New York City
Talking to Wayne Valero, the creator of Mystic and current chairman of Iron River Asset Management Incorporated, was easier said than done.
Getting through the front door was relatively painless. Although the Mystic server farm was located in eastern Washington, Iron River’s corporate headquarters were located in lower Manhattan, just a short drive from the safe house, even with the traffic congestion caused by the early morning commute. But when she and Sievers entered the reception lobby of the Wall Street office building and presented their ersatz credentials, identifying them as SEC investigators, to the receptionist, they hit a wall in the form of a brigade of lawyers whose sole purpose in life seemed to be insulating their employer from anyone with a badge.
Things went downhill from there.
Tam’s insistence that they were there not to investigate Valero, but to warn him of a possible threat to Mystic, had little effect. Before she could even finish articulating this, one of the lawyers whipped out a mobile phone. “This is harassment, plain and simple. I’ve got the U.S. Attorney and Governor of New York on speed-dial. Who should I call first?”
Tam’s pulse quickened. It was probably a bluff, but one she couldn’t afford to call. Ordinarily, she could count on her boss at the Agency to backstop her cover, but the previous day’s shenanigans had put her on thin ice. She was out favor with her boss, and a call like that might very well mean the end of the Myrmidons.
Unfortunately, the genie was already out of the bottle. The lawyers would follow up sooner or later, and when they did, they would learn that there was no SEC investigation, and no one matching their description employed by that agency.
It was a no-win scenario.
What would Stone do right now? She wondered.
But before an answer came to her, she heard Sievers give his reply.
“You can call the damn Pope for all I care.”
Tam’s first thought was that it would have been easier to arrange an audience with the Pope. Then her heart skipped a beat. What was Billy doing?
Sievers sounded angry, his drawl unusually thick, almost menacing. “In the last twenty-four hours, I have jumped off a forty-story building, chased a couple jackasses across the Hudson River, wallowed in the mud like a damned hog, blown up my car... a ’68 Mustang if that means anything to you... probably doesn’t... and ruined my favorite jacket. All of that to keep some very bad guys from hijackin’ your company, so you can call whoever you want, but we ain’t leavin’ here until we get five minutes with your boss.”
The lawyer’s eyes tightened defiantly. His finger moved over the screen of the phone, and then he held it to his ear.
But the next voice Tam heard did not come from his mouth.
“I think we can spare five minutes, Martin.”
Every head in the room turned to the door behind the reception desk, and the man standing there. He was tall, and Tam guessed sixtyish, but with a full head of prematurely white hair.
The lawyer lowered his phone but did not put it away. “Mr. Valero, I think—”
“The man blew up his car, Martin.” Valero’s eyes met Sievers’. “A ’68 Mustang?” He shook his head sadly. “Ouch.”
“I’ll get her runnin’ again, sir.”
“I hope so.” Valero made a beckoning gesture with his hand and took a step back out of view.
Tam let out the breath she had been holding. She couldn’t decide whether she wanted to punch Sievers or kiss him. Maybe both, but that would have to wait at least five minutes.
“Looks like you’re on point,” she whispered, giving him a firm push toward the doorway.
They followed Valero to a tastefully decorated executive office with large windows that looked out on a gray concrete building across the street. Valero settled heavily into the chair behind his desk. Tam hung back, loitering near the door, and let Sievers handle the small talk. The two men bantered about cars for a while; she hoped Valero wasn’t going to hold them to five minutes.
Valero finally steered the conversation in the right direction. “I heard about the incident across the river yesterday. That was you going down the side of 30 Hudson?”
Sievers just grinned.
“And that has something to do with why you’re here?” Valero now looked to Tam. “You mentioned a threat to my company?”
Tam took a step forward. “That’s right, sir. Specifically, a threat to your operating system.”
“Mystic? What kind of threat?”
“Actually, we were hoping you could shed some light on that. We have a solid lead indicating that Mystic is a target.”
Valero’s white eyebrows came together in a frown. “To whom?”
