He moved behind Ryan and Jackie so he could see the computer screen.
Then a picture came up. Leo remembered it being taken for his college rifle team. He was crouched behind a Winchester Model 52 target rifle. Damn that rifle was sweet and put the rounds exactly where they were supposed to go if the shooter did his part. At that time, there was some talk of him trying out for the Olympic Rifle Team, but that dream was crushed the instant his father was murdered.
A more modern picture came up, of him going into the coin shop — it seemed like a lifetime ago that he was dealing with coin dinks, and he missed the dusty, metallic smell of the place.
Ryan's head swiveled around and he started at Leo. “That guy in the picture looks a lot like you — could be your twin brother in fact.”
“It's me.”
Ryan recoiled in horror and Jackie stepped back. “Really,” he said, “you killed all those people?”
“It wasn't that many people — twelve, no thirteen — the guy who I got this Blackberry from. Are there any other targeting packages on the web site?”
Both Jackie and Ryan stared at him.
“Well, let's get to it,” he said.
Jackie pushed Ryan out of the way and started typing.
“I'll jump back into the parent directory and that might lead to some more links.”
A screen popped up. “I'll be damned.”
“What?” Leo asked.
“Look at the list. There must be a couple of hundred people here.”
“Can you find out who is behind this?”
She popped open another screen, “I'll just access WHOIS and see what pops up.”
“What's WHOIS?”
Ryan said, “Think of it as a reverse directory for the Internet. You can find out who owns a web site by typing in the IP address.”
Leo had no idea what an IP address was, but got the general picture.
She typed for a few minutes and a screen popped up.
“I'll be damned,” she said.
Leo and Ryan both peered down at the screen. The address looked familiar, but he couldn't place it.
“What about it?”
“The web address is owned by Alamut Enterprises… and the physical address is the same as White Hat, my company.
Chapter 16
Tyrannicide knew there was a problem. The Blackberry issued to James Phillips had been powered up, briefly, and then powered down. The logical explanation was law enforcement, either local, or, more likely, federal as they had the funding able to purchase the software to make a copy of the internal data contained on a Blackberry for further analysis.
Minutes later, the HTTP server containing the targeting packages was accessed without using the Blackberry, first to look at Max Jennings' information, then the rest of the web site was copied someplace else.
It was apparent that the data contained on the HTTP server was compromised.
The software traced back the connection to which computer was accessing the now compromised data. It took microseconds to crack through the corporate firewall and locate the exact computer, and the user of that computer. This was followed up by accessing the computer and slipping in a piece of software that would worm its way into the operating system and forward all relevant data back to the software for further analysis.
In a few minutes, it had determined the name, address, driver's license picture and a complete credit, tax and medical history of the computer user — Ryan Rees.
Slipping through some subroutines, it executed the relevant code and created a targeting package using an alternative HTTP server for Ryan — he was a threat to the Program and would be eliminated.
Jill Ringler was annoyed. Three-fourths of the Denver City Council was dead or dying, including the detestable Phil Van Wyk, and she had just used alpha-Amanitin, a toxin found in the Death's Head and the Destroying Angel mushrooms, on John Halbrook, soon to be late of the Colorado House of Representatives. He would be dead within ten days of acute liver failure. It would be a brutal and prolonged death, but her black bag of tricks and poisons was rapidly emptying.
She had just gotten a page on her Blackberry that she had one more job to do before she could stand down. As she turned the rented BMW around, she considered her options.
According to the information she had received, the target suffered from asthma. That would have been perfect to try out her sarin gas modified inhaler — the canister would emit sarin rather than albuterol — one whiff of it and you'd be dead before you hit the floor. But that particular item was back at her lab. She longed to be back at her lab, playing with chemicals rather than these interactions with the public — particularly men she detested. It was nice that she got to kill many of them — the last leer of their life would be at the person who had just killed them.
Her exotic poisons supplies were all but depleted which left some of the old standbys like cyanide. Yes. She had a couple of ounces of Potassium Cyanide and the neat thing about it is that it looked exactly like sugar and she had it packaged in a sugar packet. It was even as soluble in water as sugar although it might give off an odor of bitter almonds when it was put in water. However, most people couldn't smell it and those who could probably wouldn't recognize the significance of the odor.
Pulling off the side of the road, she called the airport where the private jet she had booked was parked and let them know that she would be delayed by a couple of hours.
She hoped Ryan Rees liked sugar in his coffee….
Jackie was stunned. There was no way that Nathan could have been running an assassination company out of their office. Or could he? There were aspects of Nathan's life that she probably had no understanding.
They were walking out the back door of the cell phone shop. Ryan had insisted that they go around the back way and would have to walk around the rear of the strip mall. It didn't matter much as she was so numb that she could barely put one foot in front of the other.
“Tell me what you know about Nathan and his business,” Leo asked.
“I met him five years ago. I was a student at school on a computer science track and was bored out of my head with the mindless class work and projects.”
“What was his company like?”
“It was a computer security consulting business. Nothing much to it, a couple of small contracts and we were working out of a spare bedroom in his house. He was never very good with the technical part of it, and when I came on board, he was able to focus on the business while I built up our technological base.”
They stepped around a pile of empty cardboard boxes. She saw that Leo's eyes were constantly moving, checking out everything, even scanning the roofs and windows of nearby buildings. Probably expecting an attack. She was tired of being a target and wondered what she could do to change the situation.
“Do you have any idea what he was doing before?”
She shrugged. “Not really. College dropout, marketing I think. Inherited some but not much money from his folks when they died.”
“How'd they die?”
“I don't know. He never talked much about his past.”
“Anything strange going on in the business when you joined or since?”
“You have to understand something; Nathan wasn't that much of a computer guy. What he could do was sell and he knew enough to ask the right questions and who to pay to answer them. What are you trying to find out?”
“I'm trying to get a better feeling for what he was involved in. As an example, how hard is it to change the address of a web site?”
“I wouldn't know. No. I actually have an idea. See, that data is stored in a WHOIS database. That can be found on the American Registry for Internet Numbers.”