by Nele Neuhaus
“If you’ll excuse me now,” he said, “I still have a few official events to attend.”
While Nick drove to Rockefeller Center, trying to hide his anxiety, Lloyd Connors headed to Greenwich, Connecticut, with the two US marshals, Spooner and Khazaeli. The three men walked through the accumulating snow toward the large, white house. The house, with its wraparound porch, was surrounded by magnificent old trees and had an extensive lawn. Connors briefly wondered why no one else had become suspicious long ago. There was no way that de Lancie could afford a house like this on his salary. John de Lancie opened the front door himself, and he turned pale when he saw Connors accompanied by two men.
“Hello, John,” Connors said in a calm voice, “these are Deputies Spooner and Khazaeli from the US Marshals Service. I apologize for disturbing you on a Sunday afternoon, but we’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“What is this about?” de Lancie asked curtly. “You’re coming here at a rather inopportune time. Can’t we discuss this tomorrow morning at my office?”
“I’m afraid not,” Deputy Spooner said, “unless you want everyone to hear about it.”
“Hear about what?”
Spooner and Connors exchanged a glance.
“May we come in, John?” Connors asked politely.
“First, I’d like to know what this is all about.”
“As you wish.” Spooner shrugged his shoulders. “We have a reasonable suspicion that you’ve accepted bribes on multiple occasions.”
All of the color disappeared from the US attorney’s face. De Lancie stood there as if paralyzed, silently staring at the three men.
“May we come in?” Connors repeated.
“Yes…yes, of course,” de Lancie whispered and took a step back. “Let’s go to my study.”
John de Lancie only tried to deny the allegations for a few minutes. When Connors presented him with a copy of the bank statement from Levy & Villiers, he collapsed. With tears in his eyes, he admitted that he’d accepted bribes from Sergio Vitali. As quid pro quo, he had agreed to do Vitali a favor every now and then.
Lloyd Connors felt a dizzying sensation of triumph. Until this moment he’d feared that the mere existence of the bank statements wouldn’t be enough to prove that Vitali was handing out bribes, but de Lancie’s confession established the connection. Now everything was clear. The testimony of just a single person in court would cause a lot of trouble for Vitali, and there were plenty of others on the list who had been bought too. It was simply incredible. This seemed to be the first time that the US Attorney’s Office really had an airtight case against Sergio Vitali. Connors thought about the mountains of evidence against this man and all of the witnesses who’d suddenly disappeared or lost their memory. He also remembered, with a quiet sense of guilt, that many people at the US Attorney’s Office—himself included—had sneered at Nick Kostidis’s futile efforts to prove Vitali’s crimes. But Nick had been right all along.
De Lancie confessed to everything in a whimpering voice. It almost seemed as if he were relieved to have freed himself from this burden that had weighed on him for so many months.
“What’s going to happen now?” he asked, trembling.
“That depends on you, John,” Connors said, shaking his head. “It’s your choice. If you resign from office and serve as a witness, then we could possibly refrain from charging you with corruption. Otherwise—”
“No, no,” de Lancie interrupted him quickly. “I’ll do it. I’ve made a mistake, a huge mistake. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but I don’t want my family to suffer from this.”
“Your name will be in the headlines,” Connors said. “You’ll have to live with it. However, you won’t be charged and sentenced. If you cooperate with us, then we might be able to prevent you from being disbarred.”
De Lancie’s face was as white as a sheet. Was he thinking that his ambitious plans for the future had been destroyed in a single blow? Connors knew that the job as US attorney for the Southern District was just a stepping-stone for big politics, but this dream seemed to be over now.
Connors opened his briefcase.
“Here’s a statement I’ve prepared for you. Read through it and sign if you agree with its content.”
De Lancie swallowed as he read the document.
“If I sign this, then I’m done,” he whispered. His hands were shaking.
“I can arrest you, John,” Connors said, “if you prefer. You have the right to remain silent. With a clever lawyer you might be able to squirm your way free from this mess, but it’ll take a long time and all the dirt will stick to you longer. You know what’s going to happen. Apart from the criminal proceedings, the IRS will knock on your door. And I’m pretty sure that it won’t be easy to explain to the IRS where you got the money to pay for this mansion and your children’s expensive schools.”
De Lancie broke into tears and covered his face with his hands. Without sympathy, the three men watched the US attorney sob like a little child.
“Will you sign it?”
“Yes…yes…” He slowly stood up and walked to his desk with wobbling steps. Without looking up, he signed the paper, admitting his guilt.
Connors waited for the ink to dry.
“You’ll call in sick tomorrow. Please don’t leave your house until further notice.”
“I’m under house arrest?”
“Yes,” Connors said as he stood up. “If Vitali contacts you, I advise you not to tell him anything about our conversation. We’re not after you, John, but a much bigger fish. We’ve tapped your telephone so that you won’t be tempted to stab us in the back.”
“I won’t do that,” de Lancie said, as he sat back down.
“I hope not. I don’t need to tell you what the consequences would be.”
De Lancie silently stared after the three men as tears ran down his cheeks. When his wife entered the study with a frightened expression, he made no effort to hide them.
