Zero day code, p.23
Zero Day Code, page 23
part #1 of End of Days Series
Captain Evseyev, the respectful young man who had greeted him at the door of the dacha at 198 Savushkina, brought tea with a slice of lemon, and a small heel of black bread with hard sausage. Yuriev reviewed the status of his little task group and waited for his own orders.
They arrived an hour after confirmation of the attack on the ethnic Russian enclave in Rezekne, and a declaration by the President in Moscow that he had authorised Russian special forces to secure the safety of the town’s orthodox Christian minority.
Rezekne was less than half an hour’s drive from the western border of the Rodina, but it was a crucial half hour which would put Russian military forces well within the borders of a full member of NATO. Sebastian Yuriev knew that the Main Directorate of the General Staff had determined that America was not likely to speed to the defense of Latvia. It had been unlikely to do so for a number of years, and now that the failing superpower was assailed by enemies both known and unknown, the chances of Washington honouring its treaty obligations were judged even less likely.
Yuriev knew this because he had sat on the very committee of the General Staff which had made that determination. His orders now arrived by safe hands, a courier from the chairman of that committee, General Anatoly Yefremov.
Sitting in his private office, a small annexe of the main room at the rear of the dacha, Yuriev heard the courier by motorcycle. He listened for the crunch of heavy boots on the stone steps and the urgent knock on the solid oaken doors.
Captain Evseyev was courteous but quiet in answering the knock and did not converse with courier. He took a small, somewhat crumpled envelope, sealed with wax and stamped with the famous star of the Red Army, and hurried it through to Yuriev, who opened it.
A note with a single word lay nestled inside.
Yuriev teased out the piece of paper and read his instructions.
PROCEED.
He filed the paper away in the envelope. It would be worth something one day, he was sure. He did not take a final sip of his tea, or delay in any way for a single moment in doing his duty.
Sebastian Yuriev, executive vice president of Glavset, but always and forever a general of the army of the Russian Federation, marched out of his office and into the control room where his systems engineers and operators awaited their own orders.
He did not disappoint them.
“Operation Molodi is commenced,” he said. “The Rodina demands that we do our duty.”
This time nobody came to attention. A chorus of voices bellowed, “Yes sir!” Everybody went immediately to their workstations and began typing furiously.
Yuriev watched for a few moments but eventually returned to his small personal space.
It was odd, this new form of so-called hybrid warfare, he thought.
So quiet and even banal on the surface, but with a few words he had unleashed upon western Europe a cyber-storm to the make the attack on America seem a schoolboy’s prank.
Nobody from the degenerate west would be coming to the aid of Latvia now.
23
Four Large By Midnight
War is always ironic in ways big and small. Some of the ironies which attended the attack on America and her allies were obvious. General Chu Jianguo thought it only fitting that the critical strike which would save the Chinese people from starvation, would in turn expose and possibly even doom many in the United States to the same fate. That was a great and terrible irony in his opinion. The use of the American developed Stuxnet program to destroy the enemy’s own food distribution network was a lesser irony, but just as proper in its own way.
One of the arbitrary and unremarked coincidences of Chu’s master plan, one of which he remained unaware even at the end, connected the fate of a software engineer at a booming Californian FinTech start-up to a semi-retired mining executive who had gone into the food business in the hipster village of Temsescal, San Francisco.
Just as General Chu’s team of militarised programmers could not provide for its own physical security, instead having to call on the services of a naval special forces group, Unit 61398 had no capacity to work on the ground in enemy territory. For that they called on the services of Bureau 13 of the Ministry of State Security. In this instance the Bureau provided a deep cover agent who had been placed inside the US college system some eight years earlier. The agent, since graduated with first class honours and employed in America’s civilian tech sector, was activated when General Chu convinced his counterpart at 13 of the strategic leverage which could be effected at just the right moment by one very talented, trusted engineer sitting at the right screen in a California-based financial technology company.
Twenty-six hours before James O’Donnell realised something was wrong with Texaco’s payment processing architecture, the Bureau 13 agent who was known to his colleagues as Benny Wong, received his activation code via Instagram; a picture of the village in which he had been born in the province of Ningxia. Another picture followed thirty minutes later; a broken wooden tablet engraved with characters in Gwoyeu Romatzyh, the Romanised lettering system used in pre-Communist China. Decoding the inscription by way of a key he had memorised many years ago, Benny unpacked a web address to a one-time downloadable file which he read on his phone, while sitting in the chill-out zone at the headquarters of The Scratch App, eating a breakfast burrito.
He almost vomited when he saw what they had ordered him to do.
His queasiness did not deflect him from the path, however. Benny Wong was a patriot and he had prepared for this moment all of his adult life. He returned to his desk, downloaded the code he needed from the address he’d been given on Github, and used his executive level access privileges to inject the new programming into the app which had made his employer one of the hottest, fastest growing FinTechs in the US. Benny had stock in the company, due to vest in six months. He knew that in following his orders he was destroying more than two million dollars’ worth of his own equity.
The new code pulsed out to millions of subscribers over the following day.
