Cyber Eyes

Peter Brown, a just-turned-thirty data analyst, needed a change. Running a hand through his too-long hair he called to the barista: “Wait – make that extra cream.”

She raised an amused eyebrow. “You sure about that? Might mess with your karma...”

The coffee was good here, but she was what kept him coming back. Was it her long hair gently pulled back in a loose ponytail? Her voice – British? Eastern European? A mix of the two? No, it was her eyes. Her beautiful, languid, heartbreaker eyes. Peter got lost in them every morning.

“Gotta change things up Dani. I’m in a rut.”

She handed him his coffee. He tasted it.

“Perfect, as always. Thanks.” He smiled under his mask.

She nodded slightly, studying him as he walked out of the shop.

Avi Rossberg’s life was not in a rut. Racing down 63rd, weaving through the morning crowd, he quickly glanced over his shoulder. They were gaining on him.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. His handler had promised him that. Avi was a computer programmer for Caspian CyberSecurity, not a trained agent. While working in London, he had met a man at temple, a small, quiet, intense man who had told him he was with the government and that they needed his help. Like most western governments, they used Caspian to protect their networks. But there was talk that the software provided hidden access to their innermost operations. A programmer with his skills could easily look into it, and wouldn’t he want to help his country?

Avi had heard the rumors about Caspian. But was it reason enough to spy on his employer? The thought of getting caught made him nervous, but what was the worst that could happen?

This is the worst that could happen, Avi thought as he squeezed through the crowd. Running for my life.

Avi didn’t hear from his handler again until he transferred to New York. “Take your time, see if there’s something to this,” he'd said.

Anything on a computer, no matter how many layers of security it hides behind, is vulnerable to certain people. Avi was one of those people. After a few months he discovered odd coding in Caspian’s software, coding that even the best programmers would simply pass off as superfluous. But spread over thousands of lines of programming the code provided entry — if you knew how to use it — to every locked door on the internet.

What Avi found was staggering. Money-laundering, hidden bank accounts, payoffs between governments and corporations – and he had barely scratched the surface. Avi documented everything in a small notebook that he kept on his person at all times, using a code that rendered the contents meaningless to a casual viewer.

Though careful to cover his tracks, all his poking around had raised suspicion. Once they started watching, it didn’t take long for them to figure out what he was doing.

The director of Caspian security was a tall, dangerously thin man, more snake-like than human. No one wanted to be in his presence for very long. In his office on an upper floor of corporate headquarters he calmly listened as the man on the other end of the phone explained what Avi had uncovered. If it went public it would be the end of the company – and the leaders of several countries.

The director spoke softly. “This is a priority one cancellation. Get the book.” Hanging up, he looked out across the Thames at the London Eye. Watching it slowly revolve, he contemplated the enormity of what he had just heard.

Out of breath, Avi cursed himself. Caspian networks never went down. If he’d been thinking he would have realized they were on to him the moment he’d been unable to log on that morning. Instead he had just gone to the coffee shop, happy to spend a little more time helping the friendly barista practice her Russian.

When he'd turned off of 63rd to go back to his apartment he saw them. Half a block away, two large men were standing next to a dark sedan, both looking up at his apartment. When the one on the phone pointed up at the building, Avi saw the gun under his jacket.

Had he eased back around the corner they might not have noticed him. But he froze, just long enough to catch their attention.

He ran back up 63rd, hoping to get to the subway. If he got caught with the notebook, he was a dead man. Where could he hide it between here and the station so he could come back later and retrieve it?

The sidewalks were crowded, the lights were turning yellow. He needed a solution. Now.

The blue backpack.

He’d seen it dozens of times in the coffee shop. The young man in the suit, always wearing a blue backpack—with an open back pocket.

Peter was used to people bumping into him on the sidewalk. But this was not the typical looking at your phone instead of where you’re going kind of bump. This was a full-on hit from behind, something he hadn’t felt since he'd played hockey for Yale. Coffee flying, he managed to catch himself before hitting the ground.

“I’m so sorry! Please excuse me – my apologies!” The man patted Peter’s arm and ran off, but not before looking over his shoulder. Peter could see the fear in his eyes.

Peter picked up his cup and adjusted his backpack. As he put on his headphones he was bumped twice more by men running past him, causing him to spill the little coffee he had left. “Maybe changing things up wasn’t such a good idea after all,” he thought.

The light turned green as the last of the crowd hurried across the street. Now less than twenty yards behind him, Avi knew the only way to escape from them was to get through the intersection.

Under stress people revert to old habits. In London it was drilled into Avi to always look right. But this was New York.

