Part 3: Playing the Field
LOCATION: Washington D.C. – Federal Building
Shinichi spotted Congressman Horowitz and moved to intercept him on his way to his office.
"Congressman Horowitz!"
The elder man looked up from a folder he was perusing, taking his readers off as he looked for the person that had addressed him. "Oh, uh… Executive Orders, the European company from the fundraiser, correct?"
"That's right," Shinichi said, flashing his best charming smile. "You know, Congressman, European countries would be willing to aid the United States in foreign operations if they know that European companies are going to reap some of the benefits. Some help in the Appropriations bill-"
"I support American companies," Horowitz said, cutting Shinichi's pitch.
"Like Storm Breaker?"
"Like Storm Breaker. And they support, uh, the country."
Shinichi didn't miss the slight hesitation in Horowitz's speech. The congressman knew exactly what sort of things his supporters at Storm Breaker did.
"I didn't pick you at random, Congressman," Shinichi said, getting to business. "Storm Breaker can be a fickle friend. Rumor has it they're looking for some fresh blood."
Horowitz looked over at Shinichi shrewdly, suspicion and doubt reflecting in his eyes.
Hook.
"You should look out for the signs, Congressman," Shinichi said gravely. "Missed phone calls, no more little favors…"
"Those are the signs that your wife is cheating on you," Horowitz chuckled.
"That's right." Shinichi grinned sharply.
"And what am I supposed to do when that happens?"
Line.
"Play the field," Shinichi said, handing the man a business card Shiho had doctored for him before leaving L.A.
They'd reached the congressman's office now and after saying good-bye, Shinichi smirked inwardly with satisfaction as he saw Horowitz stare at the card before pocketing it.
Sinker.
LOCATION: Los Angeles – Herod Sayle's Office
While Shinichi was in D.C., speaking with Congressman Horowitz, Saguru was meeting with Sayle in his office at Storm Breaker HQ.
"I remember you," Sayle said as he let Saguru enter. "From the fundraiser. Please, have a seat."
Saguru reclined in a comfortable slouch in an office chair while Sayle moved to sit behind his large oak desk.
"Thomas Burnside. You can all me Tom." Saguru was speaking in the Southern drawl he'd adopted at the fundraiser. It wasn't his favorite accent, but it was one he was most comfortable with using in a con like this one.
"You don't work for Congressman Horowitz, do you?"
"I do not," Saguru said, shaking his head. "No, I work for Congresswoman Starbright from upstate."
"We already have enough friends on the Appropriations Committee," Sayle said dismissively.
"Well, I'm here because Congresswoman Starbright wanted me to let you know that, she's open to discussions now that Congressman Horowitz has gone soft on you."
"Horowitz always delivers."
"Horowitz told my boss to her face that he's tired of covering for you," Saguru said pointedly.
Sayle frowned, fiddling with a pen at his desk. "We've backed him for years."
"Well, Horowitz wanted my boss to meet with this man from some British company. The, ah…"
"Executive Orders?" Sayle guessed, eyes shining with anger and suspicion. Good. Shinichi had left an impression and Sayle had already started to suspect something was afoot with his congressman.
"I'll tell ya what," Saguru said, leaning forward with an earnest expression on his face, "if your earmarks and your no-bid contracts are still in that Appropriations Bill then you know that he's still yer boy, but if they're not, well, Congresswoman Starbright would be open to enjoying the same favors that Horowitz has enjoyed for all these years. But, of course, Horowitz appears to have some new friends now."
It was quiet for a moment. Then Sayle gave Saguru a tight, polite smile before rising to his feet. Saguru was quick to do the same, accepting the offered handshake.
"Thanks very much for coming, Tom," Sayle said.
"Pleasure," Saguru smiled politely back.
LOCATION: Leverage Conference Room
"Congressman Horowitz is very careful," Shiho informed Heiji as they waited for the next part of their plan to start. "No direct bribes, but he's renovating his house and so far he's received over $600,000 worth of work for a little over fifty grand."
She brought up pictures of Horowitz's grand house on the screens.
"Storm Breaker owns tha contracting company, huh?" Heiji mused, looking over the information.
"Sayle's working through three shell companies, but yeah, he does. And Horowitz loves his house. Just check out his web browsing habits," Shiho huffed, brining up a website for wood paneling. "Look here. The man spent three weeks picking out the perfect mahogany wood panels. This site is like wood porn."
