Invisible Armies (27 page)

    "What's her name?" Danielle asks.
    "Doesn't matter," Keiran says brutally. "She's not dead yet. I check coroner's reports sometimes. I couldn't find her even if I wanted to, she lives completely off the grid, with crusties and squatters. Doesn't matter. She might as well be dead. But she isn't. Neither am I. That's what I owed Angus."
    "God," Danielle says.
    A long silence falls.
    "All right," Keiran says. "Let's get back to business."
    "Right," Danielle says, very briskly. "Business. You were going to give me a new identity, right? Enroll me in your own personal witness protection program? Go on then. Show me what you got."/p>

Chapter  
31 

<    Keiran has to admit that on some level Danielle is right: part of him is glad to be pursued by the law. He has spent years hacking into dozens of corporate and government systems, but he has never been able to justify actually using his access before. It has always been too risky: every abuse of a compromised system might be noticed and somehow be tracked, could be the mistake that leads to his downfall. But now he has an excuse to flex his virtual muscles, use all the dormant authority he has accumulated over the years, and the exercise of raw power feels good.
    First he needs anonymous money. Easy enough. He occasionally advises a group of Russian credit-card hackers on technical matters: in exchange, he has access to their "platinum list" of high-limit, high-volume credit card numbers, the kind for which a single hundred-dollar charge is likely to go unnoticed. Hacked from some upscale travel agency in Chicago, apparently. He uses thirty such credit cards to rent a nearby post office box, then purchase and post to that box four anonymous Virgin Mobile cell phones, two hundred dollars' worth of phone cards, and twenty cashier's checks for a hundred dollars apiece.
    After money, identity. In the space of forty minutes, he arranges for three brand-new Social Security cards and California drivers' licenses to be mailed to the post office box he just rented, in the names of Sarah Crawford, Julian O'Toole, and Parvati Rumanujan. Keiran and Danielle's new licenses feature photos from Mulligan's digital camera that display their new looks, touched up to look entirely unlike the pictures in today's newspaper. He goes back to the Russian credit-card list and throws in a secured MasterCard for each of them, with thousand-dollar limits, in the same false names.
    "Aren't you worried they could find the mailbox?" Danielle asks, when he explains the outcome of his cyberspace pillaging. She has been sitting quietly beside him the whole time, shoulder-surfing, although he doubts she or any other non-hacker could have followed a tenth of the work he just did.
    "They don't know to look for it. And we have to make sure it stays that way. Remember, no phone calls home, no checking email, don't even visit any of your favourite Web sites. We're only omnipotent for as long as we're invisible."
    "If you can do this, why haven't you ever just taken ten million dollars from some bank and retired?"
    Keiran shakes his head. "Taking money is a violation of LoTek's Law. Always be invisible. Creating a new identity is invisible hacking. If you do it right, no one will even notice. But stealing an identity, or stealing money especially, that's very visible. I could probably steal a million dollars a week from Social Security if I wanted to. Maybe I could break into a bank. Maybe not, they're a lot sharper about security then the government. But even if I did, money is a zero-sum game, there is no way to steal significant amounts without being noticed. More than a few hundred dollars will trigger their alarms, alert their forensic accountants, get them angry. And once they're angry, they will track you down. Once they start they usually win. Authorities are stupid, but they're very big, very resourceful, very persistent. If they find out I exist they'll squash me like a cockroach. But if you don't even know you have roaches, you never call the exterminator."
    "It's scary that you can do this," Danielle says.
    "Good. Because right now we need to be frightening."
    "I can't believe all these systems are so insecure that anyone can break into them."
    Keiran smiles. "Not just anyone."
    "Sorry. I didn't mean to imply you were mortal."
    "Not what I meant. I have a secret weapon. Shazam."
    Danielle looks at him. "I've heard of that. I've used it, I had it on my computer in Bangalore. I thought it was a program for downloading music, like Napster or iTunes, right?"
    "In a way. But Napster had central servers, and a business, and an address that record companies could send their lawsuits to, so they got shut down. Shazam is just a piece of software. People install it, and it looks around the Internet until it finds other computers with Shazam. It can be used to share anything, but yes, almost always music. It's very popular. More than seven million copies in active use. It's free and open source, so people can look at the software themselves and see that there's no hidden agenda, no spyware, nothing that will take over your computer. And it works. Most open source software usually doesn't quite. I'm very proud of it."
    "You hid something in it."
    Keiran nods, pleased. "A tiny little buffer overflow, obfuscated inside one of the trickiest and dullest parts of the code. Anybody can look at it, but in all these years, nobody's analyzed it in enough detail to find the bug. Like Shadbold said when he let us go. You can rely on people to do things. It would take a great programmer several very tedious hours to analyze that piece of code and find the bug, and none of them can be bothered to waste their time like that."
