Unholy Code

Chapter 4

I’m the guardian angel.

It’s such a Christian idea — and so at odds with my own beliefs — that I take particular delight in using it. But it’s true: I’ve been looking over Steel Fist’s shoulder for almost four years. Actually, let’s use his real name — Vinko Horvat — and dispense with the juvenile theatrics of his macho nom de guerre. I have one, too: Golden Voice. But it’s a tool to me, nothing more, whereas Vinko takes his pseudonym seriously. He believes he’s penetrated CyberFortress and the NSA, and he did, but only after I left him a trail of cyber breadcrumbs. Without me, Vinko would be nothing but another American demagogue shouting into the vast echo chamber of the Internet.

Instead, he’s championed by millions because he—I—give them what they want most in a time of devastation and deprivation: an eager outlet for their grievances against their government. And let us not overlook the importance that naturally underlies their most vociferous complaint — the legitimate fear that the U.S. military can’t protect them from the forces now killing citizens with abandon.

To put it yet another way, the people Vinko reaches and enrages really do have reason to hate their leaders, and he plays off their anger with the mordant skill of a born Machiavellian.

Their loathing grows daily, and hatred is a great galvanizing force. It not only brings angry, frustrated people together, it sticks to everyone it touches — just like the blood it spills, which is as red as the fires I stoke every night.

I built this home on a mountain ridge in central Washington state nine years ago, carefully crafting wood forms for the fireplace and chimney. Hard work was better than grabbing an automatic rifle and finding a bell tower, though that impulse — born of good reason — haunted me long enough to buy the weapon and search out possible locations.

But I stuck to homebuilding, at least for awhile, pouring a ton and a half of cement to make that chimney rise up. The wood grain is visible on the concrete that faces me now. I never covered it with tiles or metal cladding. I like the bald utilitarian appearance. It’s at one with the Douglas-fir logs I used for the home itself, eight hundred square feet. But don’t go confusing me with the Unabomber because this is no shack, and I cared nothing for his anarchism. By 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. And it was I who made sure she got her second jack. I’d have happily dealt her a third, if she’d needed it.

I’m luring her in much the same way I lured Vinko, by playing to what might prove her greatest weakness. Her $137 win will twitch in the back of her mind. That’s the seductive nature of addiction. The desire burns softly, invisibly, until it bursts into flame with the sudden onslaught of irrepressible need. Elkins and those like her can turn the flame back down, but the memory of pleasure doesn’t die quickly; its dissolution is slow and inversely related to the speed of a quickening pulse.

So the heat lingers for the Lanas of the world, wrapping them in temptation until they succumb, blinding themselves to everything but pure want. Until that delicious tipping point comes, Lana will tell herself that she can beat her addiction, but I will do my best not to let that happen. I’ll replace the ads on her phone with ever more enticing ones. Cards will appear on her screen with jingle-jangle casino sounds, and when she sees them landing on green felt they’ll whisper of the silent thrills she’s known so many times before.

She’ll submit.

But… if she manages somehow not to compromise herself with gaming, then in all likelihood she’ll be at those Gamblers Anonymous meetings to rendezvous with others who share her weakness, a move that will expose her mercilessly.

Fascinating, the way the holders of the nation’s secrets unburden themselves to complete strangers in a church or civic meeting hall. Not everyone who attends those sessions is of good will. That was how I observed Lana firsthand. Once I even sat next to her. We exchanged knowing, empathic nods when a man spoke of emptying his family’s nest egg to bet on the “ponies,” as he referred to them affectionately. When he finished, Elkins rose to admit that she had also squandered unconscionable sums. I nodded at her again, lying once more. Gaming does not appeal to me in the least, not when I double down on my life every day. But my hatred of Lana Elkins is so strong I could kill her.

But I might not have to. Vinko has made it demonstrably clear that he wants her dead, too, now that I’ve linked Elkins to the hacking of his site.

He and I share so much more than our dislike of that woman. We both despise moderate Muslims. Vinko’s absolutely correct when he says they are really wolves in sheep’s clothing. He must be greatly encouraged right now because federal authorities blamed his previous provocations for vicious attacks on Muslims in St. Paul, Dearborn, Oakland, Omaha, even in the liberal bastion of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The FBI is asking anyone who might know his real identity to step forward. Fat chance. Vinko’s secrets are safe with me. A few dead here, a few maimed there… the list of attacks will only grow longer and more welcome.

And I will make sure Vinko’s fire burns brighter.