The King of Fear Read Free Page B

7:30 a.m., GMT, Sedman Logistics had moved down 5 percent on the Nordic exchange, a smaller European stock market based out of Stockholm. Within five minutes an intrusion hack was made against a corporate network in Munich. On the sixth, Hunca Cosmetics dropped 7 percent on the Istanbul Borsa. Two minutes later, an IT system went down in Lyon, France.Two days ago, Navibulgar, a Bulgarian shipping company, tumbled 10 percent in after-hours trading on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange, and within thirty seconds twenty thousand customer passwords disappeared off a department-store server in Liverpool. Then this morning, about half an hour ago, two auto-parts manufacturers were hit hard on the Borsa Italiana, Italy’s small stock exchange, each dropping more than 20 percent in minutes.
    Garrett scanned the international news ticker on his Bloomberg terminal, looking for a correlated real-world event. But none came. Not yet. But he was sure that there would be one. The tug and warp of invisible money created gravitational ripples, and next would come the visible criminal strike. This was a surefire pattern; Garrett could feel it in his bones. Complicated. Dense. Dark. And coming this way.
    Whoever had done this—and he was pretty certain one person, or one group, was behind it—was good at the job. They were criminals, but talented ones, able to hack and steal across a number of platforms, in a number of countries, all with relative ease. The attacks had started small, but they were growing.
    Clearly, they had financial backing. You needed a lot of cash to short stocks and move markets, and you needed to be willing to lose that money if things didn’t go your way. A sovereign wealth fund was probably the source, or perhaps a fabulously wealthy investor. But having that much money to back a criminal enterprise seemed extraordinary to Garrett. Why spend so much just for a few thousand passwords? You could buy them on the dark net for a fraction of the price.
    They also had people on their payroll. A large number of people, who were able to move in and out of the defenses of department stores and sophisticated IT companies without being found out. In the world of hackers, those people were called social engineers. They were illusionists, performers, conjurers; people who lured the innocent, or not so innocent, into doing things they wouldn’t normally consider doing. They dangled money, or sex, or sometimes they just pulled the wool over your eyes. Outside the world of hacking, social engineers were simply called con men. And these guys were exceedingly good con men.
    Garrett stretched his legs and rubbed at the edges of his forehead. His head was beginning to hurt again. He’d managed a few hours of sleep after his long night with Avery Bernstein’s persistent ghost, but now he wished he’d managed a few more. He fished a pair of tramadols out of his pocket and dry-swallowedthem. The more medication he took, the harder it was for him to see patterns; the narcotics dulled his senses. But he’d already done the heavy lifting for the day. He felt he could coast through the afternoon.
    He checked the prescription stash he kept in his work desk. He was good for another week or so. His anxiety slacked off noticeably. He knew that was a bad sign: only addicts cared how much product they had on hand. But he just needed to get through the day.
    His phone rang again. The same number. Outside, the sirens kept screaming. They were not helping his head. Frustrated, he grabbed the handset.
    â€œGarrett Reilly, bonds. Who is this, and what the fuck do you want?”
    There was a moment’s silence on the other end of the line. Garrett thought he could hear traffic, an engine rumbling, a car horn. A pay phone, for sure.
    Then a voice cracked the silence—a muffled voice, as if the caller was trying to disguise his or her identity, maybe talking through a piece of thick fabric. “The president of the New