MONEY TREE (39 page)

Ted
and Erin sat in stunned silence gazing at the pc.

‘Does that mean…?’ he asked.

Erin sat still, looking suddenly tired. There was no elation on her face. She looked up at him and gave him a faint smile.

‘We’ve just killed my bank,
Ted.’

I
t was 9.15 Sunday morning in Dayton, Ohio. Dave Gruby was doing his weekly admin chores. For some people paperwork was a pain, something to be put off till the red bills came in or the tax penalty loomed. Dave kind of liked it. It gave him a sense of calm. It made things feel solid and ordered. He had a good filing system and diary on his home computer. It prompted and structured his life. He kept hard copies of all his correspondence in a neat file in his left hand desk drawer.

He was on-line, paying bills, checking emails and planning the following month’s banking transactions. He had to add a new monthly payment; his daughter Sue was
off to college and he’d taken on the rental payments on a small apartment she was sharing with two other girls. Dave was thinking about what his little girl would get up to away from home. The thought was making him mildly panicky as he methodically approached setting up the arrangements with his GA Internet bank service. His screen lost contact. He tried again. It was pretty unusual these days for a banking service to go down, but not unheard of. They did a lot of maintenance at weekends. Nothing. He gave up and determined to try later. He was irritated though. He didn’t like stuff left undone when he was half way through.

At 2.38 in the afternoon, in an over-priced store in Covent Garden, London, England, Diana Siciliano offered her GA credit card to pay for a ‘must have’ sweater she’d just tried on. This was the big trip to England that she and her mother had talked of for years. Ever since her dad had gone off with Sandi Thompson, her mother’s one-time best friend. The planning of it had almost been therapy enough. The reality was better. There were just the cutest stores. The shop assistant swiped the card three times and tried to key in the details by hand before noticing the GA service itself was disconnected. Diana dug out her Amex instead. It worked and she went off into the light drizzle, puzzling over her useless GA card.

It was post-breakfast and pre-brunch just off Times Square, New York. A small crowd of tourists was gathered in lines round a set of five ATMs. Each line was disappointed. No-one had been able to get any cash since 9.30 that morning. Someone said that this was the third set they’d tried. Others painted similar stories and began digging out alternative cards to try at other banks. One of the people in the queue was Mira Lindsay, a reporter for CNN on her way in to start her shift. She tried it herself then went off with a frown on her forehead.

She got to the studios and began to make some calls. Not that she had to make too many; viewers were already calling the studio to complain and ask if CNN knew anything about GA technology problems. There was a pattern emerging. Mira had a word with her boss. There was a news round-up due shortly, and things were quiet. Maybe there was a filler here. Her boss put a call in to the emergency line that GA provided. There was nothing. Zero. No way of contact. This was starting to smell like a story.

In a vast
tiled hall on a hill overlooking the San Bernardo hills in Southern California, Rick Juventus was sweating. Partly because he was the supervisor on the overnight watch in which every single bank computer had died at 6.15 am, and partly because the temperature was rising ten degrees every half hour. Whatever had knocked the computer out had taken out the computer-controlled air conditioning as well. He’d noted a whole lot of activity overnight – like there had been on three occasions over the past  few months – when 50% of their servers had been pressed into action by a head office tech team. No-one would tell him what was going on. Just shut up and keep the machines running was his instruction.

Well last night had been a lulu. At peak times 98% of their server capacity had been in use. Until two hours ago. Then, literally, the lights had gone out. First the monitoring screens had disintegrated in front of his eyes, then all the hard drives had gone into action at once like they were going to take off. Then nothing. Lights out.

