Rigged
Prologue
July 2018
Kulm Hotel
St. Moritz, Switzerland
The mountain air was crisp and cool as the sun crept closer to the edge of the Alpine crestline that encompassed the tiny Swiss village of St. Moritz. The scene was picturesque. The peaks were covered in lush greens and dotted with wildflowers. The occasional grazing cows and sheep sauntered along, lazily eating to their heart’s content. Johann, the German Foreign Minister, couldn’t help but feel conflict between the beauty of his surroundings and the severity of the situation at hand.
The sommelier refilled the wineglasses at the table, then asked, “Can I get you gentlemen anything else?” As he spoke, he lifted the now-empty bottle of 2014 Gantenbein pinot noir. The six-hundred-euro bottle of wine was Johann Behr’s local favorite when he visited St. Moritz.
“Nein, vielen Dank,” Johann said as he dismissed the man for the time being.
Returning his gaze to the men seated around the table in the private dining room, Johann leaned forward. In a hushed tone, he asked, “What are we going to do about these trade tariffs the Americans continue to impose?”
Johann was incredibly concerned by the sudden changes that had been made; the global trade policies were rocking Europe and Asia. More importantly, they were costing him and his colleagues an immense fortune.
Erik Jahn, the manager of the Norway Sovereign Wealth Fund, shook his head in disgust. “What can we do?” he replied. “We have to adjust to the new normal. At least until a new president is elected.”
Peng An, the CEO of China Investment Corporation, lifted his glass of wine to his lips, taking a few sips as he contemplated the question. He seemed lost in thought as his gaze trailed off toward the sprawling village below the hotel, where the lights were just beginning to twinkle as the sun finished its retreat behind the mountains.
Finally, he placed his half-empty glass down on the table. Looking at his compatriots, he announced, “We have two choices. We either sit back and wait out this American president, or we look to replace him with someone of our choosing that sees the world as we see it.”
Grunting at the implication, Roberto Lamy, the Director-General of the World Trade Organization, retorted, “It’s not that simple, Peng. You don’t just pick who will be the American candidates for president. They have a primary process where they are selected.”
“Roberto is partially right,” Johann acknowledged. “We cannot pick their candidates for them. We can, however, whittle down the options they have to choose from.” He finished off his glass of wine, then waved for the sommelier to come refill his drink.
Peng shook his head in frustration. “This is 1930 all over again—all those protectionist trade policies will cause another Great Depression,” he said.
“More like 1933,” retorted Johann, thinking of the rise of the Nazis in Germany.
Swatting the comment down with a literal shake of his hand, Peng responded, “President Sachs may be a petulant bully, but he’s no Hitler, Johann. Be sensible, won’t you?”
Stinging from the rebuke, Johann replied, “I’m sorry. You’re right. My concern is that his nationalist tendencies are leading the world closer to another great clash. We have to figure out a way to stop him before the economic damage he’s inflicting becomes irreversible.” He turned to look at Roberto. “There must be more the WTO can do,” he pleaded.
Roberto sighed. “Even if a nation brings a claim against the US to the WTO, we have little we can do to make the Americans cooperate. If their president and his political backers are unwilling to honor the WTO rules or judgments, what can we do? It’s not like we have a standing army. Furthermore, the Americans have a twenty-trillion-dollar economy; it’s not like they need to trade with Greece or Italy for their economic survival.” Shaking his head in resignation, he added, “They’re already proving they can survive and grow outside of their current trade arrangements with China, as I’m sure Peng here can attest.”
Peng appeared visibly frustrated, with his nostrils flaring and his face slightly flushed. Up to this point, China had been able to use its considerable economic weight against the US, forcing their companies to hand over intellectual property rights and trade secrets if they wanted to do business in China. However, that practice had abruptly changed when the Sachs administration had begun to impose a series of tough tariffs on products being produced in China and shipped to the US.
Downing the rest of his wine, Peng added, “The time for change is coming soon, gentlemen. We have a little more than two years until their next presidential election. I suggest we use that time wisely.”
