by D S Kane
CYPHERGHOST
BOOK 7 IN THE SPIES LIE SERIES
D. S. KANE
([email protected])
Copyright © 2016 D S Kane
All rights reserved.
ISBN-10: 0-9862321-8-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-9862321-8-3 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-0-9862321-7-6 (Kindle)
ISBN: 978-0-9862321-9-0 (ePub)
Cover design by Jeroen Ten Berge [www.jeroentenberge.com]
Print layout and eBook editions by eBooks By Barb for booknook.biz
Praise for DS Kane’s Spies Lie Series
Bloodridge
“A globe-trotting spy thriller dense with intriguing insider’s knowledge.”—Kirkus Reviews on Bloodridge
“I thoroughly enjoyed this book … It is definitely a page-turner.”—Judge, 22nd Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards on Bloodridge
“This is a sizzler torn straight from tomorrow’s headlines. Bloodridge by D.S. Kane is one you won’t want to miss.”
—John Reinhard Dizon, author of Nightcrawler and Wolf Man on Bloodridge
“What a wild ride! Filled with adventure and suspense and kept me on the edge of my seat. There wasn’t a slow moment in it. Reminiscent of Ludlum and Follett.”
—Sharon Law Tucker, Author, How To Be A BadAss, A Survival Guide For Women on Bloodridge
DeathByte
“Readers who adore action-packed thrillers in the vein of Robert Ludlum’s Bourne series will enjoy its many double-crossings.”—Kirkus Reviews on DeathByte
“This was a great thriller … and the speed of the plot was breathtaking.”—Judge, 22nd Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards on DeathByte
Swiftshadow
“A must read for lovers of this genre.” —Sheri A. Wilkinson, book blogger on Swiftshadow
“…the high stakes and dizzily paced action will hook genre fans from the first page.”—Kirkus Reviews on Swiftshadow
GrayNet
“Conspiracy theorists are sure to devour this novel.”
—Mallory Heart Reviews on GrayNet
“Nonstop action and suspense starring the definition of a strong female lead.”—Kirkus Reviews on GrayNet
Baksheesh (Bribes)
“More wild, violent adventures in the world of international espionage…”—Kirkus Reviews on Baksheesh (Bribes)
“This Story Should be an Audible Selection … Could be a Major Motion Picture…”—By Charles W, TOP 500 REVIEWER on Baksheesh (Bribes)
ProxyWar
“The latest adventure in a series that only grows more engaging with each installment.”—Kirkus Reviews on ProxyWar
“Mr Kane saved the best for last of course he left open the next installment. And he brought back accidental spy Jon Sommers to finish things up. Please write fast Mr Kane so we can see what happens next!” —Richard L. Cooper, Amazon Reviewer on ProxyWar
The Spies Lie Series by DS Kane:
Bloodridge, Book 1 – AMAZON BESTSELLER
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K0029J0)
DeathByte, Book 2 – AMAZON BESTSELLER
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L2LLKSC)
Swiftshadow, Book 3 – AMAZON BESTSELLER
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MJ5KXKG)
GrayNet, Book 4 – AMAZON BESTSELLER
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P8HRT9U)
Baksheesh (Bribes), Book 5– AMAZON BESTSELLER
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/B010NR3RD6)
ProxyWar, Book 6– AMAZON BESTSELLER
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/B018YS91CM)
and CypherGhost, Book 7
…with more to come.
For Eric Witchey, model story-teller,
and my very best writing teacher.
Contents
PART I
CHAPTER 1 • CHAPTER 2
ONE YEAR LATER
CHAPTER 3 • CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5 • CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7 • CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9 • CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11 • CHAPTER 12
PART II
CHAPTER 13 • CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15 • CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17 • CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19 • CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21 • CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23 • CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25 • CHAPTER 26
PART III
CHAPTER 27 • CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29 • CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31 • CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33 • CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35 • CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37 • CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39 • CHAPTER 40
PART IV
CHAPTER 41 • CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43 • CHAPTER 44
Glossary A • Glossary B
Appendix A – Character List
for the Spies Lie series (alphabetical)
Appendix B – On CyberWar
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events depicted here are the work of the author’s mind. Most but not all of the places are real.
PART I
I’m a future-hacker; I’m trying to get root access to the future. I want to raid its system of thought.
—St. Jude (Jude Milhon), hacker and author
Surveillance is ultimately not about safety. Surveillance is about control.
—Edward Snowden, Former NSA consultant
and whistleblower
CHAPTER 1
February 25, 6:56 a.m.
First Basement, Lubyanka Prison,
Moscow, Russia
Ann Silbey Sashakovich sat on the ice-cold gray concrete shelf in the prison cell the guards had tossed her into. She had landed as if she were a rag doll, hitting the concrete floor and bouncing against the wall. She rubbed the spot on her left shoulder that had taken the brunt of the landing. The damage was just one big black-and-blue mark, but she was otherwise okay.
