B.’s cell phone rang at 1:00 a.m. When they first married, Ali had resented being jarred awake by middle-of-the-night phone calls, but she’d since accepted the reality that calls like that came with the territory.
High Noon’s customer base was spread across several continents and numerous time zones. The hard-driven executives B. dealt with on a daily basis were often narcissists, egocentrics who seldom, if ever, glimpsed the world through anyone else’s point of view. When making phone calls, they tended not to worry if the recipient happened to be on the far side of the continent or even on the far side of the international date line. Since they were at work, they expected everyone else to be at work, too.
Given all that, Ali had learned to disregard the disruption, roll over, and go back to sleep. She started to do that this time as well, but then she heard the concern in B.’s voice.
“Yes, Dieter,” he said. “Please calm down. What seems to be the problem?”
Without having to be told, Ali knew that Dieter Gunther was the D. half of one of High Noon’s major international customers, A&D Pharmaceuticals, based in Zurich, Switzerland. The company had been started by Dieter and his brother, Albert, each of whom was a brilliant chemist in his own right. Under their leadership the company had flourished, establishing a research-friendly environment that resulted in the creation of several cutting-edge drugs.
Ali knew from long experience that the eight-hour time difference between Sedona and Zurich meant that Dieter had most likely just arrived at the office for the beginning of his workday.
“Why, no,” Ali heard B. say. “As you know, we’ve gone to incredible lengths to make your network cyber-resilient, with multiple firewalls protecting your most sensitive data. We’ve had no intrusion alerts on our end, and I doubt this is anything you need to worry about, but let me check with my people—”
Cut off in midsentence, B. fell quiet. Ali couldn’t make out any of the words, but when B. held the phone away from his ear, she could hear jagged shards of Dieter’s one-sided rant. She could also hear the very real worry in her husband’s voice when he responded.
By then Ali was sitting up in bed and had switched on her bedside lamp. If there’d been a data breach at A&D, it had the potential of posing a very serious problem for High Noon Enterprises.
“How exactly did this so-called ransomware demand come in?” B. was asking.
There was a long pause on his end as another torrent of unintelligible words tumbled out of the phone.
“By drone?” B. asked. “Are you kidding me? The note was delivered to your personal residence by drone? How much are they asking?”
Dieter answered, but Ali couldn’t make it out.
“The first thing you should do is notify law enforcement. Have you done that?” B.’s question was followed by another very long pause. “All right, then,” he said at last, “we can talk about that when I get there. I’ll start my people checking on this right away. What time is the car due here?” Another pause followed. “Okay, I’ll be ready. See you as soon as I get there.”
The call ended, but without even turning to look at Ali, B. dialed another number. “Hey, Cami,” he said a moment later. “Any alarms on your end?… Nothing at all? Well, I’ve just had a panicked call from Dieter Gunther at A&D in Zurich. He says they’ve been hit with a multimillion-dollar ransom demand by someone who claims they can take down the company’s entire network. The fact that the crooks are asking for dollars makes me think the demand might have originated on this side of the Atlantic. If it had come from Switzerland, it would be for either Swiss francs or euros. They claim to have installed a data-destroying trojan that can be unleashed at any time. A&D’s IT people have looked and aren’t seeing any signs of a breach. If there aren’t alarms on this end, neither are we.”
There was a pause. “You’re right, Cami. It may be bogus, but we can’t take any chances. Call in the troops and run scans like crazy. See if you can find anything. You might also check to see if any of our other customers are dealing with similar issues. Where there’s one, there may be more.”
He paused long enough for Cami to reply. “No, I won’t be coming in. Dieter needs some serious handholding, and he’s chartering a Gulfstream to pick me up at Sky Harbor. A car will be here for me in a little over an hour. Any communications about this will need to be encrypted.… Right. Good luck on this, Cami. We need to get it sorted.”
B. put down the phone and got out of bed. “You’re going to Zurich tonight?” Ali asked.
“So it would seem,” B. said. “You got the drift of all that?”
“Pretty much. You think Dieter is just pushing panic buttons?”
“I do, but I’m not the one who woke up to find a ransomware demand sitting on my doorstep.”
B. went into the closet and emerged with suitcases in hand. “We built layers of security into A&D’s system,” he continued, putting the bag on the bed and zipping open the lid. “Just because hackers penetrate one level, that doesn’t mean they’ll have access to any of the others.”
