Rogue Code

49

Richard Iyers leaned back in his chair and considered the weekend with distaste. Bored Saturday night, he’d gone to the Union Jack where he’d been pleased to spot the blonde he’d had his eye on for several weeks. She was even mildly intoxicated and in a playful mood, which made everything he had in mind that much easier. She’d seen him there before, and he had no trouble striking up a conversation. She was with a brunette girlfriend who was playing darts.

Iyers was his engaging best, and shortly after midnight, the pair had stumbled out of the bar and taken a taxi to his apartment. The rest had been by the numbers, and while in his view there was no such thing as bad sex, this had been a near thing. First and inexplicably, she’d wanted to be coy. After that, she’d wanted to be coaxed. He’d played her game, more than a little disgusted by it and with himself. Then it turned out that she had no imagination and was easily put off by almost everything he wanted. Worse, she didn’t like it rough, getting angry at one point, and the last thing he wanted right now was trouble, so he’d reined it in and settled for the ride. Disappointing was the word for it, especially when he realized — too late — that she wasn’t a natural blonde.

He’d wanted her to leave, but she passed out almost as soon as he was finished, and he’d been kept awake by her snoring. The only real fun had been Sunday morning, when he’d made her pay the price. He’d taken her without preamble, hard and fast, not given her any time to warm up to the experience. That had pissed her off, and she’d slammed the door on the way out.

Iyers smiled at the memory.

He peered idly out the opening of his cubicle. So what to do about Marc? The guy had him working like a maniac. The trading platform had been updated, and Marc alerted him that the Carnaval program was itself both updated and expanded at the same time. The changes had proved problematic and Iyers labored to fix the mess. He still wasn’t sure it was functioning properly. And he understood Rio was still laboring over yet more changes.

Iyers was irritated with Marc for leaning on him so hard. He’d done little but give Iyers hell about his use of the rootkit, describing it as sloppy. What Campos refused to admit was that he’d placed Iyers under undue pressure, had imposed an arbitrary deadline that had left Iyers with little choice except to take a shortcut. He’d intended to fix it later but it worked so well and was so unlikely to be detected that, in the end, he’d left it alone. The code was clever and would give them an extra layer of protection from snooping eyes. Now Marc had seen to an upgrade that was worse than anything Iyers had ever done.

And Marc still claimed he was getting no outside help. What a joke.

Iyers was glad the end for Vacation Homes was in sight even if his future plans weren’t yet set. The sooner he was rid of Marc, the better, in his view. The guy was a wimp. Iyers was seriously considering demanding he be paid what he was owed before doing anything more. Marc needed him right now, and there’d never be a better time. But with so much more money on the table he cautioned himself not to risk it.

The only thing he really felt good about now was how effectively Marc had run Red Zoya out of the building. That had been sweet. At first, he was worried when he’d not killed Aiken, but in the end, it didn’t matter. That ham-handed frame job Marc planted had done the trick. The SEC had stormed the place like the Gestapo. They’d all but stripped the office the pair used and spread suspicion around the office.

It was perfect. Rumors were flying everywhere about the looting of accounts, and not just by Aiken and Renkin. The story was they were all going to be served with subpoenas. People were talking about hiring lawyers. Now he heard that Aiken had left the hospital without permission and that the two men were on the run. It couldn’t have worked out any better.

Then there was the media hype about that bot they’d had weeks earlier. Newspapers were questioning the ability of the Exchange to maintain the security of their trading system. Stenton was more than his usual nervous wreck. Iyers’s only concern was the stumbling stock market. He couldn’t anticipate how that would influence the Toptical IPO. Traders might stay away, reducing the volume, which would give Carnaval a greater possibility of exposure, or they might jump in with both feet, looking to make up losses incurred these last few days. There was just no way to know.

Iyers turned to what he’d been doing. With its acceleration and the dominance of Carnaval, the end time for Vacation Homes was in sight. He checked his watch. It was important to his future that Carnaval go off like clockwork. There were less than forty-eight hours to go. And the code still looked like crap.

50

Samantha Mason watched the blanket of heavy fog from her office window, feeling as depressed as she ever had in her life. In the distance came the moan of the warning foghorn. She wondered why she’d ever thought she liked San Francisco.

It was an utterly artificial city, smug in its conceit and political correctness. Families were being systematically driven out and the upwardly mobile singles who remained were consumed with themselves. And it was cold, and wet. She longed for the sunny Valley. Even the burning heat of a Valley summer was preferable to this.

She glanced at the final prospectus. She’d consulted with her attorney the previous Friday to hear her options again and learned there were no new ones. Her attorney was a pro at this, having specialized in dot-coms from the first. He’d been down this road with other clients. “Take the money,” he’d said, “bide your time under the terms of the IPO, then sell as much stock as you like and leave. You have your whole life ahead of you. You can do whatever you like, including starting another company if that’s what you want.”

Sound advice, Sam knew. Her own preference, to facilitate a takeover by an established company that would have given them the terms they wanted, had been rejected. Everyone, except for Molly Riskin, had their eye set on maximizing the money. Nothing was getting done, not a bit of work. All the talk was about Wednesday’s IPO and how much they’d all soon be worth. Gordon Chan was wandering the hallways with that smirk on his face, as if he were the master magician who’d pulled this off. Even Adam Stallings had lapsed into uncharacteristic cynicism.

Poor Molly. She looked as if she was having a breakdown. She’d developed an uncontrollable facial tic and was now wearing so much makeup, her face looked painted on. She was like a wound-up toy as she wandered the hallways. Sam had told her to go home, as much because she couldn’t stand to see her in this state, as for concern about her.

For three days Sam had studied the prospectus, and she found it no more reassuring than she had when she’d first read it. There were red flags woven throughout it. The IPO was oversubscribed. Worse, much worse, she’d asked Adam to call his contact at the Exchange’s IT department for an update on their new IPO software. “It stinks,” he’d told her Sunday, when he’d agreed to meet at a Starbucks. “My contact says it’s so buggy, managers are starting to distance themselves from it. A senior executive even argued it not be implemented as the potential for disaster is so great.”

“Then why are they going forward? They don’t need another black eye. Just look at all the heat they’re taking about security because of some bot that crept into their system.”

“You know bureaucracy. They publicly committed. They aren’t going to back away from it. It’s up to the software engineers to make it happen. And if it fails, they’ll be forced to take the blame.”

“It won’t be that easy.”

“No, it won’t.” Adam had grimaced. “You’re right about this, Sam. I just wish Brian had listened.”

Brian. Mr. Cool.

She knew better. How many nights when they’d still been lovers did he confide to her how out of his depth he felt, how overwhelming the sudden growth of Toptical was? Since they’d come to an end, the situation had only become more intense, the company even larger. He had a new girlfriend now, some model he’d met a few months earlier. Sam saw her just once, but it had been obvious she was a gold digger. She hoped Brian knew how to write a prenup because he was going to need it.

The foghorn moaned again. Enough, Sam thought. Enough.

She stood up and went to Brian’s office, walking right past his secretary. Inside, she found him talking on his cell phone, the look on his face making it clear to her it was a personal call, and she had no doubt who was on the other end, sharpening her fangs.

“We need to talk,” Sam said, then sat down.

“I’ll get back to you,” Brian said, looking up at Sam. Pause. “Same too huh.” She knew the phrase. It was the one he’d used with her. “What’s up?”

“Brian, you know I’m very unhappy with how our IPO has been handled. I understand the decision to not seek a takeover was made by the group and don’t blame you alone. That’s not why I’m talking to you.”

“So why are you talking to me? This is a very busy time.”

Sam smiled unpleasantly. “Yes, ‘same too huh.’ Must be busy indeed.” She couldn’t help herself.

Brian glared at her. “Why don’t you get to the point?”

“The point is that I’m out of here. I’m taking everything I’m legally able to, selling as quickly as the terms of the IPO allow, then I’m exiting. No comment to the media, nice going away party, then I’m outta here. Okay?”

Sam had expected that Brian would have been relieved to see her gone. New management was coming on board shortly. He’d have his hands full with them. Not having to deal with her would only make his life simpler.

Instead, squirming in his seat, he said, “Samantha, please, don’t do this.”

“Excuse me?”

Brian cleared his throat, then continued, “We started this. It was the two of us.” He paused. “We’re a team.”

“Team? Brian, we haven’t been a team ever since the IPO date was set. There isn’t a single idea I’ve proposed you adopted. You’ve shot them all down.”

“I don’t think it’s been that drastic.”

“It has. I can give it to you point by point if need be.”

“If that’s true, then I’m sorry you think it’s been personal. I’ve been making decisions for the good of the company. I’ve turned away ideas from everyone.” He smiled wanly. “You’re not the only one who’s mad at me.”

“I’m not mad, Brian. I’m just tired and more than a bit disgusted.”

“Disgusted?” He gestured expansively. “Toptical is what we set out to make it. If anything, it’s more than we imagined. And neither of us dreamed it would become a reality so fast, mean so much to so many.”

“You sound like Molly.”

“I guess I do. But it’s true.”

“I’m disgusted by the greed. Have you walked the hallways lately? Seen the groups standing around speculating about how much money they’re going to make in two days?”

“I’ve seen it. I’ve even tried to get people back on track but for everyone here this is the biggest event of their life.”

