Blue Warrior

Meyers had even managed to find one of Tanner’s fourth-grade report cards posted on the Internet — someone had found it at a garage sale and put it up, inappropriately, on Pinterest. Even then, according to his teacher, Tanner was an outstanding young gentleman with impeccable manners, social skills, and high academic potential. Taken together, her inability to find any dirt likely meant that the blackmail “evidence” used against the esteemed jurist had to have been manufactured out of whole cloth.

For a brief period of time she began to wonder if Tanner’s death was somehow pointed at her, some kind of payback for a slight — real or imagined — committed by her while in office; but she’d been out of office and out of the political loop long enough that she eventually dismissed the idea. What would be the point now? Besides, if these people were powerful enough to get a man of Tanner’s character to put a gun in his mouth and blow his own brains out, she knew that they could have just as easily come after her with whatever “evidence” they had concocted against him.

Her monitor dinged. Ian was checking in. “Here, Margaret.”

“Good to see you, Ian.” Myers saw that he looked as tired and baggy-eyed as she did. The two of them had hardly slept the last two days as they sorted through the mountains of data they had compiled. “What do we have?” Myers asked. She had forwarded her findings to Ian and he had spent the last two hours cross-referencing their results.

“There is a lot of outrage in American politics, isn’t there?”

“Yes, unfortunately. Some of that is ginned up by the politicians themselves to rally votes, but mostly it’s bad policies by a failed government that’s hurting millions of Americans fueling that rage.”

“I don’t know if this is the right list or not, but based upon everything we discussed and the search results we have generated, there are four congressmen, three senators, and five corporate CEOs that rise to the top of the outrage list. These are some very hated people.”

“Then those are our targets. Any connections between them?”

“Funny you should ask that. There is one senator and one CEO that are very closely connected. Both go by the surname Fiero.”

“As in, Senator Barbara Fiero?”

“Précisément. Her husband’s name is Anthony. These are very rich people, by the way.”

“I’ve met Senator Fiero. She is many things, including extremely intelligent, ambitious, and beautiful, but the one thing she is not is a computer programmer. She isn’t our super hacker.”

“Maybe she has her own private Edward Snowden in the NSA,” Ian joked.

“Edward Snowden wasn’t in the NSA. He worked as a private contractor for the NSA. That’s a big difference. What do you know about the senator’s husband?”

“A little mysterious, that one. He’s a private hedge fund manager with many international connections.”

“Is he a computer guy? Or does he have access to one?”

“He’s not a computer guy, but he appears to be connected to a very savvy data outfit known as CIOS. It’s a first-rate shop. The best, really, run by the best software engineer in the business. Answers to the name of Jasmine Bath.”

“Better than you? That’s hard to believe, given what I’ve seen you do and what Troy has told me about you.”

“I’m no slacker, but I don’t have the background and experience she’s had in the TAO. She is to computer spying what Peyton Manning is to your American football.”

“So CIOS and this Jasmine Bath computer genius could mount an operation like the kind we’re talking about?”

“With the kind of cash the Fieros have? Absolutely. And if they really are using her to turn the kinds of decisions we’ve talked about, then they’re even richer than what we think, I’m sure.”

“How so?”

“This isn’t about blackmailing individuals. They’re extorting whole industries. Imagine how much money they could solicit from the entire banking industry, or the entire oil industry, if they could deliver legislation that would save those industries tens of billions of dollars in taxes and regulatory expenses. And then imagine the stock picking they could do, knowing months in advance that these sectors were about to benefit from huge changes in favorable legislation or court rulings.”

“I’m still not buying it. You’re talking about the next Democratic nominee for the presidency. The senator is already quite wealthy thanks to her husband, and she’s already one of the most powerful politicians in Washington. Why would she play these kinds of games?”

“When is anyone ever satisfied with the money and power they already have?”

Myers didn’t have an answer for that. Time wasn’t their friend and they had limited resources. They could start digging into the six other candidates they had generated as well, but that would only put them further behind. She’d gotten as far as she had in life by learning to trust the people around her, and Ian clearly thought the Fieros were the two best suspects to pursue.

“Okay, then. Those are our targets. The Fieros and CIOS.”

“Targets? Are we talking wet work?”