She was soon shivering, staring into the single bulb’s light, too dim to make it possible to examine the spartan features of the cell. She could tell that there was no real mattress. She saw only a piece of olive-drab threadbare cloth, draped over what would serve as a cot if she lived long enough to need sleep. The teenager rubbed her shoulder again. She felt a twinge as she remembered how a guard had dragged her body from the lobby down the stone staircase to the first basement. She had bounced off each slab of chipped concrete, and the snorkel parka she had worn was now ripped to shreds where the guard had grabbed her. Ann was five-feet-four inches tall and weighed less than one hundred and twenty pounds. That wasn’t a fair fight, she thought. And this wasn’t even the worst that had happened to her.
She remembered her birth mother’s death from a meth overdose in their Brooklyn tenement apartment six years ago, when she was twelve years old. Suddenly homeless, she and her younger brother Joshua had entered the tunnels underneath Grand Central Station, looking for handouts. But she was raped. When her brother attempted to stop her attacker, the man had snapped Joshua’s neck. It took her several months to become adept at surviving the tunnels. When she met Cassandra Sashakovich, the woman was fleeing a group of terrorists. Ann helped Cassie learn how to survive on the run. In return, after she had recovered her life, Cassie had found Ann and adopted her.
Cassie and her team were now trying to prevent Russia and China from invading the United States, and Ann’s part was to hack the Russian electric grid in Moscow, to prevent the Russian army from communicating to achieve their invasion.
She could hear one of the guards yelling at her mother’s uncle, Misha Kovich. She assumed Misha’s cell was nearby.
Ann had been taught
by one of the world’s best computer hackers. She was an expert in many computer languages, including C++, C#, markup languages such as CSS and HTML, and scripting languages including Java and Python. At eighteen, she would be attending Stanford University next autumn, if she survived this week.
But this week had already become a tangled adventure, and, locked in a cell within Russia’s Lubyanka prison, she was now sure that she and Misha would not be able to complete their mission. Because of her failure, Russia would successfully invade the United States. When Uncle Misha had enrolled her in this mission, he told her he had connections within Russia from his days with the KGB several decades earlier, and they both had concluded that if Ann could hack the Russian electric grid, it would give the United States enough time to thwart the imminent invasion. Unfortunately, Misha lacked the computer skills to do this himself.
She heard the echo of guards walking up the staircase, away from the cellblock. She listened and heard no further sound. Misha and she were now alone. She wondered if she could shout loud enough for him to hear her.
She stared at the cell. No window. The door was painted metal with a panel of bars at eye level about ten inches in length, too thick to be easily cut. From what Misha had told her, the Lubyanka building was over a hundred years old. She could see the locking mechanism at the right edge of the door, about eight inches left and below the bars. She was sure that if she just had a hairpin or paper clip she could pick the lock, but everything she and Misha had with them had been taken by the guards.
She saw a silent shadow move along the wall outside her cell, coming toward her location. A few seconds later, she saw Uncle Misha’s head outside the cells bars. The sight of her uncle’s stoic, bearded face flooded her with warm relief. Maybe the world wouldn’t end just yet.
The huge former KGB officer carried a bump key in his right hand. He pointed to his beard and winked. That was where he’d concealed the bump key. He whispered, “Russian prison was built before First World War. Cells have old locks.” With his left hand, he signaled her to be silent. He sprung the cell door open in seconds and motioned for her to follow him.
At the staircase, they headed down two flights, to a doorway with a small glass window. She peeked through the window into the room beyond the firedoor. She saw red and bluish lights blinking. She could hear a distinct hum. Misha drew her ear close to his mouth and whispered. “Ready?”
She nodded and pointed to the next room.
Misha nodded back. “Da. Now. We haven’t much time before they discover we’ve escaped.” He pushed the door open. They both squeezed through and moved to a spot where they could hide between rows of netservers with blinking red lights. She read the labels on the blue servers as she moved down a row of units. All were manufactured by IBM. Even in the dim lighting, she recognized the model numbers and searched for the nearest interface panel.
The server room hummed, loud enough to cover their conversation.
She pointed to a terminal. “There should be a USB port at the back end of the keyboard.”
She ran her fingers along its back. She turned away from Misha so he couldn’t see and reached through her panties, pulling the thumb drive with the Mossad’s Stuxnet II program in it from inside her rectum. She wiped the drive on her sleeve, pulled the cover off its active end and inserted it into the port. A window in Cyrillic script popped up on the screen. The only languages Ann understood besides English were computer languages. “What does it want?”
Misha scratched his beard as he studied the dialog box. “It says, what you want to do with files on the drive? There is list. The first alternative is to store files on the server. The second alternative is to run one of its programs.”
She selected the second alternative and another dialog box opened. “What now?”
“It displays choices of programs. There is only one.”
She nodded. “Run Stuxnet II.” She highlighted her selection and pressed the Enter key. Another dialog box opened. “What’s this?”
“You need to enter a password for the program to start.”
Ann took a deep breath. “Michael Drapoff gave me a password that should work. Her thin fingers pounded on the keyboard and “Ratworm” appeared on the screen. As she watched, several screens flew by. She thought they might be finished until another dialog box popped up. “What’s this one say?”
Misha frowned. “It says ‘Unreadable File. Unrecoverable Error.’”
