by Reece Hirsch
“So, no credit cards,” Zoey said.
“Right, no credit cards,” Chris said. “We can assume that the agents will be watching for any charges on our accounts. It’s a good thing that I cashed out all of my traveler’s checks at the hotel.”
“You did that? What made you think to do that?”
“I’m a natural paranoid. It comes with my line of work.”
They stopped for a moment and listened to a band of buskers, comprised of a violin, washboard, and trash-can drum kit. As they looked on, they saw a very young girl with a boyish haircut lift two wallets off tourists watching the performance. As the girl disappeared into the crowd, Chris caught her exchanging a look with the violin player. The musicians were in on the robberies. Chris turned around quickly and saw that a wolfish-looking boy was stalking him from about two paces back. Chris was glad that he had noticed him in time. His wallet contained everything that he’d gotten from the traveler’s checks. If they lost their money, it would be impossible to run.
They were looking for a clothing store where they could purchase Chris something that would allow them to blend in a little better.
“Here, this one,” Zoey said, pointing to a little hole-in-the-wall shop with an array of leather jackets in the window. “A coat will do most of the work. We need a cheap leather jacket.”
They went inside and found a bored-looking young guy behind the counter. He was in his midtwenties, with long, pointed sideburns, and a hipper-than-thou attitude that registered immediately.
“Can I help you?” he said in English, instantly identifying them as Americans.
“We’re going to browse,” Zoey said.
Chris absentmindedly ran his hand through a rack of vintage shirts. “I’ve been thinking about why someone would want to put me in this position,” he said.
“They seem to have gone to an awful lot of trouble,” Zoey said.
“Right, these hackers didn’t just want to stop me from coming after them, they wanted to ruin me.”
“So why would someone want to do that?”
“I’d have to say that it was personal somehow, since I’ve spent most of my adult life catching and prosecuting hackers.”
Zoey removed a black leather jacket from a hanger. “Here, try this one on.”
Chris slipped it on. “Too many zippers.”
“The idea here is not to get what you like,” Zoey said. “It’s to make you look more like someone who would hang with me.”
“That’s a lot for one jacket to accomplish.”
“How about this one?” Zoey asked, letting the remark pass. She handed him a black leather jacket. “Very Joey Ramone. And let’s get this black shirt.”
“You’re the fashion consultant.” It occurred to Chris that the last person who had given him fashion tips in a store had been his wife.
Chris changed into the clothes and paid for them, then carried what he had been wearing out of the store in a bag and tossed it in a dumpster. Chris still looked a little too stiff and professorial to be with Zoey, but now they were not so disparate that it drew immediate attention. They might not quite blend in, but they had definitely become less memorable.
They walked on down Las Ramblas, entering an enormous flower and vegetable market, La Boqueria. Tiny white blossoms tumbled along the street in the breeze like confetti in a ticker tape parade.
“You’d better watch your wallet,” Chris said. “Another one of those little urchins is following us.”
“Persistent, aren’t they?”
“He’s been with us for two blocks.”
Chris turned abruptly and the boy, who couldn’t have been more than thirteen, nearly ran into them. He was dressed in jeans, a Transformers T-shirt, and a denim jacket, and he didn’t even try to pretend that he wasn’t following them.
“Is there something you want?” Chris said.
The boy didn’t say anything, his eyes darting. He seemed so intensely agitated that Chris was afraid he might be about to draw a weapon of some sort. Instead, he reached into his jeans and handed Chris a folded sheet of paper. Chris snatched the paper and read the message that was written with a black marker in block letters:
GO TO THE PÈRE LACHAISE CEMETERY IN PARIS TOMORROW. BE AT THE GRAVE OF GHOLAM-HOSSEIN SA’EDI AT 4:30 P.M. IF YOU’RE THERE, SARAH LIVES. IF YOU’RE NOT, SHE DIES.
At the bottom of the message was what appeared to be a phone number. When Chris looked up from the note, the boy had already turned away and was disappearing into the throng.
