The Woman Who Stopped Traffic Read online

  She opened a separate browser window and pulled up Friendster.com. It had lived on, popular now in Malaysia and the Philippines. Stupidly, she had not closed her account. There she still was, with the same 2003 photo and the same friends: someone had simply opened a Clamor account in her name, copied across the photo and found others, then tracked down as many of the same friends as he (or she) could on Clamor – the maverick Ray Ott being among them. It seemed likely that Ray had accepted ‘her’ request and checked out her profile on Sunday as well – after their Saturday email exchange. Suddenly, his radio silence that afternoon didn’t seem so strange.

  Natalie remembered being sent to an executive course at a business school near Paris, and learning about the ‘sleeper effect’ in corporate communications: how over time, we remember only the message, not the source. It stuck with her because of the male executive colleague she went on the course with, a rising star at the company – whom she got to know a lot better that weekend. She vividly remembered the epiphany in that lecture hall, of why malicious gossip tended to be so effective.

  Her very identity had been violated with the world at large – carefully, calculatedly. And if the perpetrator could do that, what else could he or she do?

  “I need to run,” she told her two friends.

  “Huh?”

  “There’s something I need to do, immediately.”

  “No!” Stacey said, “we’re your family, Natalie!”

  But she was already packed up and half way out the door. “I’ll call you.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Outside, the rain had let up some. She made her way back to the Public Market. Its red neon sign hovered, reflected in the pools of standing rainwater she fought hard to avoid. Her car was fine, no ticket. Rather than getting in however, she hurried up Pike Street, away from the water. It was only four or five blocks to the big Bon Marché and Nordstrom department stores at the heart of Seattle’s downtown shopping area, but the vicinity of Second and Pike was a sketchy corner, particularly at night. Bums huddled under awnings, talking to themselves, cradling their one or two possessions. It wasn’t a place to loiter. Yet it was a place where she’d once seen an Internet café, just round the corner from Amazon.com’s original building on Second, she recalled. Would it still be there? Did anyone still use an Internet cafe in a city as digital as Seattle? There it was: beneath a cheap noodle bar. She descended the basement steps.

  It was a florescent-lit rabbit hutch of a place where time seemed to have stood still. She prepaid and took a seat in front of a light brown Compaq, looking as old as she felt. She launched the web browser and opened her Clamor page again – unable to recall an Internet connection this slow, even back in the days of dial-up.

  Please wait… … …

  She reached into her bag, for what had required her to come to an Internet café. Detection avoidance. She delved into an inner, zipped pocket, emerging with a glossy red memory stick, which she inserted into the Compaq’s updated USB port. Then she clicked open a folder, entered her two-factor authentication password and launched the application. Onto the screen popped:

  LoverSpy, Deluxe

  Here was the more specific reason why she’d had to leave her job. A Californian company had created the spyware to track online activities of partners in intimate relationships, usually to find evidence of infidelity. Monitoring a partner's online activities without his or her consent was usually illegal – and that had proved problematic for the authors of LoverSpy. But not always illegal, Natalie had managed to persuade herself, as she’d started to realize that a love triangle may be at play in her own workplace romance. Rather, it depended on local laws regarding marital/communal property. A fawning programmer in her department had re-written the software so that it contained a rootkit, thereby becoming ‘LoverSpy, Deluxe’. Rootkits modified host operating systems, giving the hacker administrative or root access. After listening to her lover’s suspiciously fierce denials, Natalie directed the programmer to infiltrate her lover’s computer software not only to install and hide the spyware, but also to repel any attempts at removal.

  She no longer wanted to remember.

  How the spyware knew whenever a ghost-job was killed, how it would start a new copy of the slain program within milliseconds, how the only way to remove it was to slay both ghosts simultaneously (very difficult) or to crash the system altogether.

  For right there had been her undoing.

