The bank branch of the Farmer’s Credit Union and Loan nearest “Grid 19” was open for business on a Tuesday morning when a convoy of black SUV’s rolled up in front of the building and a phalanx of men in dark suits and sunglasses marched into the building and converged on the manager’s office. A security guard intercepted them and was shown some very high-powered federal credentials that backed him right down. The manager was handed paperwork that required him to begin providing access to all of his files, account data and any other damn thing the feds decided they wanted.
At approximately the same time a similar invasion was occurring at the headquarters of that bank. And the man heading up that raiding party was from the Justice Department and he wasn’t interested in uncovering some scam that the IRS would be adjudicating. He was interested in a conspiracy. He demanded and received access to all transactional data for accounts that were deemed to be colluding in a price fixing conspiracy to control commodity prices throughout the United States.
The president of the bank was a mild-mannered fellow who was basically scared out of his wits and agreed to cooperate as thoroughly as humanly possible but he assured the official that he had no idea what they were talking about. His bank wasn’t a high-powered financial behemoth. They were strictly small potatoes. And after a few weeks of digging through the bank’s accounts, transactions and files they found precisely nothing. All of the payments were between the private individuals that bought and sold the farm products. The bank had no control over prices or quantities. There was no commonality between these transactions and the bank other than the money passed in and out of their accounts.
The Deputy Assistant Attorney General who was overseeing the investigation read the report he had received from his flunkies and shook his head. This was not going to be well-received by his boss. He now regretted having allowed himself to be convinced that his old Harvard Law School buddy Dex Hastings was onto something big with this price fixing conspiracy. He called up Hastings, “Hey listen, Dexter, make sure the next time you have a tip on a conspiracy theory just call up Morning Joe instead. You can’t have price fixing when the individual prices are up and down all over the map. I can’t waste a million dollars auditing some penny-ante flyover-country bank looking for super-villains. Some of us have to work for a living.” After that he felt better. But then he wondered if Hastings would still invite him to his summer party on Martha’s Vineyard. After that he felt worse.
Dexter Hastings got off the call from Washington and he was incensed. His friend in Washington had insulted him, his dashboard had that red flashing light which the CEO would slam him for and he still hadn’t gotten to fire Barry Carver for his insolence. This was turning into a hell of a week.
Just then he received a text to report to the C-Suite. Arriving, he saw that the executive board was assembled and Dexter nervously entered the board room and took a seat at the far end of the table. Eventually the matter under discussion was resolved and the CEO, Jim Hatcher turned to him smiling and said, “Dex, we’ve been discussing your project. It seems that wheat just isn’t going to recover soon enough for us to put your plan into action. We’ve decided to reallocate the capital to another venture. We’ve had an offer from Typhon Industries to buy up your entire portfolio in the Midwest. We’re going to have to take a bit of a haircut to get him to take the whole lot but we’re just champing at the bit to pick up that Korean Biotech firm with the hair restoration patent. I’ve heard it’ll be worth a trillion dollars over the life of the patent so how can we resist. I’m sorry we won’t be able use you anymore but you know how these things go; here today gone tomorrow. But we’ve got an excellent package set up for you, I hope. So, buck up. You’ll surely bounce back from this. In fact, if you’d like I’ll put in a good word for you with Typhon Industries. Who’s that fellow, Paul Connors? I hear he’s a strange duck, but any port in a storm, as they say. Well, that’s all Dexter. See you around the Vineyard next summer, maybe.”
Paul Connors was sitting at his desk, looking at what liquidations he could expedite in order to make the land purchase from Bay Holdings. He would be forced to sell an embarrassing amount of gold and platinum group metals on the international markets. It would necessarily depress the prices but more problematically it would draw too much attention to commodity holdings that would be difficult to explain. For these metals hadn’t been purchased they’d been mined. And having to account for his mineral holdings would raise too many questions that he could not afford to answer.
Just then a deeply encrypted link appeared on his desktop. Opening it he saw the face of his most valuable operative, Cutter. The bearded face looked only slightly worried which Connors took as good news. “What’s the word Cutter? Will the gestapo be busting down my door this week?” Cutter shook his chin, “No, not this week. You lucked out. That nitwit Hastings sicced his equally stupid friend in the Justice Department on the poor guys in the bank. And since they know exactly nothing about our operation, that’s exactly what the feds learned. We dodged another bullet.”
Connors smiled weakly, “How many more will we dodge?” Cutter looked down, “Better assume that was your last break. We’ve got to have a plan to deal with the day after tomorrow when some bright young man kicks over your Potemkin scenery and exposes your operation.”
Connor stopped smiling, “Do I declare war on the United States?” Cutter looked at him with a glazed expression and said, “Yeah, more or less.”
