by David Lender
“What? You couldn’t make that work?”
Kapur took a few steps toward the door, then turned back to face him. He said, “If this guy, Youngblood, screws this up on me, I don’t get my success fee. Frame him, my ass. I have other ways to deal with this.” Kapur glared at him. Kovarik felt fresh perspiration break out on his forehead and upper lip. “And if you have any contact with him, or screw around to pursue any personal agenda, I’ll deal with you the same way.” He turned and left, closing the door behind him.
Kovarik felt a spasm of panic flare in his chest. His next breaths came in short gasps. He reached down and scratched his thighs.
CHAPTER 34
SEPTEMBER, THIS YEAR. ONLINE. ALI stared at the flat-screen monitor on his desk: his world. His computer beeped. Another email from her. He de-encrypted it:
WHAT NEWS? WAITING FOR NEXT STEPS.
ALICA
He typed, encrypted and sent:
NOTHING.
ALI
He hoped the woman would get the message and quit trying. He turned back to the business at hand. He was inside this Daniel Youngblood’s account at Ladoix Sayre, ready to penetrate Intelligent Recovery System’s computer network through the email account IR Systems had created for Youngblood as a user on their system.
It was the same approach he’d taken with three other of Youngblood’s clients, planting trojan horses in the software code that would be sent out to the company’s customers in routine updates to their programs. Trojan horses with prearranged timing to drop their embedded cargo—logic bombs—once the program updates containing them had been installed.
He checked the IR Systems’ brag sheet on its Internet website: seventy-three refinery customers running over 220 refineries in all. This is the big one, he thought.
He worked smoothly now, familiar with the process. He’d create a “buffer overflow” in a security flaw in an appointment calendar program that was shipped with the server that IR Systems’ system ran on. He’d make an entry in the calendar program in Youngblood’s account, but his entry was a carefully designed clump of information too large to fit the storage space that the program allotted for it. The resultant overflow spilling out into the computer’s main memory allowed the code he had appended to the email to run a short routine that granted him root access. Able to do anything he wanted.
He loaded his code containing his software routine into an email file on Youngblood’s computer. Then he emailed it into his account on IR Systems. There. The buffer overflow. He sat back from the screen, watched and waited for him to get root access. Seconds later he was in. He logged back into Youngblood’s email account, downloaded his trojan horse program, its logic bomb appended, and scrolled into the refinery update code. His trojan horse and logic bomb now sat waiting to be beamed out over the Internet to the IR Systems’ customers as a routine software update at 6:00 a.m. Moments later he logged off the system and closed out his circuitous link to Youngblood’s computer.
Well, Sheik bin Abdur, I think you’ll be surprised and impressed at what happens over the next few days.
September, This Year. Langley, Virginia. Tom Goddard, CIA Mid-East Section Head, was ready for the videoconference to start, his last chance for input from his fellow Mid-East experts prior to his flight to Saudi Arabia. He fixed his eyes on the 20-inch Sanyo flat-screen computer monitor on his desk, killing time, seeing a blank background in the right half, a smaller-than-life Nigel Benthurst in 1,700 pixels per inch shrug in his confident, superior way in the left. Tom was waiting for Ira Land, Ari Verchik’s replacement in the Mossad, killing time. He noted Nigel’s decadent look and manner, carefully cultivated over the years, was now starting to show dissipation.
The right side of the screen flashed on, Ira video-streaming at him through secure OC-3 fiber-optic lines at 1.5 gigabytes per second. Real time, not like the old big-screen TV satellite hookups where everybody moved in that herky-jerky 56k world.
Nigel had been speaking, Tom realized. “…I tell you they’re a bunch of tent dwellers from centuries ago. And, uhm, that’s all they’ll, uhm, likely ever be…oh, hullo, Ira…only difference between now and two thousand years ago is that they’ve got five thousand bloody princes running the place instead of fifty.”
“All right, fellas, let’s get started,” Tom said, a stale, dry taste in his throat. Ira’s chin was just barely above the bottom of the screen. Shorter than five-foot-five-inch life. “We’ve got a situation in Saudi Arabia. Intelligence and military alert status; potential use of force required.”
