A knock came at the door. Justin roused from his reverie about the Blackwoods.

“What is it?” he called out with a touch of irritation in his voice.

Lizzie poked her head into the room, while holding her laptop case.

“I don't want to hurry you, but you really need to see the rest of my proofs as soon as possible. You must know the whole truth.”

She flowed into the room again, her light peasant dress billowing gently as if a breeze blew it. He realized that her current attire varied from her norm. He couldn't remember her wearing a dress since he'd first interviewed her for the post as his daughter's tutor five years before. A stimulating sensation went down his legs, and he squirmed uncomfortably.

She sat down again on the other side of his desk, facing him. She reached into her laptop case and pulled out a sheet of paper. She handed it to him. The title read, “Signed Statement of Alan Rossi, Hollywood Producer, January 2007.”

“What is all this about?” he asked.

“You know Rocky Stoneman, of course. I believe he's related to you,” she replied.

“Of course. He's on the board at the bank. He's also my first cousin,” he cautioned.

“Rossi made this statement about Mr. Stoneman,” Lizzie said. “Read it.”

He read Rossi's statement:

“I met him through a friend, a female attorney who called me one day and said, ‘Rocky Stoneman would like to meet you.’ He saw a film I made called Reason for Anger, knew of my candidacy for governor of California, and wanted to meet me. I said, ‘Sure, I'd love to meet him.’ We met, and I liked him. He was a very, very smart man. We used to talk and share ideas and thoughts for hours.

“He told me in October 2000 to expect an event the next year. He never told me about the event specifically. Out of that event, he said we would invade Afghanistan to run pipelines from the Caspian Sea. We'd invade Iraq to take over the oilfields and establish a base in the Middle East, all toward the goal of creating a New World Order.

“The events of 9/11 occurred less than a year later.

“I remember he told me to expect to see news reports of soldiers looking in caves for people in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He called it a war on terror, with no real enemy, a giant hoax perpetrated by the big bankers in league with the government, intended to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people. He laughed as he said this.

“He foretold the government would claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to ensure the new war on terror would go on and on, with no real enemy and no winner. They intended to scare the hell out of the American public so they could do whatever they wanted. He described this war on terror as a fraud, a farce.

“I learned early on when I told this story to some people that they would call me a nut case, which makes it very hard to speak out about it.

“Stoneman asked me if I might want to join the Committee for International Consolidation. He said I would have to get a letter to join them, but would I be interested? He kept asking me that over and over again.

“We were friends. He came to my house a lot. We would have dinner together, and then we would talk for hours at a time. He told me about his business investments. He often offered to include me in those investments.

“Each time he asked me to join the CIC, I replied, ‘As much as I like you, Rocky, you and I sit on opposite sides of the fence. I don't believe in enslaving people.’

“He replied, ‘What do you care about them? What do you care about those people? What difference does it make to you? Take care of your own life. Do the best that you can for you and your family. What do the rest of the people mean to you? They don't mean anything to you! They're just serfs; they're just people.’ He expressed such a lack of caring. It was cold, so cold.

“I asked him, ‘What's the point of all this? You have all the money you need. You have all the power you need. What are you after?’

“He said the goal was to get everybody chipped, to get an RFID chip implanted into every human body, to track all their money, making it easier for the elite to control them. They want to control the whole society, to have the bankers, the elite people, and some global President control the world.

“I asked him, ‘Do all the people on the Committee for International Consolidation feel the same way you do?’

“He said, ‘No. Most of them just believe in doing the right thing.’”

“You give me a conspiracy theory?” Justin protested angrily as he threw the signed statement down onto the desk. He flung his hands out and demanded, “You call this proof???”

She replied, “If I merely gave you that statement, I agree it would be nothing more than a conspiracy theory by itself. However, in light of the video's contents, I think you know better now. I also have a third piece of evidence to give you, one to convince you that not only is there a conspiracy, not only has it been working with the government, but it's been actively working with less reputable people to achieve its aims to your personal harm.”

He stared back at her, suspicion in his eyes. What could she possibly know that could harm me personally?

She continued before he could interrupt: “Permit me a brief lecture. The roots of the current crisis, as you know, reach back to the 1990s. The Federal Reserve pumped large amounts of newly created money into the financial system over a long period of time to stimulate the economy. This money financed the now famous 'dot com' boom, which I believe you played an important role in.”

He took a defensive tone, “Yes, our bank helped launch many of the more successful new IPOs during that time. Unlike many of the new stock issues of the 1990s, most of the IPOs our bank underwrote are still in existence today, and some of them are thriving.”

“That's true,” she acknowledged. She recognized that IPO meant Initial Public Offering, a term used to describe a new stock offering from a company going public. “Anyway, the massive cash infusion drove stock prices through the roof and led investors to believe that fortunes could be made simply by launching a website and making a stock offering. As we both know, it worked for awhile, but it eventually fell apart in the early months of the year 2000. The subsequent tech crash wiped out a lot of investor capital. If I remember correctly, the popular joke at the time was that peoples' 401(k) plans transformed into 201(k) plans as many lost half their value or more.”

