He turned to the window and glimpsed the treetops rustling in the autumn wind. It was the middle of October. Everything about it—the temperature, the longer nights, the changing of the colors—touched off life changes the last three years. First was the thought that he just turned forty-eight years old two months ago; the middle-age angst nagging at him more. Next was the work career, this government job which he'd held for sixteen years now with the DHS here in DC. Well, not exactly in DC but the DC capital area, here in west Alexandria on Eisenhower Avenue, in a seven-story building leased by the agency the past two years now where he was assigned, along with a couple dozen staff of mixed transfers from DC and new recruits, working for CISA—Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency of the Department of Homeland Security.
Along with the work career and the middle-age angst was what continued to burden his whole being the past three years now—the loss of his wife Carolyn to cancer.
This more than anything else he continued to lug around most of his waking hours. It was a seven-year marriage; seven years he could say—looking back quickly into parts of it—that made up some of the happiest times of life he had shared with anyone, family or friends.
It is said everything heals over time. Looking out the window now from his third-floor office, down at Eisenhower Avenue and beyond, over to the Cameron Run alongside the road where the two of them strolled or ran by the narrow stream two, three times a week certainly didn't help the healing. Nor did the nearby AMC cineplex, a short drive from their two-bedroom garden condo on the other side of Telegraph Road for a weekend movie, help blur the memory of life with her.
A cobweb of other memories awaited a replay at moments like this but the appearance of the Branch Chief at the doorway quickly ended his musings.
“Morning, Jason,” Eli Morton, fifty-seven, thirty-year service with Uncle Sam, greeted. He came with Fred Turner, late-thirties, a contractor staff Jason had known briefly from the last couple of meetings on the Project. “Basement, Room 28. Fifteen minutes?”
It took him a couple seconds to register what Morton said before he gave a start while still partly recovering from his musings.
“Oh shit, Tuesday, today—” he glanced at his wristwatch, adding: “Nine-thirty downstairs. Right!”
“You alright?” Morton asked.
It was five after nine in the morning, the start of the two-hour prime time for digging into some real work at one's desk, before the beginning of lunch break at eleven-thirty. Jason and most of the other lead analysts and team leaders in the Branch usually expected Morton this time of the morning to show up at their door for a visit, either social—especially during the MLB playoffs and the start of the NFL season as now—or work-related.
“The Nats are out of it,” Morton opened with the MLB playoffs.
“I know,”responded Jason, clearing the desk of some papers. “I quit watching. I don't care who wins the World Series. I'm into NFL now. My team—the Vikings.”
“Great! Mine too,” said Fred Turner. He was as tall as Morton at six one but about thirty pounds lighter than Morton's two twenty. Jason, at five nine, stood up and looked up at both of them.
Brief pleasantries were exchanged quickly after which Eli Morton, Chief of the BSB (Border Statistics Branch) of CISA, went right to the work-related business at hand.
“Got your stuff for the meet?” Morton lowered his voice as he spoke so it won't travel beyond Jason's ten by ten office cubicle.
“Yup. Got 'em right here,” Jason replied in a lowered voice as well, gathering some papers on the desk along with the mobile phone and a handful of flash drives in a sandwich plastic bag.
The last meeting early in September, Eli Morton made the presentation of the final beta version of the app Perseus Jason Philips developed for the Project. It's a software to access the cloud file Hermes, the storage of Case records of government graft and corruption gathered by the group's teams working on the Project. This meeting they were now going to was to turn Perseus and Hermes over to the team members, start uploading everything each one had in their PCs and laptops at home to the cloud file (everybody was cautioned not to leave at work anything on the Project, hardcopies and electronic).
“See you downstairs,” Eli Morton said as they moved on.
He saw five people already seated around an oval table when he entered the vestibule to room B28. A security staff posted at the door eyeballed the office badge hanging on his neck before opening the door for him. He took the seat between Morton to his left and Fred Turner to his right. Across from them was Burt Miller, Branch Chief of Finance. To his left was Henry Dawkins, one of Miller's team leaders same as Jason Philips of the Border Branch. At the head of the table was Oliver Payne, Deputy Director of CISA.
Payne, late fifties, was a tower of a man. Six five and not an ounce over two hundred pounds evenly distributed throughout so that the man looked quite hale and at least ten years younger. Some gray showed on each side of his head but this only added more to his look of authority and command over the staff gathered before him for this hush-hush meeting that was planned at the end of the last one in this very same room.
The room was around thirty feet wide and forty feet long with all kinds of audio-visual equipment at one end and a roll-down screen hanging on the ceiling at the other end. At the moment, a man was scanning the room inch by inch, ceiling and walls, with a wand RF detector, every piece of equipment and furniture in it along the walls, the power outlets, light fixtures and switches.
