A Star Called Lucky

by Bapsy Jain

  “I don’t care if he wears fishnet stockings and high heels, the point is that we are going to catch him, and damn soon, and your job is to work out how.”

  “What have you done so far?” Lucky asked.

  “We’ve read everything he’s written and we’ve analyzed the paper and the ink and the words. We’ve even taken DNA from skin samples we found on the page.”

  “Is it his DNA?”

  Coleman shrugged. “Who knows? But we think he is using scribes—no two samples have been alike.”

  “All that, and you haven’t got close enough to snap a photo.”

  “If we were close enough to snap a photo,” Coleman said, “we’d have the key to immortality.”

  Lucky nodded. “Have you ever gone fishing?” she asked.

  Coleman said, “Of course I have.”

  “What kind of fish?”

  “Everything from green cutthroat trout to swordfish, why?”

  “When you want to catch a fish, do you jump in the water and swim around with a knife? Do you spy on them from the sky? Or, do you use bait? Sun Tzu says, ‘What causes opponents to come of their own accord is the prospect of gain.’”

  “Enough!” Coleman said. “I’m paying you for data: charts, graphs, maps, names, and places. And to quote Sun Tzu again, ‘Those skilled in defense hide in the deepest depths of the earth. Those skilled in attack maneuver in the highest heights of the skies.’ Lobsang is hiding while we soar.”

  “He also said,” Lucky said, “that a wise governor does not keep his men in the field.”

  Coleman looked incredulous. “Remember what I said, Boyce. If the troops do not obey, it is the fault of the officers. You’ll do what I tell you or your stint here will be shorter than either of us imagined. I have the feeling you are going to be working some long hours.”

  As she trudged back to her office, Lucky thought, This is a strange assignment.

  Chapter 8

  After failing to make any more headway on the mysterious doctor, Lucky decided to take a break by calling Amay, only to hear a familiar greeting on the other end of the line.

  “Heeyyyyyyyyyy, Luckee!”

  Lucky almost dropped the phone in surprise. At first she thought she had dialed her home number by mistake. Even though it wasn’t the first time Maria had done double duty as a babysitter, her voice came as a surprise. “Oh,” Lucky said. “Hey. What’s up?”

  Maria was cooking spaghetti for the kids. Lucky pictured her pinching the phone between her ear and shoulder while she stirred the marinara sauce. “Why didn’t you just order out?” she asked.

  “I like cooking. Besides, it’s more fun for the kids. Here. Sean wants to talk to you.”

  He missed his mommy. “Come home,” he said.

  “Soon,” she replied. “How’s Falstaff?”

  “He stumped his toe.”

  Lucky thought about this. How does a stuffed bear with no feet stub his toe? Must have been one of the kids. “Is he all better?”

  “A little.”

  There was a crash of breaking glass and a sharp shout in the background.

  “What was that?” Lucky asked, but Sean didn’t answer. A moment later Maria took the phone. “It’s under control,” she said, “but I have to run. Is there something you need?”

  “No,” Lucky said. “I just called to say hello. Where’s Amay?”

  “He had something to do and he had to go out for a while. Didn’t say how long. I think he’s got something on the side, maybe a woman? Ha!”

  Lucky frowned. “Right,” she said.

  “You can call back later.”

  Lucky hung up. Now what? She stared at the picture of Lobsang for a few minutes, then closed her programs, turned off the monitor, and trudged back to the hotel. As she crossed the lobby to the elevators, a voice called out, “Hey, Lucky!”

  It was Collette. Collette. She was dressed in all pink; on her shirt was a picture of a phone that had skulls on the keypad instead of numbers. Below the image, it read: DIAL “M” FOR MISFITS. She was carrying a small suitcase and a My Little Pony backpack.

  Lucky did a double take. “What are you doing here?”

  Collette blew a bubble. “You didn’t call me.”

  “I… but… I…”

  “I said it was important.” She sighed and rolled her eyes.

