The Adversary (A Chris Bruen Novel Book 1)

by Reece Hirsch

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Officer Miller said, getting down to business. “So Sarah Hotchner is your coworker?”

  “Right. We work at the same law firm.”

  “But you’re here in your individual capacity, right? You aren’t here as a representative of your law firm, are you?”

  “No, that’s right. We’re friends.”

  “Now, I don’t mean to pry, but it’s my job to understand the situation as best I can before we commit resources to a missing persons case. You can understand that, right?”

  “Sure. What would you like to know?”

  The officer turned his missing persons report over in her hand. “You seem to know a lot about Ms. Hotchner. You were able to tell us where she lives, the car she drives, family history. Would you say that you had a close relationship?”

  “Yes, we were close.”

  “Pardon me if this seems intrusive, but does that mean you had a romantic relationship with her?”

  Chris paused. “Yes.”

  “Had you and Ms. Hotchner had an argument or anything like that prior to her disappearance?”

  “No. There was no problem whatsoever. We’d been to a concert the night before. Earlier that day, she’d gone with me to see my oncologist. Does that sound like someone who’s about to leave?”

  “I’m sorry to hear that you’re seeing an oncologist.”

  “Thanks, but I’m okay. As of yesterday, in fact, it turns out I’m okay.”

  “Congratulations. Sounds like you were having a very good day yesterday. Then, the next day, you received an email from her. She breaks off her relationship with you, quits her job, and, as far as you can tell, leaves town.”

  “Right.”

  “An outsider looking at those facts might think that she was trying to get away from you and was willing to go to pretty extreme lengths to do it.”

  “Everything was fine between us.”

  “Sometimes we think we know someone, but … I see it all the time in this job.”

  “I did a forensic analysis of the email that she sent and found that it was sent from an IP address in Spain. That also happens to be where a criminal hacking scheme that I’m investigating may be based.”

  “So you’re going to have to explain that to me. I’m not much of a techie.”

  “I think Sarah may have been kidnapped by the same person who sent me a threatening email. Both emails came from Spain.”

  “Do you have the name of the person who sent the threatening email?”

  “No, I don’t really have any information about the person. Except for their hacker handle. Enigma.”

  “Enigma.” Officer Miller said it slowly. Chris could almost hear the case file being closed. “So is this Enigma person your archenemy or something?”

  “This is not a joke. I really believe that Sarah Hotchner has been kidnapped.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make light of this. But you should probably think it through before proceeding with the report. It could make things more complicated.”

  “I don’t care how complicated the paperwork is.”

  “I’m not talking about the paperwork. If it turns out that you’re using the police department to locate an ex-lover who’s trying to get away from you … Well, we don’t take that sort of thing very well around here.”

  “I understand, but I’m telling you the truth.”

  Chris spent the remainder of the afternoon in the police station, filling out forms, answering questions, and waiting in windowless rooms for people to arrive to ask him more questions. At the end of the day, he felt that the one thing he had truly accomplished was making the SFPD deeply suspicious of him.

  He left the police station with no sense that there was going to be an active missing persons investigation and, if that was true, then the whole exercise had been a waste of time. Once more drawing upon his vast store of semi-erroneous knowledge of police procedure gleaned from TV cop shows, he knew that the first forty-eight hours of a kidnapping case was the time when the victim was most likely to be recovered alive. If that was so, then Sarah might not have much more time.

  Chris felt the need to move quickly to find her, but he really had nowhere to go. He could fly to Barcelona and hope to find a lead, but he didn’t even know with any certainty that she was in Spain. Sarah and her abductors might be in Spain, but they could also be anywhere else in the world.

  But Chris did believe that if he found the hackers behind the Lurker virus, then he would find Sarah. It wasn’t enough for a police investigation, but it was enough for Chris. As he sat on a concrete bench outside the police station in a chill wind, he admitted to himself for perhaps the first time that he loved Sarah and would do just about anything to bring her back.

  CHAPTER 10

  When he was done at the police station, Chris returned to the firm’s forensic lab to review the results of the Deep Web searches that Ed had conducted for the names Enigma and Ripley. The results appeared to be entirely random and useless, the data-mining equivalent of dragging a net across the bottom of a lake. Surprisingly, there were quite a few hackers using similar handles. The name Ripley alone produced nearly three dozen hits.

  Chris culled through the search results, looking for common denominators. There was an Enigma343 in Hamburg, who several years ago had bragged about his exploits hacking a university financial aid database. Further searches for Enigma343 led to the discovery that this Enigma was now an associate professor at the same university that he had once hacked and had a personal website and a blog on cyber law issues. Chris placed Enigma343 in the “unlikely” category, because a university professor didn’t fit the profile. Hackers were usually malcontents who held a succession of random jobs—they didn’t typically follow a career path. More importantly, a real criminal hacker wouldn’t have left such an obvious trail to his true identity.

  Eventually, Chris began to see some patterns that suggested he had picked up the trail of the pair. He found several postings in an Internet Relay Chat room from an Enigma that all bore a similar mix of grandiosity and menace. There were also frequent communications from a Ripley on the same message board. Ripley’s posts were so laconic that it was difficult get a read on her personality. The postings were all at least six months old and there was nothing that seemed to relate to the January 14 attack, but at least Chris had found one of the places on the Internet that they had frequented, at least at one time.

