by Jim Beegle
He opened the box again and began to look for clues about who could have planted the devices. They were very small. So small, as a matter of fact, that he would have missed them had he not been looking for them. It made sense to tap the junction box. That way whoever it was could be sure of getting all the lines and catching both incoming and outgoing transmissions. He could just imagine the panic that Mr. Willies’ visit had thrown into the crew doing the work. He was still smiling to himself over that one when his mind froze on the word “crew.”
This job could have been done by one person, two at the most. However, Mrs. Willies had spoken like there had been a team of people in the place. Now the picture was shaping up in his head. What his logic and reasoning were now telling him did not make him feel any better. In fact, it had just the opposite effect. There had been several people in the team because they were doing more than just tapping his phones. He now began to assume that not only were the phones tapped, but the rest of the house was wired as well.
He did nothing with the thought for the moment and went back to examining the taps on the lines. They were modern and very expensive from their appearance. He also noticed that they were the kind designed to broadcast wirelessly over a relatively short range. These taps were digital, meaning they would be able to collect his cell phone calls and text data converting them into a digital signal before broadcasting them out to a collection hub. The same would happen with the data lines. That meant the receiving hub would have to be within a radius of fewer than three miles he guessed.
With this information processed, Mark now made the third assumption of the morning. If the taps had such a short range, it would mean the collection hub had to be nearby as well. Which also led him to summarize that the person listening in to catalog his calls also nearby.
He wondered if they were interested in his phone calls or his data transmissions? More than likely both, but the taps were there to catch phone conversations. The computer interface with the Internet happened over another set of lines, in what was referred to as “packets of data.” The packets contain vital information that allows the two systems to synchronize their formats and transmission speeds. This process was referred to as “completing the handshake.” Once a connection is formed, the information flows in an ongoing stream of data packets. The packets contain information that tells the receiving system how and where to reassemble the information. He doubted that, even if they intercepted his high-speed transmission, they could make any sense out of it. However, he decided he had better not assume anything at this point.
This conclusion could mean several things but the most important one was the simple fact that whoever was behind this had a lot of money, or a lot of assets to bring to bear on this project.
Getting a team from Dallas to wire his house on short notice must have been expensive and very hard to pull off… Who had the ability to do this? The question did not invite many answers, but standing there he knew that he was playing against the varsity team. Even the best team makes mistakes. Already this one had made two critical errors.
The first was letting the Willies see them. They must have been from the city and assumed an urban attitude that locals were used to telephone repair people working all hours of the day or night. These guys were probably used to going about their business without people giving them a second look if they noticed them at all. Out here, where most working people went to bed with the sun and rose with the sun, night work would inevitably draw attention. He smiled to himself. Not that anything, day or night, would get by Mrs. Willies.
The second mistake they had made had been to leave the computer battery low. He assumed they had booted it up and searched the drive looking for information. More than likely they did not realize it was not plugged in, but Mark had taken the power cord with him when he left last Sunday. Amy’s phone call had interrupted his process of packing up the computer. The conversation had caused him to forget what he was doing before her call. Therefore, they hadn’t forgotten to charge it; the lack of a power cord had kept prevented it.
His mind, stimulated by the discovery of the taps, was now working in high gear, trying to sort out the information as it formed. They, whoever they were, had tapped his phones, more than likely wired his house as well with digital transmitting devices, and were somewhere within a few miles radius monitoring the hub they were using to collect the information from both the taps and the bugs in the house. While all of this was troubling, his mind found comfort in one single fact: he knew that the house was wired and his lines were tapped. The people who did the wiring did not know that he was aware of the taps, and that could be his one and only advantage. Just like his uncle said, they more than likely had a done this often enough that even if he discovered the intrusion they felt they could anticipate his moves. So how could he buy time?
Several things came to the forefront of his brain. The most pressing was what to do now? He had to find a way first to protect himself. He also needed to find a way to protect the money until he had time to get it back to IBC. Finding some way to do all that, in a manner would not tip off his watchers at the same time, was a tall order. He had already come to the conclusion that to work out a plan he had to have time.
He thought about that for a minute. He didn’t have to come up with a plan in the next fifteen minutes; he had time. At least twenty-four hours if his calculations were right. If his watchers knew anything about him, they must know that he usually didn’t leave Runaway Bay until Sunday. In fact, if he left now it might tip them off that he was on to them. The best thing to do at this point was to follow his routine and use the time it offered him to form a plan and work through the different things that might go wrong.
At first, he thought about calling Amy to warn her, but where would he call from if everything was tapped. Now the last piece of a nagging fear that had been forming in the back of his mind fell into place. He would now have to assume that if they had gone to the trouble of wiring the house all the way out in Runaway Bay, then more than likely his car and his house in Highland Park were in the same condition. The more he thought about that possibility, the more certain of it he became.
