“I told him that I respected his opinion but I was going to get to the bottom of it and I wasn’t leaving until I did. I said that if Fenton was innocent, as Sexton claimed, then my investigation would exonerate him. I instructed him not to say anything to anyone.
“He asked me what the hell made me think I could stop him from saying something to Matt Fenton. I told him that if I ever found out that he had breathed a word to anyone of what I had just told him in confidence, I would first fire him on the spot and then make a call to my liaison at army intelligence—”
“Jeff Steele?
“Yes, that’s the guy, but I didn’t use his name. I only told Sexton that I would hate to have to report to army intelligence that my security audit had turned up irregularities and the former head of operations had compromised my investigation which made me suspect he might be involved. Sexton didn’t say a word, but his face turned beet-red, so I left.”
Theo was smiling out of one side of his mouth. “That must have been when he called me. So then what?”
“The further I dug into the matter, the more obvious it became that the problems could only be deliberate. Whoever was at the center of it was doing their damnedest to make it look like incompetence on the part of our customers, like Corrine Industries, rather than a problem with KDEX.”
“But what you’re describing seems … I don’t know, too simple to be the real answer.”
“It’s precisely because the whole thing was so stupidly simple that it seemed impossible it could be deliberate.
“I gave Matt Fenton plenty of freedom to avoid me and let him think I hadn’t found anything and was looking into other areas of the operation. It took me a while, but I laid a trap by going behind his back and scheduled a shipment that was locked down in a way that only he could intercept it—but he didn’t know that.
“The shipment supposedly contained the first batch of our latest generation of guidance systems. It went out in regular fashion with the proper tracking documents. The thing was, I had our security intercept the consignment at the shipper and take possession of it. So I knew for a fact that the guidance systems never arrived at Corrine Industries—security still had them under lock and key. Yet Fenton turned in signed delivery confirmations for the phantom shipments along with all his other paperwork. It was ‘signed’ by Gerard Laza at Corrine Industries, just like he did with all the other shipments, making it look like it had been delivered.”
“This shipment that was never shipped? And yet he turned in signed receipts confirming that it had been delivered?”
“That’s right. The only one who could have forged the signature confirming delivery on the bill of lading was Matt Fenton.”
“So we’re paying this asshole six figures a year to steal guidance systems from us?”
“Not anymore. I gave him enough nuggets of my evidence for him to know that I had him dead to rights. He knew it could get very ugly for him, very fast, so when I put a resignation letter in front of him, one I had personally written for him, one that included an agreement to immediately surrender his pension and health benefits, he signed it.
“I had the heads of our Dallas corporate security standing in his open doorway, watching while I had this conversation with him, ready to escort golden boy off company property. I think he just wanted to get the hell out of the building. As soon as he signed everything, security escorted him to the front doors.”
Theo rested his fingertips on his desk as he leaned toward her. “So you just let him resign and leave? He stole sensitive and very expensive equipment and got away with it? That doesn’t sound like the Kate Bishop I know so well.”
Kate leaned in herself. “Are you kidding? These were missile guidance systems. I knew that if I called the district attorney they would have to investigate, Fenton would lawyer up, and the whole thing would take years and then likely get plea-bargained down—at best—and that’s only if Fenton didn’t flee while he was out on bail. So I told him he was free to go.”
Theo was speechless as he wiped a hand down his face, wanting her to go on.
“Instead of letting Fenton get lost in the legal system, I had already called Jeff Steele, our liaison with the army, and filled him in.
“Matt Fenton knew he was out of a high-paying job, but he thought he had at least gotten away with stealing what were some very expensive items. He’d probably sold those items on the black market or to foreign governments. He was happy as hell to be escorted out of the building. He probably had his car keys in his hand on the elevator ride down to the first floor. When our security guys took him out the front doors, Jeff Steele and his team were waiting. They took him into custody. I think our reservist has been checked into the Army’s Grey Bar Hotel.”
Theo took a deep breath as he considered it all. He finally smiled conspiratorially. “Now, that sounds like the Kate I know. So that’s what took you so long in Dallas.”
She nodded. “That’s what took me so long in Dallas.”
“What did Sexton have to say once this was all uncovered?”
Kate shrugged. “He shook my hand, thanking me for resolving the ‘glitch’ in their operation, then he said he had a meeting and had to go. I’m sure he was glad to have me out of his hair. My investigation showed that he didn’t have anything to do with it, other than the fact that the scheme worked because he was too arrogant to see what was going on right under his nose.”
“You would think he would be thankful that you had absolved him of any wrongdoing.”
“You would think. Since Fenton and my file with all the evidence are now in the hands of the army, there was no need to follow anything up with Sexton, so I caught an earlier flight.”
“Well,” Theo said, “I’m certainly glad that those hairs at the back of your neck still seem in good working order.” One eyebrow lowered. “I’ll deal with Tony Sexton myself.”
