Day 84 - Darwin's Game - Chapter 33 (2017 words)

©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

DARWIN'S GAME

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 33

Jacob felt like he was going around in circles, he had been excited by the leads and the closeness of the Darwin connection with Eugene in Michigan but it had gone nowhere and once again he was at a loss, there was so little to follow up on.

The vastness of the sound stage or hangar that the obstacle course and fake town had been recorded in was a good place to start, but there was little shown that could have placed the location to narrow down the search. There were no cars parked on the streets and no signage in any language or convention that could isolate anything other than the clock tower building could have been based on an American town or European village. No words printed on the buildings, no trash cans or shop-fronts that could give even a hint of regionality. Instead the entire set up was deliberately bland, probably for the very reason that it would nigh impossible to trace.

He was certain that the computing power of the American governmental agencies were tasked with searching satellite and publicly available imagery for a building that size anywhere in the continental United States.

It could have been anywhere, and there must have been a trail of some kind to the building of such a structure. It was inconceivable that one person built all of that, those structures and the infrastructure like roads and lighting, and the obstacle course itself even must have been a recent construction. It would be easy to find how and where it was made if there were even one connecting fact that allowed you to narrow down the search. Instead the only way “in” to finding this place was an insider, someone who recognised the project and had helped to build it.

A reward was being offered by the FBI for information leading to the capture of Darwin, it was updated regularly and inserted into articles, reported on the television and broadcast in all conceivable means to get peoples attention. Someone must know something, the town did not build itself after all. Based on what he knew of his interactions with Manson, it was possible that the people who had been used to create this place were in on the plan, or compensated possibly compromised in a friendly way to keep their silence. The manpower it would have take to create such a place, it boggled the mind that no one had any real connection to it and was not coming forward.

It could have been that they simply did not want to come forward, that they believed in the project and wanted to see it through to the end. The security liaison from Dragon Ridge had contacts at the Bureau and according to what he was feeding Edgerton and Hilliard, there was no leads of any substance so far. The problem was twofold for them, firstly no leads followed up turned out any real data that could be used or even hinted at usefulness. The second was one of resourcing because they were getting hundreds of leads, confessions and finger pointing every day that the lines remained open. They were getting new tips faster than they were clearing even the most obvious of lies. Confessions were handled first, discounted within days in most cases, but days that just added to the immensity of the problem.

Jacob thought that the most likely scenario for a good lead would have been an accusation, there would be ninety nine percent false in the mix and one percent that would be worth chasing up and in there, if at all there would be a connection that would lead to something. Someone, with a memory of the construction, or of supplying a component, would know that what they were seeing was part of the operation. Their silence may well be brought, may be bargained and may be threatened, but humanity is not known for rationality and there had to be a person who would lose control and say something. Maybe let it slip when trying to be canny, maybe drunk and with looser lips than he/she thinks, maybe not realising at all what they were saying.

These gems, if they existed would be buried in depths of evidence, false accusations, confessions of the mad and lonely all mixed up together. According to his sources Jacob understood that the tips were being invalided as quickly as possible, trying to sift through the information to find the right piece to put more effort into. There was no easy way to get to that information, it probably constituted a crime to interfere, taking leads from, a criminal investigation, especially a high profile one like this. The Dragon Ridge team balked at extracting that information on behalf of their clients, though claiming such a thing were not only possible but relatively easy to accomplish. They had a wealth of contracts with departments and agency types, it was not in their interests to facilitate such an obvious breach of confidence and security with the FBI.

At least not obviously, not directly and in no way that could ever be connected back to them. Pete who had been shadowing Blake for a little while now, had put him in touch with someone on the down low, who then put him in touch with someone else who then contacted Jacob, all of which happened unofficially and with a nudge-nudge-wink-wink spy story like chain of surreptitious and highly paranoid meetings. No emails, no talking on unsecured phone lines and arranged meetings in very public places in order to avoid any chance of being eavesdropped upon.

