Chapter 3
1:35 PM CEST Brussels - The Waldger Group Corporate Headquarters, David Matthews’ Office
David Matthews III sat in his office surfing the web and various news media services. For a Monday, not much was happening of any consequence, anywhere.
David’s job, working for The Waldger Group, was to find interesting things that were occurring that may or may not affect world stability. The company he worked for was not a recognized government, but a group of people who, for the most part, acted like a government. They were not elected, but acted very much as if they were.
The Waldger Group had far reaches into every country of the world. They held most of the media outlets, movie studios, press, and many of the world’s largest corporations, banks, and natural resources within their clutches. Many governments and their leaders were also answering to The Waldger Group in many circumstances. The Waldger Group itself was well known, but held no accountability, except to itself.
David and his staff browsed the world’s information services to make sure that nothing that could affect them slipped through. His staff consisted of over three thousand people working around the clock on twenty-four hour shifts, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Most of his staff spoke and read at least three languages each and kept their pulse on every breaking news story and event worldwide. Information was key and the quicker they got the information the faster The Waldger Group could affect the situation.
Since David could remember, he had always been a geek. He acted like one and stereotypically looked like one. He was only five feet seven inches tall, skinny, with unruly brown hair, black eyes and wore dark- rimmed glasses. He realized early on that knowledge was the real power, not being a jock.
David graduated from MIT at the top of his class in the late 70’s and was immediately recruited by the U.S. Secret Service. After twenty years of service to the government, he left the caverns of Washington, D.C. and then came in as an outsider to head the information gathering service of The Waldger Group. Over the years, with the advent of the Internet, he was able to find out and stop many a problem, person, or persons who might destabilize their investments and power.
Located in Brussels, Belgium on the hundred and twenty acre campus, which was Waldger’s Worldwide Corporate Headquarters, David’s group kept a constant vigil on what was happening worldwide. When something interesting came up, they started monitoring it. Every resource was used: from the news media, internet blogs, and even underworld connections.
They had several Sequoia, a20 petaFLOP/s (quadrillion floating operations per second) system based on Blue Gene technology supercomputer running programs which would, based on key words and instances, bring data to one of the workstations for scrutiny by one of his staff. If someone were to enter into a blog or send an email that said, “I hate the President,” the software would read and pick up that information, no matter whose internet service was used, and then relay it to his servers. The system would then display not only the comment, but also the entire blog. It would then list every person on that blog, including IP address, as well as their personal information; address, affiliations, education, and any other information that was available.
David’s systems also had the ability to monitor cell phone calls, hard line telephone and radio communications. It was based on certain key words and even voice stress.
Once received, data would be processed into a category or categories, and then sent to an analyst. The analyst would check to see if there was any threat or if it was just frivolous. If it seemed relevant, then the information was pushed up another level until either it was confirmed to be a threat or not. If the information was thought to be an issue of concern, then David would get it. David’s job was to take whatever steps necessary to protect The Waldger Group.
David had many resources available to him to protect The Group. One call from him and a law enforcement agency from just about any country in the world would be knocking on the door of any suspected attempt to undermine The Waldger Group, its leaders and or its assets.
This system had been used by several governments and still was used on a contract basis, especially after the terrorist attacks on the United States and England after 911. It was also used to track rogue governments. The Group became aware of their plans long before a group, a government, or a terrorist cell put them into action.
If you were not born in a cave and still lived here on earth, you were in their system, somewhere.
David had considerable interest in only one story today – the lottery winner – who against all odds had won two national lotteries in the United States. He knew that the odds in winning both lotteries, back to back, with the same numbers, were absolute zero. He knew that Jack South would be on the Morning Headlines today. He was hoping that the questions being asked of Jack by the anchor, Brad Williams would shed some light on how he pulled it off.
David also knew that Jack had retained a criminal defense firm and a public relations firm to the tune of thirty-five million dollars. That made no sense unless Jack really needed to have a criminal defense team for future use. He thought that possibly, as far reaching as it may seem, Jack South had figured out a way to defraud the lottery and had retained the attorney and the PR firm in order to keep the winnings.
However, through their sources, he knew that the lottery had not been tampered with, and that no one, not even Jack, was any closer to the lottery mechanisms for the drawing, than buying a ticket from a convenience store. He knew that it was not likely that Jack ripped off the lottery systems. Therefore, David was still trying to figure out why Jack needed a defense lawyer and public relations firm.
His superiors had locked onto this event and he was instructed to use whatever means to figure this person out. David then contacted The Network’s President, Joe Biggman, whom they controlled, and made it clear to him that it was important for his anchor, Brad Williams, to get to the bottom of this Jack issue. Mr. Biggman said they had a contract with Jack listing specific questions. David did not care, but instructed Mr. Biggman to have Mr. Williams get the truth. David then assured him that if there were a legal problem, the Waldger Group would take care of it.
David also had others monitoring every step Jack had made for the past few weeks. Whom he had meetings with and whom he was talking too. David also knew that Jack had moved his family out of the country for safekeeping and put a considerable amount of money for them in offshore accounts. However, David knew where Jack’s family was and was monitoring that situation.
There was one thing that haunted David, and that was Jack’s two advisors, friends, or accomplices, Gabriel Massinger and Ariel Roberts. For some reason, according to his resources, these people did not exist anywhere on any database. They had lifted fingerprints from glasses left after a meeting between them and Jack. They also took unauthorized high-resolution pictures of them. They ran the prints and pictures through almost every major database in the world, but to no avail. They just did not exist. There was no address, no occupation, not one piece of information was uncovered over the past few weeks. They had wracked their brains, and exhausted their resources and had come up empty.
As far as Jack South’s background went, he was checkered, at best. Prior to winning the two lotteries, he was pretty well broke and did not have a current job. Jack also had a questionable criminal record going back to his teenage years, but not much as an adult other than a couple of traffic tickets. Jack, it seemed, was a happy go lucky person overall, with five kids spanning two generations. He had been married three times and each divorce had cost him more than he could ever recoup. His relationships always seemed to go nowhere.
He raised his kids without their mothers and they were, for the most part, pretty successful. One child’s background was similar to David’s. He was a computer guru. The other son was an officer in the U.S. military.
He had checked Jack South’s federal tax returns for the past several years and felt that if they needed leverage they could get the Internal Revenue Service after him. That is, if he became any type of threat or un-cooperative. As far as The Waldger Group was concerned, a person worth half a billion dollars needed to be controlled and not allowed to upset the balance of power. Unlike other lottery winners, Jack South had quietly hidden away most of his winnings and hired the best to take care of his money, freedom and image.
Therefore, David was here with his best people in the viewing room waiting for Jack South’s interview on The Morning Headlines. He hoped that Brad Williams would do his job as he had been instructed to do by Joe Biggman. They might get some answers. The questions The Network had given to Jack and his council were not the real questions Brad Williams would ask. The aim was that Jack would not be prepared for Brad’s quizzing and would slip up.
As David thought over everything, he knew he had to find out what Jack was up to; how he had won the lotteries and everything else about him that The Waldger Group wanted to know. Moreover, that came directly from the top. David always did as he was told.