Balance of Power Shifted (26 page)

We were at the hospital in about an hour and
restricted from to entering the ICU.  Iris did come out and talk to us.  She was very calm and controlled while bringing us up to speed on Julius‘s condition, but her eyes belayed a combination of concern and anger.  If I had not been fully impressed with Iris’s capabilities before, there was no doubt now.  She was completely in charge of the situation and a steely resolve came across both from her in her resolve to making sure Julius recovers and holding those responsible accountable for their actions.  The beating Julius took resulted in a broken orbit around his left eye, which may affect his vision, broken ribs, five broken fingers and internal bleeding from what most likely where kicks to his side.  The doctors were also monitoring for a concussion, but with the bleeding stopped, they felt he was no longer critical and in suitable condition to move out of the ICU within 24 hours.

Iris headed back into the ICU and we headed to a waiting room where I received a text from Bill asking where we were in the hospital.  I
sent a text back that we were in the ICU waiting room.  In less than 5 minutes, Bill and Ty were there with us.  Looking around the waiting room and seeing we were alone, Bill and Ty started to fill us in on some of the events.  Whoever broke into Julius and Iris’s home were definitely professional and had most likely cased the place.  The deactivation of the alarm was a professional job and the intruders had been inside waiting for Julius knowing he was home first on most evenings.  They also deactivated the camera system and took the DVR with them.  What they had not realized was that Julius had a second wireless camera hidden in his office bookcase that dumped data to a hidden PC.  Iris is the one that had remembered that it was in place.

  The camera shows what looks to be
three Middle Eastern men.  There was no audio, but it was clear who the leader was.  Julius was not on camera during the beating and questioning, however the interrogators were and it was clear that they were repeating the same questions over and over.  During this time, they ransacked the place especially the office and took a number of files and two laptops.  I was dumfounded as they told me the story.  Ty had made a copy of the video and turned the original over to the police and sent a copy to Jeremy who in turn used his contacts in the Department of Homeland Security to see if they could identify the individuals and told them it was most likely industrial espionage related.

Iris came out a few minutes later to let us know that Julius had awoke for a few minutes and seemed to be aware of his situation. 
“He whispered to me” she said, “that they were after information regarding Efficio and Electricus and he gave them all the information that he knew, and when they pressed him, they realized that we had compartmentalized key information and that Julius did not know anything else.”  We had agreed in numerous strategy meetings for handling such an event upon this protocol.  Clavis had reasoned that it was much easier to protect a couple key employees with knowledge then a whole crew of them, which is why no one knew the location of the new Electricus reproduction and storage site except Bill, Jeremy and me.  Leave it to a woman to notice such things, but Iris caught site of the ring on Fiona’s finger and in spite of her situation leapt for joy and hugged Fiona in a full embrace.   Bill and Ty just looked confused until Bill realized what was happening.  Looking at me, he shook my hand and asked, “Did you take my suggestion and do at a romantic location?”  I nodded my head yes and said, “Bill, every once in a while you do have a coherent thought and this one was a good one.”  Ty finally caught on, congratulated me, and then congratulated Fiona.  Bill was telling Fiona how all the credit should go to him since as he said, “Rico didn’t have a clue.”

We all said
good-bye to Iris and headed for the office except for Ty who was going to talk to the Bernards Township police investigator in Basking Ridge handling the case.  Iris had authorized that Ty be updated on any developments.  On the drive back to the office, Fiona’s phone started to receive a number of text messages.  While I drove, she read them and said, “Shit…someone is trying to hack into our systems in California as well as here.  Our intrusion prevention system is picking up some low level scanning and probing, which means they will most likely try to penetrate the system soon.  Clavis is already on it since they monitor 24 hours a day for us.” 

T
he important data was not on a networked system and had encryption applied so we were not particularly concerned about data theft.  We also tried not to leave information such as addresses, phone numbers and itineraries available that might give insight on the movement of key people in the company.  For the rest of the ride Fiona speculated that the attack on me in California and the attack on Julius on the surface appears to be the act of two different groups of people and who knows who may be behind the cyber probing currently going on.  As we drove into the parking lot there were seven Black Camrys lined up in front of the building outfitted with our Power Pad system.  “I guess the guys got them done early,” I said to Fiona.  “They look great, but I was hoping that I could use the H2 as my company car,” she said with a bit of a pout.

The week and half leading up to Taylor and Kristen’s wedding were hectic indeed.  Julius made a speedy recovery and seemed to be in good spirits when we visited him at their home.  As soon as he could, he typed a very detailed report on everything he remembered about that night using his left hand since four fingers on his right hand had been intentionally broken
, one finger at a time.  Even though he had one broken finger on his left he could still type with his remaining fingers.  He had jokingly commented that he was not much slower typing now than he normally is.  His report recounted the detailed line of questioning focused on Electricus.  He remembered that his attackers spoke with heavily accented English, but he could not place their country of origin.  At no time did they call each other by name.  After the third broken finger, Julius had given them the encryption passphrase need to access the PCs and certain files.  At one point they did stop speaking English and spoke in their native tongue.  Julius did not know what they were saying but based on the gestures suspected they were discussing what to do with him.

  The police had caught a car on
neighborhood security cameras leaving the townhome complex.  The occupants appeared to match the description of the assailants.  A check on the plates revealed that the Land Rover was stolen at Newark Airport the day before the attack.

Iris came back to work about a week later to help finalize the paperwork needed to secure funding from our group of 12 investors.  There were a few individual investors, but the others represented an investment group. 
Although tried, there were no concessions to partial ownership and all investors would receive hefty returns on their investment that scaled upwards dramatically over a five-year period.  With the funding in place, Bill and Steve would ramp up production at our two suppliers.

