When his army of a hundred plus Econoline vans were not raiding the contents of unsuspecting computers during the day, they became electronic ears which listened in on the conversations between the ATM's and their bank customers. Ahmed's vans were used most efficiently. On the road, doing his bidding twenty four hours a day, every day but the Sabbath. Ahmed created cells of eight loyal anti-American sympathizers, regardless of nationality, to operate with each van. Each group operated as an independent entity with only one person from each able to communicate privately with Ahmed over cellular modem. No cell knew of any other cell. If one group was apprehended, they couldn't tell what they didn't know. Therefore, the rest of the cells remain intact. Absolute loyalty was an unquestioned assumption for all members of Ahmed's electronic army. It had to be that way, for the bigger cause. All day and night one of Ahmed Shah's computers in his lab at Columbia received constant calls from his cell leaders. During the day it was the most interesting information that they had captured from computer screens. At night, it was the passcodes to automatic bank tellers machines and credit card information. Once the passcodes were in hand, making fake ATM cards was a trivial task. **************************************************************** Chapter 18 Wednesday, January 6 Amsterdam, Holland Scott Mason had a theory. It didn't matter than no one else believed it, or that they thought him daffy. It worked for him. He believed that jet lag was caused by the human body traveling across mystical magnetic force fields called Ley lines. The physics of his theory made common sense to anyone but a scien- tist. It went like this: the body is electric and therefore magnetic fields can influence it. Wherever we live we are sub- ject to the local influence of magnetic, electrical and Ley lines. If we move too quickly, as by plane, through Ley lines, the balance of our system is disturbed. The more Ley lines you traverse, the more upsetting it is to the system. Thus, jet lag. But, Scott had a solution. Or more accurately, his mother had one which she had convinced him of years earlier. Scott carried with him a small box, the size of a pack of cigarettes, that had a switch and a blinking light. It was called an Earth Resonance Generator, or ERG. The literature said the ERG established a negative gravity field through a magnetic Mobius loop. Inside the box was a battery, a loop of wire, a light emitting diode and the back side of the switch. In short, nothing of electronic consequence or obvious function. There was no way in hell that this collection of passive components could do anything other than wear out batteries. All for $79.95 plus $4 shipping.