"All right Mama. As soon as we get home, I'll check the sensor logs for the site and see what data we have, if any. But I'll bet that we have quite a bit."
"Why do you say that Janie? Any thief good enough to get past your security long enough to steal what they did would surely disable your sensors first."
Jane gave me one of her rather fiendish chuckles. She sorta scares me sometimes.
"I'm sure that they did. I HOPE that they did. That way they probably didn't take the time to search for the ones that weren't on the blueprints, or at least not all of them."
(The darn building inspectors insist that anything electrical has to have blueprints and a physical inspection to make sure that it's safe. As if any of them could possibly understand what I'm installing. I'd flip my hair here and make some sort of snobbish sniffing noise, but, since you couldn't see or hear it, I won't bother.
It's all very silly and stupid. Any thief worth her fee would pull the blueprints for the security system before they even thought about the actual operation. I mean, who'd be stupid enough to give the thief what they need to know to buypass your system, right?
As soon as we got home I headed toward my workshop. Well, at least I tried to.)
"Jane, hold on a sec. Come here and sit down, we need to talk."
(It's pretty rare when Mama scares me, but the absolutely flat, expressionless tone she used was almost terrifying, much more so than if she was yelling at me, and I had no idea what I'd done wrong.)
"I've been letting this slide. I figured that we could put it off another week or so, but given what just happened, it's time, possibly past time. It's about your security precautions and how you handle 'retrieving' your clients' funds. You've forgotten something terribly important.
"You said that you're aware of who some of these people must be working for, but that since you totally drain their accounts and have the cops after them, they have no time to go after you. Well, you're right and you're wrong. And that's the problem.
"You're still thinking a lot like that four-year-old who snuck away from her parents. While it's true that most of the people you 'sting' aren't able to come after you, that doesn't mean none of them are. Some of these kinds of people have a couple million dollars in cash lying around their homes. Not to mention jewelry or drugs that they can sell quickly.
"And then there's the most scary thing you forgot. Your operations have been all over the world. Some of these people, even if they can't come after you themselves, work for large organizations that can. You've hurt them where it hurts them the most, in their wallets. For that, they'll come after you until they find you and you're dead."
As expected Jane went as white as a sheet. What I didn't expect was for her to run to the phone and start to dial a rather long number.
"Jane, STOP! Put down the phone."
She hesitated and started to start pushing buttons again, albeit much more slowly.
By then I'd reached her and taken the phone from her.
"Give it back Mama, I have to protect them!" she wailed.
"Protect who honey?"
"My hackers, I have to warn them. I just need to make one call, and it's only two words that I need to tell them."
"ONE call, and just two words? Well, l'll let that go for a moment. Anyway, that's exactly what THEY want you to do."
"What are you talking about Mama? That doesn't make any sense at all."
"It makes a lot of sense, at least if you have some experience. Didn't I warn you just a minute ago that you need to think things through? They're probably counting on some sort of knee-jerk reaction like this.
"If the people in your network start acting like something is wrong, the bad people are going to find out, sooner or later, that this little theft of theirs has affected the one they're after. Right now they don't even know how many of us there are.
"Oh sure, only an idiot wouldn't know that there's some sort of organization opposing them, but it could just be another crime syndicate trying to claim their turf for all they know. That's why they stole two things at once. At the very least, they probably know that there are two kinds of operatives working against them.
"Since no other syndicate is likely to give a rat's ass about thefts like these, it's obviously a fishing expedition to see what kind of response they get.
"If we respond to this theft openly, they'll know that it's a different sort of organization attacking them -- and they have to see it as an attack by now.
"Now, setting that aside for a bit, what's this about just ONE call and two words.
"What exactly did you just try to do?"
"It's simple Mama. All I had to do was say: 'Defcon Worse', and everything would be taken care of."
"Defcon Worse? What the heck kind of warning is that?"
Jane gave me a sad little smile and said, "Mama, for someone who reads as much as you do, I can't believe that you don't read Gini Koch. You know, 'Touched by an Alien"? That's where the phrase comes from. It means that the situation is way beyond dangerous."
"Great, my daughter's using catch-phrases from Sci-Fi novels now. Where did I go wrong?" I did a great job of moaning and a lovely pantomime of pulling my hair out by the roots. (Actually I think it was kinda cool, but, hey, parents need to squash egos now and then -- and she had it coming, this time.)
"So what would have happened if I'd let you make the call?"
"Within the next 18 hours every one of my people would be in safe houses somewhere. They've all been trained in capture avoidance, so they'd just disappear in crowds in some mall or transit station or airport. Someplace they go all the time, so it wouldn't look suspicious when they went there. They'd take nothing more than a laptop with them. Before they left, they'd set up a total 35x overwrite of their hard drives with random nonsense. No flash drives left around, no nothing."
"Safe houses. Capture avoidance. Right. There's no way on God's Earth that you managed to set that up by yourself.
"Jane Alicia Knight! Who are you working for?"
