System Seven (3 page)

“Be careful where you
are poking around, Drehen! We can only allow your streams if you conceal
yourself well.”

“Ja, ja, the transfer
is over in moments. I will route the interface to avoid your path. My
apologies. Guten tag.”

The last of his
clothes went into a suitcase stacked on the luggage dolly. Still a couple of
minutes left on the Thailand gig and only twelve of the forty file chunks had
come down from Alcazar.

He looked around the
studio. Surfaces wiped. Nothing of identity except stray, undocumented DNA. He dismissed
the thought that he might be overreacting to an odd email. Survival protocol
demanded action. Threat, response. Control ahead of change. He’d be back, but
then again... he looked around once more. If not, he’d miss the studio, his
home for the past four months.

The mp3 transfer was
nearly complete. He walked to the French doors and parted the heavy curtains.
Streets reflected the gray skies that drizzled the city. Another in a series of
summer storms was due over Rotterdam before nightfall. He rubbed the stubble of
his cheeks. Crosstalk’s email crowded his buzz. Possible information, possible
bullshit. Even if it were nothing, it was good for drill though he would want
an explanation.

A delivery truck laid
on its horn. Three teenage girls laughed off the near collision and danced onto
the sidewalk. Music from the Italian cafe below sounded faintly.
Italia
. The beauty, the food, the
traditions, and the people, the sense of family. He hadn’t returned since the
deVere incident. Instead, he enjoyed lunch and dinner at Cafe Trevi where Marie
and Cathrine waited on him with their beautiful accents.

A feeling pressed
uncomfortably on his buzz – the feeling it was time to go. He checked the
laptop and found trace warnings from Alcazar. He scrolled through the messages.

“
Shit.
” Someone had bypassed all safeguards and tracked him.

He canceled the
Alcazar download with only fifteen file chunks received and began unplugging
gear.

“What the fuck,
Crosstalk? What did you grab?”

• • •

A security guard waved
Austin’s white BMW through the gates at InterGen just before the Saturday sun
rose above the Sierras. He’d arrived early to get a head start on addressing
the Crest vulnerability. Rocom had already formed a response team and were ready
to work with him.

A sluggish Matt and
two other techs looked up from their consoles as he entered the network
operations center. The large NORADs showed systems and traffic looking
first-rate.

“All quiet, boss.”

“Good. How did the
trace to Thailand go?”

“Through that factory
in Bangkok to a hosting company that doesn’t honor requests without legal
wrapping.”

“Figures. You scanned
the other routers?”

He nodded and stood to
stretch. “No broken glass, no trace. The alarms are set based on what we know.”

“Good news. Beat it
Matt, and thanks for the hard work.”

“Twenty minutes ‘til I
can turn back into a pumpkin.”

“Go. These guys will
keep an eye on things.”

Matt came over and
said in a low voice, “I’m really sorry for not catching the hack.”

“Don’t sweat it. Like
my dad always says, ‘A mistake shouldn’t embarrass anyone, but failing to
benefit by it should.’ I doubt you’d miss it again.”

“Nope, I sure wouldn’t.”

The hiss of the soda
opening coincided with the phone ringing. Austin took a gulp before he answered.
It was Andreas Bietl of the brewery in Germany, speaking with thickly accented
English.

“I am returning your
earlier call. How may I help you?”

He explained the
intrusion at InterGen and the trace back to their brewery. “I was hoping you
might have logs for that router and would allow me to analyze them, or perhaps
you have a technical person I could talk with.”

There was a pause.
“Log files? Hackers? I know nothing of these things. My consultant keeps our
network secure. It is unfortunate that your security was breached but I cannot
help with what you ask. We have no logs.”

From not knowing what
a log file was to knowing he didn’t have any. This would go nowhere.

He couldn’t help
responding tightly. “If your consultant finds anything pertaining to this
matter, please do have him contact me. I will send my information.”

“Of course.”

“Thank you.” He ended
the call with a thump on the desk. Kaiya’s words echoed.
Owned by a hacker, babe. Not good.

No, not good at all.

Just in case, he fired
off his contact information to the German bullshitter and got on the phone with
Rocom to help isolate the Crest vulnerability.

He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned
my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him a spinal
cord would suffice.

-Albert Einstein, German-born American physicist

Many people whose
lives are comprised of compounded lies end up developing a certain amount of
nagging regret. It’s the feeling, however small, of wishing the lies had never
begun while knowing all too well they had and would continue. While they might
get used to the feeling, it never lost its eventual bitter after taste.

For Johan, whose
normal footprint in society was as false as the nature backdrops used in the
Berlin opera, the lies that made up his identity were nag free. The characters
portrayed to the unsuspecting public were genuine, the backgrounds contrived
yet harmless to those he met and chose to interact with. That is, harmless to
most. That he sometimes acted outside of those personas and did break laws,
steal, extort, con, and worse did not weigh heavily on his conscience. There
was no reason to indulge in regret because he was merely acting as an agent of
karmic balance.

