Skinner

  She takes the second task chair at the workstation, sits, eases herself close to Smith.

  “What do you know, Smith? What do you already have in your head that you don’t want to have to share with someone who puts you under contract?”

  She smiles, bats her eyelashes.

  “Please don’t tell me you aren’t dying to show off in front of someone who would actually understand how smart you’ve been.”

  He swallows Red Vine.

  “You suck.”

  Jae stops smiling.

  “People died. Terrence said. He said we can save lives. So. Not just money. Okay. But what? Smith. What the hell do you know?”

  He looks at the half rope of Red Vine in his hand, drops it back in the bucket.

  “I know that everyone knew it was coming. A little over a year after Stuxnet hit, variants started circulating. DuQu, Flame, Gauss. Undoubtedly others that were never detected. Worked up by someone who has access to the Stuxnet source code. Massive, truly massive pieces of government-engineered, customized malware. And then ReStuxnet. Someone put that one on a thumb drive with a West-Tebrum logo on it. Left it in the parking lot outside the plant. Some employee plugged it in to find out who it belonged to. Bunch of innocuous files, nothing special. But while it was plugged in, it loaded ReStuxnet from a partition on the drive. So it’s inside their firewall. It spread to multiple systems within the corporate firewall, dozens, in less than a day. Spread outside, too, rode home on laptops and some portable media.”

  Jae closes her eyes and knocks on her forehead with her knuckles.

  “So it’s still spreading?”

  “Yeah, but that’s a good thing for us. See, every time this fucker infects a new system, it sends a data packet back home with the IP addresses and some other handy info from the infected machines. And we can track those packets. They’re going to one of two domains hosted on servers located in Yemen and Kiev. Now, Yemen shows up and you can imagine how crazy they went in the Pentagon. But Ukraine is a much more intriguing spot on the map when it comes to hackery. Hacking is practically a national industry. Tends toward credit card theft. Dwarfs what I got up to when I was a kid. Hundreds of thousands of accounts. So many that they don’t know what to do with them all. Terrence had me doing some digging into credit hacks last year. Tracking some cash. Insane amounts of money. National-scale economies. I used some of the contacts I made on that gig following up this Kiev connection.”

  He points a finger, sends it a few inches, makes a sound like an arrow hitting its target.

  “And Ukraine sounds like a real possibility for our hackers. But no, it’s bullshit. Too easy. These people are smart enough to hide themselves better than that. There has to be some physical space between the badguys and their hosting.”

  Smith closes his eyes and rubs his temples.

  “Which leaves everyone still trying to figure out who launched the attack. Someone with a tremendous talent pool to draw on and cash to burn. Those kinds of resources definitely point toward foreign nationals. And when you talk foreign nationals and hacking, you are always talking China.”

  Jae nods again.

  “So the Chinese did it.”

  Smith blows out his cheeks and shakes his head.

  “Nope. Not the Chinese.”

  Jae taps her head.

  “Smith, I know how to hit people. When I started to get tits, my dad insisted on self-defense classes. He found a Hapkido dojang in Santa Barbara. Drove me there two evenings a week and Saturday mornings, for three years. I stuck with it for the pure pleasure of hitting people.”

  Smith scratches his beard, fingers disappearing into the thicket of hair.

  “Yeah. Do I remember stories about you picking fights in redneck bars while you were at A&M? Classy, Jae.”

  “The point I’m trying to get across here is how nearly entirely out of patience I am becoming.”

  “Great. Stop waving your ancient Asian fighting skills in my face and I’ll wrap it up.”

  Jae clenches her teeth but does not kick Smith’s ass.

  “So it’s not China. So that leaves?”

  Smith claps his hands once.

  “Imagine, if you will, a cadre of non-state actors. Are these nebulous hackers interested in credit card accounts? No. Are they into porn? No. Are they into Nigerian four-nineteen scams? No. Are they into cracking government systems to prove their might? No. Are they interested in showing the cracks in existing systems so as to improve the overall hardiness of the Internet? No. What are their motives? What do these cyber guerrillas want? Striking invisibly across borders without regard to profit, what do they hope to gain? No one knows. We only know that they exist.”

