TOWDNWTBN, thank you, I'm thinking of you. Vale, thank you, too, girl.
One more chapter -two more postings- to the end, guys, stay tuned!
It started as a bank's glitch.
The first day, Christine was not sure what to search for, and without help not in a million years would she have been able to find where to start looking. The business section of the news sites was a distant, almost alien continent where people spoke an unknown yet vaguely familiar language. Rummaging over the financial and economic news resulted in a struggle to figure out what was going on most of the time, and she was unable to read between the lines as she was supposed to.
The first couple of days Dylan's absence became a norm. Between discreetly checking on Sam who was in a hospital in Towson, Maryland, and helping Beatrice in what seemed an inexplicable case of a Brit's murder/assisted suicide, Dylan spent most of his time driving back and forth.
"If I never drive another mile in my life, I'll be a happy man," he declared the evening of the third day, leaning against the doorframe connecting their rooms. He rubbed his nape, making grimaces of pain as she sat cross-legged on the bed, reading long, boring financial articles. Her thighs were burned by the laptop. Her brain was fried.
"Then I doubt you'll find happiness in this lifetime," she muttered, not averting her eyes from the screen. "I told you which is the shortest route," she added absentmindedly.
"The shortest route is the one-hour and ten minutes flight from," he looked up through the window, "here!" he paused for effect, "but I don't want a neon sign pointing at my head if someone were to look somewhere along the way. Thank you very much. And you know I need to change routes. These damn tolls—"
She shrugged her shoulders, not really paying attention. She had one paragraph left to finish that article and she couldn't claim she had a full grasp of it yet.
"Has Sam been released?" she asked as she resignedly added a bookmark to reread it later.
"At last. But they should've kept him a day more." His disapproval was directed at the hospital's policy. "I'll order food. Want some?" She shook her head and opened another article she had saved. Perhaps repetition did work miracles for comprehension. "I'll rephrase my question: what should I order for you?"
She smiled at his tone, trying to understand what the Libor rate was, how it was calculated and how a benchmark rate like that could be manipulated. She grimaced, almost in pain. Clueless. That was what she was.
"You are intelligent, JC, a genius—are you happy with that?—but I can't believe you want to understand in two days what other people studied for years. It's pure arrogance."
This time, she followed him into his room and listened to him order food—the "usual" for her—making her growl at what a "creature of habit" she was and how transparent that was for everyone to see.
"How do you deal with this then? Have you studied economics?"
The familiar blond brow was raised in disbelief as if the question was insulting to him.
"Of course not. When it comes to matters out of my reach I trust what experts tell me—experts I trust. I have faith in them. After all, I have no silly ambition that I'll read what's really going on via the mainstream sites."
Partly, he was right. Trying to keep up with the news was not an easy task. The silence in the mainstream media on one side was balanced by an uncontrolled chaos of different news, views and "calls to arms" whenever she turned to the sites Dan and Olek had suggested. It was madness. And she was equally clueless when she read an article signed by a journalist with a first and last name or by someone called "Q5433" or "VincentTheImmortal". How serious was that? How credible? Yet, there were times that what they wrote made sense.
Her doubts were mirrored on her face because Dylan smiled at her in reassurance.
"Make no mistake, JC. Those who are involved in what's happening right now are not writing on these sites. They are working. They don't have time for evaluations or conspiracy theories. But these people with the crazy names and the even crazier theories have sources and they're our only way to get an idea of what's happening."
"And people like this are helping Kepler?"
"From all around the world. Without knowing each other. Besides the impact the news had on Spencer's and Kepler's network, Spencer's death triggered a response from people who normally would not give a shit about Gallagher or hitting a bank. They read it as 'one of us was taken down while minding his own business' or 'for no good reason' and this is not the first time this has happened. Even without Gallagher in the picture, Spencer is not the first one who chose to end his life under the pressure of prosecution. It hits a collective subconscious—in their groups. Every one of them knows what it means to try to act undetected while you don't believe you're doing anything seriously wrong. It's their view. It doesn't matter if we share it or not. It's what they believe."
