by D S Kane
Dr. Henry Sheldorff. High-priced Manhattan plastic surgeon.
Avram Shimmel. Call-sign Clearcut, mercenary, former major in the IDF, and later a Mossad kidon. Shimmel is 6’7” and a wall of muscle, and also one of the IDF’s most gifted tacticians. His pregnant wife and young daughter were killed by a car bomb set by Tariq Houmaz. Later, he founded Kravgruppe, a mercenary organization. Now, he works with Cassandra Sashakovich at Swiftshadow Consulting Group.
Ann Silbee Sashakovich. Homeless teenager living in the tunnels under Manhattan, adopted by Cassandra Sashakovich. Ann is taught computer hacking by William Wing and weapons by Lee Ainsley.
Jon Sommers. Call-sign Quicksilver, aka Friedrich Stamphil. Mossad katsa working for Ruth Cohen. Jon was recruited by Yigdal Ben-Levy after Jon’s fiancée, Lisa Gabriel, died in a car bombing.
Abel Sommerstein. Jon Sommers’s father.
Natasha Sommerstein. Jon Sommers’s mother.
Sandhia Sorab. Funds Transfer Repair Station Specialist at the Bank of Trade, Karachi, Pakistan, recruited as an asset by Jon Sommers.
Louis Stepponi. A professional assassin.
Herr Rickard Stossler. A cover identity for Yigdal Ben-Levy.
Shimon Tennenbaum. A Mossad kidon who works for Yigdal Ben-Levy.
Nikita Tobelov. Head of Russian Mafiya’s Eastern District, in Vladivostok
Benjamin Franklin Wagner. US Ambassador to Israel.
Phillip Watson. A former graduate student at working in the Technology Centre of the University of London, he helps Jon Sommers discover the death of Lisa Gabriel. Later, Phillip is founder and CEO of GrayNet, predictive markets startup.
Jacob David “JD ” Weinstein. A Mossad kidon who works for Yigdal Ben-Levy.
Ari Westheim. A Mossad kidon who works for Yigdal Ben-Levy.
William Wing. Call-sign CryptoMonger. Hacker, living in Hong Kong, contract worker for corporations, MI-6, the Mossad, and other intelligence services. He was disowned by his father when he was twelve years old, for hacking into the CSIS servers.
Xian Wing. Director of Chinese Security Information Systems (CSIS). Father of William Wing.
Appendix C – Additional Reading on Several Related Topics
Cypherpunks list; see Wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk).
Eric Blossom, designer of the Starium cryptographically secured mobile phone, founder of the GNU Radio project; see Wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Radio).
Jim Bell, author of the “Assassination Politics” paper; see Cryptome: (http://cryptome.org/jya/ap.htm):
Imagine for a moment that as ordinary citizens were watching the evening news, they see an act by a government employee or officeholder that they feel violates their rights, abuses the public’s trust, or misuses the powers that they feel should be limited. A person whose actions are so abusive or improper that the citizenry shouldn’t have to tolerate it.
What if they could go to their computers, type in the miscreant’s name, and select a dollar amount: The amount they, themselves, would be willing to pay to anyone who “predicts” that officeholder’s death. That donation would be sent, encrypted and anonymously, to a central registry organization, and be totaled, with the total amount available within seconds to any interested individual. If only 0.1% of the population, or one person in a thousand, was willing to pay $1 to see some government slimeball dead, that would be, in effect, a $250,000 bounty on his head.
Further, imagine that anyone considering collecting that bounty could do so with the mathematical certainty that he could not be identified, and could collect the reward without meeting, or even talking to, anybody who could later identify him. Perfect anonymity, perfect secrecy, and perfect security. And that, combined with the ease and security with which these contributions could be collected, would make being an abusive government employee an extremely risky proposition. Chances are good that nobody above the level of county commissioner would even risk staying in office.
