by Dave Buschi
Lip listened. It was a short message. Clipped. Cryptic.
An address in North Carolina was given. The audio file ended.
Just an address. Residential by the sound of it. On another computer, he plugged in the address and brought up an aerial view of a housing development. Small houses. The address was for a house on a tiny lot.
Hmmm.
Lip opened another PDF. This time the conversion wasn’t into an AVI file, but rather into an IPG file. These things were hiding all sorts of goodies. IPG was a format that was typically used by Apple for iPod Games. The file stayed static on his screen. Nothing played and nothing ran.
Not a surprise. IPG was an encrypted, compressed format. Lip went and dragged over WinRAR. It was a data compression utility; a handy tool that could process RAR and ZIP files, and also IPG files. He used it to unpack the contents of the IPG file.
A series of screens rapidly opened. He took a moment to appreciate this. This was ingenious. These PDFs were flying under the radar. On the surface they were just recipes. Seemingly from some grandma, or cooking nut, sending out their latest blog ‘recipe of the day’.
Innocuous. As harmless as the simple ingredients listed: butter, corn, chicken tenders, salt…
The NSA had a million methods to screen for nefarious content. Every email sent anywhere in the world was scanned. Algorithmic search looked for millions of buzzwords and key phrases. You mention “bomb” in an email or in an attachment and it got flagged. “Senator”, “President”, “Capitol”, “incendiary”, “propane”, “common grade fertilizer”, the list of words and phrases was almost never-ending and kept growing. Send a certain attachment that fit certain parameters, same deal, same result, the NSA captured it, dissected it, and reviewed it.
It was all done on the computer level. Thousands of servers in data centers of incredible magnitude funneled those emails to the ‘Black Widow’, the NSA’s badass Cray supercomputer. That beautiful baby took those emails apart. Put them through a myriad filtering process in nanoseconds! Emails were accessed and then put into two categories. Dump or save. Anything saved went to the next level.
Eventually, if it drew enough red flags, a set of real eyes looked at the content. But these emails and PDFs had nothing that would raise red flags so as to make it to the eyes stage. So how had Johnny Two-cakes obtained this stuff? There were thousands of emails on this stick.
Another question. Join the club, baby.
Lip looked at what had just been unpacked. The IPG file had contained a considerable amount of data. On his screen were what looked like stock purchases. The dates were recent, less than a month ago. There were hundreds of pages. This was streaming content directly from NASDAQ.
He skimmed through page after page. All the same, or variations of the same. He wasn’t a wizard with financial nomenclature, but he recognized some as being ‘put options’, which were short positions on various stocks. There was too much to analyze. He’d need to come back to this.
He closed out the screens and started opening some more of the PDFs. He was on his nineteenth one when he heard Marks’s Jeep pulling into the driveway. You could hear that antique of his a mile off. Lip checked one more thing real quick and then shut things down.
Hmmm. Lip was getting a glimpse here, and what he was seeing was pretty messed up.
102
“WHAT do you mean get packed? Where are we going?” Marks said.
“Hold on a second,” Lip said. He let out a burp. “Let me call Lisa first.”
Marks’s timing was perfect. Their flight left in three and a half hours. Should be just enough time to pack, pick up their visas and get to the airport. Opps… and also drop off Ma.
Lisa picked up on the second ring.
“Lisa,” Lip said.
“Mr. Lipkin… I mean Tom.” She sounded flustered.
“You okay?” Lip said.
“I’m great,” Lisa said. “I’m glad you called back.”
“You are? Why?”
“I researched what you needed.”
Lip remembered. Diebold. “Great. What’d you find?”
“Well, I had a few complications. My computer wasn’t working; I don’t know what was going on with it. There seemed to be plenty of articles on Diebold, but every time I tried to click on a link, I kept getting an error message. It was so frustrating. But I persevered and did find some stuff. Do you want me to tell you, or do you want me to email you the information?”
“How about you just give me the greatest hits?”
