The Last Hack
Page 10
The nearest ATM is out of order, so I have to go to the one on the pedestrianised stretch between Timpson and Greggs. It’s all right during the day, but I always feel conspicuous walking through there at night. I don’t like my intentions being readable, and it strikes me the cash machines are the only place you could be going at that time.
The ATMs are in sight when suddenly I’m aware of footsteps behind me. They’re moving quickly, catching up. I’m a fast walker, so this sounds like two people at a light jog. I turn around, hoping to see some runners with their headphones in, minding their own business, but instead I’m confronted by Ango and Griff.
‘Samanfa,’ Ango says. ‘Wot you doin’ out and about on your own at this time of night?’
I say nothing, but they are either side of me now. I put a hand to the pocket where the card is, concerned about it being picked. This is a mistake. Griff is on the movement like a falcon, and in a flash he’s got the card and is handing it to his mate. Ango holds it up with a flourish.
‘Hold up. Looks like you is about to make a unauforised wifdrawal.’
I take a breath and find my voice. It sounds feeble and pathetic as usual. Why can I sound confident and even husky when I’m social-engineering some mark on the other end of a phone, but come over like a hummingbird on helium when I’m in the flesh?
‘That’s my card. Give it back.’
‘Yeah, it might be your card, but it ain’t your money. That’s why it’s unauforised. Your mum still owes Lush.’
‘She’s in jail,’ I protest. ‘It’s her debt, not mine.’
‘What, you’re saying she never give you any? Yeah, sure. So you’re gonna lift the daily max and hand it over.’
‘I’ve forgot the PIN,’ I say. ‘I only just got this card.’
It’s pitiful. I don’t even sound like I believe myself.
Griff flashes a blade inside his jacket.
‘Have a stab at it,’ he says.
They escort me to the bank, one of them either side.
I look around, hoping in vain for the cops to be passing, though I know it would only piss these guys off if I stalled them that way. They know where I live.
I key in the PIN, at which point Griff nudges me aside. They lift three hundred, which is the daily limit. I check the time. It’s around half eight. Three and a half hours until they can lift three hundred more, except they can’t, because there’s only two-forty left.
Griff hands me back the card, though. They’re not going to keep it, in case I cancel it maybe. They probably think there are benefits going into the account. They want to keep this channel open for future withdrawals.
Ango fans the money like he’s riffling cards.
‘Leave me something,’ I plead. ‘My sister and me need that to live on.’
Ango puts a hand on my bottom and squeezes, running his fingers close to the seam of my jeans that runs between my legs.
‘Tasty young fing like you can always find uvva ways of workin’ off the debt.’
I don’t tell Lilly anything when I return. I will go back to the cash machine in the morning and lift everything that’s left, so that I can’t get mugged like that again. Then I will go to the school office and formally drop out. I’ve been putting it off, kidding myself that something might change, but this has made me face the reality of it.
I’m going to take the first McJob I can find, though depending on the shifts, I’ll need to speak to someone at the Loxford about after-school options.
I roll back the carpet and pull out the pouch from beneath the hatch in the floorboards. A few minutes later I’m online, scrolling message boards and scoping to see who is around in the IRC channels. I’m not feeling it, though. This is my refuge, the place I can become my true self and put distance between me and whatever shit is happening in my life, but it’s not the same tonight. The air gap has been bridged in both directions. Keisha was hurt in the real world by what I did here, and now I can’t escape from real world hurt by losing myself online.
I hear a chime and a message pops up stating:
Zodiac is inviting you to join new IRC channel #careeropportunities.
I don’t know anyone called Zodiac, so I click to ignore it.
On an internet relay chat server, you can create a new channel just like that, and if you’ve created a channel, then you have ops: operational privileges. This results in total randoms spamming invites to their new channels so they can play at king of the castle, and I often get messaged specifically because it gives them a bit of kudos if a well-known hacker joins their chat.
I tut. I can block invites from anyone not on my whitelist, but sometimes I turn the blocking off because I’m feeling sociable or mischievous. I am neither of these things tonight. I go to my settings. Oddly, the block list is active.
A few minutes later another message appears.
Zodiac is inviting you to join new IRC channel #blackmail
People post bullshit threats and prank stuff all the time. However, there’s something about this I instinctively don’t like. I can’t rationally say why, but I know I’ve never felt this way about a message before.
I don’t get why it’s clearing the block filter, then it hits me that it must be someone on my approved list who has changed their display name.
I click Ignore again and launch Sacred Reign. A bit of questing through Calastria might be what I need to help take my mind off other things.
I blow some of my virtual coin on new armour and levelling up my fire sword. It’s my idea of retail therapy.
I am riding towards a fortress on the back of a battlehog when I hear the message chime again. I toggle to the IRC window, intending to tell whoever it is to piss off and quit spamming me, but that is before I read the message.