A vague notion to
most, the idea of karma and a universe that saw fit to balance it among all
things was very real to Johan – life experience had proven its existence beyond
any doubt. Targets were never needy individuals or companies; they were always
well-endowed firms or individuals, professional players of the big game of
life. In the written and unwritten records of their past were histories that
made them deserving. His was an uncanny ability to uncover the players and
their past. Sifting through news reports and social magazines, political
reports and court filings, hacked email accounts and mail servers, invariably
deserving targets appeared.

Karmic balance.

Just as the wind blew
strong to topple rotted pines in the forest, so did he effect change on those
he selected. If profit occurred as a result, it was simply the scales swinging
back into line.

Once he’d begun such
work the successes piled up, creating a momentum that allowed him to pursue
that balance with greater resources and with more exacting cause.

He operated in the narrow
but plentiful gaps that ran through all major systems. Those systems relied on
technology and technology relied on humans to program it. Those programs had
weaknesses, especially when strung together. Legions of hackers found and
exploited those gaps. Johan belonged to a group that harvested that information
to form an exclusive repository of tools.

When a needed hack
couldn’t be found in the repository, he wasn’t beyond physically infiltrating
facilities to install his own wedge to allow access. Drehen Legters, his web
designer and internet marketing wiz persona, was well traveled as a result.
Social engineering skills stemmed from an admittedly borderline neurotic
personality he’d largely mastered and could direct at will, a character that
had talked his way into secure facilities and out of many a dire strait.
Success came from blending old world material finesse with technological
expertise.

There could be no
better time for fortune from such a mix. The adoption of computerized records, combined with the decline of care
put into paper record keeping, allowed for very creative results. Both storage mediums were subject to
unauthorized access and alteration given the right preparation.

Lately, his efforts
were aimed at catching up with those that used stolen innocence as currency. It
was as dangerous an effort as any he’d undertaken, in some ways more so... but
also more rewarding – to enact punitive sentences on those that no court could
easily target. For now, he was picking off the users; later he would target the
server operators, which might involve the law or might lead to something much
more elaborate and severe. The justice systems of the world were plagued with
ineffective agents and his work was needed for balance. As long as he followed
his rules, the outcome of each effort was predictable, resulting in either
success or a controlled failure.

Driving in the
storm-cast gloom of early evening, he assessed the situation. Half in
character, half thinking of mortality, what happened at the apartment tugged
hard on the edge of calm. When the traces showed up, the walls of the tiny
apartment echoed Crosstalk’s command,
go
low...

He had rolled his two
luggage dollies down the alleyway to the Vanagon two streets over. He circled
back and parked with a view of Café Trevi and his apartment, cell phones off in
precaution. A familiar position, waiting out possible danger. He doubted
anything would happen but was prepared to wait the rest of the day to be sure.

Within minutes the men
arrived in a sedan with blacked out windows. They disappeared into the entry
and all too soon one appeared in his apartment window, a handgun briefly
visible. At that moment the message from Crosstalk became substantial, the
danger as tangible as the rain returning to pelt the roof and windshield.

For the first time in
years a familiar fear flickered, the kind that swallowed reason to spawn panic.
There could be no doubt that Crosstalk was in trouble – perhaps dead if his
warning proved accurate.

It was good not to
exist.

A comforting maxim
he’d grown fond of, he mulled it over for a good kilometer. More than anything
it was comfort he sought driving on the storm-slick A3 towards Munich.

I don’t exist.

Birth records in tiny
Elburg in the Gelderland province were missing from the local and the regional
government storehouses. The hospital that once held his childhood medical
records lost them one chilly December night years ago. The national registry of
citizens, converted to database form nearly ten years prior, had been purged of
his existence. He’d never been arrested so his prints weren’t on file. Medical
work was done at free clinics or through private practices. Cash payment and
false ID.

Having never been
born, he was free to give birth to his own personas. The supporting
documentation and history of three identities were his, each a blossom amidst
the vast crop of failed or partial identities, each an artful manipulation of
the systems that defined identity. Two
he could become at a moment’s notice – the third required a half hour’s makeup
session. They were the result of a life spent seeking intrigue, wealth, and
most importantly, freedom.

Only now complications
from Crosstalk’s email threatened invisibility – he was tagged as a person of
interest by whoever was tracking him. Identities used for utilities and rent
were paper-thin. Bank deposits were manual and email accounts new. Web traffic
logs would reveal nothing of identity, though the encrypted streams through
Underground servers and bots could attract attention.

The truly alarming
thing was how fast they’d physically reached him. From the timestamp on
Crosstalk’s email to the time they’d hit the apartment was a span of only
twenty-five minutes. It implied a government-level response, a worst-case
scenario.

The handgun seen in
the window made him think of Mrs. Shulz. Because of the rewire of service into
his apartment, they would have gone to her apartment first. Guns drawn, she would
have been terrified. Guilt burned.

Cars passed him on the
soaked highway and turned the van’s windows opaque between wiper strokes.
Making it to Munich through rising winds and rain provided distraction from the
unanswered questions but not enough. Fear still ranged the periphery of
thought.

