>>>>>>>A.T.X.D. BRIEFING ROOM<<<<<<<
>>>>>>>8:15 AM<<<<<<<
Reach took a moment to look at Raul before informing, “While I should discipline you for putting your life in danger and almost blowing the cover of your partner and that of another A.T.X.D. Team, Signaphora, I will refrain from such action for now, given that you and Janeiro have obtained some crucial leads in addition to the intel which the Stealth Angels have gathered.”
“Thank you, sir,” Raul replied, then added, “I promise it won’t happen again.”
“You would do well to respect that promise, Raul,” Reach cautioned. The Commander General then changed the subject and requested, “Detective Yang, since you’ve been running the investigation into SIGA longer than the Stealth Angels, I’d appreciate learning from you and Raul what intel you’ve gathered on them.”
“Yes, sir,” Janeiro replied with a nod, “We know that SIGA is the primary sponsor of the Defiant Project. The currency which is converted to fund the operation is an extraterrestrial type from the Sirix system.”
“It’s called Cuynaros,” Raul replied as soon as Janeiro transferred the numerical intel from their datapad to the primary briefing screen behind Reach. “It’s a currency form most prominently used by Zaria, a neighboring planet to my homeworld Cemista. From what I know, it’s a very lucrative currency - just one paper bill is worth about $600 USD on Earth.”
“Whew,” Ashley whistled in the background, and Reach didn’t make any motion to oppose the response given his own surprise at this.
“When we first discovered this currency form was being used by the at-the-time unknown organization,” Raul continued, “I told Janeiro that until fairly recently, the Zarians used to trade in commodities with Cemista under this currency form. But in the last five years, trade slowly went silent or at least decreased a substantial amount when local planetary intelligence reported that the Zarians were starting to make even more lucrative deals with an unknown party. We now know that SIGA is that mystery benefactor, as they have used the currency to fund a number of illicit operations in a couple other systems.”
“Now extraterrestrial currency conversions here on Earth are normally handled by specifically hand-picked financial officials in each country’s respective intelligence agency,” Janeiro continued. “And there are quite a few agencies in the United States who deal with this, the most prominent one being the CIA. But we soon started tracking a series of undocumented conversions within the CIA’s servers, and that’s how we discovered the money trail that eventually led us to the Defiant Project, and our run in with the Stealth Angels.”
“I’m sorry, Detective,” Reach then interrupted with a mix of puzzlement and worry, “Did you just say undocumented transactions?”
“Yes, sir, we did. It turns out somebody or a small group of individuals in the CIA is handling the financial conversions for the Defiant Project specifically, embezzling a hefty yet well-hidden sum to be diverted to the project and not disclosing them on the required financial forms.”
“But we got lucky discovering this trend,” Raul added, “The data of the conversions from Cuynaros to US Dollars is placed on the Agency’s extraterrestrial-financial server, but then this particular data is frequently scrubbed. It wasn’t until Janeiro discovered an anomaly in the system and quietly uncovered its origin that we learned this.”
“An anomaly? In the CIA’s servers?” Ashley questioned, turning a confused look their way, “How did you even find something like that?”
“It’s a long story, but at the request of a CIA oversight official, we discovered the presence of otherwise untraceable data fluctuations in the Agency’s servers,” Janeiro replied. “However, it was spotty, irregular, and otherwise didn’t follow a specific pattern, most likely to keep anybody in the CIA from noticing a particular trend that could prompt an investigation. Day-to-day, your average intelligence official wouldn’t notice the change in the data coming in and out of the server. But if you’d spent more than a week just watching for the fluctuations in the financial server like we did, you’d eventually discover it. Even then, however, once we’d both locked onto the pattern, we and Raul had to isolate the signal and decrypt it substantially. Only then did we both discover these off-the-books conversions.”
“So it would seem that Kone has managed to sway members of the CIA to his cause,” Reach replied, then muttered. “He’s one sly bastard.”
“Actually, sir, with permission,” Ashley then requested, “During our first wakepoint meeting at the Hotel del Monique, one of my operatives, Mikayla Romero, reported overhearing a conversation from the security detail guarding Kone that involved something about an ‘asset’. From the way they used the word, Romero suspects that they were most likely talking about Kone himself. What if Kone isn’t fully in charge of the project?”
“That’s true,” Janeiro replied. “If SIGA were going to get involved in an illegal commercial activity on Earth, using a human figurehead, especially one with a lot of wealth, power or influence, would be the perfect way for them to embed their goals into the operation without being noticed.”
“But of all the illicit human-run operations on Earth which SIGA could get involved in,” Raul then objected, “why would they choose a space-colonization program? What kind of benefits do SIGA and its members get out of that?”
“For the longest time, these space-colonization programs have been marketed as tourism efforts by the upper class,” Ashley noted, recalling her memories of reading about similar proposals in the news before her recruitment to A.T.X.D. “And because it’s private sector operations, the concern is that neither the U.S. Government nor any international authority can mandate what happens in the course of the construction or revenue operations of these projects, at least not publicly. Even if they could, oversight on these projects would be greatly limited by the legal pushback efforts of these wealthy figureheads. And come to think of it, Kone frequently mentioned Mars as an example during his presentation in the ballroom.”
“What’s the connection, Captain?” Reach asked, intrigued by Ashley’s theory.
“After the Kronosian War, all those underground indigenous Martian colonies were left in serious disrepair. A.T.X.D.’s been able to offer assistance, but you know as well as I do General that those efforts are very hard to pass through the UN without catching public attention, and there’s a lengthy process involved in the approval of such assistance as a result. Since civilian aid and restoration projects are moving at a snail’s pace on the red planet, SIGA may have picked up on that and is trying to find a way to exert some sort of influence on the diverse range of races living there. Now they could just try and seize it by force like the Kronosians attempted, but if SIGA is determined to stay out of the spotlight, it is more likely they’d take part in something behind the scenes. And since there hasn’t been any major criminal activity on Mars like looting, organized crime, or civil war in the wake of the conflict, SIGA likely wouldn’t have many on-planet options for infiltration.”
“Which makes Kone’s otherwise fictional Defiant Project the perfect cover for their objectives,” Janeiro slowly pieced together with intrigue. “Nicely done, Captain.”
“I second that,” Reach agreed, then ordered, “Captain, your operatives who were assigned to gather and store intelligence in the mission, Cassandra Wayne and Nadine Salaam, have them meet with Janeiro so that both your teams can compare and exchange intel and compile a more comprehensive report on what we’ve learned so far. Then I want you to put your heads together and find some way to track down who this mystery party or individual is inside the CIA who’s handling these off-the-books transactions for SIGA. As long as the Agency has some sort of involvement in the Defiant Project, even unintended, there’s no telling what kind of obstacles they may implement to keep us from tracking down the guilty party and eliminating this threat - that’s including the risk that these people of interest may also have dangerous contacts of their own, terrestrial or allied with SIGA.”
“Yes, sir,” Ashley replied, and the response was repeated by both Janeiro and Raul before all three of them were dismissed.