Zero Sum, Book One, Kotov Syndrome Read online

  Griffen nodded. “I appreciate your understanding of my difficulty. I have some insight now into who’s causing me the discomfort. It would be helpful if any solution was handled discreetly.” Griffen watched Sergei’s face for any reaction. As a successful import/export broker, his wealth qualified him as an important investor in Griffen Ventures, not to mention that as the head of the Red Mafiya in the U.S. he commanded significant unorthodox resources.

  “I am always happy to solve a problem for a friend. Think no more about this. It will be attended to… is the correct word, expeditiously?” Sergei had a better command of the language than many English professors, but still liked to play the Russian bear on occasion. It was a habit that he’d developed to cause adversaries to underestimate him; not a mistake they typically got to make twice.

  Griffen had some initial trepidation about approaching him, as there was always an inequity to the quid pro quo, but he needed the website issue to go away before it really got out of hand.

  Who could have predicted the site would call the science into serious question, and also map out the links of some of his network of media cronies and investors? There really was no precedent for the website thing. He was definitely not accustomed to seeing most of his proprietary pump and dump strategy laid out in black and white.

  That was too close for comfort.

  Now he was taking financial hits, and if the price began tumbling...it could be terminal. If he started unloading shares to get out of his long position, the price would collapse and take his fund with him – there wouldn’t be enough patsies to sell to, much less to go short and make money on the downswing. He really needed at least two more months or so of upward trajectory, then a couple of months to sell around the top and establish his short. The website was causing the bubble to lose air far too soon – it took a lot of time and trading volume to unwind as massive a stake as he’d accumulated. The timing right now couldn’t have been worse.

  He was already in enough financial trouble. Several other unlucky bets along with the Allied play had turned the $1 billion in his domestic and foreign funds he’d started the year with into about $800 million as of today, meaning he needed some short term volatility successes, as well as a short sale home run to get back to even before he had to do his year-end investor report. That left about six months to pull it out of the bag.

  He needed this debunking site closed down yesterday, and the noise to fade so he could get on with business as he was used to conducting it. Griffen needed a level playing field with investors taking a skeptical view of Allied like he needed a hole in his head. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and Sergei was the court of final appeals.

  Only he would be settling out of court…

  Griffen sipped the dregs of his tepid coffee and looked up at Sergei. “I knew I could count on you.”

  Sergei smiled back. A cozy breakfast on a busy day in the big city. Neither one’s eyes had a trace of friendliness residing in them. Bills would come due eventually, and the piper always had to be paid. Griffen didn’t want to guess what this go-around would cost.

  * * * *

  Chapter 10

  Steven groaned as the alarm went off at 5:30 a.m.. He rolled out of bed, almost falling over Avalon, who’d decided to sleep at his bedside; uncharacteristic for him. Maybe he was feeling under the weather. They both padded downstairs into the kitchen, where Steven downed his coffee as Avalon munched his dog food; their usual preparation for the morning run.

  They loped easily down the strand in tandem; two lone figures covering a lot of ground in a relatively short time, surprising the occasional gull with their approach as they made their way to the pier and back. When they returned to the house, Steven noticed his answering machine was blinking.

  Strange. He didn’t get a lot of calls, much less at 6 a.m.. He punched the play button.

  “Mr. Archer, this is Kevin at Lone Star Web Associates. Please call us ASAP; we have an issue. It’s urgent.” Steven jotted down the number and deleted the message.

  He dialed the number.

  The same voice answered. “Lone Star, this is Kevin.”

  “Hi, Kevin, it’s Steven Archer. I got your message. What’s up?”

  “Uh, Mr. Archer, we’ve never had anything like this happen before, but apparently the server was hacked sometime last night, and your website was corrupted. The files are unreadable.” The voice sounded hesitant.

  “That’s not the end of the world, I’ve got it on my hard drive; I’ll upload it in a few minutes.”

  Kevin cleared his throat. “That’s not really what’s disturbing to us. We have a pretty bulletproof firewall, and it’s virtually impossible to breach it. In the past, attempts have been shut down within seconds. This was different. We’re still going over the logs and trying to figure it out, but it appears that this was extremely sophisticated, unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “There’s a chance some user data was compromised. We have you listed as Stanley Jorgenson and your payment listed via money order; but the servers clock the IP’s coming in, and yours could conceivably have been logged on a site upload. I don’t see how an intruder could have gotten to it, but it’s a risk that’s there nonetheless.”

  “I understand, Kevin. Thanks for the heads up. My IP is one of a group from my cable company, so anyone who wanted the IP identity would have to subpoena the user data to get anything. That would take months, according to my lawyer, and it wouldn’t be a given. So I think we’re good. I’ll get online and reload the site this morning.” He paused. “You don’t have my phone number in the system, do you?”

  “No, not in that section of the files, anyway. Your number is in a blank field in our contacts log files, with no associated site or name.”

  Well, that was something, anyway. Didn’t seem much had been compromised.

  “All right. I’ll upload in the next few minutes,” Steven advised.