“I guess. I just hope it doesn’t turn out to be the biggest in my life. That’s why I’m leaving.”

“Samantha.” He hadn’t called her that in two years. “Sam, don’t make this final. Stick with me … us. We need you. It’ll get better once we have this thing behind us. All the distraction, the money guys, that’ll be over.”

Sam shook her head slowly. Brian sounded sincere, but she knew he was fooling himself. “No, it won’t. Starting Thursday, every day before you come to the office, you’ll have checked our stock price. Every day. And when you sit in this office, every single decision you make will be driven to some degree or another by the need to keep that price up. What you’ve been through this last year? It’s the new norm for Toptical. And I want no part of it. I can see that now. When I do something like this again, I won’t repeat the mistake of going public. I’ll keep it small, closely held and private. It’ll be my thing, not some public monstrosity.”

“I had no idea that’s what you think of Toptical. A monstrosity.”

Sam hesitated. “It just came out, Brian, but now that I think about it, yes, ‘monstrosity’ is the right word for it. And what’s this about needing me? You haven’t needed me, personally or professionally, in nearly two years.”

“That’s not true. That’s not true at all. Is that what this is about? You’re the one who ended us, not me.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I begged you, Samantha. I begged you not to leave me.”

Sam didn’t know how to respond. She said nothing for a long moment. “You left me, Brian. You shut me out. It was over but you couldn’t see it. You were too full of—” She looked around the room, taking in the entire building. “—all this to even know it.” There was a very long pause. Her throat ached. She said, “You broke my heart.”

Brian rose, turned to the window behind him, and stared into the fog. Neither spoke for a long time. “You know I’ll do whatever I can to make this easy for you, Samantha. I hope … I sincerely hope you’ll change your mind.” Just then, his cell phone rang. He picked it up. “I have to take this.”

“Of course you do,” Sam said, then left the room.

51

Dressed in a navy blue business suit and carrying an oversize matching purse, Daryl stepped from the train platform and walked the short distance to the bank branch. She paused, reached into her purse, removed a mirror, and checked her appearance. She slipped on a pair of glasses that didn’t distort too much, which she’d picked up at a secondhand store and gazed at her image. With her hair pulled back, she decided she looked like a porn star pretending to be a schoolteacher. She closed her eyes. The things I do, she thought.

Daryl had intended to tell Jeff and Frank about this when they met, but after they’d said they were leaving for Brazil, she decided not to. She knew they’d have just tried to talk her out of it. The reality was that she’d never develop the information they needed working from her hotel room. She was fairly confident this would work. Every woman, certainly every reasonably attractive one, had used her femininity to her advantage at one time or another in life, though she’d always disdained such tactics.

This bank was one of the landing spots for the money streaming out of the country from the rogue code and was within easy reach of Manhattan. She placed a smile on her face, walked through the doors, and went directly to the sign-in sheet.

“Welcome to Pacific Eastern Bank. May I help you?” the receptionist asked.

“You may. I just need a few minutes.”

“Mr. Scofield is with a customer right now, but can be with you in a few minutes. Just have a seat. Can I get you coffee?”

“No, I’m fine. Thanks.” Daryl took a seat from where she could watch the cubicles. There was only one man working with a couple. A few minutes later, he finished with them and escorted them out the door. He went back to the receptionist counter, glanced at the name, then looked to Daryl and came over. “Naomi Townsend. I’m Pat Scofield. How can I help you?”

Scofield was young, like every bank employee seemed to be these days, not yet thirty. He was a handsome young man with widely set pale eyes and a prematurely receding hairline. He wore a bright gold wedding band.

“I’d like to make a deposit into a trust you hold.”

“Why, certainly. Come on back to my desk.”

As they sat down, she presented him with one of the business cards she’d had printed that morning. She had made several with various identities and positions. He looked it over. NAOMI SWENSON-TOWNSEND, it read. ASSISTANT CFO FOR APPRECIATION TRUST, with an address in Hartford.

“I’ve got the account number if you need it. I’m afraid I don’t have a deposit slip with me.”

“Let me see what I have first,” he said. “You could have made this deposit in Hartford.” She didn’t know if he was testing her or making conversation.

“I forgot. I’m on my way into the city and realized at the last second I promised to do this Friday. What a mess.”

“I understand. Here it is. I’ve got the account. Let me fill out a deposit slip for you. How much?”

“Two hundred fifty thousand dollars. You can see why I didn’t want to forget.”

“Yes, that would take some explaining. I see you usually do wire transfers.”

“That’s right.”

Scofield took out a blank deposit slip and then, comparing the information on the screen, looking back and forth, filled it out. Daryl opened her purse to find the check and fumbled around a bit. “Oh dear.”

“Problem?”

“I’m not sure it’s here. Can you imagine?” She dug in the purse again, then sighed. “Could I call my office, please? I want to ask my assistant if I left it on my desk.” He looked at her as if wanting to say something. “I left my cell phone too.” She smiled brightly. “I’m afraid it’s been one of those days.”

“Help yourself,” he said, gesturing to his phone. “Dial nine and that will get you an outside number.”

When he made no move to give her privacy, she stared at him without touching the phone. “I’ve got to check in with the cashiers,” he said after a moment, “so take your time.”

Without punching nine, Daryl dialed a number in Los Angeles she’d memorized. The phone was answered on the second ring. “Hi,” she said, “this is Pat Scofield in Connecticut.” She was calling on their internal phone system so the call was taken as authentic. She’d been ready to leave and to find another branch if the manager was male, but as luck had it the manager had an androgynous name. She was gambling that a bank employee in California had no idea that Pat Scofield in Connecticut was a man. “Our system is down and I need information on an account: Appreciation Trust. Here’s the number. Thanks.”

Daryl stepped into a Starbucks, ordered a latte, then sat at a small table, opening her laptop. Scofield had been very understanding when she told him she had in fact forgotten the check and apologized for taking up his time. He said he’d be happy to help her anytime and walked her to the door.

Now she went online with the application information she’d obtained with the two telephone calls she’d managed to make from the bank’s phone system. The Appreciation Trust accounts with Pacific Eastern Bank had been opened in the name of Dick Iver. The business address, it turned out, was a UPS store in Hartford. She did a search for the company and found absolutely nothing, which didn’t surprise her. Next she accessed Data Retriever Solutions using the CyberSys account and ran the number. It was for a man who died in 2005. Again, no surprise.

A dead end — for now. But with this information she could follow the money to the next stage. Still, her heart sank at the prospect. How many stages would there be? Too many she feared.

She drank her coffee and considered the odds. She had tonight and tomorrow for computer time. Maybe she could turn up something, but didn’t think it likely. What she needed was to link what was taking place to the rogue code’s real authors. The ease with which she’d fooled the bank manager had set her mind to considering another option. But first, there was something else she could do now. She picked up her cell phone to call her boss, Clive Lifton, in San Francisco. He answered at once.

“Daryl, when are you coming back? I need you.”

“I’m not sure, Clive. Things are complicated. Listen, I need your help.” For the next ten minutes, she filled him in on what was taking place. His company, CyberSys, Inc., was small but highly regarded in the cybersecurity community. His annual CyberCon was one of the most respected of its kind and was attended by both private contractors and government agents. His contacts throughout the cybersecurity world were extensive.

“That’s quite a story,” he said when she’d finished. “So the SEC is convinced that Jeff and Frank are thieves. But from what you tell me the setup isn’t all that clever.”

“Robert Alshon is the senior investigator. I’m hoping you know him.”

“Alshon. Alshon. I have a vague memory of a large man with a shaven head and mustache. If that’s him, we met once, briefly, but I should know people who know him. It’s the same everywhere. What do you want me to do?”

“Talk to him. At the least slow him down, get him to dig deeper before he lands on Jeff and Frank with both feet.”

“You say that warrants have already been issued?”

“That’s what Frank said. Alshon was able to get the NYPD involved. That’s why they left the city.”

“Where are they?”

“The less you know, the better, Clive. Will you do it?”

“Of course I’ll do it. I just don’t know if it will do any good.”

52

The hotel’s Web site had been true to the nature of the Pousada Verde Nova. Frank had selected it during their layover in Miami primarily because of its location. Tropical in design with a cobblestone parking area, the small hotel had a restaurant and featured both inside and outside dining. Quiet, with Wi-Fi throughout, it was situated three blocks from the nearest busy street. It was the kind of hotel that appealed to out of country travelers. It made you want to lounge about, drink too much beer, and do absolutely nothing. It was ideal for their purposes as it was easy to blend in.

Jeff had found the long flight south both physically and mentally exhausting. The passports cleared Newark and Miami without difficulty and there’d been no trouble at the Guarulhos International Airport. Frank had assured them that traveling as two Canadian businessmen would be easy.

Once they’d left Miami, Frank had offered him an Ambien, but Jeff had refused. He’d taken the drug once before, and it had left him dazed for the next twenty-four hours. He couldn’t afford such a luxury right now.

When Frank first announced his intention of flying south to collect information at the likely source or to find someone in the know, Jeff had objected, arguing that it was too dangerous. If anything went wrong, they’d end up in a Brazilian jail.

And just how reliable was the information on São Paulo anyway? They found nothing when they’d first cracked the code, and they’d looked hard for such a connection. Now, out of the blue, came this picture. Daryl was right. They’d been lured here.

