“Sudden, yes. But unexpected? Please, Mr. Ambassador. I’m sure you have an excellent idea why you’re here.”
“I have many excellent ideas, thank you very much,” Gorsky sniffed. “But not on this subject. You will please respond to my question. Russia does not expect its senior representative in your country to be treated in this fashion.”
“Very well,” Yazzi said, leaning forward. “The reason is that I would like you to convey a message for me to your esteemed president, Mr. Denikin. Are you ready?”
“I am all ears, as I believe you say,” said Gorsky, his florid features reddening further.
“Excellent. Please tell Mr. Denikin we have found the calling card of one of his friends tucked into the control systems of each of the cities that recently went dark across our country.”
“How interesting,” Gorsky said. “And whose card might that have been?”
“Another of your ‘Fancy Bear’ type units.”
Gorsky gave the president a thin smile. “Such an odd name! What does it refer to?”
“Yes,” Yazzi said. “And it would be more exact to say the GRU, your main intelligence directorate, hacked into our power grid and deprived millions of American citizens of access to electricity. The actual unit behind the attack was just the tool in their hands.”
“I’m afraid that you will have to help me with this, Mr. President,” Gorsky said. “My country has repeatedly rejected the fantasy that such a quaintly named unit, or any similar group, exists within or under the control of the directorate. We have been quite explicit in this regard. If indeed you have attributed the unfortunate blackouts to such a cyber weaponry group, we could by definition then not be responsible.”
“Your repetition of false denials does not change my message,” Yazzi said. “Please inform your president that if the United States suffers another blackout, our response will be immediate and of equal, or greater, impact. And I can assure you, things will not return to normal after a few hours.”
Gorsky raised his eyebrows. “Indeed! But against what would you respond, Mr. President?”
“I’m sure you don’t expect me to answer that question. Good day, Mr. Ambassador.”
* * *
Crypto felt an enormous sense of relief when the hand on his countdown clock reached the nine o’clock position. Within eight weeks, at most, it would reach the midnight hour. To be assured of success he must wait to strike until then. But if he had to launch his attack even now, he believed there would be a good chance of victory. With every day that passed, the odds for success would increase. When he dared to be optimistic, Crypto believed BankCoin’s event horizon had already been crossed.
And yet it brought him little relief because the Bees had seized upon the same realization to rachet up their attack. At any moment, they screamed, he could be discovered. What then? There could be no guarantee he would not. Waiting was reckless, not acting too soon.
Of course, they could be right. But how could he know for sure? His countdown algorithm had no basis in science. It was no more than the product of a series of educated guesses. And in any event, the real world, and the actions of those in it, were far too unpredictable to capture in such a simple mechanism. It might be that true midnight had passed months ago, or instead that it would not arrive until later than his little program predicted. But how could he live with himself if he struck too soon, and societies recovered before governments fell?
It did not help that he had little left to prepare until the last few days before the attack itself. Evenings, he found himself roaming aimlessly on the internet, looking for distraction. One night he stumbled on a stanza of a poem by Swinburne that spoke to his condition:
I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.
But he also stumbled on a snippet written by an advertising executive, of all people, and A Bee added that to her daily litany of woe. It read:
On the Plains of Hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions
who, at the Dawn of Victory, sat down to wait, and waiting—died!
B Bee took a more literary approach, credibly rendering in his booming voice Brutus’s famous caution in the play Julius Caesar:
There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
But still, Crypto forced himself to wait, in defiance of Bees and Bard alike.
Chapter 33
No Pain, No Gain
Frank was still annoyed at being ignored by Schwert. So, he took a break to see if anything new had popped up about him online.
Rumors continued to abound, but that was all. At one site, people claimed Schwert was really Giles Campbell, a brilliant but eccentric Cambridge-educated mathematician. Before dropping out of public view several years before, he’d made a bundle designing sophisticated investment algorithms for a huge hedge fund. No, others said, he was the alter-ego of Barry Lemuelson, the rich heir to a German chemical fortune who designed dazzling virtual reality games. Ridiculous! insisted a third story. Schwert was really a team of venture capital-backed entrepreneurs providing BankCoin-related consulting services using their intimate knowledge of its workings.
But no one really knew. Maybe George Marchand could find out?
* * *
“If we were investigating Schwert, I couldn’t tell you, or give you, any details,” George Marchand told Frank over coffee at their usual rendezvous. “But we aren’t, so I guess I can tell you that much.”
“Well, I think you should check him out,” Frank replied. “And don’t say it’s a domestic matter, so the CIA can’t touch it. The global financial system is using BankCoin, and there’s no more reason to decide Schwert’s American over any other nationality.”
“So, you’re telling me the CIA should drop all the other important work we’re doing and investigate every hotshot coder that works for free on an open source project?”
“This isn’t just any project.”
“True. But there are lots of other significant projects. Also, true?”
