“But he went anyway?”
I shook my head. “He promised not to, even gave them what he was going to turn over to the press. They were so freaked out by what he’d put together that they exposed her anyway and then watched to see what he would do. He found me and gave this stuff to me as a teaser. He wants you to post it all to your website.” Even as I said it, the story sounded invented, with a hole at every turn.
He skimmed the pages, ignoring the bios of Edward and Margaret Rider and concentrating on the first few pages of the who, what, and when. “You know what this is?” he asked.
“At least a little.”
“It’s unbelievable.” His hands shook slightly as he ate. “If it’s true and if he has the paper trail to back it up, it’s the smoking gun every federal prosecutor could ever dream of.” He poked at the paper, leaving a tiny grease drop. “Look at these names and titles. Steven Wisenburg, Richard Champs—both are at the cabinet level. They meet with the president every day.” He pointed to another name: Lester Goodencamp. “He’s director of Homeland Security, one of the few who worked his way up the ranks and stayed.”
“Not exactly household names.”
“Which works in their favor. Everyone knows the president and VP. Fewer people know the visible congressmen. Hardly anyone can name a cabinet member unless we’re in the middle of a war, and then only the Secretary of Defense or State.” He wiped his hands on a napkin and studied the pages more closely. “These decisions—they’re outrageous: ‘Identify RFID supplier,’ ‘Determine order of vaccination rollout,’ ‘Approve marketing strategy.’ Look at these dates. Some of them date back a couple of years. Every one of them is before last September, months before the first reported smallpox case. Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable.”
“It’s almost too neat and tidy, isn’t it?”
Eddy paused and slowly nodded. “Does he have more documentation to back this up?”
“He said he did.” I told Eddy how I was supposed to contact Phil again. “But maybe it’s a trap.”
“Maybe.” He stared at the pages. “Maybe.”
As he mulled over that one, I took Anna’s papers out of the envelope and spread them out.
“Here’s more.”
“From the same guy?”
I shook my head. “It’s something entirely different. It’s the programming script to get us into the CDC software through the back door.”
Eddy looked at me and gave a half laugh. “How the hell did you come up with this?”
I fumbled to explain that whole vodka-hazed, tear-drenched night.
“So you bonded and she trusted you.” That was the sense Eddy made of it.
“I guess so.”
“Do you think you could have been set up?”
I shifted my eyes a little. “I don’t know. Could be.” I thought some more. “Does it look like it?”
“I don’t have any way of knowing. But if it’s a setup, the trap will close on anyone who gets close.”
Michael, Kai, Stepan the Dishwasher. Me. Eddy.
“Here’s the problem, Mz M.” He’d finished his fish and was picking up the final deep fried breading crumbs with his fingers with one hand and had returned to massaging my neck with his other. “I have an anonymous friend out there. Someone’s been feeding me stuff—obscure articles out of major newspapers, advance notice of presidential announcements, a couple insider emails that initially contradicted the official word from the White House only to be proven accurate a few days later.”
“Your own cyber Deep Throat.”
“Exactly. So far, everything has been one hundred percent on the money. Not a mislead yet.”
“But now?”
“I got an email this morning that was very personal. It said the DHS had already approached you unsuccessfully. They’d backed off to give you a chance to bring me in, but as of noon today, it was time to ‘change Maggie’s status,’ which now makes more sense to me.”
Every cell in my body shifted. There were only three status choices: Detained, Deported, Exposed.
With the crumbs cleaned up, Eddy took my hand again and whispered. “So here’s the other thing. My source says that the backup plan is to set us up. He says, in fact, the backup plan has been put into motion.” Our eyes locked. “And we bit.”
CHAPTER
45
“SO. WE’RE TOAST.”
“We’re toast.”
“Unless we can figure out how we’ve been set up.”
“Unless.”
Eddy and I didn’t talk for minutes. Our fingers stayed entwined while we sorted through possibilities.
“Okay. Give me all the things that happened this week. Where do you think we could have gotten hooked?”
I started with Sanjeev and his warning note to me, which I had along. Nothing in it suggested a setup. We set it aside.
My next encounter with DHS was Friday with Mario Seneca and his unseen partner who installed the spyware software on my computer. He warned me, and then somewhere along the way, convinced the hotel to let him into my room, where he planted RFIDs in my clothes.
“It’s possible they thought of the spyware and RFID plants as the backup plan.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s not like we ‘bit.’ It’s just something we might not have discovered.”
“Probably so.”
That left my visit with Jola, my vodka evening with Anna, and my morning with Michael and Kai.
“Jola didn’t give you anything, though, right?”
“Just the names of the lead developers.”
“So she’s probably clean.”
“Except that the DHS was there today, outside her house.” My heart thudded at the thought of the DHS finding Jola because of me. “Maybe they tracked me to her house and compromised her.”
“It could be. But they were waiting for someone—either you or Jola, so it sounds more like they were waiting to catch someone, not that we’d already taken the bait.”
I nodded.
“So then you went to Anna’s.”
