DEAD BEEF (Our Cyber World Book 1) (15 page)

Chapter 22

Julian finally gave up around 8 PM, shortly after the last of the sunlight ebbed away on the western horizon. He drew down the sails and sat on the boat until his pursuers caught up one last time. Now, two hours later, after a shower, a meal and spreading some Aloe lotion on his sunburned skin, he sat feverish before two men.

Each of them wore meticulously ironed white shirts and pants and polished burgundy leather moccasins. As if in concert to further look alike, their faces also featured neatly trimmed goatees. Really, the only difference Julian could make out was that the one on the left was heavier set and stockier.

The one on the left spoke with what Julian assumed was some sort of middle-eastern accent. “I trust you’re feeling refreshed after enjoying a bit of our hospitality?”

“I rather be on my boat,” Julian said.

“Reserve judgment until tomorrow morning. I’m sure your accommodations this evening will far exceed the comfort of your sailboat’s cabin.”

“A nice cell is still a cell,” Julian said, wondering if he had just pushed past a social norm. He’d heard these folks took their hospitality very seriously, and maybe he’d just offended these two. He’d also heard that hospitality sometimes included a beheading, so he had that on his side of the taking offense ledger.

“If I were you, Mr. Rogers,” the same man said, “I’d be more inclined to look upon our get-together as an entrée to a mutually beneficial business relationship.”

“I don’t know how we went from a poker game, which, OK, I lost, to a business relationship. Besides, I’ve been working that off with a Hispanic guy, Mexican I think. Julio, similar to Julian, which was a nice connection for us, I thought. Anyway, Julio is a nice guy, and I thought I had helped with his technical issue and we were done.”

The two white-uniformed dudes looked at each other, and Julian could have sworn that the thinner one on the right smiled for just a fraction of a second.

“Well, you see, that Mexican gentleman, Julio, as you call him, responds to higher management. We are that higher management. And after taking a closer look, we weren’t entirely satisfied with Julio’s resolution of the technical issue.”

“Do you understand what the technical issue is?” Julian asked. “No offense, but sometimes higher management is too heavy on the money aspect, and a little thin on the technical side.”

“Oh, we understand it quite well,” the dude on the left answered.

“You know,” Julian said. “I knew Julio by name, even if that wasn’t his real name, but you guys haven’t even told me your names.”

“Are you sure you want to know our names, Mr. Rogers?” the skinnier dude on the right said.

“I don’t know how one can have a successful business relationship without names.”

“Alright, you want names, we shall give you names,” the guy on the left said. “I’m Davood, and he is...”

“Masoud,” the guy on the right said.

“Cool. Now I don’t have to think of you as the guy on the left and the dude on the right.”

“Yes, I see how that would help,” Davood said, trading another sideways glance with Masoud.

Masoud said, “Your enterprising technical actions earlier today were most impressive.”

“Yeah, you told me that right before you started chasing me all over the Pacific Ocean, or pursuing me as a business partner, which I can now totally see how I took that completely the wrong way.”

Masoud smiled. “In addition to being a proficient technician, you’re also quite the seaman, even if to someone with Allah’s heavenly perspective your sense of direction may have seen rather erratic.”

“Well, if you know me, you know I like to keep it random.”

“Yes, random. Chaos,” Masoud said. “I read your PhD thesis written back when you attended CalTech. Very interesting propositions even back then, ideas that by now we see you have matured and blossomed into practical applications.”

“And what practical applications would those be?” Julian asked.

“Chaos-based self-adaptive algorithms, or morphing, I believe we’ve heard them called,” Masoud said.

“Interesting. At first Davood was doing most of the talking, now you are. You must be the techno-guy.”

“We call it a different name, but yes, that’s the basic concept.”

“So, Masoud, where did you read about Chaos-what-something? I’m pretty sure that wasn’t in my thesis, and I don’t think I’ve run across it on Wikipedia.”

Davood nodded and said, “We appreciate that in your past employment you have made prior commitments regarding protection of sensitive information. It’s very honorable of you to uphold your commitment. Perhaps we can use different terminology to help you preserve your word.”

“Shall we just call it morphing?” Masoud offered.

“Yeah, sure, but I just want to make sure we’re talking about the same thing. So you’re going to have to explain what you mean, you know, so we’re on the same page and in sync, with no room for misunderstanding.”

Masoud and Davood exchanged another look. There definitely wasn’t a smile anywhere in that one.

