by Stuart Woods
“Now, let’s say you open your account with ten thousand dollars. We then transfer these funds to certain western banks. When you want to pay a bill, you send an e-mail to the warehouse with your instructions and your account number; that is transmitted to the partner bank, which sends a banker’s draft to your creditor. So the bill is paid without your name being mentioned, only your account number with the creditor. If you want some cash, you request that by e-mail, too, and the money is sent by certified mail or an overnight delivery service.
“At no point in this process are you identified by anything other than an account number, so the IRS can’t examine your bank records to find out how much money you’re depositing or how much you’re spending. This effectively puts a stop to the enforcement of the income tax laws.”
A man raised his hand. “How much can we save in taxes this way?”
“Depends on how much you earn,” John said. “Recently, one of our warehouse bank customers became the first of us to save one million dollars in taxes. I can tell you that we’ve saved our members, collectively, a quarter of a billion dollars in income taxes.”
There was a murmur of approval from around the room.
“Also,” John continued, “we print our own currency, which we use only among our member groups.” He passed around a banknote for everyone to look at.
Ham inspected the paper, which bore an engraving of Jefferson Davis. It had the look and feel of money.
“By drawing our own currency from the warehouse bank instead of U.S. currency, we can trade among ourselves without fear. We also encourage the use of false social security numbers, which confuses the IRS, and we’ve learned to set up trusts that help us do business without attracting their attention.”
“What are the chances of our getting caught doing this?” someone asked.
“We’ve been doing it for more than ten years, and none of us has even been arrested,” John said. “You may have seen accounts in the Jew press of arrests, but they weren’t our people. From time to time, we shut down the warehouse bank and create a new one. We’re a constantly moving target, and the antitax forces in this country have influenced the U.S. Congress to cut funds for IRS audits and investigations, which makes it harder than ever for them to track us down.”
“How can I open an account?” a man asked.
“Peck is going to distribute account application forms now,” John replied. “You’ll notice that nowhere on the form do we ask for your name. You make deposits in cash, and we give receipts to numbers. Not even I know who has which account number.”
Ham received one of the forms and put it in his pocket as the meeting broke up.
Peck walked over. “You going to open an account with us, Ham?”
“I’m going to have to take a close look at this, Peck,” Ham replied. “My income comes mostly from my army pension, although I have some investments. I think I might be too much on record to start hiding stuff. I might raise a red flag that could cause trouble for you.”
“I see your point,” Peck said, “and I appreciate your concern. You let me know what you want to do. I’m sure it will be all right with John.”
“Can I buy some of your currency?” Ham asked. “That makes a lot of sense.”
“Sure, how much you want?”
“I’ve got a couple hundred in my pocket, I guess,” Ham said, digging out some money. He handed Peck four fifties.
Peck went to a safe in the corner, opened it and returned with twenty ten-dollar bills. “Use it to shop at the gun show this weekend.”
“Right,” Ham said. He walked out to the range, his head spinning.
Thirty-eight
HAM LET HIMSELF INTO THE BEACH COTTAGE through the sliding doors. They were all at dinner again. “My God,” he said, “don’t you people ever eat anything but Chinese food and pizza?”
“You got a Mexican restaurant in this town?” Harry asked. “We’d go for that.”
Ham rolled his eyes and pulled up a chair.
“What have you got?” Harry asked.
“Fellas, it’s a whole new ball game every day.” He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it and handed it to Harry.
“What’s this?”
“It’s an application to open an account at a warehouse bank.”
“Uh-oh,” Harry said.
“What’s a warehouse bank?” Holly asked.
“The biggest tax dodge you ever heard of,” Ham said. He explained it to the group as it had been explained to him.
Holly and the three FBI agents sat, rapt, listening to him.
“Holy cow,” Holly said, when he was finished. “Harry, you’re going to have to get the IRS into this.”
“It can’t be that big a deal,” Harry said.
“Would you believe a quarter of a billion dollars?” Ham asked.
“That’s billion with a B?”
“Correct. That’s how much they claim to have cost the IRS over the past ten years.”
Harry stared at him blankly. “How many people are we talking about here?”
“I have no idea,” Ham replied. “John did say that, recently, someone had become their first member to avoid a million dollars in taxes.” He pulled the group’s paper money from his pocket and placed it on the table. “They also print this for themselves.”
Harry picked up a note. “Jefferson Davis? I don’t believe it.”
Eddie was holding a bill up to a bare lightbulb. “This is first-class work,” he said, “and with Jeff Davis on it, it could never be considered counterfeit currency, legally, unless it was counterfeit Confederate currency.”
“How do they use this?” Harry asked.
“They buy and sell among themselves at these gun shows.”
“Shit,” Harry said, tossing the note onto the table. “We’re going to end up with every law enforcement agency in the federal government in on this. There’ll be nothing left for us.”
“You’re forgetting the bank robbery,” Holly said. “And there’s the murder for me.”
