Upon the opening of the bathroom door, Killian opened his eyes. He sat himself back up and RJ flashed him a smile as she turned and headed into the kitchen to fix them both a coffee before returning to her position next to him on the couch. Once she had again settled herself tight against his side and had again tucked her legs warmly beneath her, she resumed the video and they both sipped from their steaming cups as they watched it to its conclusion.
CHAPTER EIGHTY
You know, son, I don’t mean to make light of what I did, but in the beginning, spying for the Russians was actually a pretty easy thing to do. Well, easy except for the helpless, emasculated feeling and suicidal guilt it leaves you to deal with, that is. But for the most part, the life I led during the times I was passing secrets to the Russians was just about completely normal. If anyone were to have observed me closely then, all they would have seen was a man who woke at five a.m. each morning as he always did, made the hour-and-a-half commute to his Bethesda office as he always did, ran his company for twelve hours a day as he always did, and made the hour-and-a-half drive home every evening as he always did. Everything normal, everything routine, everything as it had always been… again, for the most part.
“What wasn’t a normal part of my routine was all the time I now had to spend on a classified computer terminal inside the SCIF, the secure spaces within my headquarters building that had been hardened to resist unauthorized access and electronic monitoring, and which had to be inspected and approved by the government before my firm could use it to… Wait. What the heck am I explaining to you what a SCIF is? If anyone knows it’s got to be you with all the crazy classified stuff you must’ve done as a SEAL.
“Anyway, if anyone were to ask why I was all of a sudden spending so much time in a place where before the spying started I’m pretty sure I could have counted on one hand the number of times I’ve visited, and then those times were probably just to pop in real quick to tell my folks what a great job they were doing, I would have lied and said that I was working on a hush-hush solo consulting gig for a director of one of the intel agencies, or something to that effect. Even though I myself hadn’t done any consulting work in years, it still seemed a plausible enough cover to me since that’s how I built the company to begin with. But of course no one ever questioned me about it because, one, I held the proper clearances to be in there, and, two, as owner and CEO of the firm, I had every right to be wherever I wanted to be within its bounds, whether it be in our Bethesda headquarters building or any of our satellite offices.
“So, in addition to all the time I was spending in the SCIF, what else wasn’t normal about my new life as a spy was the flash drive my handler gave me that I now always kept tucked away in the right front pocket of my pants, the same flash drive that several times a week I would sneak into the SCIF and discreetly load into the drive of one of the classified terminals and download onto it one or two copies at a time of all the many dozens of classified cyber security contracts my company was currently working for the Intelligence Community, or the Department of Defense, or Homeland Security, or Treasury, or God only knows what other government agencies we had contracts with, the same flash drive that I would then take home with me in the evenings and load into the computer I had been given so that I could then upload the stolen files to whatever website they currently had me directed to, and the same flash drive that you loaded in your computer to allow you to watch this video.
“And for a while, that’s how my life as a spy went, that was the process I settled into. But there were only so many contracts and statements of work available to send them, so it wasn’t long before they began demanding more from me. I assume their cyber security experts must have analyzed not just the information I sent them, but also all the work my company is cable of doing, and from this analysis they targeted right in on what they wanted from what I provided them, as well as what it was they thought I could provide them. About half the work we do at my company is Red Teaming and vulnerability assessments, White Hat work, looking for backdoors and ways to break into client networks. Essentially, legal hacking. The other half is software testing and development. We can either test and clean up code already written, or we can be hired to build programs from scratch. We also have our own proprietary security software that we offer as a product to protect our clients’ networks.
“Well, let me tell you, the Russians pretty much wanted all of it, everything my company had to offer. They uploaded a prioritized list to one of their websites detailing which government programs we were working that they wanted copies of the source code from, which programs they wanted Red Team results and vulnerability assessments from, and they wanted a list of all the networks our security software was protecting, not just our government clients, but our corporate clients as well. And if that wasn’t enough, the greedy bastards also wanted me to create a backdoor access into the security software for them.”
Luc ran his fingers through his hair and looked wearily to the camera. “Killian, I tell you, son, after seeing that god damned list, the game had changed. I finally realized I was in way over my head.”
Killian shook his head slowly in disbelief. “No shit, old man,” he said, barely above a whisper.
“I mean, these dirty sons of a bitch wanted the keys to the entire kingdom, the government’s, my company’s. If I gave them our Red Team and vulnerability reports, they could use the data from them to possibly find their way into some of the most classified networks our government has. Not to mention if they had access to a backdoor into our security software…
“Hell, you know as well as I, Killian, that my company, Lebon Technologies & Solutions, is first and foremost a cybersecurity company. All the research I did decades ago on the potential dangers and vulnerabilities that would be inherent in an open, globally connected network, one like the little-known Internet was quickly becoming at the time, all the papers and books I published about it – I practically pioneered the cybersecurity industry, for Christ’s sakes. My brand, this company was built on me bringing to market, way before anyone even knew what a god damned hacker was, one of the first comprehensive suites of network security software ever offered. What other product has been on the market longer than the Lebon End Point Security Suite? Not many, I can tell you. So, when I’m talking about giving the Russians a list of all the networks my security software protects, I’m talking not just about the government now, which is bad enough, more than bad, but I’m also talking about some of the biggest corporations around the world.” He was upset now. There was a glean of sweat on his forehead and his face had reddened from the frustration he felt.
