DREAM GATE II...GRABBING TIME...

Bitcoin...what is it? Is cryptocurrency an investment or a means by which money-laundering and hidden corporate profits and triple entry accounting can become global monetary control?

Olivia Jamieson's dreams have returned.  But the thread of clues for her husband, US Secret Service Agent, Peter Finley points well beyond his investigation of a small Latvian bank...

CHAPTER…1

 “Whoa, Peter you’re sure Olivia named a bank in Latvia?”

Secret Service Agent, Peter Finley shook his head. “My wife didn’t name the bank she only named the country of the bank’s location.  Apparently Olivia has had the same dream three times in a row.”

“And it was just last night when your wife asked if you had a new assignment?”

Peter nodded watching his boss, Assistant Deputy Director Dale Inger stare at the floor reflective.

The two men stood between a blacked out waist high window and a round table flanked by ten chairs. They were the only people in the small fourth floor conference room in a DC building with no designated mailing address.

The crowded top three office floors, that coordinated over one hundred field offices around the country was listed simply as, Service-Consulting Inc on the lobby directory between one pair of double elevators.

Both men were fit, medium build and medium height, with thick closely cropped hair. However, Inger’s dark brown hair had begun to turn grey from his temples to just above his ears. Finley’s sandy-brown hair hinted that it had been blonde as a young boy.

“When exactly did she start experiencing this new sequence of dreams? We only confirmed the identity of our target bank the first week of March.” The A.D. Director looked at Peter. 

Agent Finley didn’t hesitate. “The first dream was last Friday night, late. Olivia told me that after she finished feeding Ian, she fell asleep for a few minutes in the nursing chair. The second time was on Saturday about mid morning. After she put Ian down for a nap she went to rest too. The third dream was later that afternoon when she took another short nap.”

The A.D. Director nodded then his expression changed from concern to purpose. “Well - your remarkable wife picked up on the fact that you do have a new assignment. A case that just got even more complicated as of yesterday.”

“Part of your new assignment is to work closely with two new agents who were recently civilians. We recruited then trained both men while leaving them in their high ranking executive positions still working at their original companies. The first man is Murray Schultz, with Goldman Sachs, who contacted the SEC a year ago as a whistle blower.”

“The second man is Lee Cho, with Citi-Group and he was recruited by an agent in the Treasury Department. Both Schultz and Cho manage staff trading in the cryptocurrency divisions of their respective companies. And, it was the heavy volume of transactions in the departments they directed that were quietly investigated by the SEC and Treasury.”

After a full minute Dale left the window wall to retrieve a memory-stick from his locked briefcase. He extended his arm handing the compact technology to Finley. “As you know from the briefing Dr. Mesitewati shared with you last October - since 2007 a specific sum of the Secret Service budget supported her Dream-Gate research too.”

“So, besides funding new technology to track US counterfeit currency and counterfeiting sources as well as other financial crimes like identity theft and network intrusions – the Secret Service looked for other investigating tool advantages.”

“However, in the ten months since you met then married Olivia, her abilities have taken a research leap well beyond all of the testing or analysis in Rhonda Mesitewati’s ten years of dream study.”

“And the fact that Olivia Jamieson became your wife then turned out to be a gutsy, resourceful individual in her own right still blows my mind.”

Peter grinned looking directly at his supervisor. “You’re blown away? Ten months ago I was obliviously single and working undercover as a homicide detective in a Colorado college community.”

“Since then I married, became a father and put a major organized Israeli syndicate out of business – thanks in large part to the woman who became my wife. I’m in awe every single day by how all of this came about.”

Inger smiled. “Good, because the background information on that,” he pointed to the memory stick Peter held, “was the topic of a major discussion yesterday at the White House.”

“I was there with Director McGregor and Deputy Director Nevin making an appearance before the Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Commerce, Homeland Security, National Intelligence and the Vice President.”

“You’re new assignment is to link with Interpol and MI-6 and their undercover operatives in a twofold operation.  Much of the world’s dirty money seems to have found a laundering-home in an obscure - Latvian bank.”

Involuntarily Peter looked down at the miniaturized technology in the palm of his hand. “So Olivia’s dreams may be pointing again toward something else I’m investigating?”

Dale nodded and picked up his briefcase. “Looks that way. When you’ve finished going through everything documented on that stick–we can talk further later today or first thing tomorrow morning. By early this Friday, we need to be able to meet Tony Nevin with a plan that he can sell to Director McGregor and the White House.”

“However, with two undercover corporate executives added to this case there’s more to your assignment and those additional details are also on that thumb-drive.”

