Balance of Power Shifted (51 page)

Within a half hour
, the police had a copter in the air looking for abnormal activity and a bloodhound on the ground to track Mike’s scent.  The dog caught his scent, and a minute later, they knew that a boat was most likely involved. By this time, interviews were complete on everyone in Fiona’s party.  Fiona decided to send Gwen and Iris on to the barbecue event to represent Efficio, and needed to see if they were up for it first.  Walking over to the women, who were obviously still shaken up, she softly said, “Iris, Gwen, I would like you both to continue on to the dedication barbecue if you are up to it  and represent us there.  Do you think you can do that?”  Both women shook their heads yes and stepped in to hug Fiona telling her Mike was going to be fine and they would take care of the barbecue event.

Fiona wandered over to where M
iguel was, and listened in while he was speaking with the FBI.  He was recanting the scenario with them when Fiona realized that there was something off with his statements.  Based on his description, he had stopped the vehicle when the sanitation truck crashed into the lead vehicle and then the next thing he knew, he was coming out of a deep sleep.  Fiona knew she had been in mild shock due to the accident, but she was damn sure she had seen Miguel outside of the vehicle. 

Keeping her thoughts to
herself, she wandered over towards Mike’s vehicle where an FBI forensic team out of Biloxi was working.  She saw a canister removed from under the front seat and asked what it was.  The woman forensic expert hesitated and looked toward the lead FBI agent who nodded his head to go ahead and answer.  “It is a pressurized canister of what most likely contained a gas to render the occupants unconscious.  We will verify the contents when we get it back to the lab.  This device screwed on to the top of the canister, is a timer device that opens the valve automatically based on the setting.”  Walking down the road a little ways Fiona dialed Jeremy’s cell phone number.

The Michael Carter kidnapping was the evening news.  Every station had it as the main headline for the evening. 
Speculation on the motive was rampant as well as fears that it could affect the future of Electricus.  Reporters descended on Gulfport like flies on a hot pile of dung in the middle of the summer.  By morning, news crews circled the entire Efficio Gulfport production site where Gwen and Iris provided a conduit for information. Fiona and Sean, scheduled to fly out on the Clavis jet at noon, were already at the airport waiting with Miguel.  Fiona had trouble hiding her distaste for Miguel, which luckily he took for being upset at Mike’s kidnapping.  Jeremy had personally called Miguel and asked him to escort Fiona back to New Jersey.

Arriving at Efficio’s headquarters building, Fiona said to Sean
, “I will keep you informed,” as Sean headed off to take care of some business. Next, she turned to Miguel and asked, “Do you have a few minutes to run over aspects of the kidnapping with me?”  “Sure Ms. Paschel,” was his instant reply.  They walked into the building and Fiona headed towards Mike’s temporary office with Miguel following.  Fiona entered first, and strode behind Mike’s desk.  As soon as Miguel entered the door, he noticed Jeremy and Ty were also in the room.  Fiona sat down at the desk chair, while Ty walked to the door and closed it.  “Miguel, please take that seat over there.  We want to discuss a couple of things with you,” Jeremy ordered.  As soon as Miguel sat down, Jeremy said, “Let me get right to the point Miguel.  Yesterday, as Fiona crawled out of the wreck, she saw you standing outside of your vehicle, which is contrary to the statements you provided to the police and FBI.  Can you explain this?”  Miguel’s mind was racing and he hesitated for just a few seconds before saying, “In deference to Ms. Paschel, she had just been in a traumatic accident and maybe she saw one of the perpetrators.”  “That is possible,” Jeremy conceded, however, I had some of my cyber experts breakdown your communications over the last couple of weeks as well as did a little unauthorized online banking, if you know what I mean, and guess what we found.” 

Miguel did not respond and he felt his heart sink waiting for Jeremy to continue.  “Miguel we found a Swiss bank account, and I have to tell you it was not easy
.  The account in question recently had two million dollars deposited into it.  We have not yet finished backtracking where the money originated from since they were very careful, but we will.”  If you help us out, you know they will go easier on you and God forbid anything happens to Mike, because I sure won’t go easy.”

Agent Morgan listened intently
via a radio transmission from the next office, as Miguel cracked and gave up all the information he knew.  It all fit together with the pattern the Chinese had shown, which was to steal the knowledge of Electricus.  Combine that with the top-secret information that Carl had provided regarding that little event in the South Seas and you could see how the Chinese may be panicking.  The FBI had already considered Chinese involvement and had speculated that the kidnapper’s boat most likely rendezvoused with a larger high-speed boat to Mexico and from there who knows.  They could have easily taken a private plane and flown anywhere.  Matt thought to himself, “If I was a betting man I would bet that Mike would be in a Chinese location by the end of the day. 

Hearing enough from Miguel
, Matt and his agents entered the room and arrested him.  Agent Morgan turned him over to his team and returned to his office.  Some good old investigative work had finally allowed them to get a handle on Pinnacle’s client, and they were putting the final details together to make some arrests.

Bill and Charlene had been stressing with what to do about the situation with Mike since he
had heard from Fiona.  Fiona had spent two hours talking to him over the secure link and had brought him up to speed on the situation.  In his mind, the company needed leadership, and those that had embraced Electricus needed to know the company would still be moving forward.  It all came clear to him what needed to done, and even though Charlene was worried about him, she knew it was something he had to do.  Asking Father Jovinni to set up a meeting with the Archbishop, he formulated his plan.

