The Cassandra Conspiracy (5 page)

Wingate continued. “There are two things you must know before you decide whether you’re going to join our ranks. First, legal means are always our preferred approach to resolving problems. But each member knows there are limits as to what we can accomplish using only licit remedies.”

“I understand,” Ettleberg said.

“Second,” the chairman said, “in front of you is a portfolio containing biographical information on the rest of our members. If you break the seal, you signify your unflinching commitment to our organization and its objectives. If you elect not to read the contents, and the seal stays intact, you may leave the estate; however, you remain bound by your oath of secrecy never to divulge anything you learned tonight. Doing so will precipitate the gravest consequences. Do you understand?”

“I do.”

“Then I will leave you to your decision,” Wingate said as he strode toward the library doors.

Minutes ticked by as  Ettleberg stared at the leather
-bound portfolio on the conference table. Several times he picked it up only to replace it. Handling the file as if it were a rare Ming vase, Ettelberg finally broke the seal and began to read.

Anthony Crofton

Corporate Affiliation:  Crofton Publishing

Background:

West Coast-based publishing empire that started out printing a small local paper. Expansion through reinvestment of corporate profits, which were later used to acquire competing companies. Currently owns several newspapers throughout California, Washington, and Oregon.

Introduced
West Coast Today
, a magazine targeted at the growing population centers in California, Oregon, and Washington. Magazine slowly adding readership in other areas. The magazine’s op-ed section is highly regarded from the beaches of California to the hallowed halls of Congress. Annual revenue from all sources in excess of $1 billion.

West Coast Today
is read and respected by members of Congress. It thus provides a unique forum from which to extol the Committee’s position on various topics.

Committee Membership:  2 generations

Grover Albright

Corporate Affiliation: Worldwide Agricultural Products

Background:

Chairman and CEO of this multinational manufacturer of farming and construction equipment. WAP provides early-generation agricultural equipment to Third World countries. Sales and service outlets widely placed in most South American, African, and Middle Eastern nations. Construction equipment manufactured in seven overseas factories and shipped around the world. Service and sales organizations in place.

Committee Membership: 3 generations

Annual Sales
: over $3 Billion

Helene Rochambeau

Corporate Affiliation:  Aigrette Habiller

Background:

Holding dual French and U.S. citizenship, Helene Rochambeau was born in the States while her French parents were on vacation. She earned her seat in the group by her intensive expansion of Aigrette Habiller, a company her father had started to make men’s clothes. Her family had made a respectable living from the Paris company. But when her father died suddenly, Helene at the young age of twenty-four took over the company that had been in her family for decades.

Fresh out of an exclusive Swiss finishing school, Helen Rochambeau set about to learn all there was to know about men’s fashions, and then expand Aigrette Habiller. It didn’t take her long to realize that the company, albeit quite well positioned with respect to men’s suits, wasn’t paying an ounce of attention to women’s fashions. Against the advice of the company’s stodgy senior management team, she recruited some of the emerging designers on the continent, paying them handsomely, but also demanding their best designs. She promised each of them that regardless of how bold or outrageous their designs were, Aigrette Habiller would develop the designs and manufacture the apparel. The promise of unbridled designs was worth more to most of the newly hired designers than the potential increase in their respective incomes. Her design studios became a bustle of activity, each effort focused on producing the best possible design be it for a new suit, gown, skirt or blouse. Soon Aigrette Habiller became a major contender in the women’s fashion marketplace rivaling the likes of Chanel and the other long
-established French fashion houses.

Not content to rest on her laurels, she immediately moved toward adding her retail establishments, and reducing her dependence on a middle
-man to get her designs to the public. She also increased her profitability.
To date, Aigrette Habiller had successfully started over a hundred retail stores worldwide, with the company’s sales approaching the $1 billion mark.
Ten years ago, without warning, she moved the corporate headquarters of Aigrette Habiller to New York; abandoning Paris, the acknowledged fashion Mecca. The move effectively cut Aigrette Habiller’s import duties at a time when the tariffs kept the firm from garnering a larger portion of the U.S. market. It also coincided with the introduction of new lines of men’s and women’s casual clothes. Designed in Paris, but produced in the United States, both lines took off immediately. Aigrette Habiller showed higher than expected profits that year, and significantly higher projected profits each year thereafter.

Annual Sales: $1 Billion

Committee Membership: 1 generation

Carlton Steiner

Corporate Affiliation: Steiner Aeronautics, Steiner Systems

Background:

A major first-tier contractor to commercial aviation, providing most of the airborne radar, radio, and positioning equipment to the airframe giants. In the early eighties, the company, while making itself recession-proof, expanded its market by providing similar equipment to the military airframe manufacturers. Through the combination of commercial sector and DOD business, matched with carefully controlled overhead costs, the firm has weathered most of the economic storms that have wreaked havoc on its competitors.

With a solid financial base supplying the airframe manufacturers, Steiner Aeronautics began a wholly owned subsidiary called Steiner Systems, tasked with taking state
-of-the-art technology and applying it to system applications in both the commercial and military sectors. Steiner Systems quickly assimilated the technological advances that resulted from the company’s work for such high-powered DOD clients as the Advanced Research Project Agency. ARPA was on the cutting edge of defense technology. Under a contract with the agency, Steiner Systems developed high-resolution displays for use on a multitude of DOD applications.

