by David Lender
“Not yet. Let’s wait until we have facts to confirm it.”
“What more do we need?”
“Evidence of sabotage. You know how alarming it would be to your team? And how fast it would get out, maybe even to the media? Without hard proof we’d have no credibility.”
“Yes, but we don’t want it on our consciences if things start blowing up.”
Lydia paused, looked away for a moment, then back up at Daniel, thinking. “That’s not my call, darling. It’s Yassar’s.”
“Why don’t we just call him?”
Lydia tightened her lips. “Can we finish this first? How long will it take?”
Daniel started turning it over in his mind, then talked it out, thinking aloud. “These guys are good, and I gave them all of my software vendor clients off the top of my head, and a few dozen of their biggest customers…it’s the customers that we’re after…I’d say six to eight hours to get all of what I asked for.”
Lydia winced. “Still, let’s wait, then decide.”
Daniel nodded. Yeah, plus this is still pretty hard to believe. Better to wait.
At 7:00 p.m., Daniel thanked his team and sent them home. As he walked them to the door to close it behind them, he saw Purcell and Pace exchange sideways glances, probably now not only wondering about why Lydia was there, but what Daniel was up to. The office smelled like steaks, broccoli and onion rings—Daniel had ordered in from the Palm for the entire team. He turned from the door. Lydia’s dinner still sat untouched on the end table. She’d been too anxious to eat while they awaited the team’s results, and now she was already poring over the 22-page Excel spreadsheet his team had prepared.
“It’s hard to believe,” she said without looking up. “So many. Thousands. I had no idea.”
“I’ve never tried to figure it out myself,” Daniel said as he sat down next to her, his own copy of the spreadsheet in hand. “I’ve always only looked at it from the standpoint of my twelve clients who sell operating software to the industry, and, I guess, the bigger customers they provide services to.”
“Yes, but this goes down to another level. How many primary, secondary, tertiary wells. How many drilling rigs. How many refineries…it’s almost impossible to absorb.” She looked up into Daniel’s eyes. He detected a note of alarm. It made his stomach rumble. He felt an airy feeling in his chest as he inhaled. Is she starting to lose it?
He smiled and stroked her hand, trying to calm her. “It’s a little overwhelming if you take it in all at once, but if we break it down, take it one step at a time, maybe we can sort it out.” She nodded and smiled, but her face was brittle. “Why don’t you eat something, let me absorb it, then we can attack it systematically together.”
“Okay,” she said almost timidly, then tore into her steak like it was her first meal in a week.
Ten minutes later they were sitting side by side on the sofa, their spreadsheets in their laps. Daniel was leading Lydia through the data. “The first four pages are the master list.” He flipped forward to the fifth page. “From here on it’s sorted by type of customer end use.” He started flipping pages, calling them out. “Exploration well drilling, production well drilling, refineries, pipelines, primary, secondary and tertiary well recovery, etc…you see how it’s organized?”
Lydia nodded.
“It’s too much to chase them all without some organized approach. So I asked my guys to set up the list so we could sort it. We just need to figure out what’s the most logical approach.”
“Triage,” Lydia said. “Like battlefield medics—work on the most critical cases first.”
“Great. So, who would they hit first? Production wells? Pipelines? Refiners? Exploration companies?”
Lydia looked up at him with eyes displaying urgency. “You know the business. Use your judgment. If you wanted to cripple the industry, how could you do the most damage in the shortest time, and how would it be the most enduring?”
“Refiners,” Daniel said without hesitating. “That would bottleneck the industry. Nobody could process raw oil into end products.” He paused for a moment, looking up at the golf print on his wall, thinking.
Lydia grabbed his forearm. “Don’t stop, just let it flow.”
“And refineries would take years to rebuild, and would cost the most.” He looked down into Lydia’s eyes. “That’s where I’d look first.”
Lydia started flipping pages.
“Don’t bother. Intelligent Recovery Systems is the biggest player in the industry, and their systems run by far the most refineries. If I wanted to screw up the oil and gas industry, I’d start there.”