John de Lancie was just the first on a long list of men who were paid unexpected visits on this Sunday afternoon. Tracy Taylor and Royce Shepard traveled all over the state of New York accompanied by US marshals, just like their boss. As Nick Kostidis had anticipated, all of the accused turned out to be cooperative. Sergio Vitali’s empire had started to shake, but he didn’t notice the tremors that were headed for him.
PART FOUR
Monday, December 6, 2000—Zurich, Switzerland
Alex woke up after ten hours of sleep feeling better rested than she had in days. She called Justin, and he confirmed that he had managed to block the secret files at Levy & Villiers. No one could delete them now, unless they were willing to destroy the entire computer system. Alex hung up and treated herself to some champagne with her room service breakfast. Her successful escape and the excitement of the last few days had put her into a state of manic euphoria, and she felt so safe that she would have loved to call Sergio to mock him. Instead, she called Nick Kostidis at home. It was the middle of the night in New York, but it was only a few seconds before he picked up.
“Yes, hello?” Alex heard a sleepy voice. She felt her heart start pounding, and she hesitated.
“Hello? Who is this?”
“Nick, it’s me. Alex,” she said. “I’m sorry if I woke you up.”
“Alex!” Nick sounded wide awake at once. “Don’t worry about it! How are you?”
“Good, thank you. Did Justin give you the e-mails?”
“Yes, he did.”
Nick told her about his meeting with Engels and Jenkins and that all of the men who were questioned about the corruption allegations had confessed to their crimes.
“The murder charges against you have been dropped unofficially,” he said, “and things are moving. The US Attorney’s Office is working at full speed.”
“That’s a start.”
“Tate Jenkins urgently asks you to come back to New York. The FBI will protect you.”
“That’s hardly reassur
ing,” countered Alex. “Just think about David Zuckerman.”
She lay on the bed and stared at her hotel room ceiling. How would it feel to be frightened and in hiding for an entire lifetime? The thought of a life on the run sobered her. This wasn’t an exhilarating game or an exciting movie with a happy ending—her situation was deadly serious. Her euphoria suddenly vanished, and the champagne tasted flat.
“Justin Savier is very worried about you,” Nick said, although he really wanted to tell her that he was the one most worried.
“Tell him that I’m doing well,” Alex replied. “Did Mark Ashton or Oliver Skerritt get in touch with you or Justin?”
“No,” Nick replied, “unfortunately not.”
Alex felt a chill. Mark and Oliver were probably in serious trouble, while she was safe in Switzerland sipping champagne. And although the idea to go into hiding somewhere and never return to New York was appealing, she also knew that she couldn’t turn her back on her friends.
“Alex,” Nick said emphatically, “you’re in great danger. Vitali will try everything to get a hold of you.”
“Are you worried about me?”
“Yes, I am,” Nick replied in a hoarse voice. “Very worried. The fact that you’ve stolen money from Vitali will make him furious. I know what he’s capable of, and I don’t want to see anything happen to you.”
These words affected Alex. She felt that they came from the heart. The mayor of New York, this powerful man, was worried about her! And rightfully so.
“I didn’t steal the money,” she said. “I’ll give it back to him if he leaves me alone. I don’t want to be on the run for the rest of my life. But he can’t forgive me for leaving him and…”
“And what?”
“…and coming to you, of all people.”
There was complete silence again for a moment. His voice felt so close, it was as if he were standing right next to her, without the entire Atlantic Ocean between them.
“You’ve saved my life once,” Nick said softly. “At a time when I was struggling, you bolstered my spirit and helped me move on with my life. I’ll never forget that. Whenever you need help, you can count on me.”
Suddenly, she felt a lump in her throat and tears pushed into her eyes. “I…I’ve got to go now. I’ll get in touch with you again, okay?”
Henry Monaghan was furious that Alex Sontheim had escaped. What’s worse, someone had hacked into LMI’s central computer without his noticing. It undermined his authority as the head of security, and it was his own fault. Of course, no one would ever tell him that to his face. He desperately needed to recover his tarnished self-confidence.
He sat with Phil Fox—his closest staff member—in the basement security control center of the LMI Building trying to figure out who had snooped around in their corporate network. Without a doubt this someone was clever, because nothing had been destroyed. They were dealing with a professional who was already familiar with the system, and that significantly limited the circle of potential suspects. The windowless room, filled with state-of-the-art security technology, was cloudy with Monaghan’s incessant cigar smoke. There were fifteen cigar stubs in the ashtray already when he lit himself another one.
“And?” Fox asked after Monaghan hung up the phone.
He had called the company that had installed the system five years ago, but no one was familiar with the software.
“They think that only someone who programmed the system could hack into it. He said that software manufacturers leave a back door open so that they can enter the system unnoticed at any time.”
“Sure,” Fox said, nodding, “I know that. Where should we start searching?”
“Which operating system are we using?”
“BankManager 5.3 by IBM.”
“Great,” Monaghan said with a frown, chewing on his cigar pensively, “IBM’s a pretty big organization.”
“It is,” replied Fox, “but there couldn’t be too many people who worked on BM 5.3. There are just a handful of programmers at that level.”