  “I keep looking for pay phones, but do you know how difficult they are to find anymore?”

  Collette folded her arms and frowned. “There’s one right there in the bar,” she said.

  Lucky looked over at the bar, now open. “But the bar was….oh, never mind.” An elevator arrived, and they got in.

  Lucky asked, “Honey, does your mother know where you are?”

  “No, but it’s not like she cares or anything. She left some stuff in the fridge and said she’d be back by midnight.” She checked her watch. “Don’t worry, I got a round trip ticket. I’ll be home before she misses me.”

  “Collette, what’s going on?”

  Collette smacked her gum. “I told you it was important that you call me, but nobody listens to what I say. After all, I’m only a teenager. Unless I’m carrying a gun to school or getting pregnant or using dope, I’m supposed to be seen and not heard.”

  The elevator door opened and a couple of men in suits got in. Collette made a zipping motion, running her finger across her mouth, and stayed quiet. Lucky decided she’d ask later; right now, she was grateful for the chance to assess the situation and decide what to do next.

  When she and Collette got off, Collette said, “Did those men strike you as odd?”

  Lucky shook her head, fumbling in her purse for her room keys. “No, why should they?”

  “They got on at the fourth floor.”

  “So?”

  “They were going up.”

  “And?”

  “Who gets on an elevator from their room and goes up?”

  “Maybe they were on their way to see friends or co-workers? Maybe there’s something on the roof — a bar or a pool or something.”

  “And what floor were they going to?”

  “I didn’t see.”

  “You didn’t see because they didn’t push a button.”

  Lucky finally found her room key and opened the door, vaguely hoping that if she and Collette could just sit down and have some tea, everything would make sense. But as soon as they entered the room, Collette began looking closely at the screws on the light switch.

  “What are you looking at?” Lucky asked.

  “Fresh scratches.” Collette paused, then turned to Lucky. “Don’t say my name or reveal any details about me out loud.”

  “You’re paranoid.”

  “You’re not paranoid enough.” Collette looked around the room again. “Meet me outside, and then we can talk.” And she went back out into the hall.

  Lucky stared after her and then looked around the room herself. I guess I’m not getting that tea after all. Well, at least she had a chance to freshen up.

  After changing into jeans and a light green cotton top, Lucky went out to the hall and found Collette sitting on the carpet between two potted ferns, reading a spiral bound manuscript with a photo of a keyboard on the front. It was called JAVA, AGILE, AND SCRUM FOR HACKERS. “Let’s take the stairs,” she said.

  They walked down to the garage and then back up the ramp and out. “Where are we going?” Lucky asked.

  “To eat. I’m starved. Airline service is NOT what it used to be. They give you salty peanuts and then they charge you for water. Capitalists.”

  “How did you get here, anyway?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I bought a ticket.”

  “By yourself? How?”

  “Online. I used my mom’s credit card. She’ll never know. She doesn’t check her statements. She just pays them and complains about the money.”

  “And you flew by yourself?”

  “Isn’t the Internet age great? Miss Kennedy sent her unaccompanied minor daug
hter to Washington to meet her father. All I needed was a credit card. United gave me my own private escort and everything. He was cute, too. I thought about getting a wheelchair or a sign-language interpreter, you know, saying I’m deaf. But then I figured that might be laying it on too thick. I gave him the slip at the baggage carousel. There’s a Wendy’s. Want a cheeseburger?”

  Lucky didn’t, but they crossed the road, dodging traffic, and Lucky winced as Collette ordered them cheeseburgers and fries. How long had it been since she’d eaten junk food? She couldn’t remember. They found a reasonably clean table and sat down.

  “Is this about my computer?” Lucky asked.

  “Sort of.”

  “Couldn’t it have waited until I got home?”

  “What if I told you that you might not get home?”

  Lucky set down the burger.

  Collette said, “There was nothing really wrong with your computer.”

