Infinite Exposure

by Roland Hughes

The Ivy League boys had really only thought about the situation as far as the other U.S. bank not being far enough along to even accept the data from First Global when the opportunity came along. They were absolutely floored by the scenario which had just been spun out before them without any prep work.

  Firms this size typically had a profit pool of $5 million to $10 million when it came time for profit sharing. Lenny's usually had $20 million to $30 million. Nobody was paid squat for salary here. The bulk of the money in the profit-sharing plan usually went to Lenny, but they had both gotten bonus checks for around $300,000 last year. This year, if the plan played out, the firm would have about $500 million in the pool. They had already achieved a 400% return this year for their handful of investors.

  It was the other Ivy League boy's turn to pipe up now. “This is all well and good, but we need to control our traceable participation in this.”

  “Getting squeamish?” Lenny asked.

  “A few weeks ago you were here spouting we might have a billion-dollar year this year. I've got news for you, even with the dogs in our portfolios our last little play with First Global Bank had us bringing in nearly $800 million. One play! Not counting all of the other smaller plays we have done this year. The play we are talking about now, just the one where we buy Pytho stock and sell after the post-announcement run up is going to pull in some $700 million to $800 million in itself. We still have the second play on First Global buying up before they announce the cost savings of this new software.”

  Lenny nodded.

  “I assume you are going to try and get your typical 20%-40% position if you can do it with cash.”

  Again Lenny nodded.

  “You are estimating a $15 to $20 per share run up in the price?”

  “Correct.”

  “Well sir, we will be pulling in over $2 billion on that play, coupled with the other plays, we will probably get some SEC inquiries about how we managed to do nearly $5 billion in business with only $600 million in assets.”

  The room got quiet for a while. Everybody wanted the money. Technically, what they were doing was illegal, but it wasn't like they robbed banks or sold drugs. They simply got information before other people got it. Martha Stewart managed to go to jail when the SEC was inquiring about just that topic. Nobody in this room wanted to go to jail.

  Finally Lenny said, “In the morning we will see what our cash position is. Perhaps we will only take a legal percentage in First Global this time. Then again, maybe it is finally time to use that off-shore investing company we set up. Issue it a loan and let it make all the rest of the purchases. We set it up for the day we actually got a big play like this.”

  Jeremy sat there after the others left.

  “You have something more on your mind?” Lenny inquired.

  “Does your cousin in Russia have an on-line trading account?” Jeremy asked.

  Lenny sat there and slowly got a wide smile. “The taxes would be less and I'm sure he would do it for a small fee. He is not in Russia anymore though. Last time I heard from him he was in Germany. I can send him an email tonight and ask him to give me a call.”

  ***

  Kent was rather shocked when he got the signed contract back from the board of directors. The odd thing was it came with a formal letter telling him to proceed with this plan per the details of the contract. He took it all to Margret's office to ask her about it.

  “What is so unusual?” asked Margret. “Oh, I forget, you haven't been here that long. Any time the board actually has to sign off on a capitalized project they include a letter stating they only authorize what is explicitly stated in the contract. The legal department tells them it protects them against cost overruns. It doesn't really, but they think it does. Yes, we have legal grounds to not pay the bills for an overrun, but what usually happens is the vendor stops working until they get paid, the lawyers get involved, then the project dies.”

  Margret could tell Kent still didn't believe her.

  “Ever been to our branch in Des Moines, Iowa?”

  Kent shook his head.

  Margret picked up the phone and called Carol. “Can you please pull out the pictures of our branch in Des Moines, Iowa, for Kent? He's sitting in my office and this is a story which really needs pictures.”

  A few minutes later Carol came in. “Here is the file. Dare I ask what this is about or do I not want to know?”

  Margret laughed and handed Carol the letter. Once Carol had finished reading it she looked up and said, “So?”

  “Kent doesn't believe the board always sends these with a project sign off. It helps if you explain why that is with pictures,” Margret responded.

  “You don't need Crayons!” Kent said in a combination of disgust and embarrassment.

  “Here, look at the pictures of our branch in Des Moines,” said Margret handing Kent the folder.

  There were a lot of shots of a construction site and a partially erected building. Not enough was completed to tell for certain it was supposed to be a bank.

  “What does this tell me?” Kent asked.

  “That's as far as the project ever got. The board didn't include one of these letters when they signed off on its construction. The builder bid the project with a concrete mix which wasn't up to code. When the building inspectors called him on it he tried to bill us for double his bid price. The lawyers got involved. Court case lasted nearly a year. We ended up not building a branch in Des Moines because of it. I have no idea what happened to the lot or that partially constructed disaster,” Margret said.

  “They did finally sell it,” Carol volunteered. “After the city of Des Moines fined them for an eye sore and public safety hazard.”

  “So Kent, this letter now comes with each and every project the board signs off on,” continued Margret, “or should I say the new board signs off on. None of those board members are still around are they?” she asked looking toward Carol.

