“We’re not pulling any levers yet,” Archive said. “But it appears that we would have that option, if it came down to it.”
“Meaning, we’ve hacked into a critical global system for the third time in a day?” Protégé asked.
“Continental,” Archive corrected with a smile. “Not quite global. But yes, computers are useful little tools, in the right hands.”
“There have been some encouraging developments,” Trojan said. “Some of the smaller regions have begun to figure out how to use a combination of surrogate currency and bartering to keep the coal moving to fire the plants. But those circumstances are rare, and seem to rely on a few enterprising individuals from within the coal plants who know how to reach out and get things done in a crisis like this. All the other plant operators appear to be waving their arms and making shrill noises.”
Archive nodded. “Government agencies?”
“Among those still responding? Mostly noise,” Trojan said. “Though it’s obvious they recognize the link between power and the long-term survival rate, especially with winter coming on. But they can’t throw enough dollars at foreign coal producers to make the ships move, and the domestic producers are demanding a less volatile form of payment.”
“Speaking of alternative currencies,” Archive said with a smile, “how are we looking?”
Trojan typed a key command, and the open windows on the laptop rearranged themselves. “Value-wise, just as expected. Our portfolio of metals and Bitcoins is now worth just shy of a trillion dollars.”
Archive laughed aloud. “But what’s a dollar worth these days?”
Trojan smiled. “I actually know the answer to that question,” he said, calling up another screen. It showed a red line rising at an exponential rate. “We’re about to blow through one thousand percent inflation.”
Protégé did the math and grimaced. “Today’s dollar is worth yesterday’s penny.”
“Tough to wrap your mind around, isn’t it?” Archive asked.
Protégé nodded. “Nothing unusual at all about hearing some other country going through currency woes. But the Almighty Dollar?”
Archive smiled. “They said it was impossible.”
“Like the Titanic was unsinkable.”
“There’s a problem, boss,” Trojan said, his face suddenly concerned, his eyes squinting to read a series of red numbers on a spreadsheet.
“What am I looking at?” Archive asked.
“Bitcoin accounts. They appear to be falling.”
“The value of the coins?”
“No,” Trojan said. “The number of coins in our accounts. Someone appears to be siphoning them. That means they’ve hacked into our wallets.”
“All of them?”
Trojan shook his head. “It appears just to be coming out of our exchange-traded accounts. Honestly, it’s smart of them. If I wanted to steal a bunch of Bitcoins, I’d hack into the exchanges’ servers.”
Protégé whistled. “Those numbers are getting serious,” he said. “What do we do?”
Trojan clicked on an icon on the desktop – a picture of a little robot – and a page full of computer code popped up. Then he clicked a green button marked “Run.”
“Done,” Trojan said. “The script will empty all of our exchange wallets and get them ready for cold storage. Should take no more than fifteen minutes for the transactions to be verified by the network, and then I’ll store them securely offline.”
“Total damage?” Archive asked.
“We caught it early. Just thirty or forty Bitcoins,” Trojan said.
Protégé looked at the exchange rate. “That’s a hundred and twenty grand!”
Archive laughed. “Even our minds are infected by dollars. But we’ll all converse in a more meaningful measure of value before too long, I’m sure.”
His expression suddenly turned serious. He looked at Trojan. “Can you trace the thefts?”
“Maybe. But does it matter? We stopped it in time to prevent serious damage.”
“To our accounts, yes,” Archive said. “But I’ve just had a disconcerting thought. What if this is a systematic, organized theft?”
Protégé considered. “A working currency is a hugely important thing in a situation like this. If someone is stealing a bunch of Bitcoins, they could end up in a very powerful position.”
Archive nodded somberly. “Exactly my concern.”
“I’ll get to work,” Trojan said.
29
I-35, South of Oklahoma City
Sam drove in silence. Brock dozed, head lolling against the police cruiser’s window, twitching occasionally. Her eyes drifted to his thigh, bandages visible beneath his khaki trousers, lingering remnant of the weekend spent in a cement cell, shot and abducted from their Alexandria home.