  “No virus?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “But the home page —”

  “Oh, the home page was nothing. Just a little old crappy malware script. That took me about two minutes to sniff out.”

  “Okay.”

  “The real trouble is this.” Collette dug in her pocket and produced a flash drive.

  “That’s not mine,” Lucky said.

  “Neither is what’s in it. But that was what was in your computer.”

  Lucky leaned across the table and looked at the flash drive. It was nothing—just a black and gold, eight-gig stick. “And what was in my computer?”

  “It’s kind of hard to explain,” Collette said. “Have you ever heard of a mirror server?”

  “A what?”

  “A mirror server.”

  Lucky sighed. “What’s a mirror server?”

  “It’s a connection to a dupe site. It makes it look like you’re online doing whatever you usually do, but it actually copies everything you do. Somebody is reading or storing everything about you. Everything you’d ever done, written, every picture, all your contacts, everything.”

  “But what…how…?”

  “I don’t know. I was kinda interested to hear what you had to say about this.”

  Lucky shook her head. “But my laptop is practically new. I haven’t done much with it at all.”

  “So you’re not surfing porn or anything?”

  “What?? Of course not.”

  “I mean, it’s not like it’s any of my business, and far be it from me to judge…”

  “Collette!”

  “I’m just checking. I suppose no online gambling sites. Those are real holes, too.”

  “No,” Lucky said. “I don’t know anything about online gambling.”

  “Have you opened any weird attachments in your e-mail?”

  “No,” Lucky said. “I haven’t.”

  “Has anybody put anything into your computer?”

  “No, nobody has…” and then she stopped and covered her face with her hand.

  Bloodhound. “Well, there was one thing. But there’s no way it was infected with some virus.”

  “A pen drive?”

  “Yeah,” Lucky said. “A pen drive.”

  “Some kind of download?”

  Lucky sighed. “Yes.” She was wondering how she could explain this to Collette, and to her bosses, who surely must know by now about the purloined software. She should have known better.

  “Well, there you have it,” Colette said.

  “You figured this out?”

  “Not me. Not entirely. I told you, I got this friend in Bulgaria.”

  “Collette, please just tell me everything.”

  Collette stirred the ketchup on her plate with a French fry. “Well, once I got in your computer, I started fooling around. Nothing mean, I mean, I was just gonna do a few things to enhance your performance. Really. I was just gonna fix a few things for you and not say anything about it. Just for fun. But when I checked the system usage, it was way over what it should have been — and that meant something was running. Something I couldn’t see or find. And I got kinda pissed about it cause I think I’m pretty good at this stuff. And so I called Yazma and he gave me a few pointers, and then we found that this thing was echoing everything we did. But to find that, well, you don’t want to know. We had to kind of trick your computer into thinking it was online and then watching what it did.”

  “So you tricked my computer?”

  “It’s not that hard. Anyway, Yazma got really, really excited; said he’d never seen anything like it before.”

  “Look,” Lucky said. “We have to be really careful about this. There’s this program on my hard drive…if it gets out, a lot of people could get hurt.”

  “You’re telling me! Yazma said it was like, the Holy Grail of hacking. He can even go after Swiss bank accounts now. He said to say, Thank you. That’s pretty unusual for a Bulgarian. He said he owes you a favor.”

  Lucky buried her face in both hands. “Goodbye, career,” she said. “Maybe I was meant to be in prison after all.”

  Collette slurped her milkshake. “Huh?” she said.

  “You’re telling me some teenage Bulgarian hacker just got a government program from my hard drive and I’m not supposed to react? OMG,” she said.

  “Oh, it’s much worse than that,” Collette said. “You see, whoever did this to you—as soon as they go to the mirror site to check you out, they’re going to know that you know about them too. It’s called the magic mirror.”

  Lucky sighed. “So I guess I turn myself in and get it over with?”

  Collette looked puzzled. “Get what over with?”

