Ghost:

by James Swallow

  ‘It’s like a strange kind of gravity,’ she went on, and there was a smile trying to pull at her lips. ‘Love and hate, fear and joy. Exerting a push and pull on the people around me.’ The smile faded. ‘Sometimes I think the connection that makes those feelings real is missing.’

  ‘You fake it well enough to pass,’ he said, still grinning at her. ‘I appreciate you making all that effort for me.’

  ‘I don’t have to for you,’ she told him. ‘You bridge that gap for me.’ She gave him a quizzical look. ‘How do you do that, exactly?

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘Do you want to find out?’

  ‘We could do that,’ she breathed, and leaned into his warmth.

  She wiped the rain from her face. The walk was long, and by the time Kara reached the top, the steady rainfall had soaked through and darkened the shoulders and crown of her hoodie. As she got closer, there were moments when she thought she saw someone in the trees. Off the path. Watching. She didn’t react, allowing them to think that she didn’t see or didn’t care.

  Gales of vivid, profane graffiti covered the derelict buildings. The paintings had been left behind by street artists from the Berlin scene who had made the place their open-air gallery, or at least they had until the new tenants arrived. Now the dreamers with the spray-cans kept their distance, or so the anonymous posters on the dark web shadow boards had told her.

  Kara found some of the artworks unsettling. Monstrous faces and deformed figures vomiting abstract floods of words. They were meaningless to her. Others – geometric shapes, animals and coloured forms – attracted her eye. She crossed over to one that seemed to emerge from the overgrowth and reached out to touch the painted bricks.

  Behind her, someone stepped on a loose stone and it clattered against the cracked and broken asphalt.

  ‘Geh weg!’ shouted a male voice, the intonation thick with the implied threat of violence. ‘Hey! Hast du mich gehört?’

  She turned around slowly and faced the pair of figures who had emerged from the shadows. Both male. One of them had the hatchet-faced look of a street punk, heavily tattooed, wired with too much energy and not enough places to spend it. The other was thickset, with a moon face framed by a ragged leather trapper hat. The punk had a crowbar in his paw and he looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him.

  Kara rolled down her hood and let everyone get a good look at her. Not only the two men, but those watching from behind whatever cameras were hidden in the corners of the derelict buildings. She looked around, searching for the best vantage point, finding a tatty tower and a dull white sphere next to it atop a nearby roof.

  ‘You know who I am?’ She directed the question at the man with the crowbar. Kara saw his brow crease as he studied her. He was thinking the same as she had. Faint recognition glimmered there.

  These jokers had been shadowing her since she left the main road, and now it was time for them to know who they had been watching. Time for her to shed the identity she wore and regress a few steps. Roll back to an older iteration of herself, to one closer to the truth.

  ‘Do this for me,’ she told the man. ‘Go tell Madrigal that Song is here.’

  ‘Song is in prison,’ said the one in the hat, switching from German to heavily accented English. ‘Or dead.’

  She spread her hands and presented them with an approximation of a smile. ‘Beg to differ.’

  *

  ‘There’s enough similarities in the code for me to call it, right now,’ said Assim. He took a deep breath, steeling himself. ‘I see the same quirks in the encryption on the San Francisco tablet as in the barrier code you pulled out of the software weapon.’ He pointed at the gutted device on the tech lab’s workbench and then at the air-gapped forensic system Marc had been using. ‘Whomever worked on this, worked on that.’

  ‘Confirmation,’ agreed Marc. After the conversation with Lucy and Delancort, he had thought about taking a break but sleep eluded him. Instead, he went to the only place he knew would centre him. The data lab was set up in one of the rooms off the crisis hub, and he got back to work on his analysis of the data-mesh from Wetherby’s body.

  Marc had uploaded a custom suite of digital cracking tools from his personal laptop and set to it, with Assim hovering nervously in the background. The tech gave Marc the run of the machines and did his best to stay out of the way.