He didn’t share Frank’s optimism, if that’s what it was. There seemed to Jeff virtually no chance they could run this thing down here or find someone who could confirm their suspicions and be made to talk. They had no idea if São Paulo was even the end of the trail. For all they knew it was just another stopping point for the money. And as for the hackers, the operation could very easily have been outsourced to them from most anywhere in the world. In Jeff’s view this was the longest of shots. He’d told Frank this as forcefully as he could before they’d left New York.

“If we stay here in New York, we’ll be arrested, with all that means,” Frank had argued. “We’ve already discussed it at length. Even with Daryl’s help we can’t do this working only with computers. You need to come with me.”

“To Brazil?”

“Absolutely. We can’t stay here. If we do, it’s just a question of time. A moving target is a lot harder to find. We’ve got cash and in Brazil cash is king. If this lead comes to nothing, we’ll hole up there and work this for the long run. There are few better places in the world in which to be a fugitive. The Brazilian authorities won’t cooperate with the SEC or FBI. They don’t view so-called white-collar crime the same way as the U.S. And we don’t have to show identity cards to function there so we can assume whatever name we want. There’s also a larger expat community in Brazil than you realize and in the south there’s a large number of Brazilians who originated largely from Germany. We’ll be invisible or close to.”

“I don’t know.”

“I speak the language.”

“You speak Spanish, Frank. The language in Brazil is Portuguese.”

“Close enough. Jeff,” Frank said with a winning smile, “trust me.”

After checking in to the Pousada Verde Nova, they showered and changed, then had a light snack with bottles of Brahma, a local beer. Frank had unspecified business and left, saying he’d be back in a bit.

Jeff lay on his bed and tried to sleep, but his restless mind refused to shut down. Running into Agnes had been upsetting. His mind had been filled with fear, fear that she knew there was a warrant out for his arrest, that she’d been playing him and had run off to tell the police where to find him. It was ridiculous he knew, but he’d had to fight to suppress the surge of terror that threatened to engulf him.

When Frank returned, Jeff said, “Frank, I appreciate your commitment to secrecy, I really do, and understand the culture. But in this case, I think it’s misplaced. You want me to trust you and I do, but put yourself in my place. I need to know more. Tell me about this.” He held up the passport.

Frank sat in a chair, a fresh bottle of beer clutched in his hand. “You’ve got a point. Old habits. I’ll just give you the highlights, since there are necks on the line here.” He took a pull, then continued, “The Company does a lot of its business off the books.”

“You mean it outsources.”

“Yes, but not just that. A contract operator has less of a trail back to the Company if anything goes wrong. Deniability. For one, he’s got a life insurance policy on him so the U.S. government isn’t paying his widow death benefits. It’s a ‘no questions asked’ situation, and they’ve used it a lot, especially since the start of the war on terror, as it’s known. The problem is that outsourced agents can’t get what they need directly from the Company. This is not a new issue. When the CIA was created, it set up companies in the U.S., Europe, and around the world, run by agents at first, later by patriots. With Company resources and good business management you’d be surprised at how successful some of them have become. You’d even know a name or two. So when an operator needs cash, a job title, things like that, these companies step up.

“So … passports. Not every such operation is legal. That’s how independent operators get weapons, communications gear, and the such. At least one of them specializes in identities. They have a stash of perfectly legitimate blank passports from a number of countries, including Canada. They prepare them just the way the Canadian government does. Now, here’s the tricky part; they’ve got a source inside Passport Canada. That’s a quasi-independent government agency that reports to the Citizenship and Immigration office there. It’s been a disaster from the first. Passport Canada hires people without proper clearance, issues felons passports; it’s a mess. So this guy working there inserts all the information directly into the official government database. I’m telling you, Jeff, these passports are in effect the real deal. Now, I need you to trust me. I’m as exposed as you are.”

“All right, then. Thank you.”

Frank removed a cell phone from his pocket and slid it over. “Here’s a throwaway. Keep it charged and with you. There’s a strip of masking tape across the back with your number and mine.”

Jeff glanced at the phone, then slid it into a pocket. “Should we be worried about Agnes?” He hadn’t expressed his concern or fears in transit not being entirely sure their conversations were secure.

“Naw. I was once in … now, where was it? Oh, yeah, Rome. Anyway, I was in Rome, eating dinner with someone I was running, when this guy comes up all smiles. We’d gone to high school together, wanted to know how my wife was, shook my hand until I thought it would fall off, gave me his business card, hinted he wanted to join us, then seeing I wasn’t going to invite him he moved on.”

“Awkward. What did you tell the man you were with?”

“Mistaken identity.”

“Did he believe you?”

“No. The funny thing about it was I’d never seen the other guy before. I’d never gone to school with him, and he didn’t know me. He had my name wrong and that of my wife. It really was mistaken identity. So there you are. Agnes won’t be a problem. If we become a national story or the cyber community spreads word around, then she’ll try to put two and two together. If she likes you, she’s not likely to call the authorities because she’ll have her doubts, especially Agnes. Federal law enforcement has lost a lot of credibility since the Patriot Act and PRISM. And even if she tells someone about seeing you, the Miami airport feeds lots of places in the world.”

“It’s the gateway to South America.”

Frank nodded. “There’s that. But, Jeff, you give them too much credit. You’re not traveling under your own name. They’d have to use facial recognition to spot either of us and take it from me, since my group developed that software to its current state, it is nowhere near as fast or simple as the movies make it seem. I know their capability, and it’s limited. Mostly they catch people because people do stupid things, or act guilty. That’s why you need to put this out of your mind. For the next little while, you are Doug Bennett. Think about your cover story, don’t flash too much cash and ogle the babes. That’s the national pastime down here.”

“What about Carol?” Jeff asked. He had no one who needed to know he was on the run but Frank had a wife and family.

“Carol is fine.”

“I don’t understand. How can she be fine with all this going on?”

Frank took a pull of his beer. “She knew what I was when we met, or at least not long after we met. She’s the reason I made the career change but that didn’t happen overnight. She’s lived with this before. We have a code, just in case.”

“What kind of code? What’s it for?”

“It’s for emergencies when I might have to go to ground. I was still in the field for over a year after we started living together, so I gave her a code expression. Whenever she heard or read it from me it meant I was fine but had to vanish for a while and couldn’t be in touch with her. She was to do nothing. Not call anyone, not talk about it.”

“Couldn’t someone from the Company keep her posted, so she wouldn’t worry?”

Frank smiled. “Jeff, you are an American original. The Company might very well be why I was pulling my vanishing act.”

“You’re not serious.”

“After all you’ve been through since 9/11, and especially these last few days, you still don’t get it. The field is no different than Langley was. Remember those days? Management has its own agenda, the best and brightest are few and far between, motives are muddled. As often as not out there my adversary was the home office. Dealing with the official enemy was pretty straightforward and with most of the enemy operators there were rules we followed.”

“Rules? In espionage?”

“Of course. We all had families. One rule was that they were off limits. There were others.”

“So how many times did you have to hide from the Company?”

“That was just an example of why I needed a private code. I actually only kept my head down from the home office once and that was just for a few days until the situation corrected itself.”

Jeff started to ask, then stopped. What Frank might very well mean was that he’d corrected the situation personally. “Okay.”

“You never know when your past might catch up with you, so I kept the code alive. I called Carol when we went to ground so she knows I’ll be out of touch for a while.”

“Still, she must be worried.”

“Oh yeah. No matter how hard you try you always worry.”

53

Jonathan Russo looked up from the code and nodded to Alex Baker with approval. “We’re getting there,” he said.

“How much are we committing?”

“Everything. Opportunities like this don’t come along that often. We have no idea how many high-frequency traders will be in on the action, skimming the cream, and we have losses to make up for.”

“I’m concerned no matter how good our algo looks. The new IPO software the Exchange is using is still buggy. I called a contact there, and she’s not sure it’ll be fixed by Wednesday.”

“Are they going with it anyway?”

“She says they are, though there’s a revolt going on with the staff. But the Exchange committed to it publicly, and they are being told it has to fly.”

“That’s a hell of a way to run a railroad.”

Baker shrugged. “You know what they’re like.”

“I’m afraid so. I like what I see here,” Russo said, indicating his screen, “but I want you to triple-check our exit code. We’ve established parameters in which we’ll do well. If the trades migrate out of the parameters, we have to be sure we’re no longer participating. I think we’re secure in that regard.”

“I’ll be working on that all day tomorrow.” Baker stopped but seemed poised to say more.

“What?”

“I’m concerned the algos are getting too complicated.”

“They are sophisticated, no doubt about it.”

“They are time consuming to trace and too much of the code has been generated by other code. I have to use tools to understand some of it.”

“Nothing new there.”

“In this case, though, it is. I frankly don’t understand some aspects of our algos. I know that the tools say they’re fine and that they test out on our machines but…”

“So what’s the problem?”

“I don’t understand them except in the most general way. I could write a short paper describing how they function but I can’t explain the details of the functionality.”

“Yes, it’s not like the old days, but we’re going to see more and more of this, Alex. The day will come when code will write all code. We’ll just tell it what we want it to do.”

“Not soon, I hope. I don’t trust it.”

Russo leaned back. “Don’t tell me that you want to hold off? If the algo really isn’t ready, we shouldn’t use it. But you don’t know that, do you?”

“No. I’m just uneasy is all.”

