In for a Ruble (7 page)

It appeared I’d witnessed an opening salvo in a battle over the future of the Baltic Enterprise Commission, a shadowy network of Web-hosting servers across the old Soviet Bloc, the go-to resource for anyone looking for a safe place on the Net from which to spam, scam, phish, hack, steal, or purvey porn, especially porn featuring kids.

Konychev was a favorite subject for the chronicler of Ibansk, probably because he was as good a personification as one could find of the unbridled capitalism, Kremlin control, and often crooked undertakings that define the New Russia. I’d been following the news via Ivanov’s posts since returning to New York, which mostly dealt with growing clashes within the BEC and the unknown whereabouts of its boss. According to the latest post, earlier today:

Once thought impregnable, the BEC is in disarray. Disagreements over expansion into new, higher risk lines of business—hacking for hire, industrial espionage, anyone?—have opened fissures among the already fractured federation. Ivanov hears the premier hoster of hackers has itself been hacked—although whether this was simple vandalism or invaders with more insidious purposes is thus far unclear.

The big question is Efim Konychev. Where has he been fiddling while his empire burns? He hasn’t been heard from since the attack on Tverskaya. Reports of infighting among the bosses and beneficiaries of web sleaze abound. That’s one reason he may be lying low. Another could be the identity of the young—and Ivanov does mean
young
—lovely who was with Konychev the night of the Tverskaya attack. She took three slugs in the back, cut down in her pre-prime. Her identity is a mystery even Ivanov cannot unravel. He can only presume that’s because Konychev wants it that way.

Foos called just as I was finishing breakfast.

“That weird shit on Leitz’s network I saw last night? I spent some more time looking around after you went home. He’s got someone inside working something outside. Guy, maybe gal, goes out through a couple of zombies, accesses data, brings it back, but only to his hard drive, doesn’t touch the servers, and he covers the route pretty well—though not quite well enough.”

Zombies are sleeping computers left online that cyber-crooks borrow when they don’t want to leave a trail, usually for spamming or denial of service attacks, but no reason they can’t obscure other trails.

“This connected or unconnected to Nosferatu’s bug?”

“Unconnected, it appears. Only happens a few times. Three in August. Then again in November. Then December thirtieth. That’s it.”

“How much should we tell Leitz?”

“He’s your client,” he said and hung up. That’s Foos.

*   *   *

If Nosferatu had anyone watching 140 West Forty-eighth Street, I wasn’t going to spot him or her in the morning crowd that filled the block, so I walked straight to the door of Leitz’s building, head down. The lobby guard asked my destination, checked my New York driver’s license, grimaced at my battered face and dispatched me to the forty-second floor. A pretty twenty-something receptionist sent me up a staircase to conference room A. She didn’t do any better job of disguising her unease.

The conference room overlooked the trading floor, which at a few minutes after nine, appeared fully staffed by some forty men and women with an average age of thirty-two, all in various stages of undress. Midwinter, but they were all wearing T-shirts, tank tops, capri pants, some in gym shorts. A few wore shoes. The Gillette company wasn’t making much money on razor blades. Paper plates holding the remains of breakfast, more fruit and bran than bacon and eggs, littered the desks. The heat was on high. I took off my jacket as the door opened behind me.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Leitz’s voice boomed from behind. “Everybody does. Fact is, there’s more pure brain power on that floor than eight Manhattan projects combined.”

“Brain or bran?”

He laughed his big laugh. “Both. I hire brains not suits. I feed ’em, I don’t care what they eat. Coffee?”

“Black.”

I turned as he went to the sideboard to pour. He was dressed in the same cashmere sweater, corduroys, and handmade shoes as the other day. Foos leaned against the door jam, grinning. He’d got there early to soften up his friend, I hoped.

Leitz handed me a mug. “Foos said you took some heat at my expense. I see he wasn’t exaggerating. I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting anything like that.”

I shrugged. “Neither of us were.”

“I’m sorry, in any event. Foos also says you have news.”

Foos and I had discussed how to break this news last night, before I stumbled the two blocks home to my apartment. We agreed the direct approach was best—or least worst. I was still prepared to go with the plan but, remembering the warnings about the temper, I took my coffee to a chair on the far side of the table.

