Hack Read online

  Philips smiled again. The public defender had been less than computer savvy, and I made an enemy of him by doing my own plea bargaining at the pretrial. At least I had saved my own neck. I had no doubt that Philips had read the negotiation transcripts and knew this.

  “The way I heard it, you were your own lawyer.”

  “As I said, my lawyer has advised me against talking to anybody.”

  “At least hear us out?”

  I read the time from the upside-down numbers on Garman’s watch—9:47 a.m.

  I hadn’t been allowed to have a wristwatch, or any electronic or mechanical gadget, since my arrest. That meant no TV, no radio, no computers, and no telling the time. I forget the official reason for this, but it had to do with me starting World War III, just like in the movies. Anyway, I hoped that I would be back for exercise time, at 10:00

  a.m. It was the only time I got out into the fresh air. The other twenty-three and a half hours of the day I spent inside, behind a thick steel door. Without waiting for an answer, Philips produced another photograph.

  “This man is Malik,” he said, turning the picture so I could see it.

  “We know that he’s one of the main players recruiting and coordinating young hackers out of high schools.”

  “A terrorist?” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  I looked again at the picture. If the man was a killer, it didn’t show. The sharp corners of the table looked more dangerous. He was a nondescript Middle Eastern man in his early forties, who looked a little like Mr. Jarman, a science teacher I once had. Jarman used to liven up his boring classes by sticking too much metallic sodium in a glass of water, and making a good explosion. Rather than terrorizing the class, these mini bombs got a round of applause, and Jarman was considered one of the school’s coolest teachers.

  I shrugged. “He looks like a federal informer.”

  I had been introduced to federal informers and their role in crime prevention during my arrest. The FBI admitted that this was how they had ‘taken me down.’ I hadn’t got caught because I had been careless, or complacent. On the contrary, I had always been careful. They had found me through Knight, the self-appointed leader of my own hacking crew. The FBI had recruited Knight. I went to jail, while the FBI set Knight up in his own business, as part of their deal. From what little information I had managed to get, I knew that Knight was getting paid to hack into computer networks—in other words, a white-hat hacker.

  6

  “Sadly, he’s not an informant,” continued Philips. “Malik is a charismatic and well-financed fanatic who knows how to connect with lonely young computer-obsessed kids. And that’s where you come in. We want you to get recruited by Malik.”

  “Recruited?”

  “Yes. We’ll put you in a house with two agents as your parents, and send you to high school. The rest should come naturally.”

  The FBI was famous for their ‘sting’ operations. I once read about how they had gone undercover to trap a businessman who was willing to sell firearms to terrorists. They really did that sort of thing for a living.

  “Some of the information on military and government networks that you gave up during your plea bargain would be worth not thousands, but millions of dollars to these people. That’s why we want you. We haven’t been able to get anywhere near Malik. Believe me, we’ve tried. But you might be able to do it. And you could still pass for a high schooler.”

  There was a minute’s silence, while we eyed one another.

  “Your parole officer has already agreed to turn you over to us. He knows the work you’ll be doing. He thinks that you should take this opportunity.”

  “It pays more than cooking pizzas,” added Garman.

  “I could earn ten times as much as anything you could pay, by working as a security consultant.”

  “Not for two years, you can’t,” Garman said, quickly.

  “Not legally, anyway,” added Philips.

  As well as a no-publishing clause, one other of the no-contest terms of my plea bargain was a twenty-four-month loss of all contact with computers. I wasn’t allowed within one hundred yards of a computer. Never mind that they had them in every shop. Even cell phones come with operating systems you could reprogram, if you didn’t mind straining your eyes looking at the screen.

  “What do you think?” Philips said after a minute’s silence.

  “You forgot one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s going to take about ten seconds for someone to recognize me. I got my face on the front pages of the newspapers, and on TV. For all I know, they stuck it on milk cartons, too.”

  Philips was unperturbed.

  “Trust me, we do it all the time,” continued Philips.

  He put two photographs on the table. The first was me in the old days, when I had long hair and fuzz on my face. I was so involved in my favorite pursuits that some weeks, I didn’t even bother showering. The other photo had been digitally doctored. It showed me in trendy clothes with short hair and clean shaven. I barely recognized myself all cleaned up.

  “The Witness Protection Program?”

  “Exactly. Look, you’re yesterday’s news. We’ve had two hurricanes, a White House scandal, and a stock market crisis since your exploits hit the headlines. So, are you interested?”

  “No.”

  Philips looked surprised. He seemed to have been thinking that I would jump into the air and start cheering for the FBI.

  “No? Can I ask you why?”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  7

  Philips opened his palms, a gesture that meant he didn’t know what I was talking about, as if perhaps the FBI was beyond reproach.

  “You told all those lies about me. You said that I may have been working for terrorists, and that I cost the government millions of dollars. People believed it. How many lies are you telling today?”

  “Hey,” Garman said, “don’t sit there and tell us how innocent you are. You did what you did, and you had fun doing it. When you act like a criminal, people treat you like one.”

