MONEY TREE

by Gordon, Ferris,

  Anila clapped her hands. ‘That is perfect!’

  ‘Even if you don’t get many followers, we might get a few friends to support my father when he arrives at court on Monday. Today is Saturday, which gives us two days to stir things up.’

  ‘Should we go?’

  Meera looked at this ingénue with frank admiration. How far could she go with proper training and education? But before she could answer, a burst of hammering shook the front door, as though there had been a terrible accident in the fields. A woman’s voice was calling out. A woman’s voice that Anila knew in the darkest, most scarred piece of her heart. She shot to her feet, her hands over her ears. But the voice cut through.

  ‘Come out, Anila Jhabvala! We know you are in there! Come out and pay your debts to your husband. We know you have money now.’

  ‘Who is it?!’ asked Meera, rising to her feet, shocked at the terror in Anila’s face.

  Anila couldn’t get the words out. Her mouth moved and gulped as she gasped for breath. Another voice cut in, a man’s voice, softer, wheedling,

  ‘Open up, wife of mine. We saw everything yesterday. I have come for my due. That is all. Open up and I won’t beat you, precious jewel.’

  Anila’s body twisted as though she had been stabbed in the stomach. Finally, she got it out.

  ‘It is my husband and my mother-in-law. They have come back. I knew this would happen. That it would all go wrong.’

  FIFTY TWO

  Erin returned to Ted’s room fully dressed, her face make-up free, scrubbed and glowing. She’d pinned her hair loosely held behind her ears with a big clip. Ted gave her hair a second glance. It looked different. More volume. And along the central parting was a line of lighter colour. Sunburned scalp? She saw what he was seeing and touched the seam. Her jaw clenched.

  ‘The last guilty secret. Go on. Take a look.’

  He stepped closer. She didn’t retreat. She bowed her head. He studied it in disbelief.

  ‘It’s red. You’ve got red hair.’

  She raised her head and stared defiantly at him.

  ‘Ted, I’ve got curly, red hair.’

  He grinned. ‘And freckles.’

  ‘Goes with the territory.’ Her chin jutted out.

  ‘But why? Some women spend a fortune to become a red head.’

  She shrugged. ‘Camouflage. Even in Scotland – red hair central - I got called ginger. When I was job hunting in London after university I thought it would make me look more serious, more business-like. Especially when I landed my first job. There are enough wolves in a dealing room without dangling red meat – so to speak – in front of them. It just got to be a habit. Now, shall we get down to business?’

  Ted had already set out the package content on the coffee table: two distinct sheaves of papers and one small memory stick. They each took a sheaf and began to read. Within moments, Erin looked up.

  ‘We need all this up on the web site. Use your phone, Ted, and I’ll upload.’

  He hefted his cell. ‘I’ve never actually used the camera bit.’

  ‘Call yourself a reporter?’

  Erin took the phone and set the camera zoom to take a full page in its view finder. She tried out one of the Yeardon papers on the pale carpet. The matte cream colour was perfect background for the documents. The words would stand out clearly on the faxes, contracts, private letters, and the single sheet that explained everything. They fired up Ted’s laptop and connected the phone camera to it by USB cable.

  They began to sift properly through the documents. They sat quietly, Ted on a chair, Erin on the two-seater couch sipping coffee and orange juice, and passing each other page after page of devastatingly incriminating material. Erin took photos of each of the key documents then uploaded them to the computer. They made few comments, just the occasional ‘this one’ or ‘take a look at para 3 and 4’. What they had was a chronology of the deal between Stanstead’s old bank Global Fidelity, and the insurance giant American Mart.

  But it wasn’t the official story, and the papers they were examining had never seen the light of day. The press at the time had seen only the surface: a hostile take-over bid by a power-hungry bank, astonishing at the time, but heralding a wave of consolidation among retail players, be they banks, supermarkets, insurers, clothing manufacturers, or automobile manufacturers. In the public version of the battle of wills, the American Mart boss, Bill Yeardon, had blinked first.

