Terminal Compromise - Winn Schwartau (fiction book recommendations TXT) 📗

don’t have to pay

out.”

“Yessir, but that’s not official . . .”

“Of course it’s not you idiot . . .”

“I’m sorry sir.”

“As you were saying . . .” Ferguson was glad he had moved the

psychological stress to his underling.

“When we got to the account, about 9:00 A.M., it was empty.

That’s it. Empty. All the money was gone.”

“And, pray tell, where did it go?” Templeton said sarcastically.

“We don’t know. It was supposed to have been transferred to

hundreds of accounts. Here and abroad. There’s no audit of what

happened.”

“Do you know how long it will take you to pay for this screw up

Porter?” Templeton demanded.

“Yessir.”

“How long?”

“A hundred lifetimes,” Porter said dejectedly.

“Longer. A lot longer.” Ferguson really knew that Porter would-

n’t pay any price. As long as the computer records showed he

wasn’t at fault, he would continue to be a valued employee.

Ferguson himself was bound to be the scape goat.

“What do you want me to do, sir?” Porter asked.

“You’ve done enough. Just wire me the records. I need them

yesterday. I have to talk to Weinhauser.” Ferguson hung up in

disgust. It was not going to be a good day.

Chapter 11 Wednesday, November 4 The Stock Exchange, New York

Wall Street becomes a ghost town by early evening with the night

population largely consisting of guards, cleaning and maintenance

people. Tightly packed skyscrapers with their lighted windows

create random geometric patterns in the moonless cityscape and

hover ominously over dimly lit streets.

Joe Patchok and Tony Romano worked as private guards on the four

to midnight shift at the Stock Exchange on Cortland Street in

lower Manhattan. For a couple of young college guys this was the

ideal job. They could study in peace and quiet, nothing ever

happened, no one bothered them, and the pay was decent.

They were responsible for the 17th. and 18th. floors which had a

sole entrance and exit; controlled access. This was where the

central computers for the Stock Exchange tried to maintain sanity

in the market. The abuses of computer trading resulting in the

minicrash of 1987 forced a re-examination of the practice and the

subsequent installation of computer brakes to dampen severe

market fluctuations.

Hundreds of millions of shares exchanged every day are recorded

in the computers as are the international, futures and commodi-

ties trades. The dossiers on thousands upon thousands of compa-

nies stored in the memory banks and extensive libraries were used

to track investors, ownership, offerings, filings and provide

required information to the government.

Tony sat at the front guard desk while Joe made the next hourly

check through the offices and computer rooms. Joe strolled down

the halls, brilliantly lit from recessed ceiling fixtures. The

corridor walls were all solid glass, giving the impression of

more openness than was really provided by the windowless, climate

controlled, 40% sterile environment. There was no privacy

working in the computer rooms.

The temperature and humidity were optimized; the electricity

content of air was neutralized both electrostatically and by

nuclear ionization, and the air cycled and purified once an hour.

In the event of a catastrophic power failure, which is not un-

known in New York, almost 10,000 square feet was dedicated to

power redundancy and battery backup. In case of fire, heat

sensors trigger the release of halon gas and suck all of the

oxygen from the room in seconds. The Stock Exchange computers

received the best care.

Joe tested the handle on the door of each darkened room through

the myriad glass hallways. Without the computers behind the

glass walls, it might as well have been a House of Mirrors. He

noticed that the computer operators who work through the night

were crowded together at the end of a hall next to the only

computer rooms with activity. He heard them muttering about the

cleaning staff.

“Hey guys, problem?” Joe asked.

“Nah, we escaped,” a young bearded man in a white lab coat said

pointing into the room. “His vacuum cleaner made one God awful

noise, so we came out here til’ he was done.”

“New cleaning service,” Joe said offhandedly.

The dark complexioned cleaning man wore a starchy white uniform

with Mohammed’s Cleaning Service emblazoned across the back in

bold red letters. They watched him, rather than clean the room,

fiddle with the large barrel sized vacuum cleaner.

