Black Hat Blues (18 page)

an earmark for something from which he would not benefit personally

and that brought no particular benefit to his home district, then the

assumption had to be that he was doing it because he honestly believed

it was good policy.

Ken Clover and his firm offered what Paul considered a money laun-

dering service to the members of Congress who paid his rather stiff

fees. Chloe had approached Rep. Wolverton’s aide with a classic deal.

She, as a supposed lobbyist for the entertainment industry, wanted an

earmark to provide funds for enforcement of new anti-piracy measures.

Wolverton took in a fair amount of money from entertainment lobbyists

because of his committee assignments, but he didn’t want to be seen as

being so obviously in their pocket. At the same time, there were other

members of Congress who took no money from those lobbyists, but

owed favors to other industries, like say Florida agricultural interests.

Both sides worked through Clover, who arranged for the two represen-

tatives to swap earmark responsibilities. Clover would have the Florida

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Congressman insert the procurement for the anti-piracy measure and

in return Rep. Wolverton would insert the earmark for whatever farm-

bill related procurement Clover told him to. Meanwhile, Clover would

collect his money by charging a fee from the lobbyists on each side of

the deal without ever having any direct monetary, and only minimum

actual contact, with the two representatives.

That was how it was supposed to work, and how it did work week

in and week out for Clover and Associates. Except that Chloe wasn’t

really a lobbyist and there wasn’t any Congressman working to actually

make a trade with Wolverton. From Wolverton’s point of view, managed

by Danny, he was making a trade on behalf of his MPAA and RIAA

friends. In return he’d insert some earmark for Rep. Olivera in Florida,

who would do his dirty work for him within a couple of weeks. Except

Rep. Olivera didn’t know a thing about it, nor in fact did anyone at

Clover and Associates. Because plausible deniability was vital for the

trading scheme to work, Wolverton would never talk directly to Olivera

about the trade, certainly not before it was actually done. And since

the two Congressmen didn’t serve on any committees together or have

many other points of contact, the odds of Wolverton saying something

to Olivera that might tip the con were very slim.

So they’d hooked in Wolverton and his staff with Chloe and the

forged e-mails from Clover’s account. The agriculture bill was in confer-

ence this weekend, scheduled for a vote on Monday. Now was the time

to insert earmarks, during the last minute wheeling and dealing as the

Senate and House worked out their differences on the bill. Paul looked

over his language once again, still nervous that he’d made some very

obvious mistake that would set off alarm bells in the Congressman’s

mind when he saw it. Paranoid, Paul had re-written the entire thing

from scratch, choosing to use a similar e-mail from Clover’s archives as

a template and then inserting his own legalese where needed. It seemed

appropriately obscure and legislative to him, but who knew. Only one

way to find out: send it.

But he couldn’t send it. Not yet. He had to wait for the right

moment—once the staffers from the House and Senate had gotten

together and started horse-trading, so Danny would only have a win-

dow of a few hours to pass the new earmark along for inclusion in the

bill. That wouldn’t be until this afternoon at the earliest. In the mean-

time, all he could do was wait, watch, and intercept any e-mails or text

messages or phone calls that could screw them up.

The phone calls were the biggest worry, since there was no way to fake

those. They had one safeguard in place though: any call from Danny or

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the congressman or the congressman’s office to any of Clover’s phones

would be automatically blocked and forwarded to voice mail, which

they could then erase. The same was true in reverse. If the target tried

to call Danny or Wolverton, his call would also go straight to voice

mail. If they used other lines though, or somehow ran into each other

on the streets, things could go very wrong. The key, then, was to keep

them busy worrying about other things.

Saturday morning crept by, the others waking and setting about their

tasks. Chloe offered to spell him at the watch, but he was still going

over his e-mails and tweaking, so she went and got everyone breakfast

instead. Bee and c1sman hadn’t come in last night, and Paul assumed

they’d stayed in c1sman’s room. She showed up mid-morning look-

ing more tired and grumpy than morning after bliss, so he doubted

anything too exciting had happened between the pair. C1sman was

on duty in the NOC downstairs and then planning on attending some

talks and generally presenting himself as a solid, upstanding member of

the Shmoocon staff. Shortly after noon, Sacco left to go meet up with

his anarchists and coordinate the coming assault. Sandee had gone for

a jog. Danny was busy doing the congressman’s bidding and failing

to get any confirmation about the alleged brewing investigation. The

target remained largely quiet, apparently enjoying a nice weekend with

his family. Time seemed to crawl by.

Then, all of a sudden, the moment was upon him. It happened in the

space of a few minutes. Paul sent out the e-mail to Danny, who received

it and jumped into action, forwarding it on to his fellow staffer who

was in the conference committee meeting and telling him it was very

important. The staffer texted back and said not to worry, it was a done

deal. It was that easy. Months of planning, and thousands of man hours

and dollars came down to that moment and Paul had managed to insert

a $50 million earmark into the federal budget. Boom! Just like that.

He should have felt something more, he thought. He should feel

different somehow, more excited, more charged. He just blinked, and

rubbed his eyes. There was still so much more to do. The bill hadn’t

been signed yet, and the big score against the real target still hadn’t

come off. But hey, he’d just spent fifty million taxpayer dollars. “We’re

officially earmarked,” he called out to the room.

“Really?” Chloe said. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“That’s fucking awesome!” she sounded as excited as he was supposed

to feel.

“It really is.”

