The Florentine Deception Read online

  “Please wait.…” it said. Following a few moments of analysis, OphCrack indicated that Richard’s hard drive wasn’t encrypted and that a password-crack was possible. Things were looking up.

  I selected Richard’s account name—the only one on the list—and clicked “Go.” A little hourglass appeared as the program began generating and validating hundreds of millions of passwords until it found the one that matched Richard’s. I visualized the process—“aaaaaa,” “aaaaab,” “aaaaac,” … “aaaaba,” “aaaabb,” “aaaabc”—hundreds of thousands of guesses … and failures … every second.

  The hourglass turned over and over. One minute. Two. Three. The guy must have picked a long password. Four minutes. Five.

  I began sweating. If this didn’t work, I’d have to go in, locate the proper system password files by hand, and reset Richard’s account. A year ago I wouldn’t have blinked at the prospect. But that was a year ago. Not to mention I’d blow my fifteen-minute goal.

  Finally, after seven minutes of brute-force guessing, OphCrack issued a ding. The password “r1ch4rd” appeared on the screen. I issued a sigh of relief.

  “Take that, Anonymous.”

  The PC had all of the must-have apps: a word processor, spreadsheet, Minesweeper, and more than likely a venereal buffet of computer viruses. Minus the viruses, whoever was to receive this computer should be happy. The background picture on the desktop showed a beautiful Impressionist painting, maybe a Van Gogh, I thought. I’d leave it for the new owner.

  A few clicks revealed antivirus software last updated during the last presidential election—this machine was going to need some serious detox. Twenty minutes later, I had a freeware antivirus+firewall package installed and scanning away. It was a smorgasbord all right; the scanner unearthed and removed two dozen infections.

  Step 1: Completed.

  Step 2: Remove all personal information from the machine. Financial records, documents, pictures (all types of pictures), music files, and home movies—such private information, and yet so often forgotten. It never ceased to amaze me how often people forget to remove personal data before discarding a computer. I’d started by searching the hard drive for JPEG picture files when my bedroom door creaked open.

  “What’s up, slacker?”

  “Who…?” I spun around.

  “Gotcha!”

  “Jesus! You scared the crap out of me!” I growled. “How the hell did you get in?”

  “I used my old key.” Steven shoved aside a pile of glossy open-house flyers and plopped onto my futon. His otherwise-uniform helmet of curly brown hair had been marred by a razor-shaped trough above the left ear.

  “Hillary give you a haircut?”

  “Look good?” Steven adjusted his glasses and shot me a sultry look.

  “Go look in the mirror.” I grinned.

  “Dammit,” he groused, showing no desire to verify for himself. “She was watching some new-age vegan show while she was buzzing away. Whatever. Hey what’s this?” he asked, picking up the top sheet from the stack of flyers. “Whoa, four-point-five mil!”

  “Nice huh? Twenty-foot-high walls of glass overlooking the Pacific. It’s in the Santa Monica Canyon.”

  “That is one serious chick magnet!” He winked suggestively. “Are you going to buy it?”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t decided yet. It’s got some layout problems. But it’s on my top-five list right now.”

  Steven dropped the flyer back onto the pile and leaned back against the wall, perching his hands on an increasingly prominent belly.

  “So what’s the latest?” he asked.

  “Not much. I’m stuck cleaning up a donated PC for Dad’s adopted family.” I pointed at the dusty computer.

  “Man, that family lives better than I do.” Steven wiped his forehead with his arm. “Hey, got anything cold to drink? It’s like an oven outside.”

  “One second.” I socked him in the arm, then traipsed downstairs to check the fridge. Steven was my best friend, actually more like a brother. We’d lived together since our freshman year at UCLA, until he got hitched.

  “Here,” I said when I returned, handing him a bottle. Steven had already managed to click up a tasteless picture from Richard’s hard drive.

  “Wow, this computer cleanup thing isn’t nearly as bad as I thought. It has some real perks.” He grinned.

  I rolled my eyes. “Glad to hear it. Then you can do the rest of it.”

