Zero days, p.28
Zero Days, page 28
‘So who tipped off Dmitry that we were on to Neo?’ asked Drayton.
‘It could have been any of them. But I suspect that was our Russian friend, Strykov. He assumed, wrongly, that Dmitry was his man, since they’d worked together before. And of course the Russians were holding Thomas.’
‘And what about Efren Bell?’
‘This is where it gets a little more complicated.’
‘Is that possible?’
‘You see, Bell is a man consumed by vanity.’
‘Yeah, tell me about it.’
‘He and Dmitry go back a long way, as you know. They never lost contact. Dmitry quickly blew his part of the money they made from the 2008 crash, and Efren Bell has bailed him out at least twice. The Russian has a hold on him. He knows how the money was really made. He knows it was a scam, and Bell doesn’t want those old accusations resurrected. Not now that’s he’s the darling of the techies.’
‘So, Dmitry’s blackmailing him?’
‘Not exactly. Bell wants to raise one hundred billion dollars for his Digital Pagoda Fund. He’s selling investors a dream of secure systems, powered by AI. Every time Cerberus strikes, the money comes pouring in. And Dmitry plays to Bell’s vanity, showering him with Buddha artefacts.’
‘Cullen says you are Cerberus, by the way,’ said Drayton.
‘How very flattering,’ the German replied.
‘Cullen had in his office the phone that belonged to Razor, the English hacker Matt Dobberman. It was in Dobberman’s hand when he was murdered,’ Drayton said.
‘Perhaps you will soon have another chance to ask him about that yourself,’ the German said. ‘And about the hospital.’
The mesh and wire whistled above them as a gust of wind blew across the clearing. Schoenberg looking up and then back at Drayton.
‘I think it’s time you met the rest of the team,’ he said.
*****
The radar was embedded in thick concrete, which also formed the roof of what used to be a bunker-like control room below. They entered via crumbling steps, the remains of a thick metal door hanging on one hinge. Schoenberg told Drayton to watch his feet, since there were holes in the floor, and the only light came from a series of narrow slit-like windows. Drayton could feel something glass-like crunching beneath him, piles of old computer components, transistors and circuit boards mainly.
Then a vast room of empty computer racks, a corridor with peeling walls, twisted metal littering the floor, on one side another room with drawings of ballistic missiles hanging on the walls, the descriptions below in Cyrillic, a classroom, perhaps. Then another corridor, long, narrow and dusty. Schoenberg coughed. His Geiger counter burst to life with a series of beeps, but then faded away as they left the hot spot behind them. For a while, neither of them spoke.
Light streamed from a half-open door ahead of them, a faint hum growing louder as they approached, the hum of air conditioners. Drayton shielded his eyes from the sudden harsh light. It took a while for his vision to adjust and the room to come into clearer focus. Clean white walls, a pair of sofas, desks with computers. Somebody turned from in front of the computers and waved. It was a familiar face.
‘Hey man, what took you so long?’ said Bret. ‘The beer’s in the fridge.’
Fisheye was wearing a back-to-front baseball cap and a black T-shirt, the logo a picture of an entry card, the sort used for secure access to buildings, and a caption saying, ‘ACCESS ALL AREAS’. Then in smaller letters below, ‘The dog ate my fucking pass’. Images from surveillance cameras were spread in a mosaic on the screens in front of him, an open beer beside the computer. No headphones this time, but music from the computer speakers: ‘I’m in with the in crowd’, a jazzed-up version.
Then a hand on Drayton’s shoulder. ‘Hey, that was a great performance up on the Peak. Really enjoyed it,’ said Raymond. Dim sum smiling, a big smile. ‘Glad you found your way out of Hong Kong.’
‘Thanks,’ said Drayton. ‘But your pantomime robots really stole the show.’
Then Drayton was distracted by more familiar voices, having a familiar conversation in the corner of the room, voices slightly raised.
‘It’s like the best way. To circumvent the two-tier security via a dedicated backdoor into their system,’ said Milo Müller. Then Holger Norgaard told Milo to please speak English. To please speak plain fucking English. Both looked across the room and waved.
Then Norgaard was at Drayton’s side, an arm around his shoulder, his voice lower, close to Drayton’s ear. ‘Man, I’m sorry, she was a good kid. Anna was the best. We gonna make them pay for that.’
