All The Big Ones Are Dead

by Christopher A. Gray

  Diane paced herself perfectly and angled her body to smoothly move in front of John as he reached for the door handle. She also nodded to him and smiled as if to thank him for letting her step ahead of him. John glanced at her profile as she stepped through the door of the Bean and did a slight double-take. She was beautiful. Her auburn hair went just past her shoulders. Her light brown dress looked as if it had been purchased in a vintage clothing shop. It clung to her body, revealing a narrow waist and full hips. She looked earthy and kind and pleasant. John snapped out of his momentary reverie about the woman and followed her through the café door. She glanced back at him with a smile. She wore very little makeup.

  John held her gaze for a moment, then looked away as he reflexively reached for his phone in anticipation of ordering. He thought that she dressed like a liberal Arts student. Definitely left of center anyway, he thought. John wasn’t one for politics. He had no use for any of the countless causes that protesters picketed about, though he admired most of them well enough. They stood for something. They seemed to think they knew what was going on in the world. Logan knew the woman was probably nothing like himself and he tended to find that sort of difference attractive.

  “Thank you,” Diane said to him as she reached the small lineup of customers at the counter. Standing in line behind her, his heart began to race as he became aware of her perfume. She smelled like lilacs. Logan stared at her hair as she moved forward to the barista at the counter.

  “What can I get you?” Julie the barista was nearly always behind the counter, working her usual shift, at the times of day that John normally came in on his regular rounds. Julie’s greeting came out as an overly cheerful, chain-coffee blurt. Diane hesitated still looking at the chalkboard menu, then turned around to Logan.

  “Please, you go ahead, I’m not sure what I want yet,” she smiled, as John stepped up to the counter.

  “Morning, John,” Julie chirped, as John opened the app on his phone to pay for his order. He didn’t have to say a word, and Julie was already marking an empty cup with his usual triple Americano.

  “Morning, Julie,” he said pleasantly. “Busy?”

  “Just the regulars so far,” she replied. “A few new customers. How is it with you?”

  “I’m a bit slow to start this morning, I think. Dunno why. It’s nice to see you though. You’re waking me up, as usual.”

  Julie laughed at the compliment, and Diane looked sidelong at her and John. It was obvious that the two of them liked each other. Their small talk was easy going and natural. Two compatible people who get along comfortably, but who are also both too shy to say what’s really on their minds, she thought.

  John was within arm’s length of two attractive women, a rare position of close proximity to the female of the species that both pleased and unnerved him. Julie and the stranger were going about their respective business, Julie efficiently preparing his coffee, while the woman stood studying the menu board.

  “There are so many choices,” Diane spoke aloud. Oh, that really sounded dumb, she thought. Come on, Diane, dumb women are bound to be a complete turn off to this guy. “Do you have any suggestions?”

  John hesitated. He wasn’t sure if the woman was directing her question to him or to Julie. Julie stared at John for a moment, as he darted his eyes sideways toward the woman. Julie finally caught his gaze and nodded her head towards her. Even John understood this obvious nod. Julie was trying to tell him to interact with the woman. He gave his head a quick shake.

  “Uh, I, um, I’m not sure. I just like either brewed coffee or Americanos,” he finally said, turning to her. His inability to come up with further conversation made him suddenly annoyed with himself. He passed his phone under the scanner to pay for his order.

  “Thanks, Julie,” he said as he gratefully accepted the hot cup and walked to his regular table at the back.

  “A latte please, no sugar,” he heard the woman say, just before he walked out of earshot. His usual table was free, as was the closest small table in the same area. Nice, he thought. It would give him more privacy as checked email on his phone.

  As Logan was reading, out of the corner of his eye he saw the woman approach the free table. Seemingly out of nowhere, a couple walked briskly past the woman and sat down at the table. The short woman and the large man immediately began talking, oblivious to their rude behavior. The woman looked around for a seat, but there were none free. John froze momentarily, about to offer her a seat at his table, but chickened out and just looked back down to his phone.