“Well, sure. But there wouldn’t be as much chaos if any of those systems failed.”
“Really?” Marchand asked, his eyebrows rising as he looked at Frank over the rim of his coffee cup. “You don’t think it might be just a tad disruptive if the telecommunications system went down? Which, by the way, BankCoin relies on. Or all the cloud services providers? I doubt there’d be much banking – or anything else – going on if an enemy took them down. Major parts of all those systems are based on open source software. Anyway, even if we wanted to do what you’re asking, we don’t have enough people with the right skills to tackle that type and scale of investigation.”
“Then how about the FBI?”
“I think I’d know if they were monitoring Schwert, and the answer is no.”
“For Pete’s sake, why not?”
“Well, there’s the fact that to the best of your knowledge, your boy hasn’t broken any laws yet. Right?”
“Yes, but would I know it if he had? And anyway, don’t you and the FBI infiltrate organizations and follow individual suspects all the time to see if someone is planning a terrorist attack?”
“Of course. But only if we have reliable information there’s a real risk. And so far, all you’ve told me about Schwert is that he
’s fanatical about his privacy.”
Frank was getting frustrated. “Okay, but you’d have to agree that the banking system is ‘critical infrastructure,’ yes? And the CIA is charged with protecting that against external threats? Right?” Frank gave the last word a distinct “Gotcha!” inflection.
“In normal times, yes. But these aren’t normal times,” George said.
“Nice try,” Frank said. “The last times I can recall that anyone called ‘normal’ were maybe the 1980s. And anyway, if times aren’t normal, you have to adapt to the abnormalities.”
“Okay,” Marchand replied. “Fair point. So indirectly, it’s Yazzi’s fault. He appointed a lot of cabinet secretaries who are too turf conscious. Security is a big deal these days, so everyone wants to have cyber specialists on their own staff. It’s a way to make your agency more important even if it’s at the expense of someone else – like the FBI.”
“That’s crazy,” Frank said. “What about the Department of Homeland Security? Weren’t they created to stop that kind of nonsense? Coordinate communications so another 9/11 couldn’t happen?”
“In principle, yes. But in case you haven’t noticed, ever since things became ‘abnormal,’ as soon as an administration or the legislature creates something, the special interests, the next president, or the next Congress try to tear it down again. Look at Obamacare. Heck, even social security, and that’s been around for going on a hundred years. A lot of congressmen are trying to cut back on that. Or Glass-Steagall – Congress passed that act back in 1933 to prevent another Great Depression. It took sixty-six years for Congress to kill important parts of that, but when they did, even a lot of Democrats got on board – and it was Bill Clinton that signed the repeal bill. Oops!
“So, then the Great Recession follows,” George continued, “and once again, it’s the banks that pull down the house of cards. What a coincidence! So, Congress passes the Dodd-Frank Bill to stop a housing finance disaster from ever happening again. And what happens? This time around, it doesn’t even take ten years for Wall Street to get Washington to cut those reforms back. I tell you, these days, nothing’s off the table if someone can make a buck by undermining it or improve their chance of getting reelected by killing it outright.”
“So that’s it?”
“Afraid so. But I’ll let you know if I hear anything different.”
* * *
Josh Peabody swallowed the last bite of his forty-eight-dollar steak and poured another glass of ninety-six-dollar cabernet. Time to talk a few minutes’ worth of business so he could use his CryptoBoom! credit card to pay for lunch.
“We’re down fifteen percent so far this year. We’ve got to do better than that,” he said.
“Agreed. The question is how,” Vance Morganthau, his chief trader said. “It’s been crazy out there lately.”
“So what? Crazy times are when you make crazy-big money!” Peabody said. “When everything’s stable there’s no way to make a killing.”
“Well, sure,” Morganthau said. “but don’t forget we were up by twenty percent back in February. Who cares where we are today so long as we do well over the life of the fund?”
“The institutions we’re expecting to put two billion dollars in our second fund, that’s who! I want all our existing investors to double their investment in that one, and they won’t be in a buying mood if CryptoBoom! is down fifteen percent!”
“I understand,” Morganthau said. “But still, none of us has a crystal ball. We’ve just had a run of bad luck the last few months. Every time we’ve bet big, we’ve been burned by another cyberattack. And don’t forget, this isn’t like the stock market. There’s no history to look at. And there aren’t any analyst calls or earnings announcements on a neat schedule we can anticipate and bet on to make a nice profit. So, what do you expect me to do? The only coin you can rely on to go up all the time is the Russ.”
“So, let’s bulk up on Russ,” Peabody said.
Morganthou almost choked on his cabernet. “What are you talking about? We can’t touch it. It’s on the sanctions list just about everywhere.”
“Not quite everywhere. We could buy and hold a position in, say, Malaysia.”