“I think it’s time you get in touch with Lance Solomon from Goldman Sachs,” said Erik, directing his comment at Johann. “You know that he knows the American side of this better than we do. We will need his connections to make this work.”
Beginnings of Mischief
Veles, Macedonia
Wen watched Dafina’s fingers move rapidly across the keyboard of her laptop as she finished compressing the terabytes of data she had just stolen and dumped them onto the secured site he had provided. With her immediate work completed, she turned her attention back to him.
She ran her fingers across his bare chest. “It’s complete. All the information you asked for is there,” she said with a coy smile. “Now pay me the other half of my money.”
“You made sure to leave enough bread crumbs that will lead them back to KHS?” Wen Zhenyu asked. The fingers of his left hand gently walked up her spine.
The feeling of his fingers against the bare skin of her back caused goose bumps to appear on her arms as she seemed to be excited by his touch. Tilting her head slightly, she answered, “Of course. Anyone looking to trace the intrusion will be led right to the Kosova Hacker’s Security. I made it look like I was one of their Albanian hackers. No one will be able to trace it back to me personally.”
Smiling at the response, Wen asked, “Does anyone else know you worked on this project with me?”
His hand now massaged the tops of her shoulders as he moved his other hand over to provide a nice deep tissue massage. She moaned softly as he worked out a kink in her neck.
“No. I didn’t tell anyone I was working on this project. As far as my friends know, I’m still running my fake news website. I might add, that website pays pretty well too,” Dafina asserted. She lifted her chin up, fully relaxing her shoulder muscles.
“Excellent,” Wen replied. He moved his right hand up to her face, and before she even knew what was happening, he snapped her neck, momentarily holding her now-limp body in his arms. He gently laid her down on the bed they had been sitting on and folded her laptop up, placing it in his backpack.
With his work done and his loose ends tied up, it was time for Wen to head back to his office in Skopje and sift through the data she had scooped up for him.
*******
An hour later, Wen walked into his office on the second floor of the Silk Road Bank in central Skopje. His secretary greeted him.
“You have a call from a client that needs to speak with you about a business loan, and your three o’clock with that local businessman is still on,” she announced, handing him a note.
“Thank you,” Wen replied with a smile. Before he closed his door, he leaned back out into the hall and said, “Please make sure I’m not disturbed until my three o’clock meeting shows up.”
Once inside his office, Wen handled the necessary emails to the home office in Baar, Switzerland, just south of Zurich. That would appease his corporate masters. He’d become very adept at completing a large amount of work in a very short amount of time, something that had been drilled into him since his days in the state-run orphanage in his homeland of China.
With the immediate needs of his day job handled, Wen logged on to a World of Warcraft MMO forum and perused the various threads until he found the World’s End Tavern: Roleplay and Fan Fiction Page and clicked on it. Once in, he scrolled through until he found the specific thread he was looking for. He typed in a coded message to his compatriots along with half of the URL to the server where the terabytes of stolen data had been placed.
Wen then opened a new window and found his way to a forum page of the video game World of Tanks. He clicked on a page for off-topic questions and found his desired thread. He dropped the rest of the URL needed to find the server with the data his minders had tasked him with acquiring.
With his cloak-and-dagger work done, he transitioned back to the mundane paperwork associated with his upcoming meeting with a small business owner looking to obtain a loan to purchase a second petrol station. It usually took him a moment to refocus his mind back to the slow grind after the excitement and adrenaline of his passion—spy craft for his only true parent, China.
He read through the reports again. The highway linking Thessaloniki, Greece, to Belgrade, Serbia, was nearly complete, and the amount of truck and other vehicle traffic moving along the E-75 highway through Kumanovo was about to increase substantially. This loan applicant was hoping to capitalize on the increased truck traffic by building a second petrol station along the busy route. Wen reviewed the revenues of the man’s existing petrol station and the estimates of the potential revenues at the second location. He didn’t see a reason why his bank wouldn’t approve the loan. It was a solid business investment.
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