS back home.

Chris Uben studied the housing estate posing as a party interested in renting a house. He met the realtor. As Matt Palmer, he inquired about houses for rent and why there were police vehicles nearby both times he looked at houses. The reply was that the bank staff had found extra electricity cables running into a few houses, although there was no meth lab in the development.

After two visits, he had seen enough, but unfortunately his age and his questions appeared in the development report the realtor sent monthly to the bank. For the first time the name of Matt Palmer, a person studying in San Diego, came up on Chuck Martin's screen in his underground office, but he was underwater on his way west and wouldn't get his messages for several days.

Chris headed back to San Diego. He had given his person of interest time to settle in, and he approached the house on the La Jolla cliffs facing the beach as a representative of a local electrical company. At least, that's what was printed on his small white Ford rental van with large advertising magnets he had got made on some internet site.

With trepidation, and now looking different in a uniform with cap and clipboard, a modern beard and moustache and his hair colored jet black, he carefully went from house to house doing a survey on electrical usage.

He visited a dozen houses during his first week, waving at the other workers and garbage trucks when they passed. In his second week, and his van now part of the outside view, he met two more house owners before he hit Katie's front door. Chris knew she was in, as he had been out since early morning and hadn't seen the Ferrari leave. He had often seen a second red Ferrari only several doors down from her house. She was certainly living well.

He knocked and heard a familiar voice shout at him through the door. "Whatever you are selling I'm not interested," came the voice from inside.

"I'm doing an electrical survey, ma'am," he shouted back. "Uben Electricity at your fingertips, ma'am." For several moments there was silence until he felt an eye look at him from the peephole in the door.

"And what happens if I'm not interested in doing a survey for Uben electricity?" she shouted back this time from the other side of the door. Chris thought that he could hear a smile in her question.

"I'm sure you will be, ma'am. I am now old enough to drink, so let's go out and have a beer." He said that softer so that anybody listening wouldn't hear.

The door opened and she let him in.
Chapter 17

Interest Rates Finally Rise

Even though the first half of 2013 was a quiet year in the banking industry, and the economy was rebounding, foreclosures rose steadily as time went by. The banks, especially the big four, were working hard on The Banker's orders to foreclose on anything more than 30 days late. They tried to keep their dealings away from the prying eyes of the media, though a story was about to break in July. Unfortunately, at the same time a large building exploded in downtown Shanghai and in Chicago on the same day, which took the media in another direction, so that several powerful men could tighten the screws on the Reserve Bank.

The Reserve Bank's chairman's wife had a minor car accident, not her fault, and one of his younger brother's son's was sideswiped by a car while getting off a school bus, all on the same day.

These two accidents were minor, but the really stressful part for the Reserve chairman was that two letters had arrived within days of each other a month earlier, warning him that these minor accidents could occur soon.

The accidents didn't stop there. A car, its brakes having failed, slammed into the chairman's car one Sunday morning a week later on his way to church. By this time he had discussed these letters with certain members of the FBI who shrugged them off as just a gripe with someone who didn't like him.

The poor elderly man who had driven into the rear of his car couldn't understand why his car had behaved so. He had applied the brakes to park behind the car in front, and was positive he had done so. He was not that old, he said to the police. Instead of his car halting, it had sped up, and yes, he always drove to the same church every Sunday as the Fed chairman was heading to, and at exactly the same time.

Since they were members of the same church, the FBI and local police decided that it wasn't a religious crime, and decided to strip the car down to find the problem.

What really shocked them was that inside the engine, modifications had been made to control the pedals of the vehicle by remote control. Somebody in the vicinity of the church parking lot had made the car rear-end the chairman's car. Now an investigation was started, much to the amusement of The Banker and the three leaders of the largest U.S. banks.

After two minor accidents, his wife was quite stressed, and he realized that the letters had meant what they said.

A third letter arrived a week later and caused more dismay. It arrived at his home address in Georgia, and was addressed to his wife, explaining that she only had a matter of days to live. This caused pandemonium in the FBI community; the chairman and family were given protection and moved to a secret location in Washington. That didn't stop the family house, now empty of people, erupting in a massive fireball early one morning, and the chairman's brother having a head-on vehicle collision with a runaway delivery van, empty of its driver, 300 miles south, in Florida.

Washington kept the media away, said that the house explosion was a gas main explosion and an investigation was taking place. With the chairman's brother now in the hospital with a broken arm, and other minor cuts and bruises, the President himself got involved, commanding the entire country's security systems to search for these terrorists as he called them while the chairman held an emergency meeting with the Board of the Reserve Bank.

In one of the letters he hadn't shown to anybody were demands, and he begged the Board that a two percent increase in all Treasury Bills needed to go in effect immediately. Since the Board had recently met and discussed the very idea, they reversed their latest vote with the chairman's approval, and increased all lending and prime rates in the country by two percent, effective immediately.

The President and his finance team were surprised, but believed that the country, now with a growing economy, could handle real interest rates again. This rallied the world around the Fed chairman to a peaceful conclusion, and made millions across the United States pay more in credit card interest and bank loan interest. Soon most of the adjustable mortgages would increase by two percent at their next due date.

The new mortgage rates began to hit new owners hard, at a time when Freddie and Fanny had received and granted thousands of new adjustable-rate mortgages.

During the first half of the year, adjustable interest mortgages were the rage across the country. The four big banks had eased the buying stress for many with new subprime type mortgages for the masses. They were called annual renewable adjustable interest rates and were offered at extremely low interest rates with an extremely low deposit.

The media commended the big banks on easing the house buying experience and sales soared and the house building industry grew by the day.

This had all happened months before the letters to the chairman began arriving, and since the current interest rates were so low, the Federal Reserve, its chairman, and the Federal Government didn't think that a two percent rise across the board would do much damage to the economy.

The stock market was still at record highs. The unemployment numbers manipulated by Washington to decrease the percentage rates were showing that the economy was rebounding, and The Banker knew that Washington was playing into his hands and making it easier for him to begin the next phase of his twenty-year plan.

Months before the 2013 Bankers' Convention, this year to be held in Bern, Switzerland, millions of new mortgages were making millions of new, happy home owners, the stock market high at 15,500, and the unemployment rate statistics given out by Washington showed that as far as the Feds were concerned, unemployment getting close to 2007 numbers.

The Federal Reserve still had daily meetings with the government, as well as the big four banks while these letters kept arriving.

Unbeknownst to the Fed chairman, half of his voting board was now servants of The Banker. It had taken a lot of time and years, but through threats and manipulation, he had the majority vote at the Federal Reserve, the most powerful financial organization in the world.

The government was extremely worried and wanted the big four banks to do what they had always done; bundle these new mortgages from Freddie and Fannie as mortgage-backed securities and to move them into the open markets. They were not used to so much risk, and the President and his monetary committee even wanted to return Freddie and Fannie back to privatization again. The government was at risk if ever another property bubble burst.

The big banks and companies like Jacob Silverstein's were happy to help the government. They created new paths into the stock market and to the smaller banking institutions, bundling and selling as fast as they could to the private sector, bundles of their own, and the government backed bundles of mortgages, as cheap as possible to anybody who weren't part of their inside circle. At these prices, the hungry and greedy smaller institutions gobbled up everything offered to them, with loans offered to help purchase the mortgage-backed securities by the large banks.

Stephan Saber, Chuck Martin and the other two CEOs worked back in New York for the second half of the year sending out the new mortgage-backed securities as fast as they could. The Federal government turned a blind eye to the new markets, and even the SEC was ordered by Washington and the Federal Reserve to downplay policy and allow these new markets to emerge naturally. Money after all and easy profits is the root of all evil, with high interest rates!

Only the Reserve chairman was unhappy. He met twice with the President and his money team. Both times he was told that new, modern, faster acting ideas were needed to boost the economy and that maybe he was a little too conservative in his way of thinking.

He decided to resign from his position.

With the usual pomp and ceremony, and media releases, someone new was found to replace the conservative thinker.

This time Stephan Saber and his cronies suggested, on the orders of The Banker, a new man, who was already in the current President's government and a success story throughout the financial industry, and he was persuaded to take over the reins of the Federal Reserve. He had come up the ranks working smaller banks into profitable businesses, running a large top-ten university for a decade, and had been invited into the current administration to assess the risk of the new financial success hitting the country. The four powerful bankers knew him well, and wondered if this new man was "The Banker."

Even though the man who spoke to each of them several times a year, and at their private conference, sounded foreign, maybe with today's technology, his voice and also his accent could be changed. In this modern world anything was possible.

During the second half of the year the NSA, the FBI, and even certain members of the CIA were working on financial hacking of government institutions, and also the penetration of the banking sector by decree from Washington.

Most of the hacking into the government departments was followed to areas of the planet outside the U.S. borders. They had several areas where the CIA were working hard trying to get computer-experienced agents into foreign buildings from where these hackings by the thousands were taking place daily.

China had three buildings full of hacker personnel who did everything they could to get into the U.S. government computers, 24/7.

The CIA got wind of a massive attempt to bring down the national electrical grid, airport security on the ground and in the air, and one morning a large bomb in a large farm truck driven in by an unhappy Chinese farmer exploded at the entrance gate into the building's underground parking in Shanghai. The truck was too big to drive into the underground building, and so had crashed through the security gate and exploded as its roof hit the lower corner of the building directly above it.

The blast was as large as the Oklahoma City Bombing years earlier and the thirty story building and its powerful array of international communication systems toppled into the streets around it in central Shanghai, killing hundreds of employees inside, and the same amount on the streets outside.

Immediately, the U.S. government departments saw a decrease in traffic hitting their sites, and knew that they were on the right track.

A week later a second unhappy person, this time driving a uniform delivery van, exploded it directly inside the underground parking area of a building in central Beijing. Its blast wasn't as big, but the 25 story building collapsed nevertheless, and hundreds more died. A day later a third blast hit a building in the city of Nanjing, and killed as many.

China immediately said on its national news systems after the third blast that it believed that terrorist agencies outside their borders were the cause of these attacks on its civilians and it had proof that it could be the U.S. government.

All of a sudden, attempted hacking into U.S. Government departments dropped by 50 percent, and with their workloads reduced the FBI began looking into the country's internal hacking into the private banks.

Unbeknownst to the Uben family and Katie Gardener, the government specialists, certainly not as experienced as they were, began to find clues and trails the security teams inside the banking headquarters hadn't and began exchanging information between themselves.

Since their leaving the island off Scotland in June, both men hadn't gone back. Nor had the other two Bank CEOs. Even The Banker's club people were not allowed to divulge their whereabouts to the other members. It seemed that the six club members were split up in the three new secret bases, which were secret even to the club members. Both Stephan and Chuck did not know where the other two headquarters were, and the others did not know about the Scottish island. The Banker was playing his cards carefully, and only he knew what obstacles lay ahead.

Chris and Katie were fishing off Hatteras Island when one of the NSA departments found Chris' trail of his most profitable hack inside USA Bank. Chuck Martin had been pushing the government teams like a bloodhound on a fresh scent.

Chris had always wanted to try fishing, and Katie enjoyed the sea and eating a fish diet, but not actually catching them. The charter boat they were in for the whole day off the Diamond Shoals had caught just one small Wahoo. It was mid-September and the sea was calm and flat. Not good for fishing. Katie sat next to him. It had been five months since that fateful day in La Jolla and a lot of water had passed under the bridge since then.

They were in love, a pair, and had most things in common. They now worked out new ideas together, and like Chris' parents, shared everything.

The property in La Jolla was gone, sold, as was everything else they both owned in the USA, except for Chris's RV and Katie's Ferrari, about to head out in a shipping container to an island for safety. The fast-rising interest rates had made her property sale harder, and Katie had actually lost $10,000 on her La Jolla house.

Both worked hard on their security. They planned and discussed every move, enough to get noticed by the Bytes, who asked Chris two months later about his dealings, which now seemed so much more professional and untraceable. Both the Bytes felt happy that their son might no longer be alone. They both liked Katie, and had looked forward to a reunion.

Katie had made Chris promise that he would get out of USA Bank, fast, and with his last transaction moved $1.97 million dollars out of the country, in one transaction. It was easily noticed by Martin, and Steve Uben. Then he headed over to the East Coast in the RV, pulling a new trailer that housed the Ferrari and several computers, terminals and top-of-the-line communications gear. Katie liked to travel lightly.

Chris' transaction, a "defiant goodbye to USA Bank" he said in a letter to his father a few weeks before his fishing trip, was quickly noticed by the dozens of people at all the big banks on the East Coast looking for such occurrences. Martin and his team lost the trail in the Isle of Mann, as it went through the British offshore banking system.

Chuck Martin got onto man at Barclays and got the information for the hounds to continue. They lost it again in Switzerland and used the Baron in Stuttgart, Germany to trace the transaction. The Baron was a good friend of one of the bank's managers in Zurich. Again the trail headed back to Manhattan, changed into several small banks over a period of several hours, and as it left one bank, the accounts were closed by the Feds to stop them being used as a reverse move by the hacker.

Steve Uben noticed this mistake by the Feds and watched them follow the unknown transaction that looked like the work of his son.

He saw as it headed through Panama, then the Cayman Islands, into and out of Bermuda, and finally he too lost it, somewhere in the Paris banking system. He now thought he knew where his son's secret apartment was. He also noticed that the banks lost the trail in Panama, and the Feds lost the trail before it hit Bermuda, as traffic increased between NSA, FBI and CIA headquarters and Manhattan asking where it had gone.

Chris was relieved when his real account received part of the amount, once dozens of bank fees had decreased it, as it went through their systems.

Nothing else much happened for another six weeks, until Chuck Martin got wind that the money had gone through Bermuda. A bank employee on the island was tortured and then killed a month later for the information.

Bermuda didn't like its senior bank officials winding up dead, and asked the U.S. FBI for further information on why enquiries and then a death had occurred to a person on their island. The Feds couldn't ignore the demand and found out that somebody at USA Bank had set up the meeting. As soon as they started digging through an electronic trail, the bank's security department stopped them and told the government to get out of their business. Both sides stood their ground, stopped working in unison on financial hacking, and Chuck Martin's demands were not answered by the Feds anymore.

He was furious and told the FBI where they could get off, and he closed down all communication with the bank. That was the start of Chuck Martin's downhill trend, as he sent angry memos to several high and important officials getting no reply, until The Banker ordered him to back off.

His anger and need to find this thief who was skimming off his bank grew and grew. Even though it didn't hurt him personally, as he was worth many millions of dollars, or his bank, as insurance covered most small thefts, it was that somebody was messing with him, and that meant termination to anybody who pissed him off.

Meanwhile Chris was basking in the warm September sunshine, not caring whether he caught a fish or not. He was looking forward to having his one Wahoo, filleted at a local restaurant for him and Katie to enjoy. He was nearly asleep when his phone buzzed that it had received a text message.

The message read, "Dear sir: your most recent transaction has not cleared. Suggest you clear up your end and check it out; sincerely, your bank manager." Chris sat up and studied the message, breaking down its meaning. "Dear sir" was code from his parents. "Your bank manager" meant a banking transaction versus securities or property. Sincerely with a small "s" meant pretty dangerous, big "S" meant run! "Recent transaction" meant his last hack, and Chris felt a heavy weight come down on his shoulders knowing that his father had just told him that his last transaction had been followed, and that he needed to know exactly to where it was traced.

He threw the cell phone overboard with the message still lit up. He dug and pulled out another prepaid phone out of his backpack, which had never been used, turned it on, waited until it got a signal and phoned a number in New York. There was a message waiting for him from his father. "Mr. Jones, your personal banker here. We received the information stopping check number 1022 for an amount of $521.97 cents. The check has been stopped. The forged check was written somewhere this side of Hamilton Bermuda, and we have credited the amount back to your account. Suggest that you not use your checks until further notice."

Chris felt relieved. His father had seen somebody trail his movements to between Panama and Bermuda. That was only two-thirds the distance, and it had still gone through three countries before hitting France. He smiled, relaxing again. Chuck Martin was getting closer, and he wondered how far his father had managed to trace the journey, and whether he knew the amount? After this vacation he would go straight to the closest airport, RDU in Raleigh, and get a flight for Katie and himself to a safe place, once the RV was stored somewhere.

As he thought, the ship around him woke up as a line began zinging out from the rear of the fishing vessel.
Chapter 18

The Banker's Club – Lichtenstein, and Shanghai China

Again the six men met before the annual Bankers' Convention in Lichtenstein at the same hotel to discuss the world's banking affairs. Congratulations were given by The Banker for the first decent interest rate increase. He didn't have much to say to the European bankers as their area was still in recession and there wasn't much that could be done. The Banker was giving his full attention to the U.S. economy.

"Gentlemen, we have achieved a small success with our three percent interest hike in the United States so far this year. With these rates we will not meet our objective, but on the plus side, the rate increase has prompted more people to buy property, even though they are not getting a fixed mortgage on 70 percent of these new mortgages. I can never understand how the sheep act, but they do. Let us leave the rates at what they are until the end of October, and then force the Reserve's hand to increase them 1.5 percent and then again in March 2014 another two percent. Once we get to the magical number of eight percent interest rates, the wheels should come off the system, the economy will slow, and jobs will be lost. Hopefully by year's end next year we will have a second recession on our hands. If Europe hasn't come out of its long recession before then, the U.S. demise should push Europe deeper into higher non-payments and foreclosures. I think that the U.S. market is a big enough fish to catch right now; another world recession will break Chinese exports and turn that country into minus growth. That government can't go on building more and more cities which will never be lived in, and my research shows that if that occurs as planned, over 10 million Chinese workers will lose jobs and not be able to continue mortgage payments on their investment properties. I still don't know what the government will do on foreclosures, but I believe they will look outside their borders for help. That is where we come in. The average middle to high income Chinese family owns 3.75 properties. One to live in, and between 2 and 5 investment properties that are empty and will continue to be empty. With the loss of jobs and income, a potential 30 million housing units could come on the international market for pennies on the dollar. If the Chinese government foresees destruction of its power base and strength they will begin demanding payments of loans from the U.S. I believe that will free up close to three trillion dollars of property for us to purchase for cents on the dollar in all the First World countries. Property is my main interest. I don't give a damn about the 30 million cheap units in China, but I leave it up to you and your researchers to give me ideas of what we could do with four percent of China. Not a good looking scenario for us, investing anywhere other than inside the USA for the next three years."

The discussions went on for another two hours on future world developments before the Banker got down to the less important items.

"Chuck Martin, I have heard that you have enlisted the NSA, FBI, and even the CIA into fighting your bank's hacking problems. Amounts that I consider to be completely unimportant. Reports show that your bank has lost $37 million to hackers over the last five years. And what I cannot understand is that you are risking everything I'm working on to go after these little shits, because they piss you off. Do you understand the repercussions of your moves? Not only does it open your files for government scrutiny, but it guarantees that inquisitive government and freelance hackers will search deeper in your files than you want them to. What really gets my goat, Mr. Martin, is that 85 percent of your losses have been met by the insurance companies, and yet you continue threatening our overall plan to catch stupid little penny pinchers. If you don't stop your stupid antics, I will stop you. Understand?"

All suddenly white-faced, the other five men looked at Chuck Martin, who said nothing; they could see the anger in his face, not used to being told what to do. They also saw him nodding his head in agreement. His knuckles were also pure white holding onto the arms of his chair. Stephan Saber would now keep his distance from his old friend.

Chuck Martin was a marked man.

Hans Burger, the stand-in barman, returned after the meeting to a quiet room and began to prepare drinks. There was something wrong in the room; the six men looked worried, but that wasn't his job. He was paid to keep the drinks filled, serve dinner, and he was on duty the entire evening.

Trouble didn't raise its ugly head until the usual man, the American troublemaker, began to get drunk an hour or so later. Dinner had been served and a group of young Chinese girls, a dozen of them, were about to dance for the men. Music was piped through the speakers in the bar, as nobody else apart from the barman was allowed in the bar after dinner had been cleared away. Even the security stayed outside the locked doors. The barman wondered if the same horrible scene of two years ago was going to happen.

Hans Burger could see that the dancers were again young, high school or college students. They were all beautiful porcelain dolls and the men were already urging them to take off their clothing. It seemed that this group were extremely innocent girls, and not prepared to do as the drunk hagglers wanted.

Maybe the group had not been warned of what was about to happen, but the barman had a lousy taste in his mouth as Chuck Martin swore four letter words at him loudly for not bringing his next drink fast enough. He immediately headed over with the man's fresh drink. As he arrived and placed the drink on the man's side table, Chuck Martin got up and hit him hard in the stomach. The barman doubled up and crashed to the floor. Martin shouted obscenities at the dancers, a couple of the other men the barman could see through his slanted eyes as he fell to the floor, and especially his hated enemy the Baron who was smiling, looking forward to what was to come.

"Get your damn clothes off you damn sluts," shouted Chuck Martin walking toward the girls. "I want a naked lap dance from all of you right now!" Staggering as he walked, quite drunk, he grabbed the attire of the closest dancer between her tiny breasts and ripped it totally away from her body. The dancers, now shocked, stopped dancing, put their hands to their faces and began to scream.

"Get one on all fours like a dog, Chuck," shouted Baron Von Kippenhof, hitting his table hard with his fist. Martin, driven on by the smell of virgin body and the shouting of the European banker, gave the girl an uppercut to her jaw that spewed blood in all directions. Hans Burger watched as her small head snapped back, her whole body left the floor and the back of her head hit the wooden floor hard.

That didn't stop Chuck Martin; it just excited him more and he grabbed a second screaming girl and hit her in the stomach, and in one movement had ripped off her dance clothes and threw them high above his head, turned her around and let her head hit the floor hard as she fell forward on all fours. Martin was laughing, and howling like a wolf, ripping off her small undergarments and undoing his trousers as the girl began high-pitched screams. The barman watched, his mouth open, and years of anger boiled up inside of him.

He forced his unsteady brain to get to his feet and lurched forward, his eyes focused on the man in the middle of the screaming girls. He heard the Baron egging Chuck Martin on as the barman moved forward. Chuck Martin had his trousers undone, was ramming himself into the dazed girl and pulling a switchblade out of his trouser pocket at the same time as the others noticed the barman rushing forward.

"Stop the barman, he's going to ruin the fun," shouted the Baron as the barman moved onto the dance area.

Chuck Martin didn't hear the barman coming as he flicked the blade open and rammed the knife hard underneath and into the belly of the now screaming dancer bent forward in front of him. He was also howling like a madman. The barman grabbed the banker by his arm, lifted him up and twirled him around as blood from the girl went over both of them.

Chuck Martin's eyes turned and saw the crappy man who had been late with his drink move his fist backwards and then hit him as hard as he could on his nose. The last pain he felt as he dropped was a large hard shoe connecting between his upper bare legs and the agony made him utter a piercing scream before he passed out and dropped to the ground in the growing puddle of blood from the dying Chinese girl.

Hans Burger, still unsteady and on his feet, turned to face the other five excited faces staring at him. Only the Baron had something to say.

"You dummkopf! Now you had better entertain us or I will have you and your family hurt," the Baron said in English.

"You have already killed my family, Herr Baron," replied Hans loudly, trying hard to get control of himself. "Munich, the bomb blast in 1971. Near Isartorplatz, by the Isar River. You killed that Bavarian politician who didn't like you. Remember, Herr Baron. My family lived in the same building below Herr Strauss, and you killed them as well. Now it is your turn. And by the way The Boss has asked me to inform him of everything that went on here tonight and I will make a report."

The barman menacingly walked up to the still-sitting Baron who wasn't smiling anymore. He had just wet his pants, and the barman gave him an uppercut to the jaw as hard as he could. The Baron's mouth was closed, so he didn't lose any teeth, but the strength of the blow blew him right out of the chair and he landed in Stephan Saber's lap.

The rest of the men were still shocked. With the security suddenly banging hard on the locked wooden doors to get in, Hans Burger changed his mind about killing the hated man, walked around the bar, unlocked the back door, and ran out of the building.

He immediately headed away in the darkness from the hotel. He was a dead man if he stayed there; the statement about the boss had been a lie, but it would buy him a little time if the hotel's many security guards caught him.

Chris Uben was in Shanghai, China when Hans Burger ran like a madman from the hotel. So was Katie. They were in a friend's apartment, checking over the latest IDs their mutual friend had for them. Once they had left Raleigh-Durham airport, they had flown to San Francisco, where they caught a China Airways flight to Shanghai. Both travelling under British passports from San Francisco, they had burnt all their old identities to make sure they never used them again. Hoping that totally new lives might get them ahead of the anti-hacker units that were closing in, Chris and Katie wanted only the best foreign identities from now on. They wanted to be no closer to American than Canadian.

They were quite surprised when they realized that the same man had given them all their identities; both had a friend in Chop Stix. He was happy to see them together, telling Katie that he was one of the few people in the world who knew who The Cube was, that his parents had both passed through only five weeks earlier to get new papers, and now he arrived with another customer of his. He wasn't that surprised that they were a couple. It was expected in their dark and secret world.

Chop Stix also understood that the nets were closing in on all of them. The three demolished buildings, by the CIA others believed, told him so. He was a hacker too, and Chris and Katie finally met a person face to face they had both respected.

"I thought you were an American, or at least a Chinese American," said Chris sitting with a cup of tea in front of the Chinese-looking man who he had paid well over two million dollars, and up to now had never met. He was quite surprised that they had been invited to an actual place of residence, and not in a coffee shop or street corner somewhere.

"Who says I'm not?" Chop Stix replied, handing Katie an Australian passport and full identity kit in the name of "Melody Harris." He looked about 25-30 and was dressed as an average Chinese man in Shanghai would: in a business suit with his hair slicked back. "Do not, I repeat, do not use this Australian passport going into or out of Australian customs. For some reason they can tell a hacked version. Nobody I work with understands how they do it. All the other internal paperwork can be used once you are in the country, but I believe the paper they use in their latest passports only since June has some sort of mark or coloring that appears, or doesn't appear, under a new type of infrared scanner they are now using at Aussie border control. A few of us are worried that the British might begin using the same materials in 2015. So be careful Cube, Ram, and I'll work on more legitimate untraceable birth certificates so that once you are in a country, you can always apply for a new passport with a birth certificate. Just learn the accent."

They all laughed. That wasn't so easy.

"With the birth certificates, we must just find the paper the originals were on when the person was born. This is a far easier way. The paper must be the same, look as old as the person, used and folded hundreds of times, you know what I mean. We will never have the same problem as the originals for you two, as any birth certificates will be on paper less than three decades old. For your parents, Cube, it will be a lot more work. I think that in the next few years, that will be the only way to get new identities, especially into Europe and Australia. Don't use these Australian passports in New Zealand either, just in case. Europe will be okay this year, but nobody will know when the Brits change to the Australian system, which will begin to catch people out next year, I believe."

"Are you going to the hacker convention this year in Vegas?" Chris asked, paging through his new Australian passport. He had already got a second British passport/paperwork and a second Canadian set of passport/paperwork, all for a cool $500,000. Katie was getting two European sets and the Australian paperwork for double his price. They had already collected a new Canadian set two months earlier showing that they were married. Chop Stix, with less than a dozen international clients, was doing well. Both Katie and Chris were told to mail the new paperwork to their own post office boxes in and around the United States, Europe, or wherever they were heading next, as Chuck Martin had compromised his lines of delivery.

