Dangerous Bet: A financial thriller

by Jack Gardner

  30

  In retrospect, Eddie could have taken his time eating his dinner, being that the call he was waiting for only came at 10:15 p.m. The call found Eddie ready and awake. He looked at the yellow writing pad and the two pens he had prepared in advance and picked up on the fourth ring.

  The voice on the other end was calm and composed, which did not surprise Eddie at all. He imagined the man would sound like that.

  “I assume you were expecting this call.”

  “Maybe,” Eddie replied, in a similarly calm tone.

  “You’re Eddie,” ascertained the man on the other end.

  “And you?” Asked Eddie.

  “I am not going to hide behind aliases,” the man said, catching Eddie by surprise, “my name is Ram. And what is hiding behind that Eddie of yours?”

  Eddie hesitated for a second. Information for information was a common exchange, but the information he received from the man was not verified, and so he had to react suspiciously. Also, he wanted to keep that small advantage. “Allow me to stay with Eddie, for the time being,” he said while he scribbled the word “Ram” on the yellow pad, under the hour of the call, which he had already noted.

  “As you wish,” said the man. If he was insulted by Eddie’s lack of cooperation by not reciprocating his gesture, it did not show in his voice.

  Eddie, experienced in this kind of situation, did not break the silence and patiently waited for the man to go on.

  “Is this line tapped?” He switched from personal to operational with no warning.

  “As far as I know, it isn’t,” said Eddie.

  “Nice,” replied the man who called himself Ram. It seemed like he believed that information. “Are you ready for directions?” He asked.

  “Positive,” Eddie replied, “what were you thinking of?”

  There were a couple of quiet seconds and then, “I assume we are going to have to meet in person, isn’t that what you were told?”

  “My orders were to follow your orders,” Eddie said the truth.

  “Alright,” said the other. “Please give me your cell phone number.”

  Eddie debated for a second and decided that giving his number meant following the target’s orders. He gave him the number, repeating it twice.

  “Nice,” said the man known as Ram, “I’ll call you soon and ask you to take a short walk. That would not be too bothersome for you, will it?”

  “I don’t think so,” he replied, “truth is, I look forward to it.”

  “I truly hope you won’t be disappointed. I think we’ve settled how to move on from here.”

  “Could you give me more details?” Eddie was fishing for them, even though he knew for certain that the man would not give him any more information than what he had originally intended to disclose.

  “But that would ruin the surprise, wouldn’t it?” The man said amiably, and then added: “And still, I would very much appreciate it if our meeting was intimate, if you know what I mean.”

  Eddie understood.

  “I hear you,” he answered and could almost see the smile on the face of the man on the other side of the line.

  “Great, so that settles it,” the man became very businesslike and hung up the phone.

  Eddie put down the receiver, made sure his cell phone was charged and on and called Judy to inform her that he received the call. She approved the message and waited another second for further details. Eddie waited a couple more seconds, confirming that he was not planning on giving her any further details at this point. She did not ask for any and he contentedly thought that today he was being treated like a pro.

  They know there is no point in pressing him to act not in accordance with his operational instincts. Now he had to cover himself in relation to what he planned, so he asked whether she had any more information for him. She did not. He smiled to himself: they remained secretive about the tail in the white Opel following him. Nice. It actually worked well for him. The call ended. He put on some quiet music and waited.

  ***

  No more than seven minutes later, Eddie’s cell phone rang. ‘Seems like the target has a plan,’ Eddie thought. He already got the impression that he was dealing with a self-confident and level-headed man. Clearly, this was the kind of man who can plan his moves and not leave anything to chance. The call was to the point.

  “Do you know the strip mall in the northern industrial zone?” Asked the man.

  “Yes,” answered Eddie.

  “Look for the Bank of Commerce there and wait for me next to their ATM in fifteen minutes. Clear?”

  “Yes,” said Eddie, “and then what?”

  “Keep your phone on and wait for a call from me.”

  “Okay,” Eddie replied shortly.

  He wore a black leather jacket, took a pair of gloves, and, without turning off the light in his room, carefully went to the window and surveyed the street. The white car was there, the two figures still sitting in the front seat. Now that he knew they were there, he could spot them even in relative darkness. Eddie’s car was parked on the other side of the street, by the entrance to his house. The distance between his tails’ car and his car was of about sixty-five feet of clear visibility.

  Eddie looked at his watch and realized that two minutes already passed since the phone call. He opened the door to his apartment and walked out, leaving all the lights on. In the elevator, he hit the button to the building’s underground parking lot, walking there without turning on the lights. The lot seemed empty. A few feet away from him, hidden between two cars, was his motorcycle. He pulled out a helmet that covered his face completely and realized he only had nine minutes left until their meeting.

  Now he was ready to avoid his companions. He assumed they didn’t even know he had a motorcycle. He started the bike, and the strong engine awoke in a loud roar that echoed in the closed lot. Eddie did not waste any time, and rode out of the parking lot and onto the road calmly, so as not to seem suspicious. He glimpsed at the side mirror and saw that the Opel remained in its place—they bought it—or rather, they were so sophisticated that they were notifying another surveillance team waiting on call about the motorcycle.