Morganthau looked around the dining room before answering. “Come on, Josh,” he said quietly. “Don’t even say that. That’s jail time talk.”
Peabody smiled and shrugged. “No harm in thinking, is there? Maybe there’s a way to work the Russ back into our portfolio without going over the line.”
“I can’t imagine how. I don’t even want to imagine.”
“Okay,” Peabody said. “It was just a thought.”
Morganthau frowned. Just a thought, indeed. He’d seen that look on Peabody’s face before.
* * *
Frank was enjoying his flight on the First Manhattan corporate jet far more than his last trip; this time, it didn’t involve a cameo appearance at the Academy Awards.
The opulent swiveling seats, one to each side of the aisle, were large and comfortable, and the attention of the two attendants was unrelenting. They were spending as much time with him as with the president and executive chairman of the bank, too.
Frank was impressed with how easy it was to fly privately. No TSA inspections to slow you down – the limousine took you right out to the jet on the runway at the private airport! He’d always known the ultra-rich traveled this way, but he hadn’t realized how luxurious and convenient it was. The cost must be absurd, but it sure beat standing in an endless security line before squeezing into a seat in coach.
For the first time, it occurred to him that all this might be hard to give up when his bank gig ran its course. Maybe they’d keep him on staff after BankCoin was thoroughly debugged and trustworthy?
Or perhaps they wouldn’t. How would he feel about going back to working day in and day out in his little condo in Washington?
How indeed?
He thought he knew the answer to that, and it made him uncomfortable.
* * *
“So, you’re telling me my idea is no good, is that it?” Doogie Petrie said, pushing back from the conference room table. “Do you know how long it took me to code that proof-of-concept program?”
This should be interesting, Frank thought. The first time Doogie contributes anything beyond snide remarks he gets shot down.
“I’m sorry about that,” Colonel Dix said. “But I’ve made it clear from the outset we need to design an attack that isn’t traceable to the United States. And it also can’t result in an actual loss of money. Your proposal fails on both fronts.”
“Geez!” Petrie said, snapping his laptop open. “Do you guys know anything about cracking at all?”
Colonel Dix frowned. “You seem to be a bit confused, Doogie. This isn’t typical criminal activity. This is achieving vital national goals through cyber weaponry.”
“Well, excuse me,” Petrie said, drawing the second word out. “Thanks for clarifying that for me. Somehow, I imagined taking down a multi-billion-dollar global trade network might be illegal.”
“Be that as it may,” Colonel Dix said, “Those are the rules. Now, has anyone else come up with a new exploit that shows promise?”
As it happened, Frank had been mulling over an idea for the last several days. “Yes, I’ve got one to suggest,” he said.
“Great,” Colonel Dix said. “Let’s hear it.”
“Okay,” Frank replied. “It’s based on the fact that the Russ network, like every cryptocurrency system, relies on wallets to hold the alt coins. The blockchain holds the master record of all the transactions that have come before, but as a practical matter, all anyone who’s buying and selling products using Russ cares about is the balance in his wallet.”
“So, you want to target the wallets, rather than the blockchain.” Colonel Dix asked.
“That’s right. As we’ve see
n from the real world, lots of criminals have successfully stolen cryptocurrencies from individual accounts. I believe I’ve found a way to change the balances of Russ wallets, and if we code it right, it won’t be traceable. Russia might suspect us, but they wouldn’t be able to prove it. Once we had the malware in place, we could use it to change the balance of only some wallets, or of every single one.”
“Huh!” Petrie interrupted. “And somehow, I got the idea we weren’t allowed to make anyone lose a pile of dough!”
“That’s true,” Frank agreed, “but that’s what makes accounts a good target – the blockchain remains untouched, so the accurate balances can be restored. But that would take a lot of time and effort because the Russ blockchain wasn’t designed with that in mind. If we set the attack up so it hits a bunch of wallets here, and then a week later another bunch there, and so on, we’ll undermine the credibility of the Russ as a payment vehicle. Or, if the president wants to, we could hit all the accounts at once and bring the whole network to a screeching halt. It would take them months to find the issue, fix it, and then work all that data back through the system to restore the balances. So, we can get two different attack profiles out of the same virus.”
“Huh,” Petrie said and slumped back in his chair.
“That sounds like it has potential,” Colonel Dix said, looking around the table. “What do others think about Frank’s idea?”
The rest thought it sounded promising. Only Dirk, as usual, looked unimpressed.
* * *
Josh Peabody settled in and read the headline that had just popped up. Crap! There’d been another big theft of a coin CryptoBoom! owned. He clicked the story open and then pounded his desk with both fists. The exchange the criminals had hit was the one his fund used. He did a few quick calculations and decided the loss would amount to more than four percent of the fund’s entire value. If he couldn’t figure out a way to offset these losses he’d have to postpone, or even abandon, his plans to launch a second fund.
The Blockchain Revolution Page 25