Feral: An Our Cyber World Prequel Page 3

“Uh-huh. So SES says go in, pretend I’m catching up on old times. Or like I’m looking for a job or something.”

  “Yeah,” Stan said.

  “Awesome. My first undercover gig.”

  Sylvia’s lips curled into a bitter smile. “Yeah, complete with a virtual wire.”

  04» Undercover

  They didn’t fit him with a traditional wire. This whole operation didn’t run that old school. A cellphone equipped with the right app would do the trick. As part of the ruse, they gave him two phones: a smart one with all the bells and whistles, as a decoy, in case he got asked to leave it outside or turn it over; and a second one, a wafer-thin model with lots of transmitting range and extra buffer for recording long conversations. That one went inside his right sock.

  They also gave him his MIT buddy’s contact info. Martin elected to text him. Jason Coulter replied inside five minutes. Yeah, he could do lunch, but maybe a little after 1 PM because he was busy. But hey, did Martin want to come by and check out Jason’s digs? Maybe make a working lunch of it, order from the cafeteria, like old times?

  Sure. Perfect, Martin replied. Which it was. Perfect.

  He arrived at Barton & Sons Securities at 10:45 AM, fifteen minutes ahead of when they’d agreed to connect. He texted Jason to let him know, hey, quicker taxi ride than he’d thought, so he was early.

  Jason came down the escalators five minutes later.

  “Hey, man,” he said, moving in to give Martin a fast, but ebullient hug. “Look at you. Good to see you, man.”

  “Good to see you, too, Jason.” Martin found it hard to hold eye contact, but he forced himself to.

  They went up the escalators and approached a reception desk. There, reflecting this was his day for putting his name on clipboards, Martin signed in and received an “Escort Only” badge.

  “Solid security here, I guess,” Martin said with a smirk.

  Jason broke eye contact and pressed the elevator button. “Well, we keep trying.”

  They rode up to the tenth floor. On the way, Jason said a buddy of his had agreed to bring their lunch. Sandwiches OK? Martin said, sure, sandwiches more than OK.

  They went past the brokerage house’s main lobby. When Martin frowned at that, Jason explained the hired help used the side entrance.

  “That’s all we are here,” he added. “Hired help. Which is fine by me, because otherwise they’ll put me in a tie and suit.”

  “Perish the thought.”

  “Yeah, man.” Jason paused for a moment to swipe a badge and enter an eight digit code. The door clicked, and he pulled it open. “When are they going to learn that ties restrict blood flow? Can’t expect us to do any heavy problem-solving when they’re cutting off the supply, right?”

  Martin nodded. They stepped inside. Jason took out his cellphone and dropped it in small cabinet lined with square compartments. Other phones blinked and buzzed in there.

  “No phones inside,” Jason said.

  Martin nodded and placed his in the cubby next to Jason’s. “How did you get my texts?”

  “They get piped to my computer, through a secure firewall.” He smirked. “You should know how that works, right?”

  Martin almost said, yeah, he sure did. Just like the way it worked with his job for the feds. But that would kind of blow it, wouldn’t it? He was congratulating himself for not spilling, when a different thought struck him. Interesting how this brokerage house implemented that kind of high-end cyber security, huh? The realization shook him. It set him on edge. But he set it aside, telling himself that security was security. Why wouldn’t a top notch business want to bullet-proof their network?

  “It’s a cage inside,” Jason noted.

  “A cage?”

  “Like the government uses. You’ve heard, right? For those vaults where they do all their secret stuff.”

  Martin shrugged, keeping up the dumb act. “I thought cages were for chickens.”

  Jason snickered. “Yeah, for us chickens.”

  Martin could tell Jason wanted to tell him all about the cage, but by now they stood in front of another door. “Computing and Networking,” the white on black sign on it read. Jason did more of his swipe and code-typing thing, except this time he pressed his thumb against an adjacent reader.

  “Fancy,” Martin said.

  “Only way they let chickens into the cage.”

  “Are you sure I’m OK to go in there?”