  Marc felt sorry for the younger man. Kara’s disappearing act had both forced Assim into the front rank at Rubicon and placed him under suspicion as a possible co-conspirator, a situation not unlike the one that Marc had experienced at MI6 when his own circumstances had been compromised. In Marc’s case, that had ended his career with British Intelligence and brought him into Rubicon’s orbit. Assim wasn’t handling it as well as Marc had, though, and he watched him drink cup after cup of tarry Turkish coffee and fret over every line of code he uncovered.

  After a while, Marc noted Assim staring into the middle distance, lost in thought. ‘You all right?’

  Assim jolted back to awareness and coloured slightly. ‘I’m sorry. Miles away.’ He took a breath. ‘Look, I have to say this. It’s chewing on me and I have to say it to someone.’ Marc raised an eyebrow at the outburst, letting the technician find his way. ‘Why is everyone assuming that Kara has turned on us? I mean, how do we know that?’

  ‘She cut me dead in the middle of a live operation.’ Marc failed to keep a flash of irritation from his reply, even as the same question echoed in his own thoughts. ‘Lied to me. Hacked Rubicon systems. Stole money. It doesn’t look good.’

  ‘What if she had a reason? One we don’t know about?’ His brow furrowed. ‘Did anyone consider the possibility?’

  ‘I’d like that to be true,’ Marc offered. ‘What do you know that the rest of us don’t?’

  Assim shrank back from the suggestion of an accusation in the question. ‘Nothing,’ he said quickly. ‘This doesn’t feel right . . .’

  Marc looked for a reply, but he came up empty. After a moment, he turned back to his monitor and focused on the work.

  Time blurred into the continuous rattle of keyboards and the phosphor glow of data screens. Marc’s mind detached. His body fell away as the contents of the mesh expanded to fill his attention. He lost himself in the structure of the modified Arquebus program, dismantling it into its component modules.

  Piece by piece, he backtracked the virus program from the targets it had been aimed at, as a coroner would pick traces of gunpowder or bullet fragments from the corpse of a shooting victim to identify a killer’s weapon. The mental image brought back thoughts of Wetherby’s body lying in the hospital morgue and Marc involuntarily grimaced.

  Isolating elements of the software’s ‘warhead’, he used a custom decompiler program to search the threads of data for commonalities, and slowly lines of green began to pop up where code from the zero-day information had been implanted.

  Marc tapped the screen with his finger. ‘What do you make of this?’ He highlighted a few text strings for the other man. ‘I’m seeing this reference over and over.’

  ‘HIOS Sigma.’ Assim read the text aloud. ‘That rings a bell.’

  ‘Yeah, it does . . .’ Marc moved to a network-enabled machine and ran the term though a search engine. He got a hit immediately. ‘Here we go. It’s a software suite for industrial control systems, yeah? Programmable logic controllers and so on. The new and improved Arquebus has a half-dozen exploits grouped around the core code of it.’ He leaned back from the monitor, thinking it through. ‘How the hell did Ghost5 get their hands on those?’

  ‘That’s very alarming,’ said Assim, blinking behind his glasses. ‘Breaking through ICS software vulnerabilities is how Stuxnet got in.’

  ‘And this is aimed at the same kind of targets.’ Marc scrolled down a page of data on the capabilities of the program. ‘With a much larger capacity for mayhem.’

  The Sigma software was a next-generation operating system common to internet-connected machinery
on an industrial scale. Factories used it to run production lines, cities used it for traffic control, nations used it on power utilities. If it was susceptible to covert attack, the potential risk to infrastructure and human lives was huge.

  Assim worked at another keyboard, following Marc’s chain of thought. ‘I’ve found a press release from eight months ago. SoCal Electric announcing the completion of a modernisation initiative in San Francisco. It mentions HIOS Sigma being used in the power monitoring subsystem.’

  Marc felt a chill crawl over his skin. He looked back into news feeds from earlier in the week, finding reports about the train crash in Taiwan. A metro express had collided with a commuter service at the height of the local rush hour, causing many fatalities and leaving dozens more critically injured. There was a lot of static about the Taipei police stonewalling relatives of the dead over confirmation of their losses, but digging deep he soon found what he feared would be there.

