The Emperor's Revenge (Oregon Files 11)

As they exited, Juan caught Julia giving him a knowing smile.

By the time they reached the wardroom where Murph and MacD were watching over Kula, Gretchen needed to steady herself with her hand lightly on Juan’s arm. She eased into a chair opposite Kula, while Juan remained standing.

“I want to thank you again for saving my children and aunt,” Kula said. “But I must ask what you are going to do with us now.”

“Your family is being well taken care of,” Juan said. “After you tell us what we want to know, we’ll let you all go. If, that is, we’re convinced you aren’t ShadowFoe. Do you have other family back in Albania?”

“No. But I have cousins who immigrated to Greece, on the island of Corfu. We would be safe there.”

Knowing that Max was listening to the conversation and would already be changing course for Corfu, Juan said, “Now, you said you know how we can find this hacker?”

Kula shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “What I said was that I’d help you find her. The problem is that I don’t actually know who she is.”

“What makes you think ShadowFoe is a woman?” Gretchen asked. “Have you seen her?”

“Well, no. I don’t know what she looks like. I only know her through our online communications.”

“Then ShadowFoe could be a sixty-year-old man, for all you know,” Murph said. “Or a teenager emailing you from his parents’ basement.”

“That is true,” Kula said. “I don’t know for sure. But the way she words things in her emails is more like the women I work with than the men. I can’t put my finger on it better than that. But I do know that she is the best coder I’ve ever worked with.”

“So you did work with her,” Juan said.

“For five years. We started by trading viruses and Trojan horses that we’d written. Then we moved up to ransomware.”

When Juan glanced at Murph for an explanation, he said, “It’s malware that’s installed when a user clicks on an infected link or opens an app from a spam email. The installed app then locks up your computer, and the only way to get it unlocked is to pay the creator a ransom to receive the password. If you don’t pay, your PC becomes a brick. Bye-bye, data.”

Kula shrugged, seemingly both proud of his ability and embarrassed by his deeds. “It was good money. If people weren’t so gullible, we wouldn’t make anything. Their idea of computer security is a joke.”

“I’m sure you taught them a valuable lesson,” Juan said sarcastically. “Why were you in an Albanian mobster’s castle?”

“I got . . . uh . . . too curious, let’s say, about a new project ShadowFoe wanted me to work on. She found out and didn’t like it. Really didn’t like it, as a matter of fact. So she told Simaku that I was stealing from him and sent him false evidence of the theft. I’m sure she hoped he would have me killed. Instead, he took my children and forced me to work for him. When she found out I was still alive, she must have pinned the Credit Condamine attack on me.”

“The project you got curious about was the bank heist?”

Kula shook his head. “That was just the first part of the full operation. The endgame is much bigger than a simple bank theft.”

MacD chafed at that. “Simple? She and the people she’s working with wiped out half the Monaco Grand Prix to cover their tracks.”

“And do you think they would have gone to all that trouble for the money in a single bank? Believe me, there are less risky ways to break into computers and steal.”

Juan took a seat on the table. “What are they planning?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know something or ShadowFoe wouldn’t have gone after you.”

“I’m sure she thought I discovered more than I did. All I got were bits and pieces, really.”

“You just couldn’t help yourself,” Murph said with a knowing shake of his head. “You broke into her computer system, didn’t you?”

Kula nodded. “The things she was asking me for were so bizarre that I wanted to find out more. I had no idea she was so ruthless or I never would have looked.”

“What did you find?” Juan asked. “What was she asking you for?”

“She wanted me to write a program for her that would let her change the settings on industrial protective relays. They’re the microprocessors that control circuit breakers. When a protective relay detects an overload condition, it trips the breakers to prevent damage to an electrical circuit.”

“Why would she want that?”