  “Nope. There was a meeting of the shareholders after that debacle and we got all new blood” said Carol. “It was the first and only $5 million loss this bank ever put on its books.”

  “Surely they've issued notes larger than that which went bad,” Kent said.

  “Totally different. We hold a mortgage less than a week. They get bundled up and sliced up into financial instruments. Wall Street and investment firms hold them, we don't. All we have to ensure is that they meet the initial requirements when we issue the mortgage. If you are talking about business lines of credit, the shareholders don't tend to hold the board accountable if some publicly traded company has a line of credit with us and goes under. We've usually terminated them long before that happens and if we haven't there has always been some kind of criminal investigation. The shareholders hold the board accountable for projects they authorize, not standard banking ebbs and flows.”

  “But they didn't do this for the data center project,” Kent retorted.

  “They didn't sign that contract, you did. They told you to go ahead since the cost of the project was going to be paid for in large part by the sale of the unused assets,” said Margret. “All funding for that project came out of the IT budget. They simply agreed to let us have the proceeds from asset sales to fund the project to completion.”

  Kent hadn't thought of that. He did sign the off-shoring contract. The initial dollar amount was within his authorization limit and he had told Kathryn to keep each invoice below that dollar amount so he could approve it rather than having to go to the board. Sometimes they got two invoices per month and other times they went two months without getting an invoice. Kent had only received a phone call from a board member telling him to go ahead. There hadn't even been an email message. Then again, where the data centers were and what it cost to run them was under his realm of responsibility. The board simply needed to know how much he was cutting costs, not the details of the plan.

  This conversation seemed to alleviate Kent's fears. He went back to his office and left the women to continue laughing at h
im. At least they had the decency to close the door. He was a manager, and some times your employees laughed at you. He did feel better now that he heard it from a lawyer. Now all Kent had to do was send this contract off to Kathryn and figure out a way to put in the annual report to shareholders that he saved the company $12 million per year. If they fired the entire board of directors over a $5 million debacle they should more than support his elevation for saving such a princely sum of money.

  After Kent left, the girls closed the door and began to laugh. “Do you think someone is finally catching on?” ask Carol.

  “I don't think he is that bright,” responded Margret. “At first I was completely against him getting that position, but now I think the board brought in a Grade-A patsy.”

  “Oh well, someone has to take the fall, might as well be him,” Carol laughed.

  “How true!” responded Margret. “At least I can profit from it.”

  “How so?” asked Carol.

  “I probably shouldn't say anything, you are a lawyer after all,” Margret responded.

  Carol got a serious look on her face, sat down, and said, “Tell me about it off the record.”

  “I gave a friend some money to open an on-line trading account for me. It isn't in my name and nothing ties to me directly. I told them to buy as much Pytho stock as they could before the announcement. The stock for this company I buy as part of the employee purchase plan. Once Pytho goes public with the product I expect their stock to jump quite a bit. Ours will bounce once Kent gives his interview saying how much we are saving. Once they have both peaked I plan on liquidating all shares of both.”

  “Definitely not something you want the SEC finding out about, but as long as you don't get greedy and you didn't write a check for them to trace you will probably get away with it. Pytho didn't make anyone here sign a nondisclosure agreement, so it isn't like it was insider information, they handed out product literature,” responded Carol.

  “Well, that only makes you a little,” responded Margret. “Once I've dumped all of the shares, I plan on using all of the money to short the hell out of this company's stock. When the news hits about the data center issue we are going to tank and I want to be paid for it. As far as being greedy, I should be able to retire if we go below $20 per share.”

  Carol's eyes went wide with that statement.

  “I never got married or had kids. Never bought a fancy car and rarely bought a new car. I paid my house off years ago. It's not a palace, but it is more than enough for me. I've been putting money into that trading account for over 10 years. My friend is pretty good at picking and I've had my own information to work on from time to time. It's not DOT COM-type money, but it is more than enough for me to retire anywhere I want. This last round will cement that fact.”

  Carol knew what the bank paid and about how long Margret had been here. She must have had a friend that was amazingly incredible at picking stocks. “I don't want to know how much,” she said finally. “I like what we have now and I don't want it to change.”

  “Speaking of that,” Margret continued, “What are your plans for the next few weeks?”

  “Summer vacation before the kids go back to school. I think we are taking them to Disney since they are both about the age to really appreciate it.”

  “And I'm sure you will be swamped when you get back.”

  “I've already told hubby I will end up having to work late the first three nights back just to catch up,” she replied with an evil grin. “I wanted to have some options after playing super mom and adoring wife for two weeks.”

  Both women laughed.

  ***

  Hans had been sent to locate and identify the new email hub in Pakistan. Naturally, the new center was far away from the existing headquarters. He used the cover story of being a reporter and even had a couple of the other team members act as his camera crew. There was little in the way of what they could use for a headquarters in this area and there was no way to set up an operation undetected. The new email hub was operating near the Khyber Pass close to the lawless Northern Area. While they could set up headquarters easily near Islamabad, the capital city, they would be nearly 200km away from where the communications center was. This was not a good situation.

