Start at the Prologue and First Chapter here

“Hey Frank,” a familiar voice said through the phone. “Got time for coffee?”

“Are you calling on a disposable phone? I thought I was still on the pariah list.”

“Yeah. Well, as they say, that was then, and this is now. Also as they say, something’s come up. Anyway, can you still fit me into your busy schedule? Or are you spending all your time in your swank New York penthouse now?”

Frank paused. How would George Marchand, his former boss and sometime-handler at the CIA, know he had a fancy apartment in New York? It wasn’t public knowledge. Was the CIA keeping an eye on him?

“It’s not exactly a penthouse, George, but sure. I’m only in New York two or three days a week. How about Thursday? Same place and time as usual?”

“It’s a date. See you then.”

And so George did. But not before Frank spotted him first, standing at the cash register of the coffee shop: tall, balding now; thin and a little hunched over.

“Hey, Boss.” Frank said when George turned around.

“Hey,” George said, handing him a cup of coffee. “Lovely day for a walk, isn’t it?”

It was raining outside, but Frank nodded and pulled the hood of his coat back over his head. “Never seen better.”

“Great.” Outside, George opened a golf umbrella large enough to cover them both and started walking at a fast clip.

“So, am I back in from the cold?” Frank asked.

“Not actually. At least, not as far as our Congressional oversight committee is concerned. But the president wants us to put together a top-notch task force to advise him on an urgent project. And the big guy gets what he wants.”

“Why bring someone in from the outside? Can’t you find enough folks in-house?”

“It’s too new an area,” George said, a little stiffly, Frank thought. “We’re not completely out of our element, but this is an area the FBI, Treasury and SEC have been focusing on, not us.”

“Ah,” Frank said. “The pieces all just fell into place. So, it’s the blockchain, right?”

“Right,”

That first guess was easy, but not the next. “Offense or defense?” Frank asked.

“Offense,” George said. “In a nutshell, the alt coin the Russians are issuing is going gangbusters. The speculators can’t get enough of it, and that’s shoring up the Kremlin’s finances just when the administration very much wants them to be going in the other direction. And the anonymity of the Russ blockchain allows the Kremlin to get around all those sanctions we so painfully negotiated with our allies. The president wants the Russ killed within six months.”

“Killed? How?”

“That’s up to you and the others. Make the speculators abandon it so it’s worthless. Scramble it with malware. Whatever. Honestly, our folks don’t have a clue. That’s why it’s necessary to put this little brain trust together to come up with a plan to give Yazzi what he wants. Are you game to join the team?”

“Not full time. I’m under contract to First Manhattan Bank, but I negotiated the right to work up to one day a week on other matters so I can keep my consulting practice alive.”

“Yes, I know.”

Frank stopped. “George, is the CIA keeping an eye on me?”

“You’re not being tailed every day, no. But you are a valued asset, and you have a pretty high public profile; we’d hate to see anything happen to you. The other side of the coin is we like to know who we can trust and who we can’t. Sorry. I don’t make the rules. And I’m not the guy who manages that side of the operation.”

They started walking again, with Frank pondering what he’d just heard. Had he just been tipped not to do anything stupid for the bank that might embarrass the administration? Otherwise, why would George reveal he knew something he shouldn’t know?

“Anyway,” George continued, “Can you be available for a face to face meeting a few hours a week? This isn’t something you can do remotely; you’ll have to meet at headquarters or in a SCIF here in Washington.” Frank had learned about SCIFs – secure compartmented information facilities – during a previous project with George. Nothing said or done in a SCIF could ever be monitored by the bad guys – or at least that was the goal.

“Leaving aside scheduling, yes. Any chance the meetings could be on weekends?”

“That would be preferable. Most of the other team members are employed full-time. How about Sunday afternoons?”

It wasn’t as if Frank had anything else to do on weekends, other than pursuing his unsuccessful vendetta against Fang. “Sure. That works.”

Frank hadn’t paid attention to where they were walking, and now realized George had circled back toward the coffee shop. “Who else is in the group?” he asked.

George handed him a thumb drive. “You can find all the particulars here. The first meeting will be this Sunday at 3:00 PM at Langely. Do you have a car these days?”

“No, it finally died for good. I guess an Uber driver can drop me at the guard gate?”

“He can take you all the way to the check-in building.”

“Great. Will you be at the meetings?”

“No, I’m just the messenger on this one.” George held out his hand. “Now go have some fun.”

As George turned and strode off into the rain, it occurred to Frank that George’s career with the CIA had begun in the depths of the Cold War. Frank wondered whether he was sorry he wouldn’t be able to help tuck it to Ivan one more time.

*  *  *

Frank read through the material on the thumb drive with interest. It was a small group. He’d heard of several of them and was intrigued by those he hadn’t. And then there was the Chair of the group, a full colonel from the United States Cyber Command, or USCYBERCOMMAND, as it was universally referred to. Frank mused over that datum. If the CIA was playing catch up on the blockchain, USCYBERCOM must be scrambling even harder to figure out what the heck was going on.

