Stolen Secrets (16 page)

“No... I... I just— ”

“Then turn off the motor for a minute. Give yourself time,” Ryan said.

“That’s right,” Angie added. “We’ve had days to get used to this, but I can see it’s been a great shock to you.”

The woman turned the motor off and opened the door. Angie knelt down, putting her arms around her. The redhead broke into heavy weeping and Angie just held her, amazing Ryan with her ability to empathize. He always felt inadequate when trying to tell someone about an injury or death. Yet women— most women— automatically hugged and held each other, able to connect at that moment.

He was glad Angie was with him right now. Her talents— abilities— especially her people skills, were such that they closed the gap of awkwardness for him. Actually, he felt he needed her near him all the time. She had become the sunshine in his day.

If he no longer employed her, would she go her own way? She seemed independent of family and friends, drifting from situation to situation, fitting in wherever she found herself. She could easily drift away from him, if he let her.

He had been devastated when Kathleen left. What would happen if... when... Angie drifted away? He could think of no way he could prepare himself for that moment.

His cell phone vibrated. Jim Markum from Anchorage. The MXOIL computers were being hacked into, once again. He was ready to call the hotel to reserve a room for Ryan, then changed it to two rooms when Ryan said he’d bring an assistant.

Ryan hung up. “Are you going to be all right if we leave?” he asked the grieving woman, who seemed to be gaining control of her tears.

She nodded, wiping her eyes with her fingers. “Yes.”

“We can stay a few minutes. What’s your name?”

“Barbara. I’ll wait here a little bit. You say he’s at Harborview? With Mary?”

“Yes. Where do you live? We could take you home— ”

She waved away his questions. “I’ll drive to the hospital. After a while. You go ahead.”

He touched Angie’s shoulder and she stood up.

“We have to go to Anchorage. We’ll drop Warren’s things off on the way to the airport. If we hurry, we may catch the cracker.”

“But it takes four hours to fly up there. Plus the two hour wait at the airport. Won’t we—”

“I’ve priority clearance. I’m like an air marshal when I fly— I fly armed. They’ll have things ready for me when we arrive, even hold a plane if need be. We’ll take the first flight out.”

“What about Tag?”

Six PM. Pitch black, except for the city lights spread out like fireflies trapped in a large bowl. As the plane circled to land, Ryan noted that although the surrounding Chugach Mountains were white, the city of Anchorage had no snow on the ground. No snowballs for Angie here.

He had enjoyed their flight up here, talking with her about various topics until Robyn had called with the news that Warren had died. Then they talked quietly about Mary and her future.

He leaned past Angie and pointed to the groups of lights. “That’s Fort Richardson over there, and Elmendorf Air Force Base near the water. Anchorage itself is in that area. The airport is out on the point, you’ll see it as we turn.”

“You must have to fly up often, to know the city so well.”

“Yes, but also, my grandparents lived here for over sixty years, at 12th and R, in a cooperative apartment complex called Safehaven. Robyn and I used to come up and spend summers with them.”

“Are they still alive?”

“No. If they were, I’d take you to meet them. They were wonderful folks, fiercely loyal to Alaska and to America. Alaskan pioneers... sourdoughs. They drove us over most of the state. There aren’t that many main roads.”

He had left his house key at Harborview with Robyn, who promised to drive over and rescue Tag. From the plane he called Scott, giving him his itinerary. Then Angie called Grandma Miller to bring her up-to-date.

Jim Markum met them in the luggage area. Ryan introduced her to the transplanted Texan— thin, wiry, and not much taller than himself. Ryan had talked to Markum from the airplane, letting him know which flight they were on.

“Car’s over yonder,” Jim said, pointing to a spot in the covered parking garage. He spoke without moving his lips, which emphasized the slow pace of his lingering southern accent.

The MXOIL corporate offices took up two square blocks in downtown Anchorage. With Angie beside him, Ryan followed Jim down a long carpeted corridor replete with Alaskan art and up an elevator. Jim led them to a small windowless room, bare except for a couple of swivel chairs and an army cot. A table held a computer and notebook, three empty mugs, and a large pot of hot coffee.

The last time he came, Ryan had set up this room, along with an alarm to alert whoever baby-sat the system. It was all they needed.

Networks were especially vulnerable to hacking. So many users, so many machines, so many ways for someone to enter the system.

Jim motioned around the room. “This time we kept our hands off the files. The outdated password he tried rounded him up and plunked him right here.”

“Perfect.” Ryan laid his laptop on the table, threw his jacket over the back of a chair, then seated himself in front of the computer and went to work. He first checked the log files which kept a record of any activity on the computer. In trying to cover up his intrusion, the cracker had erased his activity, leaving a blank space in the log which revealed the amount of time he had been inside.

