Blood Money (7 page)

“Well, don't give it another thought. The way I figure it, it'll be a slam dunk.

“Are you using anything special, other than ‘LEECH?'”

“You bet. I got some new software I call ‘BS.'”

“Does that stand for bull shit?” he asked.

“Nope, it's short for ‘banana split.' It will ride along with the records right up to the point of transmission, then split off any data I select and send it to a phantom address. It will travel to twelve other phantom locations until it finally ends up here. Even though it eventually uses your computer address to get here, the beauty of it is that the record of the transmission will self-destruct as soon as it is sent. No ‘cookies,' and absolutely no audit trail. No indication of what it was, or where it was sent. Just POOF!”

“That's incredible, Sue. How do you have the time and the resources to develop stuff like that? You must spend hours working on them.”

“You forget, Mark, messing with this stuff is not only my hobby, but also my life ambition. I'm really fortunate that I get to earn money while I'm having the time of my life. I'm sure that you feel that way about your work, too. I've never told anyone this, but sometimes I can't sleep at night because I'm internally gloating over one or another of my creations. Since I got hooked on computing, there's nothing else I want to do.”

“Hell, if I even had a tenth of your creative ability I'd probably walk around all day with a self-satisfied smirk on my face.” He reached over and gently squeezed her hand. “Sue, you shouldn't ever feel anything but pride about the talent you've been given, and for any opportunity you get to use it.”

“You always know the right thing to say. I suppose you're right, in a sense, but if you could listen in on my mind chatter, you might think differently. It's all relative.”

“I know I'm right,” he said, bowing slightly. He looked at the clock. It was almost eleven. “I think the next ‘right thing' for me to say is goodnight. We have an exciting day ahead of us, and I, for one, need some shuteye.”

“Normally, I'd call you a party pooper, but I agree with you. I don't know your routine, but I'm up at six. I need to run about three miles to get the cobwebs out, shower, have two cups of coffee and two slices of dry toast. By about eight, I'm usually at the office, rarin' to go.”

He took that all in. “Well, I have a morning routine quite similar,” he assured her. “I get up at six, only I skip the jogging. I drink only one cup of instant coffee, get dressed, hop in my car and drive to Denny's for breakfast.”

She laughed again. “You're impossible.”

He continued, “Then I either come back here to work, or go to my business office. Either way, I'm in place by eight, also.”

“How can you eat breakfast at Denny's every day? You must have clogged up arteries by now.”

“Actually, it seems that I'm one of those people that doesn't have a problem with cholesterol. My numbers are great, and my metabolism apparently has no issue with my diet. Tomorrow, I'll join you for coffee. I'll brew some up for us. You can have your dry toast. I'll have to have a smear of peanut butter on mine.”

“Suit yourself. I'll see you for breakfast. By the way, are there any jogging trails around here?”

“None nearby, but if you exit the cul-de-sac to the left you have almost a mile and a half to the first stop sign.”

“That'll work fine.” She looked at him with those soft emerald eyes. “I really had fun tonight. It was a wonderful evening. Sleep well, Mark.”

“It was fun for me, too. Goodnight, Susan.” He gave her a soft peck on the cheek.

She went off to her room and he cleaned up the glasses, wrapped up what was left of the garlic bread and disposed of the wine bottles. Mark didn't set the security alarm because of her early run. It wasn't worth the trouble for one night. He put on his pajamas, brushed up and went to bed. Thanks to the wine, which he had a little too much of, he went right off to sleep.

The next morning, Sue came back from her run just as he was finishing the coffee. “Give me about twenty minutes and I'll be ready to join you.”

He had the greatest admiration for any woman who can “get ready” in minutes rather than hours. Sue was always that way. He didn't have a clue as to how she could look so “drop dead gorgeous” all the time with only a few minutes at it, but she was living proof that it can be done.

