Infinite Exposure (5 page)

***

Vladimir sat in his office just outside of Nuremberg. He had been born in Russia and done his fair share of black bag operations
in the past. That lifestyle had him riding around in a wheelchair now. There was a bullet lodged in his spine from when an
operation went bad. He had always been good with computers and now it was the only thing supporting him.

He didn't really remember how he got involved with this operation. It all seemed to start with a friend from the Russian mafia
providing an introduction to an Arab gentleman. They wanted the same kind of Trojan horse virus he had written for the Russians
to collect much of the same information. He originally assumed it was yet another identity theft ring. What was once a necessity
of the spy game was now big business. He was somewhat surprised when they told him he didn't need to make the virus install
itself or look for credit card information. They were more interested in gathering information on the machine itself: CPU
serial number, Network card ID, the full IP routing where possible. A mental warning alarm should have went off when he heard
this, but it didn't.

He told them the best method of getting what they wanted was a small simple ping script attached to an email that would ping
a fixed IP address hard coded into the script, which then communicated with a server. The server and virus could send several
messages back and forth containing the email address, message header, machine hardware information and other data. He would
be able to write both sides of the software and as long as the script didn't try to open the address book of the email software
it should remain undetected. He could also put code into it which would allow it to determine if it was being read from within
a Web page rather than an email program on a local machine. He could then have the browser return much of the information.

The Arab asked how many versions of the Trojan horse Vladimir could deliver. He was certain that eventually some virus checker
would catch onto the signature and the tool would be useless. Vladimir felt he could come up with five versions with different
signatures and tactics so most virus scanners wouldn't block them for months. He said the real danger was in using a hard-coded
IP address instead of a Web address looked up on-line. It is easy to get caught that way, but a hard-coded address that avoided
DNS (Dynamic Name Service) lookup would stall off virus scanners longer. The Arab informed him they had no fear of getting
caught. The IP address would be forwarded from inside of a secure facility.

In truth, that last statement should have been Vladimir's second warning. He was definitely off his game. It wasn't that Vladimir
minded the killing game or killing itself. If this had been a simple seek and destroy and he had still been hale and whole,
he would have gladly signed up to kill al-Qaeda members. Russians had died in the Twin Towers as well. A good many of his
former coworkers actually went off to engage in that sort of game shortly after September 11.

What bothered Vladimir about this operation was learning what he shouldn't have learned. Vladimir was the only non-Nazi Party
member to know about the second camp. At least he believed he was, with the exception of the Arab he had met. Vladimir had
absolutely no problem killing these people. He had spent many of his younger days putting two behind the ear of many different
types of people. His objection was to the incinerator and the “showers” and a building site that could end up on the news.
His office wasn't far from the place where trials had been held and photographs of things like that sent some rather infamous
people to their deaths.

Life in a wheelchair was still life after all, and the Russian mafia had been paying quite well for his services. He kept
his old contacts active there in case he needed to make a speedy trip with a new identity. During his idle time, Vladimir
pondered why he had taken this job. It always came down to the same two reasons:

1. The pay was more regular and just as good as his other work

2. He really believed these people deserved to die.

Vladimir made himself a promise though. The day people started going to the second camp in buses and trains instead of the
back of a car, he was out of here. He told nobody of his promise, but he had his mafia contacts move his money to accounts
in many different countries. There was simply no telling how far he would have to run when this was over. One thing he had
not puzzled out was why there were so many refrigeration units built at the site. With all of the refrigeration units and
loading docks out front, the place looked like a food distribution center.

His computer playing a WAV file and popping up a message pulled him out of his thoughts and back into the room he called his
office. Much like some people have their email client playing a “You've got mail!” jingle when email came in, he had his ping
server set up to play the Monty Python “Message for you sir” sound byte whenever it got a confirmed hit. He quickly clicked
on the message box button to display the information and the IP address trace. Two hits had been received from the same address
in Lutton, England.

***

The man in the suit had just finished reading his email when Umar came in to make his report. Hans and the Brit were there
as well. Umar gave them a complete report and the translations for the messages concerning tunnel and trains. He was complimented
on his team's work and told to get some sleep for tomorrow. After he left the man in the suit set Hans to hacking into the
registration database for the email account providers and gave the IP addresses he had just received in his email to the Brit
to run against the database. Within an hour, they had both completed their tasks. One of the IP addresses came from an Internet
café in Lutton, England, the other came from a library in the same city. One of the email addresses was actually tied to a
Lutton address.

