Cyber Genius (13 page)

“I will teach him to respect the
authorities,
until such time as they don’t respect us,” I
corrected. “I prefer working within the system.”

“You prefer manipulating the system,” she retorted. “Just
don’t let Tudor get taken. How is EG?”

“Excellent. She’s enjoying all her studies and teachers. And
she’s no longer wearing Goth black. She’s starting to explore fashion as well
as dinosaurs, medical anomalies, and geometry.” I gave Magda those tidbits to
chew on so she wouldn’t start in on the sad state of American education. “Nick
is doing brilliantly at the embassy, and Patra seems to be settling in at CNN.”

“That’s what I call working within the system,” she said
with almost a hint of admiration. “Just don’t let any of them go near
politics.”

We both knew that politics was a ridiculous impossibility
for our family. We clashed with authority too often to be useful in public
office. But “going near” had many connotations—
undermining
being our expertise.

Magda didn’t bother sending her warm wishes to her
offspring. She shouted directions at a cab driver—or a cart or rickshaw
driver—and hung up. I’d long ago decided that Magda—whose mother had died
young—had never been hugged as a child. I barely knew my grandfather, but I
suspected my mother was a chip off the non-sentimental old block. We knew she
loved us, because she looked out for us. Sort of. When she could.

It was nearly dinner time, and after that call, I didn’t
have the will to dig back into musty files. Time to wield the family whip. I
texted Tudor that he was expected at the table promptly at six.

He texted back that he wasn’t hungry.

I might not know how to program software, but thanks to
Tudor, I have an arsenal of juvenile hacking and worming devices, and I’m not
afraid to use them.

I hit the intercom. “Boot him out, Graham, or your computers
are hash.” I happily pictured the noisy intercom blaring through Graham’s
concentration.

It was Saturday night, and we were having a family dinner,
even if Graham refused to descend from his lair.

***

Nick actually showed up to join us. He was dressed in a
suit and tie, so he was either going out or on his way home. EG glanced up from
her tablet to study his sartorial elegance. “Get tired of noodles?”

He tugged her hair and took his usual seat at the head of
the table. “I miss Mallard,” he told her in a manner that indicated he hadn’t
missed EG.

She grinned, knowing he didn’t mean it.

I was already sitting at the other end of the table when
Tudor arrived with his frizzy red hair slicked back and wearing a school blazer
over his black t-shirt. “Thank you for taking time out from your busy
schedule,” I said without sarcasm.

“Where’s the bolt hole if the cops come?” he replied
sullenly.

“Basement stairs, just the other side of the swinging door.
Or the dumbwaiter on the far side of the buffet,” Nick answered cheerfully.

We’d been trained at an early age to always locate the
exits. “Didn’t Graham show you his?” I asked innocently, fishing for
information. I knew one of his bolt holes. I was betting there were others, but
I had no excuse to explore the third floor.

“Yeah, one, but I don’t think anything will help me. Now
that the feds are involved, it’s all over but the handcuffs.”

So, Graham was keeping him informed. I hoped that was a
positive. I got itchy when I wasn’t in control, but I accepted my limitations.
The NSA had probably been very unhappy to find a worm bearing Tudor’s signature
eating through their data. But after the State Department debacle, we’d known
they’d find out sooner rather than later.

Tudor eyed the vegetable soup warily but tried a spoonful.

Mallard’s cooking was one good reason to never leave this
house. I made certain the kid was digging in before I replied. “That’s your
inexperience talking. Once we have the evidence that government computers have
been systematically corrupted by sophisticated data thieves, and you adapt your
software to look like a new kind of virus protection, you’ll be a hero.”

“We’re not James Bond,” he said gloomily.

“
Au contraire, mes
enfants
,” Nick took up the family banner. “We are better. Only peasants use
blow-’em up cars and laser guns. We simply need information. The FBI is looking
for you, yes. You stupidly used your US passport to enter the country, and I
can’t erase that. But if you choose to leave using your Brit passport, I can
arrange your disappearance. So quit worrying.”

Fortified by the rich soup, Tudor looked a little more
hopeful. “The FBI went to the embassy looking for me?”

