Dangerous Bet: A financial thriller

by Jack Gardner

  This was investigative work, almost my second nature. I could feel my breath getting stronger and the adrenaline flowing through my body. I was back in life.

  Now I had to hurry.

  36

  As is customary in these cases, the names of the Millionaires’ Millennium Lottery winners were not published—even though a clause on the lottery form states that the Millionaires reserves the right to publish the winners’ details for the purpose of advertising and public relations. Making sure the winners were safe was, in all probability, more important than publicity and the Millionaires habitually only shared general information concerning the winners’ places of residence and professions, withholding their names.

  But even this kind of general information is enough to begin an interrogation with. I had no doubt that in small towns—and two were mentioned after the Millennium Lottery—there would probably be gossip about the winners’ identities. I had no doubt that I could locate people who would know who it was. I drove to the first town, whose population was stated at no more than 6,000 people. I arrived early in the morning and after a quick tour around I discovered that the town meeting points were two cafés and three restaurants, all of which were located, very conveniently, at the same shopping center.

  I spent almost three hours there. In those three hours, I sat in all cafés and restaurants,making small talk with the waiters in all of them in order to discover who the lucky resident of the town was who became a millionaire overnight. The conversations were slow and the staff had more than enough time to chat, so quite quickly I gathered much information about the town: the local politics (yes, it existed), the employment options (almost nonexistent), the entertainment and cultural offerings (nothing whatsoever—unless you include gardening one’s backyard as “culture”), the state of education (a couple of schools and a few kindergartens), and the aspirations of the teenagers (to leave as soon as possible). All in all, quite quickly I felt like I belonged.

  But there was one thing I could not find out and no one even hinted at it: Who was the lucky resident of the town who won the lottery? It is true, everyone read in the newspaper or heard on television that such a person existed, many conversations took place, many assumptions were made trying to find out who that person was, but the mystery was not solved, the man was not discovered—which was weird in a town where everyone knows everyone. At the end, so I realized, the people were tired of thinking through the unsolvable mystery, they let it go, and new things to gossip about came up. I decided to try a different angle. It was clear to me that in order for the Millionaires to publicize that one of the winners lived in this town, they must have done it through the man’s tax identification. Therefore, there must have been some kind of documentation of that man in the town. A registered resident who no one knows must have been made up by someone else, which strengthened my assumption: the winners were listed in different towns fictitiously in order to disguise connections between them.

  The registration procedure was simple and did not require more than filling in a declaration form that the man does, in fact, live in the town. This form, as forms usually go, was probably filed somewhere in the town hall, and maybe even typed into a computer. Therefore, I had to look into the names of the people who registered as residents of the town in the two months or so prior to the Millennium Lottery. I assumed that even the most meticulous planning would not take longer than that. Then, from that list of names, I had to weed out those who really were residents of the town, and look into those people who were registered as residents but lived somewhere else. I had no time to lose. I called the resident registration office in the town, introduced myself as a census clerk from the national office, and requested a meeting where I could look into their systems of registering new and departing residents. I didn’t think they’d have any departing residents registered.

  “Yes, it is quite urgent,” I told her, “I would be happy to do it today, because I am going abroad in a couple of days and being that I am in the area, the opportunity presented itself and I would like to follow up on that.” I did not hesitate to hint that her consent would be positively mentioned in the national office, which is always effective in the peripheries. Once she heard that, the manager was quick to inform me that luckily, one of her meetings was cancelled and so she had two hours that she would be happy to devote to my visit…I made a conspicuous sigh of relief and informed her that I would be in her office within twenty minutes. “Oh, and, before I forget, if you could please print out a copy of the newest additions to your registry of residents from the past four months, no one will be more grateful than I. And you do know that in order for me to praise your work in the national office, I will have to show them some files…” Of course she knew that, and she promised me that the printed material would be waiting for me in her office. And so it did. The list that I received did not include more than thirty names, which seemed in line with my impression of that morning: the town was not an attractive place for new residents.

  A conversation about residence registries can become quite tedious, but I had a goal. The coffee someone made for me in a glass mug—I immediately noticed the paper cups crowding the trash bins—was decent, and after I gave the manager a number of compliments about the office’s efficient working methods, I let her know that I had to leave because I still had a number of errands to run before my flight. I repeated my promise that word of her good work—here a proud smile covered the manager’s face—would reach the national office, and then I left.

  In the car, I went over the list and quickly filtered out the names of families and single women, since according to the Millennium Lottery publicity, the winner was a man, and was left with the names of three men, who supposedly decided to reside in this town. The list included their addresses, and in two of the three cases, also their phone numbers. Maybe that was proof enough that the third was the person I was looking for, but just in case I called the two people whose numbers did appear in my list, claiming that I was conducting a survey about relocation patterns in that part of the county, and discovered that they did indeed move into the town. One of them simply returned after having left as a teenager.

