Feral: An Our Cyber World Prequel

by Suastegui, Eduardo

  “The response should be simple,” Odehl said. “Base it on your white paper, add the pricing data, and voila! You got yourself a compliant proposal.”

  Martin shrugged. “If you say so.”

  “There will be some negotiation on price,” Beloski noted. “Lots of emphasis on fair price and best value in the government’s contract shop, so you’ll have to right-price it.”

  Which Martin knew meant he should pad the price enough so when they negotiated it down, he got the cash flow he wanted.

  He shrugged again and paged to a section he’d forced himself to set aside earlier. With his index finger on the paragraph in question, he looked up at Odehl and held his gaze for a moment.

  “U.S. citizens only.”

  Odehl forced what turned into a sour smile. “Yeah.”

  “She’s essential. Wouldn’t you say, Robert?”

  Odehl exchanged a quick look with Beloski. Stan leaned in over the conference room table.

  “Is she? At this point, do we need her as much as we needed her when we got started?”

  Martin fixed his gaze on Odehl. “You had no intention of silver-bulleting her. Ever. Did you?”

  “We’re still working it, Martin.” Odehl puffed his lips and shook his head. “It’s just not looking very promising.” He thumbed at Beloski, then waved at Dennis and the other two team members. “We think she’s not as essential at this point in the program.”

  “We’ve squeezed all you can get out of her. Let’s toss her out.”

  “We’ve pushed really hard to keep her this long. Stuck our necks far, far out. But yes, significant security concerns remain. We need to re-evaluate and see whether the balance still merits what most consider a significant risk.”

  Martin nodded. He closed the RFP document and patted its front page.

  “If we include a foreign national, we’d no longer have a compliant proposal, right?”

  Odehl’s facial features creased into a pained expression. “Yes, but do we really want to—”

  Martin raised his hand. “I get it. It’d be a deviation. We’d have to write a pretty strong case.” He thumbed at his chest. “That’s on me. I’ll write it up.” He raised his hand to pre-empt any further objections. “I’ll sleep on it. See where things land.”

  He slid the document to Dennis, told him to keep it safe and warm for him, and walked out. By his watch, it was almost noon time. He’d go get some lunch, maybe not come back for the afternoon. On the way out, he went by Sasha’s office to see if she wanted to join him. A sticky note on her door said she’d left for the day. Doctor’s appointment, her handwriting said, with a female symbol next to the word “doctor.” Not coming back till tomorrow.

  Martin frowned. His gaze remained on the cartoonish female symbol. Did that mean what he thought it meant? Did it have anything to do with him? He tried to think back to the last time he and Sasha had been together. A month, maybe longer. He couldn’t remember whether it had happened at her place or his.

  27» Loose Ends

  Before she walked into Dr. Tsai’s office, Sasha pulled up her newest burner phone. She used it to send a text. It took ten minutes for the reply to come back. Too long. She’d be late now. But worth it. The IP address of the doctor’s main outbound server came back. Her remote code had done its work.

  She counted off the seconds. A thousand-one, a thousand-two… Ten seconds passed before her burner rang.

  No sooner had she answered it, a breathless female voice on the other side said, “Our computers went down. It’s really a bad time. We need to do a lot of billing today.”

  “OK. As luck would have it I just finished another job, not far from you. Be there in five minutes.”

  She hung up and counted off the minutes. Four minutes later, she stepped out of the car and made the minute and a half walk to the office.

  Inside, the receptionist let her in at once. In a few moments, Sasha found herself in the closet that housed the office’s computer system. Doctor Tsai came to stand at the doorway as she logged in.

  “Will it be long?”

  She gave him a sideways smile. “Well, it doesn’t seem serious. Computers are up. Might need a reboot. I’ll know soon enough.” She faced him more squarely while she waited for her login to complete.

  “How have you been?” he said.

  “Good.”

  He nodded. “OK.” He stood half-propped against the door frame, his free hand fiddling with his white coat. He seemed at odds with himself.

  No doubt recalling the off-the-books procedure in exchange for her services. Dr. Tsai had gotten the better part of the deal. His servers had been a mess. Still were, hanging on by the barest thread, except for the one she’d convinced him to replace. It didn’t take much for her to rattle them.

  “Well, I’ll leave you to your work,” Dr. Tsai said before he stepped away.

  Sasha closed the door almost all the way. The chill of the over-conditioned air went through her. She closed her eyes for a few moments and opened them again to face the task at hand.

  She plugged in a thumb drive and loaded her code. Over the next fifteen minutes, she ran it. To someone coming in after her—if anyone cared to do so—it would look like nothing but a diagnostic. The log files would say as much. The screen in front of her told a different story. It lit up with a map of Iran. Inside it, tiny dots flickered in shades ranging from yellow to green.

  Her little hooks. Her taps. All alive. All talking back to her. She nodded with a small measure of satisfaction. Well, she had that as a fallback if it all went south. Something to offer the Americans or the Israelis, though she had no intention of serving either. Not if she had her choice.