  Bringing herself back, she opened up the LoverSpy executable and re-parameterized it using a Boolean-style command: IF visitor accesses Natalie Chevalier profile page AND visitor first accessed login page, THEN scrape username, password. Next she copied the executable across to the open scripts of her profile page. From there, it would upload itself to the Clamor web servers in some hosting facility thousands of miles away, working its way in – then winging its way back.

  She leaned away from the Compaq, crossed her arms and waited. Waited. Waited …

  It still all felt so raw, so vivid.

  How, from his account of it, the Senior Vice President of Human Resources had gone in to bat for her at the last minute. She could imagine it all: him dropping by the CEO’s office at the end of a day, the CEO with his sleeves rolled up, his ball-shaped head reddened by the day’s exertions, but still listening intently. HR, in his clipped accent, acknowledging that Natalie Chevalier had been naive to get involved with a fellow executive, that there had been no defense for what she’d gone and done. And yet the company had long since tolerated workplace relationships, she was growing into a “world-class senior software executive” (the cost of recruiting and developing a replacement being significant), the provocation had been unusual – it was an aberration. “She didn’t have it easy earlier in life,” he’d apparently said on his way out of the CEO’s office.

  Natalie was left wondering what then went on behind closed doors. Perhaps that last remark to the CEO had proved her undoing. Perhaps it had been repeated to the Chairman, who could only have responded one way: “those are two mutually exclusive states: difficult childhood, total aberration – which?”

  Perhaps, perhaps.

  The CEO personally delivered the bullet. He told her that on a human level, he could empathize with what she’d been through. But business was about making the tough calls. She’d used the resources of her department to launch malware onto the personal computer of another serving executive. She would be given the chance to resign. She would receive twelve months’ severance provided that she signed a new non-disclosure and non-compete agreement covering that extended period. Both she and the other executive involved had reported into the senior leadership team. The circumstances of her departure would remain confidential to that small group.

  “What about him?” she asked.

  Her ex was not in a good place. His peers just didn’t care too much for his behavior. He’d been hit with improper use of corporate email or similar.

  “He’ll be dismissed for cause. Whatever he chooses to say, I very much doubt people will pay attention to.”

  But that wasn’t what she’d meant: “I love-d that bastard!” she’d burst forth, tears leaking out again, the sky falling in once more.

  “You bawled that out to the big guy?” Melinda had asked, open-mouthed, in the Alibi Room. Natalie had been given just five days to get her story straight, get her emails out, say her goodbyes and vacate her office for good. Initially the headhunters called. She was still crouching in her comforter, knees to her chest, forehead to her knees – on the floor of the penthouse once shared with the man she’d loved, not even ten blocks north of where she now sat … … …

  Where she now sat, in a ratty Internet café beneath a grimy noodle bar, in front of the world’s slowest ever computer. Living the latest nightmare. She’d been waiting for some alphanumeric sequence on the screen, and didn’t at first notice the double blink sound:

  A computer-headed stick figure, appearing in duplicate.

  What the
hell?

  She tried to run an image search, but the Compaq was too slow. She felt hunger. She pulled out her notepad and drew the character and stared at it till it danced above the page.

  Then she trudged upstairs: the grimy noodle bar would have to do.

  Just a couple of other diners at greasy formica tables. As with the basement, someone had gone to great lengths to ensure the place was awfully lit. An elderly owner took her order: house noodle soup, please. She pushed the boat out, succumbing to the Three Dollar Deep Bowl.

  After wiping the table with a paper towel, she opened her notebook and stared again at the stick figure. What did it remind her of?

  One of those Space Invader graphics, from the retro-‘80s video game. Suddenly she thought of Malovich, and that damned Atari T-shirt…

  The soup arrived. It was warm, oily water but nutritious and flavorsome enough. She hoped it wouldn’t react too weirdly with the Rémy Martin triple measure and Alaska in-flight snack. Bringing the bowl closer to her mouth, she exhaled the steaming vapors into her face, closing her eyes. How she’d loved to do that as a child, in the Vietnamese restaurants around Paris, with her dad.

