Unholy Code (A Lana Elkins Thriller) by Thomas Waite Read Free Book Online

comparison to his hovel, my home is like living in a finely constructed armoire with cedar walls, fir floors, cherry wood cabinets, and a three-hundred-foot sleeping loft.
    The chimney draws smoke smoothly. Nevertheless, I prod the logs every now and then with a wrought-iron poker just to see sparks fly. They might have inspired me because it didn’t take me long after settling in here to realize that I could also prod Americans every day by stoking their fears, and that my best weapon wouldn’t be an Army-issue automatic rifle but an even deadlier weapon: the computer. And I’d been well-trained to use it.
    So every day I stoke the panic of Americans. But they’re not fools. Fools fear ghosts in the attic and voodoo at their back door. Americans face real terror. And Vinko? He’s the accelerant I throw onto their fire.
    I’ve done a lot to make his threats blaze even brighter. You must have figured out by now, for instance, that the government did not inadvertently release those thousand pages detailing the weak links in America’s most vital infrastructure, along with fanciful methods for how they could be hacked. You don’t really believe that pap, do you?
    I hacked those files and released them on the Homeland Security website. But the Department of Defense could hardly stand before the American people and say, “We gave away the keys to the kingdom.” Of course not. They fell on the sword of “inadvertence,” preferring to look vaguely incompetent than definably weak, failing to realize that in cyberwar those two words are synonymous. That was why they offered such a dense technical explanation when they announced the “penetration.” (Well, they had been royally fucked, now hadn’t they?) Their exegesis was so bewildering that it made no sense, especially to me. But I was hardly going to point out that the emperor had no clothes. Besides, Vinko did exactly what I expected of him. He pounced on the government’s purported failure like a cougar on a hare.
    I play the long game. I always have. Vinko believes he does, too, because he’s been hacking government sites for six years without getting caught. But the long game is the length of your life and what you pass on to those who will carry your flame.
    I’ve come to know Vinko better than he knows himself. I’ve sensed the excitement in his fingertips when he’s gained access to Defense Department secrets. And when he released those NSA files last night I remembered how he used to smile with every success. But that was years ago, before he discovered that someone had turned on his computer camera. He immediately ended my surveillance by sealing the lens and has remained far too stealthy for that kind of exposure now.
    And his shrewdness came through, once again, when he dispatched those photos of Lana Elkins, her daughter, and the girl’s black Muslim beau. Red meat for that crowd. And the maps of their daily commute? Vinko’s very own cyber crumbs.
    He knows how to pander to his subscribers. That’s where he excels. My effectiveness with him lies in giving him the truth. It’s taken a long time but I sense that he’s beginning to trust me. I noticed that he blamed his takedown on Lana Elkins before he made any attempt to confirm what I’d told him. The confirmation will come easily enough—I’ve made sure of that—but taking my word for what happened to him was a critical step.
    When he does his own digging, he’ll also find that while the attack originated at CyberFortress, it was not from Lana Elkins exactly. It hailed from Jeff Jensen. When he discovers that, it will make him feel smarter than his anonymous helper. I want him to feel smarter than me.
    Eventually, I’ll even let him find that Elkins has a weakness for gambling. I know she won a hand of Texas Hold’em online yesterday by drawing a second jack. After compromising that gambling site and installing a back door, I’d waited months for the alert that Elkins had returned to it.