Philanthropy Pt. 05

Her eyes were closed, and she had stopped breathing.

* * *

Two months later I found myself running on the treadmill in my condo. I had promised to never go running outside again. Amanda had been distraught. When I hadn't return from the run, she had assumed the worst. She had called Imani, Amber, 911 and even the Chief of Police.

She had joined me outside the room Brad was being operated in. We stayed there until the doctor reported he was fine but that the reconstruction of his shoulder would take years. Alan Wayne and Bruce Campbell stayed with us the entire time. We were allowed to go in to see Brad, and we did, but he was so far gone with pain meds. He kept talking about living in a brothel.

We left and Alan came with us. He was my new bodyguard, and he took the role as seriously as any of the others. Alan didn't mind the sex in the condo. So long as we didn't mind when he brought a boyfriend up to enjoy. We learned to respect each other's boundaries.

I also learned how to cook a great many Scottish dishes. And then ripped them all up and vowed never to cook Scottish again. Seriously, its shit.

My dev team at Insight spent many days and evenings with me in the condo. They were all on board and we discussed the plan of action and formulated the best strategies for taking down the LTG. It had to be systemic. It was impossible to do everything at once and so we examined the money trails and found the sequence and simply worked back from the end points.

CSIS paid me a visit with Imani. We discussed what had happened to Carmen Rodriguez and Shanti. I was sworn to secrecy, signed the appropriate NDAs, and they left with me trying to forget that horrible day yet again.

Time heals all wounds they say. I was already warned about PTSD, but now that I had shot a woman two times in the chest, and once in the bloody head, I was waking up with all sorts of bad dreams. I would be fine one moment and then be angry at everything and everyone. I was referred to a shrink, and I had already had two solid sessions with her. She seemed more interested in my sex life than anything else, though. She was pretty hot for a middle-aged woman.

The dev team was coming over this evening for a momentous occasion and I had prepared their favourites: pizza, wings, poutine, beer, and lots of store-bought chips. And fucking root beer for Graham. I worried about that kid.

After my run on the treadmill and a quick shower, Amanda sat next to me on the couch in the living room and was reading a romance novel. She loved the things. I tried to read one once, and the words—clearly designed for a female mind—repulsed me. Love and romance? Who needs that shit?

The condo app buzzed, and Alan answered and let in the dev team. They came up and soon we were eating and laughing and talking about the future. Dawn gave me a wet kiss, and she was teased for fucking the boss. She flashed her tits, and they shut up.

"So, what about Insight? What happens there?" asked Graham. Of all the dev team members, he was always the one looking for problems where none existed. But I needed that and encouraged him.

I took a moment to finish my suicide wing before answering. "We're keeping it. Everything will fall under the company name."

"What about Roger, and Markie?" he asked.

"I already spoke to Roger. I offered him a handsome retirement package. He was mostly window dressing, anyway. He was looking forward to an early retirement and took the opportunity. Markie is fine. She'll be paid a handsome salary and stay with the company when we relocate. It'll be hard to separate her from Brad. I didn't see that coming. Well, not exactly."

Dawn laughed and choked a little on her poutine. "Team Vanilla," she finally managed to get out.

Amanda and I shared a look and smiled. Dawn was fast becoming a room mate around here. She doted on me and worried about the effects of the trauma. She soothed me in many interesting ways. Heh. She likes to roll-play and it turns out she adores Velma from Scooby-Do. Check one item off the bucket list. Amanda played Daphne.

The condo app buzzed again, and Alan answered, again. In moments Bruce, Brad and Alan were thumping chests, except for Brad who was still a long way from a full recovery. They sat out in the sunroom and helped themselves to my finest scotch and smoked cigars. Snow was thick outside, and the balcony was no place for humans to be. We could suffer a little smoke, besides the ventilation fans took care of most of it.

There was a knock at my door and Alan was up and moving. The man did nothing by halves. He looked at the app and saw who it was. "Dana," he announced, and the room went quiet.

Alan opened the door and Dana stood there. She moved to walk in, but Alan stopped her. "Sorry, miss. Private party."

"Party?" Dana saw me and frowned at me. "Peter? Why can't I come in? Why wasn't I invited to the party?"

Amanda rose and went to the door. "Dana, shh. It's a work party. These are people from Peter's company..." Amanda steered Dana down the hall and their conversation faded. Alan closed the door.

