A CALIFORNIA COUP

Book Three in the The Silicon Valley Trilogy

by Peter Mackeonis

available as paperback or Kindle

 

 A CALIFORNIA COUP FORWARD

The Story So Far

 

When Anna, the wife of ZEN's CEO, learned from her husband's ex-partner, Amrit, that the company has been ordered by Homeland Security to eavesdrop on the world's politicians, the two of them decide to fight the US government. Amrit recruits hackers from the Dark Web and Anna is forced to go on the run with Roger, one of the underground hackers, after Amrit is shot by a Homeland Security SWAT team, ordered by ZEN's CEO. The pair make it to the Caribbean only to be recognized and blackmailed into an act that draws attention to themselves, and they're caught by a Homeland Security agent who's on the island to interrogate a suspected international election fixer. When Anna tells the agent that she sent copies of the government files to her influential brother at the Vatican, she is given a get-out-of-jail-free card in exchange for helping retrieve the files. The Vatican agrees that as the files incriminate both parties, the copies should be destroyed and when Roger brags that he retained a copy, he is assassinated on his way to the airport.  Now we move to A CALIFORNIA COUP

 

 

A CALIFORNIA COUP

Chapter 1: Playing Old Tapes

 

Unlike the epic tale of two civilizations, this was not the best of times, it was certainly not the age of wisdom and neither was it the season of light. And, as Colonel Richard Dauber sat at his desk, his eyes firmly fixed on the photograph of his wife and children, he was acutely aware that he had let them, his country and worst of all, himself, down.

Six months had passed since the Senate Ethics Committee published its inconclusive findings on what had been a typical Washington 'dog and pony show' of the Democrats attacking Republicans, and the Republicans defending in kind. Few Senators had listened, as Anna Eisenberg, recalled how she had resisted the Homeland Security's order for ZEN to data dive into the proclivities of the world's rich and famous, and the government responded that it had simply been a theoretical exercise that certainly was never to be actioned. And, if ZEN had been sent files, then they had been done so by a rogue element in Homeland Security, so there was no need to introduce the Vatican's assistance in the return of the said files, or the death in Rome, by a faulty gas main, of the late freelance hacker......

 

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THE AUTHOR

London born Peter Mackeonis became a venture capitalist in 1981 when, knowing nothing about computers he invested in a software company that eventually became bankrupt. As a investor he became part owner in an unfinished BASIC computer language. Advised by expects to walk away from the project, he cofounded MetaComCo Software and recruited programmers to complete the software. Based on a 'lucky' conversation with a programmer in Holland, who explained the value of the completed software, Peter made a speculative 9,800 mile round trip to a computer show in Houston, Texas. Two days later he flew back to the UK with a Letter of Intent from the US software company Digital Research who licensed the unfinished software for $400,000.

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