by JT Kalnay
"Some special programming for a big currency deal today.”
"In Panama?" Tonia snapped, suddenly awake.
"Yes. How'd you...”
Tonia cut him off.
"Where are you?"
"At work.”
"In your office?" Tonia asked.
"No. A payphone in the lobby, we've got call-monitor on in the office. No calls allowed in or out because of the pending trading.”
"Good. Now listen Jay. I'm only going to say this once. Don't do it Jay,” she warned. “Just get out of there and go somewhere and don’t look back.”
The phone went dead in Jay's hand. Jay stood there, massaging the bridge of his slightly longer than normal nose, staring at the now dead telephone. "What the hell is going on around here?" he asked the lifeless handset. "What the bloody hell is going on?"
No-one answered.
Chapter
"Ready?" Angus MacKenzie asked Jay Calloway. Jay kicked his feet down off his desk. He hadn't been expecting company.
"Yes,” Jay answered. His tired voice revealed his lack of sleep in the last days.
"Good,” Angus replied. "Let's do it. Keep me posted,” Angus ordered. Jay noticed that tension had replaced the casual friendliness in Angus' voice.
"Yes sir,” Jay mouthed to the spot where Angus had stood. Angus had already left, as though he didn't want to spend one more second than absolutely necessary with Jay Calloway. Jay walked down the hallway to his exhausted team. As he passed the fire escape door in his hallway he wondered to himself.
"What would happen if there was a fire in the middle of all this? Would we be able to shut it down? Would someone be able to track my virus if I couldn't turn it off?” Jay stopped for a moment and considered one last time whether he really wanted to do this electronic devilry. Finally the challenge overcame him.
"I have to know,” he said to his reflection in the fire glass in the fire escape door. "I have to know.” He joined the team in the control center.
"Fire it up,” he ordered. The team started typing in commands on several separate keyboards connected to different computer networks all around the world. A few members had to retype commands since their typing had deteriorated from physical and mental exhaustion. After a few minutes their system came to life. It was a marvel of distributed computing, self-replicating viruses, and shady trading. Remote computers all over the world started scheduling buy and sell orders for Panamanian currency on all the major exchanges and many minor ones. MacKenzie Lazarus' computers in a hundred countries had all been loaded in the past days with Jay's special co-operating software to accomplish the job. The software was based on an obscure virus variant of the Tappan Internet worm.
As well as the "good" software they had planted, Jay had looked after infecting some of the more vulnerable systems of their competitors and also watchdog agencies like the SEC, the IMF and the World Bank. The World Bank's monitoring software had been secretly and illegally scheduled, by Jay, to first track and then report on a problem with the currency trading algorithms in the European Economic Community's currency balancing system. The phantom bug would take days to track.
Jay chuckled to himself. Most of it wasn't even illegal because no lawmaker had yet conceived that attacks like this were even possible, let alone probable and imminent.
"We have 50% of the available currency Sir,” Jay reported to Angus MacKenzie. "At the current rate of acquisition, by the close of business today we could have upwards of 90% of all the Panamanian money not in the hands of private individuals or the government of Panama.”
"Excellent,” Angus MacKenzie replied. "And the price?"
"Only up 1.7% since the start of the operation,” Jay answered.
"Incredible,” Angus MacKenzie praised. It had gone even better than he had hoped. "Schedule a meeting for 1:30 with your staff. All your staff, secretaries, everybody. I want to personally congratulate them,” Angus instructed.
"Yes sir,” Jay answered. Jay's voice had taken on the tired tone of a worn down battery operated toy that could not keep going and going any longer. Jay scheduled the meeting to grudging acceptances. His team was more interested in sleep than congratulations. Jay went back to his office to catch a cat nap.
Jay's alarm watch snapped him out of his fitful sleep. His head rose slowly off his desk. "Where am I?" Jay asked. Unwillingly his senses sluggishly returned.
"Missy, make sure everyone's in the conference room by 1:25, we don't want to keep Mr. MacKenzie waiting.”
