The Shadow File (An Alex Vane Media Thriller, Book 4)

by A. C. Fuller

  But let's say that you're a hospital with crucial medical records on your computers. If a hacker takes over your system and threatens to delete your data, there's a good chance you'll pay that hacker tens of thousands to get him or her to release the data. In short, you'll pay the ransom.

  But what Innerva had done was much more complicated, more devious, and more ingenious.

  She'd taken millions of computers and turned them into her tools, spreading her shadow file until it found the exact systems it wanted to take hostage. From Cuba, Innerva had managed to gain access to millions of machines, and to use them to freeze the entire U.S. private security system. And she'd done it all without anyone knowing until a few days ago.

  We sat in silence for a full minute, and I could tell that Greta was contemplating the details, as I was. The restaurant had emptied out, and the old woman behind the bar was wiping it down, clearly closing up for the night.

  Innerva saw me noticing this. "Don't worry," she said. "They won't mind if we stay late. I'm like family in this town. They don't know why I married Juan, but they know that I made it possible for him to travel for the first time in his life. And many of them love hearing about America. They'll let us stay as long as we want."

  I looked at Greta, then at Innerva, trying to figure out what to say. "That story was…shocking…I don't know...But the way you're talking about it, I can tell something is wrong. Amand told me that you made two threats. First, to destroy all the data you collected from these companies, which would undermine the U.S. security apparatus. And second, to publish embarrassing personal information about the men and women who work within it. And he said that you threatened to do this by yesterday, I think it was, or earlier today—I'm losing track of time—if these companies didn't shut down."

  "That's right."

  "But you didn't do it. Or else we wouldn't be here."

  "Also right," Innerva said.

  "So, setting aside the morality of this whole thing, what do you need from us?"

  Innerva stared at me.

  "Why did you send for us when you did?" Greta asked. "Why haven't you followed through on your threat?"

  Innerva chuckled bitterly. "Believe it or not, my internet's down."

  Somehow that was the most incredible thing she'd said yet. Having your internet go down is like having your credit card declined, one of those embarrassing frustrations in life that simply goes away above a certain income level. Mark Zuckerberg's credit card doesn't get declined, and Innerva Shah, of all people, does not have her internet access go down.

  She must have read some of that in my face, because she rolled her eyes. "We're in Cuba, remember? The only internet here goes through government servers. Except mine. I had a covert satellite link that gave me all the access I needed, as well as keeping this town provided with new movies, TV shows, and computer games. There's more than one reason I'm family around here."

  "You said had," I replied warily.

  "They destroyed my setup a week ago. Luckily, I got a tip that they were about to do so, or I'd be in solitary in Guantanamo Bay which, coincidentally, is only an hour from here."

  "A week ago? Amand told me they lost track of you about a week ago."

  "He was telling the truth about that," Innerva said.

  "My plan was to launch the attack from here, assuming that they ignored my ultimatum. But that's no longer possible. All the time I spent setting up the system was wasted."

  "I'm still not seeing what you want from us."

  Innerva reached into her pocket and pulled out a simple black USB drive. "I want you to take this to America and slip it into the first computer you see."

  I was about to ask if she'd lost her mind when I heard the first gunshot.

  23

  Crack!

  It came from outside the restaurant, but not far away.

  The three of us dropped to the floor under the table.

  Then came three more shots in rapid succession. Crack crack crack.

  I looked at Innerva, who was peering out toward the front door of the restaurant. "Those came from my house."

  I grabbed Greta's hand. "Your house? You live here?"

  Innerva shot a look toward the back of the restaurant, then back toward the front door. She was conflicted about something, but I didn't know what.

  But Greta did. "Delfino and Seleste? You live with them? The yellow building outside?"

  Innerva didn't respond. "Let's go," she said, leaping up, stowing the USB drive in the pocket of her shorts, and bolting for the back door.

  Greta yanked me out from under the booth and we followed Innerva past the bathrooms, down a short corridor, and out a back door into an alley.

