Crash

by David Hagberg

Hardy had come out of nowhere and was just suddenly there. “Is there a problem, Francis?”

  “Yes, Ms. Levin has the flash drive with the anti-virus, and I volunteered to hand-carry it up to Ms. O’Connell’s office, but she refused to hand it over.”

  “I need to tell her a few things about the program,” Cassy said.

  Hardy glanced at Donni, who shrank back. “No problem,” he said.

  “Well, get the fuck out of here,” Hardy said, and he glanced over at the woman cop and nodded.

  “We’ll be back in a half hour,” Cassy said.

  “See that you are,” Masters told her.

  She and Donni headed out to the elevators in the corridor, passing the woman cop, who glared at them.

  On the way up, Cassy punched 6 for the cafeteria floor, and then 23 for O’Connell’s office. “Wait for me, and we’ll leave the building together,” she said. “Just don’t lose that drive.”

  “Not a chance.”

  45

  Cassy got off the elevator and crossed the carpeted corridor. Julia O’Connell, behind her desk in her glass-walled office, looked up, smiled, and waved her in. She seemed a little strained, as if she had heard some bad news.

  This floor was busy but subdued, no noise, no one ever in a hurry. BP was one of the largest investment banks in the country, and everyone took their job seriously.

  “You’re finished, then?” Julia asked pleasantly.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Cassy said and handed over the flash drive.

  “Francis said that you needed to tell me something?”

  “It’s encrypted, and I need to give you the password.”

  “Okay.”

  “You might want to write it down.”

  “I have a pretty good memory.”

  Cassy gave her the seventeen-character alphanumeric-symbol password. “Would you like me to repeat it?”

  “It’s not necessary,” Julia said. “Is the password for this the same on your machine downstairs?”

  “No, ma’am. I erased it. Just in case.”

  “This is the only copy?” Julia asked, holding up the flash drive.

  “Yes,” Cassy said, and she started to go, but Julia gestured her to sit down.

  “Just a minute, please, if you have the time.”

  Cassy’s fear spiked, but then she steadied herself. “Of course,” she said and sat down.

  “You got a bad deal at Murphy Tweed from what I was told. It won’t happen here if your work pans out.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What I want to know is how you came across this virus of yours? What gave you the first clue?”

  “It was fairly easy once we knew what we were looking for.”

  “We?”

  “I meant me,” Cassy said. “I was seeing a bunch of odd-lot trades across the board. Started about two days ago, but it’s been peaking all this morning.”

  “What made you pick up on something like that?”

  “I have a seek-and-identify program I use. It’s an input to my main anti-hacking design-and-test program.”

  “I haven’t heard of it.”

  “It’s fairly new.”

  “You designed it?” Julia asked.

  “Yes,” Cassy said. “Anyway, as I said, I began picking up a lot of odd-lot trades, and when I went looking for the cause and the source, I came up with a pretty potent intrusion. Almost reminds me of the Stuxnet virus we and the Israelis used to mess up Iran’s nuclear program, except this one isn’t attacking industrial equipment, it’s going after our market computer systems.”

  “Do you have a name for your program?”

  “My Fair Lady.”

  Julia chuckled. “Why that name?”

  “It’s old-fashioned, but it’s always been my favorite musical.”

  “Problem solved.”

  “Maybe,” Cassy said. “But this thing is spreading really fast. So far it’s only in our system, almost as if someone was testing it on us first before releasing it.”

  “Any idea who’s doing it to us?”

  “It has the look of something the Amsterdam tribe would cook up just for the fun of it.”

  “Releasing it where?” Julia said, and she seemed a little pale to Cassy.

  “I don’t know. But I suppose if it were someone in our company, we might send it to a rival’s mainframe.”

  Julia sat back. “Good Lord, is that what you think is happening?”

  “No, I’m not accusing anyone. I was just saying something like it wouldn’t be the worst-case scenario.”

  “What would?”

  “Sending it out into the world.”

  “Where?”

  “Just down the street to the New York Stock Exchange for starters,” Cassy said.

  Julia sat still for a long moment or two. Then she picked up the flash drive. “And this would stop it?”

  Cassy nodded. “I’m pretty sure, it would.”

  Again Julia hesitated for a second or two. “Who else have you told about this?” she asked.

  “Just Francis, and Mr. Hardy was there before I left the floor. He heard some of it.”

  “How about any of your coworkers?”

  “Most of them know I’ve been working on an anti-virus program, but that’s what we all do every day. Keeps the firm out of trouble.”

  Julia smiled. “Go have your lunch now. I’ll take care of this. It’s what I do.”

  Cassy got up and started to leave.

  “Thank you,” Julia said. “Very much.”

  EIGHT

  KIDNAPPED

  46

  Hardy was at his desk trying to think out what was apparently coming at them tomorrow. Dammerman hadn’t said anything specific, but he and the top brass had been on tenterhooks for the past week or so, and especially this morning.