"Yes Jay,” she replied. "Your mother called while you were... in conference just now,” she said. "I didn't want to disturb you.”
"Thanks Missy.”
Jay picked up the phone to return his mother's call.
"Hi mom,” Jay said.
"Hi baby. You sound tired.”
"I am.”
"You should get some rest.”
"I will.”
"Good.”
"What did you want Mom?" Jay asked brusquely.
The clipped nature of his words was exhaustion not anger, but his mother didn't know that, she heard anger.
"Well I just called to ask you about the coup in Panama, do you think we'll have to send soldiers? Should your father and I sell that Central American Mutual Fund you recommended?" she asked all at once.
"The coup WHERE?" Jay shouted.
"Panama,” his mother said. "I guess about a thousand people are dead already.”
"I'll call you back mom,” Jay said as he hung up the phone.
"He knows,” Warren Fishky, the agent monitoring Jay's line shouted. Fishky and his helper jumped up and headed for Jay Calloway's office. They had murder on their minds. One man pulled a cellular phone from his pocket and dialed Angus’ emergency beeper number. Silent alarms were sounded at several high security locations throughout the building.
"Holy shit,” Jay said, his eyes wide open, his heart pounding. Jay got up from his desk and felt a violent urge to throw up.
"A coup?" he asked himself. "This is not good, this is not good.” He quickly returned to his desk to call Rick. His phone was now dead. Jay dashed out of his office to Missy's desk. He saw her punching buttons one after the other with a puzzled look on her face.
"My phones just went dead,” she said to Jay. He decided it was time to get the hell out of Dodge.
Don’t do it, he heard Tonia's voice echo from the morning. Jay felt an abrupt rush of panic start to swim up and engulf him. He felt like he was responsible for the coup and the deaths and someone was on their way right now to arrest him. He headed towards the bank of elevators on his floor and stopped just short of the elevator lobby, trying to catch his breath. A set of frosted glass double doors separated him from the lobby. As his hands reached out to push open the doors he heard the ding of an arriving elevator.
Angus MacKenzie and three men got out. One man took up position by the elevators, he looked like he meant to keep anyone from coming or going. Angus and the other two started towards the doors. For an instant the face of one of the men registered in Jay's brain. He couldn't remember where he'd seen him before but he suddenly didn't feel like finding out.
Jay Calloway turned quickly away from the doors and took several running steps back towards his office. Just as he heard the doors swing on their bearings he turned a corner and was out of sight. He ducked into the fire escape stairway in the short hallway and pulled the heavy steel door shut behind him. Jay fought the urge to press his nose against the safety glass panel to watch Angus.
Angus MacKenzie and the two dangerous looking men walked past the fire escape to Missy's station. She looked up in surprise. She knew Angus was coming to talk to them, but still his physical appearance, like that of most people in power to those not in power was startling.
"Is everyone in the meeting?" Angus asked her.
"Yes. They're all in the conference room,” Missy stammered out.
"Why don't you join us?" Angus said. “You’re part of this team too.”
"The phones sir,” she answered.
"The phones can wait,” he said.
"Okay,” she agreed. Missy got up and led Angus and the two men toward the assembled team in the conference room. She went in and sat down. She didn't notice Angus peel off from the group. Missy saw the larger of the two men reach inside his briefcase and do something to what looked like a block of plasticine. One of the two men stationed himself at the door of the conference room. The man with the briefcase went in and put his package in the middle of the table.
"Mr. MacKenzie will be with us in just a minute,” he said to the group. "He just got beeped. He'll only be a second.” After fifteen seconds the man stood up. "I’m sorry to keep you waiting. I'll go check on him. Let him know you are all ready,” he excused himself. The large ugly man left the room, pulling the door shut behind him. Those inside did not hear his partner click the lock into place. The two men moved quickly down the hall and moved into position around the corner where Angus MacKenzie awaited them.
"Ready?" Angus MacKenzie asked from where he was crouched.
"Ready,” the briefcase man answered.
"Were they all there?" Angus asked.
