by Lee Winter
“The SmartPay launch with prostitutes and champagne,” Lauren said. “Everything that you said wasn’t a story, was. We traced the invoices back to an account most likely set up to pay bribe money to four Nevada state officials.”
“I never said it wasn’t a story,” Sands disagreed. “I just asked why the other journalists in the room didn’t think it was. It’s still a valid question, don’t you think?” He arched a disdainful eyebrow.
“We’re not here to debate the media,” Ayers broke in, flicking mud from her thighs to the ground beside her. “We’re here for the story.”
“Which it sounds like you already have,” he said. “Why haven’t you run it? How long do I have to hide out in this hole until it’s safe to reappear?”
“It was incomplete.”
“How so? You just said you uncovered an account to bribe officials. So—print that.”
“No, Mr. Sands, you uncovered an account to bribe officials,” Ayers corrected. “And you left us a breadcrumb trail to find it. Not to mention, you were the one who paid for thirty-four prostitutes, a bus, and a pallet of champagne using $100,000 intended to bribe four officials.”
He adjusted his glasses. “How you came about your story is not important. It’s just window dressing. The bribes, the official corruption—that is the story. So what are you waiting for? Run it. Today.”
“You’re not disputing your involvement?” Ayers said in surprise. “And yet you claim you’re not a whistle-blower.”
“I’m not. Tell me when I ever contacted the media. I have leaked nothing to you or anyone. Even when Ms. King came to see me, I said nothing to encourage her to follow up this story. Under any legal or journalistic definition I’m no whistle-blower.”
“Why are you so opposed to being called that? Nevada’s law has protections,” Ayers said. “You could have revealed what you found, openly and safely.”
He gave her an incredulous stare. “A whistle-blower in Nevada is only protected if they take their concerns to their superiors. My superiors were corrupt all the way up the line. And are you really so naïve as to think anyone can whistle-blow safely in this country?”
“Why not?” Lauren asked doubtfully. “Give us one good reason.”
“I’ll give you more than one. Edward Snowden. Revealed to Americans their own government was spying on them. He was called a traitor and forced into hiding overseas, even though the Supreme Court now agrees he uncovered illegal acts.
“Private Manning. Released proof of American pilots shooting up groups of unarmed civilians and covering it up, among other things, and sentenced to rot for thirty-five years. You literally do less time for rape and murder. And that’s when they’re not also dragging your name through the mud, or calling you a terrorist sympathizer or crazy.
“Of course those are just the alive whistle-blowers. Want me to start on the curiously dead ones? What about the murdered journalists? Like Michael Hastings? Of course you wouldn’t have heard of them if you followed the sell-out, lazy mainstream media in this country.”
“We get the point,” Ayers interrupted, holding up her hand. “But if we were all sell-outs or lazy we wouldn’t be here right now, would we?”
Sands paused. “Mmm,” he conceded, finally. He gave them a half smile. “I suppose there’s hope for us yet.”
Lauren smothered a laugh at how aggrieved he sounded making that admission.
“So,” Ayers said impatiently. “You worked out that by doing it your way you’d only get charged with embezzlement?”
“Yes. Well, the best-case scenario I wouldn’t be found out at all. Second-best, I wouldn’t be charged given all I took was money intended for bribes. Absolute worst-case scenario—a year in jail—probably less for a first offence—or a fine. I kept the alcohol and the receipts to return it for a refund to lessen the severity of the charge.”
He ran his hand through his hair. “I miss Fee and Della, though. So, if we can move this along, I’d really rather be home.”
“I don’t understand one thing,” Ayers said. “If you’re so frightened by what happens to whistle-blowers, why do anything at all? Why risk it? You could have pretended you didn’t find the red files.”
“After going to all the effort to find something I could use on SmartPay, I wasn’t about to pretend I hadn’t found it. I just had to figure out a way to use it and protect myself at the same time.”
“It wasn’t an accident then?” Ayers asked, “Finding the red files?”
He gave a wry laugh. “Definitely not. I had to write a very clever little program to squirrel its way through SmartPay’s internal accounts over many months to dig up that particular fiscal irregularity,” Sands said. “They’d hidden it in their marketing budget over a dozen different departments to make it look legitimate.
“But then I tried to pull the thread at the Nevada government’s end, and discovered the red files were so creatively hidden that no journalist would ever be able to find them unassisted. I’d have to stick a neon arrow on them.”
“Why are you gunning for SmartPay?” Lauren asked. “I mean aside from the fact they pay bribes?”
“SmartPay bribing officials to talk up their technology at business conventions and government meet-fests and calling it speaking engagement fees doesn’t even touch the sides of what they’re up to. And I don’t want to see my little girl growing up in a world with something as evil as SmartPay in it. Think of them as a corporate Al Capone.”
Lauren cocked her head. “The gangster?”
“A ruthless crime boss from the twenties,” Sands said. “They couldn’t get him for all the countless murders, prostitution, and drug rings he ran, so they finally jailed him on tax fraud. I decided to do the same. While the red files bribes are chicken feed in the scheme of what SmartPay is involved in, it can still destroy them. All that’s needed is enough bad publicity to frighten off any other states from signing up and to stop California’s rollout cold. But it has to be done now.”
