by D S Kane
She was back the next day when they opened, and worked straight through the day until an hour before they closed at 6 p.m. Cassie finished processing the paper trash by running another program she’d stolen from the agency, translating Chinese into English. Now she had English translations of all the files and would know if anything in the trash could lead her to the stolen documents. She tossed the paper pages and shredded paper.
Cassie hadn’t eaten much—just snacks at Starbucks—for two days. And she had eaten only emergency rations on the freighter. As she left the copier center her stomach grumbled. She rubbed her famished belly and remembered the restaurant and lodging guide she’d bought at the pharmacy. She pulled it from her backpack. She wanted—no, she needed—an excellent meal to celebrate the modest successes she’d had so far. In the guide, she found a famous and expensive Cantonese gourmet restaurant, the Fook Lam Moon on Johnston Road, a short walk from her hotel. She decided to drop her computer files and equipment in her room before dinner.
She craved braised ginger shrimp in tomato sauce, her favorite Mandarin dish, and one she had prepared in her Washington apartment the last night she and Evan were together. She could almost smell the ginger root and sesame seed oil as she conjured it in her mind.
She’d remembered her mother’s kitchen, where she started cooking before she was ten years old. She’d been good enough to enroll in the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, where she spent a year, but she couldn’t stand the strong aromas of the ingredients before they were cooked. Her passion for cooking continued even though she dropped out of the academy and wound up at Stanford, excelling in the graduate economics seminars taught by her father, among many other professors.
The restaurant was a beautiful place, unmistakably Chinese in its decoration and use of red as its primary color. Already hungry when she opened the menu, her eyes grew wide at the myriad of appetizing choices available. The cuisine seemed to be a mix of high-end Cantonese. No Mandarin on the menu. Everything very expensive.
The waiter was older than her father, busy and curt. She asked, “What do you recommend?”
The old man slowed, then smiled. He said, “Your first time here?” She nodded and smiled back.
He said, “We are famous for Braised Most Superior Shark’s Fin with Brown Sauce, Braised Abalone with Goose Web, Sautéed Fresh Lobster in Fook Lam Moon’s Stock, and for dessert, we have Double Boiled Bird’s Nest with Coconut Milk Inside Coconut. All are classic, fabulous dishes. What you want?”
She ordered them all. Sitting there alone, she considered the future and how challenging survival would be. Cassie decided to have an abortion. No way she could run for her life cradling the baby of the man who’d raped her and tried to murder her. And, to seal the decision, she ordered a shot of Lagavulin sixteen-year-old single malt Scotch. She drank it in two quick swallows and ordered another.
The waiter arrived with enough food to feed a small family. “You likey these, I guarantee. Much goodness for you. And lucky too.”
Cassie was hungry; she tasted everything in a state of bliss and finished some of the exotic dishes. So good! It was the most expensive meal she’d ever eaten. She couldn’t remember ever eating a meal this fine.
She walked to the hotel holding a plastic bag filled with leftovers in take-home boxes, enough to last at least through the next day or two. Cassie placed the take-out in her room’s refrigerator and then set herself back to work, backing up the files from her belt buckle onto her cell phone. After midnight she crashed to the bed for a few scant hours of sleep.
She woke and drank coffee, then began reading the files she’d created from the paper shreds. Most of it she couldn’t understand and had no interest in, such as the role of the American Federal Trade Commission in guiding product design. She wondered if she would ever find what she needed. Her doubts increased along with her frustration, until she gave up for the night.
She took a bath to relax. Then bedtime. She dreamed of herself lying on a beach in Hawaii, warm breezes and pleasant floral scents.
The next morning she was back examining the information she’d collected, and there it was: mention of a large amount of petty cash needed for an unexpected expense approved by the Executive Vice President, Technology Development, for the 11 million RMB, equivalent to two million US dollars. She looked up the name of the EVP on the corporate directory from the company’s website and found his office’s exact location on the company’s directory map.
But the best find she’d gotten today from the shredded paper she’d turned into files was the name of the hacker, William Wing, from a personal note kept in a tiny file by the EVP. She shook her head at the sloppiness of the parties in this sordid affair. Cassie guessed they thought no one would come looking, and now they’d pay for their arrogance. Now she knew not only who, but also where.
She was off to Starbucks for another day of anonymous pay-by-the-minute wireless. The Starbucks counter woman recognized Cassie and startled her, saying “Hello, missy. Good to see you again.”
Cassie wondered if it was safe to use the same Starbucks more than once, but shook it off and smiled. “This is a good place to spend the day.”
The counter woman smiled. “Soon we charge you rent.”
She and the other woman laughed.
Three hours and two café au laits later, she’d completed hacking into the competitor’s network from afar. She searched the network to determine if there were backup files and found another onsite server. From the primary and the backup, she deleted over 600 pages related to the stolen new technology from the company’s servers. To ensure she got paid for her work, she copied the files she’d deleted onto her belt-buckle storage device, with backup on the 64-gigabyte microSD card in her cell phone.