“I feel like you’re not helping us carry out an efficient conversation,” Masoud said.

“You got it backwards,” Julian said. “I want to make sure we’re communicating clearly.”

That resulted in another look.

“Very well,” Masoud said. “By morphing we have in mind the capability to adapt a hardware or software system for the purpose of making decisions in an ever-changing and/or complex environment. By this we mean algorithms that perform decision tree searches based on randomly generated options or possibilities.”

“Wow, that sounds fancy. It also sounds like evolution, like you’re talking about software that can mutate and evolve?”

“That would be a viable alternative expression of the concept,” Masoud said.

“But I thought you folks believe in Allah, who created everything, not in evolution.”

Masoud smiled broadly. “Ah, Mr. Rogers. You’ve hit on a key point, a great thought train to ponder. What if Allah created and designed evolution? What if he now wants us to harness its power for further his will?”

Julian placed his hands on his head, followed by a radiating motion. “Poof! Consider me mind-blown.”

“Would it also blow your mind if we told you your friend Martin Spencer undid your actions in a few short hours?” Masoud asked.

Julian shrugged. He was beginning to wonder how long this was going to go on. It was starting to feel like more tacking and evading, and he didn’t know how long he’d be able to stay sharp and keep it up.

“Does that mean you don’t care, Mr. Rogers?”

“To be honest, it’s been a long day. You guys spooked me with those hovercrafts of yours, and I don’t even know what I did this morning.”

“Perhaps this is true,” Masoud said. “But rest assured that Mr. Spencer and his Sasha know exactly what you did. They also undid it all rather smugly, posting messages taking full credit with every recovery, over ten thousand, if my count is correct.”

Julian knew what they were doing. They were appealing to his hacker instinct, his desire to not be out-hacked by anyone else, to be top hacker. Even if he knew it, he had to admit to himself it was hitting home. Even if he wanted to set it aside, he couldn't accept the disrespect.

“My sources also tell us something rather interesting,” Masoud added. “Apparently the solution they applied completely removes all chaos-based self-adaptive functionality. One wonders how such a brilliant concept, such an organically logical way of modeling life itself, was so easily, and as I said, smugly set aside.”

Davood followed up with, “It is unfortunate that you lost your computer equipment this morning. Perhaps we could offer you some of our equipment so that you can take a look for yourself. Just taking a look will not do harm, will it? But it will inform your decision to join us in our venture, perhaps?”

Julian suspected he had no choice, so he said, “Sure, why not?”

Masoud snapped his fingers, and one of the goons that had flashed a gun at him earlier in the day came in with a laptop. Julian accepted it, thinking it would probably take him at least an hour to reproduce the code to initiate a probe and scan. That’s when the big surprise hit him.

Though the laptop was physically different, its contents were identical to his. The operating system, the folder structure, his legacy code, his utilities, they were all there exactly as he would have found them on either of the laptops he tossed into the ocean earlier in the day.

They had totally mirrored his system.

Upon a closer look he noticed one additional directory at the top level of his folder structure. It was labeled “Payload I-Q-019.” He looked inside and found several files, each containing disassembled machine code. Even though it wasn’t the code he had written in a higher level language, pre-compilation, Julian started recognizing familiar patterns that he had seen in his code after compilation and assembly. Similar or identical usage of registers for random number generation and shifting, similar or identical mathematical functions, and the seal in the deal was the identical constants throughout the code, including the very strings he had embedded in InfoStream code. Julian achieved additional confirmation when he found sub-folders containing sections of code he definitely recognized: mods he had made to snippets this same payload code, when he didn’t know there was a whole something — now payload I-Q-019 — that he was modifying for a gambling creditor.

“How did you get this?” he asked, looking up at Masoud and Davood, and showing them the directory and files.

“Your government and your former colleague Martin Spencer left us a little present a few years ago,” Masoud said. “We initially tried to reverse-engineer it, but found its usage too unstable, too risky without additional insight. We set it aside for such a time as this, when we would have someone of your caliber join us.”

“And you broke into my laptops with that hovercraft thing,” Julian said. They nodded, and Julian had to decide between swallowing his pride and checking out how Martin had defeated his code.

Julian opted for the second option and sent out a probe. Within minutes he was reviewing results, mostly empty return packets, except for the message, “Switch-out: Rejected courtesy of Sasha Javan, with assistance from Martin Spencer.”

