Drummer In the Dark

by T. Davis Bunn

  Alarm bells went off in the distance. The doors opened back up at his command. Crawford had lost his grip and was leaning, stunned, against the elevator’s back wall. But the Unabomber, who had also just been semimashed by the elevator doors, still had his hands locked around Eric’s leg. So Colin ordered the doors shut again. Harder still.

  The pretty Hayek receptionist, known for her icy demeanor and unflappable calm, was in full panic mode. She was up behind her chair, hair out at all angles, screaming silently. The elevator doors opened again, but only far enough for Burke to drop in a limp, defeated huddle. Colin swiftly reshut the door before the security chief could emerge, and sent the machine to the basement. And watched.

  The single remaining guard was no match for a hyperamped Eric. The frantic young trader released his grip on the stanchion only to grab the brass trash can. He hammered the guard’s blond fuzz. Then he did his best to rearrange the guy’s upper mandible and nose and right temple. On the third blow the guard staggered back a step. Eric hurled the can at him and fled through the front doors.

  Just in time. Burke and the security chief came racing up the stairs and were swiftly joined by two other guards. Burke was limping. He used the reception desk for support as they shouted at the guard who sprawled in the corner, too stunned from Eric’s onslaught to respond. Then they turned to the terror-stricken receptionist, who pointed one trembling hand toward the front doors.

  But Colin was ready for them. The doors were locked.

  He watched them try to batter their way futilely through the bulletproof glass, then turn and shout and point behind. Which gave Colin the instant required to strip off the display, pocket the tiny cameras, clear the screens, and join all the others standing at the entrances to their cubicles and watching openmouthed as the Unabomber and the muscle came roaring by. They crashed through the back doors and careened out of sight.

  Colin did not join in the subsequent chatter, however. He was under no illusions. Sooner or later they would track him down. Just like Eric. He returned to his desk and pretended to work. No question. He was toast. It was just a matter of time.

  62

  Tuesday

  KAY CAUGHT WYNN just as he and Carter were about to enter the committee room. “You heard anything from our Florida friend?”

  “Not since last night.” He refrained from adding that he had tried to call Jackie twice that morning. He had gotten nothing but a busy signal on her landline, and no connection on the cellphone. He was missing her mightily. “Why?”

  “Just grabbing at straws. We’re losing.”

  “But there’s still time for a turnaround, right?”

  “Time is not the issue here. We need a miracle, and we need it yesterday. Things are coming apart.”

  A voice called from behind them, “Kay, just a minute please.”

  The senator’s expression hardened further. “This was not what I want right now.”

  Jackson Taylor was not a handsome man. Normally he affected enough polish to hide his natural state, which was that of a man who had bullied and blustered and fought so many corporate scraps they were stamped upon his features like pox. Today’s rage made tatters of his facade, and lay bare the simian bulge to his cheeks and jaw. “You don’t feel it’s necessary to return calls from your own party chairman?”

  “I apologize, Jackson. But we have been incredibly busy, as you well know.”

  Jackson halted Wynn’s progress toward the chamber entrance. “Stay right where you are, please. I’ve got words for you as well.” He turned back to Kay. “You folks were very eloquent about this cause of yours.”

  “Mr. Chairman—”

  “Wait, now. It’s my hand on the gavel, and I’ve got something to say. We’ve made a good-faith effort to help you out here. But this particular provision doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “With respect, I disagree.”

  “Do you have the vaguest idea what kind of stink bomb you’ve let loose? How could you possibly expect me to support your position on this bill?” He swept his arm about, connecting with all the unseen foes. “The banks have all the clout in the world. We’ve got their lobbyists swarming around this place like a battalion of Gucci cockroaches.”

  “You don’t need to support us, Mr. Chairman,” Kay replied quietly. “Just don’t get in our way.”

  “You’re not hearing me, Senator. This issue is dead. I want you to help me bury it as quietly as we possibly can.”

