Jon could hear Israeli pop music playing in the background. It made him smile.
When she came back on the line, he asked, “Got another question.”
“Go ahead.”
The music started up from inside the bar. Jon moved to the far end of the patio, put a finger in his open ear. “Once my DNA is out there in a database, are precautions taken to protect it from theft?”
Terry said, “Labs take confidentiality seriously or they would go out of business very quickly. That said, once someone’s personal information is out there, it’s impossible to know who will access it.”
Precisely.
Someone exited the bar, the band’s tunes pouring out.
“Where are you . . . or shouldn’t I ask?”
“I’m in Austin,” Jon said.
“With Gabe?” Jon heard the excitement in her voice. It was sweet.
“Nope. With a colleague.” He left it at that.
“If we’re done, I’ll go get something to eat. They’re serving a dish I’ve never had before. The chef said I’ll be his hamster. Wish me luck.”
“Guinea pig.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” Jon hung up laughing out loud. It felt real good.
***
Austin-Bergstrom International Airport
“Steve or Stan Reynolds.” Jon gave the names to Craig back in the New York office while he waited at the gate for his flight to LAX. Luanne had left ahead of him.
“Which is it?”
“I’m not sure. Just look for both.” Jon didn’t mention the congressman’s defective memory. He could hear Craig typing. He asked, “How’s the slave driver?”
“He’s out again today.”
Jon snorted. “For a guy who’s always on my ass for not following protocol, he’s been AWOL a lot.”
“Lay off him,” Craig said.
“Huh? Since when are you Matthews’s big defender?”
Craig lowered his voice. “Since his wife’s been diagnosed with stage four cancer.”
Jon was stunned into silence.
“You there?” Craig asked.
“I had no idea. He didn’t say a thing.”
“You surprised? He’s not one to look for sympathy.”
“Then who’s running the ship over there?”
“He is. Back and forth to Sloan Kettering. Every day.”
It explained a lot. Doug’s recent agitation, low tolerance threshold. Ripping him apart in the men’s room.
Craig interrupted his thoughts. “I got a Stanislaw Reynolds based out of the D.C. office. Here’s his number.”
Jon wrote it down. The flight agent called for passengers to begin boarding. “Thanks. Hey, listen, send Matthews my best.”
“Do it yourself, Steadman.”
Craig hung up.
Jon was making friends quickly at his new job.
***
Los Angeles
Pamela walked in to Peter’s office without knocking. It wasn’t the first time she’d done it. He seemed to tolerate her occasional intrusions, understanding her lack of social proclivities. But she wasn’t prepared for what she saw.
He looked terrible. His shirt was wrinkled, his hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in days and his eyes, drained of all energy. It looked like he’d aged ten years since she’d seen him last.
“Peter?”
He looked up. “Pamela. How can I help you?”
“Are you feeling all right?”
“Why?”
“You don’t look so good. Maybe you should take the day off, get some rest. And a shower.”
“I have work to do. All I need is a good night’s sleep.”
“Anything you want to get off your chest?”
He looked up. As if he were bursting to say something. Dying to.
He just shook his head.
Pamela said, “All right then. I just wanted to bring you this week’s numbers. They’re terrific. First time in months. Looks like the measures you’ve taken are working.” She waved a report emphasizing her point. “We expect significant savings in employee expenses. If we can keep things steady, we’ll be in good shape by next quarter. Congratulations.”
Peter didn’t reply.
Pamela said, “Aren’t you happy with this news?”
“Just leave the paperwork on my desk and I’ll review it.”
She pushed further, uncharacteristically trying to cheer him up. “The board will be thrilled. Once again it will be Peter to the rescue. You’ll be a hero, and rightfully so.”
Peter looked like he was about to be sick.
“You know what Pamela? I think I’ll take your advice.” He grabbed his briefcase and his jacket and headed to the door, leaving her staring at his back. She turned to his desk. He had left the prospectus behind.
***
Peter was certain William Sherman could hack his phone. He didn’t dare email or call anyone about this. It wasn’t just the NDA. That he could deal with. Even jail time. What he’d done was reprehensible. He tried to rationalize it but his subconscious wouldn’t allow it. When he’d heard that one of his best employees—one he had just fired—had been hospitalized and now had no insurance, he decided to break the agreement he’d made with Sherman. Sherman didn’t seem the run of the mill hacker. Peter was scared for his safety.
For all he knew his house and clothes were bugged. When had he become so paranoid? He couldn’t continue like this. The guilt was too much. Instead of driving east toward his house, he turned westward. Toward The Times building.
***
Salt Lake City
Franklin was scanning his sample results, looking for the next big target. He was amazed at how many people put their DNA out there for all the world to see. These genealogy sites’ privacy claims were all BS. Once someone sent their sample willingly, the genie was out of the bottle. No way to put it back in. For a hacker, it was data mining on steroids.
Who would have thought he would make it this far? When he was fired from ItsRelative.com he was sure his life would take a downturn that he would never dig himself out of. But he’d learned to compensate.
