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

I recognize.”

“No problem.” Scott dialed the Times’ computer and identified

himself. After going into the bank computer with Kirk, every

time he dialed up his office, he felt an increased sense of

power, and an increased sense of responsibility. He had access

to massive amounts of information that if it got into the wrong

hands . . .

He shook the thought. The computer offered the ‘Stocks and Bonds

Menu’ and Scott set up a query in a modified SQL that was simple

enough for reporters to use:

ALL STOCKS LOSING 35% OR MORE OF VALUE IN LAST YEAR.

The computer flashed a message. ‘Working’. Scott leaned back.

“Takes a few seconds. Oh, as I was saying, when I get back,

I’ll call and we’ll see what we can screw together.”

“Back from where?” Tyrone sounded accusatory but jealous.

“Europe. Amsterdam.” Scott checked the computer screen. It was

still busy.

“Rough life.”

“No, it’s only for a couple of days. There’s a hackers confer-

ence. I’ve been invited, by Kirk as a matter of fact.”

“Hackers conference, sounds like tons of fun.” Tyrone was not

impressed.

“The best hackers in the world are going to be there. I hope to

get some leads on the First State mess. The Freedom BBS is not

all it seems.”

“Please stay in touch,” Tyrone implored.

“Sure. Here we go. It’s ready. Ah, let’s see, there are 267

companies who meet that criterion. I guess that narrows it down

for you.”

“Smart ass. Ah, can you get those in New York only?”

“The city? Sure.”

SORT BY ZIP 100XX

“That’ll give us . . .”

“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 entity 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 assumption 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 passcodes

to automatic bank tellers machines and credit card information.

Once the passcodes 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 hell that

this collection of passive 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 passengers 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