Just how would this change politics in America? It would take far less time to answer, “What would remain the same?” No longer would we be electing people who will turn around and tax us to death, regulate us to death, or for that matter sent hired thugs to kill us when we oppose their wishes.
No military?
One of the attractive potential implications of such a system would be that we might not even need a military to protect the country. Any threatening or abusive foreign leader would be subject to the same contribution/assassination/reward system, and it would operate just as effectively over borders as it does domestically.
Appendix D: Notes on Predictive Markets
Adapted from Wikipedia
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market)
Prediction markets (also known as predictive markets, information markets, decision markets, idea futures, event derivatives, or virtual markets) are speculative markets created for the purpose of making predictions. The current market prices can then be interpreted as predictions of the probability of the event or the expected value of the parameter. For example, a prediction market security might reward a dollar if a particular candidate is elected, such that an individual who thinks the candidate had a 70% chance of being elected should be willing to pay up to 70 cents for such a security.
People who buy low and sell high are rewarded for improving the market prediction, while those who buy high and sell low are punished for degrading the market prediction. Evidence so far suggests that prediction markets are at least as accurate as other institutions predicting the same events with a similar pool of participants.
Economic theory for the ideas behind prediction markets can be credited to Friedrich Hayek in his 1945 article “The Use of Knowledge in Society” and Ludvig von Mises in his “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.” Modern economists agree that Mises’ argument combined with Hayek’s elaboration of it, is correct (“Biography of Ludwig Edler von Mises (1881–1973),” The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics). One of the oldest and most famous is the University of Iowa’s Iowa Electronic Markets, introduced during the 1988 US presidential election. The Hollywood Stock Exchange, a virtual market game established in 1996 and now a division of Cantor Fitzgerald, LP, in which players buy and sell prediction shares of movies, actors, directors, and film-related options, correctly predicted 32 of 2006’s 39 big-category Oscar nominees and 7 out of 8 top category winners. HedgeStreet, designated in 1991 as a market and regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, enables Internet traders to speculate on economic events.
Prediction markets have a long and colorful lineage. Betting on elections was common in the United States until at least the 1940s, with formal markets existing on Wall Street in the months leading up to the race. Newspapers reported market conditions to give a sense of the closeness of the contest in this period prior to widespread polling. The markets involved thousands of participants, had millions of dollars in volume in current terms, and had remarkable predictive accuracy.
Around 1990 at Project Xanadu, Robin Hanson used the first known corporate prediction market. Employees used it in order to bet on, for example, the cold fusion controversy.
In 2001, Intrade.com launched a prediction market trading platform from Ireland allowing real money trading between members on contracts related to a number of different categories including business issues, current events, financial topics, and more. Intrade ceased trading in 2013.
In July 2003, the US Department of Defense publicized a Policy Analysis Market and on their website speculated that additional topics for markets might include terrorist attacks. A critical backlash quickly denounced the program as a “terrorism futures market” and the Pentagon hastily canceled the program.
Prediction markets are championed in James Surowiecki’s 2004 book The Wisdom of Crowds; Cass R. Sunstein’s 2006 Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge; and How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of “Intangibles” in Business by Dou
glas W. Hubbard.
The research literature is collected together in the peer-reviewed Journal of Prediction Markets, edited by Leighton Vaughan Williams and published by the University of Buckingham Press. The journal was first published in 2007, and is available online and in print.
In John Brunner’s 1975 science fiction story, The Shockwave Rider, there is a description of a prediction market that he called the Delphi Pool.
In October 2007 companies from the United States, Ireland, Austria, Germany, and Denmark formed the Prediction Market Industry Association, tasked with promoting awareness, education, and validation for prediction markets.
Because online gambling is outlawed in the United States through federal laws and many state laws as well, most prediction markets that target US users operate with “play money” rather than “real money”: they are free to play (no purchase necessary) and usually offer prizes to the best traders as incentives to participate. Notable exceptions are Intrade/TradeSports, which accepted US resident clients until November 2012, and the Iowa Electronic Markets, which operates from the University of Iowa under the cover of a no-action letter from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and allows bets up to $500.
