by John Statton
“You have my undivided attention, sir.”
“What I need is something two-fold: A Silicon Valley computer security company with global operations, hiding a cadre of cyber-warriors; a group that will take on some very intense national security computer assignments.”
He continued, “Your team is going to be completely off the books, and I’ll be your sole control. But you are going to have access to all of the national security developments in this area, and I mean unfettered access. Anyone in DOD, CIA, NSA, or any of the others develops a hack or access to a system, and you will know about it.”
“It's the scope of the mission, Mr. Vice President, that I’d like to discuss. Is this an entirely digital operation, or are you expecting us to be running operations in the real world?”
“I won't kid you, Mansfield. There is going to be dangerous activity at times. Ideally, we have your top people trained in espionage and covert ops, maybe run them through a few of the Farm's courses. But we’re not looking for your team to play a regular role outside of the cyber-realm. Are we clear?”
“Crystal, Mr. Vice President.”
“However, it's foreseeable there may come a time when such an operation may be needed. As head of this new group, I'm going to give you access to a special resource. I want the company to have teeth if needed.”
“Let's just call it killing people, all right?”
“All right, but I've read your field reports, and you never needed any help in that area. Your resource can make any problem go away quietly. He is code named O'Brien. Give me a while to set it up. You will use an anonymous Gmail account to reach him.” Rainy handed him a paper. “Whatever you require, email from the first email account to the other.”
Mansfield accepted the page, memorized the information, and handed it back.
“Now, I want to talk to you about the primary mission of this company. You are going to be responsible for creating population management tools using data sets the NSA is collecting.”
“Sir, I’m not exactly sure what you mean.”
“Take the job, this information will be at your pay grade and I’m going to trust you with a preview. DARKSIDEMOON is a vast repository of information gathered from the world's population; phone calls, metadata, credit card usage, ATM records, web searches, that sort of thing. This is the most extensive data set ever collected. We need an organization dedicated to developing big data tools to assist friendly leadership in foreign countries, to keep a lid on dissent.”
“We’re also interested in election security; how elections can be threatened, protected, and managed. We have concerns some countries may be adversely influenced, and want to develop ways to control and defend an election. It's cutting edge work. Interested?”
Mansfield knew when he was licked. The fact he was being asked showed it had already been decided by the CIA’s Director. “Yes, sir. It sounds like a project I would like to lead.”
With that, he gave into his next career step. Sometimes it’s easier to go along, to get ahead, he thought.
***
Shortly after buying NetSecure, Mansfield turned to building his talent pool, “So, that’s the problem, Professor. I need some very specialized staff.” Mansfield had called an old friend who headed Berkeley’s Computer Science department. “Wizards of the dark hacking arts, incredibly creative coders, and also able to handle some clandestine work. Ideally young, brilliant, and favorably predisposed to supporting national security and passing up other opportunities in the Valley.”
“Tall order,” came the older voice of Professor David Wainwright who was sitting in his office watching students pass his open door. “You, and several thousand other employers. You won’t believe what recruiters are doing to get a crack at our grads. Hell, even our undergrads are becoming like college basketball players; one and done, and off to the pros.”
Mansfield laughed. “Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of. I know you’ve got an extensive NSA alumni network, any way to use it to help my little problem? I’d love to be able to identify the best and brightest from each major college program and get them engaged.”
“What about a contest…” came the start of the professor’s reply.
***
As Mansfield recruited for NetSecure; Rainy was working on providing the security he promised. Leaning a bit on his cane, he walked across the lodge’s entryway to greet the man at the front door. He could see him through the side glass. The visitor stood around five feet ten inches with a tough, wiry build, somewhere in his thirties, and with sandy brown hair. At first glance, there was little remarkable about him, except his one blue and one black eye. If you even took a second glance, it would agree with your first, and you would dismiss him as one of the world’s anonymous.
It was a carefully practiced image.
Seth Blaculf had been the CIA's top contract killer for the last five years. He served the highest levels of government. His Langley employers tolerated his private work for the planet's wealthiest. As long as there was never any blowback to taint his usefulness, they permitted the odd job on the side. Seth simply never made mistakes.
Standing at the door waiting for Rainy, Seth reflected it had started with a single shot years earlier. His mind drifted back with the memory.
***
The six-point buck stood at the far end of the clearing, its multi-pronged antlers showing it had mastered the art of staying alive in the snow-covered forest. It pawed some snow away from a tree base to get to the grass below. Its attention focused a bit too tightly.
Seth and Viktor had stopped skiing just within the tree line at the other end of the meadow.
“Look at it,” Viktor softly whispered. The thick snow around their cross-country skis blanketed his voice, but he did not take needless chances and risk a more conversational tone.
Seth quietly unlimbered his competition .22 rifle.
“Seth, what are you doing?” whispered Viktor. “It’s not allowed. Come on; it’s almost one hundred yards. You know you need a headshot.”