“For the first time since the whole affair began, I saw past my love for Ulyana and began taking into account all the damage I was causing. I became determined to stop spying, or, at least for the time being, to not give the Russians all that they were demanding of me. But at the same time I didn’t want to do anything that would cause any more suffering for Ulyana. I tell you, I didn’t know what to do, so I did the only thing I could think of at the time. I tried to stall.
“By now it had been well over six months that I had been spying for them, so I gave them an ultimatum. I told them that I wasn’t going to do anything more for them unless they released Ulyana and allowed her to come to the States to be with me. I explained to them, promised them, that once the two of us were together, once Ulyana was safely by my side, I would be a much better, more reliable asset for them because I wouldn’t want to do anything that might risk me losing her again.
“And then I told them in no uncertain terms that if they didn’t release Ulyana to me I was prepared to turn myself in, to confess my crimes, to live out the remainder of my life in prison. But before I did I would make it known to anyone who would listen, all the major newspapers and blogs, that they, the Russians, were holding Ulyana hostage, that they were abusing and torturing a helpless, innocent woman only to force me to spy for them.
“It was a long time before they r
esponded, close to a month-and-a-half, I think. The silence from them during that time was maddening. I thought, hoped, prayed even, that maybe their slow response was due to them working out the logistics of what it would take to get Ulyana to me. I thought for sure the damn Russians could see that they would have had much more leverage over me if they would have just allowed the two of us to be together. But they apparently didn’t see it like I did, the fools.” His voice gave out on him and he started coughing to cover up what sounded like sobs.
RJ squeezed Killian tight, as if holding onto him were a matter of her survival. “The poor, poor man,” she said, herself now close to tears.
After drinking some water and getting himself settled down, Luc cleared his throat and continued speaking, his voice so low now it could barely be heard. “When they finally did respond, instead of informing me they were going to release Ulyana like I had demanded, they gave me an ultimatum of their own: Continue spying for them immediately or she would die a slow, very painful death. They called her a traitorous whore and many other horrible things, saying that if I didn’t obey them that they would let all the prisoners rape her before they killed her. To make their point, they included a video of them torturing her.”
His voice began to give way and he took in a deep breath to try to steady it. But still it wavered when he began speaking again, his bottom lip quivering. “In it two masked men held her against the back wall of her cell where she always stood for the pictures they sent me. She was naked, crying. Another masked man entered the frame with a small knife. He taunted her with it, first waving it back and forth in front of her face so she could see it, then lightly dragging it up and down her body. She was so scared, so scared. Then, without a word, he began making thin cuts across her… her breasts and nipples. She of course cried out in pain and tried with all her might to resist, to free herself, but it was of no use. The men holding her were too strong. She soon gave up trying to fight them and began begging to them. She was speaking in Russian so I don’t know what she was saying, but I have never seen anyone look so desperate, so without hope. She was covered in blood now, but the monster still kept slicing her up. Even after she passed out, he kept cutting her, finishing with her breasts and working his way down her belly, and then down past it. He got down on his knees, but the video cut off just as he was about to make cuts into her… her… Oh, Jesus, Killian,” Luc cried out. “Instead of rescuing my Ulyana, helping her, I made things so much worse for her, so much worse…” His voice broke, and this time he didn’t try to contain the sobs.
RJ looked up at Killian with tears in her eyes. “Do you still think the whole thing was a setup after hearing that? I mean, I almost hope it was because then everything your father just described would have been fake, an act. If it wasn’t, what they did to that woman is just too awful to imagine.”
Killian nodded thoughtfully. “Well, the Russians are capable of some pretty awful things so I wouldn’t put it past them one way or the other. But I have to admit… maybe this Ulyana wasn’t part of the operation after all. Maybe she really did love my father.”
RJ buried her face into his chest, her body shaking from the tears she cried.
When Luc’s sobs finally subsided enough to where he thought he would be able to speak again, he sighed heavily, despondently, as if it were the last breath he would ever take, and then wiped away the tears in his eyes that had yet to fall. “Either they were calling my bluff, or, with relations between the U.S. and Russia already so bad, they just didn’t feel threatened by me going public about their imprisonment and torture of her. Besides, with so many of their government enemies turning up dead without any significant response from the West, they were probably pretty confident that no one would care about what I had to say.
