The Russian Crisis

by G. R. Daniels

  With a glance at each man, Jackson took a few steps backward before turning and walking to his vehicle. Not a single plane-watcher had turned to watch the brief encounter between the three men.

  In a few seconds, Jackson was on his way again. No one followed his Audi as it fought its way through the dense traffic into the city.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  When he was in his early 70s, Jackson was measured at six feet, one inch tall during his annual checkups. The last few times, the nurse measured his height as six feet even. He argued each time to no avail.

  The former CEO of JPI laughed at his own childishness as he opened the door of Blax’s office the day after the parking lot affray. The current CEO was sitting in the high-backed swivel chair behind his glass and steel desk in the large office. He looked up at Jackson with a look of surprise on his handsome face.

  Jackson was struck by Blax. The man had dark brown hair, neatly trimmed. His face reminded Jackson of Antonio Banderas without the pony tail. When Jackson had interviewed the man for the CEO’s position more than a year ago, Blax had been slim. As Jackson could see through the glass of the desk, Blax was still slim and, of course, he was only in his 40s so he was still six feet, two inches tall.

  “Jackson…” Blax stammered. “Welcome.” The tone of his voice belied the greeting. Blax rose from his chair and moved around his desk. He crossed the office, stepping on the pricy area rug covering much of the wood flooring. He held out his hand.

  “I was not to be disturbed,” said Blax even as he gripped Jackson’s hand in his.

  Jackson had managed this audience simply by speeding past Mrs. Laybourne’s desk and opening Blax’s door without knocking. People were caught napping by a white-haired, older guy moving like a 30-year-old.

  “Yes, well, don’t blame her,” Jackson responded referring to Blax’s matronly gatekeeper. “I just walked in. We have to talk.” He moved away from Blax toward a conversation area furnished with a long couch and two fabric-covered chairs. Without an invitation, Jackson dropped into one of the gray-fabric chairs and waited for Blax to catch up.

  Reluctantly, Blax followed Jackson and hovered over the older man. “I don’t have time, Jackson. Perhaps, if you came back…”

  “Sit, Maxim. We have a lot to talk about.”

  “Jackson. This is my office. You can’t just dance in and…”

  “Waltz, Maxim. It’s ‘waltz in’.” Jackson smiled up at the CEO.

  Blax finally sat on the couch but remained perched on the edge of a red cushion. “I don’t have the time,” he murmured.

  Jackson dropped his smile. His mouth tightened. His eyes bored into Maxim’s. “What’s going on Maxim?”

  The meeting rapidly became a confrontation. Jackson led Blax through recent history and how he had re-entered the picture from his cottage country retirement. Blax questioned Jackson constantly. Why had Phillips come back? What was Phillips planning to do? Jackson shrugged off Blax’s questions as he pressed Blax on his recent actions and future intentions.

  Blax’s face had become darker and darker. When Jackson brought up the fact Blax had demanded the master password to company archives, he broke.

  “That is outrageous,” he shouted. “What are you saying? Are you saying I compromised security…? I will not stand for this.” The man’s face was twisted and his eyes had opened wide. Blax’s face turned ugly. Jackson wondered what he had seen in this man when he recommended his hiring months ago.

  Blax abruptly rose from the couch and Jackson prepared himself for a physical attack.

  Instead, Blax began striding across the room. He reached his desk but turned and walked back. Before reaching Jackson’s chair, the man turned again and went to the door of the office. He opened it and yelled, “Mrs. Laybourne. Come.”

  A moment later, the matron filled the doorway. Blax moved aside and she entered. Blax held out an arm and pointed a finger at Jackson.

  “Mr. Phillips. You must leave,” the woman told Phillips in a trembling voice.

  “No,” said Phillips. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Call Mr. Brownley,” Blax told the woman.

  “I’m right here.” The three looked back to the doorway to find Brownley, the security chief, standing in it. He moved into the office, shoving between Blax and Mrs. Laybourne. He moved toward Jackson but stopped and addressed everyone. “Mr. Phillips stays, Mr. Blax.” Brownley spoke in a firm, even voice. “He has things to ask you and I suggest you answer.”

