Halting State

by Charles Stross

  Across the desk, Michaels is finally looking a bit less smug. “Hayek Associates wouldn’t be able to do their job if they didn’t look and function like a real company, Inspector. And this may come as a surprise to you, but we in the intelligence community aren’t actually experts in running dot-com start-ups. We went and took on board some people with good experience and a solid background that checked out, relying on them to make most of the running, and one of them turned out to be a particularly bad egg, and another of them was a slightly less bad egg. The problem was figuring out who was who without trucking everyone who worked at Hayek Associates into a secret bunker and interrogating them, which would have risked blowing the cover operation sky-high. All it takes is one contrarian who doesn’t approve of being used as a stalking-horse by the government and leaks it via a backnet or a blog or a newspaper, and…” He shrugs.

  Oh, so that’s the way the wind is blowing! You smile politely and try to look like a dumb cop. Let Michaels incriminate himself if he wants to.

  “What about SPOOKS?” asks Liz, and you blink. “And where did the zombies come from?”

  “The zombies were from just about every AR and LARP in town,” says Michaels. “When Hackman realized his blacknet friends—Team Red in fact, but he probably thought he was dealing with the Russian mafiya—fucked up on killing Mr. Reed and Ms. Barnaby, he got them to organize a flash mob for him—an organized zombie fest outside the hotel, promise of prizes for the best-dressed undead, word out that it had been cleared with yourselves and there’d be a couple of TV crews in attendance. You’ve got to admire it as a piece of improvisation—it got your attention, didn’t it? It also distracted everyone while Hackman was trying to work out his own solution to the problem.”

  “Wayne Richardson?” prompts Liz.

  “Wayne, Wayne.” Michaels looks pained. “Wayne was just the weakest link. Hackman was the bad one. When he found out about the MacDonald identity, he suggested setting up a better back story. I should have realized earlier, but he really wanted the flat so he could loan it out to some shady characters he owed a favour or two. Local gangsters. They installed the blacknet node to replace the one you shut down last year; where better to put it than in the apartment of someone who doesn’t exist? Then Hackman realized it had other uses. Wayne he got to via the usual mixture of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Thick as thieves—but there’s always a leader, and when Wayne panicked and tried to cut a deal, Hackman got rid of him.”

  At which point things fall into place in your head. Except for one thing. “Why did you get Jack fired from his job?” you ask.

  “Because we wanted to recruit him,” Michaels explains. “ARGs like SPOOKS don’t grow on trees, they take years to develop. SPOOKS was our first toe in the water. It taught us a lot about what we need to do to run a virtual HUMINT operation, and it fed into the design process for SPOOKS 2.0, which will roll out next year. Most of the developers don’t need to know what they’re doing—we pointed them at a similar development project, used it to break the back of the coding, then cancelled it and disbanded the team once it was nearly done. But we need some of them—the smart ones, who can take the ninety-five per cent complete code for STEAMING and turn it into SPOOKS 2.0 then keep it running. And we needed Elaine for two reasons—to flush Hackman from cover, and because we wanted to recruit her, too.”

  And things are falling into place. Because it all comes back to Hackman, and the inadequate job Michaels did of positively vetting his tame sociopathic CEO and the chancer of a marketing manager. All CEOs are a bit sociopathic—it takes a really obsessive personality type to take a business public, especially in the fevered climate of a bubble, not just any bubble but the third one in a row—and Michaels had no way of getting into Hackman’s skull and realize that underneath the confident reptilian exterior there lurked a huge ball of neuroses and a psychotic rage at the world for having taken his toys away from him twice already. Hackman wanted to have his cake and eat it, and didn’t think Michaels and his old-school buddies (who kept dropping in for no obvious reason that Hackman could see) were capable of holding up their end. And Wayne Richardson was Hackman’s cat’s-paw. They hedged their bets, taking out derivatives geared against the company’s success. Get in, get the VC set-up, float on the market, get out as much of your own shares as you can, then clean up when the bottom falls out, even though you’re holding most of your visible assets in options that haven’t vested yet. Only it didn’t work, because Hayek Associates were doomed to succeed: Michaels’s friends in the shadowy machinery of state simply kept pouring liquidity into their Potemkin dot-com. The bottom persistently refused to fall out—and Hackman was getting desperate.

  But Hackman had an ace up his sleeve: He was already hooked into the local blacknet. Probably it started with his cocaine habit, or something like that; but he ended up scratching backs and hosting a node, and before long he found a way in and a seat at the table: And he found people there who wanted to pay him for information about a company he knew an awful lot about. Which is how blacknets work—people put stuff up for sale, or issue tenders, and other folks see the goods and buy them. It’s a market, just like any other, except the things that are bought and sold are illegal—drugs, confidential information, murderous favours. It was the obvious way for those spooks Liz was so uptight about to get into Hayek Associates, and they used it. Hackman sold them the company’s copy of the authentication pad for the backbone routers and the private authentication keys to Zonespace, told them how everything worked, played the part of a disgruntled employee—all to raise money to bet against his company’s inevitable success. He even solicited a final raid on their most public asset in an attempt to blow the foundations out from under them.