I said, “I bugged your computers last night. We’ve had access to your entire network for the last twelve hours.”

The big face turned red. “Not possible.”

“Not only possible, but easy.”

Two big hands balled themselves into fists the size of cantaloupes. Eruption was a spark away.

“NO! You’ve only had … I don’t believe it!”

I tossed some pages across the table. “Here are e-mails you sent this morning. Behind those are the spreadsheets one of your branny brains was working on at seven fifteen. You’ve got some interesting trading positions too. I printed it all for easy reference.”

“He’s telling it straight,” Foos said.

Leitz glanced at the papers just long enough to see they were what I said. He threw them aside, and the fists pounded the table, which was granite and had to weigh several hundred pounds. It shifted on its stand. He turned to Foos.

“GODDAMMIT! You told me…”

“I told you the perimeter was secure and it is,” Foos said. “You weren’t hacked.”

“Then … WHAT?” Leitz swung his glare back to me. The jowls shook, the eyes fired. I wouldn’t have wanted to be one of the half-clothed mathematical geniuses reporting a losing trade to this boss. Something about the needlessness of the rage made me want to rub it in, but that also could have been getting beat up, not to mention my overall frame of mind.

“Pedestrian. I bribed a member of your cleaning crew. He put a wireless recording device on a box on your trading floor. That gave us access to everything.”

“
Cleaning crew
?”

“Simplest way in. I could have used a half-dozen others.” Leitz’s fists rose again but stopped in midair. He stood and went to the phone on the sideboard. Foos was looking unusually uncomfortable.

“Don’t,” I said.

“DON’T WHAT?”

“Don’t call whomever you’re calling to tell them to fire the cleaning crew. The next one will be just as easy to penetrate. All it took was a thousand dollars—and I probably overpaid since it was your money.”

The phone flew straight at my head until the cord jerked it back and it clattered onto the tabletop. That didn’t stop me from ducking.

“Leitz! Chill!” Foos said.

Leitz looked at the phone, then at his empty hand. He shook his big head.

“Sorry.”

So far the direct approach was working like a charm. I looked around to see what else he could throw. Foos read my mind.

“Sebastian, sit down. We’re on your side. There’s more.”

Leitz took his seat. He appeared deflated, almost like a punctured balloon. He’d been broken into, and as anyone would, he felt violated.

“What more?” he said.

Nosferatu’s blows ached. I thought about whether I needed this. I looked across at Foos. His face was impassive. But he was out of the line of fire.

“Someone else planted a bug just like mine—eight weeks ago.”

The red face turned purple. The outsized cheeks blew out like Dizzy Gillespie’s chops, except there was no joy in this visage. The fists disappeared beneath the tabletop. I planted my feet on the carpet.

Leitz started to stand. Muscles stressed beneath the sweater as the tabletop rose. Coffee cups, coffee, pads and pencils, staplers and paper clips slid in my direction. I pushed the wheels of my chair back to the glass wall before three hundred pounds of granite slab flipped in slow motion, teetered at the top of the arc, and landed at my feet with a thump. It missed my knees by inches.

Foos vacated the doorway as Leitz stomped out.

“I warned you about the temper,” he said.

“You also told me to go for maximum impact.”

I stood, mainly to make sure I still could. No one on the trading floor below paid the least attention to any of us.

*   *   *

We waited about ten minutes, giving Leitz time to cool off, before going down to his office on the floor below. Foos seemed to know his way around. I asked him if he still advocated the direct approach. He grunted in response.

The office was all glass. Two large windows looked south and east over Manhattan and on to Queens. Interior panes faced the trading floor. Leitz was at his desk, another stone table, on the phone. He hit a switch as we walked in and the inside glass turned frosty opaque. I stopped by the door, keeping my distance. He noted where I was standing and shook his head. His voice was tight and tense. He was fighting the temper and winning, for the moment.

“All right, yes, dammit, I’ll call him,” he said into the receiver. “As soon as I finish this meeting.… No, I have no idea.… Yes, I know, but … Not like this, not now.”

