Qubit, page 16
She looked out at the pink sky and shadowy wisps of clouds that were reflected on the placid surface of the lake. It calmed her down.
“Have you been watching the stock markets?” asked Haruo.
“The stock markets? Not really. Just that they’re down, I guess.”
“Ryan believes it’s financial terrorism.”
“Ryan?”
“Michael Ryan. Chairman of the Fed.”
“Oh. That Ryan. Of course.” She paused, feeling foolish.
Haruo continued: “Ryan asked Brack for a list of possible suspects. Brack asked Tan. Tan asked me. I considered the matter, and, among other names, Vipul Rathod came to mind. What’s Vipul been up to?”
Katya was eager to know if her diligence in surveilling Vipul might be about to pay off. “I did pick up fragments of a cell conversation last night that mentioned insider trading. And there was another call earlier that mentioned Detroit again.”
“That’s it?” asked Haruo.
“Other than that…nothing.”
Haruo was silent.
“What sort of financial terrorism are we talking about?” inquired Katya.
“Ryan receives daily emails predicting very specific events. The drops in the prices of specific stocks. The predictions so far have been extremely accurate. Apparently, too accurate to be attributable to chance.”
“How is that financial terrorism? If he’s just predicting things?”
“The emailer claims he’s able to manipulate the market, not just predict it.”
“Oh.” Katya thought for a moment. “So he’s threatening…what? To crash the market?”
“Exactly.”
“Unless?”
“That part’s need-to-know. And, no, I don’t know.”
“I love it when they do that.”
Haruo was silent. “I’m tempted to include Rathod on the initial list of possibles,” he said at last.
Katya nodded. “Economics at Oxford. Business at Harvard, which included some finance. He ran the investment arm for the family business.”
“Before having his brother killed.”
“Yes.”
“And he apparently indulged recently in some insider trading?”
“Yes,” confirmed Katya. “I can’t really think of a reason not to include him. You sort of had a hunch about him from the beginning.”
“He seemed to be up to something, that’s all. But this…well, it seems a bit ambitious. You mentioned something about Detroit?”
Katya realized, with a tightening in her stomach, that she wanted very badly to convince Haruo that Vipul should be considered a suspect. “Unfortunately, the reception on those calls was a bit sketchy, so I only have fragments. But as best as I can tell there is an operation in Detroit that was causing them some problems but is now going smoothly.”
“Hmm.”
Why not just tell Haruo that she didn’t think Vipul was a suspect? Was she trying to avoid going home? Or did she really believe that perhaps Vipul could do something like this? “There’s all the traveling,” she pointed out.
“Refresh my memory.”
“He’s been traveling almost nonstop for the past…I guess it’s been three months.”
“I’m not sure how that would be connected to this. Besides, isn’t that an Indian name? Rathod?”
“Yeah. They have ties back to Bihar. But he was traveling all over the place. Malaysia. Hong Kong. Southern China. Indonesia. There was even a trip to Australia.”
“So…he’s leading some kind of pan-Asian trading bloc?”
Katya bit her lip. “Perhaps…”
Haruo went quiet again. Katya found that her nails were digging into the wood of the railing. “Okay,” he said finally. “I’m going to keep him on the list…for now.”
Katya had to remind herself to breathe.
Haruo continued. “This is a top-priority investigation. Unless we decide to drop Vipul, I’m going to need someone to stay up on him.”
Katya nodded.
Haruo turned to face her. “Do you want that person to be you, Katya? It would mean delaying your transfer. Presuming it would be approved, which I think is very likely.”
“I’d like the assignment.”
“You sure?”
Katya closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. She could practically feel her bones vibrating. She opened her eyes, meeting Haruo’s easy gaze. “Yes, I’m sure.”
17
* * *
Naubatpur (Bihar, India) • Rathod Apartment Building
Thursday, May 3rd
9:00 a.m. IST (India Standard Time)
Sophie lay awake, staring up in the darkness at the ceiling fan, faintly illuminated by the moonlight streaming in through the window.
