by D S Kane
After settling in, the three escapees sat in the living room, watching the television news, while Ann and the CypherGhost worked at the kitchen table. Jon had given the CypherGhost his own notebook computer. Ann and the CypherGhost were both busy at their notebook keyboards, clicking away as the local news played on TV.
“Happening now, who was responsible for the disappearance of over a million people, taken by the National Guard two weeks ago? Margot Strillet, KLOE reporting. And in a related story, one of the people who wandered into Tucson gave this reporter an interview. Listen to this.”
On the TV, an overweight man with two weeks of untrimmed whiskers scratched his head. “So, I was at home, in Orange, California. Just arrived from work. These uniformed men broke down my front door, handcuffed me, and placed a bag over my head. They put me into a railroad car that stank of animal waste, along with many, many others. Until last night, I didn’t know I’d been transported hundreds of miles. Then I was tossed into a cell with no shower, no real toilet, no lights. No place to sit. I was there for nearly four days, until the all cell doors just simply opened.”
“Who are you? Why do you think these uniformed men took you?”
“I’m Robert Powers, a security consultant for Orange Quilt Security. I test the efficacy of computer systems security. You know, zero-day software flaws. My company was hired by the Department of Energy to report on the status of the electric grid’s security. I was about to draft my report to the director, when I was taken. Now, I’m not so sure I even feel like sending them their frickin’ report. Whatever weaknesses there are, well, no computer specialist in his right mind would feel they owe anything to this government that unlawfully imprisoned over two million computer specialists. We were tossed away like trash.”
“But why do you think they did this to you?”
“My only guess is that the idiots thought that if they rid themselves of all the computer specialists in America, they’d be safe. Didn’t anyone tell them that without us, global black hats from countries that hate America would steal them blind? Now, I hope that’s what happens. They’d deserve it.”
The interview cut back to the talking head. “That’s as much as we have time for. Margot Strillet, KLOE.”
Cassie shook her head. “Wow. What do you think will happen now?”
William and Betsy were silent for nearly a minute.
William said, “My old apartment in Hong Kong is starting to look real good right about now.” He shrugged and looked at Betsy. “How about it, babe?”
Betsy nodded. “Sounds better and better, the more I think about it.”
Cassie’s face showed obvious shock. “Wait a sec. What about this country?”
Betsy shrugged. “After what they just did? If not for Jon and Avram, we three would still be in cells or wandering around Utah after your daughter and her friend hacked open the cell doors. Nope, the folks who run the government don’t want us. Why don’t you come with us, Cassie? Bring Ann.”
Cassie sat stock still. He face showed defeat. “Please. We can fix this. Stay and help.”
William smiled. He took a step away from Cassie. “No, I think not. Let’s pack.”
Cassie followed them into their bedroom. She closed the door. “Then I have a favor to ask.”
William nodded. “I expected that. Tell me what you need us to do.”
Cassie spoke with them for nearly two minutes, and after they agreed, she watched them leave the apartment for the airport. She wondered if they would be successful in leaving the country, and then successful in completing the task she’d asked them to perform.
* * *
Ann sat at the kitchen table listening to her mom. “Really? William and Betsy are gone?”
Charlette scowled, sitting across the table from Ann.
Ann waved her hand to stop Charlette from interrupting. “But, Mom, maybe they’re right. What can we do to change things here? It’s more like Nazi Germany than I ever thought it could be.”
Cassie’s voice was strident. “We can fight back. Find who was really behind this and let Avram and Jon do what they do best, using the Swiftshadow mercs.”
Ann didn’t have an immediate response. After a few seconds, she finally replied. “We’ll need to complete a lot of investigative work, and we’ll need a plan. Have Jon and Avram stop by the safe house. We’ll work with them as a planning team. Okay?”
Ann touched Charlette’s hand. “Let’s get started.”
As Cassie walked away, Charlette said, “What’s your mother going to say about us sleeping together?”