BONUS: The first chapter of Baksheesh , Book 5 of the Spies Lie series!
December 4, 7:33 a.m.
220 East Kirke Street, Chevy Chase, Maryland
She sat in the kitchen, exhausted and in pain. In the bleak November dawn, the sun was rising rosy, blurred by clouds, peeking through the window from an otherwise sleet-gray sky. Her reflection in the mirror displayed the raw bullet hole in her cheek, its stitches glowing an angry red.
Cassandra Sashakovich looked at her boyfriend, Lee, then at her adopted daughter, Ann. The pain in her heart mirrored the pain from her torn face.
Her mind wandered briefly through the last year, how she’d been forced to run for her life, chased by people who needed her dead and would do anything to have her head shipped to Afghanistan in a box.
Life for her would never again be safe. Before she’d realized this, she’d become the adoptive mother of a teenaged girl, assumed ownership of a stray cat, bought a house, gone from being an employee of a government intelligence agency to heading her own mercenary consulting force. But then, she’d made some colossal mistakes. As a result, she’d been hunted.
She inhaled the wonderful aroma of the coffee in her cup. Stalling for time.
Her broken face showed surprise as the man knelt before her.
She was nearly thirty years old, athletic, but damaged in so many ways. She drew one hand through her short, brown hair, considering his offer. The close-range gunshot wound from a would-be assassin just a week ago throbbed as she tried to move her mouth. Her face was scheduled for months of reconstructive surgeries, complex and painful.
Lee Ainsley, her boyfriend, knelt, holding up the tiny ring with its miniature diamond in his hand, offering it to her. He seemed to sense the tsunami of emotions overpowering her. Feelings mixed with logic pointing in every other direction from what she truly wanted.
He grinned slyly, like a child who’d waited too long for Christmas. “What’s your answer? Cassandra Sashakovich, I’m hopelessly in love with you. Please marry me.”
Her eyes had popped wide open the first time he asked. Now she tried to speak but her lips wouldn’t move.
She’d shown him her heart, her one and only private place, where thought had no currency.
She forced herself to moisten her lips through the pain, preparing to speak. The voice inside her head told her not to try—to sort all of it out before she answered him.
Time to feel? Time to think?
She realized there wasn’t time to properly analyze this. Cassie tried thinking anyway, since—for her—thinking always happened before any action. She wondered what she really wanted. Of course she wanted Lee. And the voice in the back of her head stated bluntly that having Lee would be dangerous for him. She wasn’t safe. No one with her could ever be safe.
Now, what she had originally dreamed of—being wanted and loved by an intelligent, good-looking man—was about to become her dream come true. But Lee had been targeted for death because of her. Accepting his proposal would only exaggerate his danger. And, Ann, her adopted daughter would be in greater danger with both her and Lee as marks for assassins.If Cassie agreed to Lee’s proposal, she’d place them all in danger. It would be so much easier for any of her enemies to leverage her. Yet, if she declined, she’d be acknowledging that the terrorists had succeeded in destroying her life. Cassie sighed; it was a lose-lose situation.
Her heart leaped at the sight of the miniscule ring. Where had he bought it? When had he had time? It had to have been before he was picked up by the FBI and taken to Guantanamo Bay; it was so small that he’d probably bought it the day after they’d left the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC.
Cassie realized, omigod, he’s been planning this for months.
She heard Ann come down the stairs. She saw the teen’s reflection, watching from just beyond the kitchen doors, facing Cassie’s back. Ann’s ragged hair had been dyed back to its natural mousey brown color, from the purple and pink she’d colored it to disguise herself when she was hunted weeks ago by a Saudi assassin. Ann held Gizmo, their small, black kitten, in her arms. She smiled. “Do it, mom,” she whispered.
Time to choose.
