Beating Ruby (8 page)

Blood drained from my face, leaving an icy sensation underneath my skin. Did he know about March? Alex hadn’t seemed to be aware of his existence; all he had mentioned was my mother’s file. “I . . . Uh . . . My father took me to London in January. We spent a week there, together with his wife.”

Yep, that trip to the UK three months ago was the last time I had
legally
left the country. My skin prickled at the memory of the fake passport March had purchased from his mobster friend Paulie to smuggle me out of the US during our hunt for the Cullinan.

The Caterpillar appraised me with narrowed eyes for a good thirty seconds. I stole a glance at Alex. He was looking at me too, those soft cinnamon irises shining with something I couldn’t quite place, like a blend of tender amusement and pity. Inside me, something broke. He knew. He had known all along.

The faint whisper of smoke being exhaled drew my attention back to the Caterpillar, who spoke in a suave voice. “Miss Chaptal, you’re being offered a parachute. I can only recommend you use it, as the opportunity might not present itself twice. If anything out of the ordinary happened in the past months, now is the best time to talk.”

My breathing grew uneven, soon coming in shallow intakes of air. This choice of words sounded a lot like an explicit threat to throw me off a plane. I looked down, almost hypnotized by the ghastly pallor of my hands against the dark blue of my jeans. The choice itself boiled down to a simple alternative: telling the truth to save my ass, and betraying March . . . or lying for him, and facing the consequences. The only question was: How hard would I crash without my stars-and-stripes parachute?

In retrospect, I wonder if I even chose. “I don’t understand what you mean. Are we still talking about what happened with Ruby?” I asked, swallowing a tremor in my voice.

The Caterpillar straightened in his seat and reached for what looked like a black leather folder lying next to him on the seat. Alex shifted as well, inching closer to me. I clasped my hands so they wouldn’t tremble. I watched as the Caterpillar opened the folder to reveal a tablet. His fingers danced on the sleek glass surface for a couple of seconds before he handed me the object.

I took it gingerly, and as soon as I registered what, or rather
who
was now pictured on the screen, I felt my stomach heave. Fine, angular features, forty at best, but with graying wavy hair. It looked like some kind of mug shot, and he seemed younger than when I had met him for the first time. The long scar on his left cheek, which had been inflicted by March in Colombia, seemed to be missing as well.

Creepy-hat.

Well, Rislow, to be precise—I never knew his first name. Sent by the Board to kidnap and torture me until I gave them the Ghost Cullinan, he had double-crossed them and teamed up with Dries instead. Bad idea. March put an end to a long-lasting feud between them by severing his spinal cord with a scalpel as swift retribution for having attempted to dissect me alive on an operating table. Creepy-hat’s life as a quadriplegic was a short one; Dries showed up later that night, equally displeased by the table thing, and shot him in the head. I know, it made me cry a little too; even supervillains can be dads, after all.

At the moment, however, there was no time to reminisce. Alex and the Caterpillar quite obviously knew Creepy-hat, and they knew that I knew him too, and that I knew that they knew . . . You get the idea. Things didn’t look good.

“Island, have you ever seen this man?”

I looked up to find myself sucked into Alex’s tranquil gaze. I shook my head negatively, holding the tablet with a white-knuckled grip.

He sighed and extended a hand to swipe across the screen. When the second picture appeared, I’m pretty sure I gasped, even though I tried to stifle it. Every single hair on my body stood on end as I stared at the SUV Rislow’s men had used to kidnap me. The pic appeared to be a still from some sort of traffic camera. The car could be seen driving along a river—likely the Hudson—and there was a timestamp in the top right corner. Sat. 2014/10/27 14:27:21. I had been sitting gagged and handcuffed in the backseat at the time.

Trust the CIA to come up with an early and unique birthday present: footage of your own kidnapping. I averted my eyes and pushed the tablet back into Alex’s hands. “I’ve never seen that car. Sorry.”

The Caterpillar brought the cigarillo to his lips again. He blew another smoke ring. I gazed at it until it had completely dissolved, half mesmerized by the rich, roasted aroma floating in the air, half desperate for something to focus on, to carry me through this hellish interrogation game. The feeling of warm fingers wrapping loosely around my left hand jerked me back to reality.

Alex was touching me. I looked down where his hand now held my arm, his thumb brushing the underside of my wrist, sending shivers up my arm. “Island, you shouldn’t say things you’re not confident you could repeat during a lie detection test.”

I didn’t understand immediately. I mean, I understood his words, but I didn’t connect them with the careful pressure on my wrist or the sympathetic stir of his lips when my eyes darted to his face. Under his thumb, I felt my pulse flutter.

He
was the lie detector. That bastard was checking my fricking pulse! I snatched back my hand as if I had been burned, burying it into one of my pockets with a glare.

