Cliff Ryder - The Powers That Be

At the end of the evening, Carstairs shook his hand and pressed a small cell phone into it. Suddenly he did not seem as intoxicated as he had been earlier. “There is someone that I want you to meet. He will send you a message on this phone, and you can reply to it at your convenience. I think you and he would have much to talk about.”

Damason’s paranoia was too muted by the alcohol to grasp the import of the other man’s words. The next morning, with his head aching and his tongue fuzzy, he stumbled across the small cell phone and tucked it into his pocket before his wife and daughters returned home from their trip to see her parents. All day he carried it, its insignificant few ounces of plastic and electronics weighing him down like lead in his pocket. His thoughts were consumed both by guilt at what he had done and the danger he might have put his family in. He wondered if this was a new kind of trap, if using the phone would bring the secret police to his door.

But at last, when he was alone and sure he wasn’t going to be bothered, he made his decision; if he didn’t take this chance now, he would never be able to do anything to help free his country. He flipped open the cell phone to read the text message on the screen: “Do you wish to help your country change its direction?”

There were two options: yes and no. Damason didn’t hesitate. He pressed the button for yes. A number appeared on the screen, and gave him instructions when to call.

Damason made sure his office door was locked, then dialed that number, waiting with bated breath for the connection to be made. After several clicks, he heard a voice: “Is this the person who wants to change his country’s direction?”

Damason swallowed, then committed himself. “Sí.”

Before he knew it he was involved in the greatest operation that was going to occur to his country—the retaking of Cuba from the Communists, and placing it squarely in the hands of the people. And once he had proved he was who he claimed to be, Damason was assigned an integral part in this new revolution.

Unfortunately, that also required sacrifices from people like Francisco Garcia Romero. Damason had received a message that Romero was in prison, and had to be eliminated before he could go to trial, or more importantly, before he revealed any details, no matter how minor, about the upcoming operation. Damason had reviewed the case, and didn’t believe there was any reason for alarm, but the voice on the other end of the phone had assured him that Romero had information that could cripple, or even expose their plan. He had to be removed. “Besides, after eight months in prison, most likely you will be doing him a favor,” the voice had said.

After seeing the state Romero had been reduced to, Damason had been inclined to agree. He was even more upset at the indignities and torments that were inflicted on people who just wanted to speak their minds. Those, along with the death of good soldiers like Cantara, were conse-quences that had to be accepted if Damason truly wanted to help his country. And he wanted that more than almost anything else in the world.

Damason shook himself out of his reverie. Just like that first day, he made sure his door was locked. He lifted his desk onto its side. The right desk leg was loose, and he pulled it out, revealing a hollow just big enough for the phone. He had made the hiding place himself, a bit at a time over several weeks, carrying out the wood shavings in his pockets bit by bit every day. The internal batteries had died long ago, so he relied on a jury-rigged battery pack that could be plugged into the phone’s power jack. It only lasted for about ten minutes, but would do the job.

He plugged the batteries in, flipped the phone open and smiled. There was a message. Damason dialed the number given and waited for the connection, savoring the fact that the countdown was about to begin, heralding a new dawn of freedom for a nation that had been suffering for over forty years.

Kate stood staring at a large screen in a virtual surveillance suite, surrounded by men and women all in front of computer screens, each monitoring or researching possible illegal activity around the world.

Along with its other perks, Room 59 had been granted carte blanche back-door access to many computer systems, civilian and military, around the world. Any they didn’t have immediate access to, a pool of brilliant, determined hackers could break into at a moment’s notice. Although they didn’t know the true identities of the others, as Room 59 kept them isolated just like everyone else, the young programming turks had formed a loose cadre and had a running bet to see who could hack an approved site in the shortest time. The current record holder was a girl—at least Kate thought of her as a girl—whose online handle was Born2Slyde. She had cracked a multinational online security company’s mainframe in under five minutes. She was now leading an operation, providing electronic backup and intel to an operative tracking a large former Russian army weapons ring.

Kate leaned over the girl’s virtual shoulder. She was viewing three monitors while watching some kind of incomprehensible anime program that featured a schoolgirl in a short dress running around feudal Japan with a guy dressed in red robes and carrying a huge sword who had either white or black hair, depending on whether he was a human, half-dog demon or something else completely. B2S had tried to explain it to her once, but Kate’s head had spun after hearing two minutes of the vast, complicated plot.

As her system sensed Kate’s presence, B2S acknowledged her with a small nod of her head, her multiple earrings tinkling softly, but her mascara-ringed eyes not leaving the main screen, which showed a meeting in progress on a remote army base in Siberia. B2S was piggybacking on a French telecommunications satellite to record the movement of vehicles and people and also monitoring the surrounding area to make sure no one was planning an ambush. All the bases were covered, Kate saw with satisfaction.

A soft chime in her ear signaled that the Paradise operation room was ready. Kate popped up an instant messaging screen in front of B2S. “You got it covered here?” Kate typed.

“GTG,” Kate read—hacker slang for “ good to go. ”

“Okay, contact me if anything happens, or afterward,”

Kate signed off.

The girl nodded, intent on the crime unfolding before her.

Kate smiled and headed for the Paradise op room, thinking that the U.S. intelligence agencies’ loss was her gain. It was doubtful that B2S would even make it in the front door of any of the alphabet-soup agencies, but she was one of the best hackers anywhere in the world. The fact that she lived in Saudi Arabia would have bothered some people, but Kate had insisted on the best of the best, no matter where they lived, and once she gave them the recruiting spiel, almost everyone wanted in. They could never talk about what they did and were monitored constantly from a secondary location, just in case of attempted subversion, but so far there had never been a leak on-line about any covert activity.

In fact, the hackers often brought Kate intel on possible security violations before any of the directors even knew there might be a problem. They were also paid extremely well for their work through several dummy companies set up for just such a purpose.

The muted activity around her faded out of sight, replaced by a room with a row of three terminals, all occupied by avatars of the three hackers readying their programs.

Once activated, they would work in shifts so that at least one was always on duty.

Judy was also in the room, and greeted Kate with a nod.

“Who’s heading this one?” Kate asked.