  The alley went left to right behind the restaurant and a few other shops. On the opposite side of the alley were a couple houses and a large vacant lot, fenced in and topped with barbed wire. Innerva sprinted between two of the houses, her floral shirt flowing behind her.

  When we came out on the other side of the houses, we were on a residential street. Small houses lined both sides, with decrepit cars in front. I caught up with Innerva, who had already crossed the street and turned left. "What are we doing?" I yelled.

  As we ran, she reached out her hand and shoved something into my hand. For an instant, I thought it was the USB drive. I didn't know what was on it, and I didn't want to know. I wanted nothing to do with it.

  But it wasn't a USB drive. It was a key.

  "You have to drive," she panted, pointing about twenty yards ahead of us at a yellowish-brown sedan. It wasn't as old as most of the cars I'd seen in Cuba, but it was just as rickety. At least it had seatbelts.

  Greta was only a few seconds behind us when we reached the car. Innerva climbed into the back seat, so Greta slid into the front seat, put her head on my lap, and tugged my shirt, forcing me to duck as I started the car.

  "Where should I go?" I asked, peeling into the street.

  "Don't speed. At least not yet. I know most of the police in town but if they see you speeding they'll stop you."

  I glanced in the rearview mirror, and that's when I understood why Innerva had taken the back seat, and why she'd wanted me to drive. She was holding a black semi-automatic pistol, pointing it out of the back window. I looked, but didn't see anyone following us.

  "Where should I go!" I demanded, surprised and a little freaked out that Innerva had a gun.

  I'd always known that she was much more radical than James. He'd been a big teddy bear of a guy, willing to break the law and hack into systems to expose criminals, corruption, and hypocrisy. He saw himself as the Batman of journalists. Sure, he operated outside the law, but his aims were pure at the core.

  I doubt he ever would have gotten involved in a plan like Innerva's ransomware attack, especially if it required using a gun.

  Innerva rolled down both of the windows in the back of the car, then said. "Two streets up is Calle Luz. Take a right there and that'll take us away from the apartment and out of town."

  "Okay, but then what?" I asked.

  When she didn't respond, Greta said, "Alex, what the hell are we doing?"

  "I don't know," I said. "I really don't."

  I took the right turn onto Calle Luz, driving at a normal speed through light traffic. We passed through another small commercial district, then another few blocks of homes before leaving town. All the while I snuck glances into the rearview mirror, which showed no signs of us being followed.

  About a mile outside of town, Innerva finally spoke. "About five miles ahead, there's a little village. A few homes. That's where we're gonna stop."

  "Then what?" I asked, but she had already turned around, gun pointed out the back window.

  The village was named Colombia-Niquerom, but it was really just a handful of old stone houses, most of which looked abandoned. Innerva directed me to a two-story house about a hundred yards off the main road, and I pulled around out back and parked next to a rusty wireframe chicken coop that abutted t
he rear of the house.

  Innerva jumped out and called to Greta. "Help me with this."

  She'd pulled a green tarp out of a bucket next to the chicken coop and, as I put the key in my pocket, she and Greta draped it over the car. The tarp only covered about two-thirds of the car, but she angled it such that it would be hard to see from the road. Next, she put a few rocks on the tarp to hold it in place, and threw a few handfuls of dirt and dry grass on top of it.

  Inspecting her work, she said, "If they're looking for a yellow sedan, this will make it a little harder."

  "But not much harder," I said. "What's the plan?"

  Innerva was already heading for the back door, a few feet from the chicken coop where four scrawny birds had come out from a little wooden house to see what the commotion was.

  Without knocking, Innerva opened the door, which was unlocked. "Abuela," she called in a loud whisper. "Abuela Martinez."

  "Your grandmother lives here?" Greta asked.

  "Grandmother in-law," Innerva said. "Juan's mother. I told myself I'd never bring her into anything I was doing but…" She trailed off, the way people always do when they know what they're doing is wrong, but are out of better ideas.