  He combs the end of his beard with his fingers, a silent movie villain.

  “They must!”

  He stops combing.

  “And these faceless agents seem to be in Sweden. Stockholm, to be exact.”

  Jae winces as if something has been thrown in her face.

  “Swedish hackers attacked the United States of America?”

  “I didn’t say they were Swedish, though they do appear to speak the language. Or code in it, anyway. This French deep data diver, he caught a command packet going the other way. Written in Swedish, and, when he traced it back, not easy, he found it was coming from an IP address in Stockholm.”

  “So who knows this?”

  Smith shrugs.

  “Not too fucking many. This French guy, he’s very, very pro-WikiLeaks, anti-secrets, down with the Western powers, especially the USA, let anarchism rule. I think he’s torn between information wants to be free and fuck you, Washington, DC. For now he’s pretending he never found it and spending his time trying to hack the Bilderberg conference. Far as I know, there’s only a few of us he let in on this bit of intel.

  Jae rubs her tired eyes.

  “Why haven’t you told anyone?”

  Smith tugs at his beard.

  “I’m ambivalent about these things myself, Jae. I call someone at the NSA, tell them what I know, they’re not just gonna go track down whoever is on the other end of that IP address. My French friend and a lot of other people I like are going to have their doors kicked in. But someone blew something up and people died, and I don’t endorse that bullshit. So. I’m telling you. Because you’re the coolest spy I know.”

  Jae almost smiles.

  “I’m not a spy.”

  Smith shakes his head.

  “Tell it to the Chinese, lady, I know better.”

  “Where in Stockholm?”

  Smith and Jae look at Skinner. Become so still as they’ve been speaking that they had forgotten him.

  Smith finds a pen and a Post-it on his desk.

  “That’s the punch line.”

  He writes something down.

  “There’s a billing address for the hosting services. In Gamla Stan.”

  Skinner takes the slip of yellow paper from him.

  “Do you have a gun?”

  Maker Smith chews the end of his pen.

  “Interesting conversational transition.”

  Jae touches the pockets of her vest.

  “Gun.”

  There’s a #28 X-Acto Pen Knife on the table. Skinner picks it up, it swivels between his fingers, suddenly animate in his grasp, handle aligned with his thumb, blade jutting at an angle from the base of his palm, edge near the inside of his wrist.

  Jae and Smith look at the tool in his hand, become instantly a weapon.

  Skinner looks at the door, closed, having sighed shut after they entered.

  “Multiple contractors, intelligence agencies, branches of the military. And it won’t just be US companies and agencies. Everyone will want to know who could pull off West-Tebrum, and how. You have a great deal of very valuable information. People might want it.”

  Skinner holds up the X-Acto.

  “May I keep this?”

  Smith nods.

  “Sure. Have fun.”

  Skinner drops the
X-Acto into his jacket pocket.

  “I would like to have a gun. If one is available.”

  Smith looks at the door.

  “Do you think anyone is out there?”

  “Let’s see.”

  The door opens on a loud hiss of compressed air, but no one shoots them.

  Jae exhales, expressing a depth of irritation that Skinner is certain could drown cats.

  “I’m on the edge of paranoia as it is. Please don’t send me tumbling over it.”

  She enters Smith’s stage-set bedroom, stops, looks to her right, to her left, then turns around.

  “Toilet?”

  Smith points.

  “Straight, left before the bedroom at the end. And don’t go in there, it’s my real room and you don’t want to see what it’s like.”

  Jae, walking down the hall away from them, muttering.

  “Yeah, I need someone to tell me that.”

  Skinner hasn’t moved, standing there as Joe walks past him, hearing the sound of the bathroom door slamming shut, then placing a hand on Smith’s shoulder.

  “Gun.”

  Smith ducks from under Skinner’s hand, sidles out the door, and leads the way down the hall.

  “It’s not much, but it shoots. I think.”

  The gun is white. The same white as the doorstop bowling ball, and it is made of extruded ABS plastic.

  “The barrel and the hammer are alloy. I had them machined. Spring I ordered from a catalogue. Everything else I fabbed here.”

