Cyber Genius (29 page)

Once I was on the sidewalk, I could feel the pulse of alarm
again. Pedestrians pushed and shoved in their hurry to be elsewhere, all of
them shouting into their mobiles. Car horns blared. In the distance, I heard
dozens of sirens, but there was nowhere for traffic to retreat. This was not a
normal rush hour. This was more like three concerts, a Christmas tree lighting,
and the Olympics emptying into the streets at once.

I made a mental note never to isolate myself in limousines
again. No wonder the wealthy had no idea how the rest of the world lived. I’d
never fully realized how my prized isolation had cut me off from reality. A
rich man’s pedestal wouldn’t be any better than my basement.

Especially if some Unholy Pratman had the power to stop
emergency services while he committed who knew what crimes. I smelled big-time
cover-up, at the very least. My gut really didn’t like the idea of that much
power consolidated in one place.

I didn’t have time to reach my clothing stash for more suitable
attire. Still in my dowdy skirt and ugly black coat, I slipped through crowds
gathering on corners, past the business suits consulting their fancy phones.
How long before the phones stopped working?

The MacroWare sales office was only a few blocks away. I
wondered how Tudor had managed to get through their security but didn’t waste
time worrying over that detail—not while the entire MacroWare staff appeared to
be spilling from the building and milling outside on the sidewalk.

Was there a fire?—which was what I’d expected after Tudor’s
smoke message. I heard no alarms or loudspeakers indicating a fire drill. I
smelled no smoke and saw no leaping flame. That didn’t keep me from panicking
at the prospect of a hidden fire with my brother in the middle of it.

If there was a fire, the place would burn down. No fire
truck could get through this traffic.

Why
was Tudor
inside a building where my next best suspect worked? He didn’t need to be
physically inside the building to mess with their servers—which should be
sensibly located offsite. My adrenalin was rapidly escalating into berserker
mode.

Where the hell was Tudor? Didn’t he have the sense to get
out with everyone else? I wanted his long red hair back so I could see him in
the mob. But in his knit cap and slouchy sweater, he’d look like every other
geek in the lot, except the execs. I strained to find him, but I was too short
to see through the crowd.

Under the assumption that Tudor would be watching for me if
he was outside, I sauntered past the mob rather than attract attention by
gawking. Around the corner from the employee door was the glass front public entrance.
It was dark. I glanced at my phone. Not five yet. They shouldn’t be closed.

I tried texting Tudor again but this time didn’t get a
response.
Not liking this.
If he was
outside with the rest of the crowd, he’d be able to hear his phone.

I called Graham and got voice mail. “Don’t say I didn’t warn
you,” I said into the recording. “MacroWare is dark. Everyone is outside, but
I’m not finding Tudor. I’m going in.”

That was about the nicest threat I’d ever left him. I pushed
open the front door and entered the dark lobby. Apparently no one had told
security to lock the doors during an emergency. Eggheads lacked common sense.

I smelled smoke. I didn’t feel heat or see flame. I heard no
crackling. I’ve had a lot of experience with fires. This one just seemed to
stink, and it wasn’t even a fried-electrical smell. Why weren’t the smoke
alarms going off? They must have done so earlier to send everyone out.

I found a bank of light switches, but they didn’t work. I
produced my LED from my bag and proceeded onward. “Ratface?” I called into the
darkness. Even in my panic I wasn’t using his very identifiable name. I was
hoping Tudor would recognize my voice or the old insult.

I heard a noise further down the carpeted corridor. Trusting
the building code would require a fire exit at the other end, I hurried down
the empty hall, shoving open office doors and flashing my light, looking for
trapped employees or Tudor.

Nothing but dark monitors everywhere. A computer company
with no active computers is a sad affair. No electronic alarms blared at my
intrusion. No security guards monitored my progress or stopped me. In a place
like this, back-up generators ought to be kicking in to at least keep the
servers and security running.

The lack of electronics was pretty damned scary. It
presented a sharp image of a world without internet or security cameras, without
fire or burglar alarms—a world where people could just walk in off the street.
Wow. Hard to wrap the mind around. It was almost like being back in an old
cowboy Western. We might as well have swinging doors.

