Saturday, 28 April 2001
Elayna Lewis is not present. She and her mother are away at State
Cheerleading trials. Dr Lewis and Sparky are pleased to see Jane,
and the agents spend a pleasant half an hour in his company. However,
their current case is not advanced one iota during this time.
The agents drive out of town past the Think Tank and take copious
photographs of the place. The think tank is located in a 55-bed
colonial mansion called Barton House. There are also several out-buildings
on an extensive plot of land, bordered by corn fields on three sides
and other residential houses on the fourth. It all looks very pleasant.
There are multiple aerials on the roof and although Jane can't see
any obvious signs of security, the agents are convinced they exist.
The agents head to the library in the afternoon and research the
history of Barton House. The house was built by Raphael Barton at
the same time he founded Dynamic Industries (on 16 July 1945). The
agents look into Raphael Barton. He died in a fire at his holiday
villa in France on 29 September 1949. The estate was transferred
to his solicitor, Thomas Moore until the reading of the will on
12 October 1949.
On this date Dynamic Industries was incorporated and became Dynamicorp.
Barton House became the property of the company. The shares were
distributed between the chairman (Michael Georgeson), someone called
Mary Butler, the CEO, the Chief Technical Officer, Chief Financial
Officer and an unnamed person. The current chairman, Marc Georgeson,
is the son of Michael Georgeson. Marc has two younger siblings,
Lucy and Robert, who are both in their mid-40s.
The agents cannot get the plans for Barton House until Monday morning,
so they are a bit of a loose end. Jane arranges a dancing lesson
with Vera Wicker and Drake goes for a drive, while Benedict checks
out James Perry's "Who Watches the Watchers" website.
Jimxxor (as Perry is called on-line) has a conspiracy theory regarding
the death of Raphael Barton. Ben contacts Perry by secure email
and soon they are talking on the phone.
Perry is extremely suspicious as to why Benedict has telephoned
him. When Ben mentions Barton House, Perry starts to pine for the
place. He explains that the best staff from the R&D Centre at
Edmond Campus in Tulsa go to Winterset for six months during which
time they work on whatever projects take their whim. It is purely
for the enrichment and development of science. He waxes lyrical
on the sort of computer programs he would write given half a chance.
There are fifteen people currently there divided into three teams.
The head administrator is Professor Danny Sayer, VP of research
.
Benedict plants seeds in Perry's mind that there is a conspiracy
concerning how the Georgeson family became Chairmen of the company.
Perry tells Ben who the original share-holders of the company were
(and their shareholdings): Chairman Michael George (66%), CEO Arnold
Barnet (10%), Financial Officer James Bates (10%), Technical Officer
Andrew Rhodes (5%), an undisclosed name (5%) and Mary Butler (4%).
The chairman always holds at least 51% of the shares. Mary Butler
was Raphael Barton's illegitimate daughter.
Perry says that he Tulsa R&D department is currently working
on two main projects: Project Raven (the computer processor) and
Project Argo (an unmanned deep space probe). Perry is no further
help.
While on his drive, Drake is pulled over by the police who direct
him to a race track just outside the town where he can practice
in peace. The track in Jake's Field, is venue for a big race a week
tomorrow. Drake determines to sign his car up for the race. By 8:00pm
both Drake and Jane have returned. Jane practises her dance-moves
on Drake, but she hasn't learned very much.
Late in the evening, Benedict sneaks into the cornfield next to
Barton House and sets up a camera to take surveillance footage of
the place. As it turns out, he does this very, very badly.
Sunday, 29 April 2001
The agents have a rest day. Jane attends move dancing lessons.
Vera is an extremely good teacher and Jane's skills come on very
quickly (although they are still woefully inadequate). Drake drives
around and around the track at Jake's Field.