  She ran a few tests and diagnostics—not on the local systems, but on those a half a world away. The results came back better than she expected at this juncture. Her code had infiltrated farther than she’d anticipated. Or to put it another way, her worst-case prediction could have used more optimism.

  At this point she could have kept the doctor’s office system down to preserve maximum bandwidth for herself. But she didn’t need it, and she didn’t have the heart to keep these poor souls down. She ran a script that undid her remote hack. Before she could go outside to notify the office staff, she heard the receptionist scream something to the effect that they were up again.

  She stuck her head out of the computer closet. “I’m going to run some diagnostics, make sure I got everything. Things may slow down a bit here and there, but you should be able to work through it.”

  “What was it?” Dr. Tsai asked, coming around the corner.

  “A new worm that hit the street today, as it turns out.”

  “You got it done quick.”

  “I quarantined it. I’m going to call a colleague of mine to make sure we button you guys up to prevent future attacks like this one.”

  “Any damage? Data spill?”

  “None. We got it in time.”

  “Good.” Dr. Tsai stepped back into one of the examining rooms.

  Sasha returned to the task at hand. This time she closed the closet door all the way, hating herself for having insisted they overcool this room. After she wrapped the thin hoodie sweater around her, she plugged one of her burner phones into the USB port of the main server. From her memory stick, she accessed a voice over IP application. It took a minute for the installation to complete. She dialed the number.

  A set of clicks followed. She tapped two access codes, followed by more clicks, until a voice came on the other end.

  “You’re late,” he said.

  “But safe,” she replied.

  “Hmm. Very well. We are ready to extract you.”

  “Yes. I wanted to discuss optimum timing?”

  “Optimum timing? We agreed to do it this week.”

  “We agreed to do it as soon as possible.”

  “Mincing of words wastes time. Say what you mean.”

  “If we wait a little longer, I can bring more with me.”
r />   “What do you mean by more?”

  “More of what the Americans have been cooking.”

  A pause followed. In her mind Sasha pictured a room full of Iranian intelligence operatives. What did their crazy chick get a hold of this time? Was it worth the wait? Well, let’s find out and see.

  “Can you be more precise?”

  “It’s complicated. Suffice it to say, it’s a Cyber payload they’re planning to use for offensive operations. I couldn’t tell for sure—”

  “You told us you had limited access.”

  “Yes. Very limited.” She paused for effect. “They’re aiming to infiltrate nuclear facilities.”

  A pause on their end. “Go on.”

  “I managed to get a look at one more thing. This thing. And I overheard who’s at the top of the list for first use. Care to guess who that might be?”

  Another pause ensued. More whispering. More waving of frantic hands, no doubt. Well, she wanted to imagine it that way, even if it only gave her partial satisfaction.

  “How long do you need?” the raspy voice said.

  “How long do I have?”

  A shorter pause this time. “One additional week.”

  “Make it two, just in case, for contingencies, and I think I can get it done.”

  A short beat. “Very well. Contact us again in three days with an update.”

  “It’s a date.”

  Before she exited the closet, Sasha checked her main phone. She had a text from Martin. How about dinner tonight? At his place?

  She swallowed. Had her little sticky note connected the way she hoped? Did he want to ask about what she’d meant with that scribbled female symbol?

  Maybe. Or as likely, he’d never noticed it at all, too absent-minded and enthralled by that Request for Proposal that had come in the day before. Too busy envisioning to see the plain and clear, right in front of his nose.

  Still, he wanted to get together with her. At her place. That was something. It hinted at hope.

  Something that Chana would celebrate. Something she’d see as an opportunity, an opening at least—an advantage that Sasha would need to press at once.

  She turned on the burner she used to communicate with Chana. Sure enough, she had a ten minute old message from her. “It’s time,” it said.

  Sasha closed her eyes and told herself, yeah, it was time. The time she’d known all along would come, all of it converging at once into a cyclone whose winds would crush her or blow her along to freedom.

  28» Sasha’s Choice

  Sasha watched Chana approach across the quad knowing she had to maintain her act. No, she couldn’t keep things the way they were, and she certainly couldn’t let them go where they were headed. She had to make her move.

  But for the next few minutes, Sasha purposed to make believe she would play along. Playing the part like she meant it, like she believed it—that was the only way to fool Chana. Keep playing along, with Chana, with the other guys whose nationality also started with an I. But with Martin? She had to break that spell. She had to come clean. She had to let him know her plans and hope he would join her.

  Sasha was still pondering all that when she felt Chana pressing something cold against her hand.

  “What’s this?” Sasha said.

  “Do I need to say it?”

  No, she didn’t. Sasha stuffed the device, a voice recorder, into the deepest recesses of her large purse, stopping short of her handgun’s hidden compartment. Through her sunglasses she scanned the surroundings. Chana did likewise. Two students with bloated backpacks walked by across the way. A girl sunbathed on a stairwell while she pretended to read a thick hardbound book. None of them looked in their direction. No, no one had noticed the exchange. No one nearby, anyway.

