The Gold Club: A White Collar Crime Thriller

by David Haskell

  The reason for such an awkward system was so they would never go down, even if the data center was bombed to the ground. No matter what happened, customers never had to wait on Sahara, not even for an instant—a huge corporate selling point, it was also their biggest weakness. Ted and Phil would have to exploit this vulnerability in order to pawn the club off and make a clean break.

  The biggest internal concern was how to break it to their staff in such a way that nobody rebelled. That meant payoffs. In a testament to how burdensome the club had become, the notion of giving away a large chunk of their earnings didn’t bother either of them. They just wanted out.

  “...and once I’ve dumped the files back in the local server, the backups will pick it all up and integrate it.” Ted finished with a faux-cheerful, “Piece of cake!” Hardly.

  “That all makes sense,” Phil said, his tone measured and non-committal. “One thing is still problematic though,” he continued, “there’s no way to get anywhere near the SDC without being seen. It’s crawling with infotechies.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that, now that you mention it,” Ted said, “and I wanted to run something by you.”

  * * *

  “I’m in.” Ella Jones smiled at Ted, a cigarette in one hand and a glass of honey-colored booze in the other. “You think I don’t want to give that old sonofabitch what’s coming to him? So what’d you need from me?”

  The dive she’d taken him to was in the basement of a rundown neighborhood, and as such Ted hadn’t had the guts to ask her if she lived around here. He seemed to remember her former address on file had been in an entirely different part of town, and that meant she’d fallen a long way since her run in with Dennis Hamm and his minions. He would have felt sorry for her if she’d not been quite so nasty to Til, but he still remembered the scathing review she’d left on one of her singles before she struck the bigtime, and he vaguely resented it even now.

  Ted’s immediate concern, though, was Ella’s willingness to help, and just as importantly, her potential ability to do so. She had fallen far, after all. He decided to approach the subject directly. “You still have your contacts, right?”

  She looked at him sideways for a second, deciding whether to be insulted. But then she shrugged and said, “Oh, sure,”—she hiccup’d once, touched her chest, then resumed talking when the second one never came—“I still keep in touch with most of ‘em. I winnowed it down some, you know, getting rid of the shits who couldn’t be bothered extending a bit of god damned sympathy to a friend in need. Who needs them, am I right?” She winked, but Ted noticed a profound, defeated slump behind the casual gesture. Not completely defeated, though, there was determination there too, along with a tinge of well-earned wisdom, perhaps? Tangling with Sahara had changed her, that much was obvious. “It’s still a big, fat list of who’s who,” she finished cheerily, “and a lot of them are none too happy with your employers, I might add.”

  “Good,” Ted said, eliciting a smile from the critic. She was ready for the hunt, that much was obvious. If even a fraction of her friends felt the same way, this part of the plan might just come together. “I assume it wouldn’t take much to send out some information to these folks, something that requires careful timing?”

  “I can do it,” she said with supreme confidence, “just tell me when”. Ted felt like this entire plan might just work, what had been a pipe dream just hours ago was beginning to come together. In a way, it almost reminded him of the beginnings of the club. Fitting since this would be the end of it, but he didn’t want to dwell on it too much.

  * * *

  Ted ran through the idea once more when he got back with Phil, now that they had confirmation from Ms. Jones that her network would be available for the job.

  The idea was to blast Sahara with a brute-force attack coordinated in such a way that it required their entire team of specialists to deal with it. The side benefit, of course, would be a legion of pissed off clients ready to tear Dennis Hamm a new one, but that wasn’t essential to their success. Just the disruption would be enough, leaving Phil with wide open access to the data center where he could shut down the system.

  “It’s all about the timing though,” Phil said for the umpteenth time, “we’ve got to make sure to get it right.”

  “We will. I’ll wait for your go-code and contact Ella Jones as soon as you take care of it. She’ll fire up the troops and publish the story. I’ll move in as soon as she’s good to go. Either way, it shouldn’t have any effect on your end.”

  “Okay, so that gets us as far as the DNS attack, but I don’t know how long it will take me after that. How will you—”

  “I’ll be on the network, remember?”

  “Of course I remember,” Phil said, a little too slowly. He hadn’t remembered at all—his mind was all over the place, preoccupied with regret for what had to be done.

  “So as soon as you take out the central server, I’ll go in. That way you won’t have to stop what you’re doing, and I’ll be able to get in and out before they get things back up and running.”

  Phil stared off into space. Ted imagined he was giving his brain a chance to catch up, or trying to process their incredibly capricious plan. There were a million ways it could go wrong. It could even wind up getting one of them hurt, if either of them got caught in a compromising position. Ted didn’t know if Phil was thinking any of that, but he certainly was.

  A snowball has better odds down below, he thought to himself. Then he said, It’ll work, Phil,”—he forced himself to stop running disaster scenarios for a minute, almost believing his own words—“It’s going to work.”