Disorienting, she thought, trying to put context to the frantic, crazed search and herculean effort that had ultimately saved him, but just barely. Seemed like an eon ago, rather than just two days ago.
Their current unlikely location, driving a commandeered police cruiser northbound on an abandoned interstate highway through the middle of nowhere in the post-sunset darkness of the Oklahoma plains, did nothing to ease the surreal feeling.
She glanced in the rearview mirror. Mike Charles rode silently in the suspect’s section of the cruiser, staring tiredly out the window, eyes unfocused. I gave him a lot to think about, she thought with a smile. And his tiredness worked to her advantage, too. It took a lot of emotional energy to resist interrogation, and subjects tended to become exponentially worse at hiding information as their exhaustion grew. Won’t be long now, and we’ll be in a talkative mood, Sam surmised.
The phone buzzed in her pocket. Brock stirred, and Charles’ eyes focused on the back of her head. She answered quietly. “Hi Dan.”
“What do a math geek, a hacker, and three satellites have in common?”
“Sounds like the start of a bad joke,” Sam said. “But don’t forget the bureaucrat.”
“The who?”
“Our illustrious and heretofore elusive friend, Mr. Charles,” she said, giving him a wink in the rearview mirror. She thought she detected a resentful glare in return.
“Ahh. You nabbed him? Learn anything yet?”
Sam shook her head. “We’re still coming in from the cold,” she said with a pointed glance at Charles. “What have you learned?” she asked her deputy.
“Here’s the deal,” Dan said. “I was hanging around the water cooler at NSA, waving a warrant around like a Willie Wonka ticket, and—‘’
“You got a warrant?” Sam interrupted. “From whom? For what?”
“The only federal judge on duty today, I think, judging by how long it took me to find someone to answer the phone at Justice. Anyway, if you ever want to see a confused person, just show a court warrant to an NSA employee. Talk about divided loyalties.”
Sam chuckled. She passed a car on the highway, watching warily for signs of trouble. If the barn incident was any indication, the sudden crisis had seemed to draw out society’s nascent highwaymen. Like weed spores, waiting for the right conditions to sprout roots and raise their ugly heads.
“Are you listening?” Dan asked.
“Sorry. What?”
“I said, I learned that the NSA extended its little accountability exercise to a very small group of contractors it employs to do various things.”
“Accountability exercise?”
“Yeah,” Dan said. “They called everybody in to talk to them, despite all the craziness in the city. They extended the personnel recall to a short list of contractors. The list is so small, in fact, that there’s only one company on it. Pro-Tek.”
“Sounds like a jockstrap manufacturer,” Sam said.
“Right? But no. Building full of nerds. They make algorithms.”
Sam feigned confusion. “Hmm, if only we had a clue about which of its algorithms the NSA might be interested in hunting down at the moment,” she said sarcastically.
“Exactly. These guys do decryption. Some pseudo-quantum thing they figured out. Simultaneous summing over numerous probability density distributions.”
“You switched to another language there.”
“It’s a code-breaking algorithm. Makes 256-bit AES keys look like a kiddy puzzle.”
“In English?” Sam asked, exasperation sneaking into her voice.
“Advanced Encryption Standard. The highest encryption system we have. Nuclear codes, top secret military hardware specs, war plans, you name it. No match for this little beauty.”
Sam considered this for a moment. “And banking system passwords, too, I’d imagine.”
“Right,” Dan said. “So you see where I’m headed with this. NSA was pretty hush-hush, but like I said, the warrant generated enough confusion for a while that I was able to sneak out a little information.”
“Do tell.” Sometimes she had to hustle Dan along towards the point.
“Turns out that everyone but two guys at Pro-Tek showed up for work this morning. One of them was mugged, showed up late, kind of beat up.”
“And the other?” Did she sound too impatient?
“Called in sick. But guess what? Not at home.”
“Name?”
