“Unless the false evidence was so well documented that he knew he couldn’t fight against it, or worse, maybe he even believed it.”
“I’m not following you.”
“You know, something like ‘Here is a picture of you with this person when you were drunk. You just don’t remember doing this terrible thing with them because you were so drunk.’ Most people believe visual evidence, even if it contradicts their beliefs. It’s so easy to fake photographs these days. It’s very difficult to trust anything digital.”
“I agree. Faked evidence is a possibility. But I still believe we’re talking about a government agency or government contractor. But you know government people. They all talk. So if the word never got out about this, then it must have been a very small operation.”
“Rogue perhaps?”
“Not authorized, for sure. At least, not legally.”
“Where does that leave us?” Ian asked.
“A few people who stood to most benefit from a single, outrageous decision utilized one or a few highly capable research and/or surveillance people to find or create blackmail data on Justice Tanner. So at least the numbers of actual participants seems to be shrinking. But the number of candidates is still huge, counting just high-ranking politicians and Wall Street CEOs. Let’s try two tacks. First, can you put together some sort of search query about outrageous decisions?”
“That’s a rather indefinable and unquantifiable search parameter, don’t you think?”
“We can attack it in two ways. First, we can tackle this from a political angle. We can look at all committee and subcommittee hearings, selecting out those focused on big-budget items like defense or regulations that affect big financial institutions.”
“I am a stranger in a strange land, but I believe there are many such committees and subcommittees in your Congress.”
“Okay, I’ll make it easy on you. The Ways and Means Committees in both the House and Senate are responsible for the tax laws. They also happen to be the most powerful and coveted of all committee appointments. Those are the two biggest fish to catch as far as lobbyists are concerned. Finance, Banking, Commerce, Energy, and Defense would be the other big ones—all of their subcommittees, too. Those committee votes are all legal documents that are in the public domain and easily pulled down. In the case of legal decisions, limit the pool to federal appellate and Supreme Court decisions. And let’s limit our search to just the last three years.”
“Just?” Ian laughed.
“The second way to attack this is to define ‘outrageous decisions’ as those that have resonated strongly with the attentive public. So we’ll conduct high-frequency word searches limited to a distinct vocabulary—words like ‘inexplicable,’ ‘indefensible,’ et cetera—and look for those on the top twenty political, financial, and military blogs, Twitter feeds, and what have you, to see what decisions have most outraged the attentive public that uses those sites.”
“We are still dealing with tens of thousands of decisions.”
“Not really. Remember, we’re only looking for the most outrageous. The real outliers. I think we’re talking hundreds, or maybe just dozens, of such extremely controversial votes. Of course, if we don’t come up with anything, we can widen the search. Unfortunately, federal bureaucracies write thousands of administrative laws every year that are every bit as binding as any piece of congressional legislation. But let’s not go there yet.”
“Thank heavens.”
“So the idea is this. If we can find the most outrageous political decisions and then find out which person or persons most benefitted from most of those decisions, I think we’ll have a pretty good pool of suspects to look into.”
“Most benefitted?”
“Let’s quantify that, and let’s just focus on money for now. Let’s set a figure of ten million dollars. If someone didn’t profit at least ten million, don’t keep them in our pool. The kind of hostile surveillance and research operations we’re theorizing about would cost a lot of money. Anything less than ten million is chump change in Washington.”
“I should think that any politician that suddenly increased their net worth by ten million dollars in a few years would make headlines.”
“You’d be surprised. There are more millionaires in Congress than nonmillionaires these days. And some of them are worth far, far more. But I take your point. We’re probably talking about corporations, private trusts, hedge funds. But just in case a political person is behind this, we should target those financial institutions with C-level managers married to the members of committees or courts we talked about.”
“Good thing I don’t have a private life,” Ian said.
“I’m terribly sorry. I know I’m asking a lot, but whoever drove Tanner to kill himself is now out for me. And if they can take out a Supreme Court justice and possibly a former U.S. president, I have to believe they are a threat to other members of the government, and maybe not just this government.”
“Quite right. It is an honor and a privilege to work with you on this. I really wasn’t whinging, I promise.”
“Thank you.”
They worked out the specifics in the arcane and mysterious language of computer programmers, then divided up the responsibilities. Myers would work from the safety of Pearce’s cabin and Ian would do his part from Pearce Systems headquarters, so long as Troy didn’t require his services. Myers agreed, secretly hoping that Pearce wouldn’t need Ian’s assistance, because if he did, that meant Troy was in trouble and she was in no position to do anything about it, and that infuriated her.
27
The village of Anou
Kidal Region, Northeastern Mali
7 May
I don’t understand. Why didn’t you just haul out of here?”
“We’re out of fuel. We wouldn’t get twenty kilometers,” Mossa said.
“You should’ve thought about that before you—”
“You arrogant bastard. What do you know about our situation?” Cella’s eyes were blue coals.
“We planned on refueling here, but the Ganda Koy drained the tanks into the sand,” Mike said. “So we’re stuck.”
“With the army on the way?” Pearce said. “You guys aren’t stuck. You’re fucked.”
“Save my daughter. Please,” Cella said.
Pearce ran his fingers through his long hair, thinking. He hated being lied to. Hated being in the middle of another war on a piece of ground that wasn’t worth pissing on. Hated the whole situation. But it is what it is, he finally concluded.
“All right, fine. We’ll take the girl,” Pearce said.
Mossa nodded his thanks.
“We can crowd a dozen of your men on the plane,” he added.
“No. Our fight is here. And even if we came with you, the minute we landed in Niger we would be arrested. Better to die as free men than live as slaves in a Nigerien salt mine.”
“Then let’s quit jawboning and roll,” Pearce said.
“Thank you,” Cella said, her eyes brimming with tears. “I’ll get her now.”
Pearce tapped his comms. “Judy, we’re on the way. ETA in ten. Fire up the engines.”
Pearce drove and Mike stood in the pickup bed, manning the Russian PK machine gun. Early wore his shemagh around his face, Tuareg style, and a pair of Ray-Bans against the choking sand billowing up around him. His personal weapon was an FN SCAR-H CQC, the short-barreled version of the 7.62mm Special Forces Automatic Rifle. Early loved it because it was short, light, deadly accurate, easy to strip and clean, and fired the same big-caliber ammo handy as the ubiquitous AK-47, so common in Africa.