  Only he miscalculated.

  Reputations were at stake. Phone calls were made: Investigators were sent in—auditors, not spooks for the most part. Michaels wasn’t going to let his surveillance operation go down the toilet. He needed to know who was leaking secrets, and why. But as he rolled back the carpet, what he found underneath was much worse than he’d anticipated. The leaker hadn’t simply sold the family silver to a gang of thieves, they’d managed to attract the attention of the opposition. Events began to snowball—you can’t really guess just how far it went, but the arrival of Kemal’s Keystone Kops is suggestive—until it all ended up in the kind of counter-intelligence clusterfuck that is the stuff of legend thirty years later when it is declassified.

  “So Hackman and Richardson were just in it for the money?” you ask. “You expect us to believe that he’d kill three folks—trying for five—just to cover it up?”

  Michaels slumps very slightly: For a moment he looks his age. “Twenty-six million euros, Sergeant. That’s what Hackman was in it for, after all. The two things that motivate CEOs: money and winning.”

  And you get the message. Because in the final analysis, that’s a load of dosh, dosh beyond the wildest imagining of the wee neds you get to deal with—like Jimmy Hastie—and you know damn well what they’d get up to for a tinny of Carlsberg, never mind a tax-free twenty-six million. “Are we looking to recover it?” you ask.

  “That’s for the proceeds of crime unit.” McMullen sniffs dismissively. “I’m sure they’ll find wherever he put it sooner or later. But first, there’s the small matter of the prosecution. Everything happened while CopSpace was compromised, so there’s a slight lack of visuals—and the lifelog transcripts for yourself and the inspector are going to be misplaced. On the other hand, we’ve got the hotel camera footage from the business in the Malmaison, so we’re going to have to run with that. If we can’t nail him for attempted murder and firearms possession in front of a jury on the basis of video evidence and witnesses, one of whom has holes, we’re idiots. The heavy stuff—Chen and Richardson and the blacknet and the penetration at Hayek Associates—we don’t need to bring it up to put him away, and if we keep it out of the picture, there’s no reason why anyone would start digging. So.” He glances at Jon
es: “I’m told the Procurator Fiscal will be laying charges against Mr. Hackman, and he’s going to be offered a discreet plea bargain.”

  Which is very much not how things are done in Scotland, where plea-bargaining is seen as some kind of perverted transatlantic phenomenon, but ye ken why the security services might not want to advertise that their pilot project in the virtual world was penetrated by a bunch of Chinese script kiddies because the guy running the cover operation didn’t believe his own story.

  “Well, if that’s the course of action you’ve decided on, I’ll co-operate,” says Liz. “Although”—she glances between Jones and Michaels—“I’d be happier hanging the bastard out to dry.”

  Jones just sits there with a pained look on his face, but Michaels nods. “So would I, Inspector. And maybe we’ll be able to let you reopen the case in a couple of years, when our critical infrastructure is nailed down tight. But I hope you understand the need for discretion here?” He looks at you suddenly, and there’s nowt of the public-school boy in his eyes. “We’re not playing games anymore.”

  EPILOGUE: Banker Martin Mase

  Mail-Allegedly-From: Martin.Mase@NNPB.co.ng

  Subject: URGENT FINANCIAL INFORMATION SOLICITED REGARDING OVERDUE SUSPENSE ACCOUNT

  Auto-Summary: Typical 419 scam.

  Spam-Weighting: 95% probable, don’t waste your time.

  Dear Mr. Hackman,

  I fervently pray that this letter soliciting for your kind assistance will not cause any embarrassment to you. I am aware that we have never seen each other before, neither have we exchanged any form of formal contact or correspondence before. I am also, aware that this world is full of dishonest people, but I sincerely hope that my humble letter will touch your kind heart to assist us in establishing mutual identity authentication and a profitable and happy future business relationship.

  I, on behalf of my other colleague in the office (NNPB) have decided to solicit your assistance as regards to the disposition of the sum of 26,023,691.47 deposited into your bank account two months ago. This fund arose from the liquidation of certain security assets deposited on your behalf by our colleagues in the Pyongyang subdivision of my parastatal over the preceding accounting period.

  We understand that the amount will be transferred into a bank account provided by yourself, but this must be supplied by you, as the code of conduct of the federal civil service does not allow us to operate with foreign accounts. We are therefore seeking for your assistance based on the agreement been made within our selves the documents of this fund will be speedily processed for immediate remittance of the fund into your bank account.

  We will avail you with our identities as regards our respective offices when relationship is fully established and smooth operation commences. We are at your disposition to entertain any question from you in respect of this transaction, so, contact me immediately through my email or the above telephone numbers for further information on the requirements and procedure. We are in particular eager to receive your suspense account details and required biometrics (e.g. left fingertip, letter signed in blood) for completion of this transaction.

  Please, note that this Deal needs utmost confidentiality and observe suitable secrecy.

  Yours faithfully,

  DR. MARTIN MASE

  Nigerian National Petroleum Bank

  Lagos

  Nigeria