“I don’t think so, Curtis. Charlie’s dead because of this place. I’ve spent the majority of the last six years confined within these walls, pushing code out the door and putting up with the politics created by this inauspicious group. I’ve had enough. You know, I had planned to work over the holidays to make sure the HSI transition went smoothly. Now I can sit back and enjoy a Christmas for a change.”
“Kyle?” Stacy said, standing up as well.
Kyle stood by the door and looked at her.
“If we find that you conspired with anyone to defraud this company, we’ll prosecute you to the full extent of the law.”
Kyle smiled at her. “Have a ball.”
“Kurt,” Tom said sternly. “Please escort Mr. Randall to his office to collect his personal belongings. Make sure he finds his way out.”
Kurt stood, a somber expression over his face. He cast a disappointed look to Tom but did as he was told. He and Kyle walked out together.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” Kurt said as they exited mahogany row.
Both walked down the hall toward Kyle’s office. Kyle had considered quitting in the past, but never had because he actually enjoyed the work, even though upper management left something to be desired. The reality of his actions hit home when he and Kurt entered his office, knowing it would be the last time he would see it. He looked out the windows toward the mountains, the afternoon sun illuminating them like a brilliant fire. The cables suspending the tram reflected the sun’s light and he could make out the two silver streaks running up the side of the mountain. It had been years since he’d ridden the tram. The last time he went he took a date to the High Finance restaurant at the crest of the mountain, the ride up taking only 15 minutes. At least now he would have more time to do such things.
“I’m sorry, Kyle,” Kurt said, taking a seat in one of the empty chairs. “The cards were stacked against you when you walked in there.”
“They seem pretty determined, don’t they?”
“I think Tom’s had it in for you for quite some time, so I guess he jumped at the opportunity.”
Kyle reached under his desk and pulled out a box, already full of odds and ends – pictures, floppy disks, a few notebooks, manila folders, a coffee cup with large letters HSI stenciled across the side, then below that, in smaller print, the slogan:
ONE WORLD...TOTALLY SECURE.
He set it on top of the small conference table where he had held hundreds of meetings with his team. “I’m ready.”
Kurt stood, his eyes frozen on Kyle. “You’re ready?”
Kyle took a memo that was sitting on top of the box, handing it over to Kurt, who started reading. Kyle smiled as Kurt finished.
“This is a letter of resignation,” Kurt said, surprised. “It’s dated today.”
“Weird, huh?”
“You mean you intended to quit when you walked in there?”
“Ah-ha. After I drafted Stacy’s disclosure statement, I figured what the heck – I’d rather spend New Year’s with a beautiful blonde in front of a cozy fire.”
Kurt smiled. “Do you have a blonde in mind?”
“Actually, no. But I guess I have time now to look around for one. And now I have the right qualifications.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, many blondes I’ve seen date guys who are unemployed. So now I’m in the running.”
Kurt laughed. “If the diversity officer heard you say that you’d be fired.”
“I can’t be fired. I already quit.”
“So, what are you going to do now?” Kurt asked.
“Oh, I have a couple of ideas.” Kyle was about to elaborate when a shrill noise erupted. Both he and Kurt jumped up and hurried to the door, looking out. It was coming from within his team’s office area.
“Come on,” Kyle said, and bolted out the door, Kurt following behind.
He made his way down the hall and rounded the corner, quickly moving up the next hall, the noise growing louder as he approached its source. He knew who it was before he got there. The nameplate on the wall said Rene Ornelas. He stepped in with Kurt following. Rene was banging on her keyboard trying to stop the noise, but it kept going, the PC speaker screeching out high pitched squeals in a steady stream. Rene looked up in shock, then reached down and shut the power off. The noise abruptly died. Several others had gathered around her office, Lawrence one of the first to arrive behind Kurt.
“What’s going on?” someone asked from the hall. Kyle couldn’t tell who posed the question, but knew exactly what was happening.
Kyle extended the palm of his hand out toward Rene. She looked up at him, sorrowful, a tear streaming down her right cheek. She reached under the desk again and pushed the button to the floppy drive, a disk ejecting into her hand. She placed it in Kyle’s palm. It had a Charlie label pasted to the plastic, the words HSI URGENT printed across the top.
“Why?” Kyle asked.
Kurt cast a confused look to Kyle. “What’s going on?”
Kyle leaned in close to him, whispering in his ear. “Get rid of these people and meet me in my office.”
Kurt turned and had everyone return to their offices, just a PC malfunction, he explained. Kyle remained in Rene’s office, looking at her as the tears rolled down her face.
“Follow me,” he said sternly, and walked out, Rene tagging along a few paces behind.
Once they entered Kyle’s office, he motioned her to take a seat, Kurt rushing in and grabbing the other chair. Kyle walked to the door and closed it, noticing Lawrence peering over the wall. He went back to his chair and sat down, moving his personal belongings off the conference table. He sat quietly staring at Rene, who was now gasping for breath as the tears and cries forced their way to the surface.
“I think I’m missing something,” Kurt said, looking back and forth from Kyle to Rene.
Kyle leaned back in his chair, taking a deep breath. “Robert and I suspected someone had been tampering with his files, the one’s related to the virus.”
