by E. C. Myers
A coffee grinder droned behind the counter. The gay barista who always gave Max free refills smiled when Max looked over.
In junior high, Max and Evan used to trade notes encrypted with the simplest of substitution codes, the kind where A equals one, B equals two, and so on. They soon moved from that basic cipher to devising their own, more complicated ones, and their interests gradually shifted to computer hacking and decrypting databases of passwords to get access to people’s e-mails, social media accounts, and private systems.
Most computer systems stored passwords as encrypted hashCodes. It took a long time to crack them by brute force with software, but dictionaries of words and their corresponding hashCodes—called rainbow tables—made it much easier.
If someone used a common word like “password”—which plenty of people actually did—it would take under a second to crack the hashCode by checking it against these tables. And once you had one password for a site or system, you often had access to that person’s other accounts. Lots of people sacrificed security for convenience by using the same password everywhere.
Max was starting from scratch, though, with no hint at a possible cipher key that could help him translate Evan’s text. He didn’t even know where to begin.
He stared at the forty-two characters on his screen, which he had meticulously retyped. There were few repetitions and he could see no discernible pattern. He checked them over carefully once more. If he misremembered even a single character, the code would be much harder to crack—if not rendered entirely useless. But his memory hadn’t failed him yet. He routinely recalled passwords as complicated as this one.
Max lifted his heavy head and rubbed his eyes. They stung from fatigue, and his neck ached from craning it forward. When he picked up his cup, he was surprised it was empty. He checked the time in the corner of his screen: seven-thirty. He should have left two minutes ago to get to school on time.
He didn’t move. The only reason to go to school was to act normal, and he didn’t think he could go through the day pretending that he wasn’t mourning his best friend. He might be able to reclaim his cell phone, but he’d already written it off; if the FBI had checked it, they would want him to answer some difficult questions.
In fact, once they cracked his phone or otherwise discovered STOP was Evan, they would be looking for Max. No reason to make it easy on them by being exactly where they would expect him to be.
He wasn’t ready to face Courtney yet either.
Max fired off a short e-mail to his dad inquiring about the lawyer. It might be a good idea to have that phone number with him if things went south today.
He loaded Full Cort Press. Courtney’s most recent blog post was from yesterday where she said she was excited about the debate. He cleared the cache and refreshed the page to make sure she hadn’t published her exposé yet. If she blew Evan’s cover, Max would have even less time before the Feds became interested in him. He couldn’t even be sure that she wouldn’t mention Max in the story, after the way they’d left things last night. She’d made it pretty clear that getting the scoop was more important than anything, including him.
Max looked around the coffee shop at the other early risers. A guy in a red and gold Los Medanos College hoodie sat at the table next to him, typing on his MacBook with just his index fingers, as if he were playing “Chopsticks” on a piano. A copy of Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut and a messy stack of index cards rested beside him.
Max leaned over. “Excuse me?”
The student glanced at Max and plucked one white earbud from his ear.
“Could I borrow a pen?” Max asked.
The guy rummaged in the messenger bag on the chair beside him and pulled out a red ballpoint pen without a cap.
“I think this writes.” He handed it to Max.
“Thanks.” Max scribbled on a gray napkin made of 100 percent recycled paper. The ink was sticky and the pen tip almost tore the thin paper, but it worked.
Some things were better done on paper than on a computer. He scribbled Evan’s code across the top of the napkin. It stood to reason that it wasn’t as easy as a substitution of one for one, with all those random numbers and punctuation marks and other characters.
“Do you want something better to write on?” the LMC student asked.
Max smiled. “That would be great,” he said.
“I don’t need these anymore.” He passed Max a short stack of index cards with almost illegible notes on the front of each. “The backs are clean.”
“Thanks,” Max said.
Max messed around with the text message for about an hour while his second cup of coffee went cold. He tried dividing it into words based on where the spaces were and applied every cipher he remembered, backwards and forwards. He tried merging some of his and Evan’s favorite ciphers. He pulled out all the numbers then put them back again. He arranged the sequence in different patterns, sorted them by length, built intricate matrices until it resembled a cracked-out game of Scrabble.
Max shredded the last index card. He hadn’t done cryptanalysis in a long time. Either this was the toughest code Evan had ever devised, or it wasn’t a code at all and he was just wasting time.
If it was a passphrase, it was way too long to be useful to most people, even for Evan and his astonishing mnemonics. But it was possible that he had created a one-off passphrase, knowing that only Max’s memory could retain one this complicated.
So if it was a passphrase, the trick was figuring out what it was for—just as he had to do with the keycard he was carrying, which unlocked a door somewhere in the world. Until he found out where they fit, he would have to keep them safe from whoever had ransacked the Baxters’ house.
“Hey, can you watch my stuff for a minute?” the college student asked.
Max nodded absentmindedly, gazing out the wide front windows.
After a minute of staring at the street in front of the shop where he’d parked his dad’s Impala, he registered a black sedan that was now parked in the spot behind his. The side windows were tinted, but Max could see the occupants through the clear windshield. The driver wore dark sunglasses and a green polo shirt under a gray windbreaker. His passenger had on a black T-shirt and a blue and white varsity jacket, and was typing on a bulky black laptop balanced on the dashboard.