The cab hit Avi in the left leg, spinning him high in the air and into the oncoming traffic. The bus driver had no time to react.

As onlookers shrieked the men pulled Avi out from under the bus. While one of them shouted for someone to call an ambulance the other pretended to try to revive him. Not finding the notebook on his body, he looked under the bus and all around them. It was nowhere in sight.

“Where did you find this?”

“I didn’t. It found me.”

Sal gave Peter the “Yeah, right” look mastered by every native Brooklynite, then went back to thumbing through the little black book. If anyone could figure out what was in it, it was Sal.

Sal was the bank’s go-to person for fraud analysis. He could find patterns in data quicker than most people could blink. A large man, the notebook almost disappeared in his thick hands.

Sal flipped through it, shaking his head. Sitting back, he rubbed his chin. “I don’t know, Peter,” he said.

“C’mon Sally, you can do six figure multiplication in your head! There’s got to be something in there that jumps out to you.”

Sal shrugged then opened the book.

“Whoever wrote this did it in code, using a mixture of Cyrillic, Hebrew, and something else – shorthand maybe? The format, with a heading, blocks of writing and columns, some blank pages then more headings, more blocks.” He paused. “It’s almost….” His eyes narrowed.

“You know what? This might have belonged to a bookie. These headings could be names, the stuff underneath addresses, notes, something like that, and these columns could be dates, account numbers, dollar figures, who knows. Yeah, I think that's it.”

“Can you decipher it?”

“No. But I got a guy…”

Peter laughed. “Of course you do. Everyone in Brooklyn’s got a guy. Let’s see what he can come up with. Maybe it’ll be something interesting.”

Alexei Kratsov dreaded meetings with the director. They made the scar that ran from the bridge of his nose across most of his right cheek throb.

The director stood with his back to him, looking out across the city. “So we failed.” The words were like ice.

Alexei took a deep breath. “Yes, the assets—“

The director slightly raised an arm, silencing him.

“We had the men, we had the plan, and we had the resources. Yet still we failed.”

Sweat ran down Alexei’s back.

“The book was not in the apartment, on the body, or in the intersection where he was hit. Did he drop it?”

“No sir. We had eyes on him the whole time he ran.” Sweat dripped off his temples and onto the carpet.

“Did he meet with anyone, talk with anyone?”

“No. Well, he did run into someone. Literally. Knocked him down, said something to him. But he was a nobody. Some guy in a suit and a backpack.”

The director slowly turned. Alexei looked him in the eyes for the first time since entering the office. This was not good.

“Did we have a discussion with Mr. Suit and a backpack?” Alexei shook his head.

“You have forty-eight hours. I want to know everything about him – where he lives, who he works for, what he had for lunch yesterday. I want to know what he’s going to do before he has a chance to even think about it. And if he has the book…”

“Yes sir.”

“Forty eight hours Alexei. Do not disappoint me.”

Alexei backed out of the office. He was too afraid to ever turn his back to the director.

The coffee shop was near empty when Peter walked in.

“Hey. What’ll it be?” Strange. She was lacking her usual warmth.

“Large coffee. But no extra cream. That didn’t work out so well last time.” She didn’t move. He was looking at her, but she was looking behind him.

He felt a tap on his shoulder. Turning, he looked into the coldest, blackest eyes he had ever seen. They belonged to a man slightly taller than Peter, thick, with a scar that ran from the bridge of his nose down under his mask.

“Sorry to bother you,” the man said, “but I’m hoping you can help me. A friend of mine lost something the other day, a small black notebook. It was very important to him, and I would really like to get it back. I understand you might have run into him? Would you know where it might be?”

The man stared right through him, unblinking. Peter didn’t know what was in the book, but he was pretty sure this was the last person who should have it. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

“Are you sure? Like I said, it was very important. In fact…” The man reached into his pocket and pulled out a packet of hundred-dollar bills. “… there’s a $20,000 reward for its return.”

Peter stared back at him. “Like I said, I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

The man sighed and put the money away. “I’m sorry to hear that. But if you change your mind...” He tucked a business card into the front pocket of Peter’s suit. “Have a nice day, Mr. Brown.”

Peter watched him leave. Who was that guy? How does he know my name?

The next thing Peter knew he was being shoved to the back of the coffee shop. “What the—“

Dani spun him around, clamped her hand over his mouth and slammed him into the wall.

“You want to live? Then shut up and do exactly as I say.”

Running out the back of the coffee shop, Peter was sure about only one thing: His life was no longer in a rut.