Shadows (Black Raven Book 1)

by Barcelona, Stella

Her cheeks flushed pink as she held his gaze. “It was easier to be someone else than to be Richard Barrows’ daughters.”

  “That’s it?”

  She gave him a blank expression and a nod. “Yes.”

  “I’m not buying it. Your alias was too good. Too elaborate.”

  She shrugged. “I’m Richard Barrows’ daughter. I don’t do halfway.” She paused, her eyes bright. “Just an FYI. My father never would have escaped. Not voluntarily. Someone kidnapped him.”

  Doubtful, but possible. Anything was possible. “Who would go through that trouble?

  “Isn’t that your job to figure out?”

  Fuck.

  Yes, it was, and he wasn’t going to be getting help from her anytime soon. Sebastian turned to face forward. No matter how fucked-up the situation had become, this was progress. At least he’d gotten there in time to thwart the kidnapping.

  “Minero’s on a conference call,” Ragno said. “His office said he’ll be available in a few minutes.”

  “Find Brandon,” he said. Brandon was from New Orleans, and part of his legal practice involved crisis management for Black Raven. “While you’re doing that, talk to me about Barrows and any of his work that could be relevant to his escape.”

  “As you know, Barrows has an enormous body of work involving computing innovations,” Ragno said. “The backup for his theories, the data that he produced, has to be somewhere. There’s just no way of knowing what could be relevant to his escape.”

  Her voice was low and controlled, but there was an undertone of excitement. Innovative ideas in computer and spyware technologies were a hobby of hers, so she loved the Barrows project. “Plus, there are interviews, some with credible tech magazines, but there’s also hundreds of transcripts of late-night conspiracy theory-type radio shows. And there are the debriefing transcripts. Thousands of pages, where it seems he took the time to tell the government everything that he thought was wrong with every governmental program, every agency. We’re only at the beginning of dissecting the transcripts, but check out the excerpt that I’m sending you now. With your fascination with the Fourth Amendment, you’re going to love it.”

  He popped the last jellybean in his mouth, savoring the candy shell before chewing through to the soft inside. Save for the feel of Skye’s eyes boring into the back of his head, the quiet that now filled the SUV made the ride relatively pleasant. He reached into his own backpack for his iPad. He switched it on and read through the text that Ragno sent.

  FBI Interrogator: Mr. Barrows, I’m trying to focus on the tax evasion offense for which you’re being prosecuted. I don’t want speeches on civil liberties.

  Barrows: But it’s the same theme. The government is taking good ideas and implementing them the wrong way.

  FBI Interrogator: And you have answers?

  Barrows: The government is collecting every e-mail, phone call, internet search, book download, and social media post. They’re not only collecting, they’re assimilating. I know, because I created the assimilation technology. They’re shadowing people. These are shadows from which the average American cannot separate. The bottom line is that such action is a search that is contrary to the Fourth Amendment. I can’t force the government to abide by the Fourth Amendment, but the data that’s being collected needs to be protected.

  FBI Interrogator: And you have a proposal to do that?

  Barrows: [Pause]. What is your clearance level?

  Sebastian chuckled. “Did he explain his proposal to the interrogator?

  “If he did, we don’t see it. Yet,” Ragno said, as her fingers ticked away on her keyboard. “We’re only at the beginning. Fascinating, right? Check out this passage.”

  FBI Agent: After September 11, 2001, you were an advocate for mass data collection by the U.S. government as a method of preventing future terrorist attacks, am I correct?

  Barrows: Yes, but never to the extent the government is collecting information from U.S. citizens without their knowledge and without anything resembling probable cause. Any legitimate reading of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits such action. I designed Shadow Technology as a tool for use after probable cause is established. Instead, the government is using it without probable cause, on law-abiding citizens. All day, every day, without probable cause.

