Roger Stelljes - The St. Paul Conspiracy

Then, in August of 2001, Lindsay’s CIA contacts informed him that some of their arms dealer contacts had found new buyers, including Middle East terrorist organizations Hamas, Hezbollah, and, worst of all, Al Qaeda. These buyers were more dangerous. Lindsay, Alt, and Bouchard decided the risk was getting too great, but it was too late.

The planes went into the towers.

The War on Terror had started.

Lindsay and Alt worried that as the War on Terror progressed, and more intelligence attention was paid to terrorist groups-where their money came from, where they got their weapons-Cross could come to light. If the Cross operation was discovered, charges of espionage and treason wouldn’t be far behind.

They shut it down. The Cross facility was shut down all together. The remaining surplus was destroyed. Dummy records were created. Alt and Bouchard hunted down their contacts who had dealt the arms, weapons, and communications equipment to the problem groups and eliminated them. Stephens was ordered to destroy all records. Everyone was ordered not to spend money, but rather to leave it overseas and spread it out as much as possible.

Stephens, having kept all the records and never having had any real operations experience at the CIA, was nervous. Alt wanted to take him out. Lindsay put him off and took a trip with Stephens and his wife, Yolanda, down to the Caymans. On a fishing boat, in the middle of the ocean, Lindsay discussed Stephens’s concerns and determined that he had put them to rest. Stephens was on board, although he always made Alt nervous. After all, he’d kept the paper trail. While his accidental death this past March had been tragic, Stephens was the one person who could have reconstructed that paper trail. They didn’t have that to worry about that anymore. Everyone else involved was a hardened intelligence officer who knew to keep his mouth shut.

Cross was in the past. Dead, buried and gone. Alt quietly watched his millions in Swiss and Cayman bank accounts grow and grow. In five years, he would retire to the Cayman’s, buy a house on a beach, an eighty-foot yacht, play lots of golf and live the good life. Nobody would be the wiser.

Then six weeks ago, Cross rudely came back to life.

Jamie Jones walked into Lindsay’s office with a banker’s box, labeled CROSS. Where the heck did this come from? Jones wouldn’t say. The box contained detailed information regarding Cross. Lindsay’s name was nowhere to be found in the papers, per his original instructions. Jones assumed it had all gone on without his knowledge. While Lindsay’s name was absent, Stephens’, Alt’s and Bouchard’s names, among others, were all over the documents. But the kicker was when Jones’ said that what she was giving Lindsay was a copy. She kept an original, and she wanted to know what Lindsay would do.

Lindsay filibustered, saying he’d look into it. He looked into Jones instead. Alt and Bouchard started tracking Jones’s every move. Her office and home were bugged. E-mail, phone, and cell phone were monitored. She was put under twenty-four/seven surveillance. They needed to find the original Cross documents. They believed she had the originals, since her copier use records revealed 437 unaccounted for copies, the exact number of documents in the box.

Apparently Jones recognized Lindsay’s response for what it was and had ideas of her own. She met for coffee with Claire Daniels at Starbucks on Grand Avenue, a few blocks from Daniels’s place. From a van in the parking lot, Alt and Bouchard conducted audio surveillance of the meeting and listened as Jones spilled the beans to Daniels, claiming she had documented proof. That set off the alarm bells. Daniels, in addition to Jones, was monitored and followed. Claire Daniels had proven that she was one reporter you didn’t want digging around.

Alt and Bouchard quickly realized two things. They had to get the original documents and take care of Jones and Daniels. Making matters worse, Jones and Daniels were childhood friends from a small town in Ohio. When taking them out, the key would be to do it so that nobody made the connection between the two. Making it all the harder was the fact they had to act fast, something that made Bouchard and Alt nervous. They had spent their careers doing this sort of thing-tailing their targets for months, knowing their every move and striking at the perfect moment and leaving without a trace. Setting up one killing in a few days was one thing. Setting up two? How to pull that off without anyone making the connection was the million-dollar question.

Then the solution presented itself.

Tailing Daniels revealed her relationship with Senator Johnson. The serial killer was making headlines daily. Daniels was killed by Alt, and they fingered the senator. On the same night, Bouchard made Jones’s death look like the work of the serial killer. Their contact with the investigation had provided all the details to make it look like one of the serial-killer murders. With a special detail investigating the serial killer, the same people would not be investigating the Daniels murder. Nobody would make the personal connection between Jones and Daniels. That eliminated the problem of linking Daniels and Jones. They could now spend their time looking for the original Cross documents.

But they couldn’t find the documents. It was the last thing out there that could hang them.

Then McRyan came along and made the connection between Daniels and Jones. They hadn’t foreseen Knapp keeping his clippings and that Jones wouldn’t be included. That was enough to make someone look, and McRyan started, meeting with Lyman Hisle and talking about PTA with Kennedy. He and his little group of friends were on the hunt. They just didn’t know for what.

Alt took a sip of his beer. They had to find the Cross documents before McRyan and company did. Their advantage was that they knew what they were looking for, and McRyan didn’t. How long would that last?

Alt finished his beer. He pushed himself up out of his chair, walked back to the kitchen and grabbed another Heineken. He popped the top off and took a long drink, snorted lightly and shook his head. McRyan. Before he went to bed, Alt would go to his office, check on his money and move some of it. Twenty-four hours ago, he thought he was done. Now, more than ever, he realized he might have to run.

Mac put the key into the deadbolt and pushed in the front door to Claire Daniels’ place. It felt like an eternity since he’d been here last, although it had only been five weeks. The condo was cold and musty, a product of vacancy. He noticed a thin coating of dust on the once shiny coffee table. Claire would have disapproved. All the furniture and other furnishings remained in place, white sheets draped over most of them. There was a for sale sign out front, and the realtor told Mac a sale was imminent.

Lich, Rock, and Riley followed him in, all clapping their hands or making some other movement to shake off the cold outside air. “So, what are we looking for Sherlock?” Rock asked.

“Don’t know exactly,” Mac replied. “Let’s go through the place, see what we find.”

They didn’t really know what they were looking for, although Mac had outlined his thoughts at breakfast. Going at PTA at the moment didn’t make sense, even if the chief would have allowed it. They didn’t know what they were looking for, and PTA most likely would have eliminated any trace of anything that was within their control. What wasn’t in their control was whatever Jones and Daniels might have been talking about. They might have left something behind. Mac figured they had to find that, and then they would have something to go after PTA with. Problem was, they had no idea what Jones and Daniels shared. Mac and the others agreed that it was likely Jones found something she wasn’t supposed to and told Daniels about it. It might have been something financial, since Jones was the CFO, but they really didn’t know. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack, but not having any idea what the needle looked like. But they were all at the window, ready to place their bets.