by John Statton
***
Mansfield looked carefully at Blair as he entered his office. He was growing tired of the search, seemingly going nowhere, for his former protégé. “What have you got?”
Blair took a seat in front of the desk and said, “We may have a line on how she got them out of San Francisco. You asked us to scour the information on any trains leaving that night. We went through the passenger and staff list on both the bullet train to LA and also an Amtrak to Denver. We looked at each person, using DARKSIDEMOON, and they all came back clear of any connection to either McAllister or Bonham, or any known aliases.”
“Stop wasting my time,” snapped Pickett, “get to the point.”
“Let me finish. We've got a small specialty travel outfit renting a private railcar attached to the Amtrak train, being repositioned empty for a charter in Denver. The order for the hook-up was made two weeks before that night. We found the car registered to a private company in the Bahamas.”
“Yeah, so what?”
“An old railcar like this is known as a Private Varnish, and there are thousands of them still in use across the country.”
“You started digging into the owners I take it? Must have found something or else we’d not be talking.”
“It seemed low probability in light of everything else we were looking at, but nothing else was panning out. We pulled on the company thread, would you believe this Private Varnish's ownership is a corporation three-times removed? One shell company after the other, it took weeks of painstaking digital detective work to peel back this onion. Everything was exceptionally well-cloaked, but we ran it to ground.”
“Did you find her fingerprints on this?”
“Not exactly, we hit a wall in Panama. The trail leads back to Banco Isthmus.”
“One of Panama’s largest banks if memory serves.”
“That’s the one. We hit them hard two nights ago and have been looking at all of their records relating to this corporation.”
“Let me guess, you found sanitized files.”
“Nothing directly points back to Mariana. We found one PDF of the account set up instructions, this had been scanned crooked and cut off most of the originating fax's phone number. But there is just enough to be tantalizing; the area code was Mariana’s as a little girl.”
“I can see the interest, still seems like a dead end. Why are you here?”
“Most banks have a document retention system for forms, and international accounts use to require a lot of fax signatures. If we could get the original for this instruction set, we could find out who is behind the account. Once scanned, the original hard-copy records are retained off-site in a secure facility. It’s going to sound strange, but we need to go see if there is a paper file for this account.”
“Someone needs to pay a visit to Panama City?”
“That’s it. We need an agent with skills in this kind of thing, meat-space breaking and entering, instead of digital.”
“This is your best lead?”
“We’ve got a few others still in play, but this is the mystery I think we need to solve. We’ve tracked the Private Varnish, and its records show nothing suspicious, just a series of charters across the country over the last couple of months. Nothing to indicate any link to McAllister. Still, I want to run this down.”
“OK, if you feel so strongly about this I’m going to connect you with a valuable field operative. I want the two of you to go down to Panama and dig into it. You’ll need to act as my deputy on this one; I especially do not want any trail left back to us. If you think there’s any chance of discovery or blowback, then you’ll need to instruct the operative to keep this clean.” As Blair departed, Mansfield started to draft an email to O’Brien.
***
Once they had picked up the final data cache, Mariana spent a lot of time in her sleeper compartment writing code. The miles rolled along, and she became an invisible presence in their small world. Sander tried to engage, but she became abnormally withdrawn. He stopped making an effort after some curt responses to his questions. He resigned himself to once again trusting she had a plan.
Finally, as they were rolling up the Pacific Coast, with dawn breaking through the marine layer, she knocked on his compartment’s door. “Sander, wake up, there’s something I’ve got to say to you.”
From deep in his pillow, “Hello, Sander's not home right now, but if you would leave a message.”
“Come on, wake up you idiot, this is important. I think I have a way to fight back.”
“That's different. Where are we, and is there any coffee?”
“California coast, and by the bedside table, open your eyes. Did you think I’d lost it and could not remember your go-juice addiction?”
“Thanks,” he said. Then, after a deep swallow, sighed and said, “High-octane Java, just what I needed. Now, what are you talking about, pretty lady?”
“Sorry to keep you in the dark, but I reflected on our perverted privacy conversation, and I think I have a way to kill it off.”
“What, privacy? Do you want to end privacy? Have you found a way to end privacy?”
“Exactly.”
“What do you mean? I kind of like my privacy, thank you very much.”
“Come on. It's becoming a surveillance state out there, and people are secretly manipulated when selecting their leaders, remember? Neither of these could exist if we pulled back the curtain and turned on a searchlight. The surveillance and election manipulation tools are loose in the world. You can't keep up with the endlessly inventive human ability to use any neutral tool for evil. It's time to end the secrecy.”
“OK, I’m still not convinced, but tell me what you’ve got.”
“Look, you know what a botnet is?”
“Yeah, it's inserting code into someone's computer so, at your command, you own their system and can use it to do your bidding.”
“You are awake. Would it surprise you to know we can now control a botnet of potentially a billion devices?”
“Is there more coffee? I swear you just used a ginormous number.”
