Hack

by Peter Wrenshall

  Moustache opened the glove box. The light went on, and I saw a pistol strapped to the roof of the compartment. He pulled out several photographs.

  “Do you mean this Philips?” He showed me a mug shot. In it, a disheveled Philips was holding an arrest card in front of his chest. I shook my head.

  “I don’t think he gets it,” said Moustache to Crew-cut.

  “How about this one?”

  He held up another photograph. This one was Philips joking with Garman and Malik in a bar. They looked drunk.

  “But they came to me in jail.”

  “Anybody can get into jail,” said Crew-cut. “It’s getting out that’s the difficult part.”

  I looked at Moustache. He seemed to be pleased with himself, like the cat that got the cream. How long had he been sitting cramped in this car, watching me, thinking of the day when he would be able to haul me in, and even the score for the FBI. “Not so smart, are you?” said his gaze.

  “Where are we going?” I said eventually.

  “You know where,” said Crew-cut grimly.

  93

  Within a minute, the car pulled up in front of a police station.

  Suddenly, Moustache leaned into the back of the car, and grabbed me by the shirt. He pulled me to him, almost choking me. My head felt like it was going to explode.

  His eyes were inches from mine.

  “Make one crack when we get inside, and I will kick the living daylights out of you,” he said quietly and calmly.

  Both agents got out of the car and opened the doors.

  “Let’s

  go.”

  Moustache took my arm and led me up the steps into the police station.

  Grace and Crew-cut followed behind. Inside, Crew-cut flashed a blue and white FBI badge at the desk sergeant.

  “I need an interview room,” he said.

  “I need some water,” I said lamely.

  Moustache poked me in the chest. It hurt like a bullet. The sergeant held his hand out, and Crew-cut handed him the badge. He squinted at the badge, and then looked at over at me, his eyes moving up and down.

  “Who have you got there, Al Capone?” he asked, without any trace of humor.

  “It’s been a long night,” said Crew-cut shortly, refusing the police banter.

  The sergeant typed Crew-cut’s details into the computer on the desk. From where I was I couldn’t see the screen, which was turned toward the sergeant, but I watched the keyboard, as he typed, one finger at a time, “E-d-w-a-r-d-s.”

  Then he gestured at Moustache, who let go of my arm and with a grim expression of bored annoyance, took out his badge and gave it to the sergeant, who typed in his details into the computer,

  “M-o-o-t-delete-r-e.” Then he handed Moore’s badge back, and gave Edwards a key.

  “Room three,” he said. “Sign the book.” He sounded as if he had already said it a thousand times that day.

  Edwards signed the book that was on the desk, and we went down the corridor. Edwards opened the door, and I was back in a police interview room again.

  Moore sat me in a chair, as if I was a child who had been naughty. Then the two FBI agents, talkative a minute ago, sat quietly, content to stare at me. I looked at Grace, who sat on the other side of the table. She didn’t look at me. She stared quietly at nothing. Her eyelashes were wet from tears. I thought of our trip to Knight’s house.

  Had she been serious about coming with me? I would never know.

  Another five silent minutes passed. Apparently, Edwards and Moore were not going to question me. We were all waiting for someone. I could guess who: Agent North of the Cyber Crime and Broken Parole Division. I had to try something.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I said.

  “Huh,” said Moore. “How come the smartest guy in the world of silicon chips is the dumbest goon in the annals of crime? Thanks to you, the birds flew away, leaving just these little canaries, both trying to flap their wings and fly away. That means that you and her take the rap alone. They left her behind. ‘Thick as thieves,’

  huh?”

  “Let her go, and I’ll cooperate. I’ll tell you what you want to know. She wasn’t part of it.”

  Edwards and Moore laughed.

  “Priceless,”

  said

  Edwards.

  I opened my mouth to talk, but Moore interrupted.

  94

  “Shut your mouth. There is nothing you can say to us that could possibly interest us.”

  “We’re not here to make any deals,” said Edwards. “That’s out of the question now, even if we wanted to. We’re just babysitting you until the cavalry arrives. You remember Agent North?”

  “Why let him take all the credit? Do you owe him something? Is he your boss?”

  I knew the answer to these questions was no.

  “I’ve got what you really want.”

  “What you’ve got is nothing,” said Edwards, losing his temper at last. “You were top of the hacker charts. You made a joke out of a lot of people. But that’s old news. You’ve got no bargaining chips left. Tomorrow’s headline will be ‘Pentagon Hacker Gets Ten Years.’”

  “All your asses are belong to us, dude,” added Moore, in a parody of a hacker saying. “You managed to plea bargain your way out of the last one. No bargaining this time.”

  “We’ve got all the evidence we need,” said Edwards.

  “They

  tricked

  me.”

  “Tell that to the judge,” said Edwards. “The way we see it, you got out of jail, and voluntarily went straight back to hacking. Not only that, but you were working for terrorists. Hell, they’re going to throw away the key.”

  I heard Grace breathe deeply, like a sob.