It only made sense to wire his car and his house in Dallas because he spent more time there than he did anywhere else. In fact, probably much easier to do the places in Dallas than it had been to do the house here. closer to the things they needed, closer to more people, no inquisitive neighbors, and with a greater amount of time. Amy’s and his routines were pretty predictable during the week. His car sat for hours either at Micronix or in his garage at home. No, he finally decided, calling Amy would not be a good idea. He could call from a pay phone in town but that did not solve the problem of the possible interceptions at the Dallas end of the conversation. Nor could he be sure what Amy’s reaction would be if he told her.
The knowledge of the money may not yet be public knowledge, but the circle of those who knew was growing quickly. The taps here proved that. So if Amy were overheard talking about the money with, say, Hamilton, could she tell them anything they did not already know? She had no clue, as of yet, where any of it was, not ever the main deposit in Nassau. He decided that he would just let Amy be for the moment.
He wondered if they had gone so far as to wire his offices and office phones. Maybe, but that would have been no easy task. People were coming and going all the time and at all hours at Micronix. Also because DECCO dealt in high-tech futuristic products, they were pretty serious about security. No, Micronix would have been very hard to wire. He would keep the possibility open that whoever had done his house here might have at least tapped his office at work. That job could be done from other places in the building.
He closed the junction box cover again and went back to the kitchen. As he climbed back up the stairs he decided that he would take the next twenty-four hours or so and decide what he wanted to do and how he wanted to do it. He was being watched, if by no other means, electronically. He would just hav
e to be careful. The best way for him to think was to put his body to work and let his mind deal with the complexities of the problem. So, he decided that he would head out to the barn and go back to work building the second floor in the rafters. He would use the time to think about his next series of moves and form a plan. He would also use the mundane nature of his day as a way to convince his unseen company that he was going about his normal weekend of chores at the ranch.
The work in the barn demanded lots of his body but very little of his mind. He was able to devote most of those energies to formulating a plan. This was going to be much like the week earlier when he was trying to decide what to do with the money in the first place. In fact, that helped cover his moves. It was an ordinary Saturday.
The irony of the results of his first set of plans did not escape him as he went about his outward task of measuring, cutting, and nailing planks into place in the rafters of the old barn. Most of the time he kept his pipe in his mouth, and for most of that time, it was filled with tobacco and rolling smoke into the air. The pipe aided his thinking. He wasn’t sure how or why, but he knew it did. The hard physical labor kept him occupied and warm in the cold air of the building.
He worked through lunch and continued for a while after the sun went down. When he finally did stop, the night had totally surrounded the two buildings that made up his house and barn. He put away his tools and locked them up in a cabinet. By the time he turned off the large floodlights that hung high in the ceiling of the barn, the heat his body had generated during the exercise of working had long since departed, leaving him shivering as he quickly walked from the barn to the house.
Reaching the kitchen he first went into the living room and lit a fire in the fireplace. The small fire of the morning had long since gone out and there was a chill in most of the house. Satisfied that his evening fire would burn unattended, he went back into the kitchen, turned on the oven, washed his hands, fished a frozen potpie dinner out of the freezer section of the refrigerator, and put it in the oven. He set the temperature on the oven and trudged off to the shower upstairs. After stripping off the sweat- and dirt-caked clothes, he climbed into the shower that he had purposely set to be too warm. His body recoiled from the hot water at first but he forced his way into the stream and stood, letting it pound off his back and knotted shoulders. The water and the heat carried by the water felt great on his body. He stood there for some time before soaping, rinsing, and getting out. He put work clothes on, but these were much cleaner than the ones he had discarded.
Mark kept to his usual routine. He ate dinner in the kitchen and read the book that he had been working on for the last few weeks. In fact, the routine of his time that afternoon and evening had caused him to almost forget about the things that he had discovered that morning. Several times he looked at the phone as he passed from one part of the house to another. When he did, the whole episode would come flooding back to him. After cleaning up from the meal he went to the back door and made sure it was both locked and bolted. He did the same for the front door.
Once the doors had been secured he threw more wood on the fire and took the power cord out of his briefcase and plugged in the laptop computer. He had no intention of using it, but he wanted to make sure it was charged anyway. He settled onto the couch in front of the now-roaring fire with his yellow pad. He sat and looked at the flames, remembering the last trip Cecil had made to the place, just a few days before he died.
What would Cecil have done if he were in Mark’s shoes? More to the point, what would he have done differently to prevent this from happening? Mark was a practical man and gave up on the latter half of his questions after a short while. There was no use thinking about what could have or should have been. What mattered now was what step or steps should he take next. No question; some of his current circumstances were of his own doing. Some were not. Be that as it may, he had nonetheless tasked himself with the job of bringing it all to an end.
