‘You game for a trip to London this weekend?’
‘Weekend? Today is Friday.’
‘Yes. Leave tonight and be back by Sunday.’
‘What for?’
‘For a quick meeting with Nikki Tan’s friends.’
Tony kept aside the newspaper he had been reading. He had an irritated look on his face. Two stories in the newspaper had caught his attention and he was completely engrossed in them when Adrian had called.
One was about an upmarket hooker in New York who claimed to have bedded over 200 famous people—athletes, celebrities, politicians—in the last few years. She had begun publishing her escapades on her blog, two every week. Tony made a mental note to read the blog posts. Confessions of a hooker—the title of the blog was too enticing for him to ignore.
The second was about a student at University of Rhode Island whose pants caught fire when the battery of his Dell laptop exploded. He’d slept off while working on his sociology project with the laptop on, well, his lap. Only to be woken up by his pants on fire!
65
Mumbai
Revenues from Indiscape’s Townsville had started to slow down. Varun was tracking them closely. He had all the answers even before the questions were asked.
He walked up to Aditya and said, ‘Dad, we are going to release a new update to our gaming program, both on Facebook and on the mobile platform.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Our games were designed to go viral on Facebook. Every time a player went up a level, acquired a new apartment, or built a new hotel, it was posted on Facebook and became a part of his friends’ newsfeeds. That drove our popularity but it had its flip side too. Many users complained to Facebook that their newsfeed was getting clogged by posts from some apps, including ours. Facebook changed its algorithm, so that game-related posts now get lowest priority in the newsfeed. So friends of many of our gamers may not even see the posts from our games.’
‘And we have committed 25 million dollars to Facebook this year. And more in the coming years,’ Aditya responded.
‘Yes. Most of which will come from the revenue we earn from the game itself. Until now we had underpriced the game, cheats, level changes, game coins . . . We are now bringing them to a reasonable level. Hopefully with this new update, our gross revenues will go up. And, in any case, our mobile app has now become a paid application. Revenue from that will start kicking in too.’
‘Great. Well done, Son!’ Aditya was a proud father. ‘Do pump in some information to my desk on the revenue numbers, at least on a weekly basis.’
‘Sure, Dad. Aren’t you going home?’
‘No, no! I have to respond to this query from the Department of Revenue Intelligence. It’ll take some time. Sundeep is working on it. Need to send it out by tonight.’
‘Cool. I’ll have the team upload the updates and leave.’ He looked at his watch.
Aditya could make out that he was not happy about something. ‘Out with it. What’s bothering you?’
‘Nothing, Dad. Its only six thirty. The gaming server downtime is scheduled at nine thirty. That’s when we will upload the update. I have to wait till then, only . . . ’
‘Is Tanya waiting?’
‘Come on, Dad,’ Varun said, sheepishly, ‘it’s not that!’
‘Leave it with me. I’ll log in from here and authorize the upload.’
Varun’s eyes lit up. ‘I’ll ask the team to hand over the program to Sundeep uncle. He’ll help you with it. It shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes. Our scheduled downtime is 9.30 p.m. to 11 p.m. IST.’
‘This will take care of both the game on Facebook and the mobile app, right?’
‘Yes, Dad, both.’
And Varun left for his date with Tanya.
Not wanting to eat out, Tanya had cooked a basic meal for him at home. Varun told her everything that happened that day and also how he had delegated the update upload to Aditya. Tanya laughed. ‘He’s such a nice guy. You shouldn’t take advantage of his goodness!’
‘Yes indeed. I wish I hadn’t stayed away from him for so long.’ He smiled at Tanya and looked at his watch. It was nearing 11 p.m. ‘If you are in the mood for a drive, why don’t we head back to office to check if everything is done?’
‘You go on. What will I do there? How long will you take?’
‘Thirty minutes, at best.’
‘Okay, then let me get my laptop. I’ll finish my work while I wait for you.’
Aditya was still in the office when Tanya and Varun reached. ‘I thought you guys had a date. I didn’t know a date meant time in office!’