“But first, I spent hours in the library researching. I found Anna’s name in Daniel’s obituary.”
“Which could have been a plant.”
I had to think about that a minute. “I guess it’s possible, but if you’d seen her, you’d believe her.”
“That or she was a world-class actress.”
I agreed halfheartedly. I had to stay open to all possibilities.
“Maybe she’s legit, but someone sent her the letter in Daniel’s name.”
“And handwriting?”
“It could have been forced. Daniel could have been threatened with Anna being exposed if he didn’t cooperate.”
I thought about that possible chain of events. “That’s entirely possible. But all this assumes we would have uncovered Anna, made the connection, and she would have trusted us enough to hand over the Java instructions.”
“Anything’s possible.” Eddy tilted his head back and forth a couple times. “They could be laying out multiple traps for us. That’s the one we just happened to fall into.”
“So the next-likely is Phil Generett.”
“It was quite a story.”
“But it came with an obituary.”
“Surely, that sort of thing could be planted.”
“But why would he warn me about the RFID implants? And tell me I had less than forty-eight hours grace before the DHS came after me?”
“To build credibility?”
“Like your cyber Deep Throat who’s been right every time?”
Eddy gave a sober nod.
“The worst that could happen is that you’d upload all his information and be wrong. But who would know or care before the story spread?”
“Unless we contact him for the rest of the story, meet him to pick up the rest of the document, and get arrested by a swarm of DHS guys.”
I mentally shuffled that information into various paradigms. “It could happen.” I
thought some more. “It’s a risk, though, that you wouldn’t upload the pages you already have. Besides, you should have seen him. Again, it was an award-winning performance.”
“So that leaves us with Michael, Kai, and Stepan the Stanford student dishwasher,” Eddy said.
“It was too easy, wasn’t it?”
“Seems that way. Except that it could never have fallen into place without Jola giving the name of Anna, who gave you the JavaScript back door.”
“And that’s way too much of a coincidence.”
Eddy tilted his head in agreement.
We sat quietly some more. I said, “Who has the most to gain from catching us?”
“Good question. For that matter, what do any of them have to gain from this?”
“Money? A promotion for Phil Generett?”
“Seems like there’d be easier ways to earn either one.”
None of it seemed likely. But then, Kai thought Stepan would be happy to hack into the CDC just for the fun of it. There’s no telling what people would do to entertain themselves.
“Of course, there’s one final possibility,” I said. “Your cyber Deep Throat planted the suspicion for suspicion sake. If he can get us to second-guess everything and everybody, then we won’t follow through with whatever plan we’re building.”
Eddy didn’t say anything for a very long time. Finally, he sighed. “It’s a very real option.”
“So that leaves us where?”
“With nothing.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
By the time we parted, only a few dusky colors outlined the city’s hills, leaving the buildings and trees in tints and shades of purple. A crisp breeze whipped in from the Bay, scattering leaves and scraps of paper along the nearly empty streets. My wallet was fat with cash again, so I hailed a passing cab and sunk into its back seat for the quiet ride to Kai’s. For the first few minutes, I watched out the back to see if anyone followed us, but in the fading light, I couldn’t distinguish one set of headlights from another.
Eddy and I hadn’t come up with much at all except a good rendezvous plan. But at least I’d seen him, touched him, kissed him again. We’d meet again in twenty-four hours. In the mean time, I would get together with Stepan, our new best hacker friend, and send a message to Phil Generett for more of his document. The plan kept us from standing still, but it didn’t do much to figure out where the trap lay.
Stepan the Dishwasher was already nursing a beer and munching on peanuts by the handful when I walked in the door at Kai’s. He stood to shake my hand, wiping the salt off first on his pant leg. His eyes, a dazzling Caribbean blue, could have single-handedly made me fall in love with him. He had that Slavic broad forehead and patrician nose, thin pale lips, and close-cropped white-blond hair. His features—and his striking eyes—combined into a pleasing combination. He was tall, too. He would stand out in a crowd for multiple reasons.
The three of them—Kai, Michael, and Stepan—were crowded around Kai’s small kitchen table, Daniel’s papers in front of them.
“Stepan has been translating the Russian for us,” Michael said. “It’s quite a story.”
“He was lead developer on project,” Stepan began. His minor grammatical flaw heightened the jagged edges and determined R’s of his accent. “When he start the project, it seem easy and simple. But then he see more and more. He has to tie software into RFID tracking. So he leave a back door in the software. In case this is bad as he think, he can––” here he cleared his throat and laughed uncomfortably. “He can ‘fix’ software to work differently.” He nodded at me, a check to see if I understood what he meant by fix.
I understood perfectly.
“That’s this Java.” Stepan held up Daniel’s script. “He give to friend for safekeeping and say to hide it from government.”
“So can you fix it? Can you hack in to the CDC site and make the changes?” I asked.
The three others exchanged looks. My suspicion radar pinged, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
“Yes. Yes, of course.” Stepan waved his hands a bit. I apparently had asked a stupid question. “I can get in with this. But you must understand. He set it up for more than just to get in and change code. Code they can fix. He set it up for virus.”
