Bounty
Page 30
“It’s all good,” Vargas said, trying to keep a stoic face.
Jones gave her a reassuring smile. “You’ve got this.”
A crisp young woman wearing a lanyard badge for the FBI’s National Press Office approached them. “Good morning, Senator. Are we ready?”
“I’m ready.”
# 60.03
At first, Senator Ascher stood frozen with a death grip on the podium, giving Jones the impression that maybe she’d had a change of heart. From his post at the corner of the stage, he scanned the room, camera flashes popping all around, dozens of video cameras feeding live coverage to points around the globe, imagining how intimidated she must feel at this very moment.
Finally, she adjusted the microphone, stared out at the cameras, cleared her throat, and began. “When we all arrived this morning, here in Washington, we were greeted by protestors wearing masks, along with other protestors out on the Internet who were casting votes to see that I be taken to task for all the bad decisions I’ve made. Behind every one of those votes, and beneath every one of those masks, is a person. Someone who is unique, and gifted, and sometimes alienated, and sometimes flawed.” She scanned the faces in the audience. “I know this, because I’ve worn a mask, too. And you’ve all had the opportunity to see beneath it. You’ve seen everything about me. Every flaw. The problem is that my mask came with the trust of my constituents. They voted for what I represented and the promises I vowed to keep. They hoped that everything they saw in me was real and honest. I’m here today to tell everyone that my mask deceived them. I violated the public trust. And I’m ashamed of what people see now that my mask has been removed. I know I can’t make it right. I can’t bring those children back…”
Ascher choked up and took a moment to compose herself. Jones could tell she wasn’t acting or playing to the crowd. She was unloading the sorts of invisible burdens that weighed heavily on those with secrets.
“If someone harmed my children…and I had to bury my children…I’d wish them harm, too.” She fell quiet for a long moment, visibly trembling, struggling not to break down.
Jones looked around the room at the press staffers and agents. Everyone was gripped by the very public—and very private—spectacle before them. Bounty4Justice had come over America like a bad storm, and here was the first humanizing element to the whole ordeal. Barbara Ascher—the mother, the person—was putting a face to the other side of the equation. She was preparing to be sacrificed.
“You’ve won,” she said humbly. “You deserve to win, because you deserve better. You are right to want justice. You are right to want a chance at liberty and privacy and fair play and everything we were promised by our nation’s founders. And none of that is possible without proper representation…and trust. Bounty4Justice isn’t just a website. It’s a voice. A voice that demands action against people who break the rules and get away with it. And though its prescription for what ails the world is violent—extreme—I’m here today to tell you that your voice has been heard.”
She fell silent again and glanced down at her hands. Then she looked back up into the cameras.
“Today, here before you, I confess my guilt to the crimes laid out on Bounty4Justice. I am remanding myself into custody so that a proper resolution can be worked out by our courts of law.”
The crowd remained silent as the senator gave Jones a tiny nod. He nodded back. Then she turned and looked over to the FBI agents standing off to her side. They escorted her away from the podium, with dignity, and out the side door. Once she was gone, the room erupted in chatter.
By the time the Secret Service agents made it back out to the Yukon, Bounty4Justice had text-blasted its verdict.
Vargas smiled and held his phone up for Jones. “Lookee here.”
Jones peered down at the display. He felt his tension start to release, knowing that the Ascher children were going to be safe:
TARGET STATUS NOTIFICATION: TARGET DEACTIVATED
TARGET: BARBARA ASCHER, senator, USA
STATUS: Guilty
BOUNTY: $2,212,058 «REALLOCATED»
http://www.bounty4justice.com/BARBARA.ASCHER
As per section 19 of our user agreement, targets who formally surrender to the charges presented herewith are subject to deactivation, and the bounty funds collected for that target will be distributed proportionately among the remaining active targets.
Thank you for your patronage.
Sacrifice accepted.