Rene looked up. “Virus?”
Kyle ignored her, continuing his explanation. “Someone entered an office we set up to continue Charlie’s research. Today, someone went in there and copied data. So, I had Robert create four disks with HSI URGENT written across the top.” Kyle handed the disk over to Kurt. “He put a common PC virus on it called PC Scream. Anytime someone pulls up a directory, their PC speaker squeals.”
Kurt turned to Rene. “Is this true?”
She nodded, wiping her eyes against her sleeve. Kyle reached in the box stuffed with his personal belongings and pulled out a couple of Kleenex, handing them over to Rene. She thanked him and wiped her nose and eyes, sobs rising from her throat.
“Why?” Kyle asked.
She composed herself, looking up at him, her eyes puffy and red. “Money. I guess I didn’t know any better and trusted someone too much.”
“Who?”
“He gave me his first name. Santiago. I don’t know if that’s his real name or not.”
“Tell us everything you know,” Kyle said gently.
Rene inhaled a deep breath. “It was last March when I first met him, or he met me actually. I went out to lunch and there he was. We started talking and he told me he was in market research. I would go to lunch at Millie’s on Jefferson, at times when I had the money to anyway, and there he’d be, sitting by himself. We eventually struck up a conversation and I started sitting with him and often we’d talk business. He told me that the marketing company he works for tries to obtain system benchmarks on other companies, but they have a hard time getting in the door. I told him I had access to our systems and one thing led to another. One day he tells me he has a tool that will record benchmarks on a disk and he’d be willing to pay me if I’d run it on our systems. I didn’t see the harm, but I guess I was naive. I thought maybe he would offer a hundred dollars, maybe two, but he offered five-thousand. I almost fell out of my seat.”
“Did he pay you f
ive-thousand dollars on the spot?” Kurt asked.
“No. I had to run the disk and then deliver it back to him. I had just gone through a divorce and was strapped for cash. Had to even stop eating at Millie’s. When it got to the point where my son had to go to school without lunch, I agreed to do it.”
“You could’ve come to me,” Kyle told her.
“I didn’t want to do that. It’s like charity, and that scares me.”
“Don’t you make enough here?” Kyle asked, knowing full well Rene earned almost forty-grand.
“If my husband hadn’t left us in debt it would be fine. Between the creditors and the lawyer, I was broke most of the time. My mom helped out as much as she could, but she’s not wealthy by any means.”
“What did Santiago ask you to do?”
“One day in April he comes to lunch with a floppy disk. He asks if my PC was configured to access the network and I tell him yes. He said all I have to do is put the disk in and run a setup program. He said I would be prompted with various logins to each system, and to enter my username and password. I started to refuse, but he said all they were doing was gathering information on disk space, CPU speed, utilization, and things like that. He said other companies were doing it and he shows me this chart with benchmark data and bar graphs. He says the data I provide will be added into the mix. So, I agreed. He paid me a thousand dollars up front. I took Benjamin out that night. We went to the movies and I bought him a big dinner and dessert, then got him brand new tennis shoes. It was the happiest night I can remember.” Rene looked up at Kyle. “You don’t want to hear about that, do you?”
“It’s okay. What happened after that?”
Rene dabbed at her nose with the Kleenex a couple of times before continuing. “I took the disk back to the office, put it in and ran it. At first it didn’t do much, then a screen comes up asking for my user login and name to Jammer, one of our production systems. I typed my login name and password and hit enter and then there’s another pause. A while later the floppy drive starts running, then the next system comes up. It ran through every one of our servers, three production and four development.
“Did it prompt you for Viola?” Kyle asked.
Rene shook her head. “Viola? No. I don’t think so. I don’t think my login is even valid over there.”
“What’s Viola?” Kurt asked.
“It’s an older system we used for development.”
“So how did they know the names of each of our servers?” Kurt asked.
“I’m not sure,” Rene said. “But their program knew each name, perhaps from the domain name server. I just don’t know.”
“They probably read it off the hosts file,” Kyle said, giving it some thought. “Back in April we took Viola out of the hosts list, so if their program read that file, it wouldn’t have known about Viola at all.”
“Go on,” Kurt said.
“Anyway, I ran the disk, and in about ten minutes it was done. I started to worry after having logged into each system. I met him the next day and he asked for the disk. I told him I wasn’t sure, but then he pulled out an envelope full of cash. It wasn’t four-thousand dollars, but five, the first thousand not counted in the total. I went ahead and did it, thinking it would be okay. I didn’t hear from him until July when he came back with another disk, saying they needed one more survey result to see if anything changed. I’d already been through it once, and they offered four-thousand dollars. So, I did it. This time it didn’t even ask me to login, it just ran a program for about 15 minutes. The only thing that appeared on the screen was the wait message, and then it just stopped when it finished. I returned the disk to him and he gave me the money. I didn’t hear from him again until a couple of weeks ago.”
“What happened a couple of weeks ago?” Kyle asked, leaning forward on the table.
Rene looked up, her eyes starting to swell again. “I didn’t mean for anything to happen to Charlie. Honest I didn’t.”