“Oh, right.”
“Harry, I think you’ve got to start making some calls to other agencies.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Harry replied disconsolately. “And once I call one, I’ll have to call them all. I still want some hard information, though. Eddie?”
Everybody turned and looked at Eddie, who was grinning.
“You look like the cat who got into the goldfish bowl,” Holly said.
“You could say that,” Eddie replied. “Ham, describe the room, Peck’s study, where all these meetings take place.”
“It’s big, maybe twenty by thirty, fairly high ceiling, windows on two sides. The venetian blinds are almost always drawn.”
Eddie set a cardboard box on the table. “This stuff was couriered in today.” He held up what appeared to be a smoke detector. “This is really neat: all you do is stick this to the ceiling somewhere in the room, and it sits there, listening. It’ll pick up anything said anywhere in the room, then it transmits what it’s hearing to an NSA satellite. They can listen to real-time conversation and transmit it to us over phone lines. We’ll know everything that’s going on.”
“What happens if they sweep the room?” Ham asked.
“They’ll probably be using readily available commercial stuff, which is pretty good, but very short-range. They’ll walk around the baseboards, then the lamps and phones with a detector; they’ll look behind pictures and under the rug. Meanwhile, ten or twelve feet above their head, this thing is sending a highly directional signal straight up. Have you noticed that nobody ever looks up in a room? Well, they won’t sweep up, either.”
“Suppose they do?” Holly asked. “Suppose Peck looks up and says, ‘Hey, I didn’t install a smoke detector in here.’”
“If Peck takes it down and looks at it, he’s going to see a smoke detector. It will even work like a smoke detector. If you blow cigarette smoke at it, it’ll squawk. What he won’t see is a layer of electr
onics that’s sealed into seamless plastic.”
“How is it powered?” Ham asked.
“The only difference between this and a regular smoke detector is it has two nine-volt batteries, instead of one. Except they’re not really nine-volt batteries, they’re made of a new, extremely high-powered battery material developed by the NSA. They’re disguised to look like regular nine-volt batteries. The two of them would give you a month’s talk time on your cell phone, and this unit uses a little less power than a cell phone.”
“Neat,” Ham said.
“What’s not neat,” Holly pointed out, “is that Ham has got to go into that room and install the thing.”
“All he does is peel off a strip of plastic, exposing a sticky tape and glue it to the ceiling.”
“You’re missing my point,” Holly said. “Ham has to do it; he has to go into that room, unseen by anybody, get on a ladder, or something, and stick it to the ceiling without getting himself shot.”
“Well, there is that,” Eddie admitted.
“Ham, have you ever been alone in that room?” Harry asked.
“No, there have always been at least half a dozen people there.”
“How long do you think it might take you to get in there by yourself ?”
“I don’t know,” Ham said, “I can only try.”
“There’s more,” Eddie said. “Ham, you wear your old army fatigues a lot, don’t you?”
“I do when I go out there,” Ham said.
Eddie held up a button. “They have buttons like these, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
“You sew this onto your fatigues, top front button, or on a pocket. There’s a tiny microphone inside that transmits a very short-range signal.”
“What good is a very short-range signal going to do us?” Ham asked.
Eddie took a pair of well-worn combat boots from his box. “It has to broadcast only as far as your feet. These will fit you,” he said. “We got your shoe size from your military record.” He took a tiny screwdriver from his pocket. “This is the kind of tool you use to replace a screw in your eyeglasses. You also use it to switch on a tape recorder in the right heel of the boots.” He demonstrated. “Insert it a quarter of an inch, make sure it mates with the screw head inside and give it a short turn clockwise. You’re up and running, and you have an hour and forty minutes recording time on two memory sticks imbedded in the heel.”
“What if he’s swept while it’s running?” Harry asked.
“Then they’ll pick it up and zero in on the button.” He turned to Ham. “Don’t let that happen,” he said.
“Gee, I’ll try not to,” Ham replied.
Thirty-nine
HOLLY, DAISY AND HAM WALKED BACK UP THE beach toward her house. “I’m worried about this,” she said.
“What, you don’t think your old man can handle it?”
“That’s not what I’m worried about. Harry is acting funny.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that, based on the information you’ve given him, he ought to be ordering a full-scale investigation and on the horn to Washington, networking with the other agencies involved, which—so far—includes the Secret Service, the IRS, Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and God knows what else.”
“You don’t trust Harry?”
“Of course, I trust him, on a personal level, but he’s playing some sort of political game, and I think that’s dangerous.”
“Well, I’m going to have to leave the politics to you and Harry,” Ham said. “What I’m going to do is go home and sew this button on my fatigue shirt, then, tomorrow, I’m going to go back out there and try to plant this smoke detector thing.”
“I know you are, Ham. You wouldn’t do it any other way.”
“Straight ahead is the only way I know.”
They stopped outside her house. “You want to come in for coffee?” she asked.
