‘I don’t check the technical details of every software that is uploaded.’
‘Okay, accepted. But how is it then that Altoids logged in from your laptop, from your wi-fi network and posted updates and messages regarding Cotton Trail and bitcoins?’
‘My wi-fi? My ID?’
‘Yes. I showed you the IP address, Mr Rao. Altoids logged into a VPN network from that IP address and posted details about bitcoins. The same Altoids has been all over the net promoting Cotton Trail. Can you explain this? If you are not the promoter of Cotton Trail, what’s your motivation in spreading awareness about Cotton Trail, Mr Rao.’ Adrian paused. A grin came up on his face. ‘Or should I say . . . Mr Altoids?’
‘Someone else could have misused it.’
‘In the normal course we would believe this, Mr Rao. But given that the malware was also uploaded from your ID, your defence doesn’t seem to be so airtight. Especially when the only person using that exclusive wi-fi network in your office is you.’
‘My conscience is clear.’
‘So is the evidence,’ said Adrian.
Suddenly, the door swung open and Dan walked in.
‘What the hell is the problem with you, Adrian? I’ve been trying to reach you for a while.’ He looked at Aditya and smiled. ‘Give us a minute, Mr Rao.’ And he pulled Adrian out of the room.
The moment they were out, Dan said, ‘He is not the one we are looking for.’
‘Dan, you are much smarter than that. Have you fallen for his innocent looks?’
‘No. Altoids just signed in and sent us a message. He is willing to engage. To figure out how to get to the missing characters in the bitcoin private key.’
‘What?’
‘Yes. The message was sent a few hours ago in response to our post. And this fellow has been in your custody since before then. How can he be in your custody and send messages at the same time?’
‘Dan you pulled us out of India because you felt that if we interrogated this guy in India, particularly after the gaming malware became known, we would hit a dead end. Now, after all this, you are asking us to let him go?’
‘It is what it is, Adrian.’ He shrugged. ‘Someone is clearly playing this guy.’
‘Now what do we do with him?’
‘Let him go,’ Dan recommended.
‘No. He knows quite a bit through the interrogation. If he is the one being played, let’s use him to help us.’
87
Washington DC
Aditya was in his room at the Ritz. For the last twenty-four hours he had been holed up in his room. He had stepped out only once to attend the World Gaming Council event. In fact, Indiscape was even awarded the prize for being the ‘best gaming company in emerging markets’. Adrian had felt guilty for having put Aditya through the trauma and had impressed upon the organizers to go ahead with the award. Given that the instruction came from the highest level in the FBI, the organizers obliged. Aware of this, Aditya didn’t even bother going up to the dais.
Adrian had apologized profusely to Aditya but Aditya was a worried man. Someone was taking advantage of his organization, his reputation. Someone was playing him. It had turned out to be far more serious than what he had imagined. The assassination of a sitting senator, bitcoins, Cotton Trail, malware—these were not issues to be taken lightly.
So when Adrian requested him to stay back for a few more days, to help the FBI in their investigation, he readily agreed. In return, he wanted them to help fix issues that seemed to have crept into his company. The FBI agreed and instructed him not to share their observations with anyone in the company as that might hamper their investigation. This was the reason why Aditya was in his room that day, watching TV. Fox News, the ultimate gossip channel in the garb of mainstream news, was playing on loop. By afternoon, the main news programmes had disappeared and the channel shifted to the latest expose by the Hooker which had the nation in its grip.
An entire thirty-minute slot was dedicated to the Hooker hullabaloo. He was not sure if it was a regular affair or got thirty minutes that day because there were multiple disclosures. Fox didn’t name the three individuals who the hooker claimed to have bedded, because they were influential people and the news could not be verified.
The news programme had intrigued Aditya. He walked up to his laptop, keyed in the URL of her blog, brought it up on his screen, and started reading. He started with the latest one. The post was quite scandalous and Aditya found he was very turned on by it. As he read further his eyes grew wide. Was she lying? Or was she writing the truth?