When Benny received another Instagram pic of the village in Ningxia, he opened his laptop, tapped a few lines of instructions into a program written by the very best code warriors of Unit 61398, and with a slightly trembling hand, he hit ENTER.
What happened next was very complicated in its technical details, but devastatingly simple in effect. Tens of billions of dollars disappeared from the accounts of The Scratch App’s millions of subscribers.
Benny, who everyone said had been looking off colour for a day or so, left the office early. He had a booking for lunch with two colleagues at a restaurant called Fourth Edition, about ten minutes’ walk from the Scratch app HQ.
He did not make the lunch.
Damien Maloney did not get the fake news alerts that stopped James O’Donnell in his tracks two and a half thousand miles to the east. He routinely kept most of the notifications on his phone turned off, save for three exceptions: text messages and calls from his chef, Ellie Jabbarah; phone calls and iMessages from his mother in Broken Hill and his son in LA (but not, you will note, from his ex-wife, who was also in LA); and alerts from Scratch, his financial management app. This last piece of software, used by three and a half million other subscribers, almost all of them high-wealth individuals like Damo, had access to all of his personal and company accounts, and had been invaluable during a tax audit last financial year. The company behind the Scratch app had also been specifically targeted for penetration by Unit 61398, working closely with Bureau 13 of the Ministry of State Security.
This made Damo an unlucky but by no means unique two-time loser on the first day of the first and last war fought in cyberspace.
“What the fuck?” he muttered as his phone buzzed and the screen lit up with an alert from the Scratch app that he had insufficient funds in any of his accounts to cover a recurring subscription to Bob Parker’s private newsletter. The wine writer charged ten dollars a month for a subscription to his weekly mail out.
Damo, who’d retired three years earlier from his first career as a broker specialising in coal and natural gas, had a lot more than ten bucks sitting in his various accounts. He was worth a little over two hundred and thirty million dollars, and he’d opened Fourth Edition as a hobby. He got his first job in the mining industry as a camp cook on the gold fields of Western Australia and it pleased him greatly to now fashion himself as the executive chef of one of the best restaurants in America. Knowing the abysmal truth of his culinary skills, this deeply amused Ellie Jabbarah, where it might offend and even infuriate other culinary professionals.
“Fuck me purple. What now?” Damo said as everyone moved back into the restaurant to salvage what they could of the day.
Ellie had already returned to the kitchen, insisting that Jody and Karl stay and have something to eat and drink in the cool. Jody wanted more than anything to just get back in the car and drive straight over to Chad’s place to pick up Maxy, but Ellie, Karl and old Sandino combined to forestall that choice.
“Miss Jody, you are hurt badly and very confused with it,” Sandino said. “I will make you chicken soup, yes, and pour you and your friend a glass of prosecco, and you will get better before you go anywhere, no?”
It was not really a question.
“I like chicken soup,” Karl confirmed. “But I don’t know about that other thing.”
They were almost inside when Jody heard Damo swearing again.
He kept his voice low at first, but he spoke with such intensity that he drew her attention to him. His jaw muscles bunched and his lips barely moved, but he was holding his phone so tightly that his fingers turned white as he stabbed a number into the screen.
Nick Perriam the lawyer was frowning at the screen of his phone too.
“Nick!” Damo growled. “I think these cunts have frozen my bank accounts.”
“It’s not just you, Mister Maloney,” Nick said. His voice was strangely thin. “And I don’t think it’s the government this time. It’s not ICE or Treasury and the accounts aren’t frozen. They’re… empty.”
Jody was sick with the heat of the sun and the stress of the morning. She just wanted to get into a cool, air-conditioned car, drive as fast as the traffic would allow, and gather up her son. She wanted to get her little boy home and close the doors on the world and this terrible day. She could pick up her camera gear later, unless of course…
Shit. Would the cops want to keep it as evidence?
Car horns blared out on Telegraph Avenue and sirens started up somewhere in the distance, but she couldn’t say whether that was the police or not. She might have tipped over another emotional cliff at that point, obsessing about her cameras. That equipment was her livelihood and she needed it.
Just like she’d needed that photoshoot job today.
But Jody Sarjanen angrily shook her head. That hurt like hell, but it also chased off the self-pity that wanted to take hold. She had to be here for Ellie and for Max.
And maybe for Damo, too, by the look of him.
The restaurant owner had closed up like the fist of an angry giant. He was stalking through the front doors of Fourth Edition, barking questions, orders and Australian profanities into his phone.
“What do you fucking mean there’s no money?” he shouted at whoever was on the other end of the call. “Are you telling me you lost it? You gave it away? You wiped your arse with it or what?”
For no reason she could put her finger on, nausea slowly filled all of Jody’s hollow spaces.
Nick the lawyer was having a phone conversation of his own. Quieter than Damo’s, but just as intense in its own way. He did not look cool and self-assured anymore. He looked like a man whose doctor just gave him some very bad test results.