‘No, Uncle. Varun was feeling bad that he left you alone. So we came back.’
‘Ha ha!’ Aditya laughed and started packing his bag to leave for the day.
66
Mumbai
The CBI interrogated the entire top management of NYIB, including Matt. Nothing objectionable had been discovered in Malvika’s email or phone records. The finance minister too had stuck to his stance that he hadn’t done anything wrong. He dared the opposition to prove his guilt.
Swami was extremely forthright in his depostion. When asked what he knew about Malvika the banker, he told them what he’d discovered about the money laundering. The finance minister’s involvement, Naidu’s confession . . . he told them everything. Malvika was a pawn that the minister used, he said categorically. Not that it proved in any way that the minister was involved in her death but it definitely gave the CBI a possible motive.
While all other depositions lasted about thirty minutes, Swami’s went on for over two hours. He backed up every statement with documentary evidence. Of all the people that the CBI interrogated, Swami’s statement was the most revealing and the most shocking.
*
That evening, Kalpana was alone at home, watching TV, when a telephone call disturbed the peace.
‘Mrs Kalpana Swaminathan?’ asked the voice on the line.
‘Speaking,’ she answered softly.
‘There has been an accident.’
67
USA
Eighteen more laptop explosions were reported in the next week. Fortunately all the laptops were in sleep mode when they blew up, so there were no serious injuries to the laptop owners.
The Rhode Island University incident was clearly not an isolated one. India recorded seven laptop disintegrations; Ukraine, South Africa and Argentina recorded eight each; and there were over twenty each in the US, Austria and France. All of them were Dell laptops. When the problem was reported to Dell’s headquarters by the local country management, they blamed faulty power supply and battery. All the laptops were replaced.
What started off as a trickle, within two weeks, had snowballed to over 1000 complaints. Until then, Dell had ignored the issue, assuming that the customers were overreacting. They could not comprehend the gravity of the situation because the complaints were distributed all over the world so when a country head looked at these numbers, they were small. In the monthly customer service review, when consolidated numbers from across the world were presented to the executive committee, panic set in. The service matrix was not looking good at all. Worse, the complaints were across all laptop models.
Computers heating up, even when not in use, was fast becoming the single largest problem. What started out as a problem with Dell computers soon snowballed into a problem for all laptop manufacturers.
Something was drastically wrong.
68
Mumbai
Kalpana was devastated. Everyone at NYIB was aghast. First, Malvika had committed suicide, and now Swami had died in a hit-and-run. That’s what the cops were treating it as and had registered a case against an unknown person.
The post-mortem report cleared any doubts. It was a clear case of death due to trauma caused by the accident. Onlookers had seen the truck lose control and ram into the car waiting at a traffic signal, with Swami inside.
Kalpana found it impossible to come to terms wit
h Swami’s untimely death. God had been extremely cruel to the family. She worried about Swami’s mother, who had gone into a daze the moment she received the news.
It was not difficult for the cops to piece together the events leading up to Swami’s death. After long and sustained discussions with witnesses, Swami’s colleagues and his family, the cops came out with their version of what transpired that fateful evening.
That day, Swami had called Kalpana and told her that some important work had come up in the bank, and that he needed to meet Matt before coming home. He wanted to brief Matt about his deposition to the CBI. This was around 1 p.m. He had then tried to reach Matt. But Matt was not available.
The CBI inquiry had drained Swami of all his energy. He was too tired, mentally, to last out the day in office. He decided to pack up and leave. That’s when Aditya called, to check on how the deposition had gone. Swami told him briefly and said that he would meet him at night and give him the details. Aditya was in Delhi for a business summit but was taking an evening flight back, so a late night meeting with Swami was possible.
Sadly none of that could happen. In the intervening few hours, a speeding truck collided with Swami’s car, killing him on the spot.
The driver of the dumper had fled the scene, fearing public outrage but walked into the Santa Cruz police station later that evening, and surrendered.