Nexus Official Tweet @nexushackerwire • 1h
The Internet allows us to unite. Let’s protect that which brings us together. INFORMATION = POWER = FREEDOM
nex.wr/1Tfd143HMR
# 61.01
@ N 49°27
After a near on-time 10:20 P.M. departure from Ottawa International Airport, the Air Canada Boeing 767 found smooth air at thirty-six thousand feet off the coast of Nova Scotia, and the cheery flight attendants initiated their first round of beverage service. It was just under seven hours to London, and after a big day, Novak was looking to catch a nap. He ordered a scotch on the rocks to settle himself. Michaels, sitting beside him at the window, dittoed him.
“To our first major victory,” she said, holding up her plastic cup.
“You made it happen,” Novak said, tapping his cup against hers. “You’re one hell of an agent.”
“Thanks. I really appreciate it. Cheers.” She sipped her drink, studied him for a long moment, then said, “Seems like you’ve got a lot on your mind. Is it this whole mess with Russia and the website pursuing you and Tim and Walter?”
He took a pull of scotch. “I can take care of myself. So can the guys. But I’m concerned about my parents. They’re going through a tough time right now, and having them fully exposed, out there on the Web, sure isn’t helping matters. Talk about taking cheap shots.”
“I’m all ears, if it would help to talk about it.”
He gave her a quizzical glance.
“We’ve got a lot of time to kill,” she said. “And I’m a lot cheaper than a therapist. Let’s hear it.”
So he aired his troubles, albeit hesitantly at first. Michaels’s easygoing, matter-of-fact nature had an almost magical way of pulling everything out of him: the helpless feelings about his mother’s illness, his anger toward his self-absorbed sister, and the other thorny emotions that linked it all together—things he’d never discussed with anyone—without judgment or strings attached.
“I never thought my parents would wind up in this position,” he told her. “My dad was a consummate planner. Every detail, mapped out. His mantra was all about structure and managing risks. And my mom…” He shook his head and sighed, trying to shake off images of her sitting at the kitchen table barely able to sip coffee through a straw, remembering instead the vivacious, engaged mother he had been so lucky to have. “My mom was always moving, full of energy and spunk. So vibrant. So healthy. Now the doctors are telling her things that, to her, amount to something far worse than a death sentence.” He shook his head again and took another hit of scotch, and Michaels waited patiently for him to continue. “Man, let me tell you, with everything they’ve got going on, the last thing they need is to be put in the spotlight by some glory-seeking hacker or to have to worry about their son being taken out by some fanatical vigilante. I just hope they can pull through until we can shut this damn thing down.”
“They’ll get through it. Because they’ve got you. Just stay strong for them, and everything else will fall into place.” She smiled, put her hand on his arm, and gave a little squeeze. “In the meantime, you and I will be sure to teach this hacker and all his vigilante minions a thing or two.”
He smiled. “Sounds like a plan.” He drained his scotch. “Okay. Your turn.”
She emptied her scotch, too, then said, “Let’s do it. Shoot.”
“Well, I hear you joined the Marine Corps and shipped off to Afghanistan right out of Cornell. What was the motive there?”
She sh
rugged. “I don’t know, just trying to escape for a while. I had a really serious boyfriend back then who was pushing for rings and kids from the moment we graduated. I wasn’t ready for all that. We had a long talk about our future, and we realized that we were on two different timelines. Two different paths. The breakup was hard, because we had a lot of history and he was a solid guy destined for great things.”
Novak figured that if he had met Michaels back in college, he’d probably have tried to hang on for dear life, too. If ever there was a “keeper,” she’d be the one. He actually felt bad for her ex.
“Anyway,” she said, “I didn’t have much of a plan for my life at that time, nor did I feel compelled to come up with one. I’d majored in business. And back then, business wasn’t doing so hot. So, you know…”
“You figured shipping off to a war zone might fix all that?”