"And the bomb made the picture even clearer for them."
"Spencer covered all options."
"I can't shake the thought of what would have happened if Sam hadn't seen it on time."
"Dan believes Kepler or Sam activated it when they entered the building but it's a sign of what kind of risks Spencer was willing to take. He knew how Kepler thought, acted. Olek believes he counted on Kepler searching everything but still—"
He opened the door and wheeled the table with food inside after tipping the man. They ate in silence, each buried in thought.
Before Spencer's death, Kepler had repeatedly dismissed the idea of aiming at the bank owned by Gallagher's family. Christine was the only one surprised by the fact that his family owned a bank or that he was extremely wealthy. As Kepler had rather bluntly stated, Gallagher's "hobbies" needed a great influx of resources before even starting to generate revenue. And Kepler had his doubts about Gallagher using his Library to generate revenue. Trapping him would have been easier if he had. Furthermore, Kepler was always against hitting the targets' families, creating collateral damage he had no control over, but this time he couldn't escape it or he didn't care anymore. Whatever the reason, now this red line was crossed. Dylan had called it "poetic justice"—turning Gallagher's family and people against him, but Christine doubted Kepler was interested in delivering anything "poetic". Of course, "Gallagher" was not the man's real name—it was the name they called him based on the man who had given Dylan the Library—but every time she had asked Dylan how they could be certain that Gallagher and the man on the bank's board was the same person he was adamant. His eyes turned steely, showing no doubt, no matter the way he expressed his unshakable certainty.
Still, Gallagher was just one of the members of the board, one of the three seats the family held. Kepler was certain that he had no real power in the bank but he took power from it and to hurt him he had to bring down his whole support system. This time, a breach like the one he'd created in BDS would not do. To have the damage reach Gallagher, really hurt him, he needed ruin. Havoc. And that was what he wreaked.
Three days after her arrival in New York, the first article hit the mainstream news. A bank's glitch. A Luxemburg-based bank, strongly linked with one of the most powerful banks in Europe, apologized to its customers, who had been struggling to access internet banking due to a glitch that had appeared three days prior. The bank was small, its customer list limited, and the problem—already investigated—by no means had affected the sister banks. All necessary measures had been taken, etc. etc. An article Christine would never have read in the first place.
A few updates followed, with customers reporting on their Twitter accounts that the banking app also had access problems, complaining about the lack of updates and information from the bank. The news would have been old and forgotten after a few minutes if not for the video of a rather ridiculous man—a French composer—who claimed that hackers had drained his account. The man had moved to Moscow for a few years trying to escape paying taxes in France but when he lost the court battle he'd moved to London, following his patron, a Russian oligarch. Cussing in two languages, the composer claimed he had screen shots of his account drained to zero just before the "glitch" appeared. Insisting he knew who was behind this, he accused hackers—French and Russians alike—and the French government of targeting him in order to punish him. His delirium was pathetic but it attracted a lot of hits and made the TV news, provoking an official reply from the bank's spokeswoman stating the obvious: they had service issues, they were working to solve them, she couldn't estimate the time needed to fix them. Oops.
If the intervention was supposed to calm the spirits it had the opposite effect. The composer gave another interview to The Sun this time, declaring that his confidence in the bank was fully restored. His freshly-dyed hair—almost blue-black—looked weird over his solarium-tanned, wrinkled face. The article concluded by stating that the Oscar nominee, once worth millions of pounds, had been battling alcoholism for years. His "confidence" brought more doubts and worries than anything else.
"That's Mickey's doing," Dylan said, reading the article. "He hates that composer. He says he single-handedly ruined his favorite book-turned-into-movie."
"Who's Mickey?"
"He's the one who helped Spencer and Kepler the most when they divided the Library and asked for aid processing it according to language and country. Mickey and a couple of other guys were invaluable at the time. They still are. Spencer said he lives in Italy."
"You know him?"
