by Eden Sharp
Job Lot took a snapshot of the screen on his phone and left the room.
I went and sat down on the couch next to Knox who looked from me to them and back again. No one spoke. Time slowed. I felt like cracking a joke.
Job-lot came back into the room.
‘I asked Lau what his old gaming username was. He says he doesn’t remember.’
Douglas turned to me. ‘You remember a gaming name Lau used over a decade ago?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Really? Tell me how that is Ms. McGlynn.’
I’d noticed he’d dropped the agent. Was addressing me as a civilian. A telling moment. All eyes were on me. Knox’s gaze was penetrating.
‘I used to write it over and over in my school books,’ I said.
25
We reconvened with Charlie for more questioning and went through the usual protocols with the phones. I tried my hardest to defeat the smile that was trying to permanently etch itself on my face. Karim would have got my message loud and clear.
I caught Charlie briefly glancing in my direction. It wouldn’t have given any indication to the others that it was anything more than the normal fleeting eye contact of someone giving statements to an attendant audience. But I knew him better than that. He understood that we were playing. I felt the sense of a united front and was beginning to enjoy myself.
The line of questioning continued in a familiar way. As far as I could tell they had nothing new. I drifted off and began to think about the best way to re-establish contact with Karim once the interview session was over.
I was aware of a pause and tuned back in thinking we were headed for a coffee break. Instead two men entered the room. A tall middle-aged black man and a shorter, younger red-headed guy, both in similar formal suits, though one looked crumpled while the other looked razor slick. They sat down without waiting to be asked.
Douglas started to summarize where we were at. No one made introductions. I wondered if the summary was a diversion and they’d been listening in anyway somehow, the whole time. I cut Douglas off.
‘And these new entrants to the interview are?’ I asked.
‘We’re with the Department of Defense ma’am, same as yourself,’ the older man said. He looked away from me as if this information was sufficient and over at Douglas and waited for him to continue.
‘I haven’t been informed of this. This interview terminates here and I’ll need to see your ID.’
‘I see you’re a little behind the curve here and you don’t have the kind of authority you think you do,’ the redhead said and stared at me in a way that I took to be a challenge.
No one was asking them to check their cell phones into the Faraday case for the duration of the meeting. I stood up, grabbed at the case and pulled it over to me to unlock it.
‘Let’s break for coffee,’ Douglas said.
Yeah, make it seem like it’s your idea to end the interview and for less combative reasons. I took out my cell and snapped two shots of the new players at the party and turned quickly on my heel and headed to the door. The red-haired guy stood up and blocked my path.
‘I’m not going to allow you out of this room until you’ve deleted those files,’ he said.
‘Then you’ll need to show me your IDs instead,’ I said.
‘How about I just have you removed from this building?’ he said.
‘Enough,’ the black guy said to the fired-up redhead then turned to me. ‘You’ll be in breach of DoD regulations if you transmit those pictures,’ he said. ‘Let’s break for coffee and I’ll provide what you need authorizing our presence here. But you’ll still need to delete those files.’
I waited for a sufficient few seconds as though I was having an inner battle with myself before allowing them to watch me scrolling through to the photo gallery and letting them see me hit delete. I showed them both an empty camera roll.
The red-haired guy nodded to the black guy with a face full of smug. Douglas and Marks looked embarrassed. Charlie looked worried. Knox looked at me with a damn fine poker face.
I smiled at them all. What did I care? I’d already sent the images to Paul. I doubted it would take the NSA long to get back to me and I was ready for some caffeine.
‘You want coffee?’ Knox asked.
I nodded trying not to take my eyes off the new guys bunching up with Douglas while Marks grabbed himself a cup. Before I got all the way over to them the black guy turned to me, held up an index finger and all three left the room. I didn’t want to wait one and I didn’t like it. Knox handed me a coffee and I downed a gulp of the tepid brown liquid the hotel served. Marks was still in the room which I took to be a good sign. I glanced at Charlie. He was staring straight ahead at the door and didn’t look concerned, but I knew he’d be worried. Unforeseen variables were always a problem requiring a swift reworking of strategy. Marks exited the room and then I was worried.
‘I’m calling in,’ I said to Knox and left him alone in the room with Charlie and the junior Fed.
Outside the corridor was clear. I dialed Paul and walked the length of it trying to detect any voices behind several possible doors. I couldn’t hear anything. The phone rang repeatedly and I could feel myself getting agitated. Finally, Paul answered.
‘The images I sent you, who are they?’ I asked, keeping my voice low as my paranoia rose.
‘No idea,’ Paul said.
‘Two guys, supposedly from the DoD, sitting in on the interview and you didn’t send them? Then you need to ID them because maybe someone else is trying to cut a deal,’ I said.
‘I’ll need to make a few calls,’ Paul said and hung up.
Back in the room Knox was leaning against a wall looking at nothing in particular, Charlie looked reasonably relaxed on a chair to the side, and Junior fiddled about with packets of sweetener, a metal spoon hitting the side of a cup the only sound in an awkward silence. All three glanced in my direction.
