RIPPLES AROUND THE WORLD
Chapter 11 Fight Back or Not?
Unencrypted Email from Hans Bauer, SEEDS Vice-President, to Grace Polonski, dated November 13.
Dear Miss Polonski,
Thank you for the information you sent us, and for the trouble that you and your friends have taken to obtain it. Here in Switzerland we are meeting to discuss how to respond to the apparent attempt at theft. However, you and your friends deserve some explanation of the underlying problem, and I hope to give it in this communication.
The goal of SEEDS sounds simple: Feed the hungry. Or to be more precise, help the hungry feed themselves. We bring our agricultural technology to an area that needs it, show the local population how to use it, then go on to the next problem area. When we started we were hoping to avoid politics altogether. However, that turned out to be impossible.
There was one occasion where a local plantation owner tried to monopolize our technology in his country and sell our grain at high prices. On another, the local government tried to control the distribution of the grain, rewarding loyal villages and denying it to others. We also try to ignore volatile regions in which our workers would be in physical danger, or where they might be the target of bigotry.
There are also purely financial considerations, though that may sound crass to you. We are dependent on donors' money and want to spend it wisely. When we discovered the LaFleur Process and realized that it had commercial applications quite apart from food production, we patented it and sold the rights to fund more missions. I assure you that nobody here is profiteering off the sales. Of course there are some companies who would like to make money off the process and pay us nothing – essentially making money at our donors' expense.
The end result is that there are many nations and entities who would like to have our technology without having to deal with our policies. In some cases we can even sympathize. There was one poor nation that was best by both famine and violent civil war, and we were afraid to expose our workers to the danger. Somebody there stole our technology and used it on to make marginal farmland fertile, and we let it slide – lives were being saved from dying from hunger, and that was the important thing.
These people whom you have encountered, what you call the Briefcase Gang, are most likely mere mercenaries, hired by somebody else to obtain the Lafleur Process and other technology. We are trying to determine who is behind the attempted theft and how we should respond.
In the meantime, I urge you and your friends not to expose yourselves to any more danger. We are grateful for the efforts you made to uncover the thefts, but it should not be your responsibility. It is ours.
On a more personal level, Miss Polonski, we have arranged for you to stay in the capital for a while, working in the local SEED headquarters. The next expedition to the valley is scheduled for two weeks from now; it would be safer for you to wait for it and not try to cross the mountains alone. Besides, your friend Bonga probably needs some familiar nearby while undergoing treatment. Best wishes for you, and our thanks.
Encrypted Email from Grace Polonski to Luke Girardi, Joan Girardi-Rove, Helen Girardi, and Adam Rove, dated November 13.
I've attached the Email from the Swiss guy. A bit dry, but I suppose being a vice-president dries you out. At least we have a better idea of what we're dealing with.
Encrypted Email from Helen Girardi to Luke Girardi, Joan Girardi-Rove, Helen Girardi, and Grace Polonski, dated November 13.
Things make more sense now. Apparently God wanted Grace to realize that her agency was being robbed, so that she could warn the people in charge. But Mr. Bauer is right: none of you should feel obligated to risk danger any longer, and maybe God never intended you to do that. Drop this briefcase business now. I can give Mr. Bauer's letter to Will; it doesn't give away any secrets.
Encrypted Email from Grace Polonski to Helen Girardi, cc Luke Girardi, Joan Girardi dated November 14.
I'm sorry, Mrs. G, but I can't just forget the matter. Before, it seemed distant to me while I was working in the valley, but when they attacked Luke it got personal. We're talking about the bastards that banged Luke's head against the wall. We can't leave it at that, can we? Something needs to be done and just because some Swiss guy tells me to leave it alone… well, you know how stubborn I can be. I can't drop it.
Encrypted Email from Helen Girardi to Grace Polonski, cc Luke Girardi, Joan Girardi dated November 15.
I'm urging you to do just that, Grace. Don't treat this situation like a TV show where everything is tied up at the end of the hour and the good guys always win. Something happened to me years ago and wasn't solved until last year. I'm not talking about turning the other cheek; I'm talking about avoiding poking at a possible hornet's nest. We know nothing about how brutal these mercenaries can get. Let the police and your leaders at the agency handle it.
Encrypted Email from Adam Rove to Luke Girardi dated November 15.
So that's that? I suppose that it's the artist in me, but I had rather dramatic daydreams of cracking the case ourselves. Not being handed the solution by a manager in Switzerland and told to drop it. Jane is rather ambivalent. That recent kidnapping, and the attack on Luke, has her feeling both ways: nervous about the danger, but also with an itch to fight back.
Luke, could you tell me the name of the store where you got the look-alike briefcase? Don't tell Mrs. G, but I have an idea.
Encrypted Email from Joan Girardi-Rove to Grace Polonski dated November 15.
The whole family – Adam and me, the parents, Kevin and Lily – are going to Massachusetts this weekend to celebrate Luke's birthday. Sorry you can't attend, but I suppose you and Luke could do one of those dream things. I remember how you guys celebrated Luke's last birthday! First time for both of you, wasn't it?
