Rogue Code (26 page)

No, Campos thought, there is too much against us and we are being forced to do this too quickly, staking too much on a single operation. His every instinct told him that this was going to be a disaster and in more ways than one.

It was all so confusing. Campos was fully involved with Carnaval. In addition, he had his usual duties to perform at work; then he spent extra hours facilitating the updates and routes. It was complex, and he had to double-check and test everything. The Rio team was doing a good job, but he’d caught too many mistakes from them and couldn’t help but wonder how much he was missing. Some errors meant nothing. The public would be shocked to learn how many bugs existed already in systems they relied on every day. But some of the mistakes could prove fatal to Carnaval. It would take a lot more time and more resources than Campos had to identify which ones.

And what to do about Iyers. Campos wanted nothing to happen to the man until after Carnaval so that gave him a bit of time. He needed him right now. But then what? He’d never killed a man, and from what he’d seen, Iyers’s guard would be up. Even if Campos risked trying, the man’s caution would make it more difficult. Now he understood why the Mafia kept its enemies close. He’d always wondered about that when he saw the movies.

Hire a killer? In that path were at least two risks. First, he’d be known to the man he paid. Second, the assassin might botch the job. Then he’d be in double trouble. Iyers would have no reason to remain loyal and the hired killer would have every reason to turn on him if he were caught.

No, hiring someone himself was out of the question. Anyway, he had no idea how to go about it. All he’d done since coming to New York was write code.

Did he dare suggest the killing to Bandeira? How long would it take for the
chefe
to set it up? Not long, Campos decided. His reach was extensive, but he’d be unhappy at being placed in that position. This was Campos’s mess, and he’d expect Campos to clean it up.

Which meant he had to kill Iyers himself. Campos swallowed, his throat suddenly aching as he did.

He stopped and tied his other shoe. No one.

Satisfied but still uncomfortable walking the streets of Brooklyn at this hour, he stepped off more briskly. Brooklyn Heights was perhaps the most accessible area off Manhattan Island, which was why he’d chosen it initially. Originally the modest apartment had been nothing more than a bolt-hole in case things turned unexpectedly wrong, as well as a place to stash what he’d need in the event he had to run.

But over the years, he found he’d often come here, especially on pleasant Sundays. It was in many ways a different world from Manhattan and its skyscraper canyons. Even the people were different, more boisterous, more congenial behind their bravado, lacking the edge he dealt with every day across the river.

Montague Street was a delight. Trees lined much of it and the five-story redbrick buildings in their stately decline reminded him vaguely of home in Brazil. Mothers still pushed strollers along the sidewalks and children played in front of the apartment stoops. There were a few hotels built at the turn of the last century, some churches, thrift shops, and small restaurants. “Cozy” was not the word for it exactly, but he found it comfortable. If people didn’t know one another, the lingering influence of Brooklyn’s past dictated that they act as if they should.

Out of habit, Campos glanced back the way he’d come a final time, though if a tail had come this far, locating his destination would not be difficult. He saw nothing and mounted the steps. He entered the front door, then walked up the stairs to the second floor. On the back side of the building he let himself into a narrow one-room apartment. He closed the door behind him and stood silently, listening. The building had been settling, reacting to the changes in humidity, soil, and temperature for more than a century now, and he could still detect the slight creaks of its all but imperceptible movement. It was silly to listen for more he knew. He was alone. He turned on the high ceiling light, which cast a soft glow about the room; then he moved along the walls, turning on lamps one by one.

Campos opened the refrigerator and removed a small bottle of Coke. It was from Mexico, one of his Sunday finds here in Brooklyn. It was made with real sugar and tasted just like the Coke in São Paulo. He opened the bottle and drank half before setting it down on the Formica top of the two-chair kitchen table.

Beside the narrow bed was a small safe he’d bought and had delivered. A professional would have no trouble cracking it, a determined amateur would just carry it off, but it kept prying eyes away. Using his real birth date he opened the safe and removed its contents. He carried these in two hands to the kitchen table and sat.