Chris leapt forward to grab him, but he missed as the boy ducked past a swarm of advancing pedestrians like a minnow darting in the shallows. The boy was in his element, and they were not. When he wasn’t delivering messages, he was undoubtedly a professional pickpocket who made his living navigating the cobbled alleyways that radiated from Las Ramblas.
Chris lowered his shoulder and barreled through a middle-aged couple. They began cursing him in Catalan from a prone position on the sidewalk. Zoey was quicker and got out in front of Chris, dancing through the pedestrians like a halfback, working her way around, rather than through, them. Extending her hand to make a grab for the tail of the boy’s denim jacket, she just missed. She staggered against the brick wall of a shop as he ran off down the street. Finally, he stopped running and disappeared around a corner, but not before giving her a cocky little salute.
Now the Catalan couple were on their feet. They were a heavyset pair who seemed to have a real talent for cursing, judging solely by the intonation, speed, and vigor of their invective. They were clearly just warming up and, now that they had regrouped, the decibel level was rising fast. Chris walked away quickly, grabbing Zoey by the arm and bringing her with him. It wouldn’t be long before a policeman became interested in the disturbance.
As they walked away, Chris stared at the scrap of paper in his hand and felt a surge of hopelessness. The hackers were playing a game with Sarah’s life and it was a game that was completely stacked against him. He had no choice but to continue to follow the path that had been laid for him, but he felt increasingly certain that he would find Sarah’s lifeless body at the end of it. He needed to find a way to start making them react to him, instead of the other way around.
Chris struggled to calm his thoughts. He would not give in to hopelessness. He had to believe that Sarah was still alive. Chris forced himself to concentrate on the problem at hand—how to cross the border into France while on Europol’s most-wanted list.
EPISODE 4
CHAPTER 22
As soon as they had put a safe distance between themselves and the angry couple on Las Ramblas, Zoey asked, “Who is Gholam-Hossein Sa’edi?”
“I have no idea,” Chris said. “But we’re going to find out.”
They wound through the labyrinthine, cobbled streets of the Barri Gòtic, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods. The narrow streets were closed to cars, except for taxis. The ancient buildings leaned in so close over the narrow streets that you could feel their musty, old man’s breath on your face as you passed. When one of the warren-like streets opened into another small square, Chris felt like he was coming up for air. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number provided in the note, which presumably belonged to a burner phone that Enigma was using. No response.
They walked for a while until they found a library with Internet access, the Biblioteca Jaume Fuster, a modern structure that resembled artfully crumpled sheets of aluminum—sort of a Frank Gehry knockoff. Chris sat down at a computer in the library’s airy main room and Googled the name Gholam-Hossein Sa’edi. He read from a Wikipedia entry.
“Sa’edi was a noted Iranian novelist and playwright.” Chris skimmed through the entry, reading the highlights. “In 1966, he joined a group of Iranian intellectuals in protesting a government policy requiring all publishers to seek state permission to print literature. He pushed for democracy in Iran as part of a leftist coalition that opposed Ayatollah Khomeini’s right-wing Islamist mov
ement. After Khomeini assumed control, Sa’edi fled to Pakistan and then France.”
“How did he end up in Père Lachaise?”
Chris read to the end of the entry. “Exile doesn’t seem to have agreed with him. Sa’edi suffered from depression and alcoholism during his time in Paris. He was diagnosed with cirrhosis, died soon afterwards in 1985, and was buried at Père Lachaise.”
“What does this have to do with us? Or with Enigma?”
“I’m not seeing a connection either,” Chris said.
Chris printed out what information he could find about Sa’edi online. “There’s no time to sit here studying this. We can do that while we’re on the road. We have nineteen hours to get to Paris, which is a drive of more than six hundred miles.”
“Even if we drive, how are we going to cross the border into France?” Zoey asked. “Border guards on both sides will probably be looking for us.”
“Ever since the Schengen Agreement in the eighties, papers haven’t been required to cross borders between most EU countries,” Chris said. “But since Europol is involved and this is viewed as a major threat, I’ll bet they’re doing border checks.”