“If the red files are chicken feed, what’s SmartPay’s main crime?” Lauren asked.
“It’s nothing I can prove without costing me everything,” he sighed. “And without the proof, people would dismiss me as a conspiracy theorist just so they could sleep at night. Some truths are too scary to face.”
“Tell us anyway,” Lauren urged. “Maybe there’s a way?”
“A way? I’ve thought of nothing else for over a year,” Sands said, staring into the fire. He shook his head. “I’ve thought of every possible scenario, and it all ends in me dead, rotting in jail, or exiled somewhere that has no extradition treaty with the US. And in every option, I lose my family. But with the red files? Problem solved. Corrupt officials, a bribing corporation? People can wrap their heads around that. And I get to keep my family.”
“Why didn’t you tell Della any of this?” Lauren asked. “This has been a nightmare for her. They told her you were probably dead.”
“Hell,” he said, his voice breaking. It was the most human Lauren had seen him. “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Look, if it’d gone to plan, the bribes story would have been run already. They would never have known who was involved and be too busy arresting corrupt officials and investigating SmartPay.
“But Barry went and named me, and the moment he did, the moment the government found out how good I really am, what I can do, then SmartPay found out, too. I knew what the next step would be—they’d be wondering what else I might have found out and they’d put me in their sights. This, here,” he waved his hand around the camp site, “is my pathetic Plan B—to hide out with Dad.
“And of course I couldn’t tell Della, because while my wife has many incredible qualities, discretion isn’t one of them. She cannot keep a secret to save her life.”
“So you parked where you did to tell her you were safe? Was she right?”
“Y
ou know I was right there on the lake, fishing, that day you were standing around my car with the cops,” Sands said.
Lauren started in surprise.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “It gave me some hope. I wanted you staying interested in the story, and there’s nothing like a turf war mixed up with a weird mystery to keep the media sniffing around.
“But I didn’t want Della to worry, either. So I left the note to let her know I was fine and prayed you were curious enough to keep digging. Please tell me I didn’t put my family through all this for nothing? Tell me you’ll run the story now?”
“We will,” Ayers said. “But I’m curious about how you knew how to play the media so well. You know far more than any ordinary IT worker should.”
“Well, that’s because of my sister. It’s her line of work—dreaming up publicity stunts to get the media’s attention. She and her husband run a big New York marketing agency. Last Christmas, we were sitting around after a few drinks, and I challenged them, pretending it was a hypothetical, to come up with one way to get the attention of a roomful of journalists at a party attended by politicians. I said it had to be a guaranteed front-page story.
“Susan suggested billing crates of the world’s worst pink champagne to the politicians using the taxpayers’ money. And the genius part was not to actually serve it to anyone, because missing cheap pink champagne sounds far more mysterious.
“Mark suggested it’d be more dramatic billing the taxpayers for a room full of Las Vegas showgirls—and then leaving the invoice lying around.
“It turns out you can do both quite easily if you know how. Although I found out showgirls are way more expensive to hire than prostitutes. Besides they lack that essential tawdry quality you in the media so love.”
Lauren ignored the dig. “And your plan worked perfectly. Until Barry blabbed.”
Sands’s lip curled in annoyance. “The human equation is always the weakest part of any plan.”
“So no one knows what you know about SmartPay? What you really have on them?”
“No.”
“Then why have two gorillas broken into your home—both here and in LA—and mine? And why do they keep following us?”
“Only two? I’m surprised it’s not more. It’ll be little more than a fact-finding mission on their part. Anytime anyone sniffs around SmartPay, men in suits turn up. What did these two look like?”
Lauren sheepishly pulled out her own cell phone that she hadn’t volunteered earlier when he was deconstructing their burner. He shot her an admonishing look. She showed him the photo.
“Can you zoom in above the ear, right there? He tapped the screen. Lauren did as he instructed.
“See? The coiled wire there? That’s standard issue for the CIA, NSA, and a couple of other intelligence agencies.”
He plucked her phone from her hands, removed the battery and SIM card, and passed it back silently. He then reached for his own phone and scrolled down. He showed them grainy black and white pictures of two men in Italian suits.
“I call this pair ‘Dolce and Gabbana.’ I still have no idea which agency they’re from. I ghosted this snap off SmartPay’s security camera at the Nevada HQ. They randomly turn up at the same restaurants I eat at. Follow me when I take my girl to the park.” He scrolled to another picture. A tall man with a thick neck and dark eyes was staring past the camera, adjusting something in his collar. “I call this one Fido. He’s security for SmartPay. He follows up industrial espionage mostly. He followed me for a little while when I first started implementing the system in Nevada. He follows us all from time to time, just to check we’re not up to anything. There are others—I’m not sure who they’re with.” He flicked through his phone, photo after photo of people with cool eyes and sharp suits greeted them. “It’ll make you crazy if you think about them watching you for long enough.”
“What do they want?” Lauren asked.
“To make sure nothing stops what SmartPay is doing.”