I looked over the remaining wings. "Folks leave some wings! For the love of God, save some!"

They looked guilty and switched to pizza. The front door opened, and Amanda came back in, wiping her mouth. She had been kissing the little next-door vixen. Amanda had a thing for Dana. She said she reminded her of an old friend. I shrugged. So long as Amanda was happy, I was happy.

Happy wife, happy life. Thank God, I'm not married.

Satiated, everyone relaxed. I went out for a toke, bracing the frigid and windy outdoors. I came back inside and told everyone we would be starting soon.

My front door banged open startling everyone. And in walked Shanti, fresh from her winter run along the river. She pulled her ear buds free and removed her phone from her arm.

I was up on my feet and greeting her like I do every day since the stabbing. I wrapped her in my arms and kissed her passionately. I'll never know when the last time I get to kiss her will be, so I do every chance I get now. She used to protest, but now she looks forward to it.

There were catcalls and whistles. I was used to it.

"Welcome home, baby. I missed you." I said and stared into her eyes. She's so gorgeous, my Shanti.

She smacked my chest. "I'm all sweaty. Let me get washed and dressed." She sniffed the air. "I smell wings! There better be some left!" She spied Brad out in the sunroom. "Brad! Rustle me up my wings! And stop smoking those fucking cigars in here!"

"Yes, mum!"

Shanti growled and left for the bedroom and washroom. She had moved in after her surgery. I had insisted and Amanda helped convince her. We took care of her and now she was a permanent part of my life. I hoped.

We waited for Shanti to reappear and she did, freshly showered and wearing her normal black technical clothes. I had only seen her wear these kinds of clothes, except for the hot dress she wore at the sex club. She would always be the tough military chick in my life and when I close my eyes, she is always dressed the same. That was my Shanti.

I had reheated the suicide wings for her and she sat at the kitchen island and sucked the meat off the bones one after another. She was being watched by the entire room and didn't mind one bit. She finished her wings, not blinking at the heat once, and looked around for more to eat. She spied the pizza and came over, snagged two pieces, put them together like a sandwich and munched. She flopped on the couch beside me and leaned toward me. She was happy and so was I.

I had asked her what she had tried to say to me on the bathroom floor. She wouldn't say and kept mum. I was fairly sure I knew what it was.

I rubbed my hands together. "Okay folks. This is the first meeting of Insight Financial. The new and improved Insight Financial. First order of business is finances. I have you all on the books as partners." I looked around the room and held everyone's eyes for a moment. "Full partners. Shares are equally split with everyone in this room."

Dawn sniggered. "Except for your fifty-one percent share."

"Yes, except for that. Duh." I rolled my eyes.

Shanti inhaled her pizza and sucked the grease and sauce off her fingers. "Poor babies."

I laughed. "Wait for it..."

Shanti shot me a look.

"Maybe we should discuss it now?" suggested Amanda and took my hand.

Shanti sat up. "What's going on?"

I turned to Shanti and smiled at her. "I want Team Bulldog working for the company. Security. Overt and covert actions. All of you and anyone else you think would be a good fit."

Shanti looked surprised. "Leave the military? And join you?"

"Yeah. Pay is good and those shares? It splits evenly with Team Bulldog, too."

Shanti looked shaken. She looked over at Brad, Brent, and Alan.

Brad smiled and shrugged. "Time for a change?" he asked her.

Alan and Brent nodded, but Alan spoke. "We'll follow your decision, mum. Just give the word."

Shanti shook her head and looked down for a long moment. "I need to think about this."

"Take your time," I said. "We have all the time in the world."

I looked out at the sea of smiling faces. Everyone was pumped and excited. My dev team had their laptops and tablets out. They looked to me.

"Okay, execute the plan. Denial of service to the main corporations we identified. Work backwards from the banks, as we discussed. Send all funds to the shell corporations Dawn has created. Brigitte, work on cleaning our tracks. Graham and Brent, move that money around. I'll work on exposure of data to world news agencies. Identify and dox the criminals. Brigitte, watch for counter attacks. Keep the international law agencies off our trail. Let's do this people!"

A ragged cheer went up and my team started their work. Their focus narrowed and fingers flew. A lot of the work was scripted, and the team knew how to watch for anomalies. Cleaning our trail would be hard but not impossible. The rest of the gathering, with nothing to do, watched for a long moment. I don't know what they were expecting but the sudden silence was not it.

Amanda looked around. "Is that it?"

