The End-Time Foretellers

by Ran Weber

  “Come on, no accusations.”

  Aharon walked about the house aimlessly and asked, “Are there any cookies?”

  Donnie shrugged and said, “Hold on, let me look in the pantry. “

  Aharon got closer to me.

  “How’d you come here, anyway?” I asked him.

  “I threatened Milstein,” he said and lowered his eyes.

  “What?” Binyamin nearly spilled his coffee.

  “I threatened him,” Aharon continued, “that if he won’t tell me where you are, I would call the police and them that he’d kidnapped me.”

  Binyamin slowly placed his coffee on the table. He took a deep breath and nodded. “All it takes to break Milstein is just a little stress. And a kid, no less.”

  “A smart one,” I muttered.

  “A little too smart,” said Binyamin and smiled, “just like his mother.”

  Donnie found cookies and brought them to Aharon.

  “Hey, you’re spoiling the child!” Binyamin said.

  “That’s all you’ve got here. I think these cookies could survive for another thousand years,” Milstein said to Binyamin, then turned to me, “as for you, why don’t you explain to me why you’ve ruined everything?”

  I took a sip from my coffee and pointed at Binyamin. “I’ll let him do the honor and tell you about it.”

  “I thought everything was over, isn’t it?” asked Donnie.

  Binyamin did not reply. He looked into his coffee mug as if some salvation would emerge from it, yet the coffee remained silent.

  “Yoav?” Donnie asked, “it’s all over, right?”

  I looked straight into Donnie’s face. “I don’t know. I understood from Binyamin that things aren’t that simple. Something just got complicated.”

  “You can say that again,” said Binyamin, “and a thousand times more and it still won’t describe the gravity of our situation.” He rotated the coffee mug several times and then let it go.

  Donnie and I were silent and only looked at Binyamin. He gave up. “All right, I’ll try to explain.”

  “Smarty pants,” he said and pointed at me again, “sitting right here, decided to save the world. In the process of carrying out his heroic act, he’d managed to block me and wipe out my computer equipment. This sounded real good at the time, because I was the one who transferred the codes to the Iranians. I gave them the codes to stop the Pillar of Fire system. Not only that, I volunteered that the transmission will take place from my computers, or from Yoav’s laptop, to be more exact.”

  “Well?” asked Donnie and tapped the table with his finger with excitement.

  “What he didn’t know,” said Binyamin and took a deep breath, “was that my real plan was to transfer them the codes, then transfer additional ‘codes.’ The second set of codes was supposed to open the system for an additional amount of time, beyond the time in which it was supposed be opened by the back door. This would have been very useful for them, and financially profitable for me too. What they weren’t supposed to know… was that the second set of codes was not really supposed to open the system for a while longer, but to cancel the initial opening. This means that the original codes would have opened the system and the additional codes would have closed and armed it after two minutes.”

  “Two minutes,” I echoed him quietly.

  “Exactly, smarty pants.”

  “Why two minutes?”

  “That was the amount of time the Iranians needed in order to launch their missile. That was the window of time they needed for the launch. They were supposed to launch a missile once they were sure the system is completely open, and then, the moment that the missile would be up in the air, the other set of codes was supposed to close it.”

  “And…?”

  “Then the missiles would have been intercepted by the system on their way to Israel. No harm would have been caused to Israel, other than the fact that Iran had started a nuclear assault against it, then I suppose that…”

  I gave Binyamin a quick look to see if I was heading in the right direction. “Israel would not have responded, and the US would have had no choice but to retaliate immediately by launching long-range ballistic missiles counter strike at Iran. The Gog and Magog war.”

  “Exactly!” said Binyamin with brilliant eyes.

  “Well, I already know all that,” sighed Donnie. “But what now?”

  “Well,” said Binyamin heavily, “now things have gotten complicated.”

  “Why?” I asked, “we destroyed the codes.”

  “Like I told you, the Iranians, or Schetritt, to be more exact, have gotten the codes from some other source. You’re not the only genius around, Yoavi. Their codes are now stored in an encrypted and guarded server, to which I unfortunately do not have access. Luckily, Schetritt is greedy enough to try and delay the launch and squeeze as much money as possible from the Iranians. This gives us so more time. I think we still have a few days before they transmit the codes and the Iranians would be able to launch the missile. But this time…” he said and slowed down, “we don’t have a mechanism that could reclose the system and the missile will unfortunately hit its mark, which is Tel Aviv, I can only assume.”

  I was filled with shame. How could I have been so stupid and arrogant? Why haven’t I checked things more thoroughly? How could I have ever believed Binyamin would agree to have the missile hit Tel Aviv?

  “What’s important now is to realize we need to do the maximum we can and let Hashem Yitbarach do the rest. We are committed to try and do the best we can, Yoavi, that is all.”

  “I have an idea!” said Donnie. “May I?”

  “Donnie,” said Binyamin, “your ideas normally give me a headache,” he rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers.

  “But,” Donnie protested.

  “Listen!” said Binyamin firmly, “you concentrate on making the pasta. I’m going with Yoav for a little walk. Once we get back, you could tell us all your ideas, all right?”