“A software virus?”
Stepan’s mouth spread into a weird, tobacco-stained grin. “He say he stop a make-believe virus with a real virus.” He laughed sharply. “Very clever, this Russian. Don’t you think?”
Kai and Michael looked at me. I nodded. They relaxed ever so slightly.
“You can make this virus happen?” I asked.
“Yes.” He shrugged his shoulders as though this were child’s play. “Daniel do this very smart. Here is what he design. You go through security with health card. They scan it. Every thirty minutes the data automatically get uploaded to central server. At midnight, server is backed up again. The virus has a time clock. It releases twenty-four hours after it enters the system.
“Perfect,” Kai laughed. “An incubation period.”
Stepan shrugged his shoulders. “Incubation? I don’t know this word.”
“The time between exposure to a virus and the symptoms appearing.”
“Ah, yes. I understand this ‘incubation.’” Stepan smiled. With no tobacco teeth showing, it was beautiful. “It is the same with this virus.”
“And you can do this?” I asked. It sounded too clever to be true.
“Yes. Is difficult, but yes, I can do this. But to do this like he write it, I will need health card and vaccination capsules. You can get these?”
A trap or not, my heart sank. I wanted to believe Stepan was legit. Now, even if he turned out to be, we were at a dead end. How could we ever get health cards and vaccination capsules?
Stepan patted around in the pockets of his jacket he’d draped over his chair. He found his cigarettes and offered them around. We all declined, so he tapped one out for himself and then patted his pockets again for matches. Before he could light up, Kai discreetly rose and opened the patio doors to her balcony. “Perhaps you’d be more comfortable smoking out here. Even at night, the view is lovely.”
He scrunched his nose and snorted lightly, but he got up from the table. “I smoke. You talk. We come up with something.” He waved his unlit cigarette at us. “Look at this smart bunch. An American, Asian, Spanish, and Russian.” No one corrected his mistake about Michael’s nationality. “We are very crafty countries. We think of a way.”
He left the patio door slightly ajar just in case we were lying about wanting a smoke.
“Do you believe him?” Kai asked softly. “I mean about being able to hack his way in.”
“Well, he’s certainly very arrogant about his abilities,” Michael said.
Kai smiled almost shyly at Michael. “He’d make a lousy Filipino.”
Michael winked at her and draped his arm over her shoulder. What a time to flirt.
“He can be arrogant,” I said trying to pull them back. “He knows there’s no way we can get health cards and vaccination capsules.” I watched Stepan’s silhouette leaning on the balcony railing, the orange dot of the cigarette butt glowing brighter and then fading.
“Don’t you know anyone in medicine? Anyone who would have access to blank health cards?” Kai asked.
I chewed on my thumbnail, nervous about where this was leading. Michael watched me.
“What about your friend, the doctor who was arrested this week?” he asked.
I shook my head. “She’s the last person who could help us. She still hasn’t surfaced.”
“But what about people in her office or her family? Would they still have access?”
My heart grew heavier with each question. I just couldn’t believe that Michael would set me up. “Even if they could, they’re halfway across the country. Too many things can go wrong.”
Kai nodded. “I think we have to look closer. Surely someone we know and trust would have acc
ess to health cards.”
Stepan took one last draw on his cigarette on the balcony rail and then flicked the still glowing butt. The small shooting star fell into the darkness below. “Any ideas?” he asked as he came through the door.
“Nothing,” Kai said and shook her head.
“What about black market cards?” Michael asked.
“Too early,” Stepan said confidently. “People don’t need black market. They can get it easy enough the legal way. But with the new requirements for people crossing the borders, they’ll be out there eventually.”
“How many do you need?” I thought of my own card, although I was pretty sure Eddy hadn’t bothered to bring it, and he certainly wouldn’t have brought the vaccination capsule that matched it.
“Ten,” Stepan said.
“Ten?” Kai repeated.
“Ten.” He held up all ten fingers. “I need one for each terminal number. Zero to nine.”
“What will that do?” I asked. Ten seemed a dangerously high number.
“But I still don’t understand why you need all ten numbers,” Michael said.
“Is because the virus will take terminal number and make all numbers that number. So all health cards ending in zero turn all numbers to zero. All cards ending in one turn all numbers to one. And so on.”
“So if my number ends in a two,” I asked, “all heath cards that end in a two become two-two-two, two––”
“Yes. All of them.”
“So the database ends up with only ten numbers: zero through nine.”
“And they’re spread over the entire population?” Michael added.
“Every number in the database, no matter when it is last entered into the system.”
I laughed out loud. If this was a setup, it was a glorious one. “And the database is destroyed.”
“Yes. Exactly,” Stepan said.
We all should have smoked a cigarette. It was like coming down off great sex.
“But what about ... ” Michael paused. We all looked at him. We didn’t want to hear about any glitches. “What about the vaccination capsules? Aren’t they the same number as the cards? Wouldn’t they be able to read the capsule numbers and reconfigure the health card numbers?”
The Virus Page 24