“When are you going over?”
“Today at noon. The red-eye into Riyadh. Our meeting starts at noon tomorrow. I’m bringing a team of computer jocks with me. Our own CIA and some Joint Terrorism Task Force guys.” He dreaded the meeting.
“We’ll provide resources on request,” Ira said. “Full government clearance.” His dark beard looked like a five-o’clock shadow, accentuated by the video monitor.
“Appreciated.”
“Same from my colleagues in London,” Nigel said. “Actually, we wish we’d been invited to your meeting ourselves.”
Tom sighed. “It’s a bitch of a trip. And it brings back old memories. Bad ones.” He thought of the hit on Ibrahim, Yassar’s kid, then of Sasha. Now he had that feeling. Grungy. Was it remorse? Just leave it. Sasha had gone into it all with full knowledge of the consequences, and the risks. And she’d at least helped Yassar avoid getting lit up by his own kid.
“We all should have expected this,” Ira said. “Sheik bin Abdur’s been rebuilding for years. We should have assumed he’d make a move sooner or later.”
“Yeah, but it’s not just that. I’ll be seeing Yassar himself.” First time since we killed his kid.
“I still think it would make everything a lot easier if the Saudis would just blow Sheik bin Abdur away,” Ira said. “They had their chance—we all did—years ago. You’d think they’d have learned their lesson now that he appears to be going critical again.”
“No, not this time either,” Nigel put in. “You know. The undesirability of making him the martyr and all that…”
“It’s really the whole Muslim thing that’s stopping them,” Tom said. “Brother against brother and all that shit.” He’d spent most of his career covering the Mid-East. Was he now worn out with it?
“Didn’t seem to trouble them too much during the first Gulf War,” Nigel said.
“Yeah, but we were the ones dropping the bombs. And they kept at arm’s length from the ‘03 Iraq invasion.”
“Maybe they should let us neutralize him, then.”
Tom grunted in the affirmative.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Ira said, “let’s make sure this isn’t just some false alarm. Maybe it’s not the al-Mujari after all.”
“Possible,” Nigel said. “We’re not hearing any unusual chatter in our monitoring of their cells.”
“Don’t count on it,” Tom said. “My bet is in a week we’ll be looking for somebody to get inside, get close enough to light up bin Abdur.”
“Not an easy type to find,” Nigel sighed.
“Whatever happened to this girl, Sasha?”
“I don’t know,” Tom had thought about it before Ira asked. He was the last one to have any contact with her. Maybe she was still alive. “As far as I know she’s fallen off the face of the earth. Or dead.” Now he remembered a few possible sightings over the years, usually when a bomb was going off someplace, but never sure it was her. “But we haven’t been the only ones looking for her, that’s for sure.”
September, This Year. New York City. By 7:42 the morning Daniel left for Houston, Lydia was in a taxi and on her way to JFK, having chartered a Gulfstream V from Falcon Aviation. She could be to the Cayman Islands and back by early afternoon. Once on the airplane, Lydia felt a sagging sensation, as if a weight was on her chest. Heartsick. Thinking about Daniel, hoping he wasn’t in danger. Then putting it out of her head. Deal with business. She
called her banker from on board.
“It’s your black-haired friend. Account number one two four six seven nine three.” There was no emotion in her voice, but her mind was racing. “I’ll need three hundred fifty thousand in U.S. currency in two and a half hours. Hundreds will do. I have a suitable bag with me.”
“I’ll take care of it right away,” her banker said.
With a sense of detachment, she phoned Herr Schinkelhaus in Switzerland. “Wilhelm, it’s Sasha. I’ll need your services again. It’s a rush job. Swiss passport.”
At 11:35 the Gulfstream V landed at George Town, Grand Cayman. She went first to the Federal Express office and overnighted Daniel’s passport photo to Shinkelhaus, then to the Royal Cayman Trust Company, where she withdrew the $350,000 from her numbered account. “Thank you, Austin,” she said to her banker. Errands accomplished, she went back to the airport and boarded the Gulfstream. Counting the rivets around the window, she remembered other flights on which she’d used that diversion from mental maelstroms. By 2:45 she was at Kennedy Airport. Customs didn’t search her bag, the one with the false bottom for the cash, with the clothes and lingerie on top of it. She rented a car and was in Kent, Connecticut, by 5:00 p.m.