"I've never seen him, never talked about his whereabouts, you know how this works, but we had some interesting conversations via emails. He was always very passionate, dedicated and really delivered." He stayed silent for a minute as if contemplating what to share. "When I couldn't take more of the Library—I had literally freaked out—Mickey took over my part. He's more organized, more courageous and far more persistent than I was."
"You're too hard on yourself."
He shook his head in denial. "We all have our limits. I'd reached mine. Mickey seems to have more endurance than any of us. Trying to find clues in videos like those in the Library taints a man's soul for good."
"So, this Mickey, he really took this man's money?" she asked, mostly to drive him away from his thoughts.
"You bet he did. Just before everything started. He probably lured him with an offer, or an email notifying him to check his account just so he would witness it."
"And he'll keep it?"
Dylan's grimace showed he was more entertained by the thought than anything else. "He may put it back," he offered, obviously to make her feel better.
"You really see no wrong in this." It was more of a statement than an accusation.
"As Cassandra would say, someone should pay for bad art."
"And why is Mickey doing this now? To get revenge against a mediocre composer?"
"He draws attention to the story. One way or the other, everyone knows about this bozo."
It turned out that once more he was right. The next day there was another article. At first, it was on sites specializing in financial and market news—the ones with the DAX and the Nikkei numbers flashing on boards at all times—but then it was so rapidly reproduced that it hit the top headlines: There had been an orchestrated DDoS attack against the "bozo's" bank. Everyone knew "bozo" but very few knew what a DoS attack was.
Another series of articles followed, heralding what Kepler called Stage Two. The Denial of Service—DoS—was the flooding of bad information or a flood of requests that halted the bank system's ability to process requests. It affected banking and internet speeds. What at first sounded like a kids' prank turned out to be far more serious when analysts started to compare events. Christine read about the DoS attacks Russia had supposedly perpetrated against Ukraine's computers before Russian troops were sent to the area. Or the ones against certain advocates of laws that had aimed to regulate the internet in the past. In the case of a troop movement they served to blind the enemy but what was the purpose behind the attack on the "bozo's" bank?
At that point things got out of control. There was all kind of speculation and since Luxemburg was hardly a country in danger of foreign invasion—after all, only the "bozo's" bank had been targeted—all kind of theories started to circulate. Depending on the source, anyone could have done it: North Korea, Russia, China, any of the EU's enemies aiming to destabilize its economy, extreme-left groups, extreme-right groups, coin activists seeking to change the global economy forever. After all, coin was based on an open source code, had gained ground and had been accused of being the perfect tool for money laundering. Was this the first strike of an open war declared by the Dark Web against the whole world? The "civilized world as we know it"?
It was pure madness. If someone could have inserted aliens into the picture he would have—she was certain that scenarios like this would be around on the "right" websites.
What Christine found scarier was a particular young politician—was he Dutch? Belgian? Swedish? His name didn't help her determine which and European politics was never her strong suit. He looked posh, elegant, but when he talked, he often sounded aggravated, a process he'd mastered to demonstrate in all its escalating steps during his brief replies to journalists' questions. In those videos he sounded like a well-mannered, cultured man who slowly turned into a frenzied avenger of the peace.
"What would have happened if those sick terrorists had aimed at other institutions? Our infrastructure or our army bases? Are we so helpless against their actions that clearly threaten our way of life? What will we do to preserve our rights? Haven't we, our fathers, fought for what we've achieved? Are we going to give in without a fight?"
Christine failed to see how his way of life was similar to that of the man who was holding his umbrella so that he could address the cameras, or why his mother hadn't fought for his cherished way of life along with his father, but his rhetoric was circulating and he earned TV time. She couldn't believe the rhetoric that had been unleashed. One would think that the Pope had been attacked and not a bank somewhere in Europe.
"Don't listen to him. It's an election year." That was all Kepler had said to alleviate her worries. "It's not over yet."
It was true. More questions arose on different fronts. Now, the bank's response was being questioned. Why had it tried to hide the attack behind the glitch story? Why had they disclosed it only after it was exposed?