An accident case, a dead victim, the accused in custody—there was nothing much to be done. As far as the cops were concerned, this was an open-and-shut case.
Aditya spent the night trying his best to console Kalpana and Swami’s mother. Sundeep and Natasha were there as well.
‘I don’t believe Swami’s death was an accident.’ Aditya dropped a bombshell on Sundeep when they stepped out to get some fresh air. ‘Could his candidness at the deposition have led to his death?’
‘The CBI refuses to disclose the details of the deposition but say that he didn’t say anything of consequence or significance to this case,’ said Sundeep
Aditya declared, ‘He briefly told me what he told them, and that was definitely not “nothing”. I will do everything possible to get to the bottom of this.’
69
Washington DC
‘No trace of Gloria’s kin.’
When Tony said this, it surprised Dan. ‘Didn’t you say that Gloria and her mom visited them last September?’
‘I did. That’s what Gloria mentioned. I checked the emigration data, and they did visit London in September last year. Our field officers in London and Amsterdam launched a search operation. They could trace the kin of most of those killed in the El Al disaster, but not Gloria’s.’
‘Wait!’ Adrian exclaimed and walked to the table. He picked up his cellphone and dialled a number.
‘Pan American Insurance. How may I help you?’
Adrian spoke for a few minutes and hung up. He looked at Dan. ‘Let’s wait.’
Within five minutes, Adrian got a call. After he disconnected the line, he looked puzzled. ‘This is not normal. Weird, in fact.’ And went on to tell them the entire story.
‘Should we speak to Mike? Perhaps he can tell us what this is about.’
Dan walked up to the computer. He had this know-it-all look on his face. ‘Let’s wait till tomorrow morning. We should be sure about what we want to tell Mike.’ He logged in and accessed a classified database.
Seeing him get busy, Adrian decided to leave and come back the next morning. He bid goodbye to Dan and got into his car.
He had hardly driven for a mile when his phone rang. He looked at the phone and then at Tony. ‘Why is he calling now?’
‘Adrian!’ Dan sounded very excited. ‘Come back. Come back right now!’
‘Okay, turning around. Five minutes and we’ll be there.’ Adrian took a U-turn at such speed that Tony went crashing into the passenger window.
‘Hey!’
‘Hang on!’ Adrian screamed back, as he steadied the car. A couple of minutes later, the car screeched to a halt in front of Dan’s residence, and the two of them jumped out and rushed in. The door was open.
Dan was stooped over his computer. He was staring at something. Intently. It was a map. Hearing them walk in, he looked up.
‘Altoids. One more log in. Last night. I just got the details.’
‘Where?’
‘It’s a post asking for help to recover lost digits from a bitcoin code.’
He handed over a piece of paper to Adrian. It was a printout from bitcointalk.org:
I have a problem. I had written down a few characters of my bitcoin private key on a piece of paper. These fucking termites. They tore through the paper, which was kept in a safe. All I have now is pulp. Is there a way to reconstruct the key from the remaining characters that I have stored elsewhere? Any help would be appreciated.
70
Mumbai
After sending a legal notice along with a claim for 5 million dollars in damages, Matt Metzger promptly sent a letter to Aditya, terminating the services of eTIOS. In the normal course, he would have waited till Swami’s notice period ended. But with Swami dead, there was no need for niceties.
A detailed exit plan was also sent to Aditya along with the termination notice. Aditya was devastated. NYIB had sent a legal notice earlier but Aditya had hoped to bring them around. Now, that didn’t seem likely. NYIB was the first account that eTIOS had secured when Aditya had quit the bank to set up his own business. Riding on the back of the NYIB relationship, Aditya had built the eTIOS business. He took the rejection personally.
He emailed a few old friends who worked with NYIB in New York. However, given the mood and the issues related to privacy and data integrity, he knew that not much would come of it.
71
Washington DC
‘Three days! I get out of the country for three days on a nice holiday that looks like work and you track me down here too!’ Mike Hendricks complained the moment he came on the line. He was in Davos for a precursor to the World Economic forum.