"Maybe," Chop Stix replied. It was far easier to use their hacker labels, as with so many names it was hard to keep up. "I think America is getting far too dangerous. The CIA is supposed to have destroyed those buildings here in China recently. I know some of those buildings. They were full of hackers working for Beijing. Two of my friends were killed in the explosions. One is the guy I depended on for getting American papers. I was told that these three buildings, although important in the government's cyber war against America, were only small installations. I believe that Hong Kong is the real main Chinese government headquarters for cyber intelligence, and I was told an underground base in a hill where thousands of university graduates work. I know this because a couple of guys I trade information with work there. Lantau Island is where the main Chinese hacking station is located for American, European, and Canadian internet traffic. The airport is close by and the electrical power goes in through the most powerful cables in the world. Another friend of mine says that Lantau Island uses more electricity than Manhattan, and there are only a few buildings. He works in the Hong Kong Electrical department."

"Why are you telling us all this?" Chris asked.

"In case you need the information. I am an American citizen, so I do care about my country, and I don't like how the Chinese government spies and steals everything it can. I don't like the American government either, or USA Bank, but I'm still an American citizen and sort of in between countries right now."

"You had dealings with Chuck Martin?" Chris asked quite surprised.

"Yes, about the same time you had the final few months of your New York State one cent program being trailed about a year ago. I was watching your investments growing. So were The Bytes, Vodka, and one of the old and best, Pepsi Cola, wherever he is these days. Also The Chinese Lady, my friend in Beijing, was watching your progress. I saw fake foreign computer DNS and ISP numbers I know come and go, trails from them watching your moves. For some reason the bank CEO or his security people caught my friend's trail watching you, and a few weeks later The Chinese Lady disappeared. Vodka and your parents immediately disappeared after that. They all went to ground I think, and I had to move my delivery operations out of the U.S. I had my ISPs going through them. To me, it seems that bank security was working with the FBI or even the CIA, so the noose is certainly tightening. Only Pepsi Cola, a guy I met back in the early 90s, continued on the trail until it disappeared. They are ganging up on us. So I don't know whether I'm going. I don't think so, and I suggest you two stay out of the States for a while as well. I'm living here in my younger sister's apartment for the next few weeks. She is at college here, studying Chinese dance and currently on a dance tour with her college group to Europe for three weeks. They were invited by somebody to perform in France, Germany and then Vienna, Austria, I believe."

"I think that staying out of the States is good advice, but I promised that I would meet my parents there," replied Chris. "They want me to meet somebody with a booth there. Guess who?"

Chop Stix shrugged and said nothing.

"Pepsi Cola. Unfortunately we can only meet him there, as it is the only place my father knows he will be. With new papers I don't think the visit will be too dangerous. If it is, this year will be the end of the hacker conventions in Vegas."

The others nodded.

Chop Stix said that he'd heard only good things about Pepsi Cola and would be an interesting person to meet, as he was one of the first hackers ever, and a legend in their world.

After a few days touring Shanghai with Chop Stix and a few of Chop Stix's friends, Chris and Katie left Hong Kong for Singapore. Chop Stix was rather worried. He hadn't heard from his sister, she had promised to snail mail him.

Singapore, Chris' father had suggested, was a safe hiding place if the net closed in, and both he and Katie had ordered Singapore papers from Chop Stix the day before they left. They would have them in a few months or so.

As agreed, Chris, his parents and Katie had stopped their forays into the international banking systems. They all had enough money to live on for the rest of their lives, and all Chris wanted was to sell the RV, have Katie ship her beloved Ferrari back to Italy to use it in Europe, and perhaps visit Las Vegas for the meeting.

As Mr. and Mrs. Peter Cartwright from Vancouver, they headed back toward the North American continent, going into Vancouver to spend a few days getting ready. They had been together now for six months, in love and enjoying each other's company as any two lovers could.

Even though they had no more interest in the big banks, the banks didn't stop following up leads, nor did various governments.

The banking conference in Switzerland came to a close, the new Federal Reserve chairman giving the world banks his ideas on the future and the USA situation in a speech the last of the conference.

"It is with utmost confidence that I gave you the opportunity to diversify in the new U.S. boom," he told the 1,600 delegates from over 140 countries toward the end. "We are on new upward slopes. Wall Street and many of your stock markets are looking stronger every day. The big two export markets, The Unites States and China, are working well. Our job growth and U.S. housing market is rebounding as fast as it can, being fed by new growth in small business due to low interest rates not seen in the country for decades. By the end of 2013 the United States will be close to the growth rate we saw in 2000 to 2007, and expecting five years of a slower but powerful growth curve. I will begin to control the positive growth and creeping inflation by increasing rates of lending again slightly across the United States toward the end of the year. This is to ensure that we do not cause a false bubble in our economy, and to allow growth, but at a slower rate. Our last chairman was too conservative in allowing natural growth, and now with the Federal Reserve Bank under my control, we will continue to reach higher plains than ever before. Thank you very much."

He received a standing ovation. Hundreds of viewers not at the conference were also watching. The representatives watching from the U.S. Congress and the Senate were overjoyed. So was the President. He would see the economy stabilize and grow in his final years of the Presidency, and The Banker smiled. He had written the speech for his new man, and it had gone across well. The chairman hadn't said that he was going to raise the interest rates over time, but The Banker knew.

Stephan Saber and Chuck Martin, his face bandaged due to a "car accident" a few days earlier, watched their new man from the front row of the convention center in Bern. Chuck had rebounded from his tirade in Lichtenstein, and Stephan had given him a lecture on life and death at the hands of The Banker if he didn't curtail his stupidity. That barman had not been found. The security personnel were now searching Austria, Germany and Switzerland now that they had disposed of the remainder of the Chinese dance group.

The screaming and panic of the girls caused by Chuck's dangerous attack and seen by the angry barman had dampened the rest of the evening's fun. The men had enjoyed the remaining screaming girls. They too were raped and tortured by the bankers, then by the dozen security guards once they had brought in some more who had tried to get away.

After the men were exhausted, the girls were hit over the side of the head to shut them up and finally executed with silenced pistols before being packed up in body bags and taken outside. They were not heavy, little wisps of Chinese innocence barely twenty years old.

The security personnel then removed the remains and Stephan knew that whatever they did to get rid of the bodies, all the entertainment had been dealt with the same way; they would never be found.

In the turmoil the guards outside had lost two of the girls, who had bounded out behind the barman so fast the world had stood still. They had no connection to the hotel, and nobody around would believe a silly little Chinese girl. The hotel was world renowned and the head of security – the barman – wasn't there, and The Banker was never told of the missing girls, who were never found.

As happened every year, the entire hotel had been cleared of guests and the usual staff for that one night. By the time they all arrived for work early the next morning, the hotel was peaceful, the VIPs asleep, the bar cleaned and looking normal and the tired security personnel guarding the gates headed out.

Once the staff arrived, the security guards' jobs were over, their several SUVs hiding the evidence from the night before. They drove the dance group into Lichtenstein illegally from Vienna, and they left no one to the wiser, except Hans Burger the barman, who was still in shock and on a train to Zurich.
Chapter 19

Weeks before the Las Vegas Hackers' Convention – November 2013

Chris moved his RV off the Chicago Bulls' accounting books and gave the bus a new owner. He reduced its price to $100,000 below book, and it sold within three days.

He had sold it for cash, and had the girlfriend of his from Tallahassee meet the new buyer, complete the paperwork, receive the payment in cash, and transfer the title.

The computer equipment aboard the bus was over a year old, obsolete, and Chris gave it all to the girl to sell. He had purchased a new mattress for the bed, and rented a U-Haul to cart the old heavy one away. The old mattress was really heavy and firm, and he and Katie slid it down the corridor out of the bus's door and Katie drove the truck away before his Florida friend arrived.

He made sure every piece of computer equipment was sanitized, inside and out. He said goodbye to his friend once the deal was done, leaving no clue of his direction and future whereabouts, except to say that he was heading into North Dakota where he had a new cabin. Chris' girl buddy had never met or seen Katie while she was with Chris. Katie stayed in a small motel while the dealings were taking place.

Chris suggested she sell everything just in case. His friend did, selling most of the electronics for a decent sum, but the girl took the best laptop for herself and was visited by the FBI less than a month later, two days before the Hackers' Convention had begun in Las Vegas.

The Cube organized a 20-foot container as Peter Cartwright, and the Ferrari headed out of the country and into Montreal by truck with new paperwork. They met it ten days later at the city container terminal, and drove it to Toronto. The weather was cold and the roads were icy, so instead of driving the valuable car to Vancouver, they transferred the car to a new container and shipped it there.

Two weeks later, the yellow Ferrari was parked into a third container and headed toward Shanghai by sea. A deal had been done with Chop Stix, who would then transfer it while in transit, and it was to head over to a port in Sardinia in the Mediterranean. There the container was to be stored until somebody came to claim it. Storage costs had been paid for a year, and it would take some time before the car and the cash in two black duffle bags in the trunk saw daylight again.

Vancouver was a fun city for Chris and Katie. They enjoyed the night life and purchased a nice apartment in the name of James Smith, a new immigrant to Canada from England. It was small, a one-bedroom richly furnished apartment, had a nice water view and was on the seventh floor of a secure block.

James Smith's new British papers were stashed by Chris in the new safe he had built in the bedroom wall, with one or two of their new identities, which had arrived by mail. The James Smith identity had done his job, and needed to be kept hidden until they returned.

As Mr. and Mrs. Peter Cartwright they headed for Las Vegas.

Chuck Martin was sick and tired of being told what to do by a guy he had never met. The Banker was getting to be a joke. He knew he was risking everything by not doing as he was told, but he had grown up in a soft world where everything was done for him, and his prestige and power increased his own self-importance and self-esteem to levels far higher than he deserved.

He told nobody this, especially his pal Stephan Saber, the only friend he had in the world. Saber had been staying away from him due to the warnings by the so-called Banker, and this gave Martin the opportunity to ignore The Banker's warning and continue with his team of computer specialists to look for any signs of anybody hacking into his bank records.

The three percent interest rate hikes had changed the landscape somewhat. The older owners who had managed to just hang on to their properties during the last recession were again struggling to make payments. USA Bank's foreclosure departments were becoming busy, especially with Martin's orders to continue foreclosure proceedings as soon as any accounts moved into 30-day late cycles. Since his return from the Banking Conference in Bern, he had even made the departments begin foreclosure as soon as one mortgage payment was 24 hours late on its 15-day deadline.

Unfortunately, one of his departments sent out several dozen letters telling the property owners of pending problems and foreclosure, even though they were a day or two late, and they had brought their accounts up to date.

Some of these owners were in high positions and complaints flooded their congressmen and senators, telling the politicians that they were about to be foreclosed on their property with up-to-date and current payments.

As several of these complaints were from actual friends of the politicians, an inquiry was started into new foreclosure practices with the larger banks in the country. This caused several complaints that got to The Banker, who warned Martin to back off and be patient. USA Bank did so, but not before being noticed by Washington and many of its mortgage holders, who suddenly wanted to move their debts out of the hands of Martin and his bank.

Martin didn't really care, and did not accept The Banker's orders to lie low, so he kept looking for the hackers that had robbed him of around $40 million over the last decade, an amount of money he earned in three months. He got a hundred of his staff at the ABO base to work with several of his top security guys in Charleston. If The Banker had known he would have exploded, as he had ordered each club member a dozen times that there would be no communications with the bases from their head offices. The two totally separate organizations in each financial house were supposed to work separately on projects. Each task was supposed to be completely different, not needing coordination.

Chuck Martin still didn't know why these three new secret bases had been built, and didn't really care anymore. With dozens of murders, mostly of women by his own hands, he thought he was infallible, above the law, and had forgotten that he was just a small pawn on a big chess board.

Two weeks before the Las Vegas Hackers' Convention, one of his men in Ailsa Craig got a lead on Mr. Byte, a possible hacker, who had actually worked under Martin. The only clue they had was that there was no actual life after resignation on a Mr. Uben since he had been forced to resign in 2011, two years earlier. Martin, already on the trail of Uben, was ecstatic. New evidence. He was getting closer.

They lost the trail and, reversing direction, suddenly couldn't find a thing on Uben. The man had not even been born. From the 300-odd files of personnel who had left USA Bank since 2008, he was the only one whose history they couldn't find outside the bank's records. Many of the others couldn't be found inside the bank's records, as the security department had purged the files of any incriminating history. Uben was the only guy they could not find history on, in the government files they were also hacking into.

Mr. Steven J. Uben had apparently never existed outside USA Bank, and for several days the security personnel had thought they had made a mistake, or that he could have been made up by the bank as a possible mortgage holder, buyer or seller, as they often did to complete an incomplete business deal. Only when Uben's file reached Martin's desk did he order them to spend anything they wanted and break any laws to get more on this man before the Hackers' Convention. Martin was going, and would have a dozen security men with him. He didn't care if he caught or terminated the whole conference. Everyone at the convention was going to be checked out.

At the same time, many thousands of miles away, Chop Stix was a worried man. He hadn't heard from his sister May-Lee since her arrival in Europe a month earlier. He had checked with her university, and so far they hadn't given out any information. They seemed worried, and they told him were waiting for the dancers to surface. They were young, they said to the brother. They had most probably thought it a joke to travel around Europe on their own itinerary, as many young Chinese did when they got a little freedom over in the West.

They were only ten days late, and had missed their flight from Berlin, but had completed two of their three performances in France and Germany. Vienna, Austria was their last and then they had a week of supervised travel before heading home. Their guides in Vienna had not seen them, and the university staff knew that they had been on the aircraft in Germany.

Chop Stix felt something was wrong, so he grabbed a set of Canadian papers and caught the first flight with China Airways from Shanghai to Vienna.

It took him two days to reach Vienna, and he began searching around theaters or other places where her group might have performed. He checked the airport, and found after lengthy searching that a cavalcade of cars had met the flight. They were all German vehicles, but one car, security police said at the gate, had a Lichtenstein number plate.

It took him a week to check out every possible place they could have danced at in Vienna, and found nothing, so he thought about heading to Vaduz, Lichtenstein. Germany was far too big a place to begin.

In Vaduz he stayed at a nice hotel, the Hotel Exclusive. It was a beautiful place and expensive, setting him back a thousand dollars a night. For two more days he checked everywhere in the tiny country, again finding nothing.

The hotel's dining room was exquisite, richly furnished and had only two dozen tables. The guests were like him; money didn't matter and every table was taken, mostly by couples looking into each other's eyes. The men were older, dressed in suits or tuxedos, and most of their companions looked young enough to be their daughters. Most were big breasted and blonde, and he was sure that he had seen a couple of them on magazine covers in the U.S. or China. He was the only person alone, and he finished a superb meal and headed into the bar to think what to do next.

The bar was empty, and the barman congratulated him at arriving at the best time, as there was a cabaret in an hour. The bar would then become busy. It was the only time since it opened at eight that it was calm and quiet in here.

"You don't use the bar during the day?" Chop Stix asked the barman as he made him a Singapore Sling.

"Oh nein, sir," the barman replied. "This bar is only open at night, seven days per week. This bar has three extremely famous and valuable paintings on the wall from Herr Gauguin, Herr Paul Gauguin," the barman said, pointing to three paintings behind protective glass on a side wall.

Chop Stix began to notice that tiny, virtually hidden wires went everywhere on the walls around the paintings. He knew a lot about security and the latest security devices. He had studied everything he could find on the most modern systems of protection and even the smallest security cameras. He understood that these paintings were most probably very valuable and turned back to the barman, whose English was good but not perfect. He was also a very powerful looking man, not the usual aging bartender with an oversized belly.

He looked at the man carefully as he headed over to a second couple who were just sitting down. "He is also certainly part of the security for the works of art," Chop thought to himself. As he pondered what to do next, his eyes went over the rear wall of the bar.

Something very small took his notice, and he looked at it again. He watched carefully as a minute object moved slightly on the wall right next to what looked like a normal security camera. It was moving away from him, and moving along the bar to look at the couple who had just arrived and was getting their drinks. It was a camera, a really tiny one, and it wasn't bigger than a pencil lead. He watched as it moved again as another couple entered through the door from the dining room.

That made him question. Why would there be another camera right next to a normal security camera? He began searching the back wall of the bar even harder. His eyesight was perfect—he was a counterfeiter after all, and he could spot something wrong with a document from a mile away.

Taking a sip of his fifty-dollar drink, he carefully scanned the back wall and saw more movement, this time further along the wall of the ten-seat bar. It was a second camera and it was moving to look straight in his direction. It too was hidden in the surrounds of the bar's second normal-looking camera. Trying hard to keep his composure, he saw the barman look his way as the camera stopped on him, and he nodded at the barman standing directly below the camera for a second drink, hoping that would give the person watching him a reason why he was looking in that direction. While the barman fixed him a second, he finished checking the bar. He could see nothing more.

"Your Sling, sir," the barman said putting the second glass next to the half-full first drink.

"Those security cameras work all of the time?" he said, nodding toward the normal large camera. They looked off, but one could never tell.

"Nein, sir. Our guests don't like cameras. They are off. There is a green light that goes on when they are operational, and they are only on at night, after the bar is closed. We never record our guests." Chop Stix now knew that the man was either lying, or didn't know. Maybe the large cameras were off, but the guests were certainly being spied on.

Thinking that he had spent too much time looking toward the back wall, he turned around and searched the room for anything out of the ordinary. The bar wasn't big. There was a dance floor, an extremely shiny and clean one beneath a disco ball in the middle of the room. A single row of luxury bar chairs and tables sat against the walls and surrounded the floor. About 60 to 70 people could sit there in addition to the seats at the bar. There wasn't much to look at.

The round disco ball about ten feet off the floor got his scrutiny. It was off and dark. It was perfectly round, or was it?

His eyes could be playing tricks on him, but there was something on top of the light, something very small. It could be another of the tiny cameras. His eyes focused on what he was seeing and he forced them to look. They watered and he thought it a good idea to wipe the back of his hand over them, in case the mini cameras were trained on his antics. He looked away and watched as a third couple entered the bar and took one of the tables opposite the bar to where he was sitting, and he looked up at the disco ball again. The ball suddenly lit up as it was turned on. Dimly, but on nevertheless. There was something up there. It was now glinting ever so slightly. It looked like a piece of cloth, or material, and he wanted to see what it was.

He finished his second drink and pondered on how to get up there. He thought that if he had seen two cameras, then there were sure to be more, so he would have to do something while the bar was open. He would have no chance when it was locked up tight.

As he figured out what to do, a group of musicians entered: three men and a girl. They began to set up on one side of the floor. While they were doing so, it seemed that the couple sitting opposite him at the table must have had a misunderstanding. The blonde girl was looking around the room in a bored way, and her companion of 60 or so stormed out of the only inside exit. Two more couples walked in as he left and the girl got up to head across the floor to the bar.

She took a seat one down from him and ordered a drink in German. By now the bar was filling up, the noise level rose and a few minutes later the band began to play soft music.

Chop Stix still couldn't figure out how to reach ten feet up into the middle of an open space with a dozen or two people watching. All he had on him were his suit, shoes, and his new airport-purchased expensive silk tie, the only one he owned.

The blonde two seats down ordered a second drink. The barman expertly looked his way and he nodded.

Chop Stix was young, only 27, and was younger than the rest of the men in the bar, apart for the barman, by around 30 years. He was fit, a martial arts fan and he worked out a couple of times a week. He hadn't won any martial arts competitions. He didn't want to, for it would make others look at him, but he was good at what he did. He knew that he could jump that high, at a stretch, to the disco light, maybe even grab whatever was up there. That was the only way.

"You come here often, Herr Chinaman?" the girl said to him, smiling. The alcohol was helping her lighten up and she moved nimbly to the barstool next to his. He stood up and bowed respectfully as she sat down.

"No, ma'am, my first time," he replied.

"A real Chinaman with a real American accent! I suppose there are many of you living in America?" she said, now interested.

"Yes, many," he replied on his best behavior, smiling graciously. At any time the old man could return, and he might not be a very nice guy. He didn't want to chit-chat either. He just wanted to get up on the disco ball, but then an idea came to him.

"Drink, ma'am?" he asked.

"Whatever you are drinking, junger Chinese man," she replied. She was about his age, looked well-kept, and very expensive. Her solid gold Rolex looked real, and so did the diamonds around her neck. Her eyes were bright blue, her hair looked its natural color, her dress tight and low, and the top area covered enough perfect real estate hanging out of the front to ski on.

He ordered and watched the barman, who didn't show any emotion in his face because this little Chinese guy was being attacked by this German she-wolf. It wasn't his job. He thought he would help the poor man with the pain though and stiffened both their drinks to prepare him for battle, either from her, or the Baron who might return. These patrons were not very nice when it came to other men playing on their turf.

As he was one of the usual bartenders for the private banking functions, he knew that these visitors were not nearly as bad as the men who frequented The Banker's Club, the hotel's owner's annual private group. It was weird what money, greed and power did to men. This poor little Chinese guy had better watch it.

The band livened up and another drink later, and out of boredom, the blonde pulled him onto the dance floor. It was time to begin acting like a drunken madman, and Chop Stix hit the dance floor with a rhythm the older men wished they had. The band saw his enthusiasm and increased their tempo. The blonde screamed with excitement and her body, with the two Alps atop her dress, began gyrating to the music, entrancing everyone in the room.

How her clothing kept the mass of body enclosed he couldn't understand but the whole bar was captivated. Captivated enough to see him add the untying of his tie to his dance routine.

He began swinging it around, trying hard to blend in with the madwoman's dance workout, and he realized that the band was coming to the end of the song. He didn't have much time. He increased the swinging of his tie, doing his best to act like a mad dancer, and aimed it well. He let it go and it rose majestically up toward the disco light. He watched, entranced, as it looped itself over the top of the ball and wrapped itself twice around the wire and cord hanging it up and....... it stayed, not falling as the band ended with a loud thump and there was applause for the hot and sweaty German girl, who bowed to the bar, showing off more than she had done before.

Chop Stix looked at the barman, who was watching him sternly. He gingerly pointed to his tie, smiling and mouthing that he was sorry. Immediately the barman got on the bar phone and several seconds' later two hotel employees ran in with a short ladder, from the kitchen, Chop Stix presumed.

"How did you get your cravatte up there?" The blonde, now realizing that something was amiss, looked where several others were looking, above her at the disco ball, which suddenly went off so that the staff could retrieve the tie.

"Excitement, I guess," he replied. The short set of stairs was opened, and one of the men readied himself to climb up to get the tie. Chop Stix interrupted him and got on the ladder himself before anybody could stop him and stretched up to unwrap his tie. What he had seen was soft, it was material, and it felt about the size of a finger. It was caught on something and he pulled quickly. The prize came away and he stepped down holding up his other prize: his retrieved tie. With applause from many he wrapped his tie and the piece of cloth into his suit pocket and returned with the blonde to their seats.

"Thank you for allowing me to retrieve my cravat, or whatever you Europeans call a tie," said Chop Stix to the barman, who just smiled and replenished their drinks.

"You dance very well," said the blonde wanting him to clink glasses.

"I think it time to go to bed," said a very firm deep German voice as her partner walked up to them. "Thank you, Mein Herr, for looking after her." He bowed to Chop Stix. "Gabrielle, it is time for bed" and holding her hand he walked her out of the room. She winked at him as she was firmly pulled away.

"A dangerous man," said the barman. "I recommend you let things be. The cabaret will begin in ten minutes. A group of folk dancers from Hungary."

Wanting to see the dancers, he watched as four men and four women expertly danced around the room doing their national dances. He wondered if May-Lee had danced on this stage. He could visualize her dance group in their shiny silver costumes on this dance floor. Chop Stix had watched her several times.
Chapter 20

The Net Closes In

Special Agent Jack Durant was an FBI hacker. He had been with the Bureau since he had been caught hacking into their files in 1999. It had been a shock and an insult to the system when he was caught. He thought himself to be the only brains in the hacking world. The Bureau had played his last few months of freedom well, never letting him think that he was being traced.

In those days the FBI Washington Cyber-Crimes Unit was small. So small that they all fitted into a corner unit of a floor. To his utter dismay, the best hacker in the States, Jack Durant, was caught by an FBI team comprising six people. It was embarrassing, and he now knew what it was like for the Feds to unsuspectingly pounce from out of nowhere on a single unimportant geeky computer hacker.

Now the cyber-crimes unit was over 250 strong, in several offices, combining details of information that could get closer to their targets. They often worked with the CIA and Interpol, as many leads ran in and out of the United States several times.

The CIA and to some extent Interpol needed help from the internal guys to trace what many Chinese, Ukrainians, Iranians, North Korean, and even Canadian hackers were searching for.

The FBI needed the leads heading outside the country to be traced to their end stations, or until the trace returned inside the borders. Nobody knew what the NSA did. They didn't discuss their information with anyone, and probably more criminals would have been caught if they partook and shared any leads they had.

Jack Durant had gone to prison after a short trial. He had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, working a deal on PayPal, skimming fees from transactions in the company's second year of operations. This was child's play to today's hacks, and he had got away with over a million dollars in six months, enough to get the company to ask the FBI to intervene.

PayPal had been Jack's third success, and he was offered a deal to pay back what he owed after a year in prison. The FBI needed his help. There was a Chinese hacker who was causing the New York Electrical department several dangerous problems. He might be inside the U.S.

It was the beginning of others trying to control utilities like ATMS, traffic lights and electrical systems, and in return for working for the FBI, and returning the money, he would be given a reduced sentence of ten years, if he worked that ten years in Washington at FBI headquarters.

Since then, he had caught three large hacks from China inside the country, two internal U.S. hackers and had completed his ten years. Still single, a free man and with a decent income, he was happy where he was, and still the best cyber guy the FBI had.

Much had gone quiet across the hacking world in the last few months in 2013, especially in the financial arena. To Jack, sitting at his desk in his small corner office, it seemed something out there was spooking the local hackers.

He had a lot at his disposal. A special government satellite tracked data from the commercial satellites, checking the feeds for any message abnormalities in private and government banking transactions, electrical grid breakdowns, 911 calls, and military bases or government installations. Unfortunately the hackers knew how to hide their work. Jack's department of twenty also went through known possibilities of hackers working certain systems, trying to find something out of place.

For them, it was often a pretty boring job, much like fishing: waiting for a bite. Then life got interesting.

Jack also went through old history on known hackers. He didn't know names, except for one or two, as the hacker handles normally wiped away all traces at the crime scene. Hell, he had done it since he was in college and in the late 80s, when computers and the internet were in the dark ages.

Jack Durant didn't know exactly who Vodka, The Chinese Lady, The Cube, The Ram, Chop Stix or even Mr. and Mrs. Byte were, but he knew how they worked, and he could identify the culprit in almost any crime.

He knew a little about Vodka from the CIA, a hacker from St. Petersburg in Russia. The kid, if he was a kid, was not that careful to hide himself, and was the only hacker he knew who had a Facebook page, though a false one. To date, this kid hadn't done anything particularly bad, apart for trying to rob Fort Knox, where he had failed miserably, a credit union in Chicago where he had managed to clear an account of $17,000, and a bank in Los Angeles which found out what he was doing and simply reversed the $10,000 he had moved out of their accounts.

Jack figured the kid lacked experience. He could have picked a bank in South Dakota, or Montana, and easily got away with the theft. No, this kid hit one of two cities that really spend money on stopping thieves taking their money. The kid was an amateur.

His favorite hack of all time was the hacker, probably a young person, who had acted as Mercedes Cortez in New York. This trace was old, three years old and the lady long dead in the system before it arrived on his desk. A really beautiful woman by the only ID he had on her, her New York driver's license. Nobody had thought to inspect the dealings of Ms. Mercedes Cortez until two of his staff, who were bored and going through old New York State records dealing with the Bernie Madoff case.