  “No problem,” said Donnie. “The water is already boiling, actually. Take your time. Trust me, Binyamin, you’ll end up coming back to Donnie. My ideas are great, you just need enough time to digest them.”

  “Good thing I don’t take a lot of time to digest your pasta,” Binyamin softened up.

  Before we got out of the cabin Binyamin stopped at the door and asked, “Aharon, would you like to be Donnie’s sous chef?” Aharon smiled. Then Binyamin turned to Donnie and said, “Be careful, Donnie. I’m not sure it was a smart thing for you two to come here. Take good care of him.”

  100

  “So, tell me, do you have any ideas?” I asked.

  “Actually, I don’t,” said Binyamin with a sour face. He took a few measured steps and thought aloud, “I don’t have a clue as to how we could infiltrate that ‘fortified castle.’ Schetritt invested a lot of effort on his server protection systems. You need a lot of power in order to break into them and I have no idea how to get that much power today. Don’t you have any hacker friends, Mr. Hacker of the year?”

  “Actually, I haven’t exactly been broadening my social horizons lately, and I can’t think of any last minute ‘Brute Force’ solutions.”

  “’Brute Force?’”

  “It’s a way of attacking servers. If you don’t have the password than you simply try by force, brute force, to guess it. You send thousands and millions of password attempts until you are able to break through.”

  “But…” said Binyamin, “it could take your computer weeks, even years.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Unless you have tens of thousands of computers doing it for you.”

  “Oh,” Binyamin smiled. His face lit up with a smile, then turned grim again. “And you don’t have even one.”

  “I don’t,” I said and stopped walking. “Even my laptop was blasted to smithereens, as yo
u well know. There’s an antique laptop in Donnie’s place. I think it would take it about forty-fifty years to break into Schetritt’s server, and that’s if we’re very lucky.”

  101

  Federal Building, Downtown Los Angeles

  “Take him out,” said Jim. He raised his head from the table and his gray eyes looked straight into Ehud’s with a cold gaze. Ehud shuddered. “Just take him out and be done with it.”

  They sat in a small and narrow room. Jim had told Ehud over the phone they would not be able to meet in the offices but in another building. A fluorescent lamp nervously flickered above them and the air in the room felt thick and heavy. The place was sparsely furnished – a portable table, two foldable chairs on which they say, bare walls and a graceless floor. A single small nail was embedded into the left-hand wall, the ghost of some picture that had probably hung there before Jim had started using the place. Ehud tried to guess if Jim was regularly using the place for such secret meetings. What difference does it make, he thought, I’m up to my neck in the mud, that’s the only thing I should think about now.

  Ehud closed his eyes. He remembered his childhood, how his mother had used to scream at him every time he would accidentally break a glass, how he’s shut his eyes tight; creating an improvised escape from a harsh reality. Now too, he did not want to open them. If it were up to him, he’d rather keep them closed until he’d hear Jim giving up and get up only when silence would settle back in the room. But Jim had other plans.

  “Look at me, Ehud,” called Jim angrily, “you good for nothing nobody, and listen carefully. I want him in a body bag in twenty-four hours. We just got a confirmation of his exact location in the desert. Go out there and finish this charade. This is national security we’re talking about here.”

  Ehud opened his eyes and looked at the menacing agent. “I can’t… it’s…”

  Jim slammed his fist on the table. “Look, you overgrown baby, see that fat file over there?” he pointed at a cardboard folder stacked with pictures and documents. Ehud tensed. Jim opened the folder, leafed through the paperwork and smiled. He took out a large picture of Ehud and Farhan talking by the dock, printed pages that included the conversation transcript were stapled to the picture. “We have evidence here of the fact that you’re spying for the Iranians. Obviously, you’re spying for Israel too, but spying for the Iranians is pretty ‘heavy’ nowadays… You’re going to rot in jail, and that’s going to be more terrible than anything you could imagine.”

  Ehud looked at the picture. “I’ve always been photogenic,” he said with half a smile.

  Jim snatched the picture from Ehud’s hands and carefully placed it back in the folder. “We’ll see how photogenic your prison mugshot is going to be, my friend.”

  “Tell me,” said Ehud while looking about, “speaking of friends, where’s your chubby friend Nash? I haven’t seen him in a while.”

  “Nash?” said Jim, “oh, he’s terribly busy now. I don’t think you’ll see him anytime soon. At least I hope so, for both our sakes.”

  102

  The Nevada Desert

  We returned to the cabin. Something didn’t look right. Binyamin tensed. He looked at the ground next to the cabin. “Someone was here,” he said and drew a pistol. I tried to see what he was talking about. Binyamin pointed at tire marks on the sand. “These don’t belong to my pickup truck or to Donnie’s car, and they’re fresh.” I looked at the soft sand with concern, then at Binyamin’s expressionless face.

  “Donnie?” he called. We didn’t hear an answer.

  We both got closer to the house. He motioned for me to be quiet and follow him.

  “Donnie?” he called again. Still no answer. We heard some rustling sounds from inside the cabin. We quickly went inside with drawn pistols. It was empty, or at least it looked empty in the beginning. We saw Donnie sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, his hands bound and his mouth gagged with duct tape. He tried to break loose from the ropes that tied him.