He walked up to the phone and placed a call.
‘Good . . .’
‘Good afternoon, Agent Scott. It’s Aditya Rao.’ He didn’t even wait for Adrian to complete the greeting.
‘Mr Rao, I was about to come and see you today.’
‘Please do. It would be great to have a drink together in the evening.’
‘Yeah, I’ll drop in.’
‘I was reading the latest in the Confessions of the Hooker series.’
‘It isn’t healthy to read trash at this age, Mr Rao,’ said Adrian, chuckling.
‘Agent Scott, if it is good enough to do it at his age, it is definitely good enough to read at mine. Have you read the latest confession? Please read it right away, then call me.’ He hung up.
Within five minutes, Adrian called back. ‘Holy motherfucker! Where did this come from?’
‘Is our drink on, Agent Scott?’
‘Yes, of course. Twenty minutes.’
88
Mumbai
After spending the birthday weekend with Tanya, Varun was back at work on Monday morning.
As usual, he logged in to his laptop and pulled up the weekly sales MIS. It gave him the number of Townsville downloads every day, from the time Indiscape had put it up on the app store.
At first glance, the MIS didn’t look too good. Weekly sales had dropped . . . in excess of 30 per cent over the previous week! He broke it down. From Monday to Friday, sales were steady. On Saturday, sales went up. They normally did on a weekend. But Sunday shocked him. Sales were down by 80 per cent as compared to Saturday. In the normal course, Sunday sales of gaming apps either tracked Saturday sales or, in certain cases, were higher. An 80 per cent drop meant something was surely wrong.
He logged in to the app store to check. The details were there. The price was there. The reviews were there . . .
The download button was missing.
Anyone who visited the app store and searched for Townsville would find it, but would not be able to download it.
‘What the fuck!?’ he shouted. He could be heard throughout the corridors of Indiscape. He called his secretary. ‘Get the Townsville gaming director in my room right away,’ he hollered into the phone.
Within five minutes, the director responsible for Townsville was in his room, laptop and lunch bag in hand. ‘Sorry, sir. I was in the parking lot, when your secretary called. I came straight to meet you.’
‘We have a problem with the Townsville app. The download button is missing on the online store.’
‘I’ll check it out, sir. Give me ten minutes.’
In two minutes, Varun got a call on his office line.
‘Sir, it’s not a problem with the Apple store alone. We are facing issues on Facebook too. We are checking it out.’
‘On Facebook too?’
‘Yes, sir. It does not load. Whenever someone clicks on the Townsville link on Facebook, it returns a blank screen.’
‘Damn. So no one has downloaded or played Townsville for sixteen hours now. This in a disaster. All the effort we have put in to popularize the game will come to naught. Everything will collapse if users cannot and do not play the game. Do you get it? Hurry up and fix the problem!’ He was yelling.
‘Yes, sir. You don’t worry, sir. I will put the team on the job.’
A few minutes later, Varun was sitting in his chair, elbows on the table, palms covering his face, when the phone
rang again.
‘Sir, I checked with the folks at Apple. They say it’s an error and they will look into it.’
‘Did they give a timeline?’
‘Twenty-four hours for resolution.’
‘That’s too long. What about Facebook?’
‘Their link with the Ukrainian server has collapsed. We are providing them with alternative server details. They will connect to those to restore service.’
‘Why the fuck didn’t we have multiple servers connecting to Facebook mainframes in the first place? Isn’t that the normal business continuity protocol?’
‘That’s the way it was programmed. Strangely now when we check, the connectivity to Facebook is only through three servers located in Latvia, Ukraine and California. It was supposed to be twelve as per the initial program. We are looking into how this happened.’
‘Put your star performer on the job. The guy who debugged your program in three hours. He is still working for us, right?’
‘Yes, sir. He is.’
‘And how long will Facebook take to restore connectivity?’
