INSTALLMENT #10

They had reason to have faith in their encryption. It took Carter an entire 20 minutes to get into the network. It only took him 15 to get into the DOD the first time.

The first thing that Carter discovered was that the entire operation was a front for what looked like the KGB, but of course, they don’t exist anymore. Then it dawned on him, "Russian mob, old KGB, same thing." This he figured out just by seeing who was on the net and who was talking to whom.

In a short time he found what passed for the books at the place. He couldn't make heads-nor-tails out of them, but he knew someone who could. Back into the America system he went and before long all those files were on the computer of a Treasury Department analyst, marked, "Please review and advise" apparently by the Director of Homeland Security.

Within an hour Carter had an email for that self-same Director sitting on his computer. The report read as follows:

"This appears to be a straightforward extortion operation. The organization in question is stealing large quantities of a hazardous substance from somebody. They are threatening to spread the stuff everywhere if the parties that made it to begin with don’t cough up enormous amounts of cash.

"They also have a couple of sidelines. In addition to extorting the generator of this substance, they are extorting all sorts of environmental watchdog groups that have collected huge sums to clean it up.

"The final sideline is that they are selling some small amounts of the material for enormous sums to someone that I cannot trace.

The analyst puts a bit of a personal note at the end of his report:

"Sorry boss, this looks like a matter for the organized crime guys, not for you."

"Yeah, right," thought Carter as he jumped back into the "charity's" network. He found they maintained a "field office" in some of the abandoned offices in the Sophiaskia power plant itself, but information about it was missing from even this tight computer grid.

"Well, you don’t just waltz in there," Carter mumbled to himself. However, a bit of computer magic later and he had himself credentials as an Environmental Professional on a Technology Exchange Delegation visiting the plant the next day.

The delegation just happened to be staying in his hotel. He found a few of them in the bar and they wanted to buy him a drink before he could even sit down. They had witnessed his little trick with the Greenpeace Van.

From the bar they moved on to dinner. This was a group affair for the delegation, but Mark and Matt, the guys he had been drinking with, brought him along and introduced him to everybody. It seems that environmental professionals really hate environmental activists like Greenpeace. Carter spent the evening being regaled with tales of how everybody from Earth First to the Sierra Club got in the way of actually cleaning anything up because it would never be clean enough for them. Pissing on that bus had made Carter a hero.

Before the evening had ended, Carter was booked for Sophiaskia with the delegation the next day and they thought it was their idea. Best of all, they were all so drunk, they’d never wonder how he got credentials that matched theirs – they'd just figure it had happened sometime during that night of camaraderie.