The CleanSweep Conspiracy

by Chuck Waldron

  “He used his influence to make sure a second global conference would be hosted in a large city, even though many spoke out against his recommendation. Many leaders around the country wanted to avoid a repeat of the 2010 version. They recommended a lower-profile location, but their arguments went unheard at the top. Claussen had spent years developing his own constituency, and he had the government eating from his hand.

  “He used Brunner to beta test his plan during other riots, reviewed videos of their rallies the way coaches review videos of games in sports. He had Brunner flying from his enclave out west to rant his hateful message at rallies, whispering discontent to true fanatics. Some small-scale rioting targeted Planned Parenthood, gay rights groups, and other organizations considered ‘unsuitable.’ When the rehearsal riots were in full stride, legitimate protesters were shoved aside by stiff-armed salutes, beatings, window smashings—and worse.”

  The screen went blank. After a short pause, Tanner’s image reappeared, and he continued. He was wearing different clothes.

  “They used the practice from the first experimental riot to predict that the next one would follow Claussen’s plan to a t. Riots would spread throughout sections of the city. Smaller synagogues that couldn’t afford costly security systems were targeted. Clubs and locations frequented by gays and lesbians were to be torched. While the riot was taking place, people were to be dragged away and beaten, many never to be seen again. Homeless men and women were made to disappear, ending up as corpses in back alleys. Claussen hinted in one e-mail about an abandoned mine shaft as a safe place to get rid of bodies, but I actually think he favored a public display. He wanted people to remember the riots. ‘Smoke from so many fires will fill the air, and the sound of police sirens will become a constant reminder of the threat to public safety,’ he wrote.”

  Tanner took a deep breath and rushed to finish. “He made a promise to his government cronies that when the time was right he would be ready to deliver the necessary security forces to put all the untidiness back into proper order. They not only agreed to his offer, they gave him billions of dollars to put his plan into action. So is Claussen doing it for the money? Sure, that’s part of it. His addiction, however, is to power. The thought of unchecked power activates the pleasure centers of his brain, in the same way cocaine does in the bloodstream of a cokehead.”

  Matt, Carl, and Susan sat looking at the screen as the video of Tanner’s story ended.

  Matt turned off the video display. “Is that enough? Is that enough?” Matt pleaded with Carl and Susan, not wanting to have to witness it all again. “I can’t bear to watch more.”

  Susan and Carl glanced at each other for a long moment.

  Susan turned to Matt and nodded silently.

  CHAPTER 11

  Roots

  Angela Vaughn recognized the signal: a double-click code. It came from her radio, mimicking the sound of static. She knew it wasn’t. Looking around to see if anyone had noticed, she reached in her shoulder bag for a throwaway cell phone, a phone she wasn’t supposed to have. When she was hired, Charles Claussen made it clear there were to be no unapproved communication devices for her, or anyone else who worked for him.

  It was even written into her employment contract. She also had to allow the company to put a tap on her separate communication devices—her personal cell and her home landline. Claussen founded and built the Enseûrtech network of communications himself, so his com channels were to be the only ones used, especially by his security people. He had a burning need to know everything that happened anywhere within his company’s operations.

  It was Angela’s job to enforce the rule about unapproved com devices, but she was about to break that rule.

  The system was designed to allow Claussen to personally monitor any wireless transmissions or electronic messages.

  “I have this one with me twenty-four hours a day,” he’d once told her, producing a small handheld receiver. “I can listen to people at random—or target a particular employee, if necessary,” he’d said with a smile that bordered on a smirk. “I developed the software program to pick up keywords, to decipher attempts at message coding, and to strangle any attempts at deception or betrayal.” He’d put the radio away as he continued. “I keep track of small details. Believe me, I have an uncanny way of knowing when to listen in on someone.”

  Angela Vaughn knew it was his custom to browse through e-mails. On occasion, he would send a blistering message to a department supervisor about something he had seen. Whenever he did, the targeted name would usually disappear from the Enseûrtech payroll.

  Angela knew Claussen monitored all the two-way radio traffic, the signals she used to communicate with her field teams. She knew his obsession meant he would almost certainly be listening tonight, eager for any news about the TV reporter or her cameraman—along with any sighting of Matt Tremain.

  Screw him, she thought. She would never have said that aloud.

  She had ways of talking to her trusted security connections without his ever knowing about it.

  The barely perceptible double-click on the two-way radio in her hand was a signal—one she hoped her boss would interpret as random noise. She felt her heart do a double-beat copy of the sound as she acknowledged it with quick double-clicks of her own and looked at a clock.

  Sitting at her desk, she palmed the small phone she was holding, slid it into a pocket to hide it from view, and looked up at the strategically placed surveillance cameras. She knew where they were located because she had personally supervised every single installation. They were obediently sweeping every corner of the building: offices, hallways, and stairwells.

  Angela’s office was no exception, and she took extra care as she appeared to casually tap a command on her computer keyboard, wishing she felt casual. Her typed command ordered the video surveillance system to place seven cameras into a loop mode. They would display empty spaces and then flicker back to the beginning of the same footage, except for the one that would continue to show a video that would show her at her desk, hard at work. She had been careful to wear the same clothes as the ones in the video.