Apparently hysteria provokes my imagination to strange heights.

I shoved at the next door. It didn’t open, and I reached
freak-out level. “Ratface?” I called again, more urgently.

Tudor dropped through the ceiling in front of me. I nearly
had a heart attack until I saw him holding one of those useless little netbooks
that cost three fortunes and a harem or two. Then I wanted to smack him. I was
still shaky from imagining his crumpled body behind that locked door.

“Some arse is burning something,” he whispered, nodding his
head toward the back part of the building. “The ventilator quit working when
the electricity went out.”

“I don’t see any reason to stay in here and find out who,” I
muttered, but I followed him down the hall. So, yeah, our entire family is
nuts, including me. “Doesn’t look like you’ve patched the software hole yet.
The entire city is crashing to a halt.”

“You haven’t given me enough time. And my monster isn’t
crashing anything. It only eats data files. This is a real attack if servers
are shutting down.”

That shut us both up. We could be hunting a truly dangerous human
monster, not just a cookie-eating one. I’d been hunting a killer, without
giving much thought to the killer’s agenda. MacroWare’s operating system ran
over half the computers in the world. Shut down MacroWare’s servers, corrupt
their operating system and browser... and the result would be far worse than
the traffic jam outside. If we had a megalomaniac controlling MacroWare...

One big corporation ruling all computers was such a very
bad
idea.

I pulled Tudor into one of the dark offices and shut the
door.

“How much can you do with that tiny piece of overpriced
junk?” I asked.

He flipped it open to show me the available networks.
“There’s a strong signal in the building that isn’t MacroWare’s. I had just
hacked their password when I smelled smoke. I was looking for the source when
you yelled at me. I don’t know even know if MacroWare is still online, but the
wireless ought to be strong enough for me to try to tap into their off-site servers
if I go outside and find a hiding place.”

I wanted him safe and a hundred miles away, but if Tudor was
our only hope of getting the world as we knew it back up and running . . .
“There’s no one up front. Head that way, sit by the front door so you can
escape if necessary. No one on the street should be able to see you. I’ll look
for the smoke.”

He yanked a fire extinguisher off the wall and handed the
canister to me. Then he hit the fire alarm for good measure. Nothing happened.
“Is that what Graham means when he says emergency services are down?”

“I’m guessing MacroWare’s security is shut down,” I said. “And
for good measure, Pratman may have disconnected police and fire department
computers so they won’t get here until he’s done with whatever he’s doing.”

Tudor snorted at the epithet I’d created from his slang, but
he didn’t interrupt while I thought out loud.

“Emergency services ought to have some kind of radio
communication,” I continued, “but it won’t do them much good with the traffic
out there, so stay by the door where I can find you. I’ll locate other fire
exits, then hunt our smoking gun.”

He took the
gun
part literally and looked alarmed. I pointed back the way I’d come. “Save the
world, minion.”

Apparently accepting that we had different goals, he
grimaced and loped toward the front. I lofted the heavy fire extinguisher,
decided I could handle it, and proceeded down the hall of executive offices. I
was hoping to find my objective on this floor. I didn’t want to be trapped on
the second floor if there really was a fire and not just a smoking rag.

The stench of smoke grew heavier as I progressed down the
hall. The titles on the various doors grew increasingly more officious. I’d
reached Chief Financial Officer before I heard the muttering.

“I’m not a damned programmer,” I heard a man’s voice whine.
“I’ll make it all go away, if you’ll just leave me alone. You knew we couldn’t
do this forever.”

I didn’t hear anyone reply. Assuming he was on the phone, I
eased past the CFO’s office and on to a double door suite with no label on it.
Conference room was my assumption. I peered in the sidelight window. At a
console of monitors against the near wall, I could see a tall man in a
high-backed chair. Shades of Graham.

But this wasn’t competent, self-assured Graham. Whoever this
was, his body language revealed a terrified, weak dude apparently in over his knucklehead.
He kept rubbing his brow and practically wringing his phone while slumped over
a keyboard.

