The Back Door Man

by Dave Buschi

  The money wasn’t hidden. Far from it. It was right out in the open.

  James had found it. Now it was just a matter of letting the Wisteria take over. Embrace it. Let the arms of the vine show its unrequited love.

  73

  AGAIN, he was on the move. This time he was determined to find a spot he could stay a while. He should have thought of this spot the first time.

  It was near The Stacks on Level 3. Far enough away that the migrating heat hadn’t taken over. It was a large room. Like a proscenium with a stage and seats that fanned out.

  This room was no longer used. Its walls were unusual. They were designed to attenuate sound. Keep sound in, and keep sound out. They were of double-walled construction, and there were access panels. Some of the cavities in the walls were large enough for a person to fit.

  It was claustrophobic, but James was getting a handle on facing his fears. So far he was managing that rather well. It all had to do with his frame of mind. James should have learned this trick a long time ago.

  He also just realized something. He had other tools at his disposal. Not just the regular suspects. The Web was the whole wide world. Reach out and touch somebody.

  He pulled up Skype. There was a free download available. Skype was a software application that enabled persons to make voice calls over the Internet.

  He had a call to make.

  74

  THE flames rose. It was a spectacle. Neighbors, who’d not shown their faces when the gunshots had gone off, now came out of their homes, stood in the street, and watched.

  Sue, her face streaked with dirt and soot, had a drawn haunted look on her face. Pieces of the house caved in as the fire consumed and greedily ate everything that meant something to her family. Years of memories.

  Inside that house were photographs, homemade Christmas ornaments, the girls’ baptismal dresses, their first baby shoes, the artwork they’d done over the years, the antique hope chest that she and James had bought at a flea market when they first got the house. In that chest Sue had tucked special items, such as James’s poetry he’d written her in college, their passports they’d used only once, their marriage certificate, the handmade quilts that had been Sue’s great grandmother’s who’d lived in Poland…

  Their home.

  The joys of becoming parents had occurred within its walls—walls, which were now burning cinders and glowing embers.

  Sue hugged her girls. Their faces were puffy from crying. It was about being alive, Sue knew. What had happened was like a bad dream. Men had tried to kill them. She was still in a daze, as if the heat coming off the house was giving her sunstroke.

  They were alive.

  That was the important thing, the only thing that mattered. Material things could be replaced. That was a phrase she’d heard and it rang true. Still… she could see the pictures and memories swirling in the flames, dancing away forever.

  Bob touched her arm. “We should go.”

  Soot blackened his face. He was standing rigid. There was a strength that radiated from him, which gave her comfort.

  Comfort. That’s not a feeling she’d ever associated with her dad before. He had saved her twice. Saved her girls.

  He’d also had the foresight to save his truck. It had been parked far enough from the house and hadn’t been damaged from the initial explosions. That truck was now running, waiting to take them from here. Far from this…

  “Oh my God.”

  “I’ve tried calling, but I can’t get the Fire Department.”

  The neighbors were chattering in the background. Sue barely heard them. Some of them had come up and expressed concern, while others were just frantic, worried about their own houses catching fire too. A few minutes ago she’d overhead someone exclaim that Sue should be doing something. As if the fire was her fault and she was supposed to put it out.

  “…don’t care, just do something!”

  Voices swirling, dancing with the flames. Sue took one last look at her home. The once pretty yard that the girls loved to play in. The grass that James agonized over every weekend, pulling weeds, adding fertilizer every spring and fall, and kept looking so green for his girls.

  It was gone. Pitted with small fires that were now smoldering. Pieces of burning house and their minivan, which had exploded, littered the yard.

  But they were alive. That’s what mattered.

  Sue turned her back on the depressing scene and helped Hannah and Katie into the truck. Bob helped buckle them in. There were no toddler or booster seats for the girls, and they did their best to latch them tightly.

  “Ready?”

  Sue nodded. She felt so drained. So spent.

  They drove away. Past more neighbors who were coming to see the spectacle. Some glanced at them with curious or alarmed expressions, while others strode forward, their eyes fixed on the flames ahead.

  Some houses down they passed a black sedan that was parked along the curb. Two men were sitting in the car. One of them looked right at her. Sue shrugged off a sudden chill.

  “You okay?” Bob said.

  A vibration trembled her leg. It took her a moment to realize what it was. She shifted in her seat and pulled out her cell phone.

  Her brow knit.

  “Someone calling?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t answer.”

  But she had already clicked to accept the call.

  She tried to keep the emotion from her voice, but it was no use, it came out in just one word.

  “James!”

  75

  “GET it?”

  “Yeah.” Denis finished jotting down the number.

  “Antique plates.”

  “Yep.”

  Peter took a drag from his cigarette.

  “That file say anything ‘bout the family?”

  “Not much. Wife, forty-two, girls three and five.”

  “That it?”

  “Yep.”

  Peter flicked his cigarette out the window. He looked at the burning house and pulled their sedan into the street.