  Tanner Woodson, the computer systems engineer, had taught her the secret to programming the cameras that way before his unfortunate accident.

  Why did he give all our secrets away to that blogger, Matt Tremain?

  She was never sure why Tanner had trusted her with the details of his deception. She was even less certain why she had kept it secret. If Claussen ever discovered she had known about it but didn’t report it, she was probably a dead woman.

  It was an act so out of character for her that she had no way of explaining it to herself. Much later, she would decide it had everything to do with her police academy graduation and taking a pledge to protect and serve. That night, however, she pushed the paradox to the side like she was brushing away a buzzing fly.

  It’s a shame about Tanner Woodson’s accident, she thought, knowing full well it hadn’t really been an accident.

  She was the one who had ordered it, after all. She’d had no choice, but she never felt right about it. She hadn’t even attempted to warn him. The worst thing was that it had never even crossed her mind to warn him. Disobeying orders wasn’t in her bloodline—well, at least not until recently. When she’d issued the kill order, it marked the ethical cliff she had fallen off since graduation from the police academy. It had also signaled a break in her loyalty to Claussen.

  She was sure she could slip away from her office unobserved now. She stepped into the hallway, then walked to the stairwell that led to the roof. She looked at the cameras, hoping her disabling program was working. She emerged onto the roof and stood on top of the building, looking at a view that was usually breathtaking. It held no beauty for her now. She tried to rub the tension from her forehead with a shaking hand. The roof was the one place Claussen had failed to secure. Finding a dark area in the shadow
s next to the massive ventilation-fan housing, she opened her secret phone.

  “Talk to me,” she whispered. “What do you mean, they aren’t there? Did your men—” She stared at the phone in disbelief, and then held it to her ear again. “Don’t ever interrupt me again! How many people do you have watching the motel?” She listened to the response, her face a study in concentration. “I want all the details.”

  Ten minutes later, back at her desk, she was ready to push the Enter key and return the cameras back to live feeds. Feeling the drops of moisture forming under her arms, she steeled her nerves and turned the cameras back on. After thinking about the call she’d just taken, she tried to consciously make her anger abate.

  Sam Farring was the best agent she had, and she knew he had information that was important enough to warrant sending her a double-click warning. They both knew Claussen would be glued to his monitor; the truth would only enrage him, making their jobs even tougher.

  If we still have jobs.

  “It’s my fault, boss,” Sam had told her. “I should have anticipated something like that would happen. But that cameraman is no fool, and the reporter, Payne, didn’t get where she is on looks. I clearly underestimated them. I thought we used enough shock and awe in the garage to keep them in place. We had the front of the garage covered, but no one realized there was an outlet to the back on the second floor until it was too late.”

  She heard him pause. He was waiting for reassurance that all would be forgiven. When he didn’t get it, he went on. “You can be assured I will personally take care of our two agents who were supposed to be watching them. Still, I should have known. I ordered teams to search their apartments and then hold their posts until they return. If they return.” Sam went on to lambaste the two team members who had let the duo slip out of their grasp.

  “On a more positive note, we picked up a cell phone call. The cameraman and Tremain talked about meeting somewhere.” Then he said, “I remember Tremain met the videographer once at a motel on Lakeshore. I’ve sent my best team there,” he said, trying to make the situation sound better than it really was. “We even someone in a room next to the one they used before. We also have the parking lot covered, and one of our people is even working as the desk clerk. Can you think of anything else?”

  She couldn’t. They had teams covering all the known locations where they might be likely to meet and two-to-a-car teams patrolling all the major streets. The city’s surveillance footage was being monitored night and day.

  Angela sat at her desk. She was regretting her fast-food dinner; it was mapping out a difficult route through her intestines. Unfortunately, there were too many places for people like Tremain and his pals to hide. She was afraid of what Claussen might do when he learned she didn’t have a more concrete plan for finding them. She didn’t want to tell him that all they could do was wait until Tremain and company came out into the open.

  I’m sure they’re together now, the three of them, she thought. She knew there was no way to actually predict their next move. This wasn’t going to end well; she just knew it.

  Claussen is going to eat me alive.

  CHAPTER 12

  Ready to Record

  “Damn, the camcorder has to run out of juice now,” Carl said as he tossed the camera in his bag.

  Room 231 at the Europa Motel was quiet. Quiet, that is, if you could ignore the distorted, tinny music coming from the bedside radio, the constant sound of running water in the toilet, and the relentless drip, drip of the sink.

  Carl readjusted the volume on the radio. It made the racket of scratchy music worse, and they all tried to ignore it, but it continued to grate on their nerves. Unsuccessful at finding decent reception, he finally turned away from the radio and picked up his smartphone.

  “Our instructor once said a good videographer makes do with whatever camera is at hand,” he said, aiming the device around the room.

  Susan stretched back on the bed, momentarily oblivious to the lack of good housekeeping.

  “Ready to record whenever you two are ready,” Carl said. “The phone’s fully charged.”