The Brit wanted to immediately turn it over to a British special investigations unit, but the man in the suit stopped him.
“What do we have to give them?” he asked.

“An address and a plot,” responded the Brit.

“Neither of which can be used to make an arrest,” was the counter argument. “We don't even have a name or know if the address
is real. It could simply be a vacant lot. The only thing we can do is attempt to confirm the address, then have our own people
put them under surveillance. Until they build a bomb or give us more explicit details, there is nothing that could be used
as the basis for an arrest.”

“We should be able to nab them for questioning ourselves,” said the Brit.

Hans replied, “We will, once they have been under surveillance for a while and we can identify just
whom
to nab. We need to identify the person at the keyboard sending the email. This group is eager. They were sent back a request
for more information. Something will let slip in the email by the time we have identified who is sending the email.”

“Give me all of the addresses. I will send them to our people in England and they will begin hanging out at the café and library.
If the address is actually real for the email address, we will have someone watching there as well. It shouldn't take too
long to get logging software installed on every machine in each place. In less than two weeks we should be able to identify
exactly who is sending the messages. If they are this eager to move, they should be having regular meetings with the rest
of their cell. It won't take long to nab the entire group. We just have to be certain we are getting the entire group,” said
the man in the suit.

Greed

Nikolaus sat in his office going over the construction specifications. He had been a member of the Reformed Nazi Party for
many years and worked with the many different factions who all claimed to be
the
Reformed Nazi Party. His current job was a vice president position for a biotech company whose name he couldn't even remember.
He didn't need to remember it. The name was printed everywhere. Corporations were just chess pieces to him. He had both built
and crushed dozens of them.

Most of this corporation's upper management were loyal party members. They let him do whatever he wanted because he was higher
in the party than they were. To do what he did for the party, Nikolaus could never be a celebrity or public figure. His lot
was to work in the shadows, making sure all of the details were taken care of. He also made sure that his signature was never
on any documents relating to his current project. Signoff came from those higher in the company when he told them to sign.

The current project was the type that would make one famous if discovered — the kind of famous that gets you executed after
a lengthy public trial. Nikolaus was very much aware of the risks involved. He had split the building of the thing across
several different contracting companies run by loyal party members whose employees were mostly loyal party members. In truth
there were only a couple of thousand loyal party members spread across the entire country. The rest were party members when
the sun was shining. Still, he was impressed what only a thousand people could accomplish when they worked in secret and remained
focused.

A secured facility for both research and manufacturing was how the project was presented to the board of directors to get
initial funding. It had been the decision of the party that this facility should be built by a corporation with stockholders
rather than just the party or a privately held company. When you spread the blame around from the beginning you reduced your
chance of going to prison or being executed. This blame had already spread to the bulk of the financial institutions on America's
Wall Street.

The corporation had manufacturing and research facilities scattered around the globe. They were big suppliers of various medical
products and a few patented drugs. In Wall Street's eyes, the biotech star was once again rising.

It wasn't a well kept secret that several black-ops contracts were being worked on by the corporation. With all of the concern
about terrorists using biological or chemical agents to attack large populations, business had been booming for the lines
making antidotes. Even if an attack never happened, every government had to stockpile enough for all of their citizens. Some
of the products would only keep three years in storage unless the storage was kept at or below -60C.

The cost of keeping millions of doses stored at such a temperature was very prohibitive for most countries. Now the company
was offering “storage provider” contracts. Countries either too poor or unwilling to spend the money up front could pay the
company an annual fee in the millions of dollars range. The company promised to have on hand in storage the number of doses
needed by the largest population participating in the contract. The company would air lift the doses to the country in need
within four hours of being notified about the attack.

