From Filth & Mud (22 page)

“I am sorry for the loss of your man, Mr. Harrington. You have my sincerest condolences. I hope that you will, yourself, recover from your injuries most quickly,” he said smiling politely. He bowed once again and exited the room, as another Asian man opened the door from the outside.

“Who was that?”

“That was our client, Jacob. Get some rest. We’ll talk more when you feel up to it.” John headed toward the door and reminded him, “Call Sarah. She’s worried about you since you haven’t called her in a day. I told her that the trip was going to take a couple of extra days, but that you were fine; just bad cell coverage where you were.”

Jacob fell back into his pillow, his head still throbbed. He closed his eyes to alleviate the pain that came with staring into the fluorescent lights of the ship’s single-room, medical bay, but that just prompted the jackhammering to begin in his ears. He lay motionless, fearing another bout of nausea, but he fell asleep before it came.

- - - - - - -

The heavy swaying woke Jacob from his bed, and the nausea followed closely behind. He was momentarily disoriented then slowly began to recognize that he was not stuck in a deserted alley, in the middle of a firefight, in Fallujah. He gathered his wits and nerves, and rose out of the bed, dressed, and headed topside. John would be there.

John was silhouetted against the rising sun that bathed the sky in an eerie orange glow and broke against a dark bank of clouds that held above the North Atlantic. “What have we stepped into here, John?” Jacob shouted as he steadied himself against the bulkhead of the superstructure from which he had exited. “Tim filled me in on the details. These Russians were equipped with first-class weapons and gear. One of them even had Spetsnaz, meat-tag tattoos, and our client, looks Chinese to me, definitely military. Start talking, John.”

John did not turn to answer the litany of questions. “Jacob, these Russians are prior military like us, probably working as mercenaries for some Russian version of XPS. We don’t know who, yet. As far as the client is concerned, that’s none of our fucking business.” John lost his cool and slammed his palms onto the deck railing and glared back at Jacob.

“Fuck you, John. You know this shit stinks of some covert-ops bullshit. I had my fill of their shit back in Iraq, and I thought you did too? How many times did we get fucked with because we were following intel that didn’t pan out. How many times did we suspect that we were being played? Right now I feel someone tugging on my balls, John!”

“Jacob—”

“I’m out John. I’m fucking out! I’ve put in my time. I don’t owe you, XPS, or these Chinese assholes, anything!” Jacob stormed across the deck of the freighter, and back down below decks to his quarters as Tim and Doug emerged to see the end of the commotion.

- - - - - - -

Jacob returned home a week later, still shaken by what he had seen. The world was different again, much like it had been in his past. His fears were no longer relegated to daydreams, memories, and nightmares. They were real, tangible, and they had almost taken him away from his family. They had paralyzed him and made him a victim. Jacob shook the thoughts angrily from his mind as he grasped Luke and Nathan in a tight bear hug. He was done with XPS, and the monsters that came with it, not for his sake, but for his family’s. As he hugged his boys in that moment, Jacob was unaware of the coming maelstrom and the horror that would touch them all, for if he had been, he would have never let go.

Eckert was on an urgent call with Under-Secretary Yi Long moments after the news had arrived that the convoy had been hit. The package had been lost. Jak reported that the Russians had hit the convoy just as they had feared. She stood quietly against one of the office windows while he made the call.

“Mr. Secretary, I assume that your men have already informed you about the loss of the package? We will arrange for its delivery as soon as possible. You have my word on this.”

There was a long silence on the line before the Under-Secretary spoke. “Mr. Eckert, you have failed to deliver and for this I am disappointed. Our deal was exclusive ownership of Lilith, and now it appears that our Russian counterparts have acquired the updated variant. This is the kind of problem that cannot be
arranged
, Mr. Eckert! Do you not remember that we have purchased five billion dollars of outstanding debt in your company? I would be hard-pressed to convince my superiors not to recall that debt immediately.”

Eckert ignored the threat. “Mr. Secretary, please have confidence in us. What the Russians got is of no value to them without our research team which is currently under your care. The variant is inert and will take years to reverse-engineer. By that time, you’ll be able to track it down and have it destroyed.”

“I am unsatisfied, Mr. Eckert. We will need a complete, in-person debriefing before the People’s Investment Committee. We expect
you
to personally deliver the debriefing on Monday.”

“That’s two days from now! Surely we can work out terms.” 

“Or perhaps you would like your company’s debt recalled. It’s your choice, Mr. Eckert. Good day.”

