Data Mining

The unusual request came in the form of a letter delivered straight to Serena Day’s office in downtown Perth. The letter, a simple white envelope, unmarked with any stamps or other identifiers, was stuffed with twenty thousand dollars worth of one-hundred dollar bills, and a small yellowed paper that actually contained the request itself.

The paper promised three times the amount of money currently given after she completed a rather odd task: steal a little black book that was currently in possession of one Aro Ehrlich of Ehrlich Enterprises, without alerting the owner that it had been stolen. She was given three days to accomplish this and deliver the notebook to a drop-off point in Cannington, along the Armadale train line, and instructed not to tell anyone about it or look into the contents of the notebook.

Serena had burnt the letter with a Zippo lighter and thrown it in the trash right after receiving it, but she couldn’t keep it out of her head—the mystery compelled her. As she leaned back on the seat of the Fremantle line, heading back home to her apartment on the eastern side of Shenton Park, her photographic memory kept coming back to the note.

Why her? Were the contents in that notebook really that valuable? And if they were, why ask someone like her to steal them in the first place? As a private investigator, Serena Day might have had a history of skirting the law, but this operation was outright unlawful. She wasn’t about to get in trouble with law enforcement over some random note and a large amount of money.

But the mystery of it all compelled her.

A quick Google search on her phone would give her more questions than answers. Ehrlich Enterprises was a data systems company based in Australia and founded by one Aro Ehrlich, a German that had been living in the country since 2012.

There were a few videos of him speaking at tech conventions and press conferences, so Serena took out her headphones and plugged them into the phone. From the snippets she saw, she gathered Aro was a loner, the kind of C.E.O. that was completely focused on his business and his business alone. He didn’t have a wife or kids to speak of, and was on the talks of launching a new program that he assured would ‘disrupt the status quo.’ Typical pseudo-enlightened tech talk. She decided then and there that she didn’t quite like the man.

In the few press conferences she watched, she could see the small black notebook poking out from the breast pocket of Aro Ehrlich's trimmed suit. She smiled. This might just be easier than she thought.

Once the line stopped at Shenton Park, she got out and, during her fifteen minute walk home, began sketching up a plan to get into Ehrlich Enterprises. The first thing she did with her newfound twenty thousand dollars was stop by a bookstore and get herself a moleskin that looked exactly like the one that Aro Ehrlich carried around.

The following morning, she looked up the office phone number for Ehrlich Enterprises and called, posing as a journalist from The West. She asked the secretary if Mr. Ehrlich had any availability in the next two days for an exclusive interview to talk about his lifestyle as C.E.O. of a large data corporation.

Seemingly tending to Mr. Ehrlich’s ego, the secretary agreed to the interview and gave Serena a meeting time for that day at 14:00. By 11:00, Serena had taken the fifty minute journey by train to 50 Hasler Road, Osborne Park, headquarters of The West, to pick up a fake journalist badge with her source, Abigail Brenaven. After a ten minute walk over to The Perfect Peach Café, where they stopped for a “quick” brunch, Abigail began to press Serena for details on the case.

“What is it this time? Cheating? Assassination? Give me something juicy to put on the pages,” Abigail said, sitting at the edge of her seat on the covered veranda of the café.

“It’s nothing too big, Abigail. Something got stolen and the owner wants it back,” Serena lied.

“Ohh, copyright infringement? That could get juicy, Serena.”

“It’s nothing like that, it’s more of a… ‘grumpy neighbor took a kid’s football’ situation.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“And that grumpy neighbor just happens to be Aro Ehrlich?”

Serena smiled. “How did you know?”

“A good journalist never reveals her sources.”

“The secretary called to confirm with your office, didn’t she?”

“She did.”

“And you lied for me.”

“Of course.”

“So now I owe you one, I’m assuming?”

“Just get me something positively juicy in the next few weeks and we’ll call it even.”

At 13:10, Serena called her office to bring her car around to the Perfect Peach Café, as she would be taking it to 1 Watts Place in Bentley, where Ehrlich Enterprises was established. The driver, one Amir Haudani, tapped at the horn once he arrived at the café’s entrance at 13:33, his signature greeting. Serena bade farewell to Abigail, promising to bring her something interesting in the following weeks, and lowered herself into the passenger’s side of Haudani’s black Sedan.

The drive was curt, and Serena arrived at Ehrlich Enterprises at 13:58, just two minutes shy of her scheduled appointment with Mr. Ehrlich. She passed by security with her fake journalist badge, and was soon greeted by none other than Mr. Ehrlich himself.

