Diablo

by James Kent

  ‘Coffee?’ Simms asked again, still smiling.

  Pearman glared at him. ‘I don’t want your bloody coffee Simms! I want to know who’s responsible for locking me out of the FBI servers and for changing all my damned passwords. Nothing works!’

  Simms looked blankly at her, wondering what she was going on about. ‘What are you talking about?’ he asked quietly, piercing her with his stare.

  ‘Like I said, someone has changed all my passwords without my knowledge! I can’t get into the servers. None of them. I can’t access anything!’

  Simms thought for a moment and then said, ‘Ah! The penny drops!’ he held up an index finger as though testing the wind. ‘Perhaps that’s . . .’

  ‘Has your damned IT department been interfering again?’ interrupted Pearman. She was red in the face and getting annoyed with Simms’s long-winded waffling.

  ‘I doubt that very much! However, if you would kindly allow me to speak,’ he paused, ‘. . . I was informed by Agent Gifford that there have been a couple of hacking incidents recently, so perhaps your particular issue is connected with that? That would be my guess,’ Simms said with a condescending smile. Pearman was about to reply, but he cut her off short. ‘But, of course, Gifford also kindly assured me that it was all in hand and well contained and that there had been no known damage to any files or web sites that we here at the JRIC routinely use,’ he smiled again. ‘So, since everything seems fine our end, and since all my passwords work, perhaps you should talk to Agent Gifford’s sensational team directly to find out precisely what’s going on with your connection? Might not that be a good idea? Hmmm? They have a splendid “Help Desk” service just down the way there,’ he explained, making inverted comas with his fingers and waving his arm in the general direction of the cyber unit, ‘which, I might add, I find eminently useful when such unexpected debacles strike us from the blue, so to speak, like veritable “thieves in the night”!’ He smiled again at Pearman as though to say that’s all the advice he could offer and that he didn’t really care in any case. His white teeth gleamed at her again. The problem seemed to be limited to her alone. Ipso facto, not his problem.

  Pearman stood there for a few seconds, saying nothing as she thought about everything; all the weird things that had been happening since she got there. The strange people in Simms’s department. Simms himself. The crashing of her program. Complete lack of cooperation. The obfuscation. Things weren’t making any sense. Simms studied her. She decided to throw him a curveball, like she had to Sally, to see what came back. Perhaps everything was connected. She looked up and suddenly asked, ‘What the hell is “Reaper”?

  The question came out of the blue. She was hoping it would catch Simms off guard. He sat there studying her like he hadn’t heard the question, like he was observing an exhibit at the zoo. His eyes narrowed. Then he snapped out of it and said blankly, ‘Eh? What? Never heard of it! What’s that?’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking you, you moron!’

  ‘“Reefer”?’

  ‘No, “Reaper”, R-E-A-P-E-R! With a “P”!’ she spelled it out loudly, emphasizing each letter.

  ‘No idea,’ he said with a self-satisfied grin. ‘Can’t help you, sorry. Never heard of it. What’s it supposed to be?’ he asked.

  ‘Jesus Christ Simms!’ she exclaimed angrily. ‘You need to get a grip!’

  ‘Anything else I can help you with? Coffee, perhaps?’

  ‘Fuck off Simms!’

  ‘Good point! I might just do that. So, ahh, while I’m doing that, why don’t you up-sticks and piss off out of my office? You’re wasting my time!’ He stared up at her with cold, dagger eyes. The smile was gone.

  It was like a sting in the tail.

  Pearman stared back at him, bewildered by his good cop, bad cop routine. She made to leave, then she suddenly turned and said, pointing her finger at him, ‘You’re a creepy sonofabitch Simms! If I find out you’ve been deliberately frustrating my investigation, I’ll charge you with obstructing a federal officer in the course of her work!’ Her hands were trembling slightly. She wasn’t sure why. Then she walked out and slammed the door behind her. Simms stared at the closed door and chuckled quietly to himself, whispering, ‘Good luck!’ Then he called up Sally and asked for coffee. Strong. Black. With a cookie. And a napkin to catch the crumbs.

  Pearman made her way down the hall to Gifford’s cyber-crimes unit which also housed the IT group. She tapped on Gifford’s office door, showing more restraint and respect than she had for Simms, perhaps because she now realized that she needed his help to find out what was going on. And how to fix the problem. Or perhaps she was slightly traumatized by her encounter with Simms and felt subdued. She suddenly felt marooned and isolated, surrounded by enemies. She suddenly thought of Nick and the night she’d met him in that bar. How nice that was! She wanted to be with him again, in his huge arms, even if for one more night. She’d never felt that way before. Safe. She felt vulnerable now and she needed to feel safe again. There was something about him. A flutter of a smile creased her mouth.

