Matthew Mather's Compendium

by Matthew Mather

  “I’m an asshole? You’re sleeping with someone, and I’m an asshole? I’m going to kill that son of a bitch.”

  “Please . . .”

  I glared at her, and she stared back at me defiantly.

  “WHAT?” I shouted, throwing my hands into the air. Luke began crying in the background.

  In the wavering candlelight she put one trembling hand to her mouth and answered me: “I’m pregnant.”

  ***

  From the author

  Hope you enjoyed the start of CyberStorm! If you want to continue the story, click here to witness the destruction of New York, and Mike and his family’s struggle to survive, or search for CyberStorm on Amazon and continue reading from 9pm on Day 2. NOTE that CyberStorm is in Kindle Unlimited, so is free to continue reading if you are part of this program.

  DARKNET

  Copyright © 2014,15,16 by Matthew Mather

  ISBN: 978-1-987942-01-9

  Cover image by Michael Corley

  All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Personal Note from Author

  There are many people to thank for their help in creating Darknet. In particular I’d like to thank:

  Dr. Gregory Dudek

  McGill Center for Intelligent Machines

  Tsvi Gal

  CTO Morgan Stanley

  Andre McGregor

  FBI Cyber Special Agent (emeritus)

  AUGUST 10th

  Wednesday

  1

  Central London

  England

  One hour until the next assassin deadline. Dead-line. An appropriate word. Sean Womack checked his wristwatch and tried to steady his shaking hand.

  It was noon.

  Clang. Clang…

  The clocks of London chimed their consensus. Sixty minutes until the next assassin bet, but he only needed half that. The Assassin Market—a crowd-funded murder collective—was on the hunt for him.

  Sean sat on a granite bench next to a marble statue of Queen Anne. He balanced a thick manila envelope on his knees while he rolled up his sleeves to relieve the sweltering heat. My God, he didn’t know England could be this hot. In front of Sean rose the imposing façade of St. Paul’s cathedral, highlighted by a brilliant aquamarine sky. A red double-decker bus growled past, belching fumes as the driver changed gears. Green trees swayed in the breeze.

  Beside Sean, a man in a tailored suit had his brown-bagged lunch spread out on his lap. The man chewed thoughtfully on a whole grain sandwich while staring at a flock of pigeons that scratched and cooed in front of them. Glancing at him—perfect silk tie, coiffed hair, polished brown shoes—Sean wondered, is he the one? The man didn’t look the part, but then it was impossible to tell anymore.

  Sean’s stomach growled. He hadn’t eaten in a day—maybe two—but he had no appetite. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and adjusted his sunglasses, then checked his watch again.

  Fifty-six minutes.

  Looking at the envelope on his knees, Sean pulled a pen from his pocket and scrawled an address on it. Taking a deep breath, he scratched out the address and wrote a different one. Satisfied, he rocked to his feet, pocketed the envelope, and walked down the street.

  Blue glass-and-steel skyscrapers rose past the dome of St. Paul’s on his left, construction cranes balanced between them, insects atop growing termite mounds. He glanced up at helicopters chop-chopping in the clear blue sky before taking a sharp right turn to duck down an alleyway. He collided with someone coming the opposite direction.

  “Can you help me?” the man asked.

  Sean grabbed him. “Who are you?”

  “Dave,” the man squeaked, trying to step back. “I wanted to know if you’d take a picture of me and my family.” He pulled free.

  Sean looked up. The man’s wife and kids huddled behind him. Sean glanced up higher, at a CCTV camera on the corner of a building. London had the highest concentration of surveillance cameras in the world. A risk Sean was only too aware of, but one he needed to take.

  “Sorry,” Sean said to the man. “Sorry, I was just…” but he didn’t finish his sentence as he jogged away from them, down the last steps of the alleyway.

  He stopped at the corner, looked in all directions, and looked at his watch again.

  Forty-four minutes.