  When she looked up again, the owner was smiling at her. She smiled back: he was almost a parody of himself. Right down to his wispy beard, like soft strands of wool.

  “Ah,” he said. “Very good”.

  He seemed to be talking about the soup.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I can do better,” and he walked back to the serving area.

  “No,” she called after him, “that was quite enough, thanks!”

  But instead of returning with more soup, he came back with an old fashioned, ornate pen. “Here,” he said. And with the most beautiful, sweeping curves of his willowy wrist:

  The black ink bled into the coarse paper.

  “This very popular Chinese name,” he said proudly. “Woooo.”

  The owl-sound went through her like a blade –

  Had Nancy Wu signed her own forgery?

  “And this, he pointed to her space-invader version higher up the page, “is American version of same name. More stray’-for-wah’,” he laughed.

  Or was someone expecting her to infer that – someone impersonating Wu? With her head spinning, she paid, found her car, fervently hoped she wouldn’t be breathalysed and headed back to the airport.

  For the rest of that night, she traded texts with Tom Nguyen. Ultimately, she was too tired to talk to him, let alone meet him – what she’d intended boarding the plane. On arrival back in San Francisco, she returned to the Keaton and there, fell into deep sleep.

  * * *

  No! – she tried to yell, awakening and realizing that she could only manage a suffocated gasp. The ‘Wu’ symbol had come alive in her sleep, wielding a machete-like blade. “No,” she repeated. She heard the murmur of the hotel’s air conditioning system, and felt cold sweat at the nape of her neck. Rubbing her wrists, she remembered the events of the previous day. The fraudulent Clamor page. She reached for her laptop and groggily googled herself. But before she had time to check the results, the room phone exploded –

  Nguyen: “Are you avoiding me?”

  She couldn’t tell whether he was pissed, joking or what. “I just woke up,” she said.

  “Natalie. It’s almost ten o’clock.”

  “No way! – Shit, I’m sorry!”

  “Never mind. What did you want to talk about?”

  She came right out with it: “I’m having second thoughts about this.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know, me taking over Malovich’s security role – it feels like it’s stirring things in ways I don’t understand, or like. It feels as though it’s starting to make someone very unhappy – likely Malovich himself...”

  “I doubt it,” Tom said. “At least, not any more.”

  The phone silence rumbled loud in her ear.

  “Yuri Malovich just took his own life.”

  CHAPTER 8

  “I’ll be there in a minute,” Ben Silverman said over the phone.

  Natalie was leaning against the side of her over-heating Taurus Limited in the Silicon Bean parking lot. “But why? – Do we need to meet here?”

  “One minute,” Silverman repeated and clicked off.

  The meeting she’d just had with Nguyen hadn’t gone at all well. Indeed, he’d been uncharacteristically beside himself: “You come and sit in on the most sensitive strategy session of the hottest company in the Valley, about to go public … you take it all in – and then you decide you WANT OUT?”

  A colleague and member of the company’s executive team had just died. It did rather put her fake profile page into perspective.

  Silverman’s graphite grey Porsche sluthered to a halt alongside her.

  She’d finally found a clothes store and was wearing a long crepe skirt. Chocolate-brown boots sheathed her feet – far too warm for outdoors in the Valley. Her toes wriggled uncomfortably. The smell of burned tire-rubber drifted. Silverman’s legs seemed to appear from the sports car long before he did.

  “Follow me.”

  Huh?

  He strode not into the coffee shop but rather round to the side, past the cardboard boxes spilling out back. A Hispanic barista with sensitive eyes was on smoke break, sitting quietly on the back steps. Asphalt gave way to rough ground, which descended into a culvert caked dry with desiccated brush. Ascending the other side, they came to a wall of faded eucalyptus bushes splotched angry maroon-red in places, the leaves crinkling in the airless noon heat. Silverman held aside a branch.

  “Where the hell are you leading me?”

