Kill Process

by William Hertling

  “Lose the t-shirt,” I say, steeling myself for further objections. “Danger, close your eyes a minute.”

  “I’m driving!”

  “Well, just look out the front window.”

  Danger shrugs and sighs. “That’s the way I generally drive,” he mumbles.

  I ignore him and focus on getting my computer prepared.

  “I’m ready,” Igloo says, fidgeting with her shirt.

  “Unbutton the top two buttons on your shirt.” I want to throw up, telling another woman this.

  “Why?”

  “Because a little skin will make the difference between you breezing in and them questioning you. If it makes you feel any better, I’d walk in naked if it would help.”

  Igloo unfastens the buttons with shaking hands.

  I rummage through a bag until I extract a hat and clear glasses.

  “Put the hat and glasses on now. Leave the gloves until we park. Put them on without touching the outside, and don’t touch the gloves to anything inside the car. When you leave the car, take the USB router out of the baggy, throw the baggy back in the car. Got that so far?”

  I tug on her shirt to show more cleavage. Resentment flashes across her face, but she takes a breath, and afterwards she’s resigned, her face emotionless.

  “When you go in, say the electrical service reading shows spikes consistent with a transient electrical short, and you need to inspect the electrical service.”

  “They’re the FCC. Won’t they’d be able to detect something like that?”

  “Good, you’re thinking. I called yesterday to set up an appointment. There’s only one actual agent for this office, and he’s in the field today. The only people left will be administrative staff. I doubt they’ll be electrical engineers. They are going to debate whether they can let you into the basement or not. While they’re doing that, you move within arm’s reach of one of their computers and plug the USB drive into the back.”

  “What if I can’t get close enough?”

  “Then you go down into the basement, visually inspect the electrical panel, and go back upstairs. Tell them you need to call another technician to come out, and ask them when would be a good time. All the while, keep getting closer to a computer, until you’re able to plug it in.”

  “What if—”

  “Look, make it up if you need to. Tell them their computer power supply is fluctuating, and you need to see their system settings. It doesn’t matter what you say. If it’s a guy, they’re going to be looking at your tits. If it’s not a guy, they’ll assume you’re an idiot because you’re showing your tits.”

  “I can’t . . .”

  “I’m sorry, but you have to. In the jacket pocket is a salt shaker.”

  Igloo moves her hand to the pocket.

  “No, don’t touch it yet. Inside the salt shaker is dust and dirt from the streetcar, DNA from thousands of people. On your way out, you shake it discreetly, to leave a lot of conflicting evidence. Don’t take off or touch your hat, it’s keeping your hair in. Try not to look up. Cameras will be mounted high, aiming down. The hat and polarized glasses will be enough unless you look up.”

  “There it is,” Danger says. “On the left.”

  We all look together at the building, a nondescript street level office.

  “Okay, circle the block, then park at the corner.”

  Igloo is breathing fast, like she might hyperventilate.

  “It’s going to be easy-peasy,” I lie. “You’re up on stage when you play with your band, right? That’s a performance in front of people. This is a performance, too.”

  “Nobody can see me in my sweatshirt.”

  “That makes this even better. We all know the girl in the big white hoodie is you. Now you’re in a true disguise. You could walk through the Tapestry office right now dressed as you are, and nobody would recognize you.”

  Igloo examines herself and nods. “You’re right.”

  Danger pulls over. The entrance is three doors down.

  “Go.”

  Igloo opens the door, and walks down the street.

  “What are the odds she can pull it off?” Danger says.

  “Sixty percent. Don’t tell her I said that. Look, nothing she’s doing will appear to be a crime. It’ll take a forensics lab to figure out anything is up with the USB drive.” Who am I trying to convince? “Even if she totally botches it, nothing bad can happen.”

  I pull on a hat and long coat, don sunglasses. “If she’s not out in ten minutes, I’ll grab her.”

  Minutes pass. Danger bites his nails. Sirens sound in the distance.

