Black Hat Blues (25 page)

along with felonious lobbyist Jack Abramoff, he was not the only one

who’d repeatedly voted against any kind of change or enforcement of

decency and humanity in the Marianas. Congressman Wolverton had

voted straight down the lobbyist line on the issue too.

Was Wolverton the worst offender? By no means, which was part

of why Paul and the Crew had chosen him. The other part was his

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connection to their real target, lobbyist scumbag Ken Clover. Clover’s

earmark trading scheme had found a reliable client in Rep. Wolverton,

and a lot of those trades had been for votes that included protecting

the status of the Marianas as a tropical US forced labor camp. As far as

Sacco and Paul could determine, there’d been no direct contributions

from any of the Marianas-associated lobbyists and Wolverton. Instead,

as their analysis of the e-mails c1sman had hacked free for them con-

firmed, he’d voted in return for other favors from other Congress crit-

ters. Paul doubted that he’d actually even given what was happening on

the islands much thought, if indeed he knew about it at all. Wolverton’s

sin was one of thoughtless, depraved disregard for human life, which

made him an asshole. But it didn’t make him quite as bad as people

like Clover, who knew exactly what they were doing and for whom the

Marianas was just one small part of a much larger rap sheet of shame.

Thus, Wolverton would be left with a way out, a path to avoid punish-

ment, but only so that the real target’s fall would be all the harder when

it came on Monday.

Pulling into the hotel parking lot, Paul regretted being forced out of

Shmoocon prematurely like this. Now they were farther away from the

action and the team had been split, with c1sman having to stay at the

con to make sure all traces of their secretly using the con’s resources

were erased and now to keep tabs on Oliver and whatever shit storm

he’d managed to stir up after seeing Sandee. And Paul had been so

sure about him. C1sman had pointed him out to them as a good pos-

sible recruit, although the two men didn’t know each other beyond

saying “hi” at cons and irregular exchanges online. They’d done their

research on the guy and he seemed ideal—headstrong, disaffected,

lonely, mischievous, with more than a couple axes to grind. And Sandee

had hooked him in perfectly. Maybe if they’d gotten a chance to really

suck him in the way they’d planned, more gradually, he might have

worked out, but once he figured out how they’d conned him, he just

went ballistic (not that Paul could blame him).

Afterwards, they’d been much more careful with the guy they got

instead, the hacker they called Mr. Data. Although the name was

almost too geeky for words, it was the guy’s own choice and it was an

apt description. He tore through data in efficient, sometimes dazzling

ways, coming up with nuggets and patterns and hidden files like he

had some sixth sense for that shit. He didn’t of course—just a good

set of algorithms and the know-how to use them. Mr. Data remained

isolated from the group, had never met any of them in person and only

dealt directly with Paul. They fed him data and cash, which helped with

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both his gambling debts and his medical bills, and he didn’t make any

complaints or ask any questions about where the data was coming from.

His distance (he was in Germany) meant that he was all the less likely

to be in a position to do the Crew any harm. The only real problem was

that they had to pay him in Euros.

Paul slung a laptop bag over each shoulder and went through the

hotel’s back door, up the stairs, and knocked on the door of their new

HQ. Sandee, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and the baseball cap, let

him in. “Welcome to our little hidey-hole, one third the size of our last

place, as ordered.” Two queen sized beds, one half-sized table, and a

dresser greeted Paul as he walked in dropping the bags on the bed.

“It’s only for a day, two at most,” Paul said.

“Plus,” said Sandee, “I’ve called down to the front desk for extra pil-

lows, so, you know, pajama pillow fight is on the agenda.”

“Can’t wait. But you’re not having them…”

“Just waiting for you to arrive, sweetie. I’m going down to the front

desk to pick them up right now.”

Paul saw that Sandee’s laptop was already set up on the dresser and

plugged into the hotel’s network. He’d thoughtfully left the undersized

table for Paul, who occupied it at once, firing up both his computers

and using cellular modems to get online and set up a VPN connection

to their secure network back in Key West, through which he could

monitor the calls, the e-mails, and all the rest. There’d been nothing

critical on any front. Danny was still working his ass off on other issues

related to the conference committee’s approval of the farm bill, but it

all seemed like routine politics stuff. Wolverton and Clover were both

dark, and for a horrified moment Paul imagined that Clover might be

attending the same fundraiser as the Congressman. He checked the

GPS locater on the target’s phone and saw that he was in a restaurant

off Dupont Circle, and nowhere near Georgetown. He sighed with relief

and kept unpacking.

Chloe arrived a little over an hour later, reporting success. She’d

talked with Bee on the cryptophone on the way over to see what the

reaction had been. According to Bee’s version of c1sman’s account, the

security guy had reported the whole story to the rest of the Shmoo

group. Heidi had decided that whatever it was, it wasn’t Shmoocon’s

problem and unless the strange woman showed up at a con event, she

didn’t want to hear about it. The others in the group split between being

intrigued by the story and those who thought of it as just one more of

those crazy things that sometimes happened at hacker cons. The few

who’d been intrigued seemed to have turned their focus towards the

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Omni as a source of more clues, and the general theory seemed to be

that the whole affair was some kind of botched attempt at a sting by the

feds or maybe some media outlet. No one had seen Oliver since he’d

spilled his guts to Heidi.

“I think we’re out of the woods on that one then,” Paul said, after

he’d heard Chloe’s report.

“I think so, yeah,” Chloe agreed. “The only question is, what do we

do about Oliver?”

“I’m so sorry about that,” Sandee said. “I feel like I blew this whole

thing.”

“It’s not your fault, San,” Paul said. “It’s really not. We checked as

best we could about him being here, and to be honest I’m shocked that

he remembered you at all. You look totally different in your reporter

outfit.”

“I suppose so, but I shouldn’t have come back through the lobby. I

should have stayed clear of the whole convention area. I know you guys

told me that, but I’d lost track of which door to use when and all that.

I’m just an island girl at heart, you know. This big-city spycraft business

is a little beyond me.”

“San, really, don’t worry about it. We’re cool.”

“We’re definitely cool,” Chloe agreed. “I’m not at all worried about

getting caught in the here and now. What I’m worried about is Oliver

in the long term. We all screwed up on him, underestimated or over-

estimated or mis-underestimated him. Whichever. The point is, he’s

out there, we know he’s smart, and he’s got two pieces of the puzzle

that is us.”

“What are you thinking?” asked Paul. He’d been kind of hoping that

Oliver would just disappear from their lives as long as they steered clear

of hacker cons in the future. He hadn’t imagined that they needed to

do anything.

“I don’t know, which is why I’m asking. It’s a tricky situation, right?

I mean, he’s out there and he knows Sandee was operating at two dif-

ferent hacker cons, and he thinks she is up to serious no good. He

also probably knows Sandee’s not alone, since he talked to you on the

phone and heard me playing your Columbian wife in the background.

All I’m saying is, he’s got some puzzle pieces. Not nearly enough to see

the big picture. Hell, the picture he’s probably trying to put together is

nothing at all like reality, but my point is, this isn’t something we can

safely ignore.”

“That all sounds pretty bad when you put it like that,” Sandee said,

sounding dispirited. “But what can we do?”

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“I’m not sure. Maybe try and put some pressure on him. Let him

know we’ve got dirt on him and could take it to the police if he keeps

blabbing to people.”

“But that’s not fair,” Sandee said. “I mean, yeah, he’s screwed things

up for us this time, but only because he did the right thing! I mean,

we conned him. We’re criminals for Christ’s sake. All he did was point

out to the authorities, well, the con authorities anyway, that there was

a criminal in the building. And you know what, he was right to do it.

I’m not down with punishing him for that. That ain’t right.”

Paul agreed with Sandee. It wasn’t right. He felt ashamed for a

moment that he’d been ready to go along with Chloe’s suggestion of

trying to intimidate or scare Oliver off. Living in their world, doing

what they did, it was easy to view everyone as part of the game, pieces to

be moved around. And yeah, they were part of the game. Paul accepted

that, but he tried to play fairly when he could, and in this case, he

could. All he had to do was give Chloe a slight nod and she understood

that he agreed with Sandee.

“Yeah, OK,” Chloe said. “You’re right. It would be a shitty thing to do

to the poor guy. It’s our mistake. We shouldn’t make him pay for it.”

“Besides,” said Paul, “I’m not sure we’d do much good intimidating

him. It might make him more interested, not less.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure I could intimidate him. Oliver’s smart, but he’s

also careful and conservative. We’ve seen how he reacts under pressure

now—he caves right in when there’s something serious like his job on

the line. But you guys are right, let’s not find out. Besides, he already

blubbered the whole story to everyone on staff. We can’t intimidate all

of them.”

“I’m not sure that’s better,” said Paul. “That means the pieces are out

there for everyone to put together.”

“It’s not better, no. But Oliver’s still the only one who’d be able to

recognize Sandee in a line up or put a voice to a face. And this evening

I spread enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt that the others will hope-

fully start making up their own pieces or working off their own made

up pictures or… fuck, I think I broke that metaphor. My point is this:

we’ll probably be OK. I think. Maybe.”

“Either way, we’re not going to do anything about it now,” Paul said.

“And Sacco’s candle-light thingy should be coming online in the next

hour. You guys ready to watch?”

Chloe and Sandee curled up on one of the beds with a pair of laptops

while Paul stayed at the table. This time around the protesters them-

selves would be streaming pics and audio onto the Web, a technique

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Sacco had introduced to them. All Paul had to do was start exploiting

his online sock-puppet personas to direct traffic towards the protesters’

sites, and since this time around there (hopefully) wouldn’t be any cra-

ziness or violence, they could sit back and watch and wait.

The candle-light protest was organized well in advance of almost every-

thing else that had happened this weekend. Conventional wisdom

within the protest circles had decided (thanks to Sacco’s suggestions)

that the afternoon’s flash mob assault on the Congressman’s house was

simply a spin-off splinter group of those who’d been involved in the

planning of the more peaceful, evening event. Sacco had worked with

several east coast labor rights and anarcho-friendly NGO’s to pull the

march together. Taking some cues from the anonymous anti-Scientol-

ogy protests, the whole thing was organized over the Internet, mostly

through Craig’s List and other free community sites. The protesters

came armed with signs and explicit instructions on how not to cross

over the line from peaceful demonstration to unlawful gathering.

Paul watched the grainy, night vision enhanced footage as it streamed

online. They’d gotten about 200 people together, most of them carry-

ing candles or lanterns or small electric lights. Some were using their

cell phones or ipods. They marched in silence, carrying signs simi-

lar to those at the earlier protest: END CORPORATE SLAVERY;

EMANCIPATE THE MARIANAS; RAPE IS NOT AN AMERICAN

VALUE. They had pamphlets they were handing out that explained the

whole issue, with citations to mainstream media reporting on the sub-

ject and websites to go to for more information. None of them said any-

thing, and many had put tape over their mouths to symbolize the silent

suffering of the workers on the islands and their lack of representation