“Vaneesh Ramasomethingorother. I got his vitals from their HR department. They were pretty confused about why a Homeland guy called just minutes after the NSA goons left, but whatever.”
“So you’ve followed up on the Vaneesh lead?”
“I’m one warrant away from seeing how he lives,” Dan said.
Sam looked at her watch. Nine p.m. in Oklahoma meant ten p.m. in DC. “So they’re burning the midnight oil at Justice?”
“Shit, no wonder they’ve been unresponsive.”
Sam chuckled. “You should get some fresh air.”
“I may smell smoke when I walk by Vaneesh’s apartment later,” Dan said.
Sam smiled. “I’m sure you’ll do what any responsible citizen would do in a situation like that.”
“Right,” Dan said. “I’ll keep you posted.”
Sam hung up. She glanced in the mirror at Charles. He eyed her back, his expression neutral. “Know anyone named Vaneesh?” she asked.
He shook his head, his eyes cold and his expression implacable.
30
Seattle, Washington
Sabot took a deep breath, feeling the tension in his neck and shoulders, smelling the cigarette smoke wafting from around the back of the house, where Angie’s mother enjoyed her sixty-ninth smoke of the day. He remained on the front porch, seated in a cheap but comfortable lawn chair situated in the shadows, and watched the street carefully.
He heard the water running inside the house, evidence that Angie’s shower hadn’t yet ended. The power was on, at least for the moment, and for that, Sabot was thankful.
He wasn’t armed. As a convicted felon, legal gun ownership wasn’t an option for him, and before the meltdown, he wasn’t ballsy or stupid enough to risk the parole violation. But with Angie and her mom to protect, and roving gangs of looters breaking into houses and beating up residents, a gun suddenly seemed like an important item to get one’s hands on. He would have to consider how best to go about that. Maybe the next delivery from Doggy Style, or whatever that goofy gringo’s real name was.
He heard Angie’s mom cough in the backyard and shook his head. She was beginning to wheeze, undoubtedly from all the cigarettes.
He liked Consuela well enough, and generally felt that she and Angie had a healthy relationship, but there was still some tension there. For one thing, Angie’s mom didn’t know that Sabot was a felon. So there was that. Plus, Connie was only ten years Sabot’s senior. They’d nearly be contemporaries, really, under different circumstances. Also, the math betrayed thirty seconds of sweaty teenage bliss somewhere in Connie’s past, which had resulted in Angie’s arrival in the world, so Sabot suspected there was some residual Catholic shame that Connie hadn’t quite gotten past.
Still, for all of that, they got along fine, though Sabot hoped Angie didn’t have plans to stay indefinitely at Connie’s place. A man had his limits.
Headlights. SUV. Escalade. My man, Sabot thought, feeling a zing of adrenaline. The first thirty seconds were critical. He remembered the feeling from his days as a punk kid in Queens, where he’d nearly become a street thug. But the lamentably low survival rate wasn’t lost on him, and he’d decided instead to become a computer thug. Fewer sharp objects and firearms.
The truck pulled to a stop at the curb, facing the wrong way down the street, driver’s side door near the sidewalk.
Sabot pulled his hands out of his pockets to make sure the driver could see them, and walked toward the Escalade, hoping he looked much more casual and collected than he felt. His heart was really pounding.
“Noob Elite?” a slightly squeaky male voice queried.
Sabot nodded.
“Doggy Style sez heya. Good lulz earlier. No hard feelins he sez.”
Whigger. Sideways hat, big brim, neck tattoos, a shiny tooth, the whole nine. Strange combination for a hacker, Sabot thought, but it took all kinds. A bag of groceries emerged from the window, attached to a skinny arm by a skinny hand. “Thanks,” Sabot said.
“He sez good one with the dox, yo. Straight up pawned him in like thirty minutes flat.” The messenger extended his arm again, this time with a laptop case in his grip.
Sabot looked around guiltily. Parole violation. Might not be meaningful at the moment, with roving herds of white-bread accountants and middle-class clerks smashing in windows and looking for leftover food in people’s refrigerators, but Sabot figured the time would come when a blackmail photo could have a seriously unhealthy impact on his future. He slung the laptop case over his shoulder nervously, and shifted the grocery bag into the crook of his arm.
