Meanwhile, in a meeting room.
“So, what did you find?” James Comey, the FBI director, asked the two men standing in front of the long meeting room table of high-ranking officials in the Bureau.
“Sir, in his basement, there is a server that seems to not have been upgraded since the time he bought it. And although its power consumption was minimal it was still indicated that it was actively being used. Also there was something else that was consuming enough power than what the entire house does.
Nothing comes to my mind that would cause such a machine to gobble such a high amount of electricity while maintaining abnormal silence,” reported one of the men, and not much surprisingly, he was the one who had visited and inspected Aron’s house under the guise of being an inspector from the power utility company.
“Did you manage to take a look at it?” asked Lisa Page, the FBI attorney.
“No, madam. There was a guard accompanying us throughout the whole process,” answered the second man.
“So, this means that you failed to plant anything into the house that could provide us with continuous information from that household?” James asked, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration.
“Unfortunately, that’s true,” replied one of them.
“Now that it’s out of the question, does anyone have an idea on how we can gather information from him that would be helpful enough to allow the President to have enough power to stop him from moving his company?” James inquired, his stress visibly increasing.
“How about his friends?” One of the high-ranking members in the meeting room suggested.
“Most of them had abandoned him after he was expelled from the university and despite their attempts to reconnect with him, he ignored every single one of them, which leaves behind only two of his friends, Sarah and Felix. However, Felix is with him in Eden, while Sarah is the one who is responsible for moving the company, so we won’t be getting anything from her either,” Lana, a high-ranking member in the bureau answered, striking the option down while also making them know that she knew enough about Aron.
“Any other suggestions?” James added after hearing a response.
One of the two standing men raised his hand, asking for permission to speak.
James took a look around the table and seeing that there was no one who had a suggestion to give, he turned to the man and nodded, giving him the permission to speak.
“Since we’ve already started with our operation, why don’t we continue with it?” He said and paused to see if he would be permitted to continue or if they were going to shut down his idea as soon as it began.
Seeing that no one interrupted him, he continued his suggestion, “From the manual I read during our preparation of inspecting his house, I remember reading a document about the electrical code violations,” he paused for a moment trying to remember the details as much as possible before he continued.
“There is a part in the document that stated that after the inspection, if the cause of the problem is deemed to be a significant public safety risk, authorities might need to take immediate action to address the issue, such as temporarily disconnecting the machine or cordoning off the property until the hazards are resolved.” He looked around at the people in the room before continuing.
“We can use this guise of public safety to cordon off his properties and have about a few days to inspect the servers in his house since most of the sensitive information should be there.”
“The few days that we gain until his lawyers can force the court to make us leave his property should be enough for us to download all of the data in his home server for later analysis. We can also plant bugs in the house, though I’m afraid that he might do a bug sweep on the whole house after we are forced to vacate the house.”
“In the court, our lawyers can argue that the vacating of the compound can only be obliged under the condition that we are allowed to take the machine that caused the power surge for inspection to avoid risking harm to the public. This gives us the ability to confiscate that strange machine and see if it is the stated ‘State of the Earth’ computer that has been giving us a headache when we tried to decrypt the data we intercepted from his house through the fiber optic nodes.”
He finished his explanation for the plan he had come up with, perusing the room to see if they would agree to his suggested plan.
And when he saw their expressions, he knew that he had hit the jackpot, while a smile could be seen on Jame’s face, indicating his satisfaction with the plan.
“That’s a very good plan,” James Comey nodded, the smile still gracing his face since he couldn’t find any notable hole in it, but just in case, he turned to Lisa Page, the FBI attorney and asked, “Is it feasible?”
“Though there needs to be some polishing, it is indeed a good plan. Although he might suspect that it was us, he can’t prove it unless he has some connection to the higher-ups. Which he doesn’t,” she answered, causing the smile on James’ face to widen even more.
Shortly after, John said, “Since you came up with this plan, you will be the leader of the operation. Work with Lisa to polish the plan and choose anyone you want to be on your team. Whatever happens, just make sure that you have the data from his servers and that strange box back to the headquarters by the time the court forces us to evict the building. Understood?”
“Yes sir,” the man answered with an excited smile on his face since his idea was accepted and now he was even allowed to lead the operation by himself.
“What’s your name again?” James Comey asked, this time genuinely wanting to know the man’s name since he had previously seen it on a document about the operation but didn’t give it much of an importance, resulting in him forgetting it.
“My name is Peter Strzok” Answered the man.
“Peter Strzok, keep up the good work,” James nodded, raising from his chair and patting his shoulder as he walked out of the room.
“Yes sir,” Peter answered before turning to Lisa Page, smiling at her, trying to make a good impression since they would be working together in the upcoming days.
“Nice to meet you,” he greeted.
“Nice to meet you too,” Lisa Page replied, reciprocating the smile he gave her.
(For those who know them 🙂)