by D S Kane
Cassie left the hotel for dinner at Centro Vasco on 23rd Street near Eighth Avenue. A lightly steamed three-pound lobster tasted delicious in celebration of her successful completion of Swiftshadow Consulting’s first assignment.
Then she headed to Starbucks where she used her cell’s wireless function to download her email. There were no email messages. How disappointing.
The next day she retrieved her workstation from the locker at the YMCA, and reclaimed documents and supplies from a locker at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. It took hours, but she was now back in operation.
Late that afternoon she used her cell to check her email and found a message from a contact she didn’t know. From small cues – language phrasing, specific terminology, and the nature of the assignment described in the vaguest of terms—it seemed to be either a federal agency or a contractor to a federal agency. She replied,
Interested, but unable to commit without more specific details and a broadly-worded mission statement.
They were unwilling to divulge enough, and she balked at accepting an assignment for something so vaguely defined. However, two email messages each way the next day began with a brief description of the assignment:
We require creation of a semi-repetitive bank-to-bank Electronic Funds Transfer network called Project SafePay, with de novo current accounts set up through screens of multiple financial blinds. SafePay will be used for military payrolls. We need end-points in Middle East, South America, and North America. Work may require in-country presence for very brief visits.
Cassie whispered aloud, “Oh, yes, this is so me!” Her whole body shivered in anticipation. It’s just what she’d done for the agency. It’s what she did best. Her smug, arrogant grin felt good.
But seconds later, the tiny voice in her head registered a warning. Why are you suddenly gifted with something so tailored to you as the mission where they sent a hit man to you? Could this assignment have come courtesy of the special someone from the agency who’d blown your cover? And if not, this could still be the Islamic extremists, trying to backtrace you through your email.
She sat stock-still, considering her options. Then she shook her head, her face a solemn sadness. She should simply decline politely. Tell them this is something she didn’t possess the skills they required. Maybe she’d get lucky. Might even make them think they hadn’t found her, that she was someone else.
But as she continued her analysis, she realized it wouldn’t work.
Someone probably has found me. Given that, my best move would be to find out as much as possible about the party on the other side of the email. What to do if they’re hostile? Don’t have the resources or skill to take them out. Could this be an innocent coincidence? Not bloody likely. Might they know who I am and not have hostile intentions? Unlikely. But if they aren’t hostile it could be a bonanza. And a great deal of fun.
These thoughts keep cycling through her mind like iterations of a broken computer program stuck forever in a looping logic routine. She tried qualifying the puzzle’s parameters and refining the probabilities of each possible outcome. An hour later, she reread the assignment description. Cassie stretched her fingers and typed her reply:
We need more info to determine fit of assignment to available skill set of our staff. Specifically,
Who are you (name, title, employer, your superior)?
Who authorized this operation?
In which cities in South America, North America, and the Middle East are the current accounts domiciled?
What languages will be required for communicating with locals?
What is your budget for our services?
What is the project plan (by phase name and description)?and
What are the dates by which each phase must be completed?
Please reply for our consideration and acceptance.
She was jumpy for the next four days. Always packed and ready to bolt from the hotel, she looked to her flanks and in store reflections when she left her room to visit restaurants for meals. And she always sat with her back to the wall, close to the exit into the kitchen. She ate sushi at Nobu, and while she was chewing a piece of deep-fried shrimp head—amaebi—she heard her cell phone beep with an incoming email. Her head jerked and she almost choked. Coughing, she reached into the patch pocket of her kangaroo pants and removed her cell phone. Cassie read the screen:
We cannot tell you much of what you wish to know. But our budget for you is $500,000 and we require your assistance as soon as possible.
It was a lot of money for a banking project within a programming contract.
The pace of email was slow torture. Cassie thought in frustration about simply not replying. By now she was sure it was the feds, not Muslim extremists. Only they could be so arrogant or so stupid as to believe she’d reply. So, she simply didn’t.
Instead, she waited to see what would happen. But she kept her attaché case full of clothing, electronics, and additional ammunition for the Beretta she carried. She placed the packed case in a locker at Times Square in the bus terminal. And she remained more cautions at all times. Fear combined with frustration inside her, a recipe for mistakes.
In defense, Cassie researched the actual assignment offer. It took three days, ten to twelve hours each day. She knew it would be dangerous for her to use her own hardware to try to obtain information about this assignment. Instead, she began using computers at the 38th Street branch of the New York Public Library. She also used the rent-a-computer facility at a Manhattan FedEx Office. Places far distant from where she kept her nest.
Cassie was able to hack partway into a network that used the same server as the sender’s email. But her capabilities weren’t up to completing the task. She searched the alt.binaries newsgroups and blogs where hackers had their crypto communities, picking up new skills at a rapid pace. Learning new techniques was tedious but she suffered it grudgingly, anticipating the results.
It became easier once she broke through the firewall security, which functioned like a front door with multiple locks on a city apartment.
When Cassie successfully hacked the assignment, she found it indeed originated with the feds and guessed they’d selected her by chance. She breathed a sigh of relief.