A half hour later Daniel put his phone back in the cradle. “I couldn’t get either of them, not even on their cell phones.”
Lydia stood up from the sofa, shook her hair out, walked over and seated herself in one of the chairs in front of Daniel’s desk. She slid it forward so she could sit with her copy of the spreadsheet on his desk. Now her eyes were flashing with energy. She bent over the spreadsheet, her hair hanging down. “Intelligent Recovery Systems has five hundred fifty-seven customers, seventy-three of which are refiners, with two hundred twenty refineries. Dresner Technologies has two hundred fifty-six customers, twenty-six refiners with seventy-eight refineries.” She looked up at Daniel. “How much of the industry is that?”
He’d already done the math. The two clients totaled 99 refiners with almost 300 refineries. “Worldwide? About forty percent of the refineries.”
Her eyes went wide. “My God, and that’s with only two of your clients.”
Daniel felt a surge of adrenaline, then a flare of tension in his chest. No question about it, this could get really ugly. He reached across his desk and took her hand, looked into her eyes. “We’re on the right track, I think. Not bad for a day’s work, lover. And if these two guys don’t get back to me tonight, I’ll be all over them tomorrow morning.”
She squeezed his hand and smiled. “I love you, Daniel.”
“I love you.” He leaned back in his chair. “And in a few minutes I’m going to take you home and do something about it.” Lydia smiled again. “But first I need to make one more phone call. I thought of something when I was looking at the list of my clients. There’s this guy I used to work with, Bob Kovarik, who also has a few sizable clients who supply software to a few dozen refiners.” Daniel picked up his office phone and punched the keys. Voicemail, damn. “Bob, it’s Daniel Youngblood. I’ve got something I need to talk to you about. I know this is going to sound crazy, but somebody’s trying to infiltrate some of my clients’ software systems, with the intention of creating real havoc in the industry. You have a few clients, particularly Resource Systems, who may be infiltrated as well. I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but this is something we should discuss, urgently. Please call me. Use my cell number.”
Lydia was sitting up straight in her chair, her jaw taut when Daniel hung up the phone. “That should get a reaction.”
“Yes, if for no other reason than he’d look like a hero to his clients if he helps them avert all this. And because even he’d want to do the right thing.”
He hoped he was right.
CHAPTER 33
SEPTEMBER, THIS YEAR. NEW YORK City. The next morning Daniel was sitting finishing his tea, admiring Lydia’s profile as she glided around the kitchen, reliving in his mind her lovemaking the previous night, when his cell phone rang.
“Daniel,” Dick Jantzen, Chairman and CEO of Intelligent Recovery Systems, said. “I got your message. Sounded like it was important. What’s up, tiger.” Daniel could tell Dick was on his cell phone, probably driving.
“Thanks for calling me back, Dick.”
“No problem. My main man calls, I’m there.”
Daniel’s stomach gurgled. This early in the morning and he’s laying it on this thick? Give it a rest. “Thanks. Since this may be a little shocking, I’ll just blurt it out.” He squeezed the phone tighter, felt his arms tense. Here we go. “
I have good information that someone may be infiltrating the computer systems of the oil and gas industry’s software vendors. I also believe they may be doing it to target refiners. Since you’re the biggest player, I have to assume your systems have either already been compromised or will be shortly.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
“Would I say something like this if I weren’t serious?”
“You have any idea of the consequences of what you’re saying?”
“That’s why I’m calling you.”
“You tell this to anybody else?”
“You’re my first call.”
“Good, because if this gets out, I’m gonna spend the rest of my life doing nothing but babysitting my customers. What the hell is the source of your information?”
Daniel swallowed; his throat felt like it was full of sawdust. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. “I’m close to someone with the Saudis, who are one of my clients, whose covert intelligence has uncovered this.”
Jantzen said, “Covert intelligence? You mean spies and shit? Are you crazy?” He paused. “You say you’re close to someone. What the hell does that mean?”