"Is his house finished?" Heiji asked.
"Not even close."
Heiji smirked. "Can I barrow yer phone?"
"Where's yours?" Shiho asked. "Didn't I just give you yours back?"
"Left it in my car." Heiji shrugged.
Shiho rolled her eyes, sliding her cell across the table to him.
Heiji glanced up at the webpage she still had up and dialed the number. "Hello? Yes, I'd like ta cancel delivery on some mahogany wood paneling, please. … Tha Horowitz house. Yeah, ya know what? Do me a favor, man, and just go ahead an' cancel tha whole order. Yes sir."
Heiji stepped out of the room just as Saguru was entering, back from his meeting with Sayle.
"What's he up to?" he asked.
"Yanking the congressman's chain," Shiho said, smiling with amusement.
"All right," Saguru nodded in approval. "Has Kid started his run yet?"
Shiho tapped away at her keyboard and brought up security camera footage from the Capital Building, blue prints for the building, and a little red dot that was tracking Kid's progress. "Just now."
LOCATION: Washington D.C. – The Capitol Building
Kid was dressed as a female cop, saluting another officer as she walked past him, turning down another hallway. She came back out of that same hallway seconds later dressed as a different woman in a dress suit carrying her jacket over an arm. She listened to the chatter over the airwaves back at the office.
"You know, Hakuba-san," Shiho was saying. "I still think it would be easier if I were to just hack the bill in the printer queue."
"No. No computers," Saguru said in response. "Besides, the Bill is put into a wooden box on the congressional floor called the Hopper."
"A wood- Hold on a minute," Shiho said sounding so incredulous and scandalized that Kid had to make sure that a smile didn't appear on her face or let a snicker slip from her lips. "A wooden box?!"
"A wooden box," Saguru answered solemnly.
"Wood?" Shiho repeated. "They can put a man on the moon but all of their laws go into a wooden box. Ugh! Americans."
"What we need to do is get Sayle to believe that Horowitz is abandoning him. That Horowitz submitted an Appropriations Bill that doesn't have any of the usual contracts for Strom Breaker, which means that we have to put our own pages into the Bill," Saguru said, moving the topic along and Kid snapped her attention back to her task.
She spotted a clerk and bumped into him, stealing his ID and stowed it away into her coat. Then she pulled out her edited copy of the new Appropriations Bill with the new pages that Saguru had just been talking about. Kid had grabbed the original earlier under the guise of the pretty clerk she was now pretending to be, volunteering to deliver it for the congressman's secretary.
"That means the only place that we could get at it would be… ah! Okay," Shiho said, a note of understanding in her voice.
Kid kept her head down to hide a smirk as Shiho finally came to understand why Kid had traveled to D.C. with Shinichi. She flashed the badge she'd stolen at the security guards and walked into the Senate Room.
"That's clever, Hakuba-san." Shiho was speaking again. "Anyone can break a law. Everyone's done that. But to steal a law…"
Kid saw the camera for C-SPAN news that was recording the proceedings on the Senate floor. As she walked to the Hopper, she waved at the camera and put the partially fake bill into the box. She couldn't resist saying, "The eagle has landed," after she did so.
The Next Day...
LOCATION: Leverage Conference Room
Shinichi and Kid were now back from D.C. and the team was gathering around the table, listening to an audio file of Horowitz and Sayle arguing.
"How was Washington?" Saguru asked Shinichi as he took a seat next to him.
"Oh, you know. Villains, conmen, wolves in sheep's clothing," Shinichi said, nonplus. "Felt right at home."
"Oh, this is pretty good," Saguru said, attention back on the audio recording. "Listen to this."
"Don't call me. This is your contractor's problem," Sayle was saying.
"Oh please," Horowitz's voice sneered back. "Let's not pretend…"
"You pulled all our earmarks from the Appropriations Bill," Sayle shot back.
"There's about an hour of this, but here's the high point," Shiho said just before they heard Horowitz say, "Somebody screwed up. I've always been there for you. I called Manila, I cleared customs for you in Los Angeles and that was a risk." Shiho paused the audio. "After that there's… well, whatever you call the rich guys on telephones' version of make-up sex, but, now we know that Storm Breaker makes a thousand shipments a month, but one ship through Manila, right after the shooting, linked to phone records from the congressman."