They had come up empty-handed apart from this beautiful Mercedes Cortez. The key was that two of his staff members and Jack himself had played Grand Theft Auto themselves, and knew that a Mercedes Cortez coming out of the woodwork, being promoted into the City of New York, then Washington, DC, and dying a few months later was all a bit much.

Over time they had found her apartment in Manhattan and her house in Long Beach. Jack Durant knew he was on a hacker's trail when he received the same answer from people who worked or resided at the two properties.

The doorman in Manhattan had only seen her niece, about 18 or 19. The old lady at the house on Long Beach said that she had never met Mercedes Cortez, but had done dealings with a young girl from a Long Island Housing department. A girl of about 20 or 21. A college student or intern, she thought.

What made him smile were the banks, which opened and closed Cortez's accounts. Nobody had met her, or even knew a Ms. Cortez had opened or closed accounts at their branches until they dug deep into emails and other conversations that the hacker had neglected to erase.

Everything Mercedes Cortez did, she did electronically. She was a famous lady, and why question money? Even the car dealer at the Ferrari dealership in lower Manhattan remembered the Mercedes Cortez who wrote a check for a brand new yellow Ferrari. She was thin, quite short, but dressed to the nines. The salesman admitted to Durant that he'd had a hard time keeping his eyes on the paperwork, and not the split in her short black dress that really caught his attention. He was a hot-blooded New York Italian after all, he explained.

Jack Durant showed Mercedes Cortez's driver's license to everyone he talked to, and even the car salesman didn't agree that the photo was anything like the girl who had purchased the car. Durant knew a hacker was at play here by the handle The Ram. He had seen the name Melissa Ram on a flight manifest from New York to Washington at the same time Ms. Cortez had flown that route. He had put this slip of a girl on his large wall board underneath the section called The Ram.

Same with The Cube. Lucky for them it seemed that the CEO of USA Bank, Mr. Chuck Martin, had a personal vendetta against this guy. The FBI was also watching Mr. Chuck Martin himself, as a couple of other FBI departments had tentatively connected him to female murders and missing bodies in New York and the Hamptons.

It had started with closed police reports that somebody had come across while looking at a totally different crime close to Sag Harbor. Chuck Martin's name had been connected with Mr. Stephan Saber, regarding the drowning of a fellow student at a school there. No evidence had been found against the two, now powerful men, but a second report at a college a few years later again had Chuck Martin's name on it as a potential witness. Again the case went cold and nobody was brought to trial, but it seemed that murders followed Martin, or the other way around, and he was on several watch lists.

Then several months ago, Chuck Martin and several of his bank staff disappeared off the face of the earth. Literally disappeared off bank records, emails, legal papers, and anything the FBI could hack into. Jack Durant's crew was hacking as much as the hackers were. The only difference was the FBI wasn't lifting a cent here and a penny there, like the massive hack The Cube had performed. In Jack's 25 years of expert judgment, this kid was good. Very good. He'd seemed like a young kid with his communication tabs on certain ways he worked certain systems only a hacker could understand, like ending a theft in 55 cents, which was too round for a perfect transaction.

What really interested Jack was the way the 55 cents became 57 cents within a few days of him seeing the transaction. His team hadn't changed it. The bank didn't even know about the hack, and suddenly this number had changed and 48 hours later disappeared off the one bank's electronic books and landed mysteriously in another bank's books in the same city: New York.

Either the kid had fixed the problem, or somebody had done it for him. That is why he had the next section of his board under the heading: "The Cube and friends."

He had heard of the Bytes, but apart from one trace into history accounts at USA Bank over a year ago, telling Jack that somebody with the hacker handle Byte had maybe worked at the bank at one time, he had no more to go on. He had downloaded every name he could find of past employees in Charlotte and Charleston head offices. There were hundreds of names that could be a Mr. or Mrs. Byte.

Chop Stix he knew pretty well. He was Chinese-American born, a Chow Lee-Sim who now lived in China, the UK and the USA from time to time. Jack Durant knew the forger well, as he had got a set of papers from the guy's mentor, and he had been introduced to the young lad in Beijing many years ago. He wasn't actually introduced to the eight-year-old who was working on papers when he headed into the shop to get his. The boy had understood English, nodded when he said hallo, and a decade later he had seen a snapshot of the same, but older-looking boy entering passport control in San Francisco. Now the FBI had face recognition records of the boy and would receive an alert if he entered the U.S. without a disguise.

Jack Durant loved his work, and his main enemy now was the same person the other departments were looking for evidence on: Chuck Martin. Like a foot stepping into a clear pond and making the water muddy, this guy was messing up his investigations. USA Bank were either deliberately trying to muddy the waters and put his division off trails, or the bank's team of investigators didn't know their ass from their elbow in hacking. USA Bank had been hacked to death by many hackers dozens of times more than the other two big banks, which made the investigator smile.

Twice he had gone up to the top floor with complaints about USA Bank investigators going into secure government files, and twice the bank had been warned. The next time, the might of the Federal government would be felt in Charleston at their head office.

Jack had called Chuck Martin once, only to be told to stop wasting his time and let the bank do its own investigations. The Bank had made complaints to the Feds, who had marveled at the CEO's temerity with murder investigations around him growing.

Jack Durant had been to the Hackers' Convention a couple of times. He knew that the big guys wouldn't want to be spotted there, and he had not caught anything bigger than a minnow in Las Vegas. The Hackers' Convention was nothing more than an excuse for legitimate computer companies to sell new inventions and the latest hardware and software. Several companies showed off investigation software, eavesdropping software, new apps for just about anything, and there was nothing that would interest a real professional hacker, except to see who else was stupid enough to show up there. That was the only reason he was going.
Chapter 21

Las Vegas – 2013

Before the big week many who were interested in going to Las Vegas began to change their appearances.

Katie Gardener, AKA Mrs. Peter Cartwright, had found a shop that sold fake pregnancy stomachs.

"Why make do with a lumpy cushion stuffed under your top when you can have an affordable, realistic fake pregnancy belly that will look and feel natural and convincing?" the advertisement said on her computer screen and within a week they walked around their apartment in Vancouver with Chris laughing. He could have saved her money, he told her, and made her stomach grow for free. She had also purchased maternity dresses, and once made up, she really looked the part. Chris had decided to go as an off-duty military serviceman. Bradley Manning had given him the idea, and he made sure though that he didn't resemble the guy now in jail.

Jack Durant was looking forward to the hacker convention. He didn't need to change his appearance. Nobody outside his department knew who he was. Just a nice security guard uniform would do him and his team. Only the security personnel and the sales reps would look clean shaven and smart at this convention.

Jack and his team knew that this year, with so many new apps on the market, the wars between Apple and Samsung, and the new releases of X-Box and Sony PlayStation 4, every inch of sales space was taken and there would be far more people selling goods than those wanting to know how to hack them. This year would be more of a computer fair than a Hackers' Convention, but, "What the hell, you never know what the cat will drag in," he said to his team working on a plan of action and preparations to see if they could identify anyone. This year he wanted to catch big fish.

The Bytes were taking it easy in Scotland. They had purchased a new house up in the cold of Scotland to ward off Interpol, in case the agency had seen their last two property transactions. So far they had not seen any interest in their dealings and believed that they were still off anybody's radar.

They had purchased a nice wee house on the coast overlooking the Irish Sea. It was a lonesome cottage, one of three along a stretch of the A719 coast road heading south, about ten miles south of the Town of Ayr and toward Turnberry, famous for its international golf. It was a great location to live quietly, and Steve and Jenny had decided that it would be fun to learn the game.

They resided a good seven miles north of the famous golf course and were shocked at how many courses there were to choose from. This part of the world loved golf, and the people weren't very fond of Americans, they found out.

When they arrived on their first day they got the unwelcome news that beginners weren't allowed on the course, but the Girvan Municipal Golf Course five miles further south would be a great place to learn. Unfortunately membership was full for the year, but they put their names down on the waiting list for 2014.

Steve was itching to get his hands on the electronic files of the gold clubs and change them around a bit, but Jenny reminded him of their pledge to each other to go straight and not mess up their new home.

Over dinner that evening after their first lesson, he thought up an idea. "I'm sure Chris, or even Katie, could look at their books," he said to Jenny.

"Steven J. Uben, or shall I say Sam Brown from Washington. You promised we wouldn't mess up this pretty place to live," she replied.

"I know dear," he replied. "But Katie is good at property. Maybe she could make us the returning owners of the property the 18th hole is on, or something? Maybe she could increase the number of members allowed in next year? That wouldn't get back to us. I know! Maybe Katie could just put our names, like, fifth on the waiting list?"

"A lot of maybes, Mr. Brown. We'll see them in Las Vegas and you can ask, as long as you don't do anything, per our pledge, and I would hate to see you dressed in one of those kilts the members wear. Your bandy legs were not made for such attire."

For the next couple of weeks, and before their flight back to Heathrow, and then into Las Vegas, they would have to play at the municipal course further south.

The organizers at the convention knew that this was going to be a big one. They hadn't had much interest from the likes of Sony and Microsoft before, and tickets to every day of the convention were sold out. They always knew that if the hackers wanted to gain access, they would either manipulate the books or get counterfeit tickets printed. Of the 700,000 total people expected during the week, at least another thousand or so would not go through the front doors. The vendors, convention staff and anybody with brains not wanting to be seen would enter and exit through the dozen or so side or rear entrances.

The FBI knew this, and checking faces in the long daily queues was not the way to find who they were searching for. The side doors the sales people used were far more interesting, the sales people themselves could bring up a facial recognition or two. That was all they were expecting. Jack Durant reckoned that he could smell a hacker, until one of his staff replied stating that maybe the hackers could do the same and smell FBI agents, and then he would really stand out from the crowd in their eyes.

He thought that very amusing, and very true.

The FBI team, now with 25 crewmembers added, came in first. Many flew in, like Jack Durant. Others drove in from the West Coast bringing in surveillance vehicles of every type. Some looked like electricity repair trucks or ambulances. One resembled a dark blue police crowd-control RV. Another had "Red Cross Blood Donation" on its sides and was from Los Angeles.

Without the management of the convention knowing, the FBI team entered the closed and dark convention center and over three nights hid tiny cameras, directional microphones, and other equipment that would give them eyes on the crowds. This was far better than standing at the front doors like a group of jerks looking for people.

Las Vegas barely noticed the convention people beginning to arrive. Vegas was a busy city and millions came and went through its airport. It was a six day event, and the first day would be busiest. As with many conventions, the elderly and Las Vegas locals had a special day they could get a reduction at the door. This was to be the fourth day, and Jack Durant reckoned that the first and fourth days would be the most important.

By the opening doors on day one the teams of hacker spotters were ready. The two vans were parked in obscure places, a dozen agents already watching screens, which the computers would automatically go through face recognition if it was trained on any face for more than half a second. Jack was in charge of one bus and his number two, Maggie Tregio, the other. Each bus had six trained spotters on the screens.

A dozen agents canvassed the outside areas as cleaners and security staff. Another dozen were inside, some working with food carts, or again security staff. Only the holders of the convention knew about the FBI presence. It was usual to get demands from the FBI to attend such events. They had been told the usual six agents would be patrolling and did not know that this year, there was a much higher presence. Nor did they really care, as long as there was no trouble, the queues waiting to get in were long, and they hoped everyone enjoyed themselves and would return the next year. With Microsoft, Sony and GoPro mobile cameras getting the three largest stands for free, this was certainly going to be a good show for their bank accounts. They had invited Elon Musk and Tesla Motors for the fourth large stand, but the carmaker had pulled out at the last moment. Instead they had bumped Apple up. They had requested a larger stand size anyway due to new rollouts in both iPhones and computers this year.

Two hours before the front doors opened, the convention was still being constructed, with people rushing everywhere like mad. That was normal, but what was unusual was a thousand or more people already standing outside ready to enter. Most years the convention only got filled around midday on the first day. The organizers rubbed their hands in glee. They had already presold 24,000 tickets; 4,000 per day, the most they were allowed to sell for the entire 6-day event. What excited them were the long lines of people wanting to purchase tickets, and the control office got on the internal intercom to the door guards, telling them that they would have to keep an accurate tally of people leaving once it filled up before they could allow in anymore.

Mr. and a very pregnant-looking Mrs. Cartwright were standing in one of the lines waiting to enter. They wanted to canvass the interior for day four, the day Chris was going to meet his parents. As expected by Chris, they were going to act like an older couple, and day four would be the best day to do that. Pensioners got 25 percent off the price of a day ticket, and local pensioners got an extra 50 percent off on the special day only.

"Ma'am, stand in front of me; you need to get in before you have that baby," said a nice man smiling and standing in front of them. The Cartwrights graciously thanked the man and were rather surprised that the next couple did the same, and the next.

Once others had realized what was going on behind them, they made sure the poor pregnant lady kept on going. As the first tickets were sold, and the doors opened to allow the preregistered purchasers in, Chris and Katie were only twenty or so people from the front of the queue. They had stopped. There were two young boys who had stood for four hours already and did not want anybody to go ahead of them.

Several people behind them began to shout at the kids and demand them to allow the pregnant lady to pass, but Peter Cartwright turned around and thanked the crowd. They were fine; he and his wife would get tickets pretty soon.

The noise and murmurs of discontent in one of the lines had been noticed by the cameras, and Jack Durant was staring at the two young boys who had caused the young pregnant lady to wait. They had looked angrily at the young couple behind them, trying to be intimidating, and seemed like they might cause trouble. They also looked young, about eighteen or nineteen, and Jack Durant asked two of his guys to bring them in as quietly as possible.

The crowd behind the Cartwrights cheered as two female security guards came over each side of the line and pleasantly asked the kids to come with them. One immediately tried to bolt, and before he knew it, was on the floor and the guard had his hands behind his back. The other looked at the couple behind him who had caused him and his friend this trouble, swore at them, and then gave a middle finger of each hand to the crowd jeering at him. He was handcuffed as a third guard arrived to help.

Jack Durant smiled at the meanness of the boys. In today's world of trolling (distasteful remarks and threats against others) on Twitter and Facebook, such coarseness had become part of life over the last several years. He had seen an increase of dissatisfaction with the latest generation since he had been a kid, and it often filled his thoughts with a growing unpleasantness.

Two computers zoomed in on the two boy's faces, and did not inspect the other faces as the boys were led off.

He wondered who these nasty types were as they were headed away from the camera view toward an interrogation center, and the line continued. He watched as the young man, a soldier by the look of his haircut, and his pregnant lady purchased their tickets and entered the convention. He grabbed for his lukewarm cup of coffee, took a swig, picked up his cap, and headed out the side door of the bus to see what those two horrible little boys had to say for themselves.

"I think we ort to be pretty careful with your belly," Chris said to Katie as they entered the convention hall.

"How do you mean?" Katie asked.

"Those boys were really nasty, and thank god the security was so quick," Chris replied guiding her into the large hall itself. "Those guards were really fast. Really professional. I mean nothing really had happened, and those tough looking security girls pounced like leaping tigers. Far better security than previous conventions, and those gals looked specially trained."

"Maybe a little too protective, but at least I feel safe with the baby," Katie replied smiling at him as they walked, understanding that Chris was implying that the security could be a real danger, and that it could be more than the usual convention security. "Maybe due to the number of people attending, ten times more than normal, maybe the security has had to be increased?" she questioned her "husband." They also knew that cameras or microphones could be aimed at them at any time. It was a Hackers' Convention after all, and everybody here knew the latest gadgetry.

"I think that we should look around and then head home," Chris carried on. "Your legs are going to get tired quickly, darling. We can always come back another time. It seems that the 'baby' is a quick way in."

Worried about the security, they knew that if there were professional agents here, he and Katie were their prime subjects. Hacking was a weird and cloudy world. Even if they were caught walking around, it would only depend on what evidence the good guys had against them. Their papers were good. They had excellent trails since entering the country, and Chris wondered what would happen if he was ever apprehended. He worried more about Katie and his parents than he worried about himself. He had been hack-free now for six months.

Three hours later they were back in their hotel room. Nothing else out of the ordinary had taken place. Chris was saddened that Tesla had not accepted the invitation. He was looking forward to chatting with a representative, for it was one of the reasons he had wanted to attend. He was a fan of the electric car, and was interested in purchasing one, but the electronic paperwork for owning one of these cars was new and very dangerous. So few drivers owned Teslas, and his only chance to get one was walk into Tesla and pay cash. This was equal to committing suicide unless he got himself an extra set of papers from Shanghai just for the purchase.

He thought about that lying on the bed as Katie was in the bathroom taking off her additions and changing her appearance so that she wouldn't be tied to the pregnant lady if they went out. His mind went over everything he had seen in the convention hall. There was absolutely nothing he wanted to look at or purchase.

Maybe he might get one of those GoPro cameras to document their life together? He pictured the faces he thought to study. His photographic memory was good for faces. Most humans didn't know that they had their own versions of facial recognition. It had been in the human mind forever. Ever since they had fought other cave people and their brains had to sort friend from foe. Chris had watched many programs on how human and animal brains could detect certain features in others within a split second and knew whether to run or fight. He had studied the faces and mannerisms of the three security guards who had taken the two kids away. He had known that these were trouble, and had stayed a few feet back.

The three guards were not overweight. Convention security was normally overweight, pensioners, or part-time ex-cops or firefighters trying to make a few extra bucks. At the last convention, he hadn't seen a guard younger than 60. These three were certainly a new breed. The girl had whipped the kid around and had him on the floor so fast that Chris had just stood there, his mouth open watching in shock. "A perfect reaction from Mr. Average," he thought to himself. Then he had searched the faces of the inside security guards. Yes, he had seen several pensioners, and even remembered a few faces from past years, but two or three were new, and looked tough.

There were food carts here and there, and two were managed by mean-looking civilians who looked like they had just returned from Army deployment overseas. Maybe the returning military needed jobs, but the coincidence was there nevertheless.

He hadn't seen any faces he could reconstruct into hackers, but there had been another element that had gotten his attention. Computer guys were normally overweight sitting behind a desk for hours on end. At two stands he hadn't seen one overweight guy or gal in the entire stand. One stand only had men, which was weird, as computers were a 50/50 enterprise between males and females. Every stand had a woman, as women found it easier to sell to men, more than men to men did. Especially pretty ones.

Even the smallest ten by ten stands had at least a man and a woman on duty. It was day one after all. At one medium sized stand he had seen five fit, thin men, two of whom seemed to be looking at screens. The other three scanned faces, not really interested in selling or conversing with passersby. Maybe it was a plain clothed security detail or something, but something was not quite right with that stand, and he wanted to check it out on day four.

Chuck Martin was just getting to the convention as Katie and Chris arrived back at the hotel. He wore a computer badge showing him to be the CEO of a small computer company. He headed toward the stand organized by his security. To make sure that nobody would be really interested in what his stand sold, he had a mass of different computer mice, mostly boring out-of-date ones, mouse pads, small computer screens that were the rage, and several computers. His screens were actually connected to mini cameras around his stand and pointing up and down the walkway in four directions. He had a standalone twenty by twenty stand so that his tiny cameras, twelve of them, could also look at passersby. Again he had no faces to subject his search to, apart from George R.R. Martin, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and all the staff that had left the bank in the last decade. His facial recognition software was as good as the FBI's, and he was hoping to connect with a few of his old employees, or a young man he had a part facial on.

Martin himself had selected the men who would man the stand. He didn't want any women. He wanted to concentrate on the crowd, and hopefully catch a crook. There would be lots of other time after the convention to spend with the opposite sex.

"What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" was the catch phrase, and the two dead women he had buried several years earlier in the area had certainly stayed. He wondered if their bodies had even been found. He smiled at the recollection as he walked onto his raised show booth.

The two young men they had taken into custody were nobodies, Jack learned. Between them they didn't have the brains to hack computers. He couldn't figure why they were going to the convention, other than to look at the new iPhones. They were nothing more than a couple of badmouthed kids with hate for everything around them. He used a cell phone and took one picture of each boy's face for future recognition, and then he headed back to the bus with their information. He would bet a month's pay that their faces or names would come up within the next few years, once he had input them and their information. They were the trouble type.

Nothing much happened that first day, or the second day. The cameras worked well and they had two face recognitions so far, both felons who had done their time and seemed to be keeping themselves clean. The third face that rang bells surprised all of them in the bus. It took one of the computers only seconds to find the name of one face: Chuck Martin.

"What the hell is he doing here?" Jack asked the rest of his crew.

"I would assume he's doing what he does so well: getting in our way, breaking the law and screwing with good people's mortgages," muttered one of the men. His names was Mark James and he had felt the might of USA Bank come down on him when he was about 45 days late on his mortgage payment a few months earlier.

"Explain," Jack ordered his agent. He hadn't heard about his agent's run-in with Chuck Martin's heavies. It was a private matter. Mark James pushed himself back from the screen, freshened his coffee and began telling his boss his story.

"Going through my lousy divorce, and with a full day's work, I had forgotten to pay the most recent monthly mortgage payment my wife had always paid. I was alone in the house, I don't have kids, my wife had left eight weeks earlier, and there was a knock on my door one night, just after midnight. Three suited men demanded that they enter. Me thinking that they were plainclothes detectives or something, I let them in while I headed to the bedroom to get my identity. When I returned to the lounge, the men had made themselves comfortable as if they owned my house, already had paperwork out and demanded one of two things in a threatening manner. One, my signature on house foreclosure papers, or two, I would write out a check for three months of mortgage payments made out to USA Bank. Once I realized that they weren't officials, and had no right to be in my house, I demanded them to leave. They laughed telling me that they weren't leaving without either foreclosure papers signed, or three months' payments. I thought of getting back-up in case I lost my temper with these goons, so I headed for my house phone and one of the men tried to stop me. Either they didn't know I was a Federal agent, or they were just stupid, so I stopped and pulled my cell phone from my dressing gown. The same man tried to make a grab for it, but got his large nuts on the wrong end of my foot as I dialed headquarters. I wasn't going to take any crap from these apes, and they were in my house illegally. The other then lunged forward and I gave him a bad head-butt for his trouble. He fell hard back onto the couch, his bloody nose leaving a trail all over my carpet and furniture. The third just sat there as I called through to our switchboard, said my name and agent ID, and said that I had a home invasion and needed backup." Agent James laughed.

"Once the three men heard I was an agent of sorts they packed up and scrambled for the door. They were gone before I ended the call. I followed and got a second's look at the rear tag number of the black Crown Vic. If the bank guys had looked in my car garage, they would have seen the exact same vehicle. I told the operator on duty, Janet King, to get an APB out on the black Victoria tag NJ47... something... something... something and told her for the cruisers to use caution. They had attacked me at home wanting to do harm and were heading north from my home address. They weren't seen that night, Jack, but the tag number was just enough to shorten the Crown Victoria list in DC to twelve. There are a lot of black Crown Victoria cars in Washington. As soon as one of our crime units arrived, Janet got them on the move, and they took blood samples in case they could find the man's DNA on the FBI database. They did. Two days before we flew out here, the DNA report came back showing that the man in question worked for USA Bank, and he had several mentions of aggravated assault on his record during the last 24 months. It seemed this guy attacks USA Bank customers for a living."

"Interesting. 45 days late, huh!" replied Jack Durant. "Foreclosures can only be activated once the mortgage is over 90 days late. They had no legal reason to knock on your door. I assume your mortgage is now up to date?"

"I sent off a double payment the next day and haven't heard anything since. Maybe those goons are here. The computers will find them if they are," replied Agent James.

Both Jack and Mark pulled themselves in back to the screens and looked through the camera where Chuck Martin's face had appeared. The convention was closing for the night, and the halls were pretty empty. That area was already closed and there was a cleaner or two entering the camera view to begin cleaning.

Steve and Jenny Uben were still preparing for their visit. They had current Nevada driving licenses from their usual source in China, and both licenses showed them to be Joe and Pat Black, who lived in near Las Vegas in Henderson, Nevada. Locals, pensioners at ages 80 and 77, they were ready for the cheap prices on day four, when they were going to look around together. Steve was going to enter as Steven J. Uben alone on day three though.

Steve had an idea something was not right. Something was nagging at him. He and Jenny had arrived a week earlier from Gatwick, England via Dallas, ready to collect their new Nevada drivers' licenses from the Henderson Post Office. They knew Chris and Katie would be there, and hopefully well camouflaged. He also knew that Chop Stix was flying in, the man who had sent their licenses. He had written them a letter, which was the only way to get private non-scanned communications through the U.S. Government these days.

To Steve it seemed weird that he could use a million modern devices to talk to another human anywhere, but the old snail mail was still the most secure. It was just not possible for the NSA, CIA and FBI to open and read every piece of mail hitting the United States from overseas. The post office said that they moved billions of pieces of mail a month, or a year, he wasn't sure, but it would need millions of people to read everything that was sent.

That was why snail mail was reasonably safe for small packages, official papers, or a letter, important information. It was the only way he now communicated with his suppliers, and knew that from this year onwards, Chris and Katie had better get used to slow messages unless they wanted somebody listening in.

They stayed in a mid-priced hotel, away from the hustle and bustle of the Strip. They were not here to get noticed, just to meet with Pepsi Cola, a hacker who did not know them as hackers, just people who had worked at USA Bank Security at one time.

Pepsi Cola was an older hacker than Steve, and was one of the first Steve had followed from long before he had got into hacking. Pepsi Cola, under the name of John Doe, had called Steve Uben, then head of security at USA Bank in Charlotte in 2003. He had wanted to know if the bank had a hacking department.

This threw Steve backwards. Some guy Steve knows as a hacker, who nobody knows, calls and asks if the bank has a hacking department? He laughed at the question, and asked who was really calling. The reply shocked him. The guy said to Steve that he was Pepsi Cola. Steve always smiled when he remembered his reply to the caller.

"Mr. Cola, or shall I call you Pepsi? You call me here at the bank headquarters in Charlotte North Carolina, with a name of a famous brand invented just down the road, and you want me to talk turkey with you? What have you been smoking?"

"I completely agree, Mr. Uben, or can I call you Steve? Since you don't know what I'm talking about, that shows me that you don't have a hacking department, or you guys don't know anything about the next crime wave that is going to rob you blind."

"Okay, Mr. Cola, you talk and I'll listen. If I get tired of listening you will hear a click. If you hear a question out of me, the call continues, okay?" The man on the other end smiled. This guy wasn't so bad, and at least he had a sense of humor.

For an hour Pepsi Cola told Steve Uben, head of security for USA Bank, about hacking, its implications with the growing internet and more powerful computers. Steve got totally caught up in the information being given to him for free. Why would this hacker divulge this information unless he worked for a government organization? Steve betted to himself it was the FBI. What Steve Uben was told during this one telephone call actually interested him to look into the world of hacking.

Thanks to Pepsi Cola Steve Uben became a hacker, not that Pepsi Cola ever knew it, and during the next couple of years both men became pretty friendly. Pepsi kept tabs on the bank's security advancements.

During their second conversation a year later in 2004, and remembering this guy well, Steven actually asked if the caller was an actual hacker, or the FBI, and said he wanted the latest bank information.

A month later a thick envelope arrived for him in the mail. It showed a history of the hacker, that Pepsi Cola had been caught by the Feds, jailed for quite a long time, and had become an agent for the FBI. The envelope also had a copy of Steve's entire life history, from the day he was born, and showed a perfectly clean record. The file had "File Copy - Property of the FBI" stamped on it.

Pepsi Cola contacted him again in 2011 after hearing that Steve had been fired from USA Bank and offered him a job. That made Steve smile. He wasn't that interested in working for the FBI, he hadn't been "made," or caught, as a hacker yet, and was now one of the best, thanks to this man.