I headed over to Knox and their attention shifted to the door opening behind me. Douglas and Marks entered. Alone.
‘Stay here with Lau,’ Douglas said to Junior.
‘Agents Knox and McGlynn? If you could follow us, please.’
In the same room we’d started the day in Douglas had us sit at one side of the table while they faced us at the other.
‘So, where are the new guys?’ I asked.
‘Had to go to another meeting,’ Douglas said.
‘And who are they?’ I asked.
‘You’ll have to take it up with brass,’ Douglas said.
He swiveled the laptop to the side so we could all view it and hit a key. Words appeared on screen.
r1p0u13k3um - ripoulekeum
‘That’s what it amounts to translated from the leet. So, we asked ourselves does it mean RIP something? Then we discussed if 0u1 could be French for yes. We knew sooner or later we’d make sense of it.’
Douglas pressed the enter button and more words appeared on the screen.
RIP? Oui (yes)? 3k? 3um? 3 thousand, 3 x 3 = 9, what?
‘We checked but we couldn’t find any ancient language matches,’ he said. ‘But like I said we knew it wouldn’t take long, computers these days and all. And now we know. It’s Verlan.’
‘What’s that?’ I said.
‘A type of French slang. Originally used by immigrants and criminals as a coded language that law enforcement wouldn’t be able to understand. It’s based around reversing the syllables of words. Ripou is Verlan for pourri.’
Marks fixed me with a loaded stare. ‘You know, the scented wood chip crap?’
Douglas continued. ‘Yeah. Except it means rotten or corrupted in French. And guess what? Le keum means “the man”’.
Marks leaned forward. ‘You tipped Karim Soulliere off.’
‘And we’ve identified some of the other members of the Infinite 9,’ Douglas said staring intently at me. ‘So Ms. McGlynn, do you want to tell us why you chose the username Ghosthex?’
I caught Knox�
�s head swivel towards me in my peripheral vision.
‘You think I’m Ghosthex?’ I said.
Marks looked at Knox before turning his attention back to me. ‘As you said, it does seem something of a coincidence that you were there, back in the day. You’re here in the capacity of a representative of the government and yet you were actually close to Lau.’
‘I was sixteen-years-old,’ I said.
Nobody said anything. Giving me room to incriminate myself.
I shook my head. ‘I was there with the US team to compete in a karate tournament.’
‘You stayed for eighteen months,’ Douglas said.
‘I went to school, I practiced karate and I watched my then boyfriend play in his band at weekends.’
Marks face crumpled into a look of disgust. ‘Your boyfriend, Charles Lau, who was eight years older than you.’
‘So?’
‘So, you were sixteen when you met him, which made him twenty-four. That’s a pretty big age gap,’ he said.
‘What are you a Puritan?’
‘Maybe you were just very mature for your age,’ Douglas said.
Marks joined back in with the tag-teaming. ‘Did he control you? Did he get you involved?’
I stared him down and tried to look like I was wondering where we were headed although I knew all too well.
‘You knew he was a computer programmer, right? That he worked testing software vulnerabilities?’ Douglas asked.
I nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘And he had computers at home, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you ever see what was on them?’
‘No.’
‘Did you ever engage in computer-related activities with him?’ Marks asked.
‘Computer-related activities? Really Mr. McCarthy?’
‘Yes,’ Marks said.
‘We played computer games. But on a console not a computer.’
The questions picked up a pace of rapid fire.
‘Were you any good?’ Douglas asked.
‘I guess I was average. For a sixteen-year-old,’ I said.
Douglas continued. ‘Did you know someone by the name of Kenji Takano?’
‘Yes. Ken was in the band. I heard he died from a brain aneurysm a few years after I left Japan.’
‘How?’
‘I read about it.’
‘Lau named Takano as a member of the Infinite 9 with the username of Keyboard Samurai.’
Douglas was on a roll. I figured it didn’t really matter if I spoke.
‘You did know about the hacking, right? You must have.’
‘I knew Lau was a computer programmer and was good at computer games,’ I said.
‘Actually, his job title is down as security consultant right now. Penetration testing, checking companies’ tech security that kind of thing. Very clever guy. Hot on the math.’
‘Were you involved with the group?’ Marks asked.
‘I smiled sweetly. Yes. Yes, I was. I was in a video and sang on a track on one of their CDs.’
‘I think you know I’m talking about the Infinite 9?’ Marks said.
‘I was sixteen-years-old.’
‘Seventeen at the time of their first major attack actually. So, I’ll ask you again,’ Marks said.
‘No. I wasn’t. I was not in a hacking group called the Infinite 9. And from what I read in the press it’s not really a group. More of a concept.’
‘More of a concept. That sounds very much like their ideology Ms. McGlynn,’ Douglas said.
Marks took up the baton again. ‘And as for your message, “Corrupted. The Man”? You did warn Soulliere off.’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘We believe you’re involved Ms. McGlynn. Maybe right up to your neck,’ Douglas said. He fixed Knox with a pointed look.
