No Apologies and No Regrets

Jack and Gabe sat in rapt attention listening to Sally and Bart’s update. They had torn apart the program Bart retrieved the day before. The architecture of the source code appeared complex though its function remained rather simple. Even so, unwinding it was a tedious task and they should have been wiped out, but instead they seemed energized: especially Sally. Their overview took a little over a half hour.

  “We now believe it was this code, most likely launched by Ilya and Ivan Rusikov that caused the securities market to meltdown on May 6.”

  “Because?” Jack was a man of few words.

  “First, and most important, I can match the code with a transmission that was sent from Ilya Rusikov’s computer to a recipient in Europe, and, second, because the code resembles something Sally was working on.”

  Gabe interrupted, “I’m confused. Why were you working on code to crater the stock market?”

  “I wasn’t, Gabe. I built a model so I could engineer a shield against it. I was getting close, too.”

  “Were you working on an assignment for a client?” Gabe looked baffled.

  “No, I did it on my own.”

  “Because?”

  “I told you, a friend of mine ran into Ivan and Ilya Rusikov recently. Ilya was drinking a lot, but he can't hold his liquor and got rather chatty. Before Ivan could haul him away my friend had a pretty good idea where his project was headed. She gave me the details later. I figured if they were even thinking about manipulating the market I should get a head start on engineering a fix. I also wanted to see how hard it would be to hack into Wall Street and precipitate significant movement without being detected.”

  “Still competing with your old Stanford friends?”

  “I was just doing my job, Gabe. As I recall you hired me for my curiosity as much as my engineering skills and I’ve never made a secret of being competitive with everyone.” Sally gave Gabe a smug smile. He didn’t like it, but what she said was true.

  “So exactly how far did you get with this project of yours?”

  “Almost finished, but I have to say, Ilya was a week or two ahead of me.”

  “I can’t believe you’d admit to it, Sally. Don’t let me hear you say that outside this office,” Gabe gave his protégé a thin smile.

  “Count on it.” Sally shared a conspiratorial wink with her boss and continued. “Besides, who knows how long they’ve been working on this thing. If it took them three or four months I'll need at least another week or so to sort it out.” Even then she knew exactly when the brothers got the idea, but she chose to keep the information to herself.

  Bart jumped into the conversation. “We thought it looked as though it was collaborative, something created by a team of developers and engineers.”

  Sally remained silent. Gabe asked, “At Fluid Dimension?”

  “That doesn’t seem to fit. The Rusikov brothers may be corrupt, but most of those guys are wrapped up in creating apps and games and commercial kinds of stuff. They're recreational hackers for sure, but they aren’t crooked at this level.”

  “I don’t think Ilya is, either,” Sally said a little too quickly and sounding protective of her former student. She added, “But he is competitive where his brother is concerned. My friend told me he claimed to have done something to eclipse anything Ivan created.”

  “Interesting. And scary. I think we should run with the assumption that one or both of them are the perpetrators.”

  Gabe did not mention that he had just gotten some intel that would seem to substantiate Sally’s theory, if that’s what it was. His conversation with the McLean based client had been very informative.

  Jack, asked, “So what’s your next move?”

  “It’s not the program itself, Jack. It’s what Sally and I call the “key”. It’s like a password that starts this thing in motion then shuts it down. It may even initiate the ‘self destruct’ routine that causes the whole thing to evaporate without a trace, at least not one we've been able to identify yet.”

  “You’d have a hell of a time making a case against these guys in court.” Jack was the company CLO as well as co-founder.

  “Impossible is more like it, but we’re working on that from another angle.”

  “But here is something interesting. This program, we call it “Blitz”, appears to require a new trigger routine every time it’s used. You couldn't just pick up the code we have and make it work: not the way it did on Thursday afternoon.”

  “How do you think it works?”

  Sally jumped in. “There are multiple segments. There are steps built into the process that require the pass codes in order to proceed to the next stage. I'm guessing either Ilya or Ivan created random code generators tied to Blitz. The program recognizes sequences as matching those existing within a pre-defined universe of possibilities.” And Blitz is just as stupid a name as Thor’s Hammer.

  “Since the original destroyed itself, we can’t be sure what symbols or values they used to generate pass codes. Hebrew, Cyrillic, Greek, or anything else you can imagine.” Sally drummed her fingers on the table and added, “You could digitize the sound I just made, for that matter, and you’ve got a pass code.”

  “Regardless, the Rusikovs have kept whatever it is to themselves. If they did this all on their own they’d have no reason to share the information. If not, the information is their security against whoever they’re working for.”

  “So, what you’re saying is, at least for now, nobody could run this program again without the brothers?” Gabe had a disconcertingly serious look on his face as he asked the question.

  “That’s our opinion,” Bart said looking at Sally for confirmation. She shook her head casually in the affirmative.

  “And, once again, how certain are you the Rusikov program initiated the ‘flash crash’?”

  “A very high level of probability given what we extracted from Ilya’s email.” Sally sat back and exhaled, seemingly for the first time during the meeting. Bart jumped into the conversation again.

  “Last but not least, we have identified the recipient of the code Ilya sent.”

  Gabe listened intently as Bart went on.

  “Her name is Anya Kovich. That didn't mean anything to us until we realized she was formerly known as Anya Ospenskya. She is from Ukraine and is a world class engineer and developer. For awhile she worked for Kaspersky Lab in Moscow. Then, about four years ago, she married a guy named Hans Kovich. He’s dead now, but he worked at a Milan based hedge fund called Grosserkopf, Haslich & Archloch, Gbh.”

  “They would certainly have use of a program like this.”

  “Better still, Anya went to work at Grosserkopf right after she and Hans got married. She’s there now.”

  “You know this because?”

  “We hacked the company’s HR files. She’s listed as a ‘Special Operations Director’. Whatever that is it pays three hundred thousand euros a year.”

  Jack and Gabe looked at one another.

  “Serge Malroff’s company.”

  “Anybody know what killed Hans Kovich?”

  “No.”

  “Any bets he did not die of natural causes?”

  They both had grim smiles on their faces as they adjourned the meeting and headed for Gabe’s office.

  14.