Terminal Compromise Part 88

"I know what it means." Tyrone shut Scott up in mock defense.

In reality he didn't know much about computers, but some things were obvious even to the technically naive.

"That was fast," said Scott. "Only 17. Help any?"

"Might. Can I get that on paper?"

Scott gave him the printout of the finances on the several unfor- tunate companies who had lost more than a third of their net worth in the last year. Tyrone folded it into his jacket pocket.

"Hey, call me a cab. I'm too drunk to walk."

Wednesday, December 30 Lenox, Georgia

A faded blue Ford Econoline van sat in the Lenox Square parking lot. The affluent Atlanta suburb had been targeted from the beginning. Demographically ,it fit the bill to a tee.

From the outside, the van looked like a thousand other parked cars; empty, with their owners shopping in the huge mall. On the inside though, two men were intently operating a vast array of electronic equipment.

"Here comes another one," said the first. "How many does that make today?"

"A hundred and forty seven. Let's do it." The second man watched the enhanced color video image on a small monitor. A well dressed lady walked up to the ATM machine, card in hand.

The first man pressed a switch on another monitor and the snow filled picture was transformed into an electronic copy of the ATM's video display.

Please Insert Card

The screen in the van echoed the ATM screen.

"Can you tune it in a bit?" asked the first man. " It's a little fuzzy."

"Yeah, we must have settled. Let me adjust the antenna." His hand grabbed a joystick on one of the tightly packed racks of equipment and gingerly moved it from left to right. "Is that better?" A small disguised antenna on the roof of the van aligned itself as the joystick commanded.

"Yeah . . .no . . .yeah, back again . . ."

"I see it. There."

"Thanks."

Enter Personal Identification Number:

A third monitor over the second man's cramped desk came to life as the number 3435 appeared across his screen.

"Got it. You, too?"

"On disk and saved."

"I'll back it up."

"Better not. Here comes another one."

"Busy day."

It was a very busy day. Ahmed Shah saw to it that his followers were kept busy, six days a week. As they had been for months.

When his army of a hundred plus Econoline vans were not raiding the contents of unsuspecting computers during the day, they became electronic ears which listened in on the conversations between the ATM's and their bank customers.

Ahmed's vans were used most efficiently. On the road, doing his bidding twenty four hours a day, every day but the Sabbath.

Ahmed created cells of eight loyal anti-American sympathizers, regardless of nationality, to operate with each van. Each group operated as an independent ent.i.ty with only one person from each able to communicate privately with Ahmed over cellular modem. No cell knew of any other cell. If one group was apprehended, they couldn't tell what they didn't know. Therefore, the rest of the cells remain intact.

Absolute loyalty was an unquestioned a.s.sumption for all members of Ahmed's electronic army. It had to be that way, for the bigger cause.

All day and night one of Ahmed Shah's computers in his lab at Columbia received constant calls from his cell leaders. During the day it was the most interesting information that they had captured from computer screens. At night, it was the pa.s.scodes to automatic bank tellers machines and credit card information.

Once the pa.s.scodes were in hand, making fake ATM cards was a trivial task.

Chapter 18

Wednesday, January 6 Amsterdam, Holland

Scott Mason had a theory. It didn't matter than no one else believed it, or that they thought him daffy. It worked for him.

He believed that jet lag was caused by the human body traveling across mystical magnetic force fields called Ley lines. The physics of his theory made common sense to anyone but a scien- tist. It went like this: the body is electric and therefore magnetic fields can influence it. Wherever we live we are sub- ject to the local influence of magnetic, electrical and Ley lines. If we move too quickly, as by plane, through Ley lines, the balance of our system is disturbed. The more Ley lines you traverse, the more upsetting it is to the system. Thus, jet lag.

But, Scott had a solution. Or more accurately, his mother had one which she had convinced him of years earlier. Scott carried with him a small box, the size of a pack of cigarettes, that had a switch and a blinking light. It was called an Earth Resonance Generator, or ERG. The literature said the ERG established a negative gravity field through a magnetic Mobius loop. Inside the box was a battery, a loop of wire, a light emitting diode and the back side of the switch. In short, nothing of electronic consequence or obvious function. There was no way in h.e.l.l that this collection of pa.s.sive components could do anything other than wear out batteries. All for $79.95 plus $4 shipping.

Scott first heard his mother proselytize about the magic of the ERG when he was ten or twelve. His father, the role model for Archie Bunker ignored her completely and said her rantings in- creased with certain lunar phases. Since his father wouldn't listen to her any longer, she endlessly lectured Scott about the virtues of the ERG whenever she returned from a trip. His father refused to travel, and had never even been on a plane.

His mother so persisted in her belief that she even tried experi- ments. On one of her trips to Rome, she somehow talked the stewardesses into handing out the 400 questionnaires she'd brought with her onto the plane. It asked the pa.s.sengers how they felt after the flight, and if they do anything special to avoid jet lag. She claims more than 200 were returned and that they overwhelmingly indicated that no one felt jet lag on that trip.

She attributed this immense success to the ERG effects which purportedly spread over one acre. In other words, the ERG takes care of an entire 747 or L-1011 or DC-10.

For years Scott successfully used the ERG to avoid jet lag. Some people put brown paper bags in their shoes, others eat yogurt and bean sprouts before a long flight. Maybe his solution was psy- chosomatic, Scott admitted to anyone who asked, but, so what? It still works, doesn't it? Scott was forever impressed that air- port security had never, once, asked him what this little blink- ing black box was. Scary thought.

He arrived completely refreshed via KLM at the Amsterdam Interna- tional Airport at 9:15 A.M. While he had been to Europe many times, he had thus far missed the Amsterdam experience. He had heard that pot was legal in Amsterdam. In fact it was more than legal. Every morning the marijuana prices were broadcast on the local radio stations and Scott had every intention of sampling the wares. After 20 years of casual pot use, he preferred it immensely to the effects of drinking, and he was not going to miss out on the opportunity.

In New York no one hara.s.sed pot smokers, but technically, it still wasn't legal, while Amsterdam represented the ultimate counterculture. This was the first time since Maggie had left for the Coast three years ago that Scott felt an independence, a freedom reminiscent of his rebellious teen years.

He gave the taxi driver the address of the Eureka! hotel, on the Amstel. During the half hour fifty guilder ride into downtown, the driver continuously chattered. "Amsterdam has more ca.n.a.ls than Venice. Many more. Holland is mostly land reclaimed from the sea. We have the biggest system of dikes in Europe. Don't forget to see our diamond centers." He spoke endlessly with deep pride about his native land.

The Eureka! is a small four story townhouse with only 16 rooms that overlooked the Amstel, the largest ca.n.a.l in Amsterdam, similar to the Grand Ca.n.a.l in Venice. The Times had booked it because it was cheap, but Scott felt instantly at home. After settling in, Scott called the local number that Kirk had given him.

"Hallo?" A thick Dutch accent answered the phone.

"h.e.l.lo? I'm looking for Jon Gruptmann? This is Scott Mason."

"Ya, this is Jon."