As it happened getting the information copied and issued to Jacob in his new base of operations in Oregon, was fast and apparently easy. He knew better than to ask who was involved or how it was done, but there was now a mountain of paperwork scattered about the cabin in the woods that was now his home. He had taken this refuge away from the lights of the city, at the end of a high speed satellite connection to the internet, a secure private network and a thirty minute drive from the nearest population centre of any size.

He wondered if this was how it was for Darwin, hiding with all the resources that his money or influence could command. Away from prying eyes, out of the sight of everyone that could connect the dots of what he was trying to accomplish. The key was to become your prey, to be like them and think like them, know them like they know themselves. Jacob was burning money as it was pouring in and Blake was balancing the books, a good team but they were determined to find their way to the truth of Darwin. Hilliard was charging more and more for advertising on their site, they were consulting on many shows and media outlets taking fees and funnelling it into side projects like the one in Eugene, Oregon. A location chosen in honour of their only other lead so far.

Jacob had no assistance in his detective work sorting through the information but he had a profile to work with that was a focal point for looking through the information. A data analyst and an economist had separately worked on the kind of information that would point the way to finding the kind of person who was involved in the construction or assembly of the town components. Skilled workers, short term contracts, single parts and confidentiality contracts. They were not looking for information all of the time, some of the data that was interesting was the information that was missing. Components that were ordered without contact and shipped to places with unknown destinations, compiled with a list of skills and dates that may have coincided with the Darwin Town.

He was chasing his tail, running through data, sifting through paranoia and thinking like Darwin would have had to. How to hide what you are doing, how to protect your intentions from even the most innocent of observations, that was the problem. A number of the accusations, the tips about the construction of the town and the course were from people claiming to have made a component. Jacob set about categorising the various elements and data mapping them to find out if there was anything in the bigger picture.

Within two days he had culled through a few thousand tips and had found three hundred items that could not be discounted immediately. The cases where the tipster have called in or emailed had provided information about an item that could be cross referenced to a real destinations were put to one side but not discounted. There was no guarantee that they were actually at those locations, but he had to start somewhere. Then he put shipping information into a database and started looking for groupings of items and patterns where the contracted staff or suppliers were only a part of a chain and without a large order or project to associate to the job. Piece by piece the information came together and he had a dozen locations that co-incided with the broad categories he was looking for.

The next day he then cross referenced those locations only with the originally discarded data for known jobs and locations and then had a subset to work with, a dozen locations initially but then he kept digging and refining his queries. He drew a line in the sand for three months ago and then discounted all deliveries of items that happened after that time. He now had ten locations and a tighter criteria to work with. The companies were next, he weeded out the jobs that were lodged to a single entity, there was no way that Darwin would go to all this trouble to hide this information so he could not be found and then use a single or repeating set of business entities. He broke the data down by recurrence of those businesses and ended up with two sets of data in four different locations that used more than five companies and he was down to four groups to sift through.

Using the companies he sifted through the super set one more time and found a few outlier orders he missed the first time. The extra numbers added to the set in the query and now he was down to two locations, one in the States and one in Italy.

Had he made a breakthrough? He was unsure what to do next, if he just turned up at one or both of these locations what would he find and what could he prove? He hit Google Earth and started pouring through the areas, one in the middle of nowhere, Montana in the land to the east beyond Great Falls somewhere. There was something there, but not in Great Falls, that was the last confirmed depot position for over half the orders that went to that state. There was some crossover when compared to the Italian village in Tuscany, an estate that was a historic trust and on a huge swathe of land in the hills above and beyond any major cities. A number of the companies crossed over between these two final locations, it had to mean something.

From Oregon he could be in Great Falls before the next episode was due, or he could be in Italy within a few days on a whim that the one outside of the country was more likely to the one where Darwin would go. If you got to this kind of trouble, then why would you leave yourself in the same jurisdiction as the the people who were chasing you? The safer bet would be overseas, or would it be the easier route of Montana where it may be near impossible to find you and yet still have access to everything locally?

He could not cover them both, but he had a good feeling about Italy so he called Blake and between them they formed a plan of attack.