  Jason opened the door and waved him in. “With me, you are. It’s all good, man. I vouch for you, and you’re king in there.”

  Martin smiled. He stepped in wondering who else Jason had crowned king for the day, and what digital goodies that king might have left behind.

  He turned to watch Jason close the door and give it a shove to ensure it had locked.

  “Sometimes the lock misbehaves,” Jason explained. “It hasn’t done it for a while, but you know, you get one glitch, and they want you to act paranoid the rest of your life.”

  Martin thought about pursuing that. Had the door’s malfunction led to a breach? No, he shouldn’t go there. Not yet. Too sudden. Too obvious.

  “So…” Martin waved at the computer room. “All this inside a cage.”

  Jason flopped his plump frame on a plush, black leather chair. “Yeah, man. You know about how a cage works, right?”

  Martin shrugged. “I’ve heard, but can’t say I totally get it.”

  “It’s a mesh, built into the walls. A Faraday cage. Blocks all signals. Like if we had a cellphone in here, it would get no reception.” He pointed at the door. “Out there you get four to five bars. In here?” Now he pointed at the floor. “Minus five bars, for sure.”

  “Minus five?”

  Jason flapped his hand. “You know what I mean. The mesh is energized, too. It scrambles anything trying to get in or out.”

  “Uh-huh,” Martin said, doing his best to sound ignorant, maybe even a little impressed, when in fact the facilities where he worked back home featured similar provisions.

  “Anyway. We leave the phones out to make double-sure. They could be carrying a bug, and they could transmit it to one of our computers.” He waved at a couple of equipment racks, stretching from floor to ceiling. “Not that we have wireless in here, or anything. But you never know what someone could do with a cellphone. Those things are evil.”

  Martin nodded, feeling one piece of evil pressing warmly against his ankle. A draft of cool air made him shiver.

  He grabbed a chair and rolled it toward Jason. “So this is all pretty sweet,” he said, already calculating the phone in his sock wasn’t transmitting much, only recording their conversation.

  Jason extended his arms and smiled. “Yeah, man. I’m king here.”

  Martin almost said something or other about Jason having landed this kind of job in spite of his youth and relative inexperience. But he only had to say “MIT” to whoever interviewed him, and the job offer had come, no problem. Besides, hiring a young guy would let them bring down payroll a little for the position.

  Building on that last thought, Martin went with, “I hope the pay is fair.”

  “Ha.” Jason twisted his lips, made a face, and looked away. “That’s all relative, right?”

  “Well, hopefully with lots of upswing, right?”

  Still looking away, Jason shrugged with only one shoulder. “Yeah. Sure.”

  It struck Martin as an odd response. Something off with it, for sure. “That doesn’t sound enthusiastic.”

  Jason turned back to Martin, smirking a little. “Sometimes you gotta make your own raise.”

  Martin mulled that over for a moment. “Oh, like with overtime. Or bonuses.”

  Jason sneered, but only for a couple of seconds. “Sure. Something like that.”

  Again, Jason’s tone didn’t sit well with Martin. Something off with it. No doubt. Was Jason moonlighting? What kind of moonlighting? How hard should Martin push on that?

  Jason pre-empted him. “We are looking for some hel
p. Last two guys quit.”

  “Oh?”

  “Interested?”

  Martin nodded. “Never lived in New York. Might be a cool change of pace.” He left out the part of why Jason would want to share his kingdom with him, figuring the competition might undermine Jason’s current supremacy.

  Jason grew serious. “Hey, do you mind if I show you something?”

  “Hmm. Sure.”

  Jason waved him over. Martin rolled his chair to scoot next to Jason, who, having swiveled toward his workstation, was already typing into his terminal.

  All four screens in the quad—two top, two bottom—screen arrangement lit up. Jason pointed at the two screens on the right. They went black. Cyan text started flowing from top to bottom.

  “And…” Jason hit a key. “There.” He pointed at the screen.

  Martin shrugged. “What am I looking at?”

  “I had to de-mangle it and decompile it from machine code. But there it is.”