  It was no big deal to him to take down the Levin broad—orders were orders, and it was what he was getting paid for—but it made no real sense. Evidently she had pissed off someone on the top floor badly enough to order her elimination. Whatever she had done had to have been large. Kidnapping and murder were the real deal, a hell of a lot more real than extortion, racketeering, or money laundering. People could get serious jail time.

  But he had put a few things in place to cover his own ass. To begin with he’d made sure that whenever and wherever he and Dammerman had spoken there were no recording devices, and especially no wires. A few years ago a geek friend downtown had sold him a cigarette pack–size device that could detect any electronic emissions within a twenty-five-foot range.

  “Just keep your voice low enough so that someone outside that range can’t hear you,” the kid had told him.

  But in all that time, and for all the things he’d done for Dammerman and the firm, he’d never thought he needed the detector till now.

  His phone rang, and he picked it up. “Hardy.”

  It was one of his lieutenants, the same one who’d followed O’Connell. “Levin and Imani are just leaving the building.”

  “Follow them, and as soon as you find out what direction they’re taking, call me back. And if they take a cab, get the number and let me know immediately.”

  “Got it,” the man said and hung up.

  Like a lot of ex-cops, at the beginning of his career Hardy had been a gung-ho athlete, in fantastic physical shape. But as the years had gone by, switching from being a cop on a beat on foot to a detective sitting on his ass in a car on a stakeout, he’d gotten soft around the edges. A little paunch, a little weakness in the knees, for which he compensated with a short temper.

  Lately he’d been thinking about getting out. Maybe heading down to Miami Beach, something he’d talked about ever since he could remember. Summers here were okay, but the winters were bullshit.

  But the money at BP made up for a lot of snowy days and freezing-your-ass-off nights.

  His phone rang. “South on Nassau Street.”

  It was not the same direction Julia had taken—that had been to the
west—and he had to wonder if they were going to meet with the head of the NYSE, like Julia had. But it didn’t matter.

  “Stick with them until I call you,” Hardy said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hardy broke the connection and dialed Bykov’s burner phone. The Russian answered on the first ring.

  “Yes.”

  “They’re on the move.”

  “Where?”

  “On foot south on Nassau Street. Do you know where I’m talking about?”

  “Of course,” Bykov said. “Is the op a go?”

  Military asshole, Hardy thought. “The op is a go.”

  47

  Bykov had a map of Manhattan folded to show Fulton Street and the Financial District, the Brighton Beach operators at his side.

  He stabbed a finger on the location of the BP building on Nassau Street. “They’re heading south on foot.”

  “Are they going somewhere we can intercept them?” Anosov asked. He was the hardest of the two, and in his Spetsnaz days had been very efficient, especially in urban infiltrations.

  “Unknown. But they are being shadowed in case they take a cab or perhaps the subway. I’ll let you know when you’re entrain.”

  “I want unrestricted mission orders.”

  “Your only order is to make her disappear, permanently,” Bykov replied.

  “What about her companion, the kid?”

  “Him as well. But the woman may be carrying a flash drive—it’s a small device—”

  “I know what it is,” Anosov said.

  “If you find it, destroy it.” Bykov looked up from the map. “It would be unfortunate if I were to learn at some date in the future that the information contained on the drive were to surface somewhere. Ponimayu?” Understand?

  “Understood.”

  “Then udachi.” Good luck. “And go with God.”

  * * *

  Anosov and Valentin Panov took the elevator down to the parking garage, where they got their Cadillac Escalade SUV with deeply tinted windows from the guest parking spot. Valentin was behind the wheel, Leonid riding shotgun.

  Before they started the engine, Leonid took out the photographs of Cassy and Donni and studied them one by one, handing each to Valentin as he finished.

  “She’s a good-looking woman,” Leonid said, looking up.

  Valentin grinned. “Be a shame to eliminate her when we we’re finished.”

  Anosov had been thinking much the same since the first time he’d gotten a look at the photos. “What do you have in mind?”

  “She’s a marketable commodity.”

  “So is the boy with her.”

  “We don’t have a contract on him.”

  “So?”

  “When we’re done, we could clean them up and send both of them across the border to Canada—it’s soft enough—and then I was thinking we might get a good price with the Saudis. A package deal?”

  “A hundred thousand?” Anosov asked.

  “Each,” Panov said, and they laughed.

  “Go,” Leonid said.

  Panov started the Caddy, backed out of the slot, and once outside, turned onto Platt, headed west.

  “What’s our play?” Panov asked.

  “Get over to Nassau, do whatever you have to do to get ahead of them, and then double-park. I’ll get out. I don’t think we’ll have much trouble with either of them, especially if I let them see my gun.”

  48

  Cassy and Donni stopped for the light at Maiden Lane, just a couple of blocks down from BP. The streets weren’t as narrow here as they were south of Wall, and traffic was heavy both on Nassau as well as on the sidewalks.

  Cassy took out her phone and dialed the NYSE main number. She was frightened now, and her hand shook.

  “Are you okay?” Donni asked.

  She glanced at him as the number rang. His eyes were wide, and he acted as strung out as she was. “Look back and see if Hardy’s got someone following us,” she said.