Ann thought for a few seconds. She frowned. “Dunno. Let’s do each other here, one more time. If I can make up a good enough reason to let us bunk together, maybe my mom will let us. We’ll just have to be quieter than we were last night.”
Charlette rose from the table and took Ann by the hand back to the guest bedroom. “They gave you the right call sign, ‘Little Noisy.’ Be quiet this time.”
* * *
Sitting at the safe house’s kitchen table, it took Cassie a while to remember the reporter’s name. Two years ago, April O’Toole had helped Cassie and a group of hackers. April was a legendary investigative reporter, having earned world-class creds for her reporting on arms dealers, drug cartels, gangs, and the hacking community. It took her just a few seconds more to remember the woman’s contact details. She pulled her cell from her pocket and punched in the woman’s number.
“April? It’s Cassandra Sashakovich.”
“I was wondering if you’d reach out. Were you in one of the detention camps?”
“Yes. Would you like the story? On the record?”
“Oh, yeah. Wait a few secs while I get to my computer. Do you mind if I record this?”
“Mind? No, I insist.”
“Okay, Cassie. Ready now.”
Cassie smiled. “It was absolutely surreal. Armed, uniformed soldiers broke down the door at the office of the Swiftshadow Group and cuffed us. William Wing, Elizabeth Brown, and me, and we’re all employees of the United Nations. They placed black bags over our heads and perp-marched us into a collections van. The bags remained on our heads for what I think was over two days. I remember standing in a transport rail car with many others, so crowded no one could sit. It smelled of body stink, vomit, and feces. They processed us like cattle, chipped us, and removed the head bags, then we were shoved into cells. I measured using my feet. My cell was about six feet by eight feet, no bedding, no light, no toilet, just a hole in one corner. And a food tray slot. About an inch high and eight inches across. Food was stale bread and a plastic bag containing water. No showers. When I escaped, the stink was so bad I had to sit alone until they could get me to a shower.”
No sound from April for almost an entire minute. “Holy shit, Cassie, was everyone treated this way?”
“My two friends were. It was pretty bad. If we hadn’t escaped, I think most of us would have died there, and soon.”
April said, “I have a ton of questions. Can you give me an hour?”
Cassie said, “Sure.”
But they spoke for over two hours.
That evening, her interview was front page news for the Washington Post, New York Times, Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and, it seemed to Cassie, everywhere else. Her cell started ringing nonstop, with interview requests from television news programs. She hadn’t remembered to turn it off and remove its battery.
* * *
Since the safe house apartment had four bedrooms, Ann had no easy excuse to bunk with Charlette. Ann decided she’d need to broach the subject of her relationship with Charlette directly with Cassie. She had found a way to get past the CypherGhost’s guard. Being intimate with the other hacker had seemed to work well. She could feel trust radiating back from the CypherGhost. But she couldn’t tell this to Cassie.
Jon and Avram were seated at the dining room table, arguing about one of Jon’s drafts of a plan to force the government to acknowledge what they’d attempted to do
to the hackers, and apologize. Avram’s solution was more military, Jon’s was more covert and espionage-based.
Cassie left the table to refill her coffee cup. Ann walked with her into the kitchen.
Ann touched Cassie’s shoulder. “Mom, I want to tell you something that happened two days ago.”
Cassie abruptly stopped pouring coffee into her cup. “What, sweetie?”
Ann gulped. Here goes. “I had sex with Charlette. A few times, in fact.”
Cassie stopped moving. She faced Ann. “Oh. You what? But, but. Uh, so is this a thing, are you two a thing?”
“I don’t know. It just happened. But it happened again, and we want to continue for now. I wanted to let you know. Can we sleep in the same bedroom?”
Cassie was silent for nearly a minute. “You’re eighteen. You can make your own decisions. Still…” Cassie stopped suddenly and was quiet, her lips moving without making any sound. “Oh, crap. Look, if it’s something you feel good doing, I won’t interfere. I never told you, but before Lee and I became a couple, I had sex with Judy Hernandez.”
