“You said they tried to hide it, but do you have any idea where the overwrite came from? Could you trace it to its source?”
Zee zipped up his bags. “It wasn’t easy, but that’s what I was doing just an hour ago. I found traces of a couple of high-anonymity proxy servers — they’re called that because they try to hide their IP addresses, which a regular old proxy server does, too, but these things even try to hide the fact that they are proxy servers to begin with. They’re very stealthy. Anyway, there are some tricks I know of to unmask them and get a read on who they’re fronting for.”
“And who is that?”
“That’s why I’m out of here. That’s what’s most disturbing of all.” He headed into his bathroom, emptying the contents of his medicine cabinet into a plastic garbage bag.
“One of the server banks they’re fronting for is close by. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s somewhere up in the Hollywood Hills. Weird location, huh?”
“That’s making you run?”
“No, there’s another location involved, either contributing to the overwrite or just monitoring it, someplace in Maryland.”
George was surprised, knowing that Amalgamated was still not well represented on the East Coast.
“That one is not part of Amalgamated,” Zee said, as if reading George’s mind.
“How do you know?” George asked.
“Because I know it is… the federal government.”
George sank down to sit on the edge of Zee’s bed, shocked. This made absolutely no sense to him. “What?”
“As best I could determine, it’s an agency that I couldn’t even find a reference to on the Internet. It’s called URI, Universal Resource Initiative.”
“If you can’t find a reference to it, how do you know it’s the federal government?”
“I got in their system, dude! Stay with me here.” Zee’s nerves were completely fried, which obviously contributed to his outburst. He paused and tried to calm himself. “Sorry. URI is tied in with another agency called the Independent Payment Advisory Board. Now, that one does have references. A lot of them. It’s well-known, and it’s fairly new. It was set up by the Affordable Care Act — Obamacare — supposedly to advise on ways for cost control of Medicare and Medicaid. ‘To bring spending back to target levels’ is how I think they word their mission.”
Zee moved into his kitchen, loading groceries and dry goods into more garbage bags. George followed. “I stumbled into a hornets’ nest! And one thing I am absolutely sure of is that they are mighty pissed that I hacked into their setup. That, my friend, is why I am heading for the woods. Because they are going to be coming here. To this apartment — actually to your apartment, now that I think about it. And I intend to be as far away as possible. I advise you to do the same. You do not want to be here when they arrive. It’s you and your computer that they’ll be coming after at first. But there’s no doubt that they’ll trace it to me, with my history of hacking. It won’t take them long to put it all together and realize that you don’t know jack shit about hacking into computer systems. Even if you don’t tell them about me, it won’t take long. And that’s not going to happen: you will talk. They’ll do things to you to make you talk. Believe me.”
“This sounds extreme, Zee,” George protested. He tried to speak slowly in contrast to Zee’s rapid pressure of speech.
“Hell it is!” Zee shot back. “Do you remember the case of Aaron Swartz last year? The Reddit dude? He was hacking into MIT, and that was just to get academic journal articles free of charge to give to students. Look at what happened to him.”
“What happened to him?” George had never heard of the man.
“He’s dead! They claim he hanged himself. They were going to throw the book at him and what he did was child’s play in relation to what we just did. Think about it. They can’t let you walk around knowing what you know.”
Zee collected his duffel and garbage bags and started for the door.
“I just can’t believe you’re actually running.”
“That’s the only option. Run! And don’t look back!”
“I can’t leave. I have a residency position…” George trailed off, wondering just what his options were.
“You can’t treat patients from jail. Or from a grave.”
“You’re overreacting, Zee! Look, you’re all hyped up on caffeine and nicotine and—”
“What I’m hyped up on is survival! On breathing! Yes, call me crazy, but I’d like to be able to continue doing that!”
George followed Zee out of the apartment and down the stairs, trying to get him to give the situation more thought. But Zee was convinced he had given the situation all the thought it deserved.
In the carport Zee slung his bags into the trunk of his old Toyota and went around to climb into the driver’s seat. He rolled down the window.
“Listen, George, grab some clothes and come with me. This is serious. Let it play out from far away. Get word out from where they can’t find you. Then come back.”
“No.” George shook his head. “No way. I’ll handle it from here.”
“It’s your life,” Zee said. He shrugged. “All I can do is warn you.”
George leaned down to the open window. “Listen, Zee. I’m sorry for getting you involved.”
Zee shook his head. “You didn’t force me to do anything. A hacker should always be prepared to take off. It’s part of the gig.”
“Thanks, Zee. I’m going to get this handled. Check in with me somehow, you’ll see. But the thing is, all I have proof of is that iDoc apparently sent out a dump command to Sal’s reservoir.”
“The proof of that is on your dining room table. And it’s pretty clear to me that the others got the same message.”
“But who did it?” George demanded. “Who initiated the command? I don’t have a bad guy! I need a bad guy, don’t you understand? You can’t leave me until you give me some more information!”
“I’m out of here while I can go. I did what I could.”
“But I don’t have the proof I need to go to the media!” George yelled in frustration. Considering the past ballyhoo about “death panels” when it was merely suggested by the government that it might be prudent to include talking with seniors about end-of-life treatment alternatives in the Affordable Care Act, he was sure that an exposé of the iDoc killings would ignite a firestorm.
Zee fired up his Toyota, its engine noisy in the stillness of the early morning.
“Do you have any ideas about what I could do to try to find the origin of the dump commands?” George pleaded.
Zee jammed his aged transmission into gear with a grinding noise. “I don’t think much more can be learned from hacking. Probably the only chance you would have is if you can get someone on the inside who has broad computer access at Amalgamated.” Zee held up his closed fist for George to bump. “Good luck, man.”
George stared at the closed fist a moment, then tapped it with his own. “Same to you.”