Franklin took a deep breath, and another cookie from the chipped plate beside him.
Truth was he missed the job. It was good money, he could work remotely part of the time, and he made his first real friend.
Wang was an outstanding computer engineer. He’d gone to Stanford, one of the country’s most prestigious universities, but never made Franklin, a graduate of Brigham Young, feel inferior. If anything, he claimed Franklin was the better programmer. They both admitted to hacking now and then just to prove they could. Sometimes they challenged each other on who could hack into a system faster, keeping them up into the wee hours until one of them succeeded.
When Franklin got canned after throwing a hot cup of coffee at a colleague, Wang came to his defense. Tried to convince the higher-ups that it wasn’t a big deal. The woman wasn’t even hurt, but they said that was it. While Franklin was incredibly talented, their work environment and safety was priority. They sent him off with two weeks’ pay. His insurance ran out a month later. There was no choice but to sign up for government assistance. Embarrassing. He’d always looked down at those people who couldn’t find a way to support themselves. Even the disabled. There was always a way. It took him a while, but he found his way.
Wang stayed in touch calling regularly and saying how disgusted he was with how things were handled. Said it reminded him of his younger years in Beijing. Where no one was ever given the benefit of the doubt. He said if it were him, he’d fight back, use their system against them.
That was the seed of their idea. Wang would access the samples on their way from testing to being discarded and salvage what he could. Franklin would be in charge of exploiting the resulting data without detection.
Their first victim was Franklin’s ex-boss. All employees were offered free genealogical testing and nearly everyone had done it. Support for the
company’s mission. Wang took the boss’s sample to his analyst, a woman he knew ironically from his church, who worked for an independent lab focusing on predictive genetics. As long as she got paid, she asked no questions. Turned out his boss had a genome linked to Spina Bifida.
It took them time to figure out what to do with the results but then the answer presented itself when the man became engaged. Franklin sent the results to his fiancée. One week later the engagement was off. No one knew what happened except for Franklin and Wang. The experiment had proven successful and a segue to what would become a thriving enterprise.
Since then they’d learned that they didn’t have to stay confined to ItsRelative.com’s samples. They could hack into any of the medical DNA sites that had already done all the work, and just pass along the data either for a fee, or as blackmail. Or as he was currently doing, to change the course of history. He hadn’t shared everything with Wang, knowing he would frown upon some of his choices. Sometimes it’s better to leave people in the dark. Even your only friend.
He loved that no one would ever suspect him, a pathetic ne’er-do-well, living in his mother’s house. It made him feel powerful, something he never had felt before in his miserable life. And he would do anything to protect that power. Anything.
Chapter 23
New York City
Shira sat behind the metal desk on the seventh floor of the Israeli consulate. Concrete barriers ran along the exterior of an otherwise nondescript building. Sheets of rain pounded the windowpane, a myriad of droplets obscuring the view of what she deemed a perpetually gray city.
Shira uploaded the photo Terry had sent her of the woman at the cocktail party. A “Plain Jane” as the Americans would say. Unfashionable, awkward, forgettable. Desirable attributes for someone keen on maintaining a low profile. Terry had dubbed the woman, “Netta,” short for the Hebrew slang for Netta Zar, a wallflower. Shira ran the picture through AnyVision, Israel’s biometrics software, cross-referencing it with IFRS, Interpol’s facial recognition system.
As she waited for the software to run its course, she considered how far Terry had come since their previous joint operation. The geneticist was more confident in the field, less jittery. Her self-defense skills were improving nicely. Still, in Shira’s opinion, Terry wasn’t the optimal asset. Yosef touted her scientific expertise, but Shira saw it differently. Terry had too much to lose. That fact alone could be easily exploited by potential adversaries. Unlike herself, Terry enjoyed close family bonds and was engaged to be married. Her fiancé, Gabe Lewis was an operational liability. Though he’d recently learned of his Jewish roots, Gabe was an American whose patriotic duty rested with his country of birth. As such, he was being kept in the dark when it came to Terry’s clandestine work for the Israeli government. Until Yosef cleared Gabe, determining how much he could know, Gabe would remain on Shira’s radar.
When the program stopped running, Shira was dismayed to find no hits. Netta was clearly keeping an impressively low profile. Or had managed to hack into some of the most secure websites in the world, wiping her profile from their databases.
Shira sat back in the chair, closed her eyes, allowing the sound of the falling rain to focus her. As Terry’s handler, she needed to think what the next step would be.
***
Los Angeles
Peter pulled into The Times parking lot. He sat in his car for a few minutes convincing himself to go ahead. He left his phone behind and walked inside. He asked the lobby attendant to tell Luanne he was waiting in the lobby.
The man looked askance at Peter’s appearance. “Your name?”
“Peter Cromwell.”
He waited while the guard called. “She says to come right up.”
“Please ask her to meet me down here.”
The guard looked wary but did so. “She’ll be down in a minute.”
Peter paced the floor until he heard the elevator ring open.
“Mr. Cromwell, what a pleasant surprise.”
