Cyber Genius

by Patricia Rice

  I called Graham’s cell phone and got voice mail, damn him. “The cops are searching the house,” I told him. “We need a place so Tudor can fix what no one seems to be in a hurry to fix. I need to head down to Goldrich headquarters. If you can’t think of a safe place to stash Tudor so he can work, I’ll send him to you.”

  I snapped the phone off and finished munching my breakfast. Threats were the only way to get through Graham’s paranoid fixations.

  Let Sean have him, he messaged back.

  OK, so he was furious with Sean and didn’t want to hear my musical voice at this hour. Got it. I could rearrange Graham’s head if I had time, but I didn’t. Family first. I called Sean and left a message saying I was sending Tudor his way and to have a computer ready. Then I faced the puzzle that was our friendly policemen in the bushes.

  “Call in a murder on the corner?” Tudor suggested. “Wouldn’t they be first on the scene?”

  “And when they find no murder and trace the call and arrest you for filing a false report, how will you get back to school?”

  I called Nick in the house. “Tell the cops with the warrant where the bodies are buried so we can get out of here.”

  He chuckled. I heard him shut a door. “I’m about to sashay to work and leave the blue boys with Mallard. They’re singularly unimpressed with the lack of evidence that Graham exists, and they really don’t like that they can’t get into your computer.”

  “And they’d better have a good reason for searching or impounding it,” I said firmly. “Or we’re calling our lawyers. Not that the drive there has anything except my client files, but it’s the principle of the thing. The guys crouching in the bushes probably need coffee about now. What can we arrange?”

  “Dogs or donuts,” he suggested.

  “Or both. I got it. Tudor and I will go exploring shortly. You may as well go on to work.”

  “Don’t do anything I would do,” he said cheerfully.

  Nick didn’t give me all that protective crap that Graham shouted. Nick and I had spent our childhoods creating diversions. He knew I could handle myself. Pity Graham didn’t respect my brain.

  Well, maybe he feared what my warped brain was capable of. He’s not dumb.

  I called a local dog walker and offered big bribes via my anonymous Paypal account. That was going on my expense report. Then I ordered a donut delivery to our front door. Mallard could provide the coffee.

  The dog walker came through with flying colors.

  Dogs big enough to yank leashes out of their walkers hands are a noisy and sometimes dangerous nuisance. Not long after my PayPal transfer, oops, the pack followed a cat and escaped their handler. They ran howling and yapping into the bushes surrounding the garage—where our men in blue were hiding.

  I admired the chaos from the monitor—pit bulls and poodles, nice.

  On another monitor, we watched Mallard stoically open the back gate to allow the dogs in so the cops could herd them where their tearful handler could catch them.

  While Mallard was passing out coffee and donut rewards, Tudor and I slipped out the side door and moseyed on down to the Metro. At least this time, I had my army jacket, although I’d slept in the clothes I was wearing.

  On Massachusetts, I watched with wary interest as all around us, men in expensive suits frowned at their newspapers or fancy tech. Some had already taken to shouting into their phones.

  I had a nasty notion that the stock market had started its plunge. The FBI would camp on our doorstep until they found Tudor and/or Graham. I needed to turn their heads in the right direction—pronto.

  I took Tudor down to Sean’s newly-remodeled newspaper office. Thanks to Patra’s last little escapade with Top Hat’s benevolent mobsters, half the offices had been burned or waterlogged a few weeks back.

  The new tile and fresh paint had improved the décor considerably, I decided, as we took the elevator up. Sean had left a message giving us entrance under our Patty and Paul Pasko aliases. I wasn’t about to give Tudor’s name to a bunch of nosy reporters.

  A secretary installed him in an office with a new computer. I admired the layout of shiny new machines in the cubicle farm and asked if anyone was beta testing MacroWare.

  The secretary gestured toward a guy taking apart one of the desktops. “Just that one. He reports on new software.”

  No cookie-eating monsters or spy holes in here, then. I approved their tech guy’s excess of caution.