  Kay’s voice held desperate appeal. “The international banking business needs to be placed under tighter regulatory control. But the nature of the modern-day beast has changed. Finance has gone global. So the only way to control it is to do likewise. What better way than to tie it to debt relief, give these extremely poor nations a helping hand?”

  “Spare me, okay? We’re all done here.”

  “I’m not withdrawing the amendment, Jackson.”

  “Then we’re burying you along with the proposal. I am siding with the opposition and readying an emergency spending measure to counteract the loss of the appropriations, at least temporarily.”

  “I think you’re making a terrible mistake.”

  “That’s your reaction?” He punched the sides of his hips instead of somebody else. “What happened to your political sense, Kay? I thought I could rely on you to see the light while you still could.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. Chairman,” she replied stiffly, turning for the door. “I have a committee to chair.”

  Jackson Taylor waited for her to vanish through the door before turning his ire on Wynn. “Who’s behind this madness of yours?”

  “I should be asking you the same thing.”

  “You’ve succeeded in raising the hackles of some of our biggest supporters. You might be green when it comes to politics, but a guy with your experience ought to know you don’t hang your top clients out to dry.” He closed the distance between them, moving in near enough for Wynn to see the tiny flecks in his eyes, bloodstains from previous wars. “It’s payback time for all the misery you put me and my company through. If I could, I’d sell tickets to the spectacle of watching you crash and burn.”

  63

  Tuesday

  ORLANDO WAS EXPERIENCING a foretaste of summer, a wet and sticky misery that sent the last snowbirds drilling their Buicks through the soggy air hanging over I-95. Rain was predicted for that afternoon, but Jackie knew the heat would not truly abate until the hurricanes of September. She was in for five months of growing certainty that Alaska might actually be a decent place to live.

  Jackie worked at her dinette table wearing cutoffs and a tank top. Tension radiated off her in waves as strong as the heat. Her laptop was logged onto the Trastevere site, but so far her twice-hourly messages to the Boatman had elicited no response. The white screen was a major fear factor. She had no idea how to access Hayek’s computers or run the code. She hated the fact that she had become so dependent upon a ghost, a guy she had seen only once, and who up to now had given her nothing but more mysteries and riddles. But there was no one else. What was she supposed to do, take this to her Washington pals, say she wanted to break into a hedge fund’s mainframe with a stolen access code?

  Jackie looked down at the book in her lap. She had been stuck on the same page for almost an hour. She was no closer to discovering why she had felt so drawn to the old textbooks. Three days of searching had done nothing but pluck away the scabs, leaving her dripping from the blood of old memories. To make matters worse, aftershocks from Eric’s midnight appearance transformed every outside noise into an attack by goblins and fiends.

  She slammed the book shut, reared back, and flung it crashing into the side wall. She leaped to her feet, kicked at the scattered books, and stomped across the room. Slamming open her screen door, she raised her fists to the dismal sky. “We’re on the same team, right? How about a little help here?”

  She lowered her fists as the back door to the big house creaked open. Millicent Kirby crabbed out, blinking
in the light as if it were the first day she’d seen in months. Jackie sighed and made her way down the steps, calling ahead, “It’s all right. I wasn’t talking to anybody. I’m just having a tough morning.”

  The old lady waited until Jackie was standing by the rotting back stairs to ask, “Are the bad men coming back?”

  Jackie did not have the strength to lie. “Maybe.” She felt her insides clutch up tight with the fear of being asked to leave.

  Millicent Kirby just plucked at the mole on her neck and stared at the heat-drenched day. “It’s hard to be alone in the dark, isn’t it.”

  WHEN THUNDER RUMBLED across the afternoon sky, Jackie reemerged to commune with the storm. She leaned against the stair railing and flapped the sweaty T-shirt against her belly. She promised herself a good hard run once the lightning had passed and the rain settled down to a cooling drone.

