Chemical Burn (22 page)

Stolen Identity

Rachel and I walked into Yvgenny’s teahouse to find the dining room full despite the early hour. We got past Alisa with a quick hello, stepped through the curtain, and headed for the stairs to the patio.

“I’m sorry, but the patio is closed until eight,” Galina called to us from the kitchen. She and another waitress were putting together a large order for a table of eight who sat laughing and drinking on the far side of the room.

“It’s us, Galina! Justin and Rachel,” I said, waiving my finger at both of us.

Galina peered at me closely and then finally recognized our faces. “Nice outfits,” she said, laughing lightly.

“Thanks!” we both said as we continued up the stairs.

As we reached the top, the door opened and a young, skinny kid around Galina and Alisa’s age stepped out. He had on bicycling gear and a satchel over his shoulder. “Excuse me,” he said as he passed by us.

I walked through the door and saw Yvgenny in the right-hand corner of the patio. A last patch of evening sunlight shone brightly on the old man. He wore flip-flops, cut-off jean shorts, a clean white t-shirt, and the same dingy blue shirt over that. His pipe stuck out the corner of his mouth, with a lazy stream of smoke drifting over his head. He had a crossword book in one hand and a pen in the other. His glasses were perched on the end of his nose. A brown-paper-wrapped package sat on the table in front of him.

Yvgenny watched us walk onto his patio and pushed the glasses from the tip up onto the bridge of his nose. He set the crossword book down and took the pipe out of his mouth. “Good evening. How am I being able to help you? We normally don’t open …” His voice trailed off, and he narrowed his eyes, examining us closely as we wordlessly walked up to the table. Yvgenny put the pipe back in his mouth and puffed thoughtfully, a smile growing across his face. “Halloween is being in October, yes?”

We all laughed.

“How could you tell?” I asked.

“The eyes, my friend. One never forgets your eyes.”

“That’s true,” Rachel added thoughtfully.

I smiled. “Is that my package?”

“Da.”

“I owe you one.”

“You owe me many,” Yvgenny said slowly.

“Hard to argue with you,” I said a bit sheepishly.

“It would being foolish to try. I’ll probably breaking your bank when I collect.”

“That’s about the size of it,” I agreed. “What do I owe you for this?” I asked, hefting the package.

“Two hundred.”

I reached into my pocket, pulled out my wallet and handed over the money.

“Would you like to stay for tea and supper?” Yvgenny offered.

“No thanks. We have to get back and do some research.”

“I understand. It is too bad. I would love to knowing where both of you have been in such costumes.”

I reached up and pulled off the hat and wig, scratching my scalp in a few places. “Whew! That’s better. It’s actually a short story, for a change.”

“What a pleasant surprise. You normally rambling like senile old woman,” Yvgenny said, prompting a wide grin from Rachel.

I rolled my eyes at him. “I wanted to go digging around the VeniCorp office and find a way to go back when it was empty. I found out they’ve got an internal network, which isn’t surprising, and what I’m after is on it. I could always crash the place, but there’s a greater likelihood I’d leave a trace going in blind like that. This way I’ll be able to make it look like business as usual as far as they’re concerned.”

“So, when do you go back?” Yvgenny asked.

“Not sure yet. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. I’m still sorting details.”

“As always, be careful,” the old man warned.

“I will. Thanks again. We’ve got to head out.”

“It was pleasure to seeing you again, Miss Rachel.”

“Good bye, Yvgenny. Good to see you, too.”

We walked out as Yvgenny went back to his pipe and crosswords. When we hit the street, we turned right and walked down the block. The pay lot across the street had been full when we arrived, so we parked in a parking garage a few blocks away.

O O O

I swung down the visor and hit the remote button as I entered the alley. The garage door rolled up, and we waited for the lift to come down. Rachel shifted a bit nervously in her seat, adjusting the bag of Chinese food we’d picked up on the way home. I could almost feel her anticipation. I pulled past the entrance and then backed onto the lift.

“Look, it’s just my loft. It’s not that big a deal,” I said smoothly. I hit the remote again and the lift rose.

“I’ve waited over two years to see this place. I never thought I would.”