Monaghan looked at the IT specialist and then picked up the telephone. After four phone calls, he was speaking with the head of software development at IBM. Monaghan quickly described his problem. However, he carefully kept the reason for his call to himself.
“BankManager 5.3 was developed in-house,” IBM’s head of technology explained, “but the security testing of the program was performed by external specialists.”
“And which specialists did the testing?”
“Usually a team from MIT. However, that was six years ago. It’s likely none of the same people still work there.”
“Right, this seems pretty hopeless to me,” Monaghan replied.
“Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” he said to Fox in a sinister tone. “I bet the little asshole we’re looking for is there somewhere. I’m flying to Boston tomorrow. I’ll find out who’s behind this.”
Monday, December 6, 2000—Offices of Levy & Villiers, Georgetown, Grand Cayman
The young man responsible for Levy & Villiers’s computer system turned to Vincent Levy and Lance Godfrey, director of the branch in Georgetown on Grand Cayman.
“I’m sorry, I can’t access those files at the moment.”
“What do you mean?” Levy asked indignantly. He hadn’t slept well for a number of nights. During the day he was forced to deal with the SEC and the police. In the evenings, his wife was giving him hell. She found it intolerable that LMI had become the subject of negative headlines, and this made his life even more difficult. Levy couldn’t bear her whiny reproaches anymore. To make things worse, he had to fly to the Caymans to have all documents relating to the secret accounts deleted—as if he didn’t already have enough work on his plate.
“Something’s not right here,” the young man said. “It refuses access to certain files and tells me that a fatal exception error occurred. I’ll risk crashing the entire system if I try to fix this.”
He pressed a few buttons, moved the mouse back and forth, and then pointed to the screen with a distressed expression.
“Look, sir. I can open and print these files without a problem, but whenever I try to delete them it says this every time:
“Invalid operation. The file is being closed.”
The way this man talked about the computer as if it were a human being made Levy nervous. He was also annoyed about how relaxed Godfrey seemed.
“I don’t understand your agitation, Vince,” he said, casually crossing his feet on the desk’s glass tabletop. “There’s no trace leading here. The data is as secure as Fort Knox.”
Levy didn’t respond. He thought it was best to keep Godfrey in the dark. With his athletic, six-foot-four frame, deep tan, and light-colored suit, this man looked more like a nightclub owner than the director of a prestigious private bank. And Levy didn’t appreciate it. Godfrey was clearly a capable man, but a little more professionalism seemed appropriate for a man in his position. But this wasn’t the right time to voice his disapproval.
“You better get this thing working again,” Levy snarled at the young man. “That’s what you’re getting paid for, after all.”
Lance Godfrey just grinned and shrugged his shoulders.
“I expect the error to be fixed in an hour,” Levy said as he turned around and marched out of the room. The young man returned to the computer again with a sigh.
It was easy enough for Henry Monaghan to get the names of the people who’d worked on testing the security of IBM’s BankManager 5.3 six years ago. There were three men: one of them was now in Silicon Valley, California; the second lived somewhere in Southeast Asia; the third man was still there. His name was Justin Savier, and he’d worked as a programmer at MIT’s world-renowned Media Lab after graduating with honors with a degree in computer science. Monaghan’s instinct told him that he had found the right guy.
Savier didn’t show up to work on Tuesday morning. Monaghan had been sitting in his small glass office for almost two days
and nights. Unfortunately, Savier’s boss didn’t allow Monaghan to look around his office, so he left the MIT premises. He found Savier’s address in the phone book and drove to his apartment with his two assistants. They rang the doorbell three times, but Savier didn’t come to the door. Monaghan got them into the apartment without a problem.
“What the hell is this?” LMI’s head of security shook his head in disgust as he saw the disorder surrounding them. The three rooms stuffed floor to ceiling with computers, parts, books, and computer magazines. Hidden beneath were fitness machines, a bicycle, a vacuum cleaner, and pieces of furniture that didn’t belong together. Piles of clothes, shoes, jackets, and even a few motorcycle helmets were strewn everywhere. These computer geeks were all the same! As brilliant as they might be at their jobs, their personal lives were chaotic and messy.
Monaghan sat down at the desk, opened all of the drawers, and rummaged around in the trash cans. He didn’t even try to start up one of the computers. This Savier character had certainly installed countless access restrictions on them. Then he checked the bathroom and the bedroom. It was the same everywhere: overflowing ashtrays on every surface, empty beer and soda cans, CDs, and a cardboard box with the remnants of a Quattro Staggioni pizza.
“Hey, Henry,” one of his men said. “Take a look at this.”
He pointed to a yellowed newspaper clipping hanging between other notes on a pinboard in the kitchen.
“Teenage Computer Whiz Fools Generals”, read the almost twenty-year-old headline. The newspaper article was about Justin Savier, who had hacked the central computer of the US Space & Missile Defense Command at the age of sixteen, and almost triggered World War III as a result. The military commanders had made fools of themselves because they hadn’t realized a teenager was pranking them. They had seriously believed that the Soviets were preparing for a nuclear strike.