“Again, we’re hoping you might have an idea about that.” Realizing that answer would leave her on shaky footing, she added. “I received a tip from a CI... a confidential informant. He didn’t have the details, and now I’ve lost contact with him. That tells us the threat is both serious and immediate.”
Valero took a long breath. “No system can be one-hundred-percent secure, but Mystic is about as close as you can get. Access requires a dedicated computer terminal which we provide to customers with their subscription. The data goes over secure hard lines. It’s all proprietary. You can’t just log onto it from anywhere, and you certainly can’t hack into the servers from the Internet.”
“What if the attack came from someone who already had access to one of those computers?”
“Clients don’t have access to the OS. Only a SysAdmin can alter the code, and that can only be done from the master terminal in Spokane. I hesitate to use the word impossible, but...” He shrugged.
“So what you’re sayin’,” Sievers put in. “Is that they can drive the car, but they can’t look under the hood.”
Valero grinned and pointed a finger at Sievers. “Bingo.”
Tam seized on the metaphor. “But they could still steer it into a tree.”
Valero shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Crashing one car—accidentally or otherwise—won’t bring down the Ford Motor Company.”
“If someone exploits your system for criminal gains or cyberterrorism,” Tam said, choosing her words carefully, “it will affect you.”
“There’s risk in every profitable venture. Believe me, I know.” Valero was silent for a moment. “Do you know what Mystic is? What it does?”
“Not really,” Tam admitted.
“Twenty-five years ago, I made a mistake. I... drove the car into a tree, if you will. Lost a hundred million dollars of client money, mostly individual portfolios. Retirement accounts. People’s life savings. Do you know what my mistake was? I wasn’t being reckless, gambling with other people’s money. I just didn’t know enough. I didn’t see the warning signs that the economy was about to collapse.
“I built Mystic to see the signs that I missed. It gathers data from a variety of sources. Everything from the stock market to social media. Mystic uses all of that raw data to create a simulated version of our world. A computer model, in which we can safely explore all the outcomes and determine the course of action that will create the least amount of instability.
“Mystic is more than just a trading platform. It’s the autopilot that keeps the car from crashing. That’s what makes it so special. Now, you tell me that these criminals are going to use Mystic for some diabolical purpose. Of course, that concerns me. But I simply don’t know of any vulnerabilities. We have a whole division in Spokane that does nothing but test the system, looking for exploits. When we find them, we fix them. If someone... a foreign agent or cyber-terrorist wanted to attack the markets, they wouldn’t need Mystic. There are far easier ways to do it.”
“Our investigation indicates that there may be several rogue users. Possibly a hundred or more. If they were identified, you could suspend their accounts, right?”
“If you know who they are, why not just arrest them?”
“It’s a hypothetical question.” Tam pursed her lips. “We have a list of suspects, but not enough evidence to take action. If they make their move before we’re ready....”
“Well, hypothetically speaking, yes, I could. No, I would. In a heartbeat.”
He opened a desk drawer and took out a business card which he passed over to her.
“That has my personal cell number and my private email. Don’t tell Martin I gave it to you. He’ll have a conniption fit if he hears I’m giving that out to law enforcement. Send me the names of your suspects. We’ll flag their accounts. Set up a kill switch, just in case. But you would have to bring me something more than just vague suspicions before I could throw it.”
Tam felt a measure of relief, but it was hardly a victory. They were no closer to an answer, no closer to finding Stone or stopping the Immortal than they had been when they walked in the building.
“Just so I understand,” Sievers said. “The only way anyone uses Mystic is on one of your computers, connected to one of your hard lines.”
“That’s right,” Valero said.
Tam looked over at him. “Billy, if you got something, spit it out.”
Sievers looked her in the eye, and when he spoke again, his corn pone accent was gone. “They kidnapped Stone and Thom Martiel for a reason. Maybe they want to force Thom to work for them... I don’t know. But there’s only one place he can do it.”
“His office,” Tam said, breathlessly. “His computer.” Once again, Tam realized, she had underestimated Billy Sievers. He had been paying attention.
“Maybe the reason we couldn’t find video of them leaving the building,” Sievers said, “is they never left.”