“Which is?”
His mouth tightened. “The thing I can’t prove and can’t directly end.”
“Tell us?” Ayers asked.
“You can’t stop it. You can’t prove it. You can’t print it. And I won’t back you up if you try to do any of these things. It’d be suicide.”
“You could go to the FBI.”
He shot her a pitying look. “You really don’t get what this is about, do you? How big this is? The FBI couldn’t do jack to stop this. There are many forces wanting this rollout to happen without interference, forces far more powerful than the FBI.”
“So tell us why.”
He sighed. “You don’t know what you’re asking. And you won’t thank me for knowing it, either. It made me paranoid for months. Della thought I was going mad. Because this stuff…it really does make you crazy.”
Lauren exchanged a look with Ayers. She saw a curiosity and determination that matched her own.
“We’re prepared to take the risk,” Lauren said quietly. “Tell us.”
Sands stared at them for a long moment, then took in a deep shuddering breath. “Okay but remember you asked. SmartPay plans to spy on us all and sell the data it gleans to the highest bidder. Namely, an intelligence agency.”
“How can SmartPay do that?” Lauren asked, perplexed. “You mean track what we spend our wages on? Or what?”
“No. First they sell payroll technology cheaply to get as many people using it as possible—SmartPay sells its product at cost, making no profit, to drive out competitors and be more enticing to employers. Next, once people have their wages in a SmartPay account, it’s deliberately made very tempting to leave your money there because the deals offered through SmartPay’s bank are phenomenal. And do you know why that is?
“It’s all because to perform transactions using SmartPay’s bank you have to use their patented security dongles. And, quite by accident, I discovered one day that their dongles have sleeping dragons in them. A special, tailored virus buried deep in the source code under many layers of high security. Only a top programmer would recognize it for what it is.”
Lauren saw fear flitter across Ayers’s eyes, and she swallowed.
Sands looked at them grimly. “Yeah,” he said, reading their faces. “That’s how I felt when I saw it. What happens is the first time your dongle gets plugged into a computer, the virus hops over into that machine then goes back to sleep, waiting for a command to wake it. The wake command can be done remotely by anyone—well, anyone who has paid for the code. Someone, like an intelligence agency, for example.”
“What happens when someone wakes the dragon?” Lauren asked.
“SmartPay’s virus has the power to take over everything on your computer—the webcam and microphone, and it has a keystroke logger built in, too. Everything you type or say or do around your computer, it watches, listens, records, knows. SmartPay essentially supplies its espionage clients with a double agent in every home. And it doesn’t stop there. The virus copies itself onto any subsequent USB device inserted into that computer and spreads itself well beyond SmartPay customers. Now from the sudden activity I’ve seen on their visitor’s e-log book, SmartPay appears to be getting very near to selling the wake-up code. Someone, somewhere will soon have unprecedented power over us. Now do you see why I couldn’t just let that happen?”
“Why wouldn’t a spy agency just develop this themselves?” Lauren asked.
“Times are tight, and research and development budgets aren’t what they used to be,” Sands shrugged. “I’m guessing SmartPay saw a gap in the market. Rumor has it key board members have NSA or CIA links, so they probably had this planned from day one. And the agencies get deniability later if anything bad blows up—it’s real easy to toss a private operator to the wolves and call them a rogue element.”
“Why can’t you prove any of this?”
“Becau
se SmartPay made their virus too well. Once it copies itself the first time, it deletes itself from the dongle and then we have no way of linking the copy of it back to SmartPay. I only stopped the deletion on my dongle in the nick of time. But to prove any of this I need a brand new dongle, still in its packaging. These things are surprisingly hard to get hold of—there’s huge security on them. They make one per customer and each is keyed to an employee’s ID.
“If that’s not bad enough, I also need a top computer expert—someone independent—to witness and prove what I’ve said is true, or people could claim it’s a lie or I created it myself.
“I also need a federal government willing to stop this madness before it starts. But it’s too late. The power available is too immense for the spy agencies to pass up—especially given SmartPay plans to go global.
“Imagine the CIA, for example, able to tap into virtually any computer in the world to see what its enemies and allies are up to. They could read the emails of an Israeli soldier in Hebron or a British protestor in London or just some teenage girl gossiping with her friends in Maine—they could get all their secrets in a single data upload from their computer. Now do you see why this stuff will make you crazy if you head too far down the rabbit hole?”
“No wonder they’ve been looking for your laptop,” Lauren mused. “Given what they fear you could have found out.”
“What?” he said sharply. “As if I’d keep anything on my work laptop.”
“I meant your other one. The My Little Pony thing.”
The color drained from Sands’s face. “How could you possibly know about that?” he asked.
“Della really wanted us to solve this mystery of your disappearance. She thought that could help. She gave it to us.”
“She… I had it hidden under my… How could… Oh my god. Tell me you have it in a safe place? That no one else knows about it?”
“Uh…” Lauren looked at her boots, drying with caked-on mud. “Okay, well, a cop in Carson City saw me leaving with it, and maybe she told someone who told someone. Or maybe someone else was following us? But now everyone seems to want it.”