  Binyamin cut him loose.

  “Donnie!” shouted Binyamin, “where’s Aharon?”

  “They took him.”

  103

  Binyamin ignored us and roamed about the room like a caged lion.

  Donnie and I ate from the pasta without relish. I forced myself to eat just so I could continue to function.

  “Binyamin?” I asked.

  “Leave me alone,” he said. “You’d better concentrate on the server. I’ll think of what to do about Aharon.”

  “I think…”

  “Stop thinking and start doing something. Deal with what you know. I don’t want to hear any general ideas or virtual plans. Just deal with what you know.”

  I was insulted by his tone of voice but could understand his distress. We were all distressed. So, I got back to my failed attempts to break into Schetritt’s servers.

  “No luck with Schetritt’s server’s name?” asked Donnie behind my back while I was repeatedly trying to break into the server.

  “We need a solution for brute force,” I said. “Got any ideas?”

  Donnie waited for the right moment, then said with a secretive smile, “I do.”

  “What are you talking about, Donnie?” asked Binyamin.

  “Listen, Amigo,” said Milstein, “there’s a lot of business I’ve done with Schetritt and a few other guys that… well, let’s just say that it was convenient for you not to know about all those years. Physical and virtual break ins, that’s just the way I live, buddy. When you step on Milstein, Milstein steps right back on you. In brief, I got me some tools, courtesy of the Chinese working with Schetritt.

  “Tools?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said Milstein with sparkling eyes. “You know what I.R.C. is?”

  “Sure, it’s chat channels. So?”

  “Know what bots are?”

  “They listen to the chat channels.”

  “Great,” said Milstein. “I have bots sitting on over ten-thousand servers and computers worldwide, just waiting for a sign from me. I call them ‘Milstein’s dark army.’ I’ve already used them to cause major malfunctions in the servers of… well, all sorts of government bodies, mainly mine or Schetritt’s commercial enemies.”

  “Hold on… like Citibank’s server?” I asked.

  “I see the kid’s up to date,” said Donnie to Binyamin.

  “How did you manage to install the bots on all the servers and computers?”

  “Oh…” said Milstein, “we hacked into them. One by one, in the beginning. It was a long process. After achieving critical mass, we used all the servers we had to force our way into other servers, thus taking over more and more of them. The nice thing is that after breaking in, we hide the bots in places that people don’t normally suspect and they’re just waiting there in the dark until we need them. Meanwhile, the server’s innocent owner carries on with his work as usual. By the way, Yoav, in case you’re wondering how come you saw hundreds or even thousands of users in the End-Time-Foretellers forum… those are my bots. Plus, we faked some I.P. addresses in the forum to help you get to the right place at the right time.”

  “Impressive,” I said and wiped my mouth with a napkin. “Definitely impressive.”

  “The pasta or the bots?” asked Donnie.

  “Both.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I learned to make pasta while in Sicily when I…”

  “Hello, pumpkins!” cried Binyamin, “wake up! We don’t have time for any Milstein stories, we have a world to save. We have Aharon to save…”

  He paused for a moment and sighed. “You got a laptop here, Donnie?” “Yes,” said Milstein. “With a high-speed connection.”

  He took out a laptop with a built in mobile broadband connection and logged into his hacking control system.

  A few minutes passed. We all nervously waited. Binyamin made more coffee.
Donnie’s fingers fluttered on the keyboard. “Something’s… I’m not sure I understand what’s going on here,” he finally admitted.

  I got closer and looked at the screen. “What’s the problem?” I asked.

  “I don’t get it. Normally, I can easily hack into any server, but Schetritt’s server… well, it just refuses me. I can’t make the system try and hack into his server!”

  “Milstein!” screamed Binyamin, “you piece of… tell me, do you think Schetritt’s stupid? Do you think he let you work with the Chinese just like that, without taking any precautions? Did it ever occur to you that he may have asked them to write something into the code that won’t allow the system to attack his own servers?”

  “Oh…” Milstein paled. “Yes, that sounds pretty…”

  “Can you bypass it?” Binyamin asked him.

  “No,” I said. “He’ll need to update each sever. And there are tens of thousands of them. This is not something he can do on short notice.”

  “Right,” Milstein admitted and slammed the laptop shut. “Right.”

  Quiet settled in the room and an air of desperation overtook us. No solution presented itself on the horizon. Binyamin started muttering to himself under his breath.

  Milstein looked at him with wonder. “What is he doing? Has he gone nuts?”

  “I’m talking with Hashem. Ever heard of him?”

  “What good will He do you now?” asked Milstein. “Now’s not the time for prayers, buddy, now’s the time for action. The clock’s ticking.”

  Binyamin buried his face in his large hands and nodded. “I just don’t know what else to do, Donnie. I just don’t know.”

  I rose from my seat. “Actually, I don’t know either.” Suddenly, all I wanted to do was just leave. “I don’t think I can help you. I don’t know if anyone can.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Milstein.

  “I’ll tell you what he’s saying,” said Binyamin and raised his head. “He’s saying that he wants to run away, like he always does.”

  I said nothing.