He put down the phone. “Sorry. Some issues with my son at his school. I owe you an apology,” he said to me. “I’ve always had a bad temper. Sometimes it gets the better of me.”

“Damned near got the better of me,” I said.

“You’re right. I have no excuse. I’m a very competitive person. I hate to lose. I hate the idea of being compromised. Especially by someone who cheats.”

“I didn’t cheat. You asked me to find a way into your system.”

“I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I was referring to the other guy. Our agreement stands, of course. I’ll have the Repin delivered.”

“Fine. I’ve got a question about something on your trading floor.”

“What…?”

“Out here.”

Leitz and Foos followed me out the door. There was a healthy buzz of activity. After 9:30, the market was open, and the underdressed legions were going about their daily battle.

“Wait here,” I said and went back into the office.

Nosferatu, if it was Nosferatu, had used the cleaners on the computers. That said he was opportunistic, he’d employed available talent. Unlikely, then, that he’d have an expert crew work the office. That didn’t mean his bug was the only one. I went over the furniture with my hands, feeling for anything out of place. Foos and Leitz watched from the door, Foos wearing a quizzical grin, Leitz an angry frown. I was on my hands and knees under his desk, which was pissing off my bruised muscles, when I found it. An electronic doodad, the size of a raisin, tucked in the crease where the frame met the tabletop. I peeled it off the stone, stood, and placed it on top of the desk. Leitz looked ready to blow. I put a finger to my lips and pointed outside. The two big men backed away.

“Let’s go to a conference room,” I said.

I thought Leitz was going to take a swing at me, but he turned and led the way to a small room on the side of the trading floor. I held up a hand as we entered and went through the search routine again. I didn’t expect to find anything and didn’t.

“I think we’re okay here,” I said.

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!” Leitz exploded. “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?”

“I could ask you that,” I said. “You’ve got somebody’s attention.”

He deflated again as he fell into a chair.

“Serves me right. Arrogance … Well, let’s just say arrogance is dangerous.”

Foos and I stayed by the door.

“Let me ask you this,” Leitz said. “Foos told me about the men who beat you up, including the tall man, what do you call him?”

“Nosferatu. Silent movie character, first vampire on film.”

“I’ll have to rent it. You think he planted both bugs?”

“The tap on the computers, certainly. The one on your desk, I’m not so sure. The cleaners didn’t say anything about that. Could have been someone else, like the guy who gave them the layout of your trading floor.”

“You asked them?”

“Yes.”

“SHIT. How many goddamned problems do I have?”

“You should have your entire office swept, to state the obvious.”

“GODDAMMIT!” Leitz swung back and forth between the two of us, face red, fists balled. He was halfway out of his chair. “I knew something … I should have … SHIT!” I waited for another explosion, but it didn’t come. Instead, he froze in midrise, eyes closed tight, for thirty seconds or more.

“Options,” he said, as he lowered himself slowly back into his chair. “What are my options?”

Foos said, “I can tag a piece of data and we can follow it. But if these are sophisticated crooks, they’ll run us up and down a bunch of blind alleys.”

“Nosferatu had a Belarusian accent,” I said. “A lot of tech thieves are based in the former Soviet countries. They’re smart, tough, and well protected. Even if we tracked them down, probably not much you could do. Legally, I mean.”

“Illegally?” Leitz asked.

“I didn’t mean it that way. Not much you could do, period.”

“So I’m a powerless victim of some shady guys in Belarus? I refuse to accept that.”

Americans like to believe they are masters of their fate and the rest of the world is irrelevant. No percentage in pointing out that brand of arrogance. I was thinking about whether to broach the other anomaly in his computer network when a middle-aged woman leaned in the door. “Your sister’s on line two. Third time she’s called. Says it’s—”

“I know, urgent,” Leitz said. He punched a button on the phone. “Hello, Julia. I’m warning you, this is already a bad day. And watch your language. I have company.”

A nasal twang blew out of the speaker. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to get through for an hour. Haven’t you heard? New bidder. Sixty-seven-point-five billion. Stock of both companies are up. Street’s looking for a bidding war. We need to get out a statement—right away. I sent you a draft. Check your e-mail.”