Ann’s mouth fell open. “You and Judy? But, you’re married to Lee now.”
Cassie nodded. “Exactly. And I love Lee. Judy has always been a good friend. She still is. After Lee and I met, Judy and I stopped having sex. So, I guess you could say, I experimented. I see nothing wrong with that. So, have at it. Decide what’s right for you.” She completed filling her coffee cup, and smiled at Ann. “Remember that I love you.”
Cassie walked back to the dining room table where Avram was making a point about how changing any government’s behavior is always more difficult than any plans would make it appear to be.
Ann stood in the kitchen, alarmed at how easy that had been.
CHAPTER 28
December 6, 8:22 a.m.
Swiftshadow Safe House, Washington, DC
Years ago, just after Cassie had adopted Ann, Ann met William Wing and he had volunteered to be her computer tutor. She’d met Betsy a few months later and counted both of them as not only friends but also hacker co-conspirators. She couldn’t accept that now they’d be separated by thousands of miles. She wiped tears from the corners of her eyes, engulfed by sadness.
Cassie, Jon, Avram, Ann, and Charlette said farewell to William and Betsy. William had learned from Jon how to backstop an identity. William had browsed the Washington Post online for obituaries from two years ago and selected an Asian male and an American female, then crafted all the identity documents they would need as backups for their passports. He then hacked Motor Vehicles for their drivers’ licenses so they’d be able to rent a car. And, finally, the State Department’s computer, to insert their passport records and request printed ones be sent to them. William now “owned” ten identities, and Betsy another ten. All that was several days ago, in the hour before they left the country.
Betsy had become Alice Walker, a twenty-nine-year-old accountant from Kansas City, Kansas, and William became Warren Cho, a thirty-year-old high-school history teacher from Syracuse, New York. William knew it would be safer for them not to use their new identities at an American airport, so he and Betsy planned to drive their rental car through the Canadian border to Toronto, and fly from there to Hong Kong.
When William and Betsy had said their goodbyes and left, the remaining residents of the safe house seated themselves around the dining room table. Over eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee, Ann listened as Cassie told them all about how her interviews would be all over television for the next several days.
It was the first step in Jon’s plan. The steps that would follow might be increasingly more difficult to manage successfully, and the outlaws’ risk of exposure might grow exponentially.
The doorbell to the safe house buzzed. Cassie looked at the vidcam to see who it was. “Oh, good. It’s April O’Toole.” She opened the door and let the investigative reporter inside. “Thanks for all your help.”
O’Toole nodded. “Great story. Thanks for thinking of me. What’s next?”
Cassie grinned. “How would you like to meet the hacker who started the mess?”
“Ah, wow. Yes.”
Charlette stood up from her seat. “Hello. I’m the CypherGhost. You don’t need to know my real name. I guess I might as well tell you how and where I got involved.” She spent nearly an hour with O’Toole, beginning with Martin’s arrest and ending with the aborted aircraft takedown. “So, no one knew who I was. I had buried my real identity so deep, I even thought of myself as the CypherGhost, a living conundrum. But now, I’m wondering why the government started arresting hackers when they’d done nothing wrong, before that anti-hacker bill could even come to a vote. By arresting so many of us with no legal basis, they’ve made enemies of the entire tech community. Worse, as a result of the incarceration of white hats, every living American has now become a victim of identity theft.”
April sat and placed her wrist under her chin. “Is there any way to correct the identity theft thing? I know that I had to spend hours arguing with my bank about all the money that was stolen from my credit cards and my IRA last week, and then I had to present a printed and signed original copy of the title insurance for my condo before its ownership was granted back to me from some hacker in North Korea. According to the new banking law, it seems individuals are held personally responsible for thefts from their bank accounts. One of my friends at the IRS told me that the IRS has had tax refunds claimed for over forty-five million Americans in the last six days, totaling over eight hundred billion dollars. They know that the refund claims are frauds, made by hackers who aren’t even residents of the United States, but they haven’t any way to tell who owns the identities for any taxpayer in the country anymore.” She shrugged. “What a mess.”