  Then she spotted the figure scampering down her drive. He ran like a skinny hamster, searching out the walls to a cage from which he had already escaped. Twice he paused to sniff the air, or so it seemed from where she stood. Jackie squinted as lightning blasted close enough for the sound to come with the flash, a great crackling boom that sent her tumbling down the stairs.

  The young man cowered midway between the back of the main house and the garage, as though trapped in amber and not heavy raindrops. Jackie saw no danger to his expression or the way he huddled under his jacket. He shouted at her, “Are you permanently deranged?”

  Recognition of the voice with its slight accent flashed in time to the thunderbolt. And the storm became more appropriate still. “Boatman?”

  “I’ve tried your phones for hours. Your landline was constantly busy and your cellphone is disconnected.” His red-rimmed eyes were as devoid of color as the sky, his gaunt features held a waxy cast. “Tell me that wasn’t intentional.”

  It was her own turn for rage. “Where have you been?”

  “Busy. And believe me, you don’t want to know more than that.” He flinched, taking the rain as he would blows from above. “I hope your computer is functioning. I was forced to depart in a hurry. The only thing I carried with me was my phone. Which has proved to be of no benefit whatsoever.”

  “It’s working.”

  “Excellent.” He scampered forward. “Is there someplace safe where we can get to work?”

  “I’m not sure. About the safety part, I mean.”

  64

  Tuesday

  JACKIE STOOD BY THE doorway, scarcely able to take in the fact that he was here and real and even named. “Let me get this straight. You were a hacker before you became one of Hayek’s computer nerds?”

  Colin Ready’s hands flew through the process of establishing internet pathways on Jackie’s laptop. “Corporations like to pretend they’re totally secure. Bankers are the worst of the lot. They want the world to think they’re absolutely invincible, never taking a wrong step. Well, we’re the gremlins who pass on a much-needed dose of electronic truth. In a fair world, we’d be getting paid for doing mankind a service. But whoever said this world was fair?”

  “Tell me,” she agreed.

  “I started hacking when I was twelve. Phreaking when I was fourteen. By then I knew I had to keep this second life separate. I worked hard at the mask called life, made it all the outside world saw. But inside I knew better. After my parents divorced I became a pawn in the battle they’d started before I was born. The outside world was compacted misery, as far as I was concerned. I’d get on a bus, spend an hour going five miles in city traffic, all so I could attend a school where the kids dreamed about dates so they could grow up and argue like my parents, or cars so they could drive and get stuck in more traffic. What kind of life was that? Then I’d go home, tap a few keys, and be exploring the other side of the world. Entering new universes. Building magic kingdoms of my own. Or best of all, sneaking through the enemy’s minefields, killing their dragons, stealing the keys, and entering the secret domains. It was the only life worth living.”

  “What were you called? Your hacker name, I mean. Not Boatman.”

  “O-zone. What can I say. I was fourteen.” Impatiently he ran his fingers impatiently about the edges of the keyboard. “This download is taking forever. I feel like I’ve moved back into the stone age, using a standard phoneline modem.”

  “It’s all we’ve got.”

  “Then it will have to do.” He started tapping keys. “We’ll go in through a back door I opened weeks ago, preparing for this. I hacked into the Atlanta federal reserve bank.”

  “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “Not the money-control section. That place has guard dogs with titanium teeth. Just the external comm link. These drone machines disperse the daily Fed releases to all the regional banks. I was astonished at how lax their security was. Making entry was a piece of cake.” His calm tone was utterly disconnected from the fingers tapping the board. “But the address is the same, which means any local bank will still recognize us as a signal from on high.”

  “This is a terrible idea.”

  “Relax. We won’t go in directly. First we’ll phreak our way around the globe, lay out a false trail.”

  When she remained standing with her arms clenched tight across her chest, Colin halted and looked up. “In or out. Now is the time.”

  “Can I trust you not to get us fried?”

  He replied simply, “This is what I do.”