Because wind can carry a biological or chemical agent a long way, there were five separate “storage provider” contracts, also
referred to as plans. Countries chose which contract they wanted to participate in. The fees for the plans were determined
by the largest population participating in the plan. Each country was instructed to join a plan that didn't have neighboring
countries in it. The plans would only protect as many people as they had doses. Other plans may offer to sell some of their
doses, but if they didn't, you would have to wait for production to get scaled up cranking out the product you needed. In
short, everyone was banking on al-Qaeda never getting strong enough to launch a biological agent high enough into the atmosphere
to cover more than one continent.

Had the citizens of any country participating in the plans heard of this, they might have thought it ghoulish, but insurance
companies play the statistics game every day. Human lives are meaningless numbers on a spreadsheet to them. They were banking
on two things. The first was that al-Qaeda couldn't pull it off. The second was if they did pull it off, everyone would be
dead anyway, so no fear of being sued. Everyone that is, except the leaders who chose to join the plan instead of providing
in-country storage. They built their own little freezer and hooked it to their data center UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply).
The taxpayers paid for that little project as well, they just were never told about it.

The beauty in all of this was it allowed Nikolaus to be in charge of building a new secured facility with acres of both refrigerated
and frozen storage. Because the facility would be storing a commodity which was beyond any price once an attack happened,
it had to be highly secured. If you are going to build a highly secured facility, you should also put some research labs,
sleeping quarters, etc. in the compound so you can do all of your government-funded or secret projects there. The dorm like
settings allowed for the building of communal showers. Last, but not least, the only way to keep your secret projects truly
secret is to have a large incinerator on site as well.

Everybody on the board of directors knew this would be a location for some clandestine operations. Every one of them understood
that they didn't have clearance from the various governments involved to know what projects were going on there. They swallowed
this pill because the cash influx from the “storage provider” contracts alone gave them the largest stock option bonuses they
had ever had. Once the facility was fully operational, the following year's option would be even bigger.

Nikolaus made certain some of the labs were of “pilot plant” size. It was easy justifying the creation of them since the company
had routinely set up pilot plants for new drug or chemical lines working out the production kinks before adding the line to
an existing factory. The board of directors didn't know it yet, but this company was poised to become one of the largest suppliers
in the world of stem-cell and whole-blood products. The profit generated by producing new stem-cell lines would be staggering.

***

Margret sat in the board room watching Big Four Consulting run through their PowerPoint presentation. Her boss, Kent, had
signed onto this idea several weeks ago and helped prepare the final spreadsheet using numbers provided by the consulting
firm. The room was packed with consultants not old enough to shave but dressed in their finest anyway. The exact same people
made the exact same comments they had made in the presentation to Kent; of course Kent's assistant was the only one who noticed.
Twisting, bending, smiling and empathizing all happened right on cue. Good-looking young guys were placed strategically around
and across from the female board member, while the short skirts virtually smothered the dirty old men.

It wasn't that she minded the “sex for sale” marketing tactic used by Big Four Consulting. Lord knows they all did it. Had
she not been on the short list of people who would be left twisting in the breeze when this project went south, she might
have even considered helping herself to a few servings from some of the dishes being offered. What really pissed her off was
knowing that the tweaked libidos in the room were going to sign off on the project in hopes of getting some, only to have
put the entire corporation face down on the table to be rectally violated when the invoices from the project started. Margret
could already see how this train wreck was going to play out.

1. Contract would be signed, then someone would buy drinks and dinner.

2. Mother ship would dock the very next day, spilling out an unbelievable number of well-dressed kids not old enough to shave,
costing the company $120/hr. each.

3. Paper consumption would increase 50-fold at the company as hand carts full of great looking documentation having absolutely
nothing to do with the project were generated. All of it required by the “process” used by the consulting firm.

4. Entire budget then would be consumed, requiring a small “extension” budget.

5. Once the extension budget was granted, Big Four Consulting would step out of the picture and make company employees do
the actual project, putting in 90 hours per week on salary.

6. Most employees involved in the project would quit and the department heads would be tagged for the failed project.

Some people said Margret was sarcastic, those who knew anything about IT knew she was a realist. This is the standard M.O.
for large consulting firms. They weren't there to solve your problem, just schmooze you long enough to consume all of your
budget. Very few board members were ever willing to say they had been taken for tens of millions of dollars, so they very
rarely got sued. When they did get sued, it was usually by a company in dire enough financial straits that they could simply
apply for continuances until the plaintiff took bankruptcy. It was an outright racket, but the MBAs would never admit it.