“It’s always that way with something new. We’ve never been this aggressive before, this committed.”

“That’s it I guess, plus we had that problem last week, when the test had run just fine. Okay, late tomorrow, I’m shutting it down to changes, then we’ll run a number of scenarios in-house. If all goes as expected, we’ll be good to go. We’ll deploy the update two hours before trading begins Wednesday morning.”

“I’m depending on you. I’m exhausted. I’m going home for some rest and I’ll be in late tomorrow. We’ve a long day ahead of us once I get here.”

Russo watched Baker leave his office. He understood what the man was saying. When he started out, he’d written code from scratch. Later, he basically copied and pasted, then adapted code he had crafted already. Only when he went to work for Jump Trading, had he returned to writing code from scratch, at least in the beginning. Now every high-frequency trading company copied where it could, duplicated functions, producing nearly identical algos. They made money even then, but every edge you could encode meant a lot.

In Russo’s view this code was conservative compared to what he’d really like to do. He was already thinking of how it would be rewritten for the next major IPO. He’d squeeze the other HFTs out, that’s what he’d do. They’d never know what hit them. He was expecting to do well on Tuesday, and was prepared to bail out at signs of trouble, even overriding the program if he didn’t like what he saw. Despite his desire to plunge after the algo problems and losses of the previous week, there was too much on the line to be taking needless risks.

54

Back in Manhattan, Daryl had found an image of a NYSE employee ID online, printed a copy at Kinkos, affixed a passport photo she had taken there, laminated it, and attached it to a lanyard. While it looked authentic, it didn’t have the RFID chip on it that would open secured doors when swiped past a reader.

The name on the card was that of a woman from the Server Systems Group at the Exchange taken from the employee information Jeff and Frank had compiled during their reconnaissance. Besides being on vacation and from a department that would give Daryl latitude to move around, she bore a vague resemblance to Daryl, at least based on the small photo in the company directory.

Daryl now stood outside the Wall Street building housing the offices for Trading Platforms IT Security and waited for a crush of employees, preferably one with several young women. It didn’t take long. She blended in with a stream, hanging close to three laughing and chatting women. Each swiped her card as she passed through a waist-level security gate. Daryl hurried behind the woman in front of her, sliding through before the gate closed while swiping her card. The security guard’s attention was elsewhere and the chattering group hadn’t noticed her tailgating behind them.

She stayed tight with the three women, then rode the elevator with them, wanting to get off the ground floor and away from the security guards at once. They exited on the fourth floor. Daryl looked around. It didn’t seem right. At the closest cubicle, Daryl asked, “Where is IT Security? I’m afraid I left my directions at the office.”

The young man scarcely looked up from his screen, “Fifteenth floor, if you’re looking for admin. It’s also housed on the sixteenth and seventeenth floors.”

“Thanks.”

Daryl returned to the elevator, then stepped off on the seventeenth floor, glanced about, then walked along the hallway, which encircled the primary work area. Perhaps a third of the cubicles she saw were unoccupied, employees in meetings, taking breaks, sick, unfilled vacancies.

When she’d first considered this infiltration in the euphoria following her success earlier with the bank manager, it had seemed easy. Now she wasn’t so sure. She knew she couldn’t just stand around looking confused. Someone would ask if she needed help. In an empty cubicle she spotted a number of loose sheets of paper. She stepped in, picked one up, then walked steadily along the hallway as if she knew where she was going. She’d read somewhere that people carrying a piece of paper looked purposeful.

It was a busy office and for that she was grateful. Anyone she encountered was obviously busy while those in their cubicles were intent on their work. She drew a look from every man she passed but there was nothing new in that. The best news was that once at their station employees rarely displayed their identity cards. She’d noticed the women with whom she’d entered had taken theirs from purses and put them back as they walked to the elevators.

She went by a copy room, an empty manager’s office, then realized she was about to lap the floor, so she slipped into the unoccupied ladies’ restroom, entering the first stall. She stood there taking several deep breaths. So far, so good.

Women entered and went straight to the mirrors. “… our fault. I can’t believe we’ve had two meetings in three days over this nonsense. It’s not like we did it.” Her voice sounded very young.

“If the Times writes about it, if it’s in the news, we have to pay the price. You know that.” The second voice seemed a bit older.

“It was harmless. It happens to every company one time or another. Now he wants to change everything. You watch. We’ll spend the next three months focused on the wrong things just to cover his ass. In the meanwhile our real work will get ignored.”

Faucets were turned on and off, water splashed, there was more chitchat, then the women left. Daryl waited before stepping back into the hallway and resumed her walk, looking for an open workstation.

Richard Iyers spotted the blonde as he was on his way to the men’s room. “Well, hi,” he said when she was close. “I haven’t seen you before.”

Daryl stopped and smiled. “I’m from SSG.” The Server Systems Group was big and housed in a separate building. She was gambling not everyone working there was known by sight here.

“That explains it. My name’s Richard. I work over there.” Iyers gestured across the top of the cubicles. “If I can do anything for you, just let me know. I’m an infrastructure specialist. We should have a lot to talk about.”

“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.” Daryl looked for his badge to get his last name and saw he had it tucked into his pocket. She moved around him.

“I didn’t catch your name,” Iyers said as she walked past him.

“Kelly,” Daryl replied over her shoulder.

This second time through, she thought she had a sense of the place. She selected a cubicle not directly seen from the hallway and sat. She couldn’t put her finger on it but as she examined the work area it gave her the impression that no one had worked at it recently. She slid into place and turned on the computer.

The backdoors into the system that Jeff and Frank had constructed were of necessity composed of several pieces. One bit was code they had planted in the trading engine. This connected to more code on the jump server, which in turn connected to still more code on other computers they’d compromised, including the essential Payment Dynamo servers. These connected out of the Exchange to the C2 servers they’d rented in public cloud providers such as Amazon EC2 or Microsoft Windows Azure. This was the tunnel Jeff and Frank employed and from which they could accomplish anything they wanted, from spying on employees on the IT side to injecting more code into the trading engine if that proved necessary.

A serious problem Daryl now faced was that the link from their C2 servers to the Exchange and possibly the jump server and their code in the trading engine had been disrupted. Her first order of business was to check to see if she could reestablish a path.

From her purse Daryl removed a USB key to boot one of Jeff’s tools. This enabled her to change the local administrator password on the operating system. Once done she rebooted the computer normally and logged on. Now that she was in, she ran a tool to leverage the passwords Jeff had collected to give her access as if she were the users to whom they belonged. Using that access, she connected to one of the Payment Dynamo backdoor servers via the IT side of the Exchange network. Holding her breath, she scanned the list of processes running for their backdoor. There it was, still active. She exhaled. She could connect to the backdoor from the system she was using and regain access to the jump server. This allowed her to monitor the software uploads through the jump server and if she positioned herself correctly, she hoped she could prevent them from passing through.

With her ability to monitor and interfere with the rogue code restored, Daryl turned to following up on the Brazilian connection. Jeff and Frank needed all the help they could get and while Frank suspected the lure was intentional she was sure of it. She was convinced that things would go very badly for them no matter how confident Frank seemed.

She navigated to the internal employee directory Web site and set about scanning it slowly searching for Portuguese names or variations in the event they’d been Anglicized. As a prodigy Daryl had discovered a natural aptitude for languages very early in her life. Before she was a teenager she already spoke Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian fluently. In her teens, she’d added both Latin and French. Her parents thought she’d become a linguist, but Daryl had also been drawn to mathematics and computers. At age fifteen, she was spending most of her time with pimple-faced geeks. It had been the combination of languages and computing skills that had led to her recruitment by the National Security Agency.

The problem in searching for a Portuguese surname was that they were Latin and so many were identical to Italian and Spanish family names, and immigrants often dropped the specific distinctions to simplify assimilation. After an hour, she had a working list of thirteen possible names: Alvaro, Braga, Camacho, Campos, D’Souza, Esteves, Fernandes, Gonsalez, Mateos, Nunes, Parra, Rodriguez, Silva.

Braga, D’Souza, and Nunes were almost certainly Portuguese in origin. The others might or might not be. She next went through the thirteen names in turn to determine what access to the trading engines each had and from that produced three who were in an easier position to insert malware. Braga, Campos, and Esteves. Of course, she knew any on the list could have used their position of privileged access to hack into the system but these three were in the best position, and she had to start somewhere.

Daryl memorized the names, titles, and office numbers. She recalled that she’d seen the name Esteves on one of the manager offices on this floor. She drew a deep breath, stood up, and went back into the hallway. Esteves’s office was unoccupied. The two others were on the fifteenth floor.

She stepped off the elevator and resumed her movement around the next floor. It seemed identical to the other. Employees walked by her, intent on their own concerns. As she’d noticed on the other floor, there was a sense of restlessness in the air, not exactly one of urgency but rather of unfocused frenzy. The cubicles had no names for occupants. Apparently you were expected to know who worked at the station. Braga and Campos were not managers. What to do?

“Excuse me,” she said to a chubby young woman standing in the hallway talking to someone in a cubicle. “I’m looking for Marc Campos. I don’t know him by sight.”

“Marc?” The woman repeated the name as if she’d never heard it before. “Marc,” she said again, looking down. “This lady wants to talk to you.” With that she said good-bye, glancing at Daryl from the side as she moved away.

