Cyber Warfare

by J. S. Chapman

  The fifty million dollars kept irritating him like an itch that needed scratching. He sat up, reached for a cell phone, and started making calls. Though he lacked the proper passwords or PINs to access his purported account at Hertford’s, opened under the name he had been given at birth, he had the identifying facts down cold. He was passed from one bank official to another, making few inroads until he convinced a vice president that she was speaking to the rightful owner of an account opened three weeks earlier. Officious to the extreme, the woman explained the account had been set up by John Jackson Finlay himself. Everything had been duly signed, approved, and executed according to Mr. Finlay’s express wishes. She apologized for any inconvenience, but as he must be aware, the account had been closed in any event.

  “I’m not aware.”

  “How very curious,” she said with crisp authority, “since you yourself ordered the transfer of funds. To Cayman BWI Trust.”

  “How very curious,” he said, employing the same inflection.

  There was a flash of temper on her part, but she quickly overcame her irritation by referring him to Cayman BWI Trust. “I’m sure they will be able to help you. Ah, yes, here’s the phone number.”

  Jack plodded through the same routine at Cayman BWI Trust. Cooperation wasn’t as forthcoming since the account in question was held in a trust, in which case the account owner must have the appropriate password or appear in person. “Though that account, too, has been closed,” said the vice president of Customer Affairs. “Or nearly closed. The equivalent of a hundred thousand American dollars remains. The rest of the fifty million was wired to a … yes, here it is … Sintex Manufacturing, Incorporated. Beyond that, I am unable to offer further assistance.”

  “Could you spell that?”

  “S-I-N-T-E-X. Located in Kansas City, Missouri. Perhaps I can refer you to the bank handling the business arrangements. Our affiliate. CapTrust Cayman Shores. They’re right across the hall, actually.”

  CapTrust Cayman Shores was solicitous but nearly useless. “The account holder—which I am presuming is you yourself, Mr. Finally,” said the account manager, a man with a sibilant speech pattern, “authorized a wire transfer to Kansas City Federalist Bank on behalf of Sintex Manufacturing, Incorporated. Does Mr. Finlay wish to be put in touch with either entity for further clarification?”

  He most certainly did.

  Kansas City Federalist gave him the runaround, saying they could not advise Mr. Finlay since he was not a customer of theirs. CapTrust Cayman Shores was. And since the funds officially came from CapTrust, Mr. Finlay would have to consult directly with them.

  Jack couldn’t reach anyone at Sintex Manufacturing since the corporate phone number had been disconnected. Sintex had to be a scam, a shell company open for business one day and shut down the next. Someone was getting rich, but it wasn’t Jack. Oh well, he thought. Easy come, easy go. Rolling in dough one minute and destitute the next. Except for the hundred thousand, which would probably disappear in the blink of a con artist’s eye.

  After getting the runaround, he hadn’t learned anything new. This he did know. He was a man. He picked up a woman in a bar. They danced under the sheets. If he was guilty of anything, he was guilty of having a one-night stand. They couldn’t fry him for that, could he? Maybe they could. And just might.

  It took courage to do the right thing, except he wasn’t a courageous man. He was a man who skated through life as if everything were a lark. Even this was a lame excuse. Because if anyone knew what life was about, how hard, unforgiving, and unfair it could be, it was Jack Coyote. When his mother became sicker and sicker and eventually lay on her deathbed, Jack had to grow up fast and leave his childhood behind. At the age of twelve, he learned one of his most important lessons.

  Life is a crapshoot. Sometimes you win. Mostly you lose.

  Someone set him up for the fall. He landed hard. He would have to get up, brush himself off, and fight back. But with what? One person alone couldn’t have pulled off the setup. It had to be a team. Dogging his movements. Hacking into his private life. Murdering Milly and making it look like he did it.

  First, a break-and-entry guy, someone who knew how to get in and out of the townhouse without Jack knowing. Leaving behind bugs, laser mics, video cameras, transmitters, and tracking devices. Invading his privacy, listening in on his conversations, and recording everything he said and did, including when and how he made love to Milly, and chillingly, the exact moment they broke up.

  Second, a reconnaissance guy, former military maybe, watching through a zoom lens. Clocking when Jack woke up and when he went to bed. Chronicling his minute-by-minute and hour-by-hour routine. Monitoring everything he did … everywhere he went … and everyone he met.

  Third, a hacker who collected every bit of information worth knowing about Jack Coyote. Bank account numbers, passwords, credit cards, social security number, birthdate, birth name, mother’s maiden name, driver’s license number, online purchases, and social networking accounts.

  Fourth, an exotic woman to beguile him and lead him to his doom. Kathy Heathland. Or Katerine Cécile Arnaud Madoc. Or whatever name she was going by today.

  Fifth, a psychopath who liked getting his hands bloodied, looked forward to it, rehearsed it in his head, and enjoyed every sadistic moment of making his victims suffer, victims like Milly—and yes, it had to be, must be—the unfortunate woman in the underground Metro, chosen at random for the express purpose of teaching Jack a lesson. Several lessons. About the recklessness of uncovering secrets, the importance of keeping his mouth shut, and the dire consequences if he didn’t.