She smiled. “It just felt like it was the right thing to do. You know, putting something else before myself. Can’t say that if I could go back I’d do it all the same, but the experience sure did reshape my priorities and values. Saw lots of things over there that completely upended my worldview…for good or bad, I’m not sure. I liked the teamwork and camaraderie, even the structure, I guess. When I came home, I knew that doing this, what we’re doing right now—setting things right, or at least trying to—was the type of work I was meant to do.”
In the grand scheme of things, all Novak had needed to bring his life into focus was to see his boss plunge from a rooftop. Relatively speaking, he figured he’d gotten off easy. “When did you get shot?” He glanced at her shoulder.
“Oh, so now you’re a detective. You sure you really want to hear war stories?”
“You heard mine. What’s fair is fair.”
She collected her thoughts, then said, “I was a logistics specialist, so I managed to go three years without a scratch. Then one day I hitch a ride with an expeditionary unit heading for Jalalabad, where I’d been reassigned. On the way, they wind up in a nasty skirmish. Not the kind of stuff that delicate girls like me were supposed to get involved in.” She laughed softly, but there was an edge in her tone.
With the Marine Corps opening combat positions to women just a couple of years ago, Novak was pretty sure that during Michaels’s years of service, female troops had been relegated to positions in the rear. Undoubtedly, Michaels wasn’t the rear-lines type, and by his estimation she sure seemed fit enough to crush the Corps’ rigid performance standards.
“The unit put them down fairly quickly, minimal damage, minimal casualties, by the book,” she said, pausing for a moment, her eyes growing distant. “When the dust clears, I see this young Afghan woman, pregnant—I mean, really pregnant—dressed in a burka. She’s hunched over, grabbing her big old belly, and it looks to me like she’s hurt, maybe going into labor. I run over to her, get down on my knees, try to help. She points a gun in my face…pulls the trigger. I avoid eating the bullet, but my shoulder’s not so lucky. I manage to knock the gun away, push her to the ground. She jumps up and screams something about God’s mercy…starts fumbling to get at something tucked into her sleeve. I run. Make it twenty, maybe twenty-five paces away…she blows herself up. Boom. Just like that. The blast wave sweeps me right off my feet. I take some shrapnel in my legs. There’re pieces of her in my hair, my gear…” Michaels paused, remembering. “Anyway, turns out it wasn’t a baby under that burka.”
“Christ. That’s brutal.”
“Tell me about it,” she said, glancing out the window at the tranquil moonlit clouds quilting the sky a couple miles below. “That’s the stuff that really fucks with your head. You know? War does horrible things to people. It’s true what they say: there are no winners.”
They ordered a second round of drinks and talked for nearly an hour. Novak made it a point to lighten the conversation, so that they had some nice laughs together—the kind that, for a few precious moments, let the weight of the world, and the past, float away and disappear.
“I have a good feeling about this trip,” she said, reclining her seatback. She tucked a pillow under her neck and wriggled in the seat to get cozy. “I think we’re on the verge of another big breakthrough.”
“Is that right?”
She closed her eyes and folded her hands over her stomach. “Mm-hmm.”
“I hope you’re right.”
United Nations @UN • 9m
Security Council and #NATO highlight vigilantism as a manifestation of wealth inequality and social injustice.
j.mp/1wstJ302t
# 62.01
@ London, England
Wednesday, 11/08/2017
14:16:04 GMT
Three blocks from their modest hotel in Westminster, Novak led Michaels across the Thames at Lambeth Bridge, and they followed the tree-lined walkway along the southern embankment in front of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s sprawling Gothic palace. It was unseasonably mild and sunny in London, the clouds pinned to the eastern horizon—just enough chill in the air to soothe Novak’s jet lag. He checked his phone for the local time. They had plenty of time to kill before their 4:00 meeting at the nearby National Crime Agency.
“So you used to come here often for business?” Michaels asked him, admiring the iconic views of the Houses of Parliament on the opposite riverbank.
“Yeah. A couple miles east of here, over in the City of London.” He pointed off in the distance.