To keep in contact with the man he considered an important source of information, Steve set up an ongoing Steven J. Uben identity in Florida. It showed the same history his file did, with birth certificate and everything. He annually updated phone numbers, email addresses and one year divorce papers, showing the world that this Uben guy was now a single man. His entire family had moved on, leaving him alone in a small secluded trailer park. His file showed that he worked for a sales company and was always on the road, driving around the country in a beat-up old 20-foot Ford RV in his name, which he had stashed in a small enclosed storage depot in Georgia. Steve had purchased the single-wide trailer, and paid the annual taxes, park fees and insurance on an annual basis.

Steve's wife Jenny, her sister's husband, who lived 100 miles away, traveled for payment to the trailer four times a year. The man said hi to the guards as Steven J. Uben, and spent a few days there making it looked lived in. With automatic lights and security guards, who knew that this Uben guy was almost never at home? They kept the trailer safe.

Dozens of trailers around Steve's were vacation homes, and the guards knew that some of the occupants didn't visit more than once a year or even less.

Jenny's husband was paid an annual retainer to clear Steve's local post office mail box, and make sure the empty trailer stayed empty. This was how Steve still got mail from the FBI, though it took him a while to reply. He warned Pepsi Cola that he was on the road a lot.

Now, thanks to this false setup, Pepsi Cola had written him again in 2012 and 2013, his brother-in-law giving him his latest mail in Dallas. The well-paid man had actually flown in to deliver the mail.

The letter dated two months earlier told Steve that Pepsi Cola would be at the convention in Las Vegas again this year, and wanted to meet face to face. Steve hadn't wanted to meet the man in 2012. Too much water was passing under the bridge the year earlier. He had written back saying that he hadn't made it, but could work his sales travels in 2013.

Meeting face to face worried the hacker a little, but he knew that if the Feds had anything on him, it would be nearly impossible to prove it. Since he knew that Pepsi Cola worked for the FBI, he had been triply careful in his dealings with financial institutions since day one of his ten-year hacking career. He had instilled this in Jenny and Chris, and he thought Jenny was even cleaner in her dealings than he was. Only Chris had made a few mistakes that he had corrected from time to time. He felt pretty confident to meet the Feds, and this time there was a recent ID photograph of Pepsi Cola. The agent knew that Steve would find him if he was there, and Steve hadn't had time to respond to the letter.

On the morning of the third day, after growing a beard for the last two months on purpose, he left out his contact lenses, made his hair a rich brown with a temporary coloring, and wore a cheap ten-dollar shirt and slacks a salesman on the road would wear. He added packs into his lower and upper jaw much like a dentist inserted into patients, and this changed the width of his face in case there was face recognition software in the security cameras. He was sure there was. Steve also put on thick glass eyeglasses to try to change his features, and Jenny, good with face makeup, made an old scar down the side of his left cheek. Something that a car accident could do.

Once she was finished it appeared real and he hardly looked like the Steven J. Uben that Pepsi Cola was expecting to meet. The latest photo the FBI had of him was over a decade old.

With hundreds of others, just before midday, he reached the ticket counter and paid with cash for one ticket. He had been to this convention hall several times and was quite surprised how busy it was. Steve didn't know how to find his meeting. Pepsi Cola had said that he would be walking around the hall in the convention's security uniform once every few hours, and for Steve to find him from the delivered photo.

Steve was happy that there were so many visitors. It made the face recognition programs work even harder if they were there, and he quickly looked for and found the usual cameras, but did not see the tiny ones the FBI had placed. He hoped his beard, scar and glasses would at least give him a chance.

The new stands interested him, and it was an hour before he began to head into the convention area, which had the smaller 20 by 20 and 10 by 10 stands. Many of the security guards were not the usual overweight and half-asleep ones the convention used year to year. Many were, but there was a smattering of extremely fit and strong guards of both sexes: the FBI agents, he reckoned. He had walked by several but none had looked like Pepsi Cola.

It was walking by a 20 by 20 corner stand when he began to sweat slightly. There on the stand, looking at the crowd in front of him, was his old boss, Chuck Martin. Not only that, three of the crew standing in the same stand were guys that he had trained and actually worked with for the last two years at USA Bank.

What in damnation are those guys doing here? he thought to himself, changing direction slightly as if something in the next row had caught his attention. He was just out of range of Martin's scans. He was looking at the crowds directly in front of him, and lucky for Steve the stand was three steps higher than the walkways around it. To look out for hackers like me.

"Can I interest you in our new laptop accessory?" asked a salesman, walking up to him. "Our drive cleaning system inspects and cleans your computer drive daily making sure no porn or spam messages are there for you to open by mistake."

Steve looked at the young salesman, about his son's age, and tried to look stupid and inquisitive at the same time. "Does it get rid of spam emails?" Steve asked.

"Guaranteed, 100 percent, if you have already received spam mail from that sender. All you do is record that address in your spam folder, and any emails resembling that sender's email will be blocked. Great if you have kids, sir. It will protect the whole household for $19 a month. You get the first 3 months trial for free!" The kid handed him over a disc for his free trial.

Steve thanked the boy and continued to watch Chuck Martin. Why would the CEO himself be here, unless he expected to catch somebody? There was no man on Earth who he detested more than Chuck Martin. It had been his job for several years to collect bad writeups, letters of complaint and threats against him, and hide them from the rest of the bank staff. Steve's last encounter with the jerk was when he had been summoned to the CEO's office and was lambasted for a scathing sexual misconduct report in the New York Times about the CEO. It was difficult to explain to the man that he had no power outside the bank, it was a free country, and the papers were free to print what they wanted. If Weiner or the mayor of San Diego were in the news at that time, as they were a few months ago, the story wouldn't have been noticed. It was a small story with one semi-famous complainant, and it would have been lost.

From then onward he knew that his days at the bank were numbered, and wasn't surprised when his pink slip arrived in the mail a few months later. Steve heard that Martin had gone through three more heads of security since his departure. The CEO thought himself more important than the President.

The kid left him alone reading the front and back cover of the disk while the corners of both eyes surveyed the scene. He noticed a stronger-looking security guard pass by in front of Chuck Martin. The man looked up at the CEO as he passed and the CEO ignored him. It wasn't the guy Steve was looking for anyway, but he spied a second strong-looking guard walking with a female guard, equally fit, about a dozen yards behind the first one.

He looked at the two approaching guards and his thoughts went back to his digging into Martin's files. He was slowly getting deeper and deeper into the hidden bank files. Even files that had been deleted still left trails. He had reached back to the year 2000, and had found a $40 million one-time payment to some company in the Middle East. He had begun researching this company about a year ago, and had found out why USA Bank would pay a company there and then try to hide the files. The answers had shocked him to his core. He had found out who did it, but he still didn't know why the funds were paid.

Suddenly his own human face recognition worked and the face of Pepsi Cola wearing a security hat fell into place. He watched the two guards walk past Chuck Martin. He wondered why Martin hadn't bothered to hide his appearance. Surely he had thousands of enemies. The CEO was certainly dressed down like he was, wearing cheap clothing, and Steve smiled, assuming that a billion-dollar CEO wouldn't be expected to be here at the Hackers' Convention. They say everybody has seven doubles, he thought again watching the two security guards pass.

The man he knew was his contact didn't look up, but the woman did, studying the CEO. Martin must have done something, as the girl's face changed, and she looked away. It was something small, not noticeable from where he was standing as he waited for the two guards, being given extra space by the crowd, to move on. He followed and waited until they were several booths away, and then he closed in.

The girl said something to the man, and headed off to what looked like the nearest restroom. The male guard stopped and talked to two saleswomen about a laptop. Steve sided up to him and waited for the saleswomen to move off to talk to real customers. Then he gingerly made himself known.

"Mr. Cola, I presume," he said quietly standing behind the man.

"Ah! The one and only Steven Uben, I presume," the guard said not turning round, but Steve had seen the man's body stiffen.

"You wanted to see me?"

"Yes, I was hoping you would meet with me one day. We have a few items in common we need to discuss."

Both sensed the girl returning, and Steve backed off.

"Maggie, I'll walk around a bit more. Why don't you take a break and I'll be back in an hour or so. Just forget what that asshole said to you for now."

The returning guard nodded, looked around, and her eyes missed Steve's face, which made him feel a little better after what he had just heard. She headed off in a different direction.

"Let's go over and grab a pocket of popcorn. I'm buying," said Jack "Pepsi Cola" Durant as he slowly headed in the closest vendor's direction without turning around to look at Steve. Steve fell into step with him. He was sure he had FBI face recognition software scanning him. He was sure that Pepsi Cola was being watched, and creeping around behind the guy was certainly asking for trouble.

He actually wasn't being watched, not the front of his face anyway, but Steve didn't know that. The crews in the buses did have cameras following the guards. They would pan closer onto a guard if there was a need to do so, and Steve actually had his back to the nearest camera. Jack Durant had figured out where the camera was, and had acted accordingly. He wanted the meeting, not the knowledge. He already knew the man he was talking to was harmless.

"We have things in common we need to discuss?" Steve asked. He stayed at least a yard away from the agent as he was handed his bag of popcorn from the vendor. He didn't want Pepsi viewing his made-up face too closely. Jenny was good, but not that good.

"You sound a little different from what I remembered your voice to be," the man turned and smiled at the old tired-looking face he had only seen in photos. "Grown a beard as well I see?"

Steve smiled back and turned to find somewhere to sit out of the bustle, and to get popcorn. There were a few empty tables at a small food court and he headed there. Thankfully the agent sat down at the next table to him, faced him and began eating. "Getting old, an earlier dentist appointment, a beard saves me shaving on the road, and being on the road all my life doesn't do much for my health, Mr...."

"Durant, Jack Durant. A little easier to say in a crowd than Pepsi Cola," he smiled back. Dressed as a security guard, the other visitors stayed away.

"Sure, a weird name, but I assume you had your reasons," Steve replied, struggling to eat. "I'm sure I can't understand why your mother would call you Pepsi? Brandy, or Avis I could understand, but Pepsi. That's too North Carolina even for me."

Jack laughed. He wondered what the reaction would be if the man in front of him knew his real name before his FBI name change to hide his real identity?

"I would like to discuss a certain person I believe both of us cannot believe is attending this convention."

"Chuck Martin, CEO of USA Bank?" Steve answered. "I actually wondered if you wanted me to give you hacking tips, Jack," he smiled at the man about his age, jumping straight into the fire.

"I'm sure you have some, defending USA Bank from hacking for several years. Maybe at our next visit." Jack smiled, enjoying his fresh popcorn. "But it is so weird that the man is actually here, and the only reason I wanted a few moments of your time was to see if you were willing to give up a few secrets on your ex-boss."

"Sure, I hate him as much as the rest of the world does. He is a total nut job, and thinks he is above the law. He told me about his upbringing out on Long Island with Stephan Saber of Jacob Silverstein's, and how they were above the law then."

"Good," replied Jack. "Do you mind if I tape a few words from you? There are cases open on Martin, and several departments working on trying to nail him. He may be a nut job, as you say, but he is clever enough to stay ahead of the law."

Steve replied that he didn't mind. It would help his cover, of still being Steven J. Uben, a man who hardly existed. "Sure, no problem. I have an hour, then my teeth are going to hurt like hell from my earlier appointment, and I'll need to get on the road. I have to be in Reno tomorrow. A large potential sale."

"What do you sell?" Jack asked.

"Security software for companies from Norton," Steve lied. "Larger companies need a rep to look after them, and of course to have it pushed down their throats." Jack laughed. He used Norton at home.

"Still based in your park in Florida, a single-wide?" Jack asked.

"You tell me," smiled Steve back. "I'm hardly there. Can't remember what it looks like. My RV is giving a bit of trouble, though."

"Well I'm sure I could better your sales income, Steven. I'm sure we could use your knowledge. I hate to see a good brain go to waste."

"Maybe I'm getting there. This sales job with its travel is killing me," Steve smiled back. He had seen the agent press the record key and he knew this was being recorded.

"Special Agent Jack Durant sitting with Steven J. Uben, November 5th, 2013, 1:15 p.m. Las Vegas Convention Center. Mr. Uben, do you volunteer to answer questions pertaining to your time as head of security at USA Bank from 2007 to 2011?"

"I volunteer if I can answer your questions," Steve replied simply.

"Mr. Uben, can you ever recall hiding or changing information on USA Bank mortgages to suit the bank's purpose?"

"Not while I was there."

"Do you remember hiding information pertaining to any actions against Mr. Chuck Martin, the CEO?"

"Yes, to stop the bank's staff from knowing about certain criminal allegations against the CEO," Steve replied feeling a little less worried.

"Did CEO Mr. Chuck Martin ever tell you private information about certain allegations he was interested in hiding?"

"Only I believe on two occasions. The first time he tried to make me a friend of his in 2008. He wanted me on his side, and to make sure that anything that came over my desk that alienated him would be destroyed. On my last visit before I was fired, he explained to me what happened to people who double-crossed him, and that I was getting close to this line," Steve replied.

"Elaborate please, Mr. Uben."

"He seemed rather proud how he dealt with whistle blowers, or people who said things about him. He described where he went to school, in Sag Harbor, and the type of people he was at school with. Most of the elite now in the New York banking world."

"Go on."

"He didn't state anything factual about any crime or actual occurrence, but he did mention two places I could go and research what a mean SOB he was, as he said in his own terms. The first was in the late 60s and early 70s at a middle and high school in Sag Harbor. About how many kids never made it to graduation, due to unpleasantness doled out by the kids like him. He said something about a girl drowning due to her insinuating that he was the father of her child. Second, and in New York proper, there was a death of some college football player, who he said had not gotten along with him, or they didn't see eye to eye. I don't know if he was boasting or just trying to scare me, but I had no interest in looking up any records. I knew my time was up with the bank."

"Mr. Uben, last question. Do you believe Mr. Martin could murder or hurt somebody?"

"Without a doubt. He is one of the most miserable meanest SOBs I have ever met."

"Thank you, Mr. Uben," and the agent clicked off the recorder and put it into one of his pockets. "Thanks so much, Steven. Now off the record, tell me exactly what he said to you, from year 2007 to 2011, and we'll be done for the day."

"I certainly won't have time to testify at any trial," said Steve, again slightly worried.

"If you do and the guy is convicted you can enter our witness protection program, like yours truly Jack Durant did, or you can come and work for us. We need good men in Washington."

For half an hour Steve told the agent everything he knew. There wasn't much more, but what he didn't say was far worse than he had legally said. Steve hated his ex-CEO with a passion, which had fuelled his taking funds from the bank's own coffers and not from its customers. Chris had done the same thing. Jack Durant and Chuck Martin had both fuelled his hacking habit, but he wasn't going to tell them. One thing he couldn't tell the agent was what he was currently working on. As Steven Uben, the information was too recent, too shocking, and Steve knew that he would have to give Durant the info soon, but today was not the day.

Thirty minutes later he shook Pepsi Cola's hand and the meeting was at an end, for now.
Chapter 22

Oh Crap!

Jenny was happy to have her man return. She was worried sick about this meeting, and her husband was so calm and brave to walk into the FBI den.

He did look like an old sourdough travelling salesman when he returned with his puffy face and cheap clothes. It didn't take him long to look like the man she had married though. Steve pulled out the padding in his mouth, telling her how hard it was to eat popcorn with it. He changed, throwing the cheap clothes in a trash bag to give to some old beggar on the street, and shaved off his two months of growth.

"How's that? Better, dear?" he asked once he was done. He looked clean, ten years younger and pretty good for over twenty years of marriage. Few would have recognized the same man who had just visited the convention.

"Our friend from overseas will meet us at the convention tomorrow," said Jenny to Steve over a late meal. "He called on the hotel landline, and said for us to look for a female friend of his. Honey, we had better get some sleep. It is going to take us seven hours tomorrow to look like Mr. and Mrs. Eighty-Year-Old."

Chris Uben was the only person who didn't need to spend hours dressing up. He and Katie were going to look the same as they had on day one. She needed help, and for two hours perfected her pregnant mother disguise.

Both wanted to get there once the long lines of pensioners had entered. Those would be there in force and he knew that his parents were going to blend in well with the older set. Chris also wondered who had the best face recognition software, the Feds or USA Bank, and whether his face was on any data banks. It shouldn't be.

By midday they got into a different line from the first day. They had about 30 aged couples in front of them and this time nobody thought to allow a young and very pregnant lady to pass.

Within an hour they were in, and to make the act look real, he and Katie headed toward a food court where she could rest and get some sustenance.

Unbeknownst to them, both had passed through the cameras watching the lines, and both faces had not caused any interest by the software. Maggie Tregio's computer had shown the young couple for twenty seconds and nothing had happened, except she remembered the faces. The pregnant girl and her husband with the young hoodlums who had caused the problem on day one, and she immediately forgot about the couple.

Agent James came in to relieve her later while she had an hour for lunch. Her job was to walk past Martin's stand and report if he was there on her way to the food court.

He was, and had just arrived by the look of it, as he was depositing a coat and some food at the rear of the stand. It was winter, and even in Las Vegas today was cold, colder than normal. She headed off to grab a dog, or a bratwurst or something, reporting to Jack that Martin was there.

Chuck Martin was becoming frustrated. So far nothing had shown up on his face recognition software. It had been a complete waste of time and energy. There must have been hackers in the building. Maybe they were changing their appearances, and now they were all these old people? If nothing happened today, he would go and find some fun. Maybe he should harass some of the retirees for the fun of it. He thought that a good idea, to break the monotony, but he needed some food first.

With his food he had also hidden a small fifth of Bourbon to ease the pain of boredom. Looking at these masses of ancient humanity was certainly not something he enjoyed, even if many of them were the bank's customers. He, as a banker, always believed that he was doing these people a favor, not the other way around. They were lucky to bank with one of the largest banks in the world, and that eased any guilt of robbing them of their unpaid houses or hard-earned dollars at any opportunity, which he did every time it presented itself. His foreclosure employees took no prisoners.

Chop Stix was dressed as an older Chinese woman, and had one of his young West Coast couriers from Seattle fly down to survey the convention with him, acting like "his" daughter.

He had seen Steve and Jenny's old person attire two conventions earlier in 2011. Even knowing what he was looking for, he still had to struggle and look several times to make sure that he was looking at the right couple when he was sure he had found them. They were seated at a food court with a lone female security guard sitting at the next table. The guard looked too fit and capable to be just a security guard, and he waited twenty minutes wondering whether he should risk the guard being so close.

The food court was pretty empty, as the older folks didn't spend money eating as much as the younger visitors. Another guard arrived out of the crowd and the female in uniform got up and joined the newcomer two tables away. This time the guard was a male, who also looked far too fit and capable of running after somebody if need be, and he knew they were either Las Vegas police, or Feds. He had to be careful.

Chop Stix and his friend edged closer, and came up to the older couple, and he took the nearest chair behind them at the next table, giving him a view of the two cops.

"A nice day for the convention," he remarked so that the older couple could hear what he said, but he was actually aiming his conversation at the young girl sitting next to him.

"A little chilly for us older people," said Jenny looking at her husband while she was talking. The two other participants expertly nodded at the conversation, in case there were cameras looking at them. "Nice to see it is an international convention. Do you come to Las Vegas often?" Jenny asked, now showing anybody watching that her head had turned and she was chatting to the lady behind her.

"Chee-Lin, please go and get us tea please. Here is some money. And maybe a cookie or two," said Chop Stix to his partner. The girl took the $20 bill and headed over to the food stand. She was Chinese, but wore tight-fitting blue jeans with a tee-shirt with a heart that said she loved NY. She looked like a Chinese-American student. Chop Stix, now in conversation with the couple behind, turned slightly to engage the couple. He hoped it looked like a bunch of pensioners chatting, as they always did. Pensioners always seemed to converse with newcomers, or anybody within speaking distance.

"You seem to be locals?" she asked.

"Yes," Steve replied. "From Henderson, a smaller town south of here. And you, ma'am?"

"Thinking of moving here. I currently live in Seattle, but my daughter is at UNLV."

"You wanted to meet with us," asked Steve now that they could chat, although in quiet tones. The two security guards had looked their way. Steve wasn't surprised to see Jack Durant sitting with the female guard. Jack had looked straight at him, and over them without halting, so he knew that his disguise was good. As far as Jack Durant, AKA Pepsi Cola knew, Steve Uben was in Reno. "See the two guards at the table?"

"Yes," replied Chop Stix.

"Ever heard of Pepsi Cola?"

"Yes, he was famous in the 90s. Was caught and put in jail for life," Chop Stix replied. "I actually met him when I was a boy; twice I think when he collected papers from my employer in Beijing."

"Well you are meeting him for the third time, old friend," replied Steve. There was silence for a full minute as the young girl returned with two cups of tea and two large cookies.

"Am I correct at what you are implying?" asked Chop Stix.

"Yes, I met with him in a different disguise yesterday. He wanted to meet to discuss Chuck Martin."

"You are sitting in the same food court with the guy you met yesterday?" said Jenny shocked.

"He's already looked at me and didn't stop. We are okay," Steve replied. "It seems that Martin is in trouble with the Feds. Something about him molesting little girls when he was in school, and again when he was in New York in college. Martha, a drink sounds good right now. Want to get us two cups of coffee while I chat?" Jenny got up. She had already heard about what had happened at yesterday's meeting.

While she grabbed two cups of coffee, Steve told Chop Stix about Pepsi Cola, and his meeting with him.

"So you don't think he was setting you up? Or checking you out for body language, or something?" the Chinese lady asked.

"Pretty sure, anyway he let me leave. I told him I was heading for Reno, and had no tail when I headed back to the hotel," added Steve. "I'm sitting within thirty feet of the guy, and his body language hasn't said anything. I don't have a listening device, I'm not wearing anything I wore yesterday. You wanted to meet. I think we have fifteen minutes before we need to split up. Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright are here somewhere and we need to find them." Jenny returned quickly, for the line was short.

"I think my sister was murdered in Lichtenstein," Chop Stix began. There was silence as everybody took a sip of tea or coffee.

"That sounds awful," said Jenny.

"Are you sure?" Steve asked rather shocked. They had met his sister once for just a minute. A nice girl, pretty, a good scholar and loved her dancing.

"I'm fairly sure. Nobody has heard of her entire dance group since they left Germany or France, and their last dance was meant to be in Vienna. I actually headed over there and found the place where they were to perform and where they actually performed, in another country. I found a tiny piece of one of their dance costumes hanging from a light, and it had blood on it. I took it back to China and had the blood analyzed. It wasn't the same blood type as my sister, but the age of the dried blood was about four weeks, the exact time my sister was to perform in Vienna."

"Wow!" said Steve. There was quiet for a minute as cookies and liquids were consumed.

"It was rather difficult to get the evidence, but what really made me think that my sister is dead, is that on my way back to China, my flight out of Zurich was delayed by 24 hours due to an engine needing replacement on the aircraft, and I was given an overnight stay at an airport hotel outside the airport. I was pretty upset after looking at and thinking through the evidence I had found, recognizing my sister's dance costume. I had placed the cloth in a sealed plastic food bag and was upset. I headed to the hotel bar and sat next to a guy who was pretty drunk, a German I believe. He was about 60, and was drinking heavily. He started a sort of communication how life is so bad and I asked him why. He told me this story about having to leave his place of employment. He was sick of the people there at the hotel he was working at being molested and hurt. It didn't sound right, in Europe, in Switzerland, in a civilized country! That doesn't happen, I thought, but I went along with the story and said nothing. He told me that he needed money to get home, back to Germany. He had left his clothes, bank cards and money at his place of work. He told me that he only had time to enter his room and take his passport. The security guards at the hotel were after him. He wouldn't tell me where it was, or the hotel's name. The man was drunk and scared."

"So what did you do?" Steve asked.

"I told him that I would give him money to get home, if I could discuss what he was talking about further sometime in the future. He then asked me if I was Chinese or Japanese. I said Chinese, and that I was looking for my sister, who was on a dance tour around Europe. Then he asked how much money I was prepared to give him. I asked him for what, and if he could give me any information? It took him another drink before he replied. He wanted $1,000 to get home to Germany. I asked him if he could tell me more about my problems. He said that for another $10,000 he could give me more information, but I could not visit him for at least a few months, for him to make sure that he could wind up his affairs in Germany. He had a wife and she needed protection. She was Swiss, and he would bring her back to Bülach, a small town just outside Zurich, by the airport. He told me that if I could give him a thousand that night he would give two clues, and I was to meet him in the hotel in exactly sixty days' time, at the same bar at the same time. If I didn't come alone, he would disappear."

"Did you give him the money?" Steve asked.

"Sure, I went back to my room, and collected his money. He was still there, much to my surprise. What shocked me was what he said once I gave him the American dollars. He got up, bowed to me and said, "Hotel Exclusive, Vaduz, Chinese dance group with twelve girls, Chuck Martin, USA Bank America," and he walked out of the bar. I was too shocked to go after him. I just stood there looking at his back as he left thinking that he was a thick and powerful and very scared man for fifty years old."

"Sounds right, Chuck Martin being there," replied Steve. "The International Banking Convention was about that time. In Bern, I think, this year. Martin would have been in Europe. What do you want me to do?"

"Anything. I will meet with the German in thirty-two days. You are welcome to come with me. Do you want to point this Martin out to me? I was told he is here."

"Sure, it's time we headed out. There go the Feds. Let's follow them," said Steve, getting up and seeing the two cops about to slowly walk past Martin's stand. They were certainly keeping an eye on him. The four rose and followed the two at a distance.

Steve watched Jack Durant and his girl slowly work their way to Martin's stand. Suddenly he saw Chris and Katie coming toward the same stand from the opposite direction. As Durant passed the stand, Chris and Katie were about forty yards from the stand and heading toward it. He was quite surprised a minute later when both Durant and the lady guard stopped once Chris and Katie passed them, and watched the couple unknowingly carry on. Then they discussed what they had seen, the female guard doing most of the talking.

"Cartwrights, 50 feet ahead right in front of us," said Steve to Jenny, and to Chop Stix who was a step or two behind them. "Something is going on. Pepsi Cola noticed them, as if he knows them. Oh crap!"

"Can't be!" replied Jenny. "Maybe it's the false baby. She looks like she's going to deliver at any moment."

Steve felt the lump in his throat. Something was not right, and as his son passed the Martin stand, all hell broke loose up on the stand.

"Got you, you thieving little bastard!" Steve heard Martin shout out from the stand above his son, and he saw the man stagger across the stage toward Chris, who had stopped, not knowing what was going on. The bank CEO looked unsteady as he ran. The man was either drunk or on something. Steve quickened his step, Jenny staying with him still arm in arm. Steve also noticed that the two Feds had stopped and were also watching from a distance.

"Oh crap!" said Steve under his breath again and reached the stand as Chuck Martin flew down the three stairs right in front of him, and with his fist hit Chris in the middle of the face.

"Got you, you thieving little bastard!" Martin shouted again as Steve, making it look like an accident, cannoned into the back of the CEO, knocking the unsteady man off his feet.

People began screaming around them, as the CEO, still screaming obscenities, fell onto the stairs of his booth. "Fall down, as if he hurt us," whispered Steve to Jenny, both still recoiling from the hit. They fell to the floor. From the corner of his eyes he watched as Martin tried to regain his feet and security guards came from all directions. Martin was livid. He turned around and kicked the old man, now on the floor, in his stomach as security guards pounced on him.

"That kid I hit. He has a bomb. There is a bomb in the hall," screamed the CEO as a pile of blue hit him and again he went down. Steve couldn't breathe. The kick had been hard, and he felt Jenny kneel above him as pandemonium broke loose. People were running and screaming everywhere at the word that a bomb was about to go off.