  They are in the workshop unit down the hall from Smith’s home. The Erector set device with its tubes and hoses is a 3-D printer, a fabricator. Homemade. Melted plastic pumped through the hoses, threadlike layers, building in 3-D plastic from digital design templates on Smith’s computer.

  “Industrial prototyping in your home. Cool, huh?”

  Skinner is looking at the gun, wondering about the odds that it might blow up in his face should he pull the trigger.

  “It’s plastic.”

  Smith bounces his head up and down.

  “Like I said, cool, huh?”

  “Have you fired it?”

  Smith scratches the back of his neck.

  “Yeah. Nah. Sort of. I made a derringer, two-shot, fired that. It worked. For two shots, anyway.”

  The gun is bulky, big, fat. A sawed-off Desert Eagle in its proportions. But absurdly light.

  Smith points at the trigger.

  “It’s not meant for multiples uses, you know. No disassembly and cleaning issues. So that eliminated a ton of screws and pins. But the barrel shroud, plastic. And the trigger housing assembly has dozens of tiny pieces. So, once you start shooting, I don’t know how they all hold up to the heat and the recoil. Possible it melts and blows the slide off the top on round one.”

  Skinner looks at the bottom of the grip, presses a wedge that releases the clip.

  “How did you plan to test it?”

  Smith shakes his head.

  “Man, I didn’t. It’s just a proof of concept thing. To say I did it. You know?”

  Skinner pulls the clip free. For all its bulk it holds only six rounds. And it’s fully loaded.

  “But you put bullets in it.”

  “Sure. Otherwise what’s the point?”

  Skinner slides the clip back in. It’s quite smooth, seats firmly. He pinches the slide, pulls it back, lets it go, and it snaps forward with a sound like especially large Lego pieces clicking together. He pulls it back again, checks the breech, finds a round of 9mm firmly seated.

  “You won’t get it back.”

  Smith shakes his head.

  “I can make another one. Next step is making something I can put on the quadrotor. Airgun.”

  Skinner puts the plastic gun under his jacket at the small of his back. It is both too big and too light.

  “Defense contract?”

  “Fuck no. Hunt the rats that are trying to take over this place.”

  Skinner looks at the whirring fabricator, the object taking form.

  “Terrence recruited you, right?”

  Smith rakes his long beard.

  “Yeah. I was serving. Time, not military. Some midnineties hacking. Credit card numbers when it still meant something to be able to get into those databases. Old darknet stuff. Ended up in one of those situations where you find out that honor among thieves is bullshit. Like that should come as a surprise. And it wouldn’t have been if I’d seen anything in my life other than my mom’s house. But agoraphobia, it keeps a boy in the basement.”

  Skinner smiles.

  “I was a basement boy.”

  “Us introverts, some of us end up as analysts, and the rest end up in jail or with a gun in their hands.”

  “Have you spoken to him?”

  “Terrence. Yeah. Um, two days back. Three days? Said Jae would likely be coming in for a consultation. Said she’d be traveling with someone. Someone in assets. He didn’t say it was you.”

  Skinner counts his own heartbeats, one, two, three.

  “Would that have made a difference?”

  Smith touches a hose on the 3-D printer, pinches and releases it.

  “Berlin. Man. That was more than I. If I’d known you were coming.”

  He looks at Skinner.

  “I might not have been at home. You know.”

  He looks at his machine.

  “Then again, Terrence asks for something and we all have a tendency to do it. That man is who he is.”

  He purses his lips.

  “He okay?”

  Skinner looks out the window, counting heartbeats again.

  “I should have sent a robot into that bathroom before I went in. Toxic. Vile.”

  Smith and Skinner turn toward Jae, standing at the door.

  “Skinner.”

  He waits.

  She points at Smith.

  “I need to have a private word. Off the job stuff. Yeah?”

  Skinner nods, starts for the door.

  “I’ll wait in the apartment.”

  Jae holds up her hand.

  “No. We’ll go.”

  She looks at Smith.

  “You still have that box?”

  Smith is focused on her, not looking at Skinner.