  We followed Innerva into the house, where a small washroom led to a hallway that opened into the kitchen. The kitchen was large, and would have been at home in a 1960s woman's magazine. The yellow and brown cabinetry reminded me of the sedan we'd just hidden, and the stove was an antiquated electric model. The fridge was short and narrow, and there was no microwave. But it was clean and well kept.

  "Sit," Innerva said, poking her head out of the kitchen. "Abuela Martinez?"

  Greta and I sat at a small round table, watching as Innerva disappeared through the doorway.

  When she was gone, Greta whispered, "This is crazy. There's got to be a better option than following Innerva. What if we—"

  "Walked out of here and found a police officer?"

  "Yeah, or called them…something."

  "That's what I was thinking during the ride over here, but…"

  "What?"

  "First of all, if we find police, they will find out about Innerva. I mean, they know about Innerva, but not that she's using Cuba to stage an attack on the U.S. security apparatus. If anyone in the Cuban government found out, or even a police officer with basic common sense, Innerva would be extradited to the U.S. in chains, probably with a stop in Guantanamo to be tortured."

  I paused for a moment, listening. I heard creaking above us, like Innerva was making her way up a flight of stairs. "The other reason is that I don't have a ton of trust in the Cuban police. We're here under false pretenses, and I don't doubt that Amand and his crew could bribe the police to arrest us. My thinking is that we see what Innerva's plan is, find a way back to Havana as soon as possible, then get the hell out of Cuba. I—"

  "Shhh," Greta said.

  The creaking was back, and it now sounded like two people coming down the stairs.

  My whole body tightened, my brain raced through scenarios that involved a dead grandmother upstairs, her killer leading Innerva downstairs with a gun pressed into her side. I was holding my breath when Innerva emerged from around the corner and stepped into the kitchen.

  A short old woman in a pink bathrobe shuffled in behind her, hunched over like her neck and shoulders were weighed down, but smiling nonetheless. "Hola!" she said in a voice louder than I would have expected coming from a woman of at least ninety.

  Innerva waved her arm toward us in a sweeping gesture. "Estas son mis amigas, Greta y Alex." Then she gestured to the old woman. "This is Grandma Martinez."

  Greta stood. "Placer conocerte. Lo que una cocina encantadora que tienes." As she said it, she pointed at the cabinets and the stove, which made me think that she was complimenting the kitchen.

  "Gracias. ¿Tienes hambre? Sí Sí. Comerás. ¿Tienes hambre?"

  Without waiting for an answer, Grandma Martinez opened the fridge and began pulling out tupperware and bowls.

  Greta and Innerva sat at the table. "Does she speak English?" I whispered to Innerva.

  "Not a word."

  "Then, can I ask, what's the plan?"

  Grandma Martinez laid out plates and cold roast pork with rice and salad. "Should I tell her we already ate?" I asked.

  "She won't care," Innerva said. "You're eating."

  "Don't be rude, Alex," Greta said. Then, turning to Grandma Martinez, she said, "Gracias. Se ve deliciosa."

  "The plan?" I said to Innerva.

  "Daylight is in about five hours. We spend the night here and, meanwhile, I'll be using every connection I've made since moving to Cuba to try to get the police to help us get out of this alive."

  24

  Innerva put Grandma Martinez to bed, and Greta and I nibbled at the meal she'd laid out for us. Innerva took a few bites, then pulled her laptop out and plugged a small black box into it. Into the black box she ran the landline phone cord and dialed up the Internet.

  I hadn't seen a dial-up connection in twenty years. "You're not gonna tell me you planned the ransomware attack over dial-up, are you?"

  Innerva smiled for the first time since the Italian restaurant. "No. Like I said, my main connections were destroyed about a week ago. This is a plan B. Actually, plan C or D at this point. It's not secure, but also not easy to trace, unless they already know we're here, which I doubt. And we won't be here long."