“The Schengen Agreement,” Zoey said. “Sometimes I think you make this stuff up.”
“We’re going to need someone to drive us,” Chris said. “Someone with a valid passport and a car. Someone who’s not afraid to break the law.”
“Even if we find that someone, how do you propose we get into France?”
“They probably won’t be searching vehicles. There’s usually too much traffic for that. If we hid in the trunk, we’d have a fairly good chance of getting across the border without being detected.”
“You’re assuming a lot.”
“The plan isn’t perfect,” Chris conceded. “But it’s the best I’ve got so far. Do you have anything better?”
Zoey shook her head. “But I may know where we could find someone to drive us.”
“Another of your criminal friends?”
“You’re going to have to adjust that attitude if you want to hear this proposal.”
Chris sighed. “I’m not going to like this, will I?”
“I’m going to take that as a yes,” Zoey said. “I know some people who might be willing to take the risk of driving us. There’s this group of hackers based in Barcelona. They call themselves the Hive.”
“I’ve heard of them. How bad are they?”
“They’re not like Enigma and Ripley. Not violent. On the other hand, they’re not as harmless as I was.”
“So they steal information,” Chris said.
“Among other things.”
“And will they know who I am?”
“Oh, they know who you are. And they don’t like you very much, either.”
“So why would one of them risk jail by driving us into France?”
“Because they do like me,” Zoey said. “In some circles, my Centinela Bank prank was a big hit.”
“So where can this Hive be found?”
“They occupy vacant office space where they can tap into phone lines and Internet connections. They’re part of a much larger group, and most of them wouldn’t be caught dead meeting in person and revealing their identities, but this bunch in Barcelona are sort of the social butterflies. They actually like hanging out together, but they don’t stay in one place for long. I know a chat board they use. I can make contact.”
Chris rose from the computer and let Zoey take a seat. Within fifteen minutes, she had established a connection with a member of the Hive called Soma. Ten minutes later, they received a text with the address of an abandoned office building that the group was using as its temporary headquarters.
The Hive had set up shop in a three-story brown-brick office building in the Barri Gòtic. The building’s façade was charred by fire. The damage had been enough to render the property temporarily uninhabitable, but apparently the phone and Internet connections were still intact.
Chris ducked under a red plastic warning tape and pushed open the front door, covering his hands with soot in the process. Inside, it looked like hell’s reception area—everything was charred but still discernible. A crumbling front desk stood guard over the entryway. The lacquered surface of a coffee table was black and covered with glistening bubbles. A rack was festooned with the scorched spines of magazines. The only thing missing was a scorched, skeletal receptionist. There was a powerful smell of smoke and burnt plastic. He could taste it in his mouth and could almost feel it soaking into his clothes and hair.
“Mmm, carcinogens,” Zoey said, pinching her nose.
“What floor are they on?” Chris asked. His throat was scratchy and he felt like coughing.
“Third floor,” Zoey said. “We can take the stairs.”
They entered the stairwell, which was untouched by the fire, all pristine white concrete and iron railings.
When they opened the metal security door and stepped out onto the third floor, they were greeted by a small olive-skinned man with prematurely gray, close-cropped hair. He was wearing black jeans, a bright red T-shirt, and an ironic smile.
“Soma?” Zoey asked.
“Cynecitta!” Soma said in lightly accented English. “I had no idea that you were such a spicy little dish. Now I wish we’d met in person years ago.” Zoey had informed Chris that Soma was an Oxford-educated heir to a Spanish manufacturing fortune who had decided to go in a very different direction with his life.
Chris could understand why the Hive had settled on this space. It was an expansive, open room with big windows. The floor appeared to have been untouched by the fire, and the smell of smoke was faint. Outside was a gorgeous view of La Seu cathedral, with its three towering Gothic spires. There were only a couple of desks, so most of the hackers were sitting on the floor in lotus positions with their laptops on their knees. It looked like an even looser version of an Internet start-up, with everyone permitted to maintain their idiosyncratic work habits as long as they kept coding. The difference was that if the Hive was dedicated to producing anything, it was probably disorder.
