Matthew Mather's Compendium, Page 4

  “Is delivering a couple of engraved pen holders really going to make or break your business?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  She took a deep breath, and her shoulders relaxed. “I forgot. I’m sorry. But this is really important to me.”

  Obviously more important than we are, I thought, but I held my tongue and tried to strike the thought from my head. Negative thoughts had a way of festering.

  Lauren looked at the ceiling. “Can’t you get Susie—”

  “They’re out all day.”

  “Then what about the Borodins?”

  She wasn’t going to give in. A pause hung in the air while I inspected the tiny plastic Christmas tree we’d stuck on a side table next to the couch.

  “Fine. I’ll figure it out.” I managed a smile. “Go on, get going.”

  “Thanks.” She collected her coat and purse. “And if you do take Luke out, don’t forget to bundle the both of you up. I’ll just go and calm him down before I leave.”

  I nodded and returned to surfing through some new social media outlets. The Web was incredibly slow. It was taking forever for new pages to load.

  Lauren went into our room, and I heard her talking to Luke. She picked him up and paced with him, and the crying stopped. Lauren appeared a moment later with her coat on and came around to my side of the counter to give me a little hug and peck on the cheek. I shrugged her off. She swatted at me playfully, and then she was off and out the door.

  As soon as she left, I went to check on Luke in his crib. He was still whimpering, but had calmed down and was cuddled up with his blanket. Returning to my laptop, I tried doing some more research, but the slow Web connection made it next to impossible. I couldn’t be bothered to check the router, so I gave up and decided to get on with my day.

  Leaving our front door ajar so I could still hear Luke, I walked next door to the Borodins. Our apartment was at the end of a narrow carpeted hallway, lit along its length by recessed lighting. Susie and Chuck lived to the left coming out of our place, with the Borodins to our right. The next door down from Chuck’s was Pam and Rory’s place, directly across from another hallway that led off at a right angle to the elevators. The emergency exit was next to Rory’s, with the stairwell leading down six floors from there. Five more apartments lined the rest of the hallway, ending in the downstairs entrance to Richard’s three-story condo on the opposite side of the building from ours.

  Irena opened the door at my first quiet knock. They were always home, and she must have been standing just beside the door, cooking as usual. The smell of roasting potatoes and meats and yeasty bread wafted out as the door slid open.

  “Mih-kah-yal, pryvet,” greeted Irena, her warm smile creasing the deep wrinkles in her face.

  At nearly ninety years of age, she was stooped and shuffled when she walked, but always had a bright twinkle in her eye. As old as she was, I’d still think twice before messing with her—she’d been a part of the Red Army that had defeated the Nazis in the frozen wastelands of northern Russia. As she liked to tell me, “Troy fell, Rome fell, but Leningrad did not fall.”

  She was wearing a green-checked apron, slightly stained, and held a tea towel bunched up in one hand. With the other she motioned for me to enter. “Come, come.”

  I glanced at their door frame and the mezuzah affixed there, a tiny but beautifully carved, ornate mahogany box. At one time I thought these were like Jewish “good luck” charms, but I’d come to understand that they were more about keeping evil away.

  I resisted entering. Going in there always ended with a plate of sausages and recriminations that I was too thin. That being said, I loved her food, and I enjoyed even more the simple pleasure of being doted on. It made me feel like a kid, protected and indulged, and no self-respecting Russian grandmother would have it any other way.

  “Sorry, I’m in a bit of a hurry.” Whatever she was cooking smelled amazing and I realized that dropping off Luke would give me the perfect opportunity to come back later and be spoiled. “I don’t mean to impose, but would you be able to watch Luke for a few hours?”

  She shrugged. “Of course, Mi-kay-yal, you know you don’t need to ask, da?”

  “Thanks. I need to go out and make some deliveries.” Glancing inside, I could see her husband, Aleksandr, asleep in his recliner in front of a Russian soap opera on the TV. Gorbachev was curled up asleep beside him.