  Sasha assured herself once more this location provided a good meeting place. The large lawn area at the center of the San Jose State University campus offered few places to conceal surveillance. Chana had chosen well. She usually did. She’d also wanted to help Sasha recall her days attending another California University for her undergrad work, before heading east to MIT, where she’d meet a boy named Martin. Chana liked symbolism, especially the kind that reminded Sasha of who had funded her education.

  “We want a full record,” Chana said, switching to more practical matters.

  “Of course you do.”

  “It will make it easier on you. Less need for debriefing.”

  “So thoughtful of you.”

  Chana patted her on the upper arm. “We have faith in you.” A squeeze at the elbow. “We’re so close. Almost there. Finish well.”

  With that she walked off. Shana stood there, with little faith she could move Martin one way or another. But she hoped she could. If faith equaled hope, she’d have all the faith in the world.

  Three hours later, she met Martin at his apartment. She had to smile when he met her at the door wearing a blue-white striped apron. She had to restrain herself from ribbing him about it, too.

  In the kitchen she found an open counter and set her purse down. While he fiddled with a steaming pot of pasta, she reached into her purse and turned on the voice recorder. He caught her doing that, frowned a little at her, and eased the frown with a smile.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said as she took out a tissue from her purse.

  “I got a Kleenex box over there,” he replied, gesturing with a wooden spoon at the far side of the kitchen, where a tissue box stood at the center of a small table.

  She sniffed and dabbed her nose. “Allergies. This time of year—”

  “Huh. I don’t remember you having allergies.”

  “East coast, west coast, you know? Lots of ragweed here.”

  Summer was ending, or was trying to, stuck on hot-and-dry in the middle of September. Some people suffered from allergies at that time of year, especially on rainy years. That should suffice by way of cover and explanation.

  She sniffed again, dabbed some more. “You never cooked for me before.”

  He smirked. “Special occasion, I guess.”

  “Oh?”

  He shrugged.

  “A surprise?” she said. “A good one, I hope?”

  “You could say that.”

  She came over and leaned over the kitchen’s center counter. With her head tilted to the side and her chin grazing an upraised left shoulder, she smiled at him.

  “But it will have to wait till after dinner,” she said.

  “If you’re really nice, I may break the news during dinner.”

  The way he said that made her swell inside. Yeah, hope. It grew. It expanded inside her chest. It made her warm behind the eyes with tears she wouldn’t let break through. She could see it in his eyes. Whatever he had to say concerned them. It meant them staying together, like she hoped. Yet, the glimmer in his eyes threatened, too. Yeah, he meant for them to stay together, but not her way. Not the way it had to happen.

  Sasha tilted her head to the other side and maintained her playful pose. “So… how nice do I have to be?”

  This was going well, Martin told himself for the third time since she’d arrived. Halfway through dinner, her main course nearly gone, Sasha remained playful, maybe even a little ebullient. Though perhaps he was imagining that. At any rate, a good time to go for it. And if it went really well, to go for the other thing and finish it off with a good, all-around night.

  “Things are moving ahead,” he said. “For InfoStream, I mean,” he added, at once knowing he sounded stiff and uneasy.

  What had been her almost constant smile eased off. It almost disappeared. “Moving in the right direction, I hope?”

  “I’d say so.”

  “Hmm.”

  He took a deep breath. He was no good at this, the people stuff. Best take the direct route, lay it out and see where things landed. “They want to bring you in. All the way.”

  “Oh?”

  He wanted to take her reaction as a positive surprise. He fought to see it. But no, it was some
thing else.

  Her fork made a soft clink sound when she set it down on her plate. “What does this mean, all the way?”

  “They’re going to silver bullet you.”

  “I’m a vampire now.”

  He fought to ignore her tone. “They’re going to give you a clearance, Sasha. That’s huge.”

  “I thought that wasn’t possible—”

  “And your citizenship.” He held up six fingers. “In six months flat.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “That sounds—”

  “Impossible?”

  “Miraculous.”

  He forced a big smile and waved his hands. “Whatever. It’s happening. Don’t worry about all the strings getting pulled. I worked it out.”

  “A deal.”

  “An arrangement. All above board. They want you, Sasha. Of course they do. You and me. We can do some damage.”

  Her lips drew a faint, regret-filled smile. “I’m sure we could.”

  He didn’t have to tell Sasha the rest. But he did, and she let him tell her all about it. How they were setting him up with his own company. A real company, this time, not just some cover front. InfoStream, a reality at last. And all the venture capital. He told her all about that, without going into where the funding came from. Not a single reference to their earlier conversation about what had happened to her Bitcoin account.

  The specialized equipment took him another five minutes of fevered explanation about what a huge deal that was. They didn’t give that to just anyone, you know? No, they didn’t. Sasha knew that well. But she kept listening to him and let him exhaust himself until he ran out of things to say.

  “What’s wrong?” he said. “You don’t seem—”

  “To get it? What a huge deal this is? Oh, I do.”

  “Then?”

  She slid her plate aside and pulled her wine glass toward her. It still held a finger of red wine that she poured into her mouth.

  “Well?” he pressed.

  “I thought…” She looked down, half-acting, half-searching for the right words. “I thought you wanted out. That you didn’t want to be under their thumb anymore.”