Eckert ensured that the line had dropped before he nodded to Jak. He placed his palm over the tablet that lay on his desk, waiting momentarily for it to authenticate his identity. Once verified, the tablet triggered an electromagnetic pulse designed to send a constant stream of interference at all microwave, UHF, VHF, and radio communications wavelengths. His office was instantaneously transformed into a silent bubble. He removed a small device from his desk, pointed it at the far wall, and punched in an alpha-numeric code. The device activated and projected a blank image against the back office wall. The image lingered momentarily before it buffered and loaded the live feed from a small office located in Langley, Virginia. A rather grim-looking woman walked into frame.

“Mr. Eckert, I trust this is important enough for you to communicate with us?”

“I have a problem.”

“Of course you do.”

“The Chinese are threatening to call their debt on the company.”

“And how much are we talking about,” Samantha Walters asked, as if she didn’t know to the penny, or yuan, precisely the amount owed to the Chinese.

“Five billion dollars, so it’s kind of urgent.”

“Oh is that all? I am tired of you CEO types using your
little red phone
to call for bailouts every other day.”

“Sam, you know that I wouldn’t even be in this situation if you guys didn’t strong arm me and my company into delivering your drugs all over the world.”

“Mr. Eckert, do you really think that you’re in a bargaining position here? You’re a dime a dozen. So don’t push it. We should just let the Chinese recall their debt and let you disappear without so much as a whisper on Wall Street; just another failed biotech company that overstretched its balance sheet. As for you Mr. Eckert, let’s just say that the IRS would be mightily interested in your bankruptcy proceedings.”

Eckert didn’t flinch. He’d dealt with bullies his entire life and his patrons at Central Intelligence were just another kind of bully, but just like every other bully, they were susceptible to embarrassment. They ruled on fear and threats of violence, but not much else because when the punches started to fly they were likely to get bloodied, and bullies didn’t like to bleed.

“What the hell happened?”

“Nothing major just the usual graft that goes along with operating in Beijing. Long is unhappy with the circumstances of his compensation for the mutual exchange of information between the parties. He expects his compensation to reflect the increased risk of exposure in the current political environment. You know that the current Prime Minister has been purging the government in an effort to show that he’s anti-corruption. Well, the Secretary believes himself to be in the ever focusing crosshairs.”

“So what do you want from us?” Walters’ eyes narrowed, quickly thinking of a number that she could afford. Her budget for such payoffs had tightened over the last couple of years with the winding down of the War on Terror, and she had several sources that were cashing their chips before the cashier’s window closed.

“Five million Euros, but he will give us a hometown discount and take three million U.S.,” Eckert held steady—the sum seemed credible enough to uphold the lie.

“How generous of the Secretary,” Walters paused, “For three million, do you expect that this debt issue will resolve itself?”

“Yes, but we could also use some help on the diplomatic front to help smooth over relations. I suggest a reauthorization of the Sino-American Biotechnologies Compact which has helped our two countries’ efforts to streamline the delivery of invaluable medicines to low and middle-income Americans.” Eckert played the role of greedy businessman perfectly.

“Of course this reauthorization would also prove quite helpful to your company’s bottom line, Mr. Eckert.”

“There’s no sense in ignoring a profit when it’s there for the taking,” he retorted.

“We’ll wire the three million to the usual accounts within the hour. Make sure you give our regards to the Under-Secretary.” The feed cut out.

Eckert interlaced his fingers and cracked his knuckles with vigor.

“Masterfully played,” Jak clapped mockingly in the corner. “You’re playing with fire,” she warned as she walked toward him flirtatiously. The powerful woman assumed an increasingly submissive posture with every softening step, and leaned her thick body into his, pressing him into the wall.

“There’s nothing to worry about. They have their heads so far up their asses that they can’t smell bullshit. They’re still chasing desert ghosts, my dear. Just make sure that we deliver an extra few hundred kilos on our next couple of shipments from our Afghan friends, and we will be okay.”

“Done,” Jak bit him aggressively through his shirt. He reciprocated by clawing at her back. He grabbed her powerful hips and slammed her down forcefully onto his desk. Her stockinged knees dangled over the edge. He climbed onto the desk and between her thighs. His knees coerced her legs into a missionary position. Jak’s skirt rode up her thighs, coming to a rest just below her now moist anticipation. He placed his hand on her exposed, laced-topped stockings, and caressed her tender thighs. His hands slowly fingered their way down to her ankles, lifting her legs as they went. Her legs came to a rest around his waist. Her black pumps crossed neatly behind the small of his back. He leaned into her. She felt his undeniable power. He cupped her breasts through her taught, leather blouse, and pushed his left hand up to her shoulder, pinning her right arm back over her head while his right hand slipped under the waist of her skirt.

