Free The Cain File by Max Tomlinson Page B

Fortunes?”
    “Through an anonymous tip,” she said.
    “One of the one-eight-hundred numbers?”
    “No, it wasn’t through one of the whistleblower numbers.”
    “Who then?”
    “I can’t say.”
    “You certainly will if you’re subpoenaed.”
    “I can’t, because I don’t know. It was anonymous.”
    “An email?”
    “No. That I could trace easily enough. Snail mail. A note. Two notes actually. They came a few days apart.”
    “Really?” Walder said. “And where did you get these two notes?”
    “Delivered to my apartment in San Francisco. They arrived several days apart in USPS postage-paid envelopes—the kind you buy at the post office. The first one contained a yellow Post-It with a single word: Ecuador.”
    The woman with helmet hair typed that into her computer.
    “It’s all in my report,” Maggie said to her. “Central Records.”
    The woman blushed as she continued to type.
    “And the second note?” Walder asked, giving an impatient sigh.
    “Just five words, which, on their own, read as pure gibberish, until I realized they were encrypted using the word in the first note—Ecuador—as a cipher text to encode them.”
    “A what text?” Walder said, clearly annoyed.
    “A cipher text—basic plaintext encryption. The code word is used to shift the standard alphabet and form substitutions.
    “The five words boiled down to two names: ‘Ryan Morris’ and ‘Five Fortunes Petroleum.’ I started researching—in my own time at first. That’s when I found that Ryan Morris, a foreman with Five Fortunes Petroleum on a site in northern Ecuador—clever how the whistleblower used the actual cipher word itself as an additional clue—had over eighty thousand in his checking account. His paychecks were building up. That’s a classic sign he’s getting funded somewhere else. I put a trace on his activity—authorized—and it turned out Morris was getting a lot of cash dumped into an offshore account. A lot. It was coming from a payroll company contracted out by Commerce Oil. Morris and half his team were getting paid to forge oil-contamination reports, make them look clean, so they could acquire drilling rights in the Amazon. What’s more, Ryan Morris worked for Commerce Oil at one time. It kept leading back to Commerce Oil.”
    Walder nodded, while Helmet Hair typed. “And you still have these anonymous notes? Evidence to support your case?”
    “In the files—Central Records. The case number is C39A4001A.”
    Walder smiled, but it wasn’t a nice smile. “Any idea who could have sent these notes?”
    “A disgruntled former employee? The foreman’s ex-wife? A jealous co-worker?” Maggie’s eyes met Walder’s. “A concerned citizen who has it in for Commerce Oil? Take your pick.”
    “Well, it’s still sounding like you have it in for Commerce Oil yourself.”
    “If I have it in for anyone, it’s for American companies that think they can cheat the system—and the American taxpayer. I don’t care what their name is—just how they do business. That’s why I took this job. That’s why you pay me—I hope.”
    Ed kicked her shin gently.
    “That will be enough of that,” Deputy Director Houseman said. “Our job is not to police the environment, or U.S. companies—”
    Director Walder interrupted again. “Let me make something clear—and this comes from the top. There will be no more witch-hunt missions like this in the future. This was a simple sting that turned into a bloodbath—one that we now own and must explain—to the Ecuadorian government. I’m spearheading an investigation into why this operation was ever approved in the first place. Commerce Oil, the supplier of much of the world’s energy and a major employer in this country, if not the world, being hounded by an intelligence agency?”
    Maggie looked at Houseman, then Walder. “Our transfer was meant to look like a donation to Beltran’s Amazon Wildlife Restoration Fund. It all looked good. I set it up