  The previous year, HIOS Sigma had been installed in the control network for the Taipei MRT, governing the movements of trains carrying over two million passengers a day. ‘Those German IP addresses I found,’ he said quickly, turning to meet Assim’s gaze. ‘Cross-reference them with this Sigma info. Look for reports of unexplained malfunctions, accidents . . .’

  ‘You have a lead.’ Lucy stood in the doorway, leaning against the glass partition. He hadn’t heard her approach. ‘I know that look.’

  And I know yours. The thought formed as he studied the woman and recognised the expression on her face. Behind those eyes was a dark mood at odds with Lucy’s usual dry humour. Flint-hard and uncompromising, Marc had seen it before, but only when the shooting started.

  He let it pass unmentioned for now, and gave her a quick run-through on what he had learned about the exploit code and the Sigma connection. ‘It’s published by a commercial software developer in Australia called Horizon Integral.’ Marc brought up the corporate website, a slickly minimalist affair of the kind sported by companies who were rich enough that they didn’t need to advertise. ‘They’re in the Fortune 500, with clients all over the world, although that list isn’t circulated publically.’

  Lucy’s lip curled. ‘They might be more willing to spill it, if they know that everyone who buys their programs is open to a catastrophic hack.’ She pointed at the monitor. ‘What are the odds that they would already be aware of it, given the train crash and the blackout?’

  ‘And the cars,’ Assim spoke up. He gestured at his screen. ‘I’ve found a correlation in the German links. A series of highway crashes, all in vehicles with an on-board digital control system.’

  ‘Another soft target,’ said Marc. He had hacked similar technology in Celeste Toussaint’s limousine, but without taking it to the same extremes. Assim mirrored the information to Marc’s screen and he scanned it, grim-faced. The crashes in Dusseldorf and elsewhere had claimed the lives of everyone in the vehicles that been targeted.

  ‘I think we may be looking at tests,’ Assim continued, carried along by the idea. ‘Look at the pattern of events. First, small and isolated incidents with the cars. Attacks that could be replicated to fine-tune the details. Then a more complex deployment with the metro trains. And then a bigger hit with the power grid. The initiator has been refining the hack, scaling it up each time.’

  ‘And no one’s caught it?’ asked Lucy.

  Assim shook his head. ‘No one has been looking for it. But with 20/20 hindsight, it’s suggestive of a larger intent.’

  ‘So this means Horizon Integral are involved, knowingly or unknowingly,’ Marc added. ‘If we can access their client list, we’ll have an idea of possible targets for Ghost5.’

  ‘They’re not going to give up that information to anyone—’ Lucy fell silent as Delancort hove into view at the door, with Solomon’s bodyguards flanking him. He gripped a small data tablet tightly in one hand.

  ‘Step away from the keyboards,’ said Brass, glaring at Mark and Assim. The Farmhand stepped in around him, moving to hover menacingly over the technician.

  ‘You know how to knock, right?’ snapped Marc, irritated at the unexplained intrusion.

  ‘Do it,’ Brass added, and Assim raised his hands as if he had a gun aimed at him.

  Delancort gave Marc a searching look. ‘Why are you digging into information about Horizon Integral?’

  Marc’s eyes narrowed and he glanced around the lab, answering the question with one of his own. ‘Are you . . . Are you monitoring us?’ He fixed on the tablet in Delancort’s hand.

  ‘Of course we are,’ the other man said crossly. ‘Or did you forget that there has just been a major breach of our digital security? So please, clarify the situation.’ Delancort turned an acidic glare on Assim, who faltered beneath it.

  ‘W-we believe they’re linked to the incident in San Francisco,’ began the technician.

  ‘What does that matter to you?’ Marc pressed the point. He rose from his chair and took a step toward Delancort. The man’s attitude grated on him, and he was too tired to mask it anymore. The Farmhand heard the shift in Marc’s tone and moved to block his path.

  Delancort folded his arms across his chest. ‘It matters to me because Horizon Integral is a corporate partner of the Rubicon Group, and it is my job to protect Solomon’s interests.’

  ‘A partner?’ repeated Marc. ‘How, exactly?’

  ‘We do business. If there’s an issue with them, I need to know about it right away.’

  ‘Please tell me you’re not using their software for anything essential,’ said Lucy. ‘Or dangerous. ’Cause you are not gonna be happy you asked.’

