"Right," Bross said, heavy on the irony. "This whole thing was planned. Get real. They didn't crash in here demanding a hundred million bucks, did they? That was only after Russell discovered who we are. At first they only wanted our wallets, for Christ's sake."
"And our watches," I said. "Don't forget the watches, Kevin. Even the 'replicas.'"
Bross glared.
"I think they were trying to make it look like a random, unplanned break-in," I said. "Which, in itself, is interesting."
"Why?" said Cheryl.
"I don't know," I admitted. "But I'll figure it out."
"I think Jake may be right," Ali said. "Look at who comes here-mostly rich people and corporate groups. Who else can afford it? All these rich folks out here in total isolation. Sitting ducks. If you're a bad guy looking to make some quick money, you can't do better than this."
"Russell knows too much about Hammond," I said. "All that stuff about our cash reserves-I doubt he figured that out tonight, on the spot, by looking at a balance sheet. He already knew it ahead of time."
"It's all out there on the public record," said Barlow.
"Sure. But that means he did research on Hammond before coming here. Right?"
For a few seconds, everyone was silent.
Then Slattery said: "But how'd he know in advance that we'd be here?"
"You guys come here every year around the same time," I said. "It's no secret."
"Then they must have had a source," Latimer said. "One of the lodge staff, maybe."
"Or they've been here before," I said.
"Excuse me," Bross said. "I don't even know why anyone's listening to you. Did anyone ask you for your opinion? You're not even a member of the executive council, or have you forgotten that? You're a substitute. You're nothing more than a ringer."
Amazing: Here we were, held hostage at gunpoint, and all Kevin Bross wanted to do was one-up me. With Hank Bodine at least temporarily incapacitated, he probably considered himself the reigning Alpha Male. And I was a threat.
"I got news for you, Kevin," I said. "There's no more executive council. Not anymore. Not now. Your life is no more important than mine or anyone else's. Neither is your opinion. We're all just hostages now."
I heard a groan, then a familiar rumbling voice. "Well put, Landry," Hank Bodine said. "When the hell's that pillow getting here?"
34
Bodine's silver hair was mussed, clumps of it standing on end. His eyes had all but disappeared into the swollen mass of his cheeks. White strips of adhesive tape crisscrossed his face.
"There he is," Bross said. "How're you doing?"
"What do you think?" Bodine tried to sit up. "What's this, they tied me up, too? The hell they think I'm gonna do?"
Bodine's mere conscious presence had reordered the group like a magnet waved over iron filings. You could tell it rankled Cheryl. She needed to take charge. "The issue isn't who they are or how they got here," she said. "The issue is how we're going to deal with it. That's the only thing that counts at this point."
"Tell me something," Lummis said. "Do we even have the ability to do this-to make a funds transfer from here-if we wanted to?"
No one replied for a few seconds, then Ali said: "I'm sure he knows about the Internet connection in the manager's office."
"That's not what I mean. Can it be done from here? Can we really transfer a hundred million dollars out of the corporate treasury to some offshore account, just using the manager's laptop?"
More silence. Cheryl looked at Slattery: She didn't seem to know the answer either. I assumed that the only ones who really knew how the system worked were Slattery, Danziger, and Grogan-but Danziger and Grogan were on the other side of the fireplace, out of range.
"I could transfer funds out of one of our accounts from a laptop at Starbucks," Slattery said wearily, taking off his glasses and running a hand over his forehead. He closed his eyes and pushed against them with a thumb and forefinger, as if trying to massage a headache away.
"You're kidding," Lummis said.
"No, unfortunately, I'm not," said Slattery.
"Hold on a second," Kevin Bross said. "Are you telling me that any lunatic could just put a gun to your head and empty the company's treasury? We don't have any security procedures in place? I don't believe it."
There was something about Bross's tone-he sounded incredulous, but in an exaggerated way-that made me suspicious. Then there was the look of irritation that Slattery gave him in response. Bross, I realized, already knew the answer. He gave a quick, furtive glance at Bodine, seemed to be performing for him. Bodine's eyes were open, but the lids were drooping.
"It's more complicated than that," Slattery said.
"Yes or no?" Bross demanded. "Do we or don't we have at least some kind of security measures?"
"Ron," said Cheryl, "you don't need to get into this. It's beside the point."
"Well, I want to hear it," said Bross. "It's very much the point."
"Don't even dignify that, Ron," Cheryl said.
"The fact is," Slattery said, "the bank's computers don't know if they're talking to a computer inside Hammond headquarters in L.A. or at a laptop in a Starbucks or some old Macintosh in a fishing lodge in British Columbia."
"How is that possible?" said Bross.
"Well, it's-anytime you log on to our system from outside the headquarters building, you're creating a virtual tunnel into what's called the VPN-the Hammond virtual private network. All the bank computers see is a Hammond IP address. An outbound gateway. For all the bank knows, it's getting a message from my office on the thirty-third floor on Wilshire Boulevard."
"Can we move on, please?" said Cheryl. "This is irrelevant."
"Even when we're talking about a hundred million dollars?" Barlow said.
"Doesn't make a difference how much," said Slattery. "It's just a little more elaborate."
"Ron," Cheryl said, "enough."
But Slattery kept going. "For large, sensitive transactions the bank requires two authorized users to make the request. Then on top of that, there's dual-factor authentication."
"Which is?" Barlow said.
"Forget it," said Cheryl. "We're not making any transfer."
"Sounds to me," Hank Bodine suddenly said, "like you're trying to shut him up. I want to hear this."
Cheryl just shook her head, furious. She did seem to want to keep Slattery from talking.
"You enter a user name and password as usual," Slattery said, "but you also have to use a secure ID token. Which generates random, one-time passwords-six-digit numbers-every sixty seconds. You take the number off the token and enter it on the website."
"So, if we don't have one of those doohickeys with us, we can't do the transfer," Barlow said. "Simple as that. I'm sure you don't carry one around with you, right?"
"It's on my key ring, upstairs in my room," Slattery said. "But Russell's probably got it by now."
"These fellas aren't going to know what it is," Barlow said.
Slattery shrugged. "If they know what they're doing, they will. The bank logo's printed right on there."
"Anyone else have a token like that?" asked Barlow. "I don't."
"Just the ones who have signing authority."
"Signing authority," Barlow repeated.
"The ability to authorize a financial transaction greater than, I think, fifty million dollars. Authorized users."
Cheryl turned slowly to Ron Slattery. "I don't believe I have such a token," she said.
"That's because you don't need to dirty your hands with all that financial…plumbing work. It's just for the guys like me who have to, you know, roll up our sleeves and do the operational stuff."
"Such as?"
He hesitated. "You know, the corporate officers who're involved directly with the finances."
"'Authorized users,' as you put it."
"Basically, yes. Officers who have signing authority at that level." Slattery was starting to sound evasive.
But Cheryl was unrelenting. "Such as? Who has the signing authority at that level? Besides me, I mean."