  Yeah, there it was. But Martin had to play dumb. “Hmm. Not seeing exactly what you mean.”

  “Man, you have gotten rusty.” Jason leaned in and rap-tapped a key sequence. A piece of text went from cyan to yellow. Its black background became a dark red highlight. “See it now?”

  Yeah, he saw it now. Like he’d seen it back in Milpitas. “What is it? A piece of malware? I thought this place was secure.”

  “Nah, man. That’s a dump and decode from the firmware in the network routers. Hardware, OK? My code in here is clean, but this thing—”

  “What does it do?”

  “Not the kind of thing we like to talk about around here.”

  “Like what? It interferes with trades?” Martin sat back and pointed at Jason. “Hey, is this that thing that made the market close yesterday?”

  Jason dropped back in his chair. It went back with a loud, long creak. “Maybe.”

  “That’s an awful sure sounding maybe.”

  “I think so, OK? But what do I know?”

  “Have you reported it?”

  “Nah, man.”

  “Why not?”

  Jason looked to the side, toward the racks of flickering computer equipment. “Because if you look at it right now, it looks like it came from here.”

  “How? You said this place is secure.” Martin left it there. He didn’t dig at how easily he’d gotten in. He didn’t need to ask or even suggest whether another of Jason’s visitors had come in and maybe done more than talk about old times.

  “This is big, man.” Jason kept staring at the equipment racks. “Billions and billions big, man. With whatever that is, someone could bring the whole house down.” He turned back to Martin and adjusted his glasses. “It would hose it for a lot of people, even those that don’t think they have anything to do with stocks or bonds or mutual funds.”

  Martin nodded. “All the more reason to report it.” He wished he hadn’t said that. The whole thing might wrap right back to him if Jason did as he suggested.

  Jason’s expression turned into that of a boy on the verge of crying. “Yeah, man. But it’s going to look like I did it.”

  Martin nodded again. When someone came in here digging, it would all flap back to him, not just Jason, who only cinched whatever someone had concocted to frame Martin. All the more reason for him to press and figure this thing out.

  “So if you didn’t do it, who could have?”

  “I don’t know, man. I haven’t let anyone in here for months.”

  Martin measured his words. “And before that?”

  Jason swallowed. He turned back to the screen and typed a few more commands. Text scrolled for a few seconds, then stopped. He highlighted the section of interest again, like he’d get a different answer.

  For solidarity, if nothing else, Martin leaned in and squinted at the screen. Different piece of code, he noted, but same subroutine callout.

  “What is this, man?” Jason said. “What could it be, huh?”

  Martin kept his gaze on the screen, even though at the moment every bit of him wanted to turn back to Jason to study his eyes. Why? Because something in that last question felt too strained, too over-the-top. Too staged.

  Martin kept his voice even. “I think you should report it. They might give you lip for a few hours, but they’ll see you’re just a guy trying to help. Doing your job, and you found something weird. Had to report it.”

  For a moment, Martin worked out how he might make that work in his favor. Jason, old school buddy—that might explain how Martin’s code rolled inside that hacked firmware. Jason had snatched it somehow. It might fly. Hell, Martin might even convince himself it was true.

  He turned to Jason. “If you don’t report it, and they trace this back to you, then you’ll have some uncomfortable questions to answer. It’ll look like you were hiding something.”

  Jason nodded. His face twitched with that on-the-verge-of-crying expression, but he held it together.

  “You’re not, right?” Martin maintained a soft, even tone. “Hiding something, I mean.”

  Jason shook his head. But it didn’t look like a denial. More like he was trying to make the whole thing go away.

  “What’s up, Jason? You look like the world’s crashing on you. If you did nothing wrong…” Martin left it hang there, the implied question slashing left and right like a machete.

  “I didn’t do this, all right?”

  “Someone else did, sure. But who?”

  Jason looked toward one of the server racks. A pained expression pulled at his face. This time it didn’t look faked. “There’s something else.”

  “OK.”

