“I don’t like to ask questions when I don’t already know the answer,” said Wallis, laughing. “That and he hung up too quickly. The whole, Tom leaving Wisconsin thing caught me off guard. Plus, I didn’t want him to think we weren’t delighted at the thought of seeing him.”
“Which we are,” said Norman, as he went back to scanning the business page for a small classified ad buried in the announcements. Underneath a grainy photo of a local print shop was the phone number that ended in the sequence, 680. Norman slowly sat back and let out a long breath. All hell is breaking loose, he thought. Not again.
Chapter Eighteen
Mark Whiting was never a stupid man. He knew from his early days in training with the Circle that the Richmond Federal Reserve was the key to the entire U.S. banking system. It controlled all of the information technology for the entire banking system. Mark was aware of that when he arrived on the Reserve’s doorstep in 1993 at the dawn of the internet age.
The Circle had given him the assignment to take his prodigious talents as a software specialist and offer them to Management.
Management knew who he was, of course. He had originally been one of their children and was seen as a boy genius who was being groomed for bigger things. That was all before he grew disenchanted and crossed the aisle. Mark was smart enough to know that he couldn’t leave the game altogether but perhaps he could find a different team.
However, massive organizations that are old and entrenched have massive egos. That led Management to believe they still understood him and could therefore use him, all the while keeping watch over him as he toiled away in one of their offices using all of their bugged equipment. Every keystroke he made was recorded and analyzed by their spyware for the thousands of potential security problems.
Over the years he had moved up in ranks and was now the Senior Technology Architect responsible for maintaining the software that directed the Fedwire Securities Service’s business strategy and personally managed the processing infrastructure.
He was a small but very important cog in the pipeline of data that was translated to all of the central banks and beyond.
It was perfect for his unique retirement plan that wasn’t sanctioned by either side.
Mark had grown tired of the cat and mouse game a long time ago. Let the two giants conspire for power, he thought. He had decided years ago to find a way to bow out without death being a necessary element.
He had watched what happened to other Circle families who had tried to maintain their family’s security and their integrity. Their children were slowly drawn into the family business and became part of the war. More than once he had questioned what the difference was between the Management’s recruitment and this insidious pull by the Circle. Neither side seemed to have much of any choice about their lives. Things would be different for his young sons and little girl. It was enough that his wife had left him a long time ago without looking back. She had wanted to be free of all of the responsibility and had left it all to Mark. That was fine with him. He loved being a father but he wanted to make sure his family got a real chance at a normal life.
However, successfully pulling away would require a large influx of cash that could go unnoticed and not get traced back to him or cause too many questions. That was the hard part.
It required staying very close to the heartbeat of Management’s central technology operations and choosing his targets very carefully. But it was imperative to his plan that the Circle not catch on either, till it was too late.
Timed correctly, they were more likely to just cut him loose if they could already see that it didn’t threaten any of their own plans.
The last year, though, had been a bloody one for Management and they were becoming more aggressive. Several of their puppet dictators were murdered although Mark wasn’t sure which side was doing the shooting. He realized he was growing older and more wary and it was time. He decided to put his plan into action.
Besides, unrest always made the large giant restless for reform by force, if necessary. Wars usually followed and new, stricter regulations would be put into place. He had to act now so that his small change in the infrastructure would become usual, routine by the time new eyes would be scanning the records.
He planted into the software accounting code a small error that only randomly occurred, shaving off less than a penny from accounts that were trading money. Any bank on the watch list from the old Soviet Socialist Union, the Middle East or South America was left out of the plot. Once the money from any of those countries rose over $5,000 someone might have noticed and thought it was part of a money laundering plot. But funds coming to or from almost any other country were left out of the scrutiny and the small and steady drain would go by unnoticed amongst the billions of trades.