Read The Land of the Free Online
Authors: TJ Tucker
The Land of the Free
TJ Tucker
Second Edition
Copyright © 2012 by TJ Tucker
…
All rights reserved. No part of
this book may be used or reproduced without written permission. Brief
quotations may be used in articles or other publications discussing this book
or related topics. For further information, contact the author by email: [email protected]
…
This is a work of fiction. I have
created all the scenarios, characters and institutions portrayed here out of my
imagination, or have used them fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons
or institutions is purely coincidental, and should not be construed as
intentional. All events and scenarios are likewise fictional or have been used
fictitiously.
Any background information I have
chosen to footnote and link with a hyperlink is entirely for the reader’s
entertainment. I cannot guarantee either the permanence of the links or the
accuracy of information they contain. They may also expire over time and be
replaced by other content, and I cannot take responsibility for that
possibility.
Chapter 2:
A Meeting of Friends, June the Following Year
Chapter 4:
President Jackson Torres
Chapter 7:
Visit from an Envoy
Chapter 8:
The Scoop from Purchasing
Chapter 9:
Analyzing the Motives
Chapter 11:
Formulating a Response
Chapter 14:
Irregular Procedures
Chapter 15:
Answers to Demands
Chapter 16:
Fallout, the Day After the Response
South China Sea, USS Ronald Reagan
New York, Universal Investment Bank
Washington, DC, Federal Reserve
Chapter 22:
Investigating Morningstar
Chapter 24:
Snyder Goes to Work
Chapter 27:
Meeting a Stranger
Chapter 28:
Delivering the Report
Chapter 29:
An Unfinished Matter
Chapter 30:
Assessing a Response
Chapter 36:
The Ferguson Estate
Chapter 39:
Meeting with Havenstein
Chapter 41:
Digging for Information
Chapter 46:
The Limits of Power
Chapter 61:
Dropping the Pretense
Chapter 70:
Operation Commences
Miramar Marine Air Base, San Diego
Chapter 72:
The Situation Room
1: Mid August
Colm Rowley was in a hurry. A
senior analyst with the CIA, he had spent the last two weeks on a high priority
report, and his family life was strained. Now that he had finished, it was
time to make amends. Having submitted the report and finished work, he needed
to gas up the car and get to that little league baseball game. All the trouble
was going to be worth it. His wife would have to understand. This report
would get him noticed in the intelligence community. There would surely be an
upside for the family.
As instructed, he had delivered the
report to the Director in person about four hours ago. By now he would have
had a chance to read it. He kept replaying its conclusions in his head as he
got out of his car to pump gas. The air in the DC area was thick and stifling,
and his breathing tightened as he took in the heat and humidity.
I should
take better care of my health
he thought. He was overweight, with high
blood pressure and signs of diabetes.
What good would it do to be a star in
the intelligence community if I’m not around to enjoy it?
It had started with an assignment
to develop a dossier on Helsing-Tilbury, one of the world’s largest shipping
companies. They had been acquired by a mysterious holding entity with no
public face, Smithfield-Warwick LLC. The Chief was curious about who was now
behind Tilbury, so he assigned the Agency to look into it. As he started
pumping gas, Rowley smiled as he considered the likely reason for the
President’s interest. He probably wanted to know who to approach for his
political fund raising. But what Rowley had found was deadly serious, and
political donations would not be the Chief’s principal concern when he saw the
results.
Tracking Smithfield’s ownership had
been very tricky. Intentionally so, he thought. The Byzantine ownership
structure was layered so deep with front entities that only a stroke of luck,
combined with his considerable skill enabled him to identify the true owners.
Once he had, he knew exactly why they had tried to hide their identities.
This
will be explosive
he thought to himself.
Heads will roll
.
The sudden, searing pain in his
chest literally took his breath away. He clutched his chest, blood now
spreading rapidly across the front of his shirt.
Was that a gunshot
?
He realized he was dying.
It
isn’t fair
. His family would never see the upside of what he’d done. He
felt cold despite the summer heat, as his consciousness faded away. He
collapsed and was dead within seconds.