“It’s still just my loft. You know, kitchen, living room, desk, bathroom, like everybody else …” I paused, thinking for a moment. “In fact, that’s something you should really keep in mind. I’m just like everybody else … well … mostly.”

“You’re pretty exceptional, Justin. I’ve seen some of the things you do. You’re far from normal.” As the lift stopped, she saw that it was mostly dark inside. The setting sun cast an orange haze that soaked into the dark interior. She started to get out, but I placed my hand on her arm and shook my head.

“That’s not what I mean. All I’m saying is that you need to always think of me as just another person … like everyone else. Okay?”

“Of course,” she said confidently. I smiled gently at her.
You have no idea what you’re in for
, I thought.

We opened our doors, I grabbed Chinese food, and Rachel grabbed the package from Yvgenny’s. “Where’s the light-switch?” she asked. “Damn! It’s hot in here!” she added.

“All lights,” I said to the darkness. The lights came on, and Rachel got her first look at my real home. “And I like to keep things warm.”

“Apparently. And that light thing is nifty.” She walked behind the car and looked around.

“The bathroom is through those doors.” I pointed towards the big double-doors at the back of the loft. “The door inside on the right.”

“Okay,” she said and walked towards the middle of the loft. “You’re right. It’s no big deal,” she turned and smiled at me, “but thanks for bringing me here.”

“See, I told you. A loft like anybody else’s. Hungry?”

“Famished!” she said and headed for the kitchen table.

“Let’s eat.” I followed her to the table and tore the bag open.

Rachel laid everything out.

“I’ll get us some plates,” I added.

“Okay,” she said, and bit off the end of an egg roll.

“Beer?”

“Mmm-hmm,” she said around a mouthful.

I got plates, two beers, and spoons for the rice. We sat down and wordlessly wolfed through pork lo mein, sesame chicken, and Mongolian beef. We washed the last of the rice down with the last of our beers. I got up and grabbed two more, twisting the tops off each and handing Rachel one.

“Let’s get to work,” I said, grabbing the package. She took a pull from the beer and followed me over to my desk.

“Hey! What’s in the tank? Are those snakes?”

“Yeah, a couple of king snakes … a scarlet and a California. That reminds me. I have to feed them.”

“What do they eat?”

“Mice.”

“You keep mice?”

“Sort of. These are frozen.” I walked towards the kitchen. “Hey, open the package, will you?”

“Sure,” she said and tore away the brown paper. I opened the freezer and took out two small plastic bags. I grabbed a bowl from the cupboard and filled it with hot water. Tearing open the packages, I dropped two small, frozen, white rodents into the steaming water to thaw them out. Then I headed back to the desk. Rachel laid out the card imprinter and a stack of ten Prox II card keys.

“USB, right?” I asked.

“Yep,” she held up the long white cord.

“Open the door there beneath you and plug it in,” I said as I came around the desk.

She opened the door and saw a small panel with a series of different inputs on it. She pushed the jack into a USB port as I sat down.

I moved the mouse, and the monitors came to life. The desktop on each screen was identical to the one displayed on the computer in my bedroom: green logo, strange green characters and all.

“Interesting desktop,” Rachel said. “What are those letters,
Klingon
?” she asked sarcastically.

I smiled. “Something like that,” I said and put the circlet over my head. I caught her giving me a curious look. “Search: VeniCorp.” The VeniCorp site came up on the far left screen. An access-point box appeared in the middle. “And bring up the access ping from this afternoon on the right, maximum security protocol.” An instant later a standard operating system desktop appeared with the login prompt in the middle of the screen. The username field had the letters PETRIR, and the cursor blinked in the password field.

“Holy shit,” she said.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” I replied mischievously. I pulled the keyboard to me and typed in Ricky Petri’s password, having seen him type it upside down, and hit the ENTER key. I pushed the keyboard away and went to work.

While the website didn’t change at all, Rachel stared in awe as I raced through data on both screens. My head shifted back and forth between the two active displays. She could tell from glimpses of the images and words screaming by that I was digging into Ricky’s files on the right while simultaneously hammering through all sorts of network and user data on the left.