“Marc Campos?” Daryl asked as she moved to the cubicle opening.

“Yes.” Though he was sitting down, she could tell Campos was tall. He was in his early thirties, with olive skin, an average face, though with slightly bulging eyes. She knew that he was on the core trading platform team at the heart of the trade matching engines. He looked very tired. “What can I do for you?”

There was just the slightest trace of an accent and for reasons Daryl could not explain she knew this was her man. “I’m Kelly,” she said. “I’m with SSG. Do you have a minute to talk?”

“Sure,” Campos said, gesturing to a chair in the corner. “You have a card?”

Daryl smiled, then dipped her hand into her purse and extracted one of the cards she’d printed earlier. She handed it to him. Campos read it, then set the card down, looking back at her expectantly.

“I’m following up on the bot that’s been in the news.”

Campos laughed. “It’s amazing how those things can get blown out of proportion. I know the former employee who is the source. He’s just disgruntled. Almost everything being reported isn’t true. And the market is rebounding today. It always does.”

“Have there been any others since you came to work here?”

Campos shook his head. “I don’t recall any but then, unless it was in the trading software, it’s not likely I’d have heard about it. And I can’t imagine anything like that getting through the jump server.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Five years,” Campos answered before looking at her card again.

“Campos,” she said. “Is that Spanish?”

“Portuguese,” he said warily.

“Eu falo Português. Onde é que sua família vem?”

“Porto,” Campos said.

“Porto é muito bonito.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Você deve falar Português?”

“Of course.” Campos began to sweat. Daryl arched her eyebrows in expectation. Then he said, “Sim, é claro que eu falo Português.”

And there it was. It was all Daryl could do not to yell “gotcha.” He’d tried, even in his short admission that he spoke Portuguese to disguise his accent but there was no hiding it. The region about Porto spoke some of the most traditional Portuguese in existence, while those from Brazil spoke a variation tempered by the climate, the distance from the source of the native language, peppered with African words and idioms unique to their region. Porto Portuguese was like Castilian to Mexican Spanish, Prussian to Bavarian German.

Campos was Brazilian.

Daryl continued speaking to him a bit, almost enjoying his efforts to conceal his accent. Finally, uncomfortable with the exchange, Campos said in English, “If there’s nothing else, I need to get back to work.”

I’ll bet you do, Daryl thought. The Toptical IPO is less than two days away. “Of course. Nice meeting you. It was good to practice my Portuguese. It’s been too long.” She extended her hand.

When she was gone, Campos lifted up her card. Kelly Vogle. He punched the listed SSG number into his phone. It rang three times before an electronic voice said, “You have reached the voice mail of Kelly Vogle. Please leave a message.”

Shit!

What did SSG want with him? They’d found the trail he’d planted leading to Aiken and reported it to the SEC just as he’d wanted. Why would they come snooping around here? Why ask about the bot? The publicity it was causing?

And why talk to him? Why send someone who spoke Portuguese? What were the odds it was a coincidence?

Campos stood up and went into the hallway, his legs unsteady. She was gone. He sat back down and stared ahead, realizing that his hands were trembling.

Merda!

55

Robert Alshon pulled the drawer out and removed two more pink tablets, chewed, then washed them down with coffee. He looked at his watch. Time was racing away.

He fingered the report he’d received earlier. Uniformed NYPD officers had located a fleabag hotel uptown the previous day where two men matching the descriptions of his target had holed up. The clerk said he had no doubt they were the pair on the flyer but by the time a SWAT team arrived and stormed their room the birds had flown.

Alshon had been furious on receiving word. Whatever happened to cops just doing their job? Why wait on a special tactics team? Just go in and make the arrest. It seemed to him every routine law enforcement procedure was morphing into a big deal. It was, in his view, just one more way to avoid responsibility.

So Aiken and Renkin were gone. Where?

Nowhere close, that much he was sure of. Alshon couldn’t shake off the thought they were long gone. He’d missed his best chance to snag them. By now they could be anywhere. Most likely they’d gone to Canada as it was so close. As Company men they’d know how to go to ground. If they didn’t already have new identities, they could get them there. A Canadian passport was as good as an American one, and they were a lot easier to obtain. You didn’t even have to get a false one. And that assumed they didn’t have one already lined up.

They could have gone south, Mexico. Simple enough by bus or by buying a used car and making the drive. Once below the border, they’d simply vanish and even if they were traveling without new identities those were easily obtained in Mexico City, where false documents were a booming business.

There was a knock at his open door. “Come in, Gene,” Alshon said. “Give me some good news. I could use it.”

Gene Livingston entered holding his customary legal tablet and took a seat. He pushed his glasses back onto his nose, then said, “I won’t get the telephone and e-mail information on Stenton, Aiken, and Renkin until tomorrow, so I have nothing new to report there. I did retrace my steps a bit and widened the search, but I still can’t find a connection to Stenton before he hired Red Zoya.” He looked up. “Sorry I couldn’t get this done as soon as I’d expected.”

“It’s good news, though. I prefer to have Stenton on my side in this. So what’s new?”

“I’ve been working on Stenton’s staff since this was an inside job. It occurred to me that these two might have another ally there.”

“Good thinking.”

“What I came up with is Marco Enfante Campos. He works on the trading platform team on one of the modules at the heart of the trade matching engines. That’s as sensitive as it gets. He’s been there for five years. According to his application, he’s from Porto, Portugal. He attended college in the U.S. and worked for New York Life before joining the Exchange. He’s a trusted, reliable employee. He’s moved up steadily in responsibility. He’s single and lives a quiet life from what I can see.”

“What else?”

“He’s working here on a green card. Okay, I got into the New York Life records — don’t ask, you don’t want to know — and while there is a cursory record of his employment, it isn’t fleshed out like that for the other employees.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It looks to me like it was inserted.”

“Inserted?”

“Let’s say you want to establish a work history. You hack a company computer and insert your personal data. When the prospective employer checks, some clerk goes into the records and says ‘Sure, he worked here from such-and-such a date until such-and-such.’ No one gives out any real information anymore because of lawsuits. And that’s all the prospective employer is looking for — confirmation the applicant actually worked there.”

“You’re saying his record looks funny.”

“Right. I checked out the data for employees with similar responsibilities and it is far more extensive. His is really stark.”

“That’s pretty thin.”

“There’s more. I checked with Tufts University, and there’s no record of him ever attending.”

“Maybe the records have it wrong. Maybe he used a different name or took them as special classes.”

“That’s possible. But it was enough for me to really focus on him.”

“And?”

“He’s a creation. I can’t tell you who this Marco Campos is but I’m prepared to guarantee that his real name isn’t Campos, and my bet is he’s not even Portuguese.”

“He looks like their inside man, then?”

“That could be. But when I looked, I couldn’t find any link between Campos, Aiken, and Renkin. Actually, Mr. Alshon, if I were looking at the data fresh, I’d say Campos is your man, not Aiken and Renkin. He’s been there five years, he’s the one who has been in position to set this operation up.”

“We’ve got Aiken red-handed!”

“Maybe,” Livingston said evenly. “But think about it. You’ve been running a long con for five years, you’ve been making money for the last year, then these hotshots from outside come in and stumble on what you’re up to. What would you do? Run?”

Alshon eased back in his chair. Livingston was solid as they come. He needed to listen. “Run makes sense. Why set them up? That in itself is a great risk.”

“Yes, it is. But you’d do it if you wanted to buy time because maybe you’ve got something big coming up.”

After Livingston left, Alshon summoned Flores and assigned her to personally check out Campos without telling her what he’d already been told. When she left, he gnawed at his lower lip until his cell phone rang.

“Alshon.”

“Mr. Alshon, my names Clive Lifton. I run CyberSys, Inc., out here in San Francisco. We met two years ago in Atlanta. Perhaps you recall. I’m sorry to bother you, but a matter has just come to my attention I need to discuss with you urgently.”

Alshon’s mind raced. Lifton? He had no recollection of meeting the man but that was no surprise. He met a lot of new people in a typical year. CyberSys, Inc. was familiar to him. When he’d been with the Bureau, they adopted one of its security systems.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Lifton.”

“I’ve known Jeff Aiken for a number of years. I’ve tried to recruit him for most of them. I understand you think he’s committed a crime of some kind.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“A colleague notified me. It’s not important who. I was able to confirm that a warrant has been issued for his arrest so we aren’t dealing in confidences here.”

“I’d still like to know who told you.”

“Let me tell you about Jeff, including information you won’t find in official records, or at least not those you can access. I think when you learn just who he is, you’ll rethink the direction of your inquiry.”

“I’m listening.”

After Alshon disconnected, he was furious. He’d had targets pull weight before. It was inevitable in any significant investigation and all of his were significant. He’d anticipated a call such as this at some point, though, this was a bit early from his experience; but he’d never had one claim his target was innocent on national security grounds before, and he didn’t like it one bit.

Just who did these people think they were? When he’d been with the Bureau, he encountered this from time to time. Someone who’d provided information to another government agency would pull a string and the boss would get a call. Snitches were devious people in his opinion, and those who sold information to the Company, or the Defense Intelligence Agency or any of the alphabet soup agencies involved in national security were weasels. They were only on the side of the angels by accident. They’d learned what they learned by working with the bad guys, by doing bad things. They had no commitment to anything beyond their own survival. Calls like this had never succeeded at the Bureau, at least not in his experience.