A video from Sam's team made its appearance. A man wearing the familiar mask saluted the power of the Internet, stating this was the field the real wars were taking place at the present time, while he clearly distanced himself from the actual attack.
"This is not 'Mission: Bank Holiday'. If that were true there would be several banks to take the fall." He went on claiming their goals were higher, they would never descend to that level and that kind of dealings.
"What does that mean?" she'd asked Dylan when he watched the video with her.
"They helped Kepler—we know that in spite of their denial—and they're showing it now to the right people as they keep helping him by turning the spotlight in the direction he wants. It's a demonstration of power—their power. Among their ranks, it's a victory. On the other hand, they want to keep their distance. All this about 'higher goals' is bull. They want to make it clear they're not in charge. After all, whatever they say, they're not an organized army."
The more days passed, the more articles about the bank appeared. It'd become a mainstream media matter and Gallagher's bank was not new to scandals, as it'd been investigated in the past for manipulating market key rates in association with a couple of other banks. It was also on DFS's radar regarding some rather suspicious activities in Russia. Known for its strict policies, DFS had investigated possible money laundering but hit a wall. Now, there was a flood of all kinds of documents and client lists to newspapers and politicians and—even though they had "to be evaluated for their authenticity to be proved"—they showed a pattern: some of the bank's clients received special treatment, enjoying services and special products that had the ability to hide or disguise money. Whenever the bank had been investigated for assisting tax evasion, there had always been a quite large fine which frankly left everyone happy because it was a small—calculated—percentage of what they were making.
The bank's spokeswoman paraded, elegant and persuasive, never ceasing in her declarations that not only was an internal investigation ongoing, but every measure the European Central Bank found appropriate would be taken, including a thorough evaluation. They would help the investigation in any possible way, including providing the full list of employees allegedly involved in the suspicious trading, as if this were not so much a matter involving the entire bank as one comprising isolated individual cases. Kepler's side responded by leaking new lists of client accounts with links to money kept offshore, endless emails and other material making the identities of certain counterparties known. It was a constant shower of illegal transactions being leaked online for anyone who cared to investigate it.
"All those who use inflammatory language and worry about the foundations of our economy would be better served waiting until they have all the facts, to see who they're really defending." She felt Kepler's wink in the phrasing of a politician looking straight at the camera just outside the premises of a meeting taking place to address the urgency of the situation. "I urge you to refute this document acquired by The Financial Times, clearly stating—"
Gallagher's bank would be investigated for rate-rigging and the latest theory was that the whole attack was a brutal demonstration by an organized crime syndicate. The result of a conflict between the bank and its Russian partners/elite clients who felt they had been double-crossed at some point and paid it back using their Russian hackers.
"And another one bites the dust." It was Dylan's words that declared "the end," even though nothing did seem to end; more lists appeared out of nowhere with interesting names on them—celebrities and more actors and athletes—leading the discussion to popular subjects like bribing officials and corruption, matters the news chewed on every day like fresh gum.
It lasted nine days, ten if one counted that morning, when a new list became a matter of discussion in the Italian Parliament—Mickey's work no doubt—but the news had gotten stale. It had been a big wave that subsided and the ripples would carry on for a while.
"So Gallagher's bank is…over? How does a bank die?" she'd asked Kepler during one of their phone calls.
"A bank is a bubble. A bubble floating on happy thoughts that more money will keep coming and profits will increase till the end of time. Hackers and subpoenas are pests for banks. Who would put his money into a shaky bank with an indisputable solvency problem when everything settles down? Do you think they enjoy receiving subpoenas or seeing their names parading over the desks of politicians who swear to initiate yet another crusade against tax evasion? Especially Gallagher's shady clients. The bank's credibility is ruined. Everyone believes someone did something that pissed the wrong people. The details are irrelevant."
He made it sound so simple. A bank had collapsed in nine days and that was Kepler's doing. Christine had difficulty grasping it in all its facets. A year ago, she was certain, she'd have hardly followed the news. At best, she would have heard that a clown of a composer had managed to ridicule himself one more time. Now that Kepler was the great puppeteer behind it all, she'd become obsessed with every tiny article. The situation had become personal and she couldn't help wondering how many other situations and games like this she had missed while living in her own world.