Sunday Adam and I will head back to Baconia, but we'll go by train, and we have an idea about something to do about the briefcase jerks.
Encrypted Email from Grace Poloncki to Joan Girardi-Rove dated November 16.
I'm glad you're making a big deal of the birthday – I remember the fiasco two years ago. And I'm glad you've decided to fight back. I'm just stuck here in an office, thousands of kilometers from where things are happening. After about a week there's another expedition to the valley, and I can go with them and rejoin my team. It'll be fun to get my butt back in a saddle instead of an office chair, but not for three days running.
And it's none of your business what Luke and I do in our dreams.
Article from online edition of the Boston Banner, dated Monday November 20, 2009
POTENTIAL LAWBREAKER CAUGHT MAROON-HANDED?
On Sunday, November 19, at 11:50 A.M., a paint-sprayer went off in a stall in a Men's Room of the central railroad station. It was not a powerful effect; the brunt of the force was received by the current occupant of the stall, who was splattered with maroon-colored paint. Just why he would trigger a paint-sprayer was not at all clear.
Security agents rushing onto the scene saw a man exit a stall, the front of his clothes soaked in maroon-colored paint and grasping the handle of an open briefcase, also maroon. The only contents of the briefcase was a compressed-air device, evidently used to spray the paint, and a wood-block with the word REVENGE carved in it. They arrested him for violating the anti-grafitti ordinance, although much more paint got on him than on the wall. Presumably they hope to straighten him out at police headquarters
An unencrypted Email from Sergeant Malone, Cambridge City Police, to Will Girardi, Arcadia City Police, November 20, 2006
Dear Will,
I've enclosed an article from the local tabloids, about a booby-trapped briefcase that sprayed paint on the man that opened it. Everyone thinks it's funny, but actually, it seems to be related to the attack on your son. The man who was splattered by the paint calls himself Mel the Messenger, who has a long record of minor charges. He says that he is innocent of any crime and in fact was anxious to give the police a lot of information, even after being Miranda'ed, to "prove" it and to get even with whoever planted that booby-trap.
Mel said that for the past two months, some shadowy figures had offered him a lot of money for some "courier service". The service always involved maroon-colored briefcases. He would be paid to drop off a briefcase at some location, or to pick up an abandoned one, and never ask questions. He pointed out that none of this is technically illegal. On one occasion he was told to stuff some papers in a briefcase in a café, and that had some unpleasant consequences.
Apparently he put the papers in the wrong briefcase, belonging to somebody else, and his employers were very annoyed. They not only refused to pay him but threatened him with some vague reprisals. However, they did not fire him outright.
On Sunday he was sitting in the train station, a frequent transfer point, when he saw a young woman walk by with a maroon briefcase with the proper markings. He couldn't give a detailed description of her – thick brown hair, he said, and a rather broad face, maybe about 20 years old. She put the briefcase in a storage locker and went off. Later he tried the storage locker and found that she had left it unlocked, and he didn't think it was an accident, so he took the briefcase. To avoid "misunderstanding", he decided to open it in the privacy of the restroom, which was largely empty on Sunday morning. That's when the paint-sprayer went off.
Mel is convinced that his employers played a mean practical joke on him, and he wanted to get even by denouncing them to the police as possible smugglers. At the same time, he asserted that HE had committed no crime. Technically he was right, and the Boston police were forced to let him go.
They checked on the storage locker, of course. The young lady left her name as Jane Adams, but the address was fictitious and they haven't been able to locate her.
The suspicion of course, is that these briefcases were containing something contraband, most likely drugs. The break-in at your son's dorm involved a maroon briefcase; maybe the burglars thought it was one of theirs. The Boston police asked various office-supply stores if they have sold a lot of maroon briefcases to a single client, and they asked us to do the same in Cambridge. They actually have a couple of leads: companies that placed a bulk order for maroon briefcases, which would have their company logo imprinted on them later. I can't say more than that, except that a really brainy operation would have bought the briefcases anonymously and separately, and not left a paper trail.
We will notify you again once we have more information.
An unencrypted Email from Helen Girardi to Joan Girardi-Rove, November 22, 2006
All right, Joan, I'm not stupid. Even Will is suspicious. Adam would know how to obtain a paint-sprayer and a special color of paint on short notice, and also how to carve wood quickly. Luke could probably rig up the sprayer to go off when the briefcase was opened. And a girl with thick brown hair who uses Jane as an alias, and who was at the Boston train station Sunday morning?
But it seems that all of you have gotten away with this prank. Mel the Mess blamed his smugglers, and presumably the smugglers won't hear about this unless they get safely locked up. Please don't try a stunt like this again.
The four of us – you, Adam, Luke, maybe even include Grace – need to talk.
(Author's Note) The spray-paint trick was taken from a third-season episode of VERONICA MARS, though I don't remember which one.
(Author's Note) The "Boston Banner" is an imaginary tabloid that I made up.
TBC