The Incredible Banker (9 page)

'Bastard!' muttered Deepak as he kept the phone down.

'What happened?' Savitha could only hear one side of the conversation.

'What did he say?' she asked Deepak.

'Nothing, babes.' He sounded very agitated.

'Come on, tell me. What did he say?' She was persistent.

'He says that I am a political, manipulative asshole...damn!'

'But you are not.'

'I know I am not. But he is saying that the way I handled the mortgage audit, is being held against me. That bastard Karan has squealed to him. Even Rajneesh and Ramneek seem to have said something hostile. He even says that I am a name-dropper and that I flaunt my closeness to him. Though he did not say it clearly, he was implying that he will not be able to do anything for me.'

'Shit! And you were relying on him to take you back into a business role.'

'Yes. So it means that I am seriously screwed. Why did I even believe him and come here?'

'It's ok. Don't worry. Everything will be fine.' She patted his shoulder. That's the best she could do because Deepak's room was in full public view.

Deepak knew that it was not going to be all right. At least for the time being. He knew he was stuck in audit for long.

I
T was a small clingy room, at best 6 ft x 6 ft, dark and damp, with not enough ventilation. In that room was a young lad, who would not have been more than twenty-four years of age. In front of him, on the table, were two computers. One was an old antiquated desktop computer. The wires from it had been unplugged and plugged into a slick laptop, kept close by. The table was small and hence everything on it looked cramped. The graphics on the screen made one infer it was a state-of-the-art and heavily configured system.

Lying on the small table in an agonisingly confusing and cluttered manner were hordes of communication equipment with a mind-numbing number of cables connecting the equipment to a junction box outside the room.

The place resembled a sleazy rundown version of an internet cafe. The person sitting in the enclosure, which could classify to be called an apology of a room, had been there the entire day and had not come out even for a minute. A bottle of Gatorade and one of water were the only things he had consumed. Even the internet cafe owner had been given instructions not to allow anyone to come inside.
'There is a little bit of whore in all of us...what's your price?
Kerry Packer had once said. The whoring price of the Internet café owner was too low and he had happily obliged by keeping the café vacant.

The screen of the laptop was a mish-mash of websites. A crazy number of sites were open, or so it seemed. A few screen shots even showed some source codes, weird combinations of zero and one moving weirdly across the screen. To the layman, this would have looked extremely mind-numbing. But not to the person working in the room. He was at ease with what was transpiring.

After thirty minutes of constant peering into the screen, he took his eyes off. All this while he had been trying not to blink, lest he missed something important. He stretched a bit, slid back in his seat, rested his head against the seat top and then extended his arms to stretch. He was nearly there. The agenda for which he had spent twelve hours on a trot was nearly achieved. Nobody could stop him now.

He picked up a mobile phone lying on the table. Next to it was a voice scrambler, which when attached to any phone converted the sound emanating from the speaker into a string of data which could then be heard by the person at the other end, only if he had an unscrambler. A technique quite common if one wished to escape interception of sensitive conversations.

'I am nearly done. Another fifteen minutes and we will be in,' he said.

'That's great news, comrade. Charu will be happy,' the person on the other end replied

'Yes, the programme is running into its final leg. Once it's done, it will take us straight into the source data of the Indian government's passport office website. I expect this to be completed very soon.'

'Great going, comrade. Which means we will have all the data that we need by tomorrow morning?'

'Yes. I have managed to get into the website. Now I am one firewall away from their data. Before they realise what we have done, we would have gone away with all their important data.'

And then both of them broke into a roguish laughter.

And the government will be too ashamed to acknowledge this, and will never make this public,' the guy at the internet cafe bragged further.

'I know...I know. That's how it always works in our country.'

The person in the room then kept the phone down. After carefully disconnecting the scrambler, he packed it up and kept it in a specially designed space in his bag.

