by Steve Jordan
“Naw,” I said. “Gotta get some sleep, I’ve been at it all day.” I got up and headed for the bedroom, already feeling like I was going to be asleep before I crossed the threshold. “I’ll be out early tomorrow, to see Lou, so if I don’t see you—”
“Yeah, good luck with it,” Pete shot back amiably. “G’night.”
As I expected, I slept like a log. Programmers who are deeply entrenched in a project don’t always sleep well during… their subconscious minds continue to write and rewrite code in their dreams. It’s one of the reasons IT guys look so tired all the time. But once you’ve finished a project, and all the subconscious code is finished, you can sleep like the dead. In fact, when I woke up, it was half an hour past when my alarm had gone off… I never even heard it. Fortunately, I wasn’t pushing a time-clock, so I got up, got myself cleaned up and dressed, and went out to get my stuff.
Pete was still asleep, no surprise for him, so I found some orange juice in the fridge, then went to my borg alcove to finish off the last details of my elaborate Trojan Horse scam. Part of it involved my own website, which was convenient because, well, I had one. I had to make sure certain files were accessible from a hidden folder I’d set up, which was crucial to the plan. I also massaged the folder’s date info to make it look like the data had been around for awhile… some people got suspicious when they uncovered material that was clearly brand new, and I couldn’t assume my bad guys were idiots, like the loan sharks from Californian Hills. Software criminals and hackers were usually damned sharp, and they knew all the tricks. You had to get up pretty early in the morning to pull a fast one on them. And I was up half an hour late, so I was being extra careful.
Once I was ready, I made my travelling copies of my files, and dropped them into the pocket of my cargo pants. IT guys love cargo pants: They’re one of the only kinds of popular clothing that allows us to bring all of our gear, and not look like geeks. I’d even managed to pick up a mini-notebook off the proceeds I’d scored from the Californian caper, something that looked hip and not as geeky as the Toughbook, and it fit into one of those cargo pockets, besides. If I had to do any running, I’d probably turn my thighs black and blue… but cool guys didn’t run, anyway.
Thus infested with my strategically-ensconced gear, it was time to go. I had considered taking a taxi, but it occurred to me that Pete was still in bed, and his Fit would be a perfect “fit” for my story. So I went to his room and knocked. I heard a vague mumble, so I opened the door. Pete was under a sheet, not moving… he might not have actually awoken when he heard me knock.
“Pete,” I said, “can I borrow your car for a couple hours?”
From under the cover, I heard, “Mmmnmsshhhuummmunnummm.” I wouldn’t have sworn that was the answer I was hoping for… but then, his arm slid out from under the cover, and waved in the general direction of his nightstand. I could see his keys there.
“Shiny! Thanks,” I said, walking over and scooping the keys off the nightstand. “See you later, bro.”
“Mmmunmmhhhuummmummm.”
I inserted myself into the Honda, and immediately used my cellphone to call 4-1-1 and get an address for Coyote Chow, then enter that back into my phone so the built-in GPS could take me there. Once done, I started the car (a minute’s less idling is a minute’s less pollution, enviro-homeys), and took off for Chow’s office. Actually, “took off” was a very poor choice of words. Contrary to what the commercials would have you believe, “the Fit is SLOW.”
It did give me plenty of quality time, however, to just enjoy the scenery a bit, and consider my situation. I already felt like being the IT freelance guy was working out… I could get used to this. Yes, being in exile in San Diego had its upsides… not the least of which was Gail, even with whatever weirdness was going on between her and my brother. But was it the life for me?
Funny thing about that question: Whenever I found myself asking that lately, I almost immediately pictured Gail’s naked body draped on me in one of a dozen interesting positions, and underneath me in a few dozen others; and immediately I answered the question with, “Well, maybe for a little while longer…”
Finally I reached Coyote Chow, and pulled into the lot. I extricated myself from the driver’s side, smoothed down my polo shirt and smoothed back my hair, and started for the door. Showtime.