She drove into the light-industrial section of town, past an equipment rental shop, some dusty, tan manufacturing buildings, a hardware store, and then parked the rental car in front of a white-painted brick building with four garage bays. Normally these operations were buried in gritty auto body shops with smashed cars scattered helter-skelter out front. This building was landscaped with grass and shrubs, with a crisp sign reading “Farrington Auto.” Two of the four bays were open, showing a spotless gray-painted concrete floor. Mechanics in matching blue overalls worked beneath cars on lifts.
Sasha walked in the office door, found nobody and went through the back office door into the garage. She found a tall man with gray sideburns who looked like Sean Connery, a “Frank” name patch stitched to his blue uniform. “Hi, Frank. I called earlier. Sandra,” she said, extending her hand.
He took her in with probing, intense eyes. After a moment he shook her hand. “Not what I expected.” He inclined his head to the side. “It’s out here.”
In the back lot, two dozen cars were parked in neat rows surrounded by a cyclone fence. Frank pointed at a maroon coupe.
“That’s it. Mercedes SLS AMG. Two years old, thirteen thousand miles.”
“Never driven over a hundred forty, right?” Sasha smiled.
Frank looked sideways at her as if annoyed at the interruption, then back at the car and continued, “They come stock with a hand-built six-point-three-liter V-eight, five hundred eighty-three horsepower, zero to sixty in three point eight seconds. A barely street-legal racing car.”
“Sounds like what I need.”
“This car’s an animal. Sure you can control it?”
“I hear they handle like sixties-vintage Aston Martins tricked out for the track.”
Frank looked over at her again, eyebrows raised as if impressed. “You race Astons?”
“No, but the man who’ll be driving this did. He raced the Northeast Aston circuit for three years.”
Frank nodded. “You want it?”
“I’ll need clean papers and New York plates.”
“Part of the deal. Two hundred thousand all-in.”
Sasha felt a tingle of irritation. “Roger told me you dealt straight.” She looked him squarely in the eye, held it when he tried to back her down with a glare.
“Lady, whatever your real name is, I only deal straight. These puppies list for over one-eighty new. I got expenses for papers and plates, plus my time to make sure it’s top-notch mechanically—I got a reputation to keep—plus my margin. Plus a premium for the time factor. Roger said you needed it today.”
Sasha didn’t flinch, but nodded. “I’ll need three keys.”
She drove the SLS AMG back to New York. Any other time she’d have been smiling like a jackal, pushing it to the limit around curves, opening it up on straightaways. Today was all business. She pulled into the basement garage of Daniel’s building and parked.
Daniel smiled and felt a rush of warmth in his chest when he returned from Houston to his apartment. “Wow.” Lydia was wearing a thigh-length emerald kimono embroidered with birds, an emerald necklace at her throat. Her eyes were seductive. “We going out?” he asked.
“No, I’ve ordered in Chinese,” she said. She kissed him and held him. “Darling, I’ve made some plans in case we need to run. I’ll explain later but first I need to show you something that’s part of them.”
“What are you up to?” Daniel said, smirking.
“This is serious.”
She took him out the front door of the apartment to the elevator, rode it down. The elevator door opened at the garage level and she led him out by the hand.
She pointed to the Mercedes coupe in the first space where she’d paid Lloyd, the garage manager, $100 to put it. “It’s not registered to either of us, but the papers and license plates are clean. If things get too hot, we can outrun almost anything in it. One key for you, one for me and a spare that’s duct-taped behind the left front tire. If we get separated, first one to the car takes it. We meet in Milford.”
He blew all the air out through his cheeks. “An SLS AMG. Puts my old Aston to shame. I’ve never driven one, but that’s one angry-looking car.”