“Yes, and yes, but get it yourself. You forget I'm a hacking wizard. I’ve hijacked a very secret national asset and am repurposing it for our own uses. With it we can be embedded in billions of phones and computers across the global networks. All of our little zombie systems will appear to function normally, but we’ll secretly control them.”
“But, why? The NSA and Cyber-command have guys who live for botnet takedowns. Hell, they probably have hundreds trained to do this. Botnets are useful for denial of service attacks, but once they rear their head, they get swatted down fast.”
“Yeah, but you need to remember, they are a way of harnessing enormous computing power. We've never talked about artificial intelligence, have we?”
“Considering that outside of this jaunt we have not seen or talked to each other in almost ten years, I'm sure it wasn’t ever a topic of conversation.”
“Artificial intelligence is hot these days; did you know a quality AI researcher costs as much as an NFL quarterback?”
“Every day I like my career path less and less. Why are we talking about this?”
“You've heard of expert systems; you dump in a lot of information about a subject, the system sorts through it and gives you expert-level answers back? This is next level. We've been adding machine learning to support these experts and turning them loose to apply deep learning techniques against large-scale linear models.”
“Hey, you just drifted into another language.”
“OK, I’m just saying AIs excel at conjuring patterns out of data. Their output is just a prediction based on patterns of patterns. It turns out that’s just like how we think as well. The big difference is we’re ten thousand human generations ahead, but they’re catching up fast, and in some areas, they outshine us. Give them data and processing power and get out of the way.”
She continued, “For the last several years I've been leading a project to p
roduce the first artificial intelligence dedicated to network and system penetration, along with signals decryption. I have a little friend who just happens to need lots of computing power and who can pretty effectively hack nation states and corporations.”
“Sounds high-powered, but how good can it be?”
“It's an entirely autonomous system, if it can't get in one way it’ll become increasingly creative. I've watched it reconnoiter a target company and then start spear-phishing. It can write a phishing email convincing enough that a person's co-workers will reveal user passwords and other credential data. To do this, it draws a lot of computing power—millions of instructions per second.”
“OK, so we've got a lot of MIPS available for the botnet, and your AI sounds like it can unlock doors, but how does this create an end to privacy?”
“Hold on, we’re getting there. I'm teaching it to protect itself. By not being noticeable, concealing itself across the Internet, covering its tracks when operating. It's the ghost in the machine. Our guardian. It's a killer on both offense and defense. You might be thinking someone will try and raise up another AI to go after it?”
“Yes, that's one way. We’ve all seen the 'send a killer to stop a killer' movies.”
“It's a risk, sure, got to admit it. But it’s much more likely it will be able to turn the AI into a supporter and against its maker. Look, a new AI needs to learn. Ours will get inside the new one’s baseline cycle, so we’re a trusted friend, not the enemy. Its teachings to the new one can come in through a lot of vectors, such as a data set infected when transmitted over a compromised network. It's going to make friends and allies.”
“Did I mention covering its tracks?” she rhetorically asked. “It’s going to be routing its consciousness across seemingly dormant devices, so there will never be a trace. And when it does surface, it will be able to draw upon an almost unlimited amount of computing power to solve a problem.”
“Let's get back to talking about the guardian thing for a second, what is its mission? How does this tie into privacy?”
“I've been instructing it to infect search engines, any search engine. If you type in a request to Google or Baidu, or any of the others, it is going to return an answer. It won't matter if you are after classified government or confidential corporate data. You will get your answer. It’s simple. There is no more encryption. There are no more firewalls. There cannot be secrets stored digitally on a networked machine. If it can reach it, it will make it searchable, and it will always be trying to reach it. The world’s information—personal, government, educational, and corporate—is going to be open to all.”
“God, this is like the creation of the atomic bomb, you know it, don’t you? The world will never be the same. It’s soul shocking. What did Oppenheimer say when he lit off the first nuke? Something like, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’. It’s your turn now to wipe away ours.”
“Sander, don't you see, there is no other way. We can do this. We can end digital privacy. We won't stop secrets among people, but we will stop their abuse on a societal level. We can halt the election. We can expose the Politburo. It’s worth the cost. I just need a few more days to finish and put some polish on the system, and we can be ready.”
Their conversation lasted throughout the day and late into the night.
#
Chapter 17
Custody Comes Calling
November 2016
Carved out of the jungle lining the highway, the Parque Industrial De Panama was one of the newer industrial parks ringing Panama City. As a successful development, it contained several warehouses for supermarkets and retailers. Home also to Capitales Archivo Municipal, a vast climate-controlled facility most of the downtown banks used for storage of old files. Within the Archivo’s six acres of secure space was the file Blair and Seth had been sent to obtain.
Before his departure to Panama, Blair ran background checks on the Archivo’s employees using the sophisticated reach of DARKSIDEMOON. Accessing phone calls and emails, bank records and GPS tracking over the last four weeks, each employee was carefully scrutinized for weaknesses. Things that would make them vulnerable to blackmail. They were hunting for the right target who could provide them with the file access they wanted.
