Downward Dog in Miami

by Larry David Allman

  I have other semi-skills which are not yoga; in fact, they are very un-yoga. In my first year at Pitt, coming home one night late from one of those infamous bars just barely off campus with my girlfriend at the time, we were mugged. Three guys, smelling of alcohol and with eyes dilated from too much cocaine or meth, popped out of nowhere, knocked me down, assaulted my girlfriend, and hit me on the head with what must have been a gun. I tried to get up, but they overpowered me. They took my wallet and her purse, and kicked us both as they left, laughing.

  I’m a fast learner. I realized on the spot that I needed better skills to defend myself out there in the real world. I enrolled in a taekwondo course with Mr. Lee. I took that course for eight months, and I’ve kept some of those skills, probably enough to get myself hurt. Somewhere during that taekwondo course, I discovered Krav Maga, the Israeli fighting system. That system made even more sense to me. I enrolled in KM training and spent fourteen months learning everything I could from two guys who formerly taught KM in the Israeli military. KM is a little different from taekwondo in terms of awareness. In taekwondo, you face your opponent head-on and destroy him with a highly effective series of attacking and blocking movements, using every part of your body: hands, elbows, feet, knees, head, hips, et cetera. In KM, the emphasis is more on awareness. It teaches you to walk around with a highly developed sense of defensive awareness, such that you’re not surprised. The key difference between the two: in taekwondo, your objective is to physically destroy your attacker; in KM, your objective is to get away to fight another day.

  I had some college friends who were into jiu jitsu and judo. I was so overwhelmed with my college courses, teaching yoga, and assisting some professors, I just couldn’t extend myself to those other disciplines. I wish I had. It ended up that I had a few moves and some awareness of basic physical self-defense, hopefully enough to get away from any situation. I also took limited firearms training while in college.

  The totality of my education and skills training while at the University of Pittsburgh was topflight and has served me well to this day. My greatest weapons, to be sure, are my mind and my computer and online skills. I think of those as lethal.

  My business office is in Palo Alto, California, in a moderately sized, ten-story building I own. I also have a nice condo elsewhere in the city, which is my main residence. I could live in my office building, but it’s a better security posture to keep work and home separate. I keep an apartment in Seattle. I never know when I might need to consult with friends who still work at Microsoft. Palo Alto is more important. I have two former associates nearby at Google; they help me, I help them. Also, the rich resource that is Stanford University is just up the road. That’s where I found Linda Vargas.

  * * *

  The two-hour yoga class flew by. When you’re in that space, working with higher energies and more pure vibrations, time does not exist, only the moment and its purity. I got everyone into final relaxation, sat in Lotus pose at the front of the room, closed my eyes, and meditated with some mantras and deep breathing. After fifteen minutes, I came out, brought the class out, and announced that dinner was ready. It’s the easiest transition that I get to make: teaching yoga to eating dinner.

  I spoke to Stephen, the director, after dinner and gave him the information I wanted him to have: the two guys were disrupting the class, I asked them to leave, I escorted them out of the center to the parking lot, and I came back in. We had no idea what happened to those two guys after that. It was one of those necessary gray lines I needed to sometimes walk… We don’t know any more than that—that part was true. I took the business cards of the detectives.

  With my teaching and responsibilities discharged for the night, I walked out of the center with the highest situational awareness. Some yoga students were leaving the center and a neighborhood couple was walking by with their dog, a black Goldendoodle, but nothing caught my attention. I walked the two blocks to my car, got in, went through a security check, found nothing, and drove away slowly, scanning for anything.

  My hotel was about fifteen minutes away. I checked my cell phone through the Bluetooth and found Linda’s message. She was pumped. She had it, she said. “Call me when you get back after class; I’m going to make you look good to these clients,” she boasted. I couldn’t wait.

  * * *

  Coming back to this great hotel was uplifting. It was old, it was elegant, it had some history—and that was just the start. I left my car with the valet and went through the revolving doors to the reception. A package was waiting for me, hand-delivered from Sabra Security.

  In my suite, I checked the Sabra package: cash, a check, and two thumb drives, which probably contained the personnel records, plus a handwritten note from Ed, thanking me for helping him. Old-school; I liked that. I placed the cash in my briefcase for operating expenses here in Miami.

  I set up for Linda. I always carry three phones: my office phone, a burner (one of several, all charged and untraceable), and a satellite phone with the heaviest encryption available, NSA/CIA level. She picked up on the sat phone on the first ring, the signal as clear as the best HD sound systems.

  “Hey, you good?” she asked.

  “Yeah, how about you.”

  “All good here. You ready?”

  “Let’s roll.” It was ten-thirty; I had all night to do this. I put it on speaker.

  “I used the Progenitor-X program on every line of code in their systems. One tiny worm was there, but it’s a strong little bastard. No coder could find it; it’s way too sophisticated. Through that one line, they got root access. They’ve seen everything, whoever they are. They’re good, Derek. Not as good as us, but they’re damn good.”

