by Len Marshall
“Now let’s focus on the work at hand. Tell me, when you are going to make a move on Farrell and what will be your approach?” she asked Natalie.
Unknown to them both, this conversation was going to make their lives really complicated in the coming days. Both girls were unaware of the bug under Natalie’s table which was transmitting the entire conversation to a warehouse building where, at that very moment, the Chinese were listening, or at least they would have been, if the building was not right now being raided by the FBI cyber division.
Chapter Nine
You willed yourself to where you are today, so will yourself out of it.
Stephen Richards
Neil was still in FBI custody where he had begun to reflect on the events that had led to his current predicament. Over the last few days he had tried to think about every possible scenario in which his mobile had been left unprotected and therefore compromised. He remembered that, other than software updates to his Android mobile OS, he had not downloaded anything for at least the last sixty days. Then he tried to recall events and places where he had been but once again he was unable to remember a single moment when he had left his mobile unattended.
“How the hell was my mobile hacked?” Finding the answer to this question had become the most important task for him right now but he still had no idea. He wondered whether his parents had been told about his arrest or not. He hoped and prayed that they would never have to know.
Neil was grilled very aggressively by the FBI during the first few days after his arrest. He was interviewed multiple times by different people including crime specialists, cyber security specialists, psychiatrists and communication specialists. He understood that he was being probed from different angles. No one from Waverley Davis had contacted him since his arrest. He was detained in a loose wired kind of small chamber with no windows, only a small air inlet to keep the fresh air flowing in and a dim light. He could not even hear any outside noises. This was like solitary confinement and it began to wreak havoc on his nerves. He was not charged or even given access to a lawyer and this seemed to indicate the fact that he was to be charged with treason or some other anti-state allegations. The FBI was using intense psychological tactics to break his will but Neil was no criminal.
He was also aware that the punishment for treason was the death penalty.
With every passing day, Neil found it increasingly difficult to keep his sanity intact. He fought inner demons, fear and despondency, when each crept into his thoughts like vultures. An intense feeling of people trying to break his will stared him in the eyes and Neil desperately tried to push this feeling of hopelessness away by thinking about and visualizing his early release from custody.
The Law of Attraction focuses on what you want to achieve. He thought of what he wanted and not give any thought to what he did not want.
Your subconscious mind only hears the thing being asked for so, in a request to be free from prison, your mind only hears ‘being in prison’ and that is exactly what has happened here he thought. He had learnt this art of visualization from Ajay, by listening to his motivational talks when he delivered them during conferences and on his travels to many lectures abroad.
In these dire circumstances, Neil decided to use the universal Law of Attraction. Suddenly a ray of light illuminated his thoughts and now he imagined being free. But a mere wish or craving for freedom was not going to get him out of this crisis. He knew he must not lose hope at that time.
Initially, the shock of his sudden arrest and the dim and spine-chilling environment of his cell pushed him towards an abyss of hopelessness. Now this sudden ray of light was helping him to crawl away from that psychological pit. What at first had seemed impossible was now very possible in his subconscious. He was to start right now. He had to defeat the thought that freedom was far from impossible. He had to make it possible; firstly in his mind and then in reality. He closed his eyes and took a trip down memory lane within his brain.
Stop using words like impossible only possible, negative thoughts beget more negative thoughts.
“Everything is impossible until it becomes possible.”
Finally, Neil recalled something Ajay had told him a long time ago.
“Nothing is impossible even the word impossible itself announces that ‘I AM possible’. Neil heard Ajay once again. He remembered that this was the most fascinating sentence he had heard in a conference and it had made a lasting impression.
The possibility began to be created in his own mind. By just thinking about his freedom, things had already begun to move in that direction. Meanwhile the FBI had discovered lots of items from inside the warehouse where Victor and his family had been recovered from. One of the items was a curious device with a delicate transmit and receive functionality. Spiritually, things were still moving in his favor. Yet, unbeknown to Neil, it was still going to take a long time before he would attain his freedom.
Little did he know that his predicament was going to get a lot more calamitous before his imagined recovery became a reality; a potential darkness before the dawn.
***
The operation by the FBI was almost concluded. “Did you find anything from the basement?” Christopher asked James, one of his squad members, who had led the operation to recover Victor and his family from captivity. “Yes, lots,” he replied. “Lots of computer parts like hard drives, RAM chips and some unknown gadget.”
“The recovered items are with forensics,” James reported
“What about the unknown gadget? Christopher asked. “What’s the unknown gadget then?
“I’ve absolutely no idea. Even forensics found it a complete mystery. We’re still checking.”
“OK. I’ll get more information when I talk to forensics. Have we any news on the identity of the dead captors yet?” Christopher asked.
“Yes sir. One of them has been identified as a North Korean citizen who came to the US a few weeks ago on a tourist visa,” James replied.
“North Korean origin... are you positive?” Christopher asked with astonishment.