"Ah, well, Mama...you see...ah...."
"Cut the crap!" Stern face back on. "Give!"
She slumped in the chair, the very picture of abject defeat. "OK, guess that you really do need to know, don't you? The arrangements were made by Interpol. They're in 190 countries you see, so they, uh, handled the training."
"Interpol?" I didn't have to fake it this time, I just collapsed back on the couch and glared at her.
Jane shifted rather nervously and tried her favorite little girl grin on me. Didn't work this time.
"All right Jane, more information needed. Get started."
She sighed, then gave in, "Yes Mama. You see, I knew when I was setting up my network that there was no way I could truly do a decent background check on everyone I recruited, and I was at a total loss as to what to do. And I needed to know who the people were behind the chat handles. Obviously I couldn't just blindly trust some random hackers that I'd found on the net."
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"OK, you got that part right at least;" I muttered.
"Mama, you remember Mr. Forsythe don't you?"
"Oh god, another one of your side trips. Are you trying to distract me?" Putting on an even more stern face here.
"Oh no, not at all, at least not this time. You do remember him, don't you?"
"Older gentleman, one of your first installations. You're still friends with his granddaughter Aleena, right?"
"You never forget anything involving people, do you Mama? Anyway, I was talking to him when I was setting things up, and he made some suggestions."
"What? You talked about setting up your network with some random stranger!? After what I taught you about security?" Close to a screech that time. I didn't know I had it in me.
"Calm down Mama. It was and is safe."
"Oh, and what made a 15-year-old girl so sure that it was safe? Just because he was a nice old man who didn't try to flirt with you?" Sarcasm doesn't really become me, but I really didn't care right about now.
"No Mama, not at all. It's because he's with the FBI. Or he was anyway. He was their liaison with the other security agencies -- not that they talked much to each other back when he was still an active agent, but still...
"And his wife Shelley? You remember her too don't you Mama? Makes a scrumptious pound cake? Anyway, she was in the Air Force back when she was young. She was in their Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Agency.
"All three of us put our heads together and they helped me get started."
My turn to turn white and fall back on the couch, again. I didn't even realize that I'd gotten back up on my feet. Damn, payback really IS a bitch. Not to mention that I heard the couch creaking from all the abuse of the past few minutes.
"Janie, are you telling me that you're working with Interpol, the FBI, and Air Force Intelligence?"
"Yes Mama, that's all. Well, uh...and..." (she was barely whispering now) "and Homeland Security. But that's all, I swear!"
I think I just about passed out. Can't be sure, but everything went sort of gray for a while.
"Some of the people we went after were sorta on the Interpol most-wanted list. While we were snooping around after our client's money, we'd come across other names and stuff, so we gave all the information to Interpol."
Jane became rather impassioned at that point. She took a really deep breath and then plowed ahead.
"They hardly have any people or money, only about 700 people, and their budget for the whole world is only about 90 million dollars a year, and their work is so important, and they only go after the worst criminals...people enslaving children, pirates, drug lords, those kind of folks, so we sorta gave them most of the extra money we took from those people and it's really helping them, and we just had to do it to save all those children, and... " She crumpled onto her side, gasping, with tears pouring off her face.
(It's hard to stay conscious when you get that much out on a single breath of air.)
"Right, of course. Naturally. So, your operation isn't just worldwide, but you're going after the most dangerous criminals that exist. How much are you stealing from them every year? Just give me a ball park figure hun.
"While you're thinking about that, I think I'll just go into lockdown mode here, get the shutters closed, activate the video console, stuff like that. Just as a precaution you understand. It's not like I really think that there could be a problem."
Well, of course I thought there was a problem. I was so worried that I almost wet myself. Iron-willed self-control is a wonderful thing, and I wish I had it.
I walked into the kitchen, opened the panel that looked like a circuit breaker box, and flipped the bottom switch. Shutters swung out over all the windows. They looked like ordinary louvered shutters, but nothing short of an armor piercing round would get through. A quick check of the video displays didn't show anything abnormal, but I turned on the motion sensors anyway.
Back to the living room, sat down facing Jane and said, "Out with it."
"Well, as best I can figure in my head it's about $150 million a year. We manage to get about 50 million distributed to various agencies that Interpol is supporting in the poorer nations, about 40 million to Interpol itself, and the rest goes to the FBI and Homeland Security for projects that they want to keep off-budget. Naturally the money from any given hit is never sent back right away to the country where the people we, ah, steal it from live, so we don't rouse any suspicions locally."
I snorted. Jane's 'figuring in her head' is as good as any calculator on Earth.
"So, all together, counting your, shall we say, 'legitimate thefts' the total over the past 5 years is something getting up close to three quarters of a billion dollars?"
"Yes Mama, that's right."
"Oy vey..."
"And you never said a word to me till this week? After all I've taught you about security and analyzing risk to yourself and those around you?"
She sniveled, and I think it was genuine this time. "I couldn't Mama, they told me I couldn't tell you a thing cause you weren't part of the team."