“So if you think the ransomware thing is mostly an empty threat, why are you on your way to Zurich in the middle of the night?”
“Because the customer is always right,” B. answered, “even when he’s wrong.”
B. kept a partially packed go bag at the ready at all times, so he was able to finish the job while carrying on a sensible conversation. When he was almost done, Ali climbed out of bed and extracted Bella from the cozy spot under the covers where she’d buried herself.
“Come on, girl,” Ali urged, slipping into her robe and tying the belt. “Let’s go to the kitchen, make some coffee, and leave Daddy to shower and dress in peace.”
Out in the kitchen, Ali opened the gate at the bottom of the drive so the car-service driver would be able to come up without having to use the intercom. After making a pot of coffee, she took that and two mugs into the library and turned on the gas-log fireplace. She was sitting in front of the fire with a coffee mug in hand when B. emerged dragging not one but two Rollaboard suitcases. Ali knew that once he put out the fires with Dieter Gunther in Zurich, he was due at a conference in Munich.
“The problem with A&D is serious, isn’t it?” she asked.
B. nodded. “If someone has managed to penetrate their network, we’re in big trouble. The difficulty is, there’s a chance Dieter may knuckle under and pay the ransom prematurely. Either way it’ll be our problem.”
“You’re afraid he might pay up without waiting around long enough to discover if the threat is real or not.”
“I am,” B. said, “and that would be a lose-lose for us all the way around. I have it on good authority that Dieter’s the kind of guy who would make our lives a living hell.”
“It sounds as though Dieter Gunther isn’t a very nice person,” Ali observed over the rim of her cup.
“He’s not,” B. agreed, “but working with guys like him is what pays the bills.”
“And you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do,” Ali added.
“So I will,” B. agreed. “In the meantime, though, I feel like I’m leaving you in the lurch. I’m the one who more or less committed to helping Francis Gillespie with his problem, and now I’m flying off and leaving you high and dry.”
“Not to worry,” she assured him. “You take care of things on your end, and I’ll look after Archbishop Gillespie. If he really is being targeted and if there’s any kind of digital trail, I’m pretty sure Frigg and Stu will help sort it out.”
Once the car showed up, Ali saw B. off, then returned to the bedroom, but she didn’t have much hope of going back to sleep. Yes, it was barely after two in the morning, but she’d had far too much coffee for that. Instead she settled into bed with a book propped in front of her, but she didn’t read either. She sat there and fumed, angry that a displeased customer on the other side of the ocean could disrupt their daily life and maybe even their entire business. Who was Dieter Gunther anyway? What gave him the right to demand B. drop everything and come to Switzerland?
When she finally calmed down some, Ali turned her attention to her book. At some point after that, she must have fallen asleep. She awakened to the smell of coffee brewing. It was seven in the morning, and Alonzo Rivera was up and on the job. The book she’d been trying to read had fallen off the bed and onto the floor. The bedroom door was ajar a telltale dachshund’s width, letting her know that Bella had already decamped for the kitchen in search of breakfast. Dressed in her nightgown and robe, Ali followed suit.
When Ali’s original aide-de-camp, Leland Brooks, had retired and returned to the UK, B. and Ali had gone in search of a replacement. Alonzo, a retired naval submariner, had ably stepped into Leland’s shoes. He’d spent his entire naval career as a culinary specialist on board various submarines, and so he’d been pleasantly surprised by the spaciousness in B. and Ali’s kitchen.
“Good morning,” he said when she entered the room. “Who came and went in the middle of the night?”
Dieter’s hired car would have driven past Alonzo’s sleeping quarters in a fifth-wheel trailer parked next to the garage. Over Ali’s first cup of coffee, she told Alonzo the story behind B.’s abrupt departure.
“You’re telling me that everyone in Cottonwood has been up and on the job since one a.m.?” he asked when she finished.
“Most likely,” she said.
“Are you going in to work?”
“As soon as I get showered and dressed,” she answered.
“All right, then,” Alonzo said. “Why don’t I whip up a frittata and maybe a batch of biscuits, too? When you’re dealing with a full-blown crisis, you’ve got to feed your crew.”
With Alonzo busy rattling his pots and pans, Ali hurried off to get ready.