“I’ve said all I have to say!” I snapped. I also tried to pump my chest, but I don’t think anything actually happened because I have no muscles there.

The Caterpillar crossed his legs and stubbed out his cigarillo in the car door’s ashtray. “Listen to me, Miss Chaptal. I have yet to decide whether you’re a talented actress or just some exceptionally unlucky airhead who’s always in the wrong place at the wrong time—but I’ll find out soon enough.”

I opened my mouth to lash back at him, but he cut me off before any sound could come out, going on in an increasingly cold tone. “We’ll see each other again. Until then, you will assist Agent Morgan in his mission to recover EM Group’s money.”

“I’m sorry . . . I
what
?
”

“I understand that your contribution was crucial to the Ruby project and that you knew Mr. Roth well. I can’t see anyone more qualified to help us, especially since you might be his accomplice,” he concluded with the faintest smirk.

“
Hey!
How can you—”

“Island.” Alex’s voice was still soft, but I didn’t miss the warning undertone. I wasn’t allowed to say out loud that his boss was full of himself and, as a direct result, full of shit.

“I’ll take you back to EMT. We have a lot of work to do,” he said.

Already ignoring us, the Caterpillar reached inside his jacket for a silvery cigarette case, by way of dismissal. A muted clicking sound indicated that the doors had been unlocked; Alex opened his and helped me out. He was about to close the door when the Caterpillar’s deep voice echoed one last time from inside the car.

“Island. Choose your friends carefully. I’d be sorry to see you end up like Léa.”

In spite of everything that had happened—his lies, the broken bond between us—I was grateful for Alex’s presence and his gentle grip on my arm. Under my feet, it seemed the ground had collapsed, and there was this pressure in my chest, like I was free-falling.

The Caterpillar had known my mother.

Alex slammed the door shut, and the Cadillac’s engine started. I watched it drive away across the parking lot and past the SUV inside which Murrell and Di Stefano still waited. Alex waved in their direction and walked me back to the Corvette, hand still hovering behind my back, occasionally brushing my shoulder blades. We climbed in as the SUV left in the same direction the Caterpillar’s limo had.

As we drove away from the docks, I mulled over the events of the morning. Part of me was dying to ask Alex what he knew about the Cullinan affair and March, but that would basically be admitting I had lied to his boss back in the limo. Not only that, but I was pretty certain Alex would lie to me again. There was a bitter taste in my mouth as I came to terms with the fact that he was more skilled than I was at the spy game . . . and couldn’t be trusted. Ever again.

I rubbed my eyes. The aftereffects of the constant stress I had been subjected to since dawn were creeping in. I felt exhausted, a little sluggish, and my temples were starting to throb unpleasantly.

I looked through the window and focused on the cars gliding past ours in Battery Tunnel, unwilling to meet Alex’s eyes as I finally spoke. “So . . . I gather that Poppy exists, but what about the rest? Was it all lies? Like, do you even live in Silver Spring?”

There was a beat of hesitation, a low sigh, and to my amazement, he answered. “No, I live in Washington.”

I shifted in my seat to look at him. “Does that house you told me about exist? With the garden, the lilacs, and the dog?”

“Yes, it was my parents’ house, but there was no dog. Poppy and I live in an apartment.”

I pondered this. Alex’s parents had been killed in a plane crash in Egypt six years prior. He wouldn’t say much about it, but, unable to resist my curiosity, I had spent hours combing the net for some details—I wondered if he knew about that too . . . At any rate, some pieces of the puzzle were starting to click together. I could see how the event had branded him so deeply that he’d made the choices he had, and unconsciously weaved the happy family portrait of his childhood into the web of his lies.

I let out a weary sigh. “Now, at least, I understand why you didn’t want me to come to your place. What would you have done if I had insisted?”

He ducked his chin, lips curling in a sheepish smile. “I guess I’d have invited you—I actually wanted to. I figured I’d tell you we had moved and the dog had been run over.”

“Okay, so the real Alexander Morgan likes sports cars, doesn’t live in a suburban house with a white porch, doesn’t have a dog . . . Anything else major? An actual girlfriend waiting in Washington, maybe?” I had meant to say this casually, but as the words escaped my lips, I cursed myself for their cutting edge.

I saw the muscles twitching in his jaw, and the Corvette sped up, passing several cars. “
You
are my girlfriend, Island.”

I closed my eyes as EMT’s building came in sight. Was I?

EIGHT

The Chicken

“
‘Clara, without you, I’m like a chicken: I have wings, but I can’t fly.
’
”

—Emmy Lee Jolly,
The Pioneer’s Last Chance at Love

When we stepped into the garage elevator and I saw Alex use a key and press the button for the fifth floor, I got this strange feeling, as if just being allowed up there the regular way was even worse a transgression than my little stunt in the air vent. Then I remembered Prince. “Can we stop at the lobby? There’s someone I’d like to see.”