He had entered at eight PM and left at five AM. The cracker probably lived on the West Coast— if he kept regular hacker hours, sleeping late and then working until early in the morning. He’d have entered much earlier in the day if he lived in an eastern time zone. Usually.

The cracker had gone to a root account and typed in a command. It would’ve erased all the files in the MXOIL computer system if Ryan hadn’t set up this computer as a “jail” to trap his activity. The command hadn’t worked; Ryan’s program protected against it.

The cracker had shown no regard for the company he was trying to destroy. It was the worst kind of malicious mischief.

“I’m going to take you down,” Ryan muttered. He’d take great joy in doing so, matching wits in the cat and mouse game that’d soon ensue.

Ryan glanced at his clock. Almost eight. Time for the cracker to try again. “Are all your networked computers synchronized?” he asked Jim.

“Yep. Just like you asked. Everything’s on atomic time, so they’ll stay in synch.”

“Good man.” He had been busy in the week Ryan was gone. He had had a lot of computers to change.

“Why is ‘synch’ so important?” Angie asked, removing her coat and putting it across the other chair.

“With the clocks synchronized, we can match the events at different stations on the network. The cracker could be using a string of computers to hide himself. Or...” He paused to watch some new activity picked up by his monitor. It looked like the cracker might be back. He watched longer. No, more like someone misspelled a file name and triggered this computer to pick it up.

“Or...?” Angie prompted, when Ryan looked back at them.

“Or it could be someone right here in MXOIL. We need to see if one computer is being used overtime.”

“Why hack in if they work here?” Angie asked. “Couldn’t they just take what they want?”

“Ryan set up the system with different levels of security,” Jim answered. “I have access to everything. Some people have access only to certain programs or functions.”

“You’re backing everything up, right?” Ryan asked him, wishing he had requested a room with a window. It didn’t matter for himself, but he’d like one for Angie.

Jim nodded. “Right. I’ve assigned a man to monitor the back-up activity, to make sure nothing is tampered with.”

“I’d like to know if this cracker is headed for anything specific. Did he go after your credit card files?”

“Nope.”

“Interesting. What does MXOIL have that a cracker would want to steal?”

“Lots of things. Drilling sites. Places where we’ve discovered oil and are still in the negotiating phase of buying the drilling rights. Business expansion plans. I don’t think our files would be valuable to anyone other than another oil company. But to them it’d be invaluable. Or pipeline information, if he’s a terrorist.”

“Terrorists. Oil. You can’t rule them out.”

“It was my first thought when it happened.”

“Hum. Any chance of a Russian interest?”

“Not likely, although some of our fields extend far out into the sea. People forget that Alaska is larger than half the lower forty-eight states put together— and if superimposed over them on a map, would touch at all four borders. Our oil reserves are huge— not small like the environmentalists would have you believe.”

“That’s a thought. An environmental group.”

“Possible. They’d love to get their hands on our files. We’re the hated “big oil,” you know. We caught some trying to blow up one of our wells on the North Slope last summer. If they had their way, we’d all be burning wood for fuel and living in the smoky past. They’re the original terrorists.”

“Are you changing your passwords frequently?”

“Yes. Especially after last time.”

Ryan nodded. Jim learned fast. The first time the cracker invaded, he’d used fairly recent passwords to access vital information. Fortunately, Jim had been working late and had seen it. He did the only thing he could think of. He switched off the power, shutting everything down— then called Ryan. He kept MXOIL shut down for thirty-four hours while Ryan removed the damage and retrieved their files.

“Also,” Jim continued, “you mentioned putting a trap-and-trace on this line. I talked to our phone company and they did it. This computer only.”

“Good work! Sometimes the bureaucrats make that nigh impossible.”

“Hey, man, our local FBI and our Alaskan judges don’t take too kindly to this kind of ‘invasion.’ Both gave the go-ahead immediately.”

“I love Alaska.” Ryan looked at Angie. “This way the phone company can trace a call past any cutouts the cracker might use, all the way to the original number.”

“Which would give you an address,” she said.

“Uh, huh. With the 911 systems in place, we can even trace cell phones now.”

“No privacy.”

“The crooks use our technology against us. The police have to play catch-up, using the same technology.” Ryan glanced at the blank screen, then turned back to Jim. “Any way you can get a copy of those files? Just covering the break-in? We’ll go over it while we wait for the cracker to resume.”

“I’m ahead of you. I sent for it as soon as you said you were coming.”

“It’s here?”

“Yes. It only shows us the record of activity on this one computer... this phone line. They faxed it over. Eight pages of numbers. I have it in my desk. I didn’t want to leave it in this room, as too many people have access.”

Ryan could hardly wait to get his hands on it. “Go get it, man.”

“Will do.” Markum walked out the door.

Ryan stood up and called after him. “And if you have it, bring a list of recently fired or laid off employees. Go back, say, six months.”

