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...
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 21st 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 5th. 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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