Billions at Stake
1399 Words
10
Billions at Stake
Stone’s reply to Jana’s text message informing him of Petrolsoft’s planned investments was brief.
There’s a J. C. Penney inside Manhattan Mall, two blocks north on W. Thirty-Second at Avenue of the Americas. Look for me. There, you’ll receive further instructions.
Meet the FBI guy at Penney’s? Sure, she thought. Pass information that violates insider trading laws? Lose my Series 7 license, be barred from working in finance ever again? Just an average day in Manhattan.
Later that day when Jana arrived at the mall, she walked into the wide entrance of J. C. Penney but had no idea what to do next.
“This guy is going to give me a nervous breakdown. There’s too many things to keep up with,” she said, and then recalled some of the advice Stone had given her. “Don’t be followed, don’t let anyone know you are snooping the corporate network.” She put her hands on her hips. “Don’t get killed by the nice terrorists.”
From across the store, Jana saw Agent Stone standing on the far side of the makeup counter. He made eye contact, then turned away and walked deeper into the store. Jana followed and found him in the men’s department looking at dress shirts.
“Don’t come too close,” he warned. “Don’t make eye contact. Just stay on the other side of this display and we can talk. So what have you learned?”
“In a day?” Jana said. “Stone, this isn’t a game of Monopoly. You’ve got to give me more time.”
“The clock is ticking, Miss Baker.”
“Ticking? Ticking to what?”
“That’s just it, we don’t know. That’s where you come in. You are our eyes.” He glanced at her ever so briefly. “The director sends his regards, by the way.”
“The director of the FBI? You must be joking. Why would he know about me?”
“Jana, I don’t want to scare you—”
“Now you are scaring me. What are you talking about?”
Stone exhaled and pulled a shirt off the shelf, then held it up to his chest. “Chatter has escalated, exponentially. NSA, Miss Baker. The National Security Agency is tracking a number of communication threads. Apparently, bin Laden has Al-Jawary on the move. There’s a huge influx in the number of communications going back and forth between terror cell members.”
Jana shook her head. “Stone, pretend for a moment I don’t know anything about terror cells, which shouldn’t be hard for you to imagine, and spell it out for me. What does that mean?”
“It means Al-Jawary’s terror cell is talking to each other with greater and greater frequency. That only happens as a terror group gets close to launching whatever strike they have planned. Think of it this way. Did you ever plan to go on a weekend trip with a friend? And in the days that lead up to the trip, you two talk several times, then there’s several more phone calls back and forth to work out the last-minute details? The terrorists are no different. The timetable is closing, Jana. We have to move.”
“I don’t even have log-in access to anything on the network that could help. But, I’ll say this, the CEO is acting strangely.”
“How so?”
“Well,” Jana said, “he and that prick CFO of his.”
“Prick? Very nice. Go on.”
“They’ve been together behind closed doors a lot. Got me researching a bunch of hedge funds.”
“Hedge funds? What kind of hedge funds?”
“That’s just it. Everything we were taught about investing at Georgetown always pointed to diversification of a portfolio. But these idiots are having me identify the top hedge funds globally that invest with a heavy weighting in oil-related stocks.”
“We thought the amount of investing was strange. Well,” Stone replied, “the company builds software for the oil and gas industry—maybe they’re just investing in their segment.”
“It’s idiotic from an investment-portfolio standpoint. They’re committing massive resources to it. After I get done, they’ll have over sixty-two percent of their liquidity tied up in the same sector.”
“Wait, how much money are we talking about here?”
“About forty-five billion dollars out of a sixty-billion-dollar portfolio. It’s a bad idea.”
“Unless . . . unless they have insider information. Insider information that tells them the oil market is going to go up.”
“Is that why we’re here? To arrest them on some Insider Trading Sanctions Act violation?”
“Of course not. The SEC would do that. But if Petrolsoft is making a forty-five-billion-dollar bet on the oil market, something is wrong. Let’s think this through. We can assume your bosses, Rune and Jeffrey Dima, wouldn’t make a bet that big unless they were sure. They’d have to have insider information, something about the oil futures market. I’m betting he—”
“Stone,” Jana interrupted. “We need to consider the tie-in to Al-Qaeda’s own Abu Adim Al-Jawary.”
Agent Stone grinned.
“What are you laughing at?” Jana said.
“You. Listen to yourself. When we first talked, you were a million miles away from the idea of being involved in breaking this terror cell. And now you sound like me. You sound like a fed.”
“All right, so maybe it excites me. Maybe I didn’t count on the adrenaline rush. But you’re changing the subject.”
“By all means,” Stone said as he laughed, “please continue, Agent Baker.”
“Oh, shut up. And that’s another thing. I figured out why I find you so easy to talk to.”
“I’m easy to talk to? Tell that to my ex-wife. But tell me, why am I easy to talk to?”
“Because you remind me of my grandfather.”
“Now I’m offended,” Stone said, but his grin said he didn’t mean it.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Jana continued. “To consider this investment and the possible payoff as being tied in to Al-Qaeda. Look, Stone, if they make a pile of money, doesn’t that mean they could fund terror operations or something?”
“Yes it does, Miss Baker. But I think I’ve created a monster.”
“They’re going to have me transfer more money and make more investments, so this thing is growing. But there’s something I need from you. I want the background on the CFO. I’m getting increasingly nervous around him.”
“Jeffrey Dima, yes. I’m not surprised by that.”
“And why is that?”
“Lady killer, a real slimeball. Our workup suggests he sees himself as a playboy, thinks every woman is interested in him.”
“Yeah, well not me,” Jana said. “He’s good looking, yes, but he makes me sick. Every time I look up, he’s staring at me. Thinks he’s so clever too. He makes a habit of walking right up to my desk to tell me something when all he’s really trying to do is look down my blouse. He’s in this investment scheme up to his eyeballs. He and Rune are plotting this together.”
“I do have one other piece of bad news to deliver,” Stone said.
“Which is?”
“The wire you’re wearing, we’re not picking anything up from it.”
“It’s broken?”
“No, it’s working fine. But whenever you’re inside your office, there’s interference and it prevents us from hearing anything. It’s when you go down into the lobby or leave the office that we can hear clearly. We’ve got some electronics experts coming in to discuss it. There may be eavesdropping countermeasure devices in place in the building. Don’t let it bother you right now, just focus on your job.”
“Easy for you to say,” she said.
Agent Stone looked at his watch. “We’ve spent too much time talking already. You need to get back. Bring me a list of all the hedge funds they want to invest in. And make a copy of all the investments you make and through which financial institutions. We need account numbers.”
“I can do better than that,” Jana replied. “They’re setting me up as a signatory on the accounts so I can move funds and make the purchases myself. I’ll have log-in access to those accounts, so I can give you those.”
“Here,” he said as he handed a USB thumb drive across the display rack. “Download the data onto this. Attached to the side is Velcro. Tomorrow at lunch, come to the food court here in the mall. I’ll be at a table. Look around until you find me, but don’t approach me. Order something to eat and when you see me get up to leave, sit at that table. Underneath the table you’ll be able to feel the other side of the Velcro. Press the thumb drive to it. One of my guys will retrieve it after you’ve gone. And Jana, the stakes are getting higher. Watch your ass.”
She smirked. “Won’t have to. Jeffrey Dima is watching it for me.”
- Writer