  ~ 33 ~

  Endings

  Ted tried to carry on like everything was normal, mostly in an attempt to put his personal failures behind him. He wasn’t happy, exactly, but he was keeping busy. Throwing money around became a form of therapy, self-medication of the external sort, and it came with benefits; he had constant companionship, and sex whenever he pleased. The sex felt empty and he was desperately lonely, but by ignoring those troubling facts he could fool himself into thinking he was having a good time. What he really needed was to feel loved again, the one sentiment money truly couldn't buy.

  Work kept him busy during the day, and he made sure to avoid any long down-times that might lead to overthinking. Nights were a debaucherous haze. But when things settled down and the work was done, when his latest conquest had drunk her coffee and beat a hasty retreat, that's when he missed her. And mourned her, again and again. Then the regrets would come, so intense they felt like acid in his gut, eating him from the inside, and so painful he wondered if he would ever feel good again, really good, good like she made him feel.

  He'd have kept up this destructive self-punishment indefinitely if the sudden message from Phil hadn't shocked him back to reality. The writing was on the wall, had been for quite some time, but Phil being in the crosshairs brought the matter uncomfortably close to home. Ted would be next.

  It wasn’t as though any of them were all that invested in the club anymore. It had been a long time since they’d seen it as anything other than a money grab. All of them had pushed their luck for a very long time. He sent a reply back to Phil, agreeing to meet on Monday to have ‘a serious conversation’.

  * * *

  “So it’s settled then?” Ted asked, at least resigned to the situation if not particularly happy about it. Phil nodded, looking worse than Ted felt. He had no ready comment. His expression, which had gone from disturbed to horrified to mournfully determined over the course of their conversation, had slipped back to horrified when they started mapping out what had to be done.

  Looking up and glancing around, he seemed to realize that Ted was expecting an answer. So he said, “Yeah, that’s how it’s got to be, I guess.” It was a whispered, scratchy tone of voice that emerged, hardly convincing, but Ted knew it was all he could manage.

  “Cheer up, man,” Ted said, trying to make eye contact. Phil didn’t re
ciprocate, he was looking back at the floor again. “Once they bring the system back online we’ll be out scot free, you know.” No reaction from his friend, so he added “it’s for the best,” before falling silent.

  “I know.” He cleared his throat, getting rid of the scratch, but his words were still unconvincing. “It’s just it’s so destructive.”

  Ted nodded, “It has to be. We’ve got to fry the whole place if we want to delete all traces. You know that.”

  “I know. Don’t mean I have to like it, though.”

  The partners were quiet as they continued working out the logistics. They would need to cause a great deal of damage in order to erase the evidence of their handiwork. The club had infiltrated departments and permeated balance sheets, and all of it would have to be forcibly removed. At the same time, the falsified, incriminating backup files would be uploaded to the local server. When the system reset itself, the switch would be permanent.

  Phil would contend with the Sahara Data Center, while Ted handled the local upload. The timing had to be perfect. Too soon onto the local servers, and routine collation scripts would swallow up their efforts. Too late, and the main computer would be up and running and flagging the false information to Infotech. No amount of magic from Phil's bag of tricks would save them if that happened.

  “Tell me again how we’re going to tie Hamm into all this?” Phil asked. “It's not like he’ll just roll over and play dead, he's going to come back at us if we try and frame him.”

  Ted walked over to the desk and picked up the quarterly report, holding it out to his partner.

  Phil took it, looked over the first page, and said “Okay. So?”

  “Read the summary on page five.”

  Phil flipped through the pages, found the text in question, and began reading under his breath. With his lips actually moving, the effect was comical. This was Phil to a T; no use for the written word unless it was an instruction manual. Well, Ted had seen him with the odd gaming magazine now and then, and there was his penchant for comics of course, but neither of those counted as high literature either.

  “Notice anything strange?”

  “What do we do about access?” asked Phil, sounding apprehensive. Funny that he would grow skittish now, after all the risks he was more than happy to take since the club was founded. But he wasn’t refusing—that was the main thing. “There’s no way for you to get into the executive wing unnoticed, right?

  Ted's enthusiasm sank. “Not while people are around, no.”

  “Or access Hamm’s files from elsewhere,” Phil continued, counting the problems on his hand.

  “Not unless you count security,” Ted suggested, though he knew full well that was even less of an option than the CEO’s office.

  “And you can’t,” Phil said, “‘cause they’ve got more eyes in there than anyplace.”

  “Out of the frying pan...” Ted admitted.

  He felt defeated. Phil was right, the warehouse was a beehive of activity twenty-four/seven, and he’d never attempted to access Hamm’s files when the boss wasn’t around. There was no way of knowing what kind of roadblocks there were.

  “Maybe there’s another way,” Phil offered.

  Ted thought for a minute, then threw out, “Hazmat accident?” without much conviction.

  “Are you nuts? You want to drop some chemicals on the floor or something?”

  “Not a real one. And not here, either. There are too many failsafes, plus the onsite emergency teams. It wouldn’t work.”

  “Okay then,” drawled Phil in long tones, as if speaking to a petulant kid, “if that wouldn't work, what are you suggesting?”

  “The train yard, maybe. Some problem with the trains, a dangerous spill. Or a derailment or something. I dunno.”

