Invisible Armies

by Jon Evans

  It seems like a little thing, compared to creating new government identities, but hacking is a time-consuming art. It can take Keiran days or even weeks to crack a new network, even with Shazam’s seven million machines on his side. P2 found Danielle in a few short hours. Maybe he just got lucky – but three months ago, when Shadbold’s thugs kidnapped him from his London flat, they were sent there by P2, who found Keiran in a matter of minutes despite Keiran’s many paranoid precautions.

  Those two extraordinary feats cannot both have been luck. The only logical conclusion to draw is that Keiran is overmatched. Either P2 has been around forever, and has a finger in every electronic pie on the planet, or he knows some extraordinary new exploit that gives him the power to immediately hack into virtually any system. For safety’s sake, Keiran has to assume that P2 has at-will access to every computer, database, network and satellite in the known world. Other than Shazam.

  “Let me put it this way,” he says. “I might have the Holy Grail, but P2 appears to have a direct line to God himself.”

  “Great. Just great. When does my new ID get here?”

  “A few days.”

  “We’re supposed to stay here until then?”

  “No,” Keiran says. “We need more to work with if we’re going to catch P2, and we need it fast, this hunt is sure to be a major time sink. You remember the corrupt police who chased you last night?”

  “Like I was about to forget,” Danielle says drily.

  “Well. Tonight, we chase them.”

  Chapter 32

  He looks to Mulligan. “Are we ready?”

  “Record away.”

  Keiran raises the microphone to his lips and affects a French accent. “This is Anna Fiche-Toi, personal assistant to Jack Shadbold.” He pauses a moment. “I apologize for not going through the usual channels, but this is a matter of some urgency. Danielle Leaf and Keiran Kell have been seen at a movie theatre and will be on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica in thirty minutes. You are instructed to be there to intercept.”

  He nods at Mulligan, who types a few lines.

  “Anna Fiche-Toi?” Danielle asks.

  “Anna Fuck You, loosely translated.”

  “You don’t sound like an Anna.”

  “He does now,” Mulligan says. “Listen.” And his computer plays back Keiran’s speech, the pitch adjusted up at least two octaves, the voice obviously filtered. It sounds more inhuman than female.

  “You’re sure you want to come?” Keiran asks Danielle and Jayalitha. “We don’t need you. And if there’s trouble…”

  “If there is trouble I am sure it will find us regardless,” Jayalitha says.

  “Fair point. Let’s take our toys and go pay the bad guys a little ambush.”

  Getting into his car again costs Mulligan a half-pint of sweat. Danielle can see why he rarely leaves home. In his apartment, before his computer, Mulligan is a master of the universe. Why go to a gruelling physical effort just to become an object of pity?

  “Try not to get pulled over,” Keiran says as Mulligan swings the car clumsily out into nighttime Valley traffic, wobbling between lanes. “Might be hard to explain how you happened to pick up two wanted terrorists and one illegal immigrant.”

  “Sorry. It’s been a while,” Mulligan says.

  Jayalitha gasps and Danielle grabs at the seat in front of her as the car skids into a last-second-decision left turn.

  “You don’t say,” Keiran says drily. “Also try not to get us killed. Killed is bad.”

  “You wanna drive?”

  “I would if I could, but I seem to have too many legs.”

  Danielle’s jaw drops at the insensitivity of that comment, but Mulligan chuckles and says, “Those damn legs gonna get you in trouble someday.”

  “They already have,” Keiran agrees.

  “You oughta get them removed. I know a doctor.”

  “I was saying just the other day I wanted to lose a few stone.”

  “That’s brilliant. The Amputation Diet! We’ll sell millions. Make Atkins look like a chump.”

  “You’re both sick,” Danielle says, amused despite herself.

  “It’s not us,” Mulligan says, “it’s the fuckin’ rest of the world.”