He smirked slightly at the joke, and she continued after quickly acknowledging his reaction with a small smile. “Some investors managed to hang onto the short-term profits they earned trading in that market. They ended up abandoning the stock market and turning their attention to real estate. The housing market stagnated for most of the 1990s, but it edged up toward the end of the decade. This pattern encouraged the investors. They bought massive numbers of properties as second homes and rental investments after the tech crash. The increased demand drove real estate prices up at a tremendous rate.”

“You call this your third proof?” he asked, a little bored. He already knew all this. He had learned over the years to trust and appreciate her financial savvy and insights, and they frequently discussed this mutual interest, but sometimes he tired of her lectures.

“Bear with me. I'm getting to it,” she replied.

Forging ahead, she continued, “Other markets boomed beside real estate, however. The government spent hundreds of billions after 9/11 on its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where most of the rest of the newly created money went. It went into the defense industry.”

Just then, the door of the study opened and his daughter Michaela came rushing into the room over to his desk.

“Hi Dad,” she said smiling and threw her arms around his neck. “Cook wants to know when you're going to be ready for dinner.”

She turned and said, “Hi Lizzie! I wondered where you went.” She beamed at her tutor.

A beautiful young lady already, Michaela almost certainly would turn heads in the near future, just as her late mother had. Amanda's physical beauty had crested at age 18, and Justin fell in love with her, marrying her four years later, after her graduation from Harvard. By that time he realized that her timeless inner beauty affected him more deeply than anything in his experience to date. Nine years of absolutely rapturous marriage followed, the happiest time he had ever known, including the first eight years of their daughter's life. The most devastating time imaginable followed, starting the day Amanda died in the auto accident. He never really got over the loss.

Justin felt a sense of bittersweet pride as he watched their daughter grow up. He saw Amanda in Michaela's face every day. They had the same natural light blond hair and blue eyes. At 14, Michaela already stood 5'6” tall. She likely would reach the 5'9” frame that her mother achieved. Like other teenage girls, she showed rounding in the appropriate places.

He reminded himself that his daughter displayed a more overtly outgoing personality. Where Amanda had moved quietly, softly and gently, their daughter flew like a whirlwind of energy and enthusiasm. Not that Amanda didn't have energy or a free spirit. She delighted, for instance, in debating and discussing political news and topics, she loved secrets and taking small but sometimes mischievous risks, and she could defend her position like a bulldog. Yet most of the time her low-key, gentle nature won out over anything truly dangerous or brazen.

“Is it really that late? I hadn't noticed the time,” he replied with a remarkably sober face, and his daughter giggled.

Justin marveled at the way Michaela so easily lived in the moment. Everything she did, she did with gusto, great pleasure, and happiness. Her enthusiasm overflowed all the time. Watching her reminded him how everything he encountered as a young man had enthralled him. She treated every minute of each day as a precious gift.

And so it is, he thought. And so it is.

He smiled and straightened up because he didn't want his daughter to know his true feelings. She deserved his best attitude at all times. Never mind the deep melancholy and perhaps even despair which threatened to overwhelm him now. That simply wouldn't do for his Michaela.

“Go ahead and tell her she can start dinner whenever she is ready,” he said kindly, and he smiled at her.

“Okay, Dad!” she replied gaily. She kissed him on the cheek, grinned at Lizzie, and ran from the room.

Raising a young girl by himself after his wife's untimely death challenged him. They never lacked money, but a young girl's unique issues confounded him at times. It greatly relieved him when he hired Lizzie Kohn as her live-in tutor. Lizzie played a more important role than merely a tutor to Michaela. As confidante and mentor, she served as a valuable role model and adult female influence for his quickly maturing daughter. He didn't know how he would have raised her without Lizzie's steady, guiding influence.

Justin doted on Michaela, which compensated to some degree for his failures as a parent, as he perceived them. He feared for years that he failed her because, well, he was a man, and she was a girl. He knew little about young girls' needs. And yet, somehow, they got through it. Genuine love overcomes all, and he loved his daughter very much. It surprised him a little how much she loved him right back, but it pleased him greatly.

“Perhaps we should finish our conversation after dinner?” Lizzie asked, interrupting his reverie.

Almost immediately, and sooner than they expected, Michaela once again burst into the room, barely pausing to knock before throwing open the door. “Cook says to tell you that dinner will be ready in 25 minutes, Dad!”

He smiled again. “Okay, sweetheart. We will come soon.” Again, she rushed from the room.

“Yes, I think we had better leave it until then,” he replied to Lizzie. He put the manuscript and the copy of Rossi's signed statement down next to his laptop on his desk, ejected the disk from his laptop, put it in his pocket, turned out the lamp, and they got up to leave the room.