‘Four to five hours is what they’ve committed. But judging by past experience it can stretch to beyond twelve hours.’
‘We will be fucked! Our screw-ups give customers a chance to sample the competition. In business, when you’re ahead, hold your customers tight. Don’t lose sight of them for even a moment. The only way to hold on to them is by giving them so much that they just don’t have the time to look at the competition. Because if one customer switches, and begins to like the competitor’s product, chances are that all our other customers may like it too.’
Varun got up and walked to the third floor to Sundeep’s room. In Aditya’s absence, he had to keep Sundeep informed. ‘Let’s fix it and move ahead,’ was all that Sundeep said. Their relationship, dismal as it had been, had broken down completely after the bots fiasco.
As he was walking down the corridor to the staircase, he looked up. There were over 200 people working on that floor, some on gaming, some on eTIOS, and others on a new project Aditya had begun. He looked around. Many of them were alien to him. This was not a floor he normally came to. As he looked around, he saw one familiar face. And then he turned and walked back to his office.
Back in his room, Varun called Aditya but couldn’t get through. He tried calling him on the hotel landline but there was no answer.Varun left a voice message, asking him to call back.
89
Mumbai
Moments later Varun received a call from Ukraine. It lasted for a few minutes and was interspersed with furious gesticulation. By the end of it, Varun’s face was red with anger. He had to do something. Quickly.
After thinking for a few minutes, he called Aditya’s cellphone again. Aditya didn’t pick up, so he called again letting the phone ring. He was losing patience when he heard Aditya’s voice. ‘Hi, Varun.’
‘Dad! Hi.’
‘What’s up, Son? I was sleeping.’
‘I figured that, Dad. But there seems to be a problem.’
‘What happened? Is everything okay between you and Tanya?’
‘Yes, Dad. No issues on that front.’
‘Then?’
‘Is there a problem in the US?’
‘No. Why?’ asked Aditya, calmly.
‘Because you extended your trip.’
‘I just extended it by a few days. Felt like meeting a few of my old friends. Remember I worked here many many years ago.’
‘I can understand, Dad. But we’ve had some problems here.’
‘What problems?’
‘Did Sundeep uncle call you?’
‘Oh, that problem. Yes he called me. It will set itself right. You guys are overreacting.’
‘No, Dad. We are not overreacting.’
‘Relax, Varun.’
‘It’s the FBI, Dad.’
‘What?’
‘Yes, Dad. It’s the FBI. Townsville has been pulled out from the servers and Facebook on instructions from the FBI.’
‘How can you be so sure?’ Aditya was very curious, because the FBI had assured him complete secrecy. They had also promised that once Aditya’s team cleansed the game, they would not have any issue with it being reloaded on to those servers.
‘The company that we have made an offer to buy, in Ukraine, is a minor stakeholder in the company that owns the server space.’
‘Oh?’
‘I checked with them.’
‘And what did they tell you?’
‘The FBI apparently asked them to shut down the access to our app on their servers. So people logging in to our game will not be able to play. The official line as dictated by the FBI is that it’s a technical snag. Because they can’t just pull down anyone’s access to a server outside their jurisdiction. I suspect Facebook too has been given the same story and they are parroting the FBI’s line.’
‘Damn! That’s not a good sign.’ Aditya swore into the phone.
Varun thought his tone was strange. ‘Dad, did you know this was going to happen?’
The question caught Aditya off guard. ‘What kind of a question is that?’
‘Sorry, perhaps I’m confused. In any case, when are you coming?’
‘This weekend.’ That was the end of the discussion.
Tanya came to visit him in office that evening. When he told her the issue he was facing, she was concerned too. She called off their dinner plans and decided to head back home.
90
Washington DC
Aditya didn’t feel good about lying to Varun. He didn’t have a choice, though, since his calls were being monitored by the FBI. He wanted the entire episode to end. It was causing him more damage than anything else had in his whole life.