  Irena nodded. “You bring Luke?”

  I nodded back.

  “And you wrap yourself up. It is much below zero today.”

  I laughed. Two women had already told me to bundle up and I hadn’t even been outside yet. Maybe I am still a kid. “We use Fahrenheit here, Irena—it’s cold, but not below zero yet. Still about ten degrees, I think.”

  “Ack, you know what I mean.” Flicking her chin to tell me to get going, she turned to get back to her cooking, leaving the door ajar.

  Back in my apartment, I rummaged around in the front closet, looking for winter coats, gloves, and scarves. Then I remembered: the weather had been so warm that Lauren had only just gotten around to taking our winter coats to the dry cleaner yesterday, and they’d been unable to give us same-day service thanks to the Christmas rush. Sighing, I pulled a thin black jacket off a hanger, picked up my backpack with the gifts in it, and went into the bedroom to put a sweater on.

  Luke was wide awake, and his cheeks were bright red.

  “Not feeling too great, buddy?” I said, reaching down to pick him up. His forehead was hot, and the little guy was sweating. He’d also wet his diaper, so I changed him, switching him into some dungarees and thick socks with a cotton shirt, and then took him next door.

  Even under the weather, Luke managed a toothy grin upon seeing Irena.

  “Ah, dorogaya!” she gushed, taking the still-sleepy Luke from my arms. “He has fever, nyet?”

  I brushed Luke’s head, feeling the sweat in his matted-down hair. “Yeah, I think so.”

  She pulled Luke into her bosom. “No worry, I take care. You go.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be back about lunchtime.” I raised my eyebrows, and by the way she smiled back, I knew there would be a feast on my return.

  She laughed and closed the door.

  A child was such an amazing thing. I’d gone through life before we had Luke wondering what it was all about, trying to sort out my hopes and dreams and fears. Then, all of a sudden, there was a little version of me staring back at me, and everything became clear. The meaning of my life was to protect and raise this new life, to love him and teach him everything I knew.

  “Forget something?”

  “Huh?”

  Pam was standing in the hallway, outside her door. She was a nurse, and was dressed in scrubs, on her way to work. We’d become quite good friends with her and her husband, Rory, but we hadn’t quite developed the kind of bond and easy relationship we had with Susie and Chuck. The thing was, Pam and Rory were strict vegans, and somehow that created a gap. I felt a bit guilty when I ate meat around them, no matter how many times they made it clear it didn’t bother them and it was a personal choice.

  I liked Pam a lot. She was a very attractive blonde, and hard not to like. Where Lauren was what you might call a classic beauty, Pam was a more voluptuous sort.

  “No, I was just dropping Luke off.”

  “I saw that,” she laughed. “Deep thoughts, huh?”

  “Not really.” I shook my head and walked toward her. She worked for the Red Cross and was stationed at a blood bank just a few blocks away. “Still draining veins, even before Christmas?”

  “It’s the season to give, right? Are you finally going to come down?”

  The elevator pinged our floor, its doors opening. I was trapped.

  “Ah, you know,” I hemmed and hawed, “I’ve got a lot to do.”

  “The holidays are when we need donors the most,” she urged in a singsong voice.

  I let her enter the elevat
or ahead of me. Now I felt doubly guilty. Before I could stop myself, I said, “You know what? I’ll come down right now.” Hey, it’s Christmas, I thought. What the heck.

  “Really?” Her face lit up. “I’ll slide you right in.”

  My face flushed at the imagined innuendo. “That’d be great.”

  Silence while we waited for the elevator to drop to the ground floor.

  “You’re going to need more than that.”

  “Huh?”

  She was looking at my thin jacket. “It’s freezing out. Did you see the storm warnings? The coldest Christmas since 1930. So much for global warming.”

  “They should have called it global warning.”

  We both laughed.

