Emerald Buddha

Chapter 8

Elliot London switched off the drive-time radio program he listened to every evening rush hour as he entered his neighborhood, a collection of single-story Midwestern homes in the sort of middle-class enclave typically given a name like Myrtle Cove or Arlington Ridge. Elliot’s subdivision was Bel Aire Forest, with the closest things to a tree the two struggling spruce that had been planted at the community entrance. He’d lived there for eight years in relative peace and comfort with his wife, Diane, and twin five-year-old daughters.

He’d worked his way up at the newspaper from a cub reporter to a seasoned investigative journalist, and was used to irregular hours and constant pressure when running down a story. Elliot had been honored by several professional organizations for his coverage of local and national politics, and had broken stories that had forced a congressman to resign in shame, an attorney general candidate to decline his nomination, a high-profile priest to be charged with pedophilia, and numerous city councilmen to be hauled off in cuffs.

The hate mail came with the territory. As his father, also a journalist, used to say, if you weren’t pissing people off, you weren’t doing your job. Of course, his dad had operated in a different environment from today’s corporate jungle, where only six conglomerates owned all the media outlets. Like it or not, Elliot had to tread carefully lest he be downsized in one of the endless reorganizations or mergers that were a constant in the business — he had a mortgage to pay and private school tuition to cover, as well as one of his daughter’s special education needs and medications, so he tempered his zeal with what he viewed as sensible restraint.

Elliot eased into the driveway of his ranch house and sighed with relief when he shut the engine off. Another brutal day at an end, and his family to look forward to. He caught himself in the rearview mirror and shook his head at the middle-aged man looking back, puffy bags under his eyes, hair so sparse he bore almost no resemblance to his college photos, and jowls beginning to show the effects of time and gravity. Where had the good years gone? he wondered, and then shook off the introspection. No point in beating himself up over what couldn’t be changed.

He walked up the path to his front door and took great pains to make sufficient noise unlocking it so his daughters would hear him. They delighted in greeting him at the end of every workday, and he cherished the experience as much as they did, painfully aware that soon they’d be grown, and he, older still.

The two girls came running down the hall toward the tiny foyer, and he smiled as they neared. “Daddy, Daddy!” they cried in unison, grime smudged on their faces from some unsupervised mischief they’d gotten into while their mother was preparing dinner, no doubt.

“Hailey, Casey, I swear you got more beautiful while I was gone. How is that even possible?” Elliot asked with feigned astonishment as he set his briefcase down and hugged them close.

“Hi, honey. How was your day?” Diane called from the kitchen. Diane was a third grade teacher and finished her workday hours before Elliot got home. It was a good pairing and had withstood the test of time.

“Not bad. Tilting at windmills. Bringing the powerful to their knees. Righting wrongs. The usual,” Elliot said, releasing his offspring and standing.

“Oh, before I forget. Another one of those computer things came through the mail slot today. I’m guessing it’s for you.”

“Where is it?” Elliot asked, waggling his eyebrows at his daughters to delighted giggles.

“On the dinner table.”

“Thanks. Speaking of dinner…”

“It’s lasagna. Be ready in a half hour.”

“Heart healthy, right? Extra cheese and sauce?”

“Why bother making it if you’re going to skimp?”

Elliot entered the dining room and spied the small gray flash drive by his water glass. He was used to such clandestine drops — both here and at the office. For some reason whistleblowers tended to favor searching out his home address, which was readily locatable with even marginal computer skills, and he’d been receiving envelopes, CDs, photos, and now flash drives for most of his career.

He moved into his office and plugged the drive into one of his USB ports and, after scanning it with antivirus software, clicked on the menu and surveyed the contents. A screen popped up informing him that the drive was password protected. He squinted at the message. It made no sense: it asked for the last six digits of his mistress’s phone number.

The only problem was he had no mistress. He’d always been faithful to his wife, and hadn’t even had a flirtation of any note.

He scratched his head, and then an idea occurred to him. He sometimes joked about his boss, Lenny Cox, being his mistress, since work kept him from home so much.

Elliot entered the last six digits and pressed enter. An error message popped up.

“What? But that’s the number!” he said out loud.

Another thought came to him. Lenny’s extension was 408. He entered the last three digits of the phone number and then the extension and hit return.

The drive flashed several times and another screen appeared. He was in.

There was an introductory file in Word labeled “Read First.” He opened it and did as instructed, taking in the contents rapidly, his reading speed triple that of a layman.

Fifteen minutes later he stood and called out to Diane. “Honey, I’ve got a hot one. Really big. I need to go into the office.”

“Elliot! Come on. It’s almost ready.”

“I can’t, sweetheart. I have to go.”