  “So what are you up to later?” he continued, ignoring me. “Want to catch Dead Alive II? Hillary’s doing girls’ night tonight, so I’m a bachelor.” Steven took a gulp and clicked on another picture.

  “Sure. When’s it playing? I need to head over to Tom and Gennady’s place around six.” I took a swig.

  “I was thinking of going at seven, but I’ll bet there’s an afternoon matinee.”

  Steven clicked on the Internet Explorer icon and pulled up Google. A few keystrokes later he consulted his watch and said, “It’s playing at the Winnetka 21 in … thirty-seven minutes.” A (temporarily jobless) rocket scientist, Steven was habitually precise.

  “Okay. Let me finish this and we can go.” I’d reached for the mouse when the newly installed firewall software popped an alert onto the screen:

  Firewall Alert: Unknown program WINCALC.EXE is attempting to send an email to address: OXOTHИ[email protected].

  It offered two buttons: “Block” or “Allow,” about as meaningful as a poorly translated fortune cookie. Only unlike a fortune cookie, this type of prompt encouraged people to call their computer-expert-sons for help. WinCalc, huh? Since when did Windows calculator programs send emails to strange Russian email addresses?

  “What’s that alert mean?” asked Steven.

  “Not sure. The firewall software I installed is grousing about some calculator program on the computer trying to send email over the Internet.”

  “Calculators sending email? That makes no sense.”

  “Agreed. My guess is it’s a spyware program, maybe an email virus. The antivirus scan I ran totally missed it.”

  “Think it’s an entirely new virus?” he asked.

  “Wouldn’t surprise me,” I said. “The last year I was at ViruTrax we discovered something like thirty million new strains.”

  “Jesus.” Steven’s jaw dropped. “So can you figure out what it does?”

  “I’m a bit out of practice but it probably wouldn’t be too hard.”

  “Why don’t you take it apart, Mr. Virus Expert?” he chided.

  “Skip the movie?”

  “Why not? I’ve always wanted to see how a virus ticks.”

  “All right. Let’s do it.”

  Chapter 3

  My buddies in the lab at ViruTrax could dissect a new computer virus in ten or fifteen minutes, determine how it spawned, what data it tried to steal (most likely your credit card number), and how to exterminate it. During your first few dissections, the process was utterly confusing, like reading Shakespeare for the first time. After a dozen, you started recognizing idioms, familiar techniques. After a few hundred, you began recognizing familial relationships between different strains, much like historians can identify the artist of an unknown painting based on its brush strokes, composition, and structure.

  My eight months of retirement had made me a bit rusty, but what the hell. I inserted a second thumb drive into Richard’s computer and, after a bit of hunting, located and copied the enigmatic WINCALC.EXE file over to my laptop.

  “Just bear with me, I haven’t done this in a while.”

  “No worries. So how do you figure out what it does?”

  “I’m going to run it through a disassembler,” I said.

  “A disassembler?”

  “It’s a tool that produces a human-readable listing of the program’s computer instructions, its underlying logic. Then we get to slog through them all to see what they do. That’s the tricky part. It’s like reading a mystery novel and fitting all the clues together until yo
u see the bigger picture. Give me about an hour and I should be able to give you the CliffsNotes overview.”

  By five, we had most of the particulars nailed. Richard’s computer was home to a species of garden-variety spyware. This particular organism recorded and archived every keystroke typed by the user into a hidden file. Once every day, it emailed the latest transcripts to its master, owner of the mysterious Russian email address.

  “So it records everything you type?” asked Steven.

  “It looks like it. Had it not been for that firewall alert, our Russian friend would know what movies you were looking up at the Winnetka 21.”

  “Scary,” he said with unusual sincerity.

  It took just a few minutes to disable the spyware from Richard’s PC now that we knew how it ticked.

  “Feeling voyeuristic?” I asked. “Want to see a transcript of this guy’s last minutes?”

  “What do you mean last minutes?”

  “My dad picked up this PC at an estate sale. That means that the owner’s dead. Deceased. Pushing daisies. That spyware wiretap file probably has the last words he ever typed in his life.”