  * * *

  The Third Street Promenade is an upscale open-air shopping mall, a pedestrian thoroughfare in Santa Monica only a few blocks from the sea, decorated with elaborate fountains and dinosaur topiaries, entertained by buskers, lined by stores vending all the famous brand names of American commerce. It is a very popular place to shop, wander, and meet. This is only partly because of its laid-back luxury. In Southern California, where the unwritten law is “drive or be dogmeat”, easy parking is a draw in itself, and Second and Fourth Street, which bracket the Promenade, boast a half-dozen inexpensive parking garages.

  “All right, Mulligan mi amigo,” Keiran says, from the roof of the largest such garage. No other cars are on the roof; it is nearly nine PM, on a weeknight, and there are plenty of parking slots available on lower levels. “Go forth to Starbucks and send our enemies my sweet whispered words of love. And try not to be obvious.”

  Mulligan glares. “Go teach your grandmother.”

  He rotates his wheelchair and speeds it towards the elevators, his closed laptop in a carry-case where his calves would rest if they existed.

  “All right,” Keiran says. “Back in the car.”

  They wait a long half-hour before Keiran’s hiptop beeps. He glances at it and shows it to Danielle and Jayalitha. “These men look familiar?”

  The Danger hiptop’s screen displays a picture of two men, both middle-aged, one lean with hawklike eyes and greying temples, one plump, balding, and moustached. “Yes,” Danielle says immediately. “It was them. On the beach. Right?”

  “I think so,” Jayalitha says hesitantly. “It is hard for me to distinguish white men.”

  “It’s them. I’m sure of it,” Danielle says.

  “Good.” Keiran taps a reply into his hiptop. A minute later it beeps again and he grins triumphantly. “Excellent. They have been Bluesnarfed.”

  “That’s it?” Danielle asks after a moment.

  “You were expecting fireworks? Remember LoTek’s Law. That was about as spectacular as I hope to get.”

  “Perhaps you could explain?” Jayalitha asks after a moment. “I do not fully understand.”

  “Well.” Keiran hesitates. “Crash course in hacking. You remember I went looking for our friend P2 online, didn’t find him but did find the phone gateway he’s using, and that he’d called two Los Angeles numbers. That’s why I called you at the hotel.”

  Jayalitha nods.

  “So. What do we want? Information about the opposition. What do we have? Phone numbers. What do we do? Look up their names and addresses, right? No dice. Their phones are anonymous. But I think to myself, what kind of phones? We can look that up, because every time you use a mobile phone, you tell the network your phone’s serial number. Ironically this is to prevent stolen phones from being used. We hacked into the mobile phone company’s database, looked up their call records, and discovered, to our joy, that theirs are flashy new Nokias with Bluetooth. Meaning they’re equipped with special radios that let them talk to other phones and computers within twenty feet. So you can update your address book from your computer and so forth. Bluetooth is a communications protocol. You know what communication means? Communication means vulnerability.”

  “How very male of you,” Danielle says, amused.

  “Very funny. Our good friend Mulligan’s laptop speaks Bluetooth too. And it has been sitting in its case for the last hour running a program we wrote that plunders any Bluetooth phone within range. The moment they walked within twenty feet of him, he pillaged their call records, address book, text messages. And these are the anonymous phones our on-the-take friends use to talk to their secret masters. Surely they have been given a phone number to use when they do catch us. If so, we have that number right now
.”

  “Well, good,” Danielle says. She has never seen Keiran so excited.

  “We’ve only just begun. They’re walking down the promenade, looking for us. When they walk back up, we move on to phase two.”

  “What’s phase two?”

  “Social engineering, with a side order of Bluebugging, and a real-time VOIP trace for dessert. Much more exciting. Hold on to your hats. We’re going to ring our friends down there and have a little chat.”

  “You’re going to call them?” Danielle asks.

  “Terrible shame to acquire their phone numbers without bothering to use them, no? But what makes it interesting is that they’re going to ring us too. And they won’t even know it.”

  A moment later his hiptop beeps again, then rings. Danielle hadn’t realized it was a phone as well.

  “Here we go,” Keiran says. He answers the hiptop, gives it to Danielle, and says “Listen. Don’t push any buttons.” Then he draws out his own Virgin Mobile phone, dials, pauses, and punches more numbers into the phone.