  Turning left onto Queen Victoria Street, Sean started back toward the center of the City of London. People thought that London was this huge city, but the real City of London was contained in one single square mile, the highest concentration of financial firepower on the planet.

  More helicopters had assembled overhead.

  Three more blocks and Sean found what he was looking for. A Royal Mail box, bright red, with the Queen’s ER insignia emblazoned in gold on the front, standing at attention next to the entrance to the Bank tube station. It was in the middle of a roundabout in a five-way intersection of streets—Victoria, Cheapside, William, Threadneedle, Prince—and in the shadow of the imposing Bank of England building. Next to the post box stood an equally red and iconic English telephone booth.

  Sean slipped the envelope into the post box, double-checking to ensure it slid all the way in, then opened the door to the telephone booth while searching his pockets for change. No cell phone, no credit or debit cards, not since Amsterdam. Even if he didn’t use them, he wasn’t sure if someone could track their tags. It was best not to take chances. Sean leaned against the inside wall of the booth and dialed a number he’d committed to memory.

  He glanced at his wrist.

  Thirty-eight minutes.

  More than enough time.

  The entrance to the Bank of England building was directly across from him, the Governor’s limousine parked in front, waiting. The quarterly Bankers’ Assembly meeting had started inside. Across the street was as far as he needed to get.

  As he cupped the receiver to his ear, the line started ringing, and not the long muted tones of a UK or European number, but the short, familiar jingling of a North American one. He stared at the Bank of England entranceway.

  Three rings. Then four.

  An answering machine picked up.

  “You have forty seconds,” announced an automated voice before connecting him, telling him how much time he’d paid for. He only heard the tail end of an answering machine message on the other end, “…the O’Connell residence, please leave a message.”

  Sean took a deep breath. “Jake, hi, it’s me.”

  How to put this?

  “Listen, I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch for so long, but there’s something I need to tell you…”

  Behind him, a growling roar erupted, and Sean turned in time to see the front of a double-decker bus bearing down on him. It crashed into the telephone booth, crushing and dragging him across the center of the square.

  AUGUST 11th

  Thursday

  2

  Atlas Capital Offices

  Long Island, NY

  “I like the ring of it—blood diamonds.” Danny Donovan, the CEO of Atlas Capital, held up his arms to show off his new cufflinks. Diamonds the size of gumdrops glistened on them.

  Jake O’Connell held his gaze steady on his boss. “Nice,” he replied.

  They sat across from each other in the main conference room of Atlas Capital, at a mahogany table that stretched the length of the thirty-foot space, the room separated from the rest of the office by a glass wall. Nice, but not too nice. The table, scuffed in places; the chairs bought at a bankruptcy auction. Donovan liked to keep up appearances, but only to the outside. Few people, except those who worked here, ever came to Atlas’s offices.

  Atlas liked to say it was a Wall Street firm, but in reality, it was far from it—at least physically. Like the legendary garage start-ups of Silicon Valley, Long Island now housed more financial upstarts in abandoned shopping malls and reconverted wa
rehouses than all of Manhattan combined.

  “I didn’t defraud them,” Donovan added, getting back to their discussion. He maintained persistent two-day-old stubble below thick eyebrows that looked plucked and arranged, his black hair parted and slicked back to one side, his three-thousand dollar bespoke suit immaculate. “I’ll admit to bending a few rules, but I didn’t steal from those pensioners’ accounts. I would never do something like that.”

  Jake watched a veil pull over Donovan’s eyes, like a translucent third eyelid that obscured the reptilian depths below. The edges of Donovan’s words were all too familiar to Jake.

  “I know,” Jake replied, the same way he’d always acknowledged his own father’s lies. “I believe you,” he added.

  But he didn’t.

  If there was anything Jake knew about, it was psychopaths. His experience was as personal as it could get: his own father was one.