  She sat up again. “It’s terrible, what happened to Tanner. Matt, I know you two grew close. Having it confirmed that his death was no accident must have come as a shock,” Susan said as she read a report he had handed her. “Do you have any idea why he finally came forward with the story—or why he chose you to relay it?”

  Matt rubbed the stubble on his chin, as if he were not quite sure where to start. “One night, partway through one of our meetings, we started talking about stuff that wasn’t related to Claussen or CleanSweep. I remember it being one of those nights when it finally felt safe enough to have a window open; the smell of the smoke in the air was fading. There was a bird of some kind chirping away, and it was pretty nice out. Man, sometimes the silly shit you remember…”

  Carl held the smartphone camera steady, waiting for Matt to go on.

  “I remember him asking about my family and how I got started as a professional blogger. It really isn’t a very exciting story to tell. A kid like me, who grew up in a stable family in the Chicago suburbs—that doesn’t exactly create much of a story. I told him why I moved to Toronto, expecting it to be different. It was, but in a way it was the same. Now, it’s worse.”

  Matt paused, thinking.

  “You need angst—need to suffer—to know how to sing the blues. What did I ever do that was dangerous or sad?” Matt shrugged. “The closest I’d come to writing about anything worth mentioning was the stuff I put on my blog about CleanSweep. Look where that got me,” he said as he laughed sardonically.

  “Tanner came from hardier stock, though. He said his family tree could be traced back to The Netherlands. He talked about generations of family lore and the way it was in the old days. We were well into the single malt that night.” Matt said, smiling at the special memory.

  “Tanner not only lived his creds, he also inherited courage. It was a part of the family’s blood that flowed through his veins. His grandfather told him stories about what it was like living there—you know, Holland—during the German occupation in the war. His grandfather was in his teens at that time but was forced to work for the Germans, making uniforms. He did what he could to support the underground. He wasn’t a part of it directly, but he did deliver messages on his bicycle for those who were.

  “Tanner heard stories about all the horrible things his grandfather witnessed. He said the worst sights of all were men in leather coats who would stand and supervise soldiers dragging people from their homes or pulling them screaming down the streets.”

  Matt stood and began pacing the room. Carl did his best to keep him framed in the shot.

  “Tanner never answered my fundamental question: Did he accidentally fall into the job with Claussen, as he claimed, or did he somehow plan to try and infiltrate his company from the start? He never revealed exactly when it was that he discovered what CleanSweep was all about. I wonder if he didn’t know about it long before he wormed his way in. Either way, he went to great lengths to document everything he could. It’s all here—what he gave us.”

  Matt continued to pace as he talked, revealing his anxiety. “As to why he picked me? You can ask me, but I don’t really know why. It could have been pure chance. What if he was surfing the web, happened across my blog article, and the story just struck the right note? Had that blog somehow hit at the heart of what he was going through? Maybe he chose me because he knew I would be willing to believe. I’d written that I eat and breathe conspiracy theories.

  “I like to think he thought I would understand the massive scale of this program and knew I would want to print the truth. I will never know the real reason…”

  When it was obvious Matt had nothing more of substance to add to the story, Carl turned off the camera and the phone and got up. He walked to the drapes, pulled one side back with his finger
, opening it just enough to peek out into the parking lot.

  “Nothing,” he reported. “I guess I’m feeling jumpy for no reason.”

  “It’s after midnight,” Susan said, sounding surprised as she looked at her watch. “Could anyone else use a coffee?” Her question went unanswered. The others had more significant problems on their minds.

  “Did you bring the flash drive I gave you when we met before?” Matt asked, turning to Carl.

  “I transferred it to one of these,” Carl said. He pulled the three media cards from his pocket. “I recorded your interviews on two, and copied the drive’s contents to this one,” he said, holding up one of them.

  Matt reached into the satchel he’d brought. He handed a small media player to Carl. “Will the card work on this?”

  “No problem.”

  The first image appear on the screen was a copy of an e-mail, a scanned copy of a memo from Claussen. It contained details about PROFUNC, a 1950s government plan to watch, arrest, and detain Communists and other sympathizers thought to be subversive. There were a surprising number of high-profile national leaders on the list. The name at the top was Tommy Douglas, leader of the first Socialist government elected in Canada. Considered the father of healthcare, a CBC poll had once declared him “the Greatest Canadian.”

  “I think it’s this plan that gave Claussen the idea for CleanSweep,” Tanner said on the video. “Look how he used some of its details. He envisioned secret detachments of his own private security forces sweeping across the country. When the plan was implemented, it would be on a day he called M-Day, or Mobilization Day. People arrested by CleanSweep agents would be taken to temporary staging facilities built to hold detainees before they were transferred to permanent internment camps. He wanted to call them ‘reeducation facilities.’ He wrote about using several run-down urban neighborhoods as temporary holding facilities, walling them off like the Warsaw Ghetto. Sites would be segregated by gender. He suggested a coed camp might be used for propaganda purposes, but that they would have to be careful not to allow the scum to procreate.”