  Deciding I’d left Tudor in safe hands, I set out to develop a clothing stash for the next few days. For years I’d lived without phones and credit cards. I didn’t have a driver’s license and my phone isn’t under my name. Family had ended my hiding months ago, but I still didn’t like the world knowing where to find me. I was desperately trying not to be my rootless mother, but old habits die hard.

  I took a membership at the Y. That gained me a locker and a shower. I found a thrift store—nowhere as upscale as the nifty consignment shops in our part of town but sufficient for a boring business suit. I stocked up on used walking shoes and a few basic no-iron clothing items that I carried out of the thrift store in a vinyl gym bag which would fit neatly in my new locker. I wasn’t wasting money on hotel rooms as Graham was doing.

  I glanced longingly at the boxing bags in the gym at the Y. I’d love to have a little attitude adjustment time, but the week was almost half over, and I had to get Tudor back to school. I resisted. I showered, put on my business suit, transferred some of my weapons from my army jacket to my attaché, locked up the rest of my clothes, and headed for Goldrich headquarters.

  High finance, as I’ve mentioned, was not exactly my forte. I’d never had money, a mortgage, or a loan of any kind. Mutual funds pushed my limit and worrying about them gave me ulcers.

  I recognized that experience divided the haves from the have-nots, and I vowed some day to educate myself about the money I’d never had.

  I had learned that in my research that Goldrich was an enormous mortgage company right on the top of the list of companies the banking committees were investigating. Goldrich, along with several mega-banks and investment firms, also had a huge political lobby. Our congress-critters were stepping delicately as they discussed new regulations on fraud in a wealthy, powerful industry. Whether or not Goldrich was taking advantage of the spyhole in the government operating systems, I had no way of knowing, but two and two normally make four, so my calculated guess was that they’d take any and all information offered.

  The fact that every single Macro exec and their families used Goldrich for their mortgages yelled collusion to me. I’d already seen how MacroWare execs traded favors. Bob Stark and Hilda owned controlling shares of Goldrich. That said they had a lot of influence on the banking front as well as the software level.

  Adolph and Trey in their expensive houses were already high on my suspect list. Bribery by mortgage was innovative but not unthinkable. Murder for cover-up was logical, no matter how I disliked the thought.

  Twenty-one

  Ana doesn’t get a mortgage

  A few weeks ago, Patra had nearly got herself killed by infiltrating a media conglomerate’s office. Unlike me, she actually had credentials to land the job. Given my GED and lack of college degree, I doubted that my resume would get past the trash basket at Goldrich, but a job wasn’t my real goal.

  Carrying my attaché, wearing a dowdy black business suit and an ugly three-quarter wool coat found at the thrift store, I entered the glass-walled headquarters of Goldrich Mortgage a little after noon. I’d texted Graham and Tudor to let them know where I was. Both ignored me. I figured they had some heavy crap on their hands and didn’t have time.

  I’m a loner. I didn’t need anyone’s approval. But I wanted to have sex again in this lifetime, so I tried to stay alive and somewhat on Graham’s good side. I approached Goldrich headquarters warily.

  Unlike many city offices, the mortgage company apparently liked to make the public feel welcome to walk in off the street. The
y apparently owned the building and had no off-putting security sitting at a barren desk in an empty foyer, keeping people out. I entered what appeared to be a busy office, with business suits striding briskly through the foyer and disappearing down corridors.

  I introduced myself at the receptionist’s desk and requested the head of Human Resources, a fellow I’d found on the internet. She asked if I had an appointment.

  “Yes, of course,” I lied through my pearly white teeth. It’s easy to lie when you know no shame.

  She tried to look up the Patty Pasko name I gave her. After studying her computer with some consternation, she made a phone call.

  With interest, I observed the suits behind her rushing around more frantically, frowning and talking into their phones, just like the suits on the street.