  It was something that took Jake a long time to see for what it was. Growing up, Jake had assumed that every father treated his children as possessions. But one day in middle school, a kid had taunted Jake, saying his dad thought that Jake’s was a psycho. Jake beat the crap out of the kid, but afterward he’d looked up the word in an encyclopedia. A great truth was revealed. Many things had come into focus.

  And a life-long obsession with psychopaths was born.

  The popular media vilified ‘psychos,’ made them out to be ogres, but Jake knew they possessed the exact qualities celebrated by the modern world: charm, ruthlessness, and a win-at-all-costs mentality. Psychopathy wasn’t black or white, but more a multi-colored rainbow from Ted Bundy to the Dalai Lama, with everyone fitting somewhere in between.

  Jake often wondered why psychos seemed to surround him.

  Did he search them out?

  Or did he just notice them more than most?

  It was hard to tell.

  Jake rated everyone he met on his psychopath scale, from full-Ted to deep-Dalai, even himself. He stared into the mirror sometimes, deep into the depths of his own eyes. Did a full-Ted psychopath know what he was? How? Everyone thought they were good people.

  It was all a matter of perspective.

  Jake had spent his life trying to hide the void inside. He used to rely on anger and violence to do the job, but now his family and work fulfilled that role. Still, his life often felt like a show, a collection of learned behaviors.

  Donovan pulled back from Jake and smiled. “I don’t know which one of us is the better liar.”

  Jake forced a smile in return. “Do I have to answer that?”

  “Not yet.” Donovan grabbed his coffee cup from the table. “But soon you’ll be answering questions. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawyers are getting ready. It’s not just my neck on the line, you understand?” Donovan pointed his cup at Jake. “Who would have imagined that an ex-con like you would end up a Wall Street trader? You want to keep it that way, you play ball.”

  Jake nodded. “Understood.” It was a point Donovan never let him forget. Ever.

  Five years ago, Sean Womack, his childhood friend, started bringing Donovan into the bar Jake managed in the Meatpacking district, one of the hottest late-night party corners of Manhattan. Soaked in tequila and high on cocaine, night after night Donovan had promised to bring Jake into his new financial start-up.

  Jake never believed it would happen, but he took to treating the guy with a few shots whenever he showed up. Then one day Donovan made good on his word.

  Almost inexplicably.

  Donovan flashed his cufflinks again. “Three carats. Not bad, huh?”

  “They are nice.” Jake couldn’t care less about the cufflinks. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, and steepled his fingers together. “Listen, I need to know what to do with this Joseph Barbara guy. Who is he?”

  Donovan smiled. “Who is he? You don’t know?”

  “I put a meeting on our schedule with him tonight, down at Johnny Utah’s.”

  “Cancel it. Doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “This guy sounded pretty upset.” Jake needed some resolution. “His name’s not on our official list of customers, so I don’t know how—”

  “I gave him your name.” Donovan held his cufflinks up at a new angle.

  “You gave him my name?” What was Donovan up to?

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  This set alarms jangling. Donovan might have taken Jake in under his wing, but he had the uncomfortable feeling of a big brother, like the one that used to hold Jake’s head underwater in the bathtub when he was little. For the hundredth time he felt the impulse to quit, but there was no way he could get this kind of money elsewhere.

  “Okay,” Jake replied, unconvinced, “if you say so.” He could do his own research. Just then he saw someone he wanted to talk to walking by outside. Jake excused himself to Donovan, “Just a second,” as he jumped up and opened the conference room door. He stretched his hand out. “Mr. Viegas,” Jake said, projecting his voice.

  Vidal Viegas, the chief operating officer of Bluebridge Capital, turned to Jake and blinked, his watery left eye drooping from some long-ago illness. Bluebridge was doing an audit on Atlas’s accounts today. Viegas looked more clean-cut than Jake remembered, his hair thicker. They’d met a few times over the years, but Viegas was a financial superstar now—no longer the obscure university professor he used to be. Maybe he didn’t remember Jake.