Oliver Payne and his Finance Chief Burt Miller were the first in the room twenty minutes earlier. The two men spoke in whispers. They came a bit too soon while the man was just finishing his work of sanitizing the room before the meeting.
After Jason Philips, another contractor staff arrived. Donald Wells took the seat to the left of Henry Dawkins to complete the Finance Team on their side of the conference table and the whole group of the Project—this side of the Potomac.
Oliver Payne had two piles of paper before him on the table, one on his left, the side of the Finance Team headed by Burt Miller and on his right the side of the Border Team headed by Eli Morton. He was perusing some papers in both hands, surreptitiously glancing briefly at one or the other of the men around him. They were the dossier of the contractors submitted to him by the two Branch Chiefs after the contractors were thoroughly vetted weeks before.
He had gone over the summaries of the vetting with each Branch Chief twice, before and after the last meeting weeks ago, and all references checked out, background profiles clean. Burt Miller and Eli Morton offered to have him interview the contractors individually but he was convinced, based on the thoroughness of the dossier they presented him and discussed in a clandestine meeting in an Old Town restaurant, there was no need for it.
He just wanted to keep them fresh on his mind while interacting with the men although he realized there is a limit they can go to make sure their activities are airtight. No such thing as a hundred percent especially in the realm of government intel cat-and-mouse operation which was how they view their group now going on a year and a half since he and the two team leaders, along with several other covert group members, associates, in other agencies—FBI, State, Treasury, DEA, Justice—coalesced based on their common resolve against government corruption.
No matter how careful they are, Oliver Payne thought as he now secured the dossier in the briefcase, there are unknown risks they must be prepared to encounter. Each and every one of the two teams they had carefully assembled over months, starting with the Feds, the local contractors, the financiers both domestic and international, could be a source of a leak either accidental, through carelessness or—heaven forbid for any reason (politics, culture, money)—treachery. But his confidence on the two Branch Chiefs with whom, for many months, he discussed the endemic corruption in the White House, the Capitol hill and the Pentagon, was not easily shaken.:
Eli Morton of the Border Team, especially, whom he'd known for their years together at DEA. Of the twelve years Eli had been with DHS, working the borders between the ports of entry in Arizona and New Mexico, he considered the one term of the past Administration the most rewarding when he worked his tail off rounding up illegals, chasing those who got through even beyond the border states and turning them back across the border. So did his men, many of whom shared his views of enforcing immigration laws and preserving their way of life and the identity of being an American. He felt the same way through his prior service of five years with the DEA where he was an armed agent. He saw what was happening to the country with the flood of drugs during many of the interdiction he participated in, what it's doing to Americans, the rich in particular with money to throw for recreation, and especially the young.
He was so effective in his job as well of rounding up cartel mules and traffickers, intercepting a large cache of cocaine about to get sneaked in at the border and in a tunnel in Tijuana and Agua Prieta in Arizona. For this, a hit order then was placed on him by the cartel a year ago. Word of it got to Oliver Payne on time and he was then forced to pull Eli Morton out of the border back to DC.
With the current Administration, it was a different story at the border states. Unknown agents bearing fat envelopes stuffed with hundreds of thousands of dollars, some of whom with strong connections on the Capitol Hill, others, many others with several high-power lobbyists for the tens of thousands, millions of migrants and undocumented aliens—both longtime and newly arrived from the caravans out of central America—occasionally visited several high border officials. And Eli had seen the handouts, before he was shipped back to DC, practically out in the open, which he was sure trickled from the low-level deputy officials at the border states up to the higher-ups in the totem pole of the agency, and possibly beyond at both ends of the Pennsylvania Avenue power bastions.
The result—thousands of illegals just walk right in, week after week, month after month, many probably cartel mules, unvetted, unquestioned and free to be anywhere in the country. Immigration laws and any law of the land for that matter be damned!
He felt relieved somehow that now with the new assignment in Washington, here in Alexandria, he no longer had to see full time what was happening down at the border and his CBP office there, although his job now required regular trips back there for quality control visits in his former domain in Tucson, Arizona, and Las Cruces, New Mexico on occasions. Visits he made with the same overt capacity and authority as before he was pulled back to DC, and as an undercover DEA agent looking into the status of the war on drugs at the border.
Burt Miller of the Finance Team, twelve years with Treasury Department right next to the White House, all in that same DC headquarters building where he had learned some of the most egregious, blatant corruption in government: money—tens, hundreds of millions of them—part of appropriation funds fought out by members of the House in Congress for the social and economic development of their congressional districts spirited out to unknown offshore bank accounts in the Caribbean and Europe.