  Brownley turned to his personal secretary with a look of distaste. “Get out of here.”

  “But… but…” she began.

  “Out.” Brownley pointed at the doorway and the large woman slunk out of the room.

  “Gentlemen. I’ll leave you to work on things.” Brownley strode quickly through the doorway, shutting the door behind him.

  Blax and Jackson stared at each other. Jackson waved at the couch Blax had vacated and Blax returned. He was calm again but Jackson studied the CEO carefully. The calm seemed somehow surreal.

  “I’m not accusing you of anything, Maxim. Not at this stage. But I want to know why you wanted the master password. What could you do with it?”

  “It is mine,” Maxim retorted. He sounded perfectly reasonable. “Everything…” he swept his hand through the air, “everything is mine. You gave it to me.”

  Jackson was appalled. “You sound like King Maxim. What’s going on?”

  Maxim Blax was the one studying Jackson now as though he was studying a bug on a slide on a microscope. He chortled. “That’s good, Jackson. King Maxim. I like it.”

  Max suddenly adopted a reasonable tone. He sat in a chair facing Jackson. “Look,” he told Jackson, leaning toward the older man. “I wanted to show everyone I was dedicated to security. I thought I could demonstrate that by taking possession of the password. It seemed a natural act for the CEO to take.”

  Jackson was surprised and somewhat confused. The CEO had switched from an imperious, outlandish stance to making some sense, however debatable. “I don’t agree that you should have taken the password but I guess I can see your thinking,” he mused as he contemplated this sudden change of demeanour.

  “Explain, if you will Max, how you think the master password got into someone else’s hands.”

  “It didn’t,” Maxim answered.

  “That’s not what Jean and Barry have found, Max,” Jackson said as he looked into Max’s dark blue eyes.

  “They are wrong. It did not happen.” Blax was adamant.

  “Regardless,” Jackson relented. “Someone has stolen our code. Someone can develop or defeat our systems. It’s a huge security problem, Max.”

  “I don’t believe that, Jackson.” There was a strident edge creeping back into Blax’s tone.

  “The evidence is there. Payne and Brownley were nearly run off the highway…”

  “There is no evidence of that,” Blax shot back. “They were tailgated. That’s all.”

  “I was followed…” Jackson described his run-in with the two men in the Mustang.

  “Perhaps you have a strong imagination, Jackson. Perhaps, you had road rage and attacked two innocent men.”

  Jackson reared back in his chair. He was angry now. “Innocent men who knew my name. Where are you getting this, Max? Somebody is doing a lot of spinning.”

  “Are you saying I’m wrong.” The loud voice was back. Blax again rose from his chair. “I am never wrong, Mr. Phillips. You don’t seem to understand. You are not the CEO here. I am. Maxim Blax. I am CEO of JPI. You are retired. An old man…”

  Jackson stood. He moved in front of Blax, forcing the CEO to stop his pacing across the office.

  “I think you need help, Max.” His voice was loud but controlled. “Maybe you should take a rest. Some time off.”

  Blax’s eyes seemed to have lost focus. They moved rapidly from side to side. Jackson became alarmed. “Are you okay?”

  Blax turned quickly and literally ran a few ste
ps toward his desk. “Of course, I am. I am fine. I am always fine. You had better leave now. I’ll call Mr. Brownley. He will take you out.” Blax moved behind his desk and slammed his body into his large swivel chair. He gripped its arms with both hands and glared out into the room.

  Jackson watched the CEO for a few seconds before leaving the office. A feeling of sadness filled him as he left and walked through the hallways to the elevator bank. What had he done to his company and its thousands of employees and clients by putting this maniac in charge? Why didn’t he see all this insane rage and narcissism in the first place?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  After leaving Blax, Jackson took the elevator to another floor and made his way to the Public Affairs offices. He passed the receptionist with a friendly wave, recognizing him from his time as CEO. The young man waved back and smiled broadly. Passing several small offices with open doors, Jackson stopped at a closed door with a nameplate reading Mariah Belo, Vice President, Public Affairs. He knocked and opened the door after hearing Mariah call out.