  “Okay. Fine.” She pulled a chair over next to his. “I’m in.”

  “Right.” He turned back to his boards. “First we need to phreak into a secure connection.” He hesitated again. “Do you want to hear, or should I just go and do?”

  “I’m in, I told you. I want it all.”

  “Okay. Like all computer skills, phreaking has evolved through a gazillion generations since the early days. We’re not talking about just stealing phone time any more. Nowadays the phreaker is after nontraceability.”

  She watched things flicker across the screen as he typed, symbols she had never seen before. “This is Sanskrit you’re writing?”

  “Just a little code. Relax. Okay, now I’m dialing an 800 number I’ve already checked out. It’s what we call a high-impact line. High impact means constant access, used by hundreds of people.”

  “Do you know who?”

  “Sure.” He let a little of his own excitement show through. “As far as the outside world is concerned, we’re just calling the home office of the drive-happy people.”

  The computer chimed. He swung back. “Right. Now I’m downloading files I’ve stored on my own secure website. Once that’s done, we’re going to play a prerecorded tonal message using a digitized recording. The tones are actually a series of messages most often used by busy execs given codes to access the corporate 800 number for outgoing calls. Follow me?”

  “Maybe.”

  “This company has perhaps a couple of hundred execs in the field. Any of them can call the company’s 800 incoming number, punch in a code, and get an outgoing line on the corporation’s trunk line.”

  “And save the company the cost of a long-distance call. Smart.”

  “Precisely.” The computer screen lit up with the word Linked. “Now just to be certain, we’re going to use this line to call another company.” He pulled up a list, scrolled down until he settled on one, and said, “Hong Kong. Perfect. Right, we’re through. And now one more time, how does Zurich sound to you?”

  “Amazing.”

  “We’re ready now. Hidden behind three companies’ phone networks, the messages traveling ten thousand miles in each direction. Time lapse, just under five minutes. All while using a nonserver system that operates at a speed barely above snail mail.”

  “You’re showing off.”

  “Maybe a little.” His fingers were a maestro’s blur. “We’re going to the Atlanta federal reserve now. And . . . in. Their drone is excellent at following instructions. We’ll have it call up the Hayek Group’s mainframe.” An instant lat
er, the monitor displayed the Hayek logo, a golden phoenix rising from the flames. “I’ve often thought it would be a nice gesture to mankind if I changed that logo to a buzzard rising off a fresh carcass.”

  Jackie leaned over so as to study his face more closely. “Why do you hate him?”

  “Suspicions, mostly.” He held out his hand. “Let’s have the code.”

  She unfolded the paper from Eric with the password. “Just suspicions?”

  “Up to now. Maybe we can change that.” He typed in the code, said, “We’re in.”

  “What if they’re monitoring this connection?”

  “That’s why we took precautions. We’re on what is called a flashlink, utterly untraceable without raising flags. If they start hunting, the drone has orders that I inserted in an earlier foray. It will instantly sever connections and erase all related files.” He was typing faster than he spoke. “Good old drone.”

  “Tell me about you and Hayek.” When he merely kept at his work, she pressed, “This is very important, Colin.”

  “I met Lisa Wrede at a conference on computer security. She was a researcher at the Library of Congress. In her free time she worked for Sant’Egidio. At the request of Nabil Saad she began researching international hedge funds and currency traders. When she discovered I worked for Hayek, she wanted to break things off. Perhaps I should have let her. Life would certainly have been tons easier. But it was too late.” His voice grew dim. “We argued all the time. She was constantly warning me that I would be toasted, circling the flame as I did. But I was too hooked on the life and the money and the thrill. Then it turned out she was the one who paid.”

  Colin’s fingers slowed, then stopped. “They threw her off a roof. Hayek’s men did. And it was my fault.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I was the one who first mentioned the secret file called Tsunami.” He forced himself to pick up the slip of paper and return to his typing. “We’re in.”