  In any case, Eddie knew that following a motorcycle at night was difficult, and following an experienced motorcyclist even more challenging. He took a turn at the end of the street and started going much faster in the direction opposite of where he was headed, in order to mislead any possible watchman that may be looking about the street corner. Two blocks later, once he confirmed that no one followed him, he quickly turned to an unpaved road he knew well and, using the bike’s off road abilities to the fullest, drove past eight stairs leading to a small alleyway that gave on to the highway.

  Four minutes later, he arrived at the strip mall and saw the bank in an instance. He drove past it and parked the motorcycle next to the ATM, hidden by a dark wall. He put his gloves and helmet in the tail box and walked toward the lit area in front of the bank, while looking at his watch and pulling out his cell phone from his pocket.

  Exactly fourteen minutes have passed since the last call.

  He stood by the entrance to the bank, which was totally deserted at this time of night. Now he had nothing to do but wait.

  The minutes passed slowly. It was quiet at that time of the night. Eddie looked at his watch to see that twenty minutes had passed. Not exactly the directions he received. His phone was still silent, and Eddie started wondering whether something went wrong with the plan. Five minutes later, he decided that the chances of the meeting taking place were becoming slimmer and slimmer with every passing moment.

  He thought that maybe the target had cold feet, or that this whole thing was simply meant to test him, and the target is watching him from a hiding place. He decided to give the man five more minutes and then leave. To no avail, even five minutes later his phone never rang. Eddie turned back toward his motorcycle that was parked behind the wall, and opened the tail box to get his helmet. Suddenly, without any
warning side, he felt a sharp object in his side and a quiet, familiar voice saying: “Excuse me for the bad manners, but recently I’ve discovered that some of the people they sent to me are not to be trusted…”

  Eddie felt his breath resuming slowly. “At your leisure,” he said. It seemed like a good enough answer.

  “I appreciate your collaboration,” the man replied and pressed the gun barrel a little more lightly against him.

  “Let’s leave the bike here. Great idea, by the way. The car is parked in the garden in the back.”

  “Alright,” said Eddie, and was about to put the helmet back in the box.

  “If you don’t mind,” said the man, “please wear the helmet until we reach the car. You can consider it our small contribution to the professional quality of the surveillance team, in case they somehow made it here.” He explained in an apologetic way.

  “I don’t think I was followed,” Eddie’s voice did not show any vanity.

  “I tend to agree,” said the man. “If I’m not wrong, I already said that it was a good idea,” he said as he tapped on the bike’s seat.

  Eddie put on the helmet and walked in front of the man, who crossed the path to the small garden behind the parking lot in measured steps.

  31

  With government consent, the Millionaires took, hundreds of millions of dollars a year from the citizens to distribute to public organizations. Therefore, the Millionaires and the organization’s management were under close scrutiny, from the inside and outside both. Therefore, it was natural for the Millionaires’ CEO not to welcome, so to say, the possible outcomes of the problem the Head of IT presented to him.

  He pressed a buzzer. “Hold my calls,” he told his secretary in a special tone, reserved for situations in which she completely understood that no call should be directed to his office.

  “Start from the beginning and do not leave out anything,” he told Yonatan, taking out a legal pad and writing the date and time in the top corner.

  “Two days before the Millennium Lottery,” Yonatan began, “on Thursday, the kiosks were constantly sending in the form numbers and the number of forms sent in. We stopped receiving forms at 7:00 p.m., as we publicly announced, and then…” He paused for a moment, choosing his words, “and then we ran the usual procedure to centralize all forms by kiosk. That way, we can give our finance department exact data for their calculations of sales and payments to agents. In addition, we keep that information for statistical reasons.” He paused and looked to his boss’ eyes in order to ensure that he was understood.

  The boss nodded, motioning that he should go on.

  “We have about two thousand kiosks, so even the abbreviated report creates a binder of forty pages or so. And then, in a routine review, an employee who is in charge of the communications systems went through the report and discovered the problem…”

  “How did he discover it?” The CEO asked, before he even inquired what it was that he discovered, feeling that his voice betrayed his tension, which he did not appreciate.

  “He simply saw it at the end of the report: after the line for the last kiosk, there was another line without a kiosk number. There were two calls there. The computer, in fact, could not associate these two calls with any kiosk.”

  The CEO took his pen, instinctively licking his dry lips.

  “When exactly were these supposed calls made?”

  The Head of IT noticed the word “supposed.” He realized that one of the options the boss wanted to rule out was the possibility that these calls never even took place, that they were a random computer-generated problem. He suddenly remembered Kornel Makuszyński’s book, Satan from the 7th Grade, where an innocent schoolboy is suspected of embezzlement because of a piece of black string that accidentally stuck to a line of numbers. He had a bad feeling that this was not the case.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you….” The Head of IT was so busy thinking about Makuszyński and his Satan that he forgot his boss’ question.

  “When did these supposed calls take place?” The boss repeated himself.