  Mariah had been writing on a white board behind her desk and glanced behind her. “Oh.” She turned and looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Jackson. I didn’t expect you …”

  He laughed and held out his hands, palms toward the young woman. “Don’t worry. I’m just a trespasser.”

  She placed a marker on her desk. “Let’s go to the boardroom and get coffee. I’m getting claustrophobic in here.” Mariah swept up a pile of file folders from her desk.

  She stepped past Phillips and the two headed away from the office to the section’s boardroom. Within minutes, they were seated at a long table, paper cups of coffee in front of each. A woman came in with a tray of muffins and bagels and left them on a sideboard. Mariah waved at the pastries but neither moved to the tray.

  Mariah had piled the file folders on the table. She put her hand on top of them. “This is your fault.” She frowned, mischievously. Seeing Jackson’s confusion, she said, “Remember the report you wrote before you officially retired from this hellhole.”

  Jackson grinned. “Took me a month. It was everything I could imagine that might be helpful to the new people. To Blax.” He said the name with distaste.

  Patting the pile, Mariah smiled. “There was a lot about crisis communications. I read the whole damned thing, Jackson.”

  Over the next hour, Mariah took Jackson through his report, line by line, pointing to where she had followed his advice. She had conducted a crisis audit, looking for every possible calamity that JPI might experience. This audit covered everything from a fire or explosion in head office to embezzlement of company funds by an employee. It also included the theft of company software through methods like cyberattacks through the Internet and by employees.

  For each potential crisis, Mariah’s crisis team had noted ‘who’ might cause the crisis; ‘who’ would be affected by it; ‘What’ the crisis would entail and the rest of the 5Ws.

  Jackson was impressed by the imagination and thought that had gone into the prep work by Mariah and her team.

  Other parts of the report had been followed just as proficiently. Mariah had identified spokespersons for each potential crisis. She had mapped out the processes to be followed in a disaster.

  “This is quite the work, Mariah.” She had been watching him with a concerned look on her face. Now, she was beaming.

  “Thank you, kind sir,” she bubbled. “We keep updating it.”

  “One catch,” Jackson said.

  Mariah wrinkled her brow.

  “You have Maxim down as your main spokesperson. You may want to rethink that one.”

  Mariah was crestfallen. “Oh, migod, Is that still there?” she mumbled.

  Jackson chuckled. “Don’t look so sad. I’ve just confirmed the guy may not be the best one to put out there defending JPI. He doesn’t react well to stress.”

  The two put the files back into a pile on the table as they discussed Maxim and the next steps they would take. They put together a short list of people who had to be kept in the loop. They guessed at how long they might have before the crisis became known by employees in general, suppliers, clients and, ultimately, by the general public. ‘Not that long’ was their best guess, unless they could resolve problems quickly.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Jackson’s next stop was the office of Carmen Flores, the Chief Operating Officer of JPI. It was his first one-on-one meeting with the woman who had been hired by Blax. Her personnel record showed she was 36 years old but it was a toned mid-30s.

  He tapped on her door and waited. She opened the door and immediately broke into a wide smile. Her olive complexion seemed to glow and her light brown eyes sparkled. “Jackson, how are you?”

  She moved aside to let him enter. He found himself in a large space that seemed more a living room than an office. There was a desk but it was small, made of exotic wood of some kind and tucked into a corner of the room. There were several chairs and a dark red sofa with light coloured cushions placed on it. The room had a quaint feel to it. It wasn’t what Jackson expected, to say the least.

  The woman herself didn’t fit her surroundings. Jackson had been impressed by the Carmen he had first met at the boardroom meeting as a modern, highly intelligent, independent, lively woman. He didn’t see her as a Martha Stewart clone. Maybe he had misjudged her.

  “Grab a chair, Jackson. Fred and I were just going over the little mess…”

  Jackson saw the head of technology, Fred Nbodo, seated in a chair facing the couch. He realized how dimly-lit the room was. Fred was black-skinned, a native of Nigeria who had moved to Canada twenty years ago. He was brilliant but extremely shy.