“Naturally. They have quite an entertaining dossier on you.”
Nick stopped talking to admire the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding Mallard
presented, presumably in honor of Tudor’s appearance.

I’m not a vegetarian. My upbringing included a lot of rice
and noodles, beans and insects, not much beef. I have adventurous tastes as a
result, but I’m more appreciative of greens and fruit. I’d seen real carnage
and didn’t need blood on my dinner table. So I didn’t simper over the beef as
the men were doing.

I concentrated on the deliciously spicy roasted broccoli and
cauliflower and let Nick play role model.

“They probably have a dossier on all of us.” Tudor said with
a shrug. “My father is both English and Australian, and I was born in London.
My mother is American. So I have three passports and a dossier. Can I leave
here on the Brit one and arrive elsewhere on the Aussie one?”

“Stop it,” I scolded. “You’re not going anywhere except to
MIT. Just give us time.”

“My worm ate the NSA!” he cried in frustration. “Don’t you
take that seriously?”

“Nope,” Nick and I said in chorus. Anarchy had been our
upbringing.

EG flashed her school tablet that shouldn’t have Wi-Fi but
now displayed a news headline: GOVERNMENT DATABASES DESTROYED. GOP CANDIDATES
DEMAND EXPLANATIONS

Oops.

Sunday morning, I did laundry. EG had gone to her father’s
house for an outing. For whatever reason, EG idolized her adulterous, pompous
dad, Senator Tex Hammond. Letting her get to know him had been one of the
reasons for my settling in D.C.

Tex had lost his conservative halo after EG turned up as
product of his adultery, but his wife and other daughter were gradually
accepting her existence. I tried hard not to judge EG’s paternal family, but it
involved a lot of tongue biting and assuring myself that she needed a
well-rounded social education.

The feds might be after Tudor and the cops after Graham, but
we still needed clean clothes, and I wouldn’t stick Mallard with our undies. So
I did laundry. Pondering whether we could hire a maid if we were rich, I
wiggled out of my work bra, added it to the wash, and tugged my sweater back
down.

Only then did it occur to me that Graham probably had a
security camera even in the basement laundry. I raised my middle finger in
salute in case he was watching and sauntered off to my office.

Bored with reading other peoples’ research, I started an
analytical search of my own. Under Graham’s instruction, Tudor had adapted his
cookie monster program to deliberately locate all systems containing the spy
hole in the betaware. He’d sent me a list of the contaminated websites that
he’d found to date.

I took his list a step further. I sorted out the government systems
by server, and using one of Graham’s illegal programs, infiltrated their computers
through the holes in their operating system firewalls. I didn’t wipe out
anything. I just ran a systematic search through the documents of two dozen
government agencies, looking for similarities. I was operating under the theory
that whoever had arranged to spy on these computers had a motive other than general
nosiness. Data mining this extensive would be worse than NSA’s phone files. No
human could reasonably process it—unless they had strict search parameters.

Almost all the government computers connected to the server
I’d chosen were used by boring financial committee personnel. There was no
point in hunting for common word similarities because “money” or “funds” would
come out on top—not useful. The key to a good search is to be specific.

I started just by comparing all proper nouns. Senator Paul
Rose—the leading presidential candidate—cropped up in a statistically abnormal
number of instances. But a megabank, a stock brokerage, and their related
executives also appeared high on the list, so Rose’s name wasn’t unusual in
conjunction with the others. They were all filthy rich and powerful and had
interests in banking.

I’d first run across Rose and his cohorts in tracking my
grandfather’s stolen funds—and developed a pretty extensive database on the
senator and his pals. Know thy enemy and all that.

A quick search revealed Rose’s trust fund owned substantial
numbers of shares in both the bank and brokerage ranking highest on my list. He
also owned a large piece of Goldrich Mortgage, which was being examined for various
fraudulent sales of bad loans to the government. The banking committee appeared
intent on blocking sale of Goldrich to the megabank—yawn. Nothing new there.

Further down my search list was a number of other large financial
institutions. With a little work, I could probably tie all of them to Rose’s
supporters, but this wasn’t leading me to murder.