Max was getting an ugly vibe from these guys. They looked too old to be college students and more like actors hired to play teenagers on television. He glanced at the LMC student’s table suspiciously. Was he with them?
Max’s laptop screen had gone dark to conserve power, so he tapped a key to wake it up. He refreshed Courtney’s blog, but the browser was suddenly sluggish. He was still connected to the shop’s Wi-Fi network and the signal looked strong, but the page wasn’t loading. Something else was slowing it down.
Something like a man-in-the-middle attack, which two men logged in to the same network could execute from a car parked outside the coffee shop. Max had been careless to connect to a public router without masking his IP address.
“Shit.” Max’s heart was pounding and the palms of his hands tingled.
This had to be connected to Evan. But were these guys federal agents, or with someone else?
Not knowing their identities made Max even more nervous. It didn’t matter who they were—they either wanted the message he had, or they wanted to prevent him from sharing it. Max couldn’t wait around to find out.
He scanned the coffee shop, mapping an escape route in his mind. He visualized his path through the tables, chairs, and scattered early-morning patrons the way he kept in mind the positions of his teammates, their opponents, and the soccer ball on the field. Only right now, he couldn’t see the ball or his way to the goal.
His attention returned to the car in time to see the driver remove a hand from inside his windbreaker.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Max’s time was up.
Whoever these guys were, even if they couldn’t circumvent half a dozen of his security precautions and compromise his computer, he had to assume they now knew a few things: One, he was trying to crack Evan’s code. Two, he had just e-mailed his dad about a lawyer. They probably had access to his unencrypted e-mails, which included that last one from Courtney—so if she hadn’t published her post yet, they could be reading it from her hard drive right now.
The upside was that monitoring his computer wasn’t the same as monitoring him. They couldn’t tell that he was on to them or see him quietly freaking out because his webcam was covered with black tape, a low-tech precaution.
The front doors of the sedan opened and the guys stepped out. Sunglasses walked to the sidewalk and kept an eye on the entrance to Bean Up while Varsity strolled over to Max’s car holding a small black box. He held it close to the lock on the passenger side—then opened the door.
What the hell?!
Max patted his pocket. His key fob was still there, so they must have had some way of bypassing the electronic lock. Max knew how to do this too, but it was scary to see it in action, against him. Varsity rummaged through the glove compartment and came up with Max’s backup laptop. Great. Thankfully, that one was configured to delete all his activity and files whenever he logged out.
As much as Max wanted to, he didn’t dare send his dad a second e-mail right now to tell him what was going on. They might be recording his every keystroke, but it wouldn’t matter after this. He started the process of deleting and zero filling the drive. It felt like putting down a beloved pet.
Max reverently closed the laptop lid while the self-destruct sequence ran and stood up. Now they could have it, for all the good it would do them.
He slid the pen into his left front pocket with the uncapped end sticking out. It made for a sad weapon, despite the old adage. Of course, even a sword wasn’t much use against firearms, but if they got rough with him, he would get rough right back.
Max spotted the torn index cards and napkin with Evan’s code written on it. He couldn’t just leave them there or throw them away; you could find all sorts of useful things about people by going through their trash.
He popped the lid off his full cup of coffee and quickly submerged the thin strips. He covered the cup again and swirled the coffee around.
Now Sunglasses was walking toward the entrance. Max had to get out of here.
He remembered the emergency exit past the bathrooms, which led to the narrow loading area between this building and Bow Wow!, the dog boutique next door. This was definitely an emergency.
Hands trembling and slick with sweat, he walked by the college kid’s table. He closed the lid of the kid’s silver MacBook and smoothly tucked it under his arm. No one even looked up from their laptops or paid him any attention. He walked at a leisurely pace toward the restrooms, resisting the urge to bolt.
It was a dick move, stealing from someone who had been kind to him, especially when he was working on a paper for school, but Max needed it more than he did. And if he had the chance—if he stayed free and alive—he would try to return it later.
Max paused at the back door with his free hand on the crossbar. What if they had backup waiting for him right outside?
A toilet flushed in the bathroom by the emergency exit. He clutched the stolen laptop under his arm tightly. Water ran in the sink.
Max pushed the door open and slipped through. As it swung shut behind him, he heard a bell jingle back in the cafe. They were inside.
Max tossed his coffee cup into a small dumpster then dragged the rusty metal bin over to block the exit. It scraped against the concrete with a horrible, prolonged shriek.
The college kid was going to raise a fuss over his missing computer, and then Max’s followers would know he had it. But they wouldn’t be able to catch him. Not on foot, in his hometown.
Max ran.
He cut over to One Tree Way and ran along it, passing the parking lot. When he turned onto Deer Valley Road at full speed he actually laughed from the joy of wind against his face and pavement under his soles. He was running, and he was fast, even if he didn’t know where he was going yet.