Knox stared back at them saying nothing. I didn’t want to contemplate what he might be thinking. I looked into his eyes but couldn’t glean anything from them. He did do a damn fine poker face.
‘You can believe whatever you like because, despite what your new friends might have told you, I’m neither obligated nor at liberty to discuss anything with you, so treat our little chat as a bonus,’ I said.
I stood up and walked out. Being watched was going to be even more intolerable now.
Just as we always did, for fear of being bugged, we sat in silence on the way back to Charlie’s apartment.
‘You coming up?’ he asked.
I shook my head. My cell chirped in my pocket. Knox.
I waited for Charlie to get out before hitting the green icon. He turned to look back before entering his building. I gave him a wave.
‘So, do you speak French?’ Knox said.
I tried very hard not to lie when it wasn’t absolutely necessary. It was easier that way.
‘Some,’ I said.
‘How come?’
‘My mother’s side of the family turned out to be French. I guess I got a kick out of looking into it.’
‘Did you find out anything about your father?’ he asked, apparently changing tack.
‘He was Irish,’ I said.
There was a pause.
‘Sophisticated and rebellious with a fighting spirit. That fits you pretty good.’
I waited for what was coming next, but nothing did. Knox ended the call and I suddenly felt very alone.
I gave my car keys to the concierge and made my way inside Charlie’s building. I knew Douglas and Marks had guys posted on the place and I could only speculate as to what Knox might be up to. I’d figured from the outset there was a possibility he’d be keeping an eye on me but felt awkward about confronting him. If he was, it would be a way for him to gain experience and I felt guilty that I wasn’t providing the training I’d promised.
I wondered how it would be read by everyone concerned when I didn’t just drop Charlie off but stayed a while once again. None of that could be helped though because right now I didn’t care.
He didn’t looked surprised to see me when he opened the door.
‘So what else is going on with you? You’ve got other things on your mind,’ he said.
I’d forgotten how perceptive Charlie was. Good hackers and social engineers were skilled observers and astute readers of people.
I didn’t want to add to his stress by relaying the rest of the day’s events. I’d reconnect with Karim somehow and fix things.
‘I saw a small protest the other day about homelessness in the city. You know this is being caused by rent hikes due to the huge influx of tech employees, right? I got talking to a family who’ve been affected. I think a little collaboration could be beneficial to everyone concerned. A chance for tech to give back.’
He smiled, his eyes animating, no doubt with the idea that he and I would have our own thing going on like before, back in Japan, that we could run a new i9 op despite the circumstances.
‘It’s happening in cities all over the world with a second, central bank subsidized, property bubble,’ he said. It’ll pop and drag everyone down even further just to fill a few pockets for another couple of years. Ordinary people who face losing everything have to move beyond outrage, don’t you think? Power only respects power. And things will drastically change after this bubble bursts and we go into a depression,’ he said. ‘So of course, we should do what we can to help.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ I said.
When it came to getting Charlie out of town we had already figured the Feds would be keeping an eye on the airport and main port departures like the Ferry Building, but they wouldn’t be able to keep every point of exit covered. Too difficult in a city practically surrounded by water with lots of tourist boats moored up for day-trippers.
‘We’ll help to get the Ellis protesters organized,’ I said. ‘Join them up with others in the same situation. Help create one big movement. Hudson’s offices are a co
uple of miles across town from the FBI field office so on handover day they are going to focus their efforts on the streets between the two locations with a broad perimeter. We need to control the route and a large citywide protest will narrow down the scope of our operations. Today’s the 9th. That’s twenty days until the ship date. Plenty of time to start the fight back.’
26
Back at my apartment I knew what I should be doing was nuking my machines and getting rid of most of them. That way if anyone got a warrant to search the place and they looked hard enough, it would appear I had a regular set up and not a server farm in my closet. But letting go of what I’d worked so hard to build up was tough.
What I needed to do first was contact Karim and rearrange a meet through different means now the Feds were all over our regular channels. We made it a rule to use dropsites for important documents only and keep comms separate. We could have set up fake accounts on social media, but I had a natural reluctance to using sites that scam free information from profiles and postings to utilize for commercial purposes. As the old wisdom goes, when the product’s free, you are the product.
Even though Karim didn’t know my real identity, we’d also communicated in the past via a vinyl trading site called DiscMart. As we shared a love of the same music, DiscMart was a place where we’d often chatted about albums and artists and had recommended obscure editions to one another. I logged in under my username for the site and started a new thread on the forum.
WANTED: Prose Combat Part II by MC Solaar – blackhatandjacket
Prose Combat was my favorite album and it scored highly with Karim too. We’d often talked about how much we wished it contained twice the amount of tracks rather than the fourteen plus thirty-five second intro, that it did. There was no similarly-titled follow up album, but the concept was something only he and I would understand.
I would need to wait until he received an email notification that he had a new forum message and hope the mail client he was using wasn’t compromised. I also hoped I hadn’t just left a trail of digital breadcrumbs that would lead the Feds straight to my door. I shook my head. Karim wasn’t stupid. I was just letting paranoia get the better of me. I felt the urge to go to sleep for a very long time.
