The Time is Now
654 Words
11
The Time is Now
As the days ticked by, Jana grew warier of Jeffrey Dima. His advances were becoming less subtle. And with the workaholic culture of the company, the hours were exhausting. Jana had been able to supply Stone with log-in information to each hedge fund she was directing investments toward, and the FBI was pleased. It gave them unfettered access into the accounts to see the exact transactions and balances. The evidence was piling up. However, nothing criminal had yet been detected. The Securities and Exchange Commission was wired in tightly to the case. The assumption was that Petrolsoft, and more specifically, Jeffrey and Rune Dima, were involved in insider trading; hardly the type of felony Agent Stone was looking for. But thus far not even the SEC had been able to ascertain the source of insider information, nor specifically what information they had in the first place. And that was no surprise. The SEC, a highly underfunded branch of the federal government, had just a single resource that was even aware of the potential issue, an investigator named John Cameron.
Jana herself began to worry that if this investigation did not pan out, she’d eventually be caught and fired for her actions. Or worse, they might kill her. Still, Agent Stone knew more was happening than they were able to yet see. The communication from Al-Qaeda leader, Abu Adim Al-Jawary, was cryptic to say the least. The NSA decoded the transmission with a decryption hash that was originally written by Section Chief William “Uncle Bill” Tarleton. The man had become a legend at NSA. Even the current director of the FBI, Steven Latent, who himself was being kept apprised of the Petrolsoft investigation, had vouched on more than one occasion for Uncle Bill. “I’ve known him since undergrad,” Director Latent had said. “If he says he intercepted a transmission from a known terror cell, then the threat is real.” And now, Agent Stone was getting daily threat assessments from Uncle Bill himself. Director Latent had told him, “If Bill is involved directly, this is more than a big deal. Find the missing pieces to this puzzle, Stone, or we’re going to have a problem on our hands.”
What was still puzzling to Stone was the content of the original encrypted message that NSA had intercepted. The communication included nothing but coordinates to points on a map. To Agent Stone’s pleasure, at least he knew they were on the right track. The coordinates pointed to the exact locations of oil and gas refineries scattered throughout the Middle East. Why Al-Qaeda would want to point to those locations was anyone’s guess. But, Stone was not going to give up until he found out. He was very concerned for Jana’s safety, but she was the only person in the world that could gain access into the Petrolsoft corporate network.
Jana too, had grown fond of him. When they communicated, Stone felt like he was listening to his daughter. To his thinking, she was as bright a young woman as he had ever known. And she had that edge to her, the kind of edge that enabled her to see details others missed. It was a dogged determination that reminded him of his trainee days at the FBI’s training facility on the Marine Corps base at Quantico. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized Jana had what it took to do his job. She was uncanny. And the one thing she had that so many other FBI applicants did not was that slight edge of a thrill-seeker. She was exhilarated by what she was doing as an undercover informant and it was obvious. But, she was going to have to take it to the next level. She was going to have to steal the log-in for either Rune or Jeffrey Dima’s personal laptop, and she was going to have to do it right now.
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