6: Selling the Trojan
When I walked in the front door, Barry was there at his desk, and this time he wasn’t rooting around in a drawer. He saw me and started to crack a smile, but it faded quickly. Good: He hadn’t expected me. So far, so good. “Hi… Mike, right?”
“Yup,” I said, smiling easily back. “I came by to see Lou… is she here?”
“Yeah,” Barry said, his eyes drifting to his computer screen, “but she’s kind of busy today… she didn’t ask me to set up an appointment…”
“I know,” I said, “I wasn’t expecting to be here, myself. But she’ll want to see me.”
Barry raised an eyebrow. “She will?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said confidently. “Tell her…” I paused dramatically, stepped a bit closer to Barry’s desk, and leaned forward (and down) a bit. “Tell her I have a fractalmonic recognizer program that can’t be spoofed. Ever.”
Barry looked at me, clearly doubtful. In fact, I doubted he knew what I’d just said. Finally, he picked up his phone and reached for the intercom.
“Waitwait wait!” I blurted, and he froze. “Don’t call her… this is too sensitive!” I looked around conspiratorially, and to his credit, so did Barry. “She’s in her office back there, right? Or maybe she has a blackberry?”
“Uh…” Barry gamely tried to follow what was happening. “She’s got a blackberry.”
“Just e-mail her, then,” I said. “That way no one else will hear it.”
Barry continued to look at me dubiously. But a few seconds later, he opened up his e-mail app, and started typing. Which was perfect. Sure, no one would hear the exchange… but e-mails were easy to tap into, especially in an office with a few smart programmers. If, as I suspected, the bad guys were accessing company e-mails, they’d be getting a clue to my Trojan in short order. After a few seconds, he stopped, and looked at me for clarification. “Fracta—?”
“Fractal—monic,” I repeated. “Fractalmonic recognizer program.”
Barry finished typing, and hit the send button. Then he shrugged, and said, “Take a seat.”
“Thanks.”
I turned and started for one of the chairs. Before I could actually sit down, the phone on Barry’s desk rang. I waited while Barry spoke to the other end of the line. Then he hung up, and looked up at me. “She’s waiting in the conference room for you.”
“Thanks again,” I said, and started back. Barry gave me one last wondering glance as I passed, but I just flashed him a confident smile, and after a moment, he turned back to his work.
I worked my way past the desks of hardbodies again, and a number of them took significant notice of me, and presumably, the fact that I wasn’t being escorted by anyone else. More than one of the girls gave me a particularly hard look. I grinned amiably as I passed, and kept going until I reached the glass-walled conference room in the back. Lou and Phil were in there, just as they’d been the other day, and I walked right in.
“Hello again,” I started as I closed the door. “Bet you didn’t expect to see me come by, did you?”
Lou and Phil exchanged glances, before Lou replied, “Um, no, we didn’t.”
“Good,” I said. “I’m sorry if I sort of sneaked in, but I didn’t want Gail to think I was playing her just so I could get to you. First of all, so we all know who we really are, my card.” I removed a card from my pocket, and slid it forward across the table. It was my standard business card, which established my IT credentials. Then I flipped it over and left it on the table.
On the back of the card, I’d written: “Play along, in case we’re bugged.”
Lou and Phil stared at the card for a few
seconds, and for those same few seconds, I was afraid they weren’t going to be able to play along convincingly. I had no way of knowing at this point whether anyone was listening in… or, for that matter, reading our lips through the glass walls of the conference room… but I had to assume so. If these guys turned out to be lousy actors, though, this whole scam would go right down the toilet.
Finally Lou raised her head. While Phil looked to Lou, she said to me, “Okay, look. Is this just some elaborate way to apply for a job or something?”
She was doing it. Aces! “Well, you could say that,” I replied. “See, I’d heard about Coyote Chow, and I know something about the contracts you have. I have some buddies in the Navy. Anyway, what I have is something I’m having a hard time selling… but I think, through you, we can both come out smelling like roses.”
Lou faux-considered my words, and turned to Phil, who just nodded. “Go on,” she said.
