by Toby Neal
Sophie peppered the IT tech with specifics about load and capacity and the current data storage of their system as Ken poked around. It turned out a lot of the company’s actual data was stored off-site and this was just their backup, local server.
Which opened up interesting possibilities. If this was just Security Solutions’ “front door,” who knew how far, wide and deep their back door went?
“I’d like a software tour around one of your workstations.” Before Lee could protest and while he still had to relock the server room, Sophie spun and walked to the nearest computer bay. She sat down, quickly plugging in a flash drive. The computer woke up immediately as she moved the mouse. A spyware program downloaded from the drive as she attached a tiny bug to the bottom of the keyboard to broadcast to her address.
She had the flash drive back in her pocket by the time Lee Chan had rejoined her.
“An interesting configuration,” she commented. With Lee hovering at her shoulder, Sophie browsed through various security installations: scrambler satellite phones, encryption software for their clients, surveillance equipment for homes activated by motion or heat and then run through an algorithm for anomalous patterns by software so no human eye had to watch the video. Essentially, the computer watched the video and then alerted the company to oddities.
“Impressive,” Sophie said. “Almost as good as AI”
“Our main programmer has a background in artificial intelligence,” Lee said proudly. “He’s out of the country right now, but he’d show you some stuff you’ve never seen before. Course, then we’d have to kill you.” He chuckled nervously.
“Never threaten a federal agent, even as a joke,” Ken Yamada said sternly.
“Of course not! Satisfied, Sophie? I mean, Agent Ang?” Lee asked.
“Yes, I am. Though I’d like a meeting with your programmer. To find out more about this artificial intelligence surveillance program.”
“I’ll have him call you.”
“We need to see the records and system our victim’s family had.” Ken hooked his thumbs lightly in his belt, subtly pointing to his weapon and badge.
“I’m afraid not, without a warrant. Or without their written permission, as I said.” Lee flashed his nervous smile. “If you need further information, please call to set up an appointment to speak with Frank Honing, our VP in charge of client operations.” The tech expert couldn’t show them out fast enough. Sophie didn’t try to pretend they’d be friends again, and felt a twinge of regret as she shook Lee’s hand goodbye.
In the elevator back down, Sophie watched the numbers change meditatively. Such a surveillance-monitoring program would definitely be a strong selling point for clients. In effect, the nanny-cam program could replace watchmen who tried to pay attention to the same exhaustingly boring monitors hour upon hour and let things slip by. Human error might be eliminated, and how much more efficient that would be.
Human error, waiting to happen. Her own emotions and needs, in a nutshell.
Ken Yamada didn’t ask her until they were getting into the black Bureau Acura SUV. “You get in?”
“Of course.”
He laughed as he turned on the vehicle. “Wonder what that meeting with their programmer will be like.”
“Boring, I’m sure.” Sophie reclined her seat a little, rolled her head from side to side. “Engineers and programmers are not usually great conversationalists.”
“Present company excepted.”
“Well, I grew up in a different culture and came to tech later than most. I had to learn social skills before I learned computers.”
“Speaking of, you didn’t tell me you knew Chan and had talked to him already.”
“I should have. I apologize.” She blew out a breath as they turned onto busy Kalakaua Avenue, the palm trees dotting the sidewalk gyrating in a breeze off the ocean. “We went to school together in Hong Kong. I was poking around the company website yesterday, and saw his picture. I called and fished for info without identifying myself as an agent. I didn’t expect to have a reason to go to the company the very next day.”
Ken smiled at her. “It’s unusual, your background.”
“I know.” Sophie didn’t elaborate.
“So how did that come about? It’s time we knew the basics about each other, now that we’re working together closely.”
Sophie shrugged. “As you know, I’m half Thai. But I’m also half American. Which part led to all my tinkering and fixing as a child and my attraction to everything technology related, I don’t know. It certainly wasn’t understood well by my mother’s family, but my father encouraged me. When I left for boarding school at age ten, he sent me to an academy in Europe that focused on math, science and technology so I got a strong foundation in tech skills. I ended up getting married early, which was a mistake, but during those five years in Hong Kong, I went to classes in programming, which is where I met Lee. By the time I joined the FBI I had a solid skill set in hard computer science as well as software. You?”
“Much less colorful background. Grew up here in Hawaii. I went to Punahou, one of our private schools here in Honolulu, did undergrad at UCLA and majored in criminology. Never wanted to do anything but be an FBI agent and come back to Hawaii to work.”
A short silence. Was disclosure time over? “So, what’s your take on Security Solutions so far?” she asked, to move things along.
“I think they’re hiding something,” Ken said. “It’s just a vibe I picked up, though Chan gave us the red carpet treatment, considering we showed up unannounced. I’m going to go back with the consent from the family to check on their system. Do you want to come for that?”
“No. You’re okay at tech; but you can call me if you need me.”
Ken slanted her an ironic glance. “I’m considered pretty good for a mere field agent.”
Sophie ducked her head. “I meant no disrespect.” She seemed to be putting her foot in it.