I sent my findings to Graham with the ungrammatical
question: “Ya think maybe Rose likes to monitor banking legislation?”

I could almost hear his snort in reply. If anyone could pay
to add corrupt operating systems to government computers, it would be Rose and his
old-boy Top Hat network. The shadowy connections between politicians, bankers,
and powerful corporate executives had first landed on my radar in my grandfather’s
dying message mysteriously mentioning
Top
Hat
. Later, I’d caught glimpses of the alliance when they’d tried to
influence EG’s dad over an infamous textbook deal. People who thwarted them
tended to die, but the Top Hat cadre was always clean.

If this powerful group had planted the spyholes, they might
have reason to kill Stiles to prevent discovery of their spying, but motive was
nothing without evidence.

I’d let Graham and Tudor figure out if Rose had corrupted MacroWare
to keep an eye on banking regulations—and why. Legislation made me snooze. In
my world, laws were made so the crooks knew which way to dodge. I just wanted
to get back to my life.

My goal was to find the bottom-feeders who had actually
killed Stiles and company. I’d leave it to people better trained than I am—like
Graham—to follow the money.

I was nose deep in MacroWare crap when the intercom
sputtered. With Tudor upstairs, I was afraid to shut it off as I often did. I
waited expectantly.

“The feds have added two and three and developed a logarithm
leading to you,” Graham said solemnly.

“A joke, he makes jokes,” I answered, still waiting for the
ax to fall.

“They no doubt have your family tree tacked on the wall,” he
retorted. “You might give Nicholas and Patra a head’s up. In the meantime, it
might be advisable to take Tudor to the movies.”

“How much time do we have?” I was already messaging my
siblings and shutting down systems. I knew cut and run. Would EG be okay at the
senator’s house?

“The feds have no grounds for a search warrant,” Graham
continued ominously. “They only wish to speak with you about your missing
half-brother. I’d give them an hour to post spies in the bushes.”

“Sweet. Get Tudor bundled up. What about you?”

He chuckled. He actually chuckled. The madman was enjoying
this. I wanted to be a fly on the wall up there. Naturally, he didn’t answer.

I don’t know why I worried about Battyman. I’d stick to
keeping Tudor out of jail until he could figure out how to fix the software or
kill his multiplying worm.

I removed my external drive, dropped it in one of the many
canvas totes kicking around my desk, and ran upstairs to collect my coat.

I cursed Nick for talking me into buying the totally
inappropriate leopard boots. They were much too glamorous for my overalls and
heavy black sweater. I pulled on combat boots and my army coat instead, new
plans formulating as I did. I tied on the hood to hide my braid.

Tudor met me in the upper hall looking pale but determined.
I yanked his knit hat further down over his distinctive hair.

“Graham said there’s a better way out through the coal
cellar,” he said, twitching away from my mothering gesture.

“I was going that way anyway. Lead on.” Ha! I’d known the
spider in our attic had more secret exits. I gloated that I was finally about
to learn another.

We clattered down two flights of stairs to the basement. Tudor
headed to the windowless cellar that had once housed coal, and I raised my
eyebrows. The coal cellar, really?

I flicked on my LED flashlight—my army coat was well equipped—and
we noted the rusted coal chute. The room was entirely underground. I didn’t
know how we could get out through here. I double-checked to make certain I
couldn’t be locked in, but the old wooden door into the chamber was rotten.
Even a baby could smash through it.

Tudor took the light and ran it across the back wall.
“There. Brill.” He ran his ungloved fingers along the edge of a crack around
the chute.

To my utter amazement, the concrete block wall opened.

“Why the friggin’ heck didn’t he tell me this was here?” I muttered
as I followed my baby brother through a six-foot-high cement tunnel.

“I think he likes watching you on the security monitor when
you sneak out through the back yard,” Tudor said with a male shrug. “You
trigger an alarm every time you go out the kitchen door.”

“Remind me to wear a sheet over my head and give him the
finger from now on.” That was attitude speaking. I actually got off on knowing
that Superman was watching me—as long as I had control of the situation. Yeah,
hormones aren’t rational.