“A woman…”
“Oh, here we go, some babe you met…”
“It’s not like that.”
“Oh, it’s not? So it’s serious, she’s your girlfriend, then?”
Daniel felt the energy draining from his legs. This wasn’t going at all like he’d planned. “That’s not important.”
Jantzen laughed into the phone. “Okay, my man, so what’s the master plan with all this?”
Daniel clenched his teeth, now starting to get angry. He wanted this conversation over with. Either Jantzen would buy into it and do something about it or not. “According to Saudi intelligence, a Saudi Islamic terrorist group, the al-Mujari, has plans to infiltrate computer service providers to the oil and gas industry and sabotage the industry’s operations.”
“So you’re telling me your girlfriend’s some kind of spy and she knows some Saudi Islamic terrorist nuts are gonna infiltrate my company and screw up the whole industry?”
Daniel chose not to answer. He was already thinking a few steps ahead; what would Jantzen do with this information: probably nothing. How would Daniel play his next conversation with Stan McDonald at Dresner Technologies: do it face to face.
“Daniel, I think you’re hanging around with the wrong broads. You should stop thinking with your Johnson and ditch that bimbo. If I send my systems guys to my customers with a harebrained story like this, they’ll drop me like a hot potato.”
“Dick, I realize this is hard to believe. But I think it would be irresponsible of you to just ignore it.”
Jantzen didn’t say anything for a few moments. Daniel heard the static on the line, knew he was still connected. “Okay, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll have my head guy do some checking to see if anybody’s busted into our system. I’ll let you know if he finds anything. But don’t ever call me back on this subject unless you’ve got either the CIA or the Saudi King on the line.” Jantzen laughed, then the line cut off.
Daniel put his cell phone down on the kitchen table, looked up and saw Lydia standing with her back to the counter, both hands clasped to the edge of it, her arms tense. Her lips were drawn into a thin line. “That went well,” she said.
Daniel shrugged. “I guess I should have expected it.”
“What are we going to do?”
“Learn from it. When I talk to Stan McDonald at Dresner Technologies, I think I’ll suggest I fly down to Houston to visit him. This might be better done in person.”
“And without your bimbo spy.”
Daniel laughed, a welcome release of tension. “You heard that?”
“How could I not, the man speaks at about ninety decibels.”
“Yes, and you could say he’s difficult.”
Lydia cocked her head to the side. “Darling, the man’s what you Americans refer to as an asshole.”
September, This Year. Houston, Texas. Daniel flew to Houston the next morning. Sitting in the conference room at Dresner Technologies, waiting for Stan McDonald to show up, Daniel played back the endless loop of thoughts he’d been assaulted by on the airplane. Dick Jantzen did have a point. Why not just go to the CIA or the FBI? Was it because Daniel wasn’t convinced it was all real, afraid to make a fool of himself? Was he so much in love with Lydia—Sasha—that he was willingly living in the bubble of her own delusion? Why not just call Yassar and put an end to his doubts? Because he was afraid that would prove he didn’t really believe in Lydia?
Daniel was staring out the window at the glass-and-steel office towers rising in all directions from the sun-baked prairie, still turning things over in his mind when Stan McDonald showed up. Daniel gave him a firm handshake, made eye contact and handled the meeting like any client presentation. Low key. Working his thought process from the client’s side, addressing likely questions and skepticism. Selling it.
A half hour later Daniel was sitting elbow-to-elbow with Jim Fredrickson, Dresner’s Senior Vice President, Systems Security. Fredrickson pointed at the monitor on his desk. “I can’t show you how the firewall works. I can only show you the printout of security checks, a list of attempted assaults, and the catalogue of viruses, network worms and spyware detected.” Frederickson looked over at Daniel to see if he understood.
Daniel nodded.
“And as you’ll see, nothing here looks suspicious. So unless what somebody’s doing is very subtle and extremely sophisticated, our firewall is intact.”
