True Faith and Allegiance

Shit, thought Ryan. That’s not much to go on.

He then looked up 5Megachopper5’s Reddit overview on the archived site.

The username had been created the day of the posting on the Baltic Conflict subreddit, and the username had been deactivated the same day.

Jack knew for certain there was something nefarious to this Megachopper, but he had no idea how he and Gavin would find out who Megachopper was.

He grabbed his phone off his coffee table and pushed a speed-dial number.

After a few rings Gavin answered, and Jack could tell the man was tired, but still working. “Biery.”

“Hey, Gav. It’s past your bedtime.”

“I’m knocking off here in a second. What about you?”

“Same here. In the meantime, though, I found that one private message was sent from a Reddit user to Rechkov. The next day, the user deleted his one post and closed his account.”

“Suspicious. So you want to know how we can read that PM?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t get to it… but I know someone who can.”

“Really? Who?”

“You didn’t hear it from me, but NSA’s got a back door.”

“How do you know that?”

“Somebody told me, but I didn’t hear it from them. I’m going to have to kiss a lot of ass to get him to dig around for us, but like I said earlier, he owes me a favor.”

“Right. Well… if we can get an idea if the person with the username 5Megachopper5 is the same person who gave intel to Vadim Rechkov, that sure as hell would push us along in our quest to find out who is responsible for the breach.”

Gavin wrote down the username. “I’ll reach out. Might take a little time to get a response. NSA is up to their eyeballs, as you can imagine.”

“Thanks. Get some sleep.”

“You too, Ryan. See ya in the a.m.”

Jack crawled up onto his couch and soon fell asleep, but only after telling himself that when he woke up in a few hours, he would continue his side project of figuring out just how, exactly, his unknown subject targeted all the victims. And then, when Jack finally did have some direction to look in, he would use his newfound knowledge of identity intelligence to target the man who was responsible for all the death and destruction taking place.

44

The black SUV pulled up in front of the office of Advanced Research Technological Designs in Bucharest at ten a.m. Four men climbed out, and Alexandru Dalca, who was looking down from his office window four stories above, saw exactly what he’d expected. They were all East Asian. They wore black business suits and moved with purpose and confidence.

These were Chinese spooks, Dalca felt sure.

And this was a problem, since Dalca had been pilfering the information the Chinese spooks had hired his company to steal, and then selling the material to various bad actors around the world, including the Islamic State.

Yes, Dalca knew he might very well be in some serious trouble. All he could do was hope they were here for some other objective, and he had to be prepared to talk his way through any problems if his initial concerns about the reason for today’s meeting proved accurate.

Five minutes later Dalca was dressed in his best sport coat, and he walked into the conference room with as much confidence as he could muster. His seat was across the table from the Seychelles Group members, down at the end of the row of a half-dozen ARTD senior staff. Dragomir Vasilescu was there, as well as the technology director of ARTD, Albert Cojocaru. As the chief researcher, Dalca was at the far end of the table, even though he was the only one of the three with intimate knowledge of the work that had been done on the files for the Chinese. Still, he was the lowest-ranking ARTD employee in the room, so he wasn’t even introduced as he entered.

Dragomir Vasilescu spent a few minutes thanking the guests for coming and for being a valued account here at ARTD, and then he read through some stats Dalca and Cojocaru had prepared for today’s meeting: the man-hours that went into the original “acquisition” of the data from India, and other resources used in the project. There were a lot of euphemisms involved in this type of talk: Just as ARTD was a technology firm and not a hacking concern, and just as the Seychelles Group was a private business and not a front for Chinese spies, so went the discussion of what ARTD had done on behalf of China. They hadn’t stolen files, they had “acquired data” from the United States via an Indian security firm. They had “exfiltrated targeted documents” instead of digging through the files to root out those who might be involved with China, and they had “identified key personalities” instead of betraying the doomed men and women to the Ministry of State Security.

Dragomir Vasilescu and Albert Cojocaru were both very proud of the work that their company had provided for the client, and it showed on their faces. Dalca’s expression appeared similarly pleased, but he was the one ARTD employee in the room who sensed that a trap was about to be sprung by the four stone-faced men across the table.