  “Some of what Barrows is saying here makes sense,” Sebastian said, scanning the road as Pete stopped at a red light. They’d come to an area that was congested with strip malls. Drive-thru windows at fast food outlets were busy. Schools were already in session. Most cars had just one person, and that was the driver. Using the visor’s mirror, he glanced at Skye, who used the mirror as well. Their eyes met and their gazes locked on each other. Her expression was blank, as though she had no interest in what he was saying to Ragno, yet her intense look told him otherwise. “We now know that the government’s data collection efforts through PRISM are pervasive, and this debriefing occurred in 2012, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “Barrows is talking about things that didn’t come to light until more recently, with the whistle-blowing from employees at the National Security Agency.” He looked for a reaction from Skye. None. Her face was impassive, yet her eyes were trained on his.

  “Well, that’s one way of looking at it,” Ragno said, her tone dry. “The official way of looking at it, and I mean official way being from our sources at the NSA and the FBI, is that Barrows made lucky guesses that were the product of a paranoid mind. He talks about Shadow Technology, which I was looking into even before we received the transcripts-”

  “Is Shadow Technology something he developed?” Sebastian noticed Skye lift her chin and smooth her hair as he asked the question, but otherwise, there was no reaction from her at his mention of Shadow Technology.

  “In Barrows’ mind,” she said, “but in reality, the official line is it doesn’t exist.”

  Black Raven spent a lot of time investigating security threats of all sorts, enough time that Sebastian knew official lines were often bullshit. “What’s your unofficial line?”

  “Well, we’re still looking into it, given how often he refers to it, but we haven’t managed to receive one confirmation that any such software was ever developed. Interspersed in all of those moments of prophetic brilliance are passages that analogize computer intelligence to extraterrestrial life. It is going to take some time to unravel this ball of yarn.”

  “Time is a luxury we don’t have. Back away from the details. Are there any odd occurrences?”

  “Yes. When the feds were collecting data on his tax evasion scheme, they secured search warrants for BY Laboratories, the company that Barrows and Zachary Young founded in the nineties. When the feds arrived there, about one month before Barrows pleaded guilty, everything was stripped. Barrows had infected everything with a virus. It seemed that he had destroyed his life’s work. Young was no help, because by then, he was dead, and the timing could be considered an odd occurrence, because the feds were turning the heat on the company for the tax evasion scheme.”

  He felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned. Spring had her hand extended, reaching out to him. He reached for her hand, and she dropped three more coconut jellybeans into his hand with a smile that made him damn glad she hadn’t been killed on that driveway. The world needed her brand of sweetness. “Thank you.”

  While Spring was disheveled, but smiling, big sis’s expression indicated she’d have been glad if the jellybeans were poison. He popped a jellybean in his mouth, chewed it slowly while he looked at Skye, thoroughly enjoying irritating her before turning to the front of the car. To Ragno, he said, “I thought Barrows admitted that he was the architect behind the tax evasion crime.”

  “He did, but the company, of which Young was half owner, was on the line for millions upon millions of dollars for back taxes.”

  “Tell me the circumstances of Young’s death.”

  “It fits in with the odd occurrence label. A plane crash. Private jet. Entire
family. Wife, two daughters, one son. All died. No one could have survived,” Ragno said. “The jet inexplicably crashed into the side of a mountain instead of gaining altitude as it should have.”

  “Cause?”

  “Undetermined.”

  “Any foul play suspected?” He looked into the mirror where he met Skye’s strong-willed gaze.

  “None that we’ve uncovered.”

  “What else is odd?”

  “Barrows claimed that he didn’t have backup for any of his projects that were in development,” Ragno said. “That’s odd. Ridiculous, as a matter of fact. He also consistently talked about Shadow Technology and LID Technology as though these things existed and had been implemented by the government, as though he worked for years creating it, but there is absolutely no evidence that these things ever existed. What’s odd is that in his ramblings, he consistently refers to data collection capabilities, and the timing of what he’s saying—remember, his debriefing occurred in 2012—actually predates some of the revelations that were made by government whistle-blowers. So it looks like he had inside knowledge, and how would he have had that, if he hadn’t actually been privy to the information?”