  I check the dashboard clock. Seven minutes.

  The sirens grow closer. Nine minutes. I grab a can of pepper spray from the bag on the floor, shove it in my jacket pocket.

  I put my hand on the door. “If she comes out without me, take her and go, okay?”

  I give it a little more time. The dashboard clock ticks twelve minutes. It could take her longer than I thought. If she really has to go into the basement, who knows how involved that will get. The sirens are gone.

  “I thought you were going at ten,” Danger says.

  “She can do it,” I say, hoping it is true.

  The clock ticks fourteen minutes.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I punch the seat in front of me. “I’m going.”

  I climb out of the car, and walk to the building, hand in my pocket wrapped around the pepper spray. I’m almost to the door when Igloo comes out. I catch her eye, and she nods at me with a big smile.

  I gesture with a tilt of my head back toward the car, and keep walking without looking back. I stop at the corner, waiting to cross. Danger pulls up across the street, and honks the horn. Twice.

  Jesus. I’m no secret agent, but it is possible to avoid being blatantly obvious.

  Inside the car, Igloo is glowing and holds out a hand for a high-five.

  I sigh and meet her hand.

  “That was awesome,” she says, a huge grin on her face. She leans back in her seat. “I went in, and it was like you said, there was a woman—”

  “I want to hear all about it, later. Right now I need to get into his records. Danger, don’t go far. We need to stay within a couple of blocks.”

  “Right,” Danger says, and I see him looking around for a parking spot. “But I don’t understand. You’re trying to mess with this guy’s employee records. How is a remote office going to help? Won’t the data be back at headquarters?” He pulls into an empty space on the next block.

  Danger’s been listening to everything we’re doing, an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence of using him as our driver. What happens if he gets uncomfortable? I meet his eyes in the rear view mirror. I think back to the bitcoin hack I did with him, and how I’d researched him before handing over the entirety of my bug-out cash. I trust him.

  “We’re on their virtual private network. Somewhere on that computer is a set of logon credentials. From there I can do an SQL injection attack. Internal systems are never secured as well as external ones. Perimeter security is a fallacy. Not only is it not secure, it actually worsens security because people learn to rely on it. I’ll have root access to the database within ten minutes.”

  I find the employee portal login credentials Erik Wecks had emailed to himself, and run an automated suite of SQL injection attacks against the website until I find a compromised query. From there it’s blind Boolean exploitation to figure out the structure of the database, until finally I insert a new record into the user’s table, and grant the user every permission in the database. Then I log back in as my new superuser.

  Igloo watches over my shoulder. “Amazing,” she whispers.

  “Hey, Angie, we’ve got company.”

  I jerk my head at Danger’s tone. There’s a parking enforcement officer pulled up next to us.

  He shakes his head at us. “You need to pay the meter.”

  “I was on my way to pay,” Danger says, opening the window.
<
br />   “Sorry. Too late if I’m already here. I have to write up the ticket.”

  I glance around the car, which looks like we broke into an Apple store and stole everything in their inventory. Four laptops, three tablets, and an army of phones surround us, and enough cabling connects the devices to restring a suspension bridge. I keep my voice low so only Danger can hear it. “Let him write the ticket and give it to you. Don’t provide your driver’s license. It’s just a parking ticket. If he tries to talk to you, ask him where the original hotcake house is.”

  Danger glances at me in the rear view mirror like I’m crazy.

  Igloo’s still sitting next to me dressed as an electrical company employee.

  We’re so fucked.

  The parking enforcement officer slips the ticket through the window, then gets back into his three-wheeler and drives away.

  “Holy shit,” Danger says. “Should I move the car?”

  “No,” I say. “You paid top dollar for this spot.” I turn to Igloo. “Gimme Daly’s employee number.”

  Igloo reads it off.

  “What was that bit about the hotcake house?” Danger asks.

  “Classic misdirection. Cognitive change, geographical redirection. Engages a different part of the brain. Now shh, I need to focus.”