“Yes sir. Immigration confirmed it after checking his profile matching. He was clearly identified.”
“What about the rest of these guys?” Christopher asked.
“Mostly locals, with ethnic Asian backgrounds; a couple of them are wanted in multiple homicides and some petty crimes.”
“Thanks, James,” said Christopher and then asked him to leave. He picked up the phone and dialed Kerstin Miles, the chief forensic investigation officer with the FBI. “What did you made of that mysterious device we recovered?”
“Well, Christopher, this device contains a memory unit as well. The strange thing is that it’s small, not more than a few gigabytes but even that is space enough to hold basic information. We don’t want to harm it anyway.”
“So, what data did you recover?” he asked.
“So far nothing because the drive is heavily encrypted,” Kerstin explained.
“How long it is going to take before you crack the encryption?” he asked.
“Can’t say for sure, but you can definitely say one thing with certainty, this is a highly sophisticated device which also has the ability to transmit and receive and that is still active on this unit,” she explained.
“Then we must go after the signal it’s sending and receiving,” he said with excitement in his voice.
“Yes. That would certainly lead us to some solid proof. We’re trying to isolate the communication chip that transmits and receives from the memory unit so that we can work on both things in tandem. You’ll be the first to know as soon as soon we get that done,” she replied.
“What about the other hard drives recovered?” Christopher asked.
“They’re encrypted too and we’ve already sent a request to NASA research department to help us decipher the cont
ent. Unfortunately all our resources here have been tightly squeezed,” she explained.
“So it’s all about waiting and been patient then,” Christopher said and put the phone down.
***
Natalie was still trying to find Fu Wang on various dark net forums, the most common sites used by hacker forums that she could access. “Nothing. He’s vanished.” Natalie was amazed by the sudden disappearance of Fu Wang. These dark net forums were their only way to communicate. Tunneling Tor forums meant it was nearly impossible to be traced. Hackers all over the world used them to exchange ideas freely. Jenifer and Natalie were also among the hundreds of thousands of regular users.
“Well, what exactly is TOR?” Jenifer asked.
“Well, it was originally developed with the US Navy in mind mainly for the purpose of protecting government communications. Today, it’s used every day for a wide variety of purposes by the military, journalists, law enforcement officers, activists and mostly hackers,” answered Natalie.
They had also asked many mutual friends about Fu Wang but no one had a clue about him. Natalie wanted to tell Fu Wang about her meeting with Farrell which had gone well but Natalie had been unable to bug his phone because Farrell had had to leave urgently after receiving a call from his office. The fact they could not contact Fu Wang on any of the TOR forums left both Jenifer and Natalie trying to understand the possible reason for his sudden disappearance.
Jenifer was thinking about ways she could contact the mysterious person whose one mobile cell phone call had instigated this entire Waverley Davis cyber-attack episode. That person had told her to connect to Fu Wang and then, after that one initial call, had not contacted her again. Fu Wang had told her that all her business would now be conducted through him. He would be the one giving her assignments and taking feedback. She was paid well so at the time she had decided not to take any interest in the other people working within Fu Wang’s organization. This presented a problem and seemed to be a bad omen to Jenifer. She had not yet been paid for the second bug implant which she was promised would be a higher than the payment for her first task. The second mission, to hack Neil’s mobile, was complete and she should at least have been paid. Now, all her hopes of continuing this lucrative money stream were fading fast.
She had kept most of her earnings as savings but, with her mother’s treatment at an expensive private clinic, draining her resources, her funds were quickly depleting. She had to act fast in order to get back in contact with the Chinese urgently.
“What do we do if he’s been arrested?” Natalie asked.
“That’s highly unlikely because if that’s the case we both would have been arrested by now too. This is something else. Pretty damn serious,” Jenifer reasoned as an answer.
“OK. But how else can you explain his sudden disappearance?” Natalie asked.
“I’ve no logical answer to that right now but things should become clearer in a couple of hours,” Jenifer thought. She was trying to keep calm herself but she knew that Fu Wang would not ever voluntarily disappear on a live mission especially during a security operation.
This was national operational protocol.
Jenifer was worried about her mother’s treatment but at the same time was also engrossed in finding Fu Wang online. She started to scan the network in the hope of finding any clue about Fu Wang or his team but drew a complete blank on this mission. Now she had also begun to think about the possibility of Fu Wang being in the FBI’s custody. If this was true, this was really bad news for her considering her dependence on being paid for this contract.
“We’re going to own them,” Jenifer said after thinking for few minutes.
“Own who?” Natalie asked.
“Their entire network,” Jenifer answered. “The Chinese will be flushed out of the Waverley Davis system and we won’t bug Farrell,” she added. Natalie was trying to make sense of the gibberish coming from Jenifer’s mouth.
“OK. Then just two questions. How and Why?”