“I don’t exist,” he
said to the road ahead.

He couldn’t deny that
the axiom offered less comfort than before.

The lights of distant
Munich seen through the rainfall lightened his heart. He’d made the eight-hour
drive straight through, sleep a prominent passenger the last hour. An exit led
to a tumbling lane with farms, pastures, and stands of old-growth trees. He
slowed when he saw the familiar wooden sign swinging in the wind. He turned
into a long drive, rolled past a stone farmhouse, and stopped in front of an
oversized barn. Amidst the darkness and rain, the wooden structure loomed
ominous and foreboding. For him, it felt like home. He dashed to the heavy
wooden doors and opened them to pull the van inside.

Built shortly after
the Second World War, the barn was of the best German timber, constructed to
outlast the problems of the period. In the late eighties George and Faiga
bought the farm and converted the rear into an apartment to accommodate
visiting family. On the ground floor was a kitchen, dining area, and sitting
room. A large bedroom with a bath made up the second floor. Its simplicity and
location in the farmlands offered refuge from the incident back at the
apartment. The file meant nothing here, over eight-hundred kilometers away...
unless they’d tracked him
.

He shook his head and
resumed the pleasant moments of arrival. No one knew where he was.

He climbed the narrow
stairs and reached for the light switch. The glow of a bulb revealed a bedroom
with only a bed, nightstand, writing table, dresser, and coat stand. Near the
door to the bathroom a painting depicted St. Michael the Archangel expelling
Lucifer from heaven.

He studied the
painting as he shrugged out of his coat. A scene both serene and incredibly
violent. St. Michael appeared to handle Lucifer with grace and confidence,
reinforced by the might of God, yet he could imagine the fierce struggle
between good and evil. Most would fail to comprehend those forces and instead
only acknowledge the biblical story depicted. So it was with much of daily
life, taken for granted with little in the way of reflection of its supporting
structures. A safe but shallow mindset held by the majority of people. It
helped his work immensely in many ways... but how deep the pond was!

“How deep, indeed?”

He hung his coat on
the stand and again thought of Crosstalk’s message.

Could it be? Psychic
abilities? There were times when intuition leapt across all boundaries of
reasoning and deduction to deliver improbable revelations about others. Too
many times to count, really. Usually it was subtle. Other times, not so much.

He went to the toilet
for a piss.

Intuition, the only
non-taboo word for a sixth sense. Mention the concept of psychics, use the term
‘mind reading’, and the whole thing blew up in your face. Too fantastic, too
contrived, but also too invasive to consider, too problematic for people’s
comfort zone.

What was consciousness
anyway? From what did it stem, and what attributes did it have? Was there an
underlying framework that could be explored and even shared? It seemed possible
that there was, which made Crosstalk’s message more intriguing.

Back in the bedroom,
he looked around for the laptop and realized he’d left it on the kitchen
counter. At the bottom of the stairs he halted at the sight of a bearded man
with a rifle.

The man lowered the
weapon. “Peter! I wasn’t sure it was you.”

“I hoped not to wake
you, George.” They embraced. “Sorry I didn’t call ahead.”

“Eh, you’re welcome
anytime and you know it.” George eyed him. “You look tired, son. Worn. Are you
okay?”

He smiled, despite
sadness. George had aged, his beard fully gray now. Only his belly remained
stout – the rest had thinned. “Work has been stressful. Time for holiday. Maybe
some drawing, maybe nothing at all. I need to relax and this is the best place,
away from it all.”

The older man nodded.
“Wise choice. Eh, you really are exhausted, it’s in your voice. They must have
you very busy.” He knew Peter as an agent of the Dutch security services. The
remark was a subtle reminder of how interested he was in his exploits. “I’m
just glad you arrived safely. The roads are hell, I bet. Crazy storms.”

“Crazy, yes.”

“Well this is good.”
He clapped him on the shoulder. “Faiga will be glad you’ve come. Get some
sleep, son. Breakfast in the morning?”

“Of course. Tell Faiga
I’ll be up to help her make it.”

“Good, good. Sleep
well.” He turned for the door.

“Thank you George.”

He went to unload the
van. Reliving the incident at the apartment, he struggled again with the
implications. If they dug really deep, they might learn he’d driven the
Vanagon. That was registered to Drehen which meant there would be just one
identity left to use.

Calm.
No ifs. No fear. Confirm. Deal with reality first.

Exhausted, he locked
up and lugged his suitcases up the stairs. He undressed messily, turned off the
lights, and collapsed into bed. Between the goose-down blankets and the rain
against the barn roof, his last thoughts were of gratitude before sleep came.

• • •

“Heya.”

Austin strolled into
the family room with a beer and a bag of chips and joined Kaiya on the couch.

“Oh,” she paused her
show. “I ordered pizza about twenty minutes ago.”

“Pepperoni?”

“Half. Thin crust.”

“You’re the best.”

“I know. How’s your
hacker?”