  “So Barrows claims that he developed Shadow Technology, a state of the art spyware,” Sebastian said, “which you’ve already determined does not exist, right?”

  “Well, what we know is that the government says Shadow Technology doesn’t exist. We’re trying to find out if it was actually in the developmental stage. All I can tell you is that if Shadow Technology exists, Black Raven wants it. We want it bad.”

  “Why?” He watched a truck merge in front of them. He glanced into the visor’s mirror, saw a woman in a ponytail driving an Escort and talking on a phone behind them. He caught Skye’s glance, saw that her attention was still riveted on him. Despite her impassive expression, he wondered what answers she might have.

  “According to the pieces and parts we’re pulling together,” he could hear Ragno typing as she continued talking, “Shadow Technology seamlessly ties together all data collection mechanisms. Look at it from the perspective of an individual. Say someone named Mark wakes up, using his cell phone alarm. That’s a collection point in surveillance programs. He checks e-mail. That’s a collection point. He finally opens yesterday’s mail, sees three checks, and deposits them online. Another collection point, and Shadow Technology now has his bank account numbers and passwords. Mark reads USA Today on his tablet while he drinks his coffee. Another collection point, where the government even knows how long Mark spends on what articles. The telematics on Mark’s fancy Mercedes traces his steps to his office, and so does the GPS mechanism in his phone. After he kisses his wife goodbye for the day, he detours to his girlfriend’s house every Tuesday. The holder of Shadow Technology knows all of that, instantly. Once Mark arrives downtown, he’s walking on a busy street with surveillance cameras. Those are also collection points.”

  “Right. I got it. We know the government collects everything, all the time. So what’s new?”

  “But the official line from the government is that they don’t collect everything, while Barrows insists that they do, and Shadow Technology is more than a collection device,” Ragno said. “Barrows claims that Shadow Technology ties all collection points together, assimilates the data, and presents a picture of what that person did that is relevant to search criteria. It turns raw data into knowledge, with just a few keyboard clicks. Say you want to know if Target X ever did anything relevant to Target Y. With just a few key words, through Shadow Technology, you can search the endless data that’s been collected and find it. Say you want to know the private banking pass codes of every American who uses the internet to do their banking. Shadow Technology gives you that information on a silver platter. In the wrong hands, it could cripple the economy.”

  As he listened to Ragno, his heart beat slowed to a dull whump pulse and the day took on a surreal feel. When Black Raven created full-scale profiles on people and businesses, the type of profile that had led him to Skye and Spring, and the type that they were now producing on Jennifer Root, Barrows’ lawyer, the profiles were the result of time consuming, in-depth data compilation and analysis. What wasn’t available from public data, his technology agents discovered by hacking. Nothing was left untouched. Credit card transactions, banking data, telephone calls, real estate transactions, medical tests. All information was fair game and once it was acquired, it took time to assimilate the information into something useful. Assimilation required computing technology to analyze lifestyle patterns and make predictions regarding behaviors, but it also required human intelligence.

  “Are you saying that Shadow Technology could produce one of our profiles in a fraction of the time that it takes your team to do the same thing?” he asked.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. According to Barrows, the Government collects everything, all the time. Shadow Technology instantly makes sense of it,” she said and paused. “In contrast, once Black Raven identifies a target, we have to not only collect, we have to process.”

  “So Shadow Technology takes a surveillance state,” he said, his skin crawling with the implications, “and makes it a super smart surveillance state.” He looked into the visor’s mirror and wondered how Skye managed to reveal nothing.

  “A brilliant surveillance state,” Ragno said. “It does what we do in days, in a matter of minutes.”

  He chuckled. “So Shadow Technology might make the cyber geniuses on your team, even you, obsolete?”

  “Well, don’t start cutting payroll yet. As far as I can tell, Shadow Technology, as Barrows described it, doesn’t exist. Remember, the government claims they don’t have it.”

  “What is LID Technology, the other program Barrows referred to?”