“Tell him thanks, bro,” Sabot said. “Doggy’s super pro. Tell him there’s lots of biz in our future.” Positive reinforcement never hurt.
“Right on, man.”
Sabot resisted the urge to ask the messenger’s name. Unwritten rule, best not violated despite the social awkwardness it produced. He patted the top of the SUV and made his way inside.
He emptied the grocery bag. No perishables, per his instructions. He arrayed the food on the countertop, like a hunter displaying the day’s quarry.
Then he made his way to the back room to find Angie. Perhaps it was a side-effect of the adrenaline rush the clandestine encounter had produced, but Sabot suddenly felt quite frisky. He walked into the bedroom, unwrapped the towel from around her trim, athletic body, and pulled her close. She knew instantly what was on his mind. Her smile told him that she found it more than agreeable.
Afterwards, he told her about the food, and about the way he planned to look after them. To be sure, there was a bit of risk, he said, but the greater risk was starving to death, or getting beat up by a hunger-crazed ambulance-chaser wielding a pipe wrench. Times like these, he reasoned, you really had to think on your feet and take advantage of the opportunities that came your way. Carefully, of course, but you definitely couldn’t let things pass you by.
But he didn’t feel any safer after having said the words, and he still felt that vague uneasiness, all too familiar from his pre-confession days as a hardcore hacktivist trying, with the hubris of youth, to lead a high-profile underground life while avoiding too high a profile, at least from a law enforcement perspective.
Right. Worked out about as well as one might expect, he thought as he made his way back to the kitchen.
He looked at the computer on the table, feeling the adrenaline begin to surge. Time to fish or cut bait, esé.
31
Western Kansas
Sam felt the coffee wearing off, and turned down the temperature, hoping the cold air would keep her from ploughing into the ditch. There were no trees to speak of, and this stretch of I-70 was laser-beam straight for about a zillion miles, with not even a timid stream to interrupt its westwar
d charge, all of which made for excruciatingly soporific driving conditions in the best of circumstances.
She looked at the clock on the dashboard. Midnight. Sunrise’s reprieve was still a solid five-plus hours away.
More boredom ahead.
Which was not to say that the trip had been entirely uneventful. They’d been stopped twice by roadblocks, haphazard and poorly-organized affairs reminiscent of those pictures from Third World countries, complete with skinny kids perched atop cars, brandishing firearms.
One roadblock was set in the middle of nowhere several miles south of Oklahoma City, which Sam found a little confusing. The cop car and her shiny badge had done the trick. No resistance. “We’ve, uh, heard tell of some gang activity ‘round here,” the lackey had lied nervously.
“Right,” Sam said. “Let me guess, you were just about to report the suspicious activity, weren’t you?” She didn’t wait for the answer.
The encounter had convinced Sam that where people were concerned, fewer would be better, and it would be far easier to approach Denver via Western Kansas and Eastern Colorado, where approximately seventeen people lived in a sixty-nine billion square mile area, than to drive north through Trinidad, Pueblo, and Colorado Springs. Those areas were sure to have all sorts of unsavories blocking traffic and demanding tributes in the form of gas, water, or sodomy. Nobody had time for that.
Their northern routing had gone well enough, until they skirted the western edge of Salina, Kansas. Just prior to getting on the interstate, they came upon another roadblock. This one appeared far more organized – undoubtedly the extra hours of practice had given the thugs a chance to dial in their technique – and Sam had actually chambered a round in her pistol and turned on the police lights to induce the right sort of behavior.
The combination proved compelling, probably more due to the social programming invoked by the flashing red and blue lights, and less by the image of a redhead with centerfold looks wielding a handgun, but Sam didn’t spend much time pondering the sociology. She’d floored the accelerator as soon as the thugs had made an opening large enough for the police cruiser to fit through.
The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich Page 157