Exponential

by JM Addison

  Chapter 25

  Damian could do nothing but pace. For someone supposedly in charge of an operation like this, he noticed that the pressure was starting to take its toll on him. First, he would have to tell Red what was happening. He dreaded this more than the actual problems themselves. Red was going to react in ways Damian couldn’t even imagine. How did he end up in this situation? He always worried from the start that the whole conception of ultimate data control would end up going off tracks somehow. It would obviously be illegal. But it would be difficult to prove any wrongdoing had occurred. The money was certainly great and the lure of riches ended up a snare that outweighed any risk.

  Now here he was, trying to figure out if there was some way to end the entire affair gracefully. Just pull the plug and get rid of any evidence. It would be hard because there was a lot of evidence to get rid of. Or would it be? It was, after all, only a bunch of little digital bits of evidence scattered across the inner workings of various computers and network gear. Couldn’t it all just be erased? Just erase your troubles with a push of a button?

  Perhaps there was still hope. Perhaps he could salvage the operation. He reminded himself again that it was, after all, only one girl.

  The conference room phone chimed and his secretary announced the arrival of his anticipated guest. Red was shown into the room and the two men stood face to face without a word between them for a brief moment. It became uncomfortable to Damian who finally turned and offered a seat to his guest. Red ignored the offer.

  “What the hell is going on!” Red demanded. “I don’t even want to be seen here at a time like this!”

  By that, Damian supposed he meant at a time that might make poor Red look bad. But that was tough. Time for him to face reality.

  “As you know, the attempt to silence our little problem has failed.”

  “Our little problem? You knew your position in this before it all started. Before the little problem became a big problem. You knew the risks with an operation as radical as this, you knew the rewards and chose to ignore the risks. Decided that the rewards outweigh the risks. So don’t think that this little problem is our little problem. Remember, I have no official ties to this operation and at this point, and I am going to have to put even more distance between us now.”

  This attitude of Red’s was really pissing him off. Who did he think he was? Sure, there was nothing official to link Red to I-Data, but this whole operation was Red’s idea. Now all of the sudden he wants to wash his hands of it? Damian knew better than to try to dispute the facts with Red, it would be a contest Red would surely win. Instead, Damian looked meek. After a pause, he replied, “Since you’re here, you might as well know what’s going on.”

  “Yes, I might as well…”

  “As you already know, the professional we hired was unable to meet our goals and has been… compromised. The police even have a sketch.”

  “You mean the police have the girl, Again?”

  “No, the moron had some sort of an episode with a parking cop at a subway station and ended up leaving a stolen car and escaping on foot. The parking officer supplied the description. No, the girl is indeed… missing.”

  “So what are you doing about it? Waiting ‘til she shows up at the police and spills her guts? That will be great! As much as I don’t want to get caught in the middle, the operation is still very important to me. To all of us.”

  Both men were silent for a moment as each contemplated the situation. Finally, Red asked, “How bad will it be if the cops catch her?”

  “I fully debriefed Enrique, the guy we hired to do the job. He doesn’t usually take payment until the job is done, but we gave him an advance anyway. We wanted him to be motivated. He gave it back. At the time, it seemed unimportant to him, but during their brief conversation, she was asking him a lot of questions. Most of which he really had no answers for, but two important facts resulted. First, she believes her brother is still alive. Second, She has a pretty good idea of what’s going on. She mentioned the ‘Tomb’. However, she’s barking up the wrong company. She knows nothing about I-Data. At least not that I could tell from talking to Enrique.”

  “So if the police do catch up with her, what’s their course of action? Obviously they might try to investigate Viiradium. That could be difficult if the Justice department was called in on behalf of them to protect secrets associated with government contracts from being publicly exposed. I would certainly slow them down.”

  “Yeah, well wait, it gets worse.”

  Red shot a concerned glance. Damian continued, “As you know, we are being funded very well by our paying customers who have us collect and decrypt network traffic to and from their target competitors. All data, regardless of whether is actually is encrypted or not is captured, analyzed, indexed, sorted and filtered to be supplied to the paying customer.”

  “I know how the operation works, I don’t need to hear a reminder.”

  “Well, it seems one of the organizations we are being paid to monitor received a very interesting anonymous e-mail. We traced the source of the e-mail easily back to the originating organization. It’s a very large free e-mail provider that many people used. There is no way to tell where the originating person sat when they sent the message without gaining access to the e-mail system’s log files.”

  “So what’s the problem? E-mail to one of our targets. They get a lot of e-mail, why does it concern us?”

  “Because… Here are copies of the mail conversation.” Damian handed over the several messages. The first was Mara’s inquiry to several of the target sites. Red recognized some of the organizations from the e-mail addresses she used. She knew something was up and she was fishing. Even more disturbing was the fact that one of the inquiries produced a response from Sequitus Technologies.

  Red was trying hard not to come unglued. This was beginning to unravel. What turned out to be a snowball was inevitably turning into an eventual avalanche.

  Damian went on, “I have a proposition. We at least have her e-mail address from this transcript. Why don’t we submit an enticing response to her and see if we can simply lure her in?”

  “She could be meeting with them right now for all we know. Anyplace in the country. Perhaps they’ve had a nice juicy telephone conversation already. Is she really going to be interested now?”

  “Let’s use the brother…”