  Steven’s eyebrows rose. “Seriously? What do you think we’ll find?”

  “Who knows? Probably nothing.” I glanced over my shoulder conspiratorially and lowered my voice. “But maybe, just maybe, the directions to the Wellingsworth treasure.”

  “Wellings-what? Treasure? Really?”

  “No, not really.” I laughed. “It’s probably just a list of the last few porn sites the guy visited.”

  I slid the mouse back over to the file, but a fraction of a second before I could open it, the lamp’s filament flared and popped, and the power to the house died.

  “Perfect timing.” Speaking about timing, I looked down at my watch. It was 6:45 p.m. “Crap! I need to go. I’m late for Tom’s party!”

  Chapter 4

  “Tom!” yelled Gennady, “Alex is here.” Gennady grabbed me in a bear hug, then stepped aside for me to enter. “Long time no see!”

  “Hey Gennady.”

  “Come on in. What do you want to drink? Wodka? Jäger?”

  “Jäger? I feel like I’m still in college. I’ll take a Diet Coke and save the shots for later. Thanks.”

  I walked down the hallway to the kitchen. A half-dozen people, most with familiar faces but unfamiliar names, were mingling around the living room with red party cups. Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon was playing in the background.

  “Hey Alex!” A hand waved from behind the refrigerator door, then a second later, Tom popped his head up. “One sec, I’ll be right over.”

  Tom finished his rummaging and returned holding a can of Pabst.

  “Happy birthday, man.” I handed him a bag of Reese’s Pieces.

  “Epic—just like old times! Thanks!” Tom ripped open a corner of the bag with his teeth and tipped a handful into his mouth.

  “And here’s the real gift.” I placed an envelope in his hand. “Don’t forget to open it or you’ll regret it.”

  Tom gave me a quizzical look and placed the envelope with the others on the counter.

  “Thanks. I won’t. Follow me,” he said, walking over to the other guests. “You remember Vic and Letty, right?”

  “Hey guys,” I said, “good to see you again.” I had no recollection whatsoever who they were.

  “And this is Cindy.” Cindy was a well-endowed brunette, very good looking.

  “Hi, nice to meet you. I’m Alex.” I shook her hand. “How do you know—”

  “And her girlfriend Vivian,” interrupted Tom, strategically.

  “Oh. Hi Vivian, nice to meet you too.”

  “The other two are Gennady’s friends from Russia.” Tom issued a polite smile and nodded. “They don’t speak much English, but boy can they pound the vodka.”

  “Hello,” I said, nodding as well. The pair smiled.

  Tom motioned me back to their red leather Bugatti couch. “Take a seat.”

  “So what’s up? Word is that you bailed from ViruTrax?” said Gennady from the kitchen.

  “That word is right,” I said, shoving aside a bag of chips and taking a seat. “That was a while ago. When did we last talk?”

  Tom, clearly well on his way to inebriation, stared up at the ceiling and considered.

  “Don’t remember,” he said, taking a gulp.

  “I do. Camping last November in Sequoia.”

  “Sue!” I hopped up from the couch to give her a hug. “How are things?”

  “Good! I started a new job last week, and Gennady and I are heading to Maui next month, so I’ve got nothing to complain about.”

  “Excellent! Come sit with me.” I sat back down and patted the couch. “I want to hear all about your job.” Sue sat down and wrapped her arm around me for a second hug.

  “Anyway, why’d you leave?” continued Tom. “All your options vest?”

  “Nah. Things just got too political.”

  “Like he needed the stock options,” said Gennady, handing me a red party cup. I took a sniff. Just Coke, no wodka. “Now on the other hand, we could have used the options.”

  I nearly choked on my drink. “You missed your calling, Gennady. You should have gone into standup.”

  Gennady and Tom had been employees number two and three at my college cyber-security startup. I’d invented an entirely new approach to detect computer viruses, but didn’t have the mathematical background to make it work, or the business acumen to make it a success. Gennady, a brilliant applied mathematics major, and Tom, a physics major and business savant, were the perfect partners. I, of course, did all the programming.