The project leader finished her positive and energetic chat about the last PowerPoint slide she had up. She smiled to the
board and asked if they had any questions.
Oh, she is good,
thought Margret.
Such a classic burn and bucket bunko scam. Just wait for it ...

“What will this project cost?” came the question from one of the board members.

The lemmings are about to go over the cliff,
Margret thought.

A quick click of the mouse brought up the final slide in the presentation, which was Kent's spreadsheet, prepared using the
Big Four's equipment valuations. There, in black and white, the board saw how half of the project would be paid for by sale
of the existing equipment and software licenses once the move was completed. The rest of the project would be paid for by
the lack of software and hardware maintenance contracts over the next three years. Given that maintenance contracts tend to
go up every year, the project would probably be paid back sooner, but they had to use the numbers currently on file.

Margret sat in silence. If the board was dumb enough to overlook the obvious, she was not going to pipe up about it. She was
only Kent's assistant. True, she would be the first fired when this train turned from locomotive to a pile of twisted smoldering
steel, but she would be fired today if she pointed out just how stupid both her boss and the board of directors were. What
was missing from that spreadsheet was just how much the service contract would be for the three years they were using the
software license savings to pay off the project. Margret was fairly certain it was going to be way more than the savings,
but the girl had chutzpah for putting up a spreadsheet and leaving that off.

The board made some appreciative sounds and a few members even nodded at each other. Of course they said they would have to
discuss the project among themselves before making a decision, but everyone in the room knew the white elephant had been sold
again. Business cards were handed out with promises they could call the cell phone any time with questions on the project.
The team leader even offered to make reservations at a very posh restaurant where they could get a private room this evening
to go over any details in a more relaxed surrounding.

Oh, this girl can work it!
thought Margret.
I wonder if there will even be 14-year-old girls in the room to catch on video with the dirty old men?
Nah. They won'
t resort to that this time. Some of the fresh faces in this room might be on their knees later, but they all know the elephant
has been sold, so they will just be doing that out of habit.

Margret added an item to the To-Do list in her PDA: Update Resume.

***

Kent walked back to his office using his strutting man-in-charge walk. He had power gripped each of the board member's hands
at the end of the meeting and assured them he had every confidence of this project's success. He had an entire folder of links
to articles from the weekly trade press expounding off-shoring as the answer to world hunger and the Utopia of cost cutting.
Of course, Kent had to have his assistant Margret find those links and create that folder, but the board didn't need those
details.

Yes sir, Kent was already picking out his corner office in Mahogany Row. He was going to go from director to president, skipping
all of those cumbersome VP roles in between. Kent was going to achieve this feat because Kent had a plan!

Original ideas didn't happen much to Kent, at least not good ones. In truth, this wasn't an original idea, and it wasn't his,
but he was going to claim it. Kent was going to be stuck in this IT role for approximately two years because the bank frowned
upon people changing jobs more often than that. He could be “offered” a job through HR as part of a promotion, but he couldn't
apply for one directly before then. You didn't get “offered” the kind of job Kent wanted unless you ended your tour on an
up-swing, and he had an up-swing planned.

Big Four Consulting assured him that they could migrate a data center every other month as long as there was a maintenance
window in that month. They wouldn't risk moving a data center during the end of a quarter when many additional jobs would
need to be run. Moving all four sets of data centers to the new off-shore set would take under 18 months. While the plan would
address a massive cost issue, it still wouldn't address the monumental effort of integrating the various applications so management
could have its “world view” of First Global Bank.

Kent's big plan was to completely eliminate the on-shore programming staff. He had called a college friend at General Motors
who told him how they had massively reduced their pension liability and direct cash outlay for programming by outsourcing
all development to a consulting company that was using programmers in India and paying them $10/day. Of course the consulting
company was charging $10/hour for those programmers and pocketing the difference, but that detail didn't come up. Another
detail that didn't come up was the fact every project of any real size the off-shore workers did was a complete failure that
had to be hidden in the books. No portion of it could be fixed or salvaged. No matter what country you went to for IT workers,
skilled software developers didn't come cheap. This was an arrangement based on cheap, so they didn't get skill.