Rick had followed the laid-down Disaster Contingency Procedures and tried to call his boss, as well as get the back-up computers warmed up for recovery to yesterday night’s position. But first the internal phones were out, so he had to use his cell. Then the standby boxes had gone crazy when they’d rebooted. He’d run out of options and was starting to shout at people, which he never did. His boss, Eduardo Castina, was none too pleased at being summoned in the middle of the night from his eight-bedroomed villa above the third fairway of the San Bernardo Country Club. Eduardo had a family christening down at La Jola beach and whatever screw-up had taken place in his absence had better be fixed by 10 am, or there would be trouble. He didn’t know how much trouble.

Warwick Stanstead was alone in his office. It was 11 am Sunday. None of the computers worked. None of the landlines worked. His cell phone was permanently ringing with news of crashed systems from around the GA empire. The only thing that worked was an old fax machine and once people knew about it, there was a steady stream of confirmations that GA was no longer operational. His bank couldn’t dispense money through its ATM network, no-one could administer an account over phone or Internet, and around $200 billion of the bank’s money, representing its overnight position in the money markets, was inaccessible. All it would take was to be out of the market for a day and the rates to shift by a mere 50 basis points - and the bank would haemorrhage $1 billion. The money markets had been like a yo-yo recently. A bank that couldn’t lend, couldn’t borrow, couldn’t manage its money, was no longer a bank. It was a mausoleum.

Warwick
had foresworn pick-me-ups or downers this morning apart from coffee. He needed to be as clear headed as possible. But all he felt was crushing depression from the catastrophic mix of events and going cold turkey. He was doing the one thing he was good at: rallying his troops. He was shouting into his mobile phone demanding the immediate presence of every goddamn executive officer of the bank. He wanted them here, now, and manning the pumps. Hackers weren’t going to stop GA!

Within minutes they were on their way. Aaron Schmidt was on a private chopper on his way from his ten
-room ‘cabin’ in Martha’s Vineyard. Marcus Nightingale was sweating behind the wheel of his new 911, careless of speed traps on the I90 on his way in from Westchester County. Abraham Kubala, just off the plane from Frankfurt, was having a cell-phone fight with his wife. She’d have to holiday on Long Island without him for the moment. Charlie Easterhouse was in a yellow cab bouncing down Madison. Charlie’d left his third wife calling her lawyer and threatening to join the ranks of his ex-wives after yet another ruined Sunday.

By mid afternoon, in a variety of off-duty clothes, most of the US based executives pitched up. As they stumbled in, one by one, Stanstead told them they’d been attacked by hackers and that they had to get their asses in gear and fight! It quickly became clear to each of them that they had nothing to fight with. This bank – like every other bank in the world – was completely and utterly dependent on its technology. GA no longer had technology, ergo it no longer was a bank. No-one could quite bring themselves to say this to Warwick. Each sat manfully in front of his dead screen and his dead phone and used his cell phone and the three tired fax machines to send useless instructions out and receive bewildered responses.

‘What the fuck is
happening!? What is going on?!’

Warwick had called Nick Trevino, his tech director seven times in the last three hours.

‘Warwick, I told you. It’s a counter-attack. Wiped us out.’ He was in shock. ‘They turned our stuff round and fired it back at us. And they used new viruses. We didn’t have the shields for them. Some of the stuff is just unbelievable. I mean our circuits aren’t just wiped clean or anything. They’re melted.’ There was awe in his voice.

‘What do you mean they’re melted?! What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘They did something to the operating system that manages the hard drives. They’ve got lasers inside – you know, for reading the data and stuff? – well they jammed the lasers and the lasers burned holes.’

‘Get new ones for Christ sakes! We have to get back up. If this bank’s still out by tomorrow, then we’re bust. Don’t you fucking understand?!’ 

‘Warwick, of course I damn well understand! You don’t! We’re dead! I’m sorry, this is going to take time, I keep telling you, there’s nothing we can do. It’ll take weeks.’ The restraint was vanishing from Nick Trevino’s voice. He’d been up all night, he’d never expected a counter-attack, and even if there had been one, they had systems that should have held out, right? He was living in a nightmare. He didn’t know what had happened other than their own salvoes had looped back at them – with interest! – and took out every single item on GA’s fixed asset register that had a chip in it.

