‘That’s not what I’m asking. Nothing is going to prevent it from happening.’
He glances around the coffee shop, wondering which unseen eyes might be watching him.
‘So if my acting on this information isn’t going to stop it, why are we both here?’
He glances at his watch. He doesn’t make a show of it but he doesn’t completely disguise it either. He needs to check how long he’s still got, and he needs to remind her of that too.
‘Have you heard of Synergis?’
She asks this with a tone of doubt that indicates maybe she hadn’t until recently. That would make sense. Synergis hasn’t exactly been making waves in recent memory, but once upon a time it had been a household name.
‘Aldous Syne was to British electronics in the nineties what Clive Sinclair was in the eighties,’ Parlabane replies, so she knows she can skip a few pages.
She gives him a blank look, the name Clive Sinclair clearly not registering anything.
‘Whatever. The point is they are the target. Synergis’s research and development labs are working on some new product that they reckon is gonna revive their fortunes. The whole thing is shrouded in secrecy, highest levels of security, but it’s not gonna be enough. The prototype is about to go bye-bye, along with copies of the plans, schematics, programming, the lot. Everything that would be needed to reverse-engineer the thing: that’s what’s going to be stolen.’
No wonder she’s playing it cagey. This is big, but only if she can stand it up. Parlabane is already thinking about when he can arrange another meet if they run out of time here. He’ll make sure he controls the venue next time, though.
‘How do you know this?’
‘That’s not important right now. You ought to be more interested in who is going to be pulling this thing off.’
‘Why? What’s his name?’
She sits up straight, folds her arms.
‘Jack Parlabane.’
THE RECKONING
‘This is a wind-up, right?’ he says. ‘Is this Broadwave’s version of a hazing ritual?’
He shifts in the beanbag, wondering if finding himself perched on this ridiculous thing was part of the prank’s stage management. The young woman across the table doesn’t look like she’s in on the joke. Her disciplined neutral expression is finally failing her and her eyes are moistening.
‘Listen, I’ve a train to catch and I’m done playing games. It’s cards on the table time, or I’m walking. Who are you and what do you want?’
She wipes her eyes and reaches into a compact rucksack at her feet.
‘Cards on the table, yeah?’
Parlabane looks down at the tiny square of paper she has placed in front of him. It shows a goofy, buck-toothed fish superimposed on a biohazard symbol.
‘It’s not what I want, it’s what I need. I need your help, Jack.’
He looks up at her again, gaping as though someone completely different has been beamed down to replace whoever was sitting there before.
He drops his voice to a whisper.
‘Jesus fuck. You’re Buzzkill?’
The impassive expression returns, though a hint of defiance creeps in.
‘What part of me weren’t you expecting? Am I a little too young, a little too female or a little too black?’
Parlabane ignores this. There isn’t time to go down that road. There isn’t time for much, in fact, so he has to focus on what’s relevant.
‘Why are you coming out to me, revealing yourself after all this time?’
‘Because I don’t have much choice any more. I did something stupid and it gave away my identity. Somebody played me: somebody in Uninvited. Now I’m being blackmailed. They’re going to go to the cops with all kinds of evidence about the RSGN hack unless I do what they want, and what they want is for me to steal this prototype from Synergis. I can’t do it alone. I need your help.’
‘First things first. What do I call you? What’s your name?’
‘The less you know about me, the better for both of us. But you can call me . . . Barb,’ she decides. ‘Can’t exactly afford to have some random overhear you calling me by my hacker name.’
He checks the time again, discreetly this time.
How is he meant to resolve this in the few minutes he’s got left before he needs to hail a cab and hope the traffic’s not gridlocked? Catching a later train isn’t an option. He’s meeting a guy at Birmingham New Street who is holding fake credentials for him, so that he can gain entry to the arms fair. This individual is not the type to wait around in public places. If Parlabane misses the hand-off, he isn’t getting in.
‘I can help you, but not like this. Think it through. If you do this for these people, they don’t go away. In fact, in the unlikely event that you pull it off without getting caught, you would double what they could hold over you. You’d be their toy to control for ever.’
‘What other choice do I have?’
‘There are cops who owe me favours. Not rank and file: senior officers. I can help bring you in.’
‘What, so I can cut a deal like Sabu? Roll on my friends?’
‘From where I’m sitting, it doesn’t sound like they’re your friends. One of them isn’t, for sure, and you don’t know about the rest — who else is in on this, who any of them really are.’
‘That’s just it, though,’ she says. ‘I’ve got nothing to offer. I don’t know anything.’
‘Neither did Hector Monsegur. He worked with the FBI to identify his LulzSec co-conspirators.’
‘Yeah, but all it bought him was a deal to reduce his jail time. He didn’t walk away free. He sold his soul and still served seven months. This way at least my fate is in my own hands, and I stay out of jail as long as I can.’
‘This way is . . .’ Parlabane looks around, trying to ground both of them in the reality of this coffee shop, the here and now. ‘It’s a non-starter. It’s madness. I mean, what made you think I would even contemplate something like this?’