More computers and sofas lined the walls of an adjoining room, some bunk beds too. A tall skinny kid with hair looking like it had been arranged by a shot of electricity turned towards Drayton and raised his hand. But Drayton wasn’t really paying attention to him. He was looking at the girl sitting on the top bunk with a laptop on her knee.
Drayton shouldn’t really have been surprised. But he still wasn’t sure what to say.
Vika spoke first.
‘Glad you could make it,’ she said. ‘Welcome to mission control.’
Schoenberg spoke next, a little hesitant.
‘I do believe you have met my daughter,’ he said. ‘And my son, Thomas. Vika’s brother.’
*****
So this was Thomas. The Thomas. Celebrity hacker and most recently prisoner of Dmitry, until somebody sprung him from his prison in eastern Ukraine. And Thomas was the son of Schoenberg, the sister of Vika. Heinz at the Stasi Museum had told Drayton that Schoenberg had had two children, and they’d been taken to Kiev by his Ukrainian wife after the marriage broke down, after it was discovered that Schoenberg’s wife had been a Stasi informer.
And Drayton remembered the photographs on the table in the living room of Schoenberg’s Lake Tegel house. The two fresh-faced youngsters. Vika and Thomas. Now it made sense. And like their father, the children had opted for a career in computers, albeit with a rather different trajectory.
‘How did you get out of eastern Ukraine?’ Drayton asked Thomas.
He didn’t really expect an answer, and never got one, though the glance from Thomas towards his father told him enough. Then Thomas was back at the computer again, in the world beyond its screen. His world.
He was tall and wiry, and was wearing baggy camouflage cargo trousers, and a creased grey T-shirt that looked as if it had been slept in for several days. Maybe it had. But what Drayton noticed most about Thomas was the way he hit the computer keys, with purpose, with intent bordering on aggression. He’d seen that before, that and the look on his face, the intense way Thomas navigated the screen in front of him. It was the look and style of the sleep-deprived gamer, on a second or third day without rest, hunting down monsters or aliens. Except for Thomas the monsters were all too real.
‘Hey guys, I’m ready,’ shouted Bret, his words punctuated by a crack and a hiss, as he opened another can of beer. They all gathered around his computer screens, arranged as Drayton remembered them from the boxing school in Bangkok and showing video images from surveillance cameras he’d hacked. Vika fetched some more beers from the fridge, handing one to Drayton.
‘What you got?’ she asked Bret.
Bret clicked and enlarged a video window showing grainy footage of a solid ten-storey building, heavy traffic moving slowly along a road in front.
‘Winnie-the-Pooh checked in this morning. His room’s on the eighth floor, on the corner, a suite with a river view. He arrived with two others. Big guys. State security, I’d reckon. Came downstairs once around lunchtime for a coffee and cake. Other than that, he’s not left his room.’
He clicked between more video windows, more hacked surveillance cameras. The lobby, the café, the hotel entrance, a lift. Then back to the wide shot of the hotel, which he said was from a camera monitoring a square beside the Dnieper River, across the road. He said it was a Chinese-owned hotel, built in old Kiev style, but a copy. He said the Chinese had been buying up a lot of property close to the river. It was the logical place for Wang Yang to stay. Home from home.
‘Captain America prefers a church view,’ he said, opening another set of video windows. The first was from a security camera monitoring a hotel driveway and entrance, where a sleek BMW had just pulled up and a dark-suited concierge was holding the rear door open for an expensively dressed woman. At the top of the frame, Drayton could just about make out a series of golden cupolas beyond the hotel driveway. Then Bret switched to a camera inside, following the woman to the reception desk.
‘Ric Cullen checked in late last night. Captain America. Man, I so love those names,’ Bret said, smiling at Norgaard. ‘They so look the parts. He took a top floor room with a bird’s eye view over Saint Sophia’s Cathedral.’
‘Interestingly,’ said Raymond, interrupting. ‘He didn’t check in under his own name. We accessed the hotel’s reservation system, and no Cullen. No Captain America, either,’ he said, sharing the joke. ‘He’s using the name Christopher Johnson.’
‘And the Russians?’ Schoenberg asked.
