Spyware

“Wha-” said Ray, then he grimaced and nodded at the agent. Best not to look this gift-horse in the mouth. He could still type this way. That should be all he needed.

The first problem presented itself immediately: The system was passworded. Everything was password-protected, including the BIOS setup in CMOS, the hard disk booting process, and doubtlessly, the network connection and any sensitive files on the hard disk. Ray sighed.

“This will take a minute. Any suggestions?”

Vasquez looked over his shoulder. The BIOS setup password was first. If they could get into that, they could cause the system to boot from an external drive and thereby bypass the hard drive’s boot-up password altogether.

Together, they tried all the obvious ones: just hitting the enter key, typing: “password”, and “santa”.

“Nothing,” said Ray. “Let’s short the battery on the motherboard.”

“That can be dangerous,” cautioned Vasquez.

“Look, if my son is still alive somewhere, he can’t last long with Ingles’ and the rest dead. We have a big time factor here.”

She nodded. They turned the system off, removed the back of the computer and touched a screwdriver to the battery posts on the motherboard. This created a short circuit and within a few seconds blanked the computer’s CMOS chips. Essentially, the computer “forgot” its password and setup.

They then put it back together, fired it up and were able to set the machine up to their liking. Booting on an external drive, they bypassed the boot-up password on the hard disk. Next, they began searching the hard disk for files. Vasquez always carried a boot drive with a set of excellent hacker’s utilities for just such a purpose. Ray could see that she was anxious to take his place and work it herself. It was what he had been hoping for.

“Look,” he said after a few minutes of searching. “I’m feeling a bit sick.” The truth was that he could barely hang onto a thread of thought.

“I’ll bet,” chuckled Johansen. “After a night in that trunk. How long since you ate anything?”

“More than a day. And that was just Nog’s stale snacks. Too bad he didn’t keep a stash in the trunk.”

“I know my search utilities better than you do, anyway,” said Vasquez, sliding into his place as he staggered out of the chair. She bent forward with a look of concentration.

Ray smiled and Johansen caught him. They exchanged knowing glances. She had taken over the legwork on this one. Johansen led him into Ingles’ kitchen and they raided the place for a quick snack. They made what his wife Sarah would have referred to as “bachelor sandwiches”. Two pieces of bread and four slices of lunchmeat, slapped together. No condiments, or any other sissy stuff. It was Spartan fare, Ray reflected, but filling.

“Just don’t tell anyone that we did this,” said Johansen as they wolfed down stolen sandwiches.

“This bastard ruined my life. The least I can do is eat some of his food,” muttered Ray bitterly. He decided he almost liked Johansen. The man could certainly eat. No less than four wads of bread and meat vanished into his broad mouth.

After a few minutes, they went back into the den to hover over Vasquez’s shoulder. “What have you got?” asked Ray.

“There was nothing in the e-mail directory of any value-except for one zip file that I’m trying to get into.”

Ray examined the screen. There appeared to be a fairly large compressed file in the e-mail directory. It was unreadable until the compression process was reversed. The problem was that there was yet another password attached to this particular file. This password could not easily be bypassed.

Again and again they tried one password after another. The process was known as “hacking”. Finally, after about half an hour, Ray watched as Vasquez typed in the password: “Sarah”.

Immediately, data spewed out on the screen. Ray blinked in alarm. What were the implications of that password? How had she known?

“My wife’s name?” he asked aloud.

Vasquez didn’t look at him. “This message looks good. It appears to have the word Santa in it.”

“ Sarah was the password?” he demanded. “Why?”

“Look, Dr. Vance,” said Vasquez. “If you’re right, we need every second to work on finding your son.”

He stared at her, knowing she was avoiding his questions. “Just tell me in one sentence then: Why?”

She looked back to the keyboard and brought up a screen full of text.

Ray looked to Johansen. The man’s face was troubled. Ray knew what he was thinking: they were both men, and they had just eaten a sandwich together. Did that mean you owed a guy something?

“You should ask your wife about that one, Vance,” he rumbled. Vasquez stiffened at his words, but said nothing.

