by D S Kane
…Two months ago… a very sophisticated virus called Shamoon infected computers in the Saudi Arabian State Oil Company Aramco. Shamoon included a routine called a ‘wiper’, coded to self-execute. This routine replaced crucial systems… overwrote all the real data on the machine. More than 30,000 computers that it infected were rendered useless.
It’s no secret that Russia and China have advanced cyber capabilities. Iran has also undertaken a concerted effort to use cyberspace to its advantage.”
—Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta,
October 11, 2012
Appendix C – Notes on Creating the Spies Lie series
Nearly a decade in my past, I read John Perkins’ book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Long ago, I’d had a similar career with our government, until my cover was blown and I was left in limbo. When I attempted to write a similar memoir, my former handler warned me against it, stating directly that there would be very serious consequences. He advised me to write fiction.
I started the process by learning to write stories. I’d been published in non-fiction almost a dozen times, under my real name, and much of my intelligence work product was a mix of truth and fiction, so I had a head start. My wife works in the publishing field, and she dragged me to writers conferences where she was a speaker. When my characters began appearing in my dreams, I knew I was either crazy or getting the hang of fiction writing.
My process for the series was to craft a series bible, complete with biographies of the characters and synopses of the books. As I read the synopses over, I realized there was an overriding plot for the six books as an integrated whole. The trick was to make each story a stand-alone story, but have the series contain it’s own overriding plot. So, if you’ve read the first six in sequence, you received the extra bonus of seeing Yigdal Ben-Levy’s misbegotten plans fly awry from the start. If not, well, that’s what you missed.
Barry Eisler, bestselling thriller author and family friend, advised me to self-publish my fiction. Andrea Brown, my wife, advised me to assemble a capable team. I recruited the best: Sandra Beris as editor and project manager, Karl Yambert as copyeditor, Jeroen Ten Berge as cover designer, and Rebecca Berus as Marketer. Oh, and one day while I was researching something on my notebook computer, I found Skype had turned itself on (NSA? Is that you?). I snapped the photo of myself and that’s the one you see of me in the books.
Yes, there will be more. The series continues with CypherGhost, Book 7. I’ve been told by readers to place Jon Sommers prominently into the book. Ann Silbey Sashakovich will bloom into the ultimate weapon. I promise!
BONUS: The first chapter of CypherGhost,
Book 7 of the Spies Lie series!
“I’m a future-hacker; I’m trying to get root access to the future. I want to raid its system of thought.”
—St. Jude (Jude Milhon)
“The illegal we can do right away. The unconstitutional takes a bit longer.”
—Henry Kissinger
CHAPTER 1
Cassandra Sashakovich’s home,
1805 Wilson Lane, McLean, Virginia
February 21, 3:15 p.m. EST
At seventeen years of age, Ann Silbey Sashakovich had applied for early admission to both Harvard and Stanford. Her boyfriend, Charles Breckenridge, was now a freshman at Harvard. While admission to Harvard was what she wanted most, her mother – Cassandra Sashakovich, the woman who’d adopted her four years ago when she was a homeless orphan – demanded she choose a better backup school than those of her classmates. Ann let Cassie make the choice, and since Cassie had graduated from Stanford, that was her backup. Ann worried that Stanford was as difficult to get into as Harvard, but that choice had been made months in the past. Too late to change.
Ann sat at the breakfast table with a cup of cocoa untouched in front of her, and waited for the mailman, watching on the closed circuit cam at the front of the family compound.
Today, she hoped she might receive her most important snail-mail ever. There hadn’t been any envelope yesterday or the days before that. She’d been glued to the kitchen for over an hour. Damn! He’s overdue.
She heard the mail cart rolling up to the row of boxes before she saw him on the cam. Ann ran out through the outdoor hallway and found him at the box in front of their home’s compound wall, sorting mail. “How long until you’re through?”
He didn’t stop sorting. He nodded his craggy face. “Minutes. Just a few.”
She stood, bouncing on her toes, shivering in the falling snow. She ran a hand through her tangled mousey brown hair.
“Must be important.” He handed her a stack of envelopes.
Ann ran back to the house, shouting over her shoulder, her breath steaming into the cold with the words, “College admissions.”