He led her to his office on the third floor of the building and, while he talked some nonsense about being so excited for their meeting, Serena observed her surroundings for cameras and security. There were a few camera’s sprinkled here and there, but she had had enough experience working with blind spots to keep herself out of them once the time came.

Once they arrived at his office, Mr. Ehrlich offered her a seat in front of his desk, while he sat down on the exercise ball he used as a chair.

“So,” she started, taking her moleskin out of her bag and clicking her pen. “Mr. Ehrlich.”

He smiled when he saw her notebook and patted his breast pocket. “I have the same kind for my own notes,” he said.

Serena smiled. “Can’t leave home without it, right?”

“Of course.”

For the following hour, Serena pretended to act interested in Ehrlich’s business, and Ehrlich pretended to be the person he wanted people to see him as. His answers to her questions sounded excited but had been clearly practiced, and she had used her moleskine to pretend to write down his answers. In reality, she had written “Sorry :(“ on a few of the pages, over and over again.

At 15:03, the interview was finally over. Mr. Ehrlich got up from his yoga ball and stood by Serena to guide her outside the office. Now was the time.

Serena got up from the chair and intentionally tripped on her way up. She landed with both hands on Mr. Ehrlich’s chest, putting all her weight on him.

Using old pickpocket trips she had learned during her time in Queensland, she switched the notebook she had in her hand with the one in his pocket, careful to avoid the gaze of the cameras that were overlooking nearly every inch of his office.

“I’m so so sorry,” she said, straightening her outfit. Her eyes looked for any indication that he might think something was amiss.

Mr. Ehrlich smiled that conceited smile of his and said, “I know we’ve only just met, but you’re falling for me already?”

Serena forced a laugh. “Again, I’m so sorry, Mr. Ehrlich.”

“It’s no big deal,” he said, raising his arms. “I’m unharmed.”

He laughed again and Serena uttered a sigh of relief. He hadn’t noticed the switch.

He escorted her out of the office and all the way back to Ehrlich Enterprises’ main entrance. As she walked down the steps, she saw Haudani was already waiting outside.

During the drive, Serena flipped through the notebook, disregarding the warning she had read in the letter. She couldn’t really understand the scribbles and patterns of code that were written across the pages. Once they arrived at the office, she’d have Haudani, who was also the office’s data analyst, figure out what it was, once again disregarding the letter’s request to tell no one about the notebook.

Its contents, as Serena would come to learn that night, were just plain and simple computer code. Code for a decryption software that would allow engineers to bypass secure app encryptions and tap into user information without alerting the data systems affected. Things like names, addresses, credit and debit card numbers from millions of user interfaces online would all be in jeopardy if knowledge of that code were to come into the wrong hands.

She told Haudani to burn the notebook immediately.

The day of the supposed drop-off came and went. She never stepped foot near the drop-off point in Cannington, along the Armadale train line, and wondered what the requesters would do once they realized that.

More so, she wondered who they were, and for what reason they were after that code. Did they want to destroy it too? Or use it for their own selfish gain? She hadn’t gotten any answers from them.

She had, instead, gotten a heated call from Aro Ehrlich, one week after her little heist, asking what she had done with the notebook. She knew her cover would’ve been blown eventually, when the story was never published, but she hadn’t expected him to take this long to figure out his notebook was missing. When he insisted, she replied she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about and hung up.

What was he going to do? Sue her?

Aro Ehrlich had been furious during that phone call. It seemed to Serena that he was planning on using that code sooner rather than later, and that her heist of it had thrown a wrench in his plans. It was no wonder the requesters had given her such a short timeframe to get the notebook. If that’s what they wanted, at least.

The next couple of nights, the scribbles danced in her memory whenever her mind was distracted. They trailed her when she was showering, brushing her teeth, just as she was falling asleep, and she shuddered at the implications.

There were no longer any copies of that code around, except in her head.

Something needed to be done about it.

Aro Ehrlich couldn’t get away with making something like that and not suffering the consequences of it. And more so, her plan was certain to get the requester's attention. She would finally be able to get some answers.

The following day, Serena stopped by a bookstore and purchased yet another moleskine notebook. She hummed all the way back to her office.

There, writing down the code from memory onto the moleskine’s pages, her phone between her shoulder and her left cheek, Serena smiled when the other end of the line picked up.

“Abigail, you would not believe the story I have for you.”