Charlette frowned. “I never meant for any of this to happen. Well, I wanted to murder those who were responsible for Martin’s wrongful death, but this goes way past murder. The entire country has been harmed. So many people lost their hope for a future.”
April tilted her head. “What you tried to do—murder—was heinous. But what resulted wasn’t your fault. And it’s a great story. I’ll let you read it before it goes out to press.” April turned off her recorder and turned on her notebook computer. She sat at the table and typed on her notebook.
Jon nodded. “Right, then. Now on to the next step. Who was the senator who tried to get the anti-hacker bill turned into a law?”
Cassie said, “Her name is Ruth Cantor. From Maryland.”
Jon scanned the internet. “Huh. Did you know she resigned last night?”
Everyone at the table craned forward.
Jon nodded, summarizing the story on the screen of his own notebook. “Yes. Last night after the news cycle ended, Cantor claimed urgent family matters necessitated her resignation. But, rumors claimed her resignation was demanded by the President. Seems she’s divorced and has no children, so the cover’s a lie.” Jon scanned to the end of the article. “Nothing more, just some bullshit about how the bill she authored was sponsored in the House of Representatives by Arthur Endor, a Republican from a small industrial district in South Dakota.”
Jon scanned the screen and chuckled. “Oh, here is something interesting. Neither one owns a computer.” Jon chuckled.
* * *
Ruth Cantor had driven home the previous night after cleaning out her office. She’d parked the Mercedes in the circular driveway and dragged her suitcase through the front door. Every footstep sounded an echo in the spacious house where she’d spent almost no time since she’d been elected to the Senate five years ago. She dropped the suitcase’s handle and left it standing near the front door. After staggering into the kitchen, she found a bottle of bourbon, but didn’t bother with a glass. She sat on a stool at the counter, crying, for several hours between sips from the bottle.
Her career was over. The more she thought about it, the more she thought her life was over.
It took her six hours to finish the entire bottle of
bourbon. Now, as the sun rose into the sky, she was very drunk. She staggered to the dresser in her bedroom and opened its bottom drawer. She pulled out the .45 caliber handgun her ex-husband had given her when they were together, and closed the drawer. She checked to see if it was loaded. The clip was full. Her husband had divorced her after she was elected to the Senate five years ago. Now, there was no one who would miss her.
Ruth cocked its trigger and placed it against her ear. She grimaced as she pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
She took a deep breath and carefully loaded a bullet into the chamber. Her hands shook. She took another deep breath, then placed the barrel to her ear a second time.
This time when she pulled the trigger, it worked.
CHAPTER 29
December 6, 5:02 p.m.
Swiftshadow safe house, Washington DC
The group sat around the kitchen table in an angry attempt to formulate a plan they could use. Cassie hoped for one that wouldn’t risk death for any of them. Although much of the plan had been formulated, no one was satisfied with it. They’d argued for several hours, and no real progress had been made.
Avram stared at the whiteboard and shook his head. “I have difficulty believing your approach will work, but I’m willing to discuss the holes I see in it with the group, Jon.” He examined the whiteboard and shook his head.
Jon’s eyebrows rose. He took a deep breath and let it out. “Do you have a better one? If not, then this is the best the group can do. What’s it to be?”
Avram sat rock still and said nothing more. His lips were clenched, displaying his unhappiness. Cassie rose from her seat. “I need a break. Let’s reconvene after something to eat.” The others nodded.
While Jon cooked dinner, Cassie turned on the television.
“Our top story tonight, is the untimely death by suicide of Senator Ruth Cantor of Maryland just a few hours ago. She left a brief note, apologizing for all the trouble she caused with the technology community. This is Margot Strillet, KLOE, reporting.”
Cassie said, “Holy crap! Divine justice!”