The Last Day (11 page)

Paul Wolfe said, “Ward, this crap went out from our server. That's all I can tell at the moment. Viruses are sort of out of my line of expertise, but it's a replicating virus. We're offline
and trying to figure out how to shut it down. I've got some calls in for help.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ward said. “What do you mean replicating? What the hell does that mean?”

“It makes copies of itself.”

“I know what replicating means!” Ward snapped.

“I'm sorry. It gets sent in and sends itself back out to the e-mail addresses in the infected computer,” Wolfe said, red- faced.

“So this got sent out to which of our e-mail addresses?”

“All of them, from every computer in the house. The phones are ringing off the hook,” Mark said. “I've never seen anything this big or this bad. There's a massive freak- out going on that started with our clients and friends and families. The media is already calling us about it.”

“And our company's signature is on the outgoing e-mails. We closed off the system to the outside immediately,” Wolfe said. “It opens infected computers to outside servers and downloads compressed files, and those files replicate over and over so our server's memory keeps filling up, and as it does so it overwrites what's stored there. We back up everything nightly, so we won't lose
anything we had before the invasion. I think it'll stop when it finishes filling the available memory, but who knows.”

“Call the police,” Ward said, feeling as though someone had dropped a waterbed on him.

“I called the cops right before you got here,” Mark told him. “This is illegal as hell. This will ruin us. I've called our PR firm so we can get in front of this.”

“I'll call …” Ward didn't even finish the thought. He just dialed Gene's number.

“Hello,” Gene answered.

“Gene, it's Ward. Get out here right now.” Ward couldn't control the anxiety, the fear, in his voice.

“I'm going into a meeting,” Gene replied. “What's up?”

“Have you looked at your e-mails from us this morning?”

“Tell him not to,” Paul Wolfe said.

“Just a second,” Gene said. “I'm looking. Okay, here's one from you. ‘You have to see this.’ Okay…”

“No, don't open it!” Ward yelled.
“A
virus has gone out to everybody in our address books and
it's filling our servers with child porn. You open that and it will send it to all your e-mail contacts.”

Paul added, “Tell him to shut down his system. Or delete everything from us without opening anything. Any e-mail that is headed ‘You have to see this’ is going to contain the virus.”

Ward told Gene what Wolfe had said. “I need you here now,” Ward said. “Unk's already called the cops.”

“Relax, I'm on my way,” Gene said. “Don't answer any questions from the cops or anybody else until I get there.”

“I think this crap could be all over the country, hell, the world, in a matter of hours,” Paul Wolfe said, rubbing his eyes.

“Hurry,” Ward said to Gene. He hung up and noticed a teary- eyed Leslie Wilde sitting at the end of the table with a crushed tissue in her hand. “Leslie, are you okay?”

She looked up at him and shook her head vigorously “I'm sorry,” she said, sobbing freely, “Mr. McCarty I just turned on my terminal and it went crazy showing those images. I shut down the computer, but it was too late. I didn't mean … It's horrible. Those awful pictures …”

“It isn't your fault,” Ward told her, sure that
was the case. “We'll fix this,” he said to no one in particular, praying that it was even possible to fix. Thinking about their clients seeing these images made his heart sink.

“Mr. McCarty,” the receptionist's voice said over the intercom. “There are two FBI agents here to see you.”

Mark ran his fingers over his hair. “We're the victims here,” he told everybody in the room and nobody in particular. “Figure out a way to stop it immediately. Get it back or something. Remember, people, we don't make any statements until Gene gets here.”

Ward told the receptionist to direct the agents up to the conference room.

TWENTY-FIVE

The FBI agents looked to Ward like a pair of young stockbrokers dressed to call on a wealthy client. They introduced themselves as Bill Firman and John Mayes, though Ward quickly forgot which was which.

Despite what he had told the assembled seconds before the agents entered, Mark immediately started to explain to the pair what had happened, but as soon as they looked at the computer screen over the techs’ shoulders, Agent Firman said, “Sir, close the computer and move away from it.” To Mark he said, “Tell your employees to turn off their monitors. We'll have our techs here as soon as possible to take over.”

