The Back Door Man
Page 7
Those series of fail-safes allowed commerce to flow seamlessly, simultaneously protecting the customer and ensuring a vendor they would get paid. A credit card took seconds to use, all thanks to payment servers, crunching data and giving the green light.
And right now that process wasn’t working. And that was only the half of it. Widespread reports were coming in of people who’d had their savings wiped out overnight. The glitch that was somehow disrupting credit card transactions was backwashing into banking networks.
James wasn’t alone. Thousands, perhaps millions, had lost all their money. The magnitude was hard to fathom.
The Gold Standard was long gone. Paper money was almost obsolete. The majority of purchases today were done using debit or credit cards. Wealth was digitized; warehoused in database servers. Servers were the modern-day vaults for people’s cash.
And that information had been compromised.
With credit cards not working, businesses—the few that were still open—were only accepting cash. In some cases, people were bartering to buy gas and food. Businesses everywhere were locking up and hiring gunmen to protect their wares.
It kind of explained everything James had seen so far. The looting, the shootings… people weren’t taking it so well. Unable to get gas, food and other basics they were resorting to other means, including violence, to get what they needed. How quickly a civilized society came apart at the seams.
Enrique was animated. “You’re talking infiltration of silo focused systems, multichannel delivery networks, dual factor authentication, scrambled PIN pads, randomly generated passwords. Think about it? That can’t be done unless you have direct access to protected data storage. And what person or company has access on that scale?”
It was crazy what Enrique was implying.
James was still processing what Enrique had relayed just a few minutes ago. At work Enrique had noticed a few ‘signatures’, those faint binary traces that usually indicated someone was snooping on a system. In the beginning, Enrique thought he was just being paranoid.
After putting in his own spyware—a big no no, which flouted corporate policy—Enrique had discovered that someone was using his log-in. Several key bundles were accessed. Key bundles were the three cryptographic keys that were used with a Triple Data Encryption Algorithm. Alone they were worthless, but if someone knew what they were doing, knew the protocol and the systems, key bundles could enable a person to access secure areas of the network.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this earlier?” James said.
“I’m telling you now.”
Enrique watched a crowd of people cross the street. His voice lowered, becoming almost reflective. “Do you remember that rogue trader that French bank blamed for losing over seven billion dollars? The one that made all those stock trades for months during the middle of the night without the bank knowing it?”
“What does that have to do with this?”
“It was a few years ago, but if you remember that man always claimed he was innocent.”
Enrique went on another tangent. He mentioned the company AngelGuard had gone through the roof in trading. It was the one bright note on Wall Street before the market’s precipitous drop. In overseas trading AngelGuard was up a thousand percent. “One thousand percent,” Enrique said, as if James hadn’t heard him the first time.
James knew the history: ComTek had almost bought the company a few years back. AngelGuard specialized in Internet security.
“Word got out.”
Every financial arm that utilized AngelGuard had not been infected. All other networks were down, even those protected by Symantec, the leader in Internet security.
“This thing is viral. But even the worse viruses never spread this fast.”
Enrique paused, and looked at him. “What’s ComTek’s biggest account?”
“I guess that would be Wells Fargo or BOA.”
“You got it. And you could name a couple other big banks with those. We’ve got them all.”
Things were opening up around them. Demonstrators were thinning out, moving en masse.
“That rogue trader? What if he was innocent?” Enrique said. “That always made more sense to me. He didn’t benefit from any of those trades he made. Why would someone do that? They wouldn’t. I’ll tell you what I think. I think he was set up to be the fall guy.”
Enrique pressed on the gas. “Who’s going to be the fall guy in this crisis? Believe me they’re going to find ‘em. And when they unravel this and fix this mess, they’ll back door this to whoever was responsible.”
Enrique shifted to second. “That stuff at work gives me a bad feeling.” He looked at James. “So what’s it going to be? Your house still? Or can we swing by The Vault so I can show you?”
21
“OTVA li! Open the door.”
The door shook as the man attempted to force it. Sue yelled for him to stop and unlocked it. The man barged in and looked at Sue menacingly. “Why did you lock it?”
“You’re scaring them. We’ll be right out.”
His voice rose: “Why did you lock it?”
“For privacy. Give us a second.”
“No! Come out now.” He grabbed Sue by the arm. She was pulled roughly from the bathroom and pushed forward. She and the girls were ushered upstairs.
He corralled them into the spare bedroom. “Be silent. If you say a word, I keel them.”
He grabbed the covers off the bed. He threw the covers on the floor and shoved them tight against the base of the door with his foot. He glowered at them.
“Stay quiet.” He drew a knife for added emphasis. “If you say anything…”
Katie screamed. Sue clamped her hand over her mouth.
“Again, and I keel her.” The man grimaced. “Do you understand?”
Sue nodded. The man’s knife gleamed cruelly. His face was grimly set. Sue had no doubt he meant what he said. She whispered to her girls, urging them to be quiet.