  She turned to me. “You’re an Internet guy, right?”

  I shrugged yes.

  “Did you notice that it was almost impossible to get online this morning?”

  That got my attention. “I did. Are you on Roadrunner too?” It must be some type of carrier problem in the building.

  “No,” she replied. “On CNN they’re saying it’s a virus or something.”

  The elevator stopped at the ground floor and opened.

  “A virus?”

  11:55 a.m.

  Giving blood took longer than I thought it would. Pam moved me to first in line, but it was a quarter past ten by the time I finally exited the Red Cross, donut in hand, to catch a cab into Midtown.

  I figured I would do a round of our four clients in the center of town, drop off the gifts—shaking hands if anyone was around—and then run back to do some grocery shopping. I’d swing by home, drop off the food and check on Luke while I grabbed a bite to eat with Irena, and then head down to the Financial District for the final two client gift drop-offs and maybe a holiday drink or two.

  I was buoyed by the feel-good sensation of giving blood, or perhaps high from a lack of oxygen and red blood cells, and my trip into Midtown took on a cinematic aura. I gawked out the window of my cab, watching the holiday shoppers bustling by on the streets, caught up in the excitement of New York at Christmas. Everyone was bundled up in hats and scarves in the intense cold, shopping bags in hand.

  My first stop was next to Rockefeller Center, and after dropping the gift off I spent ten minutes staring at the tree outside, even offering to take pictures for a few tourists, enjoying the buzz of the crowds.

  My route continued up past the Plaza Hotel, along Central Park, then looped back downtown. I had been texting with Lauren about what we needed for food, but she had stopped answering my texts. Finishing my rounds in Midtown, I hopped in a taxi and had it drop me back in Chelsea at Whole Foods. After cruising up and down the aisles for half an hour, filling my shopping cart and getting into the Christmas spirit, I finally arrived at the checkout line.

  It was huge.

  I waited ten minutes, trying to unsuccessfully check my e-mails on my phone a few times, before asking a frustrated-looking woman in front of me, “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied over her shoulder. “Seems like they’re having some problems with the computers.”

  “Mind watching my stuff while I go and have a look?”

  She nodded.

  I left my cart and wandered up toward the cash registers. The crowd’s agitation intensified as I moved forward, ending in a knot of angry shoppers.

  “Why can’t you just take cash?” one of them said.

  “Sir, we can’t let you take anything out of the store unless it’s scanned,” replied a frightened cashier, a teenage girl who was helplessly waving around a bar scanner.

  I slipped in behind the registers to address the cashier directly. “What’s happening?” I asked.

  Turning to me, she said, “It’s still not working, sir.”

  She was flustered and must have thought I was a manager.

  “Explain to me exactly what happened, from the start.”

  “The scanning devices just stopped working. We’ve been waiting for technical support for an hour, but nothing.” In a hushed voice she added, “My cousin on the Upper East Side texted me and said their store was out as well.”

  An angry customer, a large Hispanic man, grabbed my arm. “I just want to get out of here, bro. Can’t you take cash?”

  I held up my hands. “Not my call to make.”

  He looked straight at me. I expected to see anger, but he looked scared. “Screw this. I’ve been waiting an hour.” He threw a few twenties onto the counter in front us. “Just keep the change, man.”

  Grabbing his shopping bags, he pushed his way through the crowd. People around him were watching, and a few of them began to wind forward to leave money at the counter too. Others just started leaving, taking whatever they were holding without paying.

  “What’s going on?” It wasn’t like New Yorkers to start stealing.

  “It’s the news, sir, the Chinese,” replied the cashier.

  “What news?”

  “That aircraft carrier thing,” was all she could add, but by that point I was already pushing my way toward the door, suddenly and irrationally fearful for Luke.

  2:45 p.m.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  I was pacing in front of the huge flat-panel TV that dominated one wall of Chuck’s apartment.