“Agent Firman, we can't operate without our computers,” Mark protested.

“I understand that,” Firman told Mark. “But someone here sent a virus of child pornography over the Internet. Whether or not you did it on purpose, it's a federal crime, so we'll need to interview any employee with access to your computers, see if we can figure out exactly who is responsible.”

“Our attorney is on his way,” Ward said. “You can work it out with him. Until he gets here to sort this out, he's advised us not to answer any questions.”

“Well,” Agent Firman said, “that's your right, Mr”

“McCarty Ward McCarty.”

“Ward is our CEO,” Mark said.

“Well, Mr. McCarty, until we get this sorted out, we're closing down your computers. No employee is to remove anything from the premises, or leave the building, until we say so.”

“You can't do that,” Ward said. “We called you.”

“Actually Mr. McCarty,” the agent said, taking a folded piece of paper from his suit pocket. “Certain recipients of your illegal pornography called us. I have a warrant on the way,” he said. “Your computers are closed down until we say differently. Are you still online?”

Paul shook his head. “We closed off the servers to the outside as soon as we saw what was happening.”

Agent Mayes said, “Just make sure all of the computers are turned off. Yours, too; it's illegal for you to look at that.”

“You can't be serious,” Mark said.

“You can't think we did this on purpose?” Ward asked, incredulous.

“Of course not,” Firman answered.

Ward's cell phone rang and he recognized Natasha's number. When he opened the phone, everybody in the room could hear the sound of
his irate wife letting him have it with both barrels. Ward shuddered at the thought of the people on her e-mail list.

TWENTY-SIX

Gene Duncan's arrival made Ward feel better, but not for long. A contingent of no fewer than twenty FBI agents and other personnel arrived minutes before his attorney, moving through the building in ones and twos searching the offices. FBI computer techs, armed with laptops and other electronic equipment, hooked up to the RGI servers and sat typing as they stared intently at illuminated screens.

In the three hours since the virus's release, media vehicles had made their parking lot look like the streets outside the L.A. courthouse during the O. J. Simpson trial. The television viewing public was fast becoming aware that the virus had originated from a system serving a NASCAR- related business right smack on the buckle of the Bible Belt. The pundits descended.

As unnatural disasters went, this one was way off the charts, so RGI's name was fast becoming a household word, and not in a good way. Ward's suspicion was that someone was out to destroy his company, and this was probably going to accomplish just that. It was noon before it was Ward's turn with the interviewing agents, and Gene Duncan was at his side. The agents who'd arrived with the initial warrant, Mayes and Firman, were in charge. They interviewed Mark, Leslie, and the company's techs before they got around to Ward.

Agent Firman, whose expression was as unreadable to Ward as Chinese characters painted on a wall, was doing the talking.

Firman said, “Mr. McCarty what we've established so far is that the virus originated here in this building.”

“You think someone here did this?” Ward asked incredulously.

“Obviously someone did this to damage the company,” Gene railed.

Firman asked, “Do you have any enemies, Mr. McCarty?”

“Flash Dibble has been trying to buy this company for six months,” Ward said. “I have refused
to sell it. Maybe he figured if he couldn't have it, he'd destroy it to lower the price, or start another company using our pissed- off clients as his base. Yesterday I told his son I'd never sell to them. He threatened me.”

“Flash Dibble's son is trying to destroy your company? Okay, it's a theory,” Firman said, writing. “Our techs tell me that the images seem to be mostly Russian pornography. Is your Mr. Dibble a Russian mobster?”

“It makes as much sense as anything else,” Gene said. “The threat was veiled, but it sure sounded like a threat to me. Couldn't anyone with the knowledge create the virus? That is something that could be purchased. What
about
Trey Dibble? Who else would want to destroy a company that he can't buy? He's a malicious brat.”

“Destroying it would certainly be a lot cheaper than paying twenty- two million,” Ward said.

Firman reached into a sack and removed a glassine envelope with a padded envelope in it. Ward could read his own name on the front, above his home address, complete with canceled stamps. The return address wasn't one he was familiar with.

“We found this in your desk,” Firman said.

“I've never seen it before,” Ward said.