The doorbell rang.
Then nothing.
Only silence.
Sue was holding Katie and Hannah close. Katie’s hair was against her cheek. Hannah was pressed against her chest, her little body trembling.
The doorbell rang again, twice in quick succession. More silence and then footsteps. Someone was coming up the stairs!
There was pounding on the door and words were exchanged. Their captor opened the door. In the hallway were the other two. One of them had a roll of duct tape in his hand.
“Who screamed?” His eyes were ablaze.
“Please,” Sue said.
The man lashed out with the back of his hand. Katie screamed. The force of the slap knocked Sue down. Her head rung. She tasted blood in her mouth.
She forced herself to stand. Her vision was blurry. She pulled her girls to her; then stood in front of them.
The men started speaking to each other in Russian.
Sue stood tall, defiance in every fiber of her being. “You will not hurt them.”
“Shut up. We will do whatever we want.” The man with tattoos pulled out a length of duct tape. “Put your hands behind your back.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Vasily! Artem!”
The two grabbed her. Sue struggled, but it was no use. The men quickly overpowered her. Sue stopped resisting. “You don’t need to tape me.”
The man with tattoos ignored her. He bound her wrists with tape.
“Mommy!” Hannah cried.
“It’s going to be okay, baby,” Sue said. “Please.” She implored her captors to show mercy. They answered her pleas by throwing her on the bed and duct-taping her ankles.
Katie screamed. Sue wept as the men began to tape her girls.
22
BOB Pulaski started his truck. The engine rumbled to life. It was a beater of a Dodge, a full-fledged antique, but still ran just fine. His big leathery hands gripped the knobby wheel. He looked across the street at his daughter’s home.
All through her childhood he’d been gone. In her early years, it was because of the war. Vietnam. He was drafted and served two tours. When he returned he’d gone back to what he knew, working with his hands to support his family. He’d gotten into oil catting and soon was working on rigs, where he was gone for months at a time. His job took a toll on his marriage. From the get go, it never stood a chance. Sue’s mom had stuck with it way too long, but eventually it wore her out. When she served him divorce papers, he wasn’t surprised.
He was a loner by nature and never truly embraced the husband/father role. Roughnecks weren’t good at making pretty. They weren’t used to domestic settings—sitting at a table with china and silverware, going to church with the family. Their lives were twelve-hour shifts day-in and day-out working on rigs in the middle of the ocean. Even when he was put in charge of rigs, his life wasn’t much different. He was constantly away.
He fought his share of demons. Back in the war, he’d seen stuff in the bush he wished he hadn’t. For years he tried to drown those images seared into his consciousness with Jack and Johnny. Not that that ever worked. His drinking binges just made things worse. He’d never hit Sue’s mom, but when he was on the bottle he’d heaped more than his share of abuse. He’d said things he later regretted and done stuff he wasn’t proud of.
Back then he was a young buck and plenty stupid. What he wouldn’t do to turn back time, so he could patch things up and prevent the worst two mistakes in his life: letting his wife and daughter slip away. The only two good and pure things he’d ever had.
He was proud of his daughter. Even though he wasn’t there for her when she was growing up, her mother, bless her, made sure he knew about the highlights. He’d saved all the letters she ever wrote. Somehow she always knew where to send those letters, no matter where on the map he was.
His little daughter had been on the Homecoming Court her junior and senior year. She’d gone to college on a full academic scholarship. Suzy got those smarts from her mom.
Bob had done fine in school, and if not for lack of funds might have gone to college, but Suzy was in an entirely different league. She was scary smart, even as a little girl. He remembered her reciting back to him an entire kid’s book when she was only three. He’d read the book to her a few times, and she’d taken the book from his hands and read it to him, flipping the pages and reading. For a second he thought she was actually reading the words—at three years old! But she’d just memorized it by hearing him read those few times.
He could remember that like it was yesterday. He was so proud of his girl. He wanted to tell everyone and had to anyone who’d listen.
Taking a breath, trying to hold that thought as it began to slip away, he looked at his daughter’s house.
She had a good husband in James. He loved her and deep down seemed to be a good man. He and James didn’t have much in common, but that was alright. James had gone out of his way to make him feel welcome when he’d stopped by that one time. He’d shown him his granddaughters and had introduced him as ‘Grandpa’. Hearing that name for himself had made a tear well in his eye.
Katie and Hannah, like their mom, were beautiful. Bright saucers for eyes and angelic faces that Michelangelo himself couldn’t improve upon. No doubt they were with their loving parents now. Bob didn’t see any cars in the driveway. No one had answered the door when he’d walked down that driveway and rung the bell. He crossed his fingers, hoping they’d gone someplace safe.
It was scary what was going on. The whole world was turned upside down. He’d come over to make sure they were okay. Seeing things on TV had pushed him past that stuck point—that Hoover Dam inside him that kept him back. When he’d called Suzy on the phone, she’d sounded odd, like she was upset. It could have just been from hearing his voice. ‘Dear old dad’ most likely wasn’t what came to mind.