She threw up several documents onto the screens, scrolling through them before stopping on a picture of the L.A. harbor.
"Their shipments come through here. Now somewhere in this madness is container 541. It's currently sitting at the Port of Los Angeles."
"What's in it?" Kid asked.
"No idea," Shiho shrugged, "but it's moving in two days, headed to the main Storm Breaker storage facility in Kansas."
"Whatever's in the container is the reason they tried to kill Alex," Saguru muttered, his expression unreadable.
"Wanted ta tie up all tha loose ends before they tucked this one away at home base," Heiji mused, casting Saguru a worried look.
"What do you ship in a crate from Iraq?" Shinichi asked, frowning.
"Something worth killing for," Saguru said darkly, getting up from the conference table. He needed a drink. "Miyano-san, locate that container."
The team traded concerned looks as they watched him leave.
LOCATION: Port of Los Angeles
Kid and Heiji were following Shiho after sneaking past the guard and were looking for container 541, while Saguru and Shinichi were waiting by the team's car where they'd left them just a little ways away from the gate to the port, watching the guards. There had been no need for the whole team to go, and it wouldn't hurt to have the two on standby in case they needed to make a quick getaway.
"How's security?" Saguru asked.
"Dockyard entrance is no problem, but…" Heiji answered, trailing off as he ducked out of sight with Kid and Shiho as another armed patrol of Storm Breaker Guards passed by. They moved off and behind their former position, he spotted container 541.
"There it is," Heiji said, pointing so that Kid and Shiho knew where to look. He made a move towards the crate, but Shiho snatched his arm and tugged him back with surprising strength for a woman of her height and build.
"Hold up, Rambo," she huffed, pulling up an app on her cell phone, trying to detect any electronics in the area. "No lasers, no motion detectors, no vibration sensors, no… whoops," she muttered.
"Whoops? What whoops?" Saguru's voice demanded over the comms.
"There's a webcam," Shiho reported. "I'm picking up its broadcast on my phone."
"Oh, I see it," Kid said, squinting. "Up on that pole by those storage containers. Should we move and come around behind it?"
Heiji rolled his eyes and walked off a ways, eyes sweeping the ground.
"No need," Shiho told Kid. "I just have to spoof the IP address and overlay a digital duplicate over the WiFi…"
Finding what he was looking for, Heiji picked up a nice sized rock, returned to the others and lobbed it at the webcam, shattering the lens.
"Or that," Kid grinned. "That works too."
"C'mon, lets go," Heiji huffed.
"Oh that's not inconspicuous at all," Shiho snapped. "I'm sorry it was too far away for you to punch. I'm sure that really frustrates you."
Heiji only smiled cheekily back.
"Enough, you two," Saguru said firmly.
"Whatever guards are around will more than likely be coming back soon to inspect the camera once they're informed it's inoperative by whoever was monitoring it," Shinichi added.
Heiji didn't look so cheeky anymore and they hurried over to the container where Kid wasted no time picking the lock. It took a full minute, however, because the lock was of a higher quality than what he usually dealt with. There was no doubt now in Kid's mind that something really valuable was inside the container.
"What do you think is in there?" Shiho asked, as if reading Kid's thoughts.
"Artifacts from Bagdad museums," Kid guessed. "Maybe some from the Saddam palaces."
"Nah," Heiji said. "I bet its weapons. Lot of back ally arms dealing goin' on in a war zone."
It was at that moment that Kid popped the lock open and together he and Heiji pulled the doors open. They all paused in shock when they saw what was inside.
"…Money is good too," Shiho said faintly as she stared at the container filled with pallets holding large organized shrink-wrapped cubes of stacked U.S. currancy.
Kid started forward in a daze and hugged the wall of money before turning around to face the other two, back reclined and arms spread against it, a mad grin forming as he let loose a giggle that set Shiho and Heiji's nerves on edge.
That was when they heard the crunch of approaching footsteps on the gravel dirt and quickly shut the container and relocked it as it had been, but not before Kid cut into one of the cubes and grabbed several stacks of the money and stuffed it down his shirt. Then they made a mad scrabble up on top of a stack of containers a little ways away, laying down flat just as the security detail returned with some of the guards from the gate, one of them holding a monitor.
"Get some men up there to fix that webcam," the lead Storm Breaker guard ordered to the unfortunate gate guard holding the monitor. "I want it working again in an hour. Move!"