‘Because I’ve nobody else to turn to and it’s not exactly virgin territory for you, is it, Jack? You’ve been sneaking into places and snooping information your whole life. That’s why I sought you out in the first place, remember?’
He knows Barb is merely another alias, but she’s chosen it well. She’s had a jagged little hook in him since the start.
‘If by seeking me out you mean hijacking my laptop and holding my files hostage before coercing me to install malware inside the offices of my erstwhile employer, then sure.’
‘Yeah, but I also helped you hack the laptop you stole when you broke into that crusty MoD guy’s flat in Kensington; and I helped you analyse the data when you broke into that place in Inverness. We complement each other. You handle the physical infiltration, I handle the digital.’
‘And that Kensington thing worked out so well for me, didn’t it?’
‘Don’t pretend Inverness wasn’t a result.’
‘Look, I’ve broken into a couple of places.’
‘A couple!’ she splutters.
‘Usually very soft targets that were defended by little more than a locked door. Yes, I can pick locks and I can climb walls. But thanks to precisely my sorts of activities – and yours – people have seriously upped their game when it comes to security. I mean, Jesus Christ, the R&D labs at Synergis? Physically and digitally that’s got to be a fortress.’
She lifts her head and arches her brow, as though she has somehow turned the tables on him. He can’t see how.
‘Ah. So you’ve moved on from “won’t do it” to “can’t do it”. That’s a slippery slope. You’re already thinking about how it would be a blast. That’s why we’re kindred spirits. We’re both social engineers. Getting people to tell you things they’re supposed to be keeping secret, giving up information because they don’t realise its true value. We live for this shit. We’re a great team.’
Parlabane isn’t buying into this one bit, and she reads it in his face.
‘Or are we only a team when I’m helping you get what you want?’
Her expression is riven with accusation, even betrayal. Parlabane feels like shit. He knew that one day Buzzkill would come demanding the inevitable pound of flesh, and finally it is here. The thing he didn’t anticipate was that he would be in a position to refuse.
‘I can help you if you go to the authorities. That’s it.’
‘I can’t go to jail,’ she replies, her eyes moistening again. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘Coming clean to the cops about being blackmailed doesn’t mean you’ll go to jail, especially if you’re trying to prevent a crime.’
‘You don’t have a fucking clue. I hacked a bank, which means rich and powerful people are looking for a scalp. This Aldergrave fucker is desperate for a result on RSGN. And if I end up in jail, what happens to—’
She stops herself, shakes her head.
‘I can’t go to jail, Jack. I’m out of options. I wouldn’t be coming to you otherwise, believe me.’
‘And I’m out of time,’ he replies, feeling all of a centimetre high, and knowing it will be worse as he is literally about to run away from here.
She stares balefully at him as he gets to his feet. He thought she’d look more indignant, but instead she seems simply defeated.
‘You know how to find me. Soon as you’re ready to accept the help I can offer, I’ll be there for you.’
WAR FAIR
Parlabane can’t get her out of his thoughts, even as he is running flat out across the concourse of Euston Station, slaloming the somnambulant in order to reach his train on time. He always feared a reckoning from Buzzkill, but having met her under such circumstances he feels a burden of responsibility rather than debt.
He thinks of her arch tone concerning her appearance: too young, too female or too black. He’d probably have to put his hand up to two out of three. He had always pictured a white male, though her age was less of a surprise. Aside from the Hispanic Hector ‘Sabu’ Monsegur, who was pushing thirty, the other main players in LulzSec were white males ranging from twenty-two down to sixteen at the time of their arrests.
He can’t help her the way she’s asking. She looked so meekly accepting of his refusal, though: so broken. He was expecting some kind of tantrum, a protest about how he owed her.
Maybe deep down she knew she was kidding herself, and needed it spelled out to her. Maybe the best thing is for her to accept that this isn’t an option, then when she comes back to him he can speak to some cops he knows: Catherine McLeod or Jenny Dalziel. It is out of both their jurisdictions but they are sufficiently senior as to be able to chaperone her through the right channels. Whoever is blackmailing her was involved in the RSGN hack, and now they are planning high-level industrial espionage.
Surely the police would be far more interested in running them down than in making a token arrest of a harmless teenager? That said, you could never be certain when political pressure was being brought to bear: she was right about that much. Press and politicians were calling for hackers’ heads on sticks, as anything that undermined confidence in our banks clearly had to be dealt with (except when bankers themselves were responsible, naturally).
By late afternoon, his morning rendezvous seems a long time and a long way distant. He has made the hand-off to pick up his fake credentials, and subsequently spent the past few hours walking the halls of the trade show from hell. It’s like a nightmare version of the Ideal Homes Exhibition, where all the gadgets and innovations are about ways to kill everybody in the house next door in the event that your neighbours are planning an insurgency.
He finds himself in a side hall, where a number of smaller exhibitors are offering to consult on ‘security contracting’. This is the posh new name for mercenaries, though he is intrigued by the incongruous sight of a slightly built and bespectacled woman on one of the stands. Among the services listed on a pop-up banner alongside her is
‘penetration testing’.