  And finally, a sixth member. The mastermind who put out the order and set everything in motion. Someone who worked at HID, or the CIA, or the FBI.

  Everything must have unraveled when he started asking questions about Spinnaker. The data collection program had been put into motion several years ago, its goal to capture the forensic profiles of every individual in the nation, its intrusive spyglass smelling of invasion of privacy at best and oppression at worst, a surreptitious cyber warfare directed against its own populace.

  If the surveillance program became public knowledge, people would raise a stink. Investigations would be launched, congressional hearings called, and key witnesses subpoenaed. Spinnaker could be reined in or completely shut down. A few heads might roll. But was this cause enough to frame one of their own for murder? Not unless Spinnaker was more dangerous than appeared at first glance.

  Ever since Milly’s murder, HID’s well-oiled media department—officially known as the Signals Intelligence Bureau—was clocking in double overtime. With the indefatigable Angie Browne at its head, the staff was well versed in marketing, public relations, spin doctoring, damage control, smoothing ruffled feathers on Capitol Hill, and planting fictional stories with this media outlet or that nationally syndicated news organization. Jack had been vilified as a maniac and Milly described as a woman of loose morals. It was easy to slander them. Fiction often resides in truth. What better way to draw attention away from the agency than by turning the incident into a murder of passion, and afterwards, running the names of the innocent through the mud. The insinuations often didn’t make sense, but in a twenty-four-hour news cycle, they didn’t have to. Stories put out for public consumption ran from the salacious to the depraved. Jack had become the fodder of tabloids, evening news, social media, and water-cooler gossip. To depict him as a lone wolf, a predator, a madman, and a murderer was a good way of shutting him down and shutting him up. If he said anything, who would believe him?

  A man can gawk at a semitrailer heading straight for him, then watch it miraculously veer off at the last possible second and consider himself the luckiest bastard alive. Or he can be hit in a head-on collision, and in that split second between life and death, know he was the unluckiest bastard to ever walk the earth. Whether early, late, or on time for his appointment with fate, he would still be the man he had always been, believing in the poetic trut
hs he had always believed in, and would go on believing.

  Jack believed the universe was boundless. He believed the Bible was written over centuries by men whose goals were to convince other men to worship their god. He believed in magic and cosmic truth. He believed Einstein was either a genius or a charlatan. He believed computer code was a religion as great, if not greater, than Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism. He believed digitized ones and zeroes were a framework just as valid as true and false, yes and no, on and off, male and female, love and hate. He believed the integrated circuit could not have been invented by man even though it had been. He believed quantum physics explained the mystery of the universe while also explaining how two individuals living continents apart could have the same thought at the same time. He believed man and woman were never meant to be together for a lifetime but only for that single moment when sperm meets egg, since afterwards, they separated once again into two individuals. He believed the soul and the mind were in a constant tug of war while the body observed both in laughter. He believed the circle of life was a never-ending path. He believed gods were invented to explain earth, air, fire, water, birth, and death. He believed in reincarnation. And he believed in the impossible.

  But what did he know? He knew the earth was round and revolved on a lopsided axis relative to the sun. He knew the moon rotated around the earth and its axis revolved in the same plane relative to the earth so that the far side of the moon could never be observed by man from Earth. He knew that neither man nor supercomputers could compute infinity or the square root of zero, no matter how smart the man or ingenious the code. He knew that every now and then he howled at the full moon, but he had to be very, very drunk. He knew he was a serial monogamist, since being with more than one lady at the same time was the mark of a schizophrenic personality, and he wasn’t crazy. He knew that while computer code could calculate the distance from the earth to the moon, it could never replicate the magnetic pull between a man and a woman. He knew he didn’t kill Milly. He knew a pretty face had seduced him and drugged him. He knew he wasn’t the man whose face was being splashed all over the internet. And finally he knew the odds were better than even he would eventually be captured, sent back to jail, and never be seen or heard from again.

  The rains stopped, the clouds parted, and the sun came out.

  He put on some clothes, tugged on a baseball cap, hid his face behind sunglasses, left the motel room, and crossed the highway. The air was misty and the pavement slick with wet. Sunrays peeked out from between the clouds and seared the skin. The diner was steamy, noisy, and full of food odors and rumbling chatter. A few patrons watched him approach the counter but most ignored him. He occupied a stool and ordered a greasy meal along with three shots of Tennessee whiskey accompanied by an equal number of beer chasers.

  His belly full, he went back to his room, opened the laptop, bypassed a firewall using a proxy and a phony IP address, logged into a random account, input a search, and accessed recent emails sent to and from personnel inside the Homeland Intelligence Division. Not all emails. Only emails containing his name or a reasonable facsimile. He followed the trails of several interesting messages sprinkled with coded words alluding to him, Milly, and Harry. He tracked the recipients to IP addresses in Russia, which led to IP addresses in China, and on and on, until the trail circled the globe and arrived at an IP address located somewhere off the Capital Beltway, where it bounced off that location, and landed at an IP address within a five-mile radius of a dinky motel at the outskirts of town.

  He sat back and tried to understand what had just happened. He already knew but stubbornly denied it. A hacker laid a trap and was hacking him in real time.

