The Hack Read online

  ‘A cyber-mask?’

  ‘My own creation. It’s the hackers’ holy grail. I based it on an original algorithm – ’

  ‘A mask. It stops people seeing you. Am I right?’

  ‘Sure... It’s well fat.’

  ‘And it’s unbreakable? No one can ever see who stole this?’

  ‘I did not steal it! I just borrowed it, for a quick peek. Like a library book... Cross my heart’ He dimple-grinned her and she had to laugh. He had finally got the message. Enough already.

  ‘Okay Supernerd. Let’s see what our friends at the CIA have given us.’ Kate’s easy optimism surfaced again.

  Nothing bad will happen. It’s only a Thai police report after all. And anyway, she felt confident that if Johnny said no one could trace this to London he was right, even if the document was important.

  Kate leaned over Johnny’s shoulder again as he punched the air, whooped, reached out his left hand – eyes still fixed on the middle screen, right mitt scrolling pages for his sister – and deftly popped a package into the microwave permanently sited at the end of his desk. He spun the timer without a glance and whispered into her ear, ‘We got fresh popcorn!’

  ***

  Fan was having a terrible day. The very worst day of his miserable existence. And the very last day of his shabby junkie life.

  He struggled in the bottom of the dinghy, feeling the bite of wire cutting into his flesh as he realised his hands and feet were bound together behind his back. His head thundered with pain, worse than even his most vicious drug hangover.

  The blow he had received – the one he did not see or even really feel – had slammed part of his cranium against his brain. He was already dying, his skull fractured, soft brain tissue torn, with blood and vital cerebral fluid leaking gently from his right ear.

  As he came fully conscious Fan experienced a totality of agony he could not have imagined. A thousand migraines crushed his fevered mind.

  ‘What you do with me mister?’

  He vomited, a sickly sludge of spiced squid and beer pooling under his nose, the sweet acrid stench acting like smelling salts, dragging him back to incomprehensible reality.

  ‘I do nothing bad. I not hurt you.’ He struggled to speak, his swollen tongue waggling, rancid and sticky in his mouth. Sun scorched down and he longed for a return to unconsciousness.

  The steady beat of the outboard stopped and Fan felt Hunter lift him. He was like a baby in a strong man’s arms. The gentle movement of the waves allowed Fan to drift towards the sanctuary of unconsciousness, and then he came screaming awake – a terrifying agonised wail wrenched from deep inside his tortured soul.

  His body was suspended in the water. The man was holding a very large knife in one hand and Fan’s ponytail in his other.

  The Thai’s body gently swung, twisting slightly as waves lapped against the bow of the boat. Despite the water supporting him below the waist, much of his body weight was hanging from his ponytail. Had his mind been coherent and able to think despite the explosive pain detonating inside his head, he would have realised the rasping noise he heard was the sound of fragments of his own skull grating together.

  Slowly he was dipped deeper. The pain receded as the water took more of his bodyweight, and, for a brief glorious moment he lost consciousness.

  Then the warm water splashed over his face, reviving him. Agony engulfed him, but he was lucid. The bloody fluid was flowing more freely from his deafened ear.

  Hunter’s quiet words were almost crooned into Fan’s other one.

  ‘One question. One answer and no more pain. Where do you keep the children? The rent boys and girls? Where are they?’

  Fan’s ponytail tightened and he screamed again, a long primitive howl that encompassed all the anguish he had felt or dealt in his twenty-four years.

  He was able to whisper a few words, the pain in his skull such that he barely felt the knife slice his belly, spilling his guts into the sea.

  At last, released by the stranger he drifted in the pink water, his tormented synapses fusing and sparking for one last coherent thought. As his bowels were ripped away he realised that the American’s teeth really looked nothing like a shark’s.

  ***

  ‘Boss?’

  ‘Yup, Cody. What’s the deal?’

  ‘We’ve had a Level Four breach, sir’

  ‘Goddammit! Details?’