It lasted nine days but it slowly became old news. After all, a Luxemburg bank was only a Luxemburg bank. The world was a safe place again and Christine was packing her bag to finally leave the hotel room behind her. Dylan's grim face was not going to spoil her mood. It had been far more than nine days since the last time she'd seen Kepler and she'd welcome any long, boring drive if it brought her to him.
It was over. Kepler's involvement was over—whoever wanted to take over the crusade had a free pass and loads of data to do it—and all Christine was interested in doing was counting the hours.
She zipped her small suitcase noisily, an answer to Dylan's frown getting deeper. She understood Spencer was not coming back, but didn't he find any relief in the knowledge that at least this ugly bank chapter was over? Wasn't it a relief that Gallagher was crushed, out of the way? What more did he want?
"Kepler's attack against the bank equals a threat against the whole system and will be dealt with as such."
Furrowing her brows in an attempt to understand where this sudden declaration had come from, Christine took her expensive backpack in hand. Kepler's very practical, very thoughtful gift to her just after she had refused his marriage proposal. Just before he left for New York. Dylan crossed his arms across his chest. He'd rolled up his shirtsleeves, his bare forearms in sight, covered with thin blond hair. The Celtic tattoo was barely visible. The same tattoo Spencer had had, the one he'd sent her. In a way they were all there in that room. The four of them.
"Kepler destroyed Gallagher's castle but there are collateral damages. And repercussions."
"I fail to see how western civilization is endangered because Gallagher's bank is out of business." She wished she sounded as confident as the sarcasm in her voice implied.
"That politician whose rhetoric alarmed you a few days ago was a clown and nobody cares about a bank in Luxemburg, but Kepler showed them it can be done and that—have no doubt—is noted. By all sides.
"In order to do it he used resources and revealed himself to people who will eventually talk. He has no other option than to stay off the grid until it's safe to resurface again."
"He's exposed, then?" She sank onto the bed, squeezing her backpack in her arms. Her stare went to all the printed pages she had spread on the duvet, on the desk, on the coffee table. Articles and financial terms she needed handy, trying to keep up with everything going on. How could she have missed what was most important of all?
"Is Kepler part of the collateral damages?" She didn't realize she had actually uttered the words aloud until she saw Dylan rake his hair with his fingers.
"How do you think he did all this? He used all the help he could get from every possible direction. Called in every possible favor. Gave every possible or impossible promise. He may not have exposed his face but unless he cares to stay and pay them back, risking full-blown retribution, he has to vanish from the face of the earth." His words carried despair to her. And shame.
Poor man. He was in the uncomfortable position of having to explain everything in plain terms to a stupid girlfriend. And she was the stupid girlfriend. She had been stupid ever since that night when they had heard the explosion at Spencer's warehouse. Dylan must have known it even then. She recalled the way he had looked around Kepler's apartment. He had looked so lost. Did he know even then that along with Spencer, he'd have to say goodbye to Kepler?
She shook her head in denial, her body slower to comprehend what her mind told her.
"With his latest stand Kepler has been elevated from the status of an ingenious hacker to a cyber-terrorist." He knew he had hurt her. She saw it in his eyes, in his pained face, but he had to go on. He had to make sure the stupid girlfriend would not risk Kepler's life. She would not ask him to stay.
"Will he do it? Does he know it?" She winced at her own stupidity. Of course he knew. Kepler always knew. Even before he started anything he had known.
"He has to do it. If he wants to stay alive. The way things are at the moment he has no choice."
"How long?" It was a sentence, then.
"A few months. A year. Two? Who knows…it depends on who's going after him this time. Gallagher is too beaten up at the moment to be a real threat but there are other players that suffered damages from this exposé. Then there are all those who feel he owes them…. And don't count on loyalty from the ones who helped him no matter how 'noble' their motives might have been. Kepler's on his own."