  Behind this smokescreen, the real story had been a lot dirtier and a lot more personal. Bill Yeardon might not have been a saint, but nor was he the embezzling, bribing, backstabbing corporate criminal made out in the second set of documents. This was a bound dossier cataloguing the ‘findings’ of a team of Warwick Stanstead’s researchers – muckrakers and forgers, more like – into Yeardon’s business and personal life over the previous three decades. Much of it was hearsay and unproven. A large chunk was almost certainly made up, but with a grain of truth in it that would have made the lies seem plausible if they’d gone public.

  There were the purported close links with Senators and at least one President, at auspicious moments in the growth of Yeardon’s company. There were the interesting bank account details showing – apparently – personal transactions at key times between Yeardon and the heads of companies he’d taken over or presidents or top officials of countries that he’d moved into. The coincidence of these bank account details, which went back ten or twenty years, being made available by the very bank that was mounting the take-over would have been glossed over in a public exposé. Erin explained to Ted how the counterfeit records could be created. As they stood, the faked-up dossier would do little more than blacken Yeardon’s name.

  But the memory stick changed the game. Ted slotted it into a spare USB port on the laptop. A number of voice and video files popped up. Ted began clicking on them, each clearly labelled and dated. He started with a video clip. It was poor quality, taken by laptop camera in a hotel room. A man was staring into the lens. He was grey-haired and haggard. But his voice was strong and filled the room.

  ‘My name is Bill Yeardon. I’m Chief Executive Officer of American Mart. I’m sitting in room 942, the Four Seasons Hotel, New York. I’m wearing a wire and waiting for Warwick Stanstead, CEO of Global Fidelity. The conversation you will hear after this is between him and me. It concerns Global Fidelity’s hostile take-over of my company and the dirty tricks’ campaign against me and my company.’

  Ted closed the video and clicked on the audio file. It was silent for a few seconds then restarted. Now there were two voices. They listened to the familiar voice of Warwick Stanstead and the new voice of Bill Yeardon as they slugged it out. There was incredulity and outrage at first from Yeardon concerning the receipt of the first pieces of the damaging dossier. Stanstead was flippant, cocky and contemptuous. They talked back and forward over the details in the dossier, with Stanstead readily admitting to – no, gloating about the quality of the forgeries and the exaggerations.

  The second recording began the same way, but a week later and in a different hotel. This time Yeardon was losing control and making accusations of blackmail and threats of going public and calling in the police. Stanstead was turning the screws, becoming more venomous, saying there was worse to come unless Yeardon caved in.

  The final recording, just three days later was about defeat:

  ‘What sort of animal are you?’ Yeardon’s voice was leaden. The anger had been replaced by a dull, aching monotone.

  ‘It’s a jungle, call me a lion.’

  ‘I’d call you a roach but it’s an insult to the roach.’

  ‘Does this mean you concede?’

  ‘Concede? No. This means I’m walking away from the vilest, foulest piece of work I’ve ever seen in my business life. I’ve met a lot of tough guys in this business world Stanstead. Guys a lot tougher than you. But I’ve never met anyone who’d stoop so low as to falsify records, produce fake photos - of that poor, poor mite! - and threaten my wife and
family.’

  ‘Come, come, Bill. Don’t tell me you didn’t get a little horny when you saw the pictures? Don’t tell me that you didn’t wonder in your heart of hearts what it would really have been like?’

  ‘You shit! You total shit!’

  ‘Ok Bill, enough. Can we cut to the chase. Are you out or not?’

  There was a long silence. Then a voice came over like he was speaking from under water. ‘I’m out. My lawyers will be in touch. What about the photos and papers?’

  ‘So glad you’ve seen sense. We’ll be generous in the pay-off.’

  ‘What about the photos?!’

  ‘Oh, well I guess I’ll hang on to them for a little while. You never know, do you, when they might come in handy?’

  ‘No way! The deal’s off! Unless I get every scrap of filth and all the copies, I’m signing nothing. You hear?!’

  ‘Sure Bill. Sure. We can do that.’

