Swiftshadow

by D S Kane

  At that moment, Ann’s eyes mirrored acceptance and recognition. They had bonded. Cassie felt she could trust Ann. “Listen, Ann, I’d like to give you money. I have more than I need. Please. Let me help you.”

  Ann frowned. “No. It doesn’t take long for someone to figure out what this place is like. After what happened to my brother and me, I know. What you want to do for me, it’ll only complicate things. Keep your money.”

  Cassie raised her hand to interject, but Ann shook her head. “No. Let me finish. I heard a woman say she tried a shelter and was raped there. I might as well stay here.”

  “What about foster care?”

  Ann shook her head. “No. I’ve heard stories. Really ugly stories. Teens sold by the hour.”

  Cassie nodded. “But there must be somewhere safer than this.”

  Ann shrugged. “I think not. Leave me be.”

  What will you do to get food?”

  “I’ll manage. Keep your money. I’ll do what I have to, to survive.”

  “But you know how dangerous this place is. I’m offering what I can afford, nothing more. I want to help you. Why refuse me?”

  The girl rapidly shook her head. “No, no, no. I don’t want anyone’s help. If I take your help, anyone’s help, I’ll come to depend on them. What happens to me then? When they disappear? When you disappear.”

  Ann’s declaration of independence stirred something deep inside Cassie. She’s like me in too many ways. “I guess I understand.”

  Something unforeseen had happened. She saw this youngster as her guide and mentor in some disconnected bit of logic. I need the knowledge Ann possesses more than Ann needs the money I can offer. Son of a bitch, she will survive. And so will I, if I follow her advice.

  Ann said, “Chrissie, don’t come back. Please. I have to figure this out on my own. But before you go, please let me give you a hug. You’ve been kind to me.”

  When Cassie reached her arms around the young woman, Ann pushed something into her hand. Cassie examined it. It was an old bent photo of Ann. Maybe eight years old. Cassie smiled. “Thanks.” She walked away, placing the photo into her wallet. But her thoughts kept returning to the young homeless girl who was as lost as she was.

  * * *

  On the third day she bought a used business outfit at a Goodwill store and went to the YMCA at Third Avenue on 47th Street, where she paid for a day pass. She rented a locker for her homeless outfit and other possessions. Cassie showered and changed into the new clothing.

  Before she left, she noticed that the Y offered self-defense and martial arts classes. She’d need to relearn her self-defense skills. She made a mental note of the class schedule and then hiked to Dr. Sheldorff’s office to complete phase two of “Cassie Becomes Someone Else.”

  At his office, she thanked herself for thinking to stuff money from her Houmaz hack into Denise Hardcastle’s bank account before leaving DC. She used most of her remaining cash to pay the doctor.

  * * *

  Her face bore a bandage that covered both cheeks and her chin. As the anesthetic wore off, the pain burned like fires.

  Cassie didn’t want to find herself a target for another homeless bully while she appeared injured, and therefore weak. I can’t return to the Grand Central tunnels while my face is bandaged.

  She took a room with a kitchen at the Milburn Hotel on the Upper West Side. She spent the next two weeks recovering there from the surgery. For several days, despite the meds, her face was a wall of pain. Even breathing hurt. Room service at the hotel was nonexistent. She opened the door for pizza and Chinese food deliveries with her chef’s knife hidden behind her back.

  After a few days she felt well enough to walk the neighborhood and try the restaurants. The Thai café on the corner made her taste buds sing. Others were so good, as well, that she had a hard time deciding which ones she liked best.

  On the day before her last visit to the doctor, she’d had all her clothes dry-cleaned by the hotel. When Dr. Sheldorff removed the bandages, he smiled. “Perfectly done. Here.” He handed Cassie a mirror.

  Cassie saw her new face, and her jaw dropped. What she saw staring back at her was the face she’d seen so many times in a picture frame hanging on the wall of her parent’s house. Her face looked like her Uncle Misha’s, with prominent cheekbones and a jutting chin.

