Robert Smith - The Planner

“Insurance?” mused Planner.

“No. Electricity, say. And they get a monopoly contract to supply a whole state.”

“So potential for abuse from the start,” noted Planner.

“Yes. They get paid on the mark-up. So what they do is, they close local capacity, to cause power cuts 31and then buy-in expensive electricity from afar.”

“Where no doubt they get a rake off? So they’ll going to lose this contract eventually,” observes Planner.

“No. That’s just it. They don’t!” Katherine blurts. “They’ve won awards for most innovative company for six years because no-one hears the bad stuff. They pay journalists to say how wonderful they are.”

“Hmm, that sounds unethical. But is that illegal?”

“Misrepresentation? Oh yes, that’s illegal!” Katherine said trying to restrain any shrill in her voice. “But the worst part, to keep the share price going up, the company buys its own shares using a loan from a bank.”

“Stupid, sure, but not illegal?”

“It’s illegal the way they do it. The loans are treated as income and not debt. Accountants are no longer creative, they’re fraudsters. With Auditors told to look the other way.”

“Ok. That’s illegal,” said Planner pursing his lips.

“And with the loans, shares and rip-off prices, there’s lots of cash being generated… That is used to buy-off politicians so that more crappy deals are made across the country. And the pile of shit just gets bigger and bigger until…” and then Katherine stops and looks into the distance.

“Until what?”

Katherine shakes her head, “I don’t know!”

“You don’t?”

“No. I keep trying to imagine all the ramifications and I can’t. The size of the hole is billions of dollars. I imagine the four horseman of the apocalypse in my sleep,” she says dramatically.

“Well, I’m sure it won’t come to that,” Planner said reassuringly. “It’ll be a scandal and forgotten about in six months.” Planner then bit his lip and asked the crucial question that every intelligence analyst knows is the keystone to credibility, “How do you know all this?”

“There’s a whistleblower. She’s one brave lady. She’s been feeding information to the S.E.C,” said Katherine.

“S.E.C?”

“Security and Exchange Commission. Fraud investigators.”

“Oh right,” Planner belated realised he should have known this, “So how did you find out?” he asked.

“Wall Street is a small place; word gets around,” smiled Katherine.

“So the SEC is onto this then it’s sorted, right? Why is this your problem?”

“We have a ton of shares in this company and we want to dump them and advise our clients to do the same. But! We have been asked not to upset the legal case. If we sell the whole lot, we have to explain why and the whole house of cards will collapse. All those whistleblowers and sources would never work again, the whole legal case goes down the pan, and so the jerks would get off scot-free.”

“So sell slowly?”

“We are. But since the shares are still going up and up, we have other people asking why we aren’t maximising our portfolio. But, yeah, we are dumping the stock.”

“Can you say which company this is?”

“We’re pretty certain the end is nigh, except for this worrying incompetence at the SEC, so ok… You might not have heard of them. They’re the energy trading company that has California by the throat. They call themselves ENRON.”

Planner enjoyed Katherine’s company on the flight and it looked like the feeling was mutual. Katherine just had a carry-on bag, and huge handbag and needed to rush to her appointments in the city, while Planner had checked-in a bag and needed to retrieve it.

Katherine offered her hand, “Ok. Well, it’s been really good to chat with you, Robert.”

Planner shook her hand, “Good luck catching those jerks.”

“Thanks. You’ll see it in the news.”

“I’m sure I will.”

A loud airport announcement about delays in luggage handling stifled further conversation. Katherine hung back as if she wanted to say more but Planner was looking for the baggage carousel. He caught hold of a memory, of being greeted by his wife and daughter at the airport. That was a year ago.

He looked around and realised Katherine was walking away. His brain finally processed that she had said “bye”. Planner sighed, he had not replied. He could have asked her for her number. She seemed nice. Perhaps he had too much baggage for a relationship at that moment. He looked at the luggage carousel and smiled at the irony.

Through the window, towards Manhattan, he could see the misty outline of iconic New York skyline. A skyline dominated by two oblong blocks; the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

Planner was dropped off by the cab in Liberty Street, close to the South Tower of the World Trade Center. That meant he had to walk across the WTC Plaza, strongly shadowed by the 1360-foot twin towers, passed another building in the complex, the eight-story WTC6, to reach the Salomon Brothers Building, a bronzy-brown building, less than half the height of the twin towers. The sign on the building read “WTC7 Salomon Brothers”. Most people referred to the building as WTC7.

Planner took the lift to the 25th floor of WTC7 and entered the office marked “Department of Defense”. Once through the security of that office, there was a second locked door, unmarked, and Planner gained entry via a swipe card to get to the entrance lobby of the CIA offices. Following that were “security tubes”. All staff and visitors had to type a code, whereupon the front of the tube opened, entered into the tube and waited a few seconds, the tube door would then open on the other side to allow entrance (or exit) to the office. It seemed vaguely reminiscent of opening sequence of the 1960s “Get Smart” comedy-show to enter the CIA offices and while inside the tube, Planner hummed the theme tune as he waited for the plexi-glass door to open. From the CIA lobby, there were private stairways to other floors but no lifts, much to the annoyance of some of the more senior staff. This New York office was CIA’s largest office away from CIA HQ in Langley.

Bates looked up from his desk as Planner entered and immediately guided him into an empty side-office. Planner felt the laser stare from Turquoise sitting some distance away, looking grim and furiously pounding on a computer keyboard.

“Quick update,” said Bates in a professional tone. “I’ve told Turq about the four aircraft. Since we’ve max-ed out the witness protection programme, the story will just have to run with four lightly loaded aircraft. 32We’ve had some more volunteers from our staff to fill some spaces on the planes. But we’ve had real problems finding the extra flight crew.”

“Yes, that sort of figures,” said Planner, taking some water from a water cooler and sitting down. “And extra hijackers?”

“Well, there’s been some sense of humor failures over the estimated, ten extra hijackers,” said Bates condescendingly. “But we’ve talked it through; and the recommendation is that we’ll just steal some identities.”

“So just mystery men?” pondered Planner. “It does water down the back-story.”

“Yes, it does,” admitted Bates.

Planner ground his teeth, “But it can’t be any worse than the trail we’ve already left to our door. Get the names and we’ll develop some connections.”

Bates sighed and sat on the edge of the desk. “Well,” he said, “the real problem appears to be that Turquoise doesn’t feel any of the current rainbow actors are credible either. Not as devoted Muslims prepared for suicide attacks 33, or as pilots of civil airliners. Hani Hajour, for example, the guy who was refused instruction the other day, is supposed to be performing the manoeuvre we saw at Travis Air Base.” 34