  After about twenty-four months of stealth R&D in Tom’s parents’ guesthouse, we shipped a new crowd-sourced antivirus technology that put existing security products to shame. Word spread, and the product was free, so within nine months on the market, we’d reached one hundred and sixty million users, surpassing ViruTrax as the world’s most popular antivirus vendor. In a bout of desperation, ViruTrax offered us seventy-five million for our company; we settled for two hundred and ninety. Gennady and Tom had wisely cashed out and declined employment, but I promised to stay on a year as a condition to close the deal.

  “So how’s the new startup going?” I asked.

  Tom looked at Gennady and smirked.

  “Kaput,” said Gennady. “Our VC funding ran out, and neither of us is willing to put any more of our own cash in.”

  “Not to mention that the product sucks,” said Tom, just a little slur in his voice.

  Gennady glared at Tom a moment, then nodded grudgingly. “It’s true. So basically we’re trying to figure out our next project. So what have you been up to, Alex?” he asked. “Traveling the world in a private mega-yacht? Ascending Mount Everest?”

  I thought a moment. “Climbing, eating, sleeping.” I took a drink. “And I think I’m having a midlife crisis too.”

  “Wow—you’ve been busy,” said Gennady in his odd Russian-Texan accent. “Midlife crisis? At what, twenty-six?”

  “Twenty-five.”

  “Same difference.” He picked up a tumbler of some opaque alcoholic concoction from the coffee table and sipped. “Try buying a dacha in St. Petersburg and getting a new nineteen-year-old girlfriend. That worked for my dad.”

  I pulled out my smartphone and pretended to scrawl with my finger on the screen. “Nineteen-year-old girlfriend. Check. Vacation home in former Soviet Union. Check.” I nodded. “Got it. Thanks man.”

  Sue began giggling.

  “Let’s create another startup,” said Tom. “Nothing like ninety-hour workweeks to give your life meaning.”

  It wasn’t a half-bad idea if I could just find a project I was passionate about; I needed something challenging to do soon or I’d die of sheer boredom.

  “I’ll give that some thought as well,” I said, gazing around the room at Tom and Gennady’s slovenly home-slash-headquarters. Why the two of them still lived together like college students w
hen both could buy mega-mansions—for cash—was an enigma. Then again, who was I to judge; I lived in a tract home on low-fat microwave burritos and slept on a purple IKEA futon.

  “How’s Julie,” asked Sue, changing the subject.

  “Ummm … She dumped me two months ago.”

  “Sorry, Alex.” Sue squeezed my hand, then said, “I didn’t like her anyway. No big loss.”

  “Brutal,” said Gennady, shaking his head. “I think we need to go on a bender to fix Alex up.”

  “Ben-der!” yelled one of the Russians from behind.

  “Nah, I’m good. I’m just in a lull.”

  The doorbell rang.

  “Be right back.” Gennady made his way to the door. “Pizza’s here,” he yelled.

  “Oh, before I forget,” said Tom, “there’s a letter for you on my desk.”

  “A letter?”

  “Yeah, from Sheila.”

  “Why did she send it here?”

  “No idea.” Tom shrugged. “Maybe she lost your address. She’s been backpacking in India for the past seven months. You know, I used to have a major thing for her.”

  Tom disappeared upstairs and returned with an envelope covered in colorful Indian stamps.

  “Thanks,” I said. I folded the letter and shoved it into my back pocket.

  “Wow that smells good,” said Tom, sniffing the aromatic deep-dish. The other guests had already grabbed plates and were snagging slices.

  “Here you go, Alex. Dig in.” Gennady handed me a paper plate and a napkin, then grabbed a slice for himself.

  I eyed the pizza longingly, then put down the plate. “No thanks.”

  Gennady took a bite. “Dude, you’ve got negative body fat and your muscles have muscles,” he said through a mouthful of pizza. “You can afford a slice.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “All right folks, it’s time,” said Tom. “Grab your chow and take a seat, because we’re going to start the movie in five.” Every year on his birthday, Tom invited his friends to watch Back to the Future on his big-screen. There was only one hitch: any time a character said “McFly,” you had to take a shot.