  76

  JAMES felt like he’d been working for hours, but looking at the computer’s clock he realized it must still be daylight outside. The emotions inside him—like steam in a boiler—were so intense he was afraid if he didn’t keep channeling them, they’d take over and he’d explode.

  They had tried to kill his wife and girls.

  They’d burned his house down.

  This wasn’t just about him. They’d gone after his family.

  His wife and girls.

  By downloading Skype on his laptop, he’d managed to get a call through. At first it hadn’t worked and he’d had to download it a second time. When he finally got it set up and got hold of Sue, she’d relayed what had happened in a voice that trembled with emotion.

  Men had broken into the house. They spoke Russian. They’d meant to kill them. Sue gave details. How they were tied up and their girls almost suffocated. How Sue had managed to cut through her constraints and take the girls to the garage. How her father had saved them.

  She’d called him “Dad”. His wife had no relationship with her father, and now she was with him, calling him Dad?

  Their phone connection was terrible. The static on the line made it hard to hear everything, but James heard enough. He asked to speak to Hannah and Katie and he told them he loved them. He could hear them cry, “Daddy!”

  His heart had cracked. He wanted to be with them. To hug them and keep them safe.

  These monsters had tried to kill his girls.

  He had to channel that anger… that terrible caustic energy. If he didn’t, he knew it would consume him instantly. These monsters.

  He had to focus.

  To detach himself.

  It took effort this time. It was like shutting out a thousand voices yelling at him at once. Somehow, he was able to do it. His mind was wired differently than some people. It was almost like he had an on/off switch inside his head. It was probabl
y what allowed him to do his job so well. He could flip that switch and laser focus for hours. Others, if they were put in this situation, might get overwhelmed, or just completely shut down.

  Sue sometimes said he was so distant. It used to worry her, particularly when they didn’t have kids and he devoted so much time trying to make his startup work. The weeks, months, years on end he’d work straight, with hardly any rest.

  He was an odd bird, he realized. His family was what grounded him. Kept him normal. Kept him sane. If he didn’t have them, there was no doubt he’d still be holed up somewhere trying to make another startup work. Trying to do the improbable or impossible again. Make an altruistic concept monetize. Green.com SecondChance.com

  Pipe dreams. So much energy expended. So much time working on failures. Fourteen years of his life.

  Fourteen years hitting the wall. He’d failed so many times that eventually he began to lose faith in himself. Eventually it was hard not to think he was a loser. He’d had a losing streak for so long it instilled an almost defeatist attitude beneath his optimism. As paradoxical as that was, it described the tug-a-war inside him where the losing side had won.

  He’d created these concepts, packaged these ideas. The software he designed. The algorithmic innovations he’d painstakingly done to make things work better. Faster.

  He’d poured his heart and soul into it all the way down to the web design. How the user interface was intuitive. How it gave a service that people might want. Might enjoy using. Might be the next big thing.

  But when he was out there trying to make a go of it, he never had any takers. Could never get in front of the right people that could see his vision. Could take it to the next level with just a little funding.

  All the VCs he’d managed, finagled a way to get in front of—even if just for two minutes—had turned him down.

  Not for us.

  No thanks.

  Try the boys on the hill.

  Good luck with this.

  Every no, every rejection, eroded his confidence. It changed him. He’d begun with unlimited, unfettered enthusiasm. When he was in school, he had these grand ambitions of how he was going to make a mark. Do something big with his life. Really make a fantastic life that he could share with Sue, where they could travel, afford the nice and finer things in life. Would not have to worry about money. Would not fret about paying the bills, or wonder how they’d fund retirement.

  In his mind, he was fighting for freedom. Fighting to not have to work where he answered to someone else. Where he could be his own boss. Could make his own rules.

  It didn’t take long—it’s amazing how quickly years can fly—until he was like some poker player so in hock he couldn’t even afford the air around him to breathe. He was beaten. He’d put it all out there and come up empty. That internal drive, that positive attitude, which carried him even on the bad days, was gone.

  He felt lucky to get a second chance; to get a job. He’d still spent some time working on stuff on the side, but in truth, he was done.

  That man—the one he’d become—that worked for ComTek—made for easy prey. He was beaten by failure. Put in his box. Accepting of whatever they gave him. He was afraid… afraid of losing his job.

  That beaten man made for a prime target. These people—whoever they were—had picked carefully. They’d taken his money, his job, his home, and were about to take what little freedom he had.

  Still they wanted more.

  They’d gone after his girls.

  It was like coming out of a bad dream. James straightened and lost the slouch. He knew what he had to do. He wasn’t just going to take this. He was going to use the skills he had. Shoo away the lotus-eaters... He wasn’t going to quit.

  He tackled this thing from a purely objective standpoint, as if it was any other professional exercise he might undertake, except in this case he decided to throw out the rules. Rules are what put him in his box.

  Small good those rules had done him. He’d always been playing by someone else’s rules; going upstream. Expending so much energy trying to carve out a better life for his family, working a job he didn’t like, hoping beyond hope for that promotion that never came, answering to a company that saw him as just a worker.