As time went by, the grin on his face grew wider. And finally when the words -

Begin download

Press 'Yes' to continue

appeared on his screen, he just clapped his hands in glee. It was a defining moment. What a momentum this would give to their ability to raise funds for their movement!

He pressed 'Yes' and the download began. He opened the bottle of Gatorade and took a couple of swigs.

At that very instant the owner of the cafe rushed in.

'What the hell? I have categorically told you not to come in!' screamed the guy on the computer.

'Cops!' the owner said pointing towards the door. He was panting. "They want me to shut the shop. It's too late.'

'Tell them to wait for another half an hour. I am nearly done,' came the nonchalant response.

'I have tried. I have even offered them money. But they are not going away.'

'How much did you offer them?'

'Five hundred bucks each. There are two of them. Infact they had come some time back. I managed to send them away. Now they have come again.'

'Come on, man. Don't be so greedy. Share what you are making with them too. Give them five thousand each. They will surely go away. It's more than their monthly salary. I will pay you that money. I can't afford to stop now.'

'Ok, let me try. But how long will you take?' The owner didn't seem too convinced.

'Another thirty minutes maximum, after which I will be gone from here.'

'Ok. Let me see if they scoot.' And the owner scurried out to speak to the beat constables.

He could hear muffled noises. The owner was trying to speak to the constables to give them thirty more minutes. The constables were adamant. The voices grew louder. The discussion was escalating into a conflict. 'Damn! What timing!'

'Downloading file. 14 minutes to go' the computer screen showed. If only the cops had come in after fifteen minutes! Even now, with god on his side, he could accomplish what he had set out to achieve.

'13 minutes to go.' He read aloud out the message on the screen.

By now the discussion had grown into a full-blown battle. He could hear some more voices. The battle had spilled on to the street and more had joined in. The shouts were clearly audible. The owner was screaming at the constables, asking them to mind their own business and leave.

'12 minutes to go!

The guy in the room folded his hands and closed his eyes. His lips started moving as if in a prayer. So close to achieving his goal, yet so far. The street fight was still on. He wanted to get up but couldn't. He didn't want to expose himself to the crowd, especially to the cops.

'11 minutes to go.
'He. didn't see this milestone being crossed as his eyes were closed and he was deep into his prayers. The closed eyes gave him a feeling of darkness all around him. Meditation had taught him how to concentrate on his job.

'10 minutes to go.'

'...Beep.'

A beep broke his concentration and he opened his eyes. The darkness persisted. He rubbed his eyes in disbelief and opened them again. The darkness stoically refused to dislodge itself. The only light in the room came from the screen of the laptop, which displayed two words in a box in the centre of the screen.

'Connection failed..'

The lights were off. He bent down in desperation and looked at the communication equipment – the equipment he had used to dial into the passport office website failed to respond. The amber light on the face of the equipment was not coming on. There was an eerie silence all around. The noises that had tormented him earlier, had suddenly fallen quiet.

'What the hell?' he screamed. His scream pierced the silence all around, before it fell hauntingly silent once again. He could now clearly hear the conversation outside. Slowly he realized what had happened.

After the conflict had escalated, one of the constables had walked into the cafe and pulled out the fuse. He was using a laptop and hence even though the power failed, the laptop was functional. The communication equipment that he was using didn't have a battery back up. It was plugged to the power socket. When the constable pulled out the fuse, it disconnected the power to the communications equipment which crashed, in the process disconnecting itself from the laptop, thus thwarting all the efforts of the person in the room.

There was no point fighting with the constables or the cafe owner, as there was nothing they could now do. The damage had already been done. He quietly packed up all the stuff in the room, disconnected all the communication lines, picked up his bag and left the room through the rear door.

A few minutes after he left, a muted and controlled blast was heard from the room where he was working. The cafe owner rushed inside only to find that the table and all the equipment on it had been reduced to ashes in the blast, destroying any trace left behind by the person working in that room.

What was his agenda? Why was he working there ? No one knew. Everything of relevance in the room was destroyed.

A few miles away a knock on the door woke up the occupant of the house.