  As Ed had guessed, Ripley did seem to be a woman, judging by the volume of sexual innuendo thrown her way on the message boards. “Seemed” was the operative word because, with so many imposters, as an oft-repeated Internet meme put it, “There are no women on the Internet.” In some corners of the Internet, gender and sexuality were fluid concepts. In Chris’s experience, the hacker community contained a disproportionately high number of transgender persons. Perhaps engaging in online gender-bending made it easier for some to change who they were in the real world.

  Such was the trail of clues that led Chris to be hunched over his home computer at 11:00 p.m., about to log on an IRC channel frequented by Bay Area hackers and techno geeks where Enigma and Ripley had once surfaced. The blinds in his loft were open and he could see the Bay Bridge, its span strung with lights that disappeared into fog.

  Chris’s plan was to spend some time posing as a hacker on the channel in hopes of tapping into some chatter about Middendorf, Ripley, or Enigma. It took him a while to pick a suitable handle for his posting, but he finally settled on VeraDae, a play on viridae, the taxonomic group that includes viruses.

  Chris knew better than to start a thread with a direct inquiry about his targets or Sarah. He also couldn’t lurk on the message board and then join the conversation at the first mention of one of them. Instead, he needed to establish a presence, so he invented some exploits for his new alter ego.

  VERADAE: Just hacked into the City of San Francisco. I own them.

  Chris stared at the screen, waiting for s
omeone to take the bait.

  After a few minutes, a response appeared.

  CYNECITTA: Am I supposed to be impressed?

  VERADAE: Yes.

  CYNECITTA: Too easy. The city doesn’t pay enough to have decent IT staff. I like more of a challenge.

  From the name, Chris guessed that he was communicating with a woman and a movie buff. The name was probably an allusion to Rome’s famed Cinecittà movie studio. He was tempted to ask her what sort of a hack might provide a challenge commensurate with her skills, but he didn’t want to be too obvious. Instead, he typed:

  VERADAE: So u prefer the private sector?

  CYNECITTA: Correct. Or if ur going to hack a govt system, u might as well man up and take on the feds. Or maybe some mils.

  “Mils” was shorthand for military websites using the .mil domain.

  VERADAE: Ru calling me a pussy?

  CYNECITTA: If the tutu and little velvet dancing shoes fit …

  Chris smiled. Ah, the power of the Internet to turn even the meekest among us into a smartass. The person on the other end of the cursor would probably never say that to his face if they encountered one another in a line at the coffee shop or the grocery store.

  VERADAE: Big talk. How do I know ur legit? Who do you know?

  CYNECITTA: Who do YOU know?

  Chris liked where this was heading.

  VERADAE: Who don’t I know? Fembot, Pwnsauce, Black Vector, Xylo …

  There was a pause long enough to make Chris fear that he had scared her off.

  CYNECITTA: GTFO. U knew Black Vector?

  VERADAE: Yeah, I knew him a little. I was really sorry to hear what happened.

  CYNECITTA: I’m going to see the Morning Benders at the Bottom of the Hill 2nite. If u want to continue this conversation, we can do it there.

  VERADAE: How do I know that ur not just messing with me?

  CYNECITTA: U don’t.

  VERADAE: If I do show up, how will I know u?

  CYNECITTA: U won’t. I’ll know u.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Bottom of the Hill, a rock club on Seventeenth Street in the edgy Mission District, was warm, humid, and redolent of stale beer. As Chris passed the pool tables out front and drew closer to the music, the crowd became increasingly dense, as if the band were exerting a gravitational pull. At the foot of the stage in front of the amps, the throng pressed together, chest to back, with only enough room to bob their heads. He saw no one who seemed likely to be Cynecitta.

  Chris had no interest in joining the scrum, so he ordered a beer and stood for a while near the bar, where he would be visible to anyone in the club who might be looking for him. He was wearing jeans, sneakers, and a dress shirt open at the collar. There was no question that he stood out. He examined a wall of the club that was covered with graffiti left by hundreds of bands that had played there. A few of the names were familiar, but most had probably flamed out long ago, victims of creative differences or public indifference. All that remained of most of those bands was an ironic name, a logo drawn in Sharpie, and the alcohol-fuzzed memories of those who had crowded before the tiny stage.

  After about fifteen minutes of watching the very young band bash out some decent indie-rock, he began to think she wasn’t going to show. He pondered how the band’s drummer could be old enough to grow the hipster mountain-man beard that he was sporting.

  The bartender, a woman in her midthirties wearing a faded, black Sleater-Kinney T-shirt, reached across the bar and tapped him on the shoulder. “You’re not subtle, are you?” she said.

  “Is there a problem?” Chris wondered if she had somehow not gotten the tip that he’d left on the bar.

  “Yes, there’s a problem. We spoke online. You’re Chris Bruen.”