  These people that targeted him thought even less of him. They thought they’d picked on a weak, easy target. A man that wouldn’t fight back. Wouldn’t even know what happened to him, until it was too late.

  They thought they had the perfect fall guy. Had planned the perfect heist.

  What was one man’s life? What did his family matter? Just erase them and be done. Cold and efficient. That’s probably the lens with which they saw the world.

  Okay.

  That’s the way they wanted to play it.

  The rules had just changed. From now on, there were no rules. He wasn’t that old James anymore. This was the new and improved version. James 2.0. They hadn’t seen nothing, yet.

  He took a deep, calming, channeling breath and went to work.

  He had a large toolbox to pull from. Trojans, backdoors, sniffers, rootkits, exploits, buffer overflows, SQL injections… Those were just a sampling.

  Till now, he’d kept the kid gloves on with everything he’d been doing. That stuff was mild with what he was about to unleash.

  Proportionate response. Too gentle for them. Time to ratchet things up. The gloves were coming off. No prisoners. No hiding place.

  What is yours is mine.

  He’d only been footprinting. Gathering information. He was done with that. Now was the time to turn those aliases—those masked TCP/IP addresses—against themselves. Let the cannibals eat their own.

  The IP address in Moscow received an email from its counterpart in Beijing. The IP address in Switzerland, likewise received an inquiry from its partner in London. By the fifth and sixth salvos, which James kept unseen, he had accessed their networks. His imbedded program provided the key, the back door entries he needed.

  In no time he commandeered their websites, which were indirectly linked to those IP addresses. A Moscow-based company that specialized in wheat commodities and futures trading. An investment holding company in Beijing. A third, which was a private equity bank located in Zurich. A fourth entity, which was owned by a financier in London. As for the fifth one, that led him to ComTek—ending with an anonymous IP address that originated from one of ComTek’s routers.

  Anonymous soon to be eponymous.

  Somewhere, halfway around the world, a person was looking at Mickey Mouse on their home page. Another in Beijing was seeing a text message scroll across their screen, behind which, as a background, a soviet-era communist flag with the hammer and sickle was waving in an imaginary breeze.

  These monsters weren’t anonymous anymore. One by one he’d found them. Found where they lived.

  They’d turned his world upside down and now he was returning the favor.

  He clicked a third stage of instructions and outside his hidden niche the lights fired up. The Vault was back online and didn’t need the emergency generators anymore. The equipment in the entire facility began to hum.

  Chained exploits.

  He was adding to his chain. The shutdown he’d initiated was only temporary. All part of his grand plan.

  Set things right.

  He took a deep breath. A few more clicks and he was done. Least for now. Once they reacted, tried to bite back, he’d drive his spear right into their hearts.

  James crawled out of his hiding spot from within the wall cavity behind the raised dais and looked around.

  A proscenium, like a small theatre or stage.

  No one to witness his dramatic production. Aeschylus would have been proud. No one, just empty chairs, fanned out.

  This room didn’t see much use anymore. It never really had. It was one of those anachronisms. Out of place even here, in The Vault. A place that seemed to project and embody the future. A grim future, below ground. What things might look like if everything topside j
ust went to hell.

  This room, even more than The Vault, was ahead of its time. Playfully nicknamed the ‘Jedi Mind Room’, it was a three-dimensional holographic video conferencing room. This room could link up with Central IQ, any of ComTek’s regional offices, or any businesses out there that employed the same technology. There weren’t many. Not many businesses could afford this setup.

  The system was cutting edge, literally Star Wars like, and cost a small fortune to install all the components that comprised the room. It allowed someone to project a high definition holographic image of themselves, which could be viewed in an almost identical chamber that could be located anywhere, be it halfway around the world or two blocks away—just so long as a company set up the technology. The image was lifelike, you could actually see perspiration on the forehead, it was so crisp.

  ComTek had developed the technology a few years ago and had done an aggressive sales campaign to sell it to Fortune 500 companies. But it had proved to be a tough sell. Too tough in the end. The whole project had gotten shelved.

  Not many companies wanted to pony up two million dollars just to have a better video conferencing system. It was ahead of its time, perhaps doomed, like so many innovative concepts out there. One of those ideas that almost made it.

  A living, breathing anachronism.

  James could relate, if he’d taken the time to reflect on it. Not that those thoughts were on his mind right now. He looked around the room. The place had served its utilitarian purpose. It had hidden him long enough to do what he had to do.

  Somewhere, out there, he’d just made several people very unhappy.

  77

  BLOOD was coming from the man’s nose. He looked fearfully at Semion Mihajlovic with the one eye he could still open. He didn’t have the answer his boss wanted. “I don’t know where it’s gone.” His hoarse voice was but a whisper. He bowed his head and waited for a shot he felt certain would come.

  Mihajlovic spat on the floor and cursed. His eyes, beneath hulking brows, looked one by one at the other men in the room. Each of the men withered under his gaze. Mihajlovic, like a great bear, walked around the room. The banks of computers were a cold backdrop.