 |  |
It was shortly before midnight when Jack Sullivan got the call.
“Heskett is no longer a problem.” said the voice on the other end of the line.
“Good.” Said Sullivan. “Did he say anything to the writer?”
“Not from what I heard, but I can’t be sure.”
“Antonio, keep an eye on him. We’re too close to take any chances.”
“I can neutralize him.”
“It’s too risky. He may have told someone what he was doing. His death could raise suspicions. I’ll contact him and evaluate the situation.”
If the situation was to change, Sullivan had no doubts that Antonio could handle it.
To Sullivan, he was his right-hand man and fixer. But to Interpol, the FBI, New Scotland Yard, and police departments in cities on six continents, Antonio was a string of unexplained homicides committed by a faceless ghost with a never-ending list of aliases. Still, Sullivan considered him to be the physical embodiment of the phrase “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” He wasn't sure which category Antonio fell into, but he knew that as long as he paid him well, he would stay alive.
“On a different note. I need you to do a cleanup on aisle 5. I'll send the details to your phone in a few minutes.”
Sullivan disconnected the call without waiting for a reply. There was no point in waiting. Antonio always followed orders. He opened the email program on his laptop.
To the attention of The Writer:
Please update me on the status of your investigation. Specifically, do we have a reason for concern? Please get back to me ASAP. Thank you.
Very truly yours,
J. Sullivan
Media Liaison EBG Ltd.
Sullivan closed the email program and pressed redial on his phone. “How are the transfer tests going?” he asked the project manager on the other end.
“We ran the first batch at low power to keep it under the radar. Everything was nominal.”
“What about the kill switch?”
“Almost complete,” came the reply. “I’ll be sending you the trigger code within the hour.”
“Excellent. And little rocket man?”
“Locked and loaded. T-Minus forty-six hours twenty-one minutes and counting.”
“Keep me posted.” Once again, Sullivan disconnected the call without waiting for a reply.
He smiled at what he had put into motion. He wished he could brag about it, especially to the smug geniuses who had laughed at him when he was a low-level computer programmer at a very large and highly respected international banking security firm. In the late 90s, Sullivan began to realize that the Internet was becoming more pervasive and tried to alert his boss to the fact that they might want to think about gearing up for a new kind of security threat. His advice fell on deaf ears because his boss was a throwback to the three-martini lunch era and too caught up in his own ego to listen to an entry-level employee. He soon learned that it was better to just do his job and keep his opinions to himself.
The firm didn’t pay much, but he didn’t spend much and his salary covered his needs. Any extra money went to the only activity that seemed to hold his interest, day trading. In gambling parlance, he knew when to hold them and when to fold them and he always kept a little for the house before risking the rest. The stock market crash of 2000 put an end to his day trading career at about the same time that corporate cutbacks ended his employment. But while his employment experience left him with nothing but resentment for the corporate world, his day trading experience had left him with a nice little nest egg. That would come in handy for the next phase of his life. His mission in life became an obsession to make the so-called bank security experts sit up and take notice. Getting rich in the process was a nice little bonus.
It was bank robbery for the Internet age. Although it had taken him years to put all the pieces together, it was ingenious in its simplicity. In the old days, you had to physically go into a bank and inform the bank teller that you had a weapon and were fully prepared to use it unless they honored your demand for money. That was messy for several reasons. For one thing, somebody could get hurt. And for another, the teller could slip a dye pack in with the money that would leave you looking like a Washington Redskins fan for several days. Then there was the pesky problem of cameras and witnesses. Even the most fleeting of glimpses was enough to get you a new place to live and a lot of roommates.
Technology, the Internet, and the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications changed everything. Bank robbery became a lot less stressful. Still, it would require several scenarios being in play at the same time and it wouldn’t be easy. But if everything worked smoothly, he could manipulate the SWIFT global banking system to rob banks on a massive scale.
SWIFT was meant to be a fast way for global banks to communicate with each other. Financial transfers are all about numbers, lots of numbers. If you could siphon some of those numbers off then, theoretically, you could rob a bank or hundreds of banks without leaving the comfort of your own home. But could a theoretical global bank robbery scheme ever become a reality? The answer is a resounding yes and no. Hacking into a global financial system would set off alarms and, ultimately, police sirens. His methods would have to be invisible and he would have to be able to do it long enough if he planned on making really large amounts of money. A quick score could amass a small butt-load of money, but could also put his butt in a sling because of those alarms and sirens.
There was only one way that was anywhere close to becoming a workable plan. Smalltime crooks have used a technique known as coin chipping or salami slicing for small scores within a very short time frame. The basic idea is to ‘chip’ a fraction of a penny off multiple transactions. Over time, you can make hundreds or thousands of dollars. But what if he applied that concept to millions or billions of transactions? He would have to create a trojan horse program that could be slipped into hundreds of banking system computers and remain completely invisible until he could be activate it. For that, he would need a pretty substantial diversion.
The diversion that he had come up with was the old magician’s trick of misdirection, but with a new twist. Watch my left hand and you won’t see what my right hand is doing. He smiled as he thought about how this magic trick would make him a very wealthy man. The only thing that worried him was that the writer might realize the role he was playing and throw a monkey wrench into the whole thing. Just a little while longer and no one would be able to stop him. T-Minus forty-six hours twenty minutes and counting.