The Root of Money

2

2Tek looked at an email from his son: Not tonight dad. Sorry. Love You. His eyes carved away everything other than the last two words before deleting the message. He was sitting at his fifteen year old son, Jake’s desk. It was where Jake did homework, played video games and did whatever he did on the internet. Jake was a typical teenager, a good kid. But Tek thought he had a typical middle class suburban family until his wife, Victoria (never Vicky) left home, taking their savings and Jake with her. He ruminated about the night he came home late from work to find the house empty and a note taped to the refrigerator: In case you haven’t noticed, I’m gone! Two cell phones were on the kitchen table with another note saying Jake was with her and that she would contact him through his sister, Amy.

His forehead tightened as he wondered how it had gotten to this point. He should have been aware of it. She should have given him fair warning. Tek tried to see himself through a layer of dust covering the computer monitor before turning his vision inward. Maybe she did tell him. Above the desk was a photograph of the family on vacation in Rhode Island. Jake, who had just turned ten, was beaming as he dangled a handful of worms in front of Dooley’s Bait and Tackle. Victoria’s expression reflected either her sunburnt legs or the prospect of handling any fish that would be caught.

For the past few nights Tek and Jake had been Skyping at midnight. It was the one thing Tek looked forward to, maybe the one thing that kept him from sinking further into despair. He had to sell some of his prized sports autographs to buy a laptop for Jake to use during their nightly meetings, and asked his sister to send it to his son for his birthday, certain Victoria would not otherwise have let him accept it, especially if she knew it would be used for clandestine contact with his father.

Tek chastised himself for being oblivious to Victoria methodically draining their joint account and rebuked himself again for not knowing bills and notices about their mortgage and car payment had been ignored, eight months past due by the time she left. The remembered whine of a garbage pail shredder pursed his lips. Fortunately, International Asia Bank, where Tek was employed as a network security specialist and programmer, agreed to assume the mortgage and permitted him to repay them by monthly deductions from his paycheck.

He curled his shirt sleeve in his fingers and swept it across the computer monitor. Its new clarity contrasted with the other surfaces within his reach that had gone neglected. Bull, a black and white English Shepherd, sat at the base of the chair surrounded by candy wrappers. Amy rescued the dog hoping it would lift Tek’s spirit and give him something other than his own concerns to think about.

Tecumseh Sherlock had been born to Esther and Richard Carrier forty-three years ago. His father, a voracious reader, named his son (over the strenuous objection of his mother) after two of his favorite characters, real or fictional. His sister, Hester Amelia, hung the moniker of Tek on him when she was two years old and unable to command his full name.

Although he was the person most directly responsible for safeguarding International Asia Bank’s computer network, for the past weeks Tek’s purpose was to ensure that his nightly breach of their systems remained undetected while preserving the appearance that the bank’s security remained intact. Every workday morning he printed reports that enumerated instances of attempted or actual intrusions to the network and provided them to Grace Woo, the bank’s Chief Technology Officer, for review. The reports indicated only a few failed tries, each having been thwarted by Tek’s designed firewalls and systems, all of which were working properly. What no one anticipated was that the person entrusted with protecting their organization in this manner was not working properly.

For years, the government required financial institutions such as International Asia report various types of payments. Originally, regulations were limited to transfers involving cash, intended to assist law enforcement track drug cartels and other bad guys. After 9/11, all payments, whether cash was involved or not, became subject to enhanced scrutiny requiring banks become investigative extensions of the government. IAB was doing everything it was required by law to do, Tek having played an integral role in developing the programs that accomplished this. Although bank management was pleased by their systems’ performance and government regulators, who examined the bank’s processes regularly, had given them favorable evaluations, Tek was not satisfied. He wanted to go beyond what was mandated and take advantage of the bank’s full capabilities to analyze more data. He considered the bank management’s unwillingness to agree with him as self-serving, unpatriotic and potentially life endangering.

Emptiness or strain refluxed in Tek’s stomach as he accessed data he accumulated on the bank’s servers. For the next three hours he downloaded and studied information captured within the bank’s money laundering detection programs he had secretly modified. By 3:00AM, after numerous successive nights encamped in his son’s bedroom, Tek conceded that his gray matter was not performing optimally. Tomorrow would be an important day in the office and he needed rest.

“It’s time to stretch our legs,” Tek told his dog as he reached for a small spray can of air intended to clear dust from the keyboard. Instead, he blew it into each of his eyes to clear his own cobwebs. Bull followed him into the hallway and waited near a partially closed bathroom door as Tek remembered the confidentiality agreement and code of conduct he signed when he accepted his position at the bank. He had done so without reservation, not anticipating a circumstance that would motivate him to dishonor the trust of his employer. He considered the efficacy of this as he crumpled a yellow doily, a vestige of his wife, and tossed it in a basket in a cabinet beneath the sink, kicking the door so hard that it dislodged a bar of soap from its dish. He left it on the floor where it fell. Tek barely recognized himself in the mirror. His wavy brown hair looked like road kill and his ordinarily brilliant blue eyes were clouded and ruby rimmed.