Frank tapped his fingers on his desk. It was interesting that USCYBERCOM was leading the task force alone, instead of teaming with the CIA. No wonder George had sounded unhappy; the turf wars must have been interesting over this one, especially since the work order came directly from the president. But it made sense. USCYBERCOMMAND had been formed in 2009 to centralize cyber defense efforts across all of the service branches. Its remit had been growing ever since, taking on the same role for offensive efforts as well, and achieving independence as a “Unified Combat Command” in 2017.

Frank leaned back and folded his arms. Maybe this project would get him back in the good graces of the powers that be. Huh – or maybe banished for good instead. There would be lots of glory to go around if USCYBERCOM was successful. But if the task force couldn’t produce an exploit that worked – or, worse yet, designed one that the Russians discovered – the powers that be would be looking for a scapegoat. He wondered whether they’d look all the way down to his little task force.

But there was no point going down that road any further. He went back to his keyboard and opened up the bios of the other task force members, starting with the colonel’s. Fifty-four. West Pointer, number three in his class. Picked up one graduate degree in computer science and another in advanced warfare strategy a few years later. Several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Taught the first cyberwarfare course back at the ‘Point. For the last eight years, attached to USCYBERCOM. Would he be an asset or an obstacle?

The rest of the task force members were as different from each other as could be. One was a computer scientist with a dozen cybersecurity patents and an endless lists of academic papers, and two were blockchain cowboys. One of them looked to be a true believer, and the other was a reformed black hat who’d served hard time for hacking into banks. And the last one was Dirk Delhohn.

This would be interesting, in every sense of the word.

*  *  *

Frank was drumming his fingers again, this time sitting at his kitchen table as he took stock of all that he had learned.

For example, he knew from his extensive on-line research that it was almost impossible to keep a squirrel out of a bird feeder, once the beast had committed to its target. Squirrels, he had read as well as observed, were worthy opponents. Clever, single-minded and highly motivated. The Web was full of despairing tales of anti-squirrel devices purchased and then found wanting. Those few devices that did seem up to the task, like baffles intended to stop a squirrel from climbing up a pole or down a wire, were often of no use. There were simply too many squirrel launch platforms within leaping distance of the typical feeder.

What to do?

His phone dinged and he picked it up.

Who’s winning? You or Fang? Marla’s text read.

Very funny, he typed.

Sorry to hear that, she responded.

Clearly, admitting defeat was not an option.

*  *  *

Author’s Notes for this week:

Ah yes, the Cold War, beloved of thriller and spy novelists for decades. No one, except the Russians had more to lose when the Berlin Wall came down than this writing crowd. Suddenly, best-selling authors like David Cornwell (better known as John le Carré) and Tom Clancy had to come up with new bad guys and new conflicts to challenge their characters. In Cornwell’s case it worked better in some books than others. Somehow, pharmaceutical companies (The Constant Gardener) and consulting firms (A Delicate Truth) just don’t exude evil as credibly as a pack of Stalinist KGB agents.

And then international terrorism came along to save the day! Suddenly, there was a common foe again, and instead of one monolithic enemy there were lots to choose from – Islamists, ethnic minorities, eco-terrorists – the variety and supply was practically endless.

But still… Like old men reliving the salad days of their youth, many old authors just couldn’t help themselves. They resurrected old enemies of their characters, or made their characters face the questionable deeds of their past. Will book five travel down this road as well? Hmmm. Interesting question.

Before answering that question, let’s look at yet another fine line writers must walk. On the one side of the line lies cliché, and on the other, interestingly enough, another French word: trope. Everyone knows what clichés means. But what about trope?

The word trope has a specific as well as a somewhat recursive meaning (the latter is the one we’re talking about here). The Wikipedia explains those to meanings as follows:

A literary trope is the use of figurative language, via word, phrase or an image, for artistic effect such as using a figure of speech. The word trope has also come to be used for describing commonly recurring literary and rhetorical devices, motifs or clichés in creative works.

Important to the point I am making, trope is often given a positive connotation in comparison to cliché, which is almost invariably used in the negative. Why? And what’s the difference?

The difference, when used positively, is that a trope refers to a favorite device – like the bad guy riding into town in a Western, or a Lauren Bacall-type type side-kick in a detective book – that feels familiar and welcome to a movie goer or reader. Unlike a cliché, when used in this context it’s more likely to be a broad concept rather than a specific scene, and therefore provides more room for originality. You might say that it’s part of what makes a cozy mystery cozy. Indeed, you might say that there wouldn’t be such a thing as genre fiction at all if readers didn’t like tropes. What, after all, is a murder mystery but a trope at the 60,000 feet?

So that brings us back to the plot, and where this book is headed. Yes, it will be just a little tropish, but not too much. But then again, I wasn’t writing thrillers back in my Cold War days.

Next Week: Time to start packing – next week we’re off to Russia!

 

Continue to Chapter 11 here