  Danielle puts the Danger hiptop to her ear and hears a warbling ring. It sounds distant. Then a gruff voice, equally distant, says, “Yes?”

  “Good evening,” Keiran says in front of her. “My name is Keiran Kell. I understand you’re looking for me.” Danielle nearly drops the hiptop.

  “The fuck?” a man’s voice hisses in her ear. “It’s him. It’s Kell.”

  “Kell? The fuck? What does he want?” a second male voice asks. Both voices are familiar, from the beach, last night

  “What do you want?” the first voice asks.

  Danielle works out what is going on. The two cops are back within range of Mulligan. He has caused one of their Bluetooth phones to secretly call Keiran’s hiptop number, while Keiran calls their other phone. Getting a phone call from someone’s pocket without their knowledge is as good as planting a listening device on them.

  “I want you to pass a message to your employer. We want ten million dollars in my Cayman Islands account by midnight tonight, or we release evidence of what Shadbold is doing.” Keiran hangs up.

  “What was that all about?” Danielle asks, then twitches with dismay, worried that her voice might emanate from the phone on the other end of the hiptop’s connection. But the voice on the hiptop, repeating what Keiran just said, does not falter.

  “Don’t worry, they can’t hear you,” Keiran says. “Mulligan connected that phone to one of our VOIP gateways. That records the conversation and pipes the output one-way to the hiptop.”

  “You want money from them?” Jayalitha asks.

  “Oh, good Lord, no. I don’t even have a Cayman Islands account. The Caymans are so five years ago. No, the idea is to make them ring their secret masters right away.”

  “Quiet,” Danielle says. “I think they’re calling them now.”

  “Here,” Keiran says. He takes the hiptop and adjusts one of the controls on its side, turning it into a speakerphone.

  “Sorry to bother you, but Kell just called us,” the man says. “That’s right. He called us.” He summarizes Keiran’s demand, then says, “All right,” and in a different tone, “We’re supposed to wait a moment.”

  “Come on, Mulligan,” Keiran says, quietly but intensely. “Do your thing.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Ever seen a film where the police try to make the villain stay on the phone long enough to trace his call?” Danielle nods. “Well, that was always risible shite. As if phone companies could make a phone ring without knowing where it was. But this is almost like those films. I guarantee you that number they rang went through a VOIP redirector before it reached P2. Just like we’re listening to them through our gateway. Mulligan’s sitting in Starbucks right now trying to hack into their redirector before this conversation ends. If he’s good enough and fast enough, we find out where P2 physically is. But if they hang up first, anonymous redirectors don’t keep records, all those packets will be lost like tears in the rain.”

  “How poetic.”

  “Blade Runner. Cyberpunk icon. Come on, darling,” he says to the hiptop, “give me some good news.”

  The hiptop beeps as if to answer. Keiran scrolls to his email and grins with triumph. “We have a physical phone number. We have a location.”

  “He’s a block away from us right now?” the hiptop exclaims.

  Keiran, Danielle and Jayalitha stop and stare at it for a moment.

  “Parking garage at Fourth and Arizona,” it says. “Let’s move.”

  “Oh, fuck,” Keiran says hoarsely. “Fucking shit bollocks. He tracked us too. What is he, fucking omniscient? Must have triangulated the mobile signal. We need to be going right now.” He takes two steps towards Mulligan’s car.

  “Can you drive that?” Danielle asks, thinking of Mulligan’s PlayStation controller, and the backup hand-paddle accelerator and brake.

  “Shit. Probably not. Shank’s mare. Come on, the stairs. No, the elevator.” He starts towards the exit. Jayalitha follows.

  Danielle does not. Instead she looks over the edge of the parking garage, down into the alley between Third and Fourth streets, and sees, from seven stories up, two men sprint up the alley towards the parking garage. They are not uniformed, and the street lights are far too dim to recognize faces, but it has to be them.

  “Stop,” she says urgently. “It’s too late. They’re already here.”