Zodiac invites you to join new IRC channel #samanthamorpeth
Everything changes in that moment. Everything burns. I’ve been through some nasty shit lately, but I know that this is when my world truly falls apart.
I feel hyper-aware of my surroundings, as though somebody jacked up the settings on my senses. I see cracks in the paintwork that I never saw before, like a close-up, insect-eye view of the wall behind my laptop. I hear the TV next door, a couple arguing out on the street. It’s like time has stopped.
My fingers approach the keyboard again like I’m afraid it will give me a static shock.
Anyone on the server can see the list of channels, one of which is currently my real-world name. It is on a list of dozens, hundreds, but that’s no comfort.
The channel name disappears.
Zodiac invites you to join new IRC channel #letsbefriends Password is 24pitmanrise
That’s my home address.
I join the channel, where Zodiac is the only other user listed. In other windows I am running searches and queries on his display name, the associated account and his IP. He’s well shielded. I’m getting nothing.
Postings begin to appear, too fast and too large for him to be typing them. He is copy-pasting the text into the chat window, stuff he already has prepared. I see my name and address again, then the name and address of my sixth form college followed by my subjects and exam results from last term. I wince at the sight, bringing back memories of Mum’s arrest just as I was about to sit my A levels. It’s why I never got the grades I needed.
I see my mum’s name, her present whereabouts, the charges brought against her, the sentence she was handed down. Dad’s name, his date of birth, his date of death. Then Lilly’s name, her date of birth, her diagnosis, the name and address of her school.
I can still hear the couple arguing, the studio laughter from next door’s TV. Only a few seconds have passed since I was riding on that battlehog, but since leaving my fantasy realm, the real world I returned to has changed completely.
Zodiac posts some images: chat logs from the #Uninvited IRC channel taken during the RSGN hack; screenshots of early versions of th
e graphics and banners we uploaded.
Then he posts my mobile phone number. I use an app that disguises who is calling, or spoofs the source to make it appear that a call is coming from a different number, but that’s not going to save me. If somebody knows the original source, the authorities will be able to trace the moves I made at every stage of the hack, from that first phone call to Don Corrigan in HR at Canary Wharf.
I think of all those angry headlines, the rants by bank execs, the vows by politicians. On my laptop screen right now is everything they would need to put me away.
I tap the keys briefly. The sound seems louder than I’m used to, echoing off the walls.
I think of Sabu – real name Hector Monsegur – who the FBI turned, offering him a deal if he helped them catch the rest of LulzSec.
That’s when I think of Stonefish, and how I spent my day. The implications hit me like a falling anvil flattening Wile E. Coyote. How could I have been so multi-facepalmingly fucking stupid?
He got me out in the open. This was what Cicatrix feared, why he pulled back from the brink. Once I produced that Rubik cube and identified myself, I was tagged. Stonefish followed me home: him or someone working with him, watching from close by. In fact, the guy I spoke to might not even have been Stonefish, if Stonefish was even a single individual. Stonefish could be an account operated by a group of people.
I think back to the Chinese bloke and my first impressions, before he started telling me about himself. He struck me as not geeky enough: that was my initial instinct. That Team Fortress T-shirt was thrown in there for effect, a token to establish certain credentials. He was playing a part, and that was his job because he was good looking, charming.
As soon as I read this I understand that it would be better if they were the feds, because at least I would know what I was dealing with. Whatever they want, they’re using the threat of grassing me up as leverage, which means the feds are part of the equation anyway.
Stonefish. Jesus Christ. The name itself is giving away that it’s a trap. Hackers love doing shit like that: putting something right in front of your nose that you still can’t see. You don’t know a stonefish is there – you don’t see the danger – until you step on it. But once you do, it’s said the pain is horrific beyond description.
My hands reach to the keyboard again.
There is a long wait. I see the typing icon …
UNNAMED SOURCE
Parlabane takes a gulp of tea and checks the time on his phone. His contact is late, which is contributing to a tripartite anxiety he could do without at this time of the morning. The first aspect is that he has no idea what this person looks like, his late-night caller having refused to give him any identifying information whatsoever. The second is that with every passing moment he is becoming more concerned as to whether this skittish and anonymous whistleblower will actually show up; and the third is that he has a train to catch in a little over an hour.
The value of this last consideration is growing in direct proportion to his belief that he is about to be stood up, as his intended journey is taking him to a guaranteed story he is actually being paid to cover. Lee Williams has tasked him with going undercover as a delegate at an arms trade fair. It is a major assignment, the first time they’ve really taken the training wheels off him, so he can’t afford to be late due to chasing a flyer, especially if the flyer never materialises.
It’s 9.44. Parlabane’s train leaves from Euston at 10.33.
