Free The Gambit by Allen Longstreet Page A

worked for will disappear. They will get what they want. Goodman will lose the election.”
    I felt rage begin to bubble up inside of me. My heart rate increased.
    “Then the question is,” I began, “who is they? ”
    “ That is what we have to find out. Come, follow me to my office.”

    “Remember what I told you I do?” Grey asked.
    “Network security.”
    “Yes, now let me ask you a dumb question.”
    “You sound like my dad,” I said, laughing.
    He shook his head. “Anyway, since I am the head of network security at the bank, there is no one above me in terms of the job that I do. I am the lone wolf.”
    “Nicely put, you know, with the beard and all.” I peppered in some sarcasm.
    He chuckled at my remark.
    “Now, the sole purpose of Wells Fargo hiring me was to prevent what happened with the old execs that ran the bank shortly after the Confinement. When I arrived, everything was as clean as a whistle. The execs were already gone. So I created a network that would allow me to monitor everything.”
    “Everything?”
    “ Everything . What they wanted me to do was to make a system that it was impossible to commit grand larceny or launder money. I could have easily done just that. What I thought, though, was that in this kind of job market, if I made everything so perfect that my network could be secure indefinitely—they might get rid of me. Especially when they pay me a high salary compared to the rest of their staff, and I work from home. I am essential only if I can maintain my network without them learning how it operates. Once they figure out how it works, they could train some pushover fresh out of college who would do it for half the pay.”
    “Continue.”
    “So, what I did instead was I created a node system in the existing network.”
    “A node as in, a sensor?”
    “Precisely,” he responded. Excitement burned behind his eyes. “Any time an employee in my bank were to manually edit a report, move money from one account to another, etcetera, it is flagged and sent to my inbox. Then I can view the event from my computer. The employees don’t know this because I am the only person allowed to know. All I have to do is report to corporate if I see something suspicious.”
    “All right, so when you arrived it was as clean as a whistle…and now? ”
    He grinned.
    “In the past three months, I’ve been getting more things flagged to my inbox than in my one and a half years at the bank combined. Ironically, it coincided with the arrival of the new vice-president. The odd thing, though, is it was like he had done this before…like this wasn’t his first rodeo when it came to money laundering. The flags I received were mundane, similar to the things I would see an auditor mess up, or a teller screw up on a deposit. You see, what allows me to stay stealth is the district managers don’t tell any of the execs that I exist. When I go into the building, they think I am just basic IT support. The employees don’t realize I monitor the entire network and report to corporate. That was how they designed it to be, after losing one-hundred million dollars in a short period of time.”
    “So, what have you found?” I asked.
    He grabbed a folder, filled with papers that made it as thick as a textbook.
    “I knew this guy was up to no good. This was something I had to go into the building for because the events that were in my inbox just didn’t add up. To me, it seemed like the VP had executed this well enough to where what the system saw was different from what was actually happening in day-to-day operations. So I scrounged the audit packs, the paperwork, it took me weeks. Then the truth began to reveal itself, and that was when I realized he wasn’t the only one in on it, the auditors were too. The reason why this guy is still here is because apparently he is ‘doing so much’ to help business. The accountants have now been posting false profits, making it appear like the bank is making more