“That’s exactly what I asked him,” Chip replied as he refilled his glass of scotch. “And his answer changed my life.”
A cellphone began ringing.
“Excuse me for a moment.” Chip said as he abruptly pulled out his phone. “Are we ready?” he asked impatiently. A moment later he nodded his head. “Okay, tell him five more minutes. We’re going to have guests soon.” He clicked off the phone and dropped it back into his pocket.
“Who was that?” Jeri asked nervously.
“Max,” he replied calmly. “He’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“I’m guessing he won’t be alone.”
Chip smiled. “Probably not.”
Jeri stepped back from the counter. “Okay, Chip… enough. I need to know what the hell’s going on here. There’s a dead federal agent lying next to your chair, and you just told me you’ve spent the last year lying to me about who you really are.” She reached beneath her apron and pulled out the handgun she’d taken from the buried container. “I’m sorry, but lately I’ve lost trust in just about everyone – including you. So here’s the deal.” She raised the handgun and pointed it steadily at his chest. “You’ve got whatever time is left before that giant murdering muscle-head and whoever else walks through that door to finish your story and get to the truth. Or we’re going to have a very awkward situation to sort out.”
Chip looked at the gun with a slight grin before continuing.
“The night I confronted your father and asked him why the NSA wanted to destroy him, he gave me a very direct answer. He told me was wrapping up a corruption story he’d spent the better part of two years investigating. A big corruption story. Your father was about to expose widespread misconduct within a large American investment firm that went all the way to the top – executives and board members alike – and, once published, would most likely prompt a full Federal investigation. But there was a complication. One of your father’s sources inside the firm revealed that the company was managing several large pension funds for the Federal Government, including agencies like the FBI and the NSA. We’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars. Now this by itself was entirely legal, but as your father’s inside source revealed, those funds were also getting special attention in the form of privileged information, which definitely was not legal. Of course, the people overseeing these pension funds on the government side knew all about this, but they weren’t going to say a thing. On the contrary; they were making far too much money to ruin the arrangement – or take any chances. When they found out your father was nosing around, they immediately got nervous. So they decided to find out just how much he knew.”
“So they sent you after my father to find out,” Jeri said flatly, still pointing the gun at him.
“That’s right,” Chip replied. “They asked my superiors at the NSA to put me on his trail, and I unknowingly confirmed everything they feared when I brought those coded financial statements in for analysis.” He shook his head in disgust. “After that, the two principles of the agency were immediately implemented. The truth, not being advantageous, was altered, and a new enemy of the state was created with a few adjustments to my report.”
Jeri lowered the gun slightly as Chip looked up at her, his pale blue eyes suddenly focused in the dim light of the saloon.
“Your father helped me realize a very unpleasant but necessary truth that night,” he continued, his voice now sharp and commanding. “A government is really no different than any other business, Jeri. It exists to serve a purpose, to fulfill its responsibilities, and to regulate itself in a way that is self-sustaining. In most ways a business is like any living organism. It has a natural urge to grow and become more complex. But as any good biology professor will tell you, as organisms grow and evolve their interests naturally tend to become more self-serving. Eventually this self-serving behavior determines its actions, even when those actions are in direct violation of their very reason for being.”
Chip picked up the glass of scotch and slowly swirled it in his hand.
“The NSA was going to kill your father because he was about to expose our government’s very nasty little self-serving secret. Your father didn’t want to die any more than I wanted to be a part of his killing, which meant our lives as we knew them were both over. I knew we probably had less than twenty-four hours before we were both deemed enemies of the state and hunted down by every agency in Washington.”