“What’s he doing?”

“Fixing that noise, I hope.”

“What’s he doing now?”

“He’s looking at us and, saying something . . .”

“It looks like he’s praying . . .”

“Why the hell would he . . .”

The entire 46 story building instantly went dark and the force of

the explosion rocked Tony from his seat fifty yards away. He

reached for the flashlight on his belt and pressed a series of

alarms on the control panel even though the video monitors were

black and the emergency power had not come on. Nothing. He ran

towards the sound of the blast and yelled.

“Hello? Hey?” he yelled nervously into the darkness.

“Over here, hurry,” a distant pained voice begged.

Tony slid into a wall and stopped. He pointed his flashlight down

one hall. Nothing.

“Over here.”

He jumped sideways and pointed the beam onto a twisted maze of

bodies, some with blood geysering into the air from their necks

and arms and legs. Tony saw that the explosion had shattered the

glass walls into thousands of high velocity razor sharp projec-

tiles. The corpses had been pierced, stabbed, severed and muti-

lated by the deadly shards. Tony felt nauseous; he was going to

be sick right then.

“Tony.” A shrapnelled Joe squeaked from the mass of torn flesh

ahead of him.

“Holy shit . . .” Tony’s legs to turned to jelly as he bent over

and gagged.

“Help me!”

The force of the blast had destroyed the glass partitions as far

as his light beam would travel. He pointed the light into the

room that exploded. The computer equipment was in shambles, and

then he saw what was left of the cleaning man. His severed head

had no recognizable features and pieces of his body were strewn

about. Tony suddenly vomited onto the river of blood that was

flowing his way down the hallway.

“I gotta go get help,” Tony said choking. He pushed against the

wall to give him the momentum to overcome the paralysis his body

felt and ran.

“No, help me . . .”

He ran down the halls with his flashlight waving madly. The ele-

vators. They were out, too. Maybe the phone on the console.

Dead. He picked up the walkie-talkie and pushed the button.

Nothing. He banged the two way radio several times on the coun-

ter in the futile hope that violence was an electronic cure-all.

Dead. Tony panicked and threw it violently into the blackness.

Neither the small TV, nor his portable radio worked.

*

“I know it’s almost midnight,” Ben Shellhorne said into the

cellular phone. He cupped his other ear to hear over the commo-

tion at the Stock Exchange building.

“Quit your bitching. Look at it this way; you might see dawn for

the first time in your life.” Ben joked. All time was equal to

Ben but he knew that Scott said he didn’t do mornings. “Sure,

I’ll wait,” Ben said in disgust and waited with agitation until

Scott came back to the phone. “Good. But don’t forget that beer

isn’t just for breakfast.”

He craned his neck to see that the NYPD Bomb Squad had just left

and gave the forensics team the go ahead. No danger.

“Listen,” Ben said hurriedly. “I gotta make it quick, I’m going

in for some pictures.” He paused and then said, “Yes, of course

after the bodies are gone. God, you can be gross.” He paused

again. “I’ll meet you in the lobby. One hour.”

Ben Shellhorn, a denizen of the streets, reported stories that

sometimes didn’t fit within the all-the-news-that’s-fit-to-print

maxim. Many barely bordered on the decent, but they were all

well done. For some reason, unknown even to Ben, he attracted

news whose repulsiveness made them that much more magnetic to

readers. Gruesome lot we are, he thought.

That’s why one of his police contacts called him to say that a

bunch of computer nerds were sliced to death. The Cheers rerun

was bringing him no pleasure, so sure, what the hell; it was a

nice night for a mutilation.

“It’s getting mighty interesting, buddy boy,” Ben said meeting

Scott as he stepped out of his filthy Red 911 in front of the

Stock Exchange an hour later. His press credentials performed

wonders at times. Like getting behind police lines and not

having to park ten blocks away.

The police had brought in generators to power huge banks of

lights to eerily light up the Stock Exchange