Background

Tijuana Mexico - The Agapov Call Center

If you are sensitive to your surroundings, like any good undercover operator, keep your head down but feel the breeze.  I would guess that my background is now being investigated, and this period of time from start to verdict will measure how good they are at vetting employees.

As far as I know, the FBI has never inserted a contractor here. I am the first to shed some light on how the Agapov Organization is structured and how the money flows. That's the goal. If I feel the organization growing teeth, I will pull myself out.

I have too much going on at home with my god-sent bundle, Evie, and my four-legger, Mr. Tango. California's nice, but my song is Massachusetts Dreaming, not California Dreaming. It's nice to see the sunset over the ocean, but I have become fond of seeing it rise in the East.

I haven't felt any good or bad vibes from Anatoly since he took my application.  My mind wanders to the last person who held my current position. He was found dead in the alley by the strip club that is Margarita Central for my crew after work.

Things are humming in Tijuana, and I feel bad ripping off nice but gullible Americans, but it is for the greater good now. The uppers have got to like what I've done with the room and the Manolo Effect is being felt in the East.

I can't cross the border with my gun, which is disconcerting. My only defenses are guile and what I learned in Parris Island. 

I walk the room and listen to our crew. Some of them enjoy what they do, which bothers me. Our victims are elderly who have managed to accumulate a small pile that adds to their Social Security, which is inadequate for survival. Do these border crossers have parents, grandparents, or relatives forced to cut coupons and pay their smartphone bills?

I'm feeling what I do, and it will be my pleasure to build as complete a profile as possible that may help defeat organizations like this one.

The game goes beyond Russia. 

Iran, China, and North Korea all have state-sponsored hacking units, but the Russians are the most up-front and ruthless. Ask the last assistant manager. Oh, that's right, you can't.

Was Agapov a criminal? Absolutely. The Red Notice INTERPOL tagged on him made things difficult for him. There was no shore he could step on without fear of being arrested.

Agapov was trapped on his boat and died on it, if the story that Anatoly relayed to me is true. 

There was no sweet talk, no scam, no question about what the outcome would be.  Agapov was forced to sign over his company, all his accounts, and all his possessions, and once stripped of all of that, they killed him and tossed him into the Aegean. 

Somewhere in Moscow, a cigar was lit, some vodka was poured, and someone's empire expanded.

FBI Regional Headquarters - Chelsea, Massachusetts 

Wallace Q. Hughes looked at the screen on his desk, and he focused on one alert line. The search term "Troy Manolo" had been entered into search engines and various public databases multiple times in the last 48 hours. 

The Background Investigation of Troy Manolo / Thomas Allston had begun. Wally's team had built a background for Troy Manolo for at least one year, so the term was embedded on the web. The results highlighted a name that showed a sudden dropoff in activity over four years, during which Troy would have been housed at USP Lompoc in California.

There were no scrapbook accounts like Facebook that offered chronological data with personal photos; however, it looked like there was a page at one time, but it was deleted.

A work history website had a profile that showed Troy's former employment, education, and address data.

All of these data points made a man.

Troy Manolo was born in Vallejo, CA, and graduated from High School. His entries showed that he was interested in a class reunion.

Troy's secondary education was an online college, from which he graduated with a 3.5 GPA in Business Administration. This school was now out of business and had a pedigree that was, at best, dubious, but records showed that Troy attended.

Troy also worked at a bar/restaurant now defunct, followed by a decent amount of time in the call center of a Fortune 500 company in Los Angeles. With their help, a complete backgrounder has been inserted into that company.

There are two more companies with deep-inserted backgrounds.

If you follow the breadcrumbs in order, you will see that Troy got entrepreneurial at one point and entered the driveway paving business. There was a company website that was now removed, and then a few news articles were created and inserted in now-defunct local newspapers detailing the company as a scam and a rip-off.

Then came an article about Troy Manolo being arrested, tried in court, and sentenced to jail.

Wally looked at all of this and realized it would not hold up to a deep dive, but a cursory search and a few clicks developed a plausible life history that showed a good guy who went rogue.

An image of Allston was in the FBI's NGI-IPS system (facial recognition), and the name associated with that image was changed to Manolo's.

Backgrounds were getting tougher to create, and Wally wondered whether assuming a dead person's identity was now a gold standard.

Another look to see if a crossover search term had Manolo and Allston in one search showed that this had not been done. This is a good sign, in Wally's opinion.

Wally had come to a decision point,

Was Thomas Allston still safe in Tijuana?

Wally leaned back in his chair. 

He was dressed in a crisp white shirt, dark trousers, and a tie that looked Republican. 

While looking straight ahead, he tossed a ball made of rubber bands from hand to hand.

He picked up his desk phone and called his San Diego Counterpart.

"Hey, Jake, sorry to bother you. I'm just wondering if our Immersed Man had his prison contact tickled?"

"Wally, I met your guy in a bar last week when we passed things on, He's Funny As Fuck"

Wally said, "I like him, Jake, and I want to keep him safe, so no action yet?"

"Nothing yet."

"Thanks, Jake"

With that, Wally hung up, tossed his ball back and forth for about two more minutes, and decided to keep Allston in place for now,

The Cardinal And The Jack - Cambridge, Massachusetts

Lisa Tanaka and Eve enjoyed each other's company over coffee on the corner table. Tanaka glowed and looked deeply happy. The two were getting to know each other better than customers or shop workers. 

Lisa had been coming to the shop almost daily for a year, and the two were aware of each other.

What made today's interaction hard was that Lisa knew everything about what Eve's partner, Thomas Allston, 

She knew what Allston was doing and where he was, but she had to keep that a secret. She knew more about Allston right now than Eve did.

What was clear to Lisa was that Eve did not know what Allston was up to, which was good for many safety reasons.

"Ben and I are considering moving away from the city to a better school system."

Eve could not even think about Ben not being a local institution here in Cambridge, but she added, "There are so many great communities." "We love The North Shore, but I don't know anything about schools yet."

With that said, Eve began chattering about where she and Allston lived, and when she mentioned that they lived in a trailer, Tanaka winced a bit.

Eve was getting used to that, and she understood, but there was no place she wanted to be than on the shoreline with her man and dog. They had a good life.

Eve thought, people are such snobs, and I used to be one of them. At that thought, she smiled and said, "You and Ben should come up for dinner this week."

" I can broil some scallops and make some rice."

Lisa said, "I'd love that." but inside, she was cringing about the scallops. She hated them even though she had never tasted one.