Seth retorted in a low-pitched voice, "Come on, Viktor. You want to eat fresh venison or freeze-dried. You know we’re going to be out here a while.” He raised the rifle and sighted in on the magnificent beast. He started to turn the vertical and horizontal screws on the sights, adjusting for wind and distance. Each adjustment made a distinct soft click.
“Jesus, kid. That's a hell of a shot, you sure? We’re going to have to hunt it if you just wound him.”
“Quiet, old man. I've got this.” Seth let his breathing and heart calm. His focus extended down the barrel to a point on the front of the deer's head as it reached down for a bite. He connected to that spot. He gently applied pressure to the trigger.
Suddenly the deer jerked upright, its eyes alert. Seth's shot could have been ruined, but in a smooth motion, never breaking the connection with his target, he elevated and completed his pull. The gunshot echoed over the meadow.
The stag dropped to the ground.
“Hey, you think Petrov could pull that off?” Seth asked as he put his rifle away and headed over to the deer.
Viktor Kannady was Seth's coach for the 1994 Olympic biathlon. Vasily Petrov competed as Russia's favorite at the top of the ski shooting heap. “You are about to find out soon enough,” Viktor said with a smile as he pulled up next to Seth and started to help with the field dressing. “It's kill or be killed out there."
The two of them were out for a week together before the Games began. They were touring the vast Minnesota forest, where Seth had grown up, and where Viktor had retired after a competitive biathlon career.
Later as the fresh meat sizzled over coals, Viktor pulled out a flask and handed it to Seth. He turned off the Jamaican mix-tape and pulled off his headphones before accepting the drink. Viktor said, “You know you have what it takes to make it all the way. You’re strong, fast and deadly accurate. If you'd stop listening to reggae and cut your dreads, I think you can win gold.”
&n
bsp; Shaking his head to stir up his long, lanky hair, Seth affectionately replied, “Old man, you know how hard it is to grow these?” He took a short pull of the flask and handed it back. “We've had this conversation. You have to respect a streak, and we've been riding a hot one.”
“Hard to argue with bagging the North American Cup and the Open European Championships. OK, keep ‘em, but you'd better kill it out there.”
They continued to pass the flask through the meal. Afterward, each sat back, relaxed by the food and drink, just taking in the fire's flames. Viktor asked, “You ever wonder if you could kill someone like you did the buck?”
“That's seriously messed up, man…but yeah, I’ve thought about it. If there was a good reason, I could do it. Why, what about you?”
Viktor sighed, “Ever hear about the Phoenix Program?”
“No, some rise from the ashes kind of shit?”
“Not exactly, I supported special operations in Vietnam, doing a lot of behind the lines reconnaissance. Phoenix was a CIA operation targeting the Viet Cong leadership.”
“What do you mean targeting?”
“I put my sniper skills to work as an assassin. My team had nineteen senior-level kills in twelve months.” He took a sip of his drink. “Think you could handle something like that?”
“Absolutely, if required. Even better if sanctioned,” Seth said.
Viktor gave him a long probing look, weighing the answer carefully against Viktor’s moral yardstick. He then turned his gaze to the crackling flames and turned their conversation to the competition ahead.
The next week they traveled to Lillehammer, Norway for the XVII Olympic Winter Games. Seth went on to win that year's biathlon, and to vanquish the Russian to second place. ABC watchers might remember the guy with the long dreadlocks from Minnesota accepting the gold medal. Maybe not, he was rather forgettable.
After returning from the Games, Viktor made a quiet call to an old CIA friend and touted the medalist’s potential. “Hey, this kid has got the right stuff to get done what needs doing.” He paused to listen and responded, “I know, my type doesn’t come along very often.” He grimaced and closed the call with, “Yeah, the kind with moral flexibility.”
With the gold medal came an invite to the White House. After a ceremony with the president, Seth was asked to meet with Viktor and a friend of his at the Watergate Hotel's bar. They pitched him on entering intelligence work and the “Wilderness of Mirrors.”
His training at the CIA's famous Farm took twenty-four months. Its tough curriculum included tradecraft, recruiting, weapons, customs, cultures, politics, and languages. Fortunately, he spoke fluent French and Spanish from several years on the competition circuit. He discovered a passion for computer systems hacking.
What made him stand out was developing a specialty in making killing look like an accident or random urban violence, nothing to ever link him and his employers. He’d mastered each training area, and his trainers knew he was one of the few who would do well operating independently under a non-official cover.
In the end, he got assigned to Miami where he opened an office and set up business as a South American security consultant, a cutout company with no link to the Agency. Every six months or so he would get an encrypted email and find $200,000 wired to his Belize bank account. He was expected to use the funds to kill the subject of the email. Mostly these were foreign agents, corrupt businessmen, terrorist cell leaders, those kinds of people. The US was a lot more active in the murder business than most citizens knew, but that was the cost of empire.
After a while, Seth realized he had too much time on his hands, so he branched out. His private contracts were in the five to ten million dollar range, because he offered complete discretion and the ability to stage it as an accident. No matter if these kills were business or personal, it all came down to the same thing; someone at the right level in global society, with enough money, wanted someone else dead. Killing, for Seth, was business, and business was good.