  Two dozen heads looked up from their computer screens to see who she was. The cyber unit was warm and dimly lit, but its ambience was cold and menacing and clinical and unfriendly. It hummed quietly to the sound of hundreds of hard drives and servers all processing billions of bits of information non-stop, the soft sound of fans keeping thermal order. But the fans and the hard drives were indifferent to her. Monitor screens and multi-colored winking lights reflected in so many pairs of spectacles as their owners continued to look at her. She walked into Gifford’s office without waiting and closed the door quietly behind her. The two dozen heads looked down again and went back to work as though nothing had happened, as though she never existed.

  45

  Agent Gus Gifford was tapping out an email when Lavinia Pearman walked in and sat down in one of two guest chairs. She felt exhausted after having to deal with Sylvanus Simms. No one really intimidated Pearman, but there was something unnerving about Simms. She realized she was actually afraid of him in some bizarre way. In her opinion, talking to him was like communicating with the shades of the underworld. He made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, and her skin crawl. It seemed the temperature dropped a few degrees when he was near. His cold personality sucked all the heat out of the room. Gifford on the other hand was a delight. Even his office felt better. It was warmer, more inviting, more human. So Pearman took the opportunity to calm down and get her heart rate under control. Gifford looked up, smiled and indicated that he would just finish the email and then he would be all ears. Pearman listened to the delicate tap, tap, tap of his fingers on the keyboard. She could hear his fingernails hitting the keys, like a pianist tapping out a muted medley. It had a soothing effect. Tap, tap, tap. Then he quietly closed the lid of his laptop computer and smiled at her.

  ‘Ms. Pearman, what can I do for you?’

  She had no time for small talk and launched straight into it. ‘It seems all my passwords have been reset! I can’t log into anything, anything at all. I can’t even get into the local server under my usual login. Not even my own private email accounts. Nothing works! I’ve just come from Sims’s office and he said you told him there’ve been a couple of hacking attacks recently. Could they be connected? Am I a target of some bloody hacker? Have any other passwords been affected? Simms said all his are fine and he thinks it’s limited to me alone. And that scares the shit out of me because I have a lot of classified information that was supposedly protected by those very passwords!’

  ‘Yes, I mean no. I mean I doubt you’re a “target” as such, because I mean, why would you be? No one knows you’re even here, or why, or what you’re doing. So yeah, I’m sure it’s just a random incursion by someone trying his luck and maybe you got hit by chance.’ Pearman looked at him as though she wanted to hit him. He ignored the look and continued, ‘But, yes, there has been some activity beyond the firewalls, which we had only just strengthened with more aggress
ive protection. And no sooner had we done that than another attack breached it, albeit only very briefly. So, ok there’s clearly an issue there, granted. But there didn’t appear to be any damage. So that’s a plus.’

  ‘“A plus”? “An issue”?’ asked Pearman. ‘It’s hardly “a plus” you idiot! And an “issue” is a goddam understatement!’ She said, making exaggerated inverted comas with her fingers. ‘And how does that help me? Seems to me your useless firewalls are pretty bloody porous if some random asshole can bust on in five minutes after you’ve shored them up! Whoever’s responsible should be fired!’ she said with venom.

  Gifford sat there for a few seconds contemplating what Pearman had said. He was embarrassed because it was all true. He had no real defense other than to reassure her that the situation was under control and that his cyber-crimes unit was working overtime tracking down the offender and increasing security even more. ‘But honestly,’ he said, ‘getting past someone’s passwords is easier than you think. It’s just as easy for us to bust back in as it is for any decent hacker to kick the door in and reset everything to prevent us. It’s getting past the firewalls is the clever bit. That takes some work! Yet we are detecting attempted invasions all the time, although some hackers are better and more disciplined than others because the really good ones leave little or no tell-tale signs that they’ve even been there; they can be very difficult to detect and stop,’ he paused, looking at Pearman, then he continued as though he was admitting something uncomfortable, ‘There’s no such thing as a perfect firewall for the same reason there’s no such thing as an unsinkable ship . . . there’s always a way past even the best defenses no matter how clever they are or how much money you spend writing code for the best systems on the planet. But my team will have you back online in no time!’ He smiled thinly, but it wasn’t convincing.

  ‘And that’s supposed to reassure me? What if it happens again? And what damage have they done in the meantime? Maybe all my files are compromised or deleted or stolen!’

  ‘Hmm, well yes, that’s a possibility I admit, but personally I doubt it because it was so brief. We can tell how long he was in, like a few minutes. Less than twenty. Around sixteen, to be precise.’ Gifford looked sheepish because he knew it only took a few minutes to do incredible damage. Sixteen minutes was more than enough.

  ‘Sixteen minutes? Are you kidding? That’s all it takes you idiot! Jesus Christ! I’m screwed! Just think what he might have done!’ She looked down into her lap, defeated, fearing the worst. ‘It’s a disaster!’ she exclaimed. How could she be the single unlucky victim of some random hack attack? Hackers breaking into major servers like the FBI would more likely hit the entire thing, anything and everything, not just one person unless that person was a specific target. But why her? That fact alone would raise questions about Pearman herself. The Feds themselves, and the Department of Justice would go digging into her past again, believing they must have missed something the first time around.