Whatever Martin and Sasha had done, they had made his code obsolete. Just like that, they had slashed and burned all his work out of the code. They had cut him out. That just didn’t have a good vibe to it. And Julian didn’t like living with a bad vibe.

Chapter 23

Martin woke up to a kiss on the cheek and the feel of Sasha’s warm breath on his face.

“And, we’re back on the air,” she said, smiling at him. “Come, on. We have eggs and toast going, and then we have some things to check into.”

Martin cleared his eyes and stood up.

“Time to put on your uniform,” she said, pointing at her bed. The green uniform she’d shown him the day before lay on her bed like a tired, flattened man.

Martin changed into it quickly before asking, “How are things in the world?”

“You mean, how are the poor people living today?”

“Did you check?” he asked, not in a mood for jovial banter.

“Grum-peeh,” she said. “All’s well in L.A. 98 to 99% of all circuits up and happily pumping electrons, according to several news reports I pulled down.”

Martin hesitated to ask the next question. “Did you check on Julian?”

Sasha divided the eggs between two plates and did likewise with the toast. “There’s some milk in the fridge, if you’d like it. Orange Juice, too, but I think it might be going bad.”

“I take it they caught him.”

Sasha set the plates on the table and went to get her laptop. The screen showed the same meandering, then violently erratic path for Julian’s whereabouts. The last data point was flashing in red. “That’s the last known position,” Sasha noted. “After that, the beacon went silent.”

“They tracked him, they got him, then killed the beacon.”

She didn’t reply, and Martin didn’t need her to. They ate in silence for a couple of minutes until she said, “You know how to cook? I’m not so great at it, as you can tell, and I’d really like some help if there’s two of us.”

“I can fend for myself,” he said. “But every chef needs the right ingredients, and I don’t see that we have much of a selection here.”

“If you mean filet mignon, you’re right,” she said. “But I think simplicity along with creativity make for quick and easy going in the kitchen.”

Martin wondered how long she’d been eating simple meals, and how much food out of cans and boxes she'd consumed over the past twelve years. To him she looked great, thinner but more muscular than when they first met, and her face had hardened just enough to give her an edge of toughness. Yet her bright green eyes and lips retained her youthfulness and playfulness, especially when she smiled. Her jet black hair fell shorter than she had worn it back then, stopping shy of her shoulders, whereas before it had dropped just below her shoulder blades.

His thoughts returned to Julian. “What do you think is going to happen to him?” Martin asked.

“Julian?” She shrugged. “He’s going to get debriefed. What happens after that is up to Julian.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s where you come in. You know him far better than I do. Will he cooperate, will he stand his ground, or will he obfuscate and stall? It all comes down to his character, and how hard they lean on him. I can only give you a good estimate on the latter.”

Martin sighed. If he knew one thing about Julian it was that he didn’t carry any sort of moral center. He just went along with the flow, bounced from risk to opportunity, tried to get along and somehow land on the better side of the ledger. As much as Martin wished otherwise, he didn’t think Julian would hold up well under stressful, adversarial conditions — other than those involving only a keyboard, a computer screen and network connectivity. The only thing that he saw Julian could lean on was his pride, pride in his work and pride that would not let others demean what he did.

“He won’t like what we did,” Martin said. “His tendency will be to fight back.”

“They’ll play on that,” Sasha said, like she suspected it all along.

Martin saw no point in continuing to speculate about Julian. “You never quite told me how you know so much about them,” he said, and let the question hang in the air when she didn’t answer. He let it float, letting the tension build.

“It’s complicated,” she finally said, looking at him with none of the girlishness of old. “It’s hard to separate yourself from your past. Impossible, actually.  That's what I’ve found. You may want to keep that in mind now that you’re trying to do the same.”

Back when Sasha’s familial ties to Iranian intelligence had ended her career, Martin had not asked too many questions. He had worried more about what it all meant for him and her, and he couldn’t deal with anything beyond that.

“They tried to recruit me when I started my PhD program at MIT,” she said. “I never really accepted, left it at a maybe. Even if I had said no, that wouldn’t have mattered. I was clean while I was working in the agency.”

“And now?”

She clenched her jaw. “You guys dropped me like a sack of rotten potatoes. I was angry, not so much at you; you were trapped. I was angry at them, the agency. So I lashed back.”

“You flipped.”