He decides to introduce himself, pausing briefly to read a text from Lee:
What’s the big story?
She’s checking up on him. He likes that. He texts back, telling her:
All in good time.
Parlabane approaches the woman on the stand. She puts on a professional smile, practised enough to remind him what kind of sleaze she is probably assuming him to be.
‘Can you tell me a little about what you offer in terms of penetration testing?’
‘Sure thing,’ she replies. ‘What would you like to know?’
Her accent is American, though softened by travel, he estimates. Maybe Canadian, rather: he is pretty sure he heard her finish off a conversation on her mobile in French as he approached.
‘I suppose, first of all, do you guys do anything in the civilian sector? Because otherwise I’d be wasting your time. Among the interests I represent is an electronics manufacturer which is very concerned about industrial espionage.’
‘Truth is we work primarily in the civilian sector, Mr . . .?’
He hands her one of the fake cards he’s been given.
‘Logan. Jack Logan.’
‘We do consult on some military-level security, but it’s far from our core activity.’
‘So walk me through it. How does it work? When people talk about penetration testing, I mostly think of computer networks these days, which makes me picture the threat as a bunch of hackers in a basement in Donetsk; guys eating Dorritos who never even enter the same country as their target.’
She gives him an indulgent chuckle. This is good, because playing the glib and uninformed tube is what he is aiming for.
‘Computer networks often control all the other security systems, so defending against cyber intrusion is still a big part of what we do. But we’re also about analysing the physical vulnerability of premises. A lot of hacking requires physical intrusion in one form or another; accessing air-gapped servers, for instance. We infiltrate on all possible levels then provide an in-depth report of our methods, detailing all the weaknesses we were able to exploit.’
‘And this is against live targets? Like, only the CEO or whoever knows you’re coming.’
‘That’s right, though he usually doesn’t know when. Sometimes it’s the CEO who is a potential weakness, and we’ve been hired to demonstrate that to him.’
‘Isn’t it dangerous? Guards patrolling, armed police possibly getting called?’
‘Most of the time we’re in and out of there without anybody knowing, which is kind of the point. If a guard raises an alarm, then technically your pen test has failed.’
Parlabane is wary that he feels a tingle at the thought of pulling off an undetected infiltration inside some highly secure facility. Buzzkill wasn’t completely wrong about what excites him, but he is not allowing himself to entertain the notion of what she was suggesting.
‘We have on occasion penetrated installations where guards were carrying live ammunition. We are very meticulous in our safety preparation, mostly for the protection of subject personnel. There is more danger of an armed guard shooting his colleague in a panic than ever getting a bead on our guys.’
‘Not so much with the shooting here in the UK, though,’ he suggests hopefully.
‘No, but even here, the average security guard’s non-lethal load-out is getting nastier all the time: shock batons, telescopic clubs, pepper spray. Legally speaking, they’re not always supposed to have these things, but there are companies on the floor right here selling them, and they’re not surviving purely on exports. If you get caught somewhere you shouldn’t be, you’re not going to make a very credible witness when you dispute specifically what kind of hardware was used to apprehend you.’
No, Parlabane reflects, he is most definitely not going to entertain Buzzkill’s crazy notion.
‘So who does it take to break into these places? I mean, what kind of background and skills do your team bring to this?’
‘We have a lot of different s
pecialities. Ex-military, ex-law-enforcement, and sometimes ex-law-breaking.’
‘To catch a thief . . .’
‘That’s right.’
‘And which are you?’
She gives him a wary smile, though it’s warmer than the meet-and-greet one he got earlier.
‘Ex-hacker.’
‘Figures.’
She gives him her card. It says: ‘Lex Richardson, Solid Bett Security Partners.’
As he walks back towards the main hall, he gets another text. It’s Lee again, asking:
What’s the big story and why aren’t we getting it?
He decides he’d better file a taster and an outline of what he has so far. He makes his way to one of the refreshment areas, where he grabs a coffee, finds a quiet corner and opens his laptop.
The first, rather large sign that something is wrong is that his desktop background has been changed. Instead of one of the generic rotation of preloaded pictures, he is confronted by a pixelated image of a blue-haired cyborg in a purple cape, a frame from the opening of Zero Wing: an early nineties video game he never played but is tediously familiar with through a meme almost as old as the internet.
‘ALL YOUR FILE ARE BELONG TO ME,’ states an altered version of the caption.
Parlabane’s instinctive response is to check the documents he’s been working on. That is when he notices that the folder names have all been changed to unreadable Japanese characters, and their icons replaced with thumbnails of photographs: personal photographs from what he had previously considered secure online storage.
He double clicks one at random and gets a message informing him that the file is locked and requires a password. Thinking fast, he remembers that the most recently accessed files can also be accessed via a list on the Start menu. When he clicks on it, the titles are in Japanese, and though the Word program does launch, what was previously a single-sheet document now displays as several hundred pages of gobbledegook. The files have been remotely encrypted.
Fucking Buzzkill.
His annoyance gives way to a more chilling thought, as he remembers about those texts from Lee.
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