Murello looked at the clock on the Treo 6100MX wireless handheld device, a next-generation model that wouldn’t be available to the public for another eighteen months. He had seventeen minutes left. Using a stylus with a brushed steel surface that held no fingerprints, he tapped out instructions to a broker in Asia. The message told the head of the trading firm to short six million shares of Lockheed at 7% below the current selling price. This was an expensive bet, on the order of more than two-hundred million dollars, that the price of Lockheed stock was going to drop by more than 7%. What made the bet all the more outrageous was that it had an expiration of thirty-six hours – the drop had to happen within that time frame or Murello would lose. Murello’s instructions divided the transaction among three holding companies he controlled. These three companies would now have the right and obligation to sell the shares of Lockheed at a price 7% below the current value. Anyone who believed Lockheed would stay even or go up would take that order in a heartbeat since it was instant profit. But if the price dropped more than 7%, the contract Murello was purchasing meant he could force someone to buy it at that price, 7% below the current price, and Murello would profit from the difference. By his calculations the price was going to drop, starting in eleven minutes as he looked again at the clock, by at least 17%. When it did, he would buy six million shares at the drastically reduced public price and sell it back at the fixed price he was now setting.
He sent the email and within four minutes received a confirmation that the transaction was complete. Seven minutes later a dummy warhead atop an ICBM was launched from a submarine in the waters 350 miles southeast of Florida. It was headed for a one-acre target zone deep in an uninhabited region of the Mojave desert. Within forty seconds a much smaller missile leapt off the back of a mobile launcher on a truck in the mountains of Colorado near NORAD. The men and women, both uniformed and civilian, who tracked the progress of the two missiles collectively held their breath. The target ICBM reached its maximum speed and altitude in 65 more seconds. The interceptor was now traveling at 13,000 miles per hour and was dead on course. It would make contact and rain down debris over a dry lakebed in Nevada and the newspapers would describe a flash of light and reports of a sonic boom, but it would be far outweighed by the successful testing of the U.S. government’s missile defense program. The Calypso control software guided the interceptor toward the ICBM using unique algorithms beyond the capability of any developed before. The software had been built by teams working for Bernard Mills. The two blips on the radar at NORAD deep under the Rocky Mountains showed a collision course. At the moment of projected impact, the two blinking dots merged as one and the men and women in locations around the country started to let out their breath and celebrate. Until they saw the two blips start to separate and each continue on their way. A miss. The interceptor had gone directly beneath the ICBM by more than 3,000 feet. A complete failure. There would still be a headline in tomorrow’s paper, just not the one they had been expecting. The harshest disappointment was felt by Lou Tyson and his colleagues at Calypso Software, and at Lockheed, their biggest customer and the ones who had installed the Calypso tracking software in the interceptor missile. Both had been confident it would work this time. Calypso had dodged a bullet when they’d caught Bernard Mills trying to take a copy of the software out of the high-security building a year earlier. They had no way of knowing Mills wasn’t trying to steal the code – he was sabotaging it.
Murello saw the AP report about the failed missile test just as the foreign markets started to respond. Lockheed was starting to sell off and the price was dropping. It was just a little, but by this time tomorrow there would be a run on the company’s stock. It would take months to figure out the problem with the Calypso software, fix it, and get Lockheed back on track. In the meantime, Murello would have sold six million shares for a very healthy profit.
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Josh didn’t believe there was an accomplice with a rifle at the beach. But he did believe Helen would have sensed him moving toward her and shot him before he reached her. Bleeding to death in the sand wouldn’t have done him any good. Driving too fast, Josh made it home quickly, almost skidding off the pavement and onto the gravel shoulder twice as he whipped along the curves of Malibu Canyon Road. This time of night there were fewer cops and lighter traffic on that route than the way he had come. Leaving the car in the driveway, Josh barely noticed how empty the house was as he raced to his office. Time mattered now and his plan would only work if he could stay a step ahead of Helen. The computer was on and he launched a program that monitored incoming messages very different from regular email. A black window appeared and numbers began scrolling across. Each number was an IP address, the unique identifier used by a computer when it connected to the Internet. The numbers meant nothing to Josh, except one. He waited.
Josh hadn’t eaten since early that morning. After half an hour of watching the screen, he tore himself away and went to the kitchen. It had every implement known to Martha Stewart and even a few others. Many were left over from when Jenna was alive. In the quiet house, he thought about how she would spend an hour at William Sonoma and come back with a pheasant-baster.
The house was silent. It was dark except for the refrigerator light from the door he had left open. Then he heard it; a single, loud beep from the office. Still wearing sneakers he sprinted to the office. On the screen, the numbers had stopped scrolling. Halfway down there was a single line of digits, blinking. Nothing else. This was an IP address, one used by a computer somewhere in Los Angeles. Josh sat at his desk, excitement building. He typed in a command and pressed Return. Nothing happened for a few seconds, then the screen began to fill with numbers again. Only this time the numbers had words next to them: street addresses. Thirty-seven minutes later a second loud beep, but this time Josh hadn’t moved from in front of the screen. A single address was blinking at the top of the black window in front of him. He burned it into his memory. Car keys in hand, he bolted for the door.
Josh had included a virus with the Ventrica design before sending it to the email address he’d given Helen. The virus was activated when someone downloaded the file, which was what Helen would do when she retrieved the email. It launched a program to read the IP address on the computer it was running on. Then it did a very illegal reverse search and matched a physical address, a house or business, to that IP address. The nasty little program Josh had borrowed and modified while sitting at Kinko’s figured out what Internet Service Provider owned the IP address being used at the moment the machine with the virus launched it. Then it hacked into the company’s records to get the name and address of the customer. When Helen downloaded the Ventrica design, the program started. And it sent Josh her address. If she was working from her home and not using Kinko’s or some other public computer, then he knew where to find her. Right now.
Josh knew the area and could find the address easily. It was in a very nice part of Studio City, in the canyon. The plan he had constructed was now in motion, not just a theory on how to handle a complex business situation. Now that it was real, now that he was driving toward Helen and she didn’t know it, Josh wasn’t as confident about its outcome. As he pulled out of the driveway without looking either direction, something he had never failed to do in his entire, cautious life, Josh thought about what else the virus he had sent Helen was going to do. He had to hurry if there was any chance of getting out of this in one piece.