"Jenny, get a hold of Katie. Chop Stix, get them out of here fast. They will move you out fast with her stomach. Ask for help. Meet me back at the hotel. I'll try to get Chris out of here," he rasped. Jenny didn't say a word, but did as ordered. Steve could look after himself.

"Are you okay, sir?" said a female security guard over Steve.

"What happened? Crap, my stomach hurts!" he replied wheezing and rolling around in more pain than he actually had. His breath was coming back. "That damn guy kicked me in the stomach. That guy over there, Officer. I want to press charges. I'm an old man. I just bumped into him," and he pointed to Chuck Martin who was screaming blue murder, and struggling with two older guards trying to pin him down.

He also noticed that Chris was still unconscious, still lying on the floor, and Jack Durant was going through his pockets, he assumed looking for a bomb or explosive device. Chris would only have money on him. The guard told him to stay still and she ran over to help her colleagues.

Steve unsteadily got to his feet. A man cannoned into him, and he began toppling backwards. People screamed and ran everywhere. He steadied himself and got away from the limelight. He actually watched Chuck Martin throw off the two guards who were getting in each other's way, then he hit the approaching female guard in the face hard. She dropped like a stone, and he jumped back onto the stage and ran for his life. There were a lot of old people panicking and in everybody's way. Martin continued to shout bomb, which made everything worse, and they gave him an exit path.

"Get Martin, heading for the exit doors," he heard Jack Durant shout to his crew and they began the chase. Steve then saw paramedics run up and lift his unconscious son on a stretcher, as Durant ran after Martin. There was nothing Steve could do, so he followed the trail of fallen pensioners Chuck Martin had thrown in front of the guards chasing him. Several were in pain, or had blood running out of head wounds, and the guards had one by one stopped to help the people. Steve walked as fast as he could follow the trail of debris. Within a minute he was outside and watched as Chuck Martin roared off in an empty police cruiser, its lights still flashing and siren blazing.

There was nothing more that he could do. He certainly didn't want to tell Durant who he was, and he noticed that somebody had seen the theft of the cruiser as he watched as two more cars screamed off in the same direction about a minute later. He wanted to find Chris.

He found his son two minutes later as an ambulance wailed from the same direction the police cars had gone. He knew who was inside, as an unmarked car, lights flashing, headed after the other cop cars. Durant was driving. He had a split second to see the hospital name on the side of the ambulance.

Steve Uben was at a loss what to do. His mathematical brain was out of equations, so he just sat down on the steps he was standing above and put his head into his hands. Life had suddenly turned a corner, but he was not going to give up. He asked for directions to the hospital.

Everything had happened so fast for Jenny. She did as she was told, and with Chop Stix and his friend helping, they helped Katie out of the convention hall. It was panic everywhere, and many of the older security guards didn't know what to do. They stood around watching. One guard saw the pregnant Katie and he made space so that they could get to a door. Within minutes of Chris going down, they were outside and they headed away from the center toward Jenny's hotel. They needed to regroup and wait for Steve.

Jack Durant was shocked at Martin's outburst. He couldn't believe that a man of his stature was suddenly screaming at somebody. The man sounded drunk and when he hit the husband of the pregnant woman, he and Maggie sprang into action, running toward the stand. They watched as Martin was bowled over by an old couple, they went down; Chuck Martin got up and immediately kicked the fallen pensioner in the stomach hard. Jack felt anger build up in him as he closed. Suddenly the last few yards were hampered by people moving in every direction as Martin shouted bomb! Two security personnel then got to Martin. They were not his men and like a movie, time slowed as his forward movement was impeded by others. One of his staff got to the old man. She bent down and then she ran to help the guards. He was still twenty steps away when he saw Martin hit his agent out of nowhere. She dropped like a brick and now he was livid.

"Check Judy, she's down. I'm after Martin," shouted Jack to Maggie, changing direction as Martin ran across the stage. He jumped on the stage. Two of Martin's men tried to stop him and he barged through them as if they were paper. He jumped off the stage and saw Martin ahead of him causing chaos. He shouldered people out of the way, pulling them behind him so that they would get in anybody's way if they were following them, and headed for the nearest exit still shouting bomb!

Jack Durant caught a news camera filming the mad panic and it was panning onto Chuck Martin. Martin didn't see it, for he was too busy trying to see if anybody was following him. Jack was still far back and wasn't seen as Martin threw people out of his way and headed out of one exit door as two Las Vegas cops entered through the other door.

Jack took another few steps before he shouted at the cops that the perpetrator had just exited the door next to one they had ran through. They turned and began to head back for the door as four more cops came in running hard. The two cops shouted what the security guard twenty yards behind them had told them and they all headed back outside in time to see the first patrol car scream off. The four immediately headed for theirs.

Jack reached the door seconds later, and he realized in a split second that Martin had stolen one of their cars. His car was another hundred yards down one side of the building. He knew where he was, right in front of the main doors. He didn't see Steve Uben looking at the two cop cars pull away. Instead he sprinted hard for his unmarked car. It took time to reach his car. People were coming out of all doors, hundreds of them. He reached the side of the building and saw that an ambulance was parked right next to his car. There was no way he could get out, but was relieved that the ambulance team exited a sides door moments later with the poor boy, who still looked limp and unconscious on it. They were quick, had the ambulance door open, and lifted the boy inside. One got in; the other slammed the door and ran for the driver's side door. Jack reached his car and shouted at the driver "Where are you taking him?"

"Desert Springs on East Flamingo," the driver shouted. "South East of here, a mile and a half." The ambulance took off and Jack screeched his tires and headed after it.

"This is Special Agent Durant, FBI. There was a police car stolen outside the convention center. Information, please!" he said over his radio as he headed behind the ambulance, using its wake to keep up with it, and turned his radio on; it was already tuned to the local police channel.

"...stolen cruiser located one block north of McCarran Airport's main gate. Two cruisers on the scene, stolen cruiser is empty, woman at the scene said that she was pulled over by the plainclothes driver, pulled out of her white Dodge Caravan and the person drove away. Urgent message: there is reported to be two small children in the white Dodge Caravan heading toward the I-15 interchange. Use caution.... children in white Dodge Caravan."

"Where would Martin be going?" Jack said to himself aloud. "Martin's going to ditch the Caravan pretty soon. He knows the cops are on his tail." He screamed onto the I-15 and saw blue lights about two miles ahead of him. As there was holes in the traffic because rush hour hadn't started yet, the motorists, who were already aware that something was happening, quickly got out of his way. He hit 100 miles an hour as he saw a cop car enter the highway on the on-ramp ahead and speed down, opening the road further. The cruiser exited the next off-ramp and he followed. The cop ahead stopped on the exit and he drew up behind the car.

"Seen where this guy is?" Jack asked the cop.

"Not yet. They have a dozen cruisers searching both sides of the highway southwards. A road block is being set up about five miles south and if he tries to get out of town, he has no chance," the cop shouted back. Jack Durant knew all this, for he also had a radio, but could do nothing. It wasn't much use driving around, because the 12 other police cars would do that far better than he could. He just had to wait until news filtered through. He got on the radio to Maggie. Twenty minutes had passed since he had left the center.

"How's Judy?" he asked.

"She's fine. We have the whole of Martin's booth under arrest. The two guys who tried to stop you will need medical care. The young boy was taken by ambulance to Desert Springs on Flamingo I've been told. Still unconscious, so no rush there. Seven badly hurt here and are also heading to Desert Springs, three serious injuries to the head. Otherwise the center is empty and quiet. News teams everywhere. I can't find the old guy who took the boot in the stomach. He must have just walked out. Found Martin yet, Jack?"

"Negative," Durant replied trying to figure out what Martin would do. He was a CEO. CEOs use corporate jets. Then he shouted to the cop watching him to get back up to the main airport. He screamed past the cruiser and saw the cop on the radio before he heard it as he went under the flyover and headed back onto the I-15 going north.

By the time he reached the airport main gates, cruisers were pulling up to control the traffic in and out, looking for the white Caravan. Jack dropped his car at the curb, shouted at a cop to look after it and ran into the closest terminal and toward the main security room. He had been there once before years ago and knew where it was. His FBI badge got him in as he breathlessly called Maggie to get a photo of Chuck Martin on all security feeds to airports and police.

Within fifteen minutes, Chuck Martin's face came up on all the screens. Nobody had seen him, but he would not get through the terminals. He asked the nearest security agent if they had the corporate aircraft area under surveillance, and they pointed to one of the cameras and told him it was called the Private Aircraft Terminal.

"Can you get me all the recent flight plans out of that terminal?" Jack asked, and several minutes later he was given a list of seven flights that had left in the last hour or were about to leave. He scanned through it. Martin could already be in the air, for his pilot could file a plan during or after takeoff. He checked the list carefully, and then asked flight control the numbers and names aboard. Twenty minutes later he found out that Chuck Martin, or USA Bank, was not among the passengers or owners.

Soon the news came over the police frequency in the security office. "White Caravan located half a mile off the I-15 on the corner of Bermuda Road and Bruner Avenue, off St. Rose Parkway."

"Where's that?" asked Jack.

"Head down I-15 about 4 miles. You will see the St. Rose off-ramp, go east about half a mile," shouted somebody. "I live close to there."

Jack ran out and within five minutes reached his car. It was quick onto the I-15, for he was getting pretty good at Las Vegas. He headed south, and twenty minutes later was guided by police cars heading to the scene. The Caravan was there, and the kids were okay. He checked his watch. Martin now had a 95-minute head start.

He checked with the two police as the ambulance screamed up to collect the two crying babies, not more than a year or two old. The cops didn't know anything. The man who had stolen the Caravan had just disappeared. Some person driving by had seen the Caravan, its door open and the babies inside, and had called the police. That was only 20 minutes ago, but someone else had seen a man get out and run off about 90 minutes before he got here. She hadn't called 911 as she couldn't see the children inside. She thought somebody had run out of gas.

Jack checked the Caravan. There was nothing of Martin's in here, but the car did reek of alcohol. He watched the ambulance head off and sat down inside his car. The forensic team was on its way.

Twenty minutes later he thought he would head back to talk to the kid at the hospital when he suddenly heard the roar of a jet taking off close by. "What's that?" he asked the two police standing by.

"That noise?"

Jack nodded.

"Henderson Executive Airport is block east," and Jack saw a jet taking off a mile away. Within seconds he knew where Martin had gone and headed straight for the airport. Martin was now two hours ahead of him.

Thirty minutes later he found what he was looking for in the control tower. A rush take-off by a corporate jet 145 minutes earlier. A flight plan had only been filed after takeoff, to Charlotte, North Carolina. The jet had Martin in it, it was the official USA Bank jet he used, and would already be over Texas or even Arkansas by now. Jack got on the radio to Maggie and told her to put out an APB for all corporate flights going into Charlotte, to get men on the ground there, and to make sure she followed the flight. He was heading over to the hospital to see the kid.

When he reached Desert Springs 40 minutes later, rush hour traffic had begun. He got bad news, lots of it. The kid was gone, and the Charlotte flight plan had been cancelled while in flight. Maggie was waiting for a new flight plan. The pilot was filing it at the moment.

It came through 10 minutes later, Columbia, South Carolina, and Maggie got that city's police on the ground to intercept all private incoming jets. By now Chuck Martin was all over the news on local Las Vegas television. It hadn't gone national yet.

The jet didn't arrive in Columbia. At the last moment, the pilot told Air Traffic Control that there was a third change to their flight plan. An hour later the jet flew into Charleston; only five minutes after the third Flight Plan had been filed. The pilot was looking at losing his license, and maybe a prison term.

By the time the airport police arrived to arrest the pilots, and Chuck Martin, Martin was a mile away and being whisked by car to Charleston Harbor. He was in deep trouble, and even the unpleasant sanctuary of his new island headquarters was now welcomed.
Chapter 23

Chuck Martin

Chris Uben had a nose the size of his fist. It wasn't broken, but the doctor who had treated him said that with surgery, he could get it back to its original shape and size. Without surgery, the swelling would go down in about a week, but not look as pretty as before. Chris didn't care. Still groggy and under pain medication, he wanted to be released. Because no one had filed criminal reports or charges, there wasn't much to do. He was a foreign citizen, a Canadian, and they were more worried about getting the $2,800 payment for treating him. The ambulance company also wanted its $2,000 for the transportation.

Chris was happy to see an old man wave at him through the glass window of his private room, and twenty minutes later the nurse walked in asking if he could stand. The bed was needed for somebody else who had severe head injuries from the same accident at the convention center, and all his bills had been paid by his grandfather.

Unsteadily, he hugged his "grandpa," was helped to dress by the nurse, and still with blood down the front of his shirt walked to the hospital shop, where the older man paid cash for a new "I Love Las Vegas" tee-shirt.

The old shirt was bundled up and covered in a plastic bag to be discarded a few miles away.

Not a word was said as the two headed out of the hospital through a back door only two hours after Chris had arrived.

"I don't understand how the man on the street can afford to go into those institutions," said Steve as they hailed a taxi two blocks away to take them to a second point on the Strip.

There they headed through several side streets, Chris changed his clothes twice by buying new ones, and by the time they had exited the Paris casino, both men looked totally different. Both were wearing NYC baseball caps, white tee-shirts, Steve's belly was gone, and both wore sunglasses, khaki Bermuda shorts, and new track shoes. Just two more poor tourists losing money.

Jack Durant was tired. He was back going through the convention video footage when Maggie found him hours later.

"Chuck Martin disappeared in Charleston."

"I know," he replied.

"We have every agent within 200 miles heading to Charleston, there are a thousand cops walking the city, and all roads have cruiser roadblocks. He won't get far."

"Check his residence," continued Jack. "I want the entire USA Bank Tower searched from basement to roof. I want every rat's ass, trash can, cleaning room, and toilet cubicle checked. I want his top security management to be taken in for questioning. I want total lockdown on the Tower, and I want it on national news. Then we can get started on his group here. I'm going through the footage. Something is not right. Martin goes ballistic. He hits the same kid with the pregnant wife we saw in the skirmish on day one. This old couple crash into Martin, they fall down, he kicks the hell out of the old man, and then everybody disappears. I need to find the connection."

At the same time Steve was being taken care of by his wife. He wasn't in great pain, but maybe a rib was broken, or damaged. He was not going to see a doctor until they got back to the United Kingdom. He also could share the same pain pills Chris had been given by the hospital.

Jenny moved their flights forward. They were leaving on a flight to LAX in four hours, the fastest she could get seats. From there they were heading nonstop into Buenos Aires, Argentina, then onwards on different passports. It had taken over $15,000 to change and purchase new economy tickets, but Chop Stix, Chris and Katie, and she and Steve were getting out of town, immediately.

Chris looked a mess, and Jenny just hoped customs wouldn't cause him any issues in Los Angeles. They didn't.

By the time they arrived in LAX and in the departure halls, the Las Vegas Convention Center attack by a bank CEO on a U.S. Federal agent and twelve others was on the national news, thanks to Jack Durant.

Passport control queried why he looked like he had been in a fight, and through Chris' swollen lips came "Chuck Martin, Las Vegas Convention Center," which made the passport official nod and accept his excuse without a word. Nobody liked bank CEOs.

Steve smiled and ten minutes after takeoff, he turned around to Chris to tell him that Pepsi Cola had actually helped them in their escape, but his son was already drugged and asleep on Katie's shoulder. They all looked themselves, and didn't really care if they were picked up on airport security footage. They weren't coming back.

For weeks up to Christmas, the FBI team back in Washington went over the dozens of hours of footage from the dozen cameras inside the convention center and another dozen cameras around Las Vegas. Durant had seen the entire scenario play out at the stand from his own two eyes, eyes of the other security personnel, and the recorded footage.

It showed Martin bending over a computer screen that wasn't in the right direction for the cameras to spy on. He suddenly jerked upright and screaming, headed to where the young pregnant couple was. The poor kid was totally shocked at Martin's appearance, and quite rightly so. So was his wife. She actually put her hand to her mouth as Martin floored her husband and after being pushed back in the commotion just stood there in shock, as a normal person would do.

The old man looking in a different direction and about to point something out to somebody, maybe his wife, walked into Martin hard. Maybe a little too hard, but that wasn't evidence. They fell down. Why the old woman fell down, he couldn't quite see. Maybe she was weak and frail. It looked pretty normal, so was the kick the old man got. A full kick from Martin and that must have hurt, yet there were no records of him going to the hospital. Maybe it hadn't broken any ribs.

Then the approach of his agent was normal and he winced the first couple of times he watched Martin hit her. He actually had a smile on his face after he did it, and that was sent to the media. Martin was finished as bank CEO for sure.

A camera picked up the ambulance heading to the front area of the hospital and he was deposited, but the kid must have left through a side entrance as he never came back out.

The footage at the convention center also showed the old lady grouping up with the pregnant girl, helping her out of the center. Maybe she was going into labor, but again there were no hospital records showing the wife in any Vegas hospitals. He did notice an older Chinese lady with a younger friend also help the young girl head through the front doors. A street camera picked them up heading down the side of the convention center and then they were gone. He put all the faces through all the face recognition programs he had. He also sent the faces to New York and Charleston, South Carolina, and still got nothing. These people were certainly not wanted by anybody.

He blew up photos of the group and posted them on his wall. It took Maggie a week before she caught the old man, the same old man heading into the same hospital the kid was in on street recordings. It was the closest hospital to the convention center. That was expected, but he never came out again, and there were no records of the old man getting medical attention.

The day before Christmas answered many of his questions. That day's camera footage at McCarran airport arrived and there, blatantly in front of the camera, was the kid with the swollen nose and the same young girl this time without the stomach. It must have been fake. A young Chinese man was with them, and none other than Steve Uben, and after checking photos from UNC of Professor Jenny Uben, found out that it was his wife. Jack Durant smiled. He had been duped all the time. Martin had found hackers, and Steve Uben, his son Chris, his girlfriend or wife, and the Chinese lady, now a familiar-looking young man, were what had set the bank CEO off.

He didn't know who these hackers were but he could guess: Mr. and Mrs. Byte, Steve and Jenny Uben; The Cube, Chris their only son, it rhymed; and maybe even one of the best, Chop Stix, Chow Lee-Sim. Jack Durant would have laughed even harder if he had known that The Ram, alias Mercedes Cortez, was the pretty little girl, but he didn't know that, yet.

Chuck Martin was a mess. He had forced the lone submarine in the secret pens in Charleston, actually The Banker's own submarine, to take him to ABO Base in the "Rock" off Scotland. He thought that The Banker wouldn't mind. The Banker needed him and his bank personnel to carry out his next phase of the plan, whatever it was. Nobody other than The Banker himself knew the whole plan.

Stephan Saber arrived back at ABO Base a week after Martin did. His submarine had returned to fetch him and another dozen of his best security analysts. The Banker had given orders that it was time to take cover temporarily. Stephan was shocked at the trouble his bubby had gotten himself into. It seemed that The Banker had pulled out all stops to quell the output of media news about the event.

The Banker's power had reached the agents. Jack Durant in Washington had been told to get on with his life. Saber had seen the power his boss wielded. Within two days of Martin heading out from Charleston, and The Banker angrily allowing the CEO on his personnel craft as he called it, the story suddenly vanished from all major U.S. news networks. One talk show host didn't stop his daily ranting on what had happened and the silencing of the media, and was found dead in his vehicle, death by carbon monoxide suicide, just after Christmas. His death was even a larger story than Martin's.

Stephan Saber stayed well away from Martin. So did everybody else. Martin, not being used to being snubbed, took it out on his bank personnel below ground. Saber was ordered to control his friend, which was impossible, and then security took a hand.

Chuck Martin was heading up to his aboveground quarters about a week into the New Year, 2014, when the base's security commander stood in his way.

"Get out of my way. I'm not in a good mood." He demanded the three men allow him to pass. Very few people ever talked back to the CEO, it made him madder than hell, but the base commander did, and that shocked the man to the core.

"Oh! So sorry, you piece of lousy banking crap. We have orders to take you down to our security office."

"Go screw yourself! Chuck Martin, that's me, buddy, gives the orders around here, not you. Now get out of my way." Suddenly a hard fist, about the same strength as Chris Uben had felt, hit Martin right on the nose, snapping cartilage in front of the powerful knuckles. Martin screamed, half in pain and half in outrage. He totally lost it and began fighting back until a rifle butt hit him hard on the side of the head and made him drop to the ground.

"I'm not carrying him. He's bleeding like a stuck pig. Get a supply cart, throw him in and bring him down to my office," the base commander ordered and headed for the one elevator to the lower levels.

Twenty minutes later a groggy Martin was dragged into a clean and empty room. His hands were bound behind his back, and pain, pain he had always enjoyed inflicting on others, wracked his body. He began crying like a child, begging the guards to be given a painkiller. He was on his knees bending forward. Martin could hardly see out of his eyes, but he heard the men laugh at him.

Then the base commander walked in, and suddenly Martin knew where he had seen this man before. It was the day Richard whatever-his-name was helped out of the Lichtenstein bar by someone, and the smiling face clicked recognition. He was the barman who had given the politician the death drink, and him drinks many times.

"I have money, plenty of it. I'm sure The Banker will not happy about you hitting me; get me medical attention, and I'll forget you hit me," was all Martin could think of mumbling, still on his knees and looking up at the base commander. He was so used to getting his way and felt relieved when the man smiled back at him. The man's respectful reply seemed to relieve Martin. Chuck Martin always got his way.

"Who is the one man in your organization who can run your bank while you are being looked after?" the base commander asked Martin.

"John Hanks, Head of Accounts, runs everything when I'm away. Now get me to medical care, or I'll get really mad," Martin threatened.

"Need something for pain? Certainly Mr. Martin, sir," smiled the commander and snapped his fingers.

"Get me pain pills now! It hurts," ordered Martin thinking that he was again in control. Suddenly his arms were strapped to his body by a rope. It was made tight and again he screamed with the pain. He felt something tied to the back of the rope and suddenly he was hoisted into the air at least six feet high. The pain was even worse and his temper was again building until he saw a man walk a 55 gallon drum on wheels into the empty room, put it down next to him, pull the wheels from under it, and everybody walked out except the commander who was still smiling at the man in pain. Martin didn't know how The Banker got rid of people, but he was about to learn the hard way.

"Your pain medication, Mr. Martin," said the commander, and with a rope pulley on the roof above the man, pulled the white-faced bank CEO over the drum. He leveraged the lid off the barrel, and a sour stench hit Martin's nostrils. It was so strong he couldn't breathe. He couldn't get any air into his lungs without it burning like hell. "The Banker sends his regards, and wishes you bon voyage to hell, Mr. Chuck Martin, you pathetic excuse for a man." And with that he lowered the bank CEO slowly, inch by inch, feet first into the drum one-third full of sulfuric acid.

The man's long and agonizing screams didn't reach the quiet work floors many hundreds of feet above, but video camera and sounds made The Banker smile a thousand miles away.
Chapter 24

Hans Burger

It was a cold winter's morning in Washington, and there was snow on the ground with crispy cold air. Jack Durant had just got into the office when the news on the television screens got his attention.

"....CEO Chuck Martin has been relieved of his duties at USA Bank. Mr. Martin went missing just before Christmas after hitting a Federal officer in Las Vegas. John Hanks, the Chief Accountant at the world's largest bank, will take the hot seat at a time when the banks are pushing up interest rates. Mr. Hanks has worked his way up through the ranks in Charlotte and at the bank's current head office in Charleston, South Carolina. John Hanks, who could only be reached by phone, told us that Martin landed in South Carolina from Las Vegas in his corporate jet minutes before it was impounded by the FBI. The pilots were taken into custody, but Chuck Martin managed to get away. The pilots said to FBI agents that Martin threatened them with a gun, and their families, if they didn't do what he ordered. The pilots made statements that he was armed and dangerous. The FBI search continues for the renegade Bank CEO....In other news, home mortgage rates are predicted to rise again. Last month's inflation is predicted to top the seven percent mark with rising credit card interest rates and higher adjustable loan rates on motor vehicles. Interest rates rose steadily during the last quarter of 2013. The Reserve Bank increased lending rates by three percent during the third quarter, and again 1.5 percent during the fourth quarter of 2013. Since the largest spending spree ever by the America population in the first half of 2013, and the average debt increasing over forty percent during the first two quarters, times have become tough. From the beginning of the year's extremely low rates on credit card purchases, one percent interest on adjustable vehicle loans, and easy purchase of houses, people in debt are now starting to feel the pinch. John Davenport, CEO of AmericaCorp, the country's second largest bank, said higher inflation was the cause of the rate hikes. The Reserve Bank has only part control of rates. Inflation is the real cause of higher rates," he said. Will Frederickson, head of Western Fort Bank in Sacramento, California, told us that cheap rates are a thing of the past, and rates had to climb at some time. He predicts double digit interest rates by year end....Weather in the Capital City...."

"Not much good news," said Maggie to Jack as they both stood and watched the news. "She said that inflation was due to higher credit card rates and increasing rates on adjustable vehicle and house loans. You can't get a fixed rate any more. Everything you purchase on credit is adjustable these days. What I can't understand, is that it is the banks that are making inflation increase, food prices are starting to rise because of their higher rates, the whole economy is connected, so they increase inflation, and then they have to put up our rates to meet the higher inflation so they can make the same profit. I just don't get it. My mortgage payment went up $70 just last month, my car $30, and it could be the same next month."

"I don't know either," replied Durant. "I'm not an economist, and it does sound fishy. I wonder what the government is doing about it?"

"Nothing," replied Maggie. "I haven't heard a word from the White House about the rates. Only that they are cooking the unemployment figures again. They say that unemployment is down to seven percent, and with higher inflation, and companies making more money with higher prices, there will be more jobs created."

"I'm also noticing the higher credit card rates, and the loan on my new Chevy just went up $60 last month," added Jack. "I'm glad I don't have much debt. Just a grand or two on cards, my truck loan and small mortgage. To get back to work, I sent Steve Uben a message. I want to meet again. I doubt I will ever hear back from him, now that he walked out of the country in full view, and he would have figured out that we would search all airport footage. I think they have flown the coop. I need to know if he can hack us some information about Martin's whereabouts."

The same day, and in a secure room on the surface of ABO Base, Scotland, Stephan Saber and John Hanks sat waiting for a call from The Banker.

John Hanks never liked Martin. He disliked Stephan Saber even more. He had also grown up in Sag Harbor, got his job at the bank because Martin used him as a gofer all his school life, but Saber was the guy who tripped him up, or pushed him down, or hit him when the homework he had completed for Saber and Martin had mistakes. John Hanks was the reason both CEOs made it out of school and into university with reasonable grades. Money did the rest.

The two men were so in need of John Hanks that they beat him to an inch of his life when he told them that he was heading off to UCLA, the opposite side of the country to them, and days later he joined the same university as Saber and Martin did.

The poor man worked himself to death, doing the work of three students, and he himself did not even graduate, becoming a lowly accountant with a New York firm instead of completing his final year, until Martin took him on.

"Good Morning, gentlemen," said The Banker as the feed came live. "Saber, I'm a little disappointed in you not controlling Martin as I asked you to do. As punishment, I deducted $10 million from your New York bank account for costs related to your failure." Saber said nothing. He didn't know how Martin had disappeared. There was no way off the island, and he assumed his friend was no more. He kept quiet.