  “Does it look like anything we’ve seen before?”

  “No, not really,” she said pensively. “It’s not any kind of domestic signature. The traps are strange-looking. And there are three back doors, all neatly layered.”

  “Send me the line. I’ll check it later.”

  It arrived immediately, so I studied the code line in the Sabra system for a few minutes. Then I looked at the back doors they had installed; I’d never seen anything like them before. She was right: the damn things were all right there, skillfully buried so that no one could find them. This was the highest level of criminal computer expertise I had ever seen.

  “What about the phones? What’d you find there?”

  “That’s the kicker. It’s Ziv.” She was breathing heavily; the thrill of this kind of work, tracking criminals and actually finding them, was heady stuff. I knew the feeling.

  “Ziv?”

  “The initial intrusion came through his station, Derek. They tried to cover their tracks, but that part, they didn’t do so well. I found it. I coordinated the time of the intrusion with a call on his cell phone. It’s a direct connection.”

  “Shit.”

  “You’re disappointed?”

  “No… It’s just, Ziv is family in this company. He was brought in specifically because he’s blood. Man, that’s impenetrable where these guys come from. Family blood.”

  “I’m sending you the scans, plus the cell phone analysis. You’ll see Ziv’s got a lot of apps on his; maybe there’s something in there you can see.”

  “I’ll need the exact time and date when each app was installed, if they’re not embedded.”

  “Coming right now,” she said, and I heard the gentle chimes that indicated to me that the information had arrived.

  I looked over Ziv’s app’s, probably fifty of them. He was an IT guy, so he’d be comfortable with all that technology on his cell phone. I saw a lot of what you’d normally expect, such as Amazon, Walmart, Sam’s, Staples, two different WhatsApps, and on and on to a few restaurants, including Whole Foods, The Veggie Stop, and Wendy’s. Something nagged at me, with all of these apps. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I sensed it would percolate up later. I ha
d learned to trust those latent intuitions.

  My office cell phone vibrated. I checked the screen. It was Lauren, at midnight! I thought immediately that there was a problem, maybe the jerks from the other night in class.

  “Linda, hold on, I need to take this.”

  “Lauren, are you all right?” I asked quickly. I must have sounded worried.

  “Hey, Skippy, what are you doing?” She was cool and relaxed.

  “Well, I was on the phone with my office. Is everything okay with you?”

  “You wanna play?”

  “Well, I’m kind of working right now.”

  “Okay… Hmmm, well, okay. I sent up something for you, told them to leave it at your door. I’ll see you at class tomorrow.”

  “Hmm, maybe I could—”

  She cut me off. “No, no, no… No problem, Derek. Do your work, go see what I sent up for you, and have a nice night.”

  “Okay.” I paused, not sure what was the best course of action here, or what to say in that split second.

  “Good night, multi-talented Derek,” she said and clicked off, Miami style. Again, I felt reduced to someone else—what is the matter with me?

  I told Linda to wait a moment. I walked over to the door, looked out through the peephole, and saw nothing. I wasn’t sure what to expect, even though it had been Lauren on the phone. After the past two days, I was sensitive to potential threats. I opened the door slowly, in such a way that I positioned my body to be able to deal effectively with a physical attack.

  It was Lauren. She was standing off to the side, smiling, wearing a raincoat and holding a bottle of Moet Chandon in one hand and her cell phone in the other.

  “You sure you don’t want to play tonight?” Her blonde hair was down out of the ponytail—she was radiating sexual vibrations on the level of Chernobyl.

  I did not hesitate. I reached for her left hand and gently guided her into my space.

  “Hold on,” I said as I parked Lauren on the couch. “Linda, gotta go. Keep your phone open tonight.” I clicked off the satellite phone before Linda could make some jokey comment—she had heard Lauren over the sat phone.

  I turned back toward Lauren, who was comfortably sitting on my couch and staring full-faced and smiling at me like she’d swallowed a canary. She had removed her raincoat and was wearing a Gators T-shirt and gym pants… and apparently nothing else.

  Oh man, this was going to be good!

  * * *

  “Good” is not the right word for Lauren. Our chemistry and electricity were sizzling. After an amazing sharing of our respective sensual assets, we both fell to sleep about three a.m.

  About four a.m., I jerked awake. “Wendy’s” I said to myself. I had woken Lauren.

  “You want to go to Wendy’s?” She laughed in a sleepy kind of way. “I thought you were a yoga teacher.”

  “Sorry… No, it’s not that. It’s something for work.”

  “You’re working on a hamburger?” she said, still laughing.

  “Well, kind of.”

  She nuzzled in close. We were good together. She had a decent tan for someone who worked, and her skin was luscious-soft. We fit together perfectly. Something was stirring again, testosterone starting to recirculate, but then she surprised me.

  “I need to go. I have some meetings this morning.”

  “What?” I was taken aback by her confidence and assurance. She seemed to be in total control of herself.