‘Then you’re fucking fired! I’ll get someone who can do something! That’s what you’re fucking paid for!’

‘Fuck you, Stanstead!’

Trevino’s line went dead. Warwick gazed at his phone. He’d been hung up on!

Pat Duschene came in, minus his buttoned-up suit. Pat was wearing Sunday clothes. Black leather skin-tight jeans, black leather tank top and three earrings. The tattoos on his bare arms were on display for the first time. Pat was past caring. He had dropped everything and come as he was, leaving a special and decidedly peeved friend to finish the intimate brunch alone. Warwick had stopped gazing at him in wonder. Pat asked, hands on hips.

‘CNN are on the line. What do I tell them?’

‘Tell them to go to hell! No, tell them we’re undergoing a major maintenance programme and we’re sorry for any inconvenience. Tell them what you like! And get the team together.’   

Pat swaggered out, his leather clad rear swaying jauntily. He’d been around long enough to know when a game was over. And this one was truly at an end. Pat couldn’t give a shit how he looked now. He stared down anyone who did a double-take of him in his true colours. If he was going down – and he should have been doing exactly that this afternoon, he thought ruefully – he was going down in style.

Stanstead heard them being ushered into the conference room. He walked through the adjoining door. There were four of them in a motley collection of clothes – except for Kubala who’d managed to find a suit. Typical. They were sat waiting for him to tell them what to do. Warwick didn’t know. For the first time, he didn’t have a plan. He’d not prepared for this. But old habits got him going.

‘Let’s do status. None of these work I guess?’ He threw his arm round the wall at the dead video screens. Heads shook. ‘Ok, so it’s just us. Let’s take this one at a time. I want a report on your region and your function. Now. Schmidt?’

‘Canada and North America are out. Not a flicker. None of the ATMs, or systems are up. I’ve got guys phoning in on these,’ he held up his cell phone, ‘in blind panic. What do I tell them?’

He ignored him. ‘Tell them it’s being fixed. Kubala?’

‘Same. I’m in cell-phone contact with my leads. The entire EMEA territory is gone. All back-up systems are inoperable. It’s like a fucking nuclear strike.’ Warwick’s eyebrows rose a fraction. No-one used that language in his presence. And certainly not Mr control freak Kubala.

‘Why?! Why no back-up? We spent millions of fucking dollars on self-standing back-up sites. That’s what they’re there for! They were completely separate from the operational systems. Surely to god some of them are running?’

‘Nothing. Take our Michigan centre. Like everywhere, they took back-ups all the time. Kept ’em in secure bunkers off site. Then sent copies to our North America parallel data centre. It should have come up the moment the front-line systems went down. But whatever hit us, breezed right through the operational systems, tracked down the parallels and took them out too! We think they used the fibre links between the two systems. When the ops boys called through to the parallels, the viruses took over the lines. Maybe some of the back-up data is ok but we’ve got nothing to run them on. There isn’t a single computer alive in the division. We’re abso-fucking-lutely dead.’

‘How long?! To get operational?’

Easterhouse was looking incredulous. ‘To get operational?! Warwick, you’re not listening! We may never get operational. Sure, we can buy new computers and maybe we can resurrect old software and data from the back up data centres, but this will take weeks, maybe months. And by then, as a bank, we’re history!’

Warwick looked round the table. They all had the same expression: a mixture of shell-shock and rebellion. They’d given up hope and in doing so, there was nothing to play for and therefore nothing to worry about any more. They were looking into the abyss and had lost their fear for him. He couldn’t accept this. One by one he went back round the table and one by one they came back with the same story. No-one could believe a hacker team had done this. It was beyond imagination.

Schmidt asked the burning question. ‘Did any other bank get hit?’

‘Only us. I’ve been calling around.’ This was Kubala.

‘You better not have been talking about what’s going on here!’ shouted Warwick.