Zoey wandered around like a fangirl at Comic-Con, delightedly looking in on what the various hackers were up to. When Chris caught up with her, she was leaning over the shoulder of a heavily tattooed young man wearing a gray knit cap.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“This is Officer Raymond Eagleton, Atlanta Police Department. He has so been doxed.” Doxing was the practice of trolling online for the most sensitive and personal information about a person and posting it publicly, usually as some sort of retribution.
“What did Officer Raymond do?”
“You probably saw the video. He pepper-sprayed Occupy protesters right in the face. They weren’t violent, just passively blocking a building.”
“Did you find some good stuff on him?” Zoey asked.
“Oh, you have no idea,” the hacker said.
Zoey’s forehead furrowed as she leaned in closer to examine the photo on the monitor. Officer Eagleton was attired in full bondage regalia, with skintight latex and many, many zippers. “There’s a zipper for everything, isn’t there?”
The largest group of hackers was gathered around a large monitor where a scrawny teenage boy with jet-black-dyed hair was playing a video game with a fresh-faced young girl in her early twenties. Chris and Zoey watched round two of the game from over their shoulders. It was a combat game set in what appeared to be a postapocalyptic New York City. The characters were carrying automatic weapons in Times Square, but all of the giant neon and video billboards were flat black.
Disconcertingly, the two Uzi-toting characters in the video game bore exactly the same facial features as the pair playing the game. Zoey looked at the boy, who squinted as his fingers flew over the game console. On the screen, and in nearly the same instant, the boy’s avatar squinted as he stepped over a pile of concrete rubble, Uzi at the ready.
“What game is this?” Zoey asked. “Digital motion capture i
s one thing but …”
“I know,” Soma said, beaming “It’s First-Person Shooter—Avatar Edition. Same technology that the animation studios use, but it works with a webcam. It’s next year’s biggest video game release. They’re going to spend tens of millions of dollars marketing it—but we’ll be offering it for free download next week—worldwide, baby.”
“How did you get this?” Chris asked.
Soma looked suspiciously at Chris. “You said he was off-duty, right?”
Zoey nodded. “Busting you is the last thing on his mind.”
Chris looked at Soma. “Aren’t you worried that someone is going to take the trouble to hunt you down if you interfere with a revenue stream as big as this one?”
“The Hive knows no fear,” Soma said. “We strike like lightning and disappear like smoke.”
“Well, I think you’d better disappear like smoke when you make this download available,” Chris said.
“Information wants to be free and the Hive is an army of liberation,” Soma said, looking like he was warming up for a speech.
“Yes, I get it,” said Chris, who had heard this sort of manifesto before.
Zoey saw trouble brewing and attempted to steer the conversation in a less contentious direction. “So what else have you been up to? Anything entertaining?”
“Just stockpiling vulns.” “Vulns” was short for website vulnerabilities, which the hackers identified through a process of automated scanning, or crawling. A reasonably competent group of hackers had more vulns than they knew what to do with, and often they were sold to others to exploit. Then Soma smiled. “But have you seen our latest YouTube video?”
“We’ve been a little preoccupied lately,” Zoey said.
“Best lulz ever.” “Lulz” was a variation of the term “lol”—laugh out loud—and had come to mean entertainment at someone else’s expense.
Soma sat down at a nearby laptop, opened a YouTube video, and maximized it to fill the screen. The camera shook violently. It looked like footage from the thick of some sort of riot. Then the camera steadied and details came into focus. An enormous stuffed giraffe loomed over a central escalator. It was the giant FAO Schwarz toy store in New York City. And the rioters were boys and girls who looked to range from ages eight to thirteen. The shelves were being ransacked and kids were engaging in fierce tug-of-war battles in the aisles over games and dolls. A tiny, blond-haired girl, who seemed to be about seven, wearing a flower print dress and a steely expression, won a struggle for a stuffed panda. The panda flew backward into the camera, and the footage came to an abrupt end.