This Lifton had told Alshon quite a story. You’d think Aiken was James Bond to hear him tell it. He saved the world at least twice. Well, it wasn’t going to work. Alshon knew bad apples when he found them, and these two were rotten.

But as the workday drew to its exhausting close, as he prepared to go home for a few hours’ sleep, Alshon’s thoughts turned back to what Livingston had told him about Campos. It made sense that Aiken had an inside man. It made no sense to him that this was a Campos operation. No, it was the Company men; of that, he was certain.

56

The warehouses were laid out in the shape of a square-cornered U. The open end through which deliveries and shipments were made faced the rear away from the street. The entry opening was a secured expanse of steel grating topped with spear points and electric wiring. In the middle were large sliding automatic doors controlled from a guard post there. This was the only way in or out. The exterior of the warehouses was a solid wall fifteen feet high, lacking a single window or doorway. This outside wall was also topped with spear points and electrical wiring.

All of this was standard in Brazil. What was new, and unseen, were the motion detectors and sophisticated surveillance cameras Jorge César had installed in anticipation of his two visitors. The warehouse had not been used for some months, and the contained loading area showed the evidence of disuse, dirt blown into corners, bits of paper gathered here and there, the entire expanse looking abandoned. Only the offices of Companhia Cero had remained operational, and César had sent that small staff home as soon as he’d received his orders.

The warehouse had been owned or controlled by Nosso Lugar for more than two decades. It was located in a commercial district, and though there were city efforts to revitalize the Mooca District with some success, they’d not yet extended to this area. When they did, Bandeira would sell the facility for a nice profit. For now, its advantage to the organization lay in its relative isolation as it was surrounded by similar structures and because it lent itself to a wide range of activities. In just the last decade it had been a transfer point for human trafficking, a processing facility for soft drugs, a storage and transfer point for hard drugs, and a weapons cache. Now, with César’s practiced eye at work it had been turned into a killing zone.

The security chief had placed his three best men, Didi, Zico, and Cafu, on the roof to establish triangulated fire. He occupied the office in which he kept on lights after dark. With him was Paulinho, a former special operator with the army. These two gringos, Aiken and Renkin, had no chance.

The plan was simple enough: Ramos in New York had made it possible for the men to know that what they wanted was in São Paulo. He’d sent them a threat in the form of a digital photograph, careful to leave in place the GPS coordinates to this location. He’d told César that these men would discover it, and with the heat on them in the United States it was highly likely they’d take the bait, if for no other reason than to get away.

The chefe was confident, and even Ramos said he thought it would work. Still, César thought the likelihood the pair would show up to be quite low. In César’s experience only trained agents of some kind would travel so far with the intention of taking proactive measures. It was far more likely the two would just go to ground. That was the human reaction for most smart men. Those not so smart went home and waited for the police.

It was possible they’d come and if not, he knew whom he’d contact in New York to take care of them. In the meantime, he had his orders. The only hard part of the operation was all the waiting, which was why he’d selected his best men. He had a score who knew how to shoot, only a handful who knew how to wait.

Bored with scanning the security screens on the computer, César stood back from one of the office windows overlooking the loading area so he could not be seen and examined the loading area again. He’d looked at it from outside, both by day and night, to see the impression it formed. At either time it was apparent that the Companhia Cero offices was the only occupied point in the facility. They’d be drawn to it, under the guns of his snipers.

And they would come at night, which was why the lights were on. They’d want to find the offices unoccupied so they could access or steal the computers. That was what they were after. And if it was going to happen, it would be tonight, or the following at the latest, though it was possible they could come anytime in the next week. If they hadn’t arrived by Friday, he planned to inform the chefe there was no reason to maintain the operation beyond keeping a single gunman in the office.

Scrutinizing the scene, he was satisfied. He’d had the men damage the security gate to make it consistent with the current condition of the warehouse. There was no guard at the post and it was possible to simply push either of the gates back by hand far enough to slip in. He’d done it himself.

César lit a cigarette and returned to his seat. Paulinho sat in the corner, his IMBEL MD97 resting on his lap. César offered him a smoke, and he shook his head.

Let’s hope it’s tonight, César thought.

57

After seeing Campos, Daryl rode the elevator up a floor and headed directly to the ladies’ room. It was the one secure place for her in the building. In the farthest stall she gathered her thoughts. She had her man, she felt sure. What to do next?

Daryl wondered if she’d aroused his suspicion. She’d pressed the issue with him, and he’d clearly been uncomfortable. But what was he going to do about it if she had? What could he do? Call security and have them check her out? Hardly. No, he’d be confused about how to react. Most of all, the man had his own secrets, and the last thing he’d want would be to draw attention to himself, which was what would happen.

She decided to return to the unoccupied cubicle and see if she could uncover incriminating information about this Campos. Perhaps from his e-mail she could find an accomplice within the building, or even better, confirm the link to Brazil and the Companhia Cero office in São Paulo. With that she’d have enough to go to the SEC and this nightmare would be finished.

Back at the computer she tried to backtrack accesses to the jump servers. After copying them off to her laptop, she scanned them visually. The logs were voluminous and recorded tens of thousands of standard connections and attempted connections over the past several days that constituted the usual background noise of a computer network. The logs included regular backup account connections, policy management software, and security scanning software accounts. From the logs, she hoped to identify unusual behavior, then by tracing it to its senders connect Campos and any allies he had to the malware. This would constitute hard evidence the SEC would not be able to ignore and even if it failed to lead immediately to vindication for Jeff and Frank it would begin the process of revealing the truth.

Not spotting anything visually, she ran one of Jeff’s log analysis tools. Given the size of the logs it would take an hour to get results, so she turned to researching Campos by entering his name into DRS to see what she could learn about him. It took twenty minutes for her to eliminate names before identifying the right Campos out of the one hundred or so that matched.

His full name was Marco Enfante Campos. He’d attended university in the United States and worked for New York Life for a time before joining the New York Stock Exchange. He wasn’t on Facebook, LinkedIn, Toptical, Twitter, or any other social network she checked. She was able to locate an address and telephone number for him. She ran a credit check, and he came back above average but not with a top score as he didn’t have enough debt. She could follow up, but it would take more time than she had. And what was the point? She was checking out a cover identity because Marc Campos from Porto, Portugal, was clearly not who he really was.

She turned back to Jeff’s program, which had just finished. He had logged the accesses he and Frank had used so she wouldn’t confuse their activities with those of the rogue code authors. She soon listed the other connections that stood out because of their infrequency or irregularity. It noted several that corresponded to the record of the history Jeff and Frank had given her of the connection times. It also called out several others over the past week that were unusual because they were sporadic and came from a single system, employing the account of the user who managed the server.

It was highly unlikely these were legitimate. Someone had hijacked the account and was using it to upload software in order to conceal his true identity. Daryl worked to trace the trail back to the actual originator by analyzing the logs from the source system, but had no luck. He’d hidden his path well. The only conclusion she reached was that he had to be working within the system, which meant he was on one of these three floors. She considered trying this from Marc Campos’s end, but knew how secure his system would be. He’d probably have installed alerts to notify him when unexpected connections were made to his computer. Instead, she kept at it from the other end, trying different parameters on Jeff’s program that might highlight something it hadn’t caught the first time.

After another hour, she decided it wasn’t going to work, not today at least. Every time someone passed in the hallway she tensed. She knew it was hurting her concentration. But she didn’t want to just walk away with what little she had. She needed more. And she needed a different approach.

Back in the hallway she saw the number of workers was reduced by about half. She wondered when the rest would finally leave. She felt conflicted because she needed bodies for cover, though the more employees there were, the greater the likelihood she’d be discovered.

Daryl took the elevator back to the fifteenth floor. She’d decided on two or three follow-up questions in the event Campos was still working. In addition to his usual work he was managing a major fraud and the clock was running.

She braced herself as she reached his workstation. Empty. She looked about her, then stepped in. His jacket was on a coat hanger. She patted his pockets, found something hard, reached in, and drew out a cell phone. She stepped outside and went directly to her auxiliary office, the last stall of the ladies’ restroom.

If necessary, she was prepared to steal the phone even though that would alert Campos beyond whatever suspicion he already had. She’d rather just copy its data, but it was locked with a PIN. It was running Android, and that was good. Two years earlier, when she’d been working with Jeff, the two had been hired by the U.S. government to discover vulnerabilities in the Android operating system. They’d found several. Eventually, the government had notified Google, and they were fixed, but cell phone companies were in the business of selling phones and services, not updating software, and it was too common for even known vulnerabilities to never be patched. The logic was that the owner would buy another phone before anything bad happened. With luck he’d have a vulnerable one.

She ran her exploit code app on her phone. It listed the Bluetooth devices nearby, the only one of which was Campos’s phone. The very first vulnerability she had found was a bug in the Bluetooth driver. She selected it, and the app successfully exploited the vulnerability, dropping code into the phone, which unlocked it. This gave her access to the phone’s apps, including e-mail, photos, call history, and voice mail. She copied all of these into her laptop. Though the download proceeded quickly, it seemed to take forever. She found herself sweating and drew several deep breaths to calm down.

Finished, she put her laptop away, left the stall, and pressing her lips together, hurried back to the cubicle. No sign of Campos. She returned the cell phone to the same pocket and went directly to the elevator, as excited as she’d ever been. Surely, surely, there was something useful in what she’d taken. There had to be.