"Mr. John Hanks. Welcome to The Banker's Club. My club where I allow people in. You will be accepted into my private club later in the year at our usual retreat. You are to take Martin's place and do my bidding. You only do my bidding. Nobody else's. Chuck Martin began to take control of circumstances that had nothing to do with him, and therefore is not here today. Believe you me, Saber, Hanks, you don't want to know what happened to Martin, and I don't believe he made it all the way up to heaven. Hanks, you have a lovely family and three smart children in Charleston, correct?"

"Yes sir," Hanks replied.

"John Junior, 17, about to head into university. Mary-Beth, 15, at St. Mary Anne's High School for girls. And lastly Peter James Hanks, 12, an excellent student at St. Joseph's Private Middle School, correct?"

"Yes sir," Hanks said.

"Your wife Jo-Anne works at Costco and is head of one of their Charleston stores, correct?"

"Yes sir," replied the banker thinking that he sounded like a stuck record.

"You have two choices, Mr. Hanks. You do as you are told, to the letter, or bad things will begin to happen to your family. They are totally unprotected in Charleston. I can think of horrible accidents that might take place. Your wife is caught stealing Costco merchandise, little Johnny doesn't get his high school diploma, and maybe even little Mary-Beth is found to be pregnant and on heroin. Peter could be run over on his way to Stan's Ice Cream Shop, the shop he always goes to on Thursdays after school at precisely 3:35 pm. Do you understand, Mr. Hanks?" asked The Banker.

Hanks said nothing this time. His face was white, and he had trouble swallowing.

"In return for your good service to me, I will split Saber's punishment with you. Five million dollars will be in your new Swiss bank account, which is against the law by the way for an American citizen, and you can spend it how you please. You will take over Martin's salary at USA Bank and keep your damn nose clean when you head over there in a submarine tonight to make the CEO changeover official in a week. When you get on cameras nationwide, I want a happy Mr. Hanks, willing to work hard for the bank, telling the excited American public that USA Bank rates are heading up another one percent across the board this month due to Reserve Bank hikes. Davenport and Frederickson will follow suit hours later, and explain to the media that it is not your fault, just the fault of the U.S. Government and the Federal Reserve. You and they have no choice but to increase rates. Understand?"

"Yes sir!" Hanks said for the fourth time.

"Saber, you are heading back with Hanks in the same submarine. This will be your last visit stateside before the crap hits the fan later this year. Keep your nose clean, your junk zipped, or I will tell who ordered the destruction of the World Trade Center. You will back the rate hikes on the media, say that it is inevitable, and get prepared to move your investor's money into safe harbors, our accounts of course, before the market crashes. The day the market heads down 600 points, within 120 minutes of close of business, I want both of you climbing into a submarine to head back to ABO Base. You could be at ABO for a while. Davenport and Frederickson will be heading to their base, and the European bankers to theirs. Clean up your affairs; get your money safe in gold, silver, or Euros in Switzerland. Get your own financial houses in order. It is going to be a rough ride." With that the Banker went off the air.

"And you thought I was a bad kid," said Saber, not smiling as he left the secure room. Hanks couldn't move. He had never realized what was happening around him, and would never have learned if Martin was still CEO.

Hanks headed up to the roof of his apartment, Martin's old apartment. He didn't know where he was, and the rooftop had a small area with a chair. It was cold, bitterly cold, with a foggy icy breeze coming in off the sea. It was far colder than Charleston and he reckoned he was in Iceland, or Greenland or something. He had heard waves crashing, and knew that he was close to a sea. He turned on the secret cell phone he had brought, hidden away atop a pipe when he and his luggage was searched after boarding the submarine in Charleston. They hadn't found it and he now needed to make a call.

John Hanks called his wife and told her everything was fine, that he would be away for a few more days. He had been talking for a minute when alarms began to sound all around him; he switched it off and dropped it down a white PVC air pipe, through a side opening. They would have to break the whole building down to find it, as he heard it crash on something several seconds after he had let it go.

Steve Uben smiled when he heard that an FBI agent had delivered a message from Jack Durant to his brother-in-law directly this time, and not to his trailer in Florida. The morning mail had arrived to the house's owner, John MacTavish.

Playing games with the FBI was over. He got to work sorting out his small trailer mortgage with AmericaCorp, paid it off, took the funds from the bank itself and deposited them into a Western Fort Bank account, and began their movement around the world's banks for the next few weeks. Now he had no assets in the USA. It wouldn't take the bank long to query why they had paid out $280,000 on a single-wide trailer lot worth $140,000 in a good year, but Steve knew that it would take them several weeks for somebody to start a paper trail.

He was in Scotland with Jenny and Katie, and with Chris, whose nose had been treated by the British National Healthcare System, and who was starting to look himself again. Jenny and Katie were in the garden clearing a light snow layer off the driveway.

Katie's Ferrari had reached Sardinia, then Italy, and now was on a train heading to Berlin with Italian license plates, where she would store it until spring. It was too icy to bring it so far north, and once spring arrived, she and Chris would be heading down to his secret hideaway, a hideaway he still hadn't told its location. It was a surprise, even though Steve had found his faint trail of money movement he suspected to be his sons, and he thought he knew where the couple would be heading.

There was no way he would reply to the letter, until things had quieted down, if they ever would. With the house on enough computer power to equal the Feds, he was watching the trends around the world, and the rising interest rates. The bank's electronic communications were quiet. He knew about the new satellite in orbit. He had been trying to hack into its software for months, to no avail. All he could find were traces where the emails originated from, and that he had just cracked in the last few days. Chris, now better, was working with him trying to find out where these messages were being sent from and arriving at.

The coding was a work of art. The only way he could get a location was if one used a cell phone tower, or headed into its destination through another cell tower. Only one had been seen to come from an actual cell phone. It was a very recent communication, and it was from close to where he lived in Scotland, and it was routed into Charleston, South Carolina. The call originated from a cell tower only five miles south of him, somewhere close by the golf course, and it was directed through USA Bank headquarters in Charleston, which rerouted it somewhere else. Weird! It was the only call that he had seen route through the new satellite, but its course showed him very faint trails of other electronic traffic heading up from this area of Scotland, and going back down into the East and West Coasts.

"Maybe it's a feed line on internet traffic across the pond," Chris said an hour or so later when he came down to work.

"I agree, but why through that private satellite?" Steve asked scratching his head.

"Well, find out who owns the satellite and that will give you your answer, Mr. Uben senior. Where are the girls?"

"Outside clearing snow," Steve replied, still having the problem without an answer in his mind. He didn't like that.

The alarms continued on Ailsa Craig. Hanks apartment and the entire building was searched by security. They said nothing to him, but searched his unit, and him, thoroughly.

Everybody was searched. The entire operation was strip-searched, male and female. Even the base commander was searched by his men. U.S. airport security had nothing on these searches.

For two days, the entire base was searched and the commander finally reported that no cell phone was found. The Banker told him that the next time the phone was used, the commander needed to lock down its location, to within feet. New phone detection equipment would return with the next submarine.

Chop Stix was back in Europe. He was to visit with the German, Hans Burger, in just over 50 hours. Steve was packed and he had a 3 p.m. flight out of Edinburgh to Zurich the next day.

As planned, Steve left on the morning train to Ayr, and then changed trains to Edinburgh.

As John MacTavish, he had query after query on why he had an American accent but a real Scottish surname. In the area, and on the golf course, he and Jenny were already known as "The Americans," but his cover identity was secure, and he didn't have the legs for a kilt.

The flight down to Zurich was uneventful, for his papers given to him by Chop Stix worked perfectly. Europe and Britain were the toughest at checking the passports, but somehow Chop Stix had never let him down. He didn't want to travel so much anymore. It was hell on the heart every time a customs official looked at the passports.

He was met at the airport by Chop Stix, who drove with him in the taxi to a small rural chain hotel away from the airport.

They didn't speak much on the short drive, nor did they speak much in the connecting hotel rooms. Hackers weren't that used to having conversations with people they didn't know that well. They were a quiet lot, spending hour after hour looking at screens, thinking, analyzing data, or just sitting there transfixed to the brightly colored whatever-it-was on the screen.

They had dinner at a small secluded restaurant away from the hotel. Steve hated cameras, they were everywhere these days, and both visitors trusted the taxi driver to take them somewhere peaceful.

"So what do you want me to do?" Steve asked Chop Stix.

"I don't know, Steve. My idea is to introduce you to Mr. Burger, if that's his real name. I'm only going to be focusing on what he tells me about my sister. My flight out of Switzerland is five hours after we meet, a red-eye, to another city in another country. From there I head back home. I know that whatever he tells me, there will not be much I can do. I think you can concentrate on the other information, maybe see something I'm not looking for. This Martin guy is bad. Look what he did to Chris in Las Vegas. And he got away from the FBI. They couldn't catch him. Maybe you can find something to get a lead on this man?"

The next day both men worked out their plan. Chop Stix had the $10,000 ready for Mr. Burger, plus another thousand if the man would spend time with Steve. A second thousand would be given to somehow to contact the man again, and this money to the Chinese-American was small change. Small change to get news of his sister. He also hoped that the news wasn't only bad news, but he wasn't holding out for much.

He sat in the same chair at the exact time, and waited, knowing that Germans were normally on time.

Ten minutes passed, and he thought that he had been duped. He was looking down in his glass, all his hopes of finding his sister gone, when he heard the chair scrape next to him. It was the same chair the German had sat in the last time.

"Sorry, I'm late," said Hans Burger. "I needed to check the bar and reception areas to see if you were being followed."

"Did you sort out your wife and her problems?" asked Chop Stix looking at the German for the first time since the chair had scraped.

"Ja, I think I'm safe. I have not been back to Lichtenstein. I went into Germany and my wife is hiding with distant family on Lake Konstanz. I don't trust the family home in Bülach. Neighbors said that others may have been watching the house. I believe my wife and I are as safe as we will ever be. Danke schoen for the money, Herr Chinaman. Did you bring the rest?"

"Yes, but I have two favors to ask first, for more money of course. I was not followed, but I have a friend close by, not police, or a bad man, but a friend of mine only interested in Chuck Martin. He wants to hear what you have to say, and I will pay you. Second, if we catch Martin and any others who could have hurt my sister, and that will make your life safer, then I might need to get in contact with you again."

The German's shocked face first went white, then to worried, and then returned to its normal color.

"How much are you willing to pay for the other man to hear? And he is not dangerous?"

"A thousand dollars," Chop Stix replied.

"Why is he not dangerous?" Burger asked.

"Because he is wanted by the FBI for things Mr. Martin did to him and his son recently."

"In Las Vegas last year?" was the German's next question.

"You saw that?"

"Ja, it was on the news here, because that man visits here for the Bankers' Convention in Switzerland every year. I watched as Martin hit a boy with the pregnant girl in the face, and then the security guard, and some old man on the floor. I have seen Martin at his best."

"Good, that old man on the floor is the one here with me. The security guard was FBI, and I was right behind the old man. Watch it again sometime if you get a chance. His son was hit by Martin in the face. Does that relieve your worries?" Burger nodded and Chop Stix called for the bar phone and dialed the number he had committed to memory. It was to a payphone inside the airport terminal and Steve answered.

Hans Burger hadn't moved, but he was in the same position Chop Stix had sat when the chair had scraped.

"Don't worry, Mr. Burger. If you knew my work, you would not worry. Steve is at the terminal and will arrive here by taxi."

"What is your work, Herr Chinaman?"

"I make new passports and papers for people. I won't tell you any more than that."

"You can make a new passport for me?"

"If you have $100,000, Mr. Burger. My lowest fee."

"Maybe the information I have for you is worth that kind of money?"

"Maybe," Chop Stix replied. "Let's get away from the barman. Pick a table, Mr. Burger." The German looked around and found that all the tables except one were empty.

"That one," he said picking the darkest table in a rear corner.

That was where Steve Uben found them with fresh drinks ten minutes later. The German's right jacket pocket was bulging. It seemed payment had been made, or he was packing.

"Hans Burger, Mr. Steve X," introduced Chop Stix. Hans Burger was again worried. His man was twenty years younger than the old man he had seen on television.

"I assure you, Mr. Burger. Whatever my friend here told you, it is true." He pulled out his British passport. "Do I sound like I own this passport?" asked Steve hoping that the man didn't state the country of origin. He was recording the conversation for Jenny, and maybe Pepsi Cola.

"Nein, you are an American," Burger replied a little relieved and looking through the passport. He was impressed. He was German, and had an identical EU passport. It took Steve a few more answers to questions about what the man had seen happen on television before he relaxed.

"My flight leaves in four hours. I don't have much time, Mr. Burger. I have paid you what I promised. Please tell me and my friend about my sister. I am only interested in my sister. Mr. X is here to learn about Mr. Martin."

Burger's description about the sister was short. He hadn't seen the Chinese dance group arrive, only knew that Chinese dancers were that night's show. He did start off with a short description of Hotel Exclusive, and what he knew about it.

"I have worked at the Hotel Exclusive as head bartender for fifteen years. It is owned by a man I have never seen. The whole land of Lichtenstein, I've been told, is owned by the same man. He is enormously rich. Richer than any other man in the world. Ten times richer than any of you Americans. Mr. X, as you know there is a Banker's Convention in Europe every year. For some reason I cannot tell you, six men always arrive at the hotel a few days before the convention. It doesn't matter where it is being held. Of these same men, only four have changed in the fifteen years I have worked there. Each of these men is boss of a bank."

"Name them," ordered Steve.

"The one you are looking for is one, Mr. X: Chuck Martin, head of USA Bank. Baron Marcus Von Kippenhof, head of the largest bank in Germany. Bruce MacDonald, head of the largest bank in England, I think. The other three are Americans: John Davenport, Stephan Saber, and William Frederickson."

"I know all the men you have named," replied Steve, shocked at the list of names. Apart for the Federal Reserve, these men were the six most powerful men in the world banking industry. All together in one room, and with a boss.

"Who is this boss guy? What is his name?" asked Steve.

"He has never been seen by anyone on the hotel grounds ever. He speaks to these six men through a microphone and cameras when they meet."

"Please continue," asked Chop Stix.

"This meeting I believe is to discuss the world's banking conference right after this meeting. I cannot tell you anymore. When "The Banker," which is what the men call him, speaks to them, the bar is closed and there are security guards outside all doors. I pour drinks, then I must exit. Security leaves until the meeting is over. They have those headpieces you put in your ear. The bankers meet only in the evenings, and only for about an hour or two. Then the doors open, and I go back in. The men need drinks, they have dinner, and then their entertainment begins. I have only been in there two times. Normally another barman, one of the security guards, serves after dinner and thankfully I can leave. If not, I have to go through the cabaret. These men are vile horrible creatures. Baron Von Kippenhof killed my German wife and two children many years ago."

"How?" enquired Steve.

"Remember Munich, when Herr Strauss, the Bavarian politician, was elected and killed by a bomb that same night in his apartment?"

Steve remembered. "About early 70s?"

"Ja, 1971. Me and my family lived below him. He would have moved out the next day to a government house and was packing. They had been our neighbors for three years. I was at work, and my wife and children were helping them pack. The bomb exploded and took out the two apartments. Nobody survived."

"How do you know it was Von Kippenhof?" Steve asked.

"He boasted of it right in front of me a few years ago in the bar. He was very drunk and bragging about his killing of anybody who got in his way."

Neither Steve, nor Chop Stix said a word.

"Two years ago, the normal barman did not arrive. That night there were a group of young African female dancers. It was disgusting. The dancers entered, I was expecting it to be fun for the bankers. The girls began their routine. The doors were locked. Nobody could get in and out. The bankers watched for the first song, then Martin and the Baron got up and, just like Martin hit your son, he hit one of the girls. So did the Baron. The others went screaming around the bar. One even tried to hide behind the bar. I didn't know what to do. I watched. I was shocked. I couldn't move. Within seconds both men had all the dancers' clothes off, everything, forced them like dogs to bend forward and raped them. These girls were only teenagers, all pretty girls about seventeen or eighteen. Saber and the rest chased the others, howling like wolves, and caught them one by one. Saber got the one behind the bar. Grabbed a bottle. I was in the way trying to protect the girl. He hit me over the head with the bottle. I must have been knocked out, because when I came to, an hour had passed."

"What did you see?" Chop Stix asked, his face pure white.

"It was horrible. There was blood all over the floor. The bankers were all gone, and the security had bags, black bags, and were first making sure the girls were all dead. One was still moaning, the one I had tried to hide behind the bar, and the security guard snapped her neck, laughed and put her body in one of the bags. They didn't see me. It was over in a few seconds. They returned to clean up the blood and I left out of the back door. I was sick for a week, but received ten thousand in my bank account that month, for my silence."

"Please tell me about my sister," pleaded Chop Stix, his eyes already wet.

"I don't know who your sister was," and the barman explained what he had seen and how he had lost his temper. "Martin ripped the clothes off the first girl. She was so young she didn't have any breasts, and he was already on the next one when I got to him. I hit him as blood from the girl sprayed us. Then I remember walking up to the Baron, and I hit him as hard as I could. Then I simply walked out, I never saw anything else. I rushed to my room, picked up my passport as I heard shouting down the corridor and I jumped out of the window and ran as fast as I could. It took me several hours to get away. I did, and you found me sitting at the bar. I was about to kill myself." There was silence for a full minute.

"What do you think happened to the rest of the girls?" Steve asked. Chop Stix was too upset.

"I'm sure that the rest of the wolves ate them, so to speak, but I'm sure Martin and the Baron did not enjoy their evenings. Especially Martin. I kicked him very hard. I'm sorry, Herr Chinaman. I hope some of the girls got out, but they would have had to follow me really fast, and there was security behind me quickly. I really hope a few got away. But if they didn't they would have all been raped, cut up or whatever those monsters could think of to do to those poor girls, and I would say bags, body bags, were their end. I'm sorry. I know no more."

Chop Stix wept. Even the barman looked at him weeping quietly. Steve paid Burger the extra thousand, and Chop Stix bowed in gratitude and graciously left. His hope to ever find his sister had died.

Steve waited for a few minutes. "I want to look around that hotel, and maybe spend a few days there. Will you write me down the address and telephone number? You never know, I might find something for my friend, and by the way, you have earned his and my friendship. Also I need some way to contact you, Mr. Burger." The man wrote the hotel's address, telephone number, and an email address on a napkin.

"Here is contact information for me." Steve wrote something on the same napkin just handed to him, tore it in half and gave his contact information back to the German. "Keep your half of the napkin. I will keep mine. If we need to meet again, if both halves of the napkin are brought to the meeting, we are with the right people."

"Anything you need, I'm here to help. Just write to me. Make the note to Fred Smith." The German got up and without a word left the bar.
Chapter 25

Rates Rise and Hotel Exclusive

Slowly the banks ramped up the pressure to the American consumer. 2014 was not going to be a good year. Many who had survived the 2007-11 recession had regained some sort of financial independence, but the advertisements on new trucks, cars, boats, RVs and new houses had ruined their growing resistance in 2012 and they again loaded up on debt. The interest rates in the first half of 2013 were so low, it was impossible for many to stay cash positive.

Credit card spending limits increased every month over the last several months of 2012. Banks poured higher spending limits into all credit cards like water. At three percent interest rates, it was easy to get a $10,000, even a $25,000 credit card. The payments at the low rates were easy. New luxury items were only a swipe away. Many middle class families had thousands more than ever before on credit when the banks first increased the rates by one percent toward the end of the second quarter, 2013.

Adjustable house mortgages were handed out to home buyers with a few thousand in a savings account for a deposit, a semi-clean credit score, and forty percent of their income available. The excited buyers were waiting in queues. New houses could not be built fast enough and the used house inventory quickly dropped to zero. The only houses not on the market were millions of bank owned, foreclosed homes and developments that needed maintenance before sale, and that maintenance never arrived. The Ubens' old housing development in Charlotte was as desolate and overgrown as it had been two years earlier.

During the last three months of the year the auto, boat, RV, and furniture salesmen and realtors did a roaring trade, new jobs were created by the thousands and the government in Washington smiled.

Even the President spoke out, asking people if he had been right a few months ago. He shook his fist into the air at every speech, his broad smile could fit a truck in it, and he was happy. Jobs were being created faster than in the last 20 years. He was a success, the numbers of new jobs were doubling every month, and life in the good old USA looked rosy for the poor and middle class again.

Behind the scenes, the President's financial team was beginning to send out messages of concern to the big banks, suggesting that any new, higher interest rates would halt the new growth.

Under The Banker's orders, the big four banks listened and agreed with Washington, reduced interest rates by one percent on their new house mortgages in January 2014, and put a freeze on rising credit card and vehicle loans rates across the board. Somebody forgot to tell Washington that it was only temporary, and part of their plan.

The President, his popularity knocked down after the Syrian debacle and his weak response to the ongoing atrocities in 2013, began advertising the freeze of interest rates as the country's finances turning a corner. He needed every bit of good news to raise his popularity ratings with the American people.

An overall behind-the-scenes-problem in the beginning of the New Year was his government security not being able to stop the menacing hacking of U.S. media and large company internet structures by the Chinese hackers. Also, the hacking into interests inside the U.S. had grown stronger from areas like Iran, where the remnants of the Syrian Electronic Army had fled for safety. Only Russia seemed to stay out of hacking into U.S. concerns.

The Uben family, still in Scotland, and not being able to golf much, spent large amounts of time on their computers watching the weird and lightning-fast world of hacking.

Over the last few months, since their return from Las Vegas, dozens of large non-advertised boxes, mostly computer equipment, had arrived through delivery companies. Over a few months they used the most powerful and latest hardware on the market to build new computers from scratch.

EVGA, Xeon, Asus, G. Skill, and equipment from several other companies arrived as Steve, Jenny and Chris worked through long hours doing what they loved most: building the most powerful computers in the world. A diesel generator arrived and was wired up into the garage, where the old family car was kept.

Technology had improved so that they only had to use triple the house's normal electricity at full power, instead of twenty times, as Steve Uben had originally set up in North Carolina.

They were not interested in hacking for money these days. They had enough to survive most recessions, especially in U.S. dollars, several suitcases of which had arrived in the New Year.

Chris Uben's Florida female acquaintance knew a wealthy young man who had a 60-foot ocean trawler. He was actually her boyfriend and lived in Fort Lauderdale.

Once Chris had got rid of the RV several months earlier, he unpacked the hard mattress and tidily packed the contents into six large expensive leather travel suitcases. These suitcases had combination locks and were virtually indestructible. The tan leather suitcases were handed over from Chris to his Florida friend before he left the state, and she, for $25,000 of gas and expense money, gave the six suitcases to her boyfriend.

Over the Christmas vacation, and days after her courtesy visit from the FBI, she and her boyfriend cruised across the Atlantic in his luxury trawler, through Bermuda and the Azores, and docked in Plymouth, England for a short stay to refuel. From there the boyfriend was heading into the Med, while the girl went back to complete her studies in Tallahassee.

The suitcases had been spread around and hidden in the three luxury cabins of the boat, and as expected the customs in South Hampton saw one, but did not take it seriously. If they had opened it, it would have only been legal money after all, not illegal contraband.

Chris had the suitcases delivered up to Scotland and now he had two million dollars to transfer into Sterling and Euros. He did that over time, not rushing. The dollar, thanks to the booming economy, was strong compared to the European currencies, and he had opened dozens of bank accounts in several towns in the area, and made a round trip in the family car once a week depositing about $50,000 into fifteen accounts at a time, always in different-sized amounts.

Katie had also consolidated her worth into European accounts mostly in Switzerland. Between Chris and Katie, they didn't need to work a day in their lives ever again. Nor did Steve and Jenny.

Their new computer equipment was to surf the world as a hobby, and see what the others were doing. They didn't need their handles anymore, and they were now experts in changing the identity of their computers using what the hackers called "Onion Routing" or TOR, and IP address scrambling equipment.

Onion Routing had been used by the Ubens and other hackers for a few years now. It gave them anonymity when hacking into bank systems. It was a process that every hacker in the world used.

The free system, TOR, originally short for The Onion Router, directed anybody using the system personal internet traffic through a free, worldwide volunteer network consisting of more than three thousand relays to conceal a user's location or usage from anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis. The ability to use Tor made it more difficult to trace internet activity, including "visits to secure web sites, government websites, online posts, instant messages and other communication forms," back to the user and was intended to protect the users' personal privacy, freedom, and ability to conduct confidential business by keeping their internet activities from being monitored.

Of course the Ubens, Katie, Chop Stix, as well as The Banker, U.S., Syria, China, and Iran and every other hacker in the world, used the same system, except that The Banker, the U.S., China and a few other countries had one up on everyone else; they had their own private satellites to bounce and code message originations and destinations through.

"Onion Routing" refers to the layers of encryption used. The original data, including its destination, is encrypted and re-encrypted multiple times, and sent through a virtual circuit comprising successive, randomly selected TOR relays. Each relay decrypts a "layer" of encryption to reveal only the next relay in the circuit in order to pass the remaining encrypted data on to it. The final relay decrypts the last layer of encryption and sends the original data, without revealing or even knowing its sender, to the destination. This method reduces the chance of the original data being understood in transit and, more notably, conceals the routing of it.

As with modern warfare, both sides use the same technology to send, code and transfer data. This was why hacking was so complicated.

Jack Durant back in Washington studied all these methods, and even used the same channels as the Ubens and The Banker did, even knowing that he did so, but he couldn't intercept the communications. That was what the NSA had been working on for years now. Then there was DNS.

The Ubens' new computer's IP addresses were assigned by their area's internet Service Provider (ISP). An IP address was a numerical code that identified one computer. It also contained a packet of information that it shared with websites. That packet of information contained important data that allowed the website to communicate with that computer. Changing that, using DNS technology, made other computers searching for that computer's IP transmissions over the internet nearly impossible to find or follow.

Short for **Domain Name System,** DNS was an internet service that translated domain names into IP addresses. Domain names were easy to remember as they were alphabetic. The internet, however, was really based on addresses. Steve had known for a decade now that every time he used a domain name, a DNS service must translate the name into his corresponding IP address. For example, the domain name _SteveU@Yahoo.com_ might translate to _150.177.279.7_.

The DNS system was, in fact, its own network, so if one DNS server didn't know how to translate a particular domain name, it asked another one, and so on, until the correct IP address was returned. Scramble the IP addresses, satisfy the DNS with a fake name, and one became invisible, apart from the computer's location and its constant link into the internet, if there was one. That was why Chris and Steve had elected to have mobile computer platforms on the RVs to constantly change their links into the system.

Mobility wasn't needed anymore.

What had got Steve on this path of expertise was when he heard Bill Gates state years ago that "DNS," in his mind, was short for "Digital Nervous System." That made Steve realize that he, and his family and friends, were changing the "brain" and "thought patterns" of the world's internet, and so were others.

Unfortunately for the occupiers of the house in Scotland, hacking into the internet, and privately viewing secret or private files, was a drug one couldn't just turn off, although the drug of stealing money was. So the careers turned into hobbies.

Instead of working a nine-to-five job to increase their weekly or monthly paycheck illegally, and the reason why everybody had a job, they now watched others doing it. Those people made mistakes, and the Ubens watched for any faint signs that needed a detective's mind to come up with an answer along a difficult and often impossible trail of minute errors.

"Hey, Chris, come and look at this," said Steve a few days later. Chris came over and was quite surprised that his father was following a trace from Chop Stix, back in Shanghai. It was an email trail. They could see the message, but not from where it had originated, or its destination. That told Steve that Chop Stix was sending openly, but in code. It read "From MacDonald's Headquarters to MacDonald's Bülach Store, Switzerland. Delivery of special hamburgers for Chinese New Year, three days late. Secondary delivery of hamburger buns six days behind schedule. Delivery paperwork sent independently to your PO Box this morning."