On the first night without sedatives, she’d lost her nerve and simply lain there all night. On the second night, she’d been so tired from staying up all night that she accidentally fell asleep and didn’t wake until it was light outside.
Tonight was the night.
She sat up slowly, keeping her eyes fixed on the figure snoring in the easy chair, and swung her legs over the edge of her cot. Reaching down and picking up her red Converse, she stood up. She held still for a few seconds, watching her sleeping guard closely for any sign of waking.
He didn’t move when she took a step toward the door, so she took another one. Six more and she reached the door. The shadowy outline of his chest rose and fell steadily. She reached out and grabbed the door handle, turning it slowly. It made a clicking sound that might as well have been symbols crashing together, and Sophie froze. But her derelict jailor simply snorted and then resumed snoring.
Next came opening the door. She decided to open it quickly rather than slowly. There was a slight squeaking sound. She eyed the slumbering lump in the easy chair one last time and then stepped quickly through the door, not closing it behind her. The door might squeak again if she closed it, and besides, she might need to make a quick retreat.
She crept down the hallway to the stairwell until she could hear voices coming from downstairs. At least two different men, speaking softly. Perhaps, though, she could sneak past them. She tested the first step to see if it would creak, and winced when it did. But the voices kept talking, unabated. Deciding to take the steps more quickly, she stepped lightly on each until she reached the bottom step. She leaned around a corner and saw three men seated around a table playing a card game. One of them had an almost direct line of sight in her direction. She quickly withdrew and exhaled slowly, deafened by even the sound of her own heartbeat.
Immediately to the left of the bottom of the staircase was a back door. But she would be in full view of the man at the table for however long it took her to reach the door and open it. If she made a sound, it would surely alert her captors. And what if it was locked?
She stared longingly at the door. What would they do if they caught her? She had to assume that, at the very least, they would take more precautions. Perhaps they would restrain her somehow, or play cards right there in her room. Perhaps they would realize she wasn’t taking the little blue pill and find a way to force it down her throat.
And perhaps they would hurt her.
Swallowing the lump in her throat and turning, she looked back up toward the top of the stairs. Maybe there was another way.
She quickly ascended the stairs on the balls of her feet and then paused at the top to listen. The men playing cards were still chatting. There was no sign of anyone at the end of the hall. She walked quickly to the bathroom. She set her shoes on the floor, and walked to the bathroom window. It was open, but there was a screen, just like in her room. She pressed her face to the screen and looked down, feeling weightless for a moment. She couldn’t see the ground in the darkness.
She sat down on the edge of the bathtub. She couldn’t risk being away from her room much longer. Her jailer was bound to wake at some point and notice she was gone. Standing, she pressed her face to the screen again and looked down. It was too far. Surely she’d break her leg or something in the fall. She walked back out into the hallway, picking up her shoes along the way, and peered into her room. She was comforted by the sound of snoring.
Stepping into her room, she turned and swung the door until just before the point of closing. It squeaked loudly. The figure in the chair sat up. Sophie closed the door and faced him.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said softly, pointing toward the bathroom and dropping her shoes behind her. The figure rose and Sophie stepped back toward the wall, a cry catching in her throat. The man leaned forward and then opened the door, moving into the hallway and mumbling indecipherably. She followed him into the hallway.
“Thank you,” she said.
She went to the bathroom with the door open as the man waited outside. The ritual was no longer embarrassing for her nor interesting to him. Back in the room, she climbed into her cot. Maybe tomorrow night there’d be no one in the kitchen.
Swiss National Bank, Zurich
Thursday, May 3rd
9:00 a.m. CEST (Central European Summer Time)
Ryan couldn’t help but notice that the room was far too large for just the eight of them. The meeting began with a resolution for everyone to move to one end of the giant conference table. Seven of the eight of them were there; Laura Underhall, the governor of the Bank of Canada, had already privately agreed to support whatever position Ryan took, at least for this initial meeting.