  She had become someone she hated.

  Sheldorff’s smile collapsed. “Is something wrong?”

  She handed back the mirror. “No. I’m just surprised. The work you did is perfect, just as you say.”

  She was shocked to find that her new face was almost pretty, but in a way that revolted her.

  She was down to less than one thousand dollars now, and needed to perform another hack or return to the tunnels.

  She shuddered at the thought of returning to the tunnels. Ann had been her sole source for friendship and company, and she sorely missed the youngster. But Ann didn’t want to see her ever again. Cassie took the photo from her purse and stared at it. Even if the girl didn’t want to be with her, Cassie felt herself drawn to her.

  And, all things considered, she thought a hit team was less likely to find her while she lived in the tunnels. But just thinking about its desolation left her crestfallen. She shivered, remembering the violence there.

  Cassie decided any hotel was safer—for her mental functioning at least—than the tunnels, at least until her money ran out. She remained at the Milburn. She dyed her hair red to further change her appearance. Cassie left the hotel only when she needed to, visiting wireless hot spots at coffee lounges and other more technology-oriented hotels. But she often gazed at Ann’s photo. Eventually, she bought a clear plastic credit-card holder to keep it from bending and ripping.

  She sat facing the street at a Starbucks in East Midtown. While she recovered, she finished setting up her swiftshadow consulting.com website, hosted by a Chechnyan server.

  She examined the web page with mixed regret and sorrow, frowning over her work. She’d wanted to emulate the father she loved, but her life had somehow gone askew. With every step she was now walking the path Uncle Misha followed. Worse yet, she was becoming good at it. That’s when she heard the voice in her head: Tovarish, I am you, just as much as you are me. Vi ponimayu?

  The male voice spoke with a Russian accent. Although she’d never heard his voice before, she knew whose it was. Misha’s. She looked around the room but no one was close to her.

  Out of your league, tovarish. You’ll never survive without my help.

  Cassie couldn’t totally stifle her scream. “No!” Everyone in line for their designer coffee drinks turned to look at her. Crazy girl, mad. She heard the voice laugh, harsh and cruel.

  * * *

  She paid for the website through five financial blinds she’d created. The blinds were foreign bank accounts she opened by hacking into banks located in countries hostile to the United States and not in compliance with global banking rules. She gave the bank accounts fictitious identities, so they were “blind” to anyone trying to find her. It took the blinds several days to draw funds indirectly from the numbered bank account she had opened in Liechtenstein during a business trip to Europe two years ago. She’d placed a small amount of cash in that account when she opened it. She’d need to top it off soon by hacking agency funds.

  In blazing red on black, the top of her web page declared, “Dirty Deeds, But Not Dirt Cheap. If you know how to contact us, we’ll do your bidding. References on request with retainer of 50% in advance.” No links and an invisible web address. At the bottom center of her web page was a hidden “hot spot” where clients could be instructed to click to open a window and leave a reply to their invitation email message by hitting the Ctrl-Alt-S keys all at the same time.

  Cassie was ready to troll for clients. The file she’d stolen from the agency listed all the contact information for every client she’d ever had, and every other consulting firm the agency used as cover for operatives.

  Ca
ssie sent each a personalized email announcement of her new business, with a short but custom-tailored personal message identifying her, not by name but through an event she’d shared with that particular client.

  She was now open for business.

  Anyone out there?

  CHAPTER 7

  June 19, 2:14 p.m.

  Milburn Hotel,

  242 West 76th Street,

  Manhattan

  Rain whipped the street in sheets. Cassie sat at the window, staring outside.

  Ann’s photo was propped on the table where she could see it. People carried umbrellas and walked in the midafternoon, while she idly noted the change in spring fashions. She’d worked nonstop since before dawn.

  Cassie hadn’t felt like getting dressed. She also hadn’t bothered washing, or even brushing her teeth. She used her cell phone, focused on her work as she occasionally glanced out at the street, then returned her attention to the cell’s screen. All business, totally focused, ignoring the voice in her head that told her not to bother trying, because she was going to die soon.

