âWell, then letâs go recover it. Sounds like you got yourself a once-in-a-career exclusive there, so letâs figure out what happened. Worst case, I scan it for you and return it, stat,â Michael said.
Abe flagged the kid with the attitude and asked for the bill. He paid the tab, and they went back upstairs to see what progress had been made.
When they entered Abeâs office Koshi looked glum.
âI donât know what to tell you. I checked everything it could reasonably be, including viruses, worms, spyware, or Trojan horses, and thereâs nothing. Basically, what youâre describing couldnât happen, unless the e-mail server at the service provider selectively deleted just that e-mail, which is extremely, extremely unlikely,â Koshi reported.
âWhat do you think, then? Abe saw the e-mail and read it, so how could that one e-mail simply disappear?â Michael asked.
âThatâs what Iâm trying to tell you. This kind of thing just doesnât happen. Maybe you lose a whole chunk of data, but not just one message - I mean, I suppose it could actually happen, but not accidentally,â Koshi observed.
âWhat are you getting at?â Abe demanded.
âLook, a high-grade hacker might be able to accomplish the removal of a single e-mail from a server, but with all the security in place these days, weâd be talking government-level capabilities. And I highly doubt that even the government could do it,â Koshi explained.
Abe and Michael exchanged glances.
âIâll keep drilling down on this if you want from my home system, but there isnât anything more I can do here. Your systemâs clean, the firewall is in place, your virus protectionâs up. So youâre good to go,â Koshi said.
Michael frowned. âLet me ask one more question. If I read an attachment or printed something, wouldnât that leave a trail or record on the computer? Couldnât you find it that way, just for conversation?â Michael was asking more for Abeâs benefit. He already knew the answer.
Koshi looked at him oddly. âWell, yeah, but I already scanned the system to see if anythingâs there, and the short answer is, there isnât.â
âBut Iââ Abe started.
âThanks, Koshi. Yes, please keep on this and see if you can figure out what happened, or how someone could have selectively deleted a file from his service provider,â Michael instructed.
âOhâ¦itâs way weirder than that. Heâs using Securemail.com, which uses 128-bit military-grade encryption â which is why Iâm so sure even a very high-level hacker couldnât have done this.â
Michaelâs jaw clenched as he swiveled and regarded Abe.
The old man shrugged. âThatâs whatever my technology guy recommended when he set up the network. I told him I wanted the safest possible system for my communications, and thatâs what he came up with. Apparently, itâs not so safeâ¦â Abe mused.
âNo, he was right, itâs bulletproof. Thatâs why what youâre describing isnât possible. Which is what makes it a mystery,â Koshi quipped.
Michael shot him a warning glance. âOkay, thanks again, Koshi. Let me know if you come up with anything else.â
Koshi left Michael and Abe to mull over the findings. Michaelâs mind raced over the possible scenarios, and he didnât like any of them.
âHowâs security in the building at night?â Michael asked.
âNever had a breakin or any problems. I mean, Michael, please, itâs not like we have gold bullion stored here, you know? A lot of this stuff Iâd need to pay someone to haul awayâ¦â he reflected.
Michael gestured to the outer office area with his head and accompanied Abe to the small foyer at the literary agencyâs entrance.
âIâll tell you what, Abe. Iâm going to go finish up my job today, and then I want to come over and do a sweep of the office, make sure youâre clean. Remember, this is what I do for a living â and Iâve seen a lot of dirty tricks from competitor companies over the years. I specialize in this kind of security, and if youâve never had it done, youâre long overdue,â Michael advised.
âLook, Michael, the book business isnât like that,â Abe protested.
âYeah. I know. It never is. Tell you what, just for you Iâll do a quick sweep in return for you continuing to prod me along on my book. Keep at me, and Iâll stop in later and ensure your lines are clean, okay? Itâs a quick process, no big deal. And it canât hurt, given all the mysteries so far today, right?â Michael offered.
âOkay. Done deal. But I still think thereâs a simple explanation for all this,â Abe reasoned.
âI know. So let me get going, Iâll deal with this for you.â Michael nodded at the satchel with the manuscript in it, still dangling from Abeâs hand. âIâll see you in a few hours, maybe around six.â
âIâll be here,â Abe said.
âItâs a date.â
Michael took the satchel from Abe and exited the offices. Once the door was closed, he paused, studying the area around the lock and the jamb, inspecting for any telltale scrapes or abrasions. He saw no evidence of any, but that was inconclusive.
A big part of what Michael did involved being paranoid about everything so his clients could sleep easily. When unexplained potential security breaches popped up on a routine gig, alarms naturally went off in his head â it was just the way he was wired. Koshi was as good as they came, so if he couldnât figure out what happened, it could be that Abe had a real problem on his hands, even if he didnât realize it yet.