“Gotcha.”

“Don’t you think he was being a little extreme, saying environmentalists were ‘terrorists?’” Angie asked.

“Just a few of them, of course. They destroy thing and scare people from their jobs.”

Angie looked at him skeptically. “For instance?”

“Research labs. They burned down the Urban Horticulture Center at the UW years ago and destroyed fifty years of experiments.”

“I heard about that.”

“The worse thing is...” he paused to watch a flurry of commands coming across the screen. Someone was trying out different passwords. “Write these down.” She wrote faster than he, and he wanted to watch for a pattern, if any.

Angie grabbed her notebook and started writing.

The cracker kept trying names and dates, then variations of them. The computer refused them all, but the cracker remained persistent, trying variation after variation.

Ryan leaned against the table and it gave a little hop as he did so. He noted the hop absentmindedly as he watched the screen. He had set up this computer— and only this one— to allow all attempts made. The others blocked access after four tries. This computer kept a log of all attempts to enter.

The cracker wasn’t using the computer to try to locate passwords, although he might’ve already tried that and failed. Ryan made sure all his clients use passwords that contained both letters and numbers, thus preventing a cracker from doing a computer-run code-breaking attack.

He ran his finger across his thumbnail, feeling the deep “V” worn there from his pocketknife. He needed to do something else while he was thinking, something that wouldn’t leave an imprint.

“You got those?” he asked, when the screen went blank.

“Yes.”

“We’ll see if the names and dates mean anything to Jim. If so, our cracker is in the company.”

“And not a terrorist.”

“Right.” He pulled the chair sideways so he could keep both her and the screen in view, and sat down. He felt another little hop as he did so. Alaska never failed to remind you that its ground wasn’t always stationary.

Angie tapped her finger on the table. “You started to tell me the worse thing about an environmental ‘terrorist.’”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah. It’s done for money.”

She looked puzzled. “I don’t connect.”

“The leaders find a cause, real or not, and rake off most of the proceeds. Like a benefit concert that ends up benefiting them. Very little goes to the actual cause. The leaders get the people who support them to think they are really helping to make a difference. Like global warming. Real science doesn’t support it.”

“Are you sure about that?” She was frowning.

“Yes.
The earth has actually switched to a cooling cycle.
” He could see Angie would need proof. He’d have to show it to her. “If people could alter climates, we’d be pretty powerful. Anyway, if the cause goes away, they look for another one— or manufacture one.”

“Huh. I’d think that, being a mountain climber, you’d be an environmentalist.”

“I am. I just know better than to join a group. I send my money directly to folks I know, who actually work at maintaining trails and parks. And I’m careful even doing that. There’s something about a large sum of money that brings out the worst in people.”

“Wealth and power corrupts.”

“Right. I’m going to call Scott. Bring him up to date.”

Scott picked up on the second ring and Ryan told him where they were.

“Is it wise, leaving your place unguarded? I could go stay there,” Scott said.

“No. But thanks. I hired a guard. They’ll keep one posted until I return. I thought you were going to Portland to work on the new account there?”

“They asked me to wait a week. Seems their network wasn’t totally in place. The snowstorm slowed them down, too.”

“Oh. If I’d known that, I’d have had you stay at my place.”

“You order a continuous guard?”

“Yes. I want the kids protected— the ones climbing my wall.”

“Good.”

Ryan hung up and stretched. “How’re you doing?” he asked Angie.

She stood also. “A little tired of sitting.”

“Coffee?”

“Good idea.” She grabbed the mugs and he poured, enjoying the quiet intimacy of the moment. She was a pleasure to work with, her voice gentle on his ears.

Taking his mug he lifted it in a toast. “Down with all crackers!”

“Hear. Hear.”

She met his gaze, a determined light in her eyes. Ryan liked what he saw. She enjoyed the challenge as much as he.

They had just started to drink what proved to be terrible coffee, bitter black and thick as soup, when Jim re-entered, papers in hand, and handed them to Ryan.

Jim waved at the coffeepot. “Harold fixed that. You probably won’t like his brew. None of the rest of us can stomach it.”

“That’s for sure.” Ryan set his cup down and Angie did the same.

“I’ll send for a fresh pot. Something worth drinking. And some food too, if you’d like.”

“Thanks.” Ryan looked down at the list of names of former employees. No one there he recognized as a hacker. Next he scanned the phone records, looking at the area codes in front of each number. “Hmmm. He’s no computer genius. He’s made several mistakes although he re-routed himself all over the world. Tokyo, Paris, Hamburg, Cape Town, Pittsburgh, and some I don’t recognize. What? That can’t be.” He stared at the last number in the sequence. He had read that number off to the police— this morning. He looked at his watch— actually, yesterday morning. It was now past midnight.