The uncertainty takes him back to when he first worked in London, though he remembers it extracting less of a toll on his nerves when he was younger. He had to deal with some jumpy whistleblowers back then, all manner of elusive and unreliable contacts, going by aliases and codenames. There were time-wasters and attention-seekers, employees with a grudge, executives with an agenda, crooks and conmen. Sometimes there was a story at the end of it, sometimes at least a lead, and often nothing at all, but what got the adrenaline flowing was that he never knew.
For a fleeting moment of both nostalgia and regret he recalls a beguiling figure going by the single name Aurore. She made out she was a potential whistleblower, but he was never sure whether she was sounding out his reliability as a confidant or getting ready to play him somehow. He never got to find out, as he had to leave the country in a hurry when someone he was investigating set him up. It was an early instance of a meteor strike right when things seemed to be going well.
He looks around the café in case the contact is already here, nervously and surreptitiously checking him out. He can’t see any viable candidates. At the table directly ahead there is a tubby bloke in frayed jeans with a hard hat at his feet, undulating ridges of builder’s arse hoving into view as he reaches for the ketchup. Nearest the window is a woman in her fifties or sixties. He’d put the voice he heard much younger than that, and though he would ordinarily allow for a large margin of error in such things, he’s never yet seen a Deep Throat bring two grandchildren along to the meet.
To his left there is a young black girl working intently at a laptop. She looks more like she’s skipping school than she’s about to start her shift at Google, but in tech you can never be sure. She closes the machine and stands up. Parlabane glances across, anticipating eye contact, thinking this could be it, but she walks past him and goes to the counter to settle her bill.
He finishes his tea, estimating how long he can plausibly wait until he needs to make a move. He is factoring both taxi and walking options, while also calculating for each how little time he would have left to speak to the woman if she did show up.
Then his phone chimes with a text. It’s from an unrecognised number.
Change of venue. Waiting for you here instead.
There is no name or address, only a link. He clicks it and his browser opens but the screen remains blank. He checks the signal and confirms there is strong 4G. He replies.
Link didn’t work.
A few seconds later his phone chimes again. This time the link takes him to a Google map location. It’s two minutes away, if that: a Starbucks. That sounds far more Google-employee than the greasy spoon he’s in right now, though the prospect of a story is the only thing that would force him to darken the door of the place.
As he pays for his breakfast he wonders irritably why she didn’t simply text him the address, but what the hell. It’s on his way towards Euston anyway.
He walks briskly to the specified Starbucks and stands inside the door, looking past the gaggle at the counter towards the customers already seated. All but one of them is oblivious to his scrutiny. The exception is already looking at him. It is the girl from the adjacent table at the greasy spoon, the one he assumed was too young to be working at Google. The moment she catches his eye, she beckons him with a subtle gesture.
‘What was wrong with the other place?’ he asks, taking the seat opposite, which happens to be a beanbag. He wonders if she chose the spot with that indignity in mind, or if it was the only one free.
‘I had to verify that you were alone.’
Her voice does sound older than her appearance would indicate. It’s another sign of his own advancing years that he’s becoming worse at gauging these things. For all he knows she could be twenty-five.
‘You asked for alone, I came alone.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I have a train to catch, so I’m afraid my time is limited. What is it you wanted to tell me?’
‘I take it I can count on complete confidentiali
ty here?’
‘Absolutely. I have in the past gone to extreme lengths to protect my sources.’
‘Good. Because this is as sensitive as it gets. I have inside information about a data breach at a major tech company.’
‘And to establish the scale of what we’re talking about, would this company be Google?’
She lifts her head.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Call it a hunch.’
‘Well, your hunch is wrong.’
‘You don’t work at Pancras Square?’
‘No.’
He asks himself what game she’s playing here. He knows she called from Google. She used a landline and didn’t take any steps to withhold the number. Why wouldn’t she assume he could trace her location from that?
He’s making assumptions again, trying to get one step ahead of his own potential source. It happens when he isn’t convinced someone is on the level: he feels an impulse to work out what is really going on. He needs to suppress it, let her talk.
‘I said a data breach. It’s more than that, though. Much more. I’m talking full-scale industrial espionage here. High-clearance data theft as well as old-school B&E.’
She looks anxious, impatient to be unburdened and yet she still hasn’t really told him anything. His alarms are going off, but it’s not his bullshit detector that’s tripping them. Something’s wrong here. His skin is prickling.
‘Like I said, I’ve got a train to catch, so you’ll need to cut to the specifics. I need a where, a when, a who, a what, something I can hang this on.’
‘I’ll get to all of those. Are you a man of your word?’
‘Have you ever met a dishonest man who would answer no to that question?’
She stares back, her expression neutral.
‘An honest man wouldn’t avoid answering it.’
He doesn’t like this. Her tone doesn’t make this sound like sass or banter. With every passing moment she is coming across less like a contact and more like an adversary.