by Jan Coffey
Leah was normally a light sleeper, but she seemed to be struggling to open her eyes. David saw her small fingers creep out from under the blanket in search of his and he noticed her hand. It was swollen. He moved to his feet and pushed back the blanket. Leah’s feet and legs had swollen like balloons.
“Leah, wake up, honey,” he said, trying to sound calm as panic flashed through him.
The eight-year-old opened her eyes and murmured, “It hurts. It hurts, daddy.”
“What hurts, honey?”
“My back…” She closed her eyes again.
David wrapped up his daughter in the blanket and picked her up. He turned to Megan. “Call the doctor’s office. Tell whoever answers that we have an emergency and that I’m taking Leah to the hospital. Tell them I’m taking her to New York Presbyterian right now.”
“What’s wrong with her?” the teenager asked shakily.
“Tell them she’s having kidney failure.”
CHAPTER 9
FEAR
Istanbul, Turkey
A cold, wet droplet hit him squarely in the center of the forehead, startling him awake.
His head felt as if it was about to burst, and a dark haze surrounded him. He blinked and decided the problem was with his eyes. His vision was blurred. His hands were tied behind his back, and his left arm was asleep. It took some effort to get his fingers moving. As he worked them, pain shot up his arms from gashes on his wrists from the cords that bound him.
He rolled and tried to wipe his face on the filthy fragment of carpet they’d dumped him on. Dried, crusted blood came away on the rough wool. He knew the blood was from several wounds on his head. They seemed to enjoy using his head as a punching bag. He blinked a few times to clear his vision.
Another drop of cold water hit him, this time in the shoulder. He was in a very small room, an unused store room perhaps. Ancient rusted pipes emerged from one wall, ran the length of the dark ceiling, and disappeared into the opposite wall. A dim bulb hanging at the end of a thin wire was the only source of light in the room. There were no windows. Nathan didn’t know how many days he’d been here.
His memory was foggy, and he only had a vague recollection of a man asking him the same questions…again and again. The one question that seemed to tip them over the edge every time had to do with his name. They didn’t like his answer, for some reason. He kept telling him he was Nathan Galvin and that he was a tourist. That answer seemed to draw the most cracks to the head. He vaguely recalled, in an insane moment, being tempted to tell them he was Hillary Clinton, but he hadn’t known what that would do to them. The other questions Nathan couldn’t really remember. He’d been hit too hard and too often on the head.
He looked around the room. The piece of rug he slept on smelled of urine and vomit, but it was the only thing that separated him from the dirty concrete floor, stained with dark spots. Nathan didn’t want to think about what had caused the stains.
There was a table near the door. A wooden folding chair sat in the middle of the floor. He remembered sitting on that chair as they continued to question him.
He pushed himself to a sitting position. His head hurt so much that he thought it might split in half. It took a few moments to stop the room from spinning. He tried to think back to his last clear memory. He was supposed to swap a flash drive with a local contact. Simple, he’d been told.
He’d asked what was on the drive. The answer had been vague, as well. Names. Just names. He’d asked what was on the drive he was getting from his contact. Again, just names.
Nathan felt cheated. Actually, he felt stupid for not asking more questions. His parents had raised an analytical son. He had always been encouraged to go through life with his eyes open, to experience things firsthand, not to accept anything at face value. All their advice had been thrown out the window the moment Nathan had accepted this job. A job that his parents knew nothing of. As far as they were concerned, he was spending the year following his graduation from college traveling—seeing the world.
He was in serious trouble, maybe even a dead man, and they wouldn’t even know where to look for him.
CHAPTER 10
STIGMA
Boston
Jay’s only pair of khakis was the one he’d worn to the courthouse when he and Padma had gotten married. He wore those and a gray cardigan sweater his wife had found on her trip to the Goodwill store the day before.
Both of them had left home with a suitcase and what was on their backs. What little furnishings they had in their apartment they’d been able to gather from yard sales and thrift shops and dumpsters in the area. The two of them were actually proud of what they had put together.
Six months ago, Jay would have looked in the mirror and said “Good enough.” At the time, he wouldn’t have cared to work for an employer who was going to judge him based on how he dressed. Today, however, he was nervous. He wished Padma didn’t know anything about this. He’d seen the excitement in her face, the hope. He was used to disappointment. He knew how to handle it. She didn’t. He really wanted this job…for her.
For the first time in his life, he was worried that the lack of a tie or jacket or even dress shoes might make a bad impression on whoever was interviewing him.
“It’s too late to think about that now,” he muttered, crossing the busy street.
The Boston wind was damp and cold, and it cut right through him. His hair was still wet from rushing home and taking a quick shower before coming out. He hadn’t worn a baseball cap as he usually did. His hair was getting long, but Padma liked it.
They were meeting at the hotel next to the convention center on the waterfront. He was supposed to go to the bar. Jay was relieved to have turned twenty-one. Boston was big on asking for ID, and he wasn’t about to violate one item of his parole printing himself up a fake one. Three times since being up here, he’d taken Padma out for dinner. She didn’t drink. She was too careful for the baby’s sake. He’d been asked to show an ID every time.