He turned away from the fire and his memories of Cecil. He began to write again on his pad, but this time, unlike earlier that morning, he began to deal not with what had happened and who had done it. Now he began to draw on the thoughts that he had while he was working in the barn. He knew he needed to organize the jumble of thoughts down on paper and step through them slowly and with an eye for what to do next. Not necessarily what he thought he should do but, more to the point, what the people watching wouldn’t expect him to do.
He reminded himself several times that as long as he was the only one armed with the knowledge of the location of the money he should be able to protect Amy and himself. He had to give them a reason to call off the hunt. He had to take the prize they were after out of play, while at the same time keeping Amy and himself out of trouble with the law and out of harm’s way. Trying to do one of these things would be hard enough, but trying to do all three would take a well-thought-out plan and a good deal of luck. He would work up a plan, although it had been his experience over the years what most people passed off as luck was in most cases good planning and better preparation. He would try to give his luck a chance to materialize. He would treat this like one of the chess games he had played with Cecil; trying to plan five moves ahead while at the same time anticipating the next, immediate moves of his opponent. This time, however, the stakes were higher than a game of chess. There would be no stalemate in this round, and there would be no way to play to a draw.
He worked writing an outline of his plan on the face of pages of the yellow pad. It was beginning to stretch for several pages now. At one point the dry heat from the fireplace forced him to close his eyes to moisten them. The next time he opened them the fire had burned out and the Sunday morning sun was just starting to stream through the windows. Mark realized he had gone to sleep on the couch in the living room, still dressed in the clothes he had put on after his evening shower.
He got up from the couch and made his way into the kitchen. He debated on whether he needed to take another shower this morning. In the end, he gave in and decided to take another one. The night on the couch had made him sore in new places and besides, there was nothing to do before the coffee was ready and absolutely no sense in attempting to do anything until he had downed several cups first.
When he returned from the brief wake-up of the shower, he walked outside, cup in hand. Standing on the back steps he scanned the fields between his house and the Willies’ place. Soon the Willies would stream out of the house and pile into the old pickup truck for the short trip to church. Several times they had invited Mark to go with them. He declined most of the time. Occasionally he would go because it made Mrs. Willies happy; he would sit with the family and try to stay awake during the sermon while he watched the teenagers pass notes back and forth. Something in him wished he was going this morning.
He would give anything right now just to know if what he was doing, what he planned to do, was the right thing. However, there was too much to do between now and when he planned to leave to have an internal debate about it. He would have to hope that the angels could guess what he was up to and keep pace on their own. Before he went back inside he scanned the horizon as far as his eyes would allow him in the available light, looking toward the field between his house and the Willies’, looking not for angels but for someone who could possibly be listening in on a digital collection hub. He saw neither angels nor strangers and decided after just one quick look that it was silly to even try. He took his cup and went back in the kitchen.
Unplugging the laptop, this time Mark managed to get both the computer and its power cord packed away into his briefcase. He kept telling himself that he had to do a better job keeping the briefcase with him. He knew that he would need the computer and some of the other things in it within the next forty-eight hours. Better to start keeping up with it now than to forget it somewhere. As an added precaution, he took the packed case and set it in the way of the kitchen door. Now he would have to physically pick it up or trip over it
before he went out the door.
While he was in the kitchen, he rummaged through one of the cupboards until he found a medium-sized white plastic funnel. From the kitchen, he walked to the seldom-used laundry connected to the kitchen by a door. Mark opened the cupboard above the old washer and dryer and found a half-empty quart bottle of bleach. Moving back into the kitchen he put the funnel and the bleach in a brown paper bag saved from a trip to the grocery store.
From the kitchen he once again ventured into the basement, accompanied by his yellow legal pad. He copied the brand names, model numbers, and serial numbers off the digital taps that were now a fixture on his phone lines. He hoped that he would have some time later to look up some of the information regarding the kind and type of devices these were in hopes of helping him find out who had placed them there. When he returned to the kitchen, he turned out the light at the top of the basement stairs and locked the door leading down. Mark got his coffee and checked his watch. It was just a little after eleven. The timing of his trip back into town had to be just right. He had to be in Ft. Worth no sooner than sundown but not too late as to find everything closed. He would still need the cover of darkness to pull off the first part of his plan.
He had time to kill now so he returned to the desk in the living room. He settled into the chair and went through a slow and patient process of thoroughly cleaning out his pipe, repacking and lighting it before turning his attention back to his now ever-present legal pad. He reviewed his plan once more, going through it step by step. Trying to see in his mind’s eye what he was going to do, where he was going to do it, and when he was going to do it. He looked for the flaws that he was sure had to be there. He did change a few things but nothing that caused him to alter the essence of the original plan. He spent almost an hour and a half going back and forth over the document that he had been writing over the last twenty-four. Finally satisfied that he had done all he could, he decided it was time to leave the ranch and put the plan into motion.