Ken went on. “We can’t assume it’s anything unusual that they want to protect their client list. Of course they’re protecting their clients, they’re a security company. But that cyber-nanny analysis program could have terrorist implications.”
“I agree. If you could hack into someone’s surveillance feed and then put the AI to work analyzing the patterns, it could be used to plot an assassination or a heist. A kidnapping. Anything.” Sophie frowned, gazing out the window at the beauty of another downtown Honolulu day streaming by unnoticed.
“Anything designed to prevent a situation can also be turned against to create an opportunity,” Ken said thoughtfully.
The Ghost sat down at his home workstation in the martial arts gi he liked to wear around the apartment. He’d completed violin practice, his evening run, and a shower.
An icon was flashing on his personal alert network. Annoyed, he opened the data stream to check it.
Someone had succeeded in breaking into the Security Solutions mainframe. As the alert program showed the list of programs that had been deployed to hack in, he frowned. Probably a government agency. He recognized signature coding on the decryption software.
He activated a backup program that imitated everything but the company’s vital information and deployed that layer through multiple anonymous VPNs. Next time the hacker tried to get in, he’d be able to see everything of the company’s interior workings—and nothing important.
The Ghost pushed away from his desk. Darkness was spreading over the city, but he wasn’t ready to settle down to anything. Was it worth it to see exactly who’d broken through the company’s defenses? He was concerned about the hacker’s identity. This afternoon he’d also received a text from Lee Chan notifying him of an FBI probe. The hacker was probably a tech agent.
He went to his workout room and ran through a quick twenty minutes of strength exercises—stomach crunches on an inversion table, pull-ups, knuckle pushups.
His brain sufficiently aerated and emotion dispelled, he flexed his hands and sat down a
t his home rigs. Anubis followed him, intelligent brown eyes monitoring as he imported a video stream from Lee.
“Relax,” he told the dog. Anubis settled immediately, resting his head on his paws, and the Ghost turned away and opened the security recordings Lee had forwarded of the FBI’s visit to Security Solutions. He settled back with a protein shake to watch the FBI team.
There were two of them, a man and a woman. The man was Japanese and handsome in an austere way, his gray suit immaculate. The woman was riveting, even in the grainy video. He leaned in to get a closer look, blowing up his view.
Short dark cropped hair complimented a profile with high cheekbones, large dark eyes, a straight nose, and full lips. Her eyebrows looked like black calligraphy strokes. She wore neither jewelry nor makeup, just a simple button-down shirt, loose black trousers and athletic shoes, with the shiny FBI badge clipped to a small pocket.
The two of them followed Lee down the hall. The man looked competent, intelligent enough, but it was the woman he watched. She moved like water, and he noticed the darting of her eyes as she took in everything in the computer workroom. He could read lips, a handy skill, and she asked to see the server room. The Ghost cursed the budget choice that meant the surveillance feed lacked audio as he saw only the backs of their heads approaching the locked room.
Once in the server closet she checked the equipment briefly but then ducked back out, leaving the other agent distracting Lee. The Ghost switched frantically to another feed to follow her. She moved quickly and sat down at the nearest workstation, her hands a blur of movement over the keyboard. Zooming in on the workstation, he replayed the video and caught the lightning movement as she plugged a flash drive into the computer.
“Shit,” he muttered.
Her fingers flew over the keys and he saw her pull the drive out and hide it in her pocket. Her finger did something under the keyboard. Probably hiding a transmitter.
“Shit,” he said again, but he was grinning now. He liked a challenge and so seldom got one. She was beautiful and dangerous, and he liked that.
Lee returned, fluttering and upset, with the male agent. The woman misdirected him and got him jumping through various hoops. Finally she appeared satisfied. She stood up, shook Lee’s hand, and walked back out, leading the way.
She walked like an athlete, comfortable in her body. He wished he could see what kind of figure she had under those concealing clothes. Her triumph was obvious to him. She’d done what she came for, and Lee had no idea.
“Who are you?” He leaned forward, blowing up various views, trying to see more of her.
His security wasn’t worth the electricity it took to run it. She’d set up a relay station, and now that she’d breached his network, all she had to do was clone the computer she’d infected to have a framework for processing the data she was stealing.
He picked up the phone and called Lee. The tech squawked and protested in dismay as the Ghost told him what he’d discovered. The Ghost switched to real time surveillance and watched the tech director go to the computer where she’d sat.
“Found the transmitter, sir. I’m sorry she got this far.” Lee made as if to smash the tiny button on the floor.
“No!” the Ghost exclaimed. “Send it by messenger to my building. I want it. We can manipulate what they know.”
“Shall I purge this unit’s hard drive?”
“Yes, you can. But I want that transmitter.”
“Yes sir, right away. She also asked to speak to the programmer in charge of our systems.”
“Well, that’s going to be impossible, isn’t it?” The Ghost said.
“Right, I know. So how do I respond to her?”
“Tell her the truth. The man is gone out of the country and can’t be reached. Now get me that transmitter.” The Ghost paused. “And what’s her name?”