When Abílio Ramos had first set himself up in America, he’d arranged for another identity. Two of them, in fact. He opened the Portuguese passport, examined the photograph again, then read the name. Rodrigo Emanual Braga. He could handle that. He set the maroon-colored passport down, then picked up the navy blue Brazilian passport. Jadir José Silva. Why not?

His real passport was in his apartment on Lower Manhattan just in case, for some desperate reason, he was forced to travel under his own name. Also there was the existing Portuguese passport in the name of the identity he would have to abandon—Marco Enfante Campo.

Now he fingered three stacks of cash. There was fifty thousand dollars in U.S. currency, mostly hundred-dollar bills, thirty thousand in euros with a fair number of five-hundred-euro bills, which kept the stack smaller, and five thousand in British pounds. Enough. There were also credit and debit cards for each identity.

Until this week, he’d never seriously considered that he’d have to run so soon. He’d always thought Casas de Férias would continue for several years and in time would be wound down into inactivity. Carnaval had been Pedro’s idea initially but it was never intended to be the size Senhor Bandeira was now ordering.

The plan had always been that after a respectable period, Campos would just fade away. Now that was impossible. Either way, this was all coming to an end. He’d have to leave as soon as his involvement with Carnaval was not needed or if suspicion, even mild, was directed at him. Where to go? Portugal? It was part of the European Union and its security computer network. He was wary of trusting his false identities in such a system. Still, as part of Europe, once he was in he’d be free to travel about with no questions asked. He could change his identity after arrival, then go … Where? Italy? Greece? They both appealed to him.

Or maybe his first stop should be Macau. That was tempting as it was in Asia and everything was for sale there, absolutely everything. But it was distant and he’d be trapped on a long flight with no idea who’d be meeting him when he arrived.

Madeira? With its heavy tourist presence, that might be ideal. It was Portuguese, and he’d blend in there but it was a small island and there’d be nowhere to easily run to. He could buy a boat he supposed, but he’d never sailed one on his own.

Brazil? Home? Yes, in time, but not right away.

Satisfied at his efforts and feeling better now that he’d confirmed everything was still here he debated what to do. Leave it and plan to come back if needed? Take it to his apartment? He smiled at that. Leave it, of course. That was the point of having it. Knowing it was here meant he could walk away at a moment’s notice. In fact, now that he’d considered it, he’d move his real passport here as well. No one knew about this place. If there was trouble, it would focus on his official residence.

Campos placed everything back into the safe, closed the door, and spun the dial. He finished the Coke standing up, filled the bottle with water, rinsed, filled it again, and poured it out. His mother had taught him that. It kept ants away. He killed the kitchen light, kicked off his shoes, then stretched out on the narrow bed. He listened again to the quiet settling of the building, of the more distant nocturnal sounds without, and let his mind drift.

What to do about Richard Iyers. And when to do it.

39

HOLIDAY INN

LAFAYETTE STREET

NEW YORK CITY

10:56
P.M.

Daryl curled her feet beneath her in the aspect of the Buddha as she studied the screen, her right hand resting on the mouse. She was tired but too keyed up to go to sleep. Anyway, her body clock told her the time was just approaching 9
P
.
M
. Customarily a night owl, she was good for some time yet.

When she received Frank’s message urging her to follow the money, she’d turned to the task with relish. She’d chased more than her share of money trails before, both for the government and while working with Jeff, as well as in her new job. It would be a lot more interesting than tracing the code back to its authors.

Daryl still didn’t understand just how the malware worked—she’d leave that part to the boys—but once she’d focused on the cash her attention was drawn to the sequences of numbers she kept encountering. They were not all the same in length, nor did they appear in the same location in the code, but numbers were recurring throughout its functions.

Her first impression was that the numbers were encoded in such a way as to conceal the purpose they served. That was clever on someone’s part. In the event the code was discovered it would still be difficult to decipher. As it was the numbers could be most anything. They could also be of either greater or lesser significance to the money trail. There was no way to know until she’d cracked exactly what they were.

Since this was a financial operation, Daryl’s suspicion was that they were account numbers of some type, and that they’d be part of the routing path for funds once they were acquired. She suspected that the Exchange used internal identifiers for trading accounts, but hoped that the malware had a table of mappings between bank and Exchange accounts. If it didn’t, this approach would be a quick dead end. With that in mind, she researched bank routing transit numbers. These were nine digit numbers appearing on all negotiable instruments including personal and business checks. They served to identify the financial institution on which the instrument was drawn. They were in essence an address. Originally, Federal Reserve Banks processed wire fund transfers by using them but now more people had money directly deposited into their accounts and paid their bills online.

But the numbers she was examining were longer than nine digits. Some were eleven, others as many as nineteen. She began slicing and dicing the numbers, searching for patterns. She recalled reading once that when spies sent messages, they did so in blocks of five numerical digits. Many of the numbers were not actually part of the message itself. They were intended to fill out messages to conceal those that were short or to establish authenticity. She doubted either was the case here, since the numbers were not of the same length, but seized on the idea that any sequence of numbers beyond nine was meant to conceal the fact these were bank routing numbers.

It consumed several hours, but finally she had it. Using a combination of code inspection and study of the numbers looking for patterns and correlations, she discovered recurring sequences of numbers. They were not always in the same order, but she was convinced they were meant to hide the actual number. At last she came up with sets of eight numbers. When she removed these numbers in specific patterns from the sequences, she was, in most cases, able to come up with a nine-digit number. She then ran the numbers through the fdic.gov Web site, and there they were—the names and locations of U.S. banks, one of them as close as Stamford, Connecticut.

So she’d been right. This part of the code was where the money trail began. If she could demonstrate that these numbers were part of a bigger, and longer lasting operation, one in which Jeff and Frank were not profiting, that would help enormously in getting them off the hook.

Daryl was impressed once she’d grasped the vast scope of the rogue code, as Frank had called it. There must be more than a hundred banks involved. If this routing system worked as others she’d cracked had, nearly all the financial institutions were bases the money scarcely touched before moving on. The money wouldn’t come to rest until it had been carefully maneuvered and outpaced possible electronic surveillance.

Before 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act, such efforts had not been all that complicated. Money would leave a company, or in this case the Exchange, go offshore and vanish. As long as the country with the offshore bank refused to cooperate with American law enforcement, drugs lords, organized crime kingpins, and tax evaders were free to conceal their assets from the Internal Revenue Service and other government agencies. And most other countries did not cooperate unless a great deal of pressure was brought to bear on them.

If the launderers wanted to be doubly safe, once the money was offshore, they’d move it two or three times, say to Latvia, then to Belgium, then Switzerland, then back to an offshore bank. There a lawyer would set up a perfectly legal company and invest the money back into the U.S. stock market.

But the Patriot Act changed all that. In the guise of chasing terrorists the U.S. government now had the power to strip many foreign bank accounts of their protective shield. If a bank—or, more important, the country—where it was located wanted to have any dealings with the United States, then they cooperated with requests for data. Not every country played ball but most did and it took someone very knowledgeable to keep moving money from bank to bank, country to country, always staying with those prepared to stonewall Uncle Sam.

That was the trail Daryl had to follow, and her first efforts suggested it was going to be too much, at least too much in the time she had. There had to be a faster way.

Seeing Frank had been sobering. His effective disguise and the seriousness with which he presented their problem struck home. She’d understood that their situation was critical; otherwise, she’d never have climbed on an airplane, but she’d not really appreciated just how serious this was. Though Frank had been his usual self, she couldn’t help but notice how he kept an inconspicuous eye on the lobby. And though he’d seemed casual in his manner, she knew him well enough to know he’d been tightly coiled.