Annual Sales: $6 Billion

Committee Membership: 2 generations

Thomas Ward

Corporate Affiliation: Ward Petroleum Products

Background:

First, the Ward family was the major stockholder in one of the nation’s largest oil companies, the shares having been in the family since Ward’s great-great grandfather entered into a partnership with the oil company’s founder. Over the years, stock splits and dividends increased the family’s holding in the company to the point that the board of directors listened carefully to their suggestions. Given his stewardship of the family’s regional oil company, his wealth was a foregone conclusion. Nonetheless, Ward’s entry into the day-to-day operation of the business started out slowly. Ward’s company is now the dominant player, providing gas to over three hundred family-owned stations throughout the middle south. The company’s home-heating oil clients number in the thousands.

Annual Sales: $2.7 Billion

Committee Membership: 4 generations

Ettleberg had no sooner finished reading than the door opened and Charles Wingate stepped back into the room. “Congratulations,” Wingate said, extending his hand. “I see you’ve decided to join our group. We’re proud to have you.”

Ettleberg rose, and then grasped Wingate’s hand. “I’m honored to have been selected,” he replied.

“Please, sit down. I’ve scheduled a meeting for this evening, which of course will be your first opportunity to meet the others.”

Anthony Crofton’s arrival interrupted their conversation. Wingate introduced Crofton to the Committee’s newest member, after which Crofton took a seat across from Ettleberg. The three men talked about business and the state of the economy. They did so until Grover Albright and Helene Rochambeau arrived. Again, the chairman made the introductions.

In appearance, Albright was a diminutive man with thinning hair, at best described as nondescript. The man had no vices and was not given to any form of excess. Albright sat at the far end of the table, farthest from Wingate’s position of power.

The other men rose as Helene walked into the room. She greeted each man separately. Mlle Rochambeau was wearing, as usual, one of her suits, tailored to reflect the exquisite taste of its owner, while conveying a businesslike appearance. She took the chair to the right of the Chairman, and waited for the meeting to begin.

It was now a few minutes past eight, and the remaining two members of the Committee had yet to appear. A stickler for punctuality, Wingate sat at the head of the table, glancing furtively at his watch and tapping his Cross pen like a metronome on the writing tablet in front of him.

With an air of alacrity, Carlton Steiner, entered the room, followed by Thomas Ward. After introducing Lawrence Ettleberg to the late arrivals, Charles Wingate called the meeting to order.

“I’m glad to see that each of you could attend tonight. I regret that I had to call this meeting on such short notice. Before we address the business at hand, I want to be certain that each of you has not been having any trouble with your mail.”

Wingate didn’t trust the telephones to handle his communications. Too many agencies were adept at tapping the lines. Instead, he relied on a simple computer-based electronic mail system. All communications between the Wingate’s computer in the library and the members’ satellite stations were also encrypted. For short messages, the system functioned in a way that assured Wingate his security integrity was maintained. Once the message was encrypted, a modem link sent it to the recipient’s computer, where the communication was decoded.

Up to now, the Committee had been using an effective but not overly sophisticated encryption scheme. It had been more than sufficient to discourage anyone who might have come across any Committee
-oriented E-mail. Now, anything less than state-of-the-art wouldn’t do, and Wingate had had a new encryption system developed by Steiner Aeronautics.

Unlike their existing system, which used a relatively simple encryption algorithm with messages transmitted over a huge commercial network, where the sheer volume of traffic made it impossible to tell one message from another, the revamped encryption system used the government-approved Data Encryption Standard, or DES.

Wingate knew that any attempt at penetrating the Committee’s security would come from private-sector sources; his position as the President's best friend and high-level advisor would deter any of the government agencies from even thinking about trying to intercept his communications. But for reasons known only to him, Wingate had decided to upgrade the system’s security.

Once the new system had been designed, Wingate directed Steiner Aeronautics’ engineers and computer programmers to try and decrypt a test message. When the company’s huge IBM mainframe computers were unable to come up with the
clear text message, Wingate was satisfied they had reached an acceptable level of security.

“Our new data security system uses the best possible encryption scheme. In front of each of you is a floppy disk. Guard it well. Without it, your computers are useless. Lose it, and anyone getting their hands on it will be able to read our communications as if they were sent unencrypted. You’ll find the procedure for using the new algorithm in an encrypted file on the disk. All you have to do is to follow the normal procedure when you decrypt the instructions. Forty
-eight hours from now, all communications will be encrypted using the new system. Any questions?” he asked, looking around the table.

There were none. “Carlton, how are things going with our new ventures in the old Soviet Union?” Wingate asked.

“Fine. We’re buying Soviet military arms and support equipment at pennies on the dollar. Every base commander has gone into business for himself, calling what he’s doing
biznesmeny
. More like theft on a grand scale.”

“I assume that we’re buying the right stuff, no MiG fighters, and nothing that we can’t sell through our middlemen in Africa or the Middle East?” Wingate asked his protégé.

“So far, every deal we’ve done has been for light arms, grenades, and the like, you know, the stuff that every self-respecting freedom fighter should have in his arsenal,” Steiner responded.

“Any problems getting sufficient quantities of matériel?”

“No. These ex-Soviet military types make more on a single deal than they used to earn in two years. Our profits on the Moscow Project will probably total close to a hundred million dollars this year alone, and the nice part about it is that everything’s in cash. The Liechtenstein operation is going to have to hire another full-time financial officer to invest the proceeds if things keep going the way they are. Ain’t capitalism great? ”