  “I’m not a criminal.”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  “I never stole a dime.”

  “They say that, too.” Garman’s voice was steadily rising.

  “All right,” Philips said. Of the two, Garman was the most intimidating physically, but it was Philips whose personality was most forceful. Garman backed off, and sat back.

  “Look, Karl. You hate us. We hate you. That should be the end of it. You go to Pizza Land and instead of chasing girls and going to parties, like other teenagers, you start playing with computers and phones. One day soon we pick you up again when you break your parole by hacking. But we’re trapped in the tar with each other.

  I’ll be straight with you, the last time I met Malik, he got the better of me. We need each other’s help.”

  “Can I leave now? Guard!”

  “I know what you’re planning, Karl. You think that you’re going to get out of here, quietly track down Knight, and even the score. But that’s impossible. We’re giving you a chance here—a chance to put all that behind you, and maybe even start again. You should do something with your potential, instead of—” he gestured at the surroundings, “—instead of this.”

  I stared at Philips. He seemed surprised by my attitude, but not concerned.

  “North thinks you’re an addict. And he feels cheated by the way you talked your way out of a serious custodial sentence. He’s going to settle his own score. Do this for me, and I’ll make sure the next time he bothers you, at least you’ll have a get-out-of-jail card.”

  So, North hadn’t moved on. I never understood North’s stance; to him, it was personal. He really was out to get me. Even after I had bartered my way out of trouble, North had managed to keep me pending release for over six months. I blew a long breath out through my nose, trying to make it as dramatic as the routine that Philips and Garman were giving me.

>   “How long will it take?” I asked.

  “That depends how quickly you can draw Malik out. Given his increased activity, I think we can do it in a few weeks.”

  “If I do this, I want something more than goodwill in return. I want that ‘start again’ you just mentioned.”

  Philips nodded. He seemed to have expected a negotiation.

  “I want a new ID, like with the Witness Protection Program. Karl Ripley won’t be able to get a job—not with computers anyway—but John Doe will. And I want to go to college and get a degree. I want a normal life.”

  There was a pause while Philips looked thoughtful and Garman looked annoyed. But I knew they would be expecting me to negotiate. My recent court appearances no doubt left them with that impression. North had presented thousands of pages of evidence, and had petitioned for what amounted to the court making an 8

  example of me. But what it came down to in the end was the plea. I had talked my way out of it, like I had talked dozens of people out of their passwords.

  Phillips’ eyes moved across the ceiling, as if he was making a mental calculation.

  “Just the tuition fees alone would exceed fifty thousand dollars,” he said.

  “I can do it in a year. I know every single item on the syllabus, and I can graduate early. That’s less than twenty thousand.”

  “Even if that were true, that’s still a lot of money.”

  I shrugged and said, as meekly as I could, “If the FBI can’t afford it, maybe Malik can.”

  Philips stared at me and scratched his forehead. Then he smiled, as if allowing himself to be amused. Good-natured Mr. Philips grinning while he threw the football back over the fence to young Karl.

  “All right,” he said at last, with a nod. Then he added, “On the condition that we get Malik. If we get nothing, then you get nothing.”

  “Sure.”

  I allowed myself a little smile, too. Philips said something about picking me up in the morning. But I wasn’t listening. Already my thoughts were whirling around, trying to slot this development into the plan that I had been working on for the last six months: a little something for Knight. North was going to be watching me; I had guessed that. But now I was a white-hat hacker working for the FBI, and that changed things.

  I came out of my reverie when the door clanked, and the guard came back in.

  “Good-bye, Karl,” Philips said. “We’ll be here tomorrow at ten a.m.”

  I said good-bye. The guard led me through the door, and back into the corridor. Though it was autumn, the sun coming through the barred windows was bright, and the corridor was warm. Looking through the mesh-covered security windows, I could see the guards at the gate, just the wrong side of the real world. The stroll back to my cell seemed like a practice run for the next day’s walk to freedom.

  The guard next to me said nothing until we reached my cell. Then he spoke.

  “Your last day, today.”

  His earlier coldness was gone.

  “Yup.”

  “How did you know the feds would be coming?”

  “Just a guess.”

  “Take some advice, Ripley. Get a job, and get a girlfriend. Stay out of here.”

  “Sure.”

  The guard shut the door behind him, and I was alone in my cell again. I lay on my cot, and stared at the ceiling. There I was, at the dawn of the new electronic frontier, in which, against all probability, I had somehow become a gun for hire.

  I had plenty of thinking to do, and only one day to do it in.

  9

  Chapter 3

  At 10:05 a.m., after getting dressed in my civilian clothes and counting the money I had had on me when I was arrested ($13.87), I was escorted to the gate of Cedar Creek. Philips and Garman, true to their word, were already waiting for me.

  Neither of them bothered with pleasantries.

  “First things first,” Philips said, as I got into a black Ford sedan. “We’ll stop by your mother’s apartment.”