  She plucked the thumb-drive containing her hacking tools and the lists of clients, banks, and their associated accounts from her attaché case. As the day passed, she used the tools to hack first into the Central Bank of Pakistan and then into one of the agency’s client government accounts. She ran a program she’d written in C++ to institute a Domain Name System cache poisoning attack. While the bank’s computers feebly fended off her attack—called pharming—she stole $2,000,000 in small odd-numbered amounts never exceeding the equivalent of US$5,000 per transaction. Her program piggybacked the stolen funds on top of her former agency’s daily transactions, then on out to a chain of intermediary bank accounts at several European banks where the agency did its business. The program could execute ten electronic funds transfers per second, but setting up the endpoint bank details took time before she safely let the program run loose.

  The piggybacked transfers were embedded into those the agency made, so they rode free and untraceable into the United States, arriving laundered in the largest and most prestigious domestic banks such as Citi, J. P. Morgan-Chase, and Bank of America. Once they arrived, she immediately converted the funds to bitcoin, an anonymous transaction format, and downloaded the serial numbers. There was no way to trace the funds now.

  She’d always found hacking dull and repetitive. Her face—the face of her uncle—remained blank and focused on the screen. She needed the money, they had the money, and she did what her former employer taught her. No guilt. Just another job. The agency had taught her to steal, and she’d become good at it. She thought for a moment how people cheated on their taxes all the time. Cassie modified the methods the agency had trained her to use, to draw less attention to them. She smiled when it occurred to her she funded herself exactly the way she’d funded the agency. Only now it was personal, not business.

  As day passed into dusk and then into evening, she moved some of the money—just what she required for her immediate needs—to Hardcastle’s new account at Citi.

  While she waited for a response to the twenty email messages she’d sent in a cold troll for clients, she built another dozen identities. Just before midnight, she fell into bed and a dreamless sleep.

  * * *

  When she woke the next morning, she downloaded her bank statement and confirmed the funds had cleared into her checking account. The sun beamed on Cassie through the window, warming her. She walked outside and used an ATM terminal near the Milburn to withdraw some of the cash.

  She took a series of buses to the Best Buy at 86th and Lexington. Cassie purchased a rolling suitcase, a DVD reader/writer, a computer printer, inkjet cartridges, and various sorts of paper, paid for in cash. During the short trip, she often looked behind her and to her flanks, nervous someone might be following her. But, as she concluded her final surveillance detection route at the bus stop, she relaxed. No one was tracking her; Cassie had seen no teams and no individuals more than once. She considered the possibility that she was safe, for now. Just another person lost in a crowd.

  Early the next morning, Cassie searched the files of the thumb-drive. Some of the contact names there might be tightly monitored by the agency. She couldn’t decide whether the information was safe, even with all the security considerations used to cover her identity.

  But the intel was still fresh and using it now offered less risk than if she continued to hold it in reserve. She searched the thumb-drive for employees of federal agencies. Given enough motivation in the form of cash, she hoped to obtain blank passports and US currency paper.

  Cassie walked to a pay phone she had never used before, on the corner of Broadway and 76th Street. I’ll need the help of a of the Federal Reserve Bank employee, one the agency uses. Norman Cisco’s office was at one of the Federal Reserve’s annex buildings across the street at the corner of Broad and Wall Streets. They’d worked together three times over two years whenever she needed the name of a “friendly” bank account to transfer funds to Muslim extremists. “Norm? This is Cassandra Sashakovich. I just need a minute of your time.”

  “Sashakovich? I heard you’re dead.” She could hear him snicker as his chewing gum popped.

  “Not yet. But there are people out there who want me in the ground. Isn’t there a pay phone on the corner of Broad Street and Wall Street?”

  “Yeah. I assume you don’t want this call on my records. What number should I call to reach you?”