Jay didn’t have to try to act tough. He was tough. But he also knew he looked young. It was the baby face that he’d inherited from his father. He wondered if that would turn these people off.
He walked into the lobby of the hotel and looked around. He must have looked confused because a bellhop approached him and directed him toward the bar.
Jay couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this nervous. His first day in the slammer in Otisville, probably. He took off his jacket and frowned at his reflection in a mirrored wall as he passed. The work boots didn’t seem quite right in this setting.
There was a restaurant beyond the lounge, and as Jay walked past the hostess’s station, he could see there was a pretty good dinner crowd. The food smelled good, but he forced himself to forget the fact that he hadn’t had anything to eat. There’d been no time for it. He hoped Padma was eating something.
He took a couple of deep breaths and went into the amber-lit lounge. Tables and comfortable chairs were scattered around the place. Half of the tables were taken, and two women who looked like they were still in college were giving him the eye. Ignoring them, he moved toward the bar. A couple of large-screen TVs mounted on the walls had some sports channel on with the sound off.
It occurred to him that he had no idea what the guy who was supposed to interview him even looked like. Mr. Diarte probably didn’t know what Jay looked like, either.
He glanced around. A couple dozen customers, more or less, were standing and sitting at the bar. Two bartenders were working nonstop. The crowd was mostly business people, the men in ties and dress shirts, and the women still wearing office clothes. Most of the men’s jackets were draped on the backs of the chairs.
Jay didn’t have to find Mr. Diarte. A short, round-faced man with a very slick comb-over and tinted glasses approached him. He was wearing a dark gray suit, white shirt, and tie.
“Mr. Alexei.” It wasn’t a question.
Jay shook the outstretched hand. From the slight a
ccent, he knew this was the same man he’d spoken to on the phone. “Mr. Diarte.”
Diarte motioned to him to follow.
Jay moved his jacket from one arm to the other and followed the man to the far corner. An L-shaped room branched off from the main bar. He noticed that fewer people were seated in the section. There were no TVs, and the music coming over the speakers was muffled.
As Jay followed Diarte, he noticed a trim, middle-aged man at the far table, looking their way. He was wearing a tie and sport jacket. Jay figured that must be the potential employer. A thick folder sat in front of the man next to an untouched drink, and a briefcase was on the floor beside his chair.
Jay’s palms started sweating. He hoped they weren’t going to quiz him on anything important. He’d told them that he only had a high school degree, but they knew that. Actually, they knew a lot about him.
He wiped his right hand on his pants before he shook the waiting man’s hand. Diarte introduced him as Mr. Lyons. No first name.
Lyons was all business. No small talk. No BS. No offer of a drink or something to eat. He pointed to the seat across the table and immediately got down to business.
“My goal, Mr. Alexei, is to assemble a team of quality individuals together under one roof for a short period of intense training before our project takes off.”
Jay never had a chance to ask questions as Lyons continued without a pause.
“This team will consist of only one person for each particular position required for the project. No back-ups. No one drops out once the project is set in motion. Right now, we are considering more than twenty candidates for your specific position.”
Jay thought he had no chance, but Padma’s face was in his mind’s eye. He had to give it all he had. “May I ask what the project is about?”
“There are confidentiality issues in play,” Lyons told him. “I won’t be disclosing any information until I know you’re our chosen candidate.”
Beggars can’t be choosers, Jay thought. Whatever the job was, it was better than what he was doing now. And it certainly paid much better. Even so, he wasn’t ready to join the dark side.
“You know that I served time in prison. I won’t get myself into a situation that could put me back behind bars.”
Lyons stared at him for a moment. “Fair enough, Mr. Alexei. If I decide that you are the man for us, I’ll make sure that you are not put in any position that would jeopardize your future.”
“Okay.”
Lyons nodded and tapped his finger on the manila folder in front of him. “As I’m sure Mr. Diarte has already told you, we know quite a lot about your past. About your family. And about your present situation. So let’s get to what we don’t know.”
Jay wondered if there was anything that they didn’t know. He saw the man open the folder and take out a yellow pad with notes scribbled all over it. Some of the words were circled. Others were underlined, sometimes a couple of times for emphasis. Jay was good at reading upside down, but the dim light and the poor handwriting put him at a disadvantage. One thing was for sure, they’d done some homework getting ready for this interview.
Lyons opened an intricately folded pair of reading glasses and positioned them low on his nose. His thin face and the glasses reminded Jay of the public defender that he had used during his trial. The lawyer hadn’t thought much of him. He hoped this man would have a different opinion.
Jay saw Diarte speak softly to a waitress who approached their table. She nodded and went off.
“Authentication factor,” Lyons looked up from the file. “What can you tell me about it?”
Jay focused on the man. They were starting easy on him. “It’s a piece of information used to verify a person’s identity for security purposes.”
“Two-factor authentication?” he asked next.
“A system where two different methods are used to verify. This way you have a higher level of authentication assurance.” Jay had no degrees to flash at any potential employer. He had to dazzle them with knowledge he’d picked up along the way. “Using this method, the user has to have a physical token, such as a card, and something that is memorized, like a password. The rule of thumb is…something you have and something you know.”