At this hour in the winter, the floor-to-ceiling windows
were mostly dark, except for illumination from a distant street light. So it
was only the building electricity that was out. The smoke was stronger here. I
didn’t find the source until I saw the man feed papers under a desk and watched
smoke billow out. Really, who burns papers anymore—unless he was trying to set
off the sprinklers. Water would certainly wipe out any evidence in the
mainframe servers, if they were in this building. It wouldn’t wipe out any
off-campus back-up, but this guy didn’t look as if he was thinking too clearly.

He set his phone down on the desk and returned to pecking
uncertainly at his keyboard.

What should I do now? Given what I could see of his height
and shoulders and what I’d put together so far, I was pretty certain this was
Wyatt Bates, brother of the aphrodisiac-wielding dead exec, and that he could
be a desperate serial killer.

But he’d just talked to someone who apparently knew at least
some of what he was up to. He had accomplices.

That scared the crap out of me.

My usual verbal attack wouldn’t work with a real killer. I
only intimidated the powerless. The possibility of murderers with weapons
roaming the hall was frightening. I should have sent Tudor away.

But the moron in the conference room could be destroying the
internet for all I knew. He was most certainly destroying evidence. If I was
right, he had killed one of the most important men in the world. He could
easily have shot Hilda. For what? To spy on banking committees?

To save an
all-powerful mortgage company.
One partially owned by the family of another
MacroWare exec—Bob Stark. For all I knew, Goldrich owned half of MacroWare and
half the politicians in D.C. in one manner or another. Money has a way of
creating its own influential fiefdom.

But Stark wouldn’t poison himself.

Remembering Senator Paul Rose and his tribe of wealthy
investors in Goldrich’s halls—there was more than a simple mortgage company
involved. I had huge files on the senator and his Top Hat cabal and knew they ran
entire mega-banks and brokerages. Legislation controlling their realms could
endanger all of them. Could Stiles’ death just be about money? That sucked so
bad I wished the killers could all die more than once, in painful ways.

Leaning against the wall, fire extinguisher in hand, I
worked through a scenario to keep from going off half-cocked. If I was afraid
of losing our meager rainy day fund as the stock market slid downward, I could
just imagine what guys worth gazillions must fear now that the spyhole had gone
public. MacroWare stock was plummeting. Soon, the rest of the market would
follow.

Whoever had created the spyhole was about to lose everything
because they’d wanted to control banking regulations. They were so arrogant,
they had thought the peons would never catch them.

It would take time and a lot of quick thinking to cover
their tracks—hence the emergency shutdown.

Hence the mass murder of MacroWare execs? They’d been the
first to learn of the spyhole.

If Stiles or his execs had informed the government that
someone in his company had been using software to spy on government agencies,
all hell would have broken loose. Homeland Security had the manpower to locate
the spyholes, the spies, the information leaked, and how it was used. The
powerbrokers would have all gone to jail.

Desperate men led to desperate measures, and they could
justify it to each other in the end.

I was scared, but I was also majorly ticked as I worked all
this out. I snapped a blurry photo through the window and sent it to Graham.
I’d sent him one earlier of Rose and company but he hadn’t acknowledged it. I
assumed he’d identified the cabal by now, but whether he could tell anything
from this profile was doubtful. The guy in here was just another peon.

The Top Hat guys never got their hands dirty—but one of
these days, I was going to nail a witness who would squeal. This was as good a
place as any to start.

With no police to back me up, I didn’t have a lot of
alternatives. I needed to halt whatever he was doing.

I shoved open one of the double doors, aimed the fire
extinguisher, and opened a stream of foam on his trash can. It was very
definitely Wyatt Bates who looked up. I needed to run, but working out the
cover-up hadn’t cooled me off. I was geared for a fight.

The Big Guy bellowed and came after me. I kept spraying,
knocking out his computer and the trash can fire, while liberally coating him
with foam. I didn’t know what was in this stuff, but it couldn’t be good for
the eyes.