Her next task was far more dangerous, and Uncle Misha’s voice in her head yammered that she’d be in big trouble if she was caught. After hacking the EVP’s data files on their network, she’d have to enter the competitor’s office building and see if there were paper versions of the files kept there. If so, she’d need to steal or destroy them.
The agency had taught her how to enter a building covertly, locate physical property, either steal or destroy it without discovery, and leave the premises. It’s why her agency hacks were always done in-country. She took a deep breath, planning her visit.
The next step would expose her to real risk.
As the sun sank behind the city, she returned to the hotel, dressed for the black op in dark clothing and left with her cell phone and her toolkit. Cassie took the ferry to the New Territories, and then a taxi deep into the set of corporate parks.
The corporate headquarters of her client’s competitor was located across the street. The voice in her head was jabbering at light speed now, telling her to flee, but she dismissed it. She must complete her assignment. Now. She forced her attention on the lobby, her first and easiest objective.
She entered an unlit alley across the street from their building and positioned herself in darkness there. By 3 a.m., she’d determined the guard traffic patterns. Watched, waited. As one guard left to patrol and the other fell asleep watching a portable television, she used her bump key to enter the building.
She squirmed silently through the lobby doors, dropping to the floor and crawling prone toward the guard’s desk so she could use it as cover. The screaming voice in her head had become a headache, making her body sluggish in responding. She was suffused with the palpable fear of failure.
The roving guard’s footsteps echoed closer to the stationary guard’s desk. She dove for safety into the adjacent hallway as the guards stood together talking. Hyperventilating, she lay without moving for some time, fear her only companion.
Soon, the roving guard would begin his next tour. She rose up, and walked low to the floor through the halls. When the guards’ voices became more distant she removed the printed copy of the building’s map that she’d downloaded from the company’s server.
Cass
ie peeked around the corner and examined the wall for security cameras. All the cams pointed along their horizontal axis. She determined a route where she could always be directly under one as she passed it. Walking with care, she explored the building, searching for the EVP’s office.
It was exactly where the map depicted it would be. But, the door was locked.
She donned a pair of surgical gloves, opened her case of bump keys and selected the first one. Continuously shifting her focus from the lock to the sounds of the guards making their rounds, she tried one after the next.
A guard approached. She skittered silently across the hall and ducked into a nearby restroom. Hyperalert, she placed her hand over the door’s edge to keep it silent as it closed. She waited a few minutes, then returned to the locked door.
One bump key after another failed to unlock the door. But, with only two left untried, she heard the click on the EVP’s door.
Alone in the quiet of the office, she relaxed. I’ll be safe from the guard if I’m quiet and stay out of the doorway window’s line of sight. She opened one file cabinet after another, searching for the physical papers by comparing the Chinese letters on the paper to the screen on her cell phone displaying the pages she sought.
One by one, she gathered them, organizing the ones she needed by date, and stuffed them in her backpack.
As she walked toward the doorway to leave, she stepped on a bump of uneven carpet. What was this? She inspected it, finding its edges could be lifted. Underneath, she found a small safe built into the tiles of the floor.
She shook the can of Freon she’d bought at a local computer store the day before. It was called “keyboard dust remover” but if she tipped it upside down, Freon would exit its tip instead of compressed air. Once it was coated, she hit the lock with the tiny hammer she’d brought, but the lock didn’t shatter. Hardened steel. And she was now out of Freon. I am so fucked. She examined the safe’s lock. It was a fingerprint scanner. Okay, then.
Cassie opened her backpack and removed a roll of clear plastic moving tape and a sheet of plastic from the laminator she’d owned when she worked for the agency. She placed the tape against the fingerprint scanner and pulled the oily fingerprint of the EVP from the scanner. He’d never wiped it clean and now she owned his print. Then she placed the tape on a piece of clear plastic and—voilà!—she had a usable print for breaking into the safe. She placed a small blank piece of paper between her thumb and the plastic to shield her own print from confusing the scanner, then pressed her thumb against the unit. The safe cracked open.
Cassie took everything she found within, and placed it into her backpack. She closed the safe’s door, replaced the carpet, and smoothed it out.
With her search completed, she heaved a sigh of relief. She was so close now.
She tried to keep silent as she moved around the office, placing everything not associated with her hack back into its original location.
Time to leave.
The roving guard’s footsteps! Cassie dropped to the floor and scurried behind a desk, making as little noise as possible.
But the guard must have heard something because he opened the office door. The voice in her head was wailing now. You’ll be caught and taken to jail, your picture matched to the files of criminals, then to all files, your identity will be exposed, the Islamic extremists will find out and come for you again. This time they’ll kill you while you sit in jail. Idiot! Stupid little girl. What did you think you were doing?
She took a deep breath to quiet the clamor in her mind and moved deep into the desk well. The guard’s flashlight scoured the room, the file cabinets, the carpets, the walls.
But the flashlight shed no light deep enough to expose her. Cassie gulped, wondering if he could hear her breathing. She could smell her panic.
The guard turned and closed the door. As he returned to patrolling the office hallway, she took a deep breath. She waited two minutes, paralyzed, then finally rose. She closed the office door behind her. Get out now!.