She took a deep breath as she slammed the front door and sat once more at the kitchen table. Bills. Junk mail. Harvard! Stanford! She almost dropped the envelopes, a tingle of electric current shooting through her fingertips from the cold static. She noticed the envelops were light, possibly containing just one page. Did this mean they were rejection letters? Her heart pounded.
Which should she open first? Stanford was her backup, so she ripped it open first:
“Dear Ms. Sashakovich,
We regret to inform you we have declined your application to early enrollment at Stanford University. Your application can be appended and resubmitted for standard enrollment if you so desire.”
She stopped reading. Was there something wrong with her? Why hadn’t she been accepted? She’d been straight A’s in every course for the last two years. She was haunted by memories of her early life, her drug-addicted birth mother, the murder of her younger brother when she was only twelve in the abandoned train tunnels beneath Grand Central Station, and Cassie appearing, like an angel to save her from being raped yet again, and possibly murdered.
She’d always feared rejection. And here it was. If Stanford had rejected her, Harvard must surely have also done it.
She picked up the second unopened envelope. Clenched her eyes shut as she tore through its edge.
The letter from Harvard had the same basic message, but without an invitation to reapply. She found herself wailing. Her fists pounded the table.
When her sadness turned to anger, Ann decided to do something wild. She thought about how unfair this set of rejections was on the day that should have held her best triumph. How could she punish Stanford and Harvard?
Her eyes darted from the letters to the computer she could see in Cassie’s home office.
She’d learned how to hack computers when her mom asked William Wing to teach her some basic skills. Even then, William had a reputation as one of the world’s best gray hat hackers. She’d been fifteen then. She’d learned more from him then he’d ever know.
Her mom was visiting the pediatrician with Evan. It would be at least another hour until they returned. She walked in and sat at the desk, flexing her fingers. It was time to demonstrate her skills.
The Harvard University website had a firewall and ancient 128-bit security. She ran a SQL injection script she’d stolen last year from William Wing. She modified it for penetration into the Harvard web site pages. In less than three minutes, she was inside the server. She searched the directory tree for one named “Admissions” or something like that. Nothing. She found a directory called “Students,” and underneath it, there was a child directory called “Incoming Class” and another called “Rejected.”
Both of these required passwords, and she used another program written by Wing to crack the passwords needed to get into the directories. In minutes, she’d changed her status by deleting her name from the ‘reject’ directory and adding it to the ‘accept’ directory.
Ann smiled. So easy. She accessed the site for Stanford and found it more challenging. It took her almost an hour to penetrate their more sophisticated 256-bit security, but when she was done, both schools were mailing her acceptance letters.
Sh
e felt elation at having what she wanted. It occurred to her she’d had to cheat to get it, but, so what?
She wondered how Charles would feel when he found out she’d be at Harvard with him. She remembered how his touch felt, how he smelled, how she felt when he touched her during sex. Ann opened the email application on her cell phone to tell Charles the good news.
There was an email from him waiting in her inbox and she grinned as she opened it:
“Ann –
So sorry to be writing you about this. I got involved with a freshman named Nancy. Long-distance is too tough. Bye.
– Charles”
Her mouth fell open. For the second time this afternoon, she cried. She wanted to do something truly wild. She hacked into Harvard again and changed his grades. He was now about to flunk out.
After the wall of sadness crumbled, a piece of her heart with it, she made her decision. Since Charles was at Harvard, she would attend Stanford, just as her mother had.
But now, something inside her was broken.
She wanted to do something even more dangerous.
* * *
It had rained all morning. Sandra Scully stood underneath the outcropped roof of the old school building waiting for Martin. But now, classes were about to begin and she began to shuffle inside the building. Her history class would be starting in a few minutes. As the door shut behind her, she heard it creak open again.
Martin smiled at her, filling her heart. “Hi. Sorry I’m late. I needed to finish my senior project. But now it’s done. With any luck, I might get a scholarship to Stanford.” Now he was beaming with pride.
She reached for his hand. “What will we do when you’re thousands of miles away and I still have another year of high school?”
He shrugged. “Don’t worry. My heart will always belong to you.”
She nodded. “I don’t understand what your project is about. I mean, why do you think it’s so important?”