“Okay… well, most of the information I found was in last week’s paper. After my computer fiasco, I needed to clear my head and was tidying up the office and putting the newspapers in the recycling bin, and I guess it must have been my lucky day, because there it was, right on the cover of one of the papers. Diebold! They make voting machines. And they just had a legal decision in the circuit court, which went their way. The article told all about it.”
“What paper?” Lip said.
“Oh I forgot. Let me check. I’ll be right back.”
There was a pause. She came back on the line a moment later. “New York Times!”
“Great! We’re coming to the office. I’ll pick it up then.”
“You’re coming to the office?”
“Yeah, but just for a moment. Then we need to catch a flight.”
“Where are you going?”
“Costa Rica.”
“Wow. When will you be back?”
“Not sure. Save that paper, will you? You did great, Lisa.”
“I did?” She sounded surprised.
“You did. See you soon.”
Lip clicked off.
“Costa Rica?” Marks said.
Lip shook his head. “No, we’re going to Shanghai.”
Marks frowned. “Why?”
Lip grinned. “Because that’s where Johnny Two-cakes is.”
103
MA was along for the ride, at least for half of it. No way to avoid it, not with their pinched timeframe.
They swung by Marks’s place so he could quickly pack. Ma had never been to his place and was unflinching with her comments.
“Tcchh, tchhh… you need to eat better.” She was looking in his fridge. “I see no vegetables and no fruits. How are you going to stay healthy?”
Regarding Marks’s decorating skills—or lack thereof—she was equally discriminating. “Marks, you don’t live in a barracks anymore. Where are your family photos? There are no pictures and no artwork. This feels very cold.”
Marks smirked. “It’s called Zen, Mrs. Lip.”
They got Ma out of there before she started checking his closets. Getting their visas was on the way. They made a quick stop to drop their passports with a service they used now and then when they needed things expedited. Lip was going with ‘Thomas Mapother IV’ this time and Marks was ‘Alphonso D’Abruzzo’.
“Why do I have to be Alphonso?” Marks said, as they walked back to the Jeep where Ma was waiting.
“What do you have against Alan Alda?” Lip said.
Marks snorted. “I’d rather be Tom Cruise. You got Maverick.”
“C’mon. Hawkeye?”
“Man was a wuss.”
It was a little trick of the trade that Lip had picked up. Back at the NSA, he’d usually used real names of actors when angling out new passports for Marks, Johnny Two-cakes and himself. They had their pick of the crop. The SCS would have set them up with anything they wanted, but Lip was partial to names with pedigree and he liked the fact that he was slipping one past Johnny Two-cakes. Thomas Mapother IV, former name of Tom Cruise. Alphonso D’Abruzzo, aka: Alan Alda. For Johnny, Lip usually stuck him with something like Allen Stewart Konigsberg, which Johnny thought was fine, except for the nickname part. Why do you two keep calling me Woody?
That’d be Woody Allen.
Way Lip saw it, those guys didn’t want their original names. Might as well put them to good use. Names were already in the system.
Not on any Watch Lists. Required very little turnaround time in the shop to get it set up. Basically just required a new picture, some adjustments to dates, a few other particulars, and they were set.
They had a whole stack of those old passports. The ones they’d just dropped off would be ready for pickup in half an hour. Their visas would be processed, complete with the requisite stamps from the Embassy of the People’s Republic in China. The service they used was pretty slick. It was called connections, and they still had them. Who you know, baby. In this town, that was being a VIP.
Next stop was spinning by their office to print a quick letter. They kept some special 100% cotton rag that was made in China. Got to go authentic with things like this. They used Mei’s firm, Pinnacle Ventures, for the fake letterhead. Business meeting was the purported reason for their visit. Lip refrained from using any cracks to “long dong” in the text, but every time he looked at that logo he just lost it. Mountain my ass—that was a big johnson.
Ma got to meet Lisa, their new receptionist. Those two seemed to hit it off.
