Cloak and Dagger (The IMA Book 1)

Cloak and Dagger by Nenia Campbell

CLOAK AND DAGGER

by NENIA CAMPBELL

Copyright ©
2012 Nenia Campbell
All rights reserved.

ISBN-13:978-1480172920

ISBN-10:1480172928

DEDICATION

To those who said I could.

Chapter One

Honor

Michael:

The man in the cell was called Itachi Watanabe. In Japanese,
Itachi
meant weasel. He looked like one. Greasy hair. Pinched, rodent-like features. Slanted black eyes constantly shifting, never meeting one's gaze. On the security monitor he paced like a caged animal, pausing periodically, restlessly, to stare in the direction of the camera with a pleading expression.

I'd read his file. He'd built up quite a thick one over the years. He was a Japanese programer, thirty-eight-years-old. Attended school in MIT, as an international student, until he was kicked out for hacking into the administrative system and changing the grades of his ex-girlfriend and her new lover. A series of similar transgressions resulted, from various insults both actual and imaginary, causing his subsequent firings at various technological institutes. Following his expulsion from Apple for leaking corporate information to competitors — for a price — his public career went under and he disappeared underground like the rat he was, where he continued to hone his skills. Antisocial, but highly intelligent. Insecure and possibly schizophrenic. They say that genius is closely linked with insanity. Allegedly, Watanabe could hack into even the most sophisticated of firewalls. Including ours.

It had been a silent entry. A silent escape. If he had kept his mouth shut, he might have even managed to remain undetected. Watanabe had made a fatal error: he'd bought a round of sake bombs at a sushi bar in San Francisco and then, hungry for praise, made drunken boasts to his new-found companions. One of those companions had been an ex-client of ours. Out of a duty-bound sense of honor, he made an anonymous call from a local payphone. My men came for Watanabe that night.

I stared at the pathetic man on the screen, at the mess he had been reduced to over the last twenty-four hours. I'd seen men lose their backbone before, in his position, but Watanabe had nothing to lose; he was spineless. The computer was both his shield and his sword — and it had also been his downfall.

Yesterday morning a handful of computers in L7 had crashed, all of them part of the same network. One of the technicians immediately discovered the cause: a computer virus in an e-mail, opened and released by one of our employees. The infected computer transmitted the virus to every linked computer, rendering the entire network unusable.
Pandora
, the e-mail read,
She's a curious girl
. There hadn't been a sender. L7 was chiefly responsible for the archival of our weapons database. The network that had been targeted by the virus cataloged the imports that had transpired  between 2000 and 2009. The items and their prices were encrypted, but Watanabe  managed to crack some of the code.

Our IT people had checked out his home computer, which he had been stupid enough to use. In addition to a couple megabytes of porn stashed on various flash drives, they found several of his current hacking projects, including the encrypted import logs he'd been deciphering using pirated software called Skeleton Key that worked by implementing several thousand different decrypting algorithms a minute until one that fit the code was found. Before wiping his computer clean with a high power magnet, they had managed to determine that the e-mail had been sent from his e-mail account but not from his computer. And, since he hadn't installed a time-release, that meant somebody had helped him.

I was going to find out who.

On the monitor his lips were moving as he spoke with a wild-eyed desperation that implied he was ready to talk. Or just begging again. The video had no audio; I couldn't be entirely sure. He might be a nut. I swung around in my chair to face the hovering technician. “What's he saying?”

“
I'm not quite sure. From what I've been told, he's been babbling for a while.”

“
Coherently?” I wanted to know what I'd be working with, whether he'd be delusional.

The technician shrugged. “I don't know. I manage the audio-visuals. Probably as coherent as can be expected given his current situation. One of the psychologists evaluated him earlier, I think. He's terrified, but sane.”

Good. “Give me the computer read-outs. I'll speak with him.”

“
Last guy didn't have much luck,” he warned me as he handed me the papers. They were still warm from the copier.

“
Who was the last guy?”

“
Ricky Morelli.”

Ricky Morelli was a thug, with inside connections to the Italian mafia. His sister was married to one of the dons. They were old friends. Went way back. Morelli had helped the don dispose of some evidence implicating him in a major drug bust. The don was grateful, so grateful that he had made some debt collectors mysteriously vanish, and introduced him to my boss — yet another friend who had been kind enough to help him in his time of need and just so happened to be searching for another operative.

I love happy endings.

Morelli did not like me. I had the habit of making him look like an idiot; something that wasn't difficult to do. I was pretty sure he'd tried to have me killed — I hadn't stopped to chat with the hired goons that had tried to shoot me after one such humiliation. The bullets they fired spoke for themselves. Subtlety isn't Ricky's style, nor mine. I left the spent bullets on his desk along with a condolence card that said, “I'm sorry for your loss…” He never said anything about the card, but it was gone the next day. So were the bullets. He focused on his other competitor instead — Adrian Callaghan — which was like abandoning a fight with a mean dog for an even meaner dog with a taste for human flesh: further proof he wasn't the brightest bulb in the box. Callaghan was amused and all too eager to play along. Morelli was hoisted by his own petard; how could he get Adrian to back off? The solution became clear when a notebook filled with dirt on Callaghan, and his ties to the IRA, magically appeared in his locker. Their power play ended in stalemate, and Callaghan searched elsewhere for victims.

I like to think that Morelli and I have reached an understanding.

Shaking those thoughts off, I grabbed the papers. “I don't need luck.”