"Is that the new paperwork Chop Stix promised to that German barman?" Chris asked. Steve nodded smiling. His mind went back two months to before he had left Zurich.

The counterfeiter Chop Stix was a mess. Normally a quiet, methodical thinker, he was now hyper-emotional and a danger to himself. Steve managed to tell his friend that he was going to spend a little time looking around the hotel in Lichtenstein to see if he could find any clues that maybe some of the girls had escaped.

Chop Stix, heading for the terminal already packed to leave, thanked Steve when they met in the corridor, and told the older man that he needed time to regroup and to let him know if he found anything.

Steve gave Chop Stix a written copy of the German's contact information, suggested that the man had done well, and suggested that the counterfeiter should look at giving him a new travel set of papers for him and his wife. It seemed that the man would always be on the run, maybe even more so if new evidence was found and Interpol, or other police departments, was brought in. Chop Stix nodded, bowed to Steve and left for the airport.

In no rush, the next morning Steve phoned the Hotel Exclusive and booked himself a luxury single room for three days. He rented a chauffeur-driven car to drive him the seventy-odd miles to the resort. He was not good at driving in Europe, as he had just learned how to drive on the left side of the road in Scotland, and he wasn't about to get it all wrong again and cause an accident. He would take the train back to Zurich.

The road wound up to the resort above the City of Vaduz and it had magnificent views of the Alps. The air was cold and wintery, but there was less snow on the ground than at home in Scotland.

He thanked the driver, gave him a handsome tip and the Mercedes drove back to Switzerland. The doorman pointed the reception desk out, and he checked in and was shown to his room. Steve only had one large leather suitcase with him. As he hadn't brought along decent enough clothing for his meeting with Chop Stix and the German, he had needed to spend that morning being fitted for a top quality suit, a warm long black outer coat with warm boots, formalwear for dinner, gloves for outside, and two sets of quality European smart casuals.

Luckily, he had brought one of Chris's new suitcases, one of the leather ones from Florida with some of Chris' money filling the bottom. They were very expensive leather, a work of art, and they would come in handy for future travel. There was enough room to place his new clothes, which cost more than ten times the cost of the suitcase, but what the hell, a retired gentleman needed to go shopping now and again. He had tried not to show any emotion at the price tag for the clothes, and the salesman took crisp new Ben Franklins without blinking an eye. The lady at the reception desk didn't either when he paid in American dollars. He had brought an extra $10,000 with him, and it was already nearly gone. He had just enough for three days of luxury bliss before catching his return flight.

Steve Uben didn't like to use credit cards, and the lady on the phone when he had booked the room hadn't even asked for a credit card. He was sure that with the room rates, payment wasn't a problem. He booked in under the name of William Murray, the real name of a senior manager at Joseph Silverstein's, using a made-up New York address. He did not leave any passport or identity, and immediately paid in cash.

The rapid spending, something he wasn't that used to, had stressed him out. Buying computer equipment was like purchasing company equipment, but spending five figures on oneself in one week took a bit of getting used to. He decided to book himself a massage, as it was all in the deal, and he headed into the sauna, swam for an hour in the indoor swimming pool, and then had two pretty ladies beat the hell out of him.

By the time he returned to his room, which again took his breath away, it was time to dress for dinner.

That evening he had a few fifty-dollar drinks at the bar, where Chop Stix had found the piece of cloth, after a five course meal fit for a king. The hotel was half empty. The receptionist had told him that it was full the next week for the beginning of the festive season. Christmas was big in the area, but this week was quiet. All the better for him.

He identified everything he had been told about the bar. There was the only exit door from the dining room where the dancers would have entered. The barman, he thought, was the same one Chop Stix had described. The disco ball was there, and the guests were older men, often with pretty girls on their arms. One table held a group of high-end business travelers. Germans by the sound of it, and they were drinking quietly but heavily.

"I heard you have a cabaret in the evenings?" he asked the experienced but not very talkative barman.

"Ja, Mein Herr. Tonight we have a local group of senior school children from Vaduz. They will be presenting their Christmas play to our guests over Christmas, and this is their second night. A practice night, if you don't mind?"

"Of course not," Steve replied.

"You are a long way from home, an American I can tell, and somebody in America told you about our cabaret?" the barman asked.

"Yes, my boss is actually Stephan Saber, head of Joseph Silverstein's, the company I work for in New York," Steve replied smiling and looking friendly. He saw no emotion, but he did see the barman's body stiffen at the name.

"He told me that he spends one or two vacations here every year. Christmas, he said, was great. Stephan Saber and I head into Switzerland once a year for the Bankers' Conference. He leaves me at the hotel and has always disappeared somewhere private for a few days. He never said where, but since he comes here over Christmas, maybe I thought to myself, he might head over here for a bit of relaxation. Have you ever met my boss?"

The barman, still with no facial emotion, shook his head no and moved off to refill another drink for someone. Steve's eyes were not that good, but he did see a minute blink of movement on the wall behind the bar that seemed to focus on him. He turned around with his drink and checked out the empty dance floor.

The Christmas special was sweet and entertaining. He wasn't ready for Christmas yet, but the high school kids, both boys and girls, were good in their dance routine with a Nativity scene in the middle. Their hymn singing reminded him of the Vienna Boys Choir, one of the best he had ever heard. He kept his back most of the time to the bar, and didn't order another drink, just an espresso to keep awake.

The next morning was a beautiful, blue sky, white Alps day. Cold and slightly below freezing, the grass mostly showing through the ice in the gardens. The views were fantastic. He thought how Jenny would love this place and he dressed and wandered around the grounds.

They weren't big, only about three to five acres of tended garden. He checked to see if he was being followed, but saw absolutely nobody in the gardens. It was far too cold for the rich and famous. He found a bench at one of the farthest corners of the gardens. From here, he could see anybody following him from the hotel. The buildings were nearly out of view through the assortment of leafless bushes and trees, and the thick mountainous forest with its heavy snowfall, was right at his back.

With his brand new thick warm Swiss coat, winter boots and gloves, he wasn't in a rush to go back inside. It was so peaceful. There were no animal noises, as the snow inside the forest most probably kept the sound of anything moving down to a minimum. He heard a twig snap behind him and looked around to see nothing.

Steve didn't expect to find anybody. It was peaceful and tranquil. He had brought three breakfast rolls from the breakfast table, and he laid them on the bench, making it look like he was trying to feed any animals. He was sure that apart from birds, there wasn't much in the forest that would eat bread. He wasn't an expert on what animals ate, but left the fresh rolls nevertheless.

For the rest of the day he wandered around the city, getting a ride in with the hotel bus. He thought that Zurich was expensive, but Vaduz was twice as pricey, even though it was a tax haven for the wealthy. Lunch cost him over $100 for a small steak and a half-sized bottle of quality wine. It filled him, and he ate a small pastry for desert. The city was so quiet. It was the hustle and bustle of an American city, but he looked through windows, and then met the bus for the return trip to the hotel.

He headed back for a walk through the gardens and was surprised to see the three rolls had disappeared. He sat down on the same bench and looked back toward the hotel. He thought through the edge of his eye that he saw movement, turned but saw nothing. There was certainly nobody from the hotel, unless they were following him through the forest. The forest was dense and not easy to get through, especially for the thick-set barman he had chatted to the night before.

This time he pulled out a $20 bill from his billfold and placed the note under a stone right underneath the bench. He smiled thinking which animal would want to eat Andrew Jackson?

That night was warmer than the previous night outside. After dinner he enjoyed a walk on the outside terrace. A girl was tending bar this night, and he didn't want to go through the same Christmas performance, so he headed for the sauna, and then to bed.

"You Americans love your brὂtchen rolls, no?" said his breakfast server the next morning. Steve was up early and the first in the restaurant. He agreed with the middle-aged lady. Today he had six rolls in his coat pockets. The day was the same as the last except that there were thick clouds over the tops of the mountains.

He headed out for his walk and noticed another couple doing the same. It was one of the older men with his daughter or granddaughter on his arm. Steve smiled at his own private joke. They too headed for the same area and kicked the snow by the trees. They sat down at the same bench and noticed that Steve was also walking around.

"What happens if they look under the bench?" he thought. The man whispered into the girl's ear, the girl giggled and they stood up and began to walk back to the hotel. They nodded, both smiling at him as they passed a few feet away, and Steve carried on his walk.

He sat down in shock. The $20 note was gone. He checked all around the bench, and even in the beginning of the forest, but it was gone. That made him wonder, and he left four of the rolls under the bench and headed back to the hotel. He had an idea.

Two hours later he returned to the bench. The clouds were coming in and it looked like a storm. Again the rolls were gone. This time he expected it. He placed the other two remaining rolls under the bench and wrote three words on a yellow sticky note from his room. He wrote "Chow Lee-Sim" on the note and placed it with the pen under a larger stone, with just one corner sticking out.

Then he headed back to the hotel, as it was about to snow and a sharp wind was coming in from the mountains he couldn't see anymore.

He was again stressed and wanted to pass time, so he had a sauna, swim and massage. It was dark by the time he was finished and saw snow falling in the lights surrounding the closer garden area to the hotel. The bench couldn't be seen in the lights.

It was his last night and he now needed to find out who was out there. It didn't seem to him that anybody in the hotel had any interest in him, other than to smile and ask if he was comfortable. This time instead of watching a different cabaret – a group of Hungarian musicians and dancers – he headed out of the front door for his walk.

"A little snow tonight, Mein Herr," said the doorman as he exited. "Not a good night to walk."

"Hey, where I come from in New York State, this is good walking weather," he replied heading down the roadway.

Once he got out of the light, he turned left and walked around the outskirts of the hotel. There was nobody around. It took him thirty minutes, but he headed into the garden from a dirt road further out from where the lights were showing, the snow getting heavier and heavier.

He found the bench, and to his surprise, small child-like footsteps, two pairs heading from the bench into the forest. They had tried to cover them with snow, but the fresh snow had lain deeper in the footsteps, showing their outlines. He sat down and felt for the note under the stone. It had been moved, but it was still there. He pulled a cell phone out of his jacket pocket and switched it on. Its screen light gave him just enough to read the note, and his heart jumped in excitement.

Two more words had been added to the note. "My brother" were the best two scribbled words he could have ever hoped for. Chop Stix had been so close, and had not found his sister. Steve's security mentality had paid off. He wrote "Friend of Chop Stix. Leaving tomorrow, will rent car, pick you up 1 mile outside hotel gates – 10 a.m."

He left the note and the pen and, singing a tune to himself, began the walk back to the hotel. The barman was sitting on the outside deck smoking when he climbed up the snowy stairs.

"You enjoy walking, Herr Murray," he asked. Steve noticed that there was an outside door further down the building. It must have been the door Hans and the girls had flown out of. He hoped the barman was just on a smoke break, and not keeping an eye on him.

"Yes, I love walking. How can anybody come here and not enjoy the peaceful mountain air. I love the snow, winter and walking outside. I do it every day when I'm at my country home, and not downtown Manhattan. Do you like to walk?"

"Ja, Herr Murray, I'm a mountain man from Bavaria. I love the mountains. It is time for me to serve you a drink, no?"

"Exactly what I was thinking," Steve replied smiling at the barman.

The bar was full. The hotel had filled up. First he went to the reception, gave them a company card and asked that they phone the same car service he had used to arrive to pick him up. He wanted Peter, his usual driver, to pick him up. The receptionist said that they could organize a car this end. He politely and firmly refused, asking her to call the Zurich car company for a 9 a.m. pickup, and waited until the girl had done so. He thanked her and left for his drink.

The barman was waiting for him and he asked for a Budweiser, in a bottle. An American was an American after all. There wasn't any Bud, and the barman displayed three bottles of beer. One looked Dutch and had a champagne type top to it. The bottle was cold and Steve picked up the bottle, told him that he had never seen such a cap, opened the bottle himself and thirstily drank. He looked at the label.

"Grolsch, huh! Pretty good," smiled Steve to the barman.

"A good choice, sir, but the Bavarian beer is far better," the barman replied.

"Okay, can I take one to my room, or will you have it delivered to room 25? I'll try it while watching television. I have a long day tomorrow." The barman told him that he would get one delivered for him and Steve slipped him a U.S. twenty.

The bottle, in an ice bucket, was waiting for him when he got to his room. There was no way he was going to drink it, as he had had enough, but he packed it in a sock and put it in his luggage.

He slept badly, the day's excitement getting to him. By six the next morning he was up. Breakfast only started at eight, so he showered, headed down to the reception and made sure that his bill was paid and the car was on the way. The barman, who many of his thoughts had been about, was nowhere to be seen. It was time to leave; the hairs on his back were standing up.

He was first into breakfast and enjoyed several different varieties of cold cuts, cheeses of every sort and deviled eggs, one of his favorites. The coffee was excellent and at precisely 8:55 the reception came to tell him that his car had arrived. With his one suitcase he thanked the staff, who all bowed, he checked with reception to make sure he was clear to leave and walked out to the same Mercedes who had dropped him off.

"It was a little tight, but I managed to get here, Mein Herr," smiled the driver, looking tired and opening the trunk to put in his one case.

"Thank you, Peter. I need a few favors from you, but we will talk in the car." They both got in. Nobody apart from a different doorman was watching them. "Please drive me into Vaduz, but on the way you must check your odometer and find me a marker, one mile from the hotel gates."

"How much is one mile?" Peter asked. He never worked in miles.

"About one and a half kilometers," Steve responded handing the man crisp two new Ben Franklins. The driver thanked him and headed down the mountain road to town.

"That tree there, the one with the heavy snow, is about one mile," said the driver as they drove past it. Steve nodded looking around. Quite a bit of snow had fallen that night, about a foot, and even though the road had been cleared by a plow, it had thrown a good three feet on the sides of the road.

They reached the center of Vaduz at 9:25. Steve asked the driver to drive around town for a few streets, making sure they weren't followed, and then go back to the mile marker.

At the mile marker the hotel bus was coming down the mountain. As soon as it drove out of sight, the driver worked hard, turning the long Mercedes around, and headed back down, stopping at the tree.

It was 9:55 when two small dark shapes scurried over the dirty snow on their bellies, and Steve opened the back door to let them in. They crept in quietly and stayed down low on the floor.

"Can we get through border control to Zurich with two passengers without passports?" Steve asked the driver.

"If they are in the trunk, I believe so Mein Herr; the customs officials know me well," was the driver's response as they slowly cruised back down toward Vaduz.
Chapter 26

Act Three: The Beginning of the Second Recession

The Banker did not like John Hanks. The man had too clean a career history, and he was an accountant, the worst kind for signaling financial danger. Chuck Martin had been a real asset. The man had felt no remorse, didn't care about others, and stole whatever he could from his customers. He, like Charles Saber, was a master of his game and perfect for The Banker's plans. So were Bruce MacDonald and the Baron. Both Europeans, like him, were resourceful, interested in making their own lives better, and as mean and cruel as Saber.

John Davenport and Will Frederickson were real bankers. Both had climbed through the ranks due to hard work, and risen to the top to make good CEOs. Unfortunately they didn't see eye to eye with The Banker's Club when they were forced to join. These two men did have the necessary qualities of selfishness, greed, and business ruthlessness to run a large bank, but The Banker had seen them back off from the games in the bar at the hotel, once people got really hurt and blood began to flow. He had nearly got rid of both of them five years ago, but he decided that the rest of their senior staff wasn't any more suitable in his eyes, so he kept them on.

The Banker always watched the bar proceedings every year. It was exciting and lustful, and made him happy that some of his club members were actually crueler than he was. Five years ago, he had a private audio conference with each of the two new men separately.

John Davenport was married and had five children. He was the picture of American success. His predecessor, as mean and resourceful as Chuck Martin, had died a natural death due to liver cancer. John Davenport wasn't the right man for the job, but his natural promotion was not something The Banker could control. The trait the CEO had, though, was greed, and he was a spendthrift, and a perfect family man. He was the first man The Banker talked to, as Will Frederickson was married with two children, had a "long lost" FBI file with two proven attacks on girls while he was in high school, and was a far easier situation to resolve.

Davenport, having his first private audio session with the most powerful man in the world, went in excited and came out far richer, but a totally different person. Also, he never saw The Banker's face. Davenport had been given $25 million in a Swiss bank account to do with what he pleased. It was against the law for an American citizen to own an offshore bank account and not state its existence on his annual tax returns. He was ordered not to declare his new account.

His wife, happy and content in their large Manhattan apartment, could die a horrible death if he didn't do as ordered. The Banker even described the future rape and slow death, and the gang of over a dozen evil men who would do this nasty deed to her. The problem was that his five daughters would go first, one by one the same way. Davenport's wife, if she survived the death of all five of her daughters, would be last. He was told that his youngest and most dear, Emily, at the time only seven, would be first to visit the gang headquarters, and a full video recording would be sent to him, in HD. The Banker then played a short, five minute video recording of a young Hispanic teenager going through what the gang called fun, and Davenport puked up in the room he was sitting in. He never gave The Banker any reason to doubt him from then on, especially after he was sent a copy of a YouTube video of the same gang passing his apartment tower a few weeks later and writing his name on the wall in big red letters.

It was already wiped off when he went downstairs to see if it was true an hour later, but his name could still faintly be seen.

Will Frederickson was far easier. His file would be "unlost" in the FBI databanks, something he had paid an agent friend of his $100,000 many years earlier to hide when he was about to climb the ladder of success to the top.

The agent had hid it well, as only the Banker and his team of hackers had dug deep enough down to find it. No file could ever be completely erased from the FBI databanks, or any databanks for that matter. With the same offered to his two daughters and his wife by a Los Angeles gang of thugs, he began to enjoy the proceedings at the hotel. It was deep in his blood, only he was trying to hide it.

On the first of March, all members of The Banker's Club headed home for their last month of being with their families before they went underground for "Operation Default," part one of The Banker's three part operation.

The government was relieved, as interest rates had been frozen for the time being by the four large banks. So was the nervous U.S. population. Rates were already high. Seven percent on adjustable mortgages, and the average mortgage had been signed at two or three percent. It had been at eight percent for a month, and that had really hurt before it had been reduced back to seven and frozen. The lowest credit card interest rates were much higher even for those with excellent credit and track records. For anybody struggling and had late or missed payments, they were paying between 19.99 and 29.99 percent.

The adjustable interest rates on motor vehicles had gone from zero to three percent to eight percent, and thirteen percent for late or missed payments. Only now were millions of Americans realizing that this year's school summer holidays would not be much fun, and maybe staying at home was the best thing.

The higher rates had slowed the growing economy over the last sixty days. People were afraid to sign new mortgages. Car dealers could only dream of the days they hired anybody off the streets to help them sell cars and trucks. Now they were quiet, down to their original sales staff, and thinking about how many they needed to lay off. Companies began to stop increasing their workforces. Sales were slowing, especially on luxury items, as The Banker controlled inflation was pushing up the prices.

The President was worried and asked the Reserve Bank chairman to reduce its lending rates. His reply was that this slowdown was only temporary, and even if he dropped his rates, the big banks might not want to decrease their higher profit margins. The Reserve Bank chairman, the CEOs of the big four banks and Stephan Saber of Joseph Silverstein's, the largest securities firm in the world, were invited to lunch at the White House, and stony-faced, they refused to lower rates, but agreed to a compromise; all rates were frozen, and as the Reserve Bank chairman had said, they all expected renewed growth in the near future. The President was pretty disappointed with Stephan Saber. He had thought that the man would have been on his side, wanting to keep interest rates down, but he had said nothing.

It was the bank managers of the branches that had their hands full. It was their jobs to tell irate customers that overdraft fees, now at an average of $49, were to protect the bank's interest and the interest of customers who could keep their accounts in order. Also they claimed the banks were struggling with inflation, and the increased $20 to $30 monthly fees on all bank accounts were needed to keep the branches operating. Every manager smiled, nodded their heads in agreement with what their customers told them, and replied that the banks were struggling as much as they were. Times were tough again, and they were also just doing their jobs.

Unemployment began to rise, the government trying its best to fix the numbers. Unemployment payouts were decreased to ten weeks, and the government began cutting back on all expenditures to save money, to show the American people that it too could tighten its belt. The President's latest set of helicopters were cancelled for the third time, and there would be no pay raises for any government employees for the next year. Even the President and Vice-President took a ten percent cut in pay. Of course, Congress didn't.

The Banker had sent the four CEOs back to be on the news, daily, to explain to the people that it was necessary for rates to change, and anything else their media departments could put together to appease the people.

Due to the slowing of the American economy, much of the rest of the world also slowed. China refused to increase its lending amounts to the American government. The Chinese growth in exports dropped three percentage points from four to less than one percent in the first sixty days of the year, thanks to the slowing of exports to China's biggest market.

Europe, still in the claws of the last recession, fared no better. Economists reckoned that the end of the European recession was now a decade out, not the three years they had previously forecasted.

The U.S. media did a great job of playing down the tough times. They only promoted good news stories about the country's welfare, the odd scandal story with politicians, and that the spending power of most Americans was at an all-time high.

They were correct. The remains of the employed middle and upper classes were spending like crazy, emptying Costco, Walmart and Target of long-term food supplies and electrical goods. Gas prices had stayed constant up to the end of February, and with millions of gas storage canisters purchased of every size, the American public now had more reserves than the government. New ideas of gas storage became daily news, which actually dropped the nationwide price in February by forty cents a gallon.

"Buddy Williams in Trenton, New Jersey has a new and novel way of buying gas," said Charlie on CBS ThisMorning. "He and three neighbors purchased the gas station two doors down from his house, borrowing everything they could from their 401k plans and Roth IRAs. For $450,000 they purchased the property consisting of a five-year old gas station with a 24-hour store, and the 39,520 gallons of underground unleaded."

"The first item on the agenda for the new owners was to take down the station's cost per gallon advertisement and close the station to others. With ten pumps now closed in their area, neighbors will have to go a little further to fill their vehicles," added Nora.

Jack Durant and especially Maggie Tregio were also feeling the higher rates. Like many Americans, they were paying down debt as fast as they could. The higher rates made it hard on a government salary that paid for the basics but was not a fortune.

They were deep in FBI files following an old hacking trail that seemed to go down far into the murky records. Twice now they had had to go upstairs and increase their security levels of search ability, and each time it had taken a week or two before they were given permission for access. On both occasions Jack had told his superiors that hackers needed no authority to dive into the depths of the FBI murk, but they wasted time and energy getting authority to chase these hacker break-ins. It was the same trail Steve Uben had found, except that it was on Stephan Saber this time, and a $40 million payment to the Middle East.

The whole team had closed the files on the Las Vegas affair. Chuck Martin was still missing and John Hanks was his replacement. Jack had already gone through Hank's files. Also, the hackers were long gone. He had bet Maggie a month's pay that they wouldn't be seen within a thousand miles of the next convention. She hadn't taken him up on the bet.

He never forgot Steve Uben though, and often smiled at their last meeting and how he had totally been duped by a fellow hacker. The Reno FBI had gone through their area with a fine-toothed comb when Jack realized that Uben himself might be on the video in both Las Vegas and LAX airports. The CIA, Interpol, and the Argentinean police had been alerted, as they had boarded a flight to Buenos Aires from LAX, but they could be anywhere now, and he hadn't found any leads in Argentina or the banking systems he could hack into. It was if the family had stopped hacking. Maybe they have retired? he thought to himself, looking through his monthly mortgage statement and wincing.

It was a month later, an April Fool's joke he thought, when early one morning he was told he had a call on line one, a Steven J. Uben. It jolted him when he heard the name. It hadn't been a good day so far. The early news had said that the large four banks had raised mortgage and all lending rates across the country by a whopping three percent from the first of April, and his mortgage was now at ten percent and he was only on his second cup of coffee.

The country, or at least the East Coast watching the early news, now knew that the four banks, holding over sixty percent of the entire country's debt, were in collusion, and he had worried on his drive to work how he was going to pay the next mortgage installment in thirty days' time.

"Steve Uben, thanks for calling. I was hoping to hear from you. How was Reno? A great act at our meeting in Vegas by the way," said Jack as the call was put through.

"From the master who taught me my profession, I take that as a compliment," replied Steve. He was calling on a prepaid French cell phone just purchased in the railway station in Lyon, France.

Heads in the office were up everywhere upon hearing "Uben," and Durant snapped his fingers to get a trace on where the call was coming from. "You learned from me!" Jack asked smiling for the first time that day.

"Sure, I was just a nice guy, head of security for USA Bank when you came knocking, and you introduced me to the world of hacking. Tell your agents listening in and the guys trying to run down my call that it is all your fault the Uben family got involved in your old career. And I have seventeen seconds before I drop this call. Jack, I will call you again. The U.S. banks are trying to bankrupt the United States. We have proof; money was paid into the Middle East by Martin's bank in 2000, and I need to meet with you in a safe location..." The call ended.

"Anything?" Jack asked his agents, putting down the receiver, knowing that the call had been too short.

"Not in the United States or Canada. I think the call came from central Europe, maybe Germany or France. It was being routed through one of those countries."

Jack asked for the recording to be sent to his computer and he played it over and over again.

Three months earlier, Steve was shocked at the condition the two girls were in when he looked down in the rear of the Mercedes after he had closed the communication window to the driver. Their big wild eyes made them look like animals.

"May-Lee, we have only met once a few years ago. I'm a good friend and customer of your brother Chow Lee-Sim. Steve is my first name. Now which one of you is May-Lee?" The girl who had entered first, in perfect English, said that she was May-Lee. With the warm air in the back of the vehicle, the smell from the two girls began to waft into the air, so Steve opened the windows slightly.

The girl immediately apologized for their unhealthy presence. "I totally understand, girls," Steve smiled kindly. "It's been what, nearly two months since you girls went missing?"

"Seventy-nine days," May-Lee replied. "Thank you for the bread. We were nearly dead. Finding food had been easier at the beginning, as people left doors and windows open so we could easily steal food, but once it got cold we had to sneak into the hotel kitchen or into the homes of the security guards to steal food. Sometimes we didn't eat for days. There is a small stream we could bathe in for the first month, and wash our clothes, clothes stolen from wherever we could find them, but we haven't cleaned ourselves for a month, as the stream froze up. We couldn't leave, because we have no papers."

"Only two of you got out of the dance area?" Steve asked.

"No, I think five of us ran through the open door; we all headed away in different directions. I was first, my friend here was second. We saw and heard the other three being taken back in kicking and screaming, then the door closed and we have not heard anything more until you came. Are they still alive? Two of our group was hurt before we ran out; both were badly hurt and bleeding."

"I don't think so. I believe that nobody else survived," Steve answered. He saw that they had reached the city limits and that they were passing a small motel. He pressed the intercom button to the front of the car. "Peter, could we stop here for an hour? I will pay any extra costs, but my friends need to clean up. They also need clean clothes." The car had to make a U-turn, but minutes later parked next to a side entrance to the motel.

Steve entered the front door alone, and was forced to pay on card, for he was nearly out of cash. He got a ground floor double room for him and his two daughters, gave a false ID, and headed down the hall with his one suitcase in his hand. The room was on the opposite side of the hallway, and two rooms from the exit door. He couldn't see a camera inside and walked out of the door. There was no one there apart from the black Mercedes, still running, and he signaled the girls to come over to him.

Within seconds the small filthy shapes were in the room and fighting to get into the shower first. Steve let them be. They needed clothes and he needed to get cash.

"Peter, a bank, and then a department store. I need money, and teenage size clothes for my friends." Peter drove him to the nearest bank three blocks away. Peter couldn't keep quiet any longer, as the car stank of rotten bodies.