  He winced. While he knew that his undercover identity wasn’t going to fool anyone for long, he was a little disappointed that it had proved so transparent. “Cynecitta.” She wasn’t what he had been expecting. Aside from the T-shirt, Cynecitta looked like she could be one of his colleagues at the firm. She had dark brown, shoulder-length hair and no visible tattoos (which differentiated her from everyone else who worked there). With her quick, dark eyes and an ironic smile that turned her mouth sharply upward on one side, Cynecitta had a face that was made for smart remarks.

  “Can I give you a little advice?”

  “Sure.”

  “You should know that most hackers who are any good know you on sight by now.” Chris heard what sounded like the trace of a Southern accent, but one with sharp elbows. Chris guessed that she might be from North Carolina. He had learned from his wife, who had been from Birmingham, that every state below the Mason–Dixon line had its own way of torturing vowels.

  “You could have just let me drink my beer and go home.”

  She smiled. “But then I would have missed the opportunity to taunt the famous Chris Bruen.”

  “You could have waited until I got home and then taunted me by email.”

  “Not as satisfying.” Chris stood corrected. Cynecitta did not have to hide behind the Internet. She was perfectly willing to flame him in person.

  “Aside from the taunting,” Chris said, “I think there must be something that you want to say to me.”

  Cynecitta stared at him impassively.

  “Can you at least tell me your real name?”

  She wiped some beer off the counter with a rag, giving it some thought.

  “All I have to do is ask around here,” Chris added.

  “Zoey Doucet,” she said. “Let’s sit down over there. I’ll get someone to tend bar.”

  After a brief negotiation with another bartender, Zoey joined him at a table at the back of the bar near the pool tables. Even there, they had to speak a bit loudly to be heard.

  “So you knew Pietr Middendorf—I mean Black Vector?” Chris asked.

  “I did. Online, anyway. We chatted from time to time.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  “Seemed like a nice guy. And he knew his stuff. He had skills.”

  “Let me start by saying that I didn’t kill him. I had nothing to do with it.”

  She leaned forward across the table with a confrontational look. “Maybe you didn’t kill him, but you were at his apartment when he was killed, weren’t you?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I’m not going to tell you. But if that’s not right, then just say so.”

  Chris took a sip of his beer. “No, that’s right. I was trying to get Pietr to return some source code that he had stolen. But if he had cooperated, he wouldn’t have even gone to jail.”

  “What were you doing trolling on that IRC channel?” she asked.

  “Did you know that Pietr was connected to the people who created the virus that caused that midair collision in Albuquerque?”

  “I’m not surprised that Pietr was involved with a virus, but he would never hurt innocent people like that.”

  “Maybe not willingly. He may not have had a choice. Why doesn’t it surprise you that Pietr was spreading a virus?”

  “Because he wasn’t just some script kiddie pulling pranks. He wanted to do some damage—in a good way.” “Script kiddie” was a term for a wannabe hacker.

  Chris knew what she was going to say, but he asked anyway. “What would you consider good damage?”

  “A little disruption is healthy, makes everyone’s security stronger. It also lets those big corporations know that not everything is under their control. They can still be brought down— even by people like me.” This was a point of view common to the so-called antisecurity or antisec movement.

  “Were you working with Black Vector?”

  “No, but if he’d asked me, I would have.”

  Chris believed her, but he wondered if she was merely a hacker apologist or someone capable of doing real harm. “I’m looking for two hackers who go by the names Enigma and Ripley. Do you know them?”

  “Why should I tell you, even if I did know something? You
obviously know what they’re saying about you and Black Vector.”

  “If you believed that, I doubt that you’d have invited me here.”

  “You don’t know me well enough to say that. Maybe I have a gang of guys outside the club waiting to beat the crap out of you.”

  “Good point.” Chris didn’t think that was true, but the remark made him uncomfortable nonetheless.

  The music grew louder as the band’s set reached its close. They waited to continue their conversation while the crowd cheered for an encore.

  “What do you want with Enigma and Ripley?”

  “I think they’re involved in spreading a very dangerous virus.”

  “And why is that your concern?”

  Chris could have said that he was trying to avert a potential cyberattack, but he sensed that he needed to be more frank than that if he was going to make any headway with Zoey. “The virus would exploit my client’s operating system.”

  “So who’s your client?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Okay, and I care about your big corporate client because …?”

  “Fair enough, but it’s also possible that Enigma and Ripley were involved in Pietr Middendorf’s death.”

  “I don’t think you’re doing this for Pietr.”

  “You’re right. I’m not.”

  She gave a small nod, seeming to appreciate the honest response. “Look, I will tell you this. You don’t want to get too close to those two, Enigma and Ripley.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “They’re real criminal types. The kind that kill people.”

  “I think you know something that you’re not telling me about Enigma and Ripley. Why not?”

  “Because I’m really not interested in helping you protect the integrity of some operating system. In fact, I couldn’t care less about that.” She paused. “And I don’t think you would be careful enough to keep me out of it if you did find those two.”

  Chris realized that he was going to have to lay his cards on the table if he was going to get more from Zoey. “I think they’ve kidnapped a woman. Her name is Sarah Hotchner.”