  “She doesn’t want to see me.”

  “I don’t want her to get a rush of maternal guilt and start making waves. Tell her you’re going to be working away for a month.”

  Philips turned the car onto the road, and sped up. It was strange after six months in a tiny cell to be free to move around once again, even if it was in an FBI car.

  I didn’t look over my shoulder to see the prison receding into the distance, but I felt its gravity decrease. I had already said my convict’s prayer last night: “I’m never going back inside again.” But I added another line: “That’s where you’re going, Knight. That’s where I’ll put you.”

  We passed through various districts, until we came to the rundown neighborhood in central Seattle where I had lived with my mom before getting arrested. Philips eased the car to a stop on the side of the street, which was strewn with gravel, shards of broken glass, and a graffiti gallery. He and I got out, leaving Garman in the car, perhaps to make sure that nobody stole the wheels, which sometimes happened in that neighborhood. Philips pushed the doorbell, but no one answered.

  “It’s too early,” I said. “My mom works late.”

  “I phoned yesterday and told her we were coming,” Philips said.

  He stood for a moment, looking expectantly at the window. His trust seemed like a sliver of decency showing through the tough surface. He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket, and dialed. No answer.

  “The way the FBI told it, I was public enemy number one, right?”

  I turned and walked back down to the car.

  He ignored my comment. After we both got back into the car, he said somewhat defensively, “It doesn’t matter. We already have all the clothes and equipment you’ll need.”

  We set off again, with Philips and Garman saying nothing. In a short time, the car was on the freeway, and we were passing a sign telling us that we were heading out of town, and thanking us for having driven so safely.

  “Where exactly are we going?” I asked.

  “You’ll find out everything you need to know shortly.”

  The rest of the journey was silent, with the early morning talk radio making up for the total lack of any conversation, with a learned discussion on the war against terrorism. I tuned it out, and spent my time thinking through the coming weeks, like a chess player figuring out moves that he might never make.

  We had been on the road for two hours when the car wheels hit the sandstone gravel in front of a roadside diner. I came out of my reverie, and looked around. The aging, anonymous place seemed perfect for an undercover rendezvous. It was decorated with all the taste that aluminum and neon allow. Inside, it was quiet, with just a few early morning travelers clogging their arteries with cigarettes and fries.

  10

  Garman escorted me to the restroom and back, while Philips sat down and browsed the menu.

  An unsmiling waitress came over and took our order. Three coffees, Philips said, without asking me what I wanted.

  “Decaf, please,” I added.

  My caffeine habit had been a help during those midnight hacking runs that lasted until dawn. But in jail, I had been weaned off it, and there wasn’t any point in re-engaging it. I had gotten used to sleeping at night, instead of in history class.

  Curiously, my body and brain now woke up several minutes before the jail lights came on, at 6:00 a.m.—something that never ceased to amaze me.

  I noticed a newspaper on the counter, and walked over to get it. There were no headlines in it about any Pentagon hacker getting released from prison, either on the front page, the back page, or anywhere in between. Philips had been right: nobody was interested in my existence at all—not the press, not any of my old teachers and counselors, and not even my family. Only the police were interested in me now.

  The glum waitress brought three cups, and still no one said anything. Some time ago, I had begun to think the main asset in the FBI agent’s fight against crime is his unwavering persistence in the face of grinding bored
om. More than anything else, they simply quietly outwait criminals. I was going to ask what we were hanging around for, when Garman spoke.

  “Aster is injured again,” he said, dismayed. I wondered what he was talking about, and then noticed a picture in the newspaper of an oversized football player being carried off the field in obvious agony.

  “Yeah, he’s making a career of it,” replied Philips, mildly. I got the idea that he was more interested in keeping the conversation going than in discussing sports heroes.

  I had no real interest in organized sports, either. I had always preferred single sports, like cycling, or running, where you compete against yourself. But I knew something about football. At one point, when I was about thirteen—in my pre-hacking days—I became interested in gambling, and had spent some time puzzling over the game schedules, wondering how to predict the winners and make some money. During every boring bus ride, or every time I was waiting in line in the school cafeteria, or every time my mother started complaining, I’d just tune out, and start thinking about my gambling system.

  Though I had never made a single bet (being underage), the system had given me something to do. In jail, keeping up with sports was one way of having something to talk to the guards about. I remembered talking about Aster and his knees.

  “Isn’t that his third injury this season?” I asked Garman. For a second, both men looked a bit surprised. Garman didn’t say anything, but Philips said, “I think so.

  He’s got a weak Achilles.”

  “It’s his knee,” corrected Garman. “The same thing happened to me. I had surgery, but it never goes back to normal.”

  I hadn’t seen Garman limping, but I could believe that he had played football.

  He looked like he had spent his formative years tackling beer trucks or something.

  The two men continued talking about football, and I half listened. A few minutes later, the waitress came back, and smiling weakly now that table number six was so chatty, she asked if we had enjoyed our coffee.