The sudden point of a swift stiletto dug deftly into his trachea. But Eckert’s voice was hushed, reassuring, like a jazz bassist playing out a movement. His lips fluttered against hers as he spoke. “I am at your mercy. Do as you wish.”

Jak did as she desired.

The last few months working at Collier Analytics was an honest living, but it had been a very boring few months for Irina. The limitless access to information that came with the job did nothing to quell her need for mischief. Her idle mind was habitually the devil’s playground, and she kept the flames stoked with her trysts through the electronic lives of everyday, American housewives. They were a trove of entertainment. There was love, lust, betrayal, and some really juicy gossip. These women lived for it. When one in their group had an affair with a delivery guy, their husband’s best friend, or their son’s college friend they couldn’t wait to share, and they did so brazenly. Of course they confided in their friends to never tell a soul, but most immediately betrayed those confidences.

Her latest pleasure was an underground sex ring that she had discovered in Tampa. A group of upper-middle-class housewives with nothing to do but drop off the kids at daycare, hit the gym, and head to their obligatory stylists and tanning salons, found that they needed a little more excitement in their lives. They found it in one Felipe Montana, plumber by day, exotic dancer by night, and rumor had it that he was swinging some kind of pipe. A quick search by Irina revealed the rumor to be quite accurate; Felipe was quite capable of delivering a large amount of torque.

Alas, Irina tore herself away from the scintillating reading, and tried to focus on work as she swiped her hand in front of her computer screen, scrolling through several hundred lines of code, all pretty basic stuff. She tolerated mostly everyone with whom she worked, but she didn’t have any special fondness for any of them. She was always so far ahead of them in any project, and it consumed her to wait for them, but she was trying to be a team player. Aiden always harped on her about that. She had grown fond of Rhea, and not just because of their sexual relationship. Rhea was smart, kind, and above all understood her relationship with Aiden. Aiden understood her needs, and he never expected anything from her, just amazing work.
That
, she could deliver. The problem was the latest iteration of Project Yente.

- - - - - - -

The problem with the second iteration of Project Yente, Yente 2.0, as Aiden had come to call it, was that it was Frankenstein’s monster. Whereas Yente was a sleek, efficient, and refined program capable of weeding out false-positives, and targeting specific threats against national security, Yente 2.0 was bloated, cumbersome, and ill-suited for the task. Yente 2.0 was a product of committee, like everything in government. The NSA had pushed Aiden to hand over the proprietary source code for both Cupid and Aphrodite in order to have their coders refine them to meet the NSA’s growing needs. Aiden had pushed back and when that had failed, he lobbied the Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator Richard Thompson, the senior senator from California, who had oversight authority over the NSA. Aiden had been a longtime donor of the distinguished Senator’s re-election efforts, and he had provided the Senator’s family members and staff with employment opportunities in the hottest technology startups in Silicon Valley. Aiden informed the Senator that handing over the source code for his software would expose his firm to out of state and overseas competitors, and that this might force his highly successful firm out of business.
To politicians there is only one thing worse than losing a valued donor, and that is losing an election!

The result of that meeting was Yente 2.0, a hodge-podge of code that rarely integrated correctly with the NSA’s redeveloped Cupid. Yente 2.0 was crap, and boy did the NSA and the other intelligence services love it! It was the broad, gill net that they had wanted all along. It kept them and the Department of Justice in business with each new identified target—hundreds at first, then thousands. Theirs was a numbers game, and Yente 2.0 was creating the numbers for them. Aiden worried that while the intelligence and law enforcement community kept busy chasing self-created terrorists, the real threats were out there hiding and planning the next attack. The government was no longer just simply collecting haystacks they were purposefully dumping metal shavings in them, in order to justify their search for needles.

- - - - - - -

One night before bed, Aiden approached Irina with his moral turpitude. It had been weeks since he had delivered the bastardized version of Aphrodite to the NSA, and the integration horrors between the NSA’s poorly coded Cupid were beginning to rear their heads. Just twenty-four hours after Yente 2.0’s go-live date, the NSA had received confirmation on eighty individuals who fit the newly expanded target profile. Aiden had taken some time to review the matches and shook his head in disbelief.