  “Sure. Let’s go get in the box.”

  Skinner watches them exit. He listens to the printer buzzing, layer by layer, making the birthday crown for Smith’s niece. He takes the gun from under his jacket. Too light. He aims it at the wall. Then, thinking about Terrence, he follows Smith and Jae.

  burn him

  MAKER SMITH’S SCIF is very small. A cube in the middle of the living room in yet another condo he owns on the seventh floor of Oasis One. The entire exterior covered in thin sheet metal that overlaps the twelve seams where the single-piece walls, floor, and ceiling were joined to one another. An excess of button rivets. Not an inch of the shell can be peeled without leaving a mark. One ventilation duct running to the condo’s outer wall, also wrapped. The latch mechanism on the door is a simple mechanical lever, not unlike a walk-in freezer, locked from the inside. Lead-lined, thickly insulated, it contains no chairs or table and requires almost anyone who enters it to hunch under the low ceiling.

  Smith closes the door, locks it, smiles at Jae.

  “Holy what the fuck, Jae? I mean, sincerely. What the holy Jesus shitting fuck are you doing bringing fuck mother jesus hell Skinner to my fucking home? Fuck sake!”

  Jae settles her back into one of the corners of the tiny room.

  “What were you guys talking about Terrence?”

  Smith holds up both hands, pressing his palms at her. Halt!

  “No. See, I asked my question first, which, no matter how irrationally I may have phrased it, means I get my answer first. So. What the fuck, you know?”

  “He’s my protection, Smith. That’s the deal. He goes where I go. Otherwise, why the fuck bother in the first place? What do you want me to tell you? It’s not like I knew you had some kind of awkward past w
ith him. He’s not big on volunteering biographical details. Shit, he’s not big on volunteering much of anything. Looming, he’s good at. Laconic monosyllables. Jesus, he freaks me out.”

  Smith raises his index finger.

  “Good. Very good. That is a good. Because that thing out there, that golem, he is straight out of the uncanny valley, you know. Almost human, but in a way that is creepy as hell.”

  Jae palms her forehead, takes a deep breath, lifts her head.

  “You were talking about Berlin?”

  Smith looks up, lets his jaw sag, shakes his head.

  “Maaaaan. Just feel free to eavesdrop in my house.”

  “What happened in Berlin?”

  Smith folds his arms over his chest, squeezes.

  “A job happened. Like the kind of thing I can’t talk about. And I was Skinner’s asset. And.”

  He closes his eyes tight.

  “Man.”

  He opens his eyes.

  “Do you even know his deal? The Skinner Maxim?”

  She shakes her head.

  Smith draws a line with his finger, emphasizing a passage, something that will appear later on a test.

  “The only way to secure an asset is to make the cost of acquiring it greater than its value. Or something like that.”

  Jae nods.

  “So what happened in Berlin?”

  Smith shrugs.

  “What happened was nothing happened. I mean, as far as I knew, the gig went off slick. I was my usual rock-star self. Which mostly involved me in a hotel room doing things with a hard drive they handed me and told me they had to have back in five hours no matter what. Skinner sat on the bed and read newspapers.”

  Jae waits.

  Smith grinds his thumb between his eyes.

  “There was this big story in the papers that week. This thing had happened in this warehouse out by the Wall. Mass killing. Five people. Three were done execution-style, back of the head. Two were not. And Skinner, he had this stack of papers and magazines, all of them cover-to-cover coverage on this story, and he was reading every single word. Like, fascinated. And so, me, I’m high-strung, deep in the data on this hard drive, coming up only for Red Vines and air. Next thing I know, time’s up. They come and take the hard drive, I hand them what they wanted out of it, show them what I put in it. Hells yeah, I’m awesome. And now I’m bouncing off the walls with adrenaline and, you know, whatever stress release and manic feelings of victory. So I make a joke with Skinner the cyborg. I say, I say, Yo, Skinner, what’s up with the reading material? Professional curiosity or something? Trying to figure out how it was done? And Skinner, he folds down the corner of the paper he’s reading, kind of glances at me, then flips the paper up and says, No, Smith. I already know how it was done.”