The assignment was offered through West Wing senior staff, sanctioned by the White House and the highest powers in the Pentagon. This alone made her decision. No way could she ever consider this. But something told her she needed to know everything she could find out about this.
Everyone knew the West Wing ate its young.
She thought about who had sent her the emails. Who knew her reputation? And how? Was it from her Hong Kong operation? Or had someone hacked her website and backtraced her? She decided to research the email’s actual sender. Do unto others before they do unto you.
She received another email while she was hacking into West Wing’s “.gov” website server:
Please reply to me, as the direct authorizer of the assignment we offered you. Will you work with us? Time is of the essence.
Traces carried by this email led her to a deputy chief of staff for the White House, a man known all through Washington DC as having little patience.
Cassie replied:
Dear sir,
We have thought long and hard about this project and believe there are other firms better qualified for completing it, given the one-line description you have offered us. It is in your best interests to find another consulting company.
She kept researching the declined assignment anyway, telling herself it was because she didn’t have any pending work. Her skills improved while she completed hacking her way through Washington. Some of the servers were almost impossible to enter, but many were absurdly simple to penetrate.
It took her a week of trial and error until she found the names of most of the parties involved.
Now, Cassie wondered if the Vice President or the President had any knowledge of this project, or if their deniability had
been preserved.
Security guarding the President and Vice President’s email—due to federal law—was denser and more difficult. It took over a week but she cracked into the back-bearings of “whitehouse.gov.” After that, everything became much easier.
Cassie found interoffice emails between almost every member of the West Wing about this specific project. Most of the staff thought it was for payments of US Armed Services payroll. Just as she had been told. She lost interest.
But there was one alarming email that was out of place. It claimed the procedures the White House used to keep itself secure were also keeping Project SafePay’s new systems from working. She was startled, given her extensive knowledge of banking. It just didn’t make sense.
All domestic payroll systems used semi-repetitive transfers through ACH, the Automated Clearing House, and they had their own impenetrable internal security. So why would Project SafePay require security beyond what had always been in place? If it was for a payroll in the Middle East or Latin America as well as the United States, the foreign locations would require semi-repetitive SWIFT transactions—not ACH—to make the payrolls secure. She recalled how the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Transactions governed the rules for international funds transfers, and knew that semi-reps were the safest and most economical way to move cash globally.
This disconnect renewed her interest. Why did the feds find security an issue for a payroll-funds transfer system?
She pushed the hair away from her face, staring at the screen. Looking into her notebook’s screen, she noticed her eyes lit bright with curiosity. She’d never seen anything like this before.
She dug deep, even using hacking tools she hadn’t tried before. Her research found an email sent by the Information Systems Director of the White House to the Project Leader at the US Treasury. He claimed the specifications called for the ability of this new system to handle “one-offs,” non-repetitive transfers. These were never used for payroll transactions, since non-reps frequently needed to be “repaired” by either the sending or receiving bank, due to errors from re-keying. ACH and SWIFT semi-reps avoided errors. Payroll transactions never needed re-keying. After all, employees always got a payroll transaction for the same amount every pay period.
Something very wrong here. Cassie studied the emails between these two people and her jaw dropped.
The funds transferred through this new network with its almost untraceable structure would be used to pay parties in the Middle East. One of the emails came from Mark McDougal’s office. No way!
Chapter Twelve
August 1, 10:23 a.m.
New York Public Library, 500 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan
Cassie sat keying at the public computer she used in a cubicle of the New York Public Library main branch at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. It took only an hour.
The emails she read showed the transfers were paid to Muslim terrorists to keep hurting the United States, with the intention of maintaining the country in a state of alert in the ongoing “war on terror.” Her stomach lurched and she fought to keep from hurling her lunch. So that’s what I was doing. I’ve helped the government do its dirty deeds. Reclaiming the funds so they could be reused!
She whispered aloud, “Holy shit on a marshmallow stick! This is the mother of all wrong things. The people running our government are psychopaths!”
In the cubicle next to hers, someone whispered back, “No shit, lady.”
Visions of her visits to the Middle East appeared unbidden in her head. All the times she stole for her government. Oh no! She knew beyond doubt the psychopaths in Washington would kill her and everybody she cared about if they found out she knew half as much as she did. And yet, to evade them, she needed to know more. Her heart clenched. She was beyond panic now, and she knew it would take days before she calmed. How could they do this? It’s evil beyond anything I’ve ever imagined.
She took a fresh thumb-drive from her stash and shook her head. Gotta make copies of all this.
Cassie placed electronic copies of the evidence onto a thumb-drive and put it in a Post Office box at the Eighth Avenue at 34th Street Post Office.
Cassie also placed copies of the thumb-drive in lockers at the YMCA and the Port Authority Bus Terminal. She wondered what would happen if this info was posted on the Internet—maybe on YouTube. Then she remembered wikileaks.com and its publication kit for classified, censored, or otherwise restricted material of political, diplomatic, or ethical significance. And of course it could always be sent to Al Jazeera.