He seemed to ignore my request, allowing the elevator past the first floor without stopping. “Prince Grimaldo?”

My throat went dry. “Look, the air vent thing was my idea. He’s not gonna get in trouble, right?”

“We have no interest in him at the moment.”

I welcomed the news with a sigh of relief. The elevator stopped, steel doors sliding open on the fifth floor’s pristine hallway. As we walked toward a set of doors guarded by a policeman, a young engineer came out, escorted by a second policeman. They walked past us and toward the floor’s open space, from which Thom was supposed to have jumped. The guy’s shoulders were hunched, and one of his hands kept smoothing wrinkles from the front of his shirt. Having to work under the constant scrutiny of a cop—I could relate to that kind of tension.

The cop allowed us inside the clean room, and right after we had put on our overshoes, I peeked up at Alex. “Does EMT know that I have to work with you?”

He gave a quick nod while we made our way through a maze of alleys lined by dozens of server racks encased in tall black glass cabinets. “Yes. EMT’s top management has been made aware that you’ll collaborate with our investigation, as one of Thom’s closest collaborators.” He paused. “The . . . details of your situation haven’t been disclosed to anyone, though, and will not be brought up as long as you cooperate fully and help us recover that money.”

I tried to answer with the same professional, remote tone he was inflicting on me. “Thank you for your discretion. I appreciate it.”

“Hey!”

Alex stopped; I jumped and spun on my heels, searching for the source of the youthful voice I recognized. A black-haired head popped out from behind a cabinet at the end of the alley. Long bangs, round glasses. Turtle-boy. He walked toward us, hands tucked into the pockets of really skinny jeans. He didn’t exude the same sort of confidence Alex did. Scratch that—once he was standing right in front of me, he looked frankly intimidated. Which was odd, given that he had at least three inches and ten pounds on me. Plus he was CIA: a nerd heavyweight of sorts.

I gave him a timid smile, which he returned with equal uncertainty.

“Great to see you again.”

“Same here. I think we’re gonna work together, right?”

He seemed a little fidgety. “Yeah. I’m Colin.”

“Just Colin?”

His eyes darted to Alex, who nodded in response. “Colin Jeon.”

Holy macanoly. Now I remembered where I had seen this guy before. On TV. And on the Internet. And fricking everywhere for a couple of weeks, actually. “Oh my God! You’re the Wall Street Avenger, right? We discussed your method in my network security class, back when I was in grad school.”

Turtle-boy scratched his head. “Ah . . . yeah.”

Not very enthusiastic for a guy who had once managed to get trading suspended for two of the country’s largest banks after hacking into their networks and publicly sharing more than two hundred thousand confidential e-mails and documents.

“And now you’re working for the government?”

He looked at Alex and winced. “Didn’t have a lot of options.”

Okay, the CIA clearly had him by the balls. “Well, that’s . . . cool, I guess.”

I gave him a thumbs-up to cheer the mood; my heart went out to this fellow prisoner.

Our jailer interrupted this emotional bonding sequence. “So, Colin, you were checking the servers Island mentioned? The ones Roth didn’t destroy?”

He walked to an open cabinet. “Yeah. You were right. I recovered logs and data up to April 8. But I found nothing interesting so far. Just standard backups, simulations with nothing in common with the scale of the attack he led.”

“Which makes sense, in a way. Let’s say I believe Thom did this—he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to perform a large-scale simulation and leave obvious tracks,” I confirmed.

We all knelt in front of the server rack, and Colin handed me one of his laptops, showing the results of his investigations so far.

I felt Alex move right behind me, peeking at the screen over my shoulder. “Island, do you think that’s why Roth didn’t destroy those servers? Because there was nothing useful on them?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe he just wanted to make it look like this . . .” I browsed through the files with a frown. “You’re right, Colin, the simulations here are the ones I already knew of. Limited ones, on fake accounts we generate with a secondary application.”

Alex’s sigh of disappointment breezed against the nape of my neck, making me shiver a little. I tried my best to block his presence and focus on the files. “Hey . . . these—”

Colin tilted his head at the couple of well-hidden files I had just isolated. “SVG pics?”

“Yeah.”

I clicked on the first one. Another sigh, followed by the sound of Alex scratching his stubble.

“Well, it’s that chicken from
Family Guy
, right?” Colin ventured.

“Island?” Alex’s voice made me jump. It was still gentle, but he sounded increasingly annoyed.

My eyes narrowed. “Look at the size of the files.”