Daniel said, “What about my email access?”
“Let’s check,” Fredrickson said, typing at his keyboard. Daniel saw his name come up on the screen, then the printout of an email inbox showing his communications with Dresner personnel. “Nothing unusual on the surface.”
“Would my email account on your system make it any easier for someone to hack his way in?”
“Possibly, but unlikely, since our internal intranet security picks up the same kind of viruses, worms, etc. as our external firewall. But still, it’s possible.”
Daniel thought for a moment. It was a major coup for him to be accepted onto Dresner’s intranet system as if he were an employee, as the firm’s trusted advisor and a confidant of Stan McDonald. It gave him access to all internal employee memoranda and strategic white papers, and in general kept him in the inner circle of decision makers at the company. Something any investment banker would kill for. That’s why he felt a flutter of butterflies when he said, “If that’s the case, maybe you should eliminate my account. I can live with communicating with you guys the way the rest of the world does for a while. Then if this turns out to be nothing, you could reestablish my account in the future.”
“Okay,” Fredrickson said. He typed a few more keys that led him to another screen and hit “delete.” Daniel felt a brief gasp of despair.
Fredrickson promised to keep an eye open for any hacking attempts. Daniel left him then swung by Stan McDonald’s office to shake hands, and headed for the airport. He hoped his mind wouldn’t get stuck on that same infinite loop on the way home.
September, This Year. New York City. Kovarik was itchy; mad. He hated it, getting mad. It was the downside of letting a son of a bitch like Youngblood get to him. It made him sweat, made him pit out his shirts, wrinkle his suits. That was the worst part, his suits. He had to dry-clean them instead of just having them brushed and pressed—wore them out prematurely, all that caustic chemical shit attacking his English superfine worsted wools. Sweating was okay for the masses, dopes who rode the subway and wore cheap-shit JoS. A. Banks suits, but not for him. He sat scratching, rubbing his shin, because now it was starting to hurt. Goddamn son of a bitch Youngblood.
He sat with his feet up on his desk, shoes and jacket off, tie loosened, blasting the air-conditioning so he could try to keep cool. Poor Tracy in reception was freezing her little buns off, nipples standing up like sold
iers at attention. He’d been waiting for Kapur since two o’clock. That was another thing that made him mad; the guy was 45 minutes late. Finally his assistant buzzed him: “Mr. Kapur is here.”
Kovarik swung his feet off the desk and into his loafers, hitched up his tie and stood up just as Kapur walked in.
“What’s so urgent,” Kapur said without even saying hello. Wearing that same Kmart suit, same rumpled shirt. He walked over and sat down on Kovarik’s sofa, looking mad himself: brow furrowed, jaw set. Kovarik remembered this wasn’t a guy he wanted to mess with and so he eased the door closed instead of slamming it like he wanted to.
“I got a phone call from Youngblood.”
Kapur looked at him like he was saying, “So?” and shrugged.
“You know, Mr. Top-of-the-List Youngblood.”
“And?”
Kovarik walked over to his desk and turned his phone around facing Kapur. “I’ll play it for you.” He hit the speakerphone and fast-forwarded his voicemail to Youngblood’s message. He watched Kapur’s body language as the message went on. He played it cool, but when it was over he sat up on the edge of the sofa and leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs. He put his head down and sighed.
“This man is just an investment banker, no?” Kapur said, looking up at Kovarik.
Just an investment banker. The hell’s that supposed to mean? Kovarik said, “As opposed to what?”
Kapur just looked at him, then said, “As opposed to somebody whose business it is to figure things like this out.”
“Yeah, in that case he’s just a banker.” Kovarik realized he was still sweaty. He wanted to scratch his thighs because of the wool on his sweaty skin, but resisted.
At that moment Kapur stood up. “Anything else?” he said.
“Yeah, I was thinking, how about setting it up to frame Youngblood. Make it look like he’s the one who gave you all the information.”
Kapur was scowling, shaking his head.