 
Our new marketing executive Amy Christina, hailing from a recently failed alternative power company venture and with 10 years of experience with a large New York City marketing firm was busy.  Amy was currently working with a production company to produce a series of 30-second television commercial slots to start airing in two weeks.  In addition, she created ads for distribution in newspapers and industry specific magazines in construction and technology.  Her markups were very exciting however, the cost was much higher than I expected.  Amy gave us all a tutorial on how advertising will pay for itself based on proven statistical data.

Sean was leading the charge with Brinkerhoff Builders and had talked Bill and
me into allowing all the units in the low-income housing development to use our Power Pad system.  He relayed that Max and Gisele were a joy to work with and had a genuine desire to make those less fortunate better off.  Sean and Amy were already collaborating on how to leverage and showcase the development in advertisements, as well as feature a case study on our web site. 

Two Binkerhoff supervisors have been working up on the third floor with Sean learning how to install the units, as well as how to maintain them.  The
Power Pads are self- contained with heating coils and sensors that fed back to the Power Panel and could alert the owner or even Efficio of the status since we integrated wireless LAN technology into the Power Panel.  Each Power Pad cost Efficio $575 to produce and Power Panel costs $1500.  Each housing unit took two Power Pads and one Power Panel for a total cost of $2650.  As production ramps up and we start making units in the hundreds, the price drops by a full third for each.  Therefore, this whole project will cost Efficio over $260,000 dollars, which we will recoup in advertising in short order.  Brinkerhoff would be responsible for placing the Power Pads on the roof with the mounting hardware and location recommendations made by Sean and install the proper electrical wiring to the circuit breaker box during construction. 

We had already provi
ded 10 units to Brinkerhoff, and over the next month, they will receive the balance now that financing is in place.  Brinkerhoff had already completed most of the framing work on the 100 units and was currently working on the interiors.  The last step, performed by an Efficio crewmember, would require about ten 50-gallon barrels of Electricus.  Outfitted with a special filling mechanism, the new Power Pads receive Electricus by a central receptacle.  This receptacle requires 20 pounds of pressure to open a valve in each cell allowing Electricus to fill the chamber with only a slight amount of air left over from the vacuum packing manufacturing process.  Once pressure diminishes, the cell valve would close making each cell isolated from the others.  This innovation was a tremendous time saver and was the brainchild of Steve.

T
he Friday before the Taylor’s wedding Fiona and I were working out at a local dojo in a nearby town.  We had become friendly with the Korean owner Bae and he invited us periodically to join him and a few of his senior students and staff.  These sessions were Taekwondo style and I had to condition myself away from the mixed martial arts style I was familiar.  I liked learning this style because it heavily focused on the use of the legs, which were our strongest weapon and worked in throws and how to break holds.  I always learned something when we got together and did a good job of holding my own. 

There were a couple of females working out with Fiona
with firsthand experience with her strength and quickness.  Even though she was still learning, she was such an athlete that she made up for inexperience with speed and aggressiveness and regularly outclassed her more experienced opponents.  We declined going out for drinks afterwards since we had some chores to do. 

We were w
alking back to Fiona’s Hummer, which she conned Bill into agreeing she could have it as her company car, when we sensed a commotion behind us.  A car had driven up at high speed and had cut across the path of two men trailing us.  I heard Ty’s voice telling the two men dressed in dark clothes to freeze.  When one took off though a row of bushes to his left, Ty shot the other with a Taser.  The tasered person froze and shook a bit before toppling over on the sidewalk.  Ty and another Clavis security person quickly tie wrapped the wrists of the person on the ground and just as quickly tossed him into the back seat of their car.    We hustled over to Ty and I asked, “What the hell, who are these guys?”  Ty responded, “Mike, these 2 have been staking you all evening and when you walked out it looked like they were going to Taser you both.”  “How do you know that?” I asked.  Ty reached down to the grass along the walk and picked up a Taser gun.  “Because of this,” he said.  “Do I want to know where you’re taking him or what you’re going to do?”  Ty just shook his head no and said, “I’ll let you know what we find out.”

Fiona and I
shaken, headed back to the Hummer and for the first time Fiona really expressed her concern for our safety as well as others.  There was no disagreeing with her since I had the same concerns.  I did say that Bill and I had discussed this from day one, which is why we have not shared the most critical secrets with anyone.  Fiona leaned over, kissed me firmly, and said, “I know Rico, and maybe that’s what concerns me the most.  Just be extra careful.”  With my face nose to nose with hers, told her, “we have to be careful, because I don’t know who they are, and they may try to get to me through you, so I don’t want you going off on your own without me or someone from Clavis.  Promise me Fiona…promise me.”  She nodded her head yes and with tears in her eyes, jokingly said, “after all I need to get you to the altar, which by the way we need to set a date for.”

Driving up to Fiona’s
place, I opened the garage door and squeezed the Hummer into a space that was excessively small for it.  We had decided to garage it over her other car to keep prying eyes away.  We kept our eyes open until the door shut per our security training to make sure no one slipped in at the last minute and checked the alarm system to make sure no tampering had occurred since we left.  With everything looking good, I headed to the shower while Fiona made us some leftover chicken and salad.  We spend the rest of the night watching black and white movies on cable as we sipped a nice Cabernet.

The next day, w
e drove down to the Long Beach Island area and arrived at our hotel around noon.  Everyone else was also staying here.  We had given my house on the Island to Taylor and Kristen for their wedding night and longer if their family wanted to use it.  The wedding was at 3 pm and the reception at five.  It was a stunningly beautiful day with clear blue skies and temperatures in the upper 70’s.  In other, words a perfect day for a wedding.