'What are you doing here?' the lady asked as she opened the door. 'Is the job done?' she was eager to know.

'No. There was a problem. A power failure disrupted all our plans when we were so close. I was just minutes away from completing the download when a power failure crashed my communication equipment. Anyway, that was not to be. I need to stay here for the night. There might be people on the streets looking out for me.'

'You can't stay here for long. You need to leave before anyone gets up in the morning. No one should see you here.'

"The train to Midnapore leaves from Mumbai Central at 7.30 a.m. I will leave at six. Will that be all right?' asked Kishore.

'Yes, that should be fine. Come in quietly,' she said. She glanced out of the door briefly. Not a soul could be seen on the road at that hour. 'Good,' she said to herself as she banged the door shut.

"The last room on the right. You can rest there. And leave in the morning before anyone else wakes up. And please do not leave anything behind. I don't want any trace of you having stayed here, else I will be in trouble.' she said.

He walked to the last room and kept his bag on the table next to the bed. It was a functional room he and his comrades used when they had work in this part of the country, or when they wanted to hide from the police. He quietly sat down, reflecting on what went wrong. Not connecting the communications equipment to the battery backup was a big, big mistake. They were so close to hacking the passport office website. So close. They desperately needed the passport details so that they could gather the data which would be very useful in fudging identities of individuals. This raw data would have gone a long way in creating forged documents and identities for their comrades and also helped them in raising money for their cause.

And now, the entire government vigilance team would be after them. Everyone would get to know that someone had tried to hack the passport office website. The government would become extremely cautious. It would be almost impossible to make another similar attempt in the short run. Charu would be very upset. Comrade would also not like it at all. Damn! Ten more minutes was all it needed. But now they were back to square one. They had to think of some other plan. And he closed his eyes.

Next morning, when the lady of the house woke up, he was still there.

'What happened? I thought you were leaving at six?' she asked him.

'I spoke with the comrade late last night. He asked me to stay back in Mumbai for a week and await further instructions. They do not need me back in Midnapore. So I am here. Don't worry. I was only waiting for you to wake up. I am leaving now. There is a hostel in the suburbs, which is part sponsored by comrade and our unit. I have been asked to stay there. Didn't want to go there last night.'

'Ok. I will be in touch,' the lady told him.

He then picked up his luggage and walked out of her house. The last she saw of him was when he dumped his bag in the boot of a rickety black-and-yellow cab and got into the back seat.

P
ARTHA Thakurta stormed unapologetically into the video conferencing room in the CBI office in South Mumbai. He was accompanied by two of his officers. They were about five minutes late. The home secretary Nicholas Pereira was staring down at him from the video screen, which connected the Mumbai office of CBI to the high profile VC Suite in South Block, New Delhi. It was at his behest that the VC room in South Block was made available to all of them for an hour. They had already lost five minutes. Pereira and his high powered delegation was getting quite restless staring at a blank TV screen in the conference room. The meeting chaired by Pereira was also attended by the secretary in the information technology ministry, the CBI chief and a few other people of the rank of cabinet secretaries.

All of them had been pulled out of their beds early and called upon to attend this emergency meeting. That was partly the reason why all of them were grumpy that Partha Thakurta, the lowest in the official hierarchy, was joining them late. Ideally, Partha should have been the first one to come in and wait for Pereira and the others.

"Sorry, gentlemen. The Mumbai traffic was at its eccentric best today,' announced Thakurta as he settled in the chair.

'Gentlemen, can you please let us know all the information that we have? The minister has a press briefing in the next forty-five minutes. He is expecting a download from all of us.' Pereira was trying to gather information for his boss.

"Thakurta, what do we know?' It was the CBI chief.

'Sir, I am afraid, nothing.'

'What?' There was a stunned silence at the other end. More so because of the tone and manner of what Thakurta said.