“What happened?” Kyle repeated.
“Santiago called me and said he thought someone knew I had been running their disk on the system. Someone inside our company. He asked me to look at certain programs of ours and give him the user name that had the files checked out. He gave me a list of a dozen filenames. Sure enough, I login to the system and the files are exactly where he said they’d be. And there’s one name on each file, over and over. CDUNCAN.”
“Charlie,” Kyle mumbled.
Rene nodded, another tear sliding down. “I gave him the information. I thought they’d probably offer him some money or something. I never knew it would lead to this. Santiago’s called me a few times since then, and now they’re threatening me.”
“How?” Kurt asked.
“Telling me my son will be taken away if I’m indicted, but they won’t tell me why I’d be indicted or for what. Santiago says it’s almost over and I’ll never see him again, but he’s said that before. I don’t want to go to jail, and I don’t want to lose my son.”
“You should have thought about that before all this started,” Kurt said, turning to Kyle. “I guess you’re in the clear now. Maybe you can rescind that letter of resignation.”
Rene jerked her head toward Kyle. “You quit?”
Kyle nodded. “About half an hour ago.”
“Because of me?” she asked, concerned.
“They thought I was involved,” he told Rene.
“It’s all my fault, then. All this mess. Charlie’s death, you losing your job, everything.” Tears started streaming once again.
“They would have found someone else if you hadn’t cooperated,” Kyle said.
“Can you arrange a meeting with Santiago?” Kurt asked.
“Yeah, I think so, if I have something to offer.”
“Where do you meet?”
“Out in the parking lot.”
Kurt’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding?”
“No. He parks at the far end and I go out and meet him.”
“Set up a meeting for late this afternoon, and we’ll be waiting.”
“No,” Kyle said.
Kurt snapped his head toward Kyle. “What?”
Kyle pointed his finger in the air to hold Kurt back, then looked at Rene. “Don’t tell anyone about this, okay?”
Rene looked puzzled, her eyes hopeful. “I won’t.”
“I’m going to ask a favor of you, much like Kurt just did, but not yet. Okay?”
Rene nodded. “Am I going to jail?”
“Not if I can help it,” Kyle said.
“Even after what I did?”
“Someone used you, and what you did was wrong, but maybe you can make up for it.”
“I’m sorry,” she said to Kyle.
“I know.”
A smile emerged on her face as she stood. “May I go?”
Kyle nodded while Kurt squirmed in his chair. Rene made her way out, closing the door behind her.
“What the hell are you doing?” Kurt demanded.
“There are things you don’t know about yet.”
“Like?”
“Like I was abducted at lunch, I think by the same guy Rene met with. There’s a lot of people involved in this, and it extends way beyond Santiago.”
“They let you go?”
“They just wanted to intimidate me, like they did with Rene.”
Kurt seemed fascinated. “What’d they do?”
“Took me out to the mesa where a limo was waiting. I think I met the leader of this merry little band, but I can’t be sure.” Kyle leaned closer to Kurt, his voice a mere whisper. “He called me Drew.”
“Shit,” Kurt said under his breath. “How’d they know?”
“There’s only two possibilities I can think of - you or an FBI agent told someone.”
Kurt was put on the defensive. “I haven’t told a soul.”
“Right,” Kyle said, not surprised. “I bet I get a call or receive another visit from the FBI to discuss my identity. If that happens, I’
ll know for sure.”
“Do they know about your mom and sisters?” Kurt asked.
Kyle nodded. “Yep. I don’t think they know my true identity. They know my last alias on file, but it would take them some work to trace it back to my true name.”
“You could just walk away from this. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I know. Since I quit, I can no longer be held responsible for the actions of the company.”
“Maybe you should do just that. Let it run its course.”
“I can’t,” Kyle said softly. “I sat right across from the guy who killed Charlie. How can I just walk away from that? And what about Rene?”
“Those same people can kill your entire family, or at least pay someone to do it for them.”
“Maybe, but who’s to say they won’t do that anyway, just to protect themselves?”
Both remained silent for the moment, considering the possibilities. Kyle admired Kurt for cooperating, but he’d always been that way, since the day Kyle started work at Allied. Kyle had confided in Kurt about his true identity two weeks into the job, and Kurt in return felt a special kinship with him, like he was the sole protector of Kyle and his dark secret. Kurt was older and somewhat more mature, and often Kyle considered him a pseudo-father. He actually listened to Kyle and they developed a mutual respect for one another.
“I guess I better get going,” Kyle said. “Will you look after Robert? He’s working hard on this and I’m afraid he’ll get derailed by the powers that be.”
Kurt smiled. “Sure.”
“I’ll tell Robert to confide in you if anything develops. He’ll do it.”
“That’ll help,” Kurt said.
“One more thing, can you keep Rene out of this, at least for now? Tom and Stacey will eat her alive.”
Kurt pondered for a bit. “Sure.”
Kyle lifted his box, looking over to Kurt. “Can I ask you a personal question?”
Kurt nodded, opening the door.
“If I start my own company, would you consider leaving here?”
Kurt grinned. “You can’t afford me.”
Stratagems Page 18