  When Hans got back to his hotel room in the capital city, he phoned the man in the suit to inform him of the situation. There would be no way to put people in under cover this time. Even if they could turn the operative, they could not monitor him as they had with Nedim. Given the tribal warlord factions in the Northern Areas, it would be suicide to send anyone in.

  The new communications person was located in a remote village. He had a generator, solar power unit, and a satellite Internet connection. Al-Qaeda had definitely seen to it he couldn't be turned without them knowing about it. They still had no idea just how much the authorities knew, but given the cell round ups, Hans figured it wouldn't be long before the coding system would change. True, the operatives already in the field would have to be notified of code changes via some riskier means such as a phone call or personal contact, but in a short while, all of the good intelligence they had gathered from Nedim would be useless.

  “Were it up to me,” Hans finally said, “I would tell the Brit to stay where he is and give all of our information to Vladimir. He has the time and the skill to do the analysis. It is not like we are going to be working this one closely. Perhaps we can get to the new Indian communications center.”

  The man in the suit didn't like Vladimir. He was always being shown up by Vladimir. He was loath to give the guy any further information about this operation than he had to. Still, Hans' assessment was correct. Vladimir had both the skill and the time. Obviously he had the time given all of the other things he had done without direction. He couldn't even be punished for those things now because those things gave them their only solid leads.

  Some day one of the very same agencies Vladimir was now working with was going to be sent to arrest him for his work in the Russian mafia identity-theft rings. The man had to know that, but didn't seem to care. Perhaps he assumed his ties to clandestine organizations would always keep him working like he was currently. There was some truth in that. If you were good and had a reputation, there was always a government who could give you a new identity and put you to work in a back room somewhere. With the man's skills he would be most difficult to find unless you were trying to hire him.

  One thing the world didn't need right now was an outright war with one or more factions of the Russian mafia. Every government needed them to ensure al-Qaeda never got any of the stockpiled Russian nuclear or chemical weapons. They had already taken it upon themselves to handle one such situation and every government involved in this operation knew it. Piss them off now, and al-Qaeda would be able to purchase the entire Cold War stockpile for next to nothing.

  “We need to put some kind of long distance surveillance on him somehow,” the man in the suit finally said. “I can let the Brit work remotely from here for a while since he is already on his way, but we need to find an excuse.”

  “An excuse?” Hans asked.

  “We need someone high enough up in al-Qaeda visiting this location to warrant an air strike taking him and his hub out. Something which can be on the news and my government can use to state publicly they are helping in the war on terrorism. Any one of the major cell coordinators or attack planners will do. We cannot just strike him now as that would tip our hand and the others will go to ground on us.”

  “Agreed,” said Hans. “Since anyone monitoring from a hillside will need to look native ...”

  “I will make the calls and get the people,” replied the man in the suit.

  “There is another option available to us since you are ready to burn this lead. The tribes run a lot of drugs through that pass. He is close enough to the Afghanistan border that we could send the GPS coordinates to the Americans if we had a contact we could trust. Even someone in the Afghan military could send some troops acr
oss the border to clean this up. They just need a good excuse.”

  “That is a risky play. There has already been a lot of saber rattling about prior incursions. If a drug caravan stops there for the night, we would be better off having the Russian mafia come in, take the drugs, and kill everyone in their usual fashion.”

  “Long way for them to fly choppers, especially across a war zone.”

  “True, but it would remove all suspicion. Everyone can recognize the work of the Russian mafia. They specialize in brutal theatrical killings. The warlord who lost his drugs would be looking for them. At any rate, we need to get someone watching him. Stay at the hotel a few more days. I will send someone to contact you.”

  The man in the suit hated to admit it, but Hans was correct. Given all of the radar and air patrols over Afghanistan today, there was no way the Russian mafia would be able to fly a squad of choppers across undetected. If they flew low, some al-Qaeda soldier would probably shoot them down. If they encountered fighter jets they wouldn't be lucky enough to encounter pilots who understood what was going on.

  He also knew that his government was paying little more than lip service to the hunting down of al-Qaeda within its borders. This operation was almost completely shut down thanks to the news reports about Nedim. There were only a few in the intelligence service who knew anything about this operation. One of them would no longer communicate with anyone involved. So far there was no evidence that he had turned, just that he knew he had been compromised and was keeping his distance.

  Many of the clerics in this country were supportive of al-Qaeda trying to kill infidels and, in particular, Americans. Quite a few distanced themselves from the methods after 9/11. A plane hitting the Pentagon would not have brought nearly every nation into Afghanistan. If a nation didn't have boots on the ground they had money or equipment there. Even countries that didn't like America were standing in line to get in on the action. China bought an unprecedented amount of U.S. Treasury notes shortly after 9/11 so the Americans would be able to fully fund any response they deemed necessary.