The Archbishop had been supportive of his plan and had set up a press conference to talk about important developments
impacting the Stewardship Foundation regarding the recent kidnapping of Michael Carter.  A large courtyard provided the space to hold the press conference and worked well for security reasons.  As Bill looked out on the courtyard, he had a queasy tingle to his stomach.  It appeared that hundreds of people now gathered in the courtyard. At exactly 10 AM in the morning, Bill approached the temporary stage and walked the three steps to the top, then headed to the podium at center stage.  With purpose, Bill strode up to the podium and faced the noisy audience.  Almost on cue, the audience dropped into complete silence as Bill prepared to speak.

“Ladies and gentlemen” he said in English, I wish to tell you an amazing story and accomplish a few key objectives
at the same time.  At the end of what I have to say, I hope that everyone understands Electricus will go forward and that those responsible for kidnapping Michael Carter will understand that releasing him immediately is the right course of action.  Hello, my name is William Bates, and my death has been greatly exaggerated.  Bill paused for effect while scanning the audience before continuing.  Many of you may not be familiar with my name, since I have been out of the public eye for quite some time. I am the co-founder of Efficio with my good friend Michael Carter.  After I was injured and a second attack on my life attempted, I was spirited away to this location, where I received excellent care until my injuries had healed.  Michael and I realized from the time of our initial discovery how important this gift was to humankind and have attempted to leverage Electricus to generate funding and interest in helping our less fortunate global citizens.  I want to ensure you here and now that I, and God willing, Michael Carter, will ensure that, our vision, and the vision of all those now part of The Stewardship Foundation is absolute. 

To ensure our vision, the secret of Electricus is
now part of a trust that if anything happened to Michael or me, others would be able to gain access to continue the process.”  As Bill tried to continue, the crowd broke into spontaneous applause that rippled and rose in volume for over five minutes.  While waiting for the applause to subside, Bill felt he did the right thing by committing the secret of Electricus to an encrypted file, which he provided to the Archbishop.  The actual encryption key required deciphering, and relied upon the knowledge of their friends and management at Efficio.

To continue on, Bill
had to raise his arms to silence the crowd and slowly the noise subsided.  “I mentioned that there were multiple objectives today and we have discussed the first.  The second item is to implore those that have taken Michael Carter to release him unharmed.”  Even though Bill knew about the Chinese, he did not want to paint them into a corner by naming them in public even though he wanted badly to do it.  “There is very little benefit to understanding the secret of Electricus, because it will be shared with the world, so please reconsider your motives and release him.  Are there any questions at this time?”

The local CNN station had streamed the speech back to the US and even though it was the middle of the night on the east coast, Agent Morgan received a call seconds after the speech
concluded.  “Agent Morgan” the voice said, “I think you pulled a fast one on me.  That was a slick move with Bill Bates.  You may want to get up and check a replay of his speech in Rome from just a few minutes ago.  Let me know if you run into any trouble with your boss and need help to smooth it over, because I don’t think he would ever have had the balls to try anything like this himself.”  Leaving Agent Morgan dazed, Carl hung up the phone and immediately called his boss.  After a short conversation, they agreed that the latest events with Bill Bates gave their plan to negotiate the release of Mr. Carter a greater chance of success.  With the establishment of the Chinese connection, Carl suggested a way to leverage Mike’s release and kill two birds with one stone.

C
IA Director Varner with the President’s approval was calling the Chinese ambassador in Washington, DC.  He had to wait for 10 minutes as the ambassador, roused from his sleep, eventually came on the line and with a raspy voice said, “Director Varner, how may I be of assistance to you and the CIA?”  “Thank you for taking this call at such an hour, but I wanted to have this discussion at the earliest possible time.  Please hear me out Mr. Ambassador, because I will only be making this offer one time per the instructions of the President of the United States.  We have indisputable information that the Chinese government has been operating on US soil to steal the secret of the Electricus organism.  In an effort to steal this information, Chinese operatives kidnapped Michael Carter on US soil and sent him to Beijing.  We know his plane will arrive there in a matter of hours.”

Without waiting for the ambassador to comment he forcibly
continued, “To demonstrate that we have indisputable proof, I will provide you with a list of documents detailing the actions of General Hu to steal this information and kidnap Michael Carter as well as proof of China’s espionage on governments around the globe including the US.  There is even a larger list of industrial espionage against many of the world’s largest corporations.  Because our two great countries depend on each other economically, the President has offered to suppress this information for two concessions:  The first concession is to return Michael Carter to the US on the next plane back without harm or interrogation.  The second is the immediate halt to all government sponsored industrial espionage activities.  Mr. Ambassador, the ball is in you court…”

General Hu Jiabao was feeling good about himself again.  He felt the end was near on his quest to master Electricus with the
anticipated arrival of the American.  His men would escort him to the interrogation facility as soon as he arrived, however would not start the drug induced questioning until he fully recovered from the drugs used to render him unconscious during his capture. 

His chief interrogator had said the drugs would work against each other, however by tomorrow morning there should be no remaining obstacles.  That left his evening free and his lovely twins were willing and waiting.  He was wrapping up from the day when his priority phone line rang. 
Answering the phone, he listened for a few seconds and then responded “Yes, yes of course, I will be there in 15 minutes.”  Leaning back into his plush chair he was very concerned about the unexpected summoning by the ruling council to appear before them immediately.  This was a rare event and he did not know how to interpret it.

Upon his arrival armed guards escorted General Hu to a special chamber area where the ruling council met when needed.  There were nine members of the council however when General Hu arrived only six were present.  After sitting down where directed
, council member Xi addressed the General directly.  “General Hu, you have been a dedicated employee of the state and your contributions have been significant.  However, we face a serious situation that you have placed our country in.  In our hands are internally verified documents from governments and corporations that we have infiltrated over the course of years.  The problem is that the US government has provided these to us.  As of now, we do not have any idea how they were able to get these sensitive documents, which include our own internal communications, but they have.  They have also tracked your efforts to obtain Electricus and the kidnapping of the American, Carter.