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“So, time for Sacco to start some serious shit.” She pulled her crypto-

phone from her pocket and dialed. “Hey screwball, let’s get this party

started, yeah?” She hung up without waiting long enough for him to

answer.

“I’m going to go get Sandee,” Paul said. “Make sure the camera bat-

teries are charged. I don’t want to miss any moment of chaos.”

“Oh, come on, what the fuck? Seriously?”

“It’s just not feasible, Sacco. I’m sorry, but it’s just not.”

“Fine, we can make some goddamned big puppets if you want. It

won’t make any sense, but…”

“That’s not the point. The point is the target just doesn’t seem like a

high priority to us. We were thinking something with a much higher

profile like the IMF or the World Bank. An enemy worthy of our

attentions.”

Sacco felt his eyes bulge with frustration. He probably should have

tried to constrain himself, but he totally didn’t. “Are you nuts or just a

fucking idiot? What on earth do you think you can do to the IMF that

will make a damn bit of difference to them?”

“Raise awareness. Embarrass them. Bring attention to…”

“The fact that anarchists hate the IMF? Wow, that’ll be a freaking

front page story. Wow, yeah, crazy hippie liberals hate the IMF and the

World Bank and say they’re evil and bad and stupid and smell funny.

Who doesn’t know that already, and more importantly, who the hell

cares?”

“But with your plan no one will know we’ve accomplished anything!”

Trevor countered.

“Yes, but we will in fact have accomplished something. We’ll have

made life better for people living in that fucking slum apartment build-

ing and we’ll have fucked over the bullshit capitalist property owners

in the process.”

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“Sacco, we’ve already voted, and I’m sorry, but it’s not a priority for

us. Now, we’d be happy to have you along at the anti-G8 protest in the

Fall, but until then I don’t see that there’s much we can do together.”

“Oh, and you’re kicking me out too?”

“I suppose. We assumed you’d quit.”

“Why would you assume that?”

“Well, last night you said, ‘if we don’t do this I’m going to fucking

quit,’ and we took you at your word.”

Sacco had to laugh. He didn’t remember saying that, but it sure

sounded like him and he’d said so much last night at the planning ses-

sion that he absolutely could’ve said something like that. “Well, I’m a

man of my fucking word, so yeah, I quit.” He stood up, tossed a sheaf

of papers up into the air and walked out of the Brooklyn loft apartment

in what could only be called a huff.

That was the second group he’d failed to properly motivate with his

vision, not counting the Hacks of Revolution cowards. That was fine

in theory—he wanted to be as choosy with his new allies as they were

with him. But there was a clock running on things. The residents of

the Polaris Hotel were being slowly but surely driven into homeless-

ness by squalid conditions and predatory landlords. It was time to do

something now, and the housing authority was never going to be the

one to do it.

He was already hacked into all of the landlord’s phones and e-mail.

He knew just what kind of shit they were up to. But they were also old-

school shit bags. They weren’t in the digital age in any meaningful way

and handled everything with face to face conversations and sometimes

even written instructions. Taking them down meant manpower, and he

didn’t have it. He thought this last Crew of black bloc activists would

be on board, but they had visions of the Battle of Seattle from a decade

ago dancing before their twenty-something eyes, and so couldn’t actu-

ally get behind doing real good for real people. Now what the fuck was

he going to do?

Back in his own room in Brooklyn, Sacco logged on out of sheer

instinct and started fiddling around online. He’d gained a lot of fame

and notoriety in hacker circles for his little stunt at HOPE, and Listnin

had been a huge hit. Lots of people wanted to work with him on lots

of different projects, not a single one of which held much interest. He

supposed he should have been more excited about some of those pos-

sibilities, but quite frankly the idea of slaving away on coding new apps

and tools just bored him now. In Hacks of Rebellion he’d been the

idea guy, and the others had done a lot of the implementation and, if

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he was honest with himself, the hard work. Or at least the grunt work.

The boring work.

Now he wanted to be out there doing something, especially since

the whole Polaris Hotel thing had come to his attention. He’d met

Monique, a sweet, older Puerto Rican woman who worked at the coffee

shop he frequented and lived with her sister and nephews at The Polaris.

They’d got to talking, mostly so Sacco could practice his Spanish, but

also because she was funny and liked to mother him about what he ate.

So when she started dropping off-hand comments about her truly shitty

living conditions—the broken elevators and chained shut fire doors

and roaches and rats and dirty water and then no water at all—Sacco

started asking more questions. And when he tried to stop by and see her

one evening and bring her some clothing for her nephew and the burly,

steroid ridden security guard refused to let him in because he thought

Sacco was a housing rights advocate of some sort, Sacco’s interest had

really piqued. Anyone trying to hide something that hard needed to

have all their secrets aired in public.

He talked with Monique, and learned the details of the violations and

the threats and the lack of effective enforcement by the city. About the

pay-offs to inspectors and the intimidation tactics used against tenant

rights advocates. Sticking it to telecoms and global banking consortia

started to seem a whole lot less interesting than making sure Monique

and her family and friends had clean water and vermin-free homes.

Having dug into KJL Properties, who owned the building, and dis-

cerned that they really were the scumbags he suspected and that they

owned a dozen other slum properties as well, Sacco proceeded to own

every phone and computer they had. It wasn’t hard—they didn’t give

a fuck about computer security—but it also wasn’t very useful. Now

though, now he had his plan, and while it might not let him air out any