“Everyone have their briefing notes?” asked Ryan. There was a general mumbling of agreement and shuffling of papers. “We are dealing with financial terrorism, or greenmailing, depending on your flair for the dramatic, on an unprecedented scale. Our analysts don’t have any doubt at this point that the cause of the sell-offs these past two days was fraud. There is no external event that can explain it. We basically had meltdowns in two completely unrelated sectors and a third—banking, as it says in your briefings—is targeted for today. There were no significant earnings announcements, no interest changes, nothing that could explain the extremely focused selling. Further analysis revealed also that the transactions could not have been organic. That is, they were orchestrated, not spontaneous. I’m not prepared to get into the math at this meeting—frankly, I don’t fully understand it—but the takeaway is that our analysis gives us a high degree of confidence that the integrity of our financial trading systems has been compromised. We believe the threat that the greenmailer is making—to crash the market—is, in short, a credible threat. Highly credible.”
Ryan waited for some response. He looked around the room. Winslow Tyneby, the governor of the Bank of England, his face seemingly compressed into a permanent scowl, glared back at him but said nothing. Angelo Porcello, the playboy governor of Banca d’Italia, eased his rotund frame back in his chair, which squeaked in protest. He shrugged when Ryan caught his eye.
Finally, a pale, white-haired, bespectacled figure on the opposite side of the table leaned forward over the papers spread in front of him and cleared his throat. Everyone in the room turned to hear what the President of Deutsche Bundesbank, Horst Kögler, had to say.
“While I understand your concern, Chairman, we cannot be cowed by a threat like this. The greater risk is conceding to these demands. The damage that could be wrought…with this kind of information…rivals that of the prospect…that the American stock market…would crash.” The old man paused to catch his breath or gather his thoughts. “A market crash would obviously be undesirable. But it could perhaps be contained…”
“How would it be contained?” asked Yukihiro Ko, Governor of the Bank of Japan. He was relatively young, neatly coiffed, with a round, fleshy face. “With all due respect, Mr. Kögler, isn’t that wishful thinking? Where New York goes, the Nikkei will surely follow. We risk a worldwide panic and retreat of capital from the markets into less volatile assets. I think we would have a recession on our hands very quickly, one that, given our recent economic malaise, we cannot afford.”
“What do you suggest, Chairman?” ask Viktor Vitaly, Chairman of the Central Bank of Russia. Up until he’d spoken, Ryan had assumed he was falling asleep.
“I agree with both Mr. Kögler and Mr. Ko,” answered Ryan. “Concessions must be a last resort. But we cannot underestimate the danger of this threat. We are considering closing the US markets tomorrow. I would encourage you all to follow suit. That will give us the weekend to consider the matter more thoroughly and give our law enforcement agencies more time to, hopefully, figure out what’s going on. However, if we are unable to…prevent further sell-offs…uh, I believe…we will have no choice but to concede to the greenmailer’s demands at that time.”
The room fell silent until Kögler spoke. “What time is that?”
“I’m sorry, President Kögler?”
“You’re saying we shut the markets down tomorrow. But then what do we do on Monday?”
“We would begin providing the greenmailer with the information he desires. Provided that we aren’t able to shut him down by then.”
“So…you’re saying we would give ourselves three days? We have basically three days to avoid becoming complicit in this?”
Ryan cleared his throat. “I’m not sure, uh, I’d say complicit. But…well, yes, generally speaking, that’s, I guess, what I’m saying.”
“You understand the value of this information, Mr. Chairman?”
“Yes, I believe I do.”
“If someone knew what they were doing—” Kögler turned and addressed the other central bankers, “—and I think we have to believe that these people do…” He paused. “That information is worth…well, it’s almost incalculable.”
“I agree, President Kögler,” said Ryan. “It’s worth billions.”