“But that’s a piece of cake to crack, isn’t it?” Mr. Lyons tapped his pen on the pad of paper. That was a habit his lawyer had also had.
The man, the question, the pen tapping were all reminders of Jay’s past. He looked around as an uncomfortable feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. He’d done jail time for this. But this kind of information was available on the Internet for anyone to access. He told himself it was okay to talk about it. That was what he was doing now, just talking.
Jay nodded. “Two-factor authentication won’t defend against phishing. It won’t stop identity theft. Sure, it solves the security problems we had ten years ago, but doesn’t address our problems today.”
“And why is that?” Lyons asked.
Diarte was taking notes. He held the legal pad on his lap. Jay couldn’t see any of the information that was being taken down. He wondered if they were recording him, as well.
Jay thought carefully about his answer before he started explaining. “The nature of attacks has changed over this past decade. Back then, the threats were passive…eavesdropping, offline password guessing. Today’s threats might include phishing and Trojan horses.”
Jay spent a minimum four or five hours a night on the computer. Padma couldn’t keep her eyes open past nine. Jay stayed up. His mind was like a black hole, sucking in everything. The Internet was one giant universe. He had to learn. Not to break the law, but to expand his world.
“Tell me more,” Lyons encouraged.
“There are two active attacks that are more common than others,” Jay started. “The first one is a man-in-the-middle attack where the attacker puts up a fake bank website page or an EBay page or some type of page that has the capability of accessing an account once personal banking information is supplied. The attacker entices the user to the page. Now, as soon as the user types in his or her password, the attacker uses it to access the site’s real website and makes whatever illegal transactions he wants. Done right, the user will never realize that he isn’t at the bank’s website.”
“And the second method?”
“Easier than the first method,” Jay told them. “The attacker installs a Trojan horse on a user’s computer. When user logs into his bank’s website, the attacker piggybacks on that session via the Trojan horse to make any fraudulent transaction he wants.”
“Listening to you, I am amazed that anyone’s personal information is safe.”
Jay shrugged. “Banks are hot on coming up with new security techniques, but the hackers are right behind them, making adjustments. Sometimes, they’re actually ahead of them.”
Lyons looked down at his notepad. He put a check mark next to a line. “Two-channel authentication?”
“Yes…something recent. They use two different communication paths,” Jay told him. “One bank sends a challenge to the user’s cell phone via SMS and expects a reply via SMS.”
“Tell me more.”
The waitress put a tall glass of water and a straw in front of Jay on the table. She left as quickly as she’d arrived.
“It lets cell phones send and receive text messages,” Jay explained, taking a big swallow of water. He hadn’t realized until now that his throat was very dry.
“But all customers may not have cell phones.”
“Exactly,” Jay agreed. “But even if they all had cell phones, in this new world of active attacks, no one cares. The man-in-the-middle attacker is happy to have the user deal with the SMS portion of the log-in, since he can’t do it himself. And a Trojan attacker doesn’t care since he’s piggybacking on the user anyway.”
Lyons sat back in his chair. “So if I understand you correctly, you are saying that two-factor authentication is useless.”
“Not necessarily,” Jay tol
d him. “It works fine for a local login…users working inside corporate networks. But it’s definitely not safe for remote authentication over the Internet.”
There was a pause in the questioning. Jay drank half the glass of water. Diarte appeared to be the silent observer—the court recorder. Mr. Lyons was leafing through the folder. He took out a piece of paper about ten sheets into the file. Jay immediately recognized MIT letterhead. A long time ago, Jay’s dream had been to go to school there. Before Lyons pulled the letter away, Jay read his interviewer’s name. The letter was addressed to him.
“Multi-factor authentication?” Lyons asked, pushing the chair away from the table. The letter and the pad of paper went with him.
“What you know, what you have, what you are,” Jay told him. “The password is what you know. A token or an ATM card is what you have. A biometric measure is what you are…like a finger print or the iris of your eye.”
“And that is safe? Hacker proof?” Lyons asked.
Jay shook his head. “Anything can be beaten. Any system can be cracked. Just like the Minotaur’s labyrinth; any mystery devised by a human mind can be unraveled by a human mind.” Jay hoped he didn’t come across as arrogant, but he truly believed that. “Security systems are only puzzles waiting to be solved.”
“Has biometrics been beaten?”
“I’ve heard that facial recognition scanners can be cracked by showing the camera a short HD video of the person’s face. The same thing goes for the iris scanner. All you need is the photograph of an iris printed on a high resolution color laser printer. Even fingerprints aren’t safe. Fingerprints can be pressed into gelatin mold similar to the type used to make gummy bears.”
“Voice recognition?” Lyons asked.
“People don’t like using it. It became obsolete practically right after getting released.”
“And why is that?” his interviewer asked.
“What happens if you wake up with a bad cold or you’re hoarse from yelling too much at last night’s baseball game?” Jay took another sip of water. He felt as if he was about to lose his own voice.