Start at the Prologue and First Chapter here

Frank should have been reviewing the thick briefing book in his lap on the way to CIA headquarters for his first Russ Task Force meeting. Instead, he was gazing out the window, distracted.

Why had he never thought about protecting BankCoin from a foreign state? True, the bank hadn’t specifically asked him to cover that concern, and at a technical level there was no difference between a state actor and a criminal, but that was no excuse – motivations might matter. With the world banking system adopting the GFBS technology, wouldn’t the Russian Federation have a task force just like the one he was on, except targeted at taking down the U.S. financial system? Of course, they would, if only to figure out how to do it should the need ever arise.

It wouldn’t have to be Russia, either. North Korea, China and Iran all possessed formidable cyberwar capabilities. It could even be a smaller country, like Venezuela or Cuba. He’d been reading a detailed CIA report on the use of proxies – not just smaller countries, but companies and criminal enterprises, too. Both had been recruited during the Cold War. Using a proxy could level the cyber playing field significantly. Even if a country lacked a technical team capable of pulling off an attack, most could afford to hire one. Over a hundred and fifty countries fit that profile.

And using proxies was a time-honored practice, as the CIA paper pointed out. From the days of the ancient Greeks forward, countries had hired mercenaries to reinforce, or even replace, a standing army. At sea, countries with no navies, or weak ones, took an even easier and less expensive route, by issuing “letters of marque” to private ship owners, authorizing them to arm their vessels and seize enemy ships. If such a privateer was captured by an enemy warship, holding that simple piece of paper meant the difference between treated as a prisoner and imprisoned and being hung on the spot as a pirate.

The privateer analogy was really a pretty good one, Frank thought. All kinds of criminal hacker shops were flourishing under the protective umbrella of Russia, stealing money, identities and priceless corporate intellectual property at will, either at the bidding of the government, or for their own benefit.

Clearly, Frank decided, he needed to worry about more than hit and run hackers out to steal low-hanging alt coin fruit. Serving on the Russ task force would help him reorient his thinking towards protecting BankCoin from an attack by a foreign power, or its proxy.

Half an hour later he was sitting in a conference room at CIA headquarters, this time on an upper floor rather than somewhere in the underground bowels of the building, where he’d been housed during his last CIA adventure. Waiting for the others to arrive, he strolled over to the window and saw a half-dozen deer grazing on the lawn in the distance. The CIA grounds included over two hundred heavily protected acres. Those must be the happiest, and certainly the safest, deer on earth.

The door opened behind him and Frank heard a voice. “Ah, Frank. So – we meet again.”

“Hi Dirk,” Frank said. “Interesting that we should both be invited to be on the same task force.”

“Not so much, I think. You have the big name, and I am heavily involved in BankCoin, so why not?”

“Why not indeed, I guess. Hello.”

The hello was directed at the uniformed man who entered the room a few steps behind Dirk.

“Hello,” the officer responded, approaching them, “Colonel Lawrence James. And you are?”

“Frank Adversego. And this is Dirk Delhohn.”

“Glad to have you both aboard. You’ll be making a key contribution to the work of the task force, I’m sure.”

Frank settled into the chair with his name in front of it and examined James and the other newcomers as they arrived and took their seats. The colonel seemed business like, with a face older than the age Frank had found on his bio. There were bags under his eyes, and his cheeks hung down on either side of his chin, reminding Frank of a basset hound in uniform.

The middle-aged professor who sat down behind the Arnold Lerner name tag a few minutes later looked out of his element – he was dressed much the same way Frank would have dressed had Audrey Addams not restocked his closet. But Lerner was alert, taking everything around him in with interest.

Joel Ruben, the hacker who’d done hard time, looked like he’d rehabilitated well. He was wearing a blue blazer, open neck shirt, blue jeans and expensive shoes. Obviously, he was emulating the Silicon Valley venture capitalists who were paying him far more than he’d ever made outside the law.

Douglas Petrie, the last task force member to arrive – late – was clearly the ghost of Ruben’s past. He was skinny and young, wearing sneakers, old jeans, and a black T-shirt with “Code Killer” emblazoned on the front. The cover of the over-sized laptop he opened in front of him was covered with colorful decals.

“Alright,” Colonel James announced as Petrie sat down, “I’d like to welcome you all to the Russ Task Force and thank you for your service. I can assure you this project is of the highest priority. Regrettably, you won’t be able to disclose your participation or to share any of the details now or in the future, but you can be assured your work will be of vital importance to national security.” Those around the table seemed appropriately pleased, with the exception of Petrie, who’s eyes were locked on his computer screen.

“Password?” Petrie interrupted.

“Excuse me?” James replied.

“Password for the WiFi network? My phone’s hotspot isn’t working.

“That’s right. The building’s shielded,” James replied.

“So I need a password so I can log on to your network. I’ll need to access my tools and stuff if you want me to do anything.”

James pointed at the credenza behind Petrie. “Take a look over there.”

Petrie swung around, and spotted what he wanted. James glowered as Petrie set the laminated card next to his laptop and started typing.

“So,” James resumed. “I think we can forego introductions. Your briefing books include full particulars on each Task Force member. Before we get down to business, though, do any of you have any questions?”

“Yeah,” Petrie said. “So, what do you have against alt coins?”

James frowned, “Nothing, Mr. Petrie, but –”

“Doogie,” Petrie interrupted.

“Excuse me?” James said.

“I go by Doogie. Call me Doogie.”