Kate smiled. “I thought that maybe you would,” she said as she pulled her vibrating phone out of her jacket pocket.
It was a text from Brian, in the IT department, asking if she could come down to see him right away.
Kate waggled her phone. “I need to go see Brian.”
Theo finally sat down and leaned back, locking his fingers behind his head. “It’s always something, isn’t it?”
He’d said more than he could know.
Kate slipped her phone back in her pocket. “I guess I’d better go see what Brian’s problem is.”
“Good luck down in the hive.”
“The hive” was what he called the tenth floor, where all the computer operations were located.
“And Kate, if you feel the need, please, for god’s sake, take a few weeks off. I’m not just saying that—I mean it. With what just happened with John, you may find that you need some time. If you do, take all the time you need.”
“I appreciate that, Theo.” Kate smiled briefly. “I’ll think about it, I promise,” she said before heading for the door.
CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN
Kate marched past the long stretch of glass panes down on the tenth floor. She was already tired from the long meeting with Theo, and now she knew it would be another long meeting with Brian.
Beyond the glass, in a freezing-cold room of their own, were row upon row of servers, each row with a lettered blue endplate. It always reminded her a little of visiting the library when she had been a girl and seeing the rows of shelves filled with adventures and mysteries. What all the servers contained were, to her, mostly mysteries. Even from outside the room she could hear in the background the constant drone of white noise from all those machines going about their inscrutable tasks. Beneath her feet, miles of cables and wires ran under removable floor plates.
Opposite the server room were offices filled with people in charge of overseeing the computer department. A few of the people inside waved at her from their desks as she passed their open doors. She returned the gesture without slowing.
At the far end of t
he tenth floor, she finally reached Brian’s room, set by itself at an angle across the corner. Everyone called it “Brian’s cave.” Theodore Harper’s management genius was in leaving people like Brian alone to do what they did best. Kate supposed that applied to her as well. Theo didn’t always understand how certain people got results, but he recognized what they were able to accomplish and so he gave them the latitude they needed. Thus, Brian was left alone to work in his triangular cave.
The wastebasket just to the left inside the door was overflowing with empty diet cola cans. As usual, the room was semi-dark, with three big monitors providing most of the light. Brian had on a green plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the front open over a gray T-shirt. Since he would sometimes stay in his cave for days on end, he frequently had a good growth of stubble, but today he was clean-shaven. Surprisingly, for someone who seemed to care little about his appearance, his brown hair was neatly trimmed and always kept in order, even if most of it was too thick and too short to lie down.
The monitors lit the side of his smooth, pudgy face when he looked up. “Kate!” he said, sounding oddly relieved to see her.
He reached out, grabbed the back of an empty chair at the other side of the long counter holding the monitors, and spun it around for her.
“Here, why don’t you sit down?”
Kate sighed inwardly. Whenever Brian wanted her to sit down, it was more likely than not to be a long time before he was finished. He liked to show her things, pointing out relevant issues across the expanse of monitors. New topics he wanted to tell her about continually popped into his head. Brian found his electronic cosmos intoxicatingly interesting.
As he explained various issues to her he often became more and more excited, while Kate usually got more and more lost. He had virtually no comprehension of how little others actually understood of the things he was talking about. Knowledge of all things computer-related seemed to ooze from his every pore, as if computer code were part of his DNA.
Kate had long ago learned not to ask Brian to explain too many things if she didn’t think she needed to know exactly what he was talking about, because in his excitement to explain them he would only end up veering down a variety of side trails, often for hours, wandering around in the intricacies of ancillary information before she was able to shoo him back to the main path. He saw all the information in his head as an ever-expanding universe of data points that were all linked in one way or another and all profoundly intriguing.
She often had trouble getting him to stay on subject because to Brian there was no such thing as a discrete subject. It was all part of a whole, and separating out a slice was impossible.
The things he told her about were usually wrapped in a word salad of technical details that he thought she would surely want to know. She rarely cut off his explanations because, to Brian, they were his evidence, and they mattered to him the same way her evidence mattered to her. While all those bits of information were often frustratingly scattered, she respected his unique view of how they were interdependent, and even if the details weren’t all important to her, they were to him, so she let him go on until he got to the parts that she needed to know about.
Because she listened patiently, Brian loved explaining anomalies to her. She had learned such patience from listening to her brother’s tedious explanations of the most ordinary things. One time it had taken her brother fifteen minutes to explain how the bus door worked and how the driver operated it. It had been no less important to him than the things in Brian’s world were to him.
In Brian’s case, though, those anomalies were not only profoundly complex, but sometimes profoundly important to the security of the company.
Kate pulled the chair around and sat down. “So what’s up?”
He looked over at her, concern tightening the soft contours of his face. “I heard about your brother. I’m sorry.”
