The Color of Greed (Raja Williams 1) (15 page)

A month after she arrived at the Los Angeles
station, the Fantastic Four movie hit the theaters nationwide. It
popularized four comic book superheroes, one of whom happened to be
named Sue Storm, and the jokes started again. At the station they
called her the invisible woman, because the comic book Sue Storm had
the superpower of invisibility. Ironically, the only invisibility the
reporter Sue Storm managed was languishing in the research department
while hoping to break into the good old boys club of serious news
reporting. It wasn’t the superpower anyone might hope for.

When an anonymous call came in late one Friday
afternoon claiming to have information on a solar company, all the
other investigative reporters had blown it off, mostly due to an
Angel’s game they were going to that day.

Sue took the call at her desk. The caller ID had
been blocked.

“This is Sue Storm. I understand you have
information we might want. Something about the solar energy
industry?”

“I don’t know if you’ll want it or
not, but I do know there is a major problem with some of the
technical aspects of a new solar battery in development.”

“How is that news?” asked Sue. She
sounded bored.

“It is news because the failure rate in the
test results has been deliberately skewed.”

“Go ahead.” Mild interest now. Green
energy was big business in California and a lot was riding on it
economically for the state. Sue listened carefully, deciding the
voice was male, probably around forty, and college educated.

Soon the voice started to speed up, spouting
technical words and numbers.

“Hold on, hold on,” said Sue. “Let’s
back this up a bit. What’s your name?” After an empty
pause she said, “Hello?”

The call was over.

The tripe she had been assigned by her boss showed
no promise, so Sue spent an afternoon doing research on solar
batteries and the energy companies that used them. She went back over
the data from the mysterious phone call. So far it seemed the voice
on the phone, who she had dubbed Solarman, knew his stuff when it
came to solar batteries. There were major players in both the wind
and solar industries that used batteries to store energy. In solar,
other than the panels to collect the sun’s energy, the storage
batteries were the critical components. All the new electric cars
needed effective storage batteries to be practical, as well.

Sue didn’t hear from Solarman for another two
weeks. Then a call came in asking for her by name.

“You’ve got Sue Storm. How can I help
you?”

“I have more data you should have,” said
the voice on the phone.

Sue recognized it immediately as Solarman. Strong
interest, now. “Yes, yes. I would like that very much.”
She didn’t want to scare him off again, and decided to dial it
back to a passive approach. “How would you like to proceed?”
she asked.

“I want to make something clear. I cannot be
linked to this under any circumstances. I will deny everything in the
event you try to pull me into any open investigation.”

“Agreed. But, why is that? You are doing the
right thing.”

“This isn’t open for discussion.”

“Right. No names. How about I call you
Solarman?” There was a soft chuckle on the other end. She was
making a much needed connection.

“Solarman. That will do,” he said,
sounding satisfied. “There are many companies involved in solar
development and battery storage. I only have direct access to one.”

“What company?” Sue had trouble being
passive.

“We’ll get to that in time. I want you
to understand I’m not some disgruntled employee who feels
overlooked or underpaid.”

“Of course not,” said Sue, trying to be
agreeable.

“Don’t patronize me.”

Sue said nothing. The command factor in Solarman’s
voice told her this was no low level employee.

“Most of the companies are vying for
government money. There are many billions of dollars involved. A
small shift in tested success rates or specs on a key component could
be a deal maker—or breaker. Our battery has been scheduled for
use with several top energy companies. But it never met the spec
requirements. Not even close. Yet, somehow the reported test results
have been on spec.”

“How do you know that?”

“The Department of Energy has to approve all
proposals. When two other companies applied for interest-free grants,
our battery specs were included, but at much higher, more favorable,
levels. I only found out due to a DOE memo that came in requesting a
hard copy of some test results. When I checked into it, all our data
files had been skewed and the original results were long gone.”

“Someone in your research department?”

