Daemon (34 page)

A
white van raised a cloud of dust as it approached from a distance, wavering like a phantom in the summer heat. On either side of the dirt road, California grasslands stretched brown and dry, rolling up into the barren hills at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley. Every fold and furrow of the land was shadowed in the afternoon sun, like the wrinkles of some timeworn face. The topography was naked and enormously wide. Forty miles of nothing stretched to the horizon, starkly beautiful to anyone with a reliable car.

The van inched across the gargantuan landscape, progressing toward a ring of asphalt set in the bottom of a forgotten canyon. The van slowed as it reached the track, then turned, revealing the car-carrying trailer it pulled behind it. A black Lincoln Town Car sat on the bed.

The van stopped, and a moment later the doors swung open, disgorging Kurt Voelker on the passenger side. He wearily stretched. Tingit Khan and Rob McCruder exited the far side of the van and did likewise. They were all in their early twenties, but while Voelker looked dressed for a Christian Fellowship meeting—with khakis and a button-down shirt—Khan and McCruder bore the piercings, tats, and severe hair that once indicated disaffected youth but that now only meant they weren’t interviewing yet.

Voelker checked his GPS unit. He looked to his two companions. “We’re in the box.”

“It’s about fucking time.” Khan held up his hand to shade his face. His eyes scanned the terrain. “What is this? A racetrack?”

“Pretty damned small for a racetrack.”

Voelker spoke from the far side of the van. “I’m guessing a test track.”

“It’s not banked or anything.” Khan held up his other hand to block the sun. “What’s it feel like? A hundred degrees out here?”

McCruder checked his watch. “A hundred and six.”

“You have a
thermometer
on your watch?”

“Yeah. So what?”

Khan looked through the van windows to Voelker on the other side. “Kurt. Rob has a thermometer on his watch.”

“So?”

“Well, at some point, the thing you add to the watch is more significant than the watch. I’d argue he’s wearing a thermometer with a clock on it.”

McCruder scowled; he was a veteran of Khan’s observations. “Fuck off.”

“Why do you need to know the precise temperature where you
are
? It’s not like a weather report; it’s too fucking late—you’re already here.”

Voelker held up a hand. “Khan, get the gear out of the van. I’ll un-chain the car.”

Khan and McCruder started pulling hard-shell Pelican cases from the van. McCruder just shook his head sadly. “You’re the one who asked how hot it was.”

Fifteen minutes later Voelker extended the antenna on a sizeable handheld remote controller. Khan and McCruder sat nearby on the empty hard-shell containers in front of a folding table. The table was strewn with cables, high-gain antennas, and two ruggedized laptops with shades shielding their screens from the sunlight. A half-meter satellite dish pointed skyward on a tripod placed in the grass nearby.

Voelker looked to McCruder, who was peering at his laptop’s LCD screen. McCruder finally nodded. “Anytime, Kurt.”

Voelker pointed the controller directly at the Lincoln on the trailer bed. The car looked identical to the endless number of black fleet Town Cars with smoked glass coursing through downtown streets and airports nationwide—replete with a TCP number on its back bumper and a vanity plate reading
LIVRY47.
Voelker pressed a button on the remote. The car’s V8 engine started. He slid a lever to put it in gear and then began backing the car slowly off the trailer ramps.

“I bet he rolls it,” McCruder snickered.

“You’d better hope he doesn’t.”

Voelker didn’t even look. “Guys, I’m working here. You wanna shut your pie holes for two seconds?”

In a few moments he had deftly backed the car onto the dirt road; then he shifted it into drive and eased it out onto the asphalt of the small oval racetrack nearby. The circuit was perhaps two hundred feet in diameter. An oddity, really. Nothing you could actually race on. It was crisscrossed with mysterious grooves set at odd angles.

“This good?” Voelker turned to his companions.

They shrugged.

Khan took a lollipop out of his mouth. “How the hell are we supposed to know? We’re in the box. Park it where it is.”

Voelker killed the engine. He collapsed the controller’s antenna. “Anything?”

Both men shook their heads.