  “I’m really sorry about this. We’ve never had one of these breaches succeed. It’s an anomaly, and we’re contacting the firewall software manufacturer to see if they know how it could have happened.”

  “Keep me posted if you figure it out. I’ll be online in five.”

  Well, he had to expect there’d be some sort of attempt to hack the site. It was always a calculated risk, hence all the precautions surrounding his identity. Still, it was unnerving to have the possible become the actual. But if they kept trying to hack it, he would just keep uploading it. Two could play that game.

  Steven took the stairs three at a time, diving in and out of the shower in record speed, and pulling on a threadbare sweatshirt on the way to his desk downstairs. He logged onto his system, and began the morning ritual of opening the streamer windows – and then his system crashed.

  He rebooted, and waited patiently for Windows to restart all the files. Halfway through the process, the system crashed again. An error message declared ‘damaged sectors or files’. He’d been meaning to get a new computer for the last six months, and today of all days his hard disk had decided to give up the ghost. One more try, but no go. Damn.

  Fortunately, he’d backed up his data to CD-ROM, so he grabbed his laptop from upstairs and hooked up the monitors and peripherals. He copied all the data to his hard disk, and then logged in and reloaded the site. The whole annoying process had taken almost an hour, and the market had been open for most of that time, so his next step was to load the quote systems and see what the damage was. Amazingly, they were down eight cents, on light volume. That was a relief.

  Finished, he went back upstairs to check on Jennifer, who’d left a note for him when he was out running that she’d called in sick and was asleep. She’d started feeling out of it Sunday night and was pretty miserable by Monday morning.

  He got her some water and gently woke her. No fever, just a little achy. She insisted she’d be fine and wanted to stay and just hang out and watch TV. No problem. P
rovided the market kept stable today, and he wanted to go out and run some errands anyway.

  He checked on the stock one more time. Still up eighty-four cents, low volume. No fireworks. On the way out the door, the phone rang. Steven snagged it. “Hello.”

  Silence on the line.

  “Helloooo…”

  Faint clicking and more silence. He hung up. After a few moments, ring ring…

  “Hello?” More clicking, line buzz.

  Odd…still, with cell service you occasionally got dead spots where you could hear the other person but they couldn’t hear you. It happened sometimes when the caller was driving. The wonders of a digital world. If it was important, they’d call back.

  Steven hopped into his car, a convertible mid-eighties Porsche he’d owned for eons. Still ran like a charm, looked good, and was indestructible. He dropped the top and pulled out of the garage, narrowly avoiding taking out a skateboarder who rolled behind him as he backed out. The kid glared at him like he was the biggest asshole on the planet. Have a nice day, and welcome to Newport Beach.

  He buzzed up the peninsula, enjoying the sharp acceleration from the powerful, throaty engine, and dropped off his dry cleaning, hit the coffee shop, and stopped in at the grocery to pick up some odds and ends. Next up, he went by the tackle shop to collect a reel he’d left for maintenance.

  The whole exercise took half the day – mainly due to the summer beach traffic clogging the streets with the usual chaotic abandon. Throngs of bikini-clad nymphettes orbited PCH like satellites, checking out their male counterparts, who were displaying every variety of tattoo and piercing and nonchalant muscle-flexing conceivable. It was a state of barely-controlled pandemonium that occurred every summer; part of the price one paid for living in paradise.

  Steven arrived back at the house to find Jennifer languishing in the living room, watching the parade of humanity go by on the boardwalk.

  “How’s the head?” he asked, moving the grocery bags into the kitchen.

  “Getting better. I went back to sleep after you left, then the guys from the Gas Company woke me up, and I’ve been down here ever since.” She sounded better, if a little groggy.

  “What guys from the Gas Company?”

  “They knocked on the door, needed to check the kitchen and garage with their sniffer. It was routine. They said they were doing all the houses around here today.”

  The hair on the back of his neck prickled. “What exactly did they do? Where did they go?”

  “Why? I just told you, they sniffed around in the kitchen and the garage. What’s wrong?”

  “Were you with them both at all times? How long were they here?” He tried to sound light.

  “Well, I let them in, and walked them back to the garage. One of them spent some time by the water heater looking around the pilot light, and the other one went into the kitchen and sniffed around the stove. Oh, and he went upstairs for a minute to check the heater in the attic. They said everything looked fine... What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “So the one in the house was alone some of the time?”

  “Well, now that you mention it, I guess he was for a minute or two. Steven, you’re scaring me. Why are you asking all these questions? What’s wrong?”

  Steven sighed. “Probably nothing. It’s just that the website was hacked last night, and my system crashed this morning, and I guess I’m a little rattled.”

  “You didn’t say anything about any of that. They were very polite, had the little blue jumpsuits – I didn’t even think twice about it.”

  “No worries. How long ago was that?”

  “About forty-five minutes... Steven, should I be worried?”

  “Nah. I’m just a little wound up right now. Damn...I’ll be right back, I forgot something in the car.”