  If he had learned another lesson from the tough beginnings of his life, it was this: no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse.

  He broke the internet connection, slapped down the lid of the laptop, went out to the highway, and hitched a ride to anywhere by there.

  6

  Annapolis, Maryland

  Friday, July 25

  BRANDON ROLLED A chair out from a neighboring cubicle and lowered himself into it. A big man, a heavy man, he resembled a bull squatting on a decorative tearoom settee.

  “It’s been tough for you lately,” he said to Liz. His gravelly voice was roughened by years of nicotine, hard whiskey, late nights, and bellicose arguing. Yet he spoke to her in an avuncular tone, soothing and caring. “You don’t have to say a word. I’m a smart guy. I can read between the lines.”

  He wasn’t far wrong. When she passed informal conclaves in the halls, co-workers stopped whispering to each other and instead, cast sidelong glances even while giving her friendly greetings. As soon as she walked on by, their murmurings resumed. “That about sums it up.”

  “You were once Coyote’s lover.”

  Heat blossomed over her face. It was a ragged heat. A raging heat. A feverish heat that made her shiver. “Ah. I see.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a moralist. Merely a practical man.” His narrow eyes held her in thrall. They were cold eyes. Distant eyes. His voice droned on in a monotone. “I say this not to offend you. Only to observe. And to arrive at unavoidable conclusions. Such as you’re not liked or trusted, no doubt a recent phenomenon. Undeservedly so, I might add, and based on recent events beyond your control. But it does put you in an awkward position, doesn’t it?”

  The shivering lingered. She crossed her arms to contain her emotions, even if her anger must be evident. “You’ve made your point. So will I. What do you want from me, Mr. Brandon? Exactly?” She smiled faintly, tasting tartness on her tongue.

  He waved his stubby-fingered hand between them, and assumed a smile much broader than hers, though his was filled with amusement whereas hers had been awash with scorn. “Ah, a woman who thinks like a man. And it’s Neville. I never stand on formality.”

  He leaned forward, the chair springs squeaking, and braced meaty forearms on broad thighs, his chin thrust out and his eyes angled upward to meet her contempt. He was a sweaty man with a shiny forehead, acne-pitted face, blue-veined nose, and pink-blotched cheeks, presumably the product of high blood pressure and too many martinis. He was known to be a street brawler and a man used to getting his own way. This evening, his demeanor was tranquil, even while his fists clutched and unclutched, working out a constant inner tension. He was searching for the best way to engage her, and to gain her trust.

  “What do I want? Nothing sinister. Merely an assessment about the man who worked for you.” He sniffed in a breath before nodding with understanding. “And slept with you. Don’t get me wrong,” he said again. “It’s only to point out that you know him. In fact, you know him better than any of us.”

  “He’s not a murderer.”

  “People change.”

  “Not Jack.”

  He paused a moment, mulling over her defensiveness while trying to find a diplomatic way around it. He rubbed the back of his neck before going on. “Maybe you never really knew him, what he was capable of. Maybe even he wasn’t even aware of his tendencies until … well … until it was too late. Some people look outwardly, all the while searching inwardly, at their unremarkable personalities and their wretched defeats. Eventually they snap.”

  God, he was a philosopher. She had misjudged him. Or else he had revealed a truth about himself. “I know who he is.”

  “Sure you do,” he said gently, his face a study of sympathy, artificial though it may be. “But maybe he’s been suppressing these abnormal urges for years.”

  “He would never do to any woman what was done to Milly.” She sat back and tightened the grip on her arms. She wasn’t searing with anger anymore. She was cold with fear. Fear for Jack.

  “I believe you believe that. But it doesn’t make it true. All men … and all women for that matter … are capable of murder. It’s a primal instinct. Goes back thousands of years to the beginning of time, when laws did not exist and self-preservation was the only princip
le that mattered.”

  “For survival, yes,” Liz said. “But very few men are capable of doing what was done to Milly.”

  “Touché, my dear. You’re a worthy debater. And loyal. An admirable quality.” He sat back as if she had satisfied him in a crucial way or passed a test of some sort. He placed the flats of his palms onto his thighs and looked at her with eyes slightly less piercing and noticeably more open.

  Liz could only think that he wanted her to expose a truth about Jack, a weakness he could use against him. Like hell she would. “What do you want, Mr. Brandon?”

  He held up a finger. “Remember? It’s Neville.”

  “What the hell do you want … Neville.”

  “I like a temperamental woman. It means she’s a match for me. And if she’s a match for me, she’s a match for anybody.” He was being folksy. Paternal. Taking her into his confidence. Praising her like a master praises his dog. Good dog, he was saying. Good little bitch. “The girl wasn’t accidentally killed in a sex romp.”

  “She has a name.”

  “All of God’s children have names. Hers was Milly. She was tortured and sexually violated. For hours. And he was with her. No one can deny the prima facie evidence. Who else could it have been? A specter? No, it had to be him. Please,” he said, shaking his head and throwing out his hands to indicate the obvious. “He took to bed one woman and woke up with another? While some mystical pretender replaced him in his bed of shame?”