“Nah, I’d better get home, I guess.”
She kissed him on the cheek. “You watch your ass, you hear?”
“Don’t I always?” he replied. Then, with a wave, he walked toward his car.
When Holly entered the house, the phone was ringing and she picked it up. “Hello?”
“Holly? It’s Stone Barrington, how are you?”
“Oh, Stone, I don’t know.”
“You sound tired.”
“I’m depressed and exhausted.”
“Trouble with your case?”
“Oh, we’re making progress by leaps and bounds on that,” she said. “I’m just worried about it.”
“What’s the problem? I’ll help if I can.”
“When you were a cop, did you ever have any dealings with the FBI?”
“From time to time.”
“What did you think about them?”
“New York City cops don’t trust the FBI; maybe cops everywhere don’t. I was naive the first time I had to deal with them, but I learned.”
“Learned what?”
“That Mr. Hoover’s boys want all the meat for themselves and their agency, and if you deal with them, you end up with the bones and gristle.”
“I was afraid you were going to say something like that,” she replied.
“You think the Feds are trying to screw you?”
“I don’t think my friend Harry would do that, but I think he’s trying to screw every other government agency.”
“They’ll do that, too.”
“What should I do about it?”
“Do you have anything solid that would justify bringing other agencies into it?”
“Sort of, but nothing hard.”
“Then you’re going to have to ride the pony you rode in on,” Stone said. “If you try to bring other agencies into it, your sweet Harry is going to cut you off at the knees, believe me.”
“I don’t think he’d hurt me,” she said.
“Oh, he won’t hurt you, he’ll just box you in, well away from your case, until he’s milked all the credit he can out of it. It’s not just Harry, believe me; it’s the way the Bureau works. They’ll put themselves up front every time.”
“I worked with them once before, and it came out all right,” she said.
“Yeah, I read all about that. You brought them into it, didn’t you?”
“Yes, and we worked on it side by side.”
“But no other federal law enforcement?”
“No.”
“Then they didn’t have anything to worry about. If you’d gotten in their way, they’d have patted you on the head and sent you home, while the big boys in the Bureau did the heavy lifting.”
“You’re a cynic, you know that?”
“Me? I’m Sunny Jim; I’ve just had experience with them. I’ve had them walk into a case, steal my collar and confiscate the evidence my partner and I collected. I got to read about it in the papers later, and my name didn’t get mentioned.”
“Stone, don’t get me wrong, I’m not worried about getting credit. My father is up to his neck in this, and I’m afraid that they’re not putting enough resources into this case to protect him if he gets into trouble. I don’t want to go into detail, because it’s all confidential.”
“I understand. Well, it sounds like you’re going to have to give them some more rope, and hope they don’t hang themselves and your father. If it’s an important case to more than one agency, then a time will come when your Harry will have to call them in, whether he likes it or not. I think what he’s doing is maneuvering to be in a position to keep the case from being taken away from him by some other bunch of Feds.”
“I think you’re right,” she said.
“Is he a smart guy, this Harry?”
“Yes, very.”
“Then you’re going to have to trust him for a while longer. If he screws up, then you can always threaten to go elsewhere, or over his head.”
“I guess you’re right,” she said.
“Are you all right otherwise?”
“Oh
, I haven’t had time to worry about myself; I’ve been too busy worrying about Ham.”
“Who?”
“My father.”
“Have you thought about taking some time off the job? Might do you good.”
“No, it wouldn’t. I’d just worry, and I’m better off occupying myself to the hilt right now.”
“You’re the best judge of that,” he said. “Take care of yourself, and call me if I can do anything to help, or if you just need to talk.”
“Thanks, Stone, you take care, too.” She hung up and went upstairs, pulling clothes off along the way. She missed Jackson terribly at this moment. She wanted to crawl into bed and rest her head on his shoulder, while he stroked her hair.
Instead, she crawled into bed and waited for Daisy to settle in next to her. Daisy wasn’t Jackson, but she was the best friend Holly had.
Forty
HAM ARRIVED AT LAKE WINACHOBEE THE FOLLOWING morning, and before he could join his shooting students, he was intercepted by Peck Rawlings.
“Good morning, Ham,” Peck said.
“Morning, Peck.”
“John wants you to attend some classes for the next few days,” Peck said.
“Classes?”
“It’s time you got to know more about the foundations of what we believe in. I know that most of this stuff is going to be old hat for you, but John thinks it’s important, just so you’ll know how he and the leadership think.”
“Well, sure, if that’s what John wants. But leadership? I thought John was the leadership.”
“He’s one of a group, and he communicates the leadership’s messages to all of us.”
“You mean all of us at Winachobee?”
“No, all over the country. John does a lot of traveling.”
“Oh. Just how big an organization are we?”
“You’ll be told all about that in due course,” Peck said. “You better hurry; the class is getting started. It’s in my study.”
“Sure, just let me get a notebook out of my truck.”