Jane looked up at me with a bright smile and said, "But you are now Mama. I can tell you anything!"
I felt something cold crawling up my spine when she said that, but I had to ask, "I'm part of the team now? And why is that honey?"
"Mama, please bear with me a bit, I'm not trying to avoid answering, but it's going to sound like it, so please?"
"OK honey. I'll sit quietly. Well, as much as I can, and I'll keep quiet as long as I can."
"Thank you Mama." I got a real smile from her that time. I swear that she could stun an angel with her smiles.
"I'm sure that you remember when we had to leave Fresno because I let it slip that we weren't really related, and Child Welfare was going to come after us?"
I confined myself to a nod and clenched my teeth together. This listening without talking comes sorta hard to me.
"Well, you asked me where I wanted to go and I said to the Pacific Northwest, right?
Another tight nod.
"Actually that wasn't my idea. One of the foreseers for the FBI saw that if we went this way it would work out better than if we went somewhere else."
I still had my teeth clenched together so it's a wonder that Jane could understand me when I snarled out: "FBI, foreseers..."
When Jane saw my face, she started talking faster.
"After I met Mr. Forsythe he eventually figured out who we were and he told me that the FBI had been watching you even before you got those phony Social Security IDs. He said that nobody has ever managed to even come close to getting into their computer records and create a false one that could really pass muster.
"What they've done is set up a fake network that looks like the real one, complete with what looks like a back door left open by the people who installed the system. That's the one that the forgers have access to.
"It gives the FBI and Homeland Security the names of people to watch for. It's been running for years.
"They'd finished checking you out, and that means that they'd found out about me too. They were about to arrest you and put me in foster care when you did something that stopped them cold."
Speaking of cold, I'd broken out in a cold sweat when she mentioned the fake computer network, and I was shaking when she got to the part about arresting and foster care.
Jane continued like nothing had happened. Probably because she was looking down at her clenched hands and her now bloodless fingers instead of at me.
"It seems that they'd sent an agent to a warehouse to retrieve a package that had been stolen. Somehow they'd gotten their signals crossed and didn't know that you'd been sent after it too."
She nodded minutely at me.
"Yes Mama, your client that day was an undercover agent, but he didn't know about your other activities."
"Anyway, as their regular agent was creeping around the rafters of the warehouse, he saw a girl in what he called a 'sneaksuit' very quietly backing up into a security guard about the size of a wall."
"Does that sound familiar Mama?"
I nodded.
"Well, anyway, the guard grabbed said girl and turned her around. Said girl looked up and the guard for a moment and then something very unusual occurred.
Said girl shrugged off the guard's hand, backed up a bit, and then ran like crazy. After a few seconds the guard sorta shook himself and then walked away like nothing had happened.
"Right after that their orders changed from 'arrest' to 'watch with great interest'. They've been watching you, and now us, since a year before we moved to Fresno. In fact, I didn't screw up about us not being related, it was an FBI agent who told them...anonymously of course."
Right about then, my mouth was hanging open. For about the first time in my life I didn't know what to say.
Jane giggled. "Now I know what they mean when they say that someone looks like a poleaxed steer.
"So, moving right along Mama, you asked why I could tell you anything now.
"Do you remember when I kept looking in my purse on the way up to the camp site?"
"Geez, how could I forget? I thought I was gonna go nuts from all that clicking!"
"I'm sorry Mama, but, well, it wasn't just the business cards I was looking at, it was these too." She handed me a small leather case, just the right side for an ID badge.
I opened it and found myself staring back at me. It seems that I was now also working for the government and....
"JANE ALISIA KNIGHT, you said you'd told me about everything! What the hell is with this CIA ID!?"
A tiny voice came out of the little, shrunken thing on the couch that was my daughter trying vainly to hide in plain sight. "Oops. I forgot that one?"
"But why the CIA? You said that your contacts were with the FBI and Homeland Security."
"Well, it does make sense doesn't it? Everyone knows about the FBI and Homeland Security. They're around all the time, and nobody is surprised when they see one of their employees. I can certainly make myself fit the public perception of an open, well-meaning, fairly efficient, but occasionally bumbling federal employee."
"The CIA, on the other hand, is the super-secret, oh so sneaky, underhanded, get things done no matter what kind of agency. If it involves being sneaky in the world of human beings as opposed to the info world, the CIA handles it."
"So that's why you're officially a Special Agent with the Internal Affairs Division. I got you badge number 888 too! That's considered very, very lucky in Asia you know. Well anyway, if someone discovers that you're working with Internal Affairs, they'll think that you don't have anything to do with ongoing operations in the outside world, which of course will be exactly what you want them to believe."
"Uh huh, right, of course, so you're saying that my mindset fits more with the CIA. I'm just the short, dark, sneaky, flat-chested, mole of a person who lurks in the darkness and..." Getting really down and almost weepy here.
About then Jane came and sat beside me and gave me a big hug, inviting me back into her world.