  Pearman was getting paranoid.

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Gifford. ‘We did find out who it was who broke in, if that’s any help.’ Pearman looked up at the straw being offered. Gifford continued, ‘Someone we’ve known about for some time, off and on. Goes by the alias “Mordor”; widely known in the hacking underworld. He’s pretty good, but not good enough to hide his tracks like some others I’ve heard about. He left obvious clues which the system captured. Definitely his signature. But the good news is we also know where he is. Some of these guys are arrogant because they can’t help leaving tell-tale signs of their entry, like cats pissing on a fence! The really smart ones don’t do that as a rule, but some leave markers behind deliberately as a taunt, like this guy, like holding up the middle finger,’ Gifford smiled in triumph. ‘Those idiots can’t help themselves!’

  ‘So where the hell is this pain-in-the-ass so I can string him up?’

  ‘His attack appears to have originated in Nevada. Maybe Las Vegas or nearby, is my guess. Although there’s not much else around there . . . just a few small one-horse towns. Normally, of course, that would be a diversion because they usually leave false trails . . . so you think they’re in Nevada, say, because that’s where the local server appears to be located, but they’re actually in Bucharest or Prague or Moscow or Beijing or some other random place. Or vice versa. But this time it looks like this Mordor character hasn’t bothered to hide his true location, probably deliberate like I just said, because we managed to ping him remotely, like sending a test signal down the pipe and measuring what comes back. It happens automatically whenever there’s a breach and the data recorded. So, we know he’s local, as in Stateside and not too far out. So, we’ll start with Nevada, say Las Vegas, and work outwards. That’s all I can say, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Shit!’

  ‘Yeah. But at least we know who it is, more or less, and we’re pretty confident he is actually located there which means it’s just a matter of time before he’s in custody, unless he moves. Not much consolation I’m sorry.’

  ‘Well I want his bloody head on a spike when you catch him!’ she paused, ‘Or her! Goddamit!’ She shook her head in frustration. She felt her anger returning, and fear, and her blood pressure rising.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do!’ he said. ‘Coffee?’

  Pearman looked at him like he was some kind of crazy man. What the hell is with all the coffee? she wondered. People keep offering me coffee! What is it with this place? ‘Fine! I’ll have a coffee then!’ she said. ‘Make it strong!’

  *

  Two hours later, Gifford’s internet gurus managed to break back into Pearman’s accounts. They had to be given clearance, and were ordered to sign legally binding non-disclosure documents in case they saw any classified material in the process of trying to retrieve it. That however proved unnecessary in the end because Pearman discovered that all her emails and files, all the legal reports, profiling and analysis documents that she had written up and accumulated on the case of the rogue L.A. lawman, whose identity was still unknown to her, had been deleted. Every file, document, image and email – both sent and received - numbering in their tens of thousands had been completely erased and replaced with hundreds of megabytes of random characters and animated gifs. Even her backup files had gone. Valiant attempts by Gifford’s team to recover even some of the documents proved futile. Whoever had hacked into her accounts had done a very thorough job of wiping them clean. But they had left an important clue as to their identity: the internet moniker “MORDOR” appeared in large red gothic characters on Pearman’s desktop image, replacing her usual blue and gold circular Department of Justice logo which was always the first thing she saw after logging in.

  But there was nothing more anyone could do to retrieve her data. Pearman realized that her job and reputation were now on the line because she would be held accountable by the Justice Department bosses back in DC. Months of work had gone down the drain and she had nothing to show for it. She felt that, ever since she had arrived at Suite 1700 in the Los Angeles Federal building, she had been obstructed and distrusted. That of course was nothing new to her in her job, but she hadn’t experienced anything like this. It could spell the end of her career, even though technically it wasn’t her fault. She would carry the can until she caught the hacker who had killed her project.

  After fuming and contemplating the disaster in her office for three hours, sometimes in tears, Pearman got up from her desk, took the elevator down to the ground floor and went for a quiet walk across Wilshire Boulevard to the veterans’ cemetery to decide what to do, how to handle the situation, how to track down this “MORDOR” character. She couldn’t face starting all over again, accumulating evidence. She felt as though someone in her life had died, so the cemetery somehow seemed an appropriate place to be. She needed to be alone for a while to think. Yet strangely she found herself thinking instead about the big guy, Nick, whoever he was. Originally, she had harbored doubts about him, wondering if he could actually be the ve
ry guy she had been hunting all this time, but she’d dismissed it as too coincidental. And besides, he didn’t fit the profile of a vigilante hitman for hire, that was for sure. I mean what the hell are the chances you’d just run into someone like that in a random bar of all places? she asked herself. Then she found herself wondering where he was right then, and what he was doing while she was considering her options in a cemetery. Where are you Nick?