  The third phone call I made was to the white pages, where the operator gave me the third person’s phone number, whose area code belonged in the capital. ‘How convenient!’ I thought to myself. I took down the number, started the jeep, and drove to the second town.

  ***

  I had little time and was very efficient. I got to the town at 5:00 p.m. and discovered another small town with a few cafés and restaurants. Again, the same answers I heard in the morning: yes, the papers said someone won millions but no one knew who that was. At first, there were rumors but when none of those seemed to be based on anything, everyone agreed they were nothing but rumors. I was hoping that the town hall would be open at that hour, and indeed, their offices were open until 7:00 p.m.

  At 6:55 p.m., I walked past the guard at the entrance to the building and walked toward the resident registration office. At that time, minutes before the end of the day, there was only one clerk in the office, who was busy gathering her things on her way out. I passed by her, heading to the restrooms. I was hoping she’d leave in a matter of minutes, leaving her computer on, as is commonplace in many offices. If not, I would have to go back in the morning with a story similar to the one I devised earlier that day.

  At 7:02, I peeped from the restrooms at the hallway to see it empty. I was certain that the guard would walk through the building before locking it, so I only had a few minutes. I walked to the clerk’s office, and was relieved to see her computer on. I sat in her chair and scrolled through the main menu of the registration program, the same as the one I saw earlier in the other town. Now it was a matter of two minutes, not more.

  Once I left, I drove to a small side street and parked in a legal parking spot. The last thing I wanted was to make some local cop curious enough to take down my information. I pulled the list out of my
pocket, sifting through it the way I did earlier that day. I ended up with two names after sorting out the families: a man and a woman. I was not surprised to see that the woman’s name had a local phone number listed next to it and the man’s had only a cell phone number. To be sure, I called the yellow pages and asked for the man’s home number. The operator, a young and courteous man, could not locate such a number. I was not surprised—I saw that as good news. I had a feeling I earned my keep for that day. I began my two-hour drive home.

  ***

  It was their turn to do the next move. I was on hold. Hiding in my safe haven watching sports on television, I took some time off of thinking. They were showing a live game in the European Champions League between the Spanish and the Croatian champions. I let myself forget, if only for a brief moment, the odd situation I was unwillingly stuck in, and let myself be carried away by the beautiful game that took place on the screen. ‘How could anyone call this gorgeous game and the unimaginative and somber one played in this country by the same name?’ I wondered to myself.

  And then the game and its magic were over. I felt like I could not sit and wait any longer—I had to initiate something. I pulled out my cellphone thinking I’d talk to Eddie. I had something to tell him, even though nothing was confirmed yet.

  But will he listen?

  I called his cellphone. He picked up right away.

  “We need to talk,” I said.

  “I passed on your request.” His voice sounded calm, “I still don’t have an answer for you.”

  “That is not why I am calling. We need to meet. There’s something new.” I didn’t want to talk for long.

  “I don’t know…” I assumed it was not part of his orders, and he would probably have to get approval.

  “I understand you need approval. Why don’t you take half an hour and try to get it?”

  “Okay,” he said after a brief moment of silence.

  “Thanks, I’ll call you,” I said and hung up.

  I tossed the phone from one hand to another, wondering whether Eddie would cooperate. I had a feeling that I would need another experienced person to help me analyze the possibilities. I had two names that Eddie could look into and if we found that there was a connection between them and the Bureau, things might get a little clearer.

  I calculated quickly and reached the conclusion that I already used up thirty-six of the seventy-two hours I asked for. If Eddie would cooperate, we could use the time we had left in order to confirm my assumptions. In the meantime, I thought I should start looking for an answer to another question. Assuming that I was right, and someone was indeed fraudulent and managed to tip the results of the Millennium Lottery, the question I faced now was how did they do it? Here, I thought, lay the real problem. I knew the procedures and the details of the lotteries quite well. It all seemed so well guarded and so safe that I never thought the results could be tilted.

  I would have to think about the process. It would take time, and it would take another mind. I was hoping Eddie would be up to the task. I had a feeling he was an honest man who wouldn’t help an illegal scheme.

  I looked at my watch and saw that twenty minutes had passed. I got up and made myself a cup of coffee, both to pass the time and to sharpen my mind.

  Soon I would know if I had a partner.

  37

  Yonatan, the Head of IT, looked at his programmer for a long moment before he started speaking.

  “You asked to reschedule our meeting from the afternoon to the morning and I assume there is a good reason for that.”

  “I’m not sure,” said Gil slowly, his head leaning on his hands. Yonatan could see on the guy’s face just how tired he was. “I spent all night trying to figure out a reason why anyone would want to penetrate our computers an hour before the lottery closed, and I think I found it.”

  Yonatan took off his glasses and started cleaning them with a piece of cloth. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what Gil had to say, but he knew he couldn’t avoid it.