“We’ll be all right,” he told Bull. “I just have to get them to listen to me, one way or another.”

After a nap, a shave and shower, Tek felt like he had slipped back into his own skin. He flipped his Dog Lovers calendar to Friday, needlessly reminding him of a meeting scheduled that morning, and selected his blue suit and a striped power tie from his closet.

“Let’s hope I can make them see the sense of things today,” he said more to himself than his dog. He almost sounded hopeful.

It was less than a five mile drive from Tek’s house to a Long Island industrial park that housed the bank’s technology center occupying ten thousand square feet on the fifth floor of an eight story building. Tek chuckled at how easily he had gained surreptitious access to the bank’s network. It was like locking your front door while leaving the back door wide open, which technically was what he had done. He benefitted from Grace Woo’s hands-off approach to the day-to-day operation. From Tek’s perspective she had fallen behind the technology curve around the time floppy disks went into the dumpster. He felt a twinge of guilt that Ben Landers, his vacationing colleague who was tasked with assisting him secure the bank’s networks, might have to answer some difficult questions if Tek’s activities were discovered. For both of their sakes’ Tek was taking every precaution he could think of, including again trying to convince the bank’s decision makers to see things his way. It was the reason he was not going to the technology center today. Instead, he would take the ninety minute train ride to Manhattan where IAB maintained its corporate headquarters, or what Tek referred to as the place where all the bullshit happens.

He scanned the top of his bureau. “Hey Bull, did you take my badge?”

The dog barked its denial.

“Never mind, here it is.” Tek picked the diamond-shaped plastic from his crinkled sheet and put it in a pocket of his suit jacket before going downstairs where his well-worn tan leather valise sat open on the kitchen table. Its latch had not fastened properly for years.

“Got to make sure I have everything I’ll need,” he told Bull as he walked his fingers through the contents of the valise. “Oops, almost forgot.” He took a wrapper containing a cream-filled devil’s food snack cake from the refrigerator and placed it in the satchel before giving the dog a fresh bowl of water and walking out the door.

Tek’s townhouse was one of eighty residences in a development that was new when his son was born. The complex included a swimming pool, bowling alley, several game and exercise rooms, as well as an eighteen-hole executive style golf course that meandered through the grounds. Tek reflected on better times, when he and Jake would simply step out from the sliding door in their hybrid living and dining room onto the tee of the fifth hole. It was a special time to spend together, laughing and exchanging good-natured barbs. He ached from Jake’s absence as he directed his car out of the complex.

The tracks of the Long Island Rail Road ran parallel to the road that fronted the grounds. It demanded an immediate decision—steer left or right—when he drove out of the development. With his thoughts still on his absent son, Tek automatically turned right, in the direction of the technology center. A quarter mile later he realized his mistake and made a U-turn so that the fence screening the train tracks was on his right as he proceeded to the station parking lot.

He had not spoken to his friends in weeks; their phone calls, email and text messages going unanswered. The only call he returned was from his sister who threatened to either call the police or break into his house if she did not hear from him. He felt guilty that Amy was so upset. He did not know what he would do if she had not been a conduit for messages from his wife. Messages he did not like since they did not include an explanation for her action or suggest the future of their family, if there was one. Tek found a seat in the corner of the last car of the train and opened his valise to review the papers with which he planned to make his case.

International Asia Bank was an amalgam of domestic and foreign financial institutions, maintaining five branches in the United States and twelve in other countries. Tek was confident that these numbers would support his proposal that because the bank was only tracking and reporting payments conducted at its domestic locations, expanding the procedure to include the entire group would add clarity to the movement of funds, shedding brighter light on any money laundering activity.

Although his stealthy activities only scratched the surface, he believed the information he had in hand reinforced his assertion. One month’s payments from six business and two personal accounts in the United States resulted in over five million dollars being transferred to three bank accounts in Jakarta, Malaysia and Hong Kong. Tek wanted to gather data relating to payments emanating from the bank’s overseas customers to determine if additional money was being transferred to common endpoints. The work, after some initial programming, would be minimal. He would do it on his own time if necessary. The only argument he heard against doing so was that it could create problems with government regulators. Tek scoffed at this argument, expecting the government would applaud their enhanced analysis and extend the requirement to other banks to match his initiative. Nonetheless, he understood a cogent argument may not be enough to succeed. The bank powers did not rise to their positions on the basis of altruism. He would have to play their game. Unfortunately, he did not know the parameters of the game, if there were any. He planned to chip away at resistance one person at a time, starting with Eric Kilpatrick, the Director of Compliance who would be Tek’s first stop when he arrived at the place where all the bullshit happens.