There was a knock at the door. ‘Agent Scott!’ he exclaimed, surprised to find Adrian standing there so soon after he had left earlier that evening. Is everything okay?
‘I need to ask you some questions.’
‘About what?’ Aditya said as he moved aside and let Adrian in. Adrian walked to the sofa next to the window and settled down. He picked up an apple from a fruit bowl on the table in front of him and bit into it. ‘I haven’t had dinner.’ He volunteered an explanation.
‘Do you want to go down to the coffee shop and grab a bite?’
‘If you don’t mind, can you order a chicken club sandwich for me? I’ll have it here.’
Aditya nodded and walked up to the telephone. ‘What’s wrong? Obviously something is bothering you. And you are figuring out how to ask me without offending me again.’
‘Are you in any way involved in the murder of the CEO of NYIB?’
‘Malvika? Oh no! For God’s sake!’
‘Why then?
‘Why what?’
‘Why then do we have a request from the Mumbai Crime Branch, routed through the CBI, to make sure that you return to India on time?’
‘Is that normal? Is the FBI bound to comply? Just asking out of academic interest, for I don’t intend to do anything stupid.’
‘Well, no. But the request has also been forwarded to the US government through your home ministry. You seem to be in a terrible mess, my friend. All I could gather from them is that it’s about that CEO of the bank involved in the ATM heist.’
‘So’, Aditya looked at him, ‘what now?’
‘Nothing. Tomorrow you will head back. Tony will accompany you. I’ll join you in a day. Something seems to be cooking there. I have some work in California.’
‘California?’
‘Yes. Following up a case lead there.’
‘Anything to do with Confessions of the Hooker?’
Adrian shrugged non-committally, as he walked out of the room. ‘See you in Mumbai,’ he said just before the door shut.
91
Mumbai
Aditya landed in Mumbai in the wee hours of Friday. The CBI team picked him up from the airport and whisked him away. No one even knew that he had returned to the country.
A day later, early in the morning, a team of CBI officers swooped down on Sundeep Srivastava’s residence and packed him off in an unmarked van. His wife protested, threatened to call influential people, but before she could do anything of the sort, Sundeep was gone.
Varun was at Tanya’s that night. He’d just woken up and was having a morning cup of tea when a team of officers knocked at the door. In no time, Tanya and Varun were speeding towards the CBI office in Bandra-Kurla Complex. All their questions went unanswered, all their protests unheard. The officials said that all would be revealed once they reached their destination.
ACP Shome from Mumbai Police’s cyber crime cell and Tony were in the room when Tanya, Varun and Sundeep were brought in.
‘I know you want answers. Give us five minutes, and we’ll explain everything,’ ACP Shome announced to the group when he sensed the simmering tension. ‘The CBI regional director will be here.’
The five minutes stretched to ten. An hour passed. Nothing happened. The three of them sat huddled in a corner, occasionally talking to each other but largely brooding, wondering where things were headed.
Finally, at 2.30 p.m., a good four hours after they had arrived, the door swung open and three people walked in
‘Aditya?’ Sundeep exclaimed, while the other two looked on. ‘When did you get back?’
‘Hi, Sundeep. I got back yesterday,’ Aditya said. His eyes were trained on Varun, who was surprised to hear his response. He didn’t offer any explanation about why he didn’t get in touch with anyone. Varun kept staring at him, wondering what was going on.
The person next to Aditya began, ‘My name is Adrian Scott and I am with the FBI.’
‘Kabir Khan, CBI.’ The regional director introduced himself.
‘Okay, let’s begin.’ Kabir started off brusquely. ‘Folks, we have a few questions to ask you. We can either do this the easy way or make it difficult. If we do it easy, we can finish our work quickly and head home in time for dinner.’
No one spoke.
‘Okay, first question. Was Malvika Sehgal, the CEO of NYIB, murdered or did she commit suicide?’
God is a Gamer Page 22