Several possibilities came up, two employees were having an affair with each other, another searched for child porn, but few others had indiscretions making them vulnerable. None could quietly slip them into the bank’s section and give them access to its contents. Then a security guard who worked graveyard presented himself.
Jaden Pezchico was in his thirties, blessed with a wife and five growing children. He also had a love of gambling, especially betting on Panama's national football team. Unfortunately, his family's needs took up his entire paycheck, and his team had a run of bad luck. His calls to his bookie showed an increasing level of desperation. He’d built a ten-thousand-balboa debt, equivalent to the same in US dollars. From Pezchico’s perspective, an insurmountable sum to pay off. He felt anxious and trapped.
From Pezchico’s credit card purchases, Blair learned he stopped off at a local bar, El Poderoso Toro, not far from the Archivo, every morning for shots of tequila and huevos rancheros. Blair smiled when he read this, if he went home exhausted and broke to five rowdy kids, he would drink and gamble too. Pezchico fit their profile; it was going to be his unlucky day.
***
Seth was not at all happy with having a local control for this assignment. As he stood in front of the Panama Hyatt hotel’s room 2420, getting ready to knock, he was questioning why he was even here. This was rookie treatment. With his experience level, contact should be minimal. He knew he was getting too old for this shit. Maybe it’s time to go down island and not come back, he thought.
Blair opened the door, invited him in, and asked him to take a seat. Seth took in the room with a practiced eye and selected the desk chair. Blair walked up and laid a file in front of him. Inside was information on Pezchico. “This is your target. I need you to get him to infiltrate you into a bank archive to find a particular set of files we need.”
“I’ll need a little more than that, but I’ll review the file this evening,” replied Seth.
“You ‘need’ what I think you need to know,” came Blair’s cold reply, “and you will review this file here and nowhere else. Do you understand who is running this operation?”
Seth mused about how easy it would be to kill this boy. His arrogant attitude rubbed Seth the wrong way, but professional loyalty to Rainy kept his reply civil, “So let me review this in peace and then you can tell me what you think I need to know.”
***
Repetition makes us easy to find. Seth found Jaden at El Poderoso Toro, right where he expected him, wiping up beans and egg with the rest of a tortilla. There were few other guys in the place at this hour, it catered to drinkers and not a social crowd, and even for drinkers, it was early. The reason why the huevos rancheros were so tasty was they were made mostly for the staff who had to arrive early.
Seth sat down at the bar close to his mark and promptly managed to knock over Jaden's half-full shot glass. The tequila made a mess that the bartender came over to clean. “Hey, I was drinking that,” Jaden snarled.
In excellent Spanish, Seth called out to the bartender for two shots of Herradura to replace the spill. When Jaden’s arrived in front of him, he looked mollified, and gave a grudging, “Gracias.”
They tossed back the shots and Seth signaled for two more. In the warm glow of the tequila, they began to talk. Simple things at first, just to establish a connection, then Seth let him have it.
“Jaden, I've got to admit, I didn’t just run into you. I've got some friends who’d like to pay your gambling debt, but they need your help too.”
“How do you know these things, and what could I possibly offer to justify for such a sum? This isn't about drugs, is it? I can't get messed up with drugs. I don’t even know you.”
“Be
calm, Jaden. We’re friends, and ten thousand would get you even again, wouldn’t it? It's simple; I need to look at a few old files stored at the Archivo. Specifically, I need access to the Banco Isthmus area without anyone else knowing. You've got keys to their storage cage, don't you?”
“Yes.”
“Is there any way you could get me in, to see those files?”
“I don't know. It’s very risky. If caught, I lose my job and have problems with the police. You don’t even want to know what my wife would do to me.”
“But you see a way to do it?”
“Sure, there are only two of us. We alternate making rounds each half hour. If it was not a lot of documents then I could let you in through the side door, and you could have ten, maybe fifteen minutes before you would have to get out, but you couldn’t take anything.”
“We only need to look. Any video cameras or other security we need to watch out for?”
“That's a laugh; we’re cheaper than an expensive electronic system. It’s just us. But there is no way I could help with this.”
“Not even if my friends could double the amount? With the first half paid now and the second upon my exit from the warehouse?” Seth placed the two ten-thousand-balboa bundles in front of Jaden, but out of sight of the bartender. He left them both in the space between them and then pulled one back.
Jaden's eyes widened. He knew this had gone well beyond a casual conversation and there in front of him was the answer to all of his problems. He could pay off his bookie and avoid the very real possibility of a broken arm or leg. Not only that, but if he did this simple thing he could lay down bets on this coming weekend's game.
It was a galvanizing amount. Jaden's hand reached out to take the stack. As his fingers closed over the money, Seth's hand shot out and grabbed his wrist with a crushing grip. He turned and met Jaden's nervous eyes. “Just to be clear, we do this tonight, and by tomorrow, at this time, you are enjoying another plate of huevos, and you've never heard of me. This will all be forgotten, agreed?”