He knew that was what's going on between the White House nextdoor not just with Treasury but other agencies involved with domestic and foreign trade and commerce. But that wasn't all. As he dug deeper hacking into the internal online correspondence between staffers from the mid-level—GS-13, like he was—all the way up to one such as the Director of the Office of Investment Review and Investigation (OIRI), he realized that was just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
There is an inter-departmental arm of the federal government known by the acronym CFIUS (Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States) created during the Ford Administration. It's sort of an omnibus body whose committee chairman is the Secretary of the Treasury. Members of the committee include the head of DOJ, DHS, Commerce, DOD, State, Energy, among others. Several White House offices also participate in its activities, among them the OMB, Security, Economic and DHS councils.
The Committee was later expanded with a security arm called FIRRMA (the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act of 2018) to strengthen and modernize CFIUS in addressing national security concerns more effectively. That in addition to the national security act called FINSA (Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007) which focuses on genuine national security issues posed by mergers, acquisitions and takeovers that may result in foreign control of a U.S. business. CFIUS must review a transaction in 30 days and where it requests a decision on whether to prohibit or suspend a transaction, the President must act in 15 days.
Text reports and notices of all kinds are received and processed at staff level by the OIRI where he, Burt Miller at the time a GS-13 Banking and Finance analyst, was privy to all office internal and external correspondence. What he had snooped on in the emails and in-house transmittal between several of his fellow staffers and their handlers higher up for whom they executed wire transfers to the Caribbean and Europe horrified him, almost made him throw up.
There was a large agricultural company, Great Western Crops, that supplied a variety of produce nationwide seasonally and employed tens of thousands of Americans. A few months after the new Administration moved into the White House, a Chinese company among other foreign investors launched an offer to acquire it. He saw the ongoing correspondence during the negotiations for weeks until the offer to buy the company for 7.5 billion USD by the Chinese was approved by the White House and Congress. During the process, the CFIUS was practically a bystander as the powers that be on Pennsylvania Avenue went about their business with the Chinese, approving the sale of part of America to a foreign country.
Not long after, within months, a White House official on an executive salary of $200,000 a year was in the news for having purchased in New Jersey a $36 million estate with a 30,000 square-foot mansion, tennis courts and an indoor heated swimming pool.
Another time, one of his fellow staffers who he knew was on the take accidentally added him in the cc list of an email the staffer sent to his handlers higher up. After Burt Miller read it, he immediately forwarded it to his personal email he only used at home and deleted it in his inbox as well as in the sent-mail box.
The email was about another multi-billion-dollar transaction involving Hillsmith Farms, one of the biggest beef producers in America. Argentina, Brazil and China went after it. Again, the Chinese outbid the others. That time Treasury analyst Burt Miller read the email, the negotiation for the sale and approval by the Administration was near its conclusion. This Burt Miller ascertained with the part of the email that, he couldn't believe it, practically revealed the officials involved in the facilitation of the sale, the percentage of the take for each—percentage of 4.6 billion USD; how and where and when their share is to be wired this time not by the Treasury as in previous transactions but directly by the buyer.
At home, Burt Miller, incredulous and with anger building up inside, re-read the email. He worked some of the numbers mentally: one percent of 4.6B USD—46M each to three House members; two percent—92M each to two U.S. Senators; half percent—23M each to two Treasury officials; three percent—138M each to two White House officials.
The total take of the corruption added up to nine percent of the total cost the Chinese paid to acquire another part of America.
Burt Miller then turned away from his computer and looked out the bedroom window of his house in Falls Church, Virginia, drawing breath slowly, seething with anger. That was only two months into the second year of the previous Administration. When he narrated the whole episode of the sale transaction to the teams in one of their earlier meetings, everyone choked with contempt, but no one was more incensed than Oliver Payne.
That was seven months ago, during which time the group intensified their clandestine activities. Everyone then shared the same feelings of disgust, anger and thoughts of 'doing something about it' and doing it fast, and very carefully. They expanded their original strategies and developed what they simply called the Project expressly to bring down the powers that be in Washington and some state high officials who they knew are involved regularly in lining their pockets. Those high officials in the border states who they not only suspected but were certain are in the pockets of the drug cartels and the lobbyists for the tens, hundreds of thousands of migrants and illegal aliens breaching the southern border every single day of the year.
Henry Dawkins, a long-time associate of Burt Miller at Treasury, stayed behind a couple of years after Burt Miller, no longer able to stomach what was going on at work in his Treasury Department office, accepted an offer for a position in Oliver Payne's office in the Department of Homeland Security. In his position as a Financial Electronic Security Specialist at Treasury, Henry Dawkins was even more in a position to know the irregularities going on in the office, the fund transfers, the wires to and from places in the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. It didn't take him long to decide to move too when his friend Burt Miller, with the support of Oliver Payne, spotted a suitable position for him at DHS. The day he left Treasury, he loaded a flash drive of hundreds of emails selected and saved from the last three Administrations.