  “Excuse me, but do you mind if I join you?” Diane said, bending down slightly to get John’s attention. “Sorry for the interruption but there are no other seats in the café.”

  John looked up at the smiling woman, unsure what to do. On the one hand, he wanted his privacy, yet he knew to refuse the woman’s request would have been unacceptably rude. Her attractiveness tipped the balance.

  “Of course, please sit down.”

  “Thank you.” She extended her hand as she sat down. “My name is April.” Logan darted his hand towards her a little too eagerly.

  “I’m John. And, um, you’re welcome.” He hoped his voice sounded all right. He was at a loss as to what to say next. She has the same name as my old girlfriend, he thought. He began to sweat, and despite her beauty he hoped April would not be staying long. John was a classic math geek and a classic shy man. He had all the same drives and all the same desires for a healthy relationship and companionship as most other men, but too little sense of propriety, timing and relational courage.

  Diane was aware of John’s unease. She’d read the file workup on him ten times and began to regret choosing April as her alias. It had been tactically designed to increase the likelihood of their bonding, but it may have been too much. She would tone down the charm. Logan wasn’t some cocky ego-driven businessman that could be seduced in thirty seconds.

  “I think I’ve seen you at Columbia,” she said casually. “Aren’t you a math professor?”

  “Uh, you could say that. I’m not teaching much anymore, though. I’m working on some post doc material in a specialized field.” Logan’s mouth went dry. With a shaky hand, he took a sip of his coffee. Diane realized she would need to do most of the talking.

  “I’m an English Lit student, back at school part time. An injury settlement has allowed me to pursue my dream job. I'm taking a shot at being a mystery writer,” Diane smiled sheepishly.

  “Injury settlement?” John blurted, immediately regretting speaking out. “Oh, um, sorry. It’s not my…” he trailed off.

  “Oh don’t worry about it,” Diane laughed, as she pushed her hair back off her shoulders. “I was hit by car while I was in a crosswalk with the light in my favor. Broke my hip and kept me off work for months. The guy’s insurance company paid off in less time that it takes to describe the process. Old news now.”

  “Oh, that’s, uh, great I think. Lit classes, though? That’s interesting. Where do you get your writing ideas?” John was changing the subject in the most ham-fisted way because he’d read about it in a self-help dating book. He was trying his best to remain unaffected and appear casual. He wondered quite urgently if he was being successful.

  “Ideas are all around us,” Diane replied in a somewhat serious tone, as though she thought John’s question was very important. “Everyone has a secret, don’t you think? I enjoy sitting in Central Park or in coffee shops and observing people. You can tell a lot about a person by the way they dress, their body language and their mannerisms. For instance, those two women,” Diane cocked her head towards two college-age women sitting on the other side of the café, out of earshot. “Those two are in love.”

  Logan glanced at the women. They weren’t speaking much, if at all.

  “Really?” John said, genuinely interested. “How can you tell?”

  “One of them is reading a book, and the other is on her computer. They are very comfortable in each other’s company, enough so tha
t they don’t feel the need to fill every moment with conversation. Too comfortable to be friends. And I've noticed the way they look at each other.”

  John studied the women. The one on her computer had her back to him, but the other would occasionally look up from her book to smile at her partner.

  “Huh. You’re probably right. I tend not to notice things like that.”

  “Typical man,” Diane smiled. John smiled back. Her mock insult was oddly reassuring to him. For all of his pride in his work accomplishments, he envied the ease with which the average person interacted in social situations. April’s relaxed conversation was making John feel comfortable, and he could feel his heart rate returning to something resembling normal. He was beginning to enjoy himself. Diane looked at him as she took a sip of coffee.

  “I think you and I have some things in common, John.”

  “Really?”

  “We both enjoy being around people, but we don't have a lot of intimate social interaction in our lives.”

  John thought about that for a moment. He found it hard to believe that the attractive woman sitting across from him didn’t have a satisfying social life. Diane read his expression perfectly.