I took the elevator down to B1. Unlike the upper-level rooms, which were virtually indistinguishable from run-of-the-mill office cubicles, these underground rooms had steel doors with key cards. I swiped mine through the requisite slots and entered Watanabe's cell. Except for a wooden table, a chair, and a cot, it was empty. A strong, pungent smell hung in the air. From the way he avoided my eyes, I knew the man had soiled his pants.

I set his file down on the table and rolled up my shirtsleeves. The smell was foul, but I'd been through worse. “Sit
down
.”

After a wild look around the room, he plunked himself down in the chair. I pulled the computer printouts from my coat and set these down, too, ignoring him for the moment. One was from the IMA database — it showed the page he had accessed, staying up half the night to decrypt like a kid with a fucking decoder ring. The second printout was a copy of the infected email. When I looked up his eyes were locked on the pages, his face pale.

Schooling my own expression, I held up the first printout. “Look familiar?”

He stared bleakly at the page for several seconds before shaking his head no.

I had anticipated the lie but it still pissed me off. My interaction with the inept technician and the burden of Callaghan and Morelli had eaten up what patience I had; I didn't like playing second fiddle, or cleaning up after others' messes. Before Watanabe could get any further denials in, I shoved the desk forward, knocking him out of his chair. With a cry of alarm, he landed in a graceless sprawl on the floor. “Do you consider yourself an honorable man?”

“
I…” He trembled like a leaf. “…why — what do you…?”

“
You're protecting someone.” Watanabe opened his mouth. “Don't lie to me. I
know
you're protecting someone. Hackers rarely work alone, as I'm sure you're aware. Do you honestly believe you are the first to have attempted to gain entry through our firewall?”

“
No.”

“
So you're not a complete fool.”

Color rose in his face. “I do believe that I am the first to succeed,” he muttered.

“
Then you should be more cognizant of the level of trouble you are in.” I knelt down. “Would you put a price on honor? How much is your allegiance worth — your life, perhaps? The life of your…associate?”

I saw the gears turn in his head as he began to understand. The blotches of red in his cheeks receded, as though sucked into a vacuum, rendering his face even paler than before. “Honor is worth more than blood money.”

“
No, I'm afraid honor is worthless. Honor won't save you now, and whatever pathetic comfort you derive from it will do little to ease the pain I am about to inflict on you. Maybe you fear your associate will retaliate. Maybe you think he can save you. He can't.” I paused. “Do you know what we do to liars here?”

He swallowed with visible effort. “No.”

“
In the next room there is a man waiting to show you. The prisoners at our internment camp call him
el
tiburón
— the shark — because they say the scent of blood excites him. He takes great pride in what he does” — I paused again, indicating a small, hand-held radio — “do you want me to call him?”

No response.

“
Well?”

He managed to raise himself to a slumped, seated position on the floor. “No…”

“
Then I'll ask you one more time. Do you recognize this? Does it look familiar?”

He nodded wearily. “It's the code.”

“
The code to what?”

“
I don't know. I'm not sure.” He stared at the paper, as if willing the encryption to reveal itself before his hungry, desperate eyes. “I swear.”

I shuffled the papers, revealing the second printout of the e-mail. “And this one?” He frowned, leaning closer. I held the paper just out of reach. I didn't think he was foolish enough to make a lunge for it, not with me armed, although he was spry enough — and desperate enough — to do so, but there was no need to tempt him. I let him take a good look before prompting him, “Yes or no?”

He started to speak, then closed his mouth and shook his head. “No.”

I pressed the button.

His eyes shot open so wide I could make out the yellowed whites of his sclera under the track lighting. “Wait! What are you doing? I am telling the truth!”

“
You have lied to me twice already. I will not be lied to again.” To the radio, I said, “Get Callaghan on the line — ”

“
No!”
Watanabe made a wild lunge for the radio from across the table. I kicked him in the diaphragm. He hit the ground like a sack of cement and started sobbing. “Please — ”

“
Subject is being uncooperative.”

“
No,” he wheezed, “I'll talk. I swear — ”

“
You'll lie.”

“
No! I'll tell you anything you want to know. Anything!”

I held my thumb off the button. “You have a minute. Starting now.”

“
But — ”

“
Fifty-three seconds. Do not argue with me.”

For a moment he looked like he was intent on doing exactly that. He wet his lips, then spoke in a rapid burst, “Okay. I — I might have come across something similar to this once, a few years ago — though I swear I've never seen that one before!”

“
This?” I brandished the second printout.

He flinched. “Not exactly. But they're similar, ah — the other e-mail I saw also made references to Greek mythology, and it also contained a virus.”

“
I never said it contained a virus.”

“
It's obvious. There is no sender, and just the way it's laid out…” He shook his head, not repentantly but in admiration. “It's quite intricately done. The message provokes curiosity. If the user acts upon their curiosity, it becomes their own undoing; it's a clever homage to the myth of Pandora. There's so many layers to study and analyze — ” slowly, unconsciously, he reached out toward the paper

“
That's
enough
.” I folded it away. “Tell me about the other e-mail.”

He drew his hand back as though he'd been bitten. “I-it was about Hephaestus. The god of technology. I don't remember much more than that. It lacked the same level of sophistication, but there was a similar trap, also based on myth. I-I remember it contained a form of malware — called Alloy, I believe. At first it seemed to improve the computer's performance speed, but at the same time it was infecting other, less frequently used, files.” He paused, scratching at the inside of his wrist. I could see the reddish imprint of rope bindings. “I believe it was supposed to be an allegory to the arsenic added to copper to smelt bronze. It seemed like a cheaper substitute at the time but caused serious health risks from repeat exposure to those who used it.”

“
Who is he? Where does he live?”