  “I know, you’ve got me, but let the girl go.” I said “the girl” to try to distance myself from Grace. I knew that the FBI wanted me so badly that they might even consider anyone associated with me.

  “She set you up,” said Moore, his face a puzzled frown. “What are you, whipped and stunned from one peck on the lips? Her daddy is a drug dealer. The way I heard it, when they caught him, he had so many class-A substances in his car, they had to build an extension onto the evidence room.”

  “She had to do it for her father. She’ll just get off with probation. Why waste your time on something you can’t make a case out of? Let her go, and I’ll talk.”

  Edwards looked at Moore, and both men cracked up laughing.

  “You’ve got two hopes: Bob Hope and No Hope,” said Moore, grinning.

  “Now quiet down.”

  “You’re the guys who caught the Pentagon hacker. I'll give you the details of security holes in the Pentagon network. You'll be seen as heroes.”

  “Dumb, dumb, dumb,” said Edwards, quietly, after a moment’s thought.

  “Smart enough to bargain my way out again.”

  “You think so?” said Edwards.

  “You know it. I got mixed up in something only because I was duped. The press will have a field day with the whole story. Hell, I might as well get myself a PR

  agent, and book a few talk shows, to promote my book.”

  Edwards’s hard smile did not change. I continued.

  “You know that you don’t have any Knight to inform on me this time. No one to set me up.”

  “We don’t need anyone,” said Moore. “We’ve got so much video, we could make a movie out of it.”

  “We could call it ‘How To Get Back Into Jail.’”

  “We knew you’d be back in front of a keyboard,” said Edwards, continuing Moore’s theme. “Everybody in the Bureau did. You’re an addict.”

  95

  “They

  tricked

  me into doing it.”

  “You can’t tell us,” said Edwards, with his calm smile, “that you were duped by organized criminals into going after Knight. That was revenge hacking all of your own making.”

  That was true. Though I could claim that I had a
cted under duress, and had been duped by criminals, I could never convince anyone that going after Knight was anybody’s idea but my own.

  “All we had to do was watch Knight and wait for you to pop up. The rest of the stuff was fascinating enough. But basically, we don’t need it, because we already have you.”

  I shrugged, unconcerned.

  “It wasn’t my fault. If I hadn’t have been dragged back into the world of computers, I’d have gone on the straight and narrow.”

  “Says you,” said Moore.

  “I know a good lawyer who can make something out of that. He looks like me.”

  Edwards snorted scornfully.

  “You knew I was being held by killers,” I said it like a prosecution lawyer would, “ . . . and you chose to do nothing. Hell, I might be able to sue you not only for entrapment, but also for leaving me . . . how do lawyers put it . . . ‘in harm’s way?’”

  I saw Moore glance at Edwards, and I knew that I had hit on something they hadn’t considered. These men weren’t lawyers; they were standard field agents of the knock-them-down-and-cuff-them variety. They had fun banging heads and shooting guns. They probably hated paperwork. They wouldn’t know that a real lawyer could have shot holes in my lie in a minute. Probably.

  “Tell it to North when he gets here,” said Edwards with practiced unconcern, and just a hint of irritability.

  “North messed it up last time,” I said. “He’ll mess it up again. Then you’ll have nothing. I’ll walk, and you’ll both look as stupid as he did last time—beaten by a smart-mouth kid. How will that look on your record? Every time you go into court for the rest of your lives, the real criminals are going to be laughing to themselves, and for what? For some hotshot you never met who dropped the ball, and wants to drag you into his mess.”

  Edwards’s composure remained, but I could tell that I was getting to Moore.

  “North wasn’t expecting you last time,” he said, jabbing his finger.

  “And this time,” I retorted, “I have even more information about the Pentagon to trade.”

  “You don’t have anything. We’ve been watching you, remember?”

  “I have it stashed away. The Pentagon. A multi-national bank. NASA. You can have them all.”

  “I think he’s trying to hack us,” said Moore to Edwards, attempting to keep his sarcasm afloat.

  “Even if you weren’t trying to hack us,” said Edwards, “you’re talking to the wrong people. We don’t get anything out of that. We’re just the hired hands.”

  “Patriotism?”

  suggested

  Moore.

  “If it’s money you want, I can give you a bank. I have a backdoor into a bank.

  I phoned up one of the clerks, a woman, and literally sweet-talked her into giving me the internal security codes. The bank would be really grateful to know you found the hole in their security.”

  96

  “We’re federal agents.” Edwards shrugged. “We can’t accept even a cent in rewards.”

  “Not legally,” I said. “But do you know how many banks have bought hackers off? They don’t want their clients to get nervous. They hush it all up. Do you know how grateful banks can be when you keep it quiet that they had a big hole in their security? Maybe they’ll take on your mortgages, get them transferred from your current bank. I’d see to it that you got them quietly paid off.”