Ray turned back to the screen and tried to put it all out of his mind. What did it matter? The guy was dead anyway. He would figure it out later. Right now he wanted to find his son.

Things weren’t so simple, however. Somewhere, in the darkest corner of his mind, an annoying, chattering monkey would not be quelled, would not be silenced so easily. What if she caused all this? screamed the monkey. What if your precious wife has been a traitor? What if she has brought about all this hellish misfortune upon her family? What then, Dr. Raymond Vance?

Vasquez was saying something. She sounded excited. Ray blinked and tried to focus. “What?” he asked.

“There’s a letter here. A letter to you,” she said. “It says something about buried treasure. And about a man named Spurlock.”

“Buried treasure?” asked Ray. Even as he worked to read the lengthy note, a popping sound came from the driveway as gravel spit from beneath rolling tires. Several cars pulled up. Moments later a tall black man in a dark coat strode into the house with the air of a father that has discovered a pack of naughty children. Behind him came his partner and four sheriff’s deputies in kakhi uniforms.

He lifted a finger and extended it to the length of his very long arm. He aimed the finger like a pistol at the computer they all huddled around.

“Get away from that machine!” he roared.

… 5 Hours and Counting…

Ray turned his head away from the man and continued reading the e-mail message as fast as he could. He would ignore the intruder, he decided. He needed all the information that he could get. His eyes scanned the text as quickly and cleanly as he could. What he read there made his blood run cold.

Behind him, a debate raged.

“We are investigating a federal case here, agent Verr, and we would appreciate your cooperation in this matter,” shouted back agent Vasquez.

“What case?” demanded Verr. “You’ve been removed from this case, and now you’re interfering in my investigation. You’re tampering and possibly destroying valuable evidence, Vasquez!”

“We are investigating a missing person’s case, namely that of Justin Vance, Dr. Vance’s son.”

Even though he was reading and ignoring, Ray had to admire the hint of triumph in her voice.

“Vance’s kid?” Verr’s face twisted into a scowl with deeper furrows than usual. “How the hell did you swing that?”

“The same way that you managed to steal our case in the first place, I imagine.”

Verr ignored the jibe and seemed to notice Ray for the first time. “You mean to tell me this is Vance? My prime suspect for homicide, international computer vandalism and a list of other crimes is just sitting here, doing as he pleases with evidence that is doubtless key to his conviction?”

“No, sir-” she began.

“Have you lost your mind, Vasquez?” demanded Verr.

“As I said, we are investigating a federal case, and I would appreciate your cooperation.”

Verr held up one finger to silence her. He snapped open his cell phone and glared as he punched in a string of numbers. “Thirty seconds. Within thirty seconds, I’ll have you out of here, Vasquez.”

He began talking quickly into his phone. The room was now crowded with men in uniforms looking uncertain and uncomfortable.

Vasquez squeezed Ray’s shoulder and whispered into his ear, “Read fast and try to make a back up on the floppy.”

Ray did exactly that, but before he could finish copying the file, a large, long finger reached down and snapped the power off.

“What the hell-” protested Vasquez. Verr handed her the phone with a shit-eating grin.

“I believe your supervisor wishes to have a word with you, agent Vasquez.”

She took the phone with ill-grace. After a few minutes of rolling her eyes and sputtering, she handed the phone back to Verr.

“Come on,” she said over her shoulder to Johansen and Vance. “We’re taking you in, Dr. Vance.”

“Hold it,” said Verr. “I’ll take him back. I want to make sure that he doesn’t take any further detours.”

“He’s my prisoner, and you’ll just have to wait, Verr,” she growled back as they left.

Ray stumbled through the crowded room of unsmiling faces. They all thought him a murderer and a vandal of unprecedented proportions, but it didn’t matter. All he could think of was what he had read on Ingles’ computer screen.

… 2 Hours and Counting…

He told them almost immediately about the bomb. He wasn’t sure exactly when it would go off, but he knew it would be soon and it would be bad. He found it hard to believe that Nog had built such a thing, and that Ingles’ had sponsored its construction.