“Once again I was left not knowing what to do. I mean, I couldn’t, with what little good conscious I had left, just give them all that highly classified information they wanted, the damage it would do to our national security would be immeasurable. And I certainly couldn’t follow through with my threat to expose them, since after seeing that video I had no doubt they would kill her if I did. But the one thing I did know – I couldn’t just let the bastards keep on blackmailing me for the rest of my life now that I knew they were never going to let Ulyana and I be together. I had to find out who was behind the operation against me, who was holding Ulyana prisoner. I thought if I could find out who the individuals were, then maybe I could find some way to force them to release her. If I could find something compromising, maybe I could turn the tables and blackmail them, or, I don’t know, find some way to threaten their families maybe… I didn’t know what to do exactly, I just knew that I had to do something.
“My first thought was to recruit someone from inside my company. We are always out looking to hire the best coders, engineers, and hackers we can find. I thought that maybe I could convince one of these new hires, someone young who wasn’t yet familiar with how the business worked, to join me on what I would say was a highly classified government project to try to infiltrate a branch of the Russian intelligence community and identify its members. But I quickly dismissed that idea. Too risky. If we were successful, that would mean there’d be a good chance this employee of mine would discover that I had been spying for the Russians.
“My next thought was to the web. I knew, with all the illegal hacking going on, photos from movie stars’ phones, large companies’ data bases, hospital medical records, that there are marketplaces and exchanges where criminal hackers can sell their stolen wares as well as be contracted for new work. The problem is finding these places. So I started visiting message boards, first to fairly open, mostly benign sites like Reddit, but what I learned there quickly pointed me to other, more closed, more malignant sites. One of my primary leads came from a site called 4chan. Geez, what a horror show that place is. Let me tell you, when the apocalypse comes, I’m pretty sure 4chan will be ground zero.
“Look, I know what you’re thinking. With the business I’m in, of course I already knew how dangerous and disgusting the underbelly of the internet was. Hell, I made my living selling products that protected people and organizations from it, from the average consumers right up to the largest governments and multinational corporations. It’s what has allowed my company to grow into the success it has become today. But even still, it had been a long time since I had witnessed that garbage first hand, probably not since I was conducting the research for my doctoral thesis and the subsequent books I wrote about it. But that was years, decades ago, back when the internet’s vast potential for the facilitation of criminal behavior was just being discovered.
“These days, most of what I knew about it came through reports and research done by others, focus group findings, sanitized things like that. Until lately, I had never once made such an extended, personal journey into the modern internet’s so-called dark web. And I tell you what Killian, you wouldn’t believe what I found there. I couldn’t believe what I found there. Drugs, weapons, prostitution, just about any type of criminal act you could think of. Even murder contracts were available for purchase. And then of course… people were there too – men, women, boys, girls, children, babies even for Christ’s sake, all could be found there, the most unfortunate, desperate of humans to be bought and sold there like cattle...”
But of course Killian could believe it. His father was on the exact same path that he had started on when he began looking for leads into the sex trafficking trade. But he remained silent about it, not wanting to give RJ another reason to pause the video again and interrupt his father from finally getting to the end of this drawn out confession of his. He needed to go back to bed, to get himself horizontal, to close his burning eyes and try to sleep, try to sleep away the pain, the headache… no, it was more than a headache, more than a migraine even. He wasn’t even sure if this pain he was feeling originated in his head, if it was even a physical pain at all. It felt like it penetrated from without, as if a satellite was steadily t
racking him from above and blasting down at him a high-powered, pulsating, mind-destroying laser beam that targeted his left temple precisely and without fail.
“…but as gross and unimaginable as it was, the sites I visited did eventually lead me to what I was looking for. Yes, on the dark web you can hire anyone to do just about anything you ask, as long as you have the money to pay for it. And by money I mean some type of crypto currency like bitcoin, which I’m sure you’ve heard of. It was a long drawn out process, driven by extreme paranoia and mistrust obviously, but the hacker I eventually ended up working with demanded payment in a currency called monero. I had never heard of it, nor had I ever invested in crypto currency before, so I had to figure all that out before I could do anything…”
Killian moaned. “Jesus, I hope he’s not planning on taking us through the entire process of how to convert cash into crypto currency.”
RJ reprimanded him with a tight squeeze around his waist.
Outside, the clouds broke and all at once sunshine began blasting in through the living room’s lone window as if a klieg light had been turned on. Up until then Killian had been following along with the video while coping with the pain pounding inside his head. It had been uncomfortable, to say the least, but he had at least been able to deal with it, to ignore it; there were even a few times when he had become engrossed deeply enough in his father’s story that he had been able to forget about it completely for a moment or two. But now with bright, mote-filled rays of sun angling into his eyes, aggravating them, slicing into them like hot razors, the pain in his head, the ringing in his ears, the nausea, all became so intense, so immediate, that they could no longer be ignored. Taking deep breaths and closing the eyes tight helped, some. But not enough. With his eyes squeezed shut, he leaned his head back gently onto the couch and, through the pain, the pounding, the ringing, through the dark, he tried to follow along with what his father was saying…
The Good Kill Page 46