  Ten minutes later, Norm and Cassie were both at pay phones several blocks away from each other, not wanting to be seen in each other’s company. The pay phones were located where they could talk without worry about security. “Norm, I’m willing to pay you big time for a favor that’s illegal. Nothing worse than what either of us has ever done for the agency and our government.”

  “What favor and how much?”

  “I need blank US currency paper and currency ink. Two-hundred fifty sheets, unfolded and enough ink to cover that. I can give you $50,000. Interested?”

  “Not for a piddling 50K. How about 200K?”

  Cassie thought about her money. It wouldn’t last forever, and if she kept spending cash at this rate, it wouldn’t last long at all. “75K.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Sashakovich. I’m risking my job and my pension, not to mention a prison sentence. I’m cheap at 200K, especially since I can guess why you need the stuff. Tell you what, if you come back to me needing more, next time it’ll be half price.” She imagined Norm’s sadistic smile.

  “Norm, I need to survive for there to be a next time. How about 125K”

  He seemed to consider this offer for a few seconds. “Nope. I’ll do it for you for the bargain price of $150,000. And that’s my final answer, as some ancient asshole celebrity was fond of saying on the telly.”

  Cassie sighed. She wished she had better negotiation skills.“Done deal. During lunch tomorrow, I’ll call you at this pay phone at noon.”

  “Not so fast. I’ll need to arrange a visit to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Long Island City. That’s three hours out of my day. Can’t have the goods for you before the day ends.”

  Cassie agreed. Norm always used an old-fashioned “dead-letter drop.” The Soviet spies had made this method popular over forty years ago. He instructed her to place an envelope containing the cash in a waste bin outside the global headquarters of Citibank on 53rd Street and Lexington Avenue. Cassie hid in the lobby of an office building across the street and used her cell phone to video his pickup of the cash, just in case. When he’d gone, she visited the very same trash bin and found the locker key he’d left her in a large envelope. She found Cisco’s “gift” in a locker at Penn Station, just as he’d promised. Now Cassie had the paper and the ink she needed.

  She’d remembered an agency analyst complaining that the Secret Service monitored websites in unfriendly nations but couldn’t do anything about the myriad offshore sites with instructions on counterfeiting. From that long-a
go discussion, she found a plethora of information on counterfeiting currency, including an underground eBook on BitTorrent that contained details rarely found outside the US Treasury and specialty numismatists. She also found instructions on simulating real currency using Photoshop, including high-definition currency images and special programs to randomize the serial numbers.

  She took buses to the Best Buy at 86th and Lexington where she purchased a high-quality scanner and two printers—one was dye sublimation and the other was a dot matrix preprinted-form printer—and went to work. Over the next two days, she printed fresh bills on the dye sub, and ran them through the dot matrix without a ribbon to simulate the raised feel left by a real bill’s intaglio printing process.

  To finish the process, she bought some India ink and made several pots of strong Lapsang Souchongsouchong tea. She combined these liquids, and “aged”the bills by tossing them and the fluid in a garbage bag, then drying them with a hair dryer until they looked like they’d been in use for a few months. She spent two days crumpling the bills to wrinkle them.

  Three days later, she had $2.5 million in counterfeit currency, bills ranging from 20s to 50s. All would pass muster with the city’s corner fruit stands. She was sure no one scanned for anything less than 100s.

  It was more than she could fit in a suitcase.

  Cassie needed identification papers that would pass muster at customs, but the hustlers in East Harlem offered poorly crafted false IDs that might get minors into bars but could easily expose an ex-agency analyst with a burn notice.

  She had the name of someone at the US State Department who was the agency’s New York City contact for blank passports. It cost $50,000 of the counterfeit cash to purchase twenty blanks.

  She also purchased the blank paper stock used for Social Security cards, and more blank stock for New York State drivers’ licenses.

  Nothing came cheap to forgers. She paid for everything with almost $700,000 of counterfeit money. These vendors were the test of whether her counterfeiting efforts were adequate. They were.