He walked up. “I guess we wait.”

The late afternoon sun was sinking toward the hills. They had been waiting and sweating for a couple of hours in the brutal heat, listening to the wind chimes dangling from the eaves of a nearby utility shed. The chimes sounded all too infrequently.

Khan mopped his face with the front of his black T-shirt. “Goddamn. It is Africa hot.”

McCruder upended a soda can. Nothing came out. “I thought you Indians thrived in this weather, Khan.”

“Fuck you. I grew up in Portland, moron.”

Voelker wiped the salty sweat from his eyes. He blinked from the sting. “Guys, I swear, I’ll take a tire iron to you both if you don’t quit your bitching.”

They heard a
blip-blip
sound from the nearby laptop. They snapped to attention.

Khan leaned over McCruder’s shoulder to look at the LCD screen.

McCruder looked up to Voelker. “It’s here.”

All three turned expectantly to the asphalt.

Suddenly the car engine roared to life. It revved several times. The wheels turned left, then right.

They all watched transfixed.

Khan grinned. “It’s
alive
! Bu-wahahahah!”

Suddenly the car’s engine raced, and it laid down rubber, accelerating madly along the asphalt track.

“Jesus!” Voelker turned to the other two. “What the hell is it doing?”

“Don’t know, but look at it go, man.”

The Lincoln was weaving side to side, then it suddenly slammed on the brakes and screeched to a halt. It peeled out suddenly again and went into a power slide, whipping its tail around. It roared forward again, building up speed on the straightaway, then wrenched its wheels into another slide, and came out facing the other direction—still accelerating into a bootlegger reverse.

McCruder smiled. “It’s testing the properties of the car.”

Khan and Voelker leaned in, while still watching the screeching display of stunt driving.

McCruder spoke louder. “It’s confirming the specs. Braking distance, turning radius—all that stuff. It’s making sure we followed instructions.”

Voelker pointed a finger at McCruder. “It damn well better meet the spec.”

Without turning, McCruder extended his closed fist, then operated his thumb like a crank to extend his middle finger.

Suddenly the car stopped its acrobatic display and sat motionless on the pavement. Oily rubber smoke still wafted across the track.

All three men stared at it. It was half a football field away.

A Bullwinkle the Moose voice came over the speakers of McCruder’s laptop.
“Duhhh, you have mail.”

McCruder checked.

While McCruder was busy, Khan looked at his own laptop screen. He grinned at Voelker. “We no longer have a connection to the car, Kurt. It changed the access codes.”

Voelker didn’t flinch. “It’s part of the spec, Khan.”

McCruder glanced up at his companions. “Let me confirm this.” After a few frenzied moments of clicking, he smiled and turned to them again. “Fifty-six thousand dollars have been deposited into the corporate account, and we have an order for six more AutoM8s. The Daemon is pleased with our offering.”

They whooped and high-fived.

“What will that total?” Khan was beaming.

Voelker thought for a second. “Three hundred thousand and change.” He looked to McCruder. “Does it say where the cars will be coming from?”

McCruder shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Corporate leases, probably. Not our problem. Looks like the Haas has downloaded more plans, too.”

“Excellent.” Voelker smiled at them both. “Congratulations, gentlemen.”

Suddenly the distant car roared into action again—laying down more rubber. They all turned. It was accelerating toward them.

“It’s gonna whack us!”

They ran for the van, but the Town Car raced past their table and out along the dirt road. It accelerated and kept going.

They gathered their breath and watched it recede into the distance.

Khan turned to them. “We should follow it. You know, back to its lair.”

McCruder narrowed his eyes. “What, are you fucking insane?”

Voelker nodded. “He’s right. We released it into the wild. Those were the instructions. Following it is just a good way to get killed.”

Khan watched the cloud of dust moving toward the distant hills. “You think we’re the only ones doing this?”

Voelker watched, too, shielding his eyes against the sun. “If the number of unemployed electrical engineers is any indication, I’d say no.”