  “How about one for the road?” she whispered.

  * * *

  I awoke alone at seven a.m., feeling like a king. You know what I mean. I did my regular yoga breathing and meditation and got mentally ready for my day. It would be an adventure—my day job generated those.

  At eight, I called Ed. “Are you free this morning? I think I found the problem… or at least the source of the problem.”

  “Sure,” Ed responded. “What time?”

  “Can you do eleven? I have something this morning.”

  “Yeah, sure, eleven here. What’d you find?”

  “I’ll explain when I see you. Can you have Ziv in the meeting?”

  “Sure.”

  We both clicked off.

  * * *

  Ed set his cell phone on his kitchen table. After a few minutes, he picked it up and tapped in a number on his directory.

  “Hey… What are you doing?” he asked, with not much response. “Get Ronnie, and both of you be in my office at eleven.” He clicked off, concerned about what the computer consultant had found… and so quickly!

  * * *

  The Biltmore had a generous spa and fitness center. I had the aerobics room to myself, so I did a few of the things which kept me balanced and healthy. I did a yoga flow . Then, I pumped a few free weights—arms, shoulders and back, some squats, and I was done. A nice steam and a relaxing swim in the outdoor pool, a shave and a shower, and I was ready for my breakfast. I notified room service from the spa as I was leaving. My fresh fruit and nuts and French press coffee were being delivered as I returned to my room. Nothing better than a high-quality hotel.

  Every case I work on has a turning point, or, using more modern terminology, an inflection point. For Sabra Security, that was today. I had a good idea about what had happened, but I had to be delicate. Ziv was family to Ed, but you never know what’s real and what has happened. He could have been Mossad back in Israel before Ed brought him here. Actually, all of the people I had met at Sabra could have been Mossad. Ziv too had that vibe. Ziv could be a dangerous element, in that case. Or he could be an innocent victim. I hoped it was the latter. That would be a lot easier on all of us, because when the Mossad guys lost it, got emotional and threw out all the rules, they could be dangerous in different ways—the loose-cannon concept.

  As I walked out of the hotel to my awaiting Porsche Panamera, I knew how I would handle the meeting this morning. What would happen afterwards would depend on Ed and his team, mostly on where they drew their red lines.

  5

  The Sabra Security building was located a short drive from the hotel. I asked Alexa to dial on the Bluetooth a number I had put into my directory last night.

  “Yeah?” the woman answered, about as curt as it gets.

  “Hey. It’s Derek.”

  “Who?”

  “Derek. We met at the Siroco building yesterday. I helped you… Remember, they were throwing you out of the building?”

  “Derek, right. I remember. What do you want?”

  “I want to talk to you about Siroco.”

  “Are you a journalist?”

  “No, I’m a cyber security consultant. I’m dealing with these guys, too, obviously not as meekly as you are.”

  “You have information for me?”

  “Yes! We can help each other.”

  “I don’t share my sources. You understand. Do you understand this? That’s the only way I’ll talk with you. As a source, I will never give you up.” She paused. “Never!”

  “Sure… Off the record. Jeez, I can help you. Lighten up, will you?”

  “Sorry, it goes with the beat. What do you want?”

  “Let’s meet… I want to meet with you today. How about lunch, on me.”

  “Okay. Two at Joe’s. Don’t be late.”

  “What’s Joe’s?”

  “Joe’s Stone Crabs! What, are you here from out of town, like from Mars?”

  “Got it. Two at Joe’s. And don’t you be late. My time is a lot more valuable than yours.”

  “We’ll see about that.” She clicked off, Miami style. I was left momentarily with a classic image of a hard-boiled reporter, gruff, just the facts… until I remembered how tiny and almost frail she had been between two huge jerks throwing her out of the building.

  * * *

  When I parked at Sabra Security, I notic
ed two guys in loose Florida shirts, jeans, and boots, one near the entrance door, the other roving around the premises. Oakley sunglasses, of course. The shirts were loose, but I could see the outlines of what those loose shirts covered on their hips.

  Charlie stood as soon as she saw me coming toward her and signaled me to go right into Ed’s office. When I entered, Ed was behind his desk. Two other men were sitting in the couch area. Both were large. One had a beard and longish brown hair, the other was clean-shaven with a tight crew cut. Ed’s guys.

  “Derek… This is Ronnie, and this is Avram.”

  They stood and we shook hands, firmly and with good eye contact… Nothing evil. I could sense that they’d seen action, somewhere. They smiled easily and had accents. I was certain they also spoke Hebrew, and not as their second language.

  Ed told Charlie to ask Ziv to come into the meeting. He was there in a minute. He was tense as he closed the door. I saw him register Ronnie and Avram, a trained non-reaction.

  “Give me your phone,” I asked Ziv directly. He hesitated for a minute, then Ed nodded and pointed at Ziv to give it to me. I took it, a high-level iPhone, opened it, and took out the battery. Shut it down. It was a live monitor broadcasting everything we were doing.