“I know their vulnerabilities. Even though they have considerably hardened their network, I can still sneak in undetected and because I need the money for keeping Mom in that expensive clinic and to pay the rest of my bills including the rent on that apartment of yours.”
“We can cover that doing other projects,” Natalie said. She could write programming modules for various online clients. She had been earning good money through this source before Jenifer had told her to stop that work and be her partner in this new game of industrial espionage.
“Natalie you must understand that we need more than that.” Jenifer said. Natalie was quiet because she knew that Jenifer was right. They needed the extra money for taking care of Jenifer’s mother whose condition had been worsening despite all the necessary medication and care the home could provide to counteract the aging process that compounded the paralysis of Jenifer’s mother.
“OK, what’s the plan?” Natalie asked.
“The plan, my dear, is to get into that network, open a backdoor and sell that information for the best price. Will you be OK with that? We don’t know what we’ll be handing over or who to but who cares as long as we get paid,” she added.
Natalie’s humane side persisted.
“Morality, judgment, good and evil, the existence of God, faith and divine punishments. All these things are areas of the world I don’t give a thought to,” Jenifer said. “Maybe you’re right, I am in all respects a sociopath after all, or fast becoming one. That’s been my conditioning since I was able to reason, Natalie, I can’t help it. That’s just the way I am, there’s no other way.” Jenifer’s reply stunned Natalie. Usually, Jenifer had a habit of arguing with Natalie but not this time, she had finally conceded defeat on this point.
“If we’re to take control of their network, we need someone from inside Waverley Davis. We’ll need to rewrite our own malware to take control. We can’t get into their internal network because even you haven’t been successful in penetrating that. So how are we going to achieve it?” Natalie asked.
“Through the only way possible now Neil is no longer our access route and that’s to somehow get Jacob, the son of Ajay Mohan, to work with us knowingly or otherwise at Waverley Davis. Until very recently Ajay just happened to be the biggest inspiration in my life,” Jenifer boasted.
“That must mean you were already working on that plan,” Natalie said in amazement.
“No,” Jenifer replied, “when the Chinese were using my services and things were OK with them, it just became a curiosity really. That changed slightly when Neil got arrested. And then the plan to use Jacob became a realistic possibility, more so than ever now because of Fu Wang’s sudden disappearance. All of a sudden, this has to become our primary plan and we don’t have a choice. With that in mind I’ve been following him closely and can easily find a way to make contact with him if need be,” Jenifer told her friend.
“You didn’t respond to the last part of my question.” Natalie wanted to know why Jenifer chose to work against Waverley Davis when Ajay Mohan was once her inspiration in life.
“That’s because my inspirations were shot down by my circumstances and my choices. I could have gone straight to Waverley Davis and informed them about the Chinese episode but choose not to. With my expertise I might have even found a job there as well,” Jenifer replied.
“So what do we do with my mission with Farrell now? Should, we continue or stop the whole thing?”
Jenifer digressed slightly, “Teresa! Did you like him? I mean Farrell,” she asked. This was a surprise, she had used her real name and Natalie knew whenever Jenifer did that, it was to indicate that she was giving her an honest reply.
“I was focused on my job. I never gave Farrell a single thought and in any event the meeting was too brief,” Jenifer sighed as part of her answer.
“But, being honest,” Nat
alie made a confession, “I wish I was able to forget the fact that someone was behind bars because of us.” This was her way of an apology.
“Thanks and let’s drop your assignment. We’re not going to work for the Chinese anymore,” Jenifer said in decisive tone. She was furious that the Chinese had not paid her for her last assignment which she had completed for them successfully. Natalie was relieved to learn that at least now, whatever they would both be doing, she would know all about it.
***
Ajay had asked Victor to stay at home with his family to recuperate after the kidnap for as long as he or his family wanted to. It was obvious to Victor that the captivity of his family and the cyber-attacks were directly linked. The FBI had explained the connection after completing the mission to recover Victor and his family.
Jacob was pleased that Victor and his family were safe. He was also glad to have his technical genius back by his side to resume their fight to protect Waverley Davis and the besieged cyber fortress. Victor rejoined the office just three days after his release. However, Jacob had remained in a constant state of shock during the entire period of Victor’s kidnapping. He thought about doing other aspects of his job to break his routine and disconnect from the digital world of Waverley Davis. Now that Victor was back, he could do this.
One day shortly afterwards, Jacob found himself walking around an art exhibition in a well-known art gallery in New York. He was enjoying the people more than the art if he was honest and it was good to see a gathering like this where every face was smiling, cheerful and no-one wore a single sign of worry. The environment of the gallery affected Jacob’s mood too. He began to feel fresh, almost alive again. He was very conscious about this change of feeling. Suddenly, he realized that every now and again he would remember Ajay telling him that, to keep ourselves mindful, we must break our daily life circle. He had done that today and smiled when he realized how true Ajay’s advice was.