The Minders (9 page)

Afshin Noezad was so excited to be part of a new startup in Silicon Valley. The valley was always buzzing with stories of new inventions, success stories, old technologies applied in new ways, and the overall tech vibe. He was happy to have finished his Ph.D., and that he had an offer to work on a project based on his dissertation. It was a great finish to years of schooling and a great start to his career.

As was the case with many startups, there were long periods of secrecy and bootstrapping. He was comfortable with little pay, all the non-disclosure contracts, few resources, and having to work in a sparse warehouse. It was all very charming. It was part of the northern California startup culture.

The startup he joined had only three people working for it. The first founder had worked for decades in African Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), believing in vaccinations as important life saving measures, focusing on cultures that neglected vaccinations for a variety of reasons, including cultural and religious. The other founder was the immunologist. He also worked at NGOs, in Africa and Asia. Their plan was to build a new connected delivery system on top of an adaptive, self-correcting network. A new network, controlled by software, could present vaccines through aerosol dispersal, depending on recipient size, age and weight. The system should also have microinjection features, as part of the casing, for situations where the device was to deliver vaccinations when touched. These systems would be portable and easily placed inside village community centers.

One section of the warehouse had the design and manufacturing rooms with several high-end computers running a slew of Autodesk design software. Nearby they placed the most expensive device in the building, a Selective Laser Sintering 3D printer, which could print anything in metal, plastic, or ceramic. It was Noezad’s dream lab. He could design and build prototypes, and print the final products, all from his desk. The other side of the warehouse, closed off to him, was the bio labs where testing was to be done on the delivery system. The only time he managed to see anything, was when he passed by as the door was shutting, just as he came in to the building. All he saw was a glass room, bio suits, and a dozen cages filled with mice and rabbits. That was not his area and so he did not care much.

Noezad had a tight deadline on his shoulders. He had to re-design his prototype to new specs, build 180 of those devices connected and controlled via a ZigBee protocol, and have them all working within three months. Fortunately, the dissertation had the majority of the work documented in detail, and ready for use.

Life was good, but he had his work cut out for him.

As for the other two, in reality, they couldn’t care less about NGOs or vaccinations. They were just two top-notch biochemists, assigned to do a job.

Mike was sitting in his office looking over plans and project schedules, trying his best to keep busy. An unexpected call from the IT department startled him. An internal call was trying to reach him directly. A junior network manager wanted to schedule a meeting to discuss some security issues that had recently cropped up. Normally not something with which to bother the CEO, but in this case the oddities were worth mentioning directly to him. She insisted. Mike scheduled the meeting for later that day.

It was the evening of a long day. The secretary had left for the day when Mike heard a knock on his office door. The IT manager opened the door, peeking in shyly.

“Is this still a good time?” she asked.

Mike waved her in as he sent off the final email for the day. She walked in carrying a three ring binder. He cleared his desk. She sat right in front of the clearing.

“So! How can I help you, given I know absolutely nothing about network security?”

She placed the binder filled with printed network log files on his desk. She went into details about transaction logs and such, how they recorded all attempts to reach the company servers. She described how hackers were always trying to break into company systems by automating the process of testing all possible entry points. She described how they ping all ports, and when they find an open port, they begin penetration tests.

Mike stopped her before she went too far into more obscure details. He told her that he really did not have the time or patience for this.

Why are you wasting my time with this shit? I just don’t care.

“Please let me finish. This is important!” She nervously interrupted him, her voice quivering, and her hands shaking as she opened the binder.

She explained that pinging is a very simple form of knocking on a door. It was like a quick test to see if the door was open, just one simple turn per door. In this case, the pinging had a message and a bunch of numbers attached. Like testing a door and yelling aloud, asking if anyone was there. It did not make any sense, she said. Mike stood up, irritated, telling her that he was not the appropriate person for this. He began to help her out of her chair and towards the door. Grabbing her binder, clumsily, she began to walk, still talking and pointing at a page.

“Sir, the messages have your name in it, and they’re coming from Iran, according to the trace reports.” She tapped a yellow highlighted line on an open page, and then showing more pings against their servers, all including his name and a series of different numbers.

He snatched the binder from her, walked back to his desk and sat down. She followed, sitting back in her chair, quietly facing him. She had finally made her point.

“Where did they come from and do we know who sent them.” He bombarded her with dozens of questions, to which she had very few answers.

He asked for all the data in digital form and told her to keep an eye out for any other similar anomalies, and that she should report to him ASAP. She pulled out a DVD from the binder sleeve, with the weeks’ logs. With the disk in hand, Mike began to stare at the pages once more, confused.

She walked out, knowing her first meeting with the CEO was a good one.

*  *  *

Mike was driving home with the DVD on the passenger seat next to him. He could not wait to get home, to dig deeper into the data, looking for clues. He got home, walked to his office, turned on the PC and logged into the secure email software Jason had installed. He wrote a quick message explaining what he had heard, and attached one of the smaller log files containing the anomalies. He pressed the send button, and waited for Jason’s reply. An hour later, he received a short email back.

Your son is a genius. I’ll see you tomorrow.

*  *  *

The next morning, an hour before his drive to work, Mike was cooking breakfast in the kitchen, when he heard tapping on the window. Jason was standing outside, sweating from his run over the hills, looking thirsty and ravenous. Mike opened the door. Jason walked right to the sink, grabbed a cup and drank a full serving of tap water. He then poured himself a cup of coffee. Mike went back to the stove and served himself the eggs he had just cooked. Jason walked up, taking the plate from him, and ate the breakfast in several quick military gulps as he walked towards the office.

