Senator was having an earlier breakfast with one of his supporters, a businessman named Mark LoBue who often contributed heavily to Kern’s re-election campaign.”
“I knew that someone else had been in the room, but he wasn’t important. Most of the news reports glossed over him in favor of the Senator. Are you saying he was somehow involved. That doesn’t make sense because he was killed with the Senator before I shot the drones.”
“Mark LoBue was the real target, not the Senator,” Carlson informed them. “While everyone assumed that LoBue was there to discuss money he was going to donate in exchange for the usual support from the Senator for issues that mattered to the businessman, in fact they were meeting for a different reason. Mark LoBue had somehow learned of ongoing criminal activities certain members of San Francisco’s organized crime lords were pursuing, and had contacted his friend Kerns. The breakfast meeting was a brainstorming session in preparation for a special meeting with an unannounced gathering of a Grand Jury.”
“Unfortunately, the meeting was not as secret as the two of them had hoped. Somehow those who Mark LoBue was informing on had learned of the plan, and while they hadn’t been able to locate the very cautious LoBue, they knew where the Senator was going to be, and planned their actions accordingly. If they could hit Kerns during the breakfast meeting, they could probably get LoBue as well. They didn’t have much of a window because Kerns and LoBue were scheduled to meet with the Grand Jury immediately after the news conference with the other senators who had brought Kerns to the hotel in the first place. Once LoBue talked, it would be too late. Billions of dollars were at risk, as well as a whole new area the group was planning on expanding into. Once their plans were revealed, any hope of expanding would be lost.”
“That’s why there was no follow-up attempt on the Senator,” Laney said.
“That’s right,” Carlson said. “For weeks the security around Kerns was intense, but nothing ever materialized.”
“What about LoBue?” Jake asked.
“He was killed in an accident seven months later.”
“So they got him,” Jake said.
“Yes, but by then it was a revenge killing. The damage was already done. He’d talked, their plans were disrupted, and several of their key people landed in jail. One, a forward thinking planner was killed in a raid. The group still hasn’t recovered from the loss.”
“I don’t understand why you didn’t know about this?” Laney asked.
“Special Agent Ted Kramer is responsible for that. He could see no gain for the real reason behind the attempt to become known. He felt it would be in the Agency’s interest if those behind the attempt didn’t know we knew as much as we did. It also took some public pressure off his organization if it was believed that terrorists were somehow behind the attempt. Even after LoBue was killed, the true nature of the attack was buried. I believe he hoped those behind the attack would get careless at some point if they didn’t believe we were looking in their direction. Apparently, that hasn’t happened.”
“These are the people who have learned about me, and want me to retroactively reinstate their attack on, not Kerns, but this LoBue person,” Jake said.
“That’s my guess,” Carlson said. “We don’t know exactly who, but someone in organized crime is directing the effort.”
“They aren’t usually so round about,” Laney said. “Why didn’t they simply put it on the line to Jake? “Go back and let this guy get killed or else your family pays the price.”
“That was probably their first thought,” Carlson said. “I’d guess that Jake is right that as they learned about him they felt this other approach had a better chance of working. In the past, Jake has been presented situations where his actions to help have resulted in deaths of others. He has always gone back and made sure that didn’t happen. If they could make it appear he’d inadvertently caused an innocent person’s life, they could hope he’d try and unravel the matter.”
“And this time they knew I had a hard restriction that would limit my options,” Jake added.
“Between that, the death of an innocent, and the threats against your family, they could hope you’d decide to let matters adjust back to the way they’d been before you got involved. If it didn’t work, they could always revert to the more direct approach as you’ve suggested.”