Colin cracked a victorious smirk. “One point seven megabytes. A little heavy for a chicken.”

I opened the SVG file to examine its source code. “There’s additional code hidden inside.”

Near me, Alex shifted. “It doesn’t look like code, more like . . . gibberish.”

“It’s encrypted.”

“Can you decrypt it?” he asked.

“Without the key? Depends. How many years do you have?”

Colin chuckled at Alex’s visible despair.

“If I helped you build the database, could you do a dictionary attack?” I asked Colin.

“Don’t insult me,” he said with a wink. His fingers started dancing rapidly on the keyboard. I read the lines of code piling up on screen. Yup, he could. He definitely could.

Alex’s gaze traveled back and forth between Colin and me. “What’s a dictionary attack?”

I pointed at the encrypted files on the screen. “Well, when you want to crack a password, one of the most common approaches is the brute force attack. It means you just try billions of random combinations one after another. But Roth’s encryption key is apparently using Scrypt—”

Colin completed the explanation for Alex, whose mouth hung slightly open in the cutest fashion. “It’s an encryption system relying on sequential memory–hard key derivation functions. It multiplies exponentially the time and hardware resources you’ll need to crack the key.”

When his mouth opened some more, I decided to end his suffering. “It means the encryption is theoretically invulnerable.”

Colin chimed in. “But the weak link is often not the machine—it’s the human. So, what we need is a smaller database—a dictionary—that would contain words, dates, names, everything relevant to our subject.”

Alex seemed pleased with the idea. “Some sort of more targeted and less systematic approach.”

“Precisely,” I said, before turning to Colin. “Thom often said that the kind of passwords that are easiest to remember and hardest to crack are complete sentences with punctuation. He encouraged us to use those when choosing our credentials. Could you access his personal devices? Kindle, iPad, that kind of stuff?”

He grinned. “No problem. I’ve got my personal farm of zombie machines. I can run them all against the encryption key simultaneously. Will get us done faster.”

Zombie farm . . . What could I say? I wasn’t going to complain that he hacked thousands of computers on a regular basis, since he was using them for our benefit at the moment. Next time your computer gets infected by some backdoor worm while you’re watching
Barely Legal College Lesbians Party
on Porntube, you can thank Colin and go to bed with a clear conscience, knowing you and your machine have served this country well.

After a few minutes, a green window on the screen indicated that Colin’s attack had succeeded, and before my eyes flashed words I knew well:
My doom has come upon me
.

Alex cocked an eyebrow. “Island?”

“This is taken from Homer’s
Iliad
. It’s the part where Hector is about to die,” I said. “Thom spoke about that book often; it fascinated him.”

“And it’s the key he used to encrypt his data,” Colin announced.

I thought of Thom’s choice of password, as the previous mishmash of random letters and numbers on the laptop’s screen morphed into readable code. This hadn’t been about money; he had known something would happen to him. I felt Alex’s hand squeeze my shoulder. “Island, what’s in the file?”

This should have tasted like victory, but it didn’t. My throat tightened more and more with each line I read. I had wanted so hard to believe that Thom had nothing to do with the hacking of EMG’s accounts . . . yet what scrolled before my eyes was a large-scale simulation—if you could even call it that when the accounts seemed very real—combined with an ingenuous overlay to deactivate all of Ruby’s security restrictions, giving it unlimited access to external networks and free range to attack any kind of banking system.

My eyes met Alex’s. “It’s what you were looking for. But these files only contain the target accounts. I can’t see any parameters for the wire transfers. Maybe those were entered at the last minute to preserve secrecy.” I frowned. “At this point, judging by the way this was coded, I can confirm Thom engineered this . . . ‘simulation.’ But I can’t tell you the money’s final destination.”

Colin gestured to his laptop’s screen. “Yeah, like I told you, he split the cash and had it transferred thousands of times through offshore accounts and ghost funds to cover his tracks.”

A sudden anger coiled inside me at the way he assumed Thom was the mastermind behind the operation. “You’re saying that like he did it for himself. Just in case you forgot, Thom is dead!”

Colin cowered. “I’m sorry. We know someone was there with him, likely overseeing that he’d launch Ruby as planned. They also cleaned up after him: his phone was missing when his body was found, and I haven’t been able to track it. My best guess is that it got destroyed.”

I listened to his explanations, my fists clenched tightly on my lap. Alex took my hand. “Island, I’d like you to come with me to check Thom’s office again, see if there might be something we missed.”

As I nodded my agreement, I felt his thumb linger on my wrist for a second. It reminded me of what he had done in the Caterpillar’s car, but this time I could tell Alex wasn’t trying to check my pulse. A tingle traveled up my arm; I pulled my hand away carefully. “It’s okay, I’m fine. Take me there.”