  If I could, I’d delete Daly’s record, make it so that he doesn’t even exist as an employee. That’s hard if I can’t eliminate database backups. I settle for listing him as terminated. For cause of termination, I include a fake document that’s been completely redacted. Yes, this seems a little absurd even to me, but this does happen in the government. Then I lock his personal record so only the FCC director can read or change it. I trigger the employee termination automation, which removes Daly’s access to all systems, revokes his badges, and shuts down all his equipment.

  Chris Daly now has no access to money. He can’t fly. He has no job. He’s got an overseas criminal record, and he’s a suspected terrorist here in the United States. There are only a few things left to do.

  CHAPTER 44

  * * *

  CHRIS DALY wakes up, brews coffee in the kitchen of the rented house, and pads into the basement barefoot. He logs into one of his two laptops, and searches the web for recent news on Angie. Most of the articles mention the retraction of the blog post he’d created, but even those cite facts that have been confirmed. The internets are now in a massive fact-finding hunt for Angie. Once unleashed, nothing can stop them, at least until everyone gets bored and moves onto the next thing.

  He logs into the other laptop, does a quick check on her phone and finds she’s at the office. Even though Angie’s taking active counter surveillance measures, they’re using two new zero-day exploits (the cost of which is billed back to Enso’s department), and he can watch all the traffic to and from her computer and see her keystroke log.

  From the network traffic and keystrokes, she appears to be coding. He shakes his head. How she could focus on the minutia of her product with all the pressure she’s under is beyond him. Maybe she’s trying to escape reality.

  He checks in with the client directly, bypassing his agent. He’s been going under the pseudonym Walter Williams.

  Walter Williams> She’s discredited, distracted. Happy?

  R@2> This is good progress.

  Walter Williams> The rest of the fee is due.

  R@2> Not until she folds or sells the company. You promised results.

  Chris squeezes his fist a few times. He guarantees results to his personal clients. Always.

  That’s his specialty, after all. BRI is a finely-tuned organization created to wield influence to achieve specific results, not cause chaos. As long as he’s going to make a little money on the side, why not exploit the skills of this black government agency to their fullest?

  In this case, he mostly wants to be done with Angie. Drug lords are less paranoid than she is. Oh, all the circumstantial evidence leaves no doubt she’s guilty of some serious crime, but they can’t prove anything, and he’s over-extending his power and reach in BRI, pushing what he can get away with too far and for too long.

  Walter Williams> It’s just a matter of time now. Everything about her past will come out, and she’ll crack.

  R@2> Great. When that happens, you’ll receive your payment.

  The nerve of this guy. Doesn’t he realize who he’s messing with? Maybe Daly can’t enforce his agreement in a court of law, but he can make the client hellishly uncomfortable. Still, that’s bad for business. He can’t take out an ad in the paper, so he’s dependent on referrals. Screw it. He’s got a few more tricks he can use to increase the pressure on Angie. He can destroy her life the old-fashioned way.

  Walter Williams> I’ll up the stakes with her. But I want payment in 3 days regardless.

  He disconnects, checks on Angie, and finds she’s still coding. Seems safe enough to leave unattended while he gets breakfast.

  He walks over to the biscuit place on Alberta. There’s a line around the corner, and he’s not much for lines. He scans the front of the line for a girl by herself, preferably one staring at her shoes and not too attractive. He finds a mark and walks up to her.

  “Well, you’re fucking adorable.”

  Whether the line works or not is irrelevant. If she talks to him, great. If he makes her so uncomfortable she yields her spot in line to him, that’s fine too. Either way, he’s not waiting like the rest of the sheep.

  As soon as she looks up, the ever-so-slight flare of her nostrils gives away her anger at his intrusion. He keeps up the conversation, pretending she’s taking part in it, edging his way into the line as she slowly backs away, until she’s barely in the line at all. He could stop there, should stop there, because there are grumbles from the people behind her in the line, but now it’s a game to see how far he can push her. She finally abandons the line altogether and stalks off as though she never wanted biscuits in the first place.