“Billions? I think more than that!”
“A worldwide recession is nothing to sneeze at,” Ryan said, nodding in Ko’s direction. “At any rate, that is my suggestion. I recommend we meet again tomorrow and Monday before the markets open to make a final decision.”
“I’ve been saying this for years,” grumbled Tyneby. “All these computers, all the automatic trading, with the fancy algorithms—we’ve lost control of the markets. It was just a matter of time before someone found a hole somewhere. Some hacker. Some hacker has just hijacked the entire bleeding global economy.”
FBI Regional Headquarters, New Orleans
Thursday, May 3rd
7:00 a.m. CDT (Central Daylight Time)
“Hackers,” announced Clinton Honour to the overcrowded conference room. He wore a blue suit with a blue shirt and a blue tie with green stripes. He was freshly shaven, and his gray hair was combed back, which had the effect of emphasizing his already beak-like nose. “We need to start with hackers. Anyone with a record of computer fraud. Even indictments. Anything that would suggest someone capable of fraud at this scale.”
The room was filled with special agents, many of them holding Styrofoam cups of coffee and squinting under the harsh fluorescent lights. Honour had summoned every available agent to the FBI headquarters in New Orleans—more central than the DC office—for an emergency 7:00 a.m. meeting.
“I can’t stress enough how high the stakes are on this. I can’t share the details, but let’s put it this way—imagine that every bank in the country was being robbed. Now multiply that by ten. That’s the scale of fraud this guy, or gal, or group, or whatever they are…that’s how big this is. That’s why you are all here.”
“Question,” said a man with full red cheeks wearing a blue T-shirt. “Does this have anything to do with what’s happening with the stock market lately? I’ve lost a fuck load of dough.” There was some laughter and general assent.
“I can’t really get into that. We are keeping a tight lid on this; we don’t want to cause a panic. What we want to do is find the bad guys. And like I said, our number-one priorities are folks with computer fraud in their backgrounds. What I want each of you to do is go through the likely candidates in your backyard. Speaking of which, some of you are being temporarily reassigned. You should have an email about that. So read your email and go find your section chief.”
“Sir, isn’t this more of a cyber-services thing? I mean, some of us are in the middle of other cases. Not to—”
“Normally, yes, that would be the case. The scale of this is so enormous that we felt it was prudent to pool our resources together. We have a lot of potential suspects we need to evaluate in a very short time. And we will be putting just about anyone that fits the bill under surveillance. So that means lots of personnel. With any luck, we’ll run this guy down in short order, and you can all get back to what you’re supposed to be doing.”
“Have we put away that many hackers?” asked a woman with short blond hair. “I mean, it seems like there couldn’t be that many out there.”
“Good question. All I’m saying is that they would be the priority. We want to look at anyone, anyone, who might be capable of this. The odds are that they are probably on our radar in some way or another…but they might not be.”
The red-cheeked man attempted to summarize. “So basically we’re supposed to go chase down every hacker in the country.”
“Basically, yes,” agreed Honour.
18
* * *
The White House, Washington DC
Thursday, May 3rd
7:00 p.m. EDT (Eastern Daylight Time)
“Michael, the president’s all for shutting the markets down tomorrow. I think we all agree that, at this point, it’s the prudent thing to do. If nothing else, we need to see if we can just calm everyone down. But what he’s asking is, what happens Monday? And what can he tell the American people tomorrow that will set expectations and avoid a panic when the markets do finally open?”
Michael Ryan rubbed his eyes and looked over at Weintraub, the secretary of the treasury, and then back to Louis Moya, one of the president’s closest advisors. The trio sat in an otherwise empty conference room in the bowels of the White House. “What makes you think I have the answers? You know everything I know. We’ve got the FBI and CIA chasing down leads. We’re working closely with the G8 central bankers.” Ryan waved his hand. “I’m rambling. I’m sorry. I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept since this thing started.”