  How fast was the stock market dropping? I knew the possibility of losing all our money was giving me failure of the heart, but what did the stock market mean to mortgage companies? Bad vibes were pulsating so loudly through the office that even insensitive me could feel the tension.

  The receptionist apparently wasn’t getting any answer to her calls. Welcome to my life, I thought wryly. But this time, I applauded the lack of response. She was forced to apologize and step away from her desk to seek higher-ups. She took the corridor on my right.

  Ever a proponent of seizing opportunity, I immediately strolled down the opposite hall.

  A scream from a back office sent me running—not easily done in pumps and straight skirt.

  “My files are gone! All my files are gone!” a blond woman wearing a shiny gold necklace screeched. “I’ve lost everything!”

  “That’s not possible.” An African-American man in an expensive suit pushed her aside and began tapping at her keyboard. “I need that profile to close this deal.”

  “It was there! I had it all done last night, but they’re all gone!” The blonde’s decibel levels were reaching hysterical.

  Realizing no one was about to die, I shamelessly eavesdropped as curses rang from another cubicle and shouts of fury echoed from down the hall.

  This wasn’t precisely how I’d intended to meet Goldrich’s bigwigs, but as already proven, I’m an opportunist. I calmly walked in and shoved aside the black guy and the blonde and shut down the computer.

  “This was what I was trying to warn management about. But would they listen? Nooooo. Shut down all your computers, now,” I ordered in a voice of authority. “The virus attached to the spyhole will destroy everything in your hard drives if you don’t.”

  I was pretty sure I wasn’t lying. What I was doing was concealing a boatload of alarm—because the MacroWare beta-spyhole was designed for reading and manipulating files, not destroying them wholesale. After Tudor’s mini-disaster, the state department’s website had gone back up. I assumed that was a sign that his monster hadn’t gone too far. But if all Goldrich’s servers were going down...

  Something had crawled through that hole bent on destruction. I prayed it wasn’t Tudor’s monster.

  If a destructive virus had corrupted dozens of very busy government computers, and the spyhole allowed it to escape, how long before it actually ate the internet? That possibility savaged a hole right through my middle.

  I had this horrific vision of our Swiss bank account disappearing in a swirl of crashing computer bytes while our mutual funds sank to the bottom of the sea. Staring at poverty again terrified me, and gave me some understanding of the frantic suits rushing down the halls.

  Following my example, the black managerial-sort started down one side of the hall, ordering computers shut down, while I worked the other side. Wide-eyed horror was everywhere, not helping my panic much. The air turned blue with foul language in different accents. I understood and sympathized with their alarm. If I was about to lose all my hard work, I’d be a screaming meemie about now too.

  Fortunately, my valuable files were in my attaché case. Even if the cloud collapsed, I had my work intact. I knew how to start over. I just didn’t want to.

  A contingent of Italian suits and loafers emerged from a conference room at the end of the hall. The wearers of said suits looked mean—as in, I’m going to kill someone mean. And deservedly so, if my fears were correct. I was thinking this was not a good time to confront the top brass.

  I peered around an office door and tried to identify the hornets. To my shock, I was pretty certain one of them was Brian Livingston, the manager of the hotel in the center of our little controversy. He looked as if he was about to be taken out and hanged.

  Strangely, instead of the usual conservative American flag pin in his lapel, he wore a tiny rose. Where had I seen a rose pin lately?

  That’s when I spotted Senator Paul Rose and nearly gagged at the pin’s symbolism—a rose for Rose. I wanted to spew on their shiny shoes.

  But my luck had run out. I noticed a couple of Rose’s dangerous business buddies in the crowd, looking stone-faced, and my gut clenched. I’d run into those guys my first few weeks in D.C. They hadn’t reached the top by being nice men. I frantically began hunting a bolt hole.

  Power, wealth, and prestige gave Rose and his Top Hat financiers free rein to do anything they liked. I was pretty certain their minions had killed my well-heeled, well-protected grandfather. They were capable of removing anyone who got in their way—like Maggie and my entire family.