Monday, 30 April 2001
At breakfast time a young blond woman arrives at the B&B with
Benedict's surveillance camera. She is Jean Shelton is halfway through
her six months at Barton House and is very pleasant. She shows the
agents footage of Benedict blundering through the cornfield and
planting his camera on the top of an extremely obvious post in the
middle of the Barton House's garden. She has taken this with good
grace, and all the scientists there have clubbed together and got
Benedict a large wooden spoon. Jane likes Jean and invites her to
breakfast.
After Jean leaves they discuss the seriousness of Benedict's blunder.
He placed the camera without a warrant. He could be dismissed for
this, but more importantly he has tipped the agents' hand. They
have to go and see Marc Georgeson now and feed him a pack of lies.
The agents speak to Georgeson and take tea with him in the drawing
room of his elegantly appointed house. Benedict gives Georgeson
a copy of the information the team stole from the Mary Estate in
Caspar. He says that the information was sent anonymously to the
team. Benedict says that he fears that the Ukrainians that hit the
Mary Estate stole some information relating to Dynamicorp, and that
the team fears they will strike at the Think Tank. This is why Benedict
put the camera up. And he is really sorry about that.
Georgeson doesn't think the Think Tank is in any danger as there
is nothing there that is immediately worth stealing. He also thinks
that the Ukrainian thing was a smokescreen. There were two accesses
of their data on that day. It was the second party that he is more
worried about. Of course, the agents know that the second party
was them, but they don't mention that.
Georgeson doesn't seem inclined to report Benedict for planting
the camera, but he gives the agent a solid telling-off. He says
that the company under-reports its profits to stop its best and
brightest from being headhunted. He implies that he knows every
aspect of the case we are working on, and expects us to ask for
his financial records. We do not do that, but instead ask for a
tour of Think Tank.
Georgeson arranges for us to be met by Jessica Chambers who gives
us a complete tour of the place. The ground floor of the house is
entertainment and recreation rooms, the first floor is meeting rooms
and the second floor is accommodation. All the labs are in the outbuildings
beyond the house. The agents are introduced to the three teams of
five that make up the researchers.
The first materials team are newly arrived. They consist of Dr
Greg Montgomery (polymer chemist, specialising in insulators), Anthony
Frasier (material physicist specialising in conductors), Edward
Carlson (electronics engineer specialising in micro-switches), Douglas
Walters (materials chemist, specialising in semi-conductors) and
Jerry Hopkins (physicist specialising in quantum effects). Jane
makes the mistake of asking what quantum effects are, and Jerry
tells her.
The communications team have been at Barton House for three months.
They consist of Christopher Hoffman (software engineer, working
on communications), Russell Fleming (physicist working with EM radiation),
Catherine Vargas (physicist who works in shielding technology),
Jean Shelton (make transmitters capable of bust transmissions) and
Roy Holt (electronics engineer who builds receivers).
The second materials team are on the verge of returning to Tulsa.
They are: Sean O'Brien (chemist working on ultra-fast chain reactions),
Victor Newman (chemist working on thermo-insulators), Carlos Silva
(physicist who works in cryogenics), Mike Bech (engineer working
in stress properties) and Amy Sutton (electronic engineer working
with hostile environment electronics).
The team can easily pigeon-hole who works on which project back
in Tulsa, but they do not know what the scientists are working on
here. Most of it seems theoretical. Benedict has a theory that it
all links to the Game. Raphael was one of the archangels (he was
the scribe of god). Benedict makes a link between Dynamicorp's research
and the scrolls recovered from Hamblin's office. He is convinced
they are making a space ship. Finally the agents meet Professor
Sayer. He used to be an electronic engineer at Cal Tech. He has
been in Winterset for six years.
Tuesday, 1 May 2001
The agents spend the morning researching the backgrounds and specialities
of the fifteen scientists in the Think Tank. This takes until 3pm
and they find nothing. They do not know what to do next. Jane is
beginning to believe that Dynamicorp's large profits and a super-technology
is simply due to their roots in the wonderland of Winterset. She
thinks they should just pull the financial records, check they are
okay and then close the case. But Benedict cannot help thinking
that there is something more here.
Mid-West Campaign Index
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