Bret opened another window, this one showing a square with a tired, peach-coloured building beyond trees. ‘Igor Strykov’s staying here. He arrived about an hour ago with a couple of heavy-looking characters. I mean straight out of central casting. Request a pair of Mafiosi thugs and you couldn’t have come up with a better match.’
‘Why would Muttley stay there? What is that place?’ Vika asked.
Thomas said it was a safe house of the GRU, Russian military intelligence. ‘Kiev is crawling with Russian spies.’
‘They certainly have some pretty heavy dudes coming and going,’ Bret said. He switched to a security camera above the building’s entrance as a shaved head moved below it, keyed in an entrance code and then entered the building.
‘When does Efren Bell arrive? And Dmitry?’ Schoenberg asked, standing slightly back from the others, his hands behind his back again. Schoenberg the quartermaster.
‘We’re expecting Bell this evening,’ said Norgaard. ‘On a flight from Berlin. He usually stays in a villa just outside town, overlooking the Dnieper, owned by a Ukrainian tech tycoon he’s done business with. It’s a bit of a fortress.’
‘I’m still working on getting eyes inside the place,’ said Raymond. ‘Tough, so taking a bit of time, but we should be able to crack the Wi-Fi. We have a tracker in the car. It’s an OmniX, which he gifted to the tycoon last year. You familiar with those cars?’
‘Yeah,’ said Drayton, smiling at Vika. ‘Came across one in Berlin. Didn’t think much of the handling.’
Then Milo said, ‘Dmitry arrived this morning on an overnight flight from Hong Kong via Munich. We’re not sure where he’s staying.’
Vika looked uneasy. ‘He’s lived here. He knows this town. He has people who owe him.’
‘But, why?’ Drayton said. ‘Why would they all come here?’
‘They’ve been summoned,’ Schoenberg said. ‘Each of them received a private message to travel here urgently.’
‘It was sort of an offer they couldn’t refuse,’ Norgaard said, smiling, that slightly mischievous smile Drayton usually found quite appealing. Though not now. Because he could sense where the conversation was going.
‘And who summoned them? Who sent this offer they couldn’t refuse?’ Drayton asked, not liking the looks he was getting, which seemed to be building to a punchline he wouldn’t find funny.
‘The invitation came from you, Drayton. You summoned them.’
*****
Schoenberg told Drayton it was the only way they could get all of them to come to Kiev, and only by getting them all in one place could they be exposed to the world.
‘You see, you have something that all of them want, Drayton. The code book. “Cold War Tours. Cold War Berlin by Scooter”.’ He said. ‘The annotated copy that is. Each cardinal has only a part of the Cerberus puzzle, and they want the rest. They believe that guide is the key to piece together the zero day for themselves. None are aware that any of the others are here in Kiev. Intriguing, don’t you think?’
‘Very,’ said Drayton. ‘But not in a good way. Not for me.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Schoenberg, a hand on Drayton’s shoulder. ‘They’ll see it as purely commercial. As far as they’re concerned, you’ve gone rogue and are simply doing it for the money. Except perhaps for Dmitry. He is of a rather more violent disposition, and may be out for revenge.’
‘Which means what?’
‘Which means,’ said Bret, ‘that he probably wants to string you up by the balls to the highest cupola in the city.’
‘But that won’t happen,’ Schoenberg said, trying to sound reassuring. That smile again. ‘Because he has another reason to do business with you.’
‘Which is?’
‘You’ve frozen his money,’ said Milo, interrupting. ‘You asked me to check out a debit card called Pearl Delta, the one Dobberman was using. And the payment to the military in Burma. Well I tracked them both to a Pearl Digital Bank, which is part of Pearl Digital Holdings.’ Milo was gabbling now, as he always did when he got excited. ‘That’s were Neo’s payments came from, it’s where he cashed out, using the debit card, and it was the source of the Bitcoin payment to the Burmese general.’
‘Basically Pearl Digital Bank is Dmitry’s banker,’ Norgaard said. It’s a cryptocurrency exchange and it also issued his wallet, receiving Bitcoin for ransomware keys and paying the hackers’ wages.’
Then Milo said, ‘We’ve hacked and frozen the exchange, locking it with our own ransomware.’