  I saw something happen to Moore’s expression. I didn’t know anything about the divorce rate among FBI agents, but it made sense to think that all those unsociable hours and dangerous assignments might lead to marital instability. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, I had noticed, so maybe he was divorced. Maybe he had a mortgage he was still paying, on a house he couldn’t even live in. I hoped so.

  “Free of your mortgages for the rest of your lives,” I added.

  “I’m not going to sit here for two hours and listen to this,” Moore said angrily.

  Two hours. North was two hours away.

  “You want some coffee, or what?” said Edwards to Moore.

  “Yeah,” said Moore. He got up, that expression still on his face. He hadn’t bought into my plan yet, but his brain was still working.

  “Don’t forget the FBI’s phone system,” I cheerfully called after Edwards, as he made his way to the door. “I have some beautiful voicemails you just wouldn’t believe. The headlines would be memorable. And you are the two brave agents who tracked me down and brought me to justice. It’ll get you promoted to the next pay grade. The grand tour of Cape Canaveral. Handshake with the president—”

  “Shut your mouth!” said Edwards, so loudly that it must have been heard by half of the police station. I closed my mouth, and watched as Moore got Edwards by the arm, and directed him to the side of the room.

  Moore whispered something to Edwards, and the men began a hushed conversation. I watched them from the corner of my eye. Though the room was small, I couldn’t clearly make out what was being said, but I could see it in their body language. Edwards was against my offer. But Moore wanted it. As soon as I had used the word ‘mortgage,’ I had hooked him.

  “Screw him,” said Moore loudly, with exasperation, before Edwards quieted him. I knew though that he wasn’t talking about me. He was talking about North.

  I looked at Grace. Her matted eyelashes blinked slowly.

  “Were you telling the truth when you said I was a good dancer?” I asked.

  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “They made me do it. My dad—”

  “Hey,” said Edwards, turning around. “One more word . . .” He jabbed his finger at Grace.

  Two minutes later, they returned, and Edwards spoke to me.

  “All right, Ripley, here’s the deal. I don’t give a rat’s ass about whatever deals you make later, with North or the judge, or whoever. What we want is the bank.

  That’s the deal.”

  “You got it,” I said, nodding. “And the girl goes, and North never has cause to pick her up.”

  “When we’ve concluded the deal, the girl can take a hike. But if you stiff us, Ripley, she goes inside with you. We’ll see to it.”

  I watched Grace, her eyes started to open, and she tilted her head up. She watched Moore nod his head. He grabbed me.

  97

  Grace and I sat looking at each other again. I smiled at her. Even with the smudged mascara, she was easy to smile at. Moore grabbed hold of me and hauled me up.

  “Get on your feet,” said Edwards to Grace. “We’re going for a ride.”

  On the way out, I saw the desk sergeant glance at me, and realized that he must have heard Moore’s shouting. Moore pushed me through the door, and once again I was out in the darkness.

  “It’s at my old house. Take the freeway—”

  “We know where you used to live,” interrupted Moore. “The question is: where in your old house?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  Edwards looked like he was going to argue, but Moore seemed to want to just get going.

  The journey took less than an hour, and during it, nobody said anything. I couldn’t even hear Grace breathing. I looked at her once, but she wouldn’t even look at me.

  “Here it is,” said Moore, as we pulled up in front of the large white house that had been my home about a million and one years ago.

  “Get to it, Ripley. We don’t have all night.”

  I worked loose a familiar brick in the garage wall—the one that I had discovered as a kid, and it came away. Behind it was a memory stick, with all sorts of server details, and user accounts on it, encased in a waterproof plastic holder.

  I opened the pack, and took it out.

  “Here,” I said to Moore. “Now it’s your turn. Let the girl go.”

  Moore snatched it from me, looked at it, and then put it in his pocket. Then he turned to Edwards, and nodded. Edwards lifted a gun. It had a silencer on it. He pointed it at me.

  “Ripley,” he said.

  I looked at him, but then
Moore must have hit me from behind, because for the second time that night, everything went black.

  I saw a business card next to me on the floor, and then I knew for sure what Grace had meant when she said that the past always catches up with you, and why she had wanted me to forget about Knight. I grabbed the card and stood up. I felt my head. The next time somebody cracked me there, it was going to split open. I focused my eyes on the card. It was a business card belonging to Knight. On one corner was a graphic of a white chess Knight. White takes black in two moves. Sure.

  I looked around, and there was no one there. But they are always watching. I groaned and tried to rub the pain from my skull, and then made my way to a payphone. I had to bribe the taxi driver with all of the cash I had on me before he agreed to take me all the way back to my Elmwood home.

  Of course, there was nobody there, and there never had been. I slumped against the door, with my head in my hands. I knew that they were watching. They were always watching, even though they now they had what they wanted. They were watching to see what I did.

  They were somewhere in the night. Edwards and Moore, they weren’t FBI, any more than Hannah or Richard, Philips or Garman. They had my stash of user accounts and bank details. They had their leader, Knight, who had organized the con from the start. They were probably already transferring money to their own bank accounts.