The Crimson Code

“They warred over the Codex?” Steve found that difficult to believe.

“Yes,” Paloma said simply. “For the first time in my people’s history, we made war not to take captives but to kill. And all for the power of the Codex.”

Frankfurt, Germany

The rented suite in a tall office building in the financial district was already outfitted with standard furnishings. In a back room, however, they found the other equipment Office 119 had quietly arranged to have delivered. They spent several hours opening boxes. Since most of them had been shipped from within Germany, their contents were plain to see as bubble wrap and foam popcorn were removed. But a few items, electronics of some kind, had been shipped from outside the country, hidden beneath false bottoms in wooden crates.

It wasn’t that the contents were illegal. It was that Office 119 didn’t want to leave a trail to this suite.

Assif, Niko and Renate set about connecting all the computer equipment, some of which looked as if it had been intended for military use, while Lawton helped as best he could.

“We have TEMPEST shielding,” Assif remarked as he studied some of the equipment.

“Good,” Renate said flatly. “I hacked them once before. I am sure they are much more careful now. And if they have any reason to suspect that someone is hacking them now, they will try to track the hacker.”

She caught Lawton’s confused look and motioned him over to a window that gave him a neck-craning view of some of the surrounding buildings. “You see all the microwave dishes? Many of them are listening, not sending. Without TEMPEST shielding, someone can hear the electronic noise of our computers and decode it to figure out what we’re doing.”

Lawton nodded. Why did he feel he had just slipped back into the days of the cold war? Maybe he had. The names changed, but the basic plot never varied. “Like the good old bad days of the USSR,” he remarked.

Renate leaned back on a desk and folded her arms. “You Americans can be so naive.”

He bristled a little. Any naiveté he had once owned had perished on a beach in Los Angeles when a little girl saw her father killed before her eyes and blamed Lawton for it. “And you Europeans think you have the corner on sophistication.”

Renate shook her head. “Some do, perhaps. I think we’ve merely warred ourselves into a terminal case of Weltschmerz.”

World weariness. Lawton might have laughed at that, had he not been so disturbed by the frightening vibes he kept getting from Renate. She needed watching. “So what are you trying to say?”

“Everyone in Europe wants to say the last pope helped bring down the Soviet Union. Your people want to say it was your President Reagan. Shall I tell you the truth?”

One corner of Lawton’s mouth lifted. “I can take it.”

“The USSR was brought down by the Frankfurt Brotherhood.”

“Oh, come on….”

“It’s true. They refused to capitalize the Soviets in any way, which forced them into a state of poverty and bankruptcy. And the reason for that was simple.”

“Yes?”

“There was no way for the Brotherhood to make money on the communist system. They looked at the Soviets and saw huge resources and a huge labor pool they couldn’t take advantage of until after the communist government collapsed. Now there are investment opportunities. It may take decades, but the Brotherhood is patient. Very patient. They can wait centuries, if necessary.”

Then she went back to work, leaving Lawton to mull that over.

Niko went out to get them a meal, and while they ate, Assif stood next to a whiteboard and began to outline what they would need to do. “First, we have to get into the bank.” He wrote swiftly, then snagged another bite of his sandwich.

“Could we pose as an international business seeking access to SWIFTNET?” Niko asked, glancing down at a file folder full of research data. “It says here that banks are offering businesses access to the network.”

“No, we can’t,” Assif said. “First, only a handful of businesses have purchased access to SWIFTNET, and they are all major players in international finance. Second, these business clients are offered only limited access, and they are blocked from the areas of the network I need.”

“And most important,” Renate added, “our target is a private bank. Like most private banks, it has no public access, no lobby. Clients do not come in off the street. The bank solicits them…personally.”

“How can we get on their list?” Lawton asked.

“We can’t,” Renate answered simply. “The target’s clients are very wealthy families, many of them present or former nobility, and huge private trusts. These are not the sort of bona fides that can be manufactured.”

“So if I understand correctly, we have no legitimate way to enter that bank,” Niko said.

“Correct,” Renate answered.

“Utility access tunnels?” Lawton asked. “If we can find their network cables, can we tap in from there?”

“Of course,” Assif said. “If we could isolate the network cables. But the only way to do that would be to sample all their communications cables at a time when we know they are making a SWIFTNET transmission. And it has to be a transmission whose content we already know, so I can be sure I have the right lines.”

“Which brings us back to getting inside the bank,” Renate said. “With no legitimate way to do so.”

“A black bag job,” Lawton said. Renate arched a brow in a silent question, and he continued. “Covert entry.”

“Yes, precisely,” she said. “A black-bag job.”

“Then we need to know their security,” Niko said. “Working hours. How many people are in the building at what times of day. Whether there are guards at night, and how many. Electronic security, both external and internal. I’m sure their computers are password protected. If we are going to send a transmission, we will need a password.”

“In short,” Assif said, staring at the whiteboard as if it might reveal the secrets of the universe, “we need to know their security as well as their security chief does.”

Late that night, while Niko and Assif worked steadily in the back room to create what Assif insisted would be an ideal configuration of equipment for the job ahead, Lawton found Renate at the large glass windows in an unlighted executive office.

With her arms wrapped around herself, she was staring out pensively at the Frankfurt night. Beyond the glass, lights sparkled in the cold air. Traffic had almost disappeared, leaving the streetlights starkly alone along the roads. A few offices in the surrounding buildings remained lit, probably for cleaning crews. At any other time, it would have been beautiful.

Right now all Lawton could see was a threat, and he suspected Renate was seeing the same thing.

He moved to her side, joining her perusal of the night beyond the glass.

“You hate these people,” he said quietly.

“Wouldn’t you?” she asked, her German accent more in evidence than usual. “They tried to kill me. They killed my best friend. Now they have killed my family. What had my family ever done to them?”

“They produced you.”

She glanced at him, and in the light from without, he thought he detected a flicker of mordant humor in her face. Even that was an improvement over her favored glacial aspect.

“I want to know,” she said finally. Her voice seemed thick.

“Know what?”

“Who betrayed me.” She faced him briefly. “Someone betrayed me. How else do they know I’m still alive?”

“Perhaps your father…”

“My father knew as much about me being alive as your Miriam in Washington knows.”