Mark got out a couple of his old “Washington, DC” mugs that he kept when they left the Pentagon. His father always enjoyed using them for his afternoon tea, claiming that he felt proud using them. He poured coffee into his mug and added two of the “adulterers”, as Sue called them, but waited on hers. He carried the mugs downstairs and placed them on a small table that he had set up next to the computer desk.

Mark fired up the laptop, printer and auxiliary disc drive. Sue would need all three. Yesterday he had carried down the desk chair from his father's den so that they both would be comfortable. The room was about 400 square feet, not to small and not too large. It was cool and dry all year round, which suited him. There were two Thomas Kinkade paintings, one on each wall. They had been in his father's den. The only things that Mark moved from there. Both were birthday gifts from his mother. She bought them in Waynesville, a nearby town with dozens of antique stores. They were pictures of thatched cottages, a Kinkade trademark. His father found tranquility when he viewed them. Mark felt the same way. He thought of his mom and dad whenever he looked at them. Mark had built a shelf on the wall behind the computer desk to accommodate the GPS machine and all the “bells and whistles” he could afford to buy at the time. Since then, he added a few more “bells and whistles” to keep current. Mostly he added on hardware/software that would speed up his inquiries. The information he gathers is often voluminous, so any time he spotted something that could cut his operating time by as little as even five minutes, he immediately looked into acquiring it. The minutes add up, especially when you charge by the hour for your work. Mark knew he didn't have to have “everything” out there. Quite often he would just link up to outside sites and “borrow” the latest technology if he needed to. Wires were everywhere; not unusual for a home office that doesn't have fake floors and panels to hide them. To simplify things, Mark rigged up a console with input and output panels with the help of a friendly clerk at Radio Shack. He carefully marked what each plug, switch and outlet was for.

He returned to the kitchen to pick up the carafe of coffee. Sue entered the kitchen with an armful of manila folders and several sleeves of computer discs. As usual, she looked great, even with the half-moon glasses perched at the end of her nose. They took him totally by surprise.

“I didn't know you wore glasses.”

“Usually, I don't. I only need them when I'm using particular discs. Unfortunately, when I printed the labels, I thought I had set the print size for ‘Rockwell Extra Bold.' Somehow I ended up with the ‘Courier New-8' font instead. I didn't notice it until I was already doing some other programs. One of these days, I'll get around to reprinting the labels. It's just that it's a lot of trouble to set up. I also keep the glasses on hand to read the fine print on contacts, anyway. Well, I've got everything I'll need. Are you ready?”

“You bet! I just came up for the coffee. You're all set up downstairs. Everything is on, just waiting for you to do, do, that voodoo that you do so well.”

“Let's get this show on the road, then.”

They went downstairs and Sue sat down by the computer desk. During the house tour the night before, Sue had insisted on checking out Mark's equipment and communications network, not wanting any surprises. Everything had passed with flying colors.

“Go ahead and start,” he said. “I'll get you some coffee.” He brought over her mug and she smiled. She remembered them too.

“Boy, that sure brings back memories. I left all that kind of stuff behind when I moved to San Diego.”

“Well, I sort of collect mugs. I've got a box of them out in the garage. Mostly singles. When I visit a client's office, they want me to take the mug with me. They claim that it's for the advertising, but I think that they just don't want to bother washing them.”

Sue laughed. She had already set up two discs and was waiting for a go ahead signal on the screen. “This shouldn't take long. What's happening is that I'm sending out a test inquiry from the blood bank. I'm using a software program that emulates the actual service bureau in Mansfield, Ohio that is scheduled to send their daily transactions to the NRBA at nine. It's not unusual for the service bureau to send a test record prior to main processing. Both ends get a run-through prior to the main processing. This is the record that I attached ‘LEECH' to. In this way, I'll pick up the current password for accessing their system. They routinely change it every hour on the half hour, so I'll have a window from eight thirty to nine for my software to extract the financial files and attached them to the daily processing output record. I'll be using what I call a ‘SCOOP' protocol. It picks up an entire file while pretending to search for a single data record. In other words, it goes through the motion of being selective while it is actually being all-inclusive.”