  “You’re an asshole,” says a guy in the group of four now waiting behind Chris. “She’s been waiting in line an hour.”

  Chris says nothing.

  “You disgust me,” one of the girlfriends says. “You shouldn’t even be in this line. Go to the back.”

  “Or get lost entirely, you dick.”

  The trick, of course, is simply not to care. The sheep can bleat all they want, it doesn’t change anything. He keeps his focus on the register, and politely orders when he gets to the counter. He was of half a mind to order to go, but now he’s going to eat here on principle.

  The breakfast sandwich is pretty damn good, the biscuit flaky and soft. At the end of the meal, he makes a point of standing so the group of four, sitting one table over, can see him leave without bussing his dishes.

  “Douchebag,” one of the guys mumbles.

  “Hey, don’t say ‘douchebag’,” his girlfriend says. “That’s a sexist insult. It mocks women.”

  Daly shakes his head. He needs to escape Portland before the people here drive him crazy.

  * * *

  Back at the house, Daly checks Angie’s location again. Still at work, still coding. Not totally out of character, but surprising. She has an extensive background as a developer, but since they started actively monitoring her, she’s spent most of her time in meetings or handling email and phone calls. Except for when she was completely off-the-grid. Where does she go during those breaks?

  He messages Pete. Once people chose phone calls to avoid leaving a paper trail, but now that all the calls are recorded, text is better. There’s language analysis that can suggest a sender, and typing keystroke frequency analysis that’s as predictive as a fingerprint, but Daly uses software to buffer all his keystrokes, and none of that stuff is as damning as a single voice call.

  Chris> Any new developments on analyzing Angie’s traffic?

  Pete> No, Plaint got wind of the time I had sunk into it, and ordered that I not do any more analysis.

  Chris> Not even a little off-the-record?
<
br />   Pete> There is no off-the-record anymore. She’s watching all the computer time I use. Not unless Enso explicitly endorses it.

  Normally he’d keep his private business off the radar, but he’d been able to leverage Angie’s suspicious behaviors into cause for an informal investigation. Unfortunately, he’s run out of rope. He’s already been chewed out by Enso for the time and resources he’s spent on this. And Lt. Plaint has hated him since the day they met, so she probably relishes his current doghouse status.

  Chris> Could you get another guy on the team to do it?

  Pete> Plaint told everyone not to work on your stuff unless it comes from her. Sorry.

  Chris> What if we bury it as part of another case?

  Pete> Jesus. What part of no don’t you understand? If anyone works on Angie, it’s got to be official. No more of this off-the-record stuff. I’ve done a ton of favors for you over the years, gotten you records you wanted without any connected case. I hate red tape as much as the next guy, but Plaint’s pissed. I’m not sticking my neck out again. Make sure Enso vets it before you make another request.

  Pete disconnects, leaving Daly staring at a blinking cursor.

  Plaint has a lot of nerve, trying to shut him down. The thing is, he can’t go back to Enso, but he absolutely can’t let her dictate the terms of engagement. She’d end up believing she could push him around.

  He has leverage he can use on Plaint, but not long distance. It’s got to be done in person. He hates to leave Portland when things are so close with Angie, but getting Pete’s assistance is essential.

  He logs into his travel app and grabs one of the last seats on the redeye flight for that night. He clicks Book Flight once the details are entered, and the screen refreshes a few seconds later with a credit card denial. Weird. He reenters the number and security code only to be denied again. He checks the card against the screen. No typos.

  He grabs another credit card, enters the new information, and gets another rejection. He squints at the screen. It’s impossible for his cards to be denied. They’re flagged to approve all purchases. An operative in the field travels in a way that triggers fraud detection algorithms, so the agency preemptively disables them with the credit card agencies. Crap. He has another identity with different cards, but switching is a hassle.