It didn’t matter to Ray that the bomb would be a bloodless one. The bomb would cause an enormous amount of economic loss, of course, but that didn’t seem to be the worst of it to Ray. The worst would be the loss of so many thousands, millions-even billions of hours of effort on the part of so many people.

The web represents an incredible amount of labor. Hard, intense labor performed by those who lovingly craft images and ideas to present to the world in an artistic, creative effort at communication. A million souls had been lovingly laid bare on the net. With a cold explosion of electrons and magnetics, they would soon be demolished.

In addition to that, more would be destroyed when the bomb went off. Not only the online universe would burn, not only the internet, but everything else created by millions of people across the globe on every computer that was tainted by an evil touch. Every picture painted by a child with a mouse, every love-letter typed and saved, every novel, checking account balance, tax return and favorite saved game.

All of it gone in a cold, silent flash.

Companies would fold. Banks would likely close in the next few weeks. Stocks would plummet further. It was quite possible that this single event could trigger a recession, even a worldwide depression.

He told them about the bomb, and he told them about his son. For his son, he had learned, was the buried treasure that Ingles, in his twisted way, had written to him about.

And why had he done it all? Ray thought. For the love of my wife, Sarah? Ray shook his head and mumbled aloud. He snorted in disbelief, ignoring the looks and raised eyebrows of the investigators that surrounded him. According to the letter, Ingles had been in love with Sarah since before Ray and she had married. He snorted aloud again. The guy had to be as nuts as Van Gough to do all this for unrequited love.

Time and events blurred for Ray. He was finger printed, photographed, cuffed and uncuffed. He was caged, then released into a conference room. Coffee was poured while incredulous agents went over his story. Who were they? he wondered. National Security Exchange Commission? CIA? Pentagon think-tankers? Did it matter?

He saw the fear in their eyes. They didn’t believe him, but they feared his words. They heard, and they knew he might be right, but no one wants to hear words of doom.

Ray lifted a white Styrofoam cup of steamy coffee to his lips with both cuffed hands. He had given up pleading with them for a digging crew. He could see their point, of course. Where would they dig? Ingles owned more than a hundred acres. They could get out dogs, but it would still be a big effort. He couldn’t even say for sure that Ingles’ ranch was the place to look.

They moved him again. This time Vasquez and Johansen were there, following the uniform that led him toward a counter where his personal effects were shoved in an envelope and he was asked a series of inane questions about his blood type and health status. He knew in a vague, uncaring way that he was about to join the scruffy mob that America keeps behind barbed wire and chain link fences.

It was there, in the processing line, that he heard a voice that sounded vaguely familiar. He swiveled his head to the left, to the line of even scruffier-looking individuals that were being released back onto the streets after a long night and morning in jail. There, at the front of the line, was a skinny-looking addict with long hair and many tattoos. A big silver ring came out of a pouch from behind the counter. The addict smiled and slid the ring over his thumb. He smiled and joked with the humorless uniform that gave it to him.

Ray heard the voice again and it all came back to him. He knew who it was.

He turned to Vasquez like a man coming out of a coma. “That’s him!” he hissed.

“What?”

“The man at the counter. The one being released. That’s him! That’s the third guy!”

She looked at him in a way that he was becoming accustomed to. She looked at him as if he were insane.

“I recognize his voice-his ropy arms with those tattoos. He’s the one who pistol-whipped me and helped wrap me up in tape, I swear it.”

He saw them exchange glances. They both had been looking as defeated as Ray himself. This came as a shock, an unwelcome shock. They had already placed trust in him and looked foolish. They had lost both their cases, largely due to his actions. Now, he was asking them to embarrass themselves further.

Vasquez frowned at the addict. She drew herself up and seemed to sigh. Ray’s eyes lit up, he knew she was going to do something.

Before she could move, however, Verr appeared from nowhere and put a hand on her shoulder. “Tough break in there. I’m sure you’ll get a new assignment soon,” he leered down at her and showed his teeth.

She reached up to throw away his hand, but Johansen beat her to it. Verr’s hand was snapped away and Johansen held his wrist, squeezing it savagely for a moment.

All three of them faced one another in that animal moment, and it was all the time that Ray needed.

