The Enigma Ignite

Otto continued, “Now I want to turn this over to Wolfgang for his update, followed by Quip, Petra, and then Jacob.”

“I have been pursuing the money transfer avenues that align with our subjects of interest,” informed Wolfgang. “To date, most of these fund trails seem fairly standard. There are two trails that I am pursuing further for funds that were moved into a safe location several weeks ago. What made these fund movements of particular interest was that it has a sloppy trail correlated to the Chinese underground organizations. We certainly know some of their nefarious activities and tend to keep an eye on them, but the lump sum was placed into a holding account, which caused my closer scrutiny. I am still watching this and hope for an improved update soon.

“I’m also finding quite a lot of out of cycle purchases from our view of the Russian Mafia splinter group known as the Dteam. This group, interestingly enough, was partially sanctioned by the Chinese, but is still heavily involved in stealing and modifying program code using social media means. I am trying to tie some of this increased activity back to some of the communications we are storing with our current Prudence effort. I think they are involved in some special activity, but I am still working to identify the exact buyers and sellers. We have confirmed that that group is under the leadership of Nadir Zarkov, a known operative watched by Interpol. I have adjusted our databases since he took over from Grigory. Otto is researching prior discussions where Nadir may have been involved.

“That’s all I have for now, but progress is being made. Quip, I believe you are next, sir.”

Quip looked at each person quickly, then started, “As you know, we have been using ICABOD to pull in information from various sources based on the few key words that Prudence provided along with a few others we knew were also critical. We have had some success and comfort in identifying and consolidating the information into some specific work streams.

“The first bucket contains the source verification that we have several global powers currently experimenting and/or refining activity in the use of military field communications. Though the problem being solved by each is similar, we seem to have some different activities going on by those identified as main players. We can say for certain that the Chinese, British, and Americans are certainly working on specific projects in this arena with some noise from the Middle Eastern Countries. We are tracking some specific tests that occurred or are scheduled to determine what technologies are being tested as well as the results of those tests.

“For example, we found that a test by the Chinese failed miserably, with extensive loss of life. The internal correspondence on the test seemed to point to implanted chips that were not tested under battlefield conditions in their labs. We are gathering additional details, but their focus is more on chip sets rather than nanotechnology, per se. Overall, it appears to be a very tragic field exercise, that we feel will be internally maintained rather than available through mainstream information sources.

“The British and Americans are setting up for some test reviews soon, but the details are well hidden at this point. It is uncertain if they are joint efforts or technology sharing exercises, so we will continue to monitor. These may, as we often see, be separate tests toward the same overall plan. We are monitoring the communications streams as well as the data repositories for new and updated entries of both countries.

“For nanotechnology overall, we have done some reviews to determine the key manufacturers in this space. We are seeing the typical university studies, studies with the Western countries intelligence communities with their inter-agency sharing, and the high tech manufacturers, mostly related to computing power per device, rather than just communications focused. At this juncture, it is something that many would be exploring as to the best application of the technology. The possibilities would appear endless, but other dependent technology adaptations are also under review by the major technology vendors, be it computers, printers, or mobility devices. The adaptation will likely move toward consumer preferences for mobility devices to gain the return on investment of the technology.

“Jacob and I have been working together to further granulize the searching and review of the analytics. We are classifying the data segments as shared or retained based on the difficulty to acquire. Those data elements will be further reviewed before sharing as a part of our contract fulfillment. Petra has done some encryption code breaking for our access to some data sources, especially the communications. We are trying to capture and identify some of the actual communications that seem to be occurring between the different players I mentioned. However, some of the communications packets are proving difficult to capture and open. Jacob, Petra would either of you like to add some comments on this?”