“My techs tell me that the CD inside this envelope was the source of the virus. Our techs have tracked the virus's point of origin to one desktop computer here, Mr. McCarty Yours.”

Ward felt as though he'd been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. “That's impossible,” he protested, feeling suddenly nauseated.

“When someone put this disk in your computer, it infected your servers, and spread and sent e-mails containing the virus to the addresses in all of the computers in the building.”

“You can't think I did it?” Ward asked, stunned. “I didn't use my computer yesterday except to check e-mails, and I haven't put any CDs into it in ages.”

“Based on what we know, it's possible you did,” Firman said. “I don't say so, the evidence does. I'm sure whoever did it didn't do it on purpose. If you did it, you obviously didn't know when you looked at it that it contained a Trojan horse that waited some amount of time before it came to life. I
strongly
suspect you, or someone not yet identified, just wanted to look at the
porn, but whomever you, or someone else, got it from played a dirty little trick on you, or them. I strongly suspect that you, or someone else yet to be identified, is a pervert who's going to spend some quality time in a federal prison.”

Ward said evenly, “I've never seen that envelope before.”

Gene said, “So even if Ward received the envelope—and who knows what was originally inside it—and inserted it into his computer, you can't prove he knew its contents. And he says he's never seen it before, so you have to prove that isn't the case. Anybody could have put the CD inside the envelope. You have no case against Mr. McCarty.”

“If he's never seen either, then your client's prints won't be on the envelope or the disk,” Firman said. “And naturally it doesn't have a label saying what it is. That would be a first. There will be more evidence, I suspect, and then we'll have more to go on.”

“Okay, Agent Firman. If it's true, and he knew, for argument's sake,” Gene said, “and it certainly isn't, why would he be stupid enough to keep that CD in his office?”

“I don't know, Mr. Duncan. I'll check with the Behavioral Science Unit. Maybe—theoretically speaking, of course—he thinks his office is safe. According to his computer logs, he's visited questionable pornography sites for the past year.”

“I've never visited any pornography sites,” Ward said.

Gene put his hand on Ward's forearm. “Are you placing my client under arrest?” he asked the agent.

“Not yet,” Firman said. “But we'll need to take Mr. McCarty's fingerprints for exclusionary purposes.”

“No problem,” Ward said, quickly.

“A polygraph would help to clear him,” Agent Mayes added.

“I'd be happy to,” Ward said.

“My client will not be taking any polygraph,” Gene said.

“Why not, if he isn't guilty?” Firman asked.

“Because it isn't admissible,” Gene said. “And we all know there's good reason for that.”

“You aren't a criminal attorney, are you, Mr. Duncan?” Agent Firman drawled.

Ward said, “I have absolutely nothing to hide.”

“Oh, Mr. McCarty,” Firman said, smiling for the first time since he'd come into the building. “It's pretty obvious that your lawyer doesn't believe that's the case.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Watcher parked his truck outside a textile mill in Charlotte's south side that had been converted into lofts. He walked to a red door with the gold number 12 on it and rang the bell. He scanned the parking lot and was glad to see that it was deserted.

The peephole went dark and a second later the door opened. The young man who squinted out at Watcher was thin, stooped, and bald on the top of his head. The remaining halo of hair surrounding his pate was long and gathered into a thin ponytail. He wore a soul patch between his narrow lower lip and the weak chin beneath. The thick lenses held in heavy black frames enlarged his bloodshot blue eyes. He wore a soiled undershirt, and the boxer shorts he wore
looked like they were going to fall off as soon as he exhaled. Obviously he'd been awake for a very long time.

“Hi, Bert,” Watcher said.

“Hey, man,” Bert said. “Come in. You know what the frigging sun does to vampires.”

After Watcher went in, Bert looked out and scanned the parking lot before he closed the door. Except for the bathroom, Bert's condo was one open space with eighteen- foot ceilings. The lower seven feet of the floor- to- ceiling windows, built to provide both light and ventilation to the workers in the cavernous weaving room, were covered by stained bedsheets. On a mezzanine, accessible by narrow stairs, an unmade bed was surrounded by piles of clothes and other flotsam from Bert's solitary lifestyle. The space smelled like a locker room after a football game.