  He turned around. “Not that I can see.”

  The NYSE operator answered, and Cassy asked to speak with Betty Ladd.

  “Who is calling, please?”

  Cassy gave her name.

  “One moment, please.”

  The light changed, and for some reason Cassy’s eye was drawn to a white Cadillac Escalade with New York plates. The side windows were so deeply tinted that she could hardly see inside, and she only caught a glimpse of the driver and maybe one person on the passenger side when it passed them heading south.

  Betty came on almost immediately. “Good afternoon,” she said.

  “I’m on my lunch hour, and I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Is it about work?” Betty asked, her voice suddenly sharp.

  “I think so, but I’m a little confused. And scared.”

  “Okay. Where are you right now?”

  “A couple blocks south of the office. I could be at the exchange in just a few minutes, if you have the time for us.”

  “Who’s with you?”

  “One of my friends in the DCCS.”

  “Okay, listen, stay right where you are, and I’ll send a car for you. Okay?”

  “I don’t want to make a fuss; anyway, no one is following us, and we can be there faster than you could send a car to us.”

  Pedestrians were surging around them. Donni took her arm and as they started across the street the traffic light counted down from eight seconds.

  “I’ll leave word at security out front and have Jennifer waiting inside to take you upstairs,” Betty said. “But for goodness sake, can you at least give me a hint?”

  “I’m bringing something for you to see. It’s important.”

  “Okay. I’ll be here, but calm down, okay?”

  “Okay,” Cassy said, her heart racing.

  49

  “That was them on the corner,” Anosov said.

  Valentin took the next turn onto Broadway, where he headed south, and then turned west at the next intersection back to Nassau, each time getting lucky with the lights.

  Anosov watched from the door mirror. “Got them,” he said. He took out his Steyr, checked the load one final time, and stuffed it in his belt on the left side, out of sight beneath his jacket.

  When the two were less than a half block away, Leonid got of the car and opened the rear door so that it was just slightly ajar.

  He put his right hand beneath his jacket, ready to open the coat far enough so that the weapon would be clearly visible to both the woman and the guy.

  Pedestrian traffic was heavy, and for a moment Leonid lost them. He stepped away from the car to get a better look.

  50

  Cassy spotted the same white Caddy SUV she’d seen passing them, a bulky, foreign-looking man wearing jeans, a white shirt or pullover, and a dark suit jacket standing beside it, and she pulled up short.

  “What?” Donni said.

  “The guy by the SUV. I think he’s one of Hardy’s people.”

  “Oh shit, oh shit,” Donni said.

  The man spotted them.

  “Run,” Cassy said, swiveling on her heel.

  Donni was frozen to the spot.

  “Run, goddamnit!”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t care, just run!” Cassy said. “I’ll meet you at the stock exchange.”

  Donni turned and sprinted away, and the man by the Caddy suddenly shoved a pedestrian aside and headed toward Cassy, who was rooted to her spot for a long moment. She managed to speed-dial Ben’s number, then turned and headed the same way Donni was running.

  Ben answered on the second ring. “Hi, darling, what’s up?”

  “A man in a white Caddy SUV was waiting for me and Donni and now he’s heading my way. I think he might be one of Hardy’s people, and I think he means to kidnap me.”

  “Listen to me, Cassy. I want you to head someplace more public than a street corner, maybe a bank lobby that will have security.”

  “I’m running.�
��

  “Tell me everything you can. You said a white Caddy SUV. Plates?”

  “New York,” Cassy said, and she gave Ben the first three numbers.

  “One man?”

  “On the passenger side, chasing me. Another driving.”

  “Describe the man chasing you.”

  “Dark, large, wearing jeans and a jacket. I think he’s foreign.”

  “I have you on your GPS tracker. You’re two and a half blocks south of BP; run there if you think you can make it.”

  Cassy looked over her shoulder. The man was shockingly close, less than thirty feet away now, and gaining. “I can’t make it, Ben. He’s right here.”

  “Stop right now. Turn around and take his picture and send it to me. Then start yelling. Cause a public scene. That will stop him.”

  “Ben—”

  “Do what I say, Cassy, your life depends on it.”

  She pulled up short, turned around and took the man’s photograph, and hit the send button.

  He was on top of her.

  She raised both hands over her head. Her heart was racing, and she was sure that her legs were going to give way.

  An ambulance, its siren blaring, came across Nassau on Maiden Lane at the same time the man reached her. He opened his jacket so that she could see the gun in his belt.

  “There’ll be no trouble, Ms. Levin, if you will come with me. I promise that we will not harm you. But if you make noise, we will.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Something that doesn’t belong to you from your office.”

  “I don’t have the flash drive. I left it with my boss.”

  Leonid took Cassy’s arm, and turned and started back toward the Cadillac.

  She tried to pull away, but he was too strong. “You son of a bitch,” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “Help me! Help!”

  “We’re going to the precinct station,” the man said, loudly enough so that the few passersby who were taking notice could hear. “With or without the handcuffs.”

  She didn’t know what to do.

  “Then we’re going to fetch your boyfriend.”