“They’re idiots. None of these guys is a terrorist. Idiots yes, terrorists no.” He flung his tablet to the bed, nearly missing Irina who lay unclothed. She was surprised, especially since he never missed an opportunity to remark on her naked body. Aiden didn’t stop to look at her as he trundled to the shower. She reached for the tablet and reviewed the highest ranked targets, all anti-government rednecks that harbored undertones of separatist, Confederate rebellion. These guys were a dime a dozen, hating the fact that the country had gone to hell under the consecutive presidencies of a Black man, a woman, and now they were staring down the barrel of a gay presidency in 2020. For them this was a tyrannical regime. Sure they cried and complained, but they were too busy enjoying their NASCAR, prepping for doomsday, and collecting their Social Security and Medicare to mount an attack on the very government on which they completely relied.

“We’re going after rednecks now!” Aiden’s grumbling was muffled behind the bathroom door.

Irina walked into the large bathroom, and joined Aiden in the stonework shower as he stood in the center of four large shower heads that cascaded steamy, hot water down upon them. Irina caressed him softly then began to massage his shoulders and neck.

“Just ask me and I’ll fix it,” she whispered into his ear. “I can shut it down if you want.” She tempted Aiden, but she knew that he would never entertain such a thing. Aiden was a lot of not so nice things, but not a traitor, which is why she was surprised when he asked her to keep the original Yente alive.

“Can you keep it running without being detected?” he asked, though he knew the answer.

Irina nodded.

- - - - - - -

The next morning, Irina awoke and stretched before falling back into Aiden’s king-sized bed. Her arm slapped down on his tablet as she plopped onto the comforting mattress. She wasn’t surprised to find it there since Aiden was the forgetful type. She grabbed the device for a curious snoop. The tablet lit up and the Aphrodite database surfaced on the screen. She sighed, but began waving through screen after screen of profiles until one face caught her attention. It was the face of a young and beautiful Karen Mayfield. Irina selected Ms. Mayfield’s profile, and the screen quickly revealed her personal information. A 508 area code phone number, MIT microbiology and engineering degrees, bicycle purchases, butterfly gestation research, beer and lobster roll purchases,
nothing out of the ordinary
. Irina reviewed the profile wondering what the trigger could have been for Karen Mayfield to have been matched by Cupid and Aphrodite, other than the fact that she was a leftist, educational-elite from New England.             

Irina jumped out of bed, gathered her several laptops and secure router, and ran into the bathroom. She quickly pulled both of the original Cupid and Aphrodite files from Collier Analytics’ systems, and migrated them to her secure, virtual workspace; a place nobody, not even Aiden had ever seen. She ran Mayfield’s profile through Cupid and Aphrodite, and to her surprise, Mayfield was still a match. Irina was intrigued. Could it be that the program had just confirmed a false-positive because she had used the Yente 2.0 profile? That was doubtful. Irina decided to run the entire batch of several hundred matches on her system, and low and behold, Karen Mayfield remained the only confirmed match.

She drummed her fingertips on her lips as she pondered the problem. Whatever the reason, Mayfield was important. Her fingertips swept over the keyboard in an instant, inputting a deluge of commands over the next few minutes that would delete all trace of Karen Mayfield from the database. Next, she accessed the NSA’s Yente 2.0 database, and purged every phone call, text, video, voice mail, email, and credit card purchase Mayfield had ever made. She then spent the next hour creating a notification hub for all of Mayfield’s electronic communication. From that moment on, every time Mayfield accessed her email, text, social networks, and Internet from any of her devices, her communications would be routed through a series of TOR networks, and to Irina’s screen.

Though TOR networks provided layers of security protocols so popular that their use ranged from intelligence agencies to your typical hacker, Irina had improved on their basic design. Created in the 1990s as a secure structure for U.S. intelligence communications, the idea behind the TOR security protocols was that one secure network was vulnerable no matter how complicated its encryption. However, if you took ten secure networks and enveloped them one within the other, like the layers of an onion, the resulting security would be exponentially more secure, hence the name,
‘The Onion Router’
, or TOR. However, it did not satisfy Irina’s paranoia, and so she created TBOR, or ‘
The Blooming Onion Router
’. Instead of the straightforward security layers, she divided each individual layer into 360 slices, each slice corresponding to a codec consisting of 278 bits of encryption. The resulting security resembled a renowned restaurant appetizer, but this one would take 120,000 years
to get through. Now that Karen Mayfield’s existence was hidden within Irina’s TBOR network, she had virtually ceased to exist, but the problem of her physical self, remained.