'Yes, sir, absolutely nothing. I am afraid to say that this has been one of the most stealthily carried out attacks. We have never seen anything like this before. We have analyzed most of the data that we have. The IP address from where the breach was attempted is untraceable. A complex maze of routers and entanglers was used which makes it almost impossible for us to detect the point of origin. Even if we are successful it will take us ages to get to the core of it. We have no idea about the modus operandi, the technology used, or the people behind this attack.'

'But the minister has to say something to the press. They will be waiting.'

'What has been told to the press, sir?' Thakurta asked.

'As of now, nothing.'

'Do they know of this breach?'

'No. I don't think they have been told yet.' Pereira looked at the CBI chief who nodded in acceptance.

'Sir, I would recommend that we do not share anything with the press. Else we will be shamed if the world knows that someone nearly broke into our passport office datacentre and almost stole sensitive citizen information from the Government of India. It would be a matter of even greater shame if we were to go and tell them that we do not know who it was, or how it was done. I would request that we do not speak to the press at all.'

'What are you saying, Thakurta? Do you mean we brush this under the carpet?' Nicholas was appalled at this suggestion.

'I guess to protect our credibility we don't have a choice, sir.'

'If anyone were to find out, we could be lynched,' the CBI chief, too, stepped into the conversation.

'I understand, sir. But if people do find out and we have nothing to tell them, we will be condemned anyway.'

'So?'

'Don't tell the press anything. Put it on hold for some time till we unearth something. We will be at least able to save our face. In any case nothing was stolen. A data theft was just attempted.' Thakurta was very clear in his mind.

The discussion carried on for a few more minutes. Thakurta was very firm and convincing. He had a point. It would have been extremely shameful for a country of the size of India to tell the world that a breach had been attempted on a high security passport office website and that they had no clue if it was the LTTE, the Al-Qaeda or just a plain miscreant. Finally, the Delhi contingent of bureaucrats looked at each other and at the CBI chief. They all nodded. The ministers had to be told.

The entire issue was brushed under the carpet. It was easy to do so because fewer people knew about it and thankfully it got contained before the press could get a wind of it. However, one thing was agreed upon which was logical, too: the investigations would continue discreedy and the guilty would be punished. Thakurta was put in charge of the investigation.

It was in this chaos that Kishore checked into a room in a chawl adjoining the railway track in Chembur. A fifteen-foot high wall separated the chawl from the railway track. Standing outside his room, he could see a few small boys playing cricket beside the track. He stood there for an hour watching the game. It reminded him of his youthful days in his village when he nearly played for his state. His father's death in a police firing changed his life completely. He had to give up studies to provide for his family. Charu had resurrected him and his family had really prospered after Charu came into their lives.

Kishore's younger brother was now attending a school in his village. When his father had died, Kishore had no clue where life would take him and his family but Charu had helped him secure admission for his younger brother and paid his fees. Even his sister had been married off to an educated and well-paid boy based in the nearest city. Charu had yet again lent his support in fixing it up. He had even paid him twenty thousand rupees for the wedding. It was a grand affair and Charu had taken care of the invitees as if it was his own daughter's wedding. His mother had wept and fallen at Charu's feet that night. She was so grateful that he had helped her settle two of her three children. No one else could have done what Charu had done for them.

Kishore owed everything he had to Charu. So indebted he was that he would blindly do anything that Charu would ask him to. About six years back, Charu had even got him admitted into a technical institute run clandestinely, which trained him in computers, softwares, hacking and communications. He had learnt the tricks of the trade extremely fast and was one of the smartest students in that institute. Charu had handpicked him and assigned him the job of breaking into the passport office, showing tremendous faith in him, probably even more than the faith he himself had in Charu.

But now he had failed. The faith that Charu had placed in him lay shattered. How was he going to face Charu now? This was the first major project assigned to him and...and that, too, when he was so close. If only the cops had not come and pulled out the fuse, he would have done Charu proud. He was filled with remorse at having let his mentor down. There was no other choice. He now had to sit back and await the next set of instructions.