“Not much of a flip, if you stop to think about it. I was in long enough to make some connections and lay in some of my hooks. Then, I disappeared. Off the map, off the grid. Sasha Javan died, Jeannette Estrada was born.”

Martin didn't need her to fill in the gaps and blanks. Someone with Sasha's talents for information systems could make stock markets shift, bank accounts appear and disappear, as well as invent identities that looked more real than the real thing.

“And these hooks that you laid in, these connections,” he said. “That’s how you’ve been keeping track of them.”

“For my sake, to know when they are looking for me and where they’re sniffing. And to blow some chaff their way. Last known sighting is Sydney, Australia. But the hooks can have other uses.”

“I see,” Martin said. He wondered whether to press on with his inquiry and decided to let it go.  “Shall we go check on some bear scat?” he asked.

Sasha smiled. “Actually we have something more useful to do. Are you up for a little hike up to the lookout?”

“I don’t know. Does it involve advanced rock climbing?”

“Not too advanced,” she said, smiling more broadly. “One of my camera’s pointing mechanism has been acting up. Either the controller or the motor, or hopefully some dry gears. I was planning to go up there and check it out. It’s pretty accessible, so we won’t be rappelling off cliffs or anything like that. You can take your camera if you want.”

“I’m game, but not before I use the outhouse to take care of some scat of my own.”

She shook her head and smiled. “There’s that boy humor again.”

Sasha made a call into ranger headquarters to let them know she was stepping out and what she was doing. Oh, and by the way, no fires at all anywhere in view for her, and it looked like a cooler than usual summer day, so she was not concerned about fire danger, and probably wouldn’t check in the rest of the day, if they didn’t mind.

The voice from headquarters told her to be careful and also forewarned her about the weather changing. A chance of severe thunderstorms was in the forecast for later on in the day, early afternoon most probably. She thanked them for that and said she hadn’t seen that forecast herself, but, oh, yeah, checking online now in the National Weather Service website, there it was. Thanks again, fellas, and she signed off on the radio.

When Martin returned to the cabin, he retrieved his digital SLR camera, figured the short wide to medium length zoom he had would be OK for the excursion, and strapped the camera around his neck and shoulder so that it hung at his left side.

“That’s a good way to carry it,” Sasha noted. “Now do the same on the other side with this.” She extended her hand to him. Martin’s eyes traced the strap hanging from her hand down to a machine gun pistol.

“What’s this?” he asked, noticing an identical gun hanging at her right side.

“Just in case we run across hostile wildlife.”

“I take it you got an eyewitness report this morning.”

She nodded. “I checked messages while you went to the outhouse. Two to four Mexican Mafia guys are cruising around town. On other news, we have visual confirmation that your girl’s in town.”

“The video came in too?”

“You can check for yourself if you want. It’s Cynthia. And two of those guys were seen following her last night.”

“Why would they be following her?”

Sasha shrugged. “Rumor has it she’s been tailing a blond guy that also works for the cartel. Someone let in these guys on the rumor, I guess, and they decided to show solidarity.”

Martin spent the next few minutes reviewing and replaying the snippet of video Silvia the waitress had emailed. Sasha commented behind him about Cynthia’s appearance, how she had gone into operational mode, and how she looked a tad hotter than in her role as owner of a vineyard and winery.

Martin watched Cynthia come into the restaurant, take her seat to have some soup, followed with a cut in the footage, and then a clear view of her leaving. He also reviewed the cellphone photo the waitress took of her, noticing most of all the change in her hair, and the stolid look on her face. He’d seen that look before in his Special Ops teammates. The way she sat was different, too, straighter, and he guessed inside her jacket, in the small of her back, she had concealed a gun.

Sasha reached over and opened another email. “This one is of those cartel guys. A friend at the sporting goods store sent it.”

The picture showed a bald man with a thick goatee and heavily tattooed arms. Reaching over again, Sasha zoomed in on the arm. “That’s how you know he’s Mexican Mafia.”

“They’re not even hiding it,” Martin said.

“It’s far too warm this time of year for long sleeves,” she said.

Martin turned around and looked up at her. “You know these guys have been connected with terrorist groups, right?”

“I know.”

“Including Iranian sponsored ones.”

“Yes,” she said.

“I’m thinking we should be assuming that worst-case they’re here for more than Marijuana crops.”

Sasha patted her gun. “Me and Betsy are thinking the same thing.”