“Let’s hope we don’t need it.” Then she looked at him with urgency in her eyes. “But darling, if we do, and if we’re separated, we need to anticipate each other. The situation will be fluid. Be intuitive.”
CHAPTER 35
SEPTEMBER, THIS YEAR. NEW YORK City. Daniel and Lydia sat at his kitchen table strewn with open boxes of Chinese food, packages of sauce, dishes of mustard and chopsticks. The lights, at the brightest end of the dimmer, gave the room a stark quality; the smell of hot and sour soup and Chinese hot spices lent an exotic air. How incongruous, Daniel thought, admiring Lydia’s beauty in her elegant dress—hair up, emerald jewelry jiggling with the movements of her head—eating with chopsticks directly from the box. She saw him observing, licked her lips, smiled and blew him a kiss. It was equally as incongruous as this everyday scene of two lovers eating a casual meal, juxtaposed against the overhanging weight of a plot that threatened to crash down a major portion of their world.
“Quit hogging the moo goo gai pan,” Daniel said, wondering how much the terrorists had advanced their plans in the 48 hours since he’d learned of them.
“You’ve been clutching the orange chicken like it’s a long-lost child,” Lydia said. “I’ll swap you.”
Daniel passed her the box, took hers. Screw it, I can’t do this. He put the box down and pushed his chair back. “I can’t concentrate. My mind’s moving in two directions at once.”
“Isn’t trying not to concentrate what we’re doing?” She reached over and took his hand, looked at him with soulful eyes. “Darling, I don’t know what else to do except behave as if everything’s normal. If we let this twist in our minds we’ll drive ourselves crazy.”
Daniel squeezed her hand, then stood up and started pacing. “It’s been forty-eight hours since we talked about this and we haven’t made anything happen.”
“You said it yourself yesterday—not bad for a day’s work.”
Daniel stopped pacing and turned to her. “That was yesterday, but what have we got to show for ourselves today? One of my clients thinks I’m nuts, another’s convinced his systems are still uncompromised.”
“Maybe they are. But both your clients have been alerted and will be sleeping with one eye open. Believe me, even your charming Mr. Jantzen.”
Maybe she was right, but it wasn’t good enough. He gripped the back of a kitchen chair. “You know, Jantzen has a point. Why don’t we go to the FBI or CIA? How do we prove this—?”
“We’re trying.”
“Too slowly—”
“You just said it, we’ve only been at this
forty-eight hours.”
“I don’t think there’s any ‘only.’ Were acting as if we’re being chased by a glacier while an express bus is speeding to run us over from the opposite direction.”
Daniel saw her jaw sink against her chest, her jaw muscles protrude as she tightened them. He saw her hands ball into fists and then looked down to see that his own knuckles were white from clenching the back of the chair.
Daniel said, “What we’re doing isn’t a waste of time, but we need to call in somebody to kick this onto a bigger stage.”
Lydia waved her hand as if she’d heard enough. “You’re right,” she said and stood up. “I’ll call Yassar first. I have a satellite phone in my luggage. It’s not perfect, but it’s harder to trace than a landline and harder to triangulate to than a cell phone.”
Two minutes later Daniel watched Lydia dial a 3 by 10 inch contraption that looked like an early 1980s cell phone.
“It must be about two a.m. there,” Daniel said.
“Three. He’ll be up in an hour and a half for prayers anyhow—it’s ringing.”
Daniel heard a click followed by mumbled words in Arabic. Lydia spoke back in Arabic, restrained at first, probably apologizing, because she bowed her head as if in submission. As the conversation went on she grew more animated, waving her arms, standing up from the bed and walking, arching her head back, punching the air with a fist. Then her voice grew quiet, her demeanor softened, and she sat back down on the bed. She uttered a few gentle words, paused, and then whispered with affection. She hung up and looked at Daniel, her eyes wide with surprise, but a smile on her face.
“Well?” he said.
“Yassar’s already called the CIA. They found a logic bomb in the Saudi Aramco refinery control program. Bin Abdur’s lead hacker must have planted it after I gave him access—I’ll explain that later. The American team will have CIA and Joint Terrorism Task Force computer experts with them.”