He took in the domestic setting across the street one more time. The pretty house and yard. A cat, presumably theirs, went up the front steps and stopped at the stoop. He hadn’t met their cat, but Hannah had said they had a cat. He remembered her cute little voice. She wasn’t shy, even meeting him for the first time. He couldn’t get over it. She had only been two-and-a-half and there she was speaking like a big kid.
Hannah had told him he had to meet ‘Tigerlily’. He never got a chance, though. Suzy had pretty much ushered him out of the house when she’d come home.
He sighed. What he wouldn’t do to start all over. To have the time back he’d lost with his daughter. To be the dad he should have been. He loved her more than anything and now that he had nothing but time, she didn’t want to have anything to do with him.
He took his truck out of Park and set it for Drive. He was about to pull into the street when he suddenly paused. The cat at the stoop was crying. He could hear her plaintive wail even from here. My, he thought, she was a bawler.
Tigerlily. That name was way too dainty for her. With those lungs, they should have named her ‘Bawler’. He watched the cat pirouette on the front stoop before she arched her back, settled down and took a seat where she could survey the yard. She was a proud thing, judging by the way she sat. Erect and observant.
Bob winked at her and pulled out into the street. The cat watched him drive away. A grown man with a tear streaking down his cheek.
23
IT was hard to breathe with tape over her mouth. As bad as it was for her, she was thinking of her girls. Their nasal passages weren’t as developed. How could these monsters tape their mouths? They might suffocate.
Sue struggled on the bed, trying to see them. Hannah looked scared. Katie’s skin tone didn’t look good. Oh my God. Sue realized that Katie wasn’t getting enough oxygen. She dealt with sinuses a lot and didn’t breathe out of her nose very well. The doctor during a recent checkup had said it was possible she had a condition known as a deviated septum, which meant there was some obstruction in one of the nasal passages. It could make it hard to breathe when the sinuses got inflamed. Just yesterday Katie had said her nose hurt.
Oh please, let Katie be getting enough air.
Sue looked at Katie, trying to get eye contact. Katie looked listless.
Please… baby, look at me.
Their captors had left the door open. Sue heard their voices. The men were speaking Russian. Sue tried to move her hands. She had some play. She’d kept her wrists slightly apart as they’d wrapped them.
Katie looked bad. Her skin tone was a bluish pallor.
Sue strained and tried to reach her front pocket. The key was in there. If she could reach it she might be able to use it to cut through the tape.
She tried, stretching as far as she could, but the pocket was too far. Contorted as she was, she started to cramp. She let up and looked around the room. There was a desk near the bed. She remembered that its drawer contained pens and a letter opener. The men had stopped talking. She looked up as one of them peered in the room.
He must be able to see that Katie was in bad shape. Please let him do something.
Show a thread of humanity. Pull off the tape!
Sue started to squirm, trying to get his attention. She tried to speak through the tape, but it was only a guttural mumble. The man frowned. His face hardened and his eyes narrowed. He shut the door.
Sue wasted no time. She slithered towards the edge of the bed. She put her legs over. Making sure not to lose her balance and flop off, she found the ground. She scooted towards the end of the bed, which was closest to the desk.
As she did so, a wave of dizziness came over her. She stopped moving and forced herself to slow her breathing and take deep breaths through her nose. Her lungs were screaming, and she panicked until she realized she was getting air.
She took slow deep breaths and sc
ooted the rest of the way. The desk was close now. She was at the very end of the bed. This was the toughest part. She had to stand without falling and move the last foot or so to the desk. If she fell, the noise would bring the men into the room. From their actions, Sue was certain they had no intention of letting them live.
She managed to stand. With her ankles taped together, it was like balancing on a post. Her hands, taped behind her back, felt for the desk. She started to wobble. For a fearful split-second, she thought she was going to topple, but somehow got a finger hold on the desk and steadied herself.
There… the drawer pull.
Sliding to the side, so as to give room for the drawer to slide out, she pulled the drawer out. Her fingers felt inside, touching the pens and other items. She felt something cold. The letter opener!
Very carefully she pulled it out and pushed the drawer back in. She kept her backside close to the desk to balance herself. Her fingers fumbled with the opener and it dropped with a metallic thud.
Her heart skipped.
She looked at the door.
No one came in.
She felt for the opener again. It had landed on the desk and she was able to retrieve it. Manipulating her fingers, she got a grip on its handle. After several attempts she managed to move its point towards the tape. Operating solely on feel, she worked the point against the tape. Her fingers kept cramping and she had to take periodic breaks.
She looked at Katie and Hannah the entire time. Katie wasn’t moving. Hannah shifted once. She couldn’t see their faces.
Please God, let them be breathing.
She kept going, ignoring the cramps. The opener had punctured the tape and she could feel it making a difference.