58

Frank pulled the São Paulo city map from his inside pocket. He’d been studying it earlier. “Companhia Cero is about eight blocks from here. The Internet tells me it’s in an industrial area, so this time of night, it should be quiet. I’d like to observe it for a while before doing anything.” He looked over at Jeff. “I can do this alone if you aren’t up to it.”

“No, I’ll come.”

“Good. That’s better, since I’ll need you later.”

Both of them had made efforts that afternoon to access the Exchange’s software but the backdoor was down. “We’re locked out,” Jeff said. “Looks like coming down here was our only option after all. I hope Daryl can find something in the samples we pulled out before the connection went down.”

They’d agreed to a late lunch. Afterwards, Frank said he had more things to buy and suggested Jeff get some rest. He lay on his bed and tried to sleep, but his mind was racing at the pace of events. He wondered how all this could happen, how it could so quickly have reached this state. He tried to devise alternative options, measures that wouldn’t involve possibly going into an ambush but didn’t see any that led to a resolution.

He thought Frank’s intentions here a long shot, always had, but he’d agreed at the time that leaving the United States was a good idea. He didn’t like the thought of staying in Brazil long term if it came to that, but compared with a three-year legal battle that might very well end with a prison term, it was the better choice. He didn’t know how they were going to prove they were innocent, but he was determined they find a way. So long shot or not, he’d decided to trust Frank.

He wondered what Daryl was doing. The loss of the backdoor had to be frustrating her efforts, as it had theirs. Frank had sent her his new cell phone number in the event of an emergency but told her not to contact them otherwise. Even this was a risk as they had no way of knowing how far the investigation had progressed or what level of cybersecurity measures were in place. But they had to keep a channel open.

Her last message to them expressing her concern about the Toptical IPO on Wednesday was disconcerting. The rogue code updates were focusing increasingly on it. With the recent turmoil he really had to question how much more the stock market could withstand. It seemed to have rebounded, once again, from a perceived cyberthreat but with the increased attention on high-frequency traders and their role in the market Jeff questioned if the next flash crash wouldn’t be catastrophic.

For all his concerns Jeff was still recovering from his injuries and was exhausted. At some point he nodded off, his dreams consisted of unsettling flashing images, someone in the distance calling for help, remote accusing voices.

Frank shook his shoulder to awaken him. “Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty.”

Jeff stirred slowly, sat on the edge of the bed, then went into the bathroom to wash up. When he returned, Frank said, “Seriously now, Jeff, how do you feel? You haven’t been out of the hospital long.”

“All right. I’ve still got some pain where you’d expect especially in my forearm but I’m feeling a lot better. I’ve recovered some of my energy.”

“You don’t have to do this.”

“I’m fine.”

“Okay. Wear dark clothing,” Frank told him. “No reason to make us too easy to spot. And put your new phone on vibrate. We don’t want it going off at the wrong time.”

When Jeff came out, Frank was seated on his bed, carefully inserting items into a black canvas shoulder backpack he’d bought at a store down the street: nylon line with attached large hooks like something you’d use to catch a whale, a pry bar, binoculars, a large hunting knife, various items Jeff couldn’t identify, a revolver, and a heavy semiautomatic handgun. Jeff didn’t ask questions as he put on the darkest clothing he had, a pair of newish jeans, a long-sleeve plaid shirt, and running shoes.

“Ready?” Frank asked. Jeff nodded, feeling anything but.

Outside, the temperature was pleasant, nearly eighty degrees. They left the cobblestone hotel parking area and turned right at the street. The sidewalks were constructed of small flat stones. The pressure of bodies over time gave them a curious undulating effect and made for cautious walking, but they were otherwise in good repair. There were mature trees and shrubbery masking houses, usually well trimmed, but not always. It was not a poor section of the city, but it wasn’t especially affluent either.

They passed along narrow streets, then wide boulevards, moving up and down gentle hills. There were tracks laid on some streets they crossed, overhead wires for trolleys not operating at this time of night. Aging single-story buildings and houses were interspersed with five-story office buildings, graffiti marking walls everywhere. Though it was a worknight and in Jeff’s mind getting late, there were couples, young and elderly, strolling, chatting, holding hands. Not for the first time did Jeff realize how much his own country had changed in his lifetime.

Traffic remained busy and aggressive, though a bit lighter than earlier. Auto pollution controls were lax, and when trucks roared by, Jeff and Frank were engulfed in the blue-tinged acrid smoke of diesel.

Frank had memorized the route. The landscape slowly turned more commercial; then after they crossed one street, it became entirely industrial, so much so they were now conspicuous on foot. Frank continued walking at a steady pace for several minutes, until he finally slowed before ducking into the shadows created by the nearly constant walls that abutted the sidewalk. There was just a single distant streetlight. “That’s it there,” he said.

Jeff looked. All he could make out was one more solid wall. “You’re sure?”

“That’s it. Though this part of the warehouse faces the street, this is actually the rear. See the driveways on both sides? Those go to the back, which we’ll find open, covered by a security wall. That will be the entrance.”

“Google Earth, right?”

“That and images. I’m always amazed what’s available on the Internet. If only I’d had these resources back in the day. My main concern right now is finding an observation place.”

“You’ve not forgotten this is very likely a setup,” Jeff reminded him.

“I remember. We’re going to be very careful. This way.” He led them across the street, then up an access drive to an irregular paved expanse. Jeff concluded that it was an area for large trucks to maneuver in and to facilitate their movement between the various businesses away from the public street. It was lit only by ambient light.

Frank walked with measured steps, keeping to the shadows. He slowed and then came to a stop when they could see into the facility. He reached into the bag, searched for something, then extracted the binoculars. Vague illumination glowed behind two windows at the far end of the buildings. Otherwise, the facility looked abandoned.

There was movement in a shadow against the warehouse wall. Jeff searched for it, moved his line of sight slightly to the side, and saw what appeared to be a small animal, a cat most likely, perhaps a small dog.

There was a restless wind, occasionally enough to move the gathered street trash a few inches. The area about them smelled of used oil, diesel, and gasoline. But every few minutes, the wind carried the pungent smells away briefly bringing a floral fragrance, sweet like jasmine.

“What do you think?” Jeff asked a bit uneasily.

Frank lowered the binoculars. “It’s not a fortress, but like everything here it was built with security in mind. We’re going to hang out for a while. Relax if you can. It could be a long night.”

“Do you think it’s a setup?”

“It’s sure got the look. We’re out here away from any interference. The beckoning light in the window appeals to a primeval instinct in us. Even those automatic gates look slightly ajar, inviting as hell.”

“Maybe someone’s working late or it’s a night-light.”

“There are no vehicles, so we’re supposed to assume no one’s working. I’d say it’s supposed to be a night-light.”

“So you think it’s a trap.”

“I don’t know. That’s the beauty of these things. You promise someone what they want, keep it plausible, make it alluring, and even against their better judgment people fall for it. And for all our suspicion this could be exactly what it appears to be. The bad guys could very well be working out of here; it’s sure as hell a good spot for it. The threat to us was just that, a threat, and whoever sent it didn’t know about the embedded GPS code. That’s all entirely likely. So either way, we’ll settle in and watch.”

“I think this is broken glass I’m standing on.”

“I never said we’d be comfortable.”

59

Back in her hotel room, Daryl took a shower and then ordered room service. After toweling herself dry, she wrapped herself into the soft hotel robe. She ate half of a club sandwich, then sat at her laptop and examined what she’d downloaded from the cell phone.

Daryl vividly recalled identifying this vulnerability. She and Jeff had made it a game, each seeing if he or she could find more of them, faster. Hers had been the first coup, and she’d made a point to be a poor winner, reminding him repeatedly over the following days of the job that she was not only first, but also remained ahead of him in count.

It had been fun, more a game than work. When they were together, she recalled almost everything had been fun. The problem was that they weren’t together often enough, or long enough.

So now she had Campos’s digital world. She first checked his photos and found almost nothing, just three street scene shots: a juggler, a tree-lined lane that didn’t look like anywhere in Manhattan she knew about, a plate of food at a restaurant.

Next his call history. It came as no surprise that he’d placed no calls to Portugal. There were calls to the same local number but far more to one in Brazil, often more than one a day. She noted that the frequency had dramatically increased recently.

She called the number herself, using his phone. After several rings, a recorded man’s voice came on the line in Portuguese. “You have reached the offices of Grupo Técnico. We are not available. Please leave a message, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

Grupo Técnico. That was not the name Frank had used in São Paulo. She opened her browser and typed in the name along with the word “Brazil.” There were a number of hits as the name was so generic, but nothing that looked right. There was no Web site for the company.

Next she checked voice mail and found one pending, also in Portuguese. “Abílio,” a young man said, “I need you to get back to me. I know you are busy but so are we. Call as soon as you get this, regardless of the time.”

Abílio. Could that be Marc Campos’s real name? Probably.

So … just where was Grupo Técnico? Was it part of the company Jeff and Frank were going to in São Paulo, Companhia Cero? Or was it somewhere else altogether? The thought brought her up cold, because if it was somewhere else, then São Paulo was a trap.

60

Jorge César shifted in his seat and fought off boredom. He scanned the security screens again. Nothing.