The middle screen stopped flickering, and a small box of data in the lower left-hand corner came up. “Stat max user login by hours, past two weeks,” I commanded. A graph appeared in the middle monitor with a list of about sixty names across the bottom. She could see that the left-hand margin indicated the number of times users had logged in. The graph looked fairly level across the top of the screen, fluctuating between eighty and a hundred times, except for one noticeable trough.

I turned to her. “This is the number of logins at the corporate office for the past two weeks. Look,” I said and pointed to the name below the valley.

“SHAOJ,” she said. “Jackie.”

“Yep.” I turned back to the monitors. “Stat user login past eight weeks by hour for SHAOJ.” The screen flickered, and I saw what I’d hoped. “What does that tell you?”

Rachel looked at the report. The left hand margin went from seven a.m. at the bottom to six a.m. at the top. The bottom had the date, and scattered across the screen were numbers of logins. Although the numbers were all over the place, the middle of the report had the highest concentration of twos, threes, and fours. Almost ninety percent of the logins had occurred between seven p.m. and one a.m., and they were scattered across every day of the week without a pattern. “Jackie goes there at night, and there’s no telling what night he arrives or leaves.”

I smiled with admiration. “Exactly. That’s our in.”

“How?”

“Easy. Watch,” I said and looked at the screens. The middle screen flickered with data again.

Rachel picked up a list of names, the same names that had been on the first report. One flashed green with SHAOJ in the user field and stayed lit.

“Slide one of the cards into the imprinter,” I said to her as my eyes shifted to the left-hand screen.

She watched as I burrowed through Petri’s email. She grabbed one of the Prox cards from the stack on the desk and slid it into the slot of the imprinter. “Okay,” she said.

I turned to the middle monitor, and the name flashed again. The light on the front of the imprinter blinked a few times and went dark. “Another,” I said and turned back to Petri’s email.

She pulled out the first card and slid home a second. “Okay.”

I shifted my attention back and forth between setting up the Prox cards and reviewing Petri’s emails. The name flashed for the card, the imprinter light blinked, and I turned back to the email. “One more.”

We repeated the process, and when the lights on the imprinter stopped blinking, I slapped the desk, yelling “Yes!”

Rachel jumped.

“What?”

“Rule number two,” I started, and then I got a thoughtful look on my face. “Well, more like rule ninety-something. Finance execs everywhere … and marketing execs, too, for that matter … are usually lazy when it comes to IT security. I figured Ricky was one of them, and I guessed right. Look,” I said, pointing to an email.

“What’s it say?”

“It’s an email from one of their junior network guys telling Ricky that his bridge to one of their inner networks is complete, plus how to access it. According to this, the guy’s director would kill him if he found out.” I grinned like a big kid. “Hang on a minute,” I said and focused back on the monitors. “Swap screens left and middle.” The two monitors flickered and their images switched places.

An icon flashed On Ricky’s desktop, then an interface filled the screen with a login prompt. I pulled the keyboard again, typed in PETRIR in the user field and then Ricky’s password. The UI changed to a standard drive listing with a series of enumerated folders. “Shit,” I said quietly. “File count?” I asked. A small box appeared in the upper right-hand corner, and a count scrolled by rapidly, stopping at over eighteen million. “Hmmmm …” I said, leaning back in my chair and thinking furiously. I snapped my fingers and leaned back in intently. “Search left: molecule for cocaine.” The left hand monitor flickered, and sixteen boxes appeared on the screen, each with an internet page. “One and nine,” I said. Two of the screens expanded and filled the screens. One was text about the chemical chain for cocaine, the other a diagram of the molecule. “Capture data.” The characters and images flashed briefly green. “Search middle: match captured data to files.” The number on the upper right-hand corner scrolled back to zero. “Shit,” I said, frustrated.

“What does it mean?” Rachel asked.

“Well, we know that Mister Shao goes there frequently and that he’s a drug maker. We know that Ricky has access to the internal network. We have to assume that Shao uses a computer to do at least part of his work. What does that add up to?”

“Shao has either a separate network,” she said slowly, “a stand-alone computer, or he uses an abacus like no one else alive,” she added, smiling.

“That’s right. Looks like we’re going in.”