Ray launched himself after the addict that headed for the doors and freedom. The whole place went crazy behind him, but he saw nothing except for the addict’s slouched shoulders and the blazing sun outside the glass doors.

How the deputy’s gun came to be in his cuffed hands he was never sure afterwards, but the delightful feeling as he crashed his body into the other man’s back he would never forget. They went down hard together, with Ray on top. He put the gun up under the other man’s throat.

“Stay back! Stay back or I’ll blow his head off!” he shouted to the crowd of milling police. If they simply grabbed him, he knew, his plan was forfeited.

All around him, a loose circle of tense people appeared with guns drawn. He wondered vaguely if any of them had sharp-shooting medals. Perhaps one of them would soon decide to play the hero and shoot the crazy on the floor.

“Ray!” cried a familiar voice. It was Vasquez. “Ray, this won’t work. Let him go.”

He paid no attention. He might die soon, but he hardly cared anymore. His son might be dead. He might be going to jail for a very long time. His wife might even have betrayed him. But he was going to have his say.

“Are you fucking nuts, man?” hissed the addict.

“Yes.”

Ray watched the other’s reaction and enjoyed it.

“Tell me where my son is. Don’t lie-I already know most of it. Tell me or I’ll blow you away right now.”

“You’ll go down for Murder One,” hissed the addict.

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying, man.”

“You don’t know how much pressure is already on this trigger. I’ve got the safety off and these cops would have already pulled me off if it wasn’t loaded.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, you are the one is going to get fucked, one way or the other. They’ll hold you after this. You know they will. And they will find out who did it when my son’s body is recovered. Murder. That’s what you’ll be up for. Kidnapping, burglary and murder.”

“Spurlock?” asked a voice astonishingly near. Ray jumped, finding that Vasquez had gotten down on her haunches beside the two struggling men.

The addict reacted. His eyes gave him away. He glanced at her, then looked quickly away again. But that moment was enough for Ray. He looked at Vasquez and saw that she had caught the reaction as well. The man was named Spurlock.

Spurlock simply could not believe his bad luck. Here, he had this maniac Vance on top of him with a gun just seconds before he made a clean get away. He chided himself for not having killed the bastard instead of leaving him in the canal. He recalled what a crazy con told him once in prison: ‘When you step onto the murderer’s path, there’s no turning back, no washing away of the blood. Instead, only more bloodletting can keep you free.’

He decided to look into Vance’s eyes and see what he could. He found determination there. It was right there, plain as day, and easy to read. Vance was a normal guy, but pushed to his limits and beyond. He had gone mad, in a way, but for good reasons. Spurlock had seen it before in prison, on mornings in the laundry room or afternoons in the showers, when men who had been beaten and raped vowed revenge. Normal men, family men, even accountants, could turn savage at times. You could see it in their eyes.

The look of madness was there in Vance now. He had been pushed too far. Spurlock wondered vaguely if Ingles had seen that same look in his eyes earlier today. Perhaps he had. He decided not to make the same mistake that Ingles’ had. It was best not to call a desperate man’s bluff.

“He’s buried,” he whispered hoarsely.

“Is he on Ingles’ land?” asked Vasquez quietly.

Spurlock rolled his eyes up to her. Since he was laying on his back, he tried automatically to look up her skirt. He could see a hint of white satin up there. He leered. Then he leaned forward as if to kiss Vance’s ear. “In an orchard,” he whispered. “Look for backhoe, about a hundred yards away from the main road.”

“Where?” growled Vance.

“Ingles’ land,” Spurlock whispered. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

Vance smiled down at him. “No,” he said.

… 1 Hour and Counting…

Vasquez and Hansen drove back out to Ingles place. They circled the property on the main roads, looking for a backhoe. Driving at less than thirty miles an hour while Vasquez hung her head out the window and peered into the green gloom of the trees, Johansen was becoming impatient.

“We need support,” he said.

“We’ll get it, after we find the site,” replied Vasquez.

“The sheriff’s office is coming to beat the bushes. They’ll be out here in less than an hour for one of their own lost kids.”

“What if the kid doesn’t have an hour left?” she asked.

“I’m just hoping we have jobs to come back to next week.”

