Elizabeth at War Ch. 07 - Goats

Terry held up a hand. "I do not think we need a full-time stake-out, our computers can draw the conclusions we need from her telephone calls."

Nunes shook his head. "Illegal, and with these facts you won't get a judge to authorise tapping her phone."

"I am not talking about tapping her calls, merely recording what numbers she calls, and then tracking them. We have an overall authorisation, but for a specific number we need specific authorisation. What will it take?"

Nunes frowned. "I can find out, but you seem to have better contacts with the Department of Justice than I do. Now, what other cases were we going to discuss?"

"McCall and associates." Stan tapped on his pad. "Specialised consultation group, node between a number of operators in the defence industry. They appear at the center of a network of links to places where things went missing. Or where some foreign countries developed things along the same lines we were working on. Sondra had some contact with them a while ago. We had checked them out in detail but found nothing. Somehow things are just too clean."

Nunes nodded. "Clean is bad? Ok, I understand what you are talking about. How do we help?"

Stan looked around the room. "I will go in with a mandate from another consultancy. Elizabeth will pose as my secretary. They have a board meeting coming up, and we have a day to do a due diligence before that."

"Ok, so you are going in. No threat? Your backup team will be outside. Any risk?"

Stan shook his head. "But I would like someone on the inside too. Someone who can keep an eye open and can follow up if we find something. Can you get someone on the cleaning staff?"

Nunes looked at da Silva. "Let me see. Cleaning staff is usually invisible. It depends on what company does the work there, but I know most of them. I can do a credible job pushing a broom. Maria could probably act as cleaner as well. What about the next phase?"

Elizabeth's drawn breath was an invitation to listen. "Can I suggest something non-military? Can we get the whole team in on the planning? Some of them may well have an idea. And yes, I'm familiar with the 'need to know' principle. But this is not a military operation. We all need to know what the main objectives are. If someone gets taken, the whole operation is off in any case. So let's share the facts and this video and see what they come up with."