“What’s going on?” Karl asked. He was looking around the interior of the restaurant, marvelling at the expensive fit out.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Jody and Karl stood helplessly in the cool reception area at the front of the restaurant, waiting for either Damo or Nick to let them know what was happening. The other staff had all hurried away to the kitchen where Ellie was yelling orders and almost as many swear words as Damo. Jody heard the sound of breaking glass outside—something big like a window smashed by a rock, not just a bottle dropped on the pavement—but she wasn’t sure where. The blaring din of car horns seemed to be getting louder, and she saw through the dark tinted glass of the foyer that two drivers had jumped out of the vehicles, right in front the restaurant, and were advancing on each other with fists raised.
What the hell was up with people today?
Nick finished his phone call quietly, cut the connection and put the handset away in the breast pocket of his suit. He was sweating now, red-faced, but he waited for Damien Maloney to finish up. Damo did so by smashing his iPhone – one of the new, super-expensive models – into the heavy granite reception desk where diners checked in for the reservations. It shattered in his hand.
“Fuck!” he shouted.
Jody flinched.
Outside on the street, the two men who’d climbed out of their vehicles to shout at each other were now trading blows.
Damo pulled his lawyer aside and they conferred in private for a minute.
“I think something else has gone wrong,” Jody said softly to Karl.
“Reckon so,” he nodded, watching the fight out on the main road. A big Italian looking feller and a smaller Chinese guy. The Chinaman was fast and seemed to know all sorts of moves, but the Italian was a brawler and had a lot of mass to absorb all the kicks and punches.
Damo looked very worried when he re-joined them, with Perriam at his elbow.
“Look I dunno what’s going on today, Jodes,” he said, “but I gotta get to my bank. Can you tell Ellie I had to fuck off? I’ll call her later. Tell her to forget about opening today at all. Just clean up and close for now. Can you tell her that, darlin’?”
“Sure,” she said. “Is everything all right? I mean with you guys?”
Nick Perriam shook his head.
“It’s just this app,” he said cryptically. “It’s… I dunno. It’s just bad data or something.”
“Fuckin’ hope so,” Damo said. “Or else you’re gone be suing those arse-clowns at Scratch and fuckin’ Chase Morgan too.”
“You got that right,” Nick Perriam agreed.
Karl Valentine did not care much for prosecco when he found out it was Italian champagne. He very much liked Sandino’s chicken soup however, and the Italian beer they fetched up for him from the kitchen was pronounced more than agreeable. Jody had two glasses of the bubbly wine which went straight to her head. Karl insisted it would not be a good idea to have any more in her condition and she was happy to do as he suggested.
Ellie and her crew were another two hours cleaning up and shutting down for the day. Before they left, Damo rang the front desk from his bank and Jody answered it, a little tipsy.
“Fourth Edition,” she said.
“Jodes, is that you? It’s Damo. Is your girlfriend there, mate?”
“She’s in the kitchen, Damo,” Jody said. “Do you want me to get her?”
“No mate. She’ll be busy. Can you tell her to pay everyone in cash from the safe? She’ll know what to do. But make sure she knows. Are you feeling better? You gonna remember that?”
“I’m good, Damo,” Jody said. “Cash from the safe.”
“Yeah, all of it,” Damo said. “Just tell her to top everyone up. Herself included. Don’t leave anything behind, all right? You got that?”
Jody was pretty sure she had it but repeated the instructions back to him just in case. She was still finding it hard to concentrate.
“Do it now, mate,” Damo said. “And tell Ellie that I’ll see her at your place later tonight. Tell her it’s important.”
“Okay, Damo,” Jody said. “I will.”
She wanted to ask him if he found his money but she was too scared. Instead, she said goodbye and hung up.
Karl was mopping up the last puddles of chicken soup with a fresh bread roll.
“Can you drive us again later, Karl?” Jody asked as she headed toward the kitchen.
“Sure,” he said. “Only had the one beer. But won’t Ellie want to drive you home?”
Jody stopped. It was awkward, what she had to say, but there was no avoiding it.
“We have to see my ex-husband,” she said. “And he doesn’t like her. And he’s like this angry weightlifter and…”
She trailed off and Karl waved off her concerns with the last of his bread roll.
“Don’t you worry none, Miss Jody,” he said. “Like I said, I’d be happy to.”
Jody beamed.
She was starting to feel better for the first time since she been attacked.
What a freaky day.
She went through to the kitchen to pass on Damo’s message. Everyone in there was talking about the Chinese attacking Pearl Harbour, which was super weird. Jody was pretty sure it was the Japanese who’d done that.
One of the two men who got into a fist fight in front of Damien Moloney’s restaurant, was Tommy ‘The Tripod’ Podesta, a debt collector for the Milano organised crime family; a family business, it must be admitted, that had fallen on hard times since Jimmy ‘The Weasel’ Fratianno had flipped on the LA mob all the way back in the late 1970s.
These days the mob was strictly about the small-time rackets. A bit of loan sharking, some hookers, and money laundering. Lots of money laundering for their bigger, and much better resourced cousins over the state line in Nevada. Tommy Podesta, who was not even a made guy, struggled to pay his rent most weeks. The cash he had from collecting debts for Paulie ‘the Mooch’ Milano, wasn’t nothing. If he’d been careful with his outgoings, he could’ve made his rent, his alimony, and his kids’ murderous fucking school fees.