“Special Agent Sophie Ang. I knew her before she was an agent. We went to school together in Hong Kong.”
“And?”
“She’s good. Very good.”
“I can see that already.” He hung up and surged to his feet, energized. He was going to find out everything about her. She wanted a meeting with the programmer? Now that would be interesting. But impossible, obviously.
He pulled a brand new computer out of its packaging and set it up in a corner of the lab. On one of his other rigs he set up another virtual private network and cloned the Security Solutions typical work hard drive she’d accessed. From one of his rigs he loaded a hard drive of data harvested some months ago. He could keep her off their trail with outdated data that would match what she’d been seeing before.
He went back to his main rig and began building an information file on Special Agent Sophie Ang. It made fascinating reading. The only interruption came when a bell dinged, notifying him that the messenger had delivered the package with the transmitter.
After fetching it, the Ghost retrieved the tiny, powerful transmitter and attached it to the keyboard of the new rig he’d set up. On his own computer, he followed the stream of data she was now receiving, and added a little something extra.
Chapter Nine
Sophie was just settling into her Bureau workstation, reviewing the connections to Takeda Industries, the company that owned the apartment building where the kidnapping had taken place, when her phone rang. “Come to a meeting in the conference room in thirty minutes,” Waxman’s voice.
“Sure, Ben,” Sophie replied, and he gave a short bark of surprised laughter, and hung up.
Losing the ‘sir’ was going to take some getting used to for both of them.
She only had half an hour, so she made the most of it, cycling through DAVID’s search caches. Nothing new on Assan. She hadn’t come up with any way to deal with him yet, either. But there was something in the “simultaneous” cache—a new case.
Three participants in an international child pornography ring had called to turn in other members to the FBI last night. The agents on duty had worked with HPD to respond right away, confiscating computers and arresting all three suspects with the evidence on hand.
Her pulse picked up when she saw that the case had come straight into their office. Perhaps this was what Waxman was calling a meeting for. She’d assumed it was an update on the kidnapping case, which so far they still hadn’t made a lot of progress on.
She ran a quick cross-check on the new case: one of the pornographers had a business that used Security Solutions computer security.
Now she had a formal way to connect all her cases. She didn’t have to disclose DAVID’s use at all. She could just say that her investigation into Security Solutions through the Addams family had led to her searching for a common denominator among some disparate cases, and now she had one.
Jubilant, she saved her files to a flash drive and jogged to the meeting. Ken Yamada and Sven Gundersohn were already seated along with Waxman, who had the screens up already.
“We have a new case.” Waxman looked tidy and well-groomed, his silver-blond hair gleaming, but Sophie noticed a fleck of blood where he’d nicked himself shaving, right on the tip of his square chin.
Sophie waited while he went over all the information she’d already skimmed through via DAVID. She couldn’t disclose that she already knew about this case and had run an algorithm on it. She was supposed to be getting the information for the first time at this meeting. She was going to have to wait, and work it in later.
Annoyance and frustration made her jiggle her leg under the table as she stared at her monitor.
“Thoughts on the tech aspects of the case? Will you take the lead on the pedophiles’ computers?” Waxman’s voice intruded on her agitation.
“Of course, sir. Nice that the perpetrators all turned each other in. How handy,” Sophie said drily.
“I guess it was.” Waxman rubbed his chin and the tiny scab disappeared. “I didn’t think of it that way.”
“Can we discuss the kidnapping case for a moment, sir? There might be a connection t
o this new case. I need to fill you in on some developments having to do with a company called Security Solutions.” She made brief eye contact with Ken, enough to get a subtle nod. She explained the nanny-cam AI system and that Security Solutions might have been the way information was collected on the Addams family leading to the kidnapping.
Waxman frowned. “Gundersohn, Yamada. Anything from the staff interviews?”
Gundersohn shook his big, grizzled head. “No. Nobody’s talking, and none of them have debt problems or other discernible motives. Their alibis are holding up.”
“And we’ve identified the tipster,” Ken said. “Charlie Addams, the father. He has some computer skills, and he admitted to me today that he sent the tip-off email. He didn’t want his wife to know, but she figured it out when we asked her about it.”
“That explains the disconnect between the motive of the tipster and the action of whoever incited the kidnappers against each other,” Sophie said. “We still don’t know who that person is, but as I’ve been probing into Security Solutions, several other cases have come to light with odd, coincidental commonalities, all of them tracing back to some connection to the company.”
Waxman narrowed his eyes and Sophie could tell he was considering DAVID’s involvement in the case.
“I’d like for us to backtrack to these other cases and try to find out from each client of Security Solutions involved with the case exactly how they were being set up to turn themselves in,” Sophie said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if lawbreakers are Security Solutions’ marketing niche,” Yamada said. “Criminals R Us, Inc.”
“So what was your impression of the company?” Waxman asked Ken. Sophie’s fellow agent recapped their visit. He made no mention of Sophie’s illegal hack on the security firm, to her relief.
“My sense is that there’s a lot going on over there, and we’re going to have to fight hard to access any of their information,” Ken concluded.