The only things Max had ever stolen before were records from clueless companies’ servers, passwords, some e-mails. But digital files couldn’t be missed, since he had only copied them, and no one had ever suffered anything worse than embarrassment, because he hadn’t ever done anything with what he took. In fact, he and Evan had always alerted the companies to their security holes, without even bothering to claim credit or the financial rewards some of them offered.
Whatever those guys wanted him for, he was now definitely a criminal. He’d just taken some innocent guy’s laptop.
And his pen.
6
Max pushed through the revolving doorsinto the Gateway Suites.
He stood just inside for a couple of minutes, pretending to check the time on his new burner phone, until he was certain that the gentleman behind the concierge desk had seen him waiting. He pretended to dial a number then held the phone to his ear. Max paced slowly back and forth in front of the doors.
“Hey. Yeah, I’m here,” he said into the phone. His voice carried well in the marble-floored lobby. “Just a few minutes. I’m downstairs . . . . Really? Okay. Sure. I can come back if—No. No, that’s fine. Yeah, I’ll wait.”
Max made eye contact with the concierge and mouthed the word sorry. The man looked at him sympathetically.
“Sure, I’ll stay right here,” Max said. He shrugged and pointed over to the lounge area and raised his eyebrows. The concierge nodded.
“Take your time. I’ll sit tight,” Max said as he made a beeline for the seat in the farthest corner, near a mahogany baby grand piano. He sat in one of the lush armchairs facing the desk, where he could see the concierge and everyone who walked in, but where visitors would not be able to spot him immediately because of a marble pillar in the center of the room. He noted the emergency exits to his left, as well as the open space leading to them.
He’d nearly been cornered back in the coffee shop. He had narrowly escaped, but he wanted to have plenty of notice before he was caught off guard again.
Max settled back in the wide chair and put his new backpack on his lap. After successfully evading capture at Bean Up, he’d made a quick stop at Staples at the Granville Square Shopping Center for some vital supplies. He needed a bag because he would have been more conspicuous walking around with a naked MacBook. Along with the prepaid, disposable smartphone that offered him anonymity, he had also picked up a universal AC adapter for the stolen computer, a pack of two 32GB USB sticks, a microSD card and adapter, a bottle of Goo Gone, a roll of black electrical tape, and earbuds with a built-in microphone.
He couldn’t keep using his bank cards, so he’d risked a one-time withdrawal at an ATM near the Amtrak station, taking out the daily maximum of eight hundred dollars—most of his savings from caddying at the Old Mill Golf Club over the summer. After this morning’s shopping trip, he was down to $637.66 in cash—all the money he would have until this blew over.
Max pulled out the MacBook and got to work. He applied Goo Gone to the “Los Medanos Mustangs” and “Small World Amusement Park” stickers on the cover. After a couple of minutes, the liquid had loosened the glue enough for the stickers to slide right off. He rubbed it dry with the sleeve of his jacket.
Next he peeled off a strip of electrical tape and stuck it over the web camera lens inside the MacBook’s lid, then powered on the computer.
It didn’t even require a login password when it woke from sleep mode. This guy had just been asking for it.
Max rebooted the machine, thinking through what he had to do next. His skills might be a little rusty, but hacking had been his life once; it had been second nature to look for flaws everywhere, from systems
to people to places.
He and Evan had talked about how they would go on the run if they were caught for their cybercrimes, but they’d just been fooling around. Now that he was suddenly an actual fugitive, Max had instinctively begun following their imagined escape plan, and improvising with tactics he’d seen in thrillers over the years.
When he heard the computer’s startup chime, Max quickly held down the Command and S keys. He glanced up and caught an annoyed look from the concierge. He initiated the commands to delete the computer’s setup file and rebooted it.
Max plugged his earbuds into the headphone jack and stuck one in his left ear. If he’d done this correctly, he had just tricked the computer into thinking it was brand new.
He logged in to the hotel’s guest Wi-Fi network—he’d chosen Gateway Suites specifically because they advertised complimentary wireless internet in the lobby.
It worked. He created a new administrator account with the username “Maskelyne” and a ten-character passphrase, using his usual system to scramble the phrase “this machine was stolen” with numbers and other punctuation marks. Then he enabled firmware password protection to prevent anyone else from doing what he had just done, and deleted the computer’s tracking software so it couldn’t be used to find him.
He scouted the lobby. Not much traffic on a Thursday afternoon. He picked up his burner phone and tested one of the ringtones. He faked answering it and carried on another one-sided conversation for the benefit of the concierge: Yes, he’d be happy to keep waiting, he had a lot of work to catch up on anyway, and the concierge was nice enough to let him hang out in the lobby.
Then he went fishing through the true owner’s files.
Hi, Jeremy Schaal. Thanks for loaning me your laptop, Max thought.
He looked up information on Jeremy on both his computer and the internet. He was a second-year English major at LMC. E-mails from his advisor (his browser was set to remember his passwords, another no-no) indicated Jeremy was not a particularly good student, and e-mails from three women he was dating at the same time suggested why. One of the women was a teaching assistant for one of his classes, so at least Jeremy was doing something to try to improve his grades.