Michael was beginning to feel a familiar tingling sensation, which was never good. Heâd learned there was generally no such thing as coincidence, and that mysteries which couldnât be easily explained usually warranted caution.
And his tingle was resonating in an alarming manner.
Chapter 3
Michael spent the remainder of the afternoon at his apartment scanning the manuscript for Abe, while trying to arrange the handoff of the Turkish delegation to Aldous â which didnât go as he would have liked. They wanted a night on the town, complete with security, so he was going to be on deck with them from when their meetings ended until at least eleven in the evening.
Circumstances having conspired against him, Michael called Abe apologetically, and they deferred the electronics sweep to the following morning at ten. Abe was appreciative and understanding â Hey, it happened. See you tomorrow; donât stay out too late.
Michael hardly had time to glance at the manuscript as he juggled the cumbersome task of manually scanning each page with making his telephone calls â though his native curiosity had been aroused by Abeâs description of the contents. Abe would let him peek at it once it became apparent his office was clean and there was no scheme to censor his e-mail. If so, super â and if not, also fine by Michael. Hell, he didnât even have time to write his own masterpiece let alone pore through someone elseâs. Still, a part of him was intrigued, which was one of the reasons heâd offered to scan the doc and give the office the once-over.
Finally finished at five p.m., he compressed the document and copied the file to a flash drive for Abe and then put it on his keychain â that way he wouldnât lose it. It stood to be a late one, so Michael grabbed a couple of energy bars and guzzled a bottle of orange juice before leaving the apartment to keep New York safe from the Turks â or perhaps it was the other way around.
He talked to Jim, his electronics security contractor, and they agreed to meet at Abeâs building the following morning. Michael explained that it would be a quick one, as it was just Abeâs small office and a few cubicles and reception area. He also made a mental note to touch base with Abeâs tech guy to get a feeling for his acumen and backg
round.
Which reminded him to call Koshi.
âWhat do you really think happened to the e-mail, Koshi? I mean, can you think of any scenario that doesnât involve voodoo or internet Gestapo?â Michael asked.
âYeah, the most likely is that he accessed his e-mail account from another computer at some point and it stored his password or had spyware on it. Or someone knows the password because he told them, and he forgot he did. That happens as you get older, I hear…â Koshiâs jab was obvious, but Michael ignored it.
âBut then why delete only that e-mail?â
âDude, you donât really know what else is missing at this point. You just know that he noticed that one is gone and freaked. He could have a third of his logs wiped and I get the feeling heâd never register it. I really wouldnât want to go down the alternative theory road. Itâs a little far-fetched, and frankly kinda nutty â ninjas stole my best seller?â
Koshi was right.
âIt does seem odd, doesnât it?â Michael agreed.
âLook, hereâs what we know. Thereâs an older gentleman, very nice, but still, older, whoâs insisting that the spirits stole his e-mail. On the one hand, we have military-grade encryption, complete lack of any realistic explanation, and a universe of alternative theories â maybe his tech consultant logged his password or maybe itâs just not that tough to guess for someone close to him, for example. On the other hand, we have insistence itâs none of those, and that only this one e-mail is missing. Somehow, this is way more complicated than anything Iâve ever seen.â Koshi paused, allowing the silence to underscore his point.
âI know, I knowâ¦â Michael agreed.
âWhere would you put your money, if you were a betting man?â Koshi asked.
âOkay then, donât waste a ton of time on this, but do probe around and see if you can find any holes in his security, just to be thorough. Weâll run a check on his office tomorrow, and assuming that comes up clean, weâll spare him any embarrassment and this will remain one of lifeâs unsolved mysteries,â Michael concluded.
That seemed the best approach. And thatâs why it paid to keep a level head and maintain perspective instead of buying into the clientâs possibly distorted view, and also why Michael was willing to tolerate Koshiâs eccentricities and sometimes brusque attitude. Though his tingle still jangled under the surface.
********
It had been a long day, and Abe felt every day of his sixty-eight years. Sometimes the business could wear you down, what with the egos involved and the sheer volume of tasks that required his attention when things got jumping.
Mona poked her head in as she shut off the main lights in the outer offices. âYou going to stick around a while, or want to walk me out?â she inquired.
Abe considered the proposition. Given all the excitement today, he figured heâd keep normal hours for once and get home at a reasonable hour; maybe play with his two fur-balls some and get to bed early.
âI think Iâm going to call it a day too, Mona. Iâm right behind you,â Abe told her.
They parted ways at the curb, he to catch a cab and Mona to ride the subway.
Abe lived in a six room walkup flat on the upper West Side a few blocks off Central Park, in a comfortable but not ostentatious building. Heâd lived there with his wife Anne for twenty-eight years before she passed on, having lost a battle with spinal meningitis three years earlier. Theyâd tried for kids, but it was never meant to be, so theyâd adopted the two Yorkies â the little rats, as Abe fondly dubbed them â and had a good, if all-too-short life together. His only regret was not spending more time with her while she was alive. At first, it was because he was making a name for himself in a tough, competitive business and building his client roster and reputation. Later, it was because the workload and obligations of operating a successful enterprise had taken over so much of his life.