On cue, I removed a flash key from my pocket, and held it up… then put it on the table. “Last year, I developed an encryption system based on fingerprint reading, for a gaming start-up.” Which had a ring of truth: The games industry was highly focused on security, so their games wouldn’t be copied and disseminated among every prepubescent on the planet without paying for each and every one of them. “The problem I was working on was that people were figuring out ways to spoof standard fingerprint reading algorithms, at the transmission stage. In other words, they can send an electronic signal obtained from a fingerprint back into the system at anytime, with or without a fingerprint reading, and fool the security.
“I came up with a new encryption system, based on the back-and-forth handoff of remote car door unlocking systems,” I continued. “As you probably know, cars and keyfobs are preprogrammed with a random-number generator that creates a new passcode every time it is used. My system also creates a random number sequence, to confirm that the print is coming from the reading scanner instead of being tapped into the line. The sequence is not only based on fractals, but it is derived from the print itself, making it double-secured!”
Now, I won’t get into the holes involved in that scenario, of which there are only a few, but they are healthy. All that was important is that I sounded convincing. Phil actually looked like he was buying into it, and Lou was nodding like she was impressed with the idea. If anyone was watching, the body language would sell it.
“So,” Lou finally said, “why can’t you sell this?”
“I had some… issues at my old job,” I explained, also inserting a kernel of truth for verisimilitude. “I’m on everyone’s s hit-list right now. But if I can sell this to you, you can sell it to your contracts, and we both get what we want. Makes sense?”
Phil and Lou exchanged glances, and this time, Phil said, “Makes sense to me. What do you think, Lou?”
Lou hesitated for a convincing number of seconds, before she said, “We’ll check this out. If it looks good… we’re going for it!”
“Excellent!” I said, rubbing my hands together in anticipation. “All the details are on that key. Go ahead and plug it into your stuff and see how it works. I’d advise you to keep it on you, though, so it doesn’t grow legs, y’know?”
“You’re leaving it with us?” Phil asked.
“Hey, I trust you,” I said. “Just be careful with it… that’s valuable stuff. ‘Kay?”
“Sure,” Lou replied, smiling. “We’ll be careful.”
“Good. Then call me… and we’ll be in business!” I started for the door, opened it, and spoke loud enough that anyone outside could clearly hear me. “I’ve gotta get back into town, but if you need any more info on that (I nodded significantly at the key), just give me a call, and if I have to, I can come back today.”
“No problem,” Lou said, all smiles now. Phil followed her, and the two of them walked me to the front door. Again, everyone looked me up and down as we passed… this place was beginning to make me feel like a virgin at a Vampire’s picnic… though now, at least someone here had to realize that there was more to my visit than a social call.
When we got to the door, Lou said, “Say ‘hi’ to Gail, then. Next time you’ll have to join us.”
“Join you for what?”
There was maybe a split-second before Lou replied, “For a nightcap. We missed you last night.”
I nodded and said, “Sure. Next time.” And I headed out the door with a wave.
On the way back to Pete’s apartment, I reflected on two things. First of all, on the fact that the Trojan Horse plan seemed to be working. I could look forward to step two, hopefully soon.
And second, Lou’s mention of a nightcap: The way she’d said it, was the way you’d say it if a friend of yours had been there, and you weren’t. She could only mean Gail, since she was our only mutual friend. But Gail had told me she was exercising last night. Sure, she could have had the nightcap early, and exercised afterward… or the other way ‘round, for that matter. If she’d already been, there was no reason she had to mention it to me when I called her. There wasn’t necessarily anything odd in that.
So why was this tiny voice in my head doing the “Danger Will Robinson!” chant?
7: Ambush
I came in the door, and immediately heard my brother shout, “Danger, Will Robinson!” I spun around in time to catch the beer he’d hurled at me, barely having time to muse about how my thoughts were now leaking across chapter boundaries. As he came out of the kitchen, he said, “So, how did your little con job go?”