  Rose had seen me once in full Magda mode. I didn’t know if he’d recognize me in dowdy business attire, but I wasn’t taking chances.

  I darted into a restroom and waited until they’d gone by.

  If Paul Rose and his cartel had hotel management and Goldrich by the balls—who else did they have? I was spread too thin. I began texting warnings to everyone I could think of.

  ***

  Tudor’s Take:

  Tudor scrunched up his shoulders and stared at the computer screen, aware of all the wankers studying him as they strolled past his cubicle. He didn’t care what they thought, but it was hard to work under scrutiny. Besides, the machine didn’t have enough RAM to run his software, and after working with Graham’s super satellite connections, the internet here was a total shambles.

  He thought he had the code to patch the spyhole and stop his monster, but he couldn’t test it. He was debating going back to the house when he heard a commotion on the other side of the cubicle farm. Had this been school, he could have ignored it. But adults normally didn’t create that kind of aggro.

  Tudor got up and made his way through the strangely empty newsroom—in the direction of excited voices.

  “Russian hackers!” someone was shouting with authority. “It’s a terrorist attack on our economy. I’ve been warning you!”

  “The only terrorist involved here is Wall Street,” someone else yelled. “Wall Street can turn off the panic-spigot anytime, but they haven’t. One bad program won’t ruin MacroWare.”

  “Yeah, but the collapse of the internet will,” a woman’s voice insisted.

  Her warning was almost drowned in a sea of loud theories. Tudor hid outside the break room, trying to work out what had them arguing. These were journalists, he understood. They thrived on trouble. But the mention of Russian hackers had his insides churning.

  “Someone just reported Goldrich’s website down,” a louder voice yelled. “So are two more brokerages and three of the major banks. I’d say it’s a cyber-attack on our economy.”

  Just as he’d feared, it had all gone pear-shaped. Gutted, Tudor closed his eyes against panic. His cookie monster had escaped its cage? How? It wasn’t designed to go anywhere—unless some nutter adulterated the program. A few code changes . . . and it might attach to documents from an infected site and travel anywhere the document did—and keep traveling and chewing and multiplying.

  If Ana was right and someone was spying on banking committees through the beta program...

  The Frankenstein monster might really devour the internet.

  Swallowing his alarm, he returned to his computer. He n
eeded access to a lot of speed and a lot of servers, really fast.

  What better place than the MacroWare office just blocks from here?

  ***

  Ana paces anxiously

  Once the Goldrich hall was clear, I slipped out of the restroom, studying my cellphone like everyone else. With the internet on the eve of destruction, I worried that I hadn’t heard from any of my family or friends and might not again if communication servers crashed.

  Clusters of people stood in the corridors, shouting into their instruments of Satan, so I assumed phone lines were still in place. Whether the mortgage company survived depended on the security of their backup. They had only the spyhole and themselves to blame for this fiasco.

  I really liked the idea that Goldrich and Rose had been hoist by their own spying petards and Tudor’s nasty little monster. I had no proof, but I had a glorious feeling that Rose’s evil empire had just been shot down by its own villains.

  If it weren’t for my concern over our money, I’d burst into song. Well, maybe not.

  Knowing that Goldrich, Top Hat, and hotel management were linked, possessing evidence that they practically owned MacroWare execs, I cheerfully abandoned them to their drama.

  Motive was becoming a little clearer—money being the root of all evil and all that. Opportunity . . . not so clear. Paul Rose and his cadre wouldn’t be caught dead in a hotel kitchen. Logistics—completely escaped me.

  Out on the street, I tried calling Tudor. No luck again. I rang Nick but his greeting wasn’t as sunny as usual.

  “How bad is it?” I asked.

  “Pretty scary,” he admitted. “They’re calling it a terrorist cyber-attack. Wall Street just cut off trading. The White House has advised shutting off vital websites. The embassy is monitoring the situation for fear the worm will infect British computers next.”