  ‘Well, we were on to it nanoseconds after it was accessed. Codes are switched already. The target may’ve been a dummy though. Traffic from the Thai embassy. Real low grade shit. Like super low. We think it could’ve been a test run. You want me to come to your office now?’

  ‘Sure do. I’ll tip off the Director. How long before you hook the son of a bitch?’

  ‘Well, we’re having some trouble with that, sir. Never seen anything like it.’

  Cody’s boss sighed as he dropped the phone to its cradle. He could feel his shoulders tensing as his gut told him this was going to be a difficult one.

  In the five years Mike Teague had been managing Langley’s Government Systems Security Team, affectionately known as GUSSET by his staff, there had been thousands of breaches. Most were students and geeks, hackers determined to break into the CIA database, to unravel coded transmissions or copy their internal email, anything to prove how fallible national security systems were.

  Mostly for ego, to prove just how good they were, but a few were malicious. A group calling themselves Anonymous had caused some serious problems with Level Four breaches in the past, but rarely gave trouble these days since the FBI had mopped up most of the culprits.

  He thought to himself that in some respects these amateurish attacks had helped keep the systems secure from genuine threats, constantly testing and probing, highlighting weaknesses.

  They were a cheap source of recruits too. Some of his best people, Cody included, were tracked and hooked after they had hacked into government facilities. Once caught, the choice for the most talented was a no-brainer: a criminal conviction and prison, or a well-paid job with the most sophisticated systems the US can offer.

  Thousands of hackers tried to get into Government systems every day but, most of the time, their efforts bounced off the security shielding, like bullets pinging off an Abrams tank. Sometimes they would get through one or two layers of armour. Rarely did they get through three or four. At Level Five the breach was most serious, and that had not happened since his team had been set up. Level Four breaches were a rare enough event these days – read-only access to coded networks and international traffic. Tapping into the veins of the National Security System.

  This bullet had dug real deep.

  The head of GUSSET pushed open the door to the Director’s office and said, ‘Jack. We got a problem.’

  ***

  The source of the CIA’s latest headache was happily munching hot buttered popcorn in a suburban south London bedsit. His sister was flopped on his unmade bed, seemingly dead to the world. Kate’s arm was thrown over her eyes, her long blonde hair fanned on the pillow.

  Johnny watched as her chest gently pulsed up and down in a slow steady rhythm, a wistful look on his face. She was his angel. His guardian since their mother died, she had looked after him, nurtured him, protected him.

  Christ, he thought, she changed her whole life for me. He really wanted to help her, and hoped he had finally come good.

  She had once said, ‘You’re so innocent and incapable of deceit, Johnny, it’s one of the reasons I love you so much.’ Yet, he thought, she would be appalled if she ever found out the truth.

  His life was the internet, he had been hooked on computers and games for as long as he could remember, and cyberspace was like home to him. It was a magical kingdom, full of friends and comrades, jokes and surprises, games and puzzles.

  Best of all, puzzles.

  Like the one he had solved to help her today.

  He scratched his tousled head, frowning to himself as he thought of her anger earlie
r, then smiled as he remembered her delight at what he had found. Her mood rapidly morphed into shocked disbelief as she absorbed what she read.

  They had accessed CNN, Reuters, the BBC and a dozen other major news carriers, yet every bulletin was missing vital information about the death of the millionaire businessman. Kate had digested it all and then lay down to rest.

  Johnny decided he should keep looking. He rubbed his eyes with his palms, hard enough to see stars, put another bag of popcorn on to cook and turned back to his screens.

  ***

  The longhaired farang devil lies sleeping. He has several passports in different names but he thinks of himself as Doug Brown. His recurrent nightmare has been dormant for years but tonight it visits him in his hotel bed in Thailand. His muscled torso twists and writhes, tangling his limbs in the sweat soaked sheets...

  He’s running. She’s chasing. Both laughing. The trees flash by and he feels the warmth of the sun on his body. His mother catches him, hugs him, his head snuggling in the comfort and warmth of her soft breasts as she carries him to bed.

  She kisses him goodnight. Tucks him up. Switches off the light.