G
arrett Lindhurst marched purposefully toward the corner office on the fifty-first floor of Leland Equity Group’s palatial world headquarters. He clenched a rolled magazine in his hand like a baton in a slow-motion relay race and looked visibly worried. Worried about systems.

As chief information officer, Lindhurst held dominion over the systems that delivered the lifeblood of Leland Equity Group: real-time financial data. That data was delivered instantaneously to every corner of the organization and to every client. Every account and every dollar in every branch office passed through Lindhurst’s networks and data systems. Every e-mail passed through his servers. He had thirty regional VPs as direct reports and oversaw an empire of some five hundred IT employees worldwide.

And yet, Leland Equity Group was one of those multibillion-dollar companies that existed on the periphery of public awareness. Their unremarkable logo could be found in the skyline of any major city in North America, Europe, or Asia, and even if most people had no idea what the company did, they assumed it must be doing something important.

The reality was that, with eighty billion dollars in assets under management, the decisions made by Leland MBAs ruled the daily lives of two hundred million Third World people.

Following a (more or less) Darwinian economic model, Leland identified and quantified promising resource development opportunities in the far corners of the world. They had since formed private equity partnerships with local leaders for strip mining in Papua New Guinea, water privatization in Ecuador, marble quarrying in China, oil drilling in Nigeria, and pipeline construction in Myanmar. Anywhere local public and/or private leaders existed with abundant resources, a surfeit of rivals, and a deficit in capital, Leland could be found. And while these projects were theoretically beneficial, the benefits were best perceived at a distance of several thousand miles.

Leland’s equity offerings used tedious statistical analysis to mask the fact that their business centered on enslaving foreign people and ravaging their lands. They didn’t do this directly, of course, but they hired the people who hired the people who did.

Humanity had always trafficked in oppression. Before the corporate marketing department got ahold of it, it was called
conquest
. Now it was
regional development.
Vikings and Mongols were big on revenue targets, too—but Leland had dispensed with all the tedious invading, and had taken a page out of the Roman playbook by hiring the locals to enslave each other as franchisees.

To view Leland fund managers as immoral was a gross simplification of the world. And what was there to replace capitalism, anyway? Communism? Theocracy? Most of the Third World had already suffered nearly terminal bouts of idealism. It was the Communists, after all, who had littered the world with cheap AK-47s in order to “liberate” the masses. But the only lasting effect was that every wall between Cairo and the Philippines had at least one bullet hole in it. But nothing changed. Nothing changed because these alternate belief systems flew in the face of human nature. Of even common sense. Anyone who has ever tried to share pizza with roommates knows that Communism cannot
ever
work. If Lenin and Marx had just shared an apartment, perhaps a hundred million lives might have been spared and put to productive use making sneakers and office furniture.

Leland bankers told clients that they didn’t design the world—they were just trying to live in it. And incidentally, the wonders of the developed world rose from the ashes of conflict and competition, so they were helping people in the long run. For godsakes, just look at Japan.

And while the debate mumbled on, asterisked by legal disclaimers, Leland booked another highly profitable year.

But profitability was not what was bothering Garrett Lindhurst as he approached the CEO’s office suite.

Among Leland’s C-level executives, only Lindhurst was without decades-old family ties to the organization—but then again, the rapid expansion of computer systems in the corporate world in recent years had outpaced the ability of old-money families to produce senior technology talent. While Lindhurst hadn’t written any actual code since working with Fortran and Pascal back in his Princeton days, he had learned over the years how much systems should cost and what they needed to do.

In essence, computer systems needed to do only one of two things: make money or save money. Everything else was just details. Scut work. These tasks Lindhurst delegated to the executive senior veeps, who, in turn, delegated them to someone else…and so on. It was only during times of complete disaster that Lindhurst involved himself with the actual computer systems themselves.

Today was such a time.

Lindhurst pointed at the CEO’s temple-like office doors as he passed the executive secretary’s desk. “He in?”

“He’s leaving for Moscow in an hour.”

She barely registered Lindhurst’s presence. A stone-faced woman in her fifties, she was many years in the CEO’s service and effectively had more authority than any two senior vice presidents put together.