I looked up from my tablet. "Yeah, what were you expecting?"

"I dunno. Music? Fanfare? Lights and streamers?"

I chuckled. "Nope. This is what hacking looks like. Sorry to disappoint."

"How long will this take?"

"Weeks."

Brent cracked an energy drink and slurped noisily.

"Well, I'm disappointed."

Shanti tapped my leg. "We need to talk..." She rose and went into our bedroom. I gave Amanda a kiss on the cheek and rose and joined her. Shanti was waiting at the door and when I entered, she closed it and turned to me.

"Just what the blazes are you going on about? Springing something like that in front of my team! Did you not think to talk to me first?"

Shanti looked pissed. I tried to put my arms around her, but she shoved me back.

"Talk."

"Jesus, Shanti. I just offered you the best job in the world! And a salary to match it! Your team will be rich beyond their wildest dreams!"

"Off stolen money."

"Yes, off stolen money gained illegally by major cartels. Your salary will only be a tiny portion of that. Minuscule. Hardly worth mentioning."

"And you thought I would be okay with that?"

"If you like I could pay you from my own funds."

"Also stolen."

"Not true. Not all of it anyway."

"You are seriously pissing me off!"

"It was you that took off and left me, remember? If you had stayed, I could have explained all this!"

Shanti's face went dark. "That's not fair!"

"Fair? You left me! Remember? Now I'm offering you the dream of a lifetime! Goddamnit, I care for you Shanti. You know how impossible it is for me to say that? When I thought I had lost you...? I nearly died that day."

"Well, I didn't. The EMTs got me going."

"You were clinically dead for two minutes. Maybe your brain was damaged?"

Shanti paced away from me. "My team members have their own say in this. If they want to join you, they are welcome to."

"You know they will only do what you say. They adore you. They need you."

Shanti spun and glared at me. "And you? What do you need?"

I closed the gap and managed to get a hold of her and pull her close. "I need you. Always. By my side."

Shanti searched my face. I knew she could see my sincerity. I was being honest and frank with her.

"I know what you tried to tell me lying on the bathroom floor, Shanti." She put her head on my chest and I held her head. "I need you, Shanti. I can't lose you again. I can't bear it. Join us. Please. I need your eyes and ears on this. I'll share everything with you. Everything. You don't like something, you tell me, and I listen. I promise you that. You lead operations. Hundred percent authority."

Shanti just held me.

I stroked her hair and held her waist.

"You can't stay here," she said into my chest.

"No. We can't. We need to move. Into something more permanent. With proper defences and security measures. We need to see anyone coming. That's why I need you. You're the best. Imani says you are in demand the world over. You understand what they are capable of."

"And what about us?"

"You and me, you mean?"

Shanti nodded.

I leaned down and whispered into her ear. She looked up at that and suddenly she was kissing me.

A little while later, my balls slightly lighter, we re-joined the group.

My dev team looked up at us and then back to their work. Amanda rose and came over to us.

"So? Are we good?" she asked us.

Shanti nodded happily. "Better than good. You'll find out."

Amanda gave her a quizzical look and then turned that same look at me.

"Don't worry, Amanda. It's all good. Trust me."

She nodded slowly. Shanti grabbed her and pulled her in for a kiss.

Bruce whistled. "That's what I'm talking about!"

Shanti glared at him. "Shut it, ya navy puke."

"Yes, mum."

"Fuck, not you, too."

Brad chuckled. "What's the word, mum?"

Shanti beckoned and took the team out to the sunroom. I could see them talking and when their faces lit up, and they high fived each other, I knew I had my full team.

"Dawn!" I called out. "How's it going with the Carvers?"

Dawn grinned up at me. "It's done. That was easy. The Carvers are completely bankrupt. Most of the money is in a trust as you wanted. Don't expect a rent check this month!"

I sniggered. Pay back is a bitch, I thought.

The next two weeks passed in an exhaustive blur of activity, all of it across the Internet. Shanti and Amanda spent a lot of time together. They had a lot to discuss. I wasn't worried. I trusted my girls. Mostly I sat in the living room and worked with the team. There was a lot to do. Meanwhile I kept checking my data lake and looking for the results I needed. It was taking a really long time, and I had no doubts my thin clue from Dana would bear fruit.

A couple of days after we started, we heard a massive amount of smashing next door, even through the firewall between our condos. The Carvers were pissed, and it lifted my mood considerably.