"Yeah yeah,” the large man answered. He was starting to sweat in anticipation.
"Do it,” Angus ordered.
From his position in the fire escape Jay could just make out the outline of the small radio transmitter the large dark man pulled from his jacket pocket. He saw the beefy hand extend a tiny antenna and saw the thick thumb press on a flashing red light. "Hail Mary,” Jay started.
Inside the conference room, two pounds of plastic explosive detonated in a deafening roar of thunder and blinding flash of light. The building shook with the power of the explosion. Jay felt the concrete floor reverberate beneath his feet. Smoke and dust and billowed down the hallway. Angus MacKenzie and the two men headed towards where the conference room used to be. Jay saw Angus stop to pick up a piece of broken glass. Angus gashed the glass against the side of his forehead, and once on the top of his head. Blood flowed freely from both cuts. Jay didn't wait one second longer to try to figure out what was going on.
"Holy shit,” Jay said as he started racing down the stairs, hoping to escape before Angus and his hit men realized they'd missed him. What were they doing? Why did they kill everyone? Jay asked himself, not sure that he wanted to know the answer. All I do know is that Angus MacKenzie and three goons just killed all my friends, and they meant to kill me too!
Jay reached the ground floor but stopped before pushing through. He had no idea where the door opened to. And, a large red warning sign announced that opening the door would trigger an alarm. Jay went up five floors then stopped to try to let himself back in the building. He held his security card to the door. It remained locked.
"Shit,” Jay said to himself. His head swiveled back and forth, he saw no place to hide. "Trapped.”
He started back up the stairs and after two floors tried again. The lock yielded. Jay ducked out of the fire escape into a vacant hallway. No staring looks questioned his sudden sweaty appearance from the off-limits stairwell.
How am I going to get out of here? Jay thought. They probably have the stairs and lobby blocked. Jay leaned back against the wall and felt something sharp dig into his back.
"Damn,” he muttered. He turned around and saw that the fire alarm was what had dinged him. "The fire alarm! Jay gasped. Why isn't the alarm going off? he wondered. In an instant he flicked out his hand, pulled the lever out of its protective red housing and activated the alarm. A loud whoop-whooping sound peeled through the floor. Jay went back into the fire escape stairway and started back down. After another two floors there were other people responding to the alarm heading down with him.
Soon the fire escape stairway was overflowing with crowds of hurrying workers. Jay went with the human flow all the way to street level and out of the building. He kept his head down and just kept on going.
One hundred, two hundred, three hundred, Jay counted his steps as he walked away from the World Financial Center. When I get to four hundred I'll look, he bargained with himself. Finally he calmed his reeling thoughts and dared a look back.
Smoke and ash were drifting out of a large hole on the 20th floor where his office and conference room used to be. Jay gawked for a time then returned his gaze to the street.
No-one seems to be following me.
Jay started to walk farther away from the building, away from his apartment, heading uptown. Tonia's voice and then Rick's voice came to him in his head.
"Oh my God,” Jay thought, "You were right Rick. Everything you said was right.” Jay kept his back to the smoke filled scene behind him and walked further north. He soon heard the wail of sirens heading down the West Side Highway toward the calamity.
"Maybe I ought to get out of sight,” Jay said, realizing that he was a lone walker on the edge of the highway by the Hudson River parking lots. "Sixth Avenue has more people.”
Jay made his way east, into the guts of lower Manhattan where the swells of sweaty humanity could make him instantly anonymous.
I need time to think. I need to get some sleep. As is so often the case, the extraordinary rush of adrenalin produced by peril was followed closely by an overwhelming need to sleep. Jay's 60 straight hours of work with only 2 hours of sleep in his office had left him near exhaustion. The nerve-wracking escape had been the last straw. Still he wandered further uptown on Sixth Avenue, disappearing into the midtown crowds, the sirens fading well behind him.
Don’t do it Jay, he heard Tonia say in the back of his mind. Don’t do it. Jay stopped dead in his tracks.