“I think it went well,” I said, twisting off the beer top and reaching out to clunk the bottle against Pete’s in a toast. “I’ll keep an eye on the webs over the course of the next day or two, and see if we catch a thief.”
“Hmm… you know,” Pete said, “neither of us is supposed to be old enough to remember Will Robinson… or Alexander Mundy.”
“Better that,” I said, “than confess to watching Captain Planet. I’ll keep sixties television, thanks.” I tossed Pete’s car keys in the air, and he snagged the keyring on a pinkie. I took note. “You training to make a killing at a carnival?”
“Just keeping my reflexes in shape,” Pete grinned. “You never know when a little dexterity may come in handy.”
“That’s what she said,” I commented lightly as I headed for the dining room to unload my pants. (Excuse me: To unload the electronics gear from my pants pockets. You have such smutty minds.)
A few hours later, we were still hanging on the balcony, just chatting idly and checking out the babes at the pool, and beyond on the beach. Well, we weren’t really so close to the beach that we could check out the girls there without a pair of binoculars. And there were enough pretty girls down at the pool that we didn’t really feel the need to lift Pete’s binoculars from the table. So mostly we just checked out the pool.
“I could get used to this,” I said abruptly, and took a deep chug off of my beer.
“Glad to hear it,” Pete said. “I really do think staying in San Diego will be good for you. There’s no reason you have to go back to Baltimore.”
“Baltimore isn’t so bad,” I said defensively. Well, slightly defensively. Actually, I just said it to be saying it.
“Ahh, you’re just saying that,” Pete said. “The whole east coast has a way of turning people conservative… complacent… and…”
“Convivial?”
“No, that’s not it…”
“Communistic?”
“You wish…”
“Covalent?”
“Cut that out!” Pete snapped. He raised his finger at me, and said, “Sar—” he held the word after the “r”, and used his finger to stab out the rest of it… “— castic! That’s what you are!”
“Well, at least I’m not alliteratively-challenged,” I gloated. Pete was about to try to retort, when a preprogrammed ding went off on my Toughbook. “Hold that thought… if you can,” I said, as I hopped out of my chair and went to the laptop in my Borgspace. Sure enough, I had
a message that my Trojan Horse was moving around. I’d designed it to poke around the computer of any entity that downloaded it, or even ordered it moved from one place to another, so I could verify the identity of the user. Assuming the perpetrator was at another location, I could then locate them, and the police would have a place to serve a search warrant. If it was an inside job, there was every possibility that the perp wasn’t dumb enough to use their own PC… but I had a way to deal with that, if need be…
Hold on. As I watched the screen, I realized there was something I’d missed. And I was about to be screwed by it. “Aw, damn!”
“What?” Pete looked up from his chair. “What’s wrong?”
“I eff’d up! I need your car!” I snapped the Toughbook closed and threw it into my gear bag, then bolted out of the dining room.
“Key!” Pete shouted, and threw the keys at me. I snagged them back-handed, as I reached the door and threw it open. And immediately ran into Gail.
“ Oof! Hi, lover—” Gail got out, but not before I was grabbing her shoulder with my hand and turning her one-eighty in the foyer. I yelled back, “Key!” and threw it back at Pete, then pushed Gail out the door and followed close behind her.
“What’s the matter!” Gail demanded as I rushed her out.
“We have to get to Coyote Chow! You’re driving!”
“Whu—”
“Go!”
We went… downstairs, faster than the elevator could’ve gotten us down, and sprinted for Gail’s Eclipse. I was pretty damned sure it would move faster than Pete’s Fit, and when Gail threw it into gear and yanked the wheel to the left, I knew I was in speedy hands. We vaulted the hump at the parking lot entrance and laid a patch on the road as we bolted southward.
“All right,” Gail finally said, still a bit breathless from our dash from upstairs. “Tell me what’s happening!”
“I got a signal from my Trojan Horse,” I explained, opening up the Toughbook on my lap. “The file is being accessed… and it’s being done by someone at Coyote Chow, right now!”