    "And that little thing lets you take it over?"
    "It's like a tiny lock, with an insanely complicated key, that opens up their whole computer to me. I can own any box that runs Shazam. And you'd be amazed where it runs. Seven million copies. Police stations, the ATF, the White House, foreign militaries, you name it. Secretaries and IT grunts around the world use it to steal music from the Internet on work time. And then I use it to steal their machines. Places with seriously organized IT security ban it and make the ban stick, but you've worked in offices, you know how often those rules are followed in the real world. Maybe one company in ten actually enforces them. Kishkinda being one of them. Not a single instance running there. But there's one machine on the Justice International network that proved very useful indeed."
    "And once you've got access you can just turn around and get me a driver's license and Social Security card like that? It's that easy?" Danielle asks.
    "No. Shazam is just a beachhead. I have to work out what to do with the access, where their databases are, how to break into the rest of their network, how their homegrown programs work. It isn't easy. When I broke into Social Security, two years ago, it took me three weeks at fifteen hours a day to work out how to issue a new card and fix the audit trail to fool their safeguards. But once that work's done, well, today I could fill a city with people that don't exist."
    "How long has Shazam been out there?"
    Keiran pauses to think. "Almost five years. Tell you the truth, it'll be obsolete soon, it's already being replaced by BitTorrent and the like."
    "You never told me about this when we dated," Danielle says accusingly.
    He looks at her incredulously. "You can't be serious. We're talking about the hacker Holy Grail here. I've never told anyone except a few of my hacker friends. Mulligan, George, Klaupactus, Trurl. Everyone else just thinks I'm naturally godlike. You're the first non-hacker I've ever told. You should be flattered."
    "I'll try to remember," Danielle says, but she sounds mollified. "So if your Shazam network is so great, why can't you stomp this P2 guy?"
    Keiran opens his mouth – and closes it again. He is not accustomed to being pitted against a superior hacker. But he has to admit that truth. Keiran could have tracked Jayalitha's phone call to Danielle; he tunneled into America's major phone companies years ago, and has at least read-only access to most of their corporate databases. But he could not have worked out overnight which Los Angeles hotel she was in. On Keiran's advice, Danielle had showed up at the hotel without making a reservation, and yet P2 had found her. She couldn't have been followed, or he wouldn't have waited until midnight, or bothered calling her hotel to verify her presence. P2 must have broken into the rental-car company's tracking system, located Danielle's car, and then literally hacked into every one of the dozens of nearby hotels.
   It seems like a little thing, compared to creating new government identities, but hacking is a time-consuming art. It can take Keiran days or even weeks to crack a new network, even with Shazam's seven million machines on his side. P2 found Danielle in a few short hours. Maybe he just got lucky – but three months ago, when Shadbold's thugs kidnapped him from his London flat, they were sent there by P2, who found Keiran in a matter of minutes despite Keiran's many paranoid precautions.
   Those two extraordinary feats cannot both have been luck. The only logical conclusion to draw is that Keiran is overmatched. Either P2 has been around forever, and has a finger in every electronic pie on the planet, or he knows some extraordinary new exploit that gives him the power to immediately hack into virtually any system. For safety's sake, Keiran has to assume that P2 has at-will access to every computer, database, network and satellite in the known world. Other than Shazam.
   "Let me put it this way," he says. "I might have the Holy Grail, but P2 appears to have a direct line to God himself."
    "Great. Just great. When does my new ID get here?"
    "A few days."
    "We're supposed to stay here until then?"
    "No," Keiran says. "We need more to work with if we're going to catch P2, and we need it fast, this hunt is sure to be a major time sink. You remember the corrupt police who chased you last night?"
    "Like I was about to forget," Danielle says drily.
    "Well. Tonight, we chase them."/p>

Chapter  
32 

<   He looks to Mulligan. "Are we ready?"
    "Record away."
    Keiran raises the microphone to his lips and affects a French accent. "This is Anna Fiche-Toi, personal assistant to Jack Shadbold." He pauses a moment. "I apologize for not going through the usual channels, but this is a matter of some urgency. Danielle Leaf and Keiran Kell have been seen at a movie theatre and will be on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica in thirty minutes. You are instructed to be there to intercept."
    He nods at Mulligan, who types a few lines.
    "Anna Fiche-Toi?" Danielle asks.
    "Anna Fuck You, loosely translated."
    "You don't sound like an Anna."
    "He does now," Mulligan says. "Listen." And his computer plays back Keiran's speech, the pitch adjusted up at least two octaves, the voice obviously filtered. It sounds more inhuman than female.