But what she needed was some kind of time bomb that would automatically update her website if she didn’t actively stop it from doing so. She’d have to craft a computer program to unleash the info if she failed to check in, as a “life insurance policy.”
But she wasn’t a programmer and hadn’t learned how to create and test such a program.
Cassie spent her days at the YMCA and worked on her self-defense skills. Four times a week she rode a stationary bike twenty miles, did fifty pushups and seventy sit-ups, and drank two quarts of water to replace the perspiration that dripped from her. She left when her arms, back, and legs were a wall of burn. Her waist slimmed as she worked, and one whole size dropped off her. Her biceps bulged as she lifted one hundred pounds in free-weights.
Every day she looked more like her Uncle Misha.
“We’ve been sitting in hotel rooms for almost two weeks.” Sayed shook his head. “I hate San Francisco. We’ve been everywhere and there’s no trace of her.”
Hamid wanted to hit his coworker. “Silence! I will call Tariq and ask him what he wants.” He picked up the satellite phone and punched in a number. Walking to a corner of the room, he summarized their situation and asked his client, “And what now?” He listened for a few seconds, then terminated the conversation and faced the three others. “We’re to go to New York City. Tariq believes that’s where she’ll settle. She used it as her base before. Perhaps she’ll do something foolish and at last we’ll find her.”
On Saturday, Cassie decided to pretend her life was normal. She vowed that today she’d forget who she was, what she’d become. She dressed in a low-cut red tank top and black kangaroo pocket shorts. She took a bus to nearby Red Bank, and attended the Red Bank Jazz & Blues Festival. It was her first blues festival in almost a year. On a beach chair at the Harbor Stage she listened to an entire day of guitar, harmonica, and vocals by local and nationally known artists.
Between acts in the afternoon, she sat on a bench eating a barbequed tri-tip sandwich. A man about her age approached her. She noticed his guitar strapped against his back. She thought, oh my, a Galveston chrome-plated brass bell dobro-resonator 6-string. Its surface shone in the sun like a mirror.
She stared it with envy. It was a professional musician’s instrument, nicely crafted but not expensive. She admired the guitar’s biscuit bridge, imagining the rich tones its strings would make when he plucked them.
“Havin’ fun?” the musician asked.
“Yeah.” Cassie volunteered nothing more, but he sat on the ground at her feet. He stayed there for a while, while Cassie’s mind feverishly calculated whether he could be a threat. “Are you one of the performers?”
He smiled in surprise, looking like he’d found a twenty-dollar bill. “Yeah, actually. I’m Michael Bigalow. I play Piedmont-style finger-picking blues. Stuff from the late twenties and thirties. Blind Blake, Lemon Jefferson, Leroy Carr, and Scrapper Blackwell. Familiar with it?”
“Yup.” Hearing the names of her blues heroes made her smile. “Nice guitar.” She reached over his shoulder and touched its cool body. Her breast touched his neck for just a moment. She gulped.
He smiled back. “You play?”
“Yeah. Played in college. Until recently I had a Martin D-18.”
He examined her more carefully. “Nice axe. Wanna try this one?”
She suspected he’d tempt her into sampling the guitar, hoping it might lead him to sampling her in retur
n. Cassie’s eyes scoured him as if seeing him for the first time. He had a rugged look to him, sort of scruffy. Thin, but the music business didn’t offer enough money for non-stars ever to fatten. Almost attractive. At best he’d provide her with a work distraction.
She decided to tell him “No,” but found herself licking her lips and one word came from her. “Sure.” She was surprised to find she now held the guitar. He handed her a metal slide but she declined. “Can you loan me a thumb pick?”
She noted his surprised expression. He leaned closer. “You play Piedmont-style blues?” Piedmont-based blues used a thumb pick and those playing that style were a rarity.
Cassie nodded and took the offered thumb pick. She played some lines from the sultry old “Sportin’ Life Blues,” from the mid-1920s by Brownie McGhee.
She handed the guitar back to him. “Very nice. Handles like a sports car.”
Bigalow said, “Your playing’s real sweet. Ever think of doing this professionally?”
“Never. The life expectancy of musicians isn’t good.” She thought neither was hers. She fought the urge to smile at the irony. “When are you playing?”
“In an hour at the Marina Stage. I get fifty minutes. Will I see you there?”
Cassie wondered if her agency file contained anything about her love of blues guitar. Of course it does. She wondered, was this safe? She shook her head trying to regain focus. She remembered being raped in Riyadh. It was why she’d had an abortion. Yes, Riyadh had caused all the problems in her life. Even if she wasn’t targeted here, he was still dangerous. No, she could never go to bed with him.
She said, “Maybe. There’s so much here. But even if I do, I’ve got to leave soon. Good luck on your gig.”
Bigalow looked disappointed. As he walked off, her eyes drifted down to her flat chest. He must be hard up if he wanted her. What a disappointment my life is. Shit.
But her fingers tingled. She realized him wanting her wasn’t what made her feel frustrated. It was just the touch of his guitar, another thing she sorely missed. She was even more surprised to find a tear from her eye had fallen on her thumb where the pick had nestled only moments before.
