MY WAY HOME ◆ Steve McGarrett ◆ Hawaii Five-0

TWENTY THREE part II

STEVE'S POV

I sat down to the couch, exhausted after surveilling Palladin with Hooker through the night.
"There you go," Joe understandingly handed me full cup of hot black coffee.
"Thanks," I said gratefully.
"How did it go?"
I took a sip of the hot bliss.

"There were six cars total coming in and out of Palladin between midnight and 7AM, which is definitely more traffic than I'd expect, all blacs SUVs or vans by the way. We immediately run the plates and the cars belong either to Palladin itself or to local mining company called 'Theseus'. Have you heard of them?"
"I have not."

"Did Catherine get anywhere with those cayman accounts?" I asked.
Joe shook his head, "No such luck but I called in a favor. I had my contact check if there's any chatter in the Agency about Palladin, Peters, Cape Town...you name it."
I smiled. Joe was famous for always getting the right information the team needed from his vast net of contacts in the military. 

"And? Did you get anything?"
"You bet," Joe smirked. "It turned out that Peters has an interest in another company called 'Jewels of the Sun'."
"OK," I leaned back and put my feet up on the couch.

"Those payments to Peters' accounts we saw yesterday were wired from 'Jewels' itself.
When my contact looked into them, he found incoming transactions from various companies. All of them are involved in diamond business but one stood out, 'Jacob & Hill."
"Ok, what's with that one?" I asked while I took another sip from my coffee.
"On the outside it looks just like the others but my source tells me that they are a front company for CIA."

I didn't see that coming.
"Can we trust your source?" I asked.
"110 %."

"OK then who is Jacobs and Hill?" I asked.
"That I don't know but my best guess is they are just covers set up by the Agency," Joe explained.
"So you think Peters works with CIA?" I asked.
"Quite the opposite. It's an unofficial and unverified intel but my source says that CIA is after Peters and created J&H to keep an eye on him and his diamond deals until they gather enough evidence to arrest him."
"What do they have against Peters? Except that he is crazy rich now?" I smirked.

"Up until about six months ago nothing," Catherine walked into the room holding her laptop, "but then diamonds appeared on international market for 3/4 of usual price and that threatened the stability of the world diamond trade. A trade in which CIA has lot of interest giving the fact that they're using it to fund their ops. We tracked those diamonds to company called-
I interrupted her, "Let me guess, 'Jewels of the Sun."
"How did you know," Catherine smiled.

"Are those stones even real?" I wondered.
"100%."
"So how can 'Jewels of the Sun' go so cheap?" I asked. We know threy are hand in hand with 'Theseus', the mining company, but even with them they can't go so low!"

"CIA thinks that Palladin is smuggling the diamonds out of the country illegaly so they wouldn't have to pay any fees related to diamond mining, processing, registering etc. Those costs in RSA are very high. With that they save 60 to 65 % of the costs. They are selling them 25% cheaper than other legal sellers and make huge profit."

"Illegal diamonds aside," I said, "we need to focus on finding Scott and to do so it'd help if we knew what his role in all of this is.
Joe, do you think he might be working with Peters?"
"I don't think so Steve. I know Scott, he's a good man. Maybe he got caught in the middle. Maybe he found out that Peters is not playing fair game in his diamond sales and started looking into it. I'm starting to think that it might have been the reason why he asked me to meet with him. And it's possible that Peters found out."

"Or the Agency," Catherine stood up. "They could have removed him before he would mess up their op against Palladin."

"I'm with Catherine on this one," I said. "When we met Peters, you mentioned Scott but Peters didn't react in any suspicious way, "I looked at Joe. "Either he deserves an Oscar or he doesn't think there is problem with Scott. As far as he is concerned he only hasn't shown up for his flight and there are other explanations for that.