    "You're sure you want to come?" Keiran asks Danielle and Jayalitha. "We don't need you. And if there's trouble…"
    "If there is trouble I am sure it will find us regardless," Jayalitha says.
    "Fair point. Let's take our toys and go pay the bad guys a little ambush."
    Getting into his car again costs Mulligan a half-pint of sweat. Danielle can see why he rarely leaves home. In his apartment, before his computer, Mulligan is a master of the universe. Why go to a gruelling physical effort just to become an object of pity?
    "Try not to get pulled over," Keiran says as Mulligan swings the car clumsily out into nighttime Valley traffic, wobbling between lanes. "Might be hard to explain how you happened to pick up two wanted terrorists and one illegal immigrant."
    "Sorry. It's been a while," Mulligan says.
    Jayalitha gasps and Danielle grabs at the seat in front of her as the car skids into a last-second-decision left turn.
    "You don't say," Keiran says drily. "Also try not to get us killed. Killed is bad."
    "You wanna drive?"
    "I would if I could, but I seem to have too many legs."
    Danielle's jaw drops at the insensitivity of that comment, but Mulligan chuckles and says, "Those damn legs gonna get you in trouble someday."
    "They already have," Keiran agrees.
    "You oughta get them removed. I know a doctor."
    "I was saying just the other day I wanted to lose a few stone."
    "That's brilliant. The Amputation Diet! We'll sell millions. Make Atkins look like a chump."
    "You're both sick," Danielle says, amused despite herself.
    "It's not us," Mulligan says, "it's the fuckin' rest of the world."
* * *
    The Third Street Promenade is an upscale open-air shopping mall, a pedestrian thoroughfare in Santa Monica only a few blocks from the sea, decorated with elaborate fountains and dinosaur topiaries, entertained by buskers, lined by stores vending all the famous brand names of American commerce. It is a very popular place to shop, wander, and meet. This is only partly because of its laid-back luxury. In Southern California, where the unwritten law is "drive or be dogmeat", easy parking is a draw in itself, and Second and Fourth Street, which bracket the Promenade, boast a half-dozen inexpensive parking garages.
    "All right, Mulligan mi amigo," Keiran says, from the roof of the largest such garage. No other cars are on the roof; it is nearly nine PM, on a weeknight, and there are plenty of parking slots available on lower levels. "Go forth to Starbucks and send our enemies my sweet whispered words of love. And try not to be obvious."
    Mulligan glares. "Go teach your grandmother."
    He rotates his wheelchair and speeds it towards the elevators, his closed laptop in a carry-case where his calves would rest if they existed.
    "All right," Keiran says. "Back in the car."
    They wait a long half-hour before Keiran's hiptop beeps. He glances at it and shows it to Danielle and Jayalitha. "These men look familiar?"
    The Danger hiptop's screen displays a picture of two men, both middle-aged, one lean with hawklike eyes and greying temples, one plump, balding, and moustached. "Yes," Danielle says immediately. "It was them. On the beach. Right?"
    "I think so," Jayalitha says hesitantly. "It is hard for me to distinguish white men."
    "It's them. I'm sure of it," Danielle says.
    "Good." Keiran taps a reply into his hiptop. A minute later it beeps again and he grins triumphantly. "Excellent. They have been Bluesnarfed."
    "That's it?" Danielle asks after a moment.
    "You were expecting fireworks? Remember LoTek's Law. That was about as spectacular as I hope to get."
    "Perhaps you could explain?" Jayalitha asks after a moment. "I do not fully understand."
    "Well." Keiran hesitates. "Crash course in hacking. You remember I went looking for our friend P2 online, didn't find him but did find the phone gateway he's using, and that he'd called two Los Angeles numbers. That's why I called you at the hotel."
    Jayalitha nods.
    "So. What do we want? Information about the opposition. What do we have? Phone numbers. What do we do? Look up their names and addresses, right? No dice. Their phones are anonymous. But I think to myself, what kind of phones? We can look that up, because every time you use a mobile phone, you tell the network your phone's serial number. Ironically this is to prevent stolen phones from being used. We hacked into the mobile phone company's database, looked up their call records, and discovered, to our joy, that theirs are flashy new Nokias with Bluetooth. Meaning they're equipped with special radios that let them talk to other phones and computers within twenty feet. So you can update your address book from your computer and so forth. Bluetooth is a communications protocol. You know what communication means? Communication means
vulnerability
."
    "How very male of you," Danielle says, amused.
    "Very funny. Our good friend Mulligan's laptop speaks Bluetooth too. And it has been sitting in its case for the last hour running a program we wrote that plunders any Bluetooth phone within range. The moment they walked within twenty feet of him, he pillaged their call records, address book, text messages. And these are the anonymous phones our on-the-take friends use to talk to their secret masters. Surely they have been given a phone number to use when they do catch us. If so, we have that number right now."