  He’s sleeping.

  Wakes as the bed shifts.

  The man is whispering. Touching. Hands crawling over his body.

  He moves away.

  The man grabs him. Pushes his face to the pillow.

  He can’t breathe. He’s panicking, heart thundering, head light.

  The man pulls his pyjama pants down.

  The pillow moves. He sucks in a gasp of air. His head clears.

  White-hot pain rips into him. He starts to scream but his face is shoved into the pillow, smothering the noise.

  The man’s weight is crushing him. He can’t breathe. He’s dying. Sobbing and gasping.

  At last the pain eases.

  His hair is pulled and his head wrenched back.

  He can breathe again.

  The man whispers, a vicious rasp: ‘Tell your mother, runt, and I’ll kill you.’

  He cringes from the voice he knows so well.

  His father.

  Brown screams himself awake. He shudders and weeps.

  He knows what he must do.

  He must purge himself of the nightmare.

  Again.

  ***

  Kate sat up, wide awake, feeling no hint of fatigue.

  ‘Johnny, why did you access that CIA report? How did you know they’d have anything on the guy?’

  Playful eyes beamed back at hers as his face creased into a crazy grin. ‘Oh, come on Kate. You think I’m always hacking the big bad ole US-of-A security systems! Hand on heart, this was a one-time only.’

  ‘Yeah, right!’ She could not help return his manic smile with a rather more moderate one of her own. ‘What I need to know is,’ she paused as he focused, probably realising her half-hour power-nap was actually nothing of the sort, ‘what prompted you to hack into the CIA network? How did you know they’d have a report on this?’

  ‘And I’m the naive one? You need to get out to the cinema a little more kiddo. Everyone,’ he stretched out the first syllable, ‘knows that there’s a CIA station officer attached to every US embassy. And everyone knows a suspicious death of a US national in a foreign land is a very big deal.’ He paused for breath, sucked in another one and continued before Kate could get a word in. ‘Such a big deal that the local CIA station officers will be on the case like flies on shit, whisking reports back to Langley in double pronto time.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, you know... I hacked into their comms, sucking that baby on to this here screen,’ his finger jabbed his display, ‘so fast the Langley ciphers hardly know I’ve been and gone!’ He sat back, brushed a few crumbs off his front, folded his arms and did his level best to look like an inscrutable Buddha. ‘The orient holds no secrets from me!’

  Kate’s own smile had vanished. ‘You know I can’t use this.’

  Her brief period of reflection had not yielded the normal results. Instead of formulating a two or three-thousand-word article, her mind had floundered, full of excitement mingled with disbelief. Swooping highs and dreams of scoops tumbling into troughs of fear and doubt, lawsuits... and worse.

  Johnny chirped back, ‘Okay, so you can’t do your interview with the great Mr Simm cos he rather selfishly cancelled next week’s meeting due to inadvertent death syndrome. But Miss Cheery,’ his finger wagged at her, ‘you can still scoop everyone.’

  ‘Johnny, I cannot.’

  He ignored her, increasing his pace and volume, and continued, ‘Well-respected US millionaire businessman brutally murdered while on paedophile sex vacation. It’s perfect – it confirms the rumours you’d heard.’

  ‘We don’t really know that.’

  ‘Okay, okay. You’re the journo. How about alleged-paedophile-sex-vacation. That should cover it. Another couple of thousand words and big payday for big sis. Maybe no Pulitzer, but a really juicy scoop.’

  Kate was unsure. Sometimes she wondered if journalism was really for her. She got by as a freelance, but she had always thought she lacked the investigative zeal that the successful hacks displayed in spades.

  Her preference, her forte in fact, had been for well-researched and well-written analysis, background articles and insightful commentary. She had desperately wanted to get on the staff of a national daily since they arrived in the UK some years before, but never had the chance. She had survived by odd-jobbing, pitching for non-contentious profiles like the one she was doing for the FT on George Simm.

  And now, a week away from the interview that would have secured a whole pink page under Kate O’Sullivan’s by-line, this.