  “I’ve been wrecking my head over this twenty-four hours a day for two days. What kind of information is on the computer that may give someone an advantage in the lottery? I’m not sure anyone actually thought about what I am going to tell you right now, but if you think about it theoretically, it cannot be avoided.” His voice grew silent as he was waiting for his boss to reply.

  Yonatan finished cleaning his glasses and turned in his seat to face the large window that overlooked, past some rooftops, the office towers that faced the ocean. Then, without turning back, he quietly said, “I’m listening.”

  Gil cleared his throat as if he were a singer aware of the fact that the first sound to come out of his mouth would determine how attentive his audience was going to be. “The computer accumulates all lottery forms,” he started, “which means that we can know what numbers each and every one of the people who sent in forms guessed.” A short pause, as if he were expecting his boss to lose his patience and declare that this information, even though it was recorded, waas meaningless.

  Yonatan only said, “Go on.”

  “I thought of the following scenario.” Gil went on, “First of all, whoever it was waited until a time very close to the lottery, so that his or her data was as complete as possible, which fits the calls made on Thursday afternoon, right before we closed the terminals. Then, assuming he or she knew how to pass our security system, for example, by using the manufacturer maintenance code and passwords, they implemented a procedure that sorted and concentrated the data in a spreadsheet, something like a Trojan horse, in the first call. In the second call, they pull out the spreadsheet and deleted the first procedure and the temporary spreadsheet. Thus, there is no trace left of this penetration—except for, of course, the calls themselves, which were made from an external terminal. Had these calls been made from our own terminal, we couldn’t have known about them at all, which would have made it the perfect crime.”

  “Not so fast.” Yonatan was desperately looking for a crack that would undo the logical explanation his programmer had just presented him with. “Let’s assume you are right up until now. What did the person do with this gain? Let’s assume he or she knows the distribution of guesses; say they know there were 41,000 guesses of the number four and 72,000 guesses of the number twelve, and so forth. But since they cannot determine the result of the lottery, how does that help them?”

  Gil rose in his seat, as if he already thought about it.

  “Let’s assume for a second—just for a second, because I don’t think it’s reasonable—that this person found a way to determine the lottery’s results. In that case, this information can help him or her a lot.”

  “Even assuming—which is quite far-fetched and unreasonable—that the winning numbers can be determined, why would this information be needed in that case?”

  Gil gave him a dissatisfied look.

  “To minimize the number of winners,” he quietly said.

  Yonatan felt as if he were hit in the head with a hammer. He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes.

  “If I understand you correctly, the bottom line of your theory is this: this person—whoever he or she is—managed to determine the winning numbers. Therefore, sending in winning forms was not an issue; only that without the data on the distribution of forms, he or she could not know how many more people would share the prize with them. Each person would reduce the sum they receive. Is this what you are saying?”

  “Exactly,” Gil said simply,

  “So, if we follow this line of thought, that person who knows the distribution can choose a combination that was not selected by the rest of the participants in the lottery. And if he can manage for this combination to be the winning one, he would win the entire prize. Nice theory—except for one small problem—there is no way of determining the winning combination. It is totally random, remember?”

  Yonatan leaned back in his chair. Satisfied, he surveyed his programmer’s face, expecting to see the inevitable look
of defeat.

  Gil was not impressed. “I started off telling you that it seems unreasonable. I am convinced it didn’t happen. All I did was look for a theoretical scenario to explain these penetrations.”

  “Yes,” Yonatan agreed, “I assume it is an interesting theory. But is it realistic? I don’t think so. In any case, it was a nice exercise; undoubtedly, you used your brain for this one. Let’s leave this theory between us. You know how rumors go. The Millionaires does not need this kind of attention right now.”

  “Of course, it’s totally clear,” said Gil as he left the office.

  His boss’ eyes accompanied him as he was walked out. He would remember this guy and this meeting. He might possibly have to think about him when considering the next round of promotions. Thinking people are rare.

  He buzzed his secretary. When she walked into the room, he asked her to bring in Zisafel, the Head of Security, for a meeting concerning refreshing security procedures at the Millionaires. It wouldn’t do any harm and would possibly even be helpful. He still felt inexplicably restless.

  38

  Once he got the phone call from Ram, Eddie did not lose any time. (Now he had a hard time thinking of Ram as “the target.”) What he had to do was clear. First of all, he had to report and then wait for further instructions. But this time around, he knew things wouldn’t be so easy: he was out of commission following his injury and could not handle everything on his own.

  True, Eddie did not mention his injury to Ram when they talked over the phone. He did not deem it appropriate to give him that kind of information even though he sensed that Ram treated him differently than the way he treated Eddie’s superiors. His instincts and experience led him to believe that the man would be fair to him, even though he couldn’t say why he believed that. He had to admit it to himself that as time passed the story seemed weirder and more bothersome, and he had to find out exactly what was going on.