‘And Dmitry thinks you’re the guy with the key,’ Norgaard added, with a triumphant flourish.
‘That is so cool,’ Bret said.
‘I’m not sure Dmitry will see it that way,’ Drayton said.
‘There’s an added twist,’ Schoenberg said.
‘I was afraid there might be,’ said Drayton.
‘Pearl River Bank has protection from elements of the Chinese government. It acted as banker to top Communist Party officials and their families, looking to discreetly move assets in and out of the country. That also ensured protection in Hong Kong. They will be less than happy with Dmitry’s carelessness.’
‘Sure sounds like I’ve been busy,’ Drayton said.
‘We have a plan. A performance, if you like,’ said Schoenberg. He paused, waiting for a kettle to boil, then poured water into a mug, on top of a tea bag; Earl Grey. Slowly, methodically, as always. ‘The plan will be orchestrated from here.’
He sat on a desk in front of the others. ‘You see, you are standing in a powerful computer centre. The Russian Woodpecker holds a lot of secrets, some of them not so distant. After the Soviet Union collapsed it was left empty and rusting. But not forgotten. I was part of a technical team that came here in the nineties and reconfigured the radar. We were monitoring radiation levels, but we also overhauled its transmitters and receivers and turned them towards Russia. It became a powerful surveillance tool for NATO. Most recently the capabilities here have been bolstered by fibre optic lines to monitor what is going on beneath the new steel and concrete sarcophagus covering the Chernobyl plant. The connection speeds are phenomenal.’
Then, step by step, he outlined the performance, going over each of their roles. Bret in charge of the cameras, Raymond hacking connected devices to get closer still, Milo and Norgaard a mobile unit, Thomas doing a bit of everything.
Vika was doing the tracking. She opened four windows on her laptop, each showing a map, and each with a blue blob, the kind of blue blob that had been Dobberman in Bangkok before that blob was eliminated.
‘Winnie-the-Pooh’s still in his hotel, Muttley’s not yet left the GRU safe house, Captain America is sightseeing in Saint Sofia’s Cathedral.’ She leaned towards her screen. ‘Efren Bell’s car hasn’t yet left his villa, but we are expecting it to collect him from the airport this evening.’
‘How did you install the trackers?’ asked Drayton.
‘In Bell’s case, by hacking his car,’ she said. ‘That was the toughest. The others were quite straightforward. Norgaard?’
‘Igor Strykov’s got exotic tastes,’ said the Norwegian. ‘He couldn’t resist downloading an app from a local escort agency offering some imaginative services and laced with Vika’s spyware. As for Wang, Western food disagrees with him. He has to have Chinese, and loves Kung Pao chicken. He’d eat it all the time in Berlin. So we spiced up the online menu of his hotel, a virus or two along with the peanuts and chillies. When he ordered from his smartphone he got a whole lot more than fiery chicken.’
He looked at Drayton and said, ‘Sorry, not an original idea, I know.’
He said Cullen was tougher. ‘In the end we arranged for his smartphone charger to be replaced with one of our own, which transferred the spyware during charging.’
‘Nice one,’ said Bret.
But Thomas didn’t appear to be listening. He seemed distracted.
‘We’ve got no tracker on Dmitry,’ he said. ‘That worries me.’ He and Vika knew better than any of them what Dmitry was capable of, and Thomas looked uneasy, irritated by the air of self-congratulation in the room. After all, the performance hadn’t yet started.
‘Don’t forget where we are and who we’re dealing with,’ Thomas said. ‘This is Ukraine. It’s the front line in a new kind of conflict. Russian hybrid warfare, a testing ground for cyber weapons, and Dmitry’s been involved with the GRU. He’s dangerous and this is home territory for him.’
There was a moment of silence, an awkward silence, before Schoenberg began to speak again, saying that at times Dmitry had been useful to the Russians, the Chinese, the Americans, and to Efren Bell.
‘They have all regarded him as their asset, and he’s become a master at playing them off against each other. By tomorrow morning, they will all be here in Kiev, unaware of the others, and waiting for Drayton’s further instructions. Each is trying to acquire the most dangerous zero day ever discovered. Each believes that ownership of Cerberus is the key for the development of deadly cyber weapons, against which there is no defence.’