From time to time, he said something to Paulinho to confirm he was alert, but they both knew from long experience that real conversation was a distraction. The rooftop snipers — Didi, Zico, and Cafu — checked in every ten minutes, their familiar voices coming into César’s earpiece. He was out of cigarettes and Paulinho didn’t smoke. “I’m making coffee,” César said. Paulinho nodded, the fingers of his right hand caressing the IMBEL MD97, the Brazilian Army semiautomatic assault rifle.

A few minutes later, with two cups of black coffee, César returned from the small kitchen and handed one to Paulinho. He sat and scanned the screens again. Still nothing. Too late he’d realized he should have placed two cameras with infrared capability to cover the public street. He had considered the idea but dismissed it as risky, since they could be spotted. Now, though, he’d rather have taken the chance. He was blind out there.

Anxious, the hot cup grasped in his hand, he stood where he knew he couldn’t be seen from outside. The loading and parking area was empty. He sighed and returned to his seat, bored as ever.

Frank lowered the binoculars. “Someone’s inside.”

“You’re sure?”

“Reasonably. He didn’t go to the window, but there was a slight change in the light.”

“Maybe they’ve got a watchdog.”

Frank turned to face him. “Now, there’s a thought.” He resumed scanning the structure. “But I don’t think so. The change was from higher up in the room. The roof appears clear, or if someone’s up there they are very, very good.”

“How long do you want to wait?”

“I’m not sure. I’m going to keep an eye on that window for a while. I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about a security dog, but better a dog than a guard, especially one making such an effort not to be seen.”

61

Next were the e-mails, since it was possible Daryl would find a physical address in one of them.

Nearly all she saw were from or were sent to P.Bandeira@grupotecnico.com.br. She quickly read through the messages with a growing sense of excitement. This was it. There was no doubt at all. This P. Bandeira was sending code to Campos in New York. Most of the messages were tied to a previous message and lacked a signature. She searched for an original message from P. Bandeira. Finally, taking longer than she’d thought, she finally found one with the company signature located just below the telephone number and e-mail address:

Next she entered “Grupo Técnico” and “Companhia Cero” into her search engine, looking for a connection. She found none.

Biting her lower lip she sent a message to Frank’s phone.

62

MOOCA DISTRICT

“Okay,” Frank said lightly. “The roof still looks clear, and there’s been no more change in the light. Maybe a window is open and the wind moved a curtain. Or, as you suggest, they’ve got a dog in there. We’re going to take this very carefully, though, Jeff. I just want you to cover me.” He reached into the bag and pulled out the revolver Jeff had seen earlier. “Take this.” He removed the automatic and slipped it into his waist.

Jeff took the weapon. It was heavier than he expected, used but well oiled and maintained. He was not a novice with a handgun, having taken target practice with his grandfather growing up. In fact, one summer as a teenager, he’d become quite accurate. But he’d never hunted, he’d never killed anything in his life. He thought for an instant about asking if this was really necessary, but realized how foolish that would sound. Of course it was.

“You know how to use it?” Jeff nodded. “Okay, then. We’re ignoring those inviting doors. If I’m wrong about this, that open area is a kill zone. Just stick with me but I want you to hold back ten to twenty feet, depending on how much distance you need. Now, here’s the hard part: Force yourself not to watch what I’m doing. It’s going to be much harder than it sounds. Your job is to be the lookout, to watch all the things I can’t because I’m busy. Keep an eye out around us but primarily scan the roofline. I haven’t spotted anyone up there but that could just mean they are good. If there’s a roof lookout, at some point I’ll make enough noise to attract him. He should quietly check me out, and when he does you should see him. If he’s really good, he won’t move. He’ll wait for when I’m on the rope or just coming over the wall on top. Either way, if he exists, he’s not alone. You understand?”

Jeff’s mouth was suddenly dry. “You really think we need to do this?”

“If this isn’t a setup, then what we need is inside that office. In ten minutes, we can be there, with unlimited access. Even if this just proves to be a transfer point, we could very well take away enough data to clear us, or at least to get the Feds to focus somewhere else. And if Daryl’s right, we’ll have the data to prevent a potential Wall Street meltdown. It’s worth the risk. You ready for this?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then. Let’s go.”

Frank moved out back the way they’d come until they were midpoint along the extended wall of the warehouse. He hesitated, listening and watching, then quietly moved across the access drive until he was at the base of the wall. There he set his black bag on the ground and reached in for the nylon rope with attached hooks.

César’s ear came alive. It was Zico.

“Movimento abaixo,” he said quietly. “Olhê embaixo.” Movement below. Look down there.

César scanned the cameras. Nothing. Whoever Zico heard was in a blind spot. “Alguém,” he told Paulinho quietly. Someone. The man nodded but didn’t move. His job was to cover the office. Zico could take care of his roof section by himself.

César waited, no longer bored, that familiar excitement suddenly coursing through him. He notified the other two snipers, Didi and Cafu, to be vigilant.

Jeff scanned the area about them. A motorcycle sped by on the outside road. He glanced back where they’d been standing and saw nothing out of the ordinary. He looked to the skyline just visible against the ambient light of the city and sky. Nothing.

Frank had the rope out and was skillfully looping it so when he tossed the grappling end onto the roof it would feed out cleanly.

Above them, Zico was intent on the slight motion he was sensing below. Not sure this was the moment he’d been on watch for, he moved his assault weapon to the ready. There was no need to work the slide. A bullet was already chambered. He slipped the safety off and placed his finger on the trigger, long experience telling him not to put pressure on it — yet. The weapon was on full automatic. At this range it would slice his target in half in under a second.

Below, Frank was poised for the toss. He looked back at Jeff, who was standing perhaps ten feet behind him, scanning the roofline. Jeff shook his head, certain he could make out the motion. Frank stepped back from the wall and started to twirl the rope. It moved slowly at first, almost touching the ground; then Frank increased the speed, creating a slight whirring sound. Just as it seemed to Jeff he was going to let fly, he slowed the motion, then without letting the metal hooks touch the ground and make a noise he stopped. He reached into his pocket and removed his cell phone. He placed it away, carefully put the rope and grappling hooks back into the bag, and approached Jeff.

“We’re leaving. Now.”

On the roof, Zico waited. Then he detected a slight sound, almost like a wire vibrating in the wind, but very faint. Try as he might he couldn’t tell where it came from and it was so soft he wondered if he was imagining it. It faded. He listened intently. He thought he heard steps, but he had heard similar noises from time to time in the two nights he’d stood vigil. Cats, dogs probably, even the wind moving something.

“Alarme falso,” he whispered into the mouthpiece as he moved his finger and reset the safety.

In the office César looked to Paulinho and shook his head slightly. He relaxed back in his chair and scanned the security screens, utterly bored again.

Frank and Jeff moved cautiously along the black shadows painting the wall, Frank leading the way. After covering a careful twenty feet, Frank flushed a cat that screeched at being disturbed, then shot across the access alley.

On top Zico heard and spotted the cat as it raced out of darkness. Something else was moving below. He repositioned himself against the low roof wall and peered below. His eyes long accustomed to the dark, he spotted two men, crouched, moving cautiously away from the warehouse toward the street.

“Eles estão aqui.” They are here, he whispered into his mouthpiece. He rose and fired in a single motion.

The shot was not ideal, as Zico was right-handed, and though he leaned well out, it was difficult from this angle to get a direct line on his targets. He knew at once he’d missed and leaned even farther as he instinctively adjusted his aim.

Below, the blast of the fully automatic assault rifle was like a cannon going off or lightning striking a few feet away. A line of bullets laced inches away just beside Jeff and Frank.

“Run!” Frank shouted as he shot forward, pulling out his automatic as he did. Instinct took over, and he understood the shooter would quickly adjust his aim. Frank turned as they ran, slowing just an instant as he looked to the rooftop. He saw the flash and fired into it three times as trained, the shots coming so rapidly they sounded like one.

Zico felt the IMBEL MD97 reel in his hands. At the same instant, a heavy blow struck his left arm and another his shoulder. The weapon fell away as he jerked back, pain suddenly spreading across his body. “Fui atingido!” he grunted. I’m hit. He slid to the rooftop, groaning.

“Todo mundo atrás deles!” Everyone! After them! César shouted into his mic.

Paulinho shot from his chair and raced out the door. On the roof Didi and Cafu ran to the street side of the structure. Didi was first and spotted two figures just crossing the street below, fleeing into the shadows. He fired.

Frank dived behind a broken block wall. “Get down!” he snapped. Jeff sank beside him. When Didi opened fire the second time, Frank again fired three times. On the roof Didi took one shot through his right eye, the back of his head popping open as the bullet passed through. He collapsed across the low wall of the roof, half of his body hanging over the side.

Just then, Cafu arrived. He looked at Didi an instant, then, cautiously, into the street. He could see nothing.

At almost the same instant Paulinho reached the street from below and, careless of his safety, ran out so he could clearly see. In the distance he made out running figures beneath the dim yellow streetlights. He raised the weapon to his shoulder and fired, knowing he’d need luck.

Frank, hearing the fire, spun, letting Jeff race past him, crouched, then fired in two bursts of three at the flash points he saw.

Paulinho saw the discharge, heard two shots whip by him so closely, he thought his hair was trimmed. He pitched off the road, then from greater safety peeked back down the street. The men were gone.