After exchanging a quick round of courtesies, Adrian came to the point. He narrated the story of Tony’s London visit. ‘When our field operatives could not trace Gloria’s kin, we began to wonder if there was a different story there. Last night, I called my contacts at Pan American Insurance, and I was shocked . . . ’ He paused. No response from the other side.
Then, ‘I’m listening. Go on, Adrian.’
‘Pan American Insurance paid out half a million dollars each to the families of twenty-nine people who died on the ground in the El Al disaster of 1988. In the case of Gloria’s biological parents, they paid out 1.5 million dollars each to the kin.’
‘Could be a deal with Pan-American Insurance.’ Mike was unruffled.
‘We would have thought so too, had I not found out something else last night. Something that takes the cake, Mike,’ Dan butted in. ‘Last night, I accessed the federal database.’
‘Do you have access to it?’
‘Yes, I do. I got into the Combined DNA Index System. Got a hit on Gloria Tan’s DNA.’
The Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS, is a software platform that blends forensic science and computer technology. It contains over 10 million DNA profiles from the fifty states of America: of individuals—offenders, arrestees, detainees—as well as DNA of forensic interest, unidentified human remains, missing persons and relatives of missing persons. CODIS allows investigators to search for and match DNA profiles, a feature which comes in handy in crime resolution.
‘Why would that interest you?’ Mike Hendricks asked.
‘The fact that the insurance payout was three times the regular payout raised eyebrows. Secondly, as per Gloria’s own admission, she was rounded up during a suspected after-school rave party. Police records do not indicate any such detention. That got me curious. I wanted to see if Gillian was protecting her.’
‘That would be quite normal for him to do. Right?’ Mike responded. ‘He was a doting father.’
> ‘Well, yes. Would have been normal for him to do that, had he known. But Gloria also mentioned to us that Gillian was not aware of the incident.’
‘Okay?’
Adrian could sense irritation in Mike’s tone.
‘And guess what. We found Gloria’s DNA fingerprint in the National DNA registry. The NDIS.’
‘How did it get there, Dan?’
‘It’s mandatory these days to collect the DNA samples from all arrestees or detainees irrespective of whether the person is convicted or not. Gloria’s DNA samples would have been collected during the round up before someone bailed her out and erased the police records pertaining to the incident. The person who erased the police records, missed the fact that the DNA samples had already been collected. That explains why the DNA profile exists in the database, even though there are no police records.’
‘You need to give me the headlines, Dan. I need to rush. Don’t have much time.’
‘Terribly sorry, Mike. Let me try and wrap it up. We ran Gloria’s DNA strains for a match. To see if it matched with any other profile on the database.’
Silence.
‘I got the report this morning, Mike.’
‘It matched,’ Mike responded.
It was not a question. It was a statement. Dan could make that out.
‘Yes, Mike. One match. A high stringency match. You know about it, don’t you?’
Adrian was shocked by Dan’s latest revelation. Dan had not mentioned it to him.
‘Yes, Dan,’ Mike replied, ‘Gloria is Nikki’s daughter. Nikki’s and mine.’
‘The truth is stranger than fiction!’ Tony was stunned as well.
Mike explained, ‘We met in London, when she was in her early twenties, and fell in love. That’s when Gloria was born. But, over time, we realized our aspirations, our goals were different and we drifted apart. Life does this to you. When she married Gillian after a brief courtship, she kept the story under wraps. She was sure that Gillian would not accept her child. Especially given that, by then, I’d become his political adversary. But she eventually succumbed to her motherly instinct and told Gillian. He was livid but eventually accepted the child. The El Al disaster story was spun to give credibility to a three-year-old walking into the lives of Gillian and Nikki Tan. It was convenient. We presented Gloria to the world as the daughter of a couple killed in the disaster. We bought the family’s silence by paying them through Pan-American insurance. No one bothered to figure out anything till you guys got involved. I expect extreme levels of discretion from you.’
God is a Gamer Page 17