"Mein Herr, if I am to take this risk going back into Switzerland I need to know something. Is this legal? Are they child labor or sex victims?"

"I thought you might ask. They are the remains of a Chinese dance group that disappeared here in Lichtenstein. One is the sister of a friend of mine. I came to find out why twelve girls disappeared without a trace from that hotel up there eighty days ago. It seems that two survived and I need to get them in for questioning."

"That hotel, Mein Herr, is one of the most famous, highest quality hotels in the whole of Europe. Are you Interpol, or European Polizei?"

"I might be, and that is why I need to get these girls in for questioning. Their word here in Vaduz would not be listened to in light of the hotel's reputation. These girls have absolutely no documents, they were stolen. Lichtenstein is too small, and I need to get them into a larger country for their safety. I have no papers for them so these girls will enter your country illegally, but once there they will be safer. Whatever you want as payment, I will pay you, but I need to draw out money."

"Whatever you think this danger is worth, Mein Herr. I am sure you are doing your job, hopefully a good job, so a good tip is all I ask. You tip well."

Steve headed to the ATM. The last thing he wanted was to use an ATM in Lichtenstein. He sorted through his cards. He had got all of them from Chop Stix, but if he used a credit card he might have to rid himself of that identity. Steve also knew that he had at least ten thousand pounds Sterling credit available on all of the British cards, and one was active. He had already used it to pay for this trip, so he had only hours if Interpol was looking for a Brit called "Jason Green."

He keyed in that he wanted 2,500 Swiss Francs, the currency used in Lichtenstein, and without a second's hesitation, the machine began spitting out 100 Franc notes. Steve knew that the U.S. Dollar and Swiss Franc were about the same, and he hoped it was enough to get across the border, but not too large an amount to be noticed by anybody looking.

Upon returning to the car, he paid his bill. The car collection was 900 Francs, and he gave Peter an extra thousand. The driver thanked him, tipped his hat, and put part of the money with the bill in one of his uniform jacket pockets, and part in the other.

They found a department store. Steve was pretty good at sizes, and within twenty minutes had two small thickly-lined winter tracksuits, size four fur-lined boots, socks, two ski hats, a range of different size undergarments and woolen gloves in a bag. He walked out and into the next shop, a bakery. Here he purchased several pastries and cakes. He didn't know what starving Chinese girls ate, but he thought it wasn't important.

He arrived back to the hotel. As he walked through the reception, the same old lady was behind the desk, and he unlocked his room door to see two very thin girls sitting with wet hair and large hotel towels around them on one of the beds. They didn't look anything like the dirty kids he had picked up. He gave them the bag with clothes and they headed back into the privacy of the bathroom. He placed the food on the desk at the front of the room and waited.

Within minutes they had returned. The tracksuits were baggy, but looked warm. The boots looked about right, and they had the tracksuit bottoms pushed into the tops of the boots. They still had their hats and gloves in their hands, all the old smelly clothing was in the shopping bag and the ugly smell wafted up to his nose.

"Food is on the desk. I'll go and get rid of the bag while you eat."

He found a dumpster behind the hotel, threw in the stinking clothes, and by the time he got back to the room there were only two pastries left.

"One for you Steve, and one for the driver," said May-Lee.

"We are going into Switzerland. You need to be in the trunk of the Mercedes, understand?" Steve asked. They both nodded.

Twenty minutes later, heading out through the side emergency exit and not returning the room key to the front desk, they headed for the Swiss border only a few miles away.

The border wasn't busy and they only had one car in front of them when they reached the Swiss side. The Lichtenstein side did not stop outgoing cars. The driver gave his own and his passenger's passports to the guard. The guard flicked through them, and seemed to know Peter as they said a few things in German to each other. Then the guard asked Peter in English that he wanted to see the passenger in the back and Peter pushed the window switch. The dark glass disappeared, the guard checked Steve's face to his passport photo, nodded to him, looked around the rear seating area, gave Peter the passports back through the open front window, and the car sped away into Switzerland. Steve sighed with relief.

Peter dropped them off at the same hotel he and Chop Stix had stayed in by the airport. Steve ordered two rooms this time, and paid with the same card he had used throughout the journey, then purchased an expensive prepaid camera cell phone from the hotel gift shop with cash. Excitedly the girls headed to the rooms, happy to have their own with connecting door, and he sat down on their bed and called the only number he had for Chop Stix.

"Wong Dry Cleaners," said Chop Stix in English. It was his usual greeting from anybody calling from outside China.

"Is that the Wrong Dry Cleaners, or the Wong Dry Cleaners?" asked Steve, his preplanned opening reply to tell Chop Stix that it was Steve Uben. Everybody had a different greeting with Chop Stix.

"Ha! Mr. Wong here. Solly, you might have wrong dry cleaners."

"Mr. Smith here. I have news of cleaning fluid delivery to Switzerland."

"Steve, it's good to hear your voice. This line is as secure as any. Are you still there? I arrived back 48 hours ago."

"Well you had better get back to Europe, because there is somebody waiting to talk to you. Hold on. He passed the phone to May-Lee.

He had never heard such rapid Chinese, but the tears flowed from both girls like a waterfall. Even he got teary-eyed just watching their excitement. They passed the phone a few times, and May-Lee spoke the most and extremely rapidly for about ten minutes.

She finally gave the phone back to him, and the gratitude in her eyes was overwhelming. This one look made it all worthwhile for Steve.

"Steve, how can I ever thank you? This is the best day of my life. What do you need?"

"Two sets of papers for the girls, obviously. I'll have to trash Jason Green, so I need a new European passport and credit card, say, a sexy Irish identity this time. We are at the same hotel you and I met the barman in. I will move to another one, away from the airport, and wait for you. I have 73 minutes left on this phone, so call me on this when you arrive. I also need some cash. I'm out and don't want to use any more cards. I'll head out of town, to Bern, and I'll draw out enough from Jason Green to last me until you get here. Give me an ETA, and I assume you want photos of the girls?"

"Only for Kim, the second girl. I have all her particulars. I have all my sister's information and you know how I need Kim's photo for a Chinese passport: cheap, lousy color. I can play with it here. It will take me four days to get everything ready, and two days to get there. Steve, I'm currently doing an Interpol sweep for a "Jason Green" in Switzerland or Lichtenstein. Nothing is showing up yet, so you are okay for at least 24 hours. Grab a handful of money in another city. I will check again every twelve hours until I leave, but my papers are good, damn good. If you need to show a credit card at your next hotel, use a different one. How much has this cost you, Steve?" Chop Stix asked seriously.

"Oh! The usual finder's fee, Mr. Wong. $100,000 for U.S. citizens, $250,000 for Chinese citizens, half up front, half in future paperwork."

"Okay Steve, you got me this time, worth every penny," laughed Chop Stix as Steve was imitating what he said to all his customers. "Hell, I've taken ten times that off you. U.S. Dollars will do?"

"Negative, Sterling this time old boy," replied Steve in his best upper-class British accent, and he hung up to take Kim's photo.

May-Lee held two bedside lights up to shine on Kim's face against a cleared white bathroom wall to show that it was taken in a sort of studio, and Steve clicked and within seconds, sent it over to China.

Without unpacking, they headed out another side door with their belongings and found a taxi outside the next-door hotel. They wanted a ride into the city, and found a nice hotel in Zurich.

"Isn't anything cheap in this country?" he said realizing that it was an 800 Franc per day hotel. Steve showed another ID, one that he had never used in Europe, and was pleased when the receptionist asked if he wanted a two-bedroom junior suite instead of two rooms. It would come out 350 Francs cheaper. He immediately agreed.

The suite was beautiful and spacious, and the girls immediately headed for the fruit bowl in the center lounge area. The bellhop asked why there was such little luggage for three people, and Steve replied that his nieces were at a Swiss boarding school and that they were about to go on a shopping spree. "Where should they start," he asked, and the bellhop gave them names of the best stores in the area.

Within 48 hours, the girls had a suitcase each of clothes, hadn't stopped eating, and kept hugging him. They'd been to Bern and back by train, Jason Green's credit card was maxed out but Chop Stix would cover it, and he had just enough cash to survive Zurich.

A week after they arrived, Chop Stix landed in Zurich. They had two nights on the town and were the happiest group anywhere. May-Lee refused to leave Europe without going to the theater both nights.

The next day the three Chinese friends, all carrying Chinese passports, headed back to Shanghai, while Steve took his two cases back to Edinburgh: his new briefcase from China with a secret compartment full of new passports and papers, and a couple of wads of British pounds in Chris' leather suitcase, topped with expensive clothes. It wasn't much, only twenty thousand pounds, a reasonable amount of cash on a wealthy traveling man. The rest of the quarter million Chop Stix had paid him with thanks, he had deposited in one of his Swiss bank accounts.

Six weeks later the banks began to put real pressure on the U.S. economy. The Uben family was spending the time enjoying the peace and cold of Scotland.

With all the new computers up and running, Jenny Uben had made each family member, even Katie, sign a printed document that for the future, and if they wanted to be friends, they would not hack into any institution to move or steal any money other than what they already had.

Chris, now with his face back to normal, and Katie were happy to be part of a loving family with common interests, and so she happily agreed. Katie still kept in contact with her own parents, although by snail mail and via Chop Stix's expensive delivery service in Shanghai. It was weird to date a handwritten letter a month ahead of her writing it, but that was about the time it took for delivery.

The small house in Scotland still moved money around daily. Chris was shifting his new pounds from Scottish banks into Panama, the Isle of Man through the island of Jersey. Steve had to clear his trail he had left in Switzerland. On the hotel records, "Jason Green" changed to "Jack Greene." "Mathew Bloom," the second identity he had used, to "Martin Bronson."

As expected, the paperwork was good, but Steve Uben had alerted several unfriendly types at the hotel. The barman had suspected something. Then there was this stupid Chinese kid, not more than 25, but too young to be a Chinese police agent, he thought. This kid acted as if he was as wealthy as the rest of the patrons, acting like a madman with Baron Von Geesing's latest girl.

It was mostly her fault, but that had put the barman on edge, especially since the last dance group had been Chinese, and Hans Burger the barman on duty before him had gone crazy, hitting the two VIPs and then escaping. The Banker had come down hard on him, even though he was in Scotland, on the island and setting up the demise of Chuck Martin with the base's commander.

The Banker had watched the barman punch the two men, and had seen the girls run in all directions. Luckily the cameras had not been focused on the door behind the bar, and he hadn't said anything. The Banker had noticed though that only ten corpses had been put in body bags, and he had the security staff search the surrounding forest for the other two.

Apart for missing food here and there during the first few weeks, they hadn't seen any evidence that the girls had left the area.

Then this weirdo American arrives. Americans didn't often spend time at the hotel, but the barman had been warned when the guy had said that he worked with Saber. Saber would never have said anything like that. The barman had taken that night's video feed and requested that The Banker look at it.

The man in charge sent Steve's face through his systems and found that Steven J. Uben had in fact worked for Chuck Martin, not Stephan Saber, and that made him search everything he had in the world to find this man.

Within a week of Steve leaving Switzerland with his new briefcase and cash, a file was sent to The Banker by a friend. The Banker's address was also in Switzerland, but the mail was picked up and, as Chop Stix did with his correspondence, headed in a dozen different directions before it landed on The Banker's desk, somewhere in Europe, a week later. The file with only the highest NSA and CIA security clearances on the cover showed a Steven J. Uben, ex-head of security for USA Bank, meeting with an FBI agent, known to The Banker as Pepsi Cola in Las Vegas only a few months earlier.

The Banker smiled. Pepsi Cola was an old friend of his. They had worked together in the early 90s and had actually met half a dozen times. Pepsi Cola was one of the few men in the world who knew who The Banker was, although Pepsi Cola didn't know The Banker's job, or real identity.

Orders were returned the same way back to the U.S. government departments and were carried out. One order was going to change the outcome of future world history, and was carried out within 48 hours of reaching Langley, Virginia.
Chapter 27

Operation Default: The Final Curtain

Jack Durant headed home. He had spent the day going over his conversation with Steve Uben. The man wasn't hiding anymore and he had realized that The Cube must be Steve's son, as the older man could only be Byte, Mr. and Mrs. Byte, as he had also pulled Jenny Uben's file. Suddenly, and like a puzzle, everything had fallen into place. He had just found the best hacking family in the U.S. and he was going to write his report to all his senior levels from home that night.

With Maggie, they had gone over the Vegas recordings again and again, connecting all the footage from the convention center, surrounding areas, and the two airports into one long video stream.

Young Uben went nowhere without the pregnant girl who suddenly wasn't pregnant in the airport footage.

"You know Maggie, this puzzle is simple, and it is staring us right in the face. The Ubens were East Coast guys. We have the Bytes and The Cube. Who else have we been looking for from East Coast hacking data files?"

"Only the young girl we have been attempting to follow in New York. The girl with the yellow Ferrari. Mercedes Cortez, the one and only," she replied, lights going on in both brains simultaneously.

"That's the young Uben's girlfriend, or wife!" Maggie exclaimed, and they jumped around the office like a pair of kids.

"Then who is The Ram?" asked Maggie getting serious again.

"I would put my mortgage payment, which I can't afford at the end of the month, on Mercedes Cortez, AKA the girl, young Uben's wife/girlfriend. The Ram worked out of New York, around the Queens, New York area I believe. We have always been puzzled that a trail with The Ram's false DNS suspects suddenly changed handles through "Onion Routing." It started off as The Ram's play, and suddenly in the middle of the DNS false leads suddenly suspected to be used by Mercedes Cortez, her property dealings, and that threw us off the scent."

"Well done, Jack," commented Maggie. "I bet you are right. If we continue following the leads, ignoring who the trails look like, we could get to a trail end. Maybe a piece of property, or a bank hack and money transaction. I'll get back into the files immediately."

"Yes, I reckon a good place to check would be that residential property transaction on Long Island, and then the Ferrari purchase," Durant added smiling.

An hour later, and watching the footage, he came up with the last surprise of the day. Just in camera, and a few feet behind Steve and Jenny Uben in their old folks disguise, was walking what looked like an old Chinese lady and her daughter.

"Oh my God!" shouted Jack, and the agents around him came running. "Guys, look at the two shapes just in camera behind the Ubens. Who are they?" Nobody had an answer except that Maggie said that it could be a Chinese or Japanese lady and daughter by the way they were dressed. "Okay, where are we team, in this footage?" Jack asked so excited that he would need the bathroom pretty soon.

"Hackers' Convention, Las Vegas," said several together.

"Do we have any Asian hackers who we know visit our beautiful country every so often?"

"Chop Stix," replied Maggie and a few others.

"But that's an old lady?" asked one agent.

"So, look at the Ubens. Aren't they old too? Also The Ram, we always thought to be a male. What girl would want The Ram as a handle? It's far too phallic for an innocent little 18 year old or 25 year old. And is The Ram pregnant at the convention, and did she deliver a ten pound baby boy at McCarran Airport and nobody noticed? Ladies and gentleman, we had the most wanted hacker in the world right in our damn hands, and we lost Chop Stix. I want those pictures of the old lady blown up, detailed and on my desk in the morning. Maggie, you have done enough. Go home. I'm heading out in a few minutes. The rest of you, I want answers on my desk by nine sharp."

Special Agent Jack Durant was about to bring down the number one group of freelance hackers in the country, and the lead guy had actually asked to meet him. Of course he was going to meet Steve Uben, with Interpol, MI5 or MI6, all the European Police in whichever country they met, the CIA, the NSA, even the Boy Scouts of America and NASA as backup if need be.

Jack Durant was happy as he drove home. Happy for the first time in months. He was actually whistling when he parked the Crown Vic in front of his garage, opened the garage door on his rearview mirror, locked the car and walked into the warmth of his single door garage. He carried his laptop and briefcase and headed past his beloved new truck and through the connecting door into the house.

"Oh crap!" he said aloud to himself smelling a horrible smell coming from the refrigerator. He hadn't thrown out the bad food he had reminded himself to do that morning. He left his briefcase and laptop on the kitchen table, opened the refrigerator door, and grabbed for the old boxed dinner from several nights ago. He unlocked the back door and headed out to deposit the smelly food in his trash can at the bottom of the back yard.

"Stupid me," he realized. He had actually put out the garbage that very morning, without adding the rotten food; the can was still on the back road outside his rear gate. Now he had to smell the crappy trash for a whole week if the weather warmed up, and before the collectors came again. He headed through the gate, wondering if there was a dumpster in the area he could place the stinking box in, when his whole house behind him erupted in a massive explosion that threw him, the rotten food, half his back fence, and the empty trash can across the road without any touching the narrow asphalt.

Stephan Saber and the bankers were preparing to exit the country. Even the Reserve chairman was thinking of heading somewhere safer than the United States today, maybe to Venezuela or something. The same day that Durant had gone to work and had chatted to Steve Uben, the interest rates had risen three percent, breaking the promise to the American people that they were to be frozen until further notice.

The people on the East Coast went ballistic, and the discontentment spread across the country as fast as the morning's dawn. The White House, Capitol Hill, and every politician's phones began ringing, all the way down to county and town level.

Twenty-four hours later, riots ensured outside banks in the poorer areas across the country. The President hit the airwaves around midday on April 2nd, admonishing the banks for increasing rates. He promised the American people that he would have rates back down by the end of the month, when the increased payments would hurt their wallets.

That salved the anger to an extent, and the media, as always told everyone who wanted to learn what was happening, by having every expert and non-expert in the world of finance telling the population, that like the recession in 2008, the government had already quelled the previous situation, and the President wasn't afraid to do it again.

Later that day the American population's anger cooled. The government would sort out the problem, and the dinner lines outside every fast food restaurant in the country were as long as usual, and the chains didn't lose any business. That day the stock market dropped 660 points.

Life for Jack Durant came back to the real world at about the same time. He wasn't coherent enough to be angry with the banking system, just with the nurse for not getting rid of his headache.

It was like a drum solo being played right next to his ear. He hadn't been in the military, and didn't realize what an explosion did to a person's eardrums. His ears hadn't ruptured, but they were not in perfect working order, and the ringing sound and other sounds in his head weren't pleasant.

He came back to the world with one of his agents standing over him. It was Agent Mark James, the same agent who had nearly been roughed up by the heavies at USA Bank, which led the special agent to think who had done this to him. He wasn't late on his mortgage, yet, and he was up to date on all his cards. Having a reasonable sense of humor, he wondered if the rotten food could have caused the explosion.

"What happened?" he asked Agent James.

"Your whole house and everything on your property went up in a massive fireball, seriously injuring two of your neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Dumas. They will live; the rear axle of your new truck blew through the side wall into their living room. Mr. Dumas has lost a leg, and his wife's head hit their refrigerator hard in their kitchen. She's still hasn't come around. Your other neighbors were out. Lucky for them. The people across your front road had shrapnel go through the wall on their house, missing them by inches. The blast was so powerful that you shouldn't be alive, Jack. It seems that you were out back, outside your property. Is that right?"

"I think so. I had this rotten food that needed to be trashed, and my can was on the road. It was collection day."

"The police found your trash can in your rear neighbor's kitchen. It had gone straight through their kitchen window. You were found in their back garden," Agent James reported.

"Gas leak," Durant asked.

"Or a C-4-aided gas explosion from your kitchen or lounge area," replied the agent. "Forensics reckons it was too powerful for just a gas leak; you would have got out fast if you had smelled that much gas, but we will know once they sift through remains. The gas would have needed a spark to combust. Did you turn on anything, or smell gas?"

"Negative. The food stank though, but I don't think I smelled gas. That stuff smells different."

"They can identify signs of a C-4 blast pretty easy," continued the agent, "but we have proof it was deliberate. Unfortunately, the same happened to Maggie's house. Sorry Jack, she didn't make it. A similar-sized explosion, which also killed one of her neighbors. She was home and alone at the time of the explosion. Her husband was on his way home ten minutes away with her kids when her house went up. Same type of C-4 plus gas explosion."

It was a week before Durant could get back to work. The blast had really worked him over. He managed to get released the day of Maggie's funeral, and had to promise that he would return to the hospital, but never did. He had work to do. What he had lost in the explosion, on his laptop and in the files, was duplicated back at the office. Everything was backed up before it was ever taken home.

Maggie was a good agent, and he consoled her grieving husband and children at the funeral. He knew that there weren't that many people who wanted them both dead. They had only worked out the identities of the hackers that very day, and he was sure old Steve Uben couldn't have planted explosives, or had a team inside the U.S. do it. He wasn't that type of guy. There must be a leak in his office, or it had to do with what Uben wanted to talk to him about. Maybe a meeting without his backup was a better deal.

The media had revised the two Washington explosions to claim they were two unrelated gas leaks on the same day. It didn't make big enough news to reach outside the U.S. apart from the early morning news in Britain. Steve Uben had just gotten back from his day trip to Lyon several hours earlier, flying from Edinburgh to Paris, then catching the fast train down to Lyon, making the call, and then catching the next train and plane back.

Steve just happened to be watching in his Edinburgh hotel room, but was tired and did not take an interest.

The Ubens did see excited movement within the boundaries of the FBI a few days later when they checked. He didn't put two and two together on this one, and let it go. His old country was in a mess. There were still riots over the banking institutions around the country, and he needed to phone Durant again.

This time he was going to take the ferry over to Ireland and call on a new prepaid Irish phone from there. He was partial to a tipple of Guinness here and there.

Steve Uben called Jack Durant, a day after Durant had arrived back in his office in Washington. This time Durant took the call personally and asked Steve to call him back on his cell phone in twenty minutes, giving him the number. He wasn't taking any more chances on government phone lines for a while.

For the first time in his life, Jack Durant took an official call off the FBI system. He had purchased three prepaid cheap phones in a corner store, like he had done in the old days, and when his real cell phone rang, he told Steve to phone him back on the first prepaid number.

"Steve, I'm changing devices. You know how we do it. Call me back on..." and he gave Steve the number of his second phone when he called again. He knew that Steve was most probably also using prepaid phones, and it was impossible to trace these calls in less than a minute.

He waited twenty minutes, until he was at least ten miles away and hopefully on another cell tower. The phone rang.

"Are we safe, Mr. FBI man?" Steve asked.

"For 57 seconds. Did you send over guys to terminate me?"

"No, were those Washington blasts you?"

"Yes. They got Maggie, the girl in my team you saw at the convention."

"Sorry, I didn't realize that had anything to do with you. I was still in the air, traveling back from the location I called you from. We had only spoken six hours earlier. Sorry for your loss, believe you me I am. I'm sure she was a good agent."

"You want to meet? Tell me why? If I hang up in 47 seconds call me on this number..." Jack gave him his third prepaid number.

"Okay, I have found evidence that Chuck Martin paid $40 million to a terrorist organization in 1999. I have evidence that the big four U.S. bankers meet every year in a secret location in Lichtenstein. Martin, Davenport and Frederickson, and Saber have a boss. He is called The Banker. He is forcing U.S. interest rates to rise, I don't know why...." Jack ended the call. He was already thinking about the latest information he had just dredged up on Stephan Saber. It was also a $40 million payout outside the U.S. around 1999. His third phone rang.

"Do you want to meet, Mr. Cola? You have only one chance at this, and we will all be there."

"Yes," replied Jack.

"Come as Cola, not Durant. This place does not like Americans, so don't bring any friends. You will be dead within minutes once word gets out that you are FBI. Little Bay Restaurant, Belgrade, Serbia, 14 days from now, 8 p.m., and dress smart casual." The call ended.

Jack was surprised at the venue. He trashed all his phones, running over them with his Crown Vic, and he dumped them in separate cans on his way back to the office. He did not tell his new number two, Agent James, what had gone on. Nobody asked, as he was head of the department after all.

That night, he headed over to a secret location, his mother's tombstone in Baltimore, Maryland, and collected an old rusty waterproof tin box from near its base. It had been there for at least 15 years.

The dozens of new notes still wrapped in plastic now looked old, dirty and stale smelling, but still useable. His two old passports were long out of date, but the phone number where he could get new ones was still readable, and so was his old bank account. He took the whole box, covered the well-protected hole for future use, and went to purchase new prepaid phones.

Within two hours he had ordered new Panama papers and activated his old bank account with Credit Swiss in Geneva. He was quite surprised that it still had over a million dollars in it. Not one penny was missing, and the $10,000 in the tin wouldn't have been enough to pay his old Beijing contact for a new set of documents. Prices had gone up since he had gone straight.

Jack Durant worked hard for the next ten days, making progress on the one project that interested him, and found his answer the day before he headed to the airport. He was due leave, and when his new Amazon Kindle package arrived on time at his new temporary residence, he headed to Reagan, then Dallas and finally south, to Buenos Aries, Argentina, where all good hackers went when trying to get away from U.S. surveillance.

Three days later, "Michael Sanchez" entered the restaurant, a British chain he noticed, and saw a large table full of tourists all looking at him when he walked through the door.

Steve had told his family and Chop Stix in Shanghai of the meeting. He ordered Chop Stix and his sister to be there. He phoned Peter Schmidt in Klagenfurt, southern Austria, and told Hans Burger and his wife, if he wanted to take her, to be at the meeting in Belgrade. He also phoned an old friend in Dubrovnik, and ordered protection for the night at the restaurant. A dozen well-armed and well-placed men who hated foreign spies would be enough.

The Ubens headed south, Katie going along. They all knew that there could be trouble, but Steve didn't think so. If Pepsi Cola wanted to have dinner with them, all was fine and dandy. If any "extras" arrived anywhere near the restaurant, they wouldn't live to tell the tale. Anybody inside the restaurant would be safe. Any funny looking, darkly dressed and creepy people holding weapons or radios wouldn't.

They traveled by rail through Europe, taking their time to reach Belgrade. There was certainly a lot to see, and friends to pick up along the way.

By the time the train reached the outskirts of Belgrade, the invited people, apart for Pepsi Cola, were riding together. Steve read an English paper picked up in Klagenfurt. It was already a day old, and its main story was that interest rates had gone up again in America just that morning. Another two percent had been added to the tally. The average American, Steve reckoned, was now paying as much as fifteen or sixteen percent on all new mortgages, and even he and Jenny would have struggled to pay that in their old house in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Exactly thirty minutes before 8 p.m. they reached their table. The restaurant was virtually empty; it was a Tuesday night, and the quietest night of the week. By eight, when Steve noticed Pepsi Cola enter dressed in a short coat, slacks and a polo shirt, their table was the only one still occupied.

"Steve, Jenny, Chris, Katie, my old friend Chow Lee-Sim and the three I don't know, good evening. I'm Pepsi Cola, or you can call me Charles, Charles D. Rockefeller," said the new arrival, smiling while taking off his coat. He draped it over the already busy coat rack and joined the table, sitting at the empty seat waiting for him.

### About the Author

T I WADE was born in Bromley, Kent, England in 1954. His father, a banker was promoted with his International Bank to Africa and the young family moved to Africa in 1956.

The author grew up in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and a fictional depiction of his life is humorously described in his novel EASY COME EASY GO, Volume II of The Book of Tolan Series. Once he had completed his mandatory military commitments, at 21 he left Africa to mature in Europe.

He enjoyed Europe and lived in three countries; England, Germany and Portugal for 15 years before returning to Africa; Cape Town in 1989. Here the author owned and ran a restaurant, a coffee manufacturing and retail business, flew a Cessna 210 around desolate southern Africa and finally got married in 1992. Due to the upheavals of the political turmoil in South Africa, the Wade family of three moved to the United States in 1996. Park City, Utah was where his writing career began.

To date T I Wade has written thirteen novels.

The Author, his wife and two teenage children currently live 20 miles south of Raleigh, North Carolina.