Dana tried to come by, visibly upset, but Amanda pulled her away and calmed her. Dana wanted to know what we were doing. When Amanda avoided answering her questions, Dana grew angry and yelled at Amanda.

Amanda later told me about her conversation with Dana.

"Amanda! Tell me what's going on! Dad and mom are fucking freaking out! Dad says he's ruined! Everything is gone! Mom says we are destitute. She blames Peter and I know she's right! What has he done?"

"Calm, Dana..."

"Don't tell me to be calm! Jesus fuck! My parents are ruined! Documents are flooding CSIS, and the police, and who knows where else? Reporters are calling around the clock! Have you seen the news? It's happening everywhere! I know Peter is behind it! Tell me he's not! Look me in the eye and tell me he's not!"

"Dana. You'll be fine. Believe me."

"I'll be fine? What about my parents? They're fucking broke! Everything's stolen!"

"Dana. Trust me. You do trust me, don't you?"

"Trust you? Trust you! Are you fucking kidding me right now? If my dad knew I gave the name Gui Po to Peter, he would throw me off the fucking balcony!"

"That's only one small part."

"One small part? One small part of what?"

"I can't tell you!"

"You know what? FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU AND PETER! I'm telling my dad everything. I'm calling the police! You don't get to fuck with me and my family like that! Fuck you!"

"Dana, don't, please..."

And Dana stormed off. We hadn't heard a peep since then.

Imani first called on day four. She told me to come to the EDM Cessna offices right away. I told her no. I was busy and hung up. She called me repeatedly and texted my phone so much I had to turn it off. Now was not the time for distractions.

LTG could hire the best cyber detectives money could buy. My team was now spending more time fending off probes than doing the work they needed to do. At times it was close, but truly few people in the world could see what we were doing. It was a big data problem. The problem for LTG was they were lost in a forest of trees and could only see the trees in front of them. Behind the row of trees, I had clear cut the entire forest.

We pulled money, moved it, hid it, moved it again, changed what it was, and converted everything into stocks, bonds, real estate, and trust companies. But we didn't stop there. We financed companies already working on renewable energies, world hunger, poverty, and the like.

We would be at this for an awfully long time measured in months and possibly years. I sat back and helped where help was needed, which wasn't very often. My dev team were brilliant and now self-sufficient. For them this was almost an exercise. They were enjoying themselves and rarely slept.

After a month we had a much better picture of the web LTG had spread globally. They touched almost every aspect of the global financial markets, businesses, corporations, and even private lives. We attacked it all.

The name Gui Po was not a common name. We figured it was a person, likely the head of the LTG. Whoever it was, she or he was well hidden. But the name appeared, in small ways, buried in corporate correspondence. Imagine finding little dots to put on a graph. One dot means nothing. Two dots are not much better. But find hundred of little dots and you start to see a line on the graph. And then you can extrapolate and interpolate.

Spring was around the corner. We were experiencing a warmer March than normal, and I was sitting outside on my balcony examining my data lake. I won't go into just how large the big data was, likely it was one of the largest data compilations the world had ever seen. I was getting frustrated because the name Gui Po was remaining elusive. I had no doubts the person was real. He or she just didn't seem to exist anywhere.

It was Amanda who solved it for me. She sat beside me outside and enjoyed the warm sun. She opened her tablet and played some insipid mobile game and I ignored her. I heard her blow out an exasperated breath and soon she was tapping away at her tablet.

"Hey," she said out of the blue. "Did you know Gui Po means Caucasian woman in Mandarin?"

I wasn't really listening and then her words sunk in. "What did you say?"

Amanda held up her tablet for me to see. She had entered "Gui Po" into Google. A translation of Gui Po was the top search result. The words "Caucasian woman" appeared.

I sat back stunned. I had googled Gui Po as well. But I had been searching for the person, not a translation. All I had known was that Gui Po was an old ghost woman in Chinese folklore and could either benevolent or evil. Reading Caucasian woman on the tablet had my mind spinning.

I went to my data lake and entered about a dozen keywords, starting with Caucasian woman. I sat back and waited. In a few moments I had a notification and opened it. I was staring at the image of a white woman who lived in Guangzhou, China. She was ten years my senior, gorgeous, and stared out at me with bright blue eyes. She looked Danish, with large eyes, dirty blond long hair, and a killer tan. What was she doing in China? It didn't make sense, and I alerted the team and kept digging.