She grimaced. “Crap. How long before they come looking for us?”
“Dunno,” he shrugged.
She took a few seconds to calm herself. The code in the program would be unreadable for an outdated computer such as the one the Russians were using for their electric grid. She keyed an override code that Michael had told her about and the message disappeared. The dialog box was replaced by another.
Misha translated it. “Says we can proceed but program may not install correctly.”
She nodded. “Okay.” Her index finger touched the Enter key.
Misha read the next dialog box. “It says ‘Working.’ Wait. Now it says ‘Process Complete.’ Can we leave now?”
She removed the thumb drive and rose from the terminal seat. In triumph, she grinned at Misha. “Oh, yeah. How do we get out of here?”
Before he could answer, the room went dark. A klaxon began to blare. In seconds, the emergency lights came on, blinked twice, and went out. The alarm stopped in mid-ring.
She smelled something burning and heard crackling from within the server boxes.
Misha touched her shoulder. “We’ve just sent Russia back to the Dark Ages, my little one. We must leave as fast as we can. Follow me.”
Misha pulled Ann by the arm through the doorway, into the stairwell, and up the unpainted concrete stairs. The only exit would be through the courtyard and out past the very guard who’d had them arrested. They had no weapons. Ann feared they would be caught again.
Misha stopped at the stairwell’s exit and turned to face her. “This is where we may have small problem. Ready?”
She nodded. But she could feel her knees shaking.
He pulled the door ajar.
She listened to the sounds of men and women moving blind in darkness through the lobby. The doors into the courtyard had closed automatically when the power failed. Possibly, they locked automatically. If so, it would be a big problem.
“Follow me.” He reached out his hand to take hers.
She trusted him to pull her into the roiling chaos and drag her through the darkness.
They made their way toward the main doorway and came face to face with the guard who’d arrested them before. She recognized him by his height, huge, despite the darkness. His red-brimmed hat and olive uniform were identical to all the others, but his posture reminded Ann of a gorilla. The guard snarled at the chaos. Even in the dark, Ann was sure he could see them both.
“Seize them!” the guard yelled.
No one noticed or obeyed. Misha was almost as big as the guard. He grabbed the guard’s arm and used a systema throat stab, then bent the man’s arm to the breaking point. He punched the guard in the throat again and sent the man down to the floor. Misha glared at the man. In the scant light, no one seemed to notice the fight.
Ann pulled on Misha’s sleeve. He nodded, and they continued moving toward the only crack of light glowing at the emergency exit doorway. They struggled against the throng of agents moving in all directions like a human whirlpool. When they reached the emergency exit, it was closed but unlocked. Misha pushed Ann through the door and they stepped out into the Moscow winter.
It was almost as dark outside in Lubyanka Square as they emerged. Misha trudged through the snow and searched the street, then faced Ann. “We have a bit more trouble, little one. Our ride is not here.”
He pulled her to the side of the building and ducked them both against its façade. Ann assumed Misha was attempting to form a plan—where they might go first, how they could find safety, and what
it might take for them to leave Russia.
He faced into the direction of Red Square and ran, nearly dragging Ann off her feet. The sky was dark gray, and the snow falling in the dawn left them little light to guide themselves. Ann could hear the crowd of Lubyanka officers pouring out of the prison behind them.
One of the guards who must have seen them before now pointed at them and called out. Several guards ran after them. Ann realized the darkness of the street might work to their advantage. She hoped so.
Misha and Ann rounded a corner and bolted down an alleyway with brickwork buildings on both sides. At first, it appeared to be a dead end but with Misha sprinting ahead, gripping her hand, Ann had no choice but to follow. At the end of the alleyway a small gap in the wall became evident and Misha pulled her through into the street behind.
The snow had turned into a blinding blizzard, but Misha pointed down the street.
And there was the missing cab, its exhaust pipe billowing sluggish gray clouds into the snow and darkness.
Misha’s friend honked the ancient cab’s horn. Misha pointed, and Ann nodded.
They reached the cab just a few seconds ahead of the guards. Ann opened the cab’s rear door and was about to jump in when one of the guards caught Misha by the arm and wrestled him to the ground.
Ann used her leg to trip the guard, then jumped on his head with her boots. The guard stopped moving, but now the others were about twenty feet away. She pulled Misha up and shoved him into the cab, then jumped in after him and slammed the door before the other guards could catch up. The cabby floored the accelerator and the cab shot out into the dawn, spewing smoky exhaust behind them.
They were a very long way from the Russian border into the states bordering Turkey, but Ann knew they would have to get far from Russia to be safe. She wondered if the ancient taxi had that many miles left in its engine.
* * *
It had rained since dawn in Akron, Ohio, when Charlette DeSpain rose and dressed. Now the short, thin teenager stood underneath the outcropped roof of the old, red-brick high-school building, waiting for her boyfriend, Martin Burns. She’d always thought of herself as ugly, and was happy when Martin showed interest in her. He wasn’t handsome, but he was very bright. She had watched him in the early morning history class they shared. He always answered the teacher’s questions with elaborate answers that made her heart beat faster.