  “According to Barrows, the LID is an encryption mechanism that protects the data assimilation results produced by Shadow Technology. However, as far as I can tell, in reality, Shadow Technology doesn’t exist, and the LID doesn’t exist. And based on the FBI reports, when they executed the search warrants for the BY Technologies lab, the virus that Barrows used destroyed everything, and he told officials he had no backup,” Ragno said.

  “Maybe that’s what Barrows claimed,” Sebastian said, “but surely law enforcement found some. Right?”

  “No. Investigators did not find backup. Even if he was spouting about things that don’t exist, like Shadow and LID Technology, he is still is a brilliant man. How could the world’s foremost pioneer in anti-viral technology not have backup? I don’t believe that for one second. Neither does Zeus by the way. None of your technology agents do. We back everything up, Sebastian. We have backup for our backup. A man like Barrows would have even figured out a way to backup his dreams. There has to be backup somewhere. ”

  Sebastian glanced into the backseat. To Skye, he asked, “Do the terms Shadow and LID Technology mean anything to you?”

  “No.” She gave him a blank expression, one he couldn’t decipher except to think it meant she was lying.

  Hell.

  “Where’s your father’s backup?”

  It would have been more productive to ask the dead pirate Jean Lafitte where he had buried his trove of gold and jewels. She arched an eyebrow, gave him the same blank expression she’d been giving him, which he now equated to a broadcast beam of a lie, and a slow headshake. “I didn’t pay attention to my father’s business.”

  “Algorithms,” he said, remembering an intel tidbit that Ragno had fed him earlier.

  She shook her head. “Excuse me?”

  “You wrote a paper on elegance in algorithm design when you were just a teenager, and you graduated from MIT when you were nineteen. All of your professors declared you to be as brilliant as your father.”

  She shrugged. “So?”

  “So don’t play stupid. Telling me that you didn’t pay attention to your father’s business is just plain stupid. I know you’re not stupid. Don’t play that card on me.”


  Her eyes flashed with irritation, but her clenched-jaw silence told him that she wasn’t going to be giving up an answer. Even with dark smears of god-knew-what across her right cheek, and tangles in her long hair, her high cheekbones, full lips, and almond-shaped eyes made him want to get closer to her. Dammit. He was fucked. He tore his gaze away from the beautiful woman whose existence had, in the flash of a morning’s sunrise, become the opposite of the idyllic coffee house world she had created out of thin air. As he faced the front of the car, Ragno said, “Brandon’s holding for you.”

  They reached the Causeway, a 24-mile bridge spanning Lake Pontchartrain and leading to New Orleans. He and Brandon had grown up together in River’s Bend, a small town thirty minutes south of New Orleans. They’d been friends since grade school, joined the New Orleans PD together, and gone to law school together. In July, Sebastian had almost gotten himself killed while helping Brandon save the life of the woman who had, in December, become his friend’s wife. Brandon knew enough about Black Raven’s predicament not to waste time with questions, when Sebastian relayed the fact that he needed a doctor who could look at both a dog and two Jane Does, fast.

  Sebastian asked his friend, “Can you get Cavanaugh set up?”

  “Yes,” Brandon said, “but he’s going to give you hell for not showing up yesterday.”

  “I cancelled the appointment in advance.”

  “That’s not the point, and it wasn’t just an appointment. It was pre-op for surgery, which you didn’t even bother to tell me about. He had neurosurgeons lined up. You’re supposed to be at Ochsner Medical Center now.”

  “It isn’t happening tomorrow, or anytime soon.”

  “Cavanaugh is pissed. He says the surgery is essential. You could die without it.”

  And I could die with it. Or worse. “Whatever happened to doctor-patient confidentiality? He shouldn’t have talked about my health with you.”

  “He did so in the context of asking me to tell you to make sure your affairs are in order. I am your lawyer.”

  Fuck me to hell. Cavanaugh’s team of neurosurgeons had determined a few weeks earlier that scar tissue was growing in his brain, and the surgery to remedy the problem was going to be tricky. The longer Sebastian waited, the more the scar tissue grew, and the trickier the surgery would become. He had hoped to spare Brandon the worry.