  “It’s the profession I’ve chosen,” she said, frowning slightly to appear serious. “Writing is most often a solitary activity. It’s not like on television where the author is constantly lunching with friends, or on some arduous book tour signing autographs. Most of my research and writing is done at home. The truth is, I hardly get out anymore.”

  “I'm sure you, um, that you have lots of friends,” Logan replied.

  “Sure, but people go on with their lives. I don’t know your age, you look very distinguished, but also young. Once you reached your early thirties, didn’t you find that most of your friends were married and suddenly unavailable most of the time?”

  John nodded. He never had many friends, and of the few he used to associate with at the university, many were now occupied with wives or husbands and children.

  “So you get it,” Diane smiled. “I’m really enjoying myself, John, you’re nice to talk to.” She checked her mobile phone quickly. “Hm. Look at the time. I’ve got to run now, but maybe we can meet again some time?” Diane smiled a bit shyly at John. She’d just tried to set the hook. As much as he enjoyed his solitude, John smiled at the idea. Predictably, his heart rate increased again.

  “That sounds good,” he croaked. Logan cleared his throat. “I mean, that sounds very nice.” Oh man I hope that didn’t sound too eager. “I’d, uh, I’d like that too. I’m here every morning at the same time, usually.” Oh god, why did I say ‘usually’?

  “He likes you. That’s for sure. Congratulations April,” Diane heard Gauss chuckling in her earpiece as she stood up to leave. She was inwardly pleased, but didn’t react to the comment. Her success today was just the first early step in their mission.

  Chapter Seven

  Two days later, Julius Coppola was fighting for his professional life, the university’s data storage servers were a jumbled mess, and John Logan was so infuriated that he was ready to put his fist through the nearest monitor.

  The meeting in the university president’s office was not the place to be at that moment. The morning had dawned sharp, fresh and sunny. In the office of president Andrew Correlli however, it was dark, tense, and the atmosphere was thick enough to cut with a knife.

  “Mr. Coppola,” Correlli said sharply, looking directly at Julius, “As of this morning there are, according to your latest report from less than an hour ago, no less than two hundred and thirty eight separate security intrusions and no less than a full petabyte of data that has been wiped off a major data storage node. Have I got that right?”

  “Yes,” Julius replied. He and his teams were working non-stop to trace the source of the intrusion, or rather the gap in security that had allowed the intrusion in the first place. Julius had been at it for well over twenty-four hours straight. He was exhausted and he felt nauseated. “We’re working on it. We do not yet know the cause or the entry point or the method used to intrude. I personally called in THG, our consulting security company. They’re the best in the business. THG supplied our security appliances and they’re rock solid. The data logs from the THG hardware are clean. I’ve verified that those data logs have not been tampered with; I mean, that they haven’t been forged. The security auditor has confirmed that nobody at THG itself used any sort of backdoor access method either. As of this moment, as we sit here right now, I’m stumped. I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve never even heard of anything like this. We’re working hard on it.”

  There were six people sitting at the meeting table. Off to one side, the president’s executive assistant was taking notes. President Correlli sat at the head of the table, with John Logan to his left, and Executive VP Katherine Ornstein to his right. Julius was sitting next to the EVP. The Chief Financial Officer and the university’s Director of Public Safety were both sitting to John’s left. Normally, all meetings in the president’s office were automatically recorded. The state police and the FBI had been on site two days earlier, but once they realized that they didn’t have any security experts better than Julius and his team, each agency had left a representative contact on-site and then got out of the way.

  The automated recording system was off. Julius had shut down a variety of automated systems including the digital recording and voice-to-text transcription operations because he had reached a point about fifteen hours earlier where he could no longer trust any of his internal security and data integrity monitoring. Julius ate, slept and breathed the university network, his servers, his security and the enviable reputation he’d earned over many years of faultless work. He was unsure about the precise nature of the breach, but he was sure in his aching heart and nauseated gut that it had something with the USB key Dominican had forced on him. For now, one part of his mind had walled off the guilt while another part of mind searched desperately for solutions.