"She knew,” he realized all at once. "She knew!"
She tried to warn me, but she knew. How much did she know? Jay's mind started to wander as the intense weariness and trauma asserted themselves in full force.
Did she know they meant to kill me too?
Betrayal.
Crushing, brutal betrayal.
Tormenting bitter sadness clutched Jay Calloway. He came to a complete stop. “My love has betrayed me. It was all a lie,” he heard himself whimper, the melodrama lost in his fatigue. Big salt-filled tears began to splash down his face. His eyes blurred and his nose began to run. Jay broke the grasp of gravity and launched himself into a consumptive, purgative run. He could barely see through his tear soaked eyes. He began bumping into people as he careened through the crowd.
"Watch where you’re GOING.”
"Hey ASSHOLE.”
Jay barely heard their protests.
"It was all a lie. She never loved me,” he sobbed. "It's not fair. What about me? It's not fair,” he whimpered.
Jay stumbled and fell to his knees gasping for air.
"It's not fair,” he repeated over and over. The midday crowd surged around him. He crawled on his hands and knees on the sidewalk. "It's not fair,” he repeated.
"I know it ain't fair.”
"What?" Jay asked.
"Ain't none of it fair,” the street person said. Jay looked through his watery, bloodshot eyes at an incredibly old and haggard bag lady. She motioned for him to share her piece of cardboard in a little alcove in front of the building she was using as refuge.
"Ain't nuttin' fair 'bout it,” she said. Jay looked at her again. In the middle of his deepest misery the hand of human kindness had been extended by one of life's apparently lowliest creatures.
"Thank you,” Jay said.
"What happened to you?" she asked. "You lose your woman? Your man?"
"My friends,” Jay started. "There was a terrible accident just now.” He couldn't bring himself to say murder though he knew that was what it had been.
"There, there,” she soothed like the grandmother she might have been. "Have a nip of this and get a nap,” she said. "Nip and nap, nip and nap. It's the only way we hold on,” she said.
Jay looked around for the others of "we" but saw no-one else. He crawled closer to the building and the indescrib
able stench of the old lady. He took the offered bottle. He nipped and handed it back. He curled up on her cardboard, his nose becoming quickly used to her smell. In another two minutes he was sound asleep. It was 1:45 pm at the corner of Sixth Avenue and West Fourth Street. If awake and reasoning, his conscious mind might have told Jay Calloway that he'd hit rock bottom. But it would have been wrong.
Chapter
"What do you mean we're missing one?” Angus MacKenzie bellowed.
"Fourteen bodies plus two on vacation makes sixteen. We're missing one.”
"Who?" Angus demanded.
"It's awfully difficult to tell,” the large shadowy man who'd planted the bomb said. A self-satisfied look of admiration at the extent of human carnage he'd created crossed his murderous face.
"Find out! Angus snapped.
"That's going to have to wait for the Medical Examiner and dental records and all that shit,” the dark killer said.
"Smarten up asshole,” Angus snapped back. “Go to everyone's house or apartment and wait for them. Get a tap on their lines, their parent's lines, etc. etc... This is the CTSG group. It should already be in place. Do I have to think of everything for you Neanderthals?"
The three assassins looked at each other and the floor. Angus was fuming. They were suddenly concerned for their own mortality.
"Sir? The city cops will be here soon. What are we going to tell 'em?"
"The plan idiot. We're going to tell them the plan. It was an attempt on my life. And that's all we'll tell them. We're going to let the FBI look after this. Remember?"
"Oh yeah,” the men agreed.
Warren Fishky burst into the remnants of the conference room.
"Mr. MacKenzie. Mr. MacKenzie!" the men said urgently as they found Angus covered with blood and dirt. "Are you alright?" they asked.
"I'm fine,” Angus barked. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Sir. Jay Calloway. He knew. He got a call from his mother about five minutes before the accident,” Agent Warren Fishky reported. "He must have known.”
"It was him,” Angus MacKenzie announced to the collection of agents surrounding him. "It's him that tried to kill me!”