  He hurried into the garage and looked around. Everything seemed fine, nothing out of place. Still, his stomach had a knot in it, little butterflies singing the ‘something’s not quite right’ song. He pushed the garage door opener and went out onto the street. Looked in both directions. No Gas Company trucks. Didn’t mean anything, but didn’t mean that everything was okay, either. He lowered the door and went back in.

  “Did you find it?” Jennifer called from the couch.

  “What? Oh, I just left the top down. I wanted to put it up so it wouldn’t wrinkle. I’m going to go hit the head.”

  He ran upstairs, checked on his watches. None missing. He’d held onto a few high-end Rolexes and Pateks from his collecting days to wear occasionally on dressy occasions. The Gas Company ninjas had apparently passed them by.

  Maybe he was just being paranoid.

  He snagged the phone as he went into the bathroom. Dialed information.

  “Newport Beach, the Gas Company.” He selected the ‘put me through automatically’ option, before entering a call tree from hell. “If you’d like to be put on indefinite hold, press one. If you’d like to report your house blew up, press two.” After a few symphonies of music-on-hold he got a real, live person, who grilled him for his account number, which he didn’t know, then took him through the fifth degree to establish that he wasn’t an identity thief. Once he was verified as genuine, he asked about testing at his address.

  That led to another five minutes on hold because the customer service rep didn’t know – such knowledge required a supervisor. When the supervisor came on the line Steven repeated his question, but the best she could do was take his details and commit to calling back with more information later – the crew schedules weren’t accessible from the telephone service center. Steven gave her his information and hung up.

  He returned downstairs and got on the computer. Allied had closed down almost a dollar, an unexpected and happy development. The message boards were relatively quiet. He logged onto his ‘Group’ forum and posted a greeting. A message immediately popped up.

  [Dude, the site’s awesome, but man, if I were that Griffen prick I’d be pissed – Pogo]

  He bantered a bit, before telling the Group about his ISP getting hacked. One of the more heavyweight guys, who sometimes intimated a deeper knowledge of a broad range of topics, some not strictly legal, posted

  [That’s a pretty alarming breach on the firewall. I just pinged it and it’s bulletproof at first glance. If they were able to not only breach but also access security areas, that’s heavy talent. You better be careful. Gordo]

  He spent some more time debating strategies to safeguard his privacy, but had been set on edge by Gordo’s post and the open Gas Company issue, so he logged off sooner than he normally would have. He heard Jennifer in the kitchen and went to see how she was doing.

  Jennifer was looking better, though she knew him well enough to know something was bugging him, and she called him on it. “What’s your deal, Steven?” she asked him. “You’re here, but you’re not.”

  He considered telling her about the warning from the Group and his unease over the Gas Company visit, but thought better of it. Nothing had happened that warranted any concern other than a half-expected hacking attempt a thousand miles away – and he was dealing with that.

  “I just have a lot going on at the moment. I’m gonna go upstairs and meditate; that should bring me back to earth.” He looked out at the beach and cocked his head. “Honey, it’s really beautiful out. Let’s put the top down and run down to Corona Del Mar for dinner. Martinis are on me.”

  “Deal.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 11

  Steven’s meditation was troubled. Instead of a sense of descending to progressively lower and lower levels of awareness, or rather of increasing the level of tranquility and peacefulness at each stage, it was punctuated by random leaping thoughts and a vague sense of unease.

  It was far from relaxing. When he came to full awareness, he remained distinctly anxious. He’d come to trust his instincts, and they were insisting that something disturbing was on the horizon – and drawing ever closer.

  Jennifer
went upstairs when he came down. He’d changed into a linen shirt and loose linen trousers with a pair of huaraches, sort of the dressed-down version of white guy on vacation. He filled Avalon’s water bowl, cleared the remaining items off the counter – and vowed to stay away from the computer. While he was waiting for Jennifer to freshen up and return, the phone rang. He picked up.

  “Mr. Archer?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Monica Sweeney at the Gas Company. Sorry to take so long to get back to you.”

  “No problem. Any news?”

  “I’m still checking, but I haven’t noticed any activity in your area for today. It’s quite possible a crew was there, but I don’t see it on my printouts. We aren’t perfect, though, so this isn’t the last word...”

  “Well, that’s not very reassuring,” he said, “considering there were two guys in my house earlier claiming to be your employees.”

  “Did they show ID when they arrived?”

  “You kn…I…I don’t know, I wasn’t here. My girlfriend was.”

  “Always ask to see identification before admitting anyone into your house.”

  “Thanks, I’ll remember that,” Steven said patiently.

  “And like I said, there could be a crew out there, it’s just not on my system. Sorry I can’t be more help.”

  “Well, thanks for checking.”

  “You’re welcome. Have a nice evening, and thank you for calling the Gas Company.”

  Well, that hadn’t left him any the wiser, but given nothing had been touched, though, the best bet was the obvious; it was a routine check, and he was just a teensy bit on edge from the drama surrounding the website and the message boards.

  His ruminations were pleasantly interrupted by Jennifer’s descent down the stairs. She was stunning, wearing a simple white summer dress that accentuated her deeply tanned skin and mane of blonde hair; the scent of tropical flowers and coconut accompanied her into the room.