But Lindhurst had more authority than ten. He pushed his way through the towering double doors.

“Garrett!” she called after him.

He ignored her and proceeded into the CEO’s cavernous office at a quick pace.

The tanned, pampered face of Russell Vanowen, Jr., CEO and chairman of Leland Equity Group, looked up from reading a letter. He scowled. “Damnit, Garrett, make an appointment.”

Garrett heard the doors close behind him, and he took a deep breath. “This can’t wait.”

“Then just pick up the phone, for chrissakes.”

“We need a face-to-face.”

Vanowen regarded him like a statue would a pigeon. Vanowen had that obsessively groomed look of the fabulously rich—as though his head were the grounds of Augusta National and a hundred grounds-keepers swarmed over it each morning. The ring of white hair sweeping around the back of his head was perfectly manicured like a green. The pores of his skin were flawless. His suit was masterfully tailored to make his husky form look manly and authoritative.

Yet, for all his obvious fastidiousness, Vanowen did not look soft. He was stocky, intimidating, with a presence that projected itself without having to speak; his eyes scanned a room like twin .50-caliber machine guns. And he had an almost mystical authority in this office, with its bank of tall windows overlooking downtown Chicago and Lake Michigan beyond. This was a fabled seat of power, overlooking the length and breadth of the land.

Lindhurst proceeded toward Vanowen’s massive teak wood desk, still thirty feet away. “We have a major problem, Russ.”

Vanowen still held a letter in one hand, glaring over his reading glasses. He reluctantly dropped the letter on his otherwise empty desk and removed his glasses. “When you say ‘we,’ I take that to mean ‘you.’” He glanced at his massive watch, tugging a cuff-linked sleeve up to see the face. “I’m heading out to the airfield any minute.”

There wasn’t any time to finesse it. “We’ve lost administrator rights to our network.”

This did not have the impact Lindhurst hoped.

Vanowen shrugged slightly and now looked greatly irritated. “So what the hell do you want me to do about it? You’re the CIO; ride your people until they fix it. Jesus, Garrett.”

Lindhurst sat down in one of the uncomfortable leather chairs, pulling it right up to the desk. He leaned in close, still clutching the rolled magazine. “Russ, listen to me: we don’t have any control over our databases.”

“My response is the same. Now would you let me read this letter, please?”

“WE ARE UNDER ATTACK.”

That got Vanowen’s attention. “Attack?”

“Attack. All offices, worldwide. Look, I get in this morning, and I have phone calls from six division heads telling me they can’t log on as admins to our servers. They think it’s a layoff and that they’ve been shut out on purpose.”

“Were they?”

“Not by us. Turns out
no one
can get an admin logon—not even here in the main office. All systems rebooted last night. And somehow, somebody took over our network. We have only limited rights to it.”

Now Vanowen looked really angry. He pounded his fist on the desk. “Jesus Christ, Lindhurst! Why the hell wasn’t I told about this sooner? Our clients must be screaming bloody murder.”

“Hold on a second. Our Web sites are up, and we can access data, no problem. So can our clients. We can even change data, so no one outside Leland knows yet.”

Confused and getting angrier by the moment, Vanowen gestured, “So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is that we can’t back up, restore, or change our servers. We can’t even export data.”

“I may not know much about this stuff, Lindhurst, but I do know we spent thirty million dollars on backup systems. Surely you can take a backup copy and restore it.”

“That’s just it; our backup SANs are toast. Our off-site replication trashed. The log files were faked. We have no backups newer than four months ago.”

Vanowen squinted at him. “How is that possible? I spent forty-seven million dollars on IT last year alone. We were supposed to have the most advanced network security money can buy. You assured me of that. You assured the board of that. That’s why we hired you.”

“I don’t think our systems were breached. Not from the outside. I think it’s an inside job.”

“Call the FBI.”

“We can’t do that.”

“The hell we can’t.”

“Understand this, Russ: they can flush our entire network down the toilet with a single keystroke—from just about anywhere in the world. This company is hanging by a thread.”