  “You’ll see.”

  On the other side, they dropped down into the rear parking lot of a residential complex comprising twin level-blocks, all built in classic Californian motel style, outdoor stairs leading to the upper units. The amount of parking surface made the units seem like an afterthought to the automobile. The blocks were set at off-ninety degree angles to the street beyond, like huge airplane wings; everything seemed designed to connote with mobility and ease.

  Blocking a street exit was an unmarked Crown Victoria Interceptor, electric-blue flickering ominously in the grill. For the first time, she heard the fierce crackle of police radio. Beyond gawked a kid on a pushbike and a Hispanic lady cradling a baby.

  One crime scene operative was leaning into the shade, scrutinizing the screen of a black SLR camera. Another was showing a bottle of chemicals to a third team member. What appeared to be the medical examiner was talking into her recording device about “the conjunctivia of the eyelids caused by strangulation –”

  A team like this didn’t attend to a straightforward suicide case – even one involving a senior software executive in the heart of Silicon Valley. But the question foremost in her mind was just how the lead investment banker advising the company that Malovich had worked for could belly-up to a crime scene like this – and, why said banker had brought her there?

  Silverman moved to the edge of the area, stopping just short of the tape. A uniformed cop was reading out an odd inventory list: “slatted wooden futon bed with mattress and sheets, assorted toiletries including two containers of Lorazepam sleeping pills, a Linksys-Cisco wireless router still in its box … and in the kitchenette, twenty four bottles of Crystal Geyser mineral water, eight unopened boxes of Cracklin’ Oat Bran and a half-eaten beef jerky. It’s like the guy’d barely moved in.”

  The man listening turned. He was heavy set, wearing comfortable jeans and a plaid shirt sporting a prominent yoke. She noted a finely knotted leather belt seeming too thin to encompass his mass. He had the look of a small-town sheriff, missing only a sweat-stained Stetson. His eyes met Ben’s, then Natalie’s. Otherwise his face was immobile. Perhaps in his fifties, he shouted quiet authority.

  “This is Natalie Chevalier. She’s assuming Yuri Malovich’s role at the company. Natalie, this is Detective Pulver of the Sunnyvale Police Department.”

&n
bsp; She was rather stunned by this introduction, feeling growing anger and confusion. “Pleased to meet you, Detective.”

  “You can call me Bill. Welcome to 12A Garden Court, Natalie. Would you excuse me a moment? It looks like a couple of reporters have shown up,” and his steady gait took him over to the street exit blocked by the Crown Vic.

  “Ben, I am not taking over Malovich’s role at the company! Now what the hell are we doing here?” she hissed. “What is going on?”

  “My dad was a homicide cop in San Jose, recently retired. He plays in a golf tournament with a lotta these guys still serving in the force.”

  “He golfs with this guy Pulver.”

  “No, but he golfs with a guy who fishes with Pulver.”

  “And?”

  “So Dad gets the scuttlebutt. You find a dead senior executive of what may be the highest profile company in the Valley, its gonna draw attention –”

  Pulver was back. “I guess the press already cottoned on to who this guy is. Was.”

  He said to Ben: “So your old man ain’t goin’ quietly. Gotta keep his nose in.”

  “You know it.”

  “Well, can’t begrudge him that. I’d kill for his solved rate. And you’re a hotshot banker up in the city? Not following in your father’s footsteps, then.”

  “Not directly. As I said on the phone, my bank works pretty closely with Clamor. It would be great to get a sense of what we’re up against here.”

  Natalie felt Pulver draw back a little, his gaze lift to the screen of eucalyptus bushes behind them. “Short commute for the guy,” he said to himself. “Less than five minutes by car, and the same by that shortcut there on foot.” He nodded ahead.

  “Yeah,” Ben turned back to him, having followed his gaze. “From my brief meetings with Malovich, he seemed to travel light through this world. Physically, that is.”

  Ben allowed a beat.