  The recording stopped. Ted and Erin looked at each other.

  ‘Photos?’ she asked. Ted opened a zip file and found a batch of JPEGs. But heading the list was another video clip. It was Bill Yeardon again. Looking demented, looking suicidal. He had a drink in his hand. He knocked it back and stared straight into camera:

  ‘Hi Vee… darlin’,

  if you’ve ever loved me as much as I’ve loved you then you’ll know that the attached photos are false. Photoshopped or something. On the life of our children, these are lies! They are so sick that they are beyond my comprehension. This is all part of the filthy tricks and blackmail by Stanstead and his black crew. But they’ve done their work. I can’t go on with this business if there are people out there prepared to go to these lengths. I’m sick to my stomach and they can have the company if they want it this bad. I’m just terrified that they won’t stop until they get what they want. They’ll do anything and they’ve already made threats about you and the kids.

  If you’re watching this it’s because I’m not around to protect you any more. They’ve got copies of everything in this folder except maybe the voice records, and they’re just as likely to use the stuff or it could come out by accident or something. So I thought you should be prepared.

  Believe me. This isn’t me. These photos are lies. I love you more than life itself and you have to trust me at the last.

  God look after you, Vee. I love you.’

  Erin was wiping at her eyes as Ted clicked open the first photo. She took a quick glance at the screen and put her hands to her mouth.

  ‘I don’t think I’m ready for this. I’ll never be ready for this.’

  Ted steadily clicked through the folder of colour photos. They showed what looked like Bill Yeardon in a series of loving and intimate situations with children. The top ones showed ‘him’ with a boy of no more than 7 or 8. They were in a hotel room. Both were clothed and ‘Bill’ was holding the worried looking child close to him and looking into the camera. They moved on quickly to naked bedroom scenes in which ‘Bill Yeardon’ was skewering the beautiful boy in a number of different poses. The child was weeping and distraught. Ted flicked to the end and sat back in his chair.

  ‘The bastard. The bastard.’ He said it softly and carefully like a benediction. ‘None of this goes up on the web.’

  Erin wiped her eyes, blew her nose and got back to work.

  ‘Let’s keep it simple. We’ll send the whole lot, garbage and all, to a lawyer I know in London. So nothing gets lost no matter what happens to us. For the website, let’s put up all the key papers we sifted, including the faked-up dossier. Also the voice recordings that refer to them. We can embed them in the documents at the right places.’

  ‘Do we have to put the bad stuff out?’

  ‘I thought you were a newspaperman? Never underestimate people’s powers to see through lies.’

  ‘You’re right, but it needs some perspective. I’ll knock up an intro to the material putting it in context. A document and a video clip. That’ll do the trick.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s ten pm. Let’s get this done and aim to sync up with Oscar at midnight our time.’

  Erin took over Ted’s pc and handed her own laptop to Ted. While she formatted the digital records of the papers and the audios, Ted hammered away at his keys shaping an article that explained the background to everything going out. He felt the adrenalin flow like he was 20 again and had a deadline to meet and the presses were waiting. During the next hour they smiled at each other a lot in recognition of their respective contributions. Ted emailed his cover article to Erin and she set up the whole folder ready to upload to the web site.

  She brought up the address and got the message: website not available. Ted tried from his computer. Still blocked. He felt the sweat grow on his back and trickle down the base of his spine. They tried again and again.

  ‘Access denied. The web site’s down! We’re too late, Erin!’

  FIFTY THREE

  ‘Aux armes! Aux armes citoyens!’

  Oscar was pounding away on the keyboard following the sounding of the klaxon that had brought him staggering from his bedroom at 2am on Sunday morning. He’d linked the device, which sounded like a muted Second World War air raid siren, to a number of tripwires around his Internet sites. Any attack on the People’s Bank firewall or his ‘sevensilverbullets’ web site would set it off. Both were happening.