Jason Philips, one of the Fed recruits of Branch Chief Eli Morton was one of their most trusted and reliable group members. And one of the most useful for Jason's IT expertise, especially in network communications. With masters in computer science from UMD, specialized in network database and telecommunication, he could hack into sat phones, cell towers and servers that uplink from anywhere in the world. That on top of a pair of close buddies, college pals of the same expertise, he had at NSA. With the cyber sleuthing capabilities between them, they could bust into Swiss bank accounts or the offshores in the Caribbean, even the Middle East, anonymously.
Knowing Jason triggered more of Oliver Payne's distaste and hatred of the powers that be in the government. He was glad they had the man in one of the teams; so glad that he took every opportunity to personally get to know the man better.
After one of the earlier group meetings a couple of months ago, he had a chat with the man as everyone was getting up. At this time, they were on a first-name basis and he knew just about everything of his academic, work and professional background. Of his current situations—family, relationships, personal activities—Oliver Payne knew only about the loss of his wife three years before, how it affected him deeply he had to take a three-week period off work for his sorrow. The rest unraveled through the few minutes of the chat.
“She taught middle school in Arlington, Virginia,” he said of his late wife Carolyn. “She was also a board member of the Bread & Wine Mission, a food bank organization based in Alexandria.”
“I heard about that from Eli,”Oliver said.
“The organization delivers two thousand meals a week in areas of Arlington, Fairfax, Alexandria and Prince William counties.”
“And you do some volunteering yourself delivering, so Eli said.”
“Eli learned from one of my drops, an elderly woman—one Mrs. Claire Morton who happened to be his aunt. It came up during one of my quick chats with her, encouraged by the food bank—keep them company for a quick couple minutes, especially the disabled and the shut-ins.”
Oliver shifted a bit in his seat, affected.
“All gone,” Jason said speaking of his parents next when Oliver asked. “My Dad first. Killed in a Taliban attack on a command outpost in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan, October 2009. He was full bird Army, 4th Infantry Division. Planned to retire the following year.”
Oliver changed position in his chair once more, this time feeling humbled.
“Sorry to hear that,” he said and, quickly, his own time with the Army came to mind: Desert Storm, 1st Infantry Division, February1991, an O-4 leader (Major) commanding a Company of assault troops rounding up hundreds of surrendered Iraqi troops. But he did not relate this to Jason in that he came out of his war alive.
“Mom passed too, four years later,” Jason went on. ”She couldn't get over losing Dad. They had plans to move to West Florida or Arizona when he retires. Heart problem since her younger years, and chronic asthma.”
The chat ended with Jason taking a hand Oliver held out in a gesture of condolence for what his family went through, altogether, in the service of the country. Oliver spent a prolonged moment after he was left alone. What he heard from Jason reminded him of another member of the group who went through a similar hardship, sparking more of his loathing of the government, especially the current Administration.
The year before they were deployed to the Middle East, Henry Dawkins and Lisa Hart got engaged. They met during a joint military seminar in Fort Myer, Arlington, Virginia, dated for weeks while in training for their separate deployment.
April 2004, Henry Dawkins, a thirty-one-year-old Marine Lieutenant was in a Supercobra attack helicopter, one of several, on a mission to rescue squads of Army soldiers trapped behind enemy lines by Iraqi insurgents in the city of Fallujah, Iraq. Many were wounded, some already KIAs. One of the wounded was a female officer, Lt. Lisa Hart. She was badly wounded and needed medical attention fast. Minutes after arriving, the Marine air assault repulsed the enemy. The soldiers were quickly loaded in the choppers and were airborne in no time. Henry Dawkins could hardly contain himself at seeing Lt. Hart in her condition. He held her in his arms upon getting her on board as they lifted off the battlefield. She had lost a lot of blood and was partly conscious. She tried to speak to him but he held his hand gently on her lips to signal her to stay calm, preserve her strength.
She died in his arms.
Oliver Payne now glanced first at Henry Dawkins of the finance team to his left at the table and Jason Philips of the border team to his right. He then sucked air quietly to contain a surge of revulsion at the thought of the corrupt politicians and law enforcement in government, many of whom never had to dodge a bullet or taken one in a battlefield, now sitting in positions of power. And the first thing they do as soon as they take office is line their pockets and sell the country even to America's enemies.
Motherfuckers!
Somebody's gotta do something. He panned the group at the table surreptitiously and thought to himself—we will!