  “I have a program from the state government. I mean, I didn’t exactly steal it, but I borrowed it without official permission. And now, if I lose it, then I’m going to be the fall guy for the whole thing getting loose. They’ll throw the book at me.” And then it really hit her, and she began to cry. “They’re going to send me to prison.”

  “What the hell are you babbling about?” Collette asked. “I’m not talking about that bloodsucker thing.”

  Lucky looked up. “Then what?”

  “The program that hacked you. It was still running in your computer. It’s on your hard drive. Bloodsucker was nothing. Yazma said that thing had been around for years. This is something else. This program can hack into any computer – and it’s top secret! It’s all so simple. It’s designed to be used on a pen drive—you insert it into someone’s computer, it copies itself on and does its thing, and then it gets deleted. But whoever it was pulled out the flash drive too soon, before it could delete the program. Must’ve been a real amateur! But Yazma and I love him for it.”

  Lucky was stuck. This is something else? And then — “Oh!” Coleman. He had used the flash drive on her computer when he showed her the sketch of Lobsang in New York.

  “What is it?” asked Collette.

  “There was something else,” Lucky said. “My new boss. He put something in my computer. But then,” her face brightened, “he just gave me a new computer. Why would he spy on my old computer if he gave me a new one?”

  “Well, if somebody wanted to spy on you, they could give you a new computer all set up for them. But sometimes people want more.”

  “I see,” Lucky said, even though she didn’t.

  “If somebody wanted to know all about you, the best way is to get your old computer. Sounds to me like they killed two birds with one stone—they can look into what you’ve done and spy on what you will be doing.” Collette shrugged.

  Lucky frowned. “Look. This isn’t a spy movie, and nobody wants to bug my computer.” But even as she said this she realized that it was, well, entirely possible. Why wouldn’t Coleman want to know everything to maintain a high level of security?

  Collette, evidently, registered Lucky’s hesitation. “Yes? Correct?” she asked.

  “But I don’t have any secrets. And he wouldn’t have to steal my computer to spy on me—if that was what he really
wanted to do.”

  Collette shrugged. “I don’t know. But someone definitely has it out for you, and this boss of yours sounds like a good candidate. If I were you, I’d quit right now and get away from these guys. Whatever they’re up to isn’t normal. Yazma said he could fix something up to cover you for a while. If you want. He can make it look like you’ve been mirrored, but he said the best thing was just to let it go and then set up some new accounts and anything you don’t want people to know, well, if you buy a new computer and stay out of your old accounts, you can have a second life. And then use your old accounts for anything you’re not worried about people knowing. Anyway, that’s why I was worried about you. And that’s why I came to warn you. If I were you, I’d clear out of town until this dies down.” Collette looked at her watch. “Speaking of clearing out, I gotta get to the airport.”

  “You came all the way to tell me this? Why didn’t you just call me?”

  “I did call you, remember? Besides, I like flying, and I figured anybody who’d go to that much trouble to hack you is probably tapping your phone. And they have the room bugged, too. It’s in the light switch. Amateurs. Duh. And those two guys—five minutes after you got off they came back down the elevator, got off, saw me, and got right back on and left. You missed that. If they find out who I am, I’m dead meat.”

  Lucky shook her head. “They may be checking me out, Collette. I can’t explain it, but I’m working on something classified, so they might just be doing a routine security check. They may need a background check, too. Who I know. Whom I talk to. They’re just making sure I’m okay. There’s no conspiracy.”

  “Yeah, and I bet you don’t believe in black drone helicopters, either.”

  “Oh, I believe in black drone helicopters all right, just not the kind you’re talking about.”

  Collette fumbled in her backpack and took out a black string with a translucent yellow pebble strung on it. She handed it to Lucky. Lucky looked at the stone closely. A mosquito trapped in amber. “Cute,” she said.

  “Will you wear this for me? Just for luck? I’d feel better if you did.”

  “It hardly goes with my suits.”

  She looked at Collette looking at her.

  “Okay,” Lucky said. “Just for you.”