James gave him a hard look. “Okay – Doogie. As I was about to say, the government has nothing against alt coins. As you may not be aware, many government agencies have blockchain projects in progress. Treasury, the Federal Reserve and Commerce are all supportive of initiatives like BankCoin. Our focus here is exclusively on the Russ, which is being used by Russia to get around the sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies in response to Russian aggression. Does that clarification help?”

“Maybe,” Petrie said, his eyes drifting back to his computer screen. Frank wondered what kind of allowances had been made in finalizing Doogie’ background check. Presumably someone at the CIA would be keeping a very close eye on him.

“I think, Colonel,” Joel Ruben said, “what Doogie may be pointing out is that if we’re to be successful, we’ll need to be sensitive to the way the global blockchain community thinks about alt coins. If anyone in the field working on this project doesn’t display the same degree of enthusiasm as those involved in any group the government needs to infiltrate, they’re likely to be viewed with suspicion.” Good, Frank thought. It never hurt to have a peacemaker on the team.

“Understood,” James said. “So, let me continue. I think we should try to be as informal here as circumstances permit. Further to that goal, I’m not going to kick things off with the usual hundred slides. Instead, I’d like to hear your initial reactions based on your briefing books. Who’d like to kick things off?”

Frank broke the silence that followed. “What struck me most was that although the briefing book does a pretty good job of laying out the groundwork, it doesn’t suggest any particular way to go about devising a strategy for undermining the Russ. Was that on purpose?”

“Exactly,” James said. “The assumption made in standing up this task force was that you should be able to start from a clean slate, without being biased in one way or another by any thinking that’s already gone on within the CIA. What we’re looking for is the maximum amount of creativity and ingenuity on the part of you all.” James turned to Petrie, who was clattering away at his keyboard. “I assume you’re taking notes, Doogie?”

“Sorry,” Petrie said, folding his arms as he pushed back from the table. “Just something I had to finish up.”

James glared at him until Petrie reluctantly closed his laptop, and then turned back to Frank. “Did anything occur to you as a promising approach?”

“Nothing concrete,” Frank said. “I tend to think from the top down. So, my approach is usually to start by categorizing things.”

“Good,” James said. “What did you come up with?”

“Well, I actually came at it from two different directions. The first was to attack the viability of the Russ as a crypto currency. So, for example, we could launch constant dedicated denial of service attacks against the Russ exchanges to make it difficult to do business using it. Or we could steal so many Russ that no one would want to risk owning it – rather like what happened recently with the big attack against crypto currencies. They all suffered for a while.”

“Yes, but then they all came back again,” Joel said. “There have been lots of thefts, none of them with lasting consequences.”

“Agreed,” Frank said, “And that led me to the second direction, which was trying to come up with a way to technically disable, destroy or scramble the Russ blockchain.”

“Difficult,” Dirk said. “That is the beauty of the blockchain. Once created and put into operation, it is very difficult to change.”

“Yes,” Frank said, “But that’s also a weakness. If we can find a way to monkey with it, it may take a long time for the Russians to redesign their system so that we can’t just do it again. And if we come up with several strategies, every time they get it up and running we can attack it again.

“Indeed,” Dirk said. “But first we must find a flaw to exploit. And if they have done their job well, that is not so easy, yes?”

*  *  *

Colonel James’s ambitions for the first meeting of his task force were high, and Frank was tired by the time he returned home. But his fatigue disappeared when he walked into the foyer of his building. There, on the floor below the mailboxes, was the package he’d been waiting for. He grabbed it and almost ran up the stairs.

When he lifted the contraption from the box he felt a deep surge of satisfaction. It hadn’t been cheap, but he’d found the ultimate anti-squirrel device: a clear plastic, cylindrical feeder surrounded by a round cage hanging from springs. A bird could stand on one of the small perches attached to the cage and reach the seeds inside through the hole in the cylinder immediately behind the perch. But not a squirrel – it’s weight would stretch the springs and drag the cage down. When it did, metal shields covered all the holes that provided access to the seeds inside.

Frank filled the feeder with seed and hung it over the porch. He couldn’t wait to see the frustration on Fang’s face as it tried, and tried, yet always failed, to reach its reward, just like the squirrels in the video at the vendor’s website. Revenge would be his. And it would be sweet.

The next morning, Frank was astonished to see that his magnificent new, guaranteed squirrel-proof feeder was empty! How in the world could the little monster have pulled that off?

He stalked out on to the porch and examined the feeder. It seemed perfectly fine. So how …?

He’d have to catch Fang in the act to answer that. He set the feeder on the porch floor, twirled the top off, and filled the feeder to the top. After replacing the top, he picked the feeder up, and watched as eight pounds of seed pour out onto his feet. He turned the feeder upside down, and there was the answer: the miserable rodent had gnawed through the plastic bottom of the feeder while hanging upside down from the cage.

So much for the best that American industry could offer. It was time to take anti-squirrel technology to a new level on his own. Until he came up with a plan, the financial security of the western world would just have to take care of itself.

Author’s Notes for This Week: Not much to add this time around. I’ve yet to make up my mind whether the task force will play any meaningful role in the plot, but my current thinking is that it will be a small tool of convenience to pull out of the tool box a few times when I need to address a technical or plot point in a more interesting or natural way.

Next Week: Pressures on! I’ve used up my backlog of chapters and need to get back ahead of my weekly posting schedule. I’ve got about another 3,000 words of bits and pieces in various threads and will have to pick one to run with next. In the meantime, if you haven’t noticed, I posted a piece yesterday that you might want to check out.

Continue to Chapter 17