  “Figured you’d think I was being paranoid,” replied Chuck. Blurry images of a smoking aircraft carrier filled the screen behind me.

  I’d returned to the Borodins’ in a rush and knocked loudly on their door. While hurrying the few blocks up from Whole Foods, I’d searched the news on my smartphone. The device had taken forever to respond.

  There had been an incident in the South China Sea. A Chinese warplane had crashed. The Chinese were claiming it was an attack by American forces, but the Americans were denying they had anything to do with it, saying it was an accident. The governor of Shanxi Province, in northern China, was all over the news claiming it was an act of war.

  Luke was fine when I arrived, but his fever had gotten worse. He was sweating profusely, and Irena said he’d been crying most of time I’d been gone. I’d left him at the Borodins’, letting him rest, and gone over to Chuck’s.

  “You didn’t think this was maybe important enough to share?” I asked incredulously.

  “Not at the time, I didn’t.”

  CNN was on in the background. “Sources in the Pentagon deny any responsibility for the crashed Chinese warplane, saying that it was the result of the inexperience of Chinese forces in operating at-sea carrier operations—”

  “You haven’t had any food deliveries to your restaurants in a week and you didn’t think I might be interested?”

  “—Poison Trojan has now infected DNS servers worldwide. The Chinese are denying responsibility, but the bigger issue now is the Scramble virus that has infected logistics systems—”

  “I didn’t think it was relevant,” replied Chuck. “We have computer problems all the time.”

  The virus that had shut down FedEx and UPS had moved on to infect the software of almost every other commercial shipping company, and was starting to grind the world’s supply chain to a halt.

  “I’ve been reading the hacker message boards,” added Chuck. “They’re saying that UPS and FedEx are proprietary systems, and that the speed of the virus means it must have hundreds of zero-days in it.”

  “What’s a zero-day?” asked Susie, who was sitting on the couch next to Chuck. She was holding Ellarose, whose head bobbled up and down as she watched me pacing in circles. Susie was a real Southern belle, a brunette with delicate freckles and a slim figure, but her pretty brown eyes were now filled with concern.

  “It’s a new virus, right?” Chuck ventured.

  I wasn’t a security expert, but I was trained as an electrical engineer, and computer networks were my field of expertise. “Sort of,” I tried to explain. “A zero-day is a software vulnerability that isn’t yet docum
ented, and a zero-day attack uses these to get into a system. It’s an attack that has had zero-days to be analyzed yet.”

  Any system had weaknesses. The ones that were known usually had patches or fixes, and the list of new software vulnerabilities expanded at the rate of hundreds per week for the thousands of commercial vendors in the world. With a typical Fortune 500 company using thousands of individual software programs, the list of vulnerabilities could hover in the tens of thousands at any given moment. It was an impossible game of catch-up against an adversary that only needed one hole to remain open among literally millions that an organization had to continually fix.

  While everyone, private and government, struggled to keep up with the list of known vulnerabilities, against unknown vulnerabilities, or zero-days, the situation was even worse. There was nearly no defense, precisely because the attack vectors were, by definition, unknown.

  Chuck and Susie stared at me blankly.

  “It means an attack that we have no defense against.”

  Stuxnet, the virus believed to have taken down Iranian nuclear processing plants in 2010, had used about ten zero-days to get inside the systems it attacked. It was one of the first of a new breed of sophisticated cyberweapons. They cost a lot of time and money to build, so someone wouldn’t be unleashing these ones without some purpose in mind.

  “What do you mean, an attack that we have no defense against?” asked Susie. “How many of these are there? Can’t the government stop it?”

  “The government mostly looks to the private sector to protect this stuff,” I replied.

  CNN had switched to a discussion between four commentators and analysts. “The thing that has me worried, Roger, is that computer viruses, especially sophisticated ones like this, are usually designed to infiltrate networks to get information out. These don’t seem to be doing that. They’re just bringing the computer systems down.”