If heâd known how quickly the years would flit by, and how precious their moments together were, he would have done things a lot differently, that was for sure. But nobody gave you the final pages to how your life would turn out, and those were the breaks â you had to play them as they came.
Still, at nearly four years after her passing, it was days like today he missed coming home to her, missed their partnership and the intimacy of a lifetimeâs history together, even if it just amounted to sitting and having a quiet dinner at home with âthe kidsâ and opening a bottle of decent Chianti. Abe had lost his soul-mate and, from that point on, his life would be filled with books and work â he had no appetite for anyone but Anne, and now she was gone, he would remain one of the genteel aged widowers who acknowledged one another as they walked their various pooches around the block every morning and evening. He told himself it wasnât so bad.
Mostly.
The cab pulled up to his building. He paid and got out. Taxis were one of the few luxuries he allowed himself; he really wasnât much of a people-person, preferring books to flesh and blood, and the subways made his skin crawl. Ever since heâd made some real money, cabs were one of his dizzy extravagances â he rationalized that he could get work done on the way to and from his office if he wasnât on the train, so it was really an investment in his career.
When he opened his front door the two dogs, Timmy and Congo, came running across the hardwood floor, excited that Daddy was home. This was one of Abeâs favorite moments, when the two little bundles of unconditional love joyously greeted him as though he was the center of the universe. Heâd always given Anne a razzing about the dogs, mocking their small size and anemic barks, but now she was gone they were all he had for a family, and as a reminder of their life together â heâd grown to adore them.
He puttered around the house, busying himself with feeding them dinner and attempting, in vain, to bring some semblance of order to the kitchen. After eating some reheated spaghetti from the previous night, he leashed them up for their evening constitutional. This was the brightest point of their canine existences, twenty minutes of pure dog heaven as they roamed around the street, and often, along the park for a block or three before returning home.
Abe double locked the front door of his flat, as he always did, and set out for his walk. It was dark by this hour in early autumn, but there were still occasional pedestrians hurrying home or to wherever, so he had plenty of company.
He nodded at an older woman who always walked her schnauzer around the same time as he did every night. She returned the courtesy. Amazing that after seven years of walking the little beasts and passing each other almost every night, theyâd never actually spoken a word, preferring to limit their interactions to a modest head gesture.
What a town.
Their necessities accommodated, the unlikely trio returned to their building, Abe absently wondering at the teeming hordes of people in the city, most living as complete strangers from one another, pelting through their lives at breakneck speed, racing towards a destination that was as certain as Pythagorasâ theorem while oblivious to their fellow travelers â except as conveniences or annoyances. He supposed he was waxing philosophical because of the revelations in the manuscript, and the questions they naturally raised about his core beliefs in everything; including mankindâs future as a species.
The thing would outsell Harry-Fucking-Potter if it was verifiably true.
Abe had a nose for these things.
He opened his front door and the dogs went crazy, tearing down the entry hall and barking like a cat party was being held in the dining room.
Something hit him in the kidneys and he found himself falling face-forward onto the floor, his arms oddly useless and his legs unable to support him. He registered the door closing behind him, and then a figure in a Planet of the Apes mask standing over him.
The pain hit a split s
econd later. His jaw shot lightning bolts of agony through his head, and his left arm throbbed like heâd dislocated it. He barely noticed that his pants were soaked, his bladder having failed. Abe struggled to breathe, but it was as though his rib cage was in a vice that had compressed his lungs to the point where there was no room for expansion. His back felt like a car had hit him.
Tiny dots swirled on the periphery of his vision as the pain coursed through his entire being, before slowly receding until all that remained was a sensation of drifting off to sleep.
Abeâs last thought was that the books had it all wrong.
********
âA fucking heart attack? Youâre kidding me, right?â Sid hissed into the phone.
âSir, it was instantaneous. Iâd say he was dead within seconds of our arrival. There was nothing we could do,â said a detached, calm voice with a slight southern drawl.
âAnd no information? Nothing?â
âHe never made a sound, and we never got a chance to ask him anything. Again, it happened so suddenly it took us all by surprise. The best we could do was sanitize the area and verify there was nothing incriminating. The bad news is there was no sign of the document,â the voice reported.
âWe have to find out what he did with it, or who he gave it to. We know he printed at least some of it â so whatâs the plan to figure out how to move from here?â Sid asked.
The situation report from that morning had verified that the printer queue had contained instructions to print the attachment, or part of it, before theyâd neutralized it along with the communication.
âThis is a dead end,â the voice said.
The Manuscript Page 5