“I don't have a clue as to what you just said, but I sure wish I did.”

“Okay, here we go.” A bunch of mixed numbers and letters appeared on the laptop screen; fifteen letters and numbers. Sue carefully wrote them down. “That, my friend, is our ‘open sesame' to the computer system of the National Rare Blood Association. I just need to take a few more minutes to encode ‘LEECH'. Then we wait for the service bureau to start their processing.”

She placed a disc in the reader, tapped in a few numbers, and a box appeared on the screen. She keyed the fifteen-digit password in the box and hit “ENTER.” The screen went blank. She pressed a button on the side of the laptop and retrieved the updated “LEECH” disc, which she inserted in the auxiliary disc drive. “The next part is critical. I need to link up with Mansfield to synchronize their daily processing. They will be very prompt. They must adhere to the NRBA processing schedule or delay their input for at least another twenty-four hours. It is not unusual for clients to give “software support” programmers access to their processing. This is usually done for quality control purposes. It is also possible, then, through emulation, to access live processing simultaneously, without the host being aware.”

This is exactly what Sue was intending to do. She brought up their data link at exactly one minute before nine. Her software was ready. At the right moment, all Sue had to do was press “enter” and it would be attached to the service bureau's processing for their Blood Bank client. This run would contain donation records and requests for rare blood being transferred to the NRBA, and for blood being requested by one of their donors or affiliated hospitals. Mansfield, on behalf of their Blood Bank client, would receive a receipt record showing an updated profile of each donor and a transmission ID for the individual blood donation transfer. They would also receive an updated inventory record showing how much blood by type their client has donated year-to-date, and details about proposed future donation dates.

Sue's eyes were glued to the screen. A cursor blinked in the upper right hand corner of the screen and she hit ENTER. “There we are, the dastardly deed is done. We just linked our program to the transactions from the Mansfield service bureau. My code will be passed along undetected, and then it will separate to travel through their system to the financial database. I requested the payment records for the past twenty-four months.”

They breathed a sigh of relief. He refreshed both coffee mugs. They sat back and waited. “How long do you think it will take before we get anything back?”

“I really can't be sure. Their control records indicated that they expected only six blood banks to participate today. I was hoping for a bit more. The longer the normal processing takes, the less chance of our extra processing being detected. But anyway, depending on the Associations total traffic, it could take a little more than fifty minutes. I have no idea how much other activity they may have as part of the processing run. For instance, they could be doing some housekeeping on their files before they start the actual processing on the blood banks input. I have no way of knowing that. Sue stopped for a minute to take a sip of her coffee, and then continued, “I know fifty minutes seems like a long time, Mark, but apparently their processing and firewalls are very elaborate. You already know that. Actually, they seem to be over-protected, not that that will do them any good against me. You know, I could re-program their input processing to save at least forty percent on their run times, and probably make them more secure at the same time. But I guess that isn't very likely to happen, is it?” Sue chuckled at the thought.

“No, I don't think so either.”

“I really hate to see sloppy programming, but that makes my job that much easier. But back to your question. After the file has been picked up, ‘Banana Split' will take five to ten minutes, again, depending on traffic. I would lean towards a minimum of one hour for transaction processing. The kicker in this process is the size of the disbursement file. When I do ‘scooping,' I get everything there is to get in the data record. I don‘t have the luxury of being selective. I'm hoping that the excess processing time won't be so long that their internal security flags are tripped. They are not expecting any processing beyond that normally required to process the total transactions indicated by the control records. Usually they will allow a small tolerance, plus or minus up to ten percent to compensate for a variance in input/output speeds. The good part is that most systems are set up to calculate run time after all jobs are actually finished. By that time, the file records will be already gone. They will be locking the barn door after the cows have already gone.” She stopped to make some mental additions. “So, all told, I would estimate an hour to an hour and a half before we know anything for sure.”