“I like her,” Ma said, back in the Jeep. “You know, Thomas…”
“Don’t, Ma,” Lip said.
“Now Thomas.”
“Ma!”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say,” Ma said, getting flustered.
Their next stop, of course, was a complete fiasco. Dropping Ma off. Ma insisted she’d forgotten to pack something and wanted to go back to the house. They had no time for that. And she didn’t take it so well.
“This is no way to treat your mother,” she said, pinching her lips.
Five star place and she was complaining about forgetting her toothbrush.
“You can buy one here,” Lip insisted.
“They won’t have the kind I like,” Ma said. “I want to go home.”
Lip whispered, “I thought you had dentures, Ma?”
Needless to say, Lip was in the doghouse.
“Good luck with that,” Marks said, after they got back in his Jeep. “You’re on the curb the second you get back.”
Marks fired up his Jeep. They could talk freely now, as long as they yelled.
“Now tell me again why we’re letting Rudy go and jetting to Shanghai?”
“We’re not letting him go,” Lip said. “But he’s not the primary target. This is bigger than Rudnitsky and his crew. Johnny Two-cakes was onto something. I’ll fill you in on the flight, and then we can figure out the rest.”
“What do you mean figure out?” Marks said. “We’re going to Shanghai and you don’t even know what’s going on?”
“Easy. I didn’t say that. I know some of it. Johnny Two-cakes got a doozy this time. I’m pretty sure I know where he is. Good news is once we find him, we find the head. And like you say, take down the head and we take down the entire structure.”
“It’s work your way up, take down the entire structure.”
“Whatever. I was riffing.”
“I want to see what you got,” Marks said.
“Don’t worry, it’s a nineteen hour flight. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“Shanghai. And we’re using Mei?”
“I know, I thought about it,” Lip said. “But it was the best call.”
“I’m cool with it, as long as you are.”
“Wait a second,” Lip said. “I forgot all about that.” He suddenly recalled the last time, being left in the lurch for ten hours, while Marks and Mei went missing in action. “You’re not doing what you did last time.”
“C’mon, you were fine.”
Lip gave him a look.
“What?” Marks said.
Lip shook his head. “Shmackel. I’m an idiot. I almost got my ass handed to myself, and what were you and Mei doing?”
“Nothing,” Marks said. “This is a dead issue. We’re using Mei. That’s cool.”
“Like hell.” Lip was pissed now. “We’ll use somebody else.” He took out his Blackberry.
Marks waited. “Who are you gonna call?”
Lip was not happy. He put away his phone.
Marks chuckled. “Don’t worry, I get it. Won’t happen again.”
Lip’s head swiveled. “What won’t happen again?”
“Nothing won’t happen. I hope you’re right about this—Johnny Two-cakes being there. I want him alive even more than you do, but it just doesn’t add up to me.”
“We’ll see. Ten bucks?”
Marks shrugged. “Not biting.”
“Twenty?”
“Doll hairs?” Marks said.
“Ha ha,” Lip said. “Done.”
“I didn’t agree to that.” Marks switched gears and his engine reached a whole new level of wailing. “By the way, what did the tickets cost?”
Lip held his hand to his ear. “Can’t hear you?”
“Don’t give me that. What did they cost?”
“Ten doll hairs?”
Marks shook his head. “That’s what I thought. When the creditors come knocking, I’m giving you up.”
Lip smirked. “Forgot to tell you. I used your card. Mine didn’t have enough dough on it.”
Marks downshifted and took a turn. “You sonofabitch, you’re taking me down with you, aren’t you?”
“Like the Titanic, baby.”
104
AFTER a brief hop from BWI to the Motor City they were Shanghai bound on a new chariot. Lip made the mistake of checking out the range of their Boeing 777. According to what he pulled up on his Blackberry, it was 9,380 nautical miles. He Binged the distance from Detroit to Shanghai. It was 9,785 nautical miles. Not good. They were going to be short 405 miles. He pointed out the discrepancy to Marks.