  Chapter 33

  Keiran tries to imagine a plausible escape route. None is obvious. The parking garage’s interior is laid out in a giant helix, like New York’s Guggenheim museum. Elevators and stairs descend from the northeast and southwest corners of the building. Both corners will surely both be watched. Mulligan’s car is parked on the western edge of the roof. Keiran can probably hotwire it, but he cannot drive it well enough to escape the police. The garage is much taller than any other buildings around them, ruling out any escape to a connecting rooftop. The street lights of Santa Monica wink red and green seven sheer stories below, and there is nothing above them but the night sky. Keiran shakes his head, as if he might dislodge a moment of genius. Think outside the box. There must be some hack, some unexpected action, some lateral leap of logic that can save them. But nothing comes to mind. They are boxed in.

  “We could call backup,” his hiptop says. “Seal the place, have them arrested.”

  “I want that bonus,” the other voice says, his voice muffled but decipherable. “Stay here and watch the exits. Show your badge, get the attendants to help. I’ll go top and work down. If they get past us, then we call it in. They won’t get far, Santa Monica’s crawling with squad cars.”

  “Shit,” Danielle said. “Shit shit shit.”

  “Come on,” Keiran says. He doesn’t know how to get out, but he knows if they stay where they are, they’ll be captured immediately. “The stairs.”

  “They’ll see us.”

  “We’re not descending all the way. Give me that.” He takes the hiptop from her as they begin to descend, and switches off the speakerphone.

  They have gone down only one level when they hear the elevator ding on the roof above them. They freeze for a moment. If their pursuer takes the stairs immediately, they are caught. But they hear his boots moving away. Obviously he plans to walk the garage’s helix from top to bottom, checking under cars and other hiding spots, hoping to flush them out to the ground floor where his partner waits. He is unaware that his prey know they are being hunted.

  “We can just go back up top in a moment,” Danielle whispers, as Keiran leads them out onto the third floor.

  “No,” Keiran says. “Then they call backup and we’re not murdered but we’re definitely arrested. We have to get out before they give up on finding us. Except I have no idea how.”

  “The lights,” Jayalitha suggests. “If there is a wire we can find and sever. In darkness they will never see us.”

  Keiran stops in mid-step and turns to stare at Jayalitha. “That’s brilliant. The light
s. Of course.”

  “How? Find the fuse box? It’ll be locked,” Danielle says.

  “The rather large fuse box.” Smiling now, he takes out the Virgin Mobile phone again and punches a long series of numbers into it, establishing a secure connection to Mulligan’s mobile phone.

  “Yo,” Mulligan answers.

  Keiran says, “We got hacked and tracked. We need darkness and we need it ten seconds ago.” He hangs up immediately.

  “What do we do now?” Jayalitha asks.

  “Same thing we’ve been doing all night. Pray that Mulligan’s as good as I think he is.”

  The seconds ease by, much slower than Keiran would like. The elevator they stand next to dings, and the shock causes him to nearly swallow his own tongue, but it contains only a young couple, who give them curious looks before returning to their car and driving off.

  Keiran still has his hiptop to his ear. A few seconds after the couple’s car disappears down the helix, he stiffens; the other officer, the one who stayed on ground level, has told the attendants to start asking outgoing drivers if they had seen a white couple and an Indian woman.

  “We have move to the other stairs,” he commands. Danielle and Jayalitha look startled, but there is no time to explain. They are midway across the parking garage when they see the hawk-faced man begin to descend the strip of pavement that leads to them from Level 4.

  Their pursuer is closer than they are to the northeastern stairs. And when he sees them, he starts to run.

  “Police officer! Don’t move or I’ll shoot!” he shouts.

  They run. They are almost at the southwestern stairs when the other man, the fat man, appears in the stairs’ open doorway, crouched in a shooter’s stance, the barrel of his gun levelled at them. It is animal terror more than thought that causes them to go from sprint to halt so rapidly that Keiran stumbles and nearly falls.

  “That’s far enough,” the fat man growls. “Hands behind your head. Against the wall.”