“That’s what I thought, at first. But,
this didn’t originate inside the company. We were hacked.
Someone else has been manipulating the results. And, I’m afraid
we may not be the only company targeted.”

Over the next month Sue spoke to Solarman on five
different occasions. She figured out the company he worked for, but
not his name. All attempts to trace him had failed. He had been using
public WiFi access from various locations for all calls and data
transmission. Sue had proposed a story to the editor, but, with
Solarman remaining anonymous, the editor insisted on outside
confirmation before he would use it.

“Get me his name or get me someone else to
confirm the data. Otherwise you’ve got nothing,” the
editor had said.

After weeks of cat and mouse, Solarman finally
slipped up by using the same Starbucks cafe for one of his calls a
second time. Sue had told her editor she had a lead on who he was,
and had gone out to watch the cafe.

Here she was, on the fifth straight day of her
stakeout. As she watched the parade of people coming in and out of
the cafe, Sue made a game out of guessing which one was Solarman. She
thought it might be the bald, fat man with the pug dog in tow. What
looked like a computer case turned out to be a binder of wall paper
and paint samples he was considering to redecorate his apartment. A
young man with glasses and a backpack fit the bill, but he was a
student from the local community college studying for exams.

Just after lunch, a neatly dressed man with a salt
and pepper business cut strolled into the cafe, piquing her interest.
He carried a laptop, and fit her mental mockup for Solarman to a T.
Five minutes later her phone rang. She had arranged her office calls
to be forwarded to her cell. She could see the man inside wearing a
headset and sitting in front of a laptop. Adrenalin jacked up her
heart rate. It had to be him.

“Sue Storm,” she said with bated breath.

“It’s me,” said the familiar voice
she knew as Solarman.

Sue couldn’t wait any longer. She stepped out
of her car and walked directly toward the cafe, still talking on the
phone. She was so intent on the man inside, she almost walked into a
cab that had pulled over in front of her as she crossed the street.
She leaned over to say something nasty to the driver when a loud
explosion blew all the glass out of the cafe windows and rocked the
cab. The blast wind concussion wave knocked her brutally to the
ground. As she lay there, the image of the man in the cafe flashed
through her mind. A heavy sadness settled over her when she realized
she would never meet Solarman face to face. Sue decided to forgive
the cab driver who had rudely cut her off. After all, he had saved
her life. Then everything went dark.

Chapter Twenty-four: Invisible

Sue Storm had been lucky. The use of Semtex in the
Starbucks bombing had been devastating, killing Solarman and everyone
else inside the cafe. Semtex was a military grade explosive with a
nasty blast radius. However, other than a severe concussion, a
cracked rib and a few scrapes and bruises she had survived in one
piece.

Homeland Security and the FBI had been all over the
bombing investigation. The Feds had interviewed Sue in the hospital,
but she withheld any mention of why she was at the Starbucks that
day. She wasn’t going to lose the story that could make her
career as a journalist. After a day in the hospital for observation,
Sue decided to take a few weeks off and, without telling anyone, went
to her sister’s in Monterey to recover from her injuries.

The fed’s investigation dead-ended, and after
a public funeral service to pay homage to the victims of the bombing,
the Starbucks story moved to the back page. A small obituary piece
revealed that the man Sue called Solarman had been one John Smiley,
the CEO of a small tech company in the valley developing solar
batteries for commercial use.

When Sue returned to the TV station in LA, she had a
pile of messages and voice mails waiting. There were the usual
perfunctory get-well cards from acquaintances, and several heartfelt
voice mails from friends. Two had been from Randy Hope, a tennis
player with whom Sue had a brief romance in college. She puzzled over
why he called until, on his second message, he mentioned something
about fraud. When she called the number he left, it was no longer in
service. She reached his home number, and found out from the
housekeeper that Randy had died only two days after his last call to
her. Sue immediately left the television station and did not return.
It was time to use her superpower.

Chapter Twenty-five: Linchpin

When the feds had taken over the Starbucks bombing
investigation, they slammed a tight lid over most information on the
case, including the names of the injured parties. As with most police
investigations, everyone is a suspect until they are not. Add a bomb,
and the feds see terrorists behind every tree. It’s reminiscent
of the communist scare during the McCarthy era. Only now it’s
not just a few luckless individuals hauled in front of Congressional
hearings or being blacklisted. Now we have the Patriot Act. Any
citizen can suffer the indignity of getting groped at the airport, or
having their phone or internet or banking monitored while the fact is
kept secret under the omnipresent blanket of protecting national
security. Ironically, Stalin would have approved.

Getting anything but cursory information on the
Starbucks bombing incident required tunneling into government files.
Luckily, Vinny was intimately familiar with the government
communication systems from her days working for the feds. For Vinny,
it was like taking candy from a baby. She got the list and showed it
to Raja.

“You find anything of interest?” asked
Raja, as he looked over the names.

“That’s a big ten-four, Bubba. One of
the injured bystanders was a girl working for the local TV news
department. Her office number showed up on Randy Hope’s call
records.”

“I think we just found our linchpin. What’s
her name?”

“Sue Storm.”

“That name sounds familiar. How do I contact
her?”

“There you may have a problem,” said
Vinny. “Sue Storm has disappeared for all intents and purposes.
I find no trace of her starting about three weeks back.”

“Looks like she went into hiding after the
bombing.”

“Can you blame her?”

“Not a bit, considering it may be the only
reason she is still alive—if she is. Vinny, we need to find
her.”

“I’m running facial recognition in
present time in the Greater Los Angeles area. It’s slow, but we
might pick her up. Of course, she could have gone anywhere in or out
of the country.”

“She was on to a story big enough to get
people killed. If she’s like any of the reporters I know, she
won’t be able to give that up so easily,” said Raja.
“Let’s assume she’s still here.”

“Concur.”

“If you put Sue Storm at the center of our
case, what does our diagram look like?”

Vinny manipulated the computer screen. The program
created a diagram that now looked like a planet with two smaller
moons. Sue Storm was being orbited by Judge Griggsby and Governor
Black.

“There’s our friend the governor again,”
said Raja. “As little as I like politicians, this is definitely
not helping. I may never vote again.”

Chapter Twenty-six: Pay It Forward

Vinny did everything she could to search for Sue
Storm, but found no trace of her. Sue had a head start in doing her
disappearing act. And, being a reporter, she knew all the tricks to
find someone, and how not to be found, as well.

Raja decided it was time to get Vinny some help. He
would look up a friend and former client, Akeen Patel.

While the phone was ringing, Raja remembered a quote
from Martin Luther King, “The ultimate measure of a man is not
where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he
stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Raja had seen
Akeen Patel in just such a circumstance. They had first met as
classmates at Oxford. Three years after graduating, Raja had gotten a
desperate call from Akeen. His family had been stuck in Afghanistan
when the Taliban took over. It was before the American military had
returned. While the Taliban had succeeded in stopping the opium
production for the first time in a century, it was only by beheading
anyone found near a poppy plant. Their scorched earth policy also
extended to outsiders, and especially to people of different faith.
Akeen’s family members, who were Hindus from Pakistan, were
hiding in the hills during one of the bloody ethnic purges the
Taliban were conducting.

Raja had flown immediately into Pakistan and from
there requisitioned a small plane to attempt a rescue. There was no
easy place to land in the mountainous Afghan terrain, but somehow, as
soldiers swept through the hills, Akeen’s father had managed to
light enough torches for Raja to convince the pilot of the small
plane to land. Akeen’s family crowded into the plane as soon as
it was down. They were about to take off when Akeen’s mother
spoke rapidly in their Hindi dialect. Before Raja could ask what she
said, Akeen leaped to the ground and ran off into the darkness. Raja
suppressed the urge to yell after him. The lights of the searching
Taliban soldiers were getting too close. Raja waited until the last
possible moment, and reluctantly gave the order to start the plane.