  He turned back to Martin. “It’s not like no one else does it, all right?”

  Martin nodded with all the supportive empathy he could toss in Jason’s direction.

  “Insider trading. Everyone plays it. In and out. You make your play once, maybe twice, and you don’t go super big, or the feds will notice. You keep it modest and off-radar.”

  “I’m not a market guy, so you’re losing me a little.”

  Jason waved at the computers. “You don’t take your buddy at Google out for a drink or on a golf game to pump him for information, OK? Why do that when you can go in and grab Google’s upcoming quarterly report, before it goes live?”

  “I would think Google has that buttoned up pretty well.”

  Jason grinned, but even then, his face retained its pained posture. “Maybe their PR folks aren’t as locked down, all right?” He waved a hand. “But that’s just a for instance, OK? Hypothetical.”

  OK, so maybe not with Google, but Jason had played a similar game with some other company. Maybe two or three. Lined his own pockets. Maybe a few friends had benefitted, too. Reporting this anomaly he’d detected might make the feds sniff really hard at Jason’s finances, notice a few hard to explain windfalls in his stock accounts, and splat, there went that.

  No, Jason wouldn’t report this anytime soon, and Martin couldn’t say anything to convince him otherwise. No sense in pushing that wiggly noodle. Martin would get no relief there, no out for how his code made that router firmware pop and churn. Yet here he sat, across from Jason, because Martin’s minders and those SSAC operatives said, “hey, go chat up your old college buddy.” Why? Martin had no idea. He only sensed a trap.

  He sat back in his chair, gauging how best to proceed. “So you said no one has been in here for a few months.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know what I’m getting after.”

  Jason let out a loud sigh. He ran his plump hand through his mane of sandy hair. “Dating anyone of late?”

  Martin felt his face crease into a frown. Why the tangent? Or wasn’t it? A tangent. “Can’t say that I am. You?”

  Jason turned to face him. He narrowed his eyes and looked up at the ceiling, like he was trying to remember something. Or like he was trying to put on an act, seemed more the case.

  “What about that girl? You know, back at MIT?”

  Mar
tin smirked for a moment. Was Jason still smarting about the way Martin’s dating life had interfered with their friendship? But the smirk fell away in another second.

  “What about her?”

  Jason shrugged. “I thought maybe you two had, you know, reconnected.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “You two seemed pretty hot and heavy.”

  Martin waved at nothing in particular. “How many times do I need to tell you? That was a thing. Done and out. For quite a while.”

  A knock on the door sent Jason to his feet. He came back with a box holding drinks and a couple of wrapped sandwiches. They spent the next few minutes eating, with little but idle chitchat between them. As they finished up, Jason tried to bring up Martin’s past love life at MIT. Twice. And twice Martin deflected it.

  A couple of minutes after that, Martin was standing up, stuffing his lunch trash into a nearby trashcan, and saying that, hey, since they’d gotten together earlier than noon, he needed to go. Wanted to do some sightseeing across town. Jason said that was cool, though nothing in his voice struck Martin as cool about it. If anything, Martin detected a hint of frustration, maybe even desperation.

  That seemed to dissipate as Jason escorted him out. He seemed to grow glum, maybe even resigned as they descended the escalators and stepped out of the building to say their goodbyes.

  His face would have stayed like that, Martin supposed, except that for a moment it switched to fear. But only for a moment before a red dot appeared above the bridge of his nose, only to expand into a crimson fluid gash. Jason fell back, and Martin turned around to see a blurred glimpse of the hooded gunman running away.

  Then a black SUV was skidding to a hard stop feet from him, and men were jumping out, to drag him away a second later.

  05» Predictions

  “Didn’t phase him much, did it?”

  Stan nodded and sighed before turning to Agent Cynthia Odehl. She ignored his gesture to engage in conversation, keeping her squinting gaze on the two screens, especially the one on the left. It showed a close-up of Martin’s impassive face.

  “It bodes well for future ops training,” she added, her gaze still fixed on the screen. “That’s the sort of steady response we want in the field.”