He was at the top of his game and had been taking less work in recent years as his account balance had piled up. If he admitted things to himself, he’d begun to lose his taste for the work. But there were a few, like Rainy, who knew all about him and who he could not refuse. They were his patrons, and patrons always controlled their artist.
***
The lodge’s front door opened, disturbing Seth’s reverie and bringing him back to the present. “Mr. Vice President, how have you been?”
“You should know better than asking. For unknown reasons, God gave me a heart that needs a kick in the ass. Fortunately, we can do that. Good of you to come.”
Rainy steered him through the vestibule and into the expansive room, with its couches across from each other set next to the fire. Rainy motioned him to take one, and he settled into the other.
“Get you anything to drink?”
Seth shook his head.
“Then let’s get our business out of the way. You know we’re gunning for terrorists these days? I mean it. We are setting up an off-the-books operation focused on cyber-threats to this country. They’re going to need a man of your talents on occasion. Your assignments will come from this email address.”
Rainy wrote the email address down on a pad and pushed it across the mission-style coffee table. Seth picked it up, read the email address, and slid it back. Rainy got up, tore off the sheet, and the next few as well, and fed them into the fire. The paper curled just before bursting into flames.
Seth stood and joined Rainy in front of the fire. Rainy turned towards him and said, “There is one other thing you need to know. Since this work comes through a company, it pays at your private party rate. I have a strong interest in this company’s success. I expect the utmost effort, discretion, and loyalty on its matters, am I understood?”
They faced each other, Rainy’s left hand resting on his cane. Seth stuck out his hand, and Rainy held it in his still firm grip. Seth signaled his assent with a nod. Releasing hands, Rainy shed his geniality and silently walked him back out to the front door.
“Goodnight, Mr. Vice President,” Seth said, and then walked out into the dark and cold.
#
Chapter 4
Rookie Tryouts
May 2002
“Would you come in and have a seat?” asked Professor Wainwright.
Doctoral student, Mariana McAllister, stopped at the doorway to take in the man who seemingly aspired to be the classic geek—almost a throwback to the moonshot NASA look. She stepped forward and extended her gift. “I found you a new pocket protector, Professor. It's got a Digital Equipment Corporation logo, and, according to my source, was what the team wore when they built the Eclipse. Or was that Data General’s machine?” She stepped in, closed the door and placed the plastic on his desk.
He watched as his most talented Ph.D. candidate sat down. He knew she’d been pulling a coding all-nighter, and she slumped in the more comfortable of the small office's two chairs. He smiled because that was his easy chair brought from home. The university's perks did not extend to a professor getting more than his standard allotment of furniture for his rank.
“Well, thanks for this. It's a good one!” he said while holding up the pocket protector and admiring the DEC logo imprint. “I'll put this into the rotation. Got to keep wear even across the collection, it's the key to overall longevity.”
He put it down on top of a stack of papers and continued, “I appreciate you coming by. It’s been a pleasure having you in this department; you know you’re one of our stars. Now that we expect you to get your degree at the end of the term…,” he said with a smile, “I'm going to put it straight out there…There is something I’d like you to consider.”
“I appreciate the compliment, Professor. What’s up?”
“Did I ever tell you about working for the Shadow Factory?”
“The National Security Agency?”
“Quick as ever. I take it you’ve heard about No Such Agency?
Or as members of the intelligence community like to call it, Fort Meade, or The Fort. Never did take to that one, felt a little beleaguered to me. But I quite liked the Shadow Factory, seemed very mysterious.”
Mariana gave a slight smile. This was the first she knew of her advisor's former employer. He kept his secrets.
“This is in violation of about a thousand-page non-disclosure agreement I had to sign, but I trust your discretion. In the late 1960s, I was on the other side of the desk, having a very similar conversation. Those of us who did our bit and now are out to pasture in the hinterlands recruit the best. We’re talent scouts.”
“I don't know how much you know about my background, Professor, but I'd be very open to a national security role.”
“It did not go unnoticed, Ms. McAllister. Losing both parents on 9/11 may provide the drive and dedication needed from you. All I know is in my day we were working on the most significant problems, nothing less. We shared a genuine feeling we were guarding this country against a Red Menace, bent on our nuclear annihilation. It seems like things are a little more complicated now.”
While he was talking, Mariana thought fast, The NSA was known to be the ultimate hacker of the global digital nervous system. Her research in protecting critical power-grid infrastructure from cyber-intrusion dovetailed nicely with that kind of capability. She tuned back into what the professor was saying.
“The national security establishment is running a white-hat hacking competition among the major university computer programs. I’d like you to enter. Any interest?”
“You know, I usually try and present my love of breaching systems in a positive, protective light, Professor, so thanks for thinking of me. It sounds intriguing.”
“Yes, we’ve all been impressed with your widespread ‘penetration tests.’ It’s those skills which will make you an outstanding player of this little game. Things start this Thursday morning at eight.” He handed her a slip of paper with a San Francisco address printed out.