“I’m just hoping that we find Vance’s kid.”

“You seriously think he could be buried alive out here somewhere?” he asked.

She turned on him and the look on her face said it all.

“I’m sorry, Letti,” he said quietly. “It’s just been a long day for everyone.”

“Don’t call me Letti,” she said, turning back to the orchards. “I hate that.”

“Okay. Sorry. Let’s find that kid.”

The two of them drove for some time. They passed the house, went to the canal which bordered the property, then turned and rolled along the dusty embankment. A tow truck was hauling the Lincoln up the side of the canal with a winch. They maneuvered around the truck and kept on to the back road, then worked to search the entire region. There were two sheriff’s vehicles in evidence, but they were parked at the house.

When they had made it back to the place where they had started, Johansen braked gently and looked at her with eyebrows upraised.

“Let’s do it again,” she said.

“Um, about the other night,” he began a few minutes later. She tensed visibly. Here it came. The talk.

“I think it’s clear that we’re still working together reasonably well.”

She nodded, but didn’t take her eyes off the orchards.

“Well, what I wanted to ask was-” he paused, and she expected him to clear his throat like an adolescent. But he didn’t. “Can we get together again sometime? Or was it just a freak thing?”

She was silent. She wanted to speak, but couldn’t come up with anything to say. Her throat felt locked.

“Do you want me to drop it for good?” he asked quietly. “‘Cause I will, if that’s what you want.”

“A freak thing?” she responded belatedly. She gave him an appalled look.

“Okay, it was wonderful thing. I can drop it if you want. No pressure.”

She liked that. She thought it over for awhile. Outside the car, the quiet orchards rolled by.

“Well?” he asked.

“I’m thinking.”

When she finally did see the backhoe, she didn’t react right away. They had passed it and gone another hundred yards before she said, “Stop the car!”

The brakes squeaked and the hood nosed down. She was out of the car and running before they had come to a complete stop.

“Bring your cell phone!” she shouted.

He was right behind her, crashing through a thicket of weeds and weaving through the lanes of trees. They reached the backhoe and circled it in a pattern. Soon, she came upon a white PVC pipe that thrust up from a mound of disturbed earth. One spot had sunken in like a gopher-hole.

Johansen handed her his cell phone. “It’s not working for some reason, maybe we’re too far from a tower. Keep trying to call an ambulance. I’m going to get that backhoe started.”

As she watched him run for the backhoe, she made her decision. She decided that it wasn’t just a ‘freak thing’. She decided that she liked this thing, and they would make whatever they could of it together. Bureau policy be damned.

Then she returned herself to the emergency at hand. She froze for just a moment staring down at the mound of earth. Could a small boy really be buried down there?

… 0 Hours and Counting…

With a silent, rolling thunder that wilted everything that it touched, the bomb flowered outwards as the clocks of millions of CPUs touched the final hour. Time zone by time zone, sweeping across the world like a great gray tidal wave that left nothing behind in its path, circuits fell idle. Tiny electronic minds were stilled as the deadly wave touched them. Magnetic memories were forgotten, an infinitely varied landscape consisting of trillions of ones and zeros became a flat, seamless plain of zeros. A billion words, pictures and ideas were smoothed flat and vanished forever.

The internet, built to survive a nuclear holocaust that would remove entire cities from the globe, died at its own hand, following instructions written in secret that none had expected. Nog’s legacy flourished and raged like a living thing, which in fact, many philosophers would argue later, it truly was.

Phones stopped everywhere. Airliners crashed. America’s defense system lost forty years of technological sophistication in an hour. The Russian, German, British and French systems failed soon thereafter.

Like the unsuspecting natives of beautiful islands visited by Cook and his crew two hundred years earlier, whole populations of computers died when faced by a common cold against which they had no immunity.

Vasquez punched buttons repeatedly, but the cell phone didn’t work then, it didn’t work when they raced the dying boy back into town-and, in fact, it wouldn’t work for some weeks to come.

By the end of that week, when Ray was released from prison and his son was released from the hospital, the world had changed forever.

But only a few people realized it was the end of the first great network built by humanity.