Kate’s focus was drawn past him to the news stories about it hovering in the upper corner of the far monitor. Brian usually knew about things before anyone else. He seemed to have spiderwebs everywhere, vibrating with information for him to snatch up. He was protective of the people at KDEX and watched for anything that might affect them.
Kate deliberately didn’t read any of the news on his monitor. Some was video from TV stations, with static news anchors sitting at their desks, eyes caught half closed in stop-frame, red triangles over their chests, waiting to be clicked on so they could come to life and report on the murder. Kate was trying her best to remember her brother as he had been when alive.
“Thanks, Brian. John was a gentle being. I’m going to miss him.”
Brian nodded with sincere understanding. “I wish I could have known him.”
It occurred to Kate that they probably would have gotten along quite well. “So what’s up? Why did you want to see me?”
Brian leaned toward her, his eyes intense with concern, and an odd glint of glee. “We’ve been hacked.”
Suddenly alert, Kate sat up straighter. “Who’s on it?”
“No one but me knows about it, yet,” he said in a low voice, almost as if he didn’t want anyone to hear, even though there was no one else within earshot.
Kate got up and closed the door, then sat back down.
She crossed her legs and locked her fingers together over her knee. “What do you mean, no one but you knows about it?”
“I didn’t want to say anything to anyone else until I talked to you about it.”
“Why? You know I’m no computer expert.”
He tilted his head toward her. “Because this is a very weird kind of hack.”
To Kate, most of the things in Brian’s electronic world were weird. “What was so weird about it?”
“It was a probe of specific files. It started several weeks ago. I’ve been watching, waiting to see what they were after.”
“Isn’t that rather dangerous, letting it go on like that?”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t an APT.”
“An APT?”
“An Advanced Persistent Threat. Those frequently come from foreign nations—China, Russia, Iran. There are teams in China dedicated to writing malware just to try to break into our systems. I think the Chinese alone probably have more people trying to break into our systems than we have working here.
“Then there are syndicates dedicated to stealing intellectual property or information and selling it. They can have hundreds of thousands of botnets at their command. They use them for everything from saturating online ticket sales for popular concerts so they can scoop them up to be sold for an outrageous profit, to using malware to try to break into allied systems, much like impersonating a janitor and using their key ring to open doors.
“These syndicates are big organizations, frequently offshore. They’re run like any big business, with huge departments dedicated to nothing but writing malware to bypass specific types of security defenses or even just to get into a particular company or government agency. A lot of that kind of code is sold on private channels to the highest bidder—like people wanting to get into KDEX.
“They’re always finding new ways to hijack employee machines and plant subroutines in our system, continually trying to connect our data with their mother ship. If that succeeds, they have a conduit right into everything—emails, passwords, designs, that kind of stuff. They mine the data and analyze communications, looking for passwords or anything of value. Those kinds of attacks by crime syndicates and foreign governments are happening twenty-four hours a day. Thousands a day.
“Since we manufacture weapons components, we’re also a big fat target for hacktivists—people intent on destroying the nation’s defense structure. Political hacktivism is the subversive use of computers to create anarchy by destabilizing and destroying our world.”
Kate’s mind was spinning with the hopeless nature of internet security. “Seems like the bad guys outnumber us.”
“If people only knew how lawless and out of contr
ol the internet criminal activity really is …
“Here, let me show you.” He laid a keyboard in his lap and started typing. “This is an attack map developed by the Norse Corporation, a company we use.”
He typed in “map.norsecorp.com,” and a map of the world opened. He pointed at the screen.
“Hack attacks show up as streaks of light shooting across the globe from their source to their target. Here below the map the attacks are logged. The number of attacks is so massive they’re logged to the thousandth of a second.”
Kate was stunned by what she was seeing. “It looks like World War Three.”
“These are hack attacks happening in real time,” Brian said. “There are times when it looks even worse than what you’re seeing at the moment. Norse created a galaxy of honeypots, millions of them, in hundreds of data centers all around the world. They mimic computers, servers, mobile devices, office equipment, just about everything. We use them because one of the things they track is attacks on industrial equipment. With these attack logs we can see where the attacks are coming from and what the threat environment is at any given moment.”
The map was in continual turmoil as the targets lit up in rings of varying sizes and colors, depending on the density of the attacks. At times it looked like the surface of the sun.
“It’s like the fourth century all over again with the Huns invading, pillaging, and destroying lives and everything people have built,” Brian said. “The sheer amount of damage is staggering. Crime on a massive scale grows all the time and is rarely punished. A lot of it is other countries hacking into everything we have. It’s like there is no longer any law and order. No one and nothing is safe anymore. It’s like civilization itself is beginning to crack apart.”
It revealed a world of criminal activity and cyberattacks that Kate had never fully appreciated.