  "What are you doing?" I asked.

  Innerva didn't respond, and Greta put her hand on my knee and gave me a look that said, "Leave her alone."

  Then Greta said, "Is there a couch or something we can sleep on?"

  Innerva nodded toward the kitchen door, and I followed Greta into a living room with matching decor. Brownish-orange carpet, an old couch, and a TV with a screen not much larger than my iPhone, encased in wood.

  I lay on the floor, and Greta took the couch. "I figured we should try to get a few hours of sleep," she said, yawning.

  "Before the shots, Innerva was saying she needs our help. The USB drive."

  "We can talk about that tomorrow," Greta said.

  I reached out from the floor and stroked her hair, the way I knew she liked. She let out a noise, half sigh and half relaxed whimper. She didn't purr, not exactly anyway. But that's the way I liked to think about the sound of her breathing.

  One of the things I'd learned during our separation was that there was always something that seemed more important than the little moments that make up a relationship, that make up a life. Something more pressing, something more demanding of my attention. Always something that seemed more important than love.

  Back when we lived in New York, it was bills and work. Then for a while it was Greta's pregnancy, all the preparation and planning. When we lost the baby and moved to Seattle, it was bills again as we got back on our feet. Then The Barker got huge and Greta's career took off, so instead of worrying about bills we worried about work. About maintaining the levels we'd hit in our respective careers.

  Bills. Kids. Bills. Work.

  Always something more important than the relationship, than us.

  But it was all bullshit.

  In that moment on the floor, running from Amand and his team of hired killers could have seemed like the most important thing. In fact, it might have even been the smarter thing to be thinking about. But as I stroked Greta's soft hair, she was all I cared about.

  I was beginning to think she'd fallen asleep when her head shifted slightly under my hand. "I know this is bad to say, but I don't care what happens to Innerva. I don't care what happens with her ransomware attack. The only thing I care about is getting out of here and getting back to Seattle. With you."

  I didn't know what to say. It was as though she'd given voice to my thoughts.

  Problem was, as soon as she said it, my mind started changing. As much as I wanted to get back to Seattle with Greta, and as sure as I was that she was my top priority, I did care about what happened with Innerva'
s attack.

  I knew it was crazy, but I wanted to know what was on that USB drive. And that thought started a chain of thoughts. All the questions I hadn't gotten to ask in the Italian restaurant started flooding my mind, battling with the exhaustion I felt.

  I wanted to know whether Innerva really had all the data she claimed to have. I wanted to know whether she was really prepared to cripple the U.S. security system if the companies she targeted failed to shut themselves down. And, most of all, I wanted to know what would happen if she followed through on her threat.

  I knew it would be the greatest security breach in U.S. history. Bigger than the Wikileaks hack of the CIA and Vault 7. Bigger than the time a fifteen-year-old boy named "cracka" hacked the FBI and disclosed hundreds of agents' secret identities on the dark web. But what I didn't know, what I don't think even Innerva knew, what no one could know, was how far-reaching the effects would be.

  When I was sure Greta was asleep, I got up as quietly as I could and went to the kitchen, where Innerva was hunched over her laptop. Standing in the doorway, I waited for her to look up.

  I knew she was ignoring me, but I'd decided to take control of the situation. "Close the laptop," I said.

  She kept typing, then glanced up.

  "We need to talk," I said.

  "Almost done."

  I stared at her as hard as I could and was about to walk over and shut the laptop when she closed it herself.

  Taking a chair across the table, where the dirty dishes and tupperware from dinner were still sitting, I said, "Tell me everything."

  25

  I shouldn't have been surprised that she kept me in the dark. I didn't think it was because she distrusted me. She had, after all, sent Seleste and Delfino for me.

  But after twenty minutes of listening to her talk around my questions, I'd grown impatient. "Innerva, if you don't tell me what's going on right now, Greta and I are walking out of here and taking our chances with the local police."