  Similar alarms were sounding via the computer screens of his companions in arms, and one by one they were checking in. The messages began to erupt on everyone’s screens.

  the websites down an hour. whole ISP is out. looks like a data blizzard. -Thor-

  they’ll be tracking the source. our asses are on the line -Slick Willy-

  no sweat. all they’re hitting is the public stuff. originals in Tor. I’ve got 12 mirror sites in the dark. I’m posting links to each of you. all of you take a site and keep the replication going. no matter what, shield the dirt on GA. Ted & Erin are setting up a media blitz. -LR-

  Hi Lone Ranger. We’ve just come on and can’t get in. -Erin –

  Gonna give you new web site addresses. Hope you’ve downloaded the Tor browser like I told you. It’s untouchable. and by the way, take a look at the latest stuff I put up. we got the GA data warehouse to put out for us like u said. nice trace of big money going from GA to interesting accounts in India. hold tight. -LR-

  fabulous! And we’ve got new stuff to go up too! This is killer material. We need to go public. -Erin-

  you mean missile launch????! - LR-

  There was a pause in the flickering messages. Erin turned from her screen to Ted.

  ‘They want to know if this is it, and if they can counter-attack?’

  ‘I can read. So they’ve found the pay-offs to the Indian government! Ramesh is in the clear. That settles it. What’s to lose?! We’ve got Joey waiting out there for the go-ahead to come back and swat us, Stanstead’s killed one web site and I guess from what I’m seeing, the bank’s under attack again. I say go.’

  ‘You realise what will happen? And that it could all backfire?’

  ‘Do we have a choice?’

  Erin turned back to her screen, took a deep breath and hit the keys.

  nuke em. Oscar!!

  They stared at the screen. Nothing happened.

  ‘So what is going on Erin?’

  ‘We’re waiting for it to start.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Cyber war.’

  As she spoke messages started scrolling down her screen.

  ‘Is there any way you can explain that to a Neanderthal?’

  ‘Let’s start with the public web site. GA has knocked out our service provider with sheer volume.’

  She tracked the messages on her screen. They were being copied on everything that Oscar and his gang were saying.

  ‘Oscar knows GA is trying to track down the site owners. Namely, Oscar and his crew. But the trail stops at Tor. GA has no way of following URLs into darknets. It’s a separate slice of the dark web. A website set up as a Hidden Servi
ce is accessible only when you’re connected to the Tor network. They’ll waste a lot of time on the public stuff but won’t have a clue about the real world.’

  ‘But we’re in the public world and Oscar was using public servers. Won’t that allow Warwick’s team to trace them? They could be on their way round to visit him now!’

  ‘Relax. For one, Oscar’s working on a virtual machine. His hardware is shielded. For another, he’s completely anonymous inside a darknet.’

  Ted’s forehead creased as he tried to follow. Erin pointed at her screen.

  ‘Look! – instructions and a new link. We’re going into Onionland.’

  ‘Where the hell is Onionland?!’

  ‘A darknet. If you’re not browsing through Tor, you can’t get in. The Hidden Services pseudo-suffix - .onion - isn’t resolvable by the Internet’s core DNS servers, and Hidden Service URLs are a jumbled, 16-character alphanumeric mess autogenerated by a public cryptography key when the site is created.’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea what you just said. Or even what language you said it in.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Tell you later.’

  Erin typed in the details and the screen cleared showing their now familiar menu of evidence against Warwick Stanstead.

  ‘Right, I’ll upload the Yeardon material. Why don’t you hook up to the battle? I’m sending you Oscar’s link.’ She fired the email across. Ted double-clicked and found his screen filled with rapidly scrolling messages.

  ok we’re synced. we got enough replicas to snow them for days.- Switchblade-

  yeah? don’t bet. seen the code these guys are using? so bad!!!- Thor-

  sooner we go public the better. what’s cooking, LR?- SlickWilly-

  Erin’s shooting up the hidden web now with new stuff. - LR-

  checked the bank firewall. looking cool. I mean cool!! no flames… yet! - Magus-

  keep your peepers on your block. I’ve got the centre. let’s see the view from our Delhi compadres - LR-

  Ted turned to Erin. ‘How long can the bank firewalls hold out?’