  Bummer.

  And a scoop? Well, scoops were for journalists with hunters’ instincts.

  Surely not for her.

  Illegally obtaining confidential information was one thing, but being able to use it quite another. The Murdoch news empire had got itself into deep shit over hacking and she could not imagine her editor at the FT wanting any part of this.

  She bit her lip, squeezed her eyes tight, and rubbed her face with the palms of her hands, trying to clear her head and quieten her jumbled mind.

  ‘Fancy a Bud?’ Johnny held a bottle out to her, fresh from the mini-fridge tucked under his computer desk.

  She checked his bedside clock. ‘It’s not yet 4am!’

  ‘Yeah, but somewhere in the world it’s Bud-time.’

  Kate collapsed back on the bed, bottle in hand, finally relaxing. And then, sipping the chilled beer, something clicked in her mind and her excitement gradually started to build.

  Maybe, just maybe there’s a way, she thought. Why shouldn’t I go for it?

  ‘Johnny, I’ve got an idea...’

  ***

  Police Major General Lee was feeling worse today, unkempt and in need of a very long shower.

  He had despatched a car to collect the concierge, who had been woken and dragged from his cot still in his nightclothes.

  The man was sitting in a cell on a single chair positioned in the middle of the room, vulnerable, exposed. A little patch of wet appeared around his crotch as Lee walked in.

  Excellent! thought Lee. This won’t take long.

  ‘Before I ask any more questions, I’d like you to think back to our meeting last night, the little chat we had at the hotel.’

  As his head nodded, the man’s lower lip started to tremble.

  Lee had a ferocious reputation, although the reality was rather different. The son of a senior Thai banking officer who had been posted to Hong Kong, Lee entered the police force there. He had been well trained by the British, and his methods reflected much of the best of their policing mixed with a little oriental brutality – very much a tradition with the old colony’s force.

  On his return to Thailand he had rapidly risen to his current position. Rumours abounded about Lee’s methods, and his reputation – much exaggerated – was, like the best legends, based on the truth.


  ‘Is there anything more you wish to tell me? Something you may have forgotten?’

  He strolled behind his victim, and placed a palm on his head. The man flinched and craned to look up at his interrogator, eyes bugging out with fear.

  The implied threat was enough. The concierge made his choice and started talking. ‘I remember now, sir. I have seen the boy before. He’s been to the hotel, four or five times I think, always with a tourist, never begging. Just quietly waiting as they get their keys.’

  The man’s voice was tight and dry from fear, and Lee could smell cheap Thai rum on his breath. No doubt he had drunk himself to oblivion and collapsed unconscious on his bed before they had come for him, beating him with their truncheons, aiming hard blows to his kidneys and legs.

  The concierge eased himself forward in his seat, massaging his lower back. His tongue darted out, as if searching his lips for moisture. Finding none.

  Lee waited for him to continue.

  ‘The hotel’s policy, sir – ’

  ‘Tell me everything and I’ll see to it that you don’t lose your job.’

  The man’s relief seeped into his voice. ‘Well, the hotel owner will not allow hookers and street children into the rooms, and we must chase them away if they ever come into the foyer.’

  ‘I don’t care about your boss’s policies. Just tell me the truth.’ Lee strolled around to the front of the man and crouched, bringing their eyes level. ‘Go on.’

  ‘The American gave me a tip. A generous tip. He wanted me to look the other way, to not see the boy... To pretend not to notice is easy sir, and there was another customer waiting.’

  The concierge tugged his pyjama top forward, subconsciously trying to cover the wet patch. Lee knew his groin would be clammy and uncomfortable, and his embarrassment more distressing than the pain from the beating he had endured. The man’s cheeks turned darker with shame as he noticed Lee’s gaze.

  ‘The boy? Who is he?’

  ‘I don’t know his name sir, but,’ the words spilled out in a rush, ‘I believe he is one of Fan’s. I’ve seen them together.’

  Ah, at last. A lead. Fan. Of course.