The swarm of police converged on
this the scene of the latest in a series of seemingly random shootings in DC.
It had become a regrettably familiar pattern since the shootings began. First
came the swarm of police vehicles, followed shortly by ambulances and
television crews. The police cordoned off the area around the pumps while the
paramedics retrieved the body. The cameras were kept at a distance, and the
reporters filmed their segments against the backdrop of the crime scene. The
chatter from the scrum of reporters blended into a single sound, like so many
chirping crickets, as the crews worked on the scene. But this time, shortly
after the paramedics had loaded Rowley’s body on their gurney, a second
ambulance arrived along with four unmarked cars. The door of one of the cars
opened and a man in a dark suit stepped out, walked to the local crew and
flashed his FBI badge. “We’ll take this from here,” he said, at which the
local paramedics shrugged their shoulders while the local police grumbled among
themselves. Rowley’s body was loaded into the FBI ambulance and whisked away.
Meanwhile, the crime scene was cleared of anyone not with the FBI, and several
vans of investigators quickly converged on the scene.
The investigators worked into the
night collecting all possible evidence, including any fragments of the hollow
tipped bullet that killed Rowley. By the following morning, all traces of the
crime scene had disappeared, as had any chance the public would see any
evidence turned up by the investigation of the murder of Colm Rowley.
Halfway between New York City and
Albany is the old city of Kingston, a relaxing drive through the Hudson Valley
with expansive views of the Catskills. John Corson made the trip to join his
longtime friend Robbie Linssman for the weekend. Robbie’s daughter Jessica was
graduating from the University of Albany the following day, and their families
had once been very close. The girls used to play together, before the
automobile accident that claimed the lives of John’s wife and daughter.
John arrived at Robbie’s house
early Friday evening and the two men took a short walk, enjoying the smells of
late spring and the sights of old Kingston on the Hudson. They settled into a
booth at the Riverside Cafe, a comfortable place with an out of the way feel.
“It’s really nice to see you and
again,” started John. “And Jess graduating. That touches me as deeply as if
she were my own daughter.”
“I know,” said Robbie. “If it
weren’t for you, she might not even be here.” John had once saved a
four-year-old Jess from drowning. She had fallen into an icy river and John
jumped in to save her. He managed to cling to her and to a tree branch until
rescuers could reach them. After Jon’s loss, Jess filled the hole in John’s
heart like a biological daughter.
To change the subject, Robbie said,
“Helsing-Tilbury’s been bought out. I told you about that last fall.”
“Yeah?”
“The buyer was this shell company
called Smithfield-Warwick, LLC.”
“I remember you telling me this.
Have there been any problems with them?”
“None. You’d sort of expect to
have fresh MBA jerks wearing their fake smiles and loafers, crawling up your
ass looking to impress the boss by finding a few cents in efficiency. I first
thought it was some equity fund that wanted to juice up our earnings and sell
us off, or take us public again. But there’s been nothing like that. No
visits from the bosses. Not here or any of the big sites around the world.”
Robbie lowered his eyes and frowned slightly.
“Well cheers to that,” said John as
he raised a glass. “You don’t like those punks any more than I do, so what
else is there to make you look at me like that?”
“There’s a lot more, actually.”
They were interrupted by a news
update on the television mounted in the corner of the cafe. Another financial
crisis and scandal was brewing. This one was related to the settling of
positions in the commodities markets. China had evidently purchased gold
futures contracts on the COMEX, and when the settlement date came, asked for
gold bullion as was specified in the contract. Most investors never invoke the
right to claim bullion, preferring to take cash instead. As a result, many
suspected that there was not sufficient bullion to back the contracts that
changed hands. In this case it looked as though somebody had indeed been
caught with their pants down, and had no bullion to settle the position. If
this was not contained, it could bring down banks all over the world. Many
banks had large short positions in gold, meaning that they had sold gold
without owning it and now owed gold rather than currency. John had an
extensive financial background, so he made a note to himself to look into this
a little more deeply when there was time.
Robbie resumed. “Tilbury ships
containers all over the world. Mostly, we ship full containers from China to
the rest of the world, and then we scramble to fill them with anything we can
on their way back to China. Even still, most go back empty.”