  They stared at each other. Jake’s hand hovered in space between them. He was about to pull it back when Viegas finally took his hand.

  “Ah, yes, Mr. O’Connell. How are you?”

  “Good.” Jake gave two firm shakes, then Viegas’s hand slithered out of his. “Have you heard from Sean lately?” Jake asked.

  Another pause. “No, I haven’t.” Viegas flashed a weak smile. “Please, excuse me.” He turned and started for the front. Another man, limping, walked beside and behind Viegas, following him.

  Jake watched him go. On the wall of plasma TVs lining the front of the office, Senator Russ talked on CNN. It was coverage of the presidential debate on the conflict in the Middle East. Eleven weeks to go until the election, and Russ was twenty points ahead. Jake closed the door and sat back down with Donovan.

  “It’s those bastards at Bluebridge who are setting me up.” Donovan thrust his chin at the disappearing silhouette of Viegas. “They’re paying big money to back Russ in the elections. Something weird is going on there. How do you know him?”

  “Through Sean. You remember Sean Womack?”

  Donovan scowled. “Of course.”

  “Viegas was his thesis advisor at MIT.” Jake turned his Silver Eagle dollar coin over and over in his pocket. An old habit.

  “Viegas was Sean’s thesis advisor?” Donovan hissed. “He never told me that—”

  “You still talk to Sean?” Jake asked. He hadn’t talked to his old friend himself in months, but there were more pressing issues. Jake took a deep breath. “Look, we need to talk about this SEC investigation. I want to know what I should do if they come for you. I’m worried.”

  “Me too,” Donovan sympathized.

  But Jake knew he wasn’t. Not really.

  Jake had ranked Donovan a half-Ted psycho the moment he walked into Jake’s bar for the first time; his well-oiled smile and piercing eyes were dead giveaways. Right now, Donovan’s eyes did their best to project concern and sympathy, but Jake imagined what was going on behind them.

  To a psychopath, there were no dark clouds, only silver linings. There were no moral hazards, only opportunities. Even with an impending arrest and possible jail time, Donovan was probably thinking he’d get a movie deal when he got out in a few years, cement his fame as the Lion of Long Island. People saw Wall Street executives being dragged away in handcuffs after stealing the life savings of millions of retirees and asked, “How could someone do something like that?” when the real question was, “How couldn’t they?”

 
Donovan’s phone buzzed. He looked at the message on it. Jake watched him clench his jaw, a vein popping out in his neck. He was only a half-Ted. He felt some stress. Donovan looked at Jake, down at the message again, then back at Jake. “I need to talk to you, too.”

  Jake stared at Donovan for a long second. “Anything I should be worried about?”

  Donovan paused. “This is going to sound nuts, but they have audio recordings, even video, of me saying and doing things that I…didn’t…do.”

  It was odd that Donovan kept insisting he was innocent. The lies were usually casual—obvious, even. So why keep up the pretense? Most of the time Jake could parse what Donovan was up to, but not now.

  Donovan’s father had been a school teacher in the Bronx, his mother a secretary. He fought his way up, graduating from Harvard on scholarship before making a rapid ascent through the ranks of JP Morgan, the largest investment bank on Wall Street. These were the things Jake genuinely respected him for—hard work, coming up from the bottom, working class roots. After only three years at JP Morgan, Donovan led a rebellion in the high frequency trading group and dragged some of their best minds out here to Long Island for his own start-up. It was a risky move that paid off. Rumor had it that Donovan cleared two hundred million the year before.

  “Between you and me, I’m no angel,” Donovan continued. “I’ve done some stuff that’s a little off the books to get this place where it is.” His pasted-on prep school accent was sliding into his old Bronx slang, a sure sign of agitation. “I’ll admit to that, but not this stuff they’re trying to stick on me.” He slid a memory key across the table to Jake. “Put this in your pocket.”

  Jake picked it up, held it between his fingers like it was radioactive. “What the hell is it?”