Through the pain in her mouth she slowly formed the words. “Lee, I love you. You know that. But if I say yes you’ll have to quit your job with the agency, and we’ll have to move away somewhere we can’t be found. We’ll need to become our own witness protection group. And, since we’re broke, we’ll need a way to do this on the cheap. Maybe sell Swiftshadow Consulting Group to Avram Shimmel to raise the cash first. Are you sure this is okay with you?”
Lee smiled. “I’ve already thought all of this through. Family first. Us together. All of us. I spoke with Ann and told her what I was going to do. She can handle this. I can handle this. So, can you? Will you? Marry me?”
He used the blunt questions once again like weapons. She found her feelings overpowering her ability to inject logic into the situation. Tears began to form in the corners of her eyes.
There would be more questions to answer, more things to plan, a mountain of tasks to do. But that was for later. It had been her dream. It was now her reality. She nodded her head. “Yes, I love you. Yes, I’m in love with you. Yes, I’ll marry you and be your bride.” She pointed her finger back at him. “But to prove your commitment I want you to resign from the agency immediately. Do something less dangerous. Or do nothing at all. And, as I said, we’ll have to relocate and change our identities. Do you agree?”
Lee nodded, gently reaching out for her left hand. He quickly slipped the ring on her finger, as if rushing before she changed her mind.
But she drew him to her. Held him hard against her, then kissed his lips gently, despite the pain. In seconds, Ann was with them, holding Gizmo and hugging them both.
They were a family now.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, this story was spawned by a series of conversations with Steve Schear, one of the original cypherpunks and a long-time friend. He reminded me of one of my management consulting clients who’d been instrumental in the development of predictive markets. Steve led me to the cypherpunks list and Jim Bell’s iconic paper, “Assassination Politics.”
So many other people were crucial in preparing this manuscript for you, the reader.
As always, my critiques were provided by the ActFourWriting,com group, including Dennis Phinney, Linda Rohrbough, Janet Simcic, Brenda Barrie, Aaron Ritchey, Caryn Scotto, Liz Picco, Julia Reynolds, Daniel Houston, Steve Eggleston, Juliann Kauffman, Teri Gray, Carl Vondareu, Claudia Melendez, Megan Edwards, and Judy Whitmore. My local critique group, headed by Diana Paul, was instrumental in the final polishing of this manuscript into readable fiction. I also received valuable feedback, especially concerning military tactics and s
trategy, as well as inside information regarding sites where conflicts have occurred or are now occurring, from several folks from the Drink of the Month Club, a group consisting mostly of Naval Postgraduate School administration and faculty, including Ron Nelson, Martin Metzger, Fred Drake, Lee Scheffel, and Gary Ohls. Also, my friends and family contributed critiques, including Barry Groves, Michael Spicer, Frances and Elliot Spiselman, and Dana Gorman. And finally, Andrea Brown, my wife, and the CEO of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, Inc. is the best and final voice for judging what I create. She is responsible for so much of what is good in my life.
Several best-selling authors have contributed to my efforts, including James Rollins (for his discussions with me on liquid armor), Barry Eisler for his advice on self-publishing, Holly Lisle for her coursework on world building, and Greg Bear for our discussion on craft after the graduation ceremony at Northwest Institute of Literary Arts.
I want to thank my publication team, consisting of my editor, Sandra Beris; copyeditor Karl Yambert; graphic designer Jeroen Ten Berge; my website designer and host Maddee James of xuni.com; my publicists Brandi Andres and Rebecca Berus; and Paul Marotta and Megan Jeanne of the Corporate Law Group, who incorporated The Swiftshadow Group for me.
I also want to thank my literary agent, Nancy Ellis, and my film agent, Brandy Rivers, for all their hard work on my behalf.
I am grateful for all the suggestions and advice I have received but I alone am responsible for the resulting work.
I wish to acknowledge that the Wailea Spa and Hotel found in GrayNet is not the Grand Wailea Hotel and Spa, although they may appear to be quite similar. All the other places in GrayNet are as they exist in the real world.