    "Well, good," Danielle says. She has never seen Keiran so excited.
    "We've only just begun. They're walking down the promenade, looking for us. When they walk back up, we move on to phase two."
    "What's phase two?"
    "Social engineering, with a side order of Bluebugging, and a real-time VOIP trace for dessert. Much more exciting. Hold on to your hats. We're going to ring our friends down there and have a little chat."
    "You're going to call them?" Danielle asks.
    "Terrible shame to acquire their phone numbers without bothering to use them, no? But what makes it interesting is that they're going to ring us too. And they won't even know it."
A moment later his hiptop beeps again, then rings. Danielle hadn't realized it was a phone as well.
"Here we go," Keiran says. He answers the hiptop, gives it to Danielle, and says "Listen. Don't push any buttons." Then he draws out his own Virgin Mobile phone, dials, pauses, and punches more numbers into the phone.
    Danielle puts the Danger hiptop to her ear and hears a warbling ring. It sounds distant. Then a gruff voice, equally distant, says, "Yes?"
    "Good evening," Keiran says in front of her. "My name is Keiran Kell. I understand you're looking for me." Danielle nearly drops the hiptop.
    "The fuck?" a man's voice hisses in her ear. "It's him. It's Kell."
    "Kell? The fuck? What does he want?" a second male voice asks. Both voices are familiar, from the beach, last night
    "What do you want?" the first voice asks.
    Danielle works out what is going on. The two cops are back within range of Mulligan. He has caused one of their Bluetooth phones to secretly call Keiran's hiptop number, while Keiran calls their other phone. Getting a phone call from someone's pocket without their knowledge is as good as planting a listening device on them.
    "I want you to pass a message to your employer. We want ten million dollars in my Cayman Islands account by midnight tonight, or we release evidence of what Shadbold is doing." Keiran hangs up.
    "What was that all about?" Danielle asks, then twitches with dismay, worried that her voice might emanate from the phone on the other end of the hiptop's connection. But the voice on the hiptop, repeating what Keiran just said, does not falter.
    "Don't worry, they can't hear you," Keiran says. "Mulligan connected that phone to one of our VOIP gateways. That records the conversation and pipes the output one-way to the hiptop."
    "You want money from them?" Jayalitha asks.
    "Oh, good Lord, no. I don't even have a Cayman Islands account. The Caymans are so five years ago. No, the idea is to make them ring their secret masters right away."
    "Quiet," Danielle says. "I think they're calling them now."
    "Here," Keiran says. He takes the hiptop and adjusts one of the controls on its side, turning it into a speakerphone.
    "Sorry to bother you, but Kell just called us," the man says. "That's right. He called us." He summarizes Keiran's demand, then says, "All right," and in a different tone, "We're supposed to wait a moment."
    "Come on, Mulligan," Keiran says, quietly but intensely. "Do your thing."
    "What's going on?"
    "Ever seen a film where the police try to make the villain stay on the phone long enough to trace his call?" Danielle nods. "Well, that was always risible shite. As if phone companies could make a phone ring without knowing where it was. But this is almost like those films. I guarantee you that number they rang went through a VOIP redirector before it reached P2. Just like we're listening to them through our gateway. Mulligan's sitting in Starbucks right now trying to hack into their redirector before this conversation ends. If he's good enough and fast enough, we find out where P2 physically is. But if they hang up first, anonymous redirectors don't keep records, all those packets will be lost like tears in the rain."
    "How poetic."
    "Blade Runner. Cyberpunk icon. Come on, darling," he says to the hiptop, "give me some good news."
    The hiptop beeps as if to answer. Keiran scrolls to his email and grins with triumph. "We have a physical phone number. We have a location."
    "He's a block away from us right now?" the hiptop exclaims.
    Keiran, Danielle and Jayalitha stop and stare at it for a moment.
    "Parking garage at Fourth and Arizona," it says. "Let's move."
    "Oh, fuck," Keiran says hoarsely. "Fucking shit bollocks. He tracked us too. What is he, fucking omniscient? Must have triangulated the mobile signal. We need to be going right now." He takes two steps towards Mulligan's car.
    "Can you drive that?" Danielle asks, thinking of Mulligan's PlayStation controller, and the backup hand-paddle accelerator and brake.
    "Shit. Probably not. Shank's mare. Come on, the stairs. No, the elevator." He starts towards the exit. Jayalitha follows.
   Danielle does not. Instead she looks over the edge of the parking garage, down into the alley between Third and Fourth streets, and sees, from seven stories up, two men sprint up the alley towards the parking garage. They are not uniformed, and the street lights are far too dim to recognize faces, but it has to be them.
    "Stop," she says urgently. "It's too late. They're already here."/p>