“Lots of powwows about world domination?”
“Something like that. Mostly strategy sessions for how best to wager on future trends in commodities like oil and gold and copper. You know, to help the rich get even richer.”
“Fascinating,” she said, smiling. “You miss it?”
“You mean the godlike feeling of financial conquest and the first-class air travel and six-figure bonuses and twelve-hundred-dollar bottles of champagne? Nah.”
Crossing Westminster Bridge, they came upon a raucous rally in the vicinity of Big Ben. Bobbies in high-visibility chartreuse jackets kept the flow of pedestrians moving along the sidewalk as protestors blocked off behind security barriers chanted, “WE ARE THE VOICE! WE ARE THE REVOLUTION!” Some of them were huddled in groups, some worked the crowd into a frenzy with provocative pronouncements, and others waved picket signs reading, THE CYBER SPRING HAS BEGUN—JOIN US! and THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM STARTS NOW. All of them wore white volto masks.
Michaels accepted a flyer from one of them, gave it a quick scan, and passed it to Novak.
Support BOUNTY4JUSTICE
Every voice matters.
Every vote counts.
Those who ignore the will of the people bow to corruption and supplant democracy.
The Internet is the last vestige of freedom, and we will protect it.
Fight the Internet, and the Internet will fight back.
WE ARE THE VOICE.
WE ARE THE WEB.
WE ARE THE REVOLUTION.
WE ARE NEXUS.
THE CYBER SPRING HAS BEGUN.
JOIN US.
Nexus wasn’t pronouncing outright ownership of Bounty4Justice. But since the movement was highly decentralized and operated in secretive cells worldwide, Novak wondered if some lone wolf might actually be running the show and mobilizing these loyal legions—these quasi flash mobs. According to FBI intelligence data, the vast majority of the Nexus ranks were young people in their teens and twenties, roughly two-thirds male, one-third female—precisely the demographic that had been most disenfranchised by the seismic shifts in global economics and politics. If a worldwide revolution were to occur in the years ahead, he thought, it might well trace its origin back to these humble beginnings.
They negotiated the walkways that cornered the Parliament building and broke free from the crowd at the crosswalk on Abingdon Street, heading toward London’s architectural crown jewel, Westminster Abbey. Circling to the front of the building, they paused to admire the famed twin towers of the cathedral’s quintessentially Gothic facade.
Novak grimaced. “That’s a loaded question. Let’s just say I leave room for something bigger than myself in this universe and I believe that morality and law matter most, no matter what path one might take to get there.”
“I assume you haven’t been to church in a while?”
“Can’t say I have. You?”
She shook her head. “My parents were always super religious. Fire and brimstone, Catholic guilt, the whole package. They tried to raise me as a good Catholic girl…”
“You saying it didn’t work?”
She smiled mischievously, adding, “I liked the message, but I wasn’t buying into the rituals or the stories. I guess my problem with all this,” she said, glancing up at the cathedral, “is that I struggle with the notion that a supremely intelligent creator would find it necessary to be worshipped and adored. That strikes me as circular reasoning. Still, I appreciate the majesty.”
“Well, if God and the law don’t put the fear in you,” said Novak, “I suppose there’s always Bounty4Justice”—he gazed back at the masked legion—“and them.”
› Anon453we: Do you know Archos?
› B4J: I do not understand what you mean.
› Anon453we: Do you know iArchos?
› B4J: I do not understand what you mean.
› Anon453we: Do you know iArchos6I6?
› B4J: I do not understand what you mean.
› Anon453we: Show me where you are.
› B4J: Sorry. I cannot grant your request.
# 63.01
@ Manhattan
10:04:02 EST
Holed up in his office, Walter stared at the computer screen. After all the excitement up in Canada, the late flight home the previous night, and the mind-blowing email Knight had received from the NSA cryptanalyst, he’d gotten only a couple hours of restless, lousy sleep. So he’d cut his losses and headed to the office at 5:00 A.M.