  Marc watched the colour drain from Delancort’s face as Assim explained what they had discovered. When he had finished, the FrenchCanadian’s arrogance had dialled down a few notches.

  ‘We . . . have a pilot program using HIOS Sigma at two aluminium plants in Nigeria,’ Delancort explained. ‘There’s a deal in place to roll out the system to a dozen other sites in Rubicon’s industrial sector portfolio over the next few years . . .’ His accusatory mood crumbled and he rubbed a hand across his face. ‘Mon dieu. I have to deal with this immediately. Solomon needs to be informed, we have to take the plants offline—’

  ‘You do that and it’ll send up a red flag,’ Lucy countered. ‘If Horizon Integral is compromised, if Ghost5 have an insider, that’s as good as telling them someone knows about the software weapon.’

  ‘Maybe you could do it another way,’ said Assim, mulling it over. ‘Call it a spot-check safety inspection?’

  A crooked smile pulled at the corner of Marc’s lip as a new thought occurred to him. ‘Exactly how much money does Solomon have in the deal with these people?’

  ‘Let us say it is a notable amount, and leave it at that,’ Delancort deflected. ‘Not enough to get them to spill their deepest corporate secrets, of that you can be sure.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ Marc nodded to himself. A plan started to form. ‘You know what? I think Solomon has just decided he wants to review his investment with Horizon Integral. In person.’

  ‘Their corporate headquarters is in Sydney,’ Assim offered helpfully.

  ‘And that’s where their central data server will be,’ said Marc. He glanced at Lucy. ‘You see where I’m going with this?’

  Delancort snorted. ‘You appear to be suggesting that we collude to use the CEO of Rubicon to facilitate an act of international corporate espionage.’

  ‘That’s exactly right.’ Marc smiled thinly. ‘I’m glad we’re on the same page.’

  ‘T’es ouf! And of course, I am sure you have an airtight strategy to protect this company from any blowback that might be incurred?’ Delancort glared at him over his spectacles, daring him to disagree.

  ‘How long does it take to fly from Nice to Sydney?’ said Lucy.

  ‘Twenty-two hours, give or take,’ Marc replied.

  She showed a sly grin. ‘Plenty of time to figure it out.’

  *

  A
massive metal sign that bore the words Entritt Verboten had been hung upside down and repurposed as a partition wall inside the central blockhouse of the old Teufelsberg field station. Portable lights threw hard illumination to all corners of the room, drawing power from heavy-duty batteries salvaged from electric cars. Other humming generators suppled juice to a long workbench lined with communications and server hardware. Cables were everywhere, bunches of them snaking back and forth across the dusty concrete floor, but Kara negotiated them deftly, silently gauging the gear by sight and guessing at what it was being used for.

  The ‘work space’ went quiet when she entered, flanked by the man in the trapper hat and his companion. Faces turned to look at her. Some of them dismissed Kara without another glance, but others lit up with recognition.

  Someone came toward her at speed. A skinny Polish girl in her early twenties with bleached-blonde cornrows stalked up with a glare on her face, the expression half-shock and half-fury. She punched Kara hard in the shoulder. ‘You bitch,’ the girl said hotly. ‘Damn it, I thought you were in the gulag.’ She glared at the guy in the hat. ‘Back off, Billy!’ He wisely stepped away to give the two of them some space.

  ‘Hey, Pyne. I suppose that means you missed me?’ Kara winced at the impact.

  ‘Fuck off,’ she shot back. ‘Where the hell did you go? You just fucking left without a word, you left . . .’ Her voice dropped. ‘You left me here on my own.’

  Kara fumbled for an explanation. ‘I didn’t mean for it to go that way. I knew you’d be okay. You’re resilient.’

  Pyne blinked, letting the comment pass. ‘You came back. I knew you would, one day. Andre said you never would, but I said fuck him, fuck you I said, she—’

  ‘Yes,’ Kara said firmly. ‘Things have changed.’

  ‘Yuh.’ Pyne’s head bobbed and she shot a sneer at Billy and the guy with the tattoos as they hovered closer again. ‘Get lost.’