  “Hi, Fred,” Jackson called out in a cheery voice. He liked Fred as much as any geek he had ever met and admired the man’s intelligence.

  Fred made to rise but Jackson gestured for him to remain as he was.

  “Hello, Jackson.” Fred’s white teeth glistened as the techie smiled broadly. “Long time.”

  “Too long.” Jackson took one of the chairs next to Fred while Carmen moved to the sofa. She was in a blouse and skirt crossed her legs in a relaxed pose.

  “Let’s get back to that little mess,” Jackson invited.

  The trio talked for close to an hour at a technical level far above most mortals, even those in technology. Each was an expert in military software, military tactics, military needs and priorities. Despite referring to the theft of source code as a ‘little mess,’ the three agreed it was a disaster for both the company and its hundreds of clients through the world.

  They dissected the ways in which the source code could be used by an enemy to engineer their own solutions and defeat the functions built into JPI defensive software now on the market. The source code could not be turned into functional solutions without a great deal of work by experienced programmers and other techies. It would take months for anyone, even a nation, to recreate the solutions that JPI was already selling in the military market.

  “One huge loss for us is…” Jackson said in a grim voice, “… is that there is a lot of AI in that source code.” Carmen looked up in alarm while Fred shook his head to acknowledge the comment. “Some of it is now common knowledge but I recall seeing some very innovative thinking by our programmers.”

  Jackson was familiar with the code and all programming because it had been accomplished under his watch. He knew there were millions of lines of code in the source code. A percentage of the work involved Artificial Intelligence, giving machines the ability of cognitive thinking. Machines driven by the code would learn, somewhat like humans.

  Fred concentrated on AI for a moment. “Of course, enemies with the source code will know a lot about where we are going with Version 2.0.” This version was the current iteration of all JPI military software solutions.

  Carmen was nodding her head slowly, her glossy black hair swinging against her neck and face.

  Beyond AI was the fact that the stolen source code could pr
ovide a foe with a great deal of information about current allied defences and targeting methods.

  As a simple example - Fred offered one early in the discussion - software integrated into a camera network could identify explosive devices or armament being carried by a terrorist or enemy fighter and do so from a distance beyond a typical blast radius. This would be done by identifying a number of characteristics.

  An app could discern if the bomber was a nervous male walking either quicker or slower than he should be, sweating excessively, gripping a trigger in his hand, wearing an explosive vest under his shirt, robe or uniform, looking around with extra interest in guards, lacking interest in things like shopping or girl-watching.

  There were a number of characteristics that could identify a target and each would be noted in the algorithms in the source code. Defeat many of these characteristics by masking them, training them out of bombers or changing them substantially (as in the shape or where to wear explosive vests) and one could fool the software.

  Worse, noted Carmen, various programmers who worked on the code in the first place made notes in the margins. These notes could tell enemies a lot of things not explained in the code alone.

  “I read one,” she disclosed, “that actually names some of the terrorists whose pictures are on file with the U.S. Seals and the SAS in the U.K. Nobody knows these photos exist and will help target these men. Another note said it would be impossible to identify a bomber if he did several things to his appearance and the way he walks. Another one said we need to integrate the software with a minimum of so many cameras or it won’t be effective. Take out enough cameras and you blind the solution.”

  “These are things we cannot allow enemies to know,” said Fred in grave tones. “Sorry, that’s obvious,” he quickly added but Jackson nodded encouragement to his friend.

  “It doesn’t seem obvious to everyone,” Jackson commented, studying his friends carefully.

  “Ah, the elephant in the room,” Fred chuckled. “Double X.”

  “Don’t call him that.” The two men looked at Carmen quizzically. “I just don’t like the nickname; I don’t think it’s appropriate for our CEO. I wouldn’t have called you ‘Jack’, Jackson, because I know you don’t like that nickname, and I think we should be just as respectful when we talk about Mr. Blax.”