In my particular corporate empire, the “competition” is sovereign states, and the competition is fascinated beyond reason at the American interception of Al Quieda cell phone, satellite phone, field radio, e-mail, snail mail, mirror flash, and pheremone communications. Such sovereign states, although they are vendors of first resort and in some cases ostensibly cooperating with our anti-terrorism effort, are nevertheless upset that we know more about them than they know about themselves, since we aren’t normally in that business and they have repeatedly asserted that such capabilities are part of their internal governance.  So, as usual, they are scrambling to catch up.

This is particularly expensive when carried out from satellites, and the favorite ploy these days is to sell such services to private parties on the open market.  This is a tricky situation when such transactions take place within the United States, since we have laws.  A more discretionary approach involves perusing these services in various places more commonly described as tax havens, and in some cases havens for other debaucheries as well.

Since we are a largish organization with lots of business with the Federal Government, we experience unauthorized discharges of information to various media outlets, some of which are subsequently mentioned in Congressional committees.  We’ve noticed, however, the Congress doesn’t pay much attention until the sums involved run into the billions.

So I can kill more than one bird with one stone, but I am, needless to say, not authorized to reveal how many birds we can kill with the stones we use.

Our corporate cell phone IDs are cataloged.  Since we are presumably wise to the game, our executives have several phones each: one for travel to DC, one for travel to financial centers, one for out-of-town recreation and entertainment, one for business acquisitions, and one for running around town.  Each of them have different patterns etched in their cases, so we know by feel which type we’re using.

The first encounter I had with one of these organizations was the height of serendipity. I was looking for “cellulose”, which most chemists, physicists, and economists realize as the primary component of stocks, bonds, and bank notes.  Cellulose.com was no disappointment.  Trolling through the various suffixes yielded little else except for one, which was redirected to cell-u-lose.com.  I was sure this was a weight loss product, and some of the initial presentation involved perhaps somewhat over-endowed individuals, however reading between the lines allowed me to catch a more subtle dimension of their services.

This resulted in a visit to an island somewhere in the Med, Carib’s, or Channel.  I’m not sure because I just gave the pilot the name and it was up to him to find it.  It was big enough to have a runway.

My thought was to spot the use of a corporate cell phone in NYC on or around a particular date, and we duly scanned all IDs against all transactions they were able to catch.  One trip did seem a bit strange, the phone being assigned to a man we will call Frank.  Frank, evidently, figured we were on to something when his boss seemed to take inordinate interest in his interests, and promptly found work elsewhere.  He was about three months shy of vesting his retirement.

The next trip involved a visit to a hellhole which I remember most vividly by the combination of heat and stench. This was appropriate, given that the matter involved a divorce, particularly mine.  Most of the cell phone originating out of the estate that weren’t known to belong to our family were from maintenance people, however one of the maintenance numbers became suspicious when I realized someone was cleaning our pool five times a week.  I submit that even an Olympic sized pool doesn’t need that much maintenance.

One of our neighbors, bless her heart, does so much for so little, or at least what I always believed.  This is the lady in her mid-40's driving the van with the plastic flowers on the side.  I didn’t know they even made those anymore, although maybe she got them off eBay.

I’ve seen her on TV demonstrating at the World Bank/IMF confabs and G7 gatherings protesting all our wrongheaded policies.  This I find peculiar: every policy anyone in government articulated was quickly suborned to expediency, particularly when constituent payrolls were involved.

Anyway, as an exercise I decided to find her Cell ID, which was no big deal since she lives alone in one of those Cape Cod bungalow thingies.  Her cell ID stuck out like a sore thumb: Rome, Geneva, Seattle, DC, NYC, all the usual suspects.

She also spends lots of time in some of the poorer downtown neighborhoods, which I take it is her literacy and education calling when she isn’t out calling names.  I thought she spent most of her time reading Marx and Ché, but, time taken to find out such things would have resulted in missed opportunities in other dimensions.

One ID shows up in her house that seems to otherwise center in Boston, evidently she gets a visitor periodically from some bastion of liberalism.  One of my legal eagle partners was able to characterize this more specifically, an executive with a particularly noxious (to us) foundation. Ms. Flower Power, evidently, handles some money. . . if my conclusion is correct. . .