  “Oh Jesus, Ted! Will you get serious? You want to set off the whole town? Invite the cops to come knocking?”

  “You have a better idea?” Ted shot back, having exhausted his supply of unfeasible options.

  “Well, why not Sahara Day?”

  * * *

  ‘Sahara Day’, ostensibly a celebration to thank the employees for all they do, was an award winner that the media loved to tout. In reality it caused much more work, and stress, than a single day off could ever relieve. Because it rotated from place to place, employees were forever picking up the slack from all the other events. Sahara as an entity could never stop. Individual facilities did shut down entirely when their day arrived, and a bash was held at a large venue in their town, complete with politicians, marching bands, games, and assorted dignitaries from corporate.

  * * *

  Staffers began abandoning ship once the club showed signs of decay. It was no surprise to Ted that they weren't planning to stick around for the implosion. What did come as a surprise was how jealous it made him. He wished that he, too, could be in a position to just take the money and run. But that was impossible, he was in til the bitter end.

  There was still a lot of work to do, so he was grateful for the ones who stuck it out, whether or not they were protecting their own interests. Ted had little doubt that money, his money, was foremost on their minds, but as long as they continued doing the work he didn’t care. He had no time to waste on trivialities, nor to reflect on the magnitude of their clean-up efforts. He had to spend his days fielding calls and emails.

  “I’ve got a payoff sheet ready to send out to six clients, can you sign off on it?”

  “What should we do about the international paper trail? We’ve still got statements and other fund transfer slips lying around—how do you want me to handle it?”

  “We’ve got to gather up the last of the re-routed internal memo envelopes, you know. Can’t just leave them lying around once the club is gone, can we?”

  Ted took each demand in stride, not caring much about the details. He was confident in their ability to hide their tracks—every last one of them adept at subterfuge as a matter of course. They wouldn’t get caught this way, and that was the most important thing.

  As soon as he and Phil had made the decision to close up shop, they’d set a series of steps in motion that would unravel the pyramid scheme from the top down. Fortunately for that, it would take time, but the repercussions were already beginning to vibrate. Whatever damage was done in the early stages couldn’t be allowed to filter into the rest of the corporation, not yet. So he had to mollify, reassure, and otherwise handhold all those skittish creatives. They had to believe that everything was status quo, that any tremors they were seeing in their portfolios were just ordinary bumps in the road, and that their bought and paid for place in the rankings was secure. He only had to hold back the tide a little while longer. He was cautiously optimistic, but the ball was rolling fast now, with no margin for error.

  For now, he focused on making sure all those vartists were happy enough to keep their mouths shut, at least for a while. Without Marge around to take the flak, it was his turn to get personal with people he'd just as soon avoid. Frowning, he picked up the phone and squinted at his monitor, looking for the first contact number.

  ~ 34 ~

  Trappings

  With a quick glance backwards to make sure she was alone, Judy slunk into the darkened office and started poking around. She rifled through papers, cracked open drawers, and shined her cellphone light down into them and around the corners. The door creaked and she spun around, taking in a sharp breath and searching for cover—but there was nowhere to hide.

  “Looking for something?” Fangue drawled, the light from the hallway spilling in to frame his thickset features. He was fanning himself with something just under his chin.

  She allowed her shoulders to relax, arms dropping to her sides. “Asshole. You could’ve warned me.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  “Is that what I think it is?” she asked, all but certain she already knew.

  “Sure is.” He grinned, playfully sinister. Like a predator. She ignored the come-on, walking around him and
opening the door wider so she could see.

  “I need to set up a few things upstairs. Coming?”

  “Sure thing, hon. Just give me a couple minutes. I’ve been wanting to spend some time in this place since...well, since for a while now. I’ll be along—”

  “Suit yourself,” she said over her shoulder as she walked away, allowing the door to swing shut behind her, plunging the room back into darkness. Fangue chuckled at her confidence, turning back and feeling his way to the lock before reaching for the lights.

  * * *

  “The company founder had this all installed for himself, can you believe that?” She was enjoying the view, all of the plains, and the office wings, everything spread out below them like a miniature.

  “I believe it. Hamm Senior was an eccentric old bastard. Probably installed it to clock the ins and outs of all those workers under his thumb.”

  Judy clucked at him. He had no eye for extravagance, everything had to serve a practical purpose. But this, this was nothing but a vanity project. Something she would do, if she ever had the means.

  Alright,” he prodded, “hurry up and get it installed.”

  She sighed. She was almost enjoying herself, this time alone together with the one man at Sahara she held even a modicum of respect for. But his curt nature was part of that, so she had to take the bad with the good.

  Turning to the computer, she set up the false window to reflect a typical SDC login followed by a typical data center setup. Ward wouldn’t know the difference, it looked just like the screen he stared at every day. Once he tried the upload, though, that’s when it would snap shut, trapping him like a bug.

  “You sure it’s just these three stations we need to worry about?” she asked. They’d already taken care of the one in Ted’s office, and of course in the security center itself if he dared go in there. But it seemed risky, not covering all their bases.