Marks smirked. “How many times have we taken this flight?”
“But look at it?” Lip said.
“So we’re going to come up short and fall in the water?” Marks said. “How come that’s never happened?”
“Refuel in the air?”
Marks laughed. “Sometimes you amaze me.”
Lip let it drop and snapped his seat restraint. Course he knew they weren’t refueling in the air, but still WTF? 405 miles was 405 miles. What were they going to do, coast? Not good.
Lip grumbled and griped as they taxied across the tarmac. His head was killing him. He had a hammerhead for a headache. Damn cold he’d picked up wasn’t helping any. Didn’t matter they were tucked into business class in supple leather seats with plenty of legroom; this sucked. He hated flying. Every time. No fail.
“You’re such a wuss,” Marks said.
“Shut up.” Lip reviewed his emergency exits one more time, said a prayer, knocked three times on the faux wood panel in front of him, checked his seat restraint, took an Ambien, and put his glasses in his pocket and closed his eyes.
“FEEL better?”
“How long was I out?” Lip said, rubbing his eyes.
Marks glanced at his timepiece. “About seven hours.”
“No kidding? You get any?” Lip put his glasses on.
Marks smirked. “You mean from the hot stewardess?”
Lip yawned and stretched. “In your dreams.” He looked around and got his bearings. Shit, they were still in this flying sardine can. He took his glasses off, wiped his face again, and put his glasses back on. “Alright, you want to see some stuff?”
He pulled out his laptop, put it on his tray and powered it up. When he’d bought their seats he’d selected carefully. It wasn’t a full flight in business class, and he’d chosen seats that were near the back of the B-class section. There was no one behind them, just a bulkhead. And no neighbors to their right, just an aisle and empty seats.
They almost had the place to themselves. Lip saw the stewardess coming down the aisle. Marks wasn’t kidding. She was hot. He’d totally missed seeing her when they’d taken their seats. Bada bing, va voom, and wow. Her blonde hair was cut short, parted in the middle and hanging straight on the sides. He suddenly forgot all about the fact they were in a plane.
Stuck here. Nowhere to go.
She gave him a lipstick glistening smile. “Can I get anything for you, sir?”
He gulped. “Yeah… ahhh… some bottled water would be great.”
“And you?” She looked at Marks with those sparkling green eyes of hers.
“The same, thanks.”
She walked off.
Lip shook his head. “B class, baby. It’s always better in B class.”
“Won’t argue with you there,” Marks said. “Whatever you paid? Worth it.”
“Glad you feel that way. ‘Cause that’s a ten thousand dollar bottle of water she’s bringing back for you.”
Marks looked at him. “Not funny. Speaking…”
Lip didn’t let him finish. Now would be a good time to redirect. “Let me show you what we got.” Lip adjusted his laptop slightly so that Marks could view. His laptop had a special filter that prevented oblique viewing. Even with the screen turned, Marks would need to lean to see the picture. As he opened some folders, Lip brought Marks up to speed regarding the origins of the emails, the sophisticated attempt at masking where they came from and how the PDFs all had embedded files.
Lip handed him an earplug, so he could hear the audio output. He clicked on a PDF. They were on the third PDF when the stewardess came back with their bottled waters.
“And as you can see,” Lip said when she was close enough to overhear. “Profits should return in the fourth quarter.”
Marks nodded and thanked the stewardess for the water.
“Anytime,” she said. “Just call me if you need me.” She smiled and walked off.
“Did she wink at you?” Lip whispered.
“Nah.”
“I think she did.”
“Focus,” Marks said. “So what is this?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but I’ve a theory I’m going to tell you about in a second. Johnny Two-cakes put these PDFs in a separate folder for a reason. They’re all the major exchanges. TSE is the Tokyo Stock Exchange. And these companies here comprise the Nikkei 300. I had to look the symbols up, just to verify.”