“Sure, the trade imbalance is
atrocious.”
Robbie continued. “Most of what we
do here in Kingston is compliance work, making sure that the paperwork that
governments require is in place. The US government is the big problem for us.
The public story is that they’re protecting us from terrorists. The actual
wording in C-TPAT is clear though. It’s all about collecting duties. Nothing
new there, and with my background, at least it’s a living.”
They ate and drank a little and
John gave a knowing glance, which Robbie took as his cue to resume. “The big
logistical bottlenecks for Tilbury as a whole are the branch points in
shipping. Places like the Malacca Strait, the Suez and Panama canals.
Panama’s the busiest for us, with so much US bound freight passing through. The
exporters in China find it easiest to load the biggest ships as full as they
can, with freight bound for either the big ports on the west coast or for the
Panama Canal. Some years ago, the Chinese bought ports at either end of the
Canal to serve as sorting stations. They combine available ships bound for
individual ports in the Gulf, the Mississippi or the East Coast, with cargo
bound for those destinations. Our office keeps track of what’s going where,
ensuring all the forms are filled in, and all the taxes are paid.”
“Robbie, you’ve told me this story
in various forms”.
Robbie raised an index finger to
get John’s attention. “But Smithfield recently bought San Marcos Island. It’s
an uninhabited member of the Pearl Island Archipelago off the coast of Panama,
with a natural harbor. I don’t get it. The ports are not at capacity today,
and the Chinese will never in any case allow their cargo to be diverted from
the ports they already own. If they’re expecting an income stream, they’re
badly mistaken. The investment could sink the company.”
That twist caught John’s
attention.
Irrational financial behavior from a large institution is
suspicious in and of itself
, he thought. He had left the Navy after
training briefly to become a SEAL, becoming disillusioned with the ends for
which the military was used. He joined the SEC with idealistic notions that he
could weed out corruption in the financial markets. He quickly saw the
politics that went into deciding who was prosecuted and who was not. Undaunted,
he had been breaking open a financial scandal in the face of substantial
pressure not to pursue the matter. That was when the accident happened. His
wife Joanne, and his young daughter Sarah, were driving down a hill that turned
abruptly at the bottom, next to a river. The brakes failed, and John’s life
was never the same. Needing a change in his life, he joined a large investment
bank and became independently wealthy by engineering the very transactions he
had so loathed while at the SEC. John finally retired at age 47, now nine
years ago. “What do you know about the ownership group?” he asked Robbie.
“Nothing. Not even a memo
introducing themselves. Nobody I’ve spoken with could tell me anything about
Smithfield, not even Magnuson, the CEO. I briefly spoke with him this past
winter. Think about that for a second. The chief admits to a mid level
employee that he’s out of the loop.”
“Do you have any reason to worry?”
asked John.
Robbie shrugged. “If they fail,
I’ll be out of work. If they start smuggling drugs or weapons through the San
Marcos port, I might be linked to the paperwork and I’d have some explaining to
do. But no, I’m not seriously spooked.”
“What about the Panamanians. Do
they know who bought the Island?”
“They have no idea where the money
came from, if you believe what I’m hearing. But you have to figure they were
bribed in any case. I’ve made inquiries in a number of places, so maybe
something will come back with substantive info.”
“Sometimes Robbie, it’s best not to
dig too deeply into things like that. Any one of the scenarios you described
could get you fired, or worse.”
“That doesn’t scare me anymore.”
Feeling that Robbie had exhausted
the topic, John felt comfortable changing the subject. “Have you been up to
Silver Lake yet this year? It must be getting beautiful by now.” Robbie had a
small camp in the Adirondack Mountains, and they had spent many vacations there
together.
Robbie shook his head. “No, it
hasn’t worked out for me. The place is ready but I’ve been tied up with all
this crap. Besides, I like it best in August, when the bugs are gone and the
water’s still warm. Would you like to come up later this summer?”
“You know you don’t have to ask
twice. As soon as we have the date, I’ll clear everything else from my
schedule” replied John.