He shrugged again. “It changes some of the ways computers protect themselves from viruses and hackers.”
She was about to tell him that she found computers boring when, outside the school building, three police cars screeched to a halt, their sirens screaming and lights ablaze. Six officers ran through the door. One of the officers directed the other five. He spoke into an earbub and the others scattered down the halls and stairs of the building.
The senior officer asked Sandra, “Where, exactly, is the principal’s office?”
She pointed down the corridor they were in. “That way. Can’t miss it. Officer, what’s going on?”
“We’re looking for this person.” He flashed Martin’s photo. Then he saw Martin, standing next to her. “Martin Stockton, you are under arrest. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You are—”
“What are the charges?” Martin’s face had turned an ugly shade of red.
“You’ll find out, soon enough.” With that, the officer cuffed her boyfriend and dragged him to one of the patrol cars. As Sandra watched, the other officers left the building and reentered their cars. All drove away, leaving her standing at the door, staring through the window in shock.
It was the last time she ever saw Martin. She read about the trial. He’d been accused of stealing classified documents from an intelligence agency of the United States government and sentenced to ninety-nine years in a Federal maximum security prison.
As sad as that made her feel, she felt worse when she received a letter. The single page had no return address. All the envelope contained was a single sheet of paper:
“Sandra –
I was falsely accused of this crime. They have me in a small cell, dark and cold. A guard felt bad for me, gave me a piece of paper and a pen and said I could send one letter to anyone. He promised to mail this. If he does and you receive it, know that I still love you and always will.
– Martin”
Sandra had saved the letter. She was sure she’d never hear from her boyfriend again. But three months later, she received another note:
“I was one of the guards at Martin Stockton’s prison. This morning, he was found dead in his cell. Although the death has been noted as a suicide, I believe he was tortured to death. I don’t know why, but if you wish to seek justice for him, you’ll have a hard road to follow. There was no evidence I could find. Martin seemed a nice guy, and seemed to have no idea of the details of his crime. It’s why I agreed to mail you the other letter.”
Sandra’s anger built over the coming days. Then she made a plan.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, this story was spawned by a series of conversations with my “Drink of the Month” friends, mostly from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA.
But so many other people were also crucial in preparing this manuscript for you, the reader.
As always, my critiques are provided by 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. For ProxyWar, my local critique group, headed by author Diana V. Paul, was instrumental in the final polishing of my manuscripts into readable fiction. I also received valuable feedback, especially concerning military tactics and strategy, 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.
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 during 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 Rebecca Berus and Brandi Andres; 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.
About the Author
D. S. KANE is the name the author has chosen to write under. He worked in the field of covert intelligence for over a decade. During that time, he traveled globally for clients including government and military agencies, the largest banks, and Fortune 100 corporations. One of the banks he investigated housed the banking assets of many of the world’s intelligence agencies and secret police forces, including the CIA and NSA. Much of his work product was pure but believable fiction, lies he told, and truths he concealed.
Now, he’s a retired spy, still writing fiction. Through his novels, he exposes the way intelligence agencies craft fiction for sale to sway their countries and manipulate their national policy, driving countries into dangerous conflicts.
He’s been published under his real name many times in financial trade journals on topics including global banking, computer fraud and countermeasures, financial forecasting, global electronic-funds transfer networks, and corporate finance, including one book on finance published by a major publisher. He has been a featured speaker at financial conferences and conventions. His children’s book, A Teenager’s Guide to Money, Banking and Finance, was published in 1987 by Simon & Schuster. He was once the CEO of an eBook publishing c
ompany and writes a blog (http://www.dskane.com) on topics that include new technology, politics, and the future of publishing.
He has been guest faculty at the Whidbey Island MFA program, and also teaches a course at the Muse Online Writers Conference entitled Covert Training and Covert Operations for Fiction Writers, and one on a similar topic at California libraries, funded by a federal grant. He has taught a thriller-writing course at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference and was a featured speaker at a dinner meeting of the California Writers Club. He taught finance at the Stern Graduate Business School of New York University for over ten years, and is one of the co-founders of ActFourWriters.com, a unique email-based novelists’ critique group (http://www.actfourwriters.com). His website can be found at http://www.dskane.com.