  John Logan was across from Julius. He was at the meeting because his group and his department represented the highest value target in all of Columbia. No other group or department came anywhere close to pulling in the research contracts and the revenue that John Logan and his people brought in. At the first word that a crucial period of John’s projects had been left in tatters, the panic about the intrusion had become physically palpable.

  John and Julius had known each other for a dozen years. They were friends, and they had trusted each other fully for almost all the time they’d known each other. John was still fit to be tied.

  “Jules,” he said tightly, “has anybody managed to verify any of the backups yet? I can suspend work on any number of projects in my group and in the research unit overall until we can figure out where the backups left off. I mean I’ve already suspended project work until at least another couple of days have gone by. What I’m worried about, I mean, what’s keeping me up all night like you and your team, is whether or not the automated backup routines picked up the last two days of crucial work. If not, if the intrusion remained undetected and doing its work for some period of time before it errored out and you found the thing, it will take my group months and months to recreate the data. Months and months.” John paused for a breath and then continued.

  “The work was all directly derived from the technical reviews we received from the JPL and PARC project leaders and from the last set of meetings with them. We were on a roll, Jules, I mean we got more work done over the two or three days before the system blew up than we’d done in the previous six months. What my people and I had was basically a magical few days and I can’t believe it’s now just all gone.” He regretted saying it as the last words were coming out of his mouth. He was being unnecessarily cantankerous and it wasn’t helping matters at all. Julius already knew full well what was at stake for himself, for John’s work, for the university’s reputation and for his own reputation.

  “Okay,” John said in a rush before
anyone else could speak up. “I mean, I’m sorry. That wasn’t helpful. I apologize, Julius. I’m moving three of my group over to IT for as long as you need them. Gina, Paul and Bogdan are my best coders and they get along well with your guys and they’ve all got data intrusion and analysis skills. Use them. They want a piece of this. It’s a lot of their work that seems to be gone, I mean, as well as mine.”

  “Thanks,” Julius replied, quietly. “I accept the help with serious thanks. I don’t know what’s gone, John. I don’t yet know what’s still sitting on the servers we’re locked out of, if anything is still there at all, and the data scrambling or malicious encryption on some areas of the storage arrays we’ve managed to get back into is still preventing us from figuring out how much of the previously stored data is recoverable, if any of that is still there at all. Neither of us, and nobody else in this room or in any other room I can think of, have ever seen or heard of anything this bad. Whoever beat us up is really, really good at it.”

  “Keep your professional annotations to yourself, Mr. Coppola,” Correlli said angrily. “At the moment I’m completely uninterested in your opinion about or respect for the intruder’s skills. What I am deeply interested in is making sure you’ve got what you need to get this university back up and running in the shortest possible amount of time.”

  Correlli exhaled and looked around the table carefully before continuing.

  “Listen carefully,” he said, controlling his tone, “I will personally guarantee to deliver the Board’s full cooperation and financial support, anything you need, to not only get back up and running in record time but also to put your hands on the best people we can buy to track down the sons of bitches who kicked us. They’re criminals, Julius, and I want ‘em. The university’s lawyers want them. Several levels of government have offered help, but they also seem to think that you’re the best man for the job. We intend to spend more money than you can imagine, whatever it takes, to track down whomever is responsible and drop them into the deepest darkest legal hole that has ever been dug. I hope I’ve made myself clear. The Board and I have agreed. We don’t care if the bastards are on Mars. We want them, and you can be sure that we’ll get financial support from our partner institutions. They’re all scared. You know why? They’re shaking in their boots because they know your reputation, Julius. They know you’re one of the best, if not the very best, in the IT business. If your network has been hammered to bits, how do you think their IT guys are feeling right about now? I’d bet everything I own that they’re all scared witless that CalTech or UCB or MIT is next, along with all the research investment billions that have been poured into the affected schools.”