Mike placed the frying pan back on the stove, grabbed a banana and his coffee, and followed.

Jason entered the office, turned on the scrambler, and sat at the computer.

“Is the DVD in here?”

“Yes!” Mike said excitedly.

He opened several log files, staring for a while. He then highlighted one of the line items, pointing to the numbers. They were not random numbers, but rather GPS coordinates. He copied one, separated the latitude and longitude with a comma, placed the decimal points in the right place, and then copied the string of characters into Google search. Google map came up, with a location smack dab in the middle of Tehran, Iran.

“I need some time to work out a pattern. Why don’t you go to work! I’ll stay here and work on these.”

Jason spent the next hour writing a script and parsing the entire DVD. He extracted and mapped all the relevant data points. Every ping was fifteen minutes apart and occurred outside Iranian work hours. It was not Bobby roaming around town at night or early in the morning. Someone who knew something about him roamed the streets. The best part was the spoke and wheel configuration, showing a central place off of which many pings emanated, with smaller clusters away from the central location, marking the general area where this person lived and visited.

Jason wrote a quick secure email to Mike with the news, asking Mike’s office to deliver any additional and new data to his home PC. He then wrote simple instructions on how to run the automated script, and how to map the data. Emailing the instructions to Mike, he shut down the PC and walked back into the kitchen where Mikes’ wife was drinking her coffee. He walked up to her, whispering in her ear.

“I know where your son is. I’m going to get him back. Tell Mike to check his email when he gets home.”

She smiled a brief but warm smile.

He stepped out of the kitchen door, for a run back to his car.

Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport, a major hub for exports and imports, was busy, loud, and hectic. A new shipment had brought in the manager from Shah International Foods
,
for a quick inspection and re-routing to San Francisco and other cities. He arrived early in the morning with enough fresh baguettes to feed a dozen men, with the tops of several missing, presumably eaten. The fresh baked aroma permeated the car. No one could resist eating the tops. The customs officers’ moods were better early in the morning, especially when bribed with fresh bread, regardless of how many tops were missing.

The social portion of the meeting was long as usual, filled with gossip, lies about lovers, and lies about money. After indulging in bread and coffee, they sat down to go over crates due for inspection and those for re-routing. There were twenty cases of California red wine and 200 Kilos of caviar from Iran, for import inspections. There were the herrings and 10 cases of Australian Syrah wine for rerouting, with minimal inspection requirements. The customs officers did not care about rerouted items. They ran the dogs around them for explosives, rarely took an x-ray, and if nothing happened, gave it the
inspecté
stamp. They wasted the last half-hour lying a little more about love affairs over another cup of coffee and more bread. By mid-morning, several crates were on their way to California, via Air France Flight #84.

*  *  *

The crates arrived in San Francisco twelve hours later. Seven hours after that, an X-Ray, a scan for nuclear materials, and a dog walk for drugs, all showed no threats. Customs released the crates, with notification emails going out for pickup. Within the hour, a delivery van arrived at the airport to pick up the two crates, a customs pickup that was to go before a visit to the South San Francisco Wholesale Flower Market, one of the largest selections of floral products under one roof. The van holding two newly arrived crates of herring packed in dry ice parked in the vast parking lot, nestled amongst hundreds of other vans, trucks, and small cars. All vehicles were being loaded floor to ceiling with seasonal flowers. The driver went into the building to inspect and pick up the daily allotment for his restaurant table settings.

An hour later, he was back at his van ready to load his flowers. Opening the back door, he noticed one of the herring crates had toppled over with ice packs all over the floor, assuming it happened while driving. He quickly cleaned up, placing the vacuum-sealed fish and ice packs back into the crates. He then closed the crate lid, and continued loading the van with flowers. Within the hour, he would be at the San Francisco restaurant, to deliver fresh flowers and his imported fish.

*  *  *

Going in the opposite direction, down highway 101, the California-based minder was carrying the newly freed, and somewhat fishy smelling travel cooler to Silicon Valley, the last and most important material, for which the startup had been waiting. He had to get the package to the warehouse and away from himself. He knew what was in the cooler and, although sealed and not weaponized yet, he wanted to be a safe distance away. Better safe than sorry, given the high death rate associated with the contents of the cooler.

After dropping off the package, he had to attend to his real job. He was a sales rep for one of the world’s largest software companies. Based in Redwood City, his territory and most of his clients were up and down HWY 101, between San Francisco and San Jose. Being local, with a great paying sales job, he had full control of his own schedule, making side projects easy to squeeze in. He had been in The Center’s employ for over ten years, with most tasks being relatively simple; intelligence gathering, some bribery and strong-arming, and several extortion projects. This new project was the most exciting, and most consequential. He had dreamed of such a project for a very long time.

He had travelled to Europe on several occasions for his software sales job, to attend training and sales conferences. Each time, he took time off for travelling. In one case, he spent his work sabbatical in Ireland at a training facility, learning about explosives and weaponry, leaning about all aspects from acquisition and assembly, to usage and disposal. These were skills he needed and always wanted to acquire, and for which he had to wait a long time building trust before he could attend the coveted training program. And, it was the perfect place to learn and to refresh his spy craft as well as his hand-to-hand combat skills. 

This project was the most risky, given the biologicals. He was not too fond of weapons of mass destruction. But, he was getting a great paycheck for this operation. And, he felt a patriotic duty to help in any way he could. He changed the station on his radio, upped the volume, looking forward to a fruitful day, happily enjoying a fresh and beautiful white rose on his dash.