The Schwarzschild Radius (32 page)

“But you’re worthy?”

“No. I admit it. But I’m fighting against this terrible flaw that I have.”

“She stopped stripping. Then what happened?”

“From what I understand, she started selling her body. I just couldn’t save her. I’ll be lucky if I can save myself. You can help me, Rachel. I need your help. Promise me you’ll think about it.” He kissed her hand, then left her.

Rachel pretended to go to sleep on the couch. Once all was quiet above, she got up and went back to the library. No PC anywhere. Nothing in the living room or dining room. No iPods or cameras. She looked in the media library, in the TV cabinet. There was nothing―no porn of any kind, no laptop. Just books and photos everywhere.

She went down the stairs to the basement, bracing herself on the rail to put minimum weight on the steps. Every squeak was magnified. In the gym there was a Bowflex Extreme, weights, a treadmill, and a boxing speed bag. Nothing unusual in there.

Back in the living room, Rachel lay on the couch in the dark. Even if he had a PC at the office, he still had to have one at home―who didn’t? Was it in the bedroom where Sonia now lay next to him?

Was she wasting her time, abasing herself for nothing? Dammit, this was the one PC she had to get into.

Now that her eyes were adjusting to the dark, she began to perceive a faint green light pulsing every few seconds. As her night vision got better, the light grew brighter. A carbon monoxide alarm? Smoke alarm? She got up and followed the blinking light. It originated from atop the bookshelf. Standing up on a chair, she finally saw what it was. A wireless router. So he did have a PC somewhere in this house.

Rachel took a photo of the router with her cell phone. A Netgear MR814. That was going to be her way in.

“Sorry I can’t offer you guys breakfast, but I’m running late,” he said the next morning.

Rachel scrambled up and started folding the sheets.

“I’ll take care of that, don’t bother,” said the priest, all business now.

She made it to the bathroom, where she quickly washed her face and used the john. Two minutes later, they were out the door.

“I feel like hell,” said Rachel as they walked around the corner.

“You look it. There’s a place down the block. We can get some eats.”

At the Belgian Deli, Sonia grabbed a table while Rachel stood in line.

“Get me a bacon, egg, and cheese on a roll with an OJ,” said Sonia. “Hey, do you have a tampon?”

“In my knapsack.”

When Rachel got back with the food, Sonia just stared.

“Something wrong?” asked Rachel.

“You tell me.”

“Everything seems okay.”

“It should. For you.”

Rachel’s stomach was pulling down on her throat. Her knapsack contained her Columbia ID and a copy of this semester’s bill with her address and telephone number. For a moment, she had forgotten about her dual life.

“Tell me something. Are you homeless?”

“No. I’m not. Sonia―”

“What are you―writing a fucking term paper about me?”

“
No
.”

“I’m sure you’ll get an A. I gave you a lot of material. I guess you’ll be discussing it in class like a show and tell. You used me. How could you pretend to me that you’re on the streets when all the time you live on Long Island? You fucked me worse than any of those men.”

“I only did it because of Olivia―she’s my sister and I’m looking for her.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re the lowest thing I ever met, lower than I can ever stoop.”

“It was killing me―Sonia, don’t go. I couldn’t take lying to you anymore and I was going to tell you.” She walked off. Rachel went after her, took her arm, but Sonia tore it away. Rachel had taken away the little this girl had.

Sonia turned and spoke the words that disemboweled Rachel.

“You used me. And I thought I was keeping you clean by fucking those guys.”

achel took the somber train ride back to the dorm. She called her mother.

“Anything arrive for Olivia?” she asked.

“There’s been no mail for a week.”

A week without mail? Olivia wouldn’t have wanted her parents to intercept the passport, which would have come in an envelope from the State Department. Could she have suspended the mail, so she could go pick it up herself?

“I’m here to pick up the mail for Olivia Wallen,” said Rachel, handing her driver’s license to the lady at the post office. “I’m her sister.”

“Were you her designee?”

“Yes.”

The lady went to the back and Rachel tried to think of an excuse if the clerk came back to say Rachel wasn’t the designee. Instead, she had the mail in her hand. “Please sign here.” Rachel looked at the suspension of mail form. Olivia had written Rachel Wallen in the designee box.

Rachel quickly went through the six-inch pile of mail in her car. And there it was―an envelope from the State Department. She tore it open and there was the passport in the name of Olivia Wallen. She had deliberately worn a T-shirt and no makeup.

Rachel locked her bedroom door and counted all the money she had earned in the last eight days. It took a while to count. $3,222. God.

Expedia.com offered flights from Chiang Mai to New York for $1,697 over the next week.

She selected five flights leaving on different days, which she emailed to Achara along with the Expedia website. That left over fifteen-hundred for the corrupt officials.

One good deed done. Her thoughts now turned to Father Massey’s PC. That would have to wait until tonight.

At 10:00 p.m., Rachel pulled her car up to Massey’s house. She powered up her laptop and went down the list of available wireless networks in the area. All were secured. Shit. She’d have to crack the encrypted key in order to penetrate the network and that took time.

She pulled the car directly in front of Massey’s house and saw the signal strength decrease for three networks and increase for the other three. That narrowed it down to Summit, Network9, and Icarus networks. She put the car back four lengths to get out of sight and began.

First, she started CommView, a network packet sniffer and analyzer which captured packets of wireless information. CommView and Aircrack-ng were open source and downloadable off the web. She selected Summit network and started capturing data packets. When the packet collection completed, she launched Aircrack-ng. This ran a cracking program on the data packets. After breaking the encryption key, Rachel launched Internet Explorer and entered the standard IP address for a Netgear router. The login screen didn’t come up, so it wasn’t a Netgear.

She disconnected and repeated the process with the other two networks. Only one was a Netgear MRE814. That meant Icarus was Massey’s network. She connected to Icarus and brought up the router login screen. The factory ID and password didn’t work. She ran John the Ripper password cracker and thirteen minutes later it gave her VICTORY1. She enabled remote management and gave access to “everyone.” Now she’d be able to access the router from any PC on the web. It took three hours and twenty minutes. Just past two in the morning, Rachel took off for Columbia. At this hour, there was plenty of street parking.

The next day, she plugged the flash drive into her laptop and checked her emails. Yes! The IP addresses had been mailed to her. She selected Dr. Sartorius’ IP address and launched the SubSeven client on her laptop. If his college notebooks were so twisted, he must have something incriminating on his hard drive. As the screen populated, her pulse quickened. She browsed through directory after directory, finding medical and patient records. Billing records. There was no porn.