No, not yet. First, destroy the paper files as I was ordered. She found a paper shredder in the cafeteria. She entered and closed the door to give her privacy and muffle its sounds. Cassie destroyed the pages. The shreds went into her backpack.
Making no further sound, she slipped out of a side door of the building into the humid night.
She was drenched in perspiration and whispered aloud to herself, “Lucky girl. Can’t believe I ever thought to try this.”
Then she realized she was only halfway through her business for the night. Crap!
She found a dark alleyway where she could work with privacy.
Cassie used her cell phone to access the Internet and complete a reverse-lookup of the hacker’s name. She obtained not just the street address but also the apartment number. The GPS function also offered her directions to the hacker’s apartment in Ascot Heights, Block A. It was a two-mile trot to the residence at 21 Lok Lam Road, New Territories. It was 5 a.m. She walked as fast as she could and by 5:40 a.m. she could see the building. The streets were still dark and empty, providing cover. Now I need a place to watch and wait.
Cassie found another alley across from the hacker’s apartment in a residential neighborhood. She waited for a good opportunity behind a set of garbage bins. The smell was overpowering. She concentrated on keeping herself from giving in to the nausea building in her belly.
Around 6:30 a.m., people began emerging from buildings to go to work. By 10 a.m. the throng had turned to a trickle and then stopped completely.
Cassie walked until she found a pay phone and dialed the phone number associated with William Wing’s address and email. Three rings and a man’s voice, but, oh yes, good, an answering machine. Cassie would risk a visit. She double-checked the directory of his building. It confirmed William Wing lived in apartment 204.
Cassie recognized the lock on the apartment’s outer door. Shit. Never tried to pick one of these before.
She scoured her memory from her classes at The Farm and remembered the Raking Method. It might work here. She rummaged among the tools in her attaché case for her set of raking lock picks, never before used. Each one was constructed with a series of bumps, or diamond-shaped notches. This method was supposed to be fast. She “raked” the lock, running the pick over all the lock’s pins at one time, trying to get the pins to rise into the open position and stay there.
It took over five minutes, but she was finally inside the front door of the building. The next barrier was the fire-stairs door into the main building on the second floor. This lock only needed a credit card. She slipped one between the latch and the door.
Cassie cracked the door from the stairwell into the hallway, and listened. No one walking, no one talking. She looked around and sniffed. Cooking smells. She gulped as the voice began to yammer again, telling her again that she’d be discovered and her life would end. Cassie took another deep breath and made her way to the hacker’s door.
Her fear mounted like some monster alive inside her skin. What would she do if William Wing was home? She decided if the worst happened she’d say she sold magazine subscriptions, offering one of her false identity cards. She forced herself to believe that might be enough as she knocked on the door.
But no answer. She breathed a sigh of relief. Cassie worked on the door locks. Two locks, both difficult to crack. After ten minutes her picks popped the top lock.
Every noise she heard had her ready to scurry away. No one appeared on the floor to enter or leave an apartment, and if they had, she didn’t know what she would do. Probably, she’d head back toward the elevator and take it to the lobby and start over after waiting an hour.
The lower lock was more difficult. The voice in her head jabbered nonstop. She almost had the lock open three times and it fell back each time. Her hand cramped and she shook it to loosen its muscles.
After almost half an hour, it snapped open. Cassie slipped inside the door, wondering what she’d do if she found someone th
ere.
Food odors assaulted her. Wing cooked with garlic at home. The room reeked of marijuana, something she hadn’t smelled since her days in a college dorm. She listened to silence and moved stealthily through the apartment, peeking around corners for someone who might be deaf and work from home. She was prepared to quietly back out and leave.
Examining the ceiling and walls for videocams, she found several. She pulled a chair from the kitchen and climbed it, removing one cam after another. Eight, and each had self-contained storage and no networking capability. So far, things look good.
She was almost sure she was alone. The voice in her head became quiet. As she walked into the living room, she heard a noise from the kitchen. Cassie ducked behind the couch and froze. Then she heard a noise above her. Startled, Cassie looked up, her hands already moving in a jujitsu move. A large calico cat peered down at her from the top of the couch. It meowed at her, sitting, watching her. Feeling great relief, Cassie took a deep breath and reached slowly to pet it.
Time was her biggest enemy now. She quickly completed reconnoitering the apartment. There were two desktop computers, one in the living room and one in the bedroom. Cassie searched the hard-disk directory of the one in the living room, and, yes, here were copies of her target files. But maybe he modified them before sending them on to his client. I’ll take a look later. She copied all his files to the USB flash drive from her belt buckle, then unscrewed the case and removed both hard disks.
Her encore was to remove both hard disks from the bedroom computer as well. She searched the apartment for anything on paper corresponding to the assignment itself or the stolen documents, but found nothing.
Time to leave. She peeked out Wing’s front door. No one there. She took a deep breath and waited for the voice in her head to jabber, but it remained silent. In seconds she was on the staircase heading out.
Cassie walked from the building and flagged a taxi to the ferry. She scanned traffic on her flanks and in front of her, stopping at the port’s windows to use their reflective surfaces to see behind her. No one was following her. Maybe it’s safe for me now.