  “They were both made on the Thursday preceding the lottery: the first, a little after 12:00 p.m., lasted twenty seconds; the other was closer to 1:00 p.m. and lasted about the same time.”

  ‘Now he’ll ask what it means…’ thought Yonatan.

  “And what does it mean?” The boss seemed to read his mind.

  “I’d rather start with what it can’t be,” said the Head of IT. “I am convinced that it’s not a problem with our computers.” He silently exhaled. There, he said it, and he’s still alive, at least for the moment.

  “Let’s not beat around the bush,” the boss was irritated. “Do you think someone illegally infiltrated our computer system?”

  There was a silence in the room, only broken by the monotonous sound of the air conditioner. Yonatan was careful choosing his words.

  “And assuming such an infiltration did take place, does it necessarily mean that some kind of damage was done? After all, our only fear is that information that could help someone win the lottery was stolen, and our computers contain no such information.” He sounded sure. End of story.

  The boss wrote something down in his legal pad and looked at Yonatan. “Order and consistence first,” he said. “Can the computer be infiltrated from the outside?”

  “In principle it is a computer that receives information from the outside world,” Yonatan replied. “It’s true that it is protected by a firewall and passwords, but still, it is not active in a sterile environment. I have no choice but to say that under certain conditions, it can be infiltrated from the outside.”

  “Under what conditions?”

  “For example, had someone stolen the username and password of one of the kiosks….”

  The boss thought about it for a second. “But then the computer would have recognized the call as one from that kiosk.”

  “Not necessarily. It would recognize it as such, only if the call was made through the kiosk’s modem.”

  “And without a username and password? Is that kind of penetration possible in your eyes?”

  “I can’t see how,” answered the Head of IT.

  “Where did we buy the computer?” ‘Sometimes these things start at the beginning,’ the boss thought to himself.

  “Directly from Hewlett-Packard in the U.S., not involving their local distributor here. The local distributor does not deal with this kind of computer, so all discussions and the installation of the computer system were done in collaboration with the Americans and by engineers and technicians who were flown here especially for this purpose.”

  “And the maintenance?” The boss was asking all the hard questions.

  “Is done by my maintenance team—two technicians who were trained at HP’s factory. To this day, they took care of all the problems in a satisfactory way—even though, I must say, we never had any extraordinary problems.”

  “So we never needed to contact the manufacturer?”

  “Definitely.”

  “But, as a principle, had we needed the manufacturer to assist us with maintenance, how would we go about it?”

  “By telecommunication with HP’s call center. But that never happened.” ‘Why the hell do I feel nauseated?’ Yonatan wondered to himself.

  “Do you understand where I’m going here? Let’s assume, and I’m playing devil’s advocate here, that someone has access to the manufacturer passwords, and could infiltrate this computer using those—would we recognize this kind of infiltration into our system?”

  The Head of IT thought about it for a while, but he was actually just pretending to think it through: the truth was that there was no chance they would have been able to locate an entrance into the system done by the manufacturer. They never prepared for that.

  “We would have known someone infiltrated the system, but we would not be able to recognize it,” he silently uttered.

  “Isn’t that exactly what happened here?” Checkmate
. In three moves.

  “The symptoms are the same, but what is the illness? And moreover, why would anyone do that? What would anyone be able to gain from that?”

  “What would you say to ten million dollars?” The boss waved his hands, gesturing that he was only joking, and then added, “Now that we know this is actually possible, let’s think about what someone could gain from this.”

  The CEO gave the impression that he was enjoying this battle of minds, but his ease was only an illusion.

  “That is exactly what I’ve been doing all week, but I came up with nothing,” said the Head of IT.

  The CEO rose unexpectedly—which was a sure sign that the discussion was over—his hand pushed the legal pad away and he looked into his worker’s eyes and said, “If we assume that an infiltration without a username is possible, considering the time when this event took place, I can’t let it pass by. I want to get all the possible scenarios of everything one can get from this kind of action, as crazy as it is or as rational as it is. I want to know everything that is reasonable and even what totally isn’t.” He glanced at the ceiling, as if he was remembering one more thing.

  “Who else knows about this?” He asked.

  “Just the three of us: you, me, and the guy in charge of communications. When he brought it to my attention, I made it clear to him that this case is classified,” he added.

  “Good. Is he a smart guy?”

  “One of the best I have. But I make sure he doesn’t know just how much I appreciate him.”

  “Alright. From now on, you are both in charge of coming up with these scenarios. Don’t leave any stone unturned—as crazy as it may be. We will discuss whatever you come up with in twenty-four hours. Good luck!” He got up. The Head of IT gathered his things and headed to the door.

  ‘You know where it starts,’ he thought. But where does it end?

  32

  The civilized voice and the perfect manners stood in perfect contradiction with the gun that was pointed at his lungs. At the end of the day, Eddie thought, the gun defeats all. It’s true that it wasn’t always so. One should always look at the hand holding the gun, and more so, the brain that commands that hand. But in this case, he could spare himself the questions and simply accept the threat as a fact and act accordingly.