The gate guard and his fellows scrambled away. It was slow and nerve-wracking, but once Kid deemed it safe, the three thieves climbed down the other side of the container they where hiding on top of and hurried back to Saguru and Shinichi.
LOCATION: Leverage Conference Room
The team was reassembled around the conference table staring at the stacks of money Kid had snatched and was now staring at reverently.
"Okay," Shinichi sighed, picking up, flipping through, and then tossing aside a stack of the money. "That's worth killing for."
"Ultraviolet checks out," Shiho reported, tapping away at her wireless keyboard. "And so does the paper, the watermarks, the ink, all of it. It all checks out."
"There's a whole container of it from Iraq of all places," Shinichi frowned. "It has to be counterfeit."
"Nope," Kid smiled dreamily, rubbing some of the bills against his cheek. "It's real. It feels real."
"Knock it off, Kid. Somebody take that money from 'im," Heiji scowled. "He's creepin' me out."
The other three ignored Kid and Heiji's comment.
"I don't know, what is this?" Shinichi asked. "Two? Three hundred million in U.S. currency? And what was it doing in Iraq of all places?"
"The Americans sent it there," Saguru sighed.
"What?" Heiji asked, incredulously.
"At the beginning of the Iraq war," Saguru said, going into lecture mode, "some American companies, like my old company, U.N.I.S., helped insure the largest currency transfer in history. Billions of American ones, fives and twenties – all cash – were sent to Iraq for reconstruction."
"Bribes," Heiji frowned.
"As needed." Saguru shrugged. "Nine billion went missing."
"Wait, billion?!" Shinichi asked, incredulously. "With nine zeros? Are you saying that nine billion dollars of U.S. taxpayer money just disappeared?"
"So Storm Breaker has found and now gets a cut of the missing money. The day they go to move it, real soldiers see the transfer-"
"On 'a tha contractors spooks and starts shootin'," Heiji finishes.
"Yeah, but Corporal Rider didn't see anything," Kid frowned, looking troubled and was hugging the money to his chest as if seeking comfort.
"They don't know that," Saguru said quietly.
"I don't get it," Shiho frowned. "Storm Breaker is a billion dollar company. Why would they even care about this cash?"
"Because it is cash," Saguru explained. "Money is money. That's one thing. But cash is a whole other thing. For all the money in the economy there is only about $500 in cash for every American."
"These are untraceable small bills," Shinichi mused. "Perfect for slush funds or home improvements for U.S. congressmen."
"Or small time donors you know for re-election. There would be no electronic trail," Shiho said, nodding as she realized what use cash money would be to a company like Storm Breaker.
"It's money laundering," Saguru declared.
"How so?" Shinichi asked, he and the others watching Saguru curiously as the blond picked up Shiho's electronic pad, linking it to the screens so that they would show what he was drawing to illustrate his points.
"All right," Saguru mused, drawing a square with a lightning bold in, writing "STORM BREAKER" below in the middle of the top half of the tablet. "Sayle uses the illegal cash to re-elect his congressman." He drew an arrow pointing to the bottom right corner of the tablet and wrote "CONGRESSMAN" at its end, drawing a dollar sign above the arrow line. "Horowitz then gets him no bid contracts for government jobs." He drew another arrow pointing left to the opposite side on the bottom half of the tablet where he wrote "NO BID CONTRACTS" and drew two dollar signs below that arrow line. "And the government pays for his services with legal money." He finished his diagram drawing an arrow pointing back up to "STORM BREAKER" and three dollar signs. "There's the circle, right there," Saguru concluded.
"They turned the entire American government inta a money laundering scam," Heiji huffed, looking like he wasn't sure if he should be disgusted or impressed.
"That's right," Saguru said grimly.
"That… is brilliant," Shiho said, shaking her head. "I'm impressed."
Heiji made a face, deciding that he was disgusted with the whole affair.
"I never thought I'd say this, ever," Shinichi sighed, "but that is just waaay too much money to steal."
"No," Saguru said gently. "You're not going to steal it."
The group turned to face him, all looking surprised.
"Don't you remember?" Saguru asked, heart sinking just a bit. "You're the good guys now. You're going to give it back."
Kid looked crushed and the other three didn't look too pleased either, trading sad and doubting looks.