“As usual, there’s no pressure. You have the rest of today, tomorrow and Thursday.” He waved his free arm in a wide arc then opened the door and headed toward his office.

Alone, Peter thought of Olivia, their first meeting and their immediate attraction in the midst of an investigation into an eighty year old murder then their intense relationship and rushed wedding.He shook his head still amazed at how so many significant changes had happened in only a few madcap months. Peter was amazed and grateful.

Even though it had been the direct mandate of his job as a Secret Service Agent working undercover, Peter still felt regret for his necessary deception during the early weeks after they met. Fortunately both Olivia and her logical father had appreciated his need for pretext. They both understood the responsibilities of a US Secret Service agent went beyond protecting visiting dignitaries and American heads of state.

Not as well-known was the original mandate of the US Secret Service. The department had been formed specifically to track fiscal counterfeiting and in 1865 there was plenty of forged paper. With the Union and the Confederacy splitting the fledgling American Republic as well as French and Spanish interests still in the mix - for the next four decades monitoring hundreds of private banks and traveling currency exchanges - was like grasping sand

After new silver certificates were issued in 1923 in denominations of one, five and ten it seemed that anyone with a printing press, good ink and the right paper certainly tried. However, they still couldn’t stay ahead of the Secret Service for long. With a new century - everything changed again after banking embraced computers and then the worldwide-web.

 

With trillions of transactions across communities and states and countries executed each hour, the Secret Service Department’s task of safeguarding America’s economic and currency system from financial corruption went from grasping sand to grasping water. 

Splitting the atom wasn’t as much of a boon to the daily life of the average global citizen as it was for faster and faster computers that began to complete more and more banking transactions by slitting the second. But on this day 154 years after his predecessors, Agent Peter Finley was no longer chasing bogus paper notes in local or even mass circulation. What Peter faced was another dubious use of 21^st Century technology that had created a tender even darker than counterfeiting, far more dangerous and far more intangible. 

Computer technology had created a value illusion in - cryptocurrency. And its creative engineer was even more of an enigma.

What little the FBI had on the phantom Satoshi Nakamoto pointed more and more in the direction of a persona as artificial as the cyber-token’s troublesome worth.

The more Peter read and reread the background report the more he was convinced Satoshi Nakamoto was not one entity, but one unit–well organized and well connected. That meant that global money laundering was well organized and well connected. 

Then what he thought next gave him a knot in his gut…

Peter’s personal cell phone rang and the gentle face of his cherished wife appeared on his screen. “Why are you interrupting me at work young lady?” 

He teased her grateful Olivia’s call had brought his mind back from the brink of seeing only calamity. “I’m busy trying to save-the-world, here.”

Olivia ignored his remark. “Ian smiled, finely. I’m sure of it. He smiled at me just now while I was changing his diaper.”

Then Peter wondered, ‘how can such joy exist in parallel to such distress?’ And he abruptly found himself extremely protective of a life built on bliss. “Well I’d smile too if you were changing my diaper.”

Olivia laughed shaking her head at her end of the conversation. “Mr. Finley, you’re somebody’s father.”

“I’m also somebody’s husband - Mrs. Finley.”

“Sick, really sick. I’ll let you return to saving the world.”

Keeping his world safe was uppermost in Peter’s mind after he said goodbye to his wife of eight months.

Before Olivia and his son Ian, Peter’s view of the world had been fairly abstract with only his grandparents, aunt, uncle and three cousins as a factor. Now he truly wanted a world with greater weakened corruption for his family and everyone elses.

Once again he read the report from an Interpol field agent, dated March 5^th. Aside from the obvious the details were alarming. An obscure, below the radar bank in the former Soviet State of Latvia had become a murky clearinghouse for billions of US dollars and British Pounds by way of dozens of only recently identified shell companies. 

Considering the currency sources and vast amounts involved–the surprise discovery had been immediately designated a High Priority Threat to National Security.

Countries with economies supposedly stalled by global sanctions had managed to move money through numbered companies and shadow shell corporations, detouring around regulatory restrictions by all NATO Member countries.

Yet, money laundering was only one challenge posed by the Latvian bank - there was another entity exploiting its permissive standards. And for that reason Peter agreed with the caution of his Interpol and MI6 counterparts. If the Latvian bank was exposed and Latvia sanctioned too that would prematurely alert the very players they needed to identify then thwart. Which also meant with their added layer of the inserted broker and bank executives that French, British, Australian and Canadian governments certainly weren’t the only entities using inside people - so might the criminals. 

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