“Sorry I didn’t call first. I couldn’t.”
She wasn’t sure what that meant, assumed he’d get around to it. Clearly, he was under stress.
Peter eyed the guard. “Can we speak in my car?”
“Sure. Should I bring my recorder?”
“Please don’t.”
He led her to his silver Mercedes sportscar and opened the passenger door for her.
Luanne noticed it smelled like it had just come off the showroom floor. “Nice wheels.”
“Thanks.”
“So what’s up?” she asked.
He looked at his phone. It was off and so was the GPS. He knew he was acting paranoid. But better paranoid than dead.
“I’m not sure how to begin,” Peter said.
“Take your time.”
“I lied to you and more importantly, to a federal officer,” he blurted.
Luanne was taken aback by the bold confession. “Do you want to call a lawyer?”
“It won’t matter. I need to say what I’m going to say. What you do with that information is up to you.”
Luanne let him speak until he was done. She was speechless. It was almost the same story the congressman had told Jon.
Peter said, “My conscience won’t let me rest. Some of those people were excellent employees. They deserved so much better than what I did to them.”
“Yes, they did. And restitution can be made.”
He sat quietly, then said, “It will put the company out of business.”
“Maybe you can start over again once the dust settles.”
Peter shook his head. “My reputation will be demolished. I’ll be through.”
Luanne felt bad for him. She appreciated that he came forward even though it was too late for so many. But she felt even worse for people like Mrs. McAdams and Susan Goldstein.
“Why didn’t you simply downsize?”
“It got to a point where we needed more drastic measures.” A pause. Then, “I am so very sorry for naming you and Agent Steadman in my correspondence to William Sherman. I fear he may interfere with your investigation.”
“Too late for that. My boss and I were both accosted since we began looking into this. So you can stop worrying about that. It was going to happen anyway.”
Peter's face turned white. “If I’d thought he was capable of violence, I never would have agreed.”
“There’s no reason for him to suspect you’re breaking your terms. But watch your back anyway. These people have a lot to lose.”
“I’ve been vigilant.”
“Good. Your coming forward is a huge break for us. It will give the Feds a place to start. They’ll need your emails and chatroom access to trace the guy.”
“Or gal.”
“Right.”
Peter asked, “Will you tell Agent Steadman?”
“Yes, Peter. He needs to know. I’ll explain that you came to me on your own volition. Hopefully it will help diminish the consequences.”
“Whatever happens, there’s a huge weight off my shoulders.” He let out a sigh.
Luanne got out of the car and watched Peter Cromwell, the CEO of OBooks, drive away.
***
Salt Lake City
Franklin knew something was wrong the minute he saw Wang’s number come up on the caller ID. He never called before midnight.
“Wang?”
“Sorry I’m calling now but I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Don’t say anymore. Meet me at Boosters.”
“Okay, on my way.”
Franklin shut down all his equipment, called for his ride, getting himself as fast as he could out the door.
***
Boosters was a next-generation arcade. A huge space with laser tag, retro pinball machines, virtual games, and fast food. Franklin hated the noise but knew Wang loved the place, and it served the purpose of drowning out their voices.
Wang met him next to the flight simulator. He was dressed for work. Button-down oxford, pl
eated chinos, and loafers. His spiky hair was gelled. They fist-bumped.
Wang said, “We have a problem. Not something we can’t solve, but a big problem.”
“Okay. What?”
“You know how I installed an audio bug in each of our clients’ phones?”
“Yeah, great idea by the way. Works even when the phone’s off. Real state of the art tech.”
Wang grinned. “Thanks. It still needs work.” He chewed on his lower lip. “Anyhow, that guy Cromwell, the one we sold the whole employee list to?”
“Yeah, all those names took tons of time in the lab.”
“He’s bailing.”
Franklin peered at his friend. “What do you mean bailing? He signed the NDA and paid us. We saved his company a ton of money.”
“I got alerted when he left his office hours early and shut off his phone. I just listened to his chat with a reporter.”
Franklin had never told Wang that he’d hired someone to take care of The Times reporter and her boss. There was no point. Wang wouldn’t like knowing the methods he took to protect their business.
“Oh yeah? What did he tell her?”
“He spilled the beans. She’s planning to go to the Feds to trace our emails and chatroom.”
Franklin felt a prickle of fear. The woman was still alive, and he couldn’t risk another attempt so early. Especially since he didn’t have another brute lined up. He needed to think.
“This is really bad. They could expose our entire operation.”
Wang said, “Smartest thing to do is go quiet for a while. Lay low until they give up. I’d guess a month or two max.”
“No way. Who knows how long they’ll stick on us? And we have contracts with other clients. We can’t just shut it all down.”
“If we stay active, the Feds will trace us eventually.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Wang raised a brow. “What does that mean?”
“Better if you don’t know. Let me handle it.”
“I don’t know, man. I say we just shut down.”
“Trust me. Just for the next few days. They won’t be able to trace us that quickly anyway. If they’re still on our tail, we’ll shut down.”
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