“At least let me put a piece in some Tupperware. How late do you think you’ll be?”

“Don’t wait up. How long will it take for the lasagna?”

Diane appeared in the kitchen doorway thirty seconds later with a container. Elliot kissed her and took it from her. “Thanks. You’re an angel.”

“Remember to chew.”

“Yes, dear.”

Elliot practically ran to his car, so great was his excitement, and failed to notice the sedan parked at the end of his block — a perfectly natural oversight, since it was the first time he’d ever been under surveillance.

The passenger watched Elliot reverse out of his driveway and pull away from the house. He set down the high-power binoculars and turned to the driver. “Looks like it’s game on.”

The driver dropped the transmission into drive and eased from the curb. “I wish we could have intercepted the damned thing.”

“Too many people around, and broad daylight. Not a chance. But we’ll get the bitch’s friend before the night is over. The reporter’s the priority.”

“Yeah. I got that. Let’s just hope he didn’t copy it.”

“We’ll do a break-in tonight. Sanitize his system.”

“At least we know he didn’t send it to anyone.”

“He’s too careful. No way would he share that until he’s able to vet it. That’s why he’s going into the office. As predicted.”

The driver smiled sadly. “It’s good to be right, isn’t it?”

“That’s what we do.”

“Damn straight it is.”

Elliot’s mind was redlining as he traced the familiar route to the paper. The implications of the data he’d received were staggering. It detailed a plot so complex, so Machiavellian and twisted, he could hardly believe it. Or rather, he didn’t want to, because if it was true, everything he had known and believed was a lie.

That it would land on the front page was without question, if the details proved accurate. Elliot’s gut said they would — the files contained detailed financial records with dozens of front companies, including at least ten that were subsidiaries of one of the largest insurers in the world, which had also been the beneficiary of a massive bailout during the financial crisis. He’d always believed it had been the recipient of the taxpayer’s largesse because its largest creditor’s former chairman had been Treasury Secretary at the time; but if the information on the flash drive was accurate, that was only the tip of the iceberg.

Elliot had no problem believing that what he’d just read was possible. He’d studied enough history to know that humans were capable of anything. But the average citizen would go berserk if they knew.

And he had been put in the position of being the one to break the story — for which he had no doubt he’d receive a Pulitzer and be looking at a book deal that would dwarf that of Woodward and Bernstein. That was the positive. The negative was that he’d make powerful enemies in the process and might have to move to Mongolia to feel safe.

But who was feeding him the gold? Someone had painstakingly obtained, probably illegally and likely in violation of national security, enough proof to cause a seismic schism. It troubled him that he didn’t know who his leak was, but it wasn’t essential to the facts. And he couldn’t entirely blame the whistleblower — one look at how Edward Snowden had been pursued for baring the NSA’s surveillance programs to the world would convince most thinking humans to forego the honor of landing in official crosshairs.

Traffic was light as he neared downtown, and the underground parking garage was almost deserted when he pulled into his usual slot. The paper’s offices would be open, of course — the news never slept, and there would be a crew working to get the next morning’s edition put to bed. Alas, sales were down markedly, as many turned to the Internet for their daily jolt of sensationalism rather than buying dead trees. The way of the world, he thought, as his shoes pounded on the concrete garage floor, echoing in the enclosed space.

The elevators required card keys to activate, and he retrieved his from his wallet and swiped it through the reader. A green LED blinked twice and the steel double doors opened. Elliot stepped inside and swiped his card again, and then punched the button for the seventeenth floor.

He ran a quick calculation as the car rose. It would take him a week, possibly two, to put out soft probes in order to verify the data. He’d need authorization for at least two research assistants, due to the volume of data information that would need to be sifted through. And he would have to swear everyone involved to silence. That the story was volatile was an understatement of epic proportions.

The indicator showed he was at the fourteenth floor when the elevator lurched to a stop.

“What the—”

The lights blinked and then shut off as a sharp metallic clank sounded from beneath the car.

Elliot’s stomach somersaulted as the floor dropped away and the elevator free-fell a hundred and fifty feet, its emergency braking system disabled. The plunge lasted the longest few seconds of Elliot’s life, which was extinguished abruptly when it crashed into the cement subbase, moving at well over a hundred miles per hour.

Hours later, firefighters pried the wreckage apart and found Elliot’s mangled remains. Nobody noticed when one of them pocketed a flash drive from the victim’s pocket, and immediately after left the site due to dizziness.

A glowing obituary honored Elliot’s tireless work in exposing corruption, and within a week his death was forgotten by all but his family, who moved two months later, their home too filled with the ghosts of the past to ever be comfortable again.