The room got deathly quiet. Still staring, Vanowen spoke with the sort of calm voice that usually precedes violence. “Explain this to me, Garrett.”

“It gets much worse.”

“Worse? How the hell can it get any worse?”

“Watch.” Garrett motioned for Vanowen to follow him.

Vanowen’s office was huge, with a double-height ceiling and windows. Several sets of sofas and leather chairs were placed about the room, with a wide plasma-screen television on the far end and a conference table nearby, encircled by chairs. The place was easily a couple thousand square feet.

Vanowen reluctantly got up from his desk and followed Lindhurst to the plasma screen. Lindhurst was already fiddling with a remote he had picked up from the credenza there.

Vanowen settled into a conference table chair. “I’ll see that the people behind this go to federal prison for the rest of their lives.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’ll see in a moment.” Lindhurst gestured to the plasma screen. “Have you used this video conferencing system yet? It cost seventy thousand dollars.”

“Goddamnit, Lindhurst—”

“Okay, look, this system is jacked into our corporate network. I put something out there that I want you to see.” Lindhurst used the remote to navigate to an intranet Web page, which filled the screen. “I found an e-mail in my inbox this morning. It was from the system administrator—the
new
system administrator. The person who took my rights away. That e-mail contained a hyperlink—which I copied to this network share.” He navigated to another page and clicked a hyperlink. “Here is what I saw….”

Vanowen looked impatiently at the screen.

The seventy-inch plasma monitor suddenly went black and after a few moments a whooshing sound effect escorted a whirling logo into the center of the screen. It was a stylized emblem of the words:
Daemon Industries LLC.

A professional-sounding female announcer came on, along with cavorting corporate music. It was like an infomercial or network marketing video. Her voice was cheerful. “Welcome to the Daemon Industries family of companies. In just a moment you’ll hear some of the exciting new opportunities available to you in this fast-growing global organization. An organization to which your company now belongs. But first, a word from our founder…”

Vanowen frowned. “Lindhurst—”

“Shh!” He pointed.

The screen faded in on a man in his mid-thirties. He was sitting in a chair next to a fireplace. The chirpy corporate Muzak continued in the background. Words appeared at the bottom of the screen:

Matthew A. Sobol, Ph.D.

Chairman & CEO Daemon Industries LLC

Sobol nodded once in dour greeting.

Lindhurst hit the
PAUSE
button on the remote. Sobol froze in mid-nod. “That’s him.”

“That’s
who
?” Vanowen squinted at the words on-screen. He turned back to Lindhurst. “Never heard of him. Is this the person who broke into our network?”

“Yes.”

“Call the FBI.”

“Won’t do any good, Russ. Matthew Sobol’s dead.” Lindhurst handed the rolled magazine to Vanowen.

Vanowen just glanced down at it, then with some reluctance took it. He unrolled it and moved it to arm’s length so he could see the cover with his myopic eyes. The same Matthew Sobol was on the cover of the magazine. It was eight months old. The headline read:
Murderer From Beyond the Grave.
“That guy?” Vanowen tossed the magazine onto the nearby conference table. “That was a hoax.” He motioned to the plasma screen. “So is this. My kid at USC could probably make this video on his Powerbook.”

“Russ, someone managed a coordinated global attack that not only stole rights to our worldwide network, but they did it months ago without raising a single alarm. They didn’t leave a trace. Matthew Sobol was one of the few people who could have pulled it off.”

“You’re frighteningly gullible. Jesus, some hackers got into our network, and they’re trying to put one over on you. Call the FBI.”

“Russ, no one faked this video. If you listen to him, you’ll see what I mean.” Lindhurst released the
PAUSE
button.

Matthew Sobol came back to life on-screen. The infomercial music faded as